by R Coots
“I promise,” Jossa told her, meaning it with every ounce of her being. Mivi was as subtle as a battle cruiser dropping out of orbit. Whatever reason she had for wanting Jossa to ask about old concubines, it couldn’t be good.
“Oh, thank you!” Mivi fluttered a hand and flounced to the door. “I’ll have someone bring you something to eat, ok?”
Jossa waited until the woman was gone before leaning her head against Del’s cool hand and praying to every Ancestor she had that her sousi would wake soon. The sooner she was awake, the sooner they could start figuring a way out of here.
> Chapter Eighteen
Syrus
It has been found that each subject has a certain range. Inside which they may feel or hear or otherwise sense another being. Depending on the strength of the psychic ability, the subject may have a variety of reactions. In the strongest, it has been known to cause madness before training can be initiated.
-recovered data, date unknown
Almost three weeks after the first assault on the planet below, Syrus didn’t have an answer for the issue of the thank-gift. He knew what Kizen expected. By now, half the Fleet knew that Kizen wasn’t just after the Helm of the Turan. And three quarters of the Fleet would be thrilled if the bastard got his way.
Luckily for Syrus, the Campaign was going well. Well enough that he could leave the surface forces and catch a ride up to the Edde Belo to coordinate contingencies for the whole system instead of worrying about the one planet. Kizen’s ralenen needed to meet the outFleet warlord for themselves before they would tell their men to follow orders. Fucking politics. Maybe he should leave the bath until after he’d done the meet and greet and maybe even pummeled a few of them into submission.
But no. He needed to recenter his mind, so he wouldn’t jump the nav beacons and start ripping people apart. Fucking war, so much more complicated than it needed to be. Fucking planets full of people driving him fucking insane. Fucking people, getting in his way just because they could.
Parents clinging to his legs as they begged him for mercy. Piles of dead men stacked like levees against the bloody rivers. Children watching with hollow eyes as their mothers were marched into the bowels of the Fleet ships. The same children crying as they were hauled off and stuffed in other ships, the better to keep the Fleet going on down the line.
It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever agreed to, this warlord fuckery. He wanted to grab every single one of the survivors by the hair and tell them that at least they’d had each other for a little while.
But warlords didn’t get sentimental. Neither did he, usually. He just got pissed at all the motherfucking idiots who didn’t realize they were being saved. Innocked and shipped off planet. Out of the way of what was about to happen to the people who were a little too good at hiding. The same type of person he’d been, a long time ago.
Not so many this time. In the way of rats and desperate people through time immemorial, people took any way off the planet they could find. Even if they knew Oona’s people were tagging every ship that left atmo, there weren’t many places to hide. Soon enough she’d have the data to tell them where to find the leak in this fucking system. Then they could work on plugging it.
If his guess about Hadra’s Net played out, the Fleet was both in trouble and in a position to cause a hell of a lot of havoc in the Empire in the next couple years. So long as they could make it through the next gate.
He checked the slate in his hand as he palmed open the door to his quarters, but there hadn’t been an update. No messages one way or another. It could mean the techs were still getting acquainted with the computer system. It could mean they were still trying. It could mean anything.
All it really meant was that his own commanders would doubt their warlord’s decision to let so many escapees succeed, and Kizen would needle him at the banquet later. So maybe he’d be dead in a few days, if the techs didn’t come up with something.
In the meantime, he had several weeks of blood and grime to clean off and enough sexual frustration pent up to go through at least three or four of the women. Maybe Iira’d gotten the new one out of the infirmary. Maybe the other one was awake. He might have two fresh bits of meat to try instead of just the one.
He started shedding armor and clothes and putting them in the cleaner next to the door. None of the women came out to the main room. They’d know he was here and start the heat in the bath, but he didn’t expect them to come running out to fawn all over him the minute he set foot in his rooms. It had taken a while to break them of that. But they’d finally learned that he’d come and find whichever ones he wanted for the moment and leave the rest alone. Otherwise they were just tripping hazards.
At least that's what he told them. They also pissed him off, shoving weeks’ worth of worry and petty arguments under his skin. Right now he was so sick of the emotions of a planet's worth of terrified and angry people that a few minutes of peace were like an eon of relief.
He pulled off his pants, wincing as caked in dirt flaked off and week-old bruises made themselves known all over his torso. The best armor in the universe couldn’t save a person from cracked ribs.
His slate dinged. An automated message told him that Iira’d set an alert to go off once he made it back. She’d locked the infirmary and put the women in their rooms, where no one else could get to them. She said she’d gone down to Med Bay and was taking care of the incoming casualties. If he was going to be breaking anyone’s bones or wanted to have his way with the remaining cryo patient, he’d have to take care of the aftermath himself.
He stopped. Reread the message. Snorted to himself and deleted it. Tired of babysitting his strays, was she? Not surprising. Quinn had been snippy on the flight up from the surface about how much time Iira had spent in Syrus’s quarters since the two foundlings had been brought on board. Not that Syrus would ever lay a finger on the woman. He preferred someone who wasn’t a walking glacier, thank you very much. Whatever Quinn and Iira and Oona had between themselves seemed to work itself out better than any normal marriage he’d ever seen, but it wasn’t something he wanted to get in the middle of.
Besides, med-techs might be viewed as a short step up from cockroaches by any Fleet warrior, but someone had to run Med Bay. Iira’s place was down with the injured while they were on Campaign, not babysitting concubines.
Locking the women in though? That was new. Even the dumbest Fleet bastards had quit trying to break into his quarters months ago. So why would she lock the women in the back?
Dropping his clothes into the cleaner, he decided he might as well check the infirmary first. It wasn’t hard to find a half-healed wound, this one along his neck where the gorget joined the helmet. He picked up almost as much dirt out of it as blood when he broke it open. Definitely time to get washed up, before something closed over and started to fester.
When he saw that only one of the beds was occupied, he almost turned around and reached for his slate. He caught himself mid stomp. Iira must have decided Jossalyn was well enough to be turned loose of the infirmary. That was probably why she’d locked the women into the back rooms. Added protection and to cut the risk of anyone trying to escape.
It didn’t look like she’d been trying very hard, though, if the rumpled sheets on the empty bed were any indication. He chuckled when he got close enough to lean in and take a deep breath. Iira wasn’t as much of a stone-hearted bitch as she liked to pretend. The table didn’t have the antiseptic med-bay smell that clung through a night or two. The new woman had set up camp in here and probably refused to leave her sousi without a promise that she wouldn’t be kept away.
Well that was on course with how the breed acted. Even the weakest, most fragile bit of a thing would turn into a snarling terror if someone tried to separate her from her partner for long. He’d seen that often enough. With one of them laid out like this, well, the reaction would be even worse.
Good thing everyone had managed to compromise before he’d gotten back. Oth
erwise Iira’s message probably would have said that she’d broken his new toy in half instead of healing her up. Maybe she was being less soft hearted and more practical. He would’ve had to punish her for injuring any of his women. He took a moment to look the redhead over, but didn’t bother checking her very close. He wanted to be clean and he wanted to fuck the living daylights out of someone, not necessarily in that order. Now that he knew Jossa was up, this was as good a time as any to see what sort of woman the fuerrus had access to back when the throne was worth something.
>><<
The women had turned the heat on in the bath, but they hadn’t stuck around. For a minute he debated grabbing one of them and dragging her out to join him. But the lure of a tub full of water was stronger. At some point in his life, he’d learned an ancient phrase about cleanliness and godliness. The godliness part was a crock of shit. The cleanliness? It took someone who knew what true filth was to really appreciate that part.
He scrubbed down the Imperial way, kneeling at the edge of the tub and dipping a bucket of water out to get rid of the worst of the grime before he contaminated the whole thing. He had to literally scrape the stuff off his skin. He and his men had gone from the surface almost to the core on the first push, down in the dregs and sewage, before they’d started herding people upwards. Short of an eeva suit, there wasn’t a set of armor made that could keep all that dirt out.
If it hadn’t been for his own brand of street rat’s genes, he’d have probably ended up with sepsis or who the fuck knew what else, poking around down in the lowest levels of the caves. He hated Kovavek planets. Cesspools, every one. Science hadn’t even discovered the cause of half the diseases you could catch in the lower levels of a Kovavek planet.
Once he’d rinsed off the crusted blood, dirt, and bits of what might have been other people, he slid into the tub. Forget a double armful of women. Forget a real bed. Forget people kneeling at his feet, forget shows of respect to rival any a fuerrus might get. At any point in his life, this right here was something he would have killed for.
Not just being physically clean, but alone. Completely alone inside his head. In a few minutes he’d start to get twitchy, like a mental patient expecting to hear the voices he’d been cured of. But for now, he was going to enjoy the solitude.
Syrus lasted about half an hour before his dick made up his mind for him. He didn’t have to worry about what parasites the women might have. Or whether they’d rigged themselves to kill him. No bombs going off. None of the soldiers waiting for him to let his guard down. There were a hundred reasons not to grab someone out of the slave pens before they’d been cleared and shipped up to the Breeder ships.
He didn’t have to worry about any of that. The women weren’t exactly standing at attention when he opened the door between the bathing room and their quarters. Neither were they draped around the room like some of the more ridiculous holos he’d seen. They kept their eyes on him, the acid whisper of fear all but hidden in the low thrum of anticipation. They knew the drill. All except the new one.
She sat at one of the tables, holding a plant over a small glass container. Her long fingers cradled the dirt, thin roots escaping to drip water on the table. A thin sheen of cosmetics dusted her face in golds and rubies. The leaf-green dress she was wearing made her skin glow. She looked far, far better than she had when he’d pulled her out of that casket. Almost healthy, even though her collarbone still jutted and he could see every tendon in the back of her hands. That could have been from tension. Even from halfway across the room, he could see she was trembling.
His erection bobbed against his stomach as he breathed. The tension in the room ratcheted up another notch. His nerves sang with it, his lust settled a bit deeper in his balls, and he felt a smile work its way across his face. “You.” He crooked a finger at the new one. “Come here.”
She took the time to put the plant back in its container, clean the dirt from her fingers, and shake out the folds of her dress before stepping away from the table and the other women. Nobody moved, either to encourage her or block her.
Standing in front of him, she was just as blank to him as Quinn or his wives. Right. The crown. It locked her in as much as it kept her from Feeling. That was ok. She couldn’t hide her physical reactions. Her breath came in pants as she clenched and unclenched her hands in the fine gauze of her dress. He tilted his head and eyed her. Looked like he was going to have to do all the work here.
“You’re out of practice,” he told her, stepping in to catch one wrist and pull her a few steps closer. His hand lit on fire with nerves, sending tingling jolts of pain all the way up his arm. But she didn’t try to pull away, so she was about three steps ahead of what the others had done when he first took the Helm. A tick in the plus column.
Her throat worked as he counted her ribs with his hand. The slight smell of dirt and plants overlaid perfumes and cosmetics, filling his nose as he leaned in close. She stayed put, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he reached with his free hand and palmed the lock on the door between the bathing room and the women’s quarters.
“You know, I hate doin’ all the work.” He backed up a step, bringing the woman with him. “This doesn’t have to hurt you. Might even enjoy it, you loosen up.”
What he needed her to do was relax, just a bit. Enough that he could find whatever it was that would turn her from a bundle of fear and nervous energy to something else. Right now, the lust and need singing in his veins were strong enough to outweigh what sang through her skin. If he could bring the same things up in her; get her other emotions to step down, then this would be a lot more fun. For both of them.
She wavered. Her hands came up to his hips, dropped away, and then settled into place. Not really helpful, since she brought more of that electric nervousness with her. Better than nothing though. There was determination under all that sting and fizz. Was she using it for courage? Trying to keep from running?
He circled a nipple with his thumb and it pebbled up hard and tight. She gasped, and her breast filled his hand. Small, yes, but he got tired of the huge, swinging udders Brander had filled the place with.
His dick twitched and he grinned. “See,” he murmured into her ear, running his nose around its outside curve. Her hair smelled like a meadow full of flowers. “Not so bad.”
She trembled as he moved from ear to jaw, then down the line of her neck. Her fingers on his hips fluttered, like she’d forgotten she’d put them there. She didn’t back away when he took another step to close the space between them. He cupped her ass, pulling her even closer, fitting her up against him, right where she belonged.
But she was still scared of something. Still holding onto herself with both hands and what must be an iron will.
That lasted until he lipped at the base of her neck, then bit gently. She melted. It was the only word for it. Arousal ran down her neck and crawled up her body from where they touched. She sucked in a breath. Her head fell back a little further, giving him better access to the rest of her neck. He grinned against her skin and bit again, a little harder.
This time she mewled under her breath.
He had her skirt up around her hips, one hand cupping the back of her head and his teeth working over a nipple before she flipped the switch. One minute he was riding high on arousal, just getting to the point where he could start the feedback loop. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, grief hit. Lust drained out of him like air from a ruptured hull, leaving only loss. Deep, heart-wrenching loss. Once he caught his balance and managed to squeeze back the tears, he found the source. Not himself. The woman. Jossalyn.
She was curled up on the floor, her back to the door. Her arms were over her head as she sobbed like the world had ended. Some small part of him, buried deep, reminded him that her world had ended not that long ago. The rest of him was flat pissed off, roaring in the sort of animal fury that usually sent him off into a killing Frenzy.
He grabbed her by the hair. He had her halfway
across the room before she came to life again. Her feet slipped and skidded on the wet floor. Her hands came up in a futile effort to get her hair free of his grip. But she was too crippled by her own internal agony. She kept crying too. He didn’t think it was with pain so much as self-loathing. At least, that was what he thought he was picking up from her. He wasn’t so familiar with that emotion from the outside, but he knew what it felt like when it came from himself.
He cursed her as he went, in every language he knew. High Imperial, street Savage and Kuchen. He cursed her for a kuchek who should have known her place and how to do her job and a bitch who couldn’t keep herself under control and an outFleet oiyao who should have taken what was offered and been grateful that some other oversexed jackass hadn’t gotten hold of her first. He also cursed himself for forgetting that she was a projective empath. Locked under a crown maybe, but crowns didn’t always work when the wearer was strong. And the best way to strengthen a connection was skin to skin contact. He’d been a moron to forget that.
Yes, said the part of him that sympathized with the grief-stricken woman, you were.
Shut up, he growled at the voice.
He damn near punched a hole in the control panel for the infirmary. With more strength than precision, he all but threw her through the opening in the wall. She landed in a heap of green gauze and tangled hair against the base of the other foundling’s table. If she noticed where she was, she didn’t show it. She kept crying, gasping sobs that racked her whole body and made him want to either stuff her in an airlock and hit the release, or hold her until she stopped.
Snarling to himself for the weakness, wondering what else she’d pulled to the surface when she hit him with all that grief, he grabbed her and hauled her upright. “Look,” he roared in her ear. “You see her?”
She looked. She saw. If anything, the wish for death got worse. The feeling that joined it was something he’d only ever described as “It’s all my fault.” He knew that one like he knew the pattern of his soul. It went light years past guilt. Right out into the emptiness of dead space itself.
