by Hotter Edge
“Lives depend on that information,” Pilar said. “Including mine. I’ll find a medic for Hakan and we’ll all meet at the ribbon girl’s party.” Where they would be welcome impostors.
With a flare of her nostrils—an unspoken protest—Reina nodded. “Fine. Go. Be careful.”
“You too, friend.”
Pilar leapt into the cab, and Hakan settled in beside her, his arm stump folded up to his chest. With a hand on the cab’s tremble, she powered them away.
“What are you doing here?” Hakan’s voice had dropped an octave over the last twenty-four hours.
How about… “Saving my husband?”
“I sent you home.”
“I came back.”
He eyed her legs. “What are you wearing?”
“All you left available to me.”
“And Barton?”
“Picked him up in a club.” She banked onto a feeder byway. This ring of the Hub was dedicated to the garden-terraced residences of the super wealthy. Steam from the artificial humidity clung to her already sweaty skin.
She glanced over at her husband. Hakan was white lipped, but whether from loss of blood or anger, she couldn’t tell. He was shaking, another ambiguous symptom.
She had to get lower, abandon the Frust cab, and find a medic. But how to explain a lost hand? And how to keep the medic’s mouth shut?
“You have no idea what kind of danger you’ve put yourself in.” Hakan’s breath came in short pants.
“Sure I do.” She did now.
Hakan glared at her. “Then you know you shouldn’t have to come back for me.”
“I didn’t come back for you.” Though she would have. She’d have done anything for him, if he’d included her. “I came back because the Black Orchid is undermining my business interests.” Ours, actually. “I negotiated a deal with Barton for his assistance. You’ve underestimated him, just like you’ve underestimated…others.”
Maybe Hakan wouldn’t be hurt and blood-splattered. Maybe she could have made the difference that would have saved him this agony. Damn fool. How could he think she’d return to Sol and leave him behind to this? What kind of person did he think she was?
She powered into a drop, wondering which level had a medic.
“There are killers here,” Hakan said, that stumped arm held close. “And death is the best thing that they have to offer.”
The drop enclosed them inside a shaft, and Pilar turned fully in her seat to face her husband. “The point of our marriage was a union of families for a stronger generation. Stronger, the better to deal with weeds like The Black Orchid.”
If anything, he looked more intense. “That’s what I thought at first too. And then I married you.”
Pilar felt sick. “You think I’m weak.”
“I think you’re my wife.”
The way he’d uttered the word, sharp, short, pulled the invisible line between them tight.
That line, which had made her so happy, so sure of her choice.
But it also meant that his misery and pain was hers. The exhaustion wearing at his eyes strained her own as well. And her heart couldn’t quite find a steady beat when she contemplated—gods, please—the moment his hand was severed from his wrist. Love was brutal that way.
“Sol and Frust ceased to have anything to do with us a while ago,” he said.
Yes, she’d felt that too—just Pilar and Hakan.
“I couldn’t lose you,” he said.
Which was her answer too. Idiot. Sweetheart. Both combined.
“Right back atcha.” Then how in Sol hell had she come so close to doing just that? “Where do I find a damned medic?”
“Medic. Fifth ring,” a female voice intoned, and the drop whisked them upward.
***
Infection had to have gotten into his bloodstream. Hakan’s body, his head, his ears were clamoring with static.
She’d come back.
He’d learned to cope with pain, but terror?
She slanted a look his way. “Why’d Victor take your hand?”
He’d never tell her the truth. Never. “He was proving his Orchid loyalty.” Sounded reasonable enough.
They would not be the kind of couple—if they survived this, that is—who told each other everything. The sight of the firebird in his uncle’s window-screen, the long blade coming down—the trade for her life had never happened as far as Hakan was concerned. Hadn’t worked anyway, and Victor would’ve taken the hand regardless. If anything, watching Pilar get away had made the moment more bearable.
“Halt,” Hakan commanded. The drop ceased with a cushioned pop, mid-tube, the blue haze of incandescent light making Pilar’s olive complexion appear slightly yellow. “My uncle will have traced the cab. Or at least we have to think so.” His uncle would also know the intended destination, and he’d have someone waiting.
“But we’re not caught.”
He smiled. Pilar. The day she was caught would be the day all the suns went dark and cold.
“No, not caught,” he echoed. His body was stiff, aching, head jangling with noiseless bells, but her nearness fueled him. He’d keep going and going, until she was safe, or he dropped dead.
Years back, when he’d already been old enough to know better, he and Barton had made a game of sliding down, or being propelled upward, through the drop tubes without the benefit of a cab. They could’ve easily been killed for a thrill. Every time he’d used the drops since gaining an adult understanding of his finite mortality, he remembered.
“The floor of the cab will open.” A safety measure, now used for escape. He pointed to the latches on the floor, since he was in no shape to manage them himself. “There and there.”
Her eyes went wild as what he was proposing came clear in her mind.
The drop was a gamble of pressurized free fall—but which of the Hub rings they’d find themselves on/near/smashed into would be anyone’s guess, including his uncle’s.
“Lose the shoes, though.” Or he might lose a foot or two as well.
She peeled her feet from the footwear. One of her pinkie toes was bloody. “Love,” he complained to her. Was fashion really worth it?
“Oh, please,” she said, kneeling on the floor and learning the latches’ lift and twist. “When your hand has been cloned and you have the full use of it, then I’ll listen to a lecture on blisters.”
The latches opened the emergency access and simultaneously folded up the seat. The tube whirred below, soft death. The suction of the vacuum set the curling locks of Pilar’s hair wheeling and undulating like tentacles as she stood, now shorter in her bare feet.
“Together.” He and Barton used to grip wrists, which had seemed manlier than hands. Now Hakan put his good arm around Pilar—sorry for the gore and blood that left a metallic tang on the tongue—but she didn’t seem to mind. She notched perfectly under his shoulder, her arms tightly around his waist, fitting to him like a soul. They maneuvered, little steps, a silly dance. “Ready?”
“I was born ready,” she snorted, a mad gleam in her eye.
He’d known her for eight months’ worth of formal courtship and corporate negotiations, and she’d made the dull process an adventure of high-stakes secret assignations. Just remembering sparked his humor back into existence. Pilar, the undauntable. Hakan would jump with her anywhere. Might laugh, even, going down to certain death.
Why had she come back? Maybe he hadn’t paid enough. She was worth more than a hand. He’d give his life right now to have her safe.
She wiggled her toes over the tube. At his nod, they both plunged into a swift fall, slower than gravity, faster than safety. The recycled air had a slightly chemical sniff to it. One ring, two rings, three—they passed in a blur of blue and black space. Pilar giggled as they fell, a slightly panicked sound that turned into a high eek! when the white disk of another lift came into view below them. He clutched her tighter, as she did him.
The seconds before the jarring landing were white terro
r—what had he been thinking?—then a bone-reverberating shock that rattled him ankles to teeth. The pod hissed as the compressed air adjusted for their weight. But Hakan’s mind was so dizzy he felt like he was still falling, but spinning now too.
He needed to direct her how to lower the pod beneath them so that they could access the portal and get out of the tube. But she’d read his mind, or had figured out what fourteen-year-old boys had, and managed to forcibly lower the pod and hold it braced against the constant push of air from below.
He collapsed clumsily onto a slick byway, noting the massive talons gripping cargo across the ring. Walls of digi-tagged crates made neck-craning monuments to commerce, each a single enormous spoke in the wheel of the ring.
Pilar wiggled, her long legs kicking, onto the floor herself. When she stood, her gaze had darkened to worry, assessing him. “Would there be a medic on this level?”
“No,” not here, “but an emergency aid pack will hold me over.”
They’d arrived in what was commonly known as the Ark, or the secondary hold, where the larger, dangerous, or sealed cargo was kept. The air here smelled like vaporized fuel and sizzled in the lungs with each inhalation.
He must have looked really bad, because she didn’t argue. “Where?”
He jerked his chin forward, in the direction of the outer storage cells. Chills raced over his body. His vision was narrowing, until there was only forward, abyss behind him.
The Ark was always manned by a Noah, but occasionally a contract would require accommodations for a specialist traveling with cargo—guards for sensitive payload; xenogeneticists watching over some alien species; or soldiers with a prison crate. Utility quarters had been set aside.
Could be that the utility quarters were free. An emergency aid pack would be stocked somewhere nearby. They could rest for a moment, consider their next steps.
They shuffled down the byway, making slow progress, until Pilar left him, only to return with a utility cab, a fork on the front. He managed the step to sit on a greasy seat. Then her hand was on the tremble.
“Ahead until you see a sign for the Slips.” Where the freighters docked. “Quarters will be on the left.”
The ring’s corridor was empty and unobstructed, a smooth, five-minute ride circling the spokes of stacked containers. When Pilar slowed the cab, Hakan couldn’t suppress a frown of consternation.
The slips were occupied by a motley group of vessels, but not cargo freighters, which were massive and could only fit one end inside the Hub’s hold. These were duty-sized birds, built for small groups. But he had no idea who they were, or why they’d occupy slips in the Ark. Something was funny here.
Pilar parked in front of the Unit Three quarters. “Reina said I’d be sleeping in an alley or a prison cell.”
“Sounds-good,” Hakan said, slurring. It was a corpse bag he was worried about.
He stumbled into the quarters, forcing his brain to reconsider their options. He didn’t like the look of those vessels—could be Black Orchid, could be someone else.
The quarters were designed for utility and conservation of space. Each room could be converted, as necessary, to the requirements of the moment, and was now a general living area. He could’ve shifted the small sofa into a bed, but he was too far gone to figure out the mechanism. Gravity pulled him down onto the rough upholstery. He landed on his good side, realizing the mistake of his collapse—he didn’t know if he could rise again. And they weren’t safe yet. Not nearly.
Hakan’s brain began to list all the things they needed to do—Black Orchid!—but his sight went utterly dark with the warning still in his mouth.
Chapter Five
Awareness came in a foggy roll of voices through Hakan’s mind. The pain was gone. He was suspended in nothingness. Time had lost its internal markers. But a residual kernel of fear was nested in his heart. Pilar. The kernel was made of a frenetic kind of energy—where is she?—and he used its compressed power to open his eyes.
White light above. Low, smooth ceiling. A medi-pod?
He rolled his gaze to the opening at the side to find his wife standing two paces away, deep in discussion with a strange man in black. Not the Noah, who would be in a Frust service uniform.
Her body language—sitting into that sweet hip, arms crossed under her breasts—said she was relaxed, but on guard.
No immediate danger, then, though his drumming heart hadn’t received the message.
Pilar grinned at the man, a kind of sunrise expression. She laughed, and warmth spread from Hakan’s chest through his body.
If she could laugh like that, then yes, they were safe for now at least.
He tried to speak, but managed only a choke.
She looked over—sparkles swam across his vision—and when she came close, a chuckle got caught up in his throat too. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, almost defying gravity. A gold necklace hung from her neck. Gold dangly earrings. Gold sparkles on her lids. She was a sun goddess. Maybe he’d died after all.
“Hey, love.” Her voice was toned to soothe.
He grunted. But it was becoming easier to breathe. He began to perceive the rest of his body. Flexed his chest. Coming out of stasis was always difficult.
“I’ve made new friends. Such nice people. And I’ve been shopping, spent just a little bit”—which meant a lot, more warmth—“but their textiles are gorgeous. Mother will weep when she sees what I got her.”
Pilar had replaced the skimpy men’s tunic with a corset that cinched her waist and pushed her breasts up. How could he complain about any one piece of her clothing when she changed them so often? Pilar’s current flash suggested Roma. The sector’s Romani refused to go through the Frust board of commerce, or more specifically, refused to give the required twenty percent for their transactions.
Victor called them rats. How they’d gotten inside Nyer was a mystery…no longer.
The vessels in the cargo hold meant that the hold’s Noah was making a little on the side.
“By the way, I’ve promised them free docking in perpetuity in exchange for your life.”
He grunted again. In perpetuity? Gods, woman. I’m not worth that much.
“But if you die, they get nothing,” she added brightly.
That makes it much better. Hakan had a feeling he was going to live whether he wanted to or not. How she’d convinced them she had the authority to make such promises he didn’t want to know.
“You’re full of nanites,” she cocked her head “well, of a sort.”
Of a sort? Gods help me.
Pilar laughed again. “They’re club euphorics that Lash hacked into and reprogrammed to fight infection and get your arm healing.”
Lash?
Hakan looked over again at the man in black—took in his muscled bare chest, his low-slung leather pants—and with a curse, broke through the residual nanite numbness to push the medi-pod’s cover back and sit up. Hakan would take the pain, thank you. And his wife. Roma Lash had best step back.
Pilar moved in to help Hakan stand. “They don’t have the tech to grow you a new hand, though.”
Hakan kept his arm around her when he was finally upright. Possession, just in case these Roma had calculated Pilar Sol’s worth. Pilar Sol belonged to Hakan Frust; he’d made damn sure every inch of her belonged to him, from the freckle on her pinky toe to the curl of hair she tucked behind her ear, and everything in between.
She went on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You look so much better. Don’t worry me like that again.”
“I feel better,” he finally managed. And in fact, he did. His heartbeat had steadied, the buzz was gone from his ears, he’d been cleaned up, and he had his arm around his wife.
He reached over to stroke her face, but rediscovered a short stump where his right hand used to be. Strange how he could still sense his fingers. He could’ve sworn his hand had been right there a second ago, as if the horror with his uncle had never happened. And his arm seemed much shorter withou
t the hand attached.
Pilar kissed his cheek again. “We’ll get it cloned.”
If they lived they would.
“The Black Orchid likes its trophies.” Lash adjusted his position to lean back against the wall. The slight shift allowed Hakan to see that Lash had lost an ear.
“Lash and his sister took one look at your wound and knew,” Pilar told Hakan. “It’s supposed to mean you’re beaten.”
Hakan, like everyone else in the four sectors, had heard about the trophies, but he’d assumed that they were a threat: if I can take your hand, I can also take your life. So do what I say.
Victor had been against the Sol union from the beginning, so when Pilar was headed back home, maybe he’d concluded that he’d beaten his nephew. No Sol princess, no money. The Hub would be his.
But beaten?
“I hadn’t realized I was.”
Lash notched his chin up in appreciation. “They’ve been plaguing my people for many years now. It’s how we came to be in your sector, at the edge of creation. They want us to carry their cargo. We refuse; we don’t work for anyone but ourselves. We trade what we like, when we like. They expected us to become slaves.”
“And now they’re here too,” Hakan said.
Lash slanted him a pitying look. “They’ve been here for the last three years at least.”
Yes. Or longer. While Hakan was completing his education and traveling. Then he’d started looking into the accounts, investigating the lien against Nyer by the Lightways Congress. He’d come home to take on the accounting and rework the tariff system to increase income. He’d buried himself in numbers, looking for profit.
Out of curiosity… “How much did you pay the Noah to dock here?”
Lash went silent, his gaze flattening. He wasn’t going to say. Fine. From here on out, the Roma would apparently dock free regardless. Services, however, would still cost them.
“We’re leaving anyway,” Lash said, “now that we see that the Orchid has taken your hand. You might not think you’re beaten, but you probably are.” He swept his gaze to Pilar.
