by JC Hay
There's no uniforms, so either it's pirates, or CorpServ got lax when we weren't looking. Head up the port steps; that's the way you're headed before you ask. You've got two tangos topside. One's watching the door. The other's walking up to him."
He shook his head. "They're people. Not tangos or bogeys or whatever the fashionable euphemism is this week."
At the moment, they're keeping the ship from going, and if it misses its checkpoint window, they'll send a fleet of people out to see why, and that's going to bring our joyride to a screeching halt. He could practically hear her thorny annoyance in the words as they scrolled by.
And truth be told, he didn't care. The naked appreciation in her gaze had set his blood on fire, and it had been all he could do to maintain enough control to not start sporting a hard-on under her stare. The pirates gave him a place to direct his energies. A vent for his mounting frustration.
Bad luck for them.
He slammed the door open, knocking one of the pirates back and causing his friend to stop in his tracks. Before the first could react, Zar lashed out with his fist. The composite didn't yield as it slammed into the man's jaw, and the pirate fell so quickly he bounced off the deck. The other lifted an assault rifle, training it on Zar.
Zar scooped the first pirate from the deck plates and hurled him at the gunman. To the pirate's credit, he didn't pull the trigger, saving the unconscious man's life. But avoiding the tangle of limbs brought him closer to Zar, who rewarded him with a series of punches that dropped him just as easily.
He plucked the rifle from the pirate's grip and found two extra clips when he frisked him for ammunition. They also each carried a grenade. Probably smoke to protect themselves in the tight corridors of the ship. It wasn't his thing, but Yashilla had made it clear that she had no compunction about firearms. She'd probably appreciate the gift. He set them all inside the door to the stairs.
"Two down. What's that leave me?"
Five. Two by the starboard crew steps. Three in the bridge.
"Starboard have eyes to the bridge?"
No. A few seconds later she added, Bridge can't see you either. Two watching forward. One checking the manifest.
"Good to know." He moved toward the external stairs to the bridge. Having her following him in the camera, feeding him information about what to expect, felt strangely comforting. Like a team. Plus, if he was honest, he liked knowing what to expect before he could see it. Like a comic-book superhero with x-ray vision.
Take cover. Smoker.
He pressed flat against the wall as the door above him opened and boots clanged on the metal. A moment later he caught the nauseating aroma of some kind of flavored cigarette. Zar held his breath to keep from coughing. As quietly as he could, he eased himself up the stairs.
You're off camera. How are you?
He couldn't risk answering. The pirate would hear. She'd have to trust he'd be okay.
Zar took a deep breath, grabbed the rail for the stairs above his head, and vaulted up. The strength in his cybernetic arm carried him the rest of the way, and he landed in a crouch just below the bridge landing.
The smoker paused, the cigarette hanging stuck to his lip for a split second before Zar charged the short distance. Composite and titanium pistoned out to catch the pirate in the solar plexus before he could scream. The man stumbled back, hit the rail, and started to go over. Zar caught him by his shirt and pulled him back.
The click of a safety coming off was his only warning before bullets erupted from the wheelhouse. Zar spun, moving the pirate he'd just caught into the line of fire. Warm, wet blood sprayed into his face, and Zar screamed at the frustrating irony of it.
He charged forward, using the freshly minted corpse as a shield. He reached the shooter as the other man ran out the door on the opposite side of the bridge. Zar let him go. He dropped the body of the pirate he'd tried to save, then grabbed the shooter's rifle in his hand and crushed. The barrel splintered, then shattered under the force. The pirate released the weapon and scrambled back.
Not fucking likely. "You could have survived. Could have just left. Could have picked any other vessel." Zar didn't even care that the pirate probably didn't understand English, figured the punches and the volume carried enough information.
The other man bounced off a console, fell to the deck, and crab walked backwards. Zar lunged forward and snagged him by the ankle. The same amount of force that crushed a rifle destroyed the bones in the pirate's foot just as easily. Despite the man's screams Zar kept walking, dragging the pirate behind him until he could dangle him over the stairs at the far end of the wheelhouse.
Whatever screams the man had left dried up and turned to desperate prayers. Zar blinked, suddenly aware of what he was doing. He lifted the man back over the rail and rendered him unconscious without another word.
What the hell was that? Is there shooting?
"There was. It's over now. The third guy went down the stairs." To starboard. His heart lurched. He'd been so focused on his rage, he hadn't put it together. Starboard meant the remaining pirates. The other set of stairs down to the crew quarters. To Yashilla.
A low thump echoed beneath the ship, reverberating through his feet. He charged down the starboard steps to find smoke and crackling flames filling the cross-ship hallway.
"Yashilla!"
Panic fire answered his shout, which matched the welling panic in his chest. He charged into the smoke and ran into another body. By the time he and the pirate had recognized each other as opponents, Zar punched out, rocking the invader's head back on his neck and cracking it against the wall. He didn't look at the stain it left, or the boneless way the pirate dropped to the deck.
He shouted Yashilla's name again, but there was no response. Without thinking, he switched his vision to thermal and was blinded by the flames licking down the hall to his right. He switched back to normal, the afterimage fading as he ran towards the port steps. Against the light of the open door, two silhouettes fled from view, and he had to choke back his desire to go after them.
Later. First he had to make certain Yashilla was okay. He held his breath and barreled through the flames, wondering why the sprinkler hadn't turned on yet. Surely Yashilla would have turned it on by now, assuming she was alive.
She had to be alive. He refused to entertain the alternative. Not again.
He emerged out of the fire into the mess, slapping at the charred spots in his pants with the fireproof cybernetic hand as he tried to find her. For a moment he didn't see her, then he realized that the terrified shape curled into the corner, eyes on the blaze, was Yashilla.
Zar ran and lifted her up. Her arms wrapped around him, desperate, squeezing so tight he could barely breathe himself. He patted her down quickly, trying to assess if she was hurt, but found nothing. With an effort, he pushed her back, staring at her until he felt that her milk-white eyes were finally focused and seeing him.
"Yashilla, you need to start the sprinklers." It took effort to keep his voice level. Panic was the last thing she needed to hear right now. He'd seen enough trauma to recognize that she had to be in shock. "The last thing we need is for the fire to spread. Come on, fire it up."
She blinked slowly. "There'll be an alarm."
"Doesn't matter. We can deal with that if and when people come. Right now we need to fix this. You can fix it."
She nodded, and the muscles around her eyes tightened. He could feel her hand twitching as she typed on her forearm, and a moment later the water sprayed down in the halls to put out the fire.
As soon as the flames died down he sat her on the bench. "Wait here. I'm going to see if I can catch our new playmates." It didn't seem likely, but he had to try. Before she could nod comprehension, he charged back after them.
Chapter Five
H
e left her. Yashilla tried to process the information, fighting past the sick sense of panic that clawed its way around her lower spine. The electronic ghosts of the flames still haunte
d her neurocircuitry, triggering the icy terror that lay just below the surface. The fire had shoved her backwards through time, and she was eight years old again, standing on the street while the world burned around her.
And he'd left her to deal with it. Alone.
She pulled herself together enough to restart the engines. According to the ship's systems, they'd only been off for ten minutes. Was that enough to trigger warning signs from the satellite trackers that monitored the autonomous vessel? She tried to remember what she'd read about how corporations tracked the progress of these vessels, but couldn't come up with anything concrete. She increased the engine output slightly, just in case. The time could still be made up, and exact as shipping could be, there had to be some allowance for variation. It was the ocean after all.
The alternative—that the corporation controlling the ship would consider it compromised and send a reclamation team to secure it—made her want to panic all over again. A handful of poorly armed, unprepared pirates was one thing. A unit of fully briefed, networked soldiers would shred her and Zar like paper. For all his skill, and even with her guidance, Zar wouldn't be able to stop them. It would be a battle of attrition, but they would cut him down eventually.
Why did that thought bother her so damn much? He was, at best, an accessory to her big payday. No different from the protein storage matrix she'd brought, or a set of passcodes. You didn't get attached to your tools; they were the means to an end, nothing more.
None of which changed the fact that she wanted to reconnect to the ship's cameras and see if she could find him. Make sure he was okay and the remaining pirates hadn't jumped him somehow.
"Hey."
A single syllable undid all her posturing. She looked up, and the relief flooding through her had nothing to do with knowing the mission could go forward. She could see the bruises and burns from his fight against the pirates, the blood drying on the knuckles of his cyberarm where he'd defended the ship. Where he'd defended her. He stepped into the galley, and suddenly the space was too small. The sense of him was ubiquitous—no place she could look that wasn't him.
"They fled and took their survivors with them. The plan was to keep us busy with the fire."
She blinked at him. Knew she should say something. But it was all she could do to keep from shaking.
"Are you okay? I lost you for a bit there." Concern laced his words, carved a furrow between his eyebrows.
She resisted the urge to reach for him. Wouldn't be that person, too weak to handle her shit on her own. But her mind kept conjuring phantom flames in the hall, and it was all she could do not to retreat again. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. Scared-sounding. Not hers. "There was a fire."
He nodded, and she could tell he understood she meant more than the most recent. The bench shifted slightly as he sat next to her, and his arm hesitated, so close to touching her she could feel the heat of his skin on hers.
Yashilla leaned into him, fingers splayed against his chest. "When the first corporate war went from cold to hot, BlueGene clashed with Lang-Westfield in Mumbai. Things got..." She fumbled for the right words.
"They went badly. I heard the horror stories." His arm rested around her, and she laid her head against the broad plane of his chest. The circle of his arm remained carefully open on one side, allowing her to get away if she needed, and she held her breath, half-expecting the panic to seize her as she recounted the story. For the first time in years, Yashilla felt like she didn't have to protect herself.
"I..." His skin smelled like sandalwood and soap, like the jacket he still hadn't asked her to return. She focused on that rather than the remembered smells of smoke and ash. "I was eight. My parents and I had a fight. I ran away."
He stroked his hand down the shaggy hair at the top of her skull. "You don't have to tell me."
"Yes I do." She shifted slightly to move his fingers to the close-shaven skin of her temple, and almost purred at the contact. "The fight was stupid. Foolish. But so was I. I hadn't been gone ten minutes when Lang-Westfield sent in a drone attack against an entrenched BlueGene unit two blocks over. It was the dry season. Fire spreads quickly." Especially in substandard housing, like the corporations provided for their workers. Especially in India, where no one could be bothered to care. In a city where there were just so many people, the 'Netlines had read, a tragedy had been inevitable.
The smell of people burning wasn't as horrible as people thought. There was a sickly, sweet smell underneath it. Like bacon burning in the pan. It had been so hard to associate that smell with the screams she'd heard. With the deafening silence in her parents' flat. Tears burned in her eyes, smeared on his chest. "I was only gone five minutes."
He held her, not like a fragile thing, but as though he could protect her from the demons that lurked within her skin. "Nothing anyone says is meaningful. Everyone says what they think you want to hear, when all you really want to hear is their voice, just one more time."
The pain in his words spoke volumes. He'd been in the same horrible situation, and Yashilla wondered for a moment who he'd lost.
Then she decided it didn't matter and leaned up to kiss the point of his chin. "Thank you for not offering platitudes." His hand trembled at the small of her back, and she leaned up farther, pressing her lips against his.
They were as soft as she remembered from their brief kiss in the shipping container, but no less hungry for it. He hesitated briefly, and she nipped his lower lip. When he opened his mouth to her, her tongue swept in. She crushed herself to him, real and powerful and present. Every place they touched, fire exploded along her nerves. A flame she could welcome instead of fear.
She charged after it, friends and family that she'd lost falling away in the face of the unrepentant thrill of being alive. After the hell of memory flooding back, Yashilla wanted to get lost in him. She eased into Zar's lap, straddling him as she clung to his shoulders. The solidity of him, the sense of power beneath her fingers, was blunted by the fact he was still dressed. She tugged at his shirt, trying to get it over his head.
He wrapped his hands around her shoulders, gently, before pushing her back slightly. The loss of contact tore at her, and she whined in frustration. In response he lifted her chin and met her gaze straight on. This close, she could see the Arn-Helder Dynamatics logo worked in gold filigree at the edge of his irises. She made a mental note to check the capabilities. Later. When she was done touching him. Which might be never.
She pressed forward again, but his grip stayed firm. "You've been through an emotional experience. I don't want to take ad—"
"That's sweet." She pushed his hands off her arms and leaned forward, finally able to close the gap so she could kiss him again. "But I think I know my own mind." It sounded more confident than she felt, actually, but she wouldn't admit that out loud.
With approval given, he returned her kiss. The smell of his skin cocooned her, his arms dragging her hips forward to grind against his. Sparks of pleasure shot along her nerves, jagged and raw, and she groaned as she rolled her hips again, feeling the firm length of him trapped between them.
He slipped his fingers under the hem of her shirt, smoothing them over her skin. The dichotomy of the contact—warm flesh on one side, cool composite on the other—made her distinctly aware of how much he held back from using his cyberarm.
She framed his face with her hands, pulling up from the kiss to rest her forehead on his. "You can use both hands, you know. I won't break."
Zar looked at her with a combination of surprise and awe that made her wonder if anyone had considered the whole of him before. She knew the fight circles attracted their share of 'borg-bunnies, but they tended to come for the aftermarket parts—literally—and left the man alone. The realization made her sad and more sure than ever of what she wanted.
She peeled her shirt up over her head and tossed it towards the middle of the room. Her nipples pebbled in the cool air, tightening into peaks that sent sparks along her nerves with every
beat of her heart. Yashilla opened her eyes to watch his face, grabbing him by the wrists and guiding his hands to her breasts.
His shuddering breath betrayed his stoicism, and her moan of encouragement murdered what self-control he had left. She ground her hips into his, the delicious length of his cock obvious despite the fabric that separated them and flaring the sharp need that twisted within her.
They still wore too many clothes. She levered up to tug open his jeans without art or subtlety. Composite pinched down on one of her nipples with deliberate pressure, yanking a gasp from her before his mouth kissed the pain away.
The pull of his lips only reminded her of the empty ache between her legs. She eased his jeans off, freeing his erection as he bit down. Pleasure flared bright, the delicious contrast with the pain dragged a gasp from her, and she had to cling to his shoulders to keep from falling over. Another tug of his teeth and she tightened her hands, felt her nails break the skin, and heard him hiss.
The sudden fear that she'd hurt him made her self-conscious, and she quickly blurted out an apology. "Sorry."
He lifted his face to hers, responding with a kiss that dominated her senses and left her whimpering in frustration. When he released her, he smiled. "How are you still wearing pants?"
"Because you're too slow?" She hopped back, taking a moment to admire the disheveled state of him. With a single movement, she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of both her jeans and panties and shoved them to the floor.
Zar grinned. "That's more like it."
He surged across the room to her. There was no other word to describe the motion—so fluid, so fast, and she was aloft again, supported by his hands. She giggled in surprise, clinging to his arms as the floor fell away and he crushed her against him.
Another kiss, and she whimpered trying to grind her hips down. She could feel the heat of him, so close, but frustratingly not inside her. His teeth grazed her jaw, nipped their way back to her ear. "I could hold you like this all day."
She twisted her face to kiss him, legs trembling in anticipation, and she had to have more. Anything more. She raked her fingers down his chest, and he plunged into her with a single wet stroke. She cried out at the completion, the sense of him everywhere, of there being nothing in the world that wasn't Zar.