by C. F. Harris
His majesty was going to be furious when he found out about this.
I put a hand on Talia’s shoulder. She wheeled around as though she was going to attack me and then lowered her hands when she realized it was just me. Relief flooded through her and a moment later her arms were around me and her body pressed against mine in a most distracting way that for a moment took my mind off of emperors, assassins, and the thorough Charlie Foxtrot that had become my life since Talia entered it, to borrow a phrase of hers that I was rather fond of once she explained its meaning.
Talia pulled away. Balled up her fist and landed a hard punch right over my second heart. Not enough to really damage me, but it certainly got my attention. I rubbed the spot even though to acknowledge the hit was to acknowledge the shame of letting an enemy close enough to take advantage.
It wouldn’t be the first time Talia had done that, and I somehow doubted it would be the last.
“What was that for?” I growled.
“That was for how you acted back at your tower,” she said, raising a fist at me again. I took a step back. I didn’t want her to do the same to either of my other hearts. “Never again. Got it?”
I bowed my head. “You are my mate. I would not dream of insulting you as I did earlier ever again, but that means that you must listen to me as well when I tell you there is danger. We must listen to one another.”
Talia stood tall and proud. She looked beautiful and radiant even though she was covered in the dust of this slave auction house that hadn’t been used in half a century. She looked terrible and fearsome even though her skin was the soft pink of the humans from the northern climates on her world and not the sparkling blue of a true warrior.
Well she’d proved most assuredly that there was no need for your skin to sparkle true blue to be a true warrior.
“Fine. It’s a deal,” she said.
Laughter brought my attention away from Talia. I looked down to the assassin who was on the ground bleeding and broken. Talia certainly hadn’t held back in the fight, though I was still curious how she managed to do all that damage. There was something about that link, because even with training there was no way a human should be able to deal that sort of damage to a Livisk without that accursed powered armor they sometimes brought into combat.
Something to think about later. Right now there was the pressing matter of the assassin to deal with.
“Why do you laugh, honorless scum?” I spat out.
“I laugh because you dare to call me the honorless scum,” the assassin said. I still didn’t know his name. Not that I thought I ever would. Once they took their oaths they foreswore all oaths to their previous life and gave theirs to the emperor.
Who he’d been was of no consequence. Far more important was who he worked for.
“You are without honor, assassin,” I spat. “Using a stun weapon in the mating challenge? Truly you and the emperor are the honorless scum of this world, and he will pay.”
“You’re the one without honor, Jorav,” he spat back. “Letting your trained human do your fighting for you? Disgusting. The emperor would be disgusted with you. I see now why he ordered your death.”
“I did not rely on a trained human to do my fighting for me,” I said. “I relied on my bonded mate and the second half of my battle pair to complete a task I knew she was more than capable of. That’s an honor that you and that cowardly thevik of an emperor who hides behind his armies and refuses to fight his own battles would never be able to understand.”
“I like the sound of that,” Talia said as she reached over and plucked my sword out of my hand. Hefted it for a moment. Again I was surprised. She shouldn’t have the strength to hold that as she did and yet here was the evidence of my eyes telling me the impossible. She looked down to the assassin and smiled.
“Don’t think of it as Jorav not being good enough to fight you,” she said. She held the blade up and the assassin’s eyes went wide. “Think of it as you not being good enough to beat me and get the chance to fight him.”
The assassin’s face contorted into a mask of rage, but it was of no consequence. No sooner had that look of pure anger and defeat crossed his face than the sword came down and speared into two of his hearts in rapid succession. His body twitched several times and then he was still.
I stared in astonishment. I could feel the blood lust coming through the bond and I liked it. Still.
“Killing him might have been… precipitous,” I said.
Talia tossed the sword back to me. I caught the hilt in midair and placed it point down on the wood floor. “I thought about that,” she said. “Then I remembered what happened the last time I listened to you and let that asshole live. Not gonna make that mistake again.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. She was so straightforward about dealing death and destruction. It was one of the things that I loved about her. Truly she was the perfect mate.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, reaching up to pat me on the cheek. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it. The height difference between us was considerable.
I realized I hadn’t been shielding my thoughts from her. For that matter she wasn’t shielding her thoughts from me.
“I like that,” I said.
“I thought you would,” she replied. “Seems to me after what happened here, after that amazing performance we just gave because of this strange bond thing, maybe it’s not a good idea for us to hide our thoughts from each other?”
The meaning was clear. I nodded. “I agree. No more hiding from one another. We are a battle pair.”
I held my arm out as I would to one of my fellow warriors. She was so much more than that, but it was important that I observed all the proper forms for this. Even if she didn’t know what the proper forms were.
Especially if she didn’t know what the proper forms were. She would have plenty of time to learn them.
I caught something moving through the back of her mind that startled me. It had to be impossible, but it was clear as day. She looked up at me defiantly as the image presented itself in full glory. The image of her standing over the emperor with the sword I held in my hands. She was bringing it to bear on him as the boot lickers and toadies of the imperial court watched on in horror.
“That’s what I’ve been hiding from you, amongst other things,” she said. “Now you know. So what are you going to do?”
I looked at Talia. Looked at my arm which was still stretched towards her with my elbow at almost a ninety degree angle. “I believe that on your world they would say that you’re ‘leaving me hanging’ my dear.”
Talia grinned. She reached out and took my hand with her own arm at the same angle. We clasped our fists together. Her grip felt impossibly strong. There really was something about this bond that was so much more with her. I would have to ask others who had this bond to see if similar things happened with them. I would have to be careful as well.
As I clasped her hand I had the crushing final feeling that I had severed all ties to my previous loyalties. Talia was my world. Talia was where my loyalty always rested. I was just afraid to admit it to myself.
“Right back at ya sparkly,” she said.
“I was a fool,” I said. “I brought shame upon myself when I treated you as I did back at the tower.”
Talia shrugged. “It’s probably all for the best. If you hadn’t let that out then I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to kill that assassin and then I would’ve been pissy all night long.”
I blinked. Smiled. Started to chuckle, but it very quickly became a deep laugh. The sort of laugh I hadn’t enjoyed in quite some time.
My bloodthirsty battle mate. She was going to make the very foundations of the Livisk Ascendency shake in fear, and I couldn’t wait to come along for the ride.
15: Captain
Talia:
The lights of the Livisk capital city moved above, below, and all around us. The automatic pilot deftly weaved us between buildings at ranges t
hat would have been insane back on earth in the old days when people still did all their own driving.
We’d long since moved on to more civilized automated systems as well, but it still made me a little nervous to see so much architecture going by so fast and knowing that all it would take was one bug in the software and I’d potentially be splattered like a bug on the surface of some of that architecture.
I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. There were so many other things trying to kill me on this world that it seemed like a computer glitch in a guidance system was the least of my worries.
“Unless the emperor uses his access to hack into this device and try to kill us that way,” Jorav mused, adding an unfortunate ending to a thought I thought was already finished.
“Thanks. You’re really reassuring. I want you to know that,” I said.
His mind bloomed with satisfaction. The big sparkly blue jerk actually enjoyed making me miserable. Then again considering all the time I’d spent doing the same to him I suppose it was only fair that he would get some back. He seemed to do better at verbally sparring with me when I didn’t have any mental barriers up.
I was going to have to get used to that.
“I still can’t believe all of this,” I said.
Jorav glanced over to me. “You mean the power of this city? Doing what you have in mind is going to be quite the undertaking.”
“I’m not talking about that,” I said. “They don’t have any sort of low-in defenses around here. I bet there’s lots of orbital stuff, but nothing to stop someone from revving a ship up to light speed once they’re in the atmosphere.”
Jorav chuckled and I could feel amusement, or at least the closest thing that passed for amusement in his Livisk mind, filtering through the bond. “I believe the idea was that they would destroy anyone trying to do something like that well before they had a chance to reach the planet.”
“But someone coming in that fast is, by definition, not someone you’re going to hit,” I replied.
“I think most conquerers would prefer to live and have something left over to conquer,” Jorav said. “That’s always been our way. To do anything else would be madness.”
“Obviously you need to sit down and learn a few lessons from human history,” I replied.
“Have you two gone completely crazy?” Kehn asked from behind me and slightly to the side.
I looked over at him and grinned. “I’ve been bonded to the second highest ranking Livisk in the Ascendency and I have his thoughts bouncing around in my head on the regular. How can I deal with that and not go a little crazy?”
“You were always crazy,” Kehn muttered. “And I still don’t trust him.”
“Don’t trust him? Are you forgetting that he saved your life back there? That’s pretty ungrateful of you.”
Kehn stared at Jorav with an intense hatred. It made me wonder what the Livisk did to piss in his starched morning meal blend product. Then again it wouldn’t be surprising if he had some tragic back story that involved the Livisk destroying something he loved. It seemed like just about everyone in the Combined Interstellar Fleet had one of those stories.
At a certain point it stopped being a source of angst and started to become everyday business. I thought about my own grandmother and there was the sadness and anger I always felt, but at the same time it’s not like hers was the only world to burn.
I looked to Jorav and thought of his wife. The emperor’s wife that had given old high and mighty fancy pants a very personal reason for wanting to hate me. Odd that the emperor would go one way down the murder-death-kill spectrum while Jorav went to the complete other end.
Then again Jorav was getting some benefits from me that the old emperor would never get.
“Quite right,” Jorav said. “Besides, your warrior spirit is… admirable.”
“What’s he talking about?” Kehn asked.
“He’s answering a thought that just went through my head,” I said. “And he likes to answer them lived rather than beaming them back to my head.”
Kehn shook his head again. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“You think it’s going to take some getting used to?” I asked. “I’m the one who has a Livisk who’s set up residence inside her head. How do you think I feel?”
Jorav leaned forward. “We could try to find a Livisk mate for you. It would be a grand experiment. All the bondings that we’ve done in the past have been mostly with civilians who were captured on lightly defended worlds. Your military personnel on those worlds were typically wiped out or killed themselves before capture. I’m very curious to see if a more martial mind is more amenable to the bonding process.”
“The only catch is just about everyone who’s gone through the process has died. It would appear I’m a special snowflake in that regard,” I said.
Kehn’s expression was dark when Jorav talked about bonding him to a Livisk woman. They were imposing and not at all known for their gentle bedroom manner. When I mentioned the almost certainty of death he lost all interest.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said. “I’d rather keep my hide intact and make it back to earth where I can fuck someone of my own species and on the right side of this war, thank you very much.”
I grinned. “Why Commander Kehn. That was almost a joke. Spend much more time with us and you’re going to come around to our way of thinking in no time!”
Kehn shook his head. “I suppose I do owe your sparkling blue friend here some measure of gratitude for saving me.”
“You’re damn right you do.”
I felt a soothing thought come through from Jorav. He disapproved of me being so firm with Kehn. Well he could disapprove all he wanted. It wasn’t going to stop me from insisting that my former second in command treat the alien who saved his life with the proper respect, damn it.
“So where do we go from here?” Kehn asked. “I didn’t even realize I’d been abducted. I went to sleep in my quarters in the mines, got to get my four hours every night before it’s back under the lash, and when I woke up I was almost relieved to not be there anymore until I discovered they were going to kill me to lure you in.”
I shook my head and I felt a thought forming from Jorav. It was very interesting being completely open to him at all times like this. It was something I was going to have to get used to, but I was already growing accustomed to his thoughts tempering my own.
I probably should have worried about that, but there were so many other things to worry about in the moment that I didn’t give it much thought.
His plan was simple enough. I grinned and gave him a mental thumbs up. He turned to Kehn and shrugged, his massive blue shoulders rolling along with the gesture.
“I will take you back to the mines where you will live out the rest of your life in relative safety,” he said.
“For however long my life will last in that place,” Kehn muttered.
Jorav turned a sharp eye on him. “My promise was that you would live your life in relative safety. The dangers of mining operations are nothing compared to the dangers of finding yourself in the jaws of an imperial assassin.”
“How comforting,” Commander Kehn growled.
“Yeah, he’s like that,” I said. “Always showing you the silver lining and all that.”
Kehn paused for a moment. He looked between the two of us as though he suspected we were up to something. Smart man. Then again the fleet wasn’t in the habit of letting complete idiots become second in command of their ships even if he had been posted to a boring duty in the home system.
They reserved the spots for the true idiots for admirals.
“Do I have an alternative to going back to the mines?”
I pounced. He might know what was coming, but that didn’t change the fact that it needed to be done. I needed more allies than Jorav and the soldiers loyal to him on this world. Especially if I was going to do everything I had planned.
“There’s another option i
f you want to take it,” I said.
“Let me guess. I go along with whatever plan you have even though it’s probably going to get me killed?”
“I didn’t say it was a good option. Just that it was another option,” I replied with a grin. “I can guarantee you that if you decide to go along with this, though, you’re going to have a chance to get back at every Livisk who ever looked at you cross-eyed.”
Kehn looked past me to Jorav. The thoughts turning over in his mind were pretty fucking obvious.
“Every Livisk but that one,” I said. “He’s mine.”
Kehn sighed. “I suppose I really have no choice but to go ahead with it. Even if you did tell that assassin to go ahead and kill me.”
I blushed. “Sorry about that one. Not like I had much of a choice. I figured if he didn’t think I cared about you then maybe he’d let you go. Besides, tall blue and sparkly here showed up to save the day.”
Kehn sighed and shook his head. “Why do I have the feeling that the two of you are still going to get me killed before all of this is over?”
He sounded resigned, but he held his hand out. I regarded it for a moment with suspicion. After all, the last time I made contact with his hand had been when he was decking me. I was still a little sore in that spot, and fighting a mad Livisk assassin hadn’t done any favors to that old wound.
But he was offering me a hand of peace now. I had to take it. It’s not like I could very well give up now when I was so close to getting what I wanted. I grasped his and he gave it a shake.
“I still don’t trust him entirely,” Kehn said. “But I do trust you, captain.”
I felt approval moving through the bond with Jorav and once again I hated that I basked in that approval. I didn’t need his approval, but I had to admit that it was nice to have it even if I didn’t feel like I needed it.
“Good, because we’re going to need a hell of a lot of trust before we’re done with this,” I replied.
