by Cara Bristol
The moon’s surface rose to meet them, and then there was a moderate bump as the landing wheels connected with the ground. The computer braked and slowed the velocity, taxied the ship to a rounded area off to the side, and powered down the engine. Dust and sand blew in eddies. Lifeless rocky terrain stretched as far as the eye could see.
“What happens now?” she asked. The pad beneath them gave a jerk and then dropped. She grabbed his arm. We’re sinking!”
Kai chuckled. “We’re on a descender pad being transported to a sublunar hangar.”
Outside the window, harsh, formidable moonscape gave way to a wall of granite as the pad lowered. Within seconds, rock swallowed the craft. Mariska dug her fingernails into his skin. Her nostrils flared, and her chest heaved with her breathing. Perspiration beaded on her forehead.
“Are you all right?” He studied her face.
“Yes. I just…I…closed in…” Her skin had paled.
“Hey, hey.” He pulled her into his arms, pressed her face to his chest, and rocked her. “Shut your eyes. Listen to my voice. It’s going to be okay. We’re taking a little ride, and then there will be plenty of space. I promise.” He stroked her hair and murmured soothing noises.
It would take thirty seconds to complete the kilometer-deep descent.
Mariska clung to his waist and buried her face against his chest. Her breathing slowed. Pressed against him, her breasts and her entire form felt soft and warm. Hair like liquid silk flowed against his hands. His groin tightened. Not now. A natural reaction, but not one he could afford when her trust was so fragile, when danger lurked around the corner, when he would leave to face Carter’s wrath as soon as he got her to safety.
“That’s my girl.” He rubbed circles on her back while shifting his hips to avoid contact.
Bright white light flooded the cockpit as they reached the manufacturing plant, but Kai waited until the factory was completely visible and the descender bumped to a stop before rousing her with a little shake. “We’re here.”
She slipped out of his arms and blinked. “What is this place?”
“It’s called Moonbeam Chop Shop. A buddy owns it. We’re stopping here for bit.”
“We’re getting off?”
“Yes.”
“I have to get my veil.” She darted for the passageway.
“What for?”
She brushed a hand over her forehead and temple. “I have to cover up. People prefer not to see me.” Her beautiful face reddened with humiliation.
“You haven’t worn your scarf around me.”
“That’s different.” She averted her gaze. “You’re an andro—a Terran.” She fluttered her hand before dropping it to her side.
Many women would kill to look like her, but the ugliness of her deformity had been drilled into her head from birth, and it would take more than a pep talk to counteract the brainwashing. Every minute could mean the difference between life and death. Business had to be conducted at warp speed. Their lives and the lives of all the workers on Deceptio depended on it.
He sighed. “All right. Get it. Please hurry.”
She was back in a flash, her face and head shrouded. He itched to rip away the offending fabric but, instead, opened the forward door and connected the bridge to the dock.
Dale waited at the end of the gangway.
“Hey, asshole.” Kai greeted him with an insult and a bear hug. Dale had been one of the few who retired from Cyber Operations to lead a normal life—if running a spacecraft chop shop and occasionally aiding and abetting individuals on the wrong side of the law could be considered normal. The remanufacturing plant bustled and clanked with activity as workers and robots disassembled spacecraft, repurposing the parts to build untraceable new ships with more advanced capabilities.
“How the fuck are you doing?” Dale thumped his shoulder with a heartiness only a fellow cyborg could deliver and then shoved him away. “Other than getting uglier, that is.”
Next to him, Mariska jerked. Her eyes flashed. “He’s not ugly! He’s very handsome!”
Dale roared with laughter.
Kai couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed, but heat flooded his face. Dale guffawed harder and afforded Kai another reason to conduct his business and scram. He’d never live this down. “When you’re done pissing all over yourself, let’s talk.”
Dale wiped his streaming eyes.
“Mariska, this is Dale Homme. Despite his uncouth manner, he’s a friend of mine.” Kai glanced at his buddy. “This is…Mariska.”
Fortunately, Dale had the good sense not to mention the veil. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He flashed one of the megawatt smiles he reserved for seducing the opposite sex. “You have the most beautiful eyes.”
Kai ground his teeth.
The flirtation means nothing. Not that it should bother you if it does. She wasn’t his woman, but a terrorist’s pawn he’d broken the rules to save. He needed to avoid distractions and focus on his objective: get her to a safe haven and then salvage what remained of his Cy-Ops career.
“If you’re finished ogling Mariska, you might peek behind me.” He jerked his head at the shuttle.
Dale winked at her as if they shared a joke then shifted his gaze over Kai’s shoulder. The smirk fell off his face. “Holy Fuck! Is this what I think it is?” He rounded the vehicle, inspecting it from all angles, his expression covetous.
Gotcha! Kai hadn’t been too worried about getting Dale to trade, but it was reassuring to have it verified. And to get his attention off Mariska. “It’s a Lamis-Odg military small cargo shuttlecraft. Not a warship, but it does have shields and weapons suitable for limited engagement. And a homing device, which you should extract stat.”
If the tracker wasn’t removed, it could lead Lamis-Odg to Deceptio. The terrorists wouldn’t be able to see through the cloaking shield, but they would wonder how the ship could vanish and still transmit a beacon.
Dale signaled two workers. “There’s a tracker. Find it. Don’t destroy it, but seal it off in a lead case.”
The men were shorter than the average human and had webbed fingers and two more sets of eyes. Chattering excitedly, they rushed to the spacecraft.
Kai blinked. “You have Arcanians working for you?” The pickpockets of the galaxy, the creatures were notorious for their thievery.
“They pay great attention to detail,” Dale said and shrugged. “I do regular patdowns to recover items that have disappeared.” He beckoned. “Let’s go to my office.”
He ushered them up a set of stairs to a quieter space overlooking the shop floor. A reinforced glass wall allowed for a bird’s-eye watch on the factory while filtering out the noise. Dale’s desk, a curved ship’s console, all but disappeared under piles of parts and circuit boards. The smell of metal, plastic, composite polymers, and grease permeated the air.
Dale unloaded the debris from a chair and gave it a swipe with his palm. “Sit, please,” he said to Mariska, leaving Kai to clear off a seat for himself. Dale rounded his desk and plopped into a sensa-chair with electronic massaging fingers. “What do you want in exchange for the shuttle?”
“Something fast. With some creature comforts.”
“Done.”
“You’re not going to dicker?” Kai arched his eyebrows. Dale could and did drive a hard bargain, using a client’s desperation to press an advantage. But his buddy had lit up like a supernova once he’d ignored Mariska long enough to get a gander at the shuttle. No one in the entire galaxy had been able to get their hands on a Lamis-Odg spacecraft.
“Is there any point?” Dale asked.
“Not much,” Kai leaned back in his chair. Despite their desperate need, he’d had a hunch he would sit in the pilot’s seat in this negotiation.
Dale activated a commline. “Prep the Panthera 4 for launch,” he said.
“Panthera?”
“She’s sleek, fast, and purrs like a kitten. She’ll be re
ady to fly in half an hour. I assume you’re on a tight schedule.” He twisted his mouth mockingly.
“Aren’t all your customers?”
Mariska glanced between him and Dale. “Why do we need a new ship at all? If the tracker is removed, what’s wrong with the shuttle we have?”
“The craft is recognizable as a Lamis-Odg vehicle,” Kai answered, hoping she wouldn’t press the issue. Now wasn’t the time to break the news that due to her people’s terrorist proclivities, they had become personae non gratae throughout much of the galaxy. Any Lamis-Odg ship would be denied landing privileges on many worlds. And a military craft? Forget it.
“Which brings me to the obvious question…how did you manage to acquire the vehicle?” Dale asked.
“It belongs to her father—General Obido.”
His buddy’s jaw dropped, and his gaze flew to her veil.
Kai could guess what he was thinking: the scarf hid the distinctive facial features. “Mariska is not a threat,” he addressed the unspoken question. “Her father was sending her to Katnia.”
“Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Jesus!” Dale shook his head.
“By the way…if Carter asks, you never saw me.”
“You’re AWOL?” Dale whistled through his teeth. “Carter’s gonna have your ass.”
“He’ll have to find it first. And I want to take the homing device with me when I leave.”
“Hell, no. It came with the ship and belongs to me. I paid for it with the Panthera 4 and my selective memory.”
“The lead case will block further transmissions, but the electronic signature can be traced to the last emission coordinates. Obido probably has a fleet searching for us and might pick up the frequency. Do you want to draw them here?”
“I haven’t kicked butt in a while,” Dale’s eyes gleamed. Once a cyborg, always a cyborg. Taking on impossible challenges was what they had trained for. Lived for. Sometimes died for.
“An armada hovering over Deceptio would scare off your regular customers.”
“True.” He sighed. “All right. You can have the device back. But that’s it. We’re square.”
“Won’t it allow my father to follow us?” Mariska asked.
“Not if it’s shielded by lead, and we won’t have it for long. I’ll jettison it somewhere. They’ll follow the decoy, which will lead them away from Deceptio and us.”
“Any idea where you’ll go?” Dale asked.
“Not yet.”
“Not that you’d tell me.”
“The fewer people who know, the better.” For security’s sake, in covert ops, no one individual had all the pieces of the puzzle.
Chapter Nine
Aboard the Panthera, Kai removed the monitoring device from the lead case and slipped it into the underbelly compartment of a small drone. “Sorry, little buddy.” He patted the robotic decoy. “You’re going to have to take one for the team.”
Mariska frowned. “What do you mean?”
Kai picked up the drone, shoved it into the Panthera’s small craft launch tube, and shot it into space. He pushed a button on the remote to fire it up, and the tiny craft zipped away.
“If your father picks up the tracking signal—and I hope he does—he’ll blow it up. With any luck, that will occur after the drone leads him to a far, far corner of the galaxy. I had Dale program it to orbit a couple of smaller uninhabited planets before landing on DeltaNu9084.”
“There aren’t people on DeltaNu9084, right?”
“Nothing there but trees and acid pools. A missile won’t damage anything the galaxy will miss.”
“What did you have to pay Dale for the drone?”
“Surprisingly, nothing. He threw it in gratis.”
“Because he was happy to acquire the shuttle.”
“Because he liked you,” Kai said.
She twisted her hands. Her own people had shunned her. Why would an alien like her? Especially since she’d discovered her people and her planet had earned the contempt of the galaxy. While the Panthera was being prepped by his workers, Dale had given them a factory tour. Her father’s ship had drawn gawkers, and she’d overheard their whispers.
Radicals.
Extremists.
Terrorists.
She’d been taught her people were the noblest of the Great One’s acolytes. Yet no one else recognized their favored status—just the opposite. The infidels know not of what they speak, her father would have dismissed the claims.
She could not. Not after everything else she’d learned in the past twenty-four hours.
Despite the ribbing and insults batted back and forth between the two men, she sensed a strong friendship. Kai could say what he wanted, but she’d bet Dale had offered the drone to help him and not her.
She looked up to find Kai’s gaze upon her. “Dale isn’t the only one. I like you, too,” he said.
Pleasure and discomfort dueled. “Why?” she whispered. “I am my father’s daughter. The fruit of his seed. I am the same as he.” Only ugly.
He shook his head. “You are different,” Kai said. “In my world, we judge people on the merits of their character.”
A tingling like none she’d ever experienced sizzled through her body, leaving her light-headed and dry-mouthed. I like you, too. The words wouldn’t come to her lips. She’d never had an occasion to share her innermost thoughts, had concentrated her efforts on concealing them.
“Serving as your android servant, I observed your kindness in how you treated others.” He stepped toward her. “You don’t have a mean or malicious bone in your body.”
“I wish it were so, but it’s not true. I often get angry and resentful.” She turned to stare out the Panthera’s window. She had a hunch she would never return to Lamis-Odg, either the planet or the space station. But homesickness wasn’t the emotion churning inside. She took a breath. “I hate my father,” she whispered.
“For good reason. He tried to murder you.”
She exhaled, and her veil poufed. “The Great One commands us to revere our fathers.” To disrespect one’s sire compared to dishonoring Him.
In the window, she saw Kai move closer. “I would counter that attempted filicide invalidates obligation.” He settled his hands on her shoulders. “We’re alone now. Why are you still wearing the veil?”
She dropped her gaze to her folded hands. “You know why.”
“I have already seen you.”
“I’m not…beautiful.” But oh, how she wished she was. Or at least normal. Females were taught the pursuit of beauty resulted in vanity and shallowness. If that was so, why had her homeliness been reviled? Why had her father chosen the comeliest women as his mates?
“Because you don’t have the Odgidian ridge?” He lifted his hands, and she missed the warmth of his touch. With a finger, he traced his hairline. “I don’t have one. You told Dale I was handsome. Did you mean it?”
“Of course I did!” It felt like she was admitting much more than noting a fact. She rather favored Kai’s striking blue eyes, strong chiseled cheekbones, masculine shadowed jaw, thick hair, and smooth forehead and temples. Even his hulking broad and tall form had become attractive to her.
“Then why judge yourself differently?”
“I don’t know.” She would have sidestepped the probing questions by leaving the bridge, but he blocked the exit. “Perhaps...because you’re a man. And, an…alien. There’s a different standard for you.”
“You saw other women—workers—at Dale’s factory. They had no ridges either. Were they unattractive?”
“Of course not.” There’d been quite a few women of many species at the Moonbeam Chop Shop. Like Kai said, none of them had rippled foreheads, yet she’d considered them attractive.
“So it is only yourself you criticize?”
“Are you always so logical?”
“Usually,” he replied. “Not always.” He tugged at the corner of her veil.
“Don’t!�
�� She grabbed his wrist, remnants of old shame flashing through her. But on its heels came other memories—Kai’s lack of disgust, his respectful treatment. He’d never acted like he considered her an abomination.
His eyes were gentle and his smile reassuring. He almost made her believe in miracles. She still could not accept her beauty for herself but believed him when he said he found her attractive. She released her grip on his forearm and allowed him to loosen the scarf to fall around her shoulders. She had severed ties to her people. There was no retreat from this course, and the veil belonged to her former life.
He skimmed a knuckle across her cheek, catching a wayward tear. With a light touch, he trailed his finger along her jawline then up again to her smooth temple then back down to cup her chin. He brushed a thumb over her lower lip.
She caught her breath when he lowered his head and kissed her. With his mouth, he coaxed in a slow exploration. She leaned into him.
A brief grin of masculine triumph twitched on his lips before he pulled her tight against him, and kissed her in earnest, slipping his tongue into her mouth and pressing harder.
Satisfaction. She moaned, responding to every thrust and tango. He tasted male, heady and dark. Like something forbidden and decadent. Something to be coveted and not shared.
She hardly noticed when he tugged her veil completely off and let it flutter to the floor. More rich kisses followed. Under his caress, the vestiges of bad memories melted away. He eased the neckline of her tunic from her shoulder, and then his mouth was there, licking and nipping.
Before she could warn him, he’d pressed his lips to the sacred spiral. Her stomach plummeted, and with a cry wrenching up from her soul, she jerked away.
“What’s wrong? What did I do?”
She stared at him, standing so strong and tall, so alive. She rubbed her shoulder where his lips had been.
“Did I hurt you? I didn’t think I nipped that hard.”
“Y-you’re not supposed to…to…touch the mark.”
“Did I violate some custom?”
“‘He who touches the sacred spiral shall die.’” She quoted what she’d been told.
His cough could not mask his snort of laughter.
