“ . . . didn’t know you were acquainted. He did not mention it until later, and I can guess why you did not.”
Kris’s heart began to palpitate. This didn’t sound good at all—
The entry pad chimed, and Heydrich pressed the entry button. As the door slid open, he declared, “Excellent timing, Sergeant. Please come in.”
Soho Manes stood in the entrance holding what looked like a portable med-kit. Icicles of dread slashed at her guts. She’d thought she could play his game—
But it seems I’ve got a lot to learn.
Manes stepped into the room. Kris dropped her head back, staring into the corpse-white visage reflected in the mirror.
Oh, I wish I were—I wish I were—I wish I were . . .
“Ah, Sergeant,” Heydrich sounded appallingly happy. “I must go to CIC for several hours to oversee a . . . situation. This woman”—Heydrich hooked a thumb in her direction—“knows rather more than I would like her to. Please rectify that.”
Manes grunted. “Beggin’ the admiral’s pardon, sir, but we already been through that. All yesterday. I told ya she’s a stone bitch. Jus’ whathefuck you want me to do now, sir?”
Heydrich smiled. “I wish you to use your imagination, Sergeant.” Hideous accent on that word. Kris stared fixedly into the mirror, as if it might swallow and save her. “Consider it recreation. And, by all means, take your time.”
“Yessir!” Obscene happiness was beaming through his voice now.
“Very good, Sergeant. Inform me if anything . . . interesting transpires.” She heard the squeak of his boots as he began to leave, the scuff as he paused and turned. “I should like there to be something left, Sergeant. Something . . . worthwhile. Do you understand?”
“Uh, yessir.”
Kris heard the swish of the door opening, the clap and the gust of air as it slammed shut.
Chapter Seven
IHS Ilya Turabian
orbiting Asylum Station
For a long, frozen heartbeat, she remained motionless, staring at the other girl, the one in the mirror, the one Manes couldn’t touch, and wishing desperately to change places.
I’m still you, the mirror girl said. It would still hurt.
I guess you’re right, she answered herself.
Manes came and stuck his ugly face in between them. He looked her up and down admiringly, then stared intently at her face.
“Ya don’t ’member me, do ya?” His voice slurred more than usual, and she noticed his pupils—pin-hole tiny.
You jacked up for this, she realized. Fuck’n wonderful . . .
“Do ya?”
Wait—that voice, mumbling slaver gab, those eyes. Wait . . .
“Give ya a hint. Nobody called me Manes then.”
Oh . . . Mentally, she added some thick, curly brown hair, a ragged black beard growing almost to the eyes, and removed about twenty pounds . . .
Mangle. Trench’s half-Max surgeon’s mate. Oh shit—
“Yep, that’s me.” He was smiling now. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. “Sure glad you ’membered, Kris.” His face disappeared, and she heard him clattering and rustling around in the med-kit. The noise wrapped her spine in icy tendrils.
Say something, dammit! Her tongue was welded to the roof of her fear-dry mouth. Oh, I see you brought some toys . . . Not that, dumbass! When Trench was in a bad mood, you always had something to say . . .
Fuck! Trench! A low, not-quite-controlled moan escaped her throat. What did Manes/Mangle know about Trench? He hadn’t been on the ship then. Were they tight at all? Trench was about the only one he ever talked to. They’d take off sometimes—maybe a week or more. Just business?
Manes/Mangle was making satisfied noises as he laid out the contents of the kit on the serpentine wine table.
Say something . . .
“What happened to you, Mangle—or d’ya prefer Manes?”
“Mice-nuts either way,” he mumbled. “Manes is good.” His instruments clicked and clinked against the polished tabletop.
“Your real name?”
“Sorta.” A Maxor hold-name? Maybe. Being sorta Maxor, that would fit.
“Missed you there at the end.”
“Yeah, missed that too. Can’t say I’m sorry—’cept about Trench.”
Oh shit . . .
“What did’ja hear about Trench?”
“Only that’cha offed him.” More rattling in the kit. “Up close and personal-like. Weren’t he good to ya?”
Kris let her eyes close. Before they closed, she saw Manes approaching with an old-fashioned scalpel.
Remember what the old man said—leave something worthwhile . . .
“He was alright . . . some of the time.” She felt Manes draw the scalpel around the ankle of the boots, just above and below the cuffs. Then he split the leather down both sides and pulled them off in pieces. Next, he began dissecting the skintights, first slitting them up the insides of her calves. As he worked, the cold-searing edge of the scalpel just barely kissed her skin.
“Jus’ somma the time?” he asked. The scalpel ran up the inside of her thigh towards her crotch.
Oh Jesus! No!
She twitched her legs together, rattling the chains, and the scalpel bit. Warm blood seeped down the inside of her thigh.
“Don’t move! I din’t say move!”
She stopped moving. The scalpel’s edge continued up to the juncture of her thighs, between them, and on down the inside of the other. She breathed again. “Yeah. Jus’ somma the time.”
Manes began to peel away the silk and leather, cutting it off in odd-shaped patches. Each shape was definable by the caress of chill air on hypersensitive skin.
“He liked ya, y’know.” The scalpel made an odd hiss-slip sound as it stripped her. “Wouldn’t even share—that was rank. Piss us off. Trench always shared.”
“Oh?” Hiss-slip. Another chill-air kiss.
“Yeah. Where ya think we got the ’tween-decks whores? Trench’s hand-me-downs, most of ’em. But he didn’t share you. Piss us off. Strich got real bent—wanted ya bad. Trench says, Get fucked.” Manes laughed. “You ’member Strich?”
“Yeah, I remember.” The line-boss—the guy with a spiker. Wasn’t too bad with it though . . .
“Yeah, he get pissed real bad. Trench decked him.” Manes laughed again. “Ya fucked up that boat somethin’ awful, lady. Ya musta been one she-hell of a captain’s bitch. Trench kept ya what? Seven years?”
“Eight.” The last of her clothing surrendered to the knife, except the gloves. Kris hadn’t thought she’d miss it, but she did. “Were ya friends?”
Manes’ laugh became a thoroughly unpleasant cackle. “Trench ’n me? Naw. He was a jag mothafucker. Bitched my ass off the boat.”
“How come?”
“Aww, Trench brings me this kid, see. Got his guts hangin’ round his ankles—keeps trippin’ on ’em.” Manes’ fingers slid over her, testing the tension in her muscles. Her skin fluttered, revolted. “At Dogshit Run, ’member?”
Kris remembered. The actual name was something else, and anyway, Manes was lying.
You sliced that kid up in the mess. He was raggin' on ya and you cut him open just like—
“Trench tells me fix it. Well, shit—this a boat. I can’t remake the kid’s belly on a boat. So I freeze ’im. Gonna take it downside and fix it. Well, it don’t read. We get a kidsicle.” More laughing. “Trench don’t think it’s funny. He tells me I’m jacked when I work—chucks my ass out on Cathcar.”
No—you ran. Ya fuck’n up and ran.
“Close book.” He jabbed low and inside her hip points. Pain screamed electric along her nerves, compressing time. She jerked.
“That hurt?”
“Yeah.” It came out a gasp.
“Good.”
She heard him walk away, rattle around in his instruments. Keep talking. “Is that where you met the Admiral?”
“Yeah.” Rattle and clink. “I like ’im. He lets me
alone mostly. I get work, too.”
Sounds great. She felt him approaching.
“Open your eyes.”
No—
“Open your eyes.”
She ignored him, letting go, reaching down. Reaching for her bastion in hell . . .
It didn’t work. Whatever they’d done to her glued her tightly to the inside of her skin.
I can’t get AWAY and this is Playtime!
A hooking jab, low and vicious, in her groin. Her eyes snap open. He’s holding a nastily curled steel pick to her face. Her blood adorns the tip, glossy crimson.
“Do like I say.”
“Okay.” Raw, naked terror jumps in the back of her throat.
Oh god! This is all he wants—
He slides the steel instrument over her skin, over her breasts, around her nipples.
Please, please, want something else—anything else—Please . . .
As if he’s heard, he says, “Tell me ’bout Trench.”
“What ’bout him?” A strangled whisper.
His other hand joins in the explorations. Hot calloused fingertips and cold brittle steel ride over her skin. “’Bout how you iced him. How ya killed him . . .”
“I—I don’ remember.” I don’t want to remember. Her breath is sandpaper in a dry throat. His fingers find a point in her armpit near the side of her breast, stab down. Pain flares blue-white. Her body arches off the bed.
“’Member.”
I CAN’T . . . Please don’t make me . . . please—
The hard-calloused fingers dance over her, finding the points and hitting them like piano keys. Up under the jaw. Jab. Under the ribs. Jab. Along the neck. Jab. Pain burns a symphony of colors across her brain. Each time he tells her: ’Member.
The pain drags the memories up, exhumes them from the burial grounds of her mind. Something in her fractures, crumples, cracks. She’s falling now—falling back, falling in . . .
Harlot’s Ruse, under attack. The alert beacon raises an undulating wail, adding to the cacophony of the proximity sirens. There’s a crumping noise, and three loud bangs tattoo the side of the ship. She hears the weird little kzing of the ship’s batteries returning fire.
More banging on the hull, then a loud crump—louder than the others. The emergency reds come on. She dives for a lift ladder, swarms up using the rungs—you never can tell when the gravity might give out in a fight. More noisy crumping—armor plate slagging off, she realizes—and a sudden veer the inertial dampers don’t quite handle. She swings around to the other side, knees hooked around the rails, and keeps moving. Less noise from the ship’s guns, just the forward batteries firing now. The shudder of a missile launch.
She boosts herself out of the ladder well onto the afterdeck. Trench is in the passageway just outside the cabin they share. He has a sidearm in one hand and is trying to get into his space armor with the other. He isn’t on the bridge! He’s been sleeping! Her joy turns savage. She never expected so much. She sprints at him.
He hasn’t seen her yet. Another sudden, uncompensated veer staggers them. He turns, reeling—sees her, waves the gun at her. The boarding alert drowns out part of what he’s shouting: “ . . . below! Goddammit! Get the fuck outta here!” Her eyes widen. He thinks she’s afraid. She laughs, but it comes out a scream. He continues to wave at her. “Evac, goddammit! Evac!”
There’s a huge clang. The ship shudders and rolls violently. They’ve been docked. Trench goes down, clumsy in his half-on armor, tumbling across the deck and hitting the rim of a sealed hatchway. The breath leaves him in a grunt. She skids into a bulkhead feet first, kicks hard, and launches herself across two meters of intervening deck plate.
He still doesn’t understand when she slams into him. Her unexpected, vicious chop sends the gun flying. Now he’s struggling, but she gets her arms under his and back around to his neck. She forces his head back. Partly trapped by his armor and still gasping, he paws at her feebly. Her teeth find his throat. They sink in, chewing and tearing, stripping back the flesh from the hard ridges of cartilage, worrying from side to side, ripping out chunks of tough meat and stringy tendon, seeking—finding a pulsing, elastic blue vein—clamping it, gnawing it while it squirms like a live thing—finally severing it—blood exploding in her mouth, fountaining and gushing, spraying her face, running into her ears, choking her . . .
. . . she gags on the vicious, clotted memory—seeing it, smelling it, tasting it all over again, gags again and almost loses it. Manes is sitting at the edge of the bed, his eyes fever-bright—twin mirrors reflecting hell. Abruptly, he leans over and kisses her. His lips are wet with saliva; his tongue is a pallid eel. His breath is sweet and fetid with the drugs he’s taken. She chokes, recoiling. He jerks away; his open hand cracks across her face. The simple, unadorned brutality shocks her.
The horrid, everlasting, ever-present moment ends.
“Bad,” he snarled, his voice thick with agitated frenzy. “You’re a captain’s bitch. See any captains here?”
“N—no.”
Wrong answer. He hit her again. Blood trickled down her jaw from a split lip.
“Me. I’m Captain now. Trench dissed me ’cuzza you. Shit-kid din’t have nothing t’do with it. Trench pissed me out cuz he was worried ’bout me an’ you.”
What the fuck? She hadn’t said ten words to Mangle/Manes when he was on board. Ya think that matters? You’re in his jag-whacked world now—
“But ya got ’im—and I got you. Captain’s kiss, now . . .”
His mouth approached. Kris dragged up the lessons learned over eight years in every back alley of hell and gave him what he wanted.
“Fuckin-A,” he muttered as he got up. “No wonder that jag sumbitch kept ya so long.” He began unfastening his pants. “Let’s see what else you can do . . .”
Kris tensed involuntarily, but she made her voice soft. “Captain’s fuck, Manes?”
Manes looked at her, pupils dilating. He blinked, the rush and the drugs staggering him. “Yeah.” The word drooled out the side of his mouth. “Yeah.”
“Better without the hands tied,” she murmured. “Trench never tied both my hands . . . Y’know what I can do with just one hand . . . Captain?”
Manes sat heavily on the edge of the bed, his pants around his knees.
“Naw.” His pupils were huge.
He must be nearly blind, as jacked up as he is.
“Naw. Ya tell me.”
She told him, in all the lurid, obscenely glistening detail she could imagine, everything Trench had ever said, had ever done, everything she could think of. She spared nothing, weaving the words tighter and tighter, like a noose around his neck.
He stood it for almost five minutes and then began to move on top of her, too impatient to take the pants off over his uniform boots. Kris released an inward, despairing cry.
Shit! I pushed him too far! He won’t care now—
But as his twisted little body covered hers, she whispered in his ear, “Wait, wait. Don’t waste it, Captain. One hand—let’s try just one hand.”
Sucking his breath savagely through his mouth, he reached up and fumbled the buckle on the right wrist cuff open. She pulled her arm free, murmuring, “Oh, thank you, Captain. Thank you so much—” and sunk two stiff fingers into his eyes. He rolled off her, thrashing, and hit the floor with a heavy thud. Frantically, she undid the left wrist cuff, then reached for the ankles. She got the right one undone as Manes groped his way upright, swearing and shaking his head, his feet still tangled in his pants. Instinct and adrenaline brought her right foot up and out. It slammed into the underside of Manes’ jaw. Blood sprayed from his bitten tongue as he dropped, the tension exiting his limbs like air from a burst balloon.
Quickly, Kris undid the last buckle and rolled off the bed.
On the carpeted floor, Manes wasn’t quite unconscious—or maybe he was just thinking with his spine. He’d managed to flop over on his belly, his broken jaw sagging horribly, slobbering streams of saliva and
blood. He seemed to be trying to crawl to the door. Deliberately, Kris took a long step and stood over him. Maybe he was aware of her—he made a liquid burble of sound just as her right heel slammed into the base of his skull. His face hit the floor, leaving a starfish of blood on the champagne carpet. The carpet took a lot of the shock. He gurgled. Kris brought her heel down again, harder. And again. Pain lanced up through her leg even as she felt bone crunch beneath her heel.
Shit, were those my bones or his? Both, she decided, as his body spasmed and went limp. She withdrew her heel from the wet, mushy depression in the base of his skull and leaned back against the bed. Her right foot throbbed.
Motherfucker, I think I broke my heel on that little shit.
She touched it to the floor accidentally, and it blossomed with pain. Yep. It was beginning to swell, too. Beads of cold sweat itched under her eye sockets and dripped down her cheeks and forehead. Shock setting in. Great . . .
She looked down at the small twisted body with blood radiating from its face.
Alright, ya little bastard, did’ja bring anything useful along?
The corpse didn’t answer. She looked over at the array of toys he’d carefully sorted and laid out on the wine table. She blanched, hastily skipping over them to find the med-kit he’d brought them in. Going through that was worth a shot, at least. She limped over, her heel radiating jagged spears of pain up her leg with every step. Standing on one leg, she rummaged through the compartments of the kit.
Hot damn! There was a small first-aid pack. In it, she found a box of standard-issue painkiller hyposprays, some analgesic capsules, and a couple of stim-tabs. The analgesic would help the shock and swelling; the stim-tabs would animate a corpse—for a few hours. Of course, after that . . .
Kris snorted to herself. Considering her situation, there was no after that. She swallowed a stim-tab and an analgesic capsule dry, then fished out one of the hyposprays, placed the tip of the ampoule against her throbbing heel, and squeezed hard. The hypospray popped off, making her wince, and then a warm sensation spread through her foot, tingling. After a minute, she placed it gently on the floor. It twinged, but she could walk on it.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 118