To the Victor

by R Coots

  Beating her to a bloody pulp would only make a mess he’d have to scrape off the floor and shove down the reclamation tubes. He had to remember that. Had to brand that into his brain before he forgot that he’d been looking for a good fuck, not cleanup detail.

  “You don’t pull your shit together,” he snarled, “I’m going to drop you on a Breeder ship. You know the average lifespan of a woman on one of those things?”

  When she didn’t answer, he shook her by the hair, hard. She whimpered, hanging there, hands fisted against her stomach, but didn’t speak. Didn’t even try to fight.

  “A year. If they’re lucky. Pump you full of fertility drugs and mount as many men on you as they can in a day. There’s a whole Fleet out there looking to blow their load into an actual living cunt. One of them’s bound to get lucky. You live long enough to pop out a kid, they’ll cut the umbilical and start the whole show over again. Fight too much and they’ll just stick you in a coma instead. Ready-made incubator. How long you think you’ll last?”

  She kept staring at the young woman on the medunit table. Growling, he spun her around and took her by the shoulders. “I don’t need both of you. Don’t know why I’m keeping either of you. Whole Fleet wants you dead. So you get your head on straight. Do whatever you fucking Feels have to do to keep emotion from mixing things up. Or I’ll take her instead.”

  That got her attention. A jolt of alarm and the burning heat of anger hit his hands. He clenched his fingers tighter on her bony shoulders and glared at her, daring her to read him. She was the one person on this boat who could blow his cover; but right now, he was betting she was too wrapped up in what she was feeling to notice much outside herself.

  “She’ll kill you first,” the woman whispered, voice broken but clear.

  He laughed and dropped her. She staggered and landed up against her sousi’s table. “Funny to see her try. People been trying to kill me since before I can remember. Stay there. Got something for you.”

  He came back twenty minutes later, having snagged one of the women to help him go through their stash of dresses. He’d brought her to screaming orgasm and destroyed half the closet in the process, but she’d managed to salvage a dress from the wreckage. He might finally be calm enough now to walk the corridors of the ship and not pick a fight with everyone who looked at him sideways.

  Jossa was huddled on the floor next to the other woman’s table. Somehow, she’d gotten her sister’s hand down without disconnecting any of the leads and was clinging to it like it was her last hope in the universe. He couldn’t tell what she was whispering against that translucent skin, but from the reverent tone, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a prayer.

  “Put this on,” he said, dropping the dress into her lap. “I’ve got warlord things to do. You’re going to see what the rest of the Fleet looks like. And be glad you ended up with me

  .

  > Chapter Nineteen

  Jossa

  You try to stand between two halves of a sousi, you’re signing your own death certificate. Don’t matter what you aim their way. They’ll kill themselves to get past you.

  -advice to a young recruit

  The warlord led Jossa halfway down the corridor outside his quarters before he spat a curse and halted midstride. Jossa stumbled to a stop, barely aware of the pain in her arm where his fingers dug into her muscle. Her dress had sleeves, so the full force of his emotions were blunted by the fabric. But it wouldn’t have been any different if she was naked and plastered to him. Nothing could make much of a dent in the dull pound of grief running through her veins.

  “Come on.”

  Jossa felt him haul her around and pull her back the way they’d come. Her toes barked against the decking as she scrambled first for balance, then speed, trying to catch up with the fuming warlord. Her legs were long enough, but he moved with a purpose that threw her off balance and made it hard to find the rhythm of her steps.

  No sooner had she caught her balance and managed to shrink the distance between them than he stopped again. Jossa almost smashed her nose into his shoulder.

  It was disturbing, she thought absently, how the doors here opened. She half expected them to make some sort of suction noise, or to burble and pop with little liquid sounds. Something, at least, to go with the stomach-turning ooze of metal flowing back into the frame around the door. But the process was silent. As silent as the bond between herself and Delfi. As silent as the years that had taken her from—

  Jossa grunted as the warlord shoved something into her stomach with enough force to back her up a step or two. She swallowed, hard, to convince her breakfast to stay where it belonged, and looked down.

  He gave her half a second to see that he was still holding on to the object before letting go. Jossa yipped in surprise and grabbed for the thing. No thought involved, just a grab and a grunt when she misjudged its weight. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase on its rounded surface, catching and slipping from raised bumps and grooves. Just as she lost her grip entirely, she found an edge. A rim? And caught hold for real.

  Then she discovered the slimy grit that covered the thing, and the fact that something was all but stabbing her hand, and nearly let go anyway.

  The warlord caught it before she lost her grip entirely and shoved it at her again, harder this time. Jossa fetched up against the wall of the corridor this time and tried to wrap her arms around the disgusting thing before he let go again.

  “What in the—” she started to ask.

  The warlord growled, grabbed her arm, and they were off again.

  “Ow!” Jossa couldn’t help the little yelp of pain. She hitched the mysterious object over to one hip, hooked her fingers around one of its curved edges, and tried to ignore the wires poking her from wrist to elbow as she stretched her legs to catch up with the nehkeh man in front of her.

  His grip on her arm eased as she drew alongside him. Jossa did her best to match her steps to his, just a little behind and to one side as he all but stalked down the hall. For a moment she had difficulties with her skirts, but she managed to get a pinch of fabric in the hand not clinging to the mysterious slimy thing. After that she just had to keep from stepping on his heels—less tempting than it might have been given her bare feet—and make sure she didn’t lag too far behind him as he made turns, went up small ramps, and occasionally stopped short in front of her.

  Twice she lost her grip of the thing he’d handed her. Once she lost it entirely and nearly had her arm wrenched out of its sockets as a reward for stooping to get it. The second time, she caught it in the tips of her fingers. After that, whether out of pity or because some of his anger had worn off, the warlord slowed and she had less trouble.

  That only made for more opportunity to look around. What she saw was not designed to inspire hope in a person. Quite the opposite.

  The theme of twisting brambles, thorns, and winding snakes must be something universal to the Fleet as a whole. Every hall, every door, every ceiling crawled with sinuous lines and barbed angles. Enameled eyes, red and gold and silver, watched her from dark, burnished metal leaves as bas-relief bodies slid and caught on long thorns. Occasionally the creatures and plants protruded from the walls, forming hooks, clasps for safety lights, and the borders of what she assumed must be security hatches and other safety measures. Once she flinched away from a hooded snake, convinced she’d seen it move.

  The warlord ignored her, stalking down yet another curved hallway. Men and women scattered in front of him, staring as Jossa trotted past, and re-formed in clusters to whisper in their liquid language once the pair had moved on. Jossa could only guess at what they might be saying; they were too quiet and too far away for her to gauge tone of voice. Their faces, though, were not promising. If she hadn’t known it before, she knew it now. She’d have no help in any escape, assuming she could come up with a viable plan.

  Assuming Del woke up in any shape to help her.

  Jossa lost track of time. Surely this ship had
faster means of transportation than walking. She wouldn’t ask though. This was part of his punishment for her, and she didn’t want to make it worse.

  Eventually, the warlord halted again. Jossa overshot him by two or three steps and he yanked her back to his side without so much as looking at her. She braced her feet and panted for breath, feeling the sour Fleet air sting the back of her throat as she looked around and tried to figure out what she’d done wrong this time.

  “Back up,” the warlord growled. Jossa stared at him. He glared and yanked her in closer to his body, then used his free hand to slap a blank space in the wall next to him. Jossa hissed in pain and tried to resettle her burden on her hip before the man could take it into his head to run off again.

  The vines covering the wall next to the warlord slid and retracted. The snakes slithered up and out, forming an oval half a foot taller than the warlord himself. Then a seam formed in the blank metal, and the halves of the oval hissed, dropped slightly, and moved apart to reveal . . .

  A lift? Jossa shrank back against the warlord as a crowd of women emerged from the little room and out into the corridor. Some of them saw the warlord and dipped their heads. Then they saw Jossa and sneered. From the back of the lift stepped a pair of men. One with an ornate helmet shading ice-blue eyes, and another with florid skin and a fine webbing of purple veins creeping up his neck and down his cheeks. The two men bowed at the waist, and the man with the icy eyes said something in the Fleet language.

  Jossa flinched as the translator in her jaw parsed the words for her.

  “We’ll see you shortly in the banquet hall?” The man’s voice as reproduced by the translator was slightly stiffer than the real thing, but the lack of emotion in it was just the same as the original.

  “I’ll get there when I get there,” the warlord replied in the same language, then pulled Jossa into the lift while the words were still filtering into her brain. She looked up from making sure her skirt was all the way inside and saw the strange man watching her. She couldn’t read his eyes under the rim of his helmet, but his mouth was a thin line in his face, and she thought she saw a muscle tic in his jaw.

  The door of the lift closed, the floor jerked, and he was gone.

  >><<

  The warlord hauled her out and down a short corridor. He wasn’t even looking at her now. Hadn’t spoken, hadn’t shifted his hold on her arm. He just brought her along, like baggage. Baggage that made him really, really angry. Jossa wrapped her arm more tightly around the thing he’d made her carry, ducked her head, and tried not to let her skirt catch on any of the thorns sticking out from the walls of the hallway as he stalked towards the murmur of voices at the other end.

  She knew what she could do to make him less angry. Maybe. But he hadn’t given her a chance to offer. Even if she could get him to listen, she didn’t know that she had it in her to service him out in the open like this. In a past life, yes. But that had been the Palace where she was raised. Here? Where even the ship itself was trying to hurt her?

  As if in answer to the thought, she tripped over a seam in the floor and ran face first into the warlord’s shoulder.

  He didn’t move.

  Jossa got her feet under her and tried to figure out if her nose was bleeding. She’d just decided she was safe when a sound make her look up.

  A roomful of women stared at her.

  These weren’t women like those who occupied the warlord’s quarters. These, like the one getting off the lift, wore dark uniforms, slashed at the shoulder and breast to show various brighter colors under the fabric. Ranks? Differences in their duties? More snakes and thorns wrapped themselves around the women’s necks in ornate torcs. Hair was either short or wrapped up and pinned in place.

  Jossa tried to square her shoulders and stand straight under the weight of so many hostile eyes. She didn’t manage as well as she would have liked.

  “Milord. We did not expect you.”

  A woman came up the low steps that ran down the center of the room. The others shifted out of her way as needed, going back to their duties at terminals and handheld screens. One had her fingers in a holo, turning it this way and that as another poked at little yellow lights inside. The lights brightened, then followed the second woman’s hand as she pulled them out of the display and down to the screen she had propped against the edge of the holo projector.

  “Show or tell,” the warlord growled at the woman as she stopped in front of him. Jossa resisted the urge to rub her ear against her shoulder. His voice vibrating in her jawbone via the translator was not a fun feeling. He kept going, either not noticing or ignoring the involuntary twitch of her head, “Easier to show your girls what to look for. Telling them hasn’t worked.”

  The woman’s full lips tightened, and her dark eyes narrowed.

  “Now, Oona. Got places to be.”

  Oona bowed, a short jerk of her upper body that almost didn’t count, and walked away. The warlord followed. Jossa followed in his wake. She made it two steps before something caught her bare ankle. Only the fact that the warlord still had hold of her arm kept her from falling flat on her face. The thing he’d given her to carry went flying as she let go and flailed for balance. Her downward motion halted with a jerk. Jossa hung in midair for half a heartbeat before the warlord yanked her again and she stumbled down a step. Another yank and she was able to get her feet under her to straighten herself.

  The room around them was silent. Worse than laughter. Worse than whispers.

  Never had she been so glad to be crowned. Not even the burn of frustration and anger, coming through her dress where the warlord had hold of her, was enough to stave off her relief. What these women must think of her. What they must be feeling right now.

  Something hit her in the gut. Jossa grunted and curled in on herself. Cold, sticky fabric clung to her skin as the slime from the thing she’d been carrying glued her dress to her body. Ridges and wires poked at her belly.

  Jossa looked up into the hard, brown eyes of Oona. Except for those eyes and the downturned corners of her mouth, the woman could have been a doll, an inanimate prop piece, for all the expression she showed.

  Jossa looked down at the dirty, sticky thing the woman held. Half of it had rubbed itself shiny. The other half was just as disgusting as before. Even more so, because the stuff covering it had started to dry. And the smell—of rubbing alcohol and the dregs of a water tank.

  With a sigh, Jossa hooked her fingers around the edge of the thing, hitched it back over to her hip, and followed the warlord as he started moving again. Nobody tripped her this time.

  “She is a disruption,” Oona said as they walked. “A distraction from purpose.”

  “She’s learning a lesson,” the warlord growled, moving past a cluster of women gathered around a screen mounted in the wall. They shifted and bunched to make room for him but stepped out and away from their object of focus as Jossa tried to get by. The warlord pulled her through with a tug and a snarl over his shoulder.

  “Then give her the back of your hand,” Oona replied, without looking back to see what was going on. “And teach her.”

  “Already learned that one, thank you.” The words came out before Jossa could stop them.

  Next thing she knew, there was an arm in front of her face. Dark and corded with muscle. The warlord. He had hold of Oona’s wrist.

  Jossa jerked away. The warlord’s fingers tightened on her arm, halting her attempt at escape as easily as he’d stopped Oona from slapping her.

  “Not that lesson,” he snarled. “But I’ll teach you, if that’s what you need.”

  Jossa stared at Oona as the woman curled a lip at the warlord. He watched her back, teeth bared. Finally, the woman dropped her eyes and dipped her head. “As you say, milord.”

  The warlord dropped the woman’s hand and they started moving again. Only then did Jossa realize that what was coming through her contact with the warlord wasn’t anger. Or even frustration. Those emotions seemed to have melted
away somewhere since they’d come off the lift. She couldn’t quite tell what the man was feeling, beyond the fact that he was feeling something. Resignation? Pain of some sort?

  Jossa tightened her hold on the contraption she carried and caught her skirt in the tips of her fingers. She wouldn’t complain. As long as the fires of fury were banked, she could survive.

  >><<

  The thing the warlord had come to show Oona dealt mainly with the holo display in the upper corner of the room. Jossa stood as the other poked and prodded at the lights and watched the activity of the room around her. Women gathered, talked, and dispersed. Some had communications devices clipped to their jaws and ears. They spoke to thin air in tones that her translator couldn’t pick up or parse. Snatches of conversation in closer proximity resolved themselves into coordinates, flight groups, and water levels. Nothing complete. Nothing more than two or three words. But as she listened, Jossa realized what this place must be.

  The bridge. The command deck not only for this ship, but for the Fleet as a whole. And, if what she was hearing was correct, a Fleet in the middle of an offensive action. And . . . scouts? She couldn’t quite bridge the gap between the terminology these people used and what she had been used to hearing as a concubine to the fuerrus, but that seemed to be the best guess.

  What was it Iira had said? The warlord was using Jossa’s answers to the questions he’d asked when she first woke up, and he was doing . . . something with the information she’d given him. Something that might endanger his position at the head of the Fleet?

  “Smaller.” The growl of the man himself pulled Jossa’s attention back to the cluster of people next to her. “Coasting too.”

  “But milord,” said one of the women. “How—”