Havoc

by Linda Gayle

  He sat and pulled on his boots. “I was hoping to prod him into action, getting him to blindfold you and see us off. I think my genius plan may have backfired.”

  She dressed, bending gingerly to get her ankle boots from the floor. Kels rose and took them from her, then seated her in the chair before the cosmetics table. He dropped to one knee and slipped her boots onto her small feet for her. “Sorry, sweetheart. You really are feeling it, aren’t you?”

  Under her lovely, tawny skin, she blushed. “I’ve never, well…done anything like that before.”

  “You liked it, though.”

  “It was amazing.”

  He grinned. “Eh, didn’t I tell you? Trust Captain Kels.”

  She slipped her fingers through his hair. “Can we do it again? Before the high games?”

  “‘Course. Only gets better with practice.” He closed his hand on her knee, encouraged by her shy enthusiasm. This was a girl he could get used to. Of course, he’d also been thinking by the time they got to the high games, he’d have convinced his mate to join them, but now… Saints, what if he’d ticked him off enough to quit?

  Sayal put her hand against his cheek. “I’m sure Elion’s fine. Let’s go find him.”

  Funny how she always seemed to know his turn of thoughts. Or was it so funny? There was a possibility, a dark one, he’d been turning over in his mind since the night of the card game, that she might be an enhanced human with empathic abilities. It was a sketchy conclusion. Sensible Elion would think he was crazy just for entertaining it.

  But if it were true, if her genes had been radicalized by human scientists to emphasize certain traits, Sayal would be outcast wherever she went if word got out. In fact, she’d be lucky if that was the worst she suffered. All she’d need was one trip to the bonesman and a gene scan, and she’d be branded a criminal, imprisoned, or even put to death.

  Perhaps she didn’t know herself if she was enhanced. It was possible. Well, best to push the thought aside for now, disturbing though it was. He had little proof beyond his intuition.

  He patted her knee and got to his feet.

  “We’ll try the ship first,” he said.

  A knock came on the door. Kels answered, and Canto handed them a receipt for the iron deposited in Kels’s account.

  The gamesmaster glanced around the changing room. “No sign of your mate?”

  “None yet. I’m sure he’ll show.”

  “Too bad. He missed a fine performance.” Canto rubbed his hands together. “Are you quite certain you’re not interested in a contract?”

  “Nah. But thanks, Canto. You’ve been terrific about everything.”

  After a last courtly bow to Sayal, he left. Kels waved the bit of vellum. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’s a start.”

  She went to him and looked at the total. It was more than she’d expected. “You’ll make ten times this in the high games,” he said, “especially if we get a longer act together.”

  “How much longer?” Her eyes widened. “I’ll have to build up my stamina.”

  “Keev and me used to go nigh on two hours.”

  “Two…? Kels, I’ll fall to pieces.”

  He laughed and kissed her. “No worries, princess.” They walked out into the hallway and down the maze of corridors toward the exit. “I’ll teach you a few tricks of the trade. And I’m sure you won’t have any trouble matching up with another experienced gamespartner once we’re in the Zone.”

  “Another one? But I thought you would do it?”

  “I will for a few rounds, but me and Elion have other business to attend to. I’m happy to get the ball rolling for you, so to speak.” She frowned, confirming his suspicion that she hadn’t thought far beyond their initial entrance into the high games.

  Then she surprised him by shrugging and saying, “That’s all right. It shouldn’t take more than that to…accomplish my goal.”

  “Which is?”

  She flicked a glance at him. He waited. Finally she bit her lip. “I’m trying to attract the attention of one man. If he sees me in the high games, I’m sure he’ll seek me out.”

  “Ah…” An odd weight settled in his chest as they exited the Dome and headed for the cargo bay. One man who wasn’t him. Or Elion for that matter. They’d have their fun, then be on their separate ways. It was exactly as he’d expected, but hearing it from her made it real. “Well, we’ll be sure to cook up something eye-catching, then.” He quirked a smile, but once again she seemed to understand his true feelings. She reached for his hand and grasped his fingers.

  “I haven’t been completely honest with you, and it’s been bothering me more and more since you’ve been so very kind. I told you I wanted to make a career of the high games, but that’s not true. It’s very important that I find this man, or rather that he find me. He watches the games. If he sees me, I know he’ll contact me.”

  “A richer, is he?”

  Her mouth twitched into a telling frown.

  “It’s all right, Sayal. If I were a beautiful bird like you, I’d be thinking of my future too. It’s quite a smart plan actually. Get yourself set up in a permanent position. I’m pretty sure those were Keeva’s designs as well.” He made himself squeeze her hand. “Plenty of warlords and barons who’d love to have a woman like you in their harem.”

  “Harem?” Once again, inexplicably, she sounded blank.

  “Group of women kept as lovers? Quite a nice life if you can get it, from what I understand. Plenty of shopping and good food. A luxury liner to go planet hopping in.” The weight in his chest grew heavier even as he attempted to force a note of cheer into his voice. “If you don’t mind sharing a guy, it’s the high life top to bottom.”

  They strolled into the cargo bay. Sayal shook her head. “It’s not like that.”

  “No?” He heard the rising strain in his voice, couldn’t crowd it out. “What is it like, then?”

  She stopped, and he stopped beside her. Her gaze fell to the floor. “I can’t explain further. Only that it’s not what you’re describing.” Her beautiful, sad eyes met his. “I wouldn’t be using you if it weren’t so important.”

  Kels inwardly flinched. Using him. Yeah, well, he supposed she was, and this was her awkward attempt at being honest. Some things were better left unsaid—like that. Elion had accused Keeva of using him too, not that he’d listened. Saints, he’d always thought he was in control of his world, but maybe he’d been deluding himself. First Keeva left, now Sayal would be going, and where in the seven hells was Elion?

  He started walking toward the ship again, Sayal beside him. “Will you still help me?” she asked.

  “Yeah, of course.” And of course he would. Nothing had changed, not really. He had other reasons to go to the Zone. Might as well get his rocks off while he was there. He’d fuck her if she needed him to, fuck her like a soulless machine since that’s what she wanted. Besides, hadn’t he started this conversation by telling her she’d have to find someone else anyhow? Why now were his thoughts and feelings in such a bloody tangle? He needed to dump on Elion. He’d sort it all out, set him straight like he always did.

  He was about to hit the signal for the Nova’s ramp when his com buzzed. Thank the saints, Elion. He spoke into it. “Havoc.”

  “Kels…”

  A flush of adrenaline prickled over his skin. Something was wrong. He strained to hear Elion’s weak voice. “El, where are you?”

  “Air shaft.” A pause as if his mate struggled to speak. “District seventeen, junction four.”

  He didn’t bother asking how he’d gotten there or why. “Are you hurt?”

  “Shot.”

  “Did you say you were shot? Elion?”

  The com went dead. Kels glanced into Sayal’s wide, worried eyes. “C’mon.”

  The last thing Elion remembered was chasing the black figure around a corner in the maze of air shafts and a sudden force flinging him backward, as if he’d hit a wall, and the wall had hit back. He woke on the flo
or, bathed in the dim glow of the safety lights in the two-by-two-meter air shaft. His disruptor lay a short distance away. Blood trickled down his upper lip from his nose. He thumbed it away and tried to breathe through a pain in his ribs.

  Gingerly, he pressed his side. Bruised, not broken, best as he could tell. He found the shaft number imprinted on the wall and contacted Kels, but the reception here was shit. Kels would find him. Elion’s ears rang. He rose stiffly to his feet, cursing as his side bit, and retrieved his weapon. It had been discharged. The fucking creature had shot him with his own gun.

  His com burped. “El? You there, mate?”

  “I’m here. You must be close. I can hear you better.”

  “Not dying on me, are you?”

  “Nah.” Elion limped a few meters farther into the shaft, but the alien was long gone, dammit. Why hadn’t it killed him? He turned and began shuffling toward where Kels must be, closer to the mouth of the shaft.

  “Keep talking,” Kels instructed.

  “What’s to talk about? How were the games?”

  “Fucking amazing.”

  “You won, I suppose.”

  “‘Course we did.” Suddenly it was Kels’s own voice unfiltered by the com. Elion saw him and Sayal coming toward him through the shaft. “Bloody hells,” Kels muttered, hooking his com and his own weapon back on his belt.

  “Elion.” Sayal ran to him and took his arm, her worried gaze searching his face.

  Kels said, “What happened to you?” He stopped in front of him and put his hands briefly on Elion’s face, studying him. “Your hair’s all standing on end. Got hit with a disruptor, did you?”

  “Yeah, my own.”

  “By who?”

  “Some bloke I saw under the stands at the Dome about to shoot you, least that’s how it appeared to me.”

  “Shoot me?” Kels shook his head. Sayal pressed her hand over her mouth.

  Elion glanced at her. “One of you, I guess. Any case, I chased him halfway through the station, and he ducked into the air shafts. Must have hit me with a kick to the ribs, then greased me with the disruptor for good measure.” He grimaced and rubbed his side. “I’m slipping. Used to be no one would get the drop on me like that.”

  “Well, we’ve been living the fat, happy life,” Kels said, eyeing him with concern. “Important thing is you’re all right. I had a notion something was wrong when you didn’t show after the games.”

  “Yeah, sorry I missed all that.” He gazed at Sayal, and his mind rushed with the last impression he’d had of her, down on her knees with Kels’s cock between her lips. “How’d it go?”

  “Very well,” she said, dropping her eyes modestly.

  Kels patted his hair down for him. “So who was this cruel assassin that laid you low?”

  “It’s no joke,” Elion said, falling into place at Kels’s side as they made their way back out into the station. “I saw him kneeling under the stairs and pointing some sort of weapon toward the arena while you two were out there.”

  “Well, why didn’t he shoot you with it, then?”

  Elion worked his jaw, trying to get his ears to pop. Fucking disruptors. “I don’t know. Could’ve been a distance sniper, no close-up abilities. I startled him for certain.”

  “Sure it wasn’t just some creeper getting into the games for free? Maybe it was a vidcorder he had.”

  Elion shook his head. “I saw him lurking about the ship earlier too. I followed him this morning when I told you I was running late. He disappeared before I could catch up to him. Something odd about him.”

  “Odd how?”

  “Alien, but not a kind I’ve seen before.”

  “Describe.”

  “Close to two meters, seventy-two kilos, wearing a hooded black coat. Moved well, not with the limps or jerky stride you see with most of these offworlders. Like it was born to Earth-grav.”

  “Sure it wasn’t a man?”

  “Nah. Moved too smooth, even for a human.”

  “Didn’t see the face or the body, though?”

  Elion rubbed his forehead. Had he seen a flash of eyes before the alien hit him? “I can’t be sure. If I did, it was right before I lost consciousness.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it this morning?”

  He acknowledged the slight reprimand. “Sorry, Captain. I didn’t think the being posed a threat then. It was just standing around looking. I only followed it because it seemed so focused on the Nova.”

  They approached the ship, and Kels remotely lowered the ramp.

  “If I had to make a guess based on your description,” Kels said, walking beside him into the ship, “and supposing it wasn’t human, I’d say it might be a Prime.”

  Elion was almost startled to hear his suspicions confirmed. “I admit I had the same thought.”

  “Improbable,” Kels said, raising the ramp once they were safely inside, “but not impossible.”

  “What would a Prime be doing here?” Sayal asked almost to herself. Her voice had tightened, and something close to fear shone in her eyes.

  “And why would it be interested in us?” Kels went thoughtfully silent as he sank into his chair in front of the control panel. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to hang around and find out. I think it’s best we leave.”

  Elion nodded. “Agreed.”

  Kels looked at Sayal. “Sorry, princess. Our celebratory dinner will have to wait.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, crossing her arms and looking rattled. “I can make something, perhaps, in the eating area you showed me.”

  Elion watched her leave; then Kels powered up the ship, and together they ran the standard routine for deep-space launch that would take them to their intercept. “She got nervous all of a sudden,” he observed.

  “Maybe she doesn’t like Primes.”

  “Who does?” He hissed out a breath as his ribs pinched when he reached for a control. The ship lifted off smoothly, and the bay doors gaped open. He settled uncomfortably back in his seat.

  Kels’s gaze swept over him. “You look like shit warmed over, mate.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Listen, El. Don’t get killed on my account. I’d rather you let the alien go than chase it through the air vents.”

  “I really thought it had a weapon.”

  Kels cracked his knuckles and gazed out at the star field. “I doubt it would have attacked us in the Dome,” he said after a moment. “Too public.”

  Elion shrugged. “Maybe it was a vidcorder and I overreacted.”

  “It would be a better explanation for why it was interested in me and Sayal. I’ve got enemies, but none I know that would go to the trouble of hiring a Prime assassin, if there even is such a thing.”

  “Unless it was after Sayal.”

  “Hm.” He tapped in the coordinates that would lead the Nova to the head of the interspace lane where they could safely fold and fly.

  “That doesn’t surprise you,” Elion said, peering at him. “That it might be Sayal at the heart of this.”

  His friend drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m still putting it together. I’m thinking more and more, she’s on the run from someone. What if this alien you saw today had a vidcorder and was transmitting her activities back to her…owner, for lack of a better word.”

  “She’s in danger, then?”

  “Might be.”

  “We have to protect her,” Elion said, surprising himself with the strength of his emotions.

  Kels smiled. “Yeah, she does get to you, don’t she? I wish you’d seen it. She was solid gold in the Dome, mate.”

  Elion had seen plenty. “You’re a good match, you two.”

  “Hells, you never said that about me and Keev.”

  “I would never mean it about you and Keev.”

  “Well, it’s Keeva I’m going to find once we get to the Zone.” He drew his hand over his cheek a
nd said, “All this nonsense about going back in the games…it’s got me thinking. She wanted something more permanent, and I’ve been turning it over in my head too. I’ve decided I need some stability in my life. I think I’ll ask her to marry me. That way she’ll know I’m serious.”

  Elion almost groaned and, prodded on by pain and the disruptor’s disorientation, demanded, “Then what? She’s going to live on board with us? The three of us tripping the shipping lanes together, a smuggling trio?”

  Kels shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “Well, you can count me out.”

  Kels actually paled. “You’re not going to leave me, are you, El?”

  “Haven’t you thought this through?” His long-suppressed temper rising, Elion swiveled his chair around to face Kels. “What do you think life’ll be like for me if that harridan joins us? We hate each other. And do you honestly think she’ll adjust to a life in space? She’s a social bird; she’ll go insane with just the three of us cooped up together.” He’d never seen Kels look so distressed, and finally relented. He sucked in a pained breath. “Sorry, Captain. If you order me to tolerate her, I will, but don’t expect more than that. I’m going in the back to get some ice for my ribs. Have you got the com?”

  “Yes, I’ve got the com,” Kels replied, sounding snappish.

  Elion limped back to the commissary. For the love of all the saints, maybe it was time for him to dig heels into a grass planet somewhere and find a nice guy to settle down with. He’d waited years for Kels Havoc. Enough was enough.

  A Prime hunted her. Could Elion be wrong? She prayed to the Fates he was, but knew in her heart he wouldn’t make that sort of mistake, and neither would Kels. The description fit a high alien.

  Alone in the ship’s small commissary, Sayal poured dried rice into a cooker. She used to help her mother cook on the Prime’s ship, one of her happier childhood memories. It had been completely unnecessary, as everything on the ship was automated, but her mother enjoyed it, and Sayal loved helping her. Sorush had approved because it made her more…human. He’d needed her to be able to blend into human society, for if she could do it, so could the others he’d create—others with greater, more sinister abilities.