by Bruns, David
Tonight was different. Tonight was more. Ruben focused himself on experiencing her, opening his senses. He wanted to feel all he could. He wanted to feel alive and living and loving. Her scent wafted up from beneath the sheets. Her warmth wrapped around him, and being inside her was like discovering the reason for being alive. He tasted the sweat on the back of her neck, and Mai smiled her secret enjoyment of that, turning to watch him over her shoulder. His ears shut out all but her voice as her gasps of “shì … shì … shì ” paced their pleasure.
Their movements quickened .
“Shì-shì-shì! ”
Mai came with shouts that were almost painful, and Ruben forced himself to hold off for her, to continue thrusting into her until Mai’s pleasure subsided. Knowing he neared his own climax, Mai clasped Ruben to her, one human in two halves connected still, and teased the last of his shockwave from him with her body.
When the last of his energy had drained away, Ruben withdrew. Mai turned into him, two bodies folding in to one another, now under an invisible, enveloping afterglow. The sweat of their passion soaked into the sheets beneath them. Mai’s breathing began to slow.
They said nothing for a time, neither wanting to break the sacredness of the moment. How many times had they made love in the past week? Ruben wondered. A dozen?
Still new. Still fresh. Still magical.
With Mai it felt like it would always be magical.
“I don’t ever want to leave here,” she whispered. Lost in his own thoughts, Ruben had almost not heard.
“Mars?” he said. He grunted amusement. “That’s unusual for an Earther—”
“No, dummy,” she said. Her index finger drew circles in the moist hair of his chest. “Here . Now. This bed. This—”
“—fantasy?”
He felt the curve of her smile against his shoulder. “Yes, that,” she said. “You’re my fantasy man, Ruben Qinlao. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“Lose me?” he said. “You getting paranoid?”
“No. It’s just that… ”
She didn’t have to say it. Funerals have a way of reminding the mourners how mortal they are. And wasn’t that the point? Ruben thought. Ming’s funeral yesterday had been subdued, something she would have appreciated, a solemn affair with a few tears and a few more laughs. Her service might even have pleased her, he thought.
It had been somewhat impersonal, which she would have found funny, with each of the other faction leaders holoing in their condolences. None had made the trip to Mars. Understandable, Ruben decided with grace, given the troubled times. Each had read from a script of amusing anecdotes mixed with earnest memories. Elise Kisaan had been typically cool but respectful. Adriana Rabh’s commentary had been short and thrifty, measured out like you’d expect an accountant to count paper money. Trying to channel his father Viktor, who’d loved Ming like a daughter, Gregor Erkennen had spoken thoughtfully of her, the Qinlao Faction, and their place in the Company. But for all his effort, he’d never really known Ming personally, and it showed.
Ironically, only Tony Taulke—the Iron Hand of the Syndicate Corporation—had sounded genuine as he’d recounted her life. It had been Ming’s unexpected last request—or a final dig?—that he give a eulogy, and despite all that was happening across the system, Tony hadn’t shirked. Maybe he felt grateful for the warning Ruben had passed along after the last board meeting. Whatever the case, Tony had shown a rare kindness in his words, a generosity of spirit for a woman who’d often been his adversary. Whereas the others’ speeches had sounded written for them, Tony’s had carried idiosyncrasies branding it his own. There had never been love lost between Ming Qinlao and Tony Taulke, but a kind of steely respect, one for the other, had marked their relationship over the years. Tony’s generosity in memorializing Ming had given Ruben a newfound respect for the man Ming had once called the Backstabber in Chief.
“Thinking about your sister?”
“Yes.”
“She was a great woman,” Mai said. She watched her finger twirling his chest hair. “The Company wouldn’t be here without her talent, her will. Tony had a lot of regard for her.”
“He surprised me yesterday,” Ruben said.
“Me too,” she said with humor in her voice. Then, more seriously, “Where do you think she is now?”
Ruben thought about it. “I programmed the pod to circle Mars three times. She’ll be heading in soon.”
Mai nodded against him. “It’s nice what you did.”
“It was her request,” Ruben said. “And I, uh…”
“Yes?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to get up.”
Mai blew out a breath. “Well, you can’t pee here!”
Ruben laughed quietly. “Okay. Be right back.”
When he lifted the sheet, the cold air hit the sweat still drying on his body. It made him shiver as he rose.
“Nice ass,” she said behind him.
Smiling, he walked through the dimly lit bedroom. They’d become so intimate so quickly. But beyond the sex, more than the slaking of new lust, the time they’d spent together had felt like a pair of old souls becoming reacquainted after a long, involuntary separation. Ruben wondered how Mai would feel about giving up her day job as Tony’s personal assistant and becoming the new Queen of Mars. Somehow, he suspected, she might like the promotion.
There was a noise in the bedroom. A squeak of alarm.
“Not again,” he said to himself. If there was one truism of human expansion—across oceans of water or a sea of stars—there would always be rats. A recent food shipment from Earth had been full of them. Somehow they always managed to stow away in supplies, and once disembarked on the new frontier, they bred like rabbits. The mixed metaphor made him laugh. “Just stay in bed!” he called. “I’ll be right there.”
He finished up, flushed the toilet, and returned to the bedroom.
“If you liked the back, what do you think of the front?” he asked cheekily. He glanced around for the rat but didn’t see it. Already under the bed, he figured. More afraid of Mai than she of it.
She was under the covers, hiding.
“Come on, Mai, it’s just a rat,” he said. He slid into bed next to her. It was wetter than he remembered. A tribute to their lovemaking, he thought proudly. But the sheets weren’t just wet. They felt soaked.
“Mai?”
She hadn’t moved.
“Lights: twenty-five percent,” Ruben said.
Blood: liquid and dull red in the low light. Blood was everywhere .
“Mai?” he said again, yanking the sheet down.
Mai Peng stared at the ceiling, her throat cut in a half-moon. Blood ran in streams over the skin he’d been caressing just a little while ago. It crested the dam of her collarbones and ran into the crook of her arm pit to pool into the bedsheet. Her jugular notch had filled in as if she’d donned a red broach
“An impressive performance,” a voice said from the shadows. “She died a happy woman.”
Stunned, still trying to wrap his mind around the warped reality of Mai’s beautiful, mutilated body, Ruben began to shake.
“Why?” he whispered.
A light step came from behind. “No witnesses, I’m afraid.”
“Witnesses?” Ruben’s eyes were filled with the ruins of his lover. Hers were empty.
“The Qinlao Faction is ending,” the voice said. A woman’s voice, Ruben realized. His senses were waking again. He turned to see the woman who’d murdered Mai Pang, who’d stolen his future. “Stay right there. I’ll make this quick.”
He turned to find a modestly tall woman wearing a black filter mask. Not from Mars, then. Her black hair was tied behind her head in a fierce bun. Her almond eyes were calm. In each hand she held a katara, an Indian assassin’s dagger. Ming had taught him all about exotic weapons, even ancient ones.
“Why?” he asked again. “You could have taken me an
ytime. Why did Mai have to die?”
The woman was silent as she drew nearer. Ruben’s shoulders collapsed. He sat on the bed, holding Mai’s hand. The woman in the half mask stood next to him.
“This is nothing personal,” she said, her voice sounding hollow and plastic through the filter. “It’s just business.”
Ruben didn’t look up as she raised her daggers to strike.
All business is personal . Ming’s lesson came unbidden to mind.
He moved without thinking. His leg shot out from the bed, connecting with the woman’s midsection. The air whooshed out of her, and she flew backward.
“Gravity: fifty percent,” Ruben said.
The assassin’s brown eyes widened as her momentum carried her farther, smashing her into a credenza along the far wall. He’d noticed her skin tone, water fed and flush like Mai’s. He’d gambled she wasn’t used to operating in low-g environments.
Ruben pulled the top sheet from the bed, shying away from Mai’s bloody, naked corpse. He wrapped the sheet tightly around both hands, pulling the red-stained fabric taut in his grip.
The woman had recovered, though she still seemed clumsy in half-g.
“You know how to fight,” she said. “Good. I prefer killing wolves to sheep.”
Ruben said nothing. He centered his mass, waiting for her attack, planning his response.
Everything is a weapon. Use it .
A fighter’s wisdom passed along by Ming in the endless, exhausting hours of combat training she’d forced on him as a teenager.
The assassin advanced again, adapting her movements to the lower-g. She stepped twice and hopped high, angling for a jump attack from the ceiling, daggers forward like eagle talons.
“Gravity: one hundred fifty percent!” Ruben shouted, preparing his muscles for the dead weight about to drag them down. When it hit, he could barely stay standing.
The assassin’s descent accelerated sharply, and she hit the floor hard. Her attempt at rolling out of it faltered, the greater gravity confusing her muscles. She struggled to inhale.
Ruben advanced, powering against the pull of the artificial gravity grid, avoiding her kataras. She tried to turn and meet him but her moves were sluggish, her muscles slowed by lack of oxygen.
“Gravity: Earth normal,” Ruben said. Before she could react, he’d moved behind her and wrapped the silken sheet, still shining with Mai’s blood, around her neck. One weak hand brought a dagger up and over her shoulder, narrowly missing Ruben’s thigh. He pulled up and lifted against her carotid arteries, pressing one knee into the base of her skull. Her hands loosened, one at a time, dropping each katara to the floor. She pumped her feet, trying to gain leverage to flip him over her shoulder.
“Gravity: one hundred fifty percent,” Ruben grunted.
A moan of fear slipped from her.
No one stays conscious in a choke hold past ten seconds , Ming said in his mind. So hold it for twenty .
Ruben counted slowly. The assassin’s struggles diminished. Her eyes fluttered. His gaze wandered to Mai splayed across their bed, staring at nothing. He wanted to kill this woman. To allow air back into her lungs, just enough for her to recover consciousness, then squeeze it out of her again. Over and over.
A moral man .
That’s what Ming had named him. She’d handed over their family faction to his care because that, she said, is what it needed now. Not the closed fist of a ruthless founder but the open hand of a compassionate leader.
Ruben didn’t feel very moral right now. Part of him hated Ming for hanging that expectation on him. Then he felt guilty for thinking ill of the dead.
How a moral man would feel.
The woman had slumped, seconds ago, against him.
“Gravity: Mars normal.”
Her weight and his own lessened. Relief flowed through Ruben as he laid her on the floor. Picking up the knives, he opened his sceye.
“Captain Li, report to my quarters. Bring a squad. And some goddamned gravity cuffs.”
A sleepy Li acknowledged the order. Ruben knelt and removed the woman’s filter mask. Her young face was dark complected. Indian. And she bore a striking resemblance to a young Elise Kisaan. One of the rumored Three Sisters, Elise’s cloned assassins? No one had ever seen them in person before. No one who lived, anyway. No longer mere rumor now.
Ruben recalled the last council meeting, which had ended abruptly when the Regent of Earth had claimed her farms were being attacked. A ruse? Were his suspicions that Elise Kisaan was behind the plot to unseat Tony right after all? She’d sent one of her three cloned assassins to end the Qinlao rule over Mars. Had she sent another to the Syndicate Corporation’s Headquarters orbiting high above Earth?
He bound the clone’s hands and feet with the sheet, tying the final knots behind her back and out of reach. He was fully clothed and staring down at Mai again when Li rang the door chime. Out of respect he’d covered Mai Pang’s body with a fresh sheet. All but her face.
“Come.”
The captain and his squad entered, quickly assessed the scene, and encircled the unconscious woman on the floor.
“Sir, I…”
“Medina, I’m leaving Mars,” Ruben said, not taking his eyes from Mai. He needed to imprint her vacant eyes on his memory. Their horror would help steady him in the coming days.
“Sir?”
“I’m placing you in operational control of faction business until I return. I would tap one of my cousins, but there’s no time. And I don’t trust most of them anyway. I’ll imprint a seal of authority handing over temporary control to you before I depart.”
“Yes, sir,” Li said. He was a military man and usually bore the confidence that chosen life required. Now he seemed just this side of dumbstruck.
“Mars is under martial law. Consider us in a state of war. Normal trading will continue until I say otherwise, but all visitors will be turned away from ports of entry. No exceptions. No Martian citizen is allowed off-world who isn’t crewing a ship necessary for trade. And … please have Mai Pang seen to. Place her in the morgue in Wallace Med until I get back. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Li said again, his voice a bit more solid. “But where are you going?”
The squad was pulling the still-unconscious clone to her feet.
Ruben released a long, slow breath.
“Earth. I have a promise to keep.”
Chapter 23
Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Pax Corporatum
The ship’s engines no longer hummed through the hull. The Pax Corporatum hung in orbit, docked at Regency Station. Kwazi lay on his bed, his eyes closed. He wasn’t able to sleep, trying as he had for two days to re-create, through the effort of conscious thought, the fantasy Dreamscape had brought him.
He pictured Amy and her broad smile, which always lit her face from the inside. He made her talk to him about trivial things like how bad the coffee was in Facility 12 and whether or not Mikel and Aika knew that everyone, even other teams, knew that they were dating. Those memories were pleasant, but they weren’t Dreamscape. When Kwazi had entered that vibrant world with Abrams and the others, it truly was like stepping into a realm of his own making, a reality painted with dreams he could shape and mold. Amy appeared as her ideal self, the way Kwazi truly saw her, her smile bright, her voice airy and sounding like sunshine felt on cool days. He saw the others there too: Aika and Mikel trading glances they thought no one else saw, a snide Beren who despite his bravado didn’t really have a mean bone in his body. Even Max was there, being his strong, silent-type self and clapping Kwazi on the shoulder to encourage his pursuit of Amy. It was like every wish Kwazi had ever wanted to come true was there for the taking, delicious apples to be plucked from a tree and consumed. Kwazi felt happy in Dreamscape, he felt complete—full of life, full of love.
No longer the Hollow Man.
Helena Telemachus had taken Dreamscape away from him. She’d been furious when, after a long search of the ship, he’d been foun
d with the other hackheads, each drifting among their own fantasies. Kwazi hadn’t seen Abrams or the others in several days.
“You’re lucky I don’t throw your ass in gravity cuffs!” Helena had stormed as Milani checked him over.
He’d been missing for more than a day when they found him. He hadn’t eaten or even drunk water. He’d soiled himself and had to be cleaned up. Dreamscape made you forget to do those things, the basic rituals of life. But Dreamscape was generous—it gave you so much more in return. It gave you back the dead, more alive than ever. It took away guilt. It made attaining happiness like breathing air.
Half lost in the serenity of Dreamscape, Kwazi didn’t say a word when they pulled him out. When you awake from real dreams, good ones, you try to hang onto them, keep them from fading. But they always slip away, becoming ethereal and without substance, until all that’s left is the feeling they evoked in you. Dreamscape was different. When you were pulled from Dreamscape—and you had to be pulled, you would never leave willingly—the dreams tried to hold on to you .
“Turn it off,” Helena had said to Milani while the doctor injected him with vitamins. Telemachus’s sharp voice in his head called Kwazi back to that moment in the med-bay.
“Turn what off?” Milani asked.
“His damned implant. Turn it off. Nothing working, nothing to hack.”
“No .” It was the first and only word he’d said in days. “No, please…”
“Ms. Telemachus, can I speak to you for a moment?” Milani said, drawing her away. Milani whispered, but Kwazi could still hear her.
“Kwazi feels very guilty,” Milani said, “guilty for surviving when the others didn’t. Dreamscape is giving him solace. Like a prisoner getting time out of his cell. If you take that away from him—”
“Do it, Doctor,” Telemachus said. “Kill the SCI. Or I’ll find someone who will.”
And it had been two days. Two days without Amy, except the Amy he could remember. Less real, less alive than the Amy in Dreamscape. Irony nested in irony. He hadn’t been able to sleep without Milani’s tranquilizers, and even then erratically. Even when he took double the dose.
