by Jenn Lyons
kill you.”
I expected him to lash out at me telepathically. I was tensed for it, ready. Instead, he ran a hand down my cheek, down the tendon of my throat, and across one of my breasts. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him. I laughed, low and cynical. “Really? You’re going to threaten me with something I’ve wanted since I was a teenage girl? I would have thought you had a better understanding of how this intimidation business is supposed to work.”
That bastard just smiled. “Maybe I wanted to see how you’d respond now that I’m not pretending to be human anymore. You hate Sarcodinay, remember?”
I felt my lip curl and I wanted to hit him. I didn’t like the reminder of vows made and broken. I grabbed the fabric at his hips and pulled him up against me, pleased at his quickly swallowed inhalation. “I remember.” I tighten my hands, let my thumbs caress his hip bones through his uniform. “Hate is a strong emotion.” I looked up into his eyes, blue at the moment. “I’m feeling a lot of strong emotions right now.”
He cupped a hand around my cheek. “I wish it could be different.”
“Who says it can’t? Stop this, Zaladin.”
Zaladin growled and pushed me back against the door, hands on my shoulders. “I can’t. I want to. You don’t know how badly I want to, but it would be—” I waited for him to finish.
“What? What would it be?” I pulled his hands off my shoulders and moved them down to my waist. “Unapproved? Not signed off by some gene-priest so it merits that quaint Sarcodinay definition of rape?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t be rape. But it would be...a betrayal.”
“Of whom?”
He let go of my waist, turned around and walked away from me. His back to me, I could feel the emotions and turmoil roiling inside him. “You.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You stabbed me. That’s acceptable but sex is a betrayal?”
“I knew you’d heal.” Zaladin turned around and walked back to my side. He took one of my hands and kissed the palm. “But you and I—” Dark laughter bubbled. “I don’t know what would happen. Would you bond? You’re half-Sarcodinay. You might. And that would be intolerable.”
I felt my stomach twist, and my throat tightened in anger. “Intolerable? Because I’m a half-breed?”
He looked over at me, shocked, the surprise in his voice clear. “No. No, I didn’t mean—” Zaladin laughed. “You’re not the one who would be unworthy.”
I stared at him. There was so much I didn’t understand. I pulled at the edge of his uniform, tugged him back to me, unresisting, until his lips and mine were almost touching. “That’s not your decision,” I whispered. I pressed my lips against his and this time he didn’t flinch back. His arms wrapped around me and mine around him and we forgot who we were or what we were trying to do.
Only for a moment though.
“Promise me you won’t kill Kaj-Shae Threllis,” I whispered.
He scoffed. “When did you decide life is so sacred?”
“When did you decide it isn’t?”
That struck home, and I saw his expression reflect the wound. Zaladin didn’t hide the pain, the sadness or the regret from his expression, but even if he had I would have felt the emotions. He pressed his forehead against mine. “I promise,” he said. “I will not kill Kaj-Shae Threllis.” Zaladin gave me a sad smile.
“And no sleepers?”
“There aren’t any on Deimos, or this would have been much easier.”
“Good, then—” But I couldn’t say anything else, because he was kissing me again. This time he was soft and gentle, but the part that really made my legs go weak was the way he opened up his mind to me; a swirl of emotions and feelings that danced around us both, more erotic than poetry, art or music. Intimacy, true intimacy, the sort that people quest for all their lives and sacrifice everything to taste so fleetingly.
He shook his head. “We can’t linger any longer.”
I hated that he was right.
I pulled myself away from the door and opened it.
ggg
Deimos had once been a moon in orbit around Mars before it had been hollowed out and kitted as a space station and ore processing plant. Very little of the original moon remained, but at the far end of the station from the administrative center and docking bay, a circle of native rock was home for the Meshikath, who tunneled out the stone in order to build their hive.
Their preferred air was breathable by human and Sarcodinay standards, although the mixture brought with it a sulfurous rotten-egg smell that most people found unpleasant. Indeed, the Meshikath were one of the most compatible species in the universe for cohabitation with Sarcodinay—prior to the discovery of humans.
They were the stuff of nightmares: giant 3 meter tall arachnid-like beings with a segmented, slimy thorax and heavily armored arrow-shaped heads. No one would blame a soldier for screaming if she came around a corner and saw that staring her down.
The irony? They’re vegetarians who eat a mixture of native fungi and heavy metals from their home world. I’m not saying that they wouldn’t hurt a fly, just that most Meshikath wouldn’t see the point unless it was in defense of their hive.
We came across a pair of soldiers first, one of a group they cycled through guarding the front on the off-chance some inmate was foolish enough to intrude on their territory. I immediately began making a clicking noise with my teeth and bending down to tap on the ground with my hands.
“Where did you learn how to speak Meshikath?” Zaladin asked.
“Long story. Let’s just say I spent a few years playing hopscotch next to one of their colonies.” I concentrated on drum beats until the pair of soldiers started stomping in return, and a drone clicked its way forward to add an additional response.
“What’s it saying?”
“They’ll let one of us through but the other will stay behind as a sacrifice to their queen.”
Zaladin stared at me.
I grinned. I didn’t really expect him to think it was funny. “They’ll cooperate. They don’t want to be blown up any more than we do. They’re bringing in transportation for both of us.”
“What do you mean by transportation?”
“We’d never scale the shaft fast enough on our own, but the Meshikath are very good climbers.”
Zaladin looked at the aliens, then back at me. He waited for me to reveal that this too was some kind of joke. He was going to wait a long time.
I gestured towards one of the two Meshikath approaching from the back of a tunnel. “There’s our ride.”
He crossed his arms on his chest and shook his head. “Those things are coated in slime.”
“The slime, as you so maturely describe it, is a fire-resistant gel that protects their core from the high heat of their native volcanic environment. It’s not toxic to humans or Sarcodinay. Don’t be such a baby.”
Oh, the look he gave me was priceless.
I walked over to one of the tunnel walls, slid down a panel of rock and entered a code. “Besides, you won’t have to. There’s no air where we’re going. We will all be wearing suits.” I eyed him. “We should have something your size.” I walked into the small store room as the doorway opened and began rifling through the collection of maintenance spacesuits kept on hand for such contingencies.
I wasn’t responsible for the storeroom. This was the proof of just how wrong Zaladin was when he claimed that humanity didn’t have an agreement with the Meshikath—in fact, our relationship spanned decades.
I tossed him a spacesuit. “Check that for leaks.” Behind us, the Meshikath were accessing their own lockers. They were absurdly resistant to high pressure environments, but no more invulnerable to vacuum than any other organic life form. They had their own vacuum suits.
I might have felt embarrassment under other circumstances as I stripped off the prisoner shift and suited up, but it felt oddly like being back with a striketeam. I couldn’t deny the sexual attraction I felt for Zaladin, and I knew it
was mutual, but this was business, and it wasn’t healthy to let oneself be distracted when a leaky seal might mean a painful death by asphyxiation.
“Hook on to the back of the Meshikath next to you when you’re ready and strap yourself on. Like so.” I demonstrated, clicking in several of the clips from my safety harness to the back of the Meshikath who had squatted down next to me so I could climb on.
Zaladin followed my lead. “What happens after—”
And then we were running down the tunnels.
I held on for life in spite of the strapping. We ran blind through curving tunnels that twisted through the asteroid rock. We didn’t need to be able to see. Our hosts, the Meshikath, could see very well and that was all that mattered.
We paused at the end for the airlock separating the tunnels from the ore shaft used for deliveries. I suppose I was feeling sadistic, but I didn’t warn Zaladin what was coming. The doors beeped as one set closed behind us and the other set opened in front and then the light hit us like flash powder and we were up inside the elevator.
The elevator was not a 3 meter by 3 meter box, but closer to 20 meters wide, a huge circular shift stretching a kilometer up into the air, so tall that it seemed to curve. Gleaming metal, white ceramic and transparent plastics that had never seen rust or dissolution were scratched and torn by the passing of countless chunks of ore rock on their way to processing. Quartering the circle were large metal struts that would be used by any elevators for stabilization.
The Meshikath used the metal struts,