Aurora Blazing

by Jessie Mihalik

  “For the final test, we had to fight each other. Benedict threw the match, despite me begging him not to. Father punished failure, but he punished insubordination more. Benedict disappeared for a month. When he came back, he was colder, harder. But whatever happened had honed his resolve and he threw every match after that, until Father finally stopped pitting us against each other.”

  “Then Benedict won in the end,” Ian said.

  “He did, but he paid a dear price. He never spoke of what happened whenever he was taken away, but he always came back colder and sharper.” And having had my own share of “reeducation” time, I could well imagine what he’d gone through.

  “Benedict would tell you that the result was worth the price.”

  “He would and he has.” I sighed. “Ferdinand did the same thing, as did Hannah. Then we all did it for Ada and Catarina. The result is worth the price, but that doesn’t remove the guilt. Benedict gave up little pieces of himself to save me.”

  “Do you begrudge Ada and Catarina for the pieces of yourself you gave?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then believe that Benedict doesn’t begrudge you, either.”

  “Easier said than done,” I murmured.

  “I know.”

  We lapsed into silence. I’d learned more about Ian in the last ten minutes than I had in the eighteen months he’d been my bodyguard. He’d shared a story from his childhood to make me feel better and to distract me from my worries.

  “Thank you, Ian,” I whispered.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I drifted off to sleep, still bound by the fragile connection of my fingers on his shoulder.

  When I awoke, Ian was gone. Last night was a hazy memory, as ephemeral as a dream. Had he really come into my room to make me feel better or had I imagined the whole thing?

  I checked my com and the message from Benedict was all too real. Ian could’ve used Benedict’s deployment as an excuse to send me home, but instead he’d come to check on me and offer comfort. The man was a walking contradiction.

  I showered and dug through the bag of clothes Ian had packed for me. As expected, he’d only packed what was in my closet, which was entirely utilitarian. These clothes would be perfect for fitting in on Matavara, but not so good for dress shopping on High Street.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other option because from what I’d seen, Ada’s supplies in the cargo bay included more of the same—she had outfitted me for combat, not shopping. I dressed in sturdy black pants, a short-sleeved gray shirt, and heavy boots. Any shop that turned me away didn’t deserve my business in the first place.

  The mess hall was a medium-sized room on the middle level, just down from the crew quarters. A food synthesizer and recycler were set into the back wall and the rest of the space was filled with two white plastech tables surrounded by chairs.

  Ian sat at the near table, wearing a near match to my outfit. It was still disconcerting to see him in something other than a suit—it made him more human. He had a plate of what appeared to be eggs and bacon in front of him, along with a cup of coffee.

  I nodded at him, wary, but he just nodded back and continued to eat his breakfast. Some of my tension drained away. Perhaps he wasn’t going to mention my meltdown.

  I crossed to the food synthesizer, a small rectangular box that ran off the ship’s power. It converted energy into matter and could make nearly any food in the ’verse, assuming you’d bought the recipe. The Consortium strictly controlled both the recipes and the technology because synthesizers were one of the core technologies that made life easier, and the Consortium wanted everyone to know exactly who had provided that benefit.

  And who could take it away.

  I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, so I needed to try to force something down. After falling asleep without restarting the silencer, my head ached. I could feel the signals of Honorius pressing against my skull.

  I settled on a cranberry scone with jam and a cup of sweet, milky tea. I preferred coffee, but sometimes my stomach reacted better to tea. Having been raised on freshly prepared meals, I thought synth food tasted slightly weird because the recipe in the system didn’t match what our chefs had prepared. The difference was less obvious with simple foods.

  The synth dinged when my food was ready. I opened the door and pulled out a plate with one perfect scone and a steaming cup of tea. I carried my breakfast to the small table Ian occupied.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Are we in Honorius?”

  “Yes, we landed last night. We berthed next to our new ship. The security team will transfer the supplies once we leave. Do you know where you want to go shopping?”

  “High Street. The boutiques there should have what I need, though we may have to try a few before one lets me in.” At Ian’s raised brow, I waved a hand at my clothes. “I don’t exactly scream Consortium royalty in this getup and High Street boutiques are notoriously elitist. You don’t need to go with me.”

  “But I will,” he said, iron in his tone.

  “Suit yourself.”

  I broke off a piece of the scone and slathered it in jam. I needed the calories however I could get them. The smell turned my stomach, but I forged ahead. Sometimes the nausea was a false alarm. I ate a second bite and my stomach rolled. I sighed and sipped my tea, hoping the warm liquid would settle the queasiness. It did not. I pushed the plate away, aware of Ian’s sharp gaze following the movement.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” he asked.

  “I haven’t decided,” I said.

  “Did you eat dinner last night?”

  I’d promised him honesty, but answering the question would just lead to more questions. “Did you?”

  “Yes, I had a protein shake. Now stop trying to avoid the question.”

  “I did not eat dinner. I wasn’t hungry.” Not a lie.

  “You need to eat more.”

  No shit, detective. I barely stopped myself from saying the words out loud. “I eat what I can. My stomach has been weak lately.”

  “Since when?”

  Since my husband injected me with experimental nanobots and fucked up my life. “It is not your concern. It doesn’t affect my ability to do my job or find Ferdinand.”

  “Your safety is my concern. If you pass out from hunger—”

  “Give me some credit, Director Bishop,” I said, my voice cold. “I’ve never passed out from hunger, nor have I come close. If it becomes a concern, I will let you know. Until then, I would appreciate it if you would leave it alone.”

  His jaw flexed, but he held his silence.

  I finished my tea, forced down one more bite of scone, then dumped my dirty dishes in the recycler. It would break them down into energy that could be used by the ship or the synthesizer in the future.

  “I’m ready when you are,” I said.

  Ian drained the last of the coffee from his cup and put his dishes in the recycler. “Lead the way.”

  Chapter 13

  People expected High Street to be a riot of color and fashion, but it was a quiet little street with wide sidewalks and old brick shops with frosted-glass windows and understated black signage. These boutiques didn’t need to attract window-shoppers.

  The first boutique worker took one look at my clothes and announced they were closed, despite the three other customers in the store. Ian bristled, but I just smiled and moved on. I was about to spend a mountain of credits—if they didn’t want my business, that was their loss.

  The girl working the front counter at the third shop couldn’t have been more than eighteen, with freckled ivory skin and natural red hair. She wore a simple A-line dress that was the uniform of the boutique, but hers was in emerald green, which perfectly matched her wide eyes. She looked at me rather than my clothes. “Lady von Hasenberg,” she stammered, “welcome to Boutique Blanchard. How may we assist you?”

  “I need a dress and everything that goes with it.”

  “Right this
way, my lady,” she said. She led me to a richly appointed sitting room, and gestured for me to have a seat on the upholstered sofa. “Madame Blanchard will be with you shortly. May I bring you some tea or coffee?”

  “Tea with milk and two sugars, please,” I said. “And black coffee for my guard.” Ian glanced up in surprise, though I didn’t know if it was because I knew how he took his coffee or because I’d remembered him in the first place.

  The girl bobbed a curtsy and disappeared behind a curtain. A few minutes later, an older woman glided into the room. Her graying hair was pulled back into a sleek chignon. She was impeccably dressed in slim trousers and a tailored jacket in a soft shade of blue that complemented her deep brown skin.

  “Lady von Hasenberg, I apologize for your wait,” she said with a pleasant lilting accent. “I am Madame Blanchard, the owner. It is my pleasure to assist you. You need a new dress?”

  “Yes,” I said. “At least one.” Her eyes lit up. “But time is of the essence. It must be ready today, preferably by the time I leave.”

  She inclined her head. “What sort of dress are you looking for?”

  “Devastating,” I said simply.

  “Stand, if you please,” she said.

  I stood and spun in a slow circle. This wasn’t my first time in a boutique, and making her circle me would just waste time.

  “You are tiny,” Madame Blanchard murmured to herself. “The dress must not overpower you. But perhaps if others underestimated you, that would not be so bad, no? A dress is a weapon. I have just the thing.” She disappeared with a brusque command to strip.

  Ian moved closer to the room’s entrance and turned away from where I stood without a word. I stripped out of my clothes with brisk efficiency. The girl returned with my tea and I sipped it for warmth while I waited. My stomach was still uneasy, but the tea didn’t make it worse. Perhaps I would be able to eat lunch.

  Madame bustled back into the room, followed by another fair young woman in yellow carefully hauling an armful of dresses. The young woman hung the dresses on the rack and waited for direction.

  “The silver, first, I think,” Madame Blanchard said. She looked at my bare feet. “Do you normally wear heels?”

  “Yes. I’ll need a new pair.”

  “Very good.” She murmured to her assistant and the girl disappeared, only to return a minute later with a box of heels in various heights, all my size. “Pick your preferred height and we will figure out the exact shoe later.”

  I picked the height that I was most comfortable in. It wasn’t the tallest option, but I could move faster in these shoes. I’d give up the extra couple of centimeters of height for the ability to run.

  Once I had the shoes on, Madame Blanchard’s assistant helped me into the silver gown. It was gossamer-thin and flowed over my body like water. Before the young woman had even zipped me into it, Madame Blanchard shook her head. “Take it off.”

  Two more dresses suffered the same fate before we tried a dress in deep teal. It had heft from the intricately beaded bodice. The neckline plunged deep and a slit up the side rose from the floor to almost the top of my leg. The color made my skin look alabaster.

  As I walked toward the mirror on the wall, my thigh flashed with every step. The dress enhanced my modest bust and made my figure look amazing.

  “Stunning,” Madame breathed.

  I turned in the mirror, checking the back, what little there was. The dress was open from my shoulder blades to the small of my back. If dresses were weapons, this dress was a grenade—designed for maximum damage and impossible to ignore.

  I stalked toward Ian, swinging my hips. He glanced at me and froze. His gaze slid down my body like a caress before returning to my face. Desire heated his expression before he remembered to hide it.

  “I will take it,” I said, turning to Madame Blanchard. I heard Ian suck in air as he caught sight of the back.

  I also bought a more conservative dress in a dark gold that complemented my hair, slacks and a matching blouse, two full sets of undergarments, two beautiful half-face masks, and two pairs of shoes, which had to be sourced from another store. I added a generous tip to the total and directed that each young woman who helped should get 15 percent. Madame inclined her head in agreement.

  The dresses were carefully folded and packaged while Ian went to wait for the transport. When I joined him by the door, he took the package from me. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “I’m set for clothes. We won’t be allowed to take weapons into the party, but walking around Matavara unarmed is just asking for trouble. I have a few weapons in the supplies you pulled from Aurora.”

  “Party invites include a berth in a secured spaceport adjacent to the venue. Guests are encouraged to remain within the confines of the property.”

  “Do you have an invite?”

  “Not yet. Do you?”

  “No. My contact is in Matavara.”

  “Absolutely not,” Ian growled.

  I shrugged in indifference. “I’d rather not venture out into the city if we don’t have to but time is running out. We’ll barely have time to recon the party location.”

  “You’re not going to be reconning anything,” Ian said.

  Correcting him would just give him more time to argue, so I let the comment go. Our transport appeared outside and Ian ushered me out to meet it.

  We returned to the spaceport, but rather than boarding Persistence, we boarded its mirror image, Fortuitous. All three High Houses had ships like these scattered across the universe to facilitate high-priority travel.

  Two people, a man and a woman, stood in the cargo hold, blast rifles casually in hand. Both were tall and fit. The man had light brown skin and dark brown hair, longer on top than the sides. He was more heavily muscled than Ian, stopping just short of bulky. The woman had ivory skin and strawberry blond hair pulled up in a ponytail that reached past her shoulders. She was lithe, with the kind of supple strength that was easy to underestimate.

  Ian clapped both of them on the back with a smile. “Thanks for coming,” he said quietly.

  “Of course,” the woman said. The man nodded.

  Ian turned to me. “Bianca, meet Alexander and Aoife.” He pronounced the woman’s name EE-fa, and he did it carefully enough that I knew it wasn’t a mispronunciation of Eva.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. Neither of them echoed the greeting, and they both stared coldly at me. Okay, then.

  Clearly these two were not House von Hasenberg employees, which begged the question of where Ian had dug them up. I made a mental note to look into it, though Ian had been careful not to include their surnames.

  Ian shot the two a warning look. A wealth of silent communication passed between the three of them as they all ignored me. I told myself it didn’t matter, but being excluded still stung, just a little.

  I sank into my public persona as I looked around the cargo hold and pretended indifference. The cargo had been moved from Persistence, and an additional crate of supplies had been added. I moved toward the new supplies, but Ian cut me off. “We need to get in the air,” he said.

  “I’m not stopping you,” I said.

  “You should be clipped in on the flight deck in case we run into trouble after we jump to CCD Six.”

  “You think someone will attack a registered House ship?”

  “It’s a possibility. We don’t know what kind of defense the Syndicate has set up.”

  “Ian, what’s in the crate?”

  “Supplies.”

  “So you won’t mind if I take a look?”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he ground out, “Not if you think it’s worth the delay.”

  “You do realize it would be far faster if you just told me?”

  Aoife and Alexander watched us with sharp eyes. They didn’t have the body language to indicate they were a couple, but they were comfortable with each other. They’d worked together for a long time.

  “Oh for fu
ck’s sake,” Aoife said. “It’s a crate full of von Hasenberg prototype technology. Combat armor, weapons, et cetera.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Ian. “There, was that so hard?”

  “Aoife, get us in the air,” Ian growled.

  She gave him an insolent salute and turned for the stairs. Alexander cast a suspicious look my way before following her, leaving me alone with Ian in the cargo bay.

  “Nice crew,” I said.

  “They’ll keep the ship safe and their mouths shut. And if things go poorly in Matavara, they’ll get us out.”

  “Fair enough. Are the supplies for them, then? Because you know the Syndicate won’t let you within two kilometers of the party with prototype weapons and armor.”

  Ian started up the stairs and I followed. “We don’t know where Ferdinand is being held or what condition he is in. If you fail to purchase him, we’ll have to break him out. That’s why Alex and Aoife are really here.”

  “You think you can infiltrate a Syndicate compound with four people?”

  “Three,” Ian said sharply.

  Anger flared through the ice of my facade. “Oh, so you can defeat Silva security? Maybe Alexander or Aoife is a secret security specialist? No? Because I am. I’m one of the best systems crackers in the universe. That’s why I run circles around your security protocols and why House von Hasenberg has never been hacked.”

  It was also one of the reasons Father was desperate to have me back, but Ian didn’t need any more reasons to send me home.

  Ian spun around to face me. He was a step higher, so he towered over me, an advantage he used to great effect. “Can your precious security protocols prevent you from taking a blaster bolt to the brain? Taking you on a rescue mission into Silva’s compound would be like leading a lamb to slaughter. If it comes to that, you stay on the ship.”

  Bright, furious rage turned the world red. “When you get caught, and you will get caught, I am going to make you beg on your knees before I get you out.”

  “Dream whatever fantasy you want, love. I will protect you even from yourself, so stay out of my way and let me do my job.”