He thrust into her, straight into the center of the aching pressure. She gasped, and he kept thrusting, each stroke sending quakes of pleasure through their bodies and their minds. He kept pumping, moving in a steady powerful rhythm. The happy quakes collided inside her, building stronger and stronger, until her muscles contracted and the ache inside her broke into intense shudders of pure bliss. She cried out and sagged against him, supported by his arm around her waist.
"Did you like that?" He grinned, masculine and possessive, and very happy with himself.
"Yes," she told him.
"Good. Now we reenact mine." He picked her up and carried her to the bed.
"That was a very elaborate dream you had," Claire murmured. She lay with her head on Ven's biceps, exhausted, spent, and euphoric.
"I have a creative subconscious."
She smiled.
"What was the deal with the visit to the Carvannas?"
She sighed.
"Out with it," he said.
"Ven, you took me to this garden paradise, which I could never have, and introduced me to a woman who was more than me in every way. She is beautiful, warm, she can cook like a chef, and then the lot of you sat around and discussed people you've known since childhood."
"I wanted you to like each other," he said.
"I like them. It's just... I can't even cook. I mean, I try, but it tastes odd."
He laughed at her.
"I will never be Imelda Carvanna," she said.
"If I wanted someone like Meli, I would have married a long time ago. I want you. My beautiful, lethal, precise ice dragon. One of a kind."
"That's a terrible pet name," she said. "Ice dragon?"
"Silver Shark? Captain Lethal? Slaughter Maiden?"
"Venturo!"
"Seriously, how many hours have you logged in?"
She shrugged. "Eight hundred and forty two combat missions; with training, a little over forty thousand hours."
"I have fifty thousand hours and I've been logging in since I was six. This is kind of embarrassing."
"You logged in because it was fun and you loved it. I logged in because it was my duty to contribute to the war effort. Eight hours, almost every day. There were times when we'd get stuck, and I'd be in for forty hours at a time. I'd wake up with an IV in my arm and have to relearn how to walk." She shivered.
"But do you like it? The bionet?"
She nodded. "It's what I do. It's what I am."
"I'm glad," he said. "I like it, too."
"I had a squad working with me. Grade B and C psychers. That's where the precision comes from - I had to protect them and I couldn't shield all of them at once, so my only choice was to attack and kill with one or two blows before they attacked my guys."
"You didn't hit anything vital on the bridge," he told her quietly.
She sat up and faced him. "I knew in a sheer power contest you would crush me. You are strong, Ven, stronger than me. Less precise, but stronger. I didn't want to hurt you and I didn't want to die. I had only one chance - to run."
She told him about the school and the dagger and the five repair techs.
"And the kid I sprung free today was helping, I'm guessing?" he said.
"Yes. We did the basic DAD - draw away and distract - on the AI protocol. You should've seen him. He was bouncing about sniffing flowers. His eyes were this big." She opened her hands wide and held them by her eyes. "It was all, 'Kosta! Don't touch that, it will eat you. No, don't touch that either. Don't pet that giant monster... Like trying to walk a kitten on a leash."
Venturo laughed and then the laugh died. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I almost did, up in the roof garden. And then you went on about how I had a nice quiet mind."
He groaned. "I was trying to pay you a compliment."
She mimicked him. "'You have such a quiet mind, Claire. I deal all day with people whose brains are noisy.' Was I supposed to come back with, by the way, I can kill you with my brain and I indulge in dirty fantasies about you in my spare time?"
He grabbed her and pinned her down. "I like your dirty fantasies."
She laughed.
"And I like when you laugh." He kissed her. "Mmm."
She untangled herself from him and rolled off the bed. "Come on. I'll show you the split."
"Oh, I'd love to see that." His grin was carnal.
"No, you fool, the cloning technique. Come on."
He got off the bed.
"Bionet hub," she ordered. A section of the wall split, and a small liquid interface terminal emerged, the lid sealed.
"Still sealed," Ven said.
"I was too afraid to log in. Besides, the shell takes a week to rebuild. I didn't want to chance it." She took out two cognizance units from the shelf and tore the plastic.
Ven twisted the lid, breaking the seal. "Some people open wine. We open the hub."
She fitted the unit on him and waited as he fit one on her. It felt oddly symbolic.
The dark tunnel swallowed her, and a moment later she landed next to him into the soft grass. They sat in a jungle clearing, wild bright flowers blooming all around them.
The enormous beast that was Ven stretched, raking the ground with his massive claws. Claire rolled, batting her red paws at the sun rays puncturing the jungle canopy in narrow spears of light.
A deep underground roar made her jump up.
The jungle fell apart, melting. The ground underneath them surged up, the wind pressing on them like a massive hand. Suddenly the movement stopped.
Behind them the ground dropped off in a sheer cliff. They stood on the edge of a wide grassy plateau. A low sound of a gong rang through the world. In the distance a bright star winked, then another, and another. Psychers logging in.
"Cute," Venturo said.
The realization washed over her. "DDS. Pelori came to see me two days ago, trying to buy me. He had sensed the shell on my mind. They must've put a code trap on my access line."
Across the plateau, dust rose. Something massive was moving toward them at top speed.
"Figured," Ven said. "Attacking Guardian was too risky. Castilla must've decided that sooner or later you would log in and alone you'd be the perfect target."
"We can grow wings and glide down off the cliff," Claire said.
He shook his enormous head. "No. I am going to finish this once and for all. But if you want to go -"
"Are you joking? You couldn't drag me away."
The cloud of dust parted and she saw them: an enormous elephantine monster, followed by a huge canine and a flightless bird with fiery plumage. Lim, Pelori, and Castilla.
Claire grinned, displaying her fangs. Fire sheathed Ven.
The monsters were almost upon them.
"Hey," Ven said to her. "Watch this."
Epilogue
From: Lienne Escana
To: Malvina Escana
Malvi, I know you won't believe it, but your son finally found someone. Smart girl, Grade A psycher, perfect manners, you'll love her. Apparently Castilla had the stupidity to attack the two of them in the bionet, and they ended up rampaging through DDS. It was brutal. DDS is still recovering and their stock has fallen 32%. I'd give you the details, but they refuse to talk about it during the work day and at night they hole up in his apartment, drink pink wine, and have sex like two rabid monkeys.
Anyway, if you want Venturo to marry, now is your chance. I've got a scheduling conference set up on Monday, and if we ambush them there with combined forces, I'm sure we can get them to commit to a date. I suggest you make your husband warm up the aerial as soon as you get this.
Your Loving Sister,
Lienne
A MERE FORMALITY
Chapter 1
The alarm chimed, sending tiny shivers through Deirdre’s fingers, coated in liquid interface. Five minutes to the opening speech. “All right, all right.” She shrugged the lead-grey metal off her hand and caught her reflection in the mirror. The hair. She had forgotten ab
out her hair.
Her gown looked fantastic. She loved this dress; the cut and color suited her: a shimmering grey-black that caught her breasts, wound about her waist and fell down in clean lines to brush the floor. Unfortunately, the gown alone wouldn’t do it. Her hair sat atop her head in an ugly pile, and it was too late to do anything about it. It’s your fault, Robert, she thought, pulling out the pins one by one. She dragged the brush through her hair and inspected the result.
Hideous.
That’s fine, she decided. Nobody can be expected to be ran ragged for nine straight hours and then attend a banquet looking perfect.
A knock jarred her from her thoughts. “Open!”
The door slid open, revealing Fatima Lee in her navy blue power-dress. Robert’s aide-de-camp looked perfect, her hair a glossy black wave, her face fresh as if she had taken a long refreshing nap instead of the grueling administrative marathon.
“Three minutes to opening speech. If we’re late, Robert will suffer a deep space fit.”
They headed out the door and down the winding hallway at the speed of a brisk march. Unbound by gravity, the makers of the Orbital Embassy had constructed an impossibly tall banquet hall, and the hallway circling it matched it in height. Today the huge walls and ceiling lost in darkness brought a sense of foreboding. Like going through some ancient Temple to be sacrificed.
Fatima’s communicator buzzed with the voice of Michel Rashvili. “Where are you? Robert’s losing it.”
“We’ll be there in thirty seconds, tell his Excellency to keep his panties on.” Fatima snorted. “I don’t get it. The man can negotiate with terrorists with a needle rifle pressed to his temple, but banquets drive him up the wall.” “That’s because he can’t control a banquet,” Deirdre murmured. “And the stakes are high.” 30 million lives hanging in the balance would give anyone a pause.
They rounded the curve. The huge doors of the banquet chamber waited wide open just ahead, under the banner depicting the Duke of Rodkil, Robert’s mentor and veritable legend in the annals of the Diplomatic Corps. Fatima zeroed in on the doors.
Several men dressed in black entered the hallway from a side passage, also aiming for the door. Deirdre caught Fatima’s arm. “The Reigh.”
The aide-de-camp halted. The Reigh moved in silence, like black ghosts, each carrying a vered, a short ceremonial branch, in their left hand signifying their peaceful intentions. Tradition dictated they stayed silent when in sight of the enemy until given permission to speak by the Lord. For them, everyone is an enemy, Deirdre thought.
They had to be desperate for the money to even enter the Orbital. Unfortunately, taking money for their military services was the very thing that the Reigh doctrine categorically forbade.
A tousled man shot out of the doors at a near run…Michel Rashvili mumbling into his communicator. As if in slow motion Deirdre saw him crash into the nearest Reigh. The black-gloved hand let go and the sign of peace clattered to the floor. Oh great Lao Tzu.
Michel stumbled, caught himself. His face went slack with shock. A short-range plasma firearm leaped into Fatima’s hand almost on its own.
“Michel, kneel!” Deirdre approached and dropped to her knees.
Michel hit the floor next to her. Wide-eyed, he looked at the vered. “I’m so sorry. Should I?” His voice shook.
“No. Keep your head down, don’t look them in the eye.” Very slowly Deirdre reached and picked up the branch off the floor. Holding it on her open palms, she raised it above her head, like an offering. Their eyes fixed on the floor, they waited. Moments dripped by, long and viscous. Finally the Reigh closest to her stepped forward. Leather brushed her palm, and the Reigh moved on, still silent, into the banquet hall. Deirdre remembered to breathe.
“Sweet Jesus.” Michel straightened. “I can’t believe I knocked that out of his hand.”
“You didn’t.” Fatima’s firearm had vanished. There was no way it could be hidden in that tiny dress. “He dropped it.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“He dropped it,” Deirdre confirmed, looking after the Reigh making their way through the banquet hall. “When was the last time you fought in hand to hand combat, Michel?”
The adjutant ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I don’t remember.”
“They do it every day. Trust me, if that man didn’t want to run into you, you wouldn’t have touched him in a million years. Go hide somewhere.”
“What?”
“Go hide, dimwit.” Fatima snorted. “When Robert finds out, he’ll blow his core. You want to give him a few hours to cool off.”
The words finally made an impact and the adjutant took off down the hallway.
Chapter 2
Deirdre frowned. “We have been tested, and I’m not sure we’ve passed. Why do I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well?”
“Because it won’t.” Fatima’s face was grim. “Let’s go.” For better or worse they entered the banquet hall.
The red-furred Vunta officer at Deirdre’s left smiled at her, exposing fifty two sharp teeth, arranged in twin rows in his cavernous mouth. The effect was enough to give a hardened Navy veteran a lifetime of nightmares.
“You wook wowery,” he offered, sounding very much like a Terran Scottsman with a mouthful of tissue stuffed into his cheeks. He hit her with a direct, unblinking stare.
Trying to dominate. He should know better. “Thank you.” She showed him her teeth and glared back.
For a moment they stared eye-to-eye, neither willing to back down. Deirdre ground her teeth. The sound died in the hum of the banquet hall but not before the Vunta heard it. A noise reserved for the alpha of the Vunta society, the grinding had the same effect on the Vunta as the scraping of nails on a glass had on the human ear. The officer wrinkled his muzzle and looked away.
Deirdre glanced across the hall at the Vunta, seated here and there at the tables. Too many flickering ears, too many flashes of teeth, too much animation in the gestures of furry paw-hands. Like sharks smelling blood in the water. What is going on? What do they know that we don’t?
She looked to Robert, seated at the head table between the Vunta Ambassador and the elderly lemon-skinned Monrovian with mournful iconic eyes. Sir Robert Sergei Sarvini, Ambassador of the Second Intergalactic Empire to the Branches of Reigh, looked perfect: hair slicked back into a horse tail, handsome face shaven, trim figure sharp in Diplomatic Corps formal midnight blue. Urbane, debonair, eloquent, every inch worthy of the long list of titles attached to his name.
Robert’s food lay untouched on his plate. Officially the banquet was thrown in honor of the successful treaty negotiations between the Monrovians and the Vunta Caliphate, for which the Empire, in the form of Robert, had provided a neutral meeting ground. Unofficially, Robert wanted to woo the Reigh. Unfortunately, he was stuck at the head table, sandwiched between the two treaty partners.
Their stares connected and in his eyes she read a confirmation. Yes, something’s up. No, we don’t know what. We can do nothing about it. Just sit tight and wait.
Deirdre sighed. There were four parties to this dance: the Vunta Caliphate, the Monrovian Republic, the Empire, and the Reigh. Each wanted something and would claw all others bloody to get it. All she wanted to do was to prevent a massacre.
She looked to the guest of honor table where Lord Nagrad of the Reigh sat with Nina on one side and a white-furred Vunta dignitary on the other. The rest of the Reigh formed a line behind the table. None but the Lord had chosen to sit down. None ate or drank. A line from the Reigh Codex popped into her head: I will consume no food in the house of my enemy…
Nagrad’s scarred face was grim. Had he been from an inner Imperial world, she would’ve guessed him at eighty or ninety. Her painstaking research put him at closer to sixty. The only Reigh lord in the history of his people to entertain the idea of cooperation. His wife was dead. His entire family consisted of his son. And the Vunta Raiders were very afraid of him.
The Vu
nta dignitary shot Nagrad a toothy smile and said something. Nina cut in, smooth, breathtaking like a golden angel against the backdrop of black. Deirdre felt a stab of jealousy right in the stomach. Nina’s perfect six foot and one inch tall figure was wrapped in a strapless gown of champagne-colored lace, accented with complex swirls of golden thread. The dress hugged her like a glove. The color perfectly complemented her light blonde hair and light bronze complexion.
“Why couldn’t we have her job?” Fatima murmured at her right.
“Because we don’t score 8:13 on the proportion scale,” Deirdre said. “And because we haven’t been trained as escorts and we don’t have a perfect recall.”
“Bullshit,” Fatima said. “You know you could do what she does with your eyes closed. You’re a freaking cultural attaché. You know more about the Reigh than all of us combined. You should be picking the Reigh Lord’s brains, not she.”
“She knows what she’s doing. My job is to compile and analyze the information. Her job is to keep the object of her attention enraptured.” And it would be an incredibly difficult task, considering the strictness of the Reigh rules of conduct. Nothing off-color. Not a hint, not a joke, not even an idea of impropriety. No reference to sex, religion, or politics. Deirdre smiled. “I’m perfectly happy to advise her from the sidelines.”
Fatima sneered. “You have no ambition. In the next life, you’ll be reborn as a tea kettle.”
Nina reached for a small appetizer and artfully offered it to the Reigh Lord. He accepted the tiny twisted dough puff and bit into it. Nina continued talking. She had a way to totally engage a person in conversation, until speaking to her appeared to be a reward in itself.
The Reigh Lord finished the puff. A nervous tick jerked his face once, twice. A grimace twisted his features, baring his teeth. He arched his back, biting at the empty air. His hands flailed, knocking over the goblets and plates. A spasm gripped his body. He shuddered, froze, and fell back against his seat, foam sliding from his lips down his chin.
The Kinsmen Universe Page 17
