The flitter’s narrower back passenger section forced Pico to practically sit in Sojaire’s lap, and she couldn’t find it in herself to mind.
“Thanks for telling Luka about the medic for my dad and Professor De Luna. Gunnin don’t like to admit weakness.”
“You’re welcome,” Sojaire said softly. “Where is Valenia tonight?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Being pampered in her parents’ luxury hotel, I expect. Wait until she hears about today’s ‘interesting times.’”
Sojaire chuckled. “We’ll never live it down.”
The feel of his warm breath on the side of her face sent a tingle through her. She looked out the window at the city lights to distract herself. “Hey, where are we going? This isn’t the bay.”
“Our hotel,” said Luka. “Sojaire can take you home if you insist, but I’m guessing the news media will have found your address by now. A lot of names are trending, and yours is on the list. Since none of us have been answering incoming pings, they’re probably already knocking on your door.”
Pico sighed. “Shuyun Chao. She’s in my Materials Science class. Her uncle owns the top investigative news magazine on the planet. She’s probably given him every name she knows.” She frowned and looked at Sojaire. “I didn’t introduce you to her, did I? Could she find you?”
“No. We’re booked under the company, not individual names.”
She relaxed a little. “Can I borrow some funds for a room, Mr. Foxe? My percomp… I guess I owe you and Sojaire new percomps, huh?”
“I think saving our lives makes up for it,” said Luka. “Besides, Mairwen wanted us all to buy better ones anyway.” He patted her hand on his thigh. Mairwen spared him a quick glance. Whatever he saw in her face made him laugh.
The couch in Sojaire’s “reception suite”—meaning it had two rooms and a fresher—was compact, but comfortable and firm, which was a good thing, because Pico was sleeping on it for the night. The hotel was booked solid, so it was either that, or search for another hotel in the dead of night. Waves of exhaustion were beating her down, and yet she was still keyed up from the day’s events. She had yet to process the fact that her teke talent was more than she’d imagined. She was also distracted by the sight of Sojaire in low-slung sleep pants and nothing else as he opened the bag of warmed candied nuts into a bowl, which he handed to her. “This will fix your low blood sugar better than I can.”
She sat on one end of the couch, hugging a pillow between her knees and her chest. At least she was clean and dry for the moment. Sojaire had kindly lent her one of his knit shirts to sleep in, since her poor jumpsuit was sadly in need of cleaning. The borrowed shirt was plenty long enough, but a little clingier than she was comfortable with. She was already so hopelessly vulnerable to Sojaire right then, without revealing her body’s response to him.
When he pulled up the room’s overstuffed chair and sat facing her, she waved him away. “Shoo. Bedtime.” She pointed to him. “Work.” She pointed to herself. “Class.”
He pointed to himself. “Understanding boss.” He pointed to her. “Underwater campus.”
She snorted, and her eyes started to fill. She put the bowl down beside her and sighed shakily. “Don’t mind me. I’m an emotional train wreck.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s okay.” His solid presence and sympathy felt so real, so personal. And not real.
“You do know, don’t you? You knew all along.” Tears spilled down her checks. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have understood.” She’d have quit bothering him, and quit finding ways to meet him again. Maybe she could have found someone who could love her.
“Because I assaulted you, and I was too ashamed to admit it.” His voice was raw.
She blinked. “Assaulted me? When?” He’d healed her a few times, but it never hurt.
He squared his shoulders, but it didn’t erase the vulnerable look on his face. “On the space station, when I was stuck in the sabotaged airlock, I was desperate. I reached out with my empath talent. I twisted your emotions so you’d think you loved me and would want to help me.”
She thought back to that night, three years ago. She remembered waking because she’d dreamed gravity was pulsing again. Valenia’s blue nightlight made it easy to find her plush warm robe and soft, grippy slippers in the slick-floored, darkened habitat. A quick visit to the fresher and a pouch of water and she’d be fine. Sleeping on cots in temporary domes had been fun for one night, but by the fifth night, they’d grown old.
“Bring me some water, too,” said Valenia sleepily. “Next summer, we’ll go to room service camp.”
On the way from the fresher to the cold box where the water was kept, she noticed a diagnostic percomp on the edge of the communal dining table, just like the one Medic Celeyron used. She picked it up to move it to a safer place, and learned his first name, Sojaire, from its property tag. Very French. Valenia was teaching her the language, so maybe older, sophisticated, sexy Sojaire would practice with her. She smiled and put the percomp in her pocket, then pulled two pouches of water from the cold box.
Something unknown—a sound, a breeze, a whiff of sour acid—made her think she wasn’t alone. It made her nervous enough to freeze and listen. She knew Medic Celeyron often stayed up studying for his B-level certificate, and she had a sudden wave of longing to find him, to see him, to give him the percomp, to have him laugh with her and tell her she was imagining things.
The door to his makeshift clinic was wide open and the light was on, but no one was there. A rising sense of panic told her she needed to find him, because he could save her the way he’d saved the boy who had broken his neck just that afternoon.
A faint tapping sound to the left of the clinic door sent her in that direction, toward the sealed and locked camp entrance. Farther to the left was the camp’s very own practice airlock, which led to the rigid cage in space where they practiced in exosuits and learned zero-G skills. The airlock felt wrong, like a bad circuit or a leaking power source. She’d never told anyone she could feel such things, because maybe she just had an overactive imagination and read too many adventure stories. Still, she edged closer to it, going slow enough so she wouldn’t slip. Her grippy slippers weren’t up to the micro-smooth threshold intended for gravity boots. She stood on her tiptoes and looked through the airlock’s view window.
Sojaire’s desperate and anguished face on the other side scared the life out of her.
Pico looked up at the real man in front of her. “When did you assault me? I found your comp, I found you in the airlock, I got you out, those three wastes of carbon chased us, you flatlined the phase-knife jerk with your talent, I flatlined the tech with mine. Was it when you stopped me from bleeding out and healed me?”
“No, earlier. I saw you standing at the cold box, getting water. I knew you liked me, and I breached your shell and pumped you with as much love as I could, so you’d want to see me, want to be with me, and find me.”
“I admit I liked you, maybe even already had a crush on you, but I was more terrified than anything else,” she said.
He hung his head. “That was my fault, too. Once I connected us, I didn’t know how to let it go. I was scared to die, and I thought they’d kill you, too, because you found my percomp with the evidence. You couldn’t help but feel it, too.”
Chaos, she was tired, but she needed to hear this. “Let’s say it’s all true, that for as long as we were in that stupid space station, you played my emotions like a tesla harp. Not buying it, but nonetheless.” She took a deep breath and glared at him. “How does that explain how I felt—how you knew I felt—for the last three years?”
He flinched, distressed. “I didn’t know. I never used my empathy talent. It hurt.” He pushed his hair back from his forehead, then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his fingers barely touching. “I knew about my healer talent early on. It’s strong, and it’s who I am. My empathy talent didn’t even show up until I was about sixteen, and I tho
ught I was just cracking under the pressure of living with my bastard father. He no longer had to tell me he hated me, I could feel it. The household staff was terrified of him. His manager felt sorry for me. His hordes of women were jealous. Finally, a friend at school, and empath herself, told me what I was, and showed me how to contain my talent.”
He looked so forlorn, she wanted to touch him, to at least hold his hand like he’d held hers in the police captain’s office. She didn’t know how to close the distance. “But you got out, didn’t you? You left.”
“The day I turned seventeen. He’d been counting planetary years, not GDAT years—he thought he had another year to ‘fix’ me. I filed a severance declaration at the stroke of GDAT midnight and left with only the clothes on my back. I moved in with a friend and took an emergency response job so I could eat. For the next two years, my father got me evicted, fired, or expelled, each time he found me.” He smiled lopsidedly for a moment. “I thought space camp would be safe.”
She returned his smile. “I thought it would just be boring.”
His smile faded. “Remember when you told me you were leaving Rekoria to come here?”
She sighed. “Yes.” He’d been at his careless, distant worst. It still hurt.
His shoulders hunched. “Luka and Mairwen had dug up the evidence that exonerated me and exposed my father’s lies. They testified for the injunction. A week before you told me the news, the day my medic license was restored, a couple of freelance enforcers tried to jump Mairwen. They were supposed to hurt her and tell her that if she and Luka continued to corrupt me, their business wouldn’t last another year.”
“Corrupt you?”
“An obsession of my father’s. I was afraid that since he was brazen enough to send someone after my bosses, despite the injunction, he’d go after you. You were the only constant friend I had through all the schools, and jobs, and living situations. If you were on another planet, I thought you’d be safe.”
“There’s that word again. I think we should ban it from our vocabulary, so the universe doesn’t keep trying to prove us wrong.” She dropped her feet to the floor, but kept the pillow close. “Why didn’t you tell me all this at the time? I’d have understood.”
“Because I fucked up. I used my empath talent on you again.”
“You manipulated my emotions?” He’d purposefully made her feel sad and abandoned?
He shook his head vehemently. “No, no, I just read them.” He took a deep breath and let it out. He caught her gaze and held it. “I found out you loved me as much as I loved you. If I’d said anything at all, you’d have stayed. You’re a fighter, Pico. He’d have destroyed you.”
Her jaw and the pillow dropped at the same time. “You love me? Since when?”
“Since… I don’t know when.” He pushed his hair back again. “When we met, you were underage, and I was in a position of trust. I liked you too much even then. Then you were an adult, and your mom shredded you and your dad, and still you laughed with me and kept me from getting lost. Not just in the ‘interesting times’ moments, but in my head. In my self-pity. And we kept running into each other, and I didn’t know how to talk to you, so I didn’t. I just soaked up your sunlight.”
The sweet, earnest look on his face was mesmerizing. And his “interesting times” reference made her smile. She so much wanted to believe him, that this was real, that the baseline version and the illegal clone were one and the same man. “What was going on at the restaurant, then?”
“Sensory overload. Mairwen’s been pushing… Well, no, she doesn’t push anyone. She just becomes an immovable object. She’s been encouraging me to learn to use my empathy talent instead of fighting it. She said a friend used to fight his, and it didn’t go well.” He flattened his hands on his thighs. “But now I’m not so good in crowds, and the restaurant was packed, and I was having to keep healing myself of a headache. And then there you were, gorgeous and sexy, and I was tongue-tied, and I owed you three years’ worth of apologies. Then those idiots behind us started fighting, and it overwhelmed my containment.” He smiled ruefully. “The best I could do was try to help Valenia, and she was calmer than I was.”
“So are you containing now?” She wished she could tell. Maybe she could learn.
“As best I can around you.” He sighed. Even exhausted and wrung out, he was impossibly handsome.
“Well, stop it. You already know all my secrets. And now, I know all yours.” She raised an eyebrow. “I do, don’t I?”
He held up his hands. “Honest as the stars.”
She slid the pillow aside and stood up. “Then tell me again that you love me.”
One step put her in front of his knees. “Let me feel you.”
She grabbed his hands and pulled him gently to his feet, pressing her aching, tingling body against the hot, hard, muscular planes of his, and sliding her arms around his neck. She felt his arms wrap around her and hold her like the sun was going nova tomorrow. She looked up at him. “Let me feel all of you.”
He tilted his head down and she met him halfway, with her soft lips and inquisitive tongue. The feel of him, in her head and in her heart, sent her up in flames. Tears began to flow. Three years of dreams paled in comparison to the real man in her arms.
He shuddered and deepened the kiss, thrusting his hips against hers, letting her feel how much he wanted her. Loved her. Burned for her. His warm hands palmed her butt and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his slender hips and broke the kiss to gasp for air and wipe away the tears from both their faces.
She nibbled on his ear. “Take me to your bed and ravish me, my brave corsair Sojaire, that I may return the favor soon after.”
She felt him smile as he pivoted and carried her through the doorway to his bedroom.
“As my lady Captain commands, so it is my pleasure to obey.”
She sighed against his neck. “I really loved that show.”
Chapter 26
* Planet: Nila Marbela * GDAT 3241.150 *
Andra held her head over the solardry in Luka and Mairwen’s hotel suite and toed the unit on. She ran her fingers through her hair to encourage it to dry. She’d deal with the frizz later.
A minute later, she gathered it in a barrette, while grimacing in the mirror at her clean but still bruised body, especially over the newly repaired ribs. Another visit to the medical center was high on her agenda. She pulled on her stained but clean exercise pants and loose top and thanked the cosmos for upscale hotel freshers with oversized, multi-head showers and built-in clothes sanitizers. She opened the fresher door and padded barefoot into the reception area of their suite, where everyone else was waiting for her.
Jerzi, hair and skin still damp, wearing his torn tank top and stained cargo pants, sprawled on the small couch. While she’d been washing off the smells of war zones and the police station, he’d done the same in the fresher in Sojaire’s room. Jerzi was obviously torn between staring at and avoiding the overstuffed chair, where contented Sojaire cradled a blissful Pico in his lap. Andra couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t think she’d ever seen two people more in love, and it had to be shaking Jerzi’s worldview.
Luka looked up from the percomp in his hand, just like the other two on the tiny table in front of him. “Breakfast is on its way.” He’d apparently convinced—or bribed—the hotel to acquire replacement comps and deliver them to their room. He’d been using his to query the newstrends while waiting for her and Jerzi.
She sketched a slight bow. “My hollow stomach thanks you. They never got around to feeding us last night.” While the room suite was pleasant, luxurious even, it had no windows, which was rare in Tremplin, where the constant view of a tropical wonderland was one of its main selling points. “What time is it?”
She and Jerzi had stumbled out of the police station sometime before dawn. Majeed had offered junk food scrounged from various desks, had the staff medic treat them, and allowed them short naps in between interview sessions. Jerzi had p
inged Mairwen, who he was confident would be awake, and she’d invited them to the hotel for food and the use of their freshers. Since Andra was still temporarily homeless, it was too good an offer to pass up.
“Six thirty-seven,” said Mairwen, standing near the door, feet slightly apart, hands clasped behind her back. She was wearing the solid gray tunic and pants she’d worn five nights ago in the restaurant in the sky. So much had happened since then that it felt like that was weeks ago. Mairwen turned her head a little. “The cart is here.”
The suite’s wallcomp lit up and chimed a moment later. Mairwen opened the door to reveal the automated cart full of food. Andra cast a look at Jerzi telling him to stay put, then crossed to help Mairwen unload the stack-locked plates and carry them into the miniature kitchen area with its narrow sink and token counter. They quickly distributed the plates all around. Mairwen sat next to Luka, leaving Andra’s only option to sit on the couch next to Jerzi.
Ten minutes later, she and Jerzi finished their omelets and pastries almost simultaneously, as if they’d been in a race. She laughed to herself as she leaned back on the couch, reveling in the first comfortable place she’d been for the last two days. It was like a post-mission wind-down in the military, but better, because all these people genuinely cared about one another.
Luka cleared his throat. “While you two were entertaining Captain Majeed, the ‘floater war’ story reached critical mass in the newstrends. So far, they know crew and mercs are dead or detained by the military, and the floater is damaged. The prevailing narrative is that an upstart crew was using the labs to make illegal recreational chems, and that a rival crew hired the mercs to steal their product and punish them by sabotaging the floater.” He waved a fork with a bite of sausage on it. “I think the ‘rival crew’ is actually a pharma company, and the ‘recreational chems’ were actually blackmarket clones of minder enhancement drugs made specifically for the Citizen Protection Service’s use in the Minder Corps. It’s the most logical reason for their involvement.”
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