by R Coots
“You never hurt the women in your quarters like that,” she whispered. The acid faded slightly. He couldn’t read what replaced it, but it was cool and firm. If something intangible could feel firm.
“They’re not sai, sousi, or so infuriating that I want to wring their necks every time I see them,” he replied. Then frowned. “Except the one, and she likes it. Which is fucked up.”
Jossa snapped her mouth shut on whatever answer she had for that and looked back at Delfi. He waited and tried to breathe, to tamp down on the thing inside. He hadn’t lied. It lived too close to the surface these days. And he could do this job without her or Delfi, although getting access to the base on his credentials alone would be much riskier.
No, the real danger was losing himself, killing both of them, and not coming back. Or not coming back in time. If he lost his shit out here, and the military found him like that?
Well. At least he’d be dead before Quinn or Kizen realized he hadn’t delivered on his promise.
Jossa flinched and looked at him. He realized she’d Felt some of that. His shields must have degraded enough for her to catch his frustration. He glared at her, daring her to comment. To prove him right.
Her mouth twisted, but she kept it shut. Instead, she settled her balance on her knees and then stood, pulling him up in the same fluid motion. Syrus blinked at her, not quite sure how she’d done it. When he opened his mouth to say something, she put her fingers over it, cutting him off. With the other hand, she took his wrist and pulled his hand to her waist.
Syrus felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead. He didn’t think she’d hit her head. Maybe it was some sort of delayed effect of the drugs Iira had dosed her with back on the Edde Belo. He looked at his hand on her waist, then at the redhead on the floor. If that was the case, why wasn’t Delfi affected?
Jossa stepped in closer, her hips bumping his. Her hand slid from his mouth to his chest, fingertips resting on his sternum.
Oh, now he got it.
Syrus wove the fingers of his free hand through the hair at the back of her head and pulled. Just enough to expose her neck. The scent of the shampoo his women used drifted up from her hair, a mix of spices and honey. “So,” he said, leaning down so his lips brushed the soft skin just over the carotid. Her heartbeat hammered against his mouth. He felt arousal bloom from the spot under his lips, wiping out the fear, but leaving that other emotion floating like fog on a lake. “This the deal then? You going to pull all that experience out and dust it off for me? For real this time?”
“Need to promise me something,” Jossa whispered.
“Promise?” He bit down. She shuddered and sagged as her knees went out from under her. He caught her. His shields cracked slightly. He braced them back up. He wouldn’t be able to set up the loop this time. Couldn’t afford to let her get inside his head. He’d put too much work into keeping her alive to have to kill her so soon, given what she’d find rattling around his skull. Had to get her worked up enough the hard way. Syrus stepped back towards the pilot’s chair, pulling at her waist to bring her along.
“Just me,” Jossa gasped in his ear, following him in a one-two step pattern. Kind of like a dance. “Don’t touch her. Please.”
He pulled away to look at her. The arousal was there. That was real enough. But so was everything under it. She was afraid of what would happen if he went for her sousi instead.
This reaction was beyond what he’d gotten when he made the suggestion that they get each other off for him to watch. This was something to do with Delfi herself. But it wasn’t about jealousy. Some bonded pairs let that shit mangle their lives. Not these two. Not with the grief Jossa felt when her husband came up.
He looked down at Jossa, rubbing a thumb along the back of her neck as he thought. She watched him, breathing uneven as her body responded to his touch. But she kept her mind closed off.
Syrus leaned down to graze his teeth along the line of her throat, up to her ear. She quivered against him. Her hands plucked at his waist in feathery little movements. “You keep her in line,” he breathed. Her arousal spiked, setting his body on fire where he touched her. “Keep her in line, I don’t mess with her. Violent . . .” He paused to bite her earlobe gently. “Or otherwise.”
She leaned against him. He was more than half holding her up by now. His dick was trying to fight through his pants. From the raggedness of her breathing, she was picking up on the reaction. He waited while she found the air to speak. At last, she turned her face to his. “Agreed,” she whispered.
Syrus grinned and moved back to sit in the pilot’s chair, pulling the startled woman down to straddle him. “Then you better get to work.” He ran his hands up her arms and undid the catches that held the shoulders of her dress together. The fabric puddled around her hips, giving him an eyeful of bare stomach and breasts, all quivering glory as she panted for air. Pale scars marked her dusky brown skin. Some small. Some larger.
“Only got so much time,” he said, tracing a finger over a pale ridge just under her sternum. It looked like a knife wound someone had stitched up in the dark, without bothering to match the edges.
Long fingers wove their way through his hair. Her lips were softer than he’d expected. Perfect, actually. He managed to get rid of the weapons on his belt and tighten his shields one last time before she hitched herself up to fit her hips against his.
His control didn’t last, of course. He had the choice of enjoying himself or keeping her out of his head. By the time he lost his grip on the outer guards, she was a whimpering, shivering mess of white-hot need. He clung to the inner barriers by the barest thread of determination when she convulsed over him, hair straggling into his face as her orgasm ground her into dust.
Not more than a heartbeat later, he lost it too; his hands on her hips pulling her down, down, down. She went from whimpering to screaming, hands tearing at his hair, and he followed her through the black hole. His ears rang. He might have gone permanently blind. All he could think was that this was what the fuerrus had had in his palace. In his bed. Now he could see why a man would chase her for ten years just to get this back. He might literally fuck himself to death.
>Chapter Twenty-Six
Syrus
If we link the nanites to the DNA, it should give us a complete record of how the breeding program went, even if the original data banks are lost. So long as the subject doesn’t get electrocuted, retrieving their genealogical history should be as easy as taking a blood sample.
-recovered data, date unknown
He dreamt of blood and dust. So thick at the back of his throat. He needed to claw it all out so he could breathe. There were bodies at his feet. Their blood mixed with the dirt of the street, turning it to a tacky red-brown mud that stuck to his toes and plastered the rags he wore to his skin.
Plastered. There was a word. He couldn’t remember where he’d learned it. None of the builders had taught it to him. They always chased him off.
Something made a noise nearby. His head shot up. He stared, feelings he didn’t recognize burning and twisting in his gut. Pounding at his head. The only other person in the alley cowered against the wall, sucking air as she bit her hand and stared at the bodies.
She was also silent.
Good. If she’d tried to talk to him, he would have had to kill her. Instead, he was going to figure out where these new feelings came from. They hurt. He didn’t like it. Bad enough the whole city hurt him, just by existing. Bad enough the fuckers burned his skin and made him want to hide in the coldrooms to escape. But now something was messing with his stomach. Son of a bitch.
He kicked the bodies. Nothing. Dead. No feelings there. Was it him?
Another noise. Low and whining. Like a dog growl. Coming from his throat. It made sense once he thought about it. You’re less than an animal, part of him said. Why wouldn’t you make noises like one? Except now, the dogs will come after you too, because you’re not one of them either.
Something scraped agai
nst stone. He looked up. The girl was inching away from him. He glared at her. Something was wrong with her face. It kept changing.
He pointed at the ground in front of his feet and snarled again. She shook her head and backed away again. Words sprouted in his head like weeds after spring rain, but didn’t reach his mouth. All that came out was another growl as he stomped over the bodies, right through the blood puddle, and after the girl.
This is wrong. This isn’t how it happened.
He snorted to himself. Wasn’t like she was alive to complain, was it? His child-self reached the girl, grabbed a fistful of hair in one sticky hand, and yanked her head back.
A stomach-churning meld of faces cracked wide in an insane smile. He saw Delfi’s hair, Jossa’s bone structure, and Rissa’s—
His child-self smashed the girl’s head against the wall as hard as he could. Her skull cracked like an egg.
No! Syrus tried to stop the kid. No! That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. You touched her. Or she touched you. Who did what doesn’t matter. But you didn’t kill her!
Didn’t you?
He opened his eyes in time to see Delfi hefting a spanner over one shoulder. He reached up to deflect it. Not soon enough. He kept her from caving in his skull, but not from giving him a solid tap on the head. Glaring at the snarling young woman, he growled. “You’re all temper and no brains, you know that, girl?”
Delfi hissed something derogatory at him and hauled on the spanner. He let her have it. She staggered backwards, flailing for balance. And she was in a temper. Not that he needed to guess why. Jossa lay against his chest, not quite asleep, but dozing. He remembered that he’d lost all his interior shields. For a heartbeat, panic froze his brain. Fuck. Would she realize?
Then he came to his senses and slammed them all back up. No point in leaving anything out there for her to catch.
Jossa groaned a little and shifted against him. He couldn’t worry about her right now. Delfi had her balance. If she wasn’t planning to murder him outright, she was definitely going to cause as much pain as she could. Too bad for her, he was ready.
Syrus grabbed the masker from where he’d left it on the console. Thumbing the toggle on the side of the case, he jabbed the thing into her ribcage as soon as she came in reach. Hopefully it had been long enough that this wouldn’t kill her.
Delfi went up on tiptoe, a high-pitched keening noise clawing its way out of her throat. Fear hit him this time, not surprise. He was aware enough to notice it, now that the monster slept. Her body twisted and turned, hands scrabbling to get at her back. He knew the feeling. It was an absolute bitch. Like being lit on fire from the inside out.
The masker beeped a warning and he pulled it away. She dropped. Jossa writhed in his lap, moaning and clutching at his chest. His dick twitched. He told it to settle down. In a few minutes they'd all be electrocuted and nobody would want anything to do with sex.
Speaking of which. He tilted the masker up so he could read the screen at the top of the device. Well look at that, he’d gotten the right settings for the right person. He flipped the toggle for the next setting and looked down at Jossa.
Hitting her was even easier than Delfi. He shut his ears to her half-aware cry of pain as she thrashed against him. He shut his eyes too. He could see right down her bare back. Watching someone’s maruste rearrange itself into a new pattern was disturbing on so many levels. Who would have thought the one thing the Empire managed to grind into him was the collective obsession with people’s lives being written on their backs? Fucking bastards.
Of course, he probably should have done this when he didn’t have the woman in his lap and his pants down past his ass. Grumbling, he set the still-twitching woman on the floor next to her sousi. Once he’d yanked his pants back over his hips, he picked the women up, and took them back to their bunk. He’d have to come back with the kit for the blood draws, but that could wait. On the way out, he grabbed the broken bits of the cuffs. No point in trying to shackle them again. Now, to get this shit over with. Syrus flipped to his own setting once he got back to the bridge and stood there for a moment, trying not to think of how long it had been since he’d worn his real maruste.
He jabbed himself in the neck before his brain could calculate the exact times and dates, cryo included. Or how many times he’d done this. Or any of the rest of it. Time travel was a fucking bitch. That was his last thought before the needles went through his skin and the program hit his bloodstream along with far too many volts of electricity.
It was so stupid that he laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more as the fire burned through his veins and his blood shifted back into the old familiar patterns.
He laughed until unconsciousness claimed him and he slipped into deep dreams of a different time.
>Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jossa
No one knows where the prophetic language originated. What we do know is that all subjects with the ability to foresee started using it around the same time. It can be parsed word by word, but without the translator half of the pairing, its warnings are useless.
-“Etymology of He’la” Professor Sandini, New Hopks College of Language
Jossa had known for a long time now that something was very wrong. And like a fool, she’d walked head first into danger anyway.
Anything to keep Del from sinking into the same pit.
Now she lay in a place somewhere between agony and bliss, sore and stretched and a half step off tempo. She wished her skin would peel off and prove she wasn’t this person she pretended to be. Somewhere under all this was Rui’s wife. She knew it. She just couldn’t find her through the haze.
A shriek slammed into her skull and vibrated through her eardrums. Her cheek burned, first with physical pain, then with residual terror. Another shriek, this time with words. ::Joss, wake up!::
What she meant to do was to sit up and look for whatever it was that had Del in a panic. What she managed to do was raise her head and blink at her sousi through eyes so heavy they nearly refused to open. “Del? Wha?”
::I can’t stop it! It’s coming—it’s still working!:: Del’s face swam into focus. She looked queasy and panicked. The feelings rolling off her had enough force to sear themselves straight into Jossa’s brain. It hurt. Oh Ancestors, it hurt.
“Joss!” Another slap across the face.
“Ow. Del, stop it.” Everything felt heavy. Her tongue, the weight in her stomach, the—
She stopped. Backed her thoughts up. Went over her body again. Felt Delfi follow her with her mind, pushing pushing pushing as the urgency built. Three parts joy. Half a part horror. Another part pure and unadulterated terror.
It was there. It was working. Her true sai. The talent that made her continued existence worthwhile.
::You are a moron.:: Del gasped aloud, then doubled over and fell off the bed. “Hunters seek and hunters find,” she croaked in Imperial. “Keys to turn and keys to hide. Ghosts will know, ghosts can save. Run, rabbit, run. Hawk invisible stoops from a cloudless sky!”
Jossa wanted to cry. Wanted to bundle her sister up in her arms and scream in despair. The whole time. They’d had the answer the whole time, if only she’d put some thought to it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
No time for that. She needed to get moving.
Words rose like bile in her throat, threatening to spill out into uselessness. She swallowed them down, then forced her feet, followed by the rest of her body, off the bed. The air was cool on her skin. She was naked again. No time. No time for the little things. Had to go. Had to—
She tripped over Del and nearly fell against the door. Catching her balance, she tried the keypad. Unlocked, thank all the Ancestors and bless all her Progeny.
She found the warlord aft, coming out of a hatch in the floor. She got a brief glimpse of machinery before he saw her and kicked it shut. Wary anger colored the air around him. She didn’t care. She had her audience. Now she could let the translation out.
“They’
ve found us,” she gasped, clinging to the corner of a box sitting in the corridor. “Patrols. Something about a ghost knowing what to do about keys. And something else. Something hidden that’s going to come later.”
He stared at her. Every one of his shields were locked in place. As far as her sai was concerned, he wasn’t there. Behind her, she heard Del stagger down the hall.
Jossa ignored her. The man in front of her needed convincing. “We’re still broken,” she said, pushing herself to stand straighter. “But the prophecies still work. They’re backwards. Imperial, not He’la.” Delfi rounded the corner and nearly ran into the wall. Jossa reached out to steady her. “I have the translation. But I don’t know what it means until someone else hears it!” Later she’d try to figure out why they were so scrambled. For now, it was enough to know the prophecies still worked. They still worked. After a fashion.
Syrus just watched her with flat eyes. She could have screamed. Would have thrown something at him if there’d been anything to throw. He chose now to shut down? To go from a man of high emotion and action to an asjokojek statue? Ancestors’ balls!
But she was trying to keep Del upright and hold on to the contents of her stomach at the same time. She didn’t have any attention to spare for an infuriating man who couldn’t take a prophecy when she dropped it on his head.
And then they ran out of time. Alarms blared over the shipwide. The comm alert attached to Syrus’s belt started blinking and beeping. All at once, he came alive. Next thing she knew, he had them turned around and was hustling them down the corridor. Headed towards the bridge, if she had her guess.
“Hey,” she yelped, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Delfi retched.
The warlord made a disgusted noise, but didn’t stop. “You’re right. Got maybe an hour before the patrol’s knocking on the door. Kemvate at the base must have them out further than I thought. I’m the ghost, by the way. Don’t know about the rest. ’Cept the key. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
