Hotter on the Edge

by Erin Kellison

  She shook her head. "We always thought the crystals were inert without the unique Qv'arratz physiology. Not even all of our people can be keyed, and not all who are exposed survive the process. We've been safe until now because no one else could use them."

  "Safe, except for those people who died. And the ones who were sold."

  She moved a few restless paces from him. "People get hurt and die on every world through the cosmos. We are not unique in that respect."

  "Just unique in the aspect that you can be programmed to become the perfect mate for the perfect person."

  She glanced at him. "Now you sound intrigued."

  "I didn't believe the stories. And I'm not sure I do yet."

  She gave him half a smile. "I can't convince you with mere words. You must wear the a'lurilyo crystal to experience it yourself." She touched the outer curve of the torque.

  In the starlight, tiny points glittered on the inner curve of the crystal ring. Sharp enough to pierce the skin? Maybe, except a clear sealant coated the torque and protected the owner. Still, his hackles prickled. "No thanks."

  "What other reward will you take then?" She turned her steps in a half circle behind him. "You didn't even touch the pix."

  He held himself still, though the prickle on the back of his neck tripped down his spine with her out of sight. "Keeping the sheerways open is more important than berries. We should bring in backup. If your raiders are a private entity, we can blow them out of the sky. And if the UU is involved, other consortiums will be willing to fight them—do whatever it takes, to stop them from commanding the sheerways."

  "Fight them long enough to take the qva'avaq for themselves? No, we can't bring in anyone else."

  "You brought me."

  "Yecho and Icere trust you."

  He noticed she hadn't included herself in that short list.

  She stopped her prowl at a right angle to him, just out of arm's reach. "You had the opportunity to bind a world to your bidding. And yet you chose otherwise."

  The dull heat in his face annoyed him almost as much as the sympathetic twinge in his scarred shoulders. His rebellion at L-Sept hadn't been a choice; the men he'd once commanded had been trying to kill him. But he buried the memory under a hard smile. "Why would I settle for one world? With the Asphodel and the sheerways, the universe is mine."

  "I hope you mean that metaphorically. It was our calculation that—unlike our attackers—you will be able to resist the opportunity to enslave a universe." She wrapped her arms around herself. "Why does it mean so much to you?"

  "My freedom? You have to ask?" As soon as he said it, he realized, of course she had to ask. The reminder appalled him anew, and the truth popped out before he could censor it. "Because it's all I have left."

  He dared to slant a glance at her, sickened at the pathetic sound of the words. But her face was tilted to the stars, and her gaze was frosted with the light. "Do you hear that?"

  The faint telltale whine sent old memories racing in all directions. "Incoming. Tangle it, where's my pilot—?"

  Before he finished, his comm link chattered to life.

  "Captain, we're tracking a low-orbit launch. Looks like a remote minefield drop; timed. Sorry, sir, but it was powered down so we missed it on initial sweep. No other ships on sensors."

  As Evessa spoke, Corso grabbed Benedetta's arm and hustled her back inside the doorway. "Point of impact?"

  Evessa's cool tone murmured in his ear. "Calculating… Looks like a klick downpole from your location. A small village by the heat sig. A missile from us at this angle will double the fallout."

  Corso took one second to think. "But smaller pieces will reduce damage. Get up there and hit it high as you can." He spun Benedetta toward him. "Can you contact the closest settlement? Have them duck and cover."

  She paled, but nodded and raced back to the still-seated l'auraly. She snatched the tablet from Icere's hand over his protest, explaining the situation rapidly as she typed.

  Patter loped up. "To the Asphodel?"

  Corso turned his head to avoid the scent of pix on his first's breath. "No, she's going aloft now to counterstrike and neutralize that mine drop. We'll be needed at the village." His shoulders burned at the memory of scorching plasma fires.

  His ship was all he had, and at a word from him, she would return to lift him off this rock, away from the raining fire on the ground and in his head. But if these jewel-eyed slave-whores were right, more than a planet—or even his life—was at risk; for want of this crystal, the freedom of all the sheerways could be lost.

  What was his life compared to that?

  He ran for the door but halted when Benedetta grabbed his arm from behind. "Can you stop it?"

  He clenched his jaw. From the other side of the darkened forest, the Asphodel shrieked as she climbed into the sky at full speed, simultaneously launching a forward missile. Before he could speak, a rumbling roar drowned out the ship.

  A red glow appeared over the trees.

  He met Benedetta's terrified glance. "Can't stop a shredded thing. Let's go."

  Chapter Four

  Benedetta paced the captain as they fell in behind the heavily-laden runabout rig bearing Yecho and Rislla. The elders' anatomy skills would be needed tonight, she feared.

  The captain barked orders to his ship above; something about redirecting the automated bombing drone without destroying it. "If they're waiting for the autos to weaken resistance and soften us up for the kill, we don't want them coming back early to see what's causing the delay."

  Benedetta didn't feel softened, she felt like a rock on fire—burning fury and heavy dread mixed with volcanic violence in her body. "The raiders aren't even here. We can't give in to them no matter how much we might wish it."

  He shot her a glance. "And wouldn't you be more eager to submit when they finally return?"

  "I want to kill them!"

  "Well, a few more mine drops would take care of that. They have the timing of their attack well planned. The first bomb to announce themselves. This one to remind you. The next to break you."

  She chewed the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. No, the metallic tang came from the village ahead. "Oh no," she whispered.

  She stumbled as they emerged into the firelight.

  The bombing had taken out a quarter of the village. The scattering blast had decimated buildings, and incendiaries were eating furiously outward in a blazing red ring.

  But already the villagers were gathering to fight the blaze and begin rescue work. Her call had at least prepared them for the devastation; faces were set in grim, determined lines.

  "We won't be soft," she murmured.

  The captain's dark gaze assessed the activity in one efficient sweep. "Not what I expected from people living off slave labor."

  "Stop it." She wheeled on him. "Enough."

  After a moment, he nodded. "Let's do this."

  They plunged into the chaos.

  The bombs were the worst sort of terror tool, shredding as much as killing, so that the victims were a horror of their own and the buildings left standing were death traps of instability and flames. The villagers had already set up a triage; Yecho and Rislla unpacked the runabout in the midst of the moaning wounded. Since they seemed to have everything under control there, Benedetta followed the captain toward the nearest building where rescue efforts were still underway.

  He glanced at her. "Go back."

  She set her jaw. "I'll be more use here. I am stronger than I look."

  "You're also my payment. Can't lose you now."

  "At the rate things are going, there won't be anything to pay for." She passed him at a jog.

  Someone had tossed down a pile of mismatched gloves, not much more than decorative knitting, but she yanked on a pair over her silver-threaded hands and joined the villagers pulling aside debris where the frantic calls from the trapped were loudest.

  A woman clutched at her arm. "L'auralya, my children! They were in the back
room. Please..."

  Big hands—too big for any gloves—set the woman to one side and reached past Benedetta. "Let me make the hole," Corso said. "Put the sway in those hips to good use and see if you can shimmy past the obstructions."

  She nodded. While he levered up a still-smoldering beam, she cracked a lume stick and tucked it behind her ear. The hot timber prickled on her back as she scuttled underneath, but her backside burned with a different sort of heat: the fever of the qva'avaq.

  He'd noticed her hips?

  Behind the fallen beam, one wall had toppled, but the other still stood. The triangular corridor of open space was big enough for her to crawl quickly toward the back of the house, following the terrified cries, wordless and pleading.

  "I'm coming," she called. "Hold on."

  She shoved past crumbled masonry and burst into the collapsed room. Three sets of wide eyes stared back at her, arms wrapped in a knot around one another.

  "L'auralya," the smallest of the three whispered. "Have you come to take us to paradise?"

  Benedetta held out her hand. "I've come to take you to your mother. She's waiting . . . this way. Quickly now."

  Still the eldest of the three clung to the smallest. "His leg is caught under the bed frame."

  Around them, the house groaned a warning, and a puff of smoke rolled through the space. A horrified thrill raced along Benedetta's nerves, and the middle child began to cry.

  "None of that now." Benedetta modulated her voice to comfort and cajole as she'd been taught. "Can you be brave for me? If you stop crying, I'll sing you a secret l'auraly song when we get out."

  Lips quivering, they stared at her, but at least they swallowed down their sobs. They'd need all the breath they could get as the smoke thickened.

  Benedetta crawled into the children's midst, physically disentangling them. "Go now, you two. Here's my lume. Follow my path back to your mother. You can see right there how I went. Tell the big man at the other end that we are still here, your brother and I. He'll know what to do." Although what Corso could do… The back of the house was in ruins; he could never punch through the fallen outer walls before the fire reached them.

  The two children scrambled over the debris into the haphazard corridor.

  "Quickly," Benedetta said.

  "I'll race you," the eldest challenged the middle. They disappeared into the thickening gloom.

  Benedetta turned her attention to the little boy. Without her lume stick, the red glow of the encroaching fires seemed closer than ever. The boy stared at her with solemn dark eyes.

  She traced her hands down his small leg to the snarl of wood and wire that had been the bed frame. "What is your name, child?"

  "Rooly." He sucked in a breath and coughed once on the thickening smoke but didn't cry out. "I think I'm really stuck. Will your friend come back for us?"

  "Yes," she said absently, still feeling for the place where he might be caught. But then she heard herself and paused. She did think Corso would come. "Yes, Rooly," she repeated more firmly. "But we could surprise them if we got you free first." There. Not crushed, his foot was merely snared in the webbed wires that supported the mattress.

  "Everyone's talking about the l'auraly," the boy said. "Everyone says you should just give the crystals to the bad men and then they'd go away. The bad men did this, didn't they?"

  Benedetta gritted her teeth as she tried to pry the wires apart. "Yes, they did this."

  "Maybe you should have given them the crystals and then they wouldn't have done this. That's what Mother tells my brother when he won't share his toys with me and I cry."

  Though the boy was just repeating what he'd heard, guilt twisted in Benedetta as cruelly as the wires around his foot. She tugged until the fabric of the gloves gave way. "Turn your foot, can you, Rooly? See if—"

  With a surprised cry, the boy slipped free. "You did it! Oh, my foot is all sticky with blood. But it doesn't hurt at all."

  "We'll look at it when we get out. Can you crawl very fast? Faster than your brother?"

  "Surely! And faster than you too."

  "Show me." She let him race away from her into the tunnel she'd made. The debris chewed at her knees but her hands were worse. She refused to look down where the wires had cut past the gloves to her flesh.

  "Etta!" The roar reverberated down the corridor.

  "We're coming," she called back. "I have the child."

  "Hurry."

  As if that hadn't occurred to her. She quickened her scramble, trying not to feel the pebbles that ground into her torn hands. The smoke in her lungs tore at her from the inside. Just ahead of her, Rooly was a scuttling shadow. So close to escape…

  A gout of fire shot across the corridor in front of the little boy.

  Rooly recoiled into her, his heels grinding over her fingers. She gasped and pulled him into her arms. Apparently the fire wanted to come farther in.

  They couldn't return to the collapsed deathtrap of a room. They couldn't go forward. The timbers groaned a protest at the flames licking toward them. The groan intensified to a shriek, which Rooly echoed.

  The tilted wall beside them began to smoke, then glow red. Clutching Rooly to her chest, she edged back, despair dragging at her muscles.

  The wood of the wall blistered. Benedetta turned to shield the little boy from the broiling heat just as the butt of a hazer—wrapped in big hands—crashed through the burning laths.

  "Etta." In the barrage of splinters and plaster, Corso crouched. His dark skin was streaked with soot. "The front of the house collapsed. We have to go out through the side here."

  "The other children?"

  "Out. Just you now. Come on." He reached for her.

  She dumped the boy into his arms. Together they hunched toward their survival. Through the opening ahead, she saw Patter and Jorr still battling back the flames. Holding their own, but barely. The fire snaked overhead, licking along every crevice.

  With a cackling roar, it flared up. Sparks rained down so the fire seemed all around them. Benedetta ducked but the hot ashes never found her. Corso lifted the flap of his coat around her. On the other side of his broad chest, the boy clung, eyes clenched tightly shut.

  She raced forward under that protection, and they were only steps from the exit.

  As if the fire had sucked the last life from the building, the remaining timbers breathed out one last crackling shower of sparks. And buckled over their heads, swinging toward them as they fled.

  Through Corso's heavy body, Benedetta felt the impact as the beam struck him from behind. The heat singed the air around them and he staggered but didn't drop the boy or even the edge of his coat around her. "Don't stop," he growled. The words echoed through her like another impact.

  All around them, the night had turned to fire. She heaved for breath, and tears half blinded her as they burst from the crumbling house. Jorr grabbed the boy and Patter yanked Corso—Benedetta still under his arm—free from the chaos.

  They staggered away from the mess into the frantic cries from the mother. The little boy shrieked—the last of his bravery gone up in smoke—and Jorr quickly passed him over.

  Around them, the last of similar dramas were playing out as the flames died down.

  "What next?" Corso hunched with his hands on his knees and coughed.

  "Are you all right?" Benedetta angled herself beside him. "That crossbeam—"

  "I'm fine."

  Jorr raked his hair back, leaving ashy streaks. "That's it, Captain. We should get back to the Asphodel. We're too vulnerable down here."

  Benedetta glared at him. "Will your ship hold all the Qv'arratzy too?"

  The crewman didn't flinch. "This is your rock, not ours."

  Corso straightened. "I want a status report on the drone up there. What's its next timed drop? That'll give us a clue when our friends are coming back."

  Jorr gave a terse nod and moved away to mumble into his comm.

  Patter, who had turned aside to converse with Icer
e, glanced back. "Got four dead, a couple dozen injured—a few look bad. Could use some derm patches, hypo sprays, and meds from the ship."

  "Get it done." Corso glanced at Benedetta. "How bad are your hands?"

  She blinked. "I don't know."

  She didn't look down as he lifted her hands and uncurled her clenched fingers. "Make a fist. Now open up. You're cut deep in a few places, but everything's working." He gently folded her hands closed again but didn't let go. "A lot of crystal there. Maybe it protected you a little."

  The warmth of his touch sank through her cold skin. "The qva'avaq tends to flow along nerve pathways, showing where we are most sensitive." She sounded a little breathless but couldn't find the control to steady her voice.

  "Then it must hurt, so have Jorr look at it. He's a good medic despite his bedside manner. He'll take care of you."

  She focused on his face. The smudges made him somehow more approachable—if the world could make a mark on him, perhaps she could too. "Are you leaving?"

  "I'm not going anywhere," he mumbled. Then his eyes rolled back and he toppled over at her feet.

  Chapter Five

  He'd passed out before—a professional hazard for a mercenary ship's captain—so he rarely felt any confusion upon regaining consciousness. If he'd passed out for bad reasons, he'd wake up in a med bay. If he'd passed out for good reasons, he'd wake up in somebody's bed.

  He almost always woke up in med bay.

  But Corso was confused to revive this time. He'd been injured, clear enough, and yet he was in somebody's bed. He tried to avoid that kind of woman.

  The woven coverlet rubbed over his bare chest as he took a pained breath to catalogue his injuries. Broken ribs, that was a given. From the hitch in his innards, he'd probably nicked something important. A derm patch itched at his neck, so he had analgesics aboard, not that they were doing enough. Which meant Jorr had seen to his wounds; Jorr was a good medic, but he chronically shortchanged his victims on the painkillers. Always said since the pain hadn't killed them, it only made them stronger.

  Morning light—almost, but not quite, as soft as the sheet under his hands—filtered through filmy curtains across the room. He turned his head. A bit of a struggle, that, since the pillow was softest of all and tried to swallow him.