She looked at the pool and back at him. When he didn't move she emphasized the gesture by arching her narrow eyebrows. With some hesitation he slid his pale feet down the lens-like slope of the pool's wall. The chilling touch of the water slid between his toes and stroked through the skin of his calves. A shiver ran up his back culminating in a wistful sigh from his lips.
“That's better,” she told him, leaning in to be heard over the waves.
“Yeah, it is.” He allowed himself another smile.
“I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to fall asleep in your bed.”
“It's all right, really. I was much more disturbed by the dream I was having.” He shrugged.
“I could tell. You scared the Will from me.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“No, it's all right. I guess I kind of deserved it.” She cast her eyes towards her feet.
“What?”
“After all of the teasing I put you through as a child. I’ve been thinking that I'm entitled to a little payback.”
He blinked, and his jaw went slack.
“Maybe a lot of payback.”
“Um, no, that's not it.” He shifted his weight.
“What is it then?” She tried to brush an errant lock of hair away from her ear.
“I—” He thought about telling her that part of him still resented the teasing from all those years ago, but now that she was back in his life he was far more worried about her spying for his family’s murderer. He almost said so, but she was nothing but nice to him since the conversation they had in the Queen Gaia's corridor. If her words were real he would hurt her with the accusation. A very small part of him hoped that she was being genuine with him. He needed someone to be.
Sophi was so harsh and confusing about what she wanted. With Sable out of touch he had no one but Pasqualina to talk to. If she was spying then his accusation might tip her off that he knew, and things could get worse. He didn't want to risk it. The best course of action would be to stay quiet, watch her, and maybe try to enjoy what happy moments came with it.
“I'm just, worried.” he said.
She was quiet for a while, then bowed her head. “Me too.”
“What? What are you worried about?”
Her shoulders tensed. “What was your dream about?”
He stared into her eyes. If she was a spy, as long as she did her job she had nothing to worry about—but if she wasn't, maybe she did have something eating her. Was it really possible she was actually interested in him instead of pleasing her masters? Had he just glimpsed her real self? Those questions could wait. It was easier to answer her about his dream than to try and drag out something she didn't want to reveal. He was enjoying the trip, and at the moment, her company as well. The easy way let him continue to do both, so he took it.
“I don't really remember.” He watched her relax, and made a decision. “I've had this dream before. I know I have. There is a circle of blue sparks—sometimes there are two—and they circle each other so fast I feel dizzy. I'm floating in darkness, and I think I can hear this voice off in the distance, but I can't make out what it's saying. I can't move, and I feel like I'm suffocating. There's something important I know I have to do, but I don't know what it is.” He shrugged. “I don't know. I always wake up screaming when I have that dream.” He looked down, surprised to find her hand against his on the deck. He surprised himself by not pulling away.
“That's a strange dream,” she said.
“It's not the only strange thing. I have this name stuck in my head. It was in my cerebral planner when I woke up the morning after our engagement party.” He felt odd mentioning it. He wasn’t going to marry her. The party was held as a façade.
“What's the name?”
He licked his lips. His palms broke out in a cold sweat, and he felt his gut churn. He almost couldn’t say it, but her eyes were on him like a blanket. He drew strength from her through the warmth of her skin, and to his surprise, his gut steadied.
“Captain Solus.” The words were slurred, like his mouth resisted speaking them despite his will to do so. A pain formed just beneath his forehead for a moment, but faded after it peaked.
“I'll look into it. I promise,” Pasqualina said in earnest.
“You don't have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I owe it to you.” She gave him a warm smile.
“No, you don't.”
She nodded. “Yes, I do. You've said it yourself, I tortured you for years. It doesn't matter that we were just kids when I did it if you still feel it now. I owe you for that and a hundred things you don't know about. I'm going to start paying my debt right now.”
He was about to object again, but she yanked her legs from the water and stood up with her hands on the hem of her shirt. The serious look on her face melted into a wicked grin, and she yanked upward with both arms, discarding the white garment on the deck in one fluid motion. She was wearing some kind of stringy bathing suit beneath her shirt that the Cyberweb identified as a “slingshot monokini” that showed much, much more skin than it covered. It looked like a single strip of fabric connected her neck with her groin, swelling just wide enough to cover the center of her breasts. Just above her inguen a small, silver medallion, barely bigger than three of his fingers, connected the two cords with the seven-pointed star of Keltan Securities. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, he caught a hint of muscle beneath her smooth skin as she thrust out her chest. Nanomachines manufacturing melanin turned her creamy pale color to a deep golden-brown before his eyes, and the ring through her navel glittered the light.
“Let's go for a swim.” She moved over to a box by the ship’s rail and drew out a rubbery breather-membrane that she pressed over her mouth and nose. It's cloudy surface anchored itself in her skin with hypo-allergenic proteins.
“I, ah,” he stammered as he felt a burning tingle rising in his groin. It felt like his gaze had glued itself to the curving hemispheres of her derriere.
There was no mistaking the smile in her eyes when she called his attention upward with a crooked finger. She grasped the rail and vaulted over. Her body shimmered as it passed through the violet aegis field and splashed into the sea.
“Shit!” He scrambled to his feet, and paused. Something stopped him, a feeling that somehow Pasqualina diving off the ship wasn’t as important as he thought. He concentrated on it a moment, realizing he had the urge to leave her in the water and let her drown—but the feeling was momentary, a strange alien thought that somehow snuck into his brain and was soon overcome by the returned urgency of his need to act.
Ben, stop the ship! he messaged.
“Immediately, master.”
He ran over to the railing, his eyes scanning the water as the deck heaved and dropped beneath his feet. A widening circle of white foam marked where she went in somewhere behind the ship’s aft deck. Cursing, he tore the shirt from his body and got a membrane for himself. It felt cold and slimy when he pressed it over his face, and the feeling sent shivers down his spine. He sucked in a breath and threw himself over the rail headfirst. It wasn't until he was falling through the cold air that he realized he'd been compelled by foolish animal instinct and had no idea what he was doing.
The ship's aegis field tingled on his skin. Small shocks generated by the ions in the air jolted his body as he bridged the gap across the field. A moment later he was through and plunging into the frigid water of the Das’jaa Sea. The icy shock was worse than the one he received passing through the ship's aegis. His body went numb, confused for several seconds before deciding the appropriate reaction was to be painfully cold. Foam sizzled up his body as he plummeted into the darkness, and for a time all he could do was shiver and fall. After a seeming eternity he felt his body slow and stabilize. The crackle of bursting air bubbles around him lessened, and he was able to calm himself long enough to remember that he was wearing a breather membrane.
Drawing a breath was harder than on the surface. He felt the membrane flex a
nd press firmly against his nostrils, but it was air and not water that flowed into his lungs. After his second breath, he regained his equilibrium and was able to orient himself in the direction of the bubbles leaving his body. A steady kick got him moving towards the rolling surface. His hair pulsed wildly around him like the tentacles of an Earth jellyfish, and his beard kept rising before his face obscuring his field of vision but he was undeterred. He judged himself nearly at the surface by the growing light filtering down when something slippery and warm grabbed him from behind. His heart raced, and for a moment he thought he'd been seized by a large sea creature, but then he felt the firmness of the arms tucked under his own, and the touch of human breasts against his back.
Pasqualina drew him close, pressing the length of her nearly nude body against his. The sensation of water flowing around him felt sharper than it should, and he reached down to his hip with a sudden feeling of dread. His fingers confirmed his fears. The sea had stripped off his shorts when he broke the surface, and he was now totally exposed to Pasqualina's designs.
“Relax and enjoy the feeling of the ocean,” she transmitted.
You're crazy, you know that? Who dives off of a speeding ship? he sent back.
He hoped she wouldn't notice his state of affairs, though it was hard to imagine she hadn't with her pelvis grinding into his butt. Wrapping her legs around his, she hugged him tighter and he felt her laughter on his back. Held in such a way he had no choice but to try and relax, though his heart was beating as hard as it could from the experience of diving into a freezing sea at high speed and the proximity of Pasqualina's subtle form.
She made no move to take advantage of his situation, but just held him as they bobbed in the current. By the time they broke through the surface he became somewhat accustomed to both the temperature of the water and to her embrace. His hair spread out like a fibrous red halo on the surface and clogged his eyes. He reached up to clear them but Pasqualina's hands grasped his.
“Let me get that for you.” She used her fingers to pull the hair from his face and smoothed it against his skull while massaging his scalp. Leaning back, she pulled them both into a reclined position. Together they drifted in the saline water with the sunlight on their faces.
“There, see? All better.”
“Thank you,” he responded.
“Sorry if I startled you before.”
“Huh?”
“Jumping off the ship.”
“Oh.” He frowned in thought as they bobbed with the waves.
“I just felt it. You know?”
He shrugged as best he could in her grasp. He could tell she was stronger than she looked and it surprised him. He hadn’t thought of her as the athletic type, but he could feel the hard muscles beneath her smooth skin as she pressed him to her body.
“Well, I wanted to show you this feeling. I used to do this off Hagus’ boat when I was a girl. I love the sensation of floating in the sea, feeling the currents lift and take me wherever they please.”
“What if you wind up in the middle of nowhere?” He lurched upward, scanning the horizon until he spotted the Keltan's Gambit. Ben had the ship circling around towards them, no doubt homing in on the signal from their implants. It wouldn't be long before they were within reach of the ladder on its aft deck.
Pasqualina pulled him back down against her chest. “What if you do? It's never anything I worried about, especially not when I was fifteen. It was nice to get away from everything for a while and just drift.”
“Oh,” Cylus said, not really seeing the point. He could tell this meant something to her, but it was lost on him.
“Here, try it.” She released him so suddenly that he almost didn't know what happened. He started sinking but flexed his back and restored himself to the surface. Cold spots on his skin marked where she had pressed herself against him.
“How do you feel?”
“Panicked.” It occurred to him that floating on his back gave the raft of his body a mast. His reflexive convulsion brought him under the surface again. It took him a few moments to get into the proper vertical position to both tread water comfortably and to keep his embarrassing physical reaction from her sight. In a near panic, he looked at her to check if she saw him.
She was quiet, looking back at him with polarized eyes.
“Okay, sorry. Let's just call this a failed experiment,” she said.
The waves lapping at its hull grew louder as the ship pulled up alongside them.
“I'm sorry. I guess you're trying to tell me to just go with things, but that's not who I am. I can't let go like that.” Cylus shook his head.
“That's all right. Here, let me climb up first. I'll go down below so you don't have to be embarrassed.” She looked away, refusing to meet his gaze.
Her reaction shamed him and made him feel puerile. He thought about her complaint on the Queen Gaia, when she accused him of ignoring her while he took Sophi to his bed. Added together with her recent kindness to him, and taking care to ask him what he wanted made his shame deepen.
Sophi never did that.
Maybe Pasqualina was being genuine with him after all. Perhaps he owed her more than he was giving her.
When the ladder came within reach he snagged it with a hand before she could.
“I've been an ass. I'm sorry.” With a deep breath he climbed out of the water onto the deck, fully exposed to her gaze, feeling nervous but proud of himself for the first time in a very great while.
Chapter Nine
Lokhari Forest, Elmorus
41:2:11 (J2400:3135)
Three crescent-shaped craft passed over a rift in the black canopy, the shock of their supersonic passing cracked the air down to the forest floor.
So, they’ve started air sweeps, Nero thought. He waited for five minutes with his hands on the controls of the air-car. He was almost to the camp now, and if the Broghites were patrolling this close it meant trouble. To be on the safe side he took a meandering path while listening for more patrols above. He hoped that the baron’s people were finished mining whatever data they needed from the Siren lab, because they were about out of time.
Nothing challenged him between the camp’s perimeter and the tents. The baron’s robotic troops were programmed to ignore those they recognized as friendly and were well hidden among the trees. The first contact he had was with a merc in gray armor who startled as his vehicle came humming out of the forest shadows. He waved at the man and whipped the craft around, heading straight for the large command tent in the center of camp. As he pulled up and climbed out the baron’s bug-eyed aide, Mamiya, opened the flap and gestured for him to come inside.
“Praetor Graves, welcome back. The baron will be relieved.”
“Thank you,” he said, walking into the large area beneath the tent’s peak. He looked around and leaned against the baron’s holoprojector table.
“Mitsugawa-uesama is out at the moment, along with your partner, and Eckortaan Setha,” Mamiya said. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?”
Nero took a deep breath and noticed he was leaning on the table more than he intended. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt this tired. “I was going to share some intel and report my survival.”
“Of course. You could share the intelligence with me if you like. If you prefer to wait, Mitsugawa-uesama should be returning soon.”
He frowned. “I think I’ll wait.”
“I am informed that you are having problems with your SCC. I’m not sure you are aware, but I am quite capable of helping. Perhaps I could assist Agent Khepria with—”
“No, thank you. That won’t be possible.”
“No?”
“Security concerns. I can’t have someone from outside the Order or the CSA messing with Daedalus’ tech, you understand?”
The corners of Mamiya’s mouth bent downward. “I understand that is a concern, yes. Please know that the offer stands. I’m sure Agent Khepria is very resourceful, but you may find I have abilities t
hat could be helpful to you and her both.”
“I’m sure, but no, thank you.” Nero watched the man, unable to penetrate the passive mask of his facial expression. Was he prying to gain secrets as so many tried to do in the past? Daedalus was one of the Confederation’s biggest mysteries, a digital being that self-evolved beyond its original programming in the total isolation made necessary by the war with the VoQuana. Baronies would pay billions to get just a hint of its secrets—was this man’s intentions more honest? Did he really just want to help get Prospero back online? As good a feeling as Nero had about the baron, he couldn’t trust this man. Khepria would figure out what was wrong soon enough, maybe after they got off this world and back to civilization.
“It is unfortunate, but as you wish.” Mamiya bowed. “You are fortunate today. They just passed the outer sentries. If you care to wait in your tent, I shall have someone fetch you when they arrive.”
“Thank you.” Normally he would refuse such an offer, but he felt like the planet’s gravity increased by threefold in the last few minutes. Giving a nod, he moved out into the clammy air. It didn’t take him long to stumble to his tent and he was down on his bedroll almost as soon as he entered.
He awoke with a gentle pressure on his shoulder and blinked, not quite certain how he came to be on his back staring up into Khepria’s feline eyes.
“Nero, are you all right?” Her ears twitched.
“Yes, and a little better I think. I—I passed out.” He sat up, looking around in confusion, though he felt a bit refreshed at least. “How long was I out for?”
“We returned to camp four hours ago.” She forced a human smile to her lips. Not entirely capable of it the expression came out as what most humans would call a smirk. “I am happy to have you back and safe.”
“It’s good to be back. I have some information for us.” He got up to his feet. She followed and started brushing off his jacket.
“You don’t have to do that.”
Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2 Page 15