by Susan Grant
"In what way?"
"Her hair is shorn off."
Gann leaned forward, taking the bait. "Go on."
"She wears an Earth-dweller cap most of the time to cover it. But one gentleman got a glimpse of what's underneath. It's green."
"Green!" Gann exclaimed.
"Well, brownish green. But it looks really green in certain light, they say. One of the merchants remarked that it was a shame she had such awful hair, because she had the face of an angel. A purebred Vash Nadah angel."
"That's her. It has to be. You say the captain's an Earth dweller?"
"Yes." Lara plopped into the chair next to his. "Which means they might at any time head back to Earth."
"Or any number of planets in between," Gann speculated, frowning.
The silver bracelets on Lara's wrist tinkled as she called up Grüma's coordinates on the nav computer. "I can get us there in precisely"—she studied the data—"two-point-four standard days."
Satisfaction swelled inside him. Lacing his fingers over his stomach, he reclined in his chair. "I'm in your hands, Lara. Let's go get her."
Instead of taking her seat, the tracker tucked the ketta-cat under one arm and mounted the ladder leading down from the cockpit.
Gann raised a brow. "What in blazes are you doing?"
"Putting the cat out," she said and ducked out of sight.
By the time he caught up to the woman, she was standing at the top of the exit ramp, nudging the ketta-cat with her boot.
"I said, go on. Shoo." The creature butted its head against Lara's calves repeatedly until she finally relented and patted its back. Gurgling softly, it brushed at her trousers with one velvety paw. Lara plunked her hands on her hips. "It won't leave."
Gann smiled. "Apparently not."
"I'll bring it to the freighter next door. Surely its crew can use a ketta-cat to reduce the vermin population in their cargo holds." But when she reached for the cat, it rolled onto its back. Clearly at a loss, Lara sighed.
"She wants you to rub her belly," Gann said. He crouched down and stroked his hand up and over the animal's warm, silky stomach. The cat writhed, wanting more. "Ah, here, too, eh?" he murmured, rubbing his thumb under its chin. The ketta-cat's head tipped back and its purrs turned to snorts.
Gann said pointedly, "Notice that even this small creature knows that pleasure is heaven's gift, a treasure to be shared and savored. See how she tells me just how to please her? I do like that."
Lara made a small sound in her throat.
He glanced sideways. Her attention was glued to his hands. Her reaction pleased him; he enjoyed having discovered a way to circumvent her self-protective barrier.
He rolled the ketta-cat over and traced the bumps of its spine with his fingertips. Spreading the toes of its front paws, it arched into his hand, tilting its pelvis toward him.
He noticed Lara shut her eyes, color rising in her cheeks. "We have to leave," she said. "Put it outside."
All innocence, he asked, "Why? By now she considers herself part of the crew."
Lara snatched the animal away and marched with it down the ramp. She lowered the ketta-cat to the ground. "Take advice from someone who's been around the frontier awhile; you're better off on your own." She gave it a firm push, then she wiped her hands and walked up the ramp.
Mewing, it trotted after her. "What is wrong with it?" She snatched the ketta-cat up off the ground, holding it in midair, inches from her face. "You know nothing about me. Yes, today I fed you. Tomorrow I might sell your mangy hide to a coat factory!"
The ketta-cat told her what it thought of her threat by rubbing its whiskered face against her smooth cheek.
"Bring her along," he said. "How much trouble can one ketta-cat be?"
She glared at him. "This is your fault. The blasted thing's become attached. I told you this would happen."
"That's what pets are supposed to do. Become attached." He gentled his tone as he added, "People, too."
Fire flashed in her eyes. "Attachment means dependence." She spat the last word as if it were a filthy epithet. "Dependence is dangerous."
She apparently remembered she was holding the animal. Shoving it at Gann she growled, "Get rid of it. I've got a preflight checklist to run," then stormed back to the cockpit.
Gann shook his head at the ketta-cat. "She sure can be endearing at times, can't she?" Apparently in agreement, the little creature darted up the ramp after her.
Lara waited until after they'd launched and were established in the space lanes before she turned in her chair to glower first at the ketta-cat, eating from a bowl on the floor, and then Gann. "You never listen to what I say."
"I listen, Lara. But perhaps what I hear is the essence, the feelings behind your words."
She made a sound of disgust. "Here we go. You Vash and your thinky-feely, listen-to-your-senses crap." The ketta-cat jumped onto her lap. She sighed. "Now you've gotten its hopes up. It'll think it's found a home."
"Hope. Another concept that you find dangerous. Like dependence?"
Her jaw tightened. "Gann," she said past clenched teeth. "This discussion is not covered—"
"In your contract," he finished for her. "Yes, I know. Regardless, I'd like to continue—off the official record."
He stepped closer until he stood directly before her. "I suppose that if you expect the worst from others, then no one can disappoint you. Insulate yourself from disappointment and you don't get hurt. Right, Lara? Is that your credo?"
She made a strangled sound in her throat, then she brought her fists to her eyes. His heartbeat faster; blood rushed through his veins. He sensed he was close to breaking through the mighty wall she'd erected, and he did not want to back down until he did. "I am curious," he persisted. "Are your expectations of others as low? Or do you simply have none at all?"
With that, she slammed her fists onto her thighs. "Gann, you are a pain in the ass."
Her directness delighted him. But the torment in her eyes emptied him of that amusement quicker than mog-melon wine from an upended uncorked flask.
"Lara," he said quietly, surprised. "Your hands are shaking."
She made a choking noise. "What's your game, Vash? Do you want to know more about me? Is that what this is all about?"
"Yes." He placed his hands over her cold, bloodless fists, warming them. "You knock me off-balance continually. I like returning the favor." His fingers fanned out over her fists. "That, and I know you're not what you appear to be."
Whatever she was trying to say to him appeared to be a struggle. Finally she mumbled, "You're not always what you appear to be, either."
He smiled ruefully. "No, Lara. I'm not."
She stared at their linked hands. On her face curiosity battled with constraint. Then, abruptly, she yanked her fingers out from under his. "I grew up on Baresh, a wretched, filthy place. I don't suppose you've heard of it."
Gann searched his knowledge of the frontier. "It's an asteroid. The Bareshti mines are located there."
"That's correct. It's a place right out of the Dark Years. Centuries and centuries of backbreaking labor, isolation, and boredom have bred the Bareshtis into a population of cooperative drudges—except during their time off. For that, we have the virtual reality arcades… and the usual hallucinogenic drugs to heighten the experience. Of course some prefer the real thing; dangerous activities, near-death experiences." Her mouth twisted bitterly. "Nothing like a little self-inflicted or dished-out pain to remind you that you're not already dead."
Her eyes hardened. "My father lost a leg in a mining accident. My mother took his place because they wouldn't let him back into the caverns and we had to eat. A few years later, she was killed. A gas explosion, we were told."
For a heartbeat Lara's voice lost its hard edge, then her tone iced over again. "My father said he'd find me a cabin position on an intersystem cargo freighter. The salary I'd send back home would make up for the loss of my mother's. I was drunk with anticipation."
She pushed herself to her feet and walked to the sweeping forward viewscreen. "I'd always dreamed of flying, and he knew it. We Bareshtis worshipped the starpilots like gods. They were gods, I suppose, to us—we, who could never leave. But my father and I both understood that without money or influence to get me into flight school I'd have to start at the bottom and work my way up. I started at the bottom, all right. On a bed beneath a filthy swindler's sweaty body."
She halted, faced him, her mouth twisting bitterly. "My father sold me into sexual servitude. I was thirteen."
It felt as if the floor dropped out from beneath him. He reached for her. "Lara…"
Her hand shot out, stopping him. She swallowed, twice. "I spent my teenage years as a receptacle for a man's depraved fantasies. At mealtimes, the pig chained me to the leg of the table. Naked." She searched his face for a reaction. "With a collar around my neck."
He stood there, too stunned to move.
"One night he choked to death on a piece of meat," she said breezily, a tone at odds with the rigid way she held her body. "After he tumbled off his chair, I used his key to unlock my collar. Then I helped myself to his ship and made it mine."
She attempted to maintain the lighthearted tone, but it sounded false. "I learned to fly from what I'd read, watched, and heard. It wasn't pretty, and I think I was in love with the autoflyer. And I didn't attempt a landing for months. Finally, when supplies ran low, I learned to dock—fast."
"I imagine you did. And then picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and became the best blasted tracker I've seen in years."
She shrugged, suddenly awkward. Gann sensed that she'd at first told her story wanting to shock him, but she'd finished craving the solace she hated to admit she needed.
He opened his arms. "All I want is to comfort you," he explained, seeing her dismay.
"I don't know, Gann." She wrapped her arms over her small breasts. The bracelets adorning her wrists glinted in the starlight streaming across the cockpit viewscreen. "I don't think I can respond in kind. Should you need me to." Helplessly she added, "Should anyone need me to."
"Of course you can." He hadn't realized before what he was up against. Now that he did, his heart went out to her.
"No. I'm… too closed up inside." She pressed her fingers to her lips.
His insides twisted. "Lara, you are so full of fire, so full of life. Let yourself feel, let yourself heal. Otherwise you're condemning yourself to a lifetime of loneliness."
The moment dragged out, tense yet tender. Then, miraculously, her arms lifted. He captured her fingers and drew her close. Strangely, his need to hold Lara went beyond wanting to console her; they had shared something, something he struggled to define. Sure of only one thing he bent his head to taste her lips, but she stopped him.
"He never kissed me," she said.
Of course the creature hadn't kissed her, Gann thought, feeling ill. "But, afterward, after you'd escaped, didn't you… Haven't you…"
"Once. Years later. He was a trader___I think.
We went straight from the bar to bed, and I was so drunk he got right to business." She shrugged. "After that, I thought, why bother?"
He'd been raised to celebrate lovemaking and the relations between the sexes. Lara's outlook and ex-perience were at utter odds with what he knew to be true. He pondered that, and the way she wore her mistrust of the Vash like a coat of armor. Great Mother. "He was Vash, wasn't he?" he practically growled. "Your 'keeper.'"
"Yes, a Vash." Her mouth dipped in a sneer. "Raised to follow the Treatise of Trade, and to respect and revere women."
"The man who abused you was an aberration, Lara. A monster. Sexual slavery is banned. It has been since the Great War."
"Don't be naive. It still exists. Granted, perhaps only here and there in the frontier, a place you Vash somehow manage to exploit without involving yourselves in our welfare."
Gann spread his hands on top of the narrow briefing table next to her, his mind wracked with dark images of Lara abused by a Vash whom he prayed would suffer for all eternity to pay for his cruelty.
A place you Vash somehow manage to exploit without involving yourselves.
Her accusation rang with a truth he couldn't deny. "But the lawlessness and lower standard of living in the frontier stems from neglect, not malevolence," he defended. "Rom B'kah, our new king, once described the Vash federation as an old quilt—the center tight, the edges frayed. He wants badly to bring the frontier into the fold. He's been working to do so——-"
"How?" she demanded.
Ian. The answer came to Gann in a rush: Rom's stepson, a frontiersman himself. In choosing the young, contested heir, Rom had proven brilliantly his commitment to the peoples of the outer reaches. Ian would be the first ruler with blood ties to both the frontier and the Great Council. People on both sides would look to him for leadership. And once Ian was well established, no man would be better suited to lead the Federation into a new era where the quality of life in the farthest corners of the galaxy equaled that enjoyed in the central regions. Earth was the newest upcoming power in the area, and to right the wrongs in the frontier, the Federation needed that planet's help.
"I'm deeply ashamed, Lara. You have suffered because of the Federation's shortcomings. But with Rom's son-by-marriage as the crown prince, I believe we can change what is wrong."
She assumed her familiar, defiant stance. "The fact he's not Vash Nadah makes me more inclined to believe it."
Gann suppressed a smile. He supposed that was as close as he'd get to an "I think you may be right." He also had the feeling he'd come as close as he was going to get for a kiss. But there were two-point-four days left to remedy that. He was more attracted to Lara than ever before.
He glanced over at a furry lump curled in her chair. "Look. Cat's helped herself to our ship."
Lara surprised him with a pleased, throaty laugh, clearly recognizing his reference to her earlier comment. "Your ship, Vash. My ship's impounded. Thanks to my idiot associate, Eston."
She sauntered to her seat and buckled in. "That's the only reason I'm traipsing around the frontier, looking for a spoiled girl too half-witted to recognize how good she had it at home. Someone should tell her."
Gann winced. Poor Tee'ah Dar. The soon-to-be-rescued princess had no idea what she was be in for once she met Lara, master tracker, face to face.
Chapter Fifteen
Outside the ship, a slow rosy Grüman dawn melted away the shadows. Inside the Sun Devil, the day was well underway. Tee'ah returned to Ian's quarters with tock and coffee, though, at that point, having been up most of the night, she was certain she was well beyond the benefits of stimulating beverages.
"It is Tee," she said at the door. The hatch slid open with a soft hiss, revealing his uncluttered, shipshape bedchamber. The few pieces of furniture were simple and masculine, and the fabrics covering the bed and floor cushions were dyed in desert tones of ocher, russet, and light brown. But just as she learned that Ian was not as he first appeared, so the room's neutral hues were unexpectedly spiked with brilliant colors: a pillow of pure turquoise, a yellow bowl, an old-fashioned wax candle in bright red. In fact, she found the effect extremely pleasing.
She stepped around a lumpy piece of metal that looked like it belonged to the Harley. Next to it was a neatly folded polishing rag. A razor and the barest of toiletries were stuck to the magnetic shelf above Ian's sink. Nothing in the chamber indicated that Ian would, upon Rom's retirement to the Great Council of Elders, ascend to the most powerful ruling position in the galaxy.
But Ian looked every inch a leader—especially as he, Quin, and Muffin huddled around a holographic map of Grüma. She poured the hot drinks, looking up to find Ian's eyes seeking hers. His smile made her heart do a little flip-flop.
He doesn't know who you are. For the hundredth time since discovering who Ian was, she reassured herself of that fact.
His face taut with tension, he reiterated the day's plans with his men. "With
the very good chance that Klark will make another attempt at sabotage, I'm separating the two main elements I'll need to fly off-planet—the Sun Devil and Tee. She'll come with me. Muffin, you have the ship; and Quin, keep plugging away repairing the thruster. Gredda and Push will be stationed downtown, looking for any sign of Klark—or Randall, should he not be at his ship. Everyone remains in comm contact at all times, with check-ins every hour."
Despite the grim silence, knowing looks broadcast the men's approval of the plan.
Ian reached for the holographic map. "Display sector 3-A." A tiny, forested ridge appeared in front of them, a replica of the green-blue hills above downtown Grüma. "This morning Tee and I will do surveillance from the ridge above the fortress where Randall landed his ship. This afternoon, if all checks out okay, I'll head down there.
"Have you loaded the food and water onto the Harley?" Ian asked Tee'ah, closing the holo-map.
"Yes. Everything is ready," she said, wondering if he'd given any thought to what happened when they'd last ridden together.
Muffin and Quin departed for their assigned duties, and Ian unlocked a safe, out of which he plucked a smallish brown box. Open, the box emitted the pungent sweetness of fragrant wood. Carefully he spilled the contents onto the desktop: unfamiliar coins and a thick roll of green-and-white old-fashioned paper credits—Earth money, she guessed—and a leather pouch.
He explained in a quiet voice, "I suppose if labels and titles define a person, then these would be me."
She could hardly breathe as she watched him take a long beaded chain with a curious golden charm—a cross with a tiny man pinned to it—from the pouch and set it aside. "Rosary beads. I was raised Catholic," he explained, translating the English words into Basic with some apparent difficulty. Next, he laid out two gold rings. One carved band had a blue gem and the Earth runes A.S.U. "My class ring. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in finance."