by Bex McLynn
Vedma moaned and rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, her eyelids closed and fluttering. "Oh, Dyr. Again."
Eyes locked on her saddle, still astounded that she took him to the root, he pumped shallowly. Bliss snapped his spine, triggering another pump of his hips. Vedma clutched his cock tighter, and her insatiable clyccana firmly stroked his anthers.
"Fuck!" Dyr grated between his teeth as his breath rushed from his lungs.
"Again, Dyr." Vedma’s begging became the sweetest thing he'd ever heard.
He released his grip on the cot, transferred his hands to her hips, and thrust. Gave over completely to the snapping rhythm of his hips.
Oh, gods. This sensation, it explained so damn much. Explained why his brothers devolved into beasts and idiots to brace with a gravid woman. Why thanes bartered with wealth and politics to clutch with a pregnant Athela.
Again, his eyes locked onto where they connected. Drifted upward to the soft curve of her belly. The babe that she sheltered inside her body enabled her to draw him deep within. Was this what nature intended? To bind a man after breeding? Because this...
This was... this was...
Gods, how he wanted to be bound by her.
He gazed up at Vedma. Watched as her back bowed, arching her breasts toward the ceiling. Her lips parted, and a low, endless moan filled the cabin as she clamped down on him. He couldn't thrust. He couldn't breathe. All he could do was come.
This lady. Gods, this brilliant lady.
Dyr slipped out of the cot, snagged his boots and another jumper, then crept from the cabin. Once in the corridor, he dressed, tying the sleeves around his hips and sliding on his boots.
The quiet grated on his nerves. Fuckles's recent, ongoing silence blared like an alarm.
He didn't return to the control room or the maintenance bay and instead went to the engine room. He ducked into the engine cluster, heading toward the spot where he had hidden the signal boosting buoy.
The buoy, a conical device no bigger than a wine cask, resembled TerTac issued tech. With no access to the greater AthNet on the barge, if the kidnappers had wanted to send or receive messages, they needed to launch the buoy.
He had kept its existence from Vedma. Since he'd stifled his technopathic skills for so long, he feared that he wouldn't be able to reprogram it successfully. If he didn't vet it thoroughly, using it could trigger an alert to the kidnappers' co-conspirators. His message could also be intercepted by the Gwyretti, marauders, or anyone else who stood to gain by acquiring two spacebound technopaths, especially an Athela.
Aye. Deploying the buoy could cause a world of hurt.
But what choice did he have now? The control room and pipe repairs lagged, and a one-man-stand against armored hostiles would end decisively in their disfavor. Only the buoy remained, and sadly, it could backfire on them spectacularly.
He set to work, powering up the buoy and encasing its operating system in his technopathy. He wove through the code at a painstakingly slow pace, overriding protocols and setting new commands. With paranoid fervor, he reviewed his work over and over, looking for flaws.
Time now harried him worse than the Gwyretti or their kidnappers. The clock tolled each hour like a death knell. No telling when more salvagers or kidnappers could arrive. No telling how long it'd take for him to fix the control room and then the pipe. But he knew one definitive time, the term of a pregnancy, and knowing that led to another certainty. Never would any children of his be born under these conditions.
Unholde drag him under, but pride melded with wonder and flared inside of him as he thought of Vedma. She's carrying your child.
Dyr hadn't avoided his duty to have children because he didn't want to be a father, but because he didn't want to be a father modeled after his own sire. Fatherhood achieved through contract negotiations and clinical breeding. Thane Borac had eighteen children by twelve different women—all in an attempt to maximize genetics and produce a technopathic heir. House Borac had no Athela overseeing their Athel Hall. No lady seated by the thane's side. His father had forgone permanent attachments as he strove for a genetic anomaly.
Dyr knew why his father acted so desperately. The politics of the Teras Dominion shifted decade to decade, depending on the children born to thanes and Athelas. Thane Borac himself wasn't technopathic, but his grandmother had been. House Borac had gone almost two generations without a technopath until Dyr was born—the only technopath currently in his house. Without a technopath, they could have lost both the stewardship of Vayant, their spirenought, and their standing in the Dominion as a Great House.
If he returned home, well, that would give House Borac more time.
All his problems, both near and far, amounted to a matter of time.
He drifted a moment, wasting precious seconds as he stared at the signal boosting buoy. He had completed his reprogramming. Just needed to launch it and hope that they floated only so far into the Uncharted Void, that their rescue happened within a week or so.
His chest constricted. An entire week or two with Vedma. No more. That wasn't enough time. Because once their rescue came, she'd go back to the Academe. He'd go back to his house. In the eyes of the Dominion, their child remained indeterminable until technopathic testing occurred around age four or five. No oaths or clutching bound them.
Gods, he wished he knew why she rebuked his oath because then he could fix it. Repair whatever flaw he carried that set her steadfastly against binding herself to him. She called him thane's son with a mixture of scorn and jest. Did she question his honor because he was an Unsworn? Or, without a house, did she question his ability to provide shelter, which made him impractical to her needs? He could easily see both swaying her, and if that proved true, he'd doubly fucked himself. Vedma didn't seem the type who granted second chances.
Which meant here and now remained his only chance.
The buoy was functional and ready to go, and as much as he hoped otherwise, time always marched on. Wishing for a reprieve had him pushing against the tide. Everything got swept away.
He laughed as he swore.
Fine. For her. For their child. He'd gladly let both of them slip through his fingers if it ultimately ensured their survival.
He wiped at his eyes, aghast to feel dampness on his fingertips.
Taking a step toward the buoy, he heard a soft click, like a component locking into place, then followed by a puff of air. He swiveled toward the sounds, suddenly aware that he left his sword with Vedma.
A sharp pain pierced his shoulder.
His turn became a tumble as he crashed down to the deck. He fought the wave of unconsciousness that crested over him, but he pushed against the tide, and blackness swept him away.
Chapter Six
Vedma woke up alone, thus angry. Dyr should have dragged her ass out of bed. Aye, she couldn't do shit to help him patch the armor or fix the ship, but he didn't have to undertake those tasks on his own. How the hell hadn't she been clear about that? Hadn't she whacked him enough to knock some sense into his noggin?
Reaching out through the local AthNet, she pinpointed Dyr's WristCune. Fine, she'd haul her ass to the engine room, bring him some tuck, and then whap him some more until he got the basics. They were in this together, dammit.
She kicked off her blanket and stood up. A bout of light-headedness and tummy tumbling wavered her. She snarled at her own weakness, then got dressed.
She stomped down to the engine room with a food ration packet squeezed in each fist.
"...there was this perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."
"Shut it, Fuckles," she grumbled. "Ain't in the mood. This perfect Athela is gonna kick some Unsworn technopath's ass. If you're the squeamish sort, you best look away. Gonna kick his ass so hard, he'll be upchuckin' turds."
Silence.
"Aye, that's what I thought, Fuckles. You're all talk."
She stepped through the hatch and nearly lost her footing when she caught sight of him. Her e
yes relayed information that her brain struggled to process. Dyr lay on the deck. No, Dyr had collapsed on the deck, with his arms and legs scattered at uncomfortable angles. He sprawled on his belly, looking so much like the other bodies they'd encountered on the barge.
Her chest pulled tight as she called to him, his name hissing from her mouth as an airless whisper.
Dropping the food rations, she scurried over to him, stumbling gracelessly in the too big boots. Her knees struck the deck, followed by her palms. Jolts of pain wracked her limbs as she crawled on all fours toward him.
"Dyr!"
She reached for him, shrieking as new pain pierced her shoulder. White hot lances punctured her skin and sank into the muscles. She rolled onto her hip, rotating her shoulder despite the hurt. Protruding from her flesh quivered two silver slivers of metal. Darts.
Dazed, she reached for them, only to pull back as she heard puffs of air and sharp dings against metal as more darts were fired.
Vedma scooted back, scraping her ass along the deck as her hands and feet propelled her into the shelter of the engine cluster. More puffs and dings trailed after her, striking the racks of engine components.
Backed against the power cell, she battered down the dual urges to scream and run. Scoffed as she admitted that her impulses offered shitty options. Dyr was out there, and she wasn't going to leave him.
Her left shoulder throbbed and so did her right thigh. Using her fingers, she gingerly explored her leg and encountered a dart. She yanked it out with a whimper and pulled out the ones in her shoulder before she thought better of it. The silvers contained sharp edges, even along the shaft, and had sliced into her fingers.
With her heart ramming her chest and her breath heaving her lungs, she waited and waited.
Dyr sprawled on the deck, probably falling when he got darted. She could still move. Felt no numbness, just localized pain at her shoulder and thigh. Her palms and knees pulsed with a dull throbbing from when she fell. Bile rose in her throat, pumped up from her stomach. She twisted and vomited on the deck as a searing light burst behind her closed eyes. Her head radiated with pain, like she had just taken a cudgel to the back of her skull. She heaved and emptied her stomach again.
"[I wake.]"
"Fuck." Vedma moaned as she clutched her head with both hands.
That voice skittered across her consciousness, grating against her technopathy like screeching metal.
"[I wake.]" The voice twanged her technopathy, like a pipe striking a taut metal cable. "[I wake.]"
Vedma spit bile onto the deck as her stomach lurched again. "Fuck off."
Gods, she'd never trained for anything like this. Didn't even know how an assault on her technopathy could be possible. As she reached out, giving a reflexive, mental shove against her assailant, she encountered jagged edges and frayed lines. No tech. No codes. Just pain.
"[I wake.]" The words struck against her technopathy. "[I wake.]" Another strike. "[I wake.]"
Vedma whimpered and curled in on herself. Oh, how she ached.
Ached.
Desperate, Vedma called out. "You ache! Gods, I got it! You ache!"
The next strike came but felt tempered, like a pinprick. "[I ache.]" Another strike on her technopathy that rocked her like a nudge. "[I ache.]"
Vedma remained curled on the deck, panting as each strike on her technopathy became a thrum along a chord. Underneath, she still felt the bone-weary fatigue and the sourness clenching her stomach. The exhaustion and nausea had been her companions since waking on the Gwyretti ship, but both sensations intensified once she and Dyr had been dumped in the ore hold on Kigen.
A chill moved through her. They both suspected that the barge was Athelasan in origin. At the Academe, she'd heard tales of Athelas hearing voices. Girls whispered the word 'moya' like summoning a specter.
Swallowing back more bile, she squeezed her eyes and called out. "Kigen?"
"[I wake.]" The words thrummed along her technopathy, resonating with relief.
Vedma lay there, stunned. The ship spoke to her, just like Dyr had joked. Had said she could ask the barge to extended the ore extractor and—
Dyr!
Vedma scrambled to her feet, knocking her shoulders and elbows as she rushed to clear the engine cluster. She dropped down next to Dyr and carefully pulled two darts from his shoulder.
"Why ain't he awake?" She shifted his limbs, arranging them for his comfort. "Did you shoot him same as me?"
"[I ache.]" A frisson of pain accompanied those words.
Vedma's lip curled. "I can't do shit about that. Ships're thanes’—"
"[I fire.]"
A metal click echoed in the engine room, pulling her gaze upward. Above her swiveled a turret that appeared to have dropped down from the ceiling. The nozzle pivoted away from her and shot darts against the bulkhead.
"You fired darts." Vedma looked at the darts scattered around her. "You fired those darts at the Gwyretti, didn’t you?" A chill raced up her spine, and she clasped onto Dyr tighter. "Those darts killed them. What about Dyr?"
Another metal click echoed in the hold. This one carried more weight, like a heavy component notching into place. The turret cocked, then fired a round that pierced the bulkhead and pounded her ears. Vedma cringed as she gaped at the resulting hole in the bulkhead.
"You fired on the armored Teras too."
"[I fire.]" The words carried fatigue and suffering.
The Gwyretti had pilfered the ship's parts. The Teras had squatted like an infection in a wound, taking advantage of another's hurting.
"So you was defendin' yourself?"
"[I ache. I fire.]" Outrage colored those words.
She cast her eyes around the engine room. Other than a winch for hoisting around power cells and such, she had no clue why Dyr had come here. Made no sense why the ship, claiming self-defense, would dart someone who had been actively repairing it.
She slid her fingers to his neck, seeking his pulse. Relief flooded her as she found a faint but steady beat. Likewise, she rested her palm to his chest, feeling the slow bellows of his lungs.
"Why'd you shoot him?"
"[I ache.]" Kigen said it with insistence and defensiveness.
That answer told her shit. Could the ship even tell her more? What if all it could mutter was 'I wake,' 'I ache,' and 'I fire?'
"[I ache.]" Not quite a whine, not quite a plea.
"What the hell am I supposed to do about it?"
Her WristCune pinged. Glancing down, she saw a stream of images, one after another, shifting so swiftly that her screen flickered like a candle.
She blinked her eyes to clear her scattered vision. "What's all this? I can't—"
Her WristCune pinged again, showing her a vid of the control room.
"[I ache.]"
Vedma toggled her gaze from her WristCune to the turret. "You want me to go there, to the control room?"
"[I ache.]" The ship sounded relieved.
Vedma did what she could to get Dyr resting comfortably, then hiked over to the control room. As she entered the room, her mind flashed with a memory. Of Dyr leaning against the ore extractor console, a smile brightening his face, as he told her she'd be his hero.
Gods, if only she could be.
Because right now, Kigen had her by her tender clutchers. No way could she drag Dyr to safety if Kigen decided to shoot him with more than a tranquilizer dart. He was too big of a bastard, and Kigen had rounds that could pierce her own bulkheads.
This here devolved into an itchy situation. What choice did she have but to become the godsdamn hero?
So she strode to the center of the room. "Whatcha got for me? Why'm I here?"
Again, her WristCune pinged with another vid of the control room. This time, the image honed in on the pile of components removed by the Gwyretti. In particular, a Cuneiform screen.
Vedma went over and investigated the pile. The salvagers stripped so much of the ship, yet at the same time, so much still functi
oned. She glanced again at the ore extractor console.
"You sent the ore extractor for us, didn't you? To get us off the pipe."
"[I wake.]"
Well, that told her shit, but she bet that she guessed correctly. She just didn't know why the barge had rescued them.
She resumed her sifting through the pile and pulled free a Cuneiform screen, a rather large one intended to serve as a display, and looked around. The display could go in any number of empty console spaces that gaped back at her.
Elder Megera always said life was like a puzzle: that you shouldn't waste time on pieces that didn't fit. Ech. Vedma knew the old biddy had thinly veiled her own griping about Vedma and her place at the Academe. Just never thought she'd think of Elder Megera at a moment like this, wondering why Kigen ignored the heaps of failing systems all over the barge and wasted her time with a damn Cuneiform screen.
She strode up to the first vacant slot in a console. "It goes here?"
Her technopathy twinged with a prick of pain.
Fine, then.
She shuffled over to the next slot. "Here?"
Another negative pinch. On her fourth slot, soothing relief trailed over her technopathy.
"Be better if you just fuckin' said so from the get-go," Vedma mumbled as she hefted the Cuneiform display overhead, sliding it into the slot.
When she released the display, she almost brained herself as it came tumbling back out.
Well, hell. She actually had to install the damn thing, now didn't she?
She went over to Dyr's tool caddy, placing her hand on a torque spanner. Kigen pricked her.
"Ech!" Vedma scowled, looking upward, as though she could see the disembodied voice. "I was movin' it outta the way. Know you can't use a torque spanner to mount a display. Ain't an idiot."
She palmed a bolt driver and mag clamps, then arched a brow and waited. No pricks. Good.