by Elsa Jade
Returning her smirk, he anchored both hands behind his head in an impudent stance—and to stop himself from holding her tight. “We’re not in a saloon anymore. No bets needed.”
“But maybe…” She scooted down his body, kissing as she went, the tickling ends of her hair trailing behind. “Maybe if you feel something, it means neither of us is stuck in the past, broken by what was done to us.”
He wasn’t stuck or broken. He’d never been intended as anything but a soulless killer.
Still, when she kissed down the midline of his body, past the second sealed gouge across his flank, to where his navel would’ve been if he’d been Earther born—or born at all—he shivered at the erotic promise. He should at least lie to her, pretend she was reaching past the cybernetic armor and into the nothingness that was a shroud’s heart.
But then she wrapped her lips around his half-stiff cock and he wondered if he was only lying to himself.
***
When he woke, he was alone, but his blood hummed with satisfaction.
And the lingering note sounded like Nell’s voice.
He stretched slowly, waiting for his internal diagnostics to cycle. Shrouds usually slept only when their nanites needed to conserve energy. He’d been in low-power ever since his Omega brother had shot him down on Earth a couple of months ago, so he’d slept more in those weeks than in most of the decades previous.
Last night—brief as darkness was on the swiftly spinning moon—had been the first time he’d slept with anyone else. He shouldn’t get used to it, of course. Thetas were meant to work alone, separate even from their matrix.
Also, he’d probably die in his assault on the consortium, so he didn’t want Nell to get used to him either.
The thought squeezed him like fingers spasming around a pixberry, bruising. But he couldn’t let his newfound attraction sway him. The only reason they were together was because she wanted to be free of the empress and he wanted to free his matrix-kin.
And still his blood thrummed with remembered ecstasy, because if he had bet her about his ability to feel, he would’ve lost. Except he’d won.
True love was more complicated than card tricks.
Restlessness and the need to see her drove him from the bunk. The emergency lights were extinguished, but the glow of bright daylight through the open hatch was more than enough illumination for him to see the cabin was empty. So was the field just beyond the gangplank.
He frowned then backpedaled to the discarded robe. As he wrapped it around himself, he saw a cup and carafe waiting on the galley counter.
When he popped open the lid of the carafe, the scent of coffee shortcircuited his systems check. Without full power to the shuttle, she’d found a way to brew a pot. And she’d left enough of the precious beverage to share with him.
As he poured a half measure of the rich black nectar into the waiting cup, his hand shook just a bit. Just anticipating the pleasurable kick of caffeine, almost as satisfying as his night with Nell. She’d probably known he’d need the rejuvenation after last night since she’d been delighted to find that he could rouse his erection as many times as she wanted him.
And she’d wanted him several times.
Reining in the smug multitudes of his nanites, he tamped them down into the hidden refuges he’d carved out for them. They resisted. Or, really, he didn’t want to make them go. They’d been replicating, bringing him back to his full strength, or at least as much as they were able until he was fully activated. And some of them were…not his. Not Nell’s either, exactly, but something different. Something they’d shared, like the coffee.
Cradling the warming cup in his hands, he returned to the open hatch, peering out at the morning. As much as he wanted that first sip, more he wanted to pour himself out to Nell. He longed to reveal all of himself to her, not just his body or even his wonder at the feelings she evoked in him. All of him.
Except what he was…wasn’t good.
She’d been through so much bad, part of it because of what he’d done to her. She’d been captured by the matrix keyholder and held captive in his place while he’d been inadvertently freed from a shroud’s programmed fate. He couldn’t show her the rest. Even if she had shared her kiss and her nanites and her hope for a new path, she’d hate the deeper truth of what he was.
But he had to try. Ever since the crash landing in Montana more than a century ago, he’d followed his Theta programming: stay on the outside, hide and disguise, support the matrix from a distance, let nothing ever get in the way of the mission.
But in the absence of a keyholder’s commands, he’d realized the mission was staying free. And freeing all the shrouds.
Though it was probably the first shroud mission to ever have a noble purpose, he’d been wrong to try to make himself the keyholder to control his own matrix-brothers against the consortium. And he’d been wrong to try to trick Nell into falling in love with him. He had to tell her everything and let her choose, just as he’d wanted for the other shrouds still lost among the stars.
With a determination as strong as the coffee, he strode down the gangplank to look for her. Maybe she’d just gone pix picking and he could make a berry-topped coffeecake…
He strode around the bow of the shuttle and almost tripped over Nell.
His heart thumped hard, not startled but relieved and happy to see her. A laugh almost bubbled out of him, like cheap pixberry wine, to realize that now his heart had a say in what he was feeling, just as his nanites did. And every part of him yearned to be with his Earther girl.
She was crouched partly behind the panel he’d removed yesterday, which was why he hadn’t seen her. But she straightened when he appeared—except the crooked set of mouth stayed the same.
He took a stumbling step sideways and stopped. That frown of hers… It made him wary in ways even the thought of defying the consortium hadn’t. “Good morning.”
“High noon, almost. This moon turns so fast.” When she lifted her chin from behind the collar of her cloak, fastened all the way up to hide any glimpse of the vulnerability they’d shared last night, the cool hue of the bluish sun made her cataracts into stormclouds. “Why did you sabotage the power lines?”
His nanites had been thumping eagerly around his deepest hidden secret places like overexcited electrons. Now they froze as if the heat death of the universe had come to his body. “I needed time. Time to make you love me.”
She closed her eyes, just for a moment, but even that instant triggered all his alarms. She was pulling away from him already and she didn’t even know how bad he was.
And he deserved nothing else.
“I thought we were in this together,” she murmured. “Which was silly, of course, considering I kidnapped you.”
At the self-recrimination in her voice, he interrupted. “I wanted to go with you, since we were already half compatible because of our nanites.”
When she took a step back, he realized that wasn’t the absolution she was looking for.
“In all my time alone, I never believed I’d have someone on my side,” she continued doggedly, “someone who’d be there, no matter what. And now, I’ve come so far, so long… And I was right.”
“No, you’re wrong.” He stepped toward her.
But she put up one hand to halt him. And in the other, he realized she was holding the blaster. “Wrong to trust you,” she agreed. “But it’s not your fault. It’s what you are, what you were made to be. You have a mission, and I’m just a means to your ends.”
The cold of the half-dead ground under his bare feet crept up his spine. This little moon was still so raw, only the toughest, most defensive life would survive for the foreseeable future. He didn’t have that kind of time to nurture what might’ve been with Nell.
Something inside him—not his nanites—withered into a bittersweet dust like pixberries in the cruel vacuum of space. “I needed to patch the flaw in my code that would’ve let the keyholder take control. If I imprinted on
you, I’d be untouchable.”
“Being untouchable sounds lovely.” She aimed the blaster at the exposed vee of his chest. “Put the panel back in place. I already checked the lines and there’s nothing wrong. All you did was manipulate the alarm codes so the shuttle thought it was on fire.” She shook her head hard, so the garnet strands of her hair flagged on the wind. “I can’t believe I fell for it.”
He hated the anger in her voice, anger at herself at the failing. “Galaxies have fallen to matrix shrouds, and I am a Theta.”
“I won’t forget again.” She flicked her finger toward the panel. “Now put it back.”
He hesitated. His nanite power had recharged enough to take her, even if she shot him. At worst, he’d be temporarily weakened again, but he’d have command of a ship.
And of her.
Leaving his beverage cube in the dust, he edged around her and did as she ordered. Sealing up the plasteel was even easier than gluing himself closed, and the edges came together with an ominous clang. But despite the return of some of his cybernetic strength, he felt as if all his innards were oozing out of him, as if the healing gel had come undone leaving him to bleed out in front of Nell.
He drew a breath, ready to explain, but then he let it out again like a meteor-pierced hull. What could he say to her now that was truer than the lies he’d told?
An impassive overseer, she followed him back to the bridge and watched as he reignited the engines. With the false alarms that he’d rigged earlier now disabled, the shuttle came to life with welcoming chirps of readiness from all systems.
And one other message.
“Cruiser in orbit is hailing,” the shuttle’s AI informed them. “Would you like to accept?”
“Yes,” Nell said before he could answer. When he swiveled toward her, she thumbed the power dial on the blaster all the way up, glowering at him. “Shuttle to Tartaula cruiser. Captain Gul-gah, are you piloting?”
“Little Nell?” came the question from the shuttle’s comm. “What are you doing down there? Got your emergency signal but no details.”
“Borrowed a shuttle to retrieve a gift for the empress and ran into some trouble.”
“Nell,” Troy said urgently. “You didn’t have to call them in.”
“Who’s that?” This question from the comm was more demanding.
“That is trouble.” Nell arched one eyebrow at Troy.
He couldn’t argue with that, but sorrow and desperation slashed through his chest as if he’d dropped half a shuttle on himself. “I would’ve gone with you. You can still present me to the empress as a gift.”
She shut down the comm with a jab of her finger. “It’s not going to work. You can’t sway me into locking your imprinting protocol so you can go after the consortium.” She glared at him, her clouded eyes turbulent. “Not if I don’t love you anymore.”
“You don’t have to be in love with me to execute the protocol,” he corrected gently. “I only have to be in love with you.”
When she stared up at him, the old scars in her eyes were like the silvered backing of a mirror, reflecting him so he could see what she saw: a spy, saboteur, a liar.
It was what she couldn’t see, somewhere deep inside him, that held him hopelessly silenced as she toggled the comm back on.
“I have one of Emperor Eletanvor’s old shrouds in custody,” she told the cruiser, her hard gaze fixed on Troy. “When you come down, bring adequate restraints.”
Whatever she and the captain above discussed after that, even Troy’s built-in recording system didn’t retain. The pain in his bones was worse than any blaster charge. Not that he blamed her at all. He knew what he was—worse than she knew. If there’d been a moment or two of his existence where he might’ve hoped for something else…
Lying was something a Theta did so very, very well, and for one very short night, he’d believed in dreams.
Chapter 9
She thought he’d run. She was so sure he would rush her for the blaster, take her down to the hard, rocky ground of this little moon and fly away without her.
She half hoped he would.
But he didn’t. Why, she wasn’t sure. The metallic glow of his aura was so strong she knew he must’ve regenerated at least some of his nanites. And yet he stayed.
Instead, he let her come at him with much heavier restraints while the nervous soldiers aimed their much bigger blaster rifles at him.
“I thought shrouds were deadly killer cyborgs,” one of them muttered to his companion. “But Little Nell captured one?”
Troy kept his gaze on her the whole time as the massive cuffs locked around his neck and wrists. She couldn’t meet his stare.
The cruiser captain sent one of his soldiers to fly the shuttle back to the royal barge while the others ushered Troy down to the hold. She started to follow them, but Gul-gah called her up to the cockpit with him. She looked back once, but Troy had his head down, beaten and submissive, shuffling ahead of his captors.
She’d done that to him.
He’d be a prisoner of the empress, but at least he wouldn’t be dead at the consortium’s ruthless hands.
Resolutely, she turned her back on him and joined the captain.
“Quite the prize,” he said with a bubbling note of admiration. He was an Ajellomenes, built like an Earther starfish but squishier. Although she’d never actually seen a starfish in her time on Earth. Montana was too far from any ocean for the girl she’d once been.
She stared down at her tightly wound fingers. “For the last night of the Emperor’s Demise.”
Gul-gah waved one tentacle. “Too bad you couldn’t make an entrance at the feast itself,” he mused. “The empress loves a dramatic reveal.”
Nell wrinkled her nose. “Too late for that.” Too late for so much.
“She’ll be glad to see you at the feast anyway. She missed you.”
Nell snorted. “She never even noticed I wasn’t there.”
“She would have, eventually. And then you know how Her Most High Excellency can be when she doesn’t have her old toys around her.” He chuckled, bubbles popping from his beak. “The royal family has never approved of change. Too much like revolution.” He frothed again in amusement at his own joke. “They still want everything just the way it’s always been. Although considering they lost all their planets, you’d think they’d be more flexible”—he waved his tentacles—“about self-improvement.”
If she thought about it too hard, Nell could hate the empress, even though the royal family had kept her alive all this time. But maybe she couldn’t be too contemptuous when she herself was still stuck.
The flight back to the royal barge was faster than she wanted it to be but so slow she couldn’t help but fret about Troy. Was he fighting his incarceration? The stasis cuffs wouldn’t hurt him unless he tried to resist them. He was too clever for that, wasn’t he?
At any moment, she half expected klaxons to go off, warning that he’d escaped the hold. But of course he wouldn’t run away. He’d always intended to face the empress for his activation codes, to claim the full lethal potential of his shroud heritage.
He’d said he’d be safe from imprinting if he already loved someone. But…he couldn’t love her, not after what she’d just done. Her stomach churned, the taste of coffee dank on the back of her tongue.
This morning, after their brief night together, was worse than waking from a laudanum daze. And the only way she knew to stop the pain was to get more. But if he did love her, then he’d try to take on the consortium, which would mean his death.
When they docked with the barge, she shoved out of her seat, but Gul-gah held her back for a moment with the suckers of one tentacle suctioned to her wrist. “Watch out for Her Most High Excellency. You know how she gets around the memory of her grandfather’s demise.”
As if being an empress gave her special license to lament the loss of a loved one.
But Nell nodded and hurried off the cruiser into the enormous, mult
i-level hangar. The barge was probably larger than the moon they’d just left, though with far more inhabitants. Despite her haste, she caught only a glimpse of Troy, already halfway across the vast, crowded deck, being led away by the royal guard.
“Little Nell!”
The strident call made her wince. Inside, of course; she’d never let it show. As she pivoted, she dropped to the deck in a multi-stage Tartaula genuflection. “Your Most High Excellency.”
Although Tartaulans had evolved along the same morphological pattern as Earthers, they’d adapted to an arboreal homeworld where higher status individuals lived higher in the trees than lesser individuals. With their willowy limbs, they communicated in an elaborate gestural language in addition to loud vocal expressions. In their oldest stories, more than one Tartaulan royal had fallen to their deaths—or been gruesomely impaled on their way down—after losing their grip while trying to proclaim their supremacy. The stories were told as tragedies among the elite and as comedy among the literal lower classes.
Lady Eletanvine the Seventh, Empress in Exile of Tartaula Secondus, waved Nell upright, her long, loosely jointed arms undulating. “I hear my dearest toy brought me an early demise-feast gift. How delightful.” Her short, plush fur flashed with the currently popular enhancements of bioluminescence though her somewhat bulbous, wide-spaced eyes were all black. “Now everyone else will be so disappointed to be late!” She barked out a shrill chirp of glee.
“In your grandfather’s name,” Nell murmured. She kept her grimace confined to an imperceptible tongue bite, although she caught a sidelong glimpse of the empress’s personal guards eyeing her morosely. She wanted to glare back at them. She hadn’t intended to start a new trend of early offerings to the notoriously capricious ruler-in-exile, but now that she had, they’d all suffer. And worse, with no meaningful courtiers in attendance to astound or intimidate at this moment, the empress would be unlikely to reciprocate with her even more notoriously fickle largesse.
