by R Coots
Jossa took a deep breath. She got it. She’d been stupid to think they were safe. So stupid.
The warlord seemed to understand. He let go of her chin. Jossa reached with her mental hands for the false bond and did her best to shelter the others with it.
It was hard. Almost harder than it had been while she was chained to the wall. Somehow it was easier to reach for grace when she knew it was the only thing saving her from imminent death. When the knife was off her neck, she slipped into complacency far too easily.
Once she was sure of her grip on the Feeling, she nodded at Syrus. He nodded back and turned to speak quietly to Oona. She had to stop making death threats so she could listen to him. After another moment, she hissed something under her breath, turned on her heel, and limped out to the hall to stand next to Iira.
Syrus waved Jossa after her, then followed them out. They all waited as he forced the door to the room shut again. Then he and Oona gathered up Delfi’s stretcher and they all limped off down the hall.
It wasn’t far, but it was far enough. Syrus closed every door he found behind them. Probably to create as much of a barrier as possible between the second in his prison and any survivors.
Lucky for them, there were a lot of doors. Imperials didn’t build on curved lines like the Fleet. The halls were straight, but they were mazelike on purpose. Each crossing could be closed off to block invaders and give soldiers time to fight in sections if needed. Nobody could storm the place without heavy losses.
Unfortunately for the men and women who’d staffed this place, the air ducts hadn’t had as many failsafes. Bodies lay here and there, faces still. Suffocated. Stinking, too, of loosed bowels and the other indignities of death. Some had breathers on. It hadn’t saved them. The air had been too tainted.
She breathed through her mouth and closed her eyes to the condition of the few women. Wondering how long the five of them had been raving in that room would only make it worse. She couldn’t think about that. Instead, she grabbed the peace of the false bond and tried to mainline it to her heart. It worked, for all of a minute.
The other warlord must have moved most of his people out once they’d taken the base. Syrus had been right about her range though. And the ineffectiveness of their armor. The few Fleet soldiers they saw were dead. Torn apart with the same ferocity as the ones in the room where she and the others had been held. Jossa stared at the crumpled and broken bodies. Ancestors’ Seed, she had hoped she’d never see this again. And here she was . . . again.
“Don’t look,” Syrus said as his emotions wavered, leeching anger like lava into the waters. “Seriously. Don’t fuck this up.”
She stared at his feet in front of her and concentrated on listening to Delfi’s breathing. It was better. Somewhat. Not as labored. But she still needed a medunit. And her mind was still twisted in on itself. The only thing Jossa could parse from the morass of her sister’s head was pain. Every ripple of agony echoed from her sister’s body to her own.
The two Fleet women had locked themselves down somehow. They were just echoes in her head. Slightly out of step with Delfi and herself. Completely out of sync with Syrus. But still there. Still injured. Still angry.
Juggling them all plus the false bond turned walking into a new form of torture. She’d thought losing her virginity hurt. Having to give herself to the fuerrus. What she’d done to keep herself and Del alive during that first year of freedom. She’d thought that was bad. Giving herself to Syrus had been a betrayal of everything she’d tried to build with Rui. But this. What had been done to Delfi. What she’d done to them all. This was desecration.
“And stop thinking. Fuck, woman.”
She stared at his heels and walked. And walked. Until she ran right into his shoulder. Startled, she staggered back and rubbed her nose. Questions bubbled inside her. She squashed them. Asking him “What?” again wouldn’t help matters.
“You stay here.” He steadied her with one hand on her shoulder. “All of you.”
She was still getting her bearings when he moved away. There was a red insignia on the wall nearby, two short bars crossed in the middle. The origins of the symbol had been lost in time. Now it just meant “infirmary.” Good. Now, all they needed to do was get inside. Judging by the tangle of Fleet armor and the trail of blood leading down the hall, whatever guards had been stationed here were dead. So why was he being cautious?
The door slid open. A searing mix of anger, pain, and lust slapped her in the face and clogged her lungs. Every nerve leapt to attention. Her body tried to simultaneously melt and get ready for battle. Jossa slumped against the wall behind her, clawing for sanity. Delfi’s, Syrus’s—even her own would do if she could manage it. She was going to send them all into an orgy if she didn’t manage to balance herself out again.
The door slid shut behind the warlord. The emotions vanished, leaving only the residual anger of the Fleet women and Delfi’s pained breathing. Right. Shielding plates. Of course an infirmary would be shielded. The military trained its people to ward themselves against sai. But if a person was injured, their defenses were more likely to fall.
Now she just had to hold herself together until—until what? Until Delfi or the warlord could do it for her? Again?
“How are you feeling?” Iira had come to stand next to her. “Any hurts besides,” she gestured at Jossa’s wrists.
“Not so bad as you or Del,” Jossa told her. “It’s all inside.” She tapped a finger to her breastbone. “I’ll live.”
Iira opened her mouth to say something else, but the door to the infirmary slid open again. Syrus stood there. His shirt was gone; his pants were torn. He bled from a dozen fresh wounds. In one hand, he held a knife, its blade long and wide. From the other hand dangled the head of Warlord Kizen, snarling in death as he had in life.
The soft pat pat pat of blood dripping on the floor was the only sound in the corridor. The pyroclastic flow of rage that had filled the room behind him was gone. Only the Savage remained. “Come on then,” Syrus said as he met her eyes. The cool calm filled the air between them, shaky, but undeniably there. “Let’s get this shit over with.”
>Chapter Thirty-Five
Syrus
You cannot collar the soul. Not once it’s seen its way to freedom.
-proverb of the Edge Planets
Eventually, Syrus looked up and realized Jossa was gone. Looking over at the other units in use, he saw that Iira hadn’t moved. She’d been perched on the edge of that same stool ever since they’d closed the lid on Oona, doing a very good impression of a statue. A bloody, battered statue.
Oona and even Jossa had tried to talk her into getting into a unit right away, but the woman refused. She was the Chief Med-Tech of the Edde Belo, flagship of the Turan of the Kuchen Fleet, and by Strength and Will, she’d make sure her co-wife was up and walking before she’d let them stuff her in a box herself.
Syrus hadn’t bothered arguing. Del’s breathing was too shallow and her heart rate too fast. He didn’t know if Jossa thought of it, but the possibility of internal organ damage hung over the young woman just as certainly as her collapsed lungs. And far more dangerously. Jossa seemed to be holding her own fairly well. He didn’t want to send her back over the edge by mentioning the danger, so rather than bring it up, he’d let her distract herself by arguing with Iira.
Syrus sighed. If he hadn’t noticed an unstable Feel wander out of one of the most heavily shielded rooms in the base, Iira probably hadn’t even batted an eye.
He looked over at the third unit. It had at least another two hours on the chrono. The concubine bitch, Mivi, hadn’t had much to say for herself after he’d killed Kizen. Partly because the man had broken her jaw in three places. But she’d also been looking for more, even through her half-conscious stupor. Whoever tried to condition her before she came to the Fleet, they’d fucked her over but good.
Now that he thought about it, he could see how this had happened. He hadn’t given her nearly enough of w
hat she wanted, so she’d gone looking for it. One way or another, she wouldn’t have been able resist Kizen when he showed up. The others would have tried. And failed. The broken locks on his rooms hadn’t helped. She’d opened the door to his quarters and the lunatic had walked right in.
He kicked the mental door shut on the memory of the walls coated in blood. He’d be going back to empty rooms, and he’d be surprised if Jossa and Delfi came quietly. Or agreed to stay put once he got them there.
Come on, what’ll you do? Drag them back in shackles? Is that really what you want to be?
Arguing with the voice in his head was stupid. And a losing battle.
All this assumed he had a Fleet to go back to. So far, they were holding off. Kizen hadn’t expected anyone but Quinn to get loose. He might have even had a tech tamper with the anchors of the second’s grav tethers, weakening the seal. From what the man had said before Syrus severed his spinal column, Quinn was supposed to be turning them all into bloody mush right about now.
Syrus looked at the display screen propped up on Iira’s medunit. It showed the room they’d left. It looked very different now. At some point, his second had managed to pull the last grav tethers free of the wall. And, true to Kizen’s plan, he was turning the other occupants of the room to bloody mush.
Syrus decided that he never, ever, wanted to know how Quinn and Iira and Oona managed to keep their weird idea of marriage going. Although what was happening in that room certainly explained why Quinn had been so upset over the waste of a dead body. And Iira’s promise to Mivi just before she prodded the concubine’s broken bits back inside her medunit and closed the lid on her. There were great things in store for the shattered woman. She just wouldn’t enjoy them for long.
He should have let Jossa take her shot. Hell, he should have done it himself. Maybe he would have been able to hold out against the emotions the man gave off. Maybe he even would have been able to use them to channel his own blowup.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Why don’t you find a gun and take care of him right now?
Why don’t I just seal off the room and suffocate the bastard? he replied. Then Iira will try to gut me and I’ll have to kill her. While I’m at it, I might as well set Oona’s medunit to “cremate” and be done with it. It gets me fuck nowhere as far as keeping the Fleet running. Now. Keep your opinions to yourself, would you?
She went quiet.
If it came to that, he could take care of Quinn later. There were four blast-sealed doors locked to Syrus’s genetic code between them and the lunatic, and nobody was going anywhere. Nobody but Jossa. Who the fuck knew what she was up to. She could be starting a self-destruct sequence somewhere. In fact, she probably was.
Syrus snagged a spare slate from one of the counters along the wall and set its chrono to match the timer on Delfi’s medunit. Then he headed out. He stopped at the door, thought about letting Iira know he was going for a walk, then shrugged and kept going. She’d notice. Or she wouldn’t.
For safety’s sake, he logged in to the controls in the hall. A swipe of one bloody thumb gave him basic access. Once the door slid shut behind him, the women were locked in. Quinn wouldn’t make it into the infirmary if he decided to go for a walk. They couldn’t go set him loose, either. Win win.
Loose ends taken care of, he went hunting.
The Fleet hadn’t sucked all the Seed out of the air vents when they’d boarded the base. Just enough to make it breathable for a baseline conscript with the innock in his system. That was plenty enough for Syrus to manage. Not run a marathon, maybe, but who the hell wanted to do that?
When he finally found Jossa, he cursed himself for an idiot. And cursed the voice inside that told him he should have known. Of course he should have known. What he didn’t know, but wanted to, was how to stuff the voice back in the hole and keep her there. With his luck, he couldn’t. Fuck.
He stood in the door and looked at her, wondering how someone so battered could have so much dignity. Jossa had turned her chair to face him. She sat in it like some sort of queen out of legend. If queens were naked, bruised, with tangled hair, bloodshot eyes, and bloody wrists. The lights of the control board screens painted her skin with blues and greens. Her eyes were eerie in the shadows that hid most of her face.
Syrus slammed his shields back up, hoping she hadn’t gotten much of a read on him. The room was quiet, except for the whir of processors and fans. Whatever she felt, she had a strong enough hold on herself to keep it contained. Although not to keep herself from trembling once a minute or so. He thought he felt something like bravado shimmer through the air.
“Trusting,” he said after a few minutes. “Leaving Del up there with me and Iira.”
She snorted, and transformed from the statue of a slave queen into a real person. It was a shaky snort, but it was a sign of life. “She’s locked in a medunit. Somehow I doubt you’re desperate enough to pry the thing open and violate her in the state she’s in.”
He decided not to tell her that Quinn had gotten free of his shackles. The man was too big to fit in any of the maintenance shafts.
“Thought all this would have locked down,” he said.
“It did.” She held up a piece of cloth in one hand. Syrus realized it was a scrap of his shirt. When had she gotten hold of that? “Strange thing about the Empire. It’s obsessed with bloodlines.”
Something in one of the machines growled quietly. Humor trickled through the air, canceling out his irritation. He realized the noise came from him, not the computers. Muttering curses in his head, he leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “You say that like it’s news.”
“Ah. He reminds me of the things he knows. Things that everybody knows.” The dried blood on her wrists flaked off as she gripped the armrests of her seat and leaned forward. She was more fragile than she let on. Her knuckles were white on the armrests. Her voice had a brittle edge. “He doesn’t explain how he knows things he shouldn’t.”
He ignored the mocking laugh bouncing around his brain. The last thing he needed was to get all sentimental and do something stupid. Like give Jossa his life story. Or a reason to doubt his sanity.
She watched him, eyes narrowed and breathing almost normal. As if pretending she wasn’t naked and bruised. As if she had every right to sit there and demand answers. Maybe she was trying to convince herself that she did. Ha.
There was something off about her though. Something different than it had been, under the nerves she was doing shit all to hide.
After a second, he realized the humor leaking out of her was really the bravado from earlier, transmuted slightly. It hit as a bubbly cascade, like the fermented fruit drinks he’d stolen as a kid. Was she trying to get him drunk? Or did she even realize what was happening? Either way, he could wait her out. She was the one who had a sousi to get back to, not him.
Of course, when Delfi emerged from the medunit and found Jossa gone, she’d come to get her sister. Then they’d have one of those mental discussions and figure out the best way to fuck up the rest of his day. Delfi would eventually try to attack him, which would mean he’d have to put her back in the medunit. Which would waste even more time. And then someone up in the Fleet would get impatient and blow them all to Hell.
The odd drunk feeling tickled, damn it all. She wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore.
Fine. If that was the way she wanted to play things.
Syrus dropped into the chair across from her and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing his ankles. “This is all you get,” he warned her. “No questions.”
She smiled slightly, as if she knew something he didn’t. Her hands eased a bit on the armrests and she sat back. Syrus decided he liked her better when she was off balance and panicky. Wherever she’d found this new personality, it could only mean trouble.
Syrus took a breath and exhaled slowly. Get the hard stuff out of the way fast, like ripping off synthskin that bonded wrong. “They told you about Rissa, yeah?” The women in
his quarters were smart enough not to run their mouths where he could hear, but no way they’d kept that secret.
She nodded. “A little.”
He folded his hands and propped his elbows on the armrest of the chair. “Rissa found me on the streets. She had sai.” Which was a bit like saying a star put out light and heat. She’d had so much talent they’d had to stick her in cold storage to keep her from following him after he left.
“Her family ran the system. She realized what I had. Talked me into coming home with her.” And hadn’t that been a poor man’s drama, when her sire found out she’d brought the trash home, covered in blood and feral as a stray dog. “She had a sousi. Fresh bonded. Neither of them could take care of themselves. Protect themselves. Things were going sour in the quadrant and her sire liked to play politics. You know what they say about Savages?”
“Bring one into your house and you bring ruin unto your family,” Jossa said quietly.
Syrus clamped down on his shields again and sighed. “She wouldn’t let me go. Only way he let me stay was if I let them do a contract binding. Lifetime indenture.”
He could see the understanding dawn. “Oh.”
For a moment he debated what else to say. In his head, Rissa was going nuts, but she’d been dead for years now. You couldn’t read emotions off a figment of your imagination. He wished he could claw her out of his brain, since she refused to go back in the hole where he’d been keeping her. But taking a knife to his skull would be crazy. Crazier than sitting here having a civil conversation with a woman who’d just watched her sister get raped and was about to go back to being a sex toy. But not as crazy as what Rissa wanted him to say.
What happened in this room could stay in this room, he decided. He didn’t have to let it affect him.
Liar, Rissa snarled at him. You are a horrible liar.
He ignored her. The drunken mix of humor and courage that Jossa had been putting out was starting to mutate into the pop-fizz of frustration.