With a smoothness unexpected from her body type, she eased onto the stool, casually leaned back. Let the atmosphere of the place—after the mad dash to avoid being soaked in the downpour—wash around her. Sounds and aromas swirled in a tidepool of friendships and camaraderie.
The bartender came back, slapping down a coaster and slopping the drink in his haste to turn away; she ignored his distaste, her attention focused elsewhere. Saw him make another fusionnaire, and grabbed it out of his hand before he could deliver it.
“Here ya go, big boy,” she said, sliding the mug in front of the elemental. Medication delivered, with her usual flair and none the wiser.
She watched him pound back this fusionnaire as well and followed suit, tossing off her entire shot of vodka. The liquid splashed frozen-cold through mouth and throat, exploded with nova-hot warmth in her stomach, almost as good as climax. Her eyes watered. She glanced askance at Corin, blinking away tears and imagination. Almost. Yes, this should be very good.
“So you going to introduce yourself, or do I need to do all the talking?” Her voice practically purred, honed by the shot of vodka like fine-grade motor oil to an Avanti V12.
Once more, no response. The tree act again. Did she need to turn up the heat? Singe his whiskers a little? She relished the idea.
Swiveling around on the barstool, she leaned out behind him and called out to no one in particular, “Julia, hey, it’s Cindy. Give me a minute and I’ll come to your table. Okay.” Her voice, despite its volume, carried only a short distance beyond the immediate vicinity, all in the timbre.
Turning back toward the bar, she laid a casual hand on his upper arm (those muscles!), while leaning forward enough to lightly brush her breast up against his forearm, tossing a flash of flesh from her braless, low-cut top up to hungry male eyes.
“That was Julia. Such a sweetheart. We work together.” She laughed deeply and kept her touch on him a half heartbeat longer than an accidental touch might have warranted. Let him try to decide if I did it on purpose or not. Should only increase the tension. The desire.
As she eased back around, removing her hand from his arm, his head, fully a half meter above her own, swiveled around and tipped down to look her directly in the eyes. Like a flower under the harsh pounding of a desert sun, she slowly wilted. It had been a very long time since she’d faced such loathing.
Without a change of expression, the deep tone she hoped to hear panting her name instead tried to flail flesh from bone. “Do not ever touch me again, filth.”
Snow easily discounted such words. She tried to rally, pasted a hurt look on her face. “Hey, sorry. It was an accident.” Pushed the look into a sultry pout. “You not into Inner Sphere women? Only Clanners? Don’t know what you’re missing,” she said, trying to parry the emotionless void of his voice and eyes with another glimpse of her ample breasts and a tone that vibrated with sexual tension. She peered up into dead eyes and knew she’d lost this fight already. Time to cut her losses. But his next words slipped under skin, despite her years of training.
“I have sampled such pleasures to my satisfaction. But I prefer my meat fresh and sweet. You are neither. Leave.”
From one moment to the next she moved from the warmth of the bar and words that cut more than she cared to admit, to standing in the lukewarm downpour.
Corin. Such a nice name. Too bad it hid such a rotten core, such a void. Now she just wanted to see something in those eyes. Some emotion. Yes, any emotion would be good to see. Squeezed from him slowly and with deliberate care.
Snow shook off the last vestiges of the memory (tongued it one more time for good measure) and peeked around the corner again. She could just see him moving down the street once more—a flicker of movement before the rain washed away his existence.
She casually slipped around the corner, her current jumpsuit the opposite of low-cut and sexy. Of course, sexy came in many forms, and she might still have a chance to prove that to Corin.
She moved to the other side of the street and picked up speed, almost slipping between the droplets of rain. She began to push her senses to the limit, finding ways to blank out the sound and visual obscurants around her. Trying to find and pinpoint the thread of heavy tread—her elusive prey.
Five minutes bled like drops of blood from a shallow wound. She caught up with him almost immediately, but the situation was not yet right. She needed better cover. Better timing. She kept pace, but far enough back to hopefully escape his notice. Finally, the mountain slowed and crossed the street. He almost appeared to be meandering.
He knows I’m here. That someone is here.
She didn’t for a moment underestimate him. Regardless of the void at his core, he represented generations of genetic breeding to produce the ultimate hand-to-hand soldier. She could take him, but she needed to be careful. Couldn’t relax. Couldn’t let her cold fury cloud her judgment. Focus.
With practiced ease she slipped her shoes from her feet, preferring to trust her hard soles on the wet concrete. As he reached the sidewalk on her side of the street, only a half dozen meters separated them; she rushed forward, low, hands out to balance against any move she would make.
At the last possible second the Elemental moved with blinding speed, spinning to the right and following through with a sweep of his left leg, placing himself in a crouch, with right hand firmly planted on the curb.
Snow moved with the sweep, doing a backward flip that briefly touched hands to sidewalk just after his trunk of a leg swept through, before launching herself into a twist, landing facing him, feet already carrying her backward, bleeding off speed. She stopped in her own crouch.
Damn. Hadn’t the drugs taken effect yet? He should’ve been moving at half his current speed, if not less. Chagrined, Snow realized she had not thought to check whether Elementals were naturally resistant to drugs. Still, the dose she’d used could’ve put a horse to sleep. Almost. Had to have affected him somewhat, right? Enough for her to make it out of this with minimal damage, she hoped.
In the space between two light posts, with the darkness and rain, she could barely make out his face even at two meters; she felt confident he wouldn’t know her from a wallflower.
“You have no idea what you have done, surat.” That deep voice. Even now, she felt a shiver slide up her spine. Something in the timbre. The tone. She chuckled softly. Even now she still wanted him. Still wanted to see what such a mountain of flesh could do.
You’re a silly girl. Daydreaming of a romp with a man who insulted you and is about to try to pound you back to the Star League.
She saw him stiffen slightly at her laugh. Snow laughed again, this time with more hilarity at her own fickleness as much as to try to disarm Corin.
“You will soon not have the teeth, much less the jaw, for such laughter, surat.” Now he talked? Now he couldn’t shut up? She smiled and laughed even louder. Could it be this easy to goad him?
He bellowed and rushed forward, low and hands out to try to grab her regardless of which direction she might move.
With a return bark of laughter (a dismissal of his own anger), Snow dove forward in a roll that placed her into a springing crouch as he swept into her. She pounded forward with a triple fist to his crotch as he scrambled to stop his forward movement. Some would be horrified at such an attack, but she’d been taught long ago to set aside such niceties. If she won, who cared how she got there? She didn’t and her opponents certainly never did.
Supernova-strength pain blossomed in both shoulders as his ’Mech-sized fists hammered down; she grunted, giving him kudos for sloughing off the pain she had just delivered to his manhood.
“Stravag. Time to die.”
She flopped backward—marveling he would waste breath right now—and used the momentum to roll herself up and to the side. She planted her left hand and scissored her legs back toward his right leg as he leaned over farther to reach her with those flesh hammers. Though he landed another blow, which momentarily lit off the mothe
r of all bells in her ears, he put himself far enough off center that her blow knocked him to the side and down before he could adjust.
She rolled left several times—felt a jolt as she rolled off the curb and into the street; tasted copper as she bit her tongue—and came up into a crouch, facing him again. She knew he would expect her to pause and assess the damage: such inaction was for the weak. She attacked again, sweeping left toward his blind spot as Corin regained his feet and tried to turn as well.
Planting her left foot firmly (her flesh giving her purchase her shoes would’ve denied), she swung once again directly into his line of attack. Caught him off guard.
A frenzy of strokes and counterstrokes exploded as she pushed him back by the simple expediency of never letting up. Kept him reacting to her moves. With a feint at her head, Corin backed up against the wall. She moved forward left, slid slightly to the right and took a calculated blow directly to her right chest; she compartmentalized the pain and washed it away like the rain carried away the blood from cuts on her face and her knuckles. In return, she stabbed a flat knife hand directly into his throat.
Years of training allowed her to land the blow with a precision few could match. She felt the crunch of cartilage and knew he now felt the stunning pain of a trachea on the verge of partial collapse; a hairbreadth more pressure would’ve crushed it, ending his life in gasping, horrified pain. Pain lit his face like fire through old parchment. He grabbed at his throat as he wrenched his head backward in an attempt to ease the pressure… and smashed his head into the building wall behind him.
He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
She breathed shallowly, aware too deep a breath would painfully stretch her right breast; she’d have a ’Mech-sized bruise there come morning. Stretched her right shoulder, surprised the old wound didn’t hurt more. She sucked at her knuckles for a moment, then bent to reposition his head to lessen the strain on his trachea—keep it bent too long and it would collapse.
She couldn’t believe how much he weighed; it took her longer than she could have guessed to move him to his new residence.
Now, with him restrained on the table, she flicked the needle several times to push out the last of the air bubbles and expertly added the drug to the IV line.
Then, with the languid grace of a Holt prairie cat nestling up to its kill to feed, she climbed up on the table, straddled his massive chest (the warmth still blossomed; she laughed at her own folly) and placed her face only centimeters from his. She’d not even taken time to dry off, and droplets of water slowly fell from her hair, splashing onto his face, pooling in the corners of his eyes and running down his chiseled features.
Blurry eyes slowly opened. Blank. Not understanding his change of status. She didn’t say a word as he struggled to come fully awake—or as awake as she’d allow him to be. Took account of his situation. She smiled slowly, as confusion warred with anger. He couldn’t place her.
He tried to speak, but the drugs wouldn’t let that happen; she’d upped the dosage after her first mistake. Not yet. Another dozen seconds trickled by before understanding slinked in like a dawn to gray skies. He knew her. She warmed further as something moved behind those vacant eyes.
He’d been so talkative with his fellow Clansmen, and he would be again. She just knew he had so much to talk about, after all.
Now the real fun would begin.
19
Clan Sea Fox DropShip Ocean of Stars
Nadir Jump Point, Tania Borealis
Prefecture VII, The Republic
10 August 3134
“What are you hoping to accomplish, oh supreme ovKhan?” Jesup asked, walking onto the observation deck of the Ocean of Stars moments before the scheduled termination of deceleration.
Did we not have this conversation a half dozen times since leaving Adhafera? Jesup’s sarcasm didn’t reduce the irritation this time around. Petr ran his hand over his scarred scalp. Felt the twisted flesh, which would never change. Which would only grow more wrinkled with age. Grimaced at the idea of aging. Felt the twinge in his shoulder—a ghost of remembered pain. He did not answer. Did not feel the question—or Jesup, right about now—worthy of a response.
Just then, the captain cut the drive flare, having bled off most of the velocity in the short trip between the Voidswimmer and the ArcShip Poseidon. With the loss of the actinic glare of the fusion drive, the Poseidon, or at least a portion of her, hove into view. Both men fell silent, marveling at the construct before them.
At what their Clan had accomplished.
A Potemkin–class WarShip, the Poseidon’s original specs pegged her at a hair over 1,500,000 tons displacement and a length of just over 1,500 meters: a giant, round-tipped cylinder, with a slight flaring of her sides near the massive intersystem drive, and a plethora of docking rings dotting her midsection, where she held her twenty-five DropShip capacity like a clutch of possum young on her back.
Now, like a fungus fed to bursting, she’d grown and morphed well beyond the wildest imaginations of the original contractors who put pencil to paper and laid her keel. Though he did not have specifics, Petr felt sure she pushed almost a million tons more, and both her length and width had increased by more than fifty percent.
Beautiful did not come to mind. She had long ago lost her elegant lines to such growth, but the enormity of it still flabbergasted. With a gargantuan capacity of fifty DropShips, dozens of them Behemoth s permanently attached and turned into habitats or food repositories, she housed almost a half million inhabitants.
Beautiful did not come to mind. Magnificent did.
“You never answered my question.” Irritation flared, as Jesup’s words pulled Petr back from his contemplation of greatness.
“Because we already have had this conversation. Several times, in fact.”
“Then what is once more time, aff?” His laughter held a brittle quality Petr had never noticed before. He launched for the door.
With his usual grace, he grasped the edge of the hatch—Jesup had not dogged it upon entering—and smoothly twisted through, flinging himself down the long corridor, as though to escape Jesup’s words. Why did it so often feel like he fled his aide’s words?
“Why will you not answer?” The words came and Petr realized Jesup followed.
“Why will you not stop badgering me?”
“Me, badger you, oh great one? My obsequiousness would never allow it.”
Despite everything, Petr smiled slightly, unsure what that meant, but confident Jesup made some point.
“Neg, ovKhan, I do not badger. This lowly one simply asks.”
“Then ask a different question.”
“But a different question would seek the same information.”
Petr checked for traffic at a corridor intersection, then passed through. “For all your accusations of obsessiveness on my part, you manage a fair imitation yourself. Why can you not leave this alone?”
“Because you will not let me.”
Petr glanced over his shoulder at the slightly strident tone, saw a look of determination hiding behind the light smile Jesup forced on his face. “I will not let you? That makes no sense. Do I force your hand, Jesup? Do I hold a Gauss pistol to your skull?”
“Are you not my ovKhan?”
His words could be taken to mean any number of things. But Petr did not have time to try to untangle the complicated weave of his aide’s questioning.
Petr grabbed a stanchion and pulled himself to a stop, causing Jesup to almost overshoot him. “I need to speak with the saKhan about Sha.”
Once again, Petr discerned more of Jesup’s true emotions than at any time he could remember. Have you allowed your mask to slip, finally revealing your true face, the clown’s paints missing? And what is that truth?
“ovKhan, can you not let it go?”
“What?” Petr actually averted his eyes, than pulled them back to Jesup, furious at his subconscious attempt to shy away from a simple question.
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��Nothing has transpired that you both cannot forgive. Take a surkairede and let your oaths wash away the years of differences.”
Petr held himself rigid. His anger was an inferno ready to incinerate Jesup for his audacity. He could not respond, not here. With the confrontation with saKhan Sennet looming and his growing certainty of Sha’s guilt, he simply would not have this conversation. Not now.
He turned abruptly and began moving forward again. Like a mantra, Petr responded, “I hope to convince the saKhan that Sha is dangerous.”
“How?”
Even more questions! An angry retort aborted on his tongue; his anger centered on himself, not Jesup.
I do not know how I will convince him.
The thought set his scalp itching and the phantom pain in his shoulder surging. As he reached the final intersection and began the descent to the docking station between the Ocean of Stars and Poseidon, he could not stop the thought from repeating within his head like the hammering of autocannon shells into ’Mech armor.
I do not know.
The thrum of humanity ( his humanity) felt good after so long downside, among spheroids.
Petr moved with swift grace, swimming along the giant main thoroughfare of the Poseidon, parallel to the craft’s mammoth K-F drive. Around him skimmed a school of humanity, in a rainbow of colors and shapes. With unobtrusive handholds and lines spaced at easy intervals on almost every available surface of the corridor, Fox Clansmen seemed to dart in and out of the main current, taking side shunts into each perpendicular deck, with amazing speed and grace.
Ahead, what had been Primary Cargo Hold A so many decades ago, Alpha Community Prime now filled to brimming—almost fifty thousand civilians. And four more communities half that size occupied other former cargo holds. Not to mention the dozens of DropShip communities.
Magnificent.
The word once more resonated in his head as he slipped into the hold and beheld the beehive of activity, as literally thousands of people made their way on various errands. Much as he wished to linger and take it all in, he could not delay his own mission.
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