No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three
Page 5
“But what if you hadn’t been there?”
“Don’t be afraid to make some noise and call for help.”
“Will people help us? Since we’re human?”
“You won’t know unless you ask. If you’re shouting, you’re going to attract the lifeguard’s attention on the beach, the bouncer’s attention at the bar, Security’s attention on the street. People will help because they don’t want to be seen shirking their jobs. Cameras will come. That always helps, if you’re anywhere civilized.”
“If I’m alone?”
“If you’d had a gun, you should have kneecapped the leader. But you didn’t—and often you won’t. Use whatever you can reach. The beach stones. The sake bottle. Anything. All you want is to make the ringleader hesitate enough that you can run away.”
“That’s not very dignified.”
“Fuck dignity.” She snarled it so angrily that it sobered him. “It took years to get my dignity beaten out of me. Dignity will get you hurt. You do whatever you have to do to survive.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I thought you’d have a no-fail attack,” he said sadly.
“I do.” She took another sip of sake. “Everyone underestimates me because I’m small. That means any attack I make is a surprise. That means I always start the game a move ahead. And since I don’t have any dignity left and I can make anything into a weapon, I’m hard to beat.” She clinked her cup against his. “As usual, Mykah, you don’t want to do what I’ve done to get into my position.”
“No lie,” Mykah agreed. Still, he envied her ability to take care of herself. “Thank you for coming to my rescue today.”
“My pleasure.”
He sensed it really was.
Before the silence could turn awkward, Raena said, “I have a question for you.”
“Anything.”
The conversation didn’t go in the direction he expected. “What’s it like to date someone who isn’t human?” she asked.
“Up until I started working on Kai, I never dated anyone who was human,” Mykah said. “Human girls … well, they were hoarded for a while.”
“You mean like harems?”
“Not really. So many humans died in the War that there was a big ‘save the species’ push. Women were valued for their ability to save us, so they got the best educations, protected jobs, plenty to eat, safe places to live, as long as they pledged to help repopulate.”
“Eugenics?”
“Yeah. Eugenics.”
“Cloning would have been easier.”
“The galaxy would have wiped us out,” he corrected. “There had been a cloning war out here before humans left Earth. The technology is still forbidden.”
“That’s why you didn’t spread the news about the Thallians all being clones,” she realized.
“Actually, we debated it. I was all for full disclosure, but Coni pointed out that the cloning revelation would just make humans look that much more depraved. We didn’t need to do any more damage.”
He realized that none of that really answered her question. “It’s great to date anyone,” Mykah said. “In my not-vast experience, love is love. Some people don’t have strong affinities for one species over another. Others do. I’ve never cared where my girlfriends came from, only how they treated me.”
“Thank you,” Raena said. “I’ve never concerned myself with gender before, but this is my first time with someone as cold-blooded as Haoun.”
He saw she meant it as a joke. Mykah wondered hazily if he should warn Raena about Haoun. Probably that ship had left the spaceport.
He didn’t know a lot about Raena’s romantic history, beyond Thallian and Sloane, but Haoun was so much less of a psychopath than either of them. Mykah wasn’t sure how things would play out, but he doubted that Raena would feel compelled to kill Haoun at the end of their relationship. That thought actually made Mykah laugh.
Raena looked at him quizzically. “I’m cutting you off, Captain. You’re not going to make it home safely if you’re chuckling to yourself.”
“My big, strong girlfriend will take care of me,” he assured her.
“No doubt.”
*
Raena thought the end of the meal might be uncomfortable, but Coni wanted to hustle Mykah off to sober up and Vezali had plans for a spa visit, so Raena and Haoun were left to their own devices.
By unanimous agreement, they tried out another hotel. This one had an enormous tub. Haoun drew the line at a bubble bath, but he made it up to Raena by exploring every inch of her. His overly long fingers were precise as they peeled away her clothing. He followed each article with his long, slightly sticky tongue.
For her part, Raena struggled to relax and enjoy the attention. She was familiar with taking pleasure from the pleasure others took from her. However, now that she was free, to be the recipient of so much attention without being allowed to reciprocate flustered her. She wanted to be an active participant: an equal, not a plaything.
She turned over in the tub so she could look Haoun in the face. Luckily, he wasn’t like the pocket-sized lizards she grew up with, who had an eye on either side of their heads. Like a predator, Haoun had binocular vision. She traced his hexagonal scales with her fingertips.
“I love to watch you fight,” Haoun told her, trailing his claws lightly down her arm.
Raena wasn’t sure if he mocked her. “Why?”
“You look like you’re having so much fun. Today, when you came up out of the water to face those guys, you had the scariest grin. You looked like you wanted nothing more than for them to make a move, so you’d know which one to take down first.”
Raena smiled. “You could see that?”
“You look like you were born to fight.”
“Not born to it, no.” She snuggled against him, enjoying his claws skimming the ridges of scars across her back. “Made for it, maybe. Certainly trained for it.” For a long time, fighting had been her favorite pastime.
She wondered, “When are you going to show me what your people do together?”
He gave her his barking laugh. “Aren’t you tired out?”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he hedged.
“Please. You know I’m not going to let a little pain stand in my way.”
He buried his snout in the base of her throat, so she couldn’t see his eyes. Raena smiled to herself and ran her fingers around the scales around his tympanic membranes. He squirmed. She wondered if she’d made him uncomfortable, but he clutched her closer.
“Come on, Haoun. Be adventurous,” she teased.
“You are, without a doubt, the most perverse woman I’ve ever met.”
She took that as the praise it was meant to be. “Stellar.”
*
Mykah climbed dutifully into the shower to wash the ocean from his skin as Coni settled in to check the news for the galaxy’s reaction to the Messiah documentary.
Mykah wanted desperately not to think, but this thing today troubled him. Yesterday he’d noticed that Lautan didn’t have a lot of human visitors. Until Raena found the nabe restaurant, he hadn’t seen any human food. Raena was too innocent of the modern galaxy to understand what that meant, but Mykah had believed himself to be more aware. Still, he hadn’t taken the lack of humans as a warning. He’d allowed himself to relax, to buy into being a tourist. It might have gotten him killed.
He turned the water a notch hotter, hoping to counteract the chill in his blood. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to forget. Just because he had a Haru girlfriend and his crewmates were Dagat and Na’ash and he was legal co-owner of a sweet old Imperial ship, it didn’t mean he equaled anyone else in the galaxy. Like it or not, he would always be a visible representative of a species that had committed genocide.
Maybe the bullies today had only intended to frighten him, or beat him up a little, but the ocean could have easily taken matters out of their hands, if Raena hadn’t been there.
The anger buried beneath his fear and shame bubbled to the surface. Mykah promised himself that from this moment on, he would do his share. Unless he started dating her—and not even then—Raena wouldn’t always be around to protect him. Until he could defend himself, he would always be afraid.
He hadn’t done anything wrong, anyway. The Templar plague spun out while he was a child. His attempts to atone for it seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Mykah was sick of apologizing.
Coni startled him by tapping on the glass wall of the shower. “Are you ever coming out of there?”
Mykah switched the water off. “Yeah,” he said, instead of “Sorry.”
“Good. I’ve been missing you.” She held out a towel. When he stepped toward her, she began to rub him dry with just enough friction. Mykah felt his anger slink back to its hiding place. Parts of his life really were stellar.
Coni surprised him by asking, “What’d you and Raena talk about at the restaurant?”
“She wanted to know about dating someone who wasn’t human.”
“Oh? Are they dating?”
“Apparently.”
While Coni hung up his towel, she wondered, “Are you jealous?”
Mykah laughed. “You’re just asking me now because you think I’ll be more honest when I’m drunk.”
Coni inclined her head in agreement, but her mouth quirked into a smile. “That’s not an answer.”
Mykah pulled her into his arms, luxuriating in the softness of Coni’s blue fur against his bare skin. “I am not jealous,” he said with all honesty. “I hope they can make each other happy. Both of them deserve some peace.”
Coni made the trill deep in her throat that meant he was doing something that she liked. Mykah smiled and kept doing it.
*
“What’s with the lockdown, Mom?” Gisela asked as Ariel and Eilif joined the breakfast table.
Ariel had been thinking over what to tell her family, how to make the situation seem serious without terrifying the kids. “You know that Eilif came from a really bad situation,” she began. None of the kids knew whom Eilif had been married to, only that he was murderously crazy. “We’ve had some news that implies that she may be in danger again. Even here.”
That was exactly the right tack to take, she realized. All her kids had come from varying levels of jeopardy. Without exception, they were grateful to be free of their pasts. They were solicitous and gentle with Eilif, seeing in her what might have happened if they hadn’t been rescued as children.
“What do you need us to do?” Gisela asked.
“Stay armed. Stay alert. I know some of you will need to get back to work, so use the protocols when you leave the compound and watch your backs. Once you’re out, stay out. I’ll give you the all-clear as soon as I’m sure the danger has been neutralized.”
Brendon asked, “Eilif, do you need anything?”
She was too shy to look up from the cup of tea she cradled in her hands.
Ariel spoke for her. “If any of you have time, it would be great if you could do some fight training or run through the range with Eilif. It will help her to feel safer if she has some skills with which to protect herself.”
The kids exploded in sound, shouting over each other with offers and plans.
Ariel whistled for silence. “One at a time,” she reminded. “I appreciate your willingness to help, but be respectful.”
Really, though, she couldn’t have been more proud. Thallian might have cloned his own bodyguards, but her private army was even more enthusiastic. And not insane. And far better armed.
*
Raena’s eyes came open in the unfamiliar hotel room. Haoun had curled around her again, his chin resting on the top of her head. His scales had drawn the warmth from her skin. She shivered.
She didn’t have any idea what time it was, but sleep had abandoned her for the night. When she flopped over to face Haoun, he didn’t even grumble at her to go back to sleep.
She went to fill the tub. Maybe Haoun would wake while she rattled around and be ready to go out after she got herself cleaned up.
This time she did indulge in a bubble bath. She couldn’t name the floral scent in the hotel’s soap, but it made her think of Ariel’s house. Being the wealthy girl’s companion had given Raena a taste for expensive things, which Thallian had not allowed her to indulge on the Arbiter. Maybe now she could treat herself. The Veracity didn’t have a tub, but surely Vezali could contrive one for her.
Raena lazed in the water until it grew cold. Still Haoun didn’t wake. She decided that it was time to hunt down some breakfast. After she climbed back into the tiny blue dress she’d bought yesterday, she commed Vezali. When she got no response, she tried Coni.
“You’re up early,” the blue girl noted.
“Hungry,” Raena said. “Are you?”
“Sure. Why don’t I meet you at the nabe place again and we can find something near there?”
“See you soon,” Raena said.
*
Eilif waited anxiously for Jimi to answer her call. When he did, he looked bleary-eyed. Sleep had tangled his long black hair.
“Mother,” he said, clearly relieved. “You got my message.”
“How did you find me?” she begged to know.
“I traced Raena Zacari’s connection to the Shaad Foundation. I was looking for Raena, but found you by accident.”
“Then it would be easy for him to find me as well.” She heard the quaver in her voice.
“Yes. You need to go back through all your correspondence and execute a global change of your name. There’s a way to scramble the change so there’s no record of it. That should help you disappear. I’ll send you the directions.”
Eilif swallowed. “Thank you.” She clutched her quivering hands in her lap, below the view of the monitor. “Are you hidden?”
“Yes. I have a couple of layers of mirrors between me and the cameras on Drusingyi. I’ve changed my name and I’m working on getting papers, so there’s no connection to the family.”
She nodded sharply. “You look well.”
“I have a perfect life, Mother. This has been the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
She understood that he meant the destruction of his home and the slaughter of his family. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, too.”
*
Coni suggested skewers of unfamiliar vegetables for breakfast, so they bought some from a street vendor and proceeded to window-shop.
“Where’s Mykah today?” Raena wondered.
“Back at the ship. He was such a mess last night I saw no point in wasting money on a hotel room.”
Coni said it in flawlessly accented Standard, but without any sort of vocal cues that would let Raena decipher how she felt about it.
“I’m sorry,” seemed the safest response.
Coni shook her head. “He used to drink a lot more, after he’d been bullied on Kai. This thing yesterday churned up all those emotions again.”
Raena nodded. It didn’t surprise her to learn that he’d been bullied. She had wondered if Mykah learned free-running for a reason.
She changed the subject. “I think I broke Haoun.”
Coni didn’t answer, so Raena felt compelled to clarify. “I exaggerate. But he may sleep for the rest of the day.”
“I’m glad you two are having fun together,” Coni said.
Raena smiled to herself. In point of fact, she was quite fond of Coni’s deadpan delivery. Before this, she hadn’t considered Standard to be a tonal language.
Coni stopped in front of a window to admire the shoes inside, which puzzled Raena. While feline Coni wore paw covers, they were so simple and unadorned that she made them herself. “Need
some new boots?” Coni asked.
Raena came nearer. The window held a forest of boots in every shade and material. One black leather pair had sharp silver heels to match the buckles that climbed their sides. “I may need those boots,” Raena agreed.
*
Mykah woke after Coni had gone out. His head felt stuffed with dampening filaments, but he forced himself to get up, drink two glasses of water straight down, and consider breakfast.
Not much food remained on the Veracity. Before they left Lautan, they’d need to restock. He started a shopping list as he reconstituted some eggs. If he could choke them down, the protein should settle his stomach.
Once he had the eggs scrambled and garnished with some garlic and mushrooms from his garden, he settled in the cockpit to listen to messages.
Coni left a message that she was off for breakfast with Raena. Vezali checked in to see how he was feeling. No word from Haoun, who was probably still asleep. The final message came from Ariel Shaad. She addressed it to Raena, but marked it extremely urgent.
Ms. Shaad had taken the Veracity in shortly after they left the Thallian homeworld. Raena had needed a doctor off the grid to look at her shoulder wound and Thallian’s wife Eilif needed someone to help her acclimate to the galaxy after her long enslavement. Ariel handled everything without questions.
Now that Raena passed as her own daughter, her relationship with Ariel had grown even more complicated. Ariel seemed to just roll with it. She didn’t care if she was Raena’s lover or sister or guardian, as long as Raena allowed Ariel to continue to be part of her life.
Mykah would have forwarded the message directly to Raena’s comm, but he was curious. And hungover. His impulse control felt extremely tenuous.
Whatever he had expected to see from Ariel Shaad, it wasn’t the image of a teenaged boy. The kid looked so much like Jain Thallian, former guest of the Veracity, that Mykah had to struggle to see the differences. It was spooky.
He set the message to play. It made him forget all about finishing his eggs.
*
Raena paid for her new boots and waited for the humanoid shop girl to hand her a bag with her old boots in it. The clerk’s eyes widened suddenly. Before Raena could react, a gun barrel jammed into the base of her skull.