by Calinda B
“Not tonight,” he said. “The captain locked down the ship. Didn’t Benedetta tell you to eat and rest before you get to work?”
She tucked her chin, looking mutinous, but finally nodded. “Since I have eaten, I will run my diagnostics and be ready to start in the morning.”
“I can arrange to retrieve your personal items and have them brought here, if you like.” Which would give him a chance to get to know her better as he rifled her belongings.
She touched the hazer at her hip. “I have everything with me.”
So much for his idea to get to know her. “Traveling light.”
“We take nothing with us when we die.”
She was watching him closely, as if she was trying to trick some response out of him, but he wasn’t sure what. And he wouldn’t react anyway.
He was already dead inside.
“You really should try out the water shower,” he said. “It’s as good as ice cream.” He turned on his heel and walked out.
Chapter 5
Shaxi waited until the door hissed closed behind Eril before she let out an equally soft breath.
Why did he set off her internal alarms? Without her link to Hermitaj, she wasn’t even sure she had internal alarms anymore. And yet she’d felt the prickle of unease when he’d followed her into her room.
He was dangerous, she was sure of it, for all that he served her pixberry pie for dinner. He’d thumbed the laser cutter to a precise cutting depth without even looking at it, and anybody willing to share that much precious ice cream with a complete stranger obviously had ulterior motives and was not to be trusted.
She realized she was still clutching the empty dessert packaging. She dumped it into the reclamation chute in the small lav and cleaned her hands while she stared at herself in the mirror behind the sink.
She’d been sleeping in doorways since landing in Levare, and it showed. Eleven tours since Hermitaj cleared her for active duty—not that she remembered all the details, thanks to the memory wipes—but she suspected she’d never looked this wrecked. She found dirt under the filth, and more smudges beneath that even the tactical black of her skin couldn’t hide. Pha! Benedetta had obviously taken her in out of mercy, but how could Eril in good conscience have recommended her for employment, looking like this?
Another black mark—as black as her fingernails—against his trustworthiness.
Who was he? Her search, though limited by the loss of her Hermitaj uplink, still should have yielded something of note. But except for a public dossier too glossy to be believed, he was almost as much a nobody as she was.
At least he knew his own history, even if he didn’t share it. For all her inexplicable attraction to him, he wasn’t like her, snatching at half-erased memories while the risk of oblivion loomed closer.
Maybe his suggestion that the shower was big enough for two had been less lascivious and more lonely.
Disgusted that she’d allowed herself to wonder, she stripped off her battered uniform. A year in the same clothes had been tough on even the durable, self-healing Hermitaj service gear. Keeping the hazer within easy reach, she stepped into the sonic cleaning unit and waited for the thick mist to fill in the cylinder. Breathing in the rainstorm-scented ozone, she gave herself permission to relax. In less than two minutes, the high-frequency bubbles eradicated all outward evidence of her destitution.
As for what was inside… Whatever was still inside her was in—mostly—working order. For now. That was all she needed to know. She reached for her uniform. As if that threadbare layer was enough to put her world back the way it had been.
But her hand—the one without the cyber-embeds—stopped short of the stained fabric. Part of her didn’t want that fraying scrap of ancient history against her skin right now, not when she’d just gotten clean.
She started to reach out with the other hand, to force the issue, but then stopped herself. On the Asphodel, she was as safe for the moment as she’d ever been, and she had a night off. Even the best programmed soldier knew when to take advantage of a quiet moment.
She stepped naked out of the lav, though she took the hazer with her and left it within one diving length on the bunk while she poked through the recessed storage units embedded in the blue-gray bulkhead. Most were empty, but she found one with ready-to-eats. She peeled open a bar and munched while she finished her search.
There was a small comm unit but as far as her implants could tell, it was not recording her, and she found no subtler spybots anywhere else. For the first time in a year, her muscles seemed to unwind a notch, and she swore she could almost hear a groan of relief from her cyber-embeds, as if even the nearly indestructible biotech had been feeling the strain.
She patted the bunk. It was wider than most and a bit softer. It was going to feel so—
A soft chime from the door alarm brought her whirling around.
The pale blue light beside the internal lock panel showed the intrusion was not urgent. She looked down at the hazer in her hand. She must have grabbed it instinctively.
Apparently she wasn’t as relaxed as she’d thought.
She strode toward the door and touched the comm. “Yes?”
No answer. She activated the door cam and caught a glimpse of Eril’s back and his tattooed shoulder. She bit at the inside of her lip. He couldn’t have known she’d been on the verge of shooting through the door, so why was he retreating?
The bunk might not be wide enough for two, but for one and a half…
She huffed to herself and redirected her attention to the small anti-grav cart he’d left outside. She opened the door just wide enough to pull it through and risked a glance down the hall. But he was already gone.
The cart held two changes of clothes and an extra selection of ready-to-eats, including several of the kind she’d just consumed. Since she would swear to any hells there were no bots in the room, how had he guessed which she would pick? She looked at the discarded wrapper and realized it was a pix bar.
The twinge of pleasure—not at the food, but that he’d remembered—annoyed her. It wasn’t as if he would have forgotten in such a short amount of time.
But when had anyone ever made note of even her limited, underdeveloped preferences?
She stowed the supplies, reminding herself he was auxo. It was his job to supply the crew with what they needed. And she was part of the crew. For now.
Still, as she pulled on the fitted basewear and snuggled into the bunk’s clean sheets, she couldn’t resist the warmth that sank in deeper than what was left of her human skin and bones.
***
She was burning up. No, not burning, awash. Her body ached with unfamiliar sensation. Too much, too much. She needed…
She wasn’t sure what. The need was its own entity, but it pulsed so close she could not tell where she ended and it began, as if it shared her same space. It writhed in her like an electrical storm, seeking to arc out of the most tender parts of her—her fingertips, her nipples, the inner curves of her clamped-tight thighs—to complete the connection.
When she touched herself, the inward arc only heightened the burning waves of need. She whimpered with wanting.
Then he was there.
So close, the longing in her body seemed to call to him. His shaggy dark hair drifted toward her, his arms raised up to encircle her, a hot, heavy darkness at the center of his body surged to fill the throbbing, empty lightness at her core…
Shaxi sat up with a gasp.
The tight spot between her legs pulsed like a second heartbeat, and she pressed her palm over it, shivering. She pulled her hand away and ran shaky fingers through her short hair, spiking it upward.
She knew instantly where she was—in her bunk on the Asphodel; her enhanced neural net would not fail at such a basic locating task—but what in any hells had been happening?
Dream. She knew the meaning of the word, but dreams were for unenhanced brains that couldn’t completely process information from the day. Her encoding should have pur
ged any lingering, unnecessary fragments.
More evidence of her breakdown.
Since continued sleep was obviously out of the question—maybe forever, if that was going to happen again—she dressed in one of her new uniforms of an unobtrusive but quality charcoal fabric. Rolling her shoulders to settle the jacket, she smoothed the leggings over her thighs then jerked her hands away when the touch reminded her of the dream.
For someone who’d had his hands all over her—at least in the dream—the auxo hadn’t been even close to getting her measurements correct, she thought testily. The fit was too snug. At least the flexibility was unimpaired, and the close contours created a sleeker outline beneath the already bulky sand-robes for when she needed to venture outside the ship.
She reprogrammed the sonics in the lav to clean the hazer and waited a twitchy two minutes for the cycle to complete. Then she threw her Hermitaj service gear into the unit for a longer decontamination sequence and left her bunk.
She’d patched her ocular implant link to her door cam and had kept an “eye” on the door to the twins’ suite. There’d been no activity yet this morning, which was starting to make her uneasy. What if the girls had slipped away while she’d been lounging in her person-and-a-half wide bed for much longer than her usual regeneration cycle, dreaming of…of things better left undreamt? When she shouldn’t even have dreams.
So she went to their door and touched the announcement pad.
When there was no answer, she touched it again, escalating from pale blue to green. If she had to go to yellow—
The door panel slid open to reveal a bleary-eyed Alolis, her blonde hair flowing in wild tangles over a long, silky, pink robe.
“By every thread that weaves the sheerways, do you know what time it is?”
Shaxi consulted her inner clock. “Four bells.”
Alolis scowled. “Doesn’t that mean the sun isn’t even up yet?”
Shaxi pursed her lips. “On which planet?”
“The one where I could be sleeping.” Alolis slumped back into the room, but she left the door open, so Shaxi followed, glancing around in curiosity.
The suite appeared thrice the size of her own, with the central unit set up as a sitting area while open doors in each of the side walls apparently led to the girls’ individual bedrooms. The bulkheads were softened with drapings and tapestries in colors so bright her ocular implant dialed down reflexively. Huge cushions in equally overwhelming colors were strewn across all horizontal surfaces. Or those horizontal surfaces not already covered with discarded drink and meal packaging.
She tilted her head. “Is your reclamation chute not functioning?”
Instead of going back to her room, Alolis groaned and threw herself into a particularly dense pile of pillows. “Don’t you start. It’s much too early for the clean-your-room speech.”
From the darkness in one of the bedrooms, a grumpy voice called, “Loli, who are you talking to?”
Alolis peered resentfully at Shaxi through one open eye. “Our nursemaid.”
“You let Jorr in here?!” Torash flung herself into the bedroom doorway, one hand clutching the frame, the other clasping her short violet robe between her breasts. Her wide eyes narrowed when she saw Shaxi. “Oh. Our new nursemaid.”
Apparently Benedetta had already informed her sisters of the change. That should make things easier.
“I came to request your itinerary for the day since there is nothing preset in the crew manifest,” Shaxi said.
“No need to bother.” Torash canted her shoulder against the door frame. The long braid of her black hair peeked forward around her hip like a lashing tail when she crossed her arms. “Whatever we ask to do will be summarily rejected and we’ll spend the day doing what we always do: sitting in here.”
“Then I would’ve thought you’d find time to inform the auxo that your reclamation unit is broken.” Shaxi went to the comm. “I can message him now—”
Alolis groaned again. “It’s working fine.” She waved a hand at her sister. “Tory, show her.”
Grumbling, Torash slouched forward and grabbed a few items off the nearest low table. She went to the lav panel and tossed everything in. “There. All cleaned.” She dusted off her hands and returned to sit beside her lounging sister while she stared at Shaxi. “You’re all cleaned up too. Had you ever used a true water shower before? Won’t it rust your components?”
“Tory.” Alolis wrapped her hand around her sister’s braid, giving it a gentle tug.
“What?” Torash yanked her hair free. “Benedetta keeps telling us being on the Asphodel is such an amazing way to see the wonders of the universe. So I’m just wondering about our cyborg bodyguard.”
Shaxi’s shoulders stiffened but she forced her arms to hang loose at her sides rather than drawing in defensively. As if mere words had force. “My implants are water resistant. Which is fortunate since the biotech is mostly fed on my blood, and blood is mostly water.” Alolis let out a mewl of disgust, but Shaxi ignored her. “However I haven’t used the shower. It seems unnecessary.”
“It’s a bribe,” Torash said bluntly. “Our sister thinks hot running water will make us forget that we’ll never have—”
“Tory!” Alolis’s sharp interruption cut off her sister.
Just when Shaxi was getting interested in what she was saying. “Forget what?” she prodded.
Torash shifted her jaw, as if grinding down the words she wanted to say into chunks small enough to swallow. “That we’re stuck on this hellhole planet instead.”
It didn’t take cyber-embeds to read that lie, but Shaxi let it go. It wasn’t her place to solve the sisters’ problems, she reminded herself. Just keep them alive.
“Since you have no plans,” she said, “perhaps you’ll join my morning routine.”
“Yours seems to involve getting up before dawn.” Alolis burrowed deeper into the pillows. “So, no.”
“It would be something to do,” Shaxi pointed out. “Especially since I suspect the captain will be reluctant to let you off the ship until he forgets the outing yesterday.”
Alolis sighed and Torash muttered something rude under her breath, but they both looked at her.
Shaxi headed for the door. “Get dressed for the day and meet me in the mess hall.”
She didn’t doubt she’d be waiting for a while so she thought she’d have something to eat. Though she’d already consumed another RTE in her bunk, it seemed her stomach had remembered it liked being full. Even the raw edges of her severed links to Hermitaj somehow felt smoother, as if the food and rest had eased all her parts.
Except for the part that had dreamed.
No, she wasn’t going to think about that. But somehow she wasn’t surprised when she entered the mess and found him preparing a decidedly not RTE meal. Her stomach rumbled at the scent of real protein and what she guessed was an unnecessary amount of fat.
She stepped closer and watched him put a second small square of a rich yellow substance in a pan over a heating element. The smell that arose along with the sizzle made her mouth water.
“Butter,” he said.
“What?”
“Your eyes turned that color. I assumed you were running a search to figure out what it was. It’s butter.”
“My mother made this.” The words blurted out of her, forced by the sudden, silent explosion of memory. She tried to gather the fragments of that long-ago morning, but unfortunately, as with any explosion, most of what remained was shock and shards. Her hands tightened at her sides, but the memory slipped away.
“Scrambles are popular with mothers throughout the sheerways because you can put whatever you have in them.” He stirred a bowl of something and dumped that into the pan. His movements were as precise and sparing as when he’d hustled the twins out of the cantina. “Do you remember her name?”
She shook her head. “Mama. That’s all she was to me.”
“A popular name with mothers throughout the sheerways.” H
e gave her a small, lopsided smile. “If she browned the butter of your scrambles, then her reasons for giving you up to Hermitaj must have been desperate.”
She frowned down into the disarray of ingredients he’d upended in the pan. Did the reasons matter? A mother had sold her child to a mercenary corporation, to be made into a thing half machine and all alone. Could there be any cause that would justify such an action?
Never would she have thought to ask such questions when the Hermitaj coding was in place. And she wasn’t particularly sure she wanted to ask it now.
She glanced up and found Eril watching her even while his clever hands stirred and added small black flakes and white crystals—salt and pepper, her implant helpfully identified. The mixture was starting to come together and the fingers of her non-implanted hand twitched on the counter near the spoons.
“There’s a bowl of pixberries in the cooler. Previously frozen, but better than nothing. Grab that and bring it to the table.”
She followed his orders, just as she followed all orders. By the time she found the purplish spheres in the big cooler and returned, he’d arranged two place settings at a small banquette near the bulkhead screen that showed an image of the empty hangar outside.
She glanced around. “Will none of the rest of the crew be eating?”
He shrugged. “They come and go, so I try to stock things that can be easily repurposed. The Asphodel runs on a much looser schedule than you’re used to.” He sat and gestured for her to do the same.
Still thinking, she sat across from him and picked up a spoon. “The ship’s itinerary and manifest don’t offer much detail about its purpose.”
“And that says a lot in itself, don’t you think?”
She ate the food on her plate and sat back with a handful of berries. They were still half-frozen and crunchy in the middle, bursting between her teeth with the flavor of light and water from some far-away planet. Or some long-ago time. She realized her eyes had drifted closed again, and with a sigh she looked up to stare at Eril. “So?”
He poured some of the berries onto his plate and ate them with a fork, the tines hitting the frozen cores with a tiny click. For some reason, the civility of it bothered her. “Why do you think I’ll tell you if the captain hasn’t?”
