by Calinda B
“I had nowhere else to go,” Shaxi said.
“Just anyplace along the sheerways,” Torash muttered.
Shaxi hesitated, wondering if she should explain. But the girls should know there were worse options than a luxurious sheership and their sister’s arms. “I came here in hopes the shriving storms will blank what’s left of the Hermitaj programming.”
“The punishment of the sandstorm is bad enough,” Benedetta said. “But the alien elements in the dust whip up an electromagnetic feedback that could destroy even the Asphodel. And you’re going to deliberately expose yourself to it?”
Since a certain man didn’t want to see her exposed. Shaxi squelched the errant thought. “That energy could set me free.”
“Or kill you.” Benedetta’s voice was flat, with none of its customary melodic undertow.
“It’s a risk,” Shaxi acknowledged. “But if I can wipe out the failing code, I’ll be…”
Torash leaned forward, the cushion jammed into her belly. “You’ll be what?”
“Anything, anyone I want to be.”
Benedetta was watching her with a faint line between her brows, and the frown deepened when the twins nodded. “Speaking of homework,” she said.
The girls groaned in unison.
“There’s still a lot you two don’t know,” Benedetta told them. “And you’ll need to know it before you become your own anything.”
She pointed in opposite directions at the bedroom doors. Torash threw her pillow at her sister but slouched off to her room like a darker mirrored image of Alolis going the other way.
She paused in her doorway to look back at Shaxi. “Next time we fight, you need to show us how to defeat bossy older sisters.”
Shaxi looked at her solemnly. “I think some forces in the universe can’t ever be defeated. Sisterly love might be one of them.”
From the other side of the room, Alolis snorted but the sound was muffled by the closing door echoed by Torash’s.
Leaving Shaxi alone with their older sister.
Benedetta lounged back on the cushions, tilting her head. She’d bound her many braids into a tight coil at her nape. Still not a warrior’s coiffure but as sleek as it might be. “What do you know of love, on’Taj?”
“The on’Taj are all gone,” Shaxi said. “And what I know of love occupies approximately one bit of binary memory space.” After her failure with Eril, that space contained a zero rather than a one.
“Then why did you mention it in front of the twins?”
“Because they are young humanoid females. Who wear pink. I thought it would make sense to them.”
Benedetta huffed out a soft laugh. “True.” Her amusement faded, although her emerald eyes were as bright as ever. “All the hardest things I’ve done in my life, I’ve done for love: of my people, my siblings, my dashing sheership captain.”
Shaxi considered. “All the hardest things I’ve done, I’ve done because I was forced.”
The other woman shrugged. “Well, love can be a bit like that too, sometimes.”
“At least you get to choose it.”
“Sometimes,” Benedetta repeated. Her pocket chimed and she pulled out her tablet without looking away from Shaxi. “Maybe after the storms you will have a chance to make more space for it inside you. I hope so.”
For a moment, Shaxi thought about telling Benedetta that she knew the l’auraly’s secret. She could do it without sharing Eril’s involvement. But the reason for the impulse made her suspicious. Did she think there was strategic value in angling to become a confidante? No. She would do the same job regardless. So her only wish was to be part of this little tribe for her own selfish reasons, to maybe find solace and support as the twins did in the soft, strong bow of their sister’s embrace.
But that was not her place.
She bowed stiffly. “If there’s anything you need from me…”
Benedetta waved at her. “I’ll stay with the girls until we land. Even then, I’m guessing Corso will have more urgent work for you. Go.”
Shaxi went, and she managed not to look with longing over her shoulder at the peaceful, cushioned room or to think of the l’auralya’s promise that love was a possibility.
Chapter 10
As he often did when he was troubled, Eril got out his knives.
And started baking.
Most of the crew was occupied with damage repairs or prepping for flying into the storm, and they’d rotated through the galley to grab RTEs. But he was a lowly supply clerk without any real skills so he received no messages requesting his assistance.
Which only left him time to recall in excruciating detail the expression on Shaxi’s face as he pushed her away.
He used the nanotech knife to slice viciously through the frozen pixberries, unwilling to wait even the few seconds necessary to defrost them in the wave-oven. Besides, the sensation of chopping off tiny heads wouldn’t be as visceral if they weren’t frozen.
Appalled at his own violent thoughts, he let the hungry knife fall from his fingers to the cutting board. He stared down at the vivisected fruits. Their dark purple juice stained the blade and his fingertips.
He braced his hands on the counter and closed his eyes.
It had been a mistake.
He couldn’t quite identify which part had been wrong—kissing her or stopping her from kissing him more—but definitely there’d been a fuck-up of galactic proportions.
And because of it, something had changed. He’d done terrible things, monstrous things in his time as the underwriters’ lone wolf left hand. Seducing a lonely woman was nowhere near the worst. And yet even though she’d been the one covered with dust and blood, he was the one who felt dirty.
He turned away from the cutting board to wash the juice off his hands and realized they were shaking.
What had she done to him? Had her unstable biotech somehow undermined his own convictions? But unlike her, he wasn’t programmed to carry out sometimes unsavory missions. He did it because he’d seen there was no choice. Sometimes terrible, monstrous things were done in the hopes of someday making the universe a better place.
Even as he reminded himself of that truth—the only way he could justify his existence—he found another woman’s face floating in his mind. She’d be older, with Shaxi’s strong, curved body, but without the scars. Though her features were hard to picture, he thought they’d be soft and smiling as she browned butter for her little daughter.
Until she sold the girl into encoded servitude.
How had she justified herself? If he ever sat down with her, with their lives spread out as a choice of dishes before them, he wondered if either of them would be able to stomach the bitter dregs.
Gut churning, he spun away from the counter. And caught a glimpse of that white shock of hair, retreating out the mess hall doorway. Obviously, she’d seen him and instantly turned on her heel. As if seeing him made hunger preferable.
“Shaxi. Wait.”
He thought for a second she’d keep going. She’d said she wanted him to forget her name.
But she paused. Slowly she pivoted to face him, one brow arched in question. Her eyes pinwheeled with almost solid gold as the embeds concentrated at some intensive but secret task.
“I want to apologize again for—” for not taking what she offered and losing himself, if only for a moment “—my behavior. I was out of line, and it won’t happen again.”
She stood so straight his back ached in sympathy at the strain. “The malfunctions in my coding made me complicit in the unfortunate incident.” The clipped words gave her voice an almost mechanical quality. “And you are correct. It won’t happen again.”
She twisted on her boot heel.
“Wait,” he repeated. “If you came for food, I’m making a…cake.”
The gold rings thinned then expanded again, and he could almost hear her mental query to her database. “A cake,” she said flatly. “Why?”
“We had those leftover berri
es. And when we land, we’ll need to celebrate not crashing.”
“That assumes we don’t crash.”
“Well, real cakes take a while to bake, so I thought I’d get a jump on things.”
The rings of gold expanded another notch, swallowing all but a pinprick of her black pupil. Hunting eyes. The effect both mesmerized him and made his skin prickle with atavistic dread. Why did she intrigue him so much?
As if she was reading his mind—which, considering the intensity of her focus, she might be—she asked, “Why are you trying to redeem yourself with me?”
He opened his mouth to protest. It was just a thrice-tangled cake, not a plea for compassion. Besides, he didn’t deserve pardon. But when no words came out, he realized that mercy was exactly what he wanted from her.
Which only deepened his self-loathing, because he knew when the moment came he would have no mercy on her.
He let out a slow breath. “I’m sorry,” he said.
As if she knew he was not talking only about his fumbled seduction, she turned and walked away.
By the time he finished the cake—with a pixberry center layer and pix frosting—and set it in the cooler, the sim screen in the mess hall showed the sky outside had turned almost the same color as Shaxi’s eyes, dark gold with swirling sand. As soon as he made note of it, his comm chimed.
“Crew to alert stations,” the captain said. “We’ll be flying through the storm front in a few minutes. Stay away from the bulkheads since it might get zappy when we throw the switch on the polarizing charge.”
Eril left the mess hall with no place to be. He had no assigned tasks, and his covert mission was suspended while the twins were confined to quarters during the emergency.
Anyway, if they did crash, his mission could very well be over.
He encountered Fariz and Jorr running a giant cable through engineering, so he stopped to help them manhandle the coupling between a generator and the main structural support around the engines. The support beam was bolted through the strongest parts of the ship and would polarize the hull to ward off the most damaging elements of the storm. In theory.
He grunted as he and Jorr hefted the heavy tubing over their heads while Fariz rigged up a fastening. “Kind of waiting until the last minute on this, aren’t we?”
“It’s more exciting this way,” Jorr said.
“I can’t believe I’m drilling a hole through the bulkhead.” The engineer’s fretful voice was muffled by a thin, screaming whistle as he punched through.
“Just remember to plug it before we leave atmo,” Jorr said.
They fed the cable up to the hole, and on the exterior cams, they watched the cables emerge like spider legs to clamp to the outer hull.
“Ready?” Fariz’s finger hovered over the generator switch.
Eril eyed the gold sand thickening to a ominous gloom, like old blood stained across the sky. “I don’t think the storm is going to wait if we say no.”
The captain’s voice cut across their comms. “Do it.”
Fariz flicked the switch.
Nothing.
Jorr cleared his throat.
“It’s supposed to do that,” Fariz said. “I mean, it’s probably working. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. Of course, it would also look like that if it didn’t work. We can’t see the polarizing either way.”
A shiver traced down Eril’s spine. He might have been inclined to think the tremor was a response to the possibility of their fiery doom, but he lived with that threat every moment. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering what else might have triggered the reaction.
“I can see it,” Shaxi said from behind them. “Or not see it, but feel it. The ion field is active and correctly polarized.”
Fariz and Jorr continued to stare at the screen, as if hoping for sparks or something, but Eril found his gaze locked on Shaxi.
Who was deliberately not looking at him.
The glow in the engine room faded with the dimming light from the screen as they were swallowed by the storm. They all reached for the nearest support when the Asphodel jolted in the worsening turbulence. Eril swallowed down the sideways lurch of his belly as the normally graceful ship, which negotiated the twisting threads of the sheerways with ease, slalomed against the mood swings of the air. They hit an empty pocket and dropped abruptly until the thrusters compensated with a screaming roar.
Jorr made a hacking sound. “If it’s going to keep doing that, I think I’d rather crash.”
Fariz smacked him in the back of the head. “Knock on wood.” He stomped away to mutter at the engine console and Jorr ambled off, rubbing the back of his head.
Stiffly, Shaxi turned her head to meet Eril’s gaze. “The captain has said when we land we will take one of the runabouts to Rampakh to buy what we need for repairs.”
“You and the captain?” Eril heard the low note of a growl in his voice but couldn’t stop it.
Shaxi’s brows furrowed over her black eyes. “The captain indicated you and I are to go. I have the list of required components, plus I have experience with mechanical repairs if we need to find alternatives. He said you would serve as negotiator as he suggested I might not have the same ease with personal interactions.”
Eril forced a smile. “For a man who stole the universe’s last l’auralya, his sudden interest in manners seems hypocritical.”
She frowned. “He doesn’t want us to call attention to ourselves since that would endanger the Asphodel and its people. He said we are less likely to be recognized, especially if the attackers have a crew manifest.”
“Also, we are most expendable.”
She looked at him as if he’d said something stupid. “Of course.”
He shook his head. “Can’t wait.” And to his surprise—even though this foray had nothing to do with his mission; especially since it had nothing to do with his mission—his anticipation was real. “When do we leave?”
“The canyon where we chose to hide the Asphodel is still an hour out. Meet in the cargo bay when we land. We’ll leave immediately after that.”
Without waiting for him to reply, she stalked off.
And he was left alone in the middle of the empty room, the engines thrumming with restless disquiet around him and the simulated sky a clotted red-black. Though the cable link should have sealed around the bulkhead hole, still he swore he smelled the dust leaking in.
Despite the captain’s orders about staying away from the polarized hull, he drifted toward the support beam where the cable attached. Shaxi said she could feel the ions protecting the ship. With a recklessness he didn’t know he possessed, he flattened his palm against the metal.
He half expected to be blasted on his ass by the energy surging through the cable to the ship’s outer skin. Getting vaporized might be preferable to joining Shaxi on their little pleasure outing. But instead he felt only a tingle that raised every hair on his body.
He stepped back with a sigh. When had he developed this death wish?
And how deadly was it? He supposed he’d have the chance to find out on the way to Rampakh with Shaxi at his side.
Chapter 11
Watching Evessa sink the Asphodel down into the slot canyon, Shaxi discovered nerves she didn’t know she had. Bad enough to read the impossibly tight confines on the nav controls, but to have the visuals glaring from the screens made her want to disconnect from her ocular implant.
The rim of the canyon held sharpened teeth of stone where the edge had sheared away in places, but as they descended, the wind-honed channel of rock looked more like a smooth gullet hungrily swallowing them down.
The pilot had triggered the external flood lights and the color on the screens was saturated to garish levels that turned the striations of rock to blood and gold. Audio of the thrusters’ howl bouncing off the canyon walls was ratcheted up to deafening. But Evessa’s eyes were barely open and her fingers drifted over the controls, as if she was half asleep.
The captain and Shaxi had co
nfirmed the location with her before Evessa took over, and when Deynah had left the pilot to do her work alone, as most pilots did, Shaxi had started to follow, but Evessa said, “I don’t mind you. You don’t interrupt like the others.” She waggled her fingers in an incomprehensible gesture.
Whether that was a good thing or not, Shaxi wasn’t sure, but she stayed in the nav chamber, curious. If she’d thought the turmoil of the flight through the storm front was bad, getting swallowed by the canyon was worse. Maybe it was a good thing she had finally learned to be afraid to die. That hadn’t been a possibility under Hermitaj programming. Maybe Benedetta’s wish that she might learn to love wasn’t so unlikely.
Unless she died first, of course.
“We won’t die,” Evessa said serenely.
Shaxi flinched. She hadn’t spoken aloud, she knew, but her fingers wrapped around the console near Evessa was probably a giveaway. “That’s good.”
“Can’t you feel it?”
Descending below the canyon rim, they’d left the worst of the storm particulates behind, but Evessa had told them to keep the ion field on, to help guide the ship down.
Mostly, Shaxi felt the ions pinging off the tightening rock walls, like vicious little stabs to her awareness. Although feeling was an improvement over not feeling. In theory.
“Almost…” Evessa murmured “…there.”
The ship settled with a nearly imperceptible bump as the landing struts deployed to find stabilizing surfaces. The outside cams scanned the surrounding area and sent back their report: empty, quiet, alone.
Shaxi let out a slow breath. On the one hand, the ship hadn’t been scoured into oblivion by the sandstorm, and they hadn’t crashed down the side of the canyon in a flaming ball of twisted metal. On the other hand, Eril Morav would be waiting for her in the cargo bay.
Evessa opened her eyes. “I got us here. Now you need to find the parts to get us out again.”
Shaxi jerked her head in a nod. “That is my assignment.”
“Benedetta said you aren’t staying.”
Shaxi frowned. “In Rampakh?”
“On the Asphodel.”
“No.” Shaxi wondered why the l’auralya had shared that info with the pilot. “I am staying on Khamaseen until the shriving. The Asphodel needs to be offworld before then or you’ll be grounded.”
