by C. F. Harris
I growled and turned to look through the crowds. There was the smell of the lower streets. The crowds of people moving about their lives unconcerned with me. Humans mixed with Livisk down here and it made it impossible to pick out a single human, even with the way she tended to walk with her head held high which was unlike any of the other humans down here.
I heard something off in the distance. Screaming followed by the sound of an explosion. I closed my eyes and went through a familiar old battle preparation drill where I tried to clear my mind as I counted up. I’d been using that a lot since being bonded to Talia. I also listened inwardly. I had a feeling Talia was at the center of whatever terrible thing was happening off in the distance, and if she was then there was a good chance the mental barriers she’d put up would drop. She wasn’t so practiced that…
And then she flooded my mind. I had a feeling of danger and a direction that, not coincidentally, was off in the same direction as the screams and the explosion. Then the feelings winked out as though their source had been rendered unconscious. Damn it. There were times when I hated being right.
“Out of the way!” I bellowed.
That cut through the dazed crowd moving along at a slow pace. Humans and Livisk alike looked up at me as though they were being shaken out of a daze. They looked up as though they were truly seeing the world around them for the first time in ages, and that world included an angry warrior barreling through them.
The crowd parted fairly quickly after that. I knew they would be back to their shuffling stupor in no time. Underdwellers. I let out a derisive snort as they parted around me and I ran for the source of the explosion.
It was pretty obvious when I reached the right spot. I went from a crowd parting around me to the crowd not existing. The charred and smoking remains of an energy weapon discharge scarred the side of a building that was across from a tall dark alley between two massive buildings that reached for the skies.
I frowned. The perfect spot for someone to ambush a human who didn’t know any better. And if they were using energy weapons in the attack then…
I let out another growl. The battle desire took over. It wasn’t something that usually took me on the homeworld. It was an odd sensation running to battle on a planet that had the appropriate level of gravity and the right atmospheric composition for a change without added gear that made combat that much more difficult.
I skidded to a halt in front of the alley and frowned at what I saw there. One Livisk assassin was on the ground moaning, and from the way his blood was pumping out of a hole in his chest it seemed like his hearts were pumping their last. Next to him was a second assassin cradling his arm that was scarred with the telltale sign of an energy weapon.
Wonderful. They weren’t the ones using that sort of weapon. Somehow Talia had gotten into my personal store of toys and taken one of them with her out in the city. I was never going to hear the end of this if the authorities intervened.
Not that I thought it likely they would. Those assassin tattoos were far too elaborate. They could only be working for the one person in this city who had more authority than me. Something told me the authorities wouldn’t want to get involved. They would be like insects trying to stop two titans, and that wasn’t a good place for someone of lower rank to be.
Two dark figures stood down the alley a bit where I couldn’t see them. I took a step forward and flexed my hand. My entire body was on fire, and not in the way it caught fire when I was close to Talia. No, this was all the battle spirit.
And something else. If that was Talia back there with an assassin then this day would go very poorly if they’d managed to fulfill their mission. It would go very poorly for them if they hadn’t managed to fulfill their mission, but if they had then I would make this hurt.
“I don’t know who you are, but I have a good idea of who it is you’re working for,” I called out to the dark figure. “If you let her go now then I promise your death will be as painless as I can make it.”
It was a very generous offer. More than I usually gave an enemy. Not that I expected them to take me up on that offer. I flexed my hands again, preparing to grab the blade attached to my back by a tiny molecular bond that was only atoms thick but was surprisingly comfortable and would render it impossible for anyone to take my weapon from me if I didn’t want them to.
This was going to be… therapeutic. I had so much pent up frustration and there’d been nothing convenient to take it out on. I couldn’t lash out at the emperor and I didn’t want to lash out at Talia. An imperial assassin was another matter entirely, though. I smiled.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile. I imagined it was the sort of smile that a Trovargh Beast might fix upon a gentle purring Yalur right before messily devouring it, scales and fur and all.
“I know who you are, General Jorav,” the assassin said, his voice a grating whisper. “And I want you to know I’ve been looking forward to this assignment from our sovereign more than any other that’s ever been handed down.”
I shook my head and chuckled. “Great. Just what I need. An assassin with delusions of grandeur who thinks he’s going to be the one to take me down.”
I pulled the blade out from behind me and held it down to the side. The message there was clear enough.
“Do you want to know how many have tried that in the past? How many corpses there are littering the path I climbed to get where I am today? All of them thought they would be the ones to bring me down, including that pretty little thing you have in your arms today,” I said. I held the blade up so the point was aimed directly at his heart.
“What makes you think you’ll be any different?”
I sensed something. A brief flicker in my mind as though a light came on for a moment then went dead. A moment later it was there again, faint but gaining strength as though a signal was finally coming into focus out in deep space. I smiled. Talia was well, confused, and pissed off.
I almost pitied the assassin holding her. Almost.
“Enough of your theatrics, General,” the assassin said. “You’re past your prime. You can’t even choose a mate who can defend herself properly!”
I held my breath and my tongue. This was a delicate situation. If I acted on her behalf then Talia would fail the mating challenge and be deemed unfit. I desperately didn’t want that to happen. This is something I had to let her do on her own. At the same time I was terrified that if I didn’t intercede on her behalf then she would be killed before she had a chance to even learn what the mating challenge was.
I’d kept too much from her. I should have told her everything. Let her know all the dangers out there on our world.
The flicker in my mind suddenly roared to life and that anger was all consuming. It was a wonder that the assassin didn’t realize that she was stirring to life. I could feel a dizzying pain running through her body via our mental link, but at the same time I’d seen what she could do even when her body was bleeding and broken.
I had a scar in my side to prove what she could do when she was bleeding and broken.
Talia turned into a whirl of motion. Her foot went down on the assassin’s foot which only seemed to surprise him, but then her elbow moved back and landed a hit right over his lower heart. The man was foolish for letting himself be exposed so.
I felt that scar where I’d been stabbed on a journey between the stars itch. I knew all too well how easy it was to underestimate this human woman and allow her to get too close. It was nice seeing someone else paying for that mistake.
The assassin let out a strangled grunt and stumbled back. A hit to the lower heart would do that to anyone, which is precisely why it was such a good idea to protect that area above all others.
Well, except maybe for the mid-heart. That was really a spot to keep away from your enemies. Unfortunately he was so distracted stumbling back from the hit to the lower heart that he didn’t have time to dodge when Talia spun around and executed a perfect kick right to the mid-heart.
&n
bsp; This time he didn’t make any noise at all. There was a strangled choking noise as the flow of blood to his extremities was cut off. It would take a good ten seconds for that flow to return to a normal rhythm and by then the fight would be over. Only instead of going in for the kill as he stumbled back instead Talia moved up between him and landed a kick right between the legs.
I winced. That was even more terrible than being hit in the lower or the mid heart. I felt a ripple of phantom pain move out from my own genitals as I cowered back from the thought of being hit there. The assassin’s eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he fell back with one hand between his leg and the other alternating clutching at the heart in his abdomen and the one at his side.
Talia spun around and smiled at me.
“I was wondering when you were going to get here,” she said. “Though I really did have everything under control.”
I put the tip of my blade on the grimy alley floor and cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Because when I arrived I seem to recall you were unconscious and about to be killed. That hardly seems like having things in hand.”
Talia shrugged as she walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me. That got my attention between my legs in an entirely different manner than the phantom pain I felt when she kicked the assassin.
“That’s just what I wanted them to think,” she said. “Wouldn’t want these assassins to die feeling completely inadequate.”
I frowned. I thought of the mating challenge. Talia had performed more than adequately, and adequate was already more than the emperor would expect from a human woman. The only problem was that we needed to leave one of the assassin’s alive for word to get back to the emperor that his men had been bested.
“We need to let one live,” I said.
Talia looked up at me as though I’d told her to go dive off the top of the Imperial Palace without a repulsor belt to slow the fall.
“Why on earth would I want to leave any of them alive?” she said. “They tried to kill me, and if I don’t miss my guess they were working for your nephew. Seems like the kind of guys I don’t want coming after me again.”
“Ah, but how will my nephew know you passed the mating challenge if you don’t leave one of them alive to tell him about their terrible defeat at your hands?”
Talia frowned. “Mating challenge?”
I glanced at the alley around us. Certainly this was all legal since it was part of a mating challenge. It was also legal in the sense that just about anything the emperor wanted to do was legal considering he was sovereign of all the Ascendency and the law made flesh, but at the same time at any moment someone could see us and raise an alarm that would cause a lot of headache and delay.
“I’ll explain later when we’re back at the palace,” I said.
Talia shrugged. “Suit yourself. What you’re saying does make a bit of sense. Leave one alive to tell the others not to come after me.”
She traced a finger along one of the rank tattoos on my chest and I closed my eyes and shivered. It was so very distracting when she did that, and I was always happy I’d risen to a rank that gave her plenty of tattoo to trace when she did that. She looked up at me in the darkness with an unpleasant smile on her face that I wouldn’t care for if I was her enemy.
I knew I wouldn’t care for it because I’d been on the other end of that smile before when she bested me, but today we were on the same side. I could sense that much from the bond even if she was masking some of her other feelings.
“You did say I only have to leave one alive, right?”
“Well…”
I paused. I wasn’t sure I knew where she was going with this. “I suppose one is all you need, right?”
“Good,” Talia said. That smile grew even wider. I was reminded of the Trovargh Beast again, though admittedly Talia filled out her tight clothing far better than a Trovargh ever would.
She walked down the alley a little ways and picked up something I recognized immediately. A directed hand energy weapon I thought I’d hidden well enough in my private study that I would be the only one who could ever find it. Then again I’d never counted on leaving Talia alone in my office for the space of a couple minutes. I was going to have to be far more careful about hidden weapons in the future. Those could easily be turned on me under the wrong circumstances, and that scar in my side pulsed with phantom pain as I thought of other times Talia had turned my own weapons against me.
Like now. She wheeled around and pointed the weapon directly at me. I raised my hands and tried to sense something from her mind, but she was still blocking her thoughts.
“Talia, you don’t have to do this,” I said.
She cocked an eyebrow and the alley lit up with the crackle of energy as the weapon discharged. I felt the hair rising off the top of my head as it moved right over my shoulder and hit something behind me. I turned and stared in amazement at the assassin who’d only been injured in the arm. His blade clattered to the ground as he fell to the ground with a cauterized smoking hole where his head had no doubt been moments ago.
Talia walked over to the other one she’d incapacitated. He tried pulling away from her, but she raised the weapon and fired several times until he stopped moving. Then she turned and smiled at me.
“There. I left one alive. Happy?”
“It would appear I am in your debt,” I said.
Talia shrugged and grinned. “I figure you’re already so far in my debt that you should just get used to it. Now come on, let’s get home so you can tell me all about this ‘mating challenge’ thing that somehow involves the emperor sending assassins to kill me.”
6: Overwhelmed
Talia:
I turned and moved down the alley to a spot where there were fewer assassins strewn about. My body was still shaking just a little from the encounter. I might be doing my best to present a cool strong front to Jorav, but that whole thing had me shaken.
I was used to combat in ships where you pushed buttons and tried to kill Livisk at distances measured in parsecs like civilized people. I could do this hand to hand crap, but I didn’t like it.
Jorav came up behind me. I felt him approach in my mind before I felt his hand fall on my shoulder. I guess he wasn’t trying to mask himself from me right now. That was good, because it kept me from jumping and turning to try to beat the crap out of him for sneaking up on me like that.
“You fought admirably back there,” he said.
I spun and looked up at him and realized that there was something else there in that link. Something pulsing below the worry and the annoyance and the battle desire. A different sort of desire that I should have known by now.
“You sound surprised,” I said.
“You agreed to take sparring lessons with me,” he said. “You made it sound as though you didn’t know how to fight a Livisk without that power armor you humans rely on.”
I shrugged and grinned. Looked away from him because staring at that angular chiseled blue sparkly body was causing me to think all sorts of things that I was having a hard time keeping from him. It seemed that masking my thoughts became a hell of a lot more difficult when I was pumped with a strong emotion.
Fear. Anger.
Desire.
“Well it wouldn’t do much good for me to have the ability to fight off a Livisk if I went around telling every one of you damn sparklies that I can do that,” I said. “Really takes away the element of surprise, y’know?”
“True,” Jorav said, his voice a low growl. “But the way you handled yourself there… That was better than I would expect from a Livisk trained in fighting.”
There was that damned pulsing again. Moving just below the surface of his emotions and threatening to break free. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to break free or if I wanted to run from him. I’d been so conflicted about my desire for this strange alien ever since I lost control in the fever of being taken by this damned bond the Livisk emperor had burdened me with.
On the one hand t
here was that incredible desire. There was the need to feel him near me. On me. Over me. In me. On the other hand there was the sure knowledge that I was consorting with the enemy in the worst way possible. That I was committing the ultimate betrayal of humanity. That was heavy stuff, even if I hadn’t had much good to say about the Fleet brass lately or humanity in general.
I still felt a duty to my species even if that duty was eroding with every moment I spent with Jorav around me. With Jorav in my head.
I shrugged. “So I fought well. That’s the other guy’s problem.”
The growl wasn’t a surprise. The sudden flood of emotion moving into my mind as the dam broke and Jorav became an alien possessed was more of a surprise. And yet it wasn’t a surprise at all. I’d known those feelings were there simmering under the surface. I knew it was only a matter of time, and I knew that I was already so close to the breaking point because of how keyed up I was from fighting.
Jorav pinned me against the alley wall. For a wonder it didn’t feel nearly as grimy or dirty as I would expect a back alley wall to feel as he pressed me against it. I looked his muscled body up and down and even in the darkness it seemed like he sparkled with a radiant light all his own.
Huh. I wondered if that was something that happened when they were feeling some sort of strong emotion. There was so much we didn’t know about the Livisk. I used to think that was a danger, but the more time I spent with Jorav the more I thought it meant there were so many new pleasant surprises awaiting me.
Like what was happening right now. It was happening again. That same dizzying feeling that hit me when we were plummeting to the ground and it seemed like death was imminent but I didn’t care because his desire was flooding my mind and feeding my own desire which hit him in turn and it created a mental feedback loop that was unlike anything I’d enjoyed before.
That same thing was hitting me now. I felt his desire for me. It was a powerful overriding emotion that took over my mind. It took over my body that screamed with the desire to have him pressing against me. To feel him inside me.
