She nodded. “I will. Caleb?”
He stopped in the doorway but didn’t turn around.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“Funny. I’m not.”
10
SENECA
Cavare
Senecan Federation Military Headquarters
* * *
Field Marshal Gianno had the good manners to act a little taken aback when Morgan sauntered into the Senecan Federation Military Headquarters Command Center unannounced.
“Ms. Lekkas. I was under the impression I had revoked your security authorizations when you stole my Artificial and deserted your post.”
Morgan shrugged and propped herself against the conference table. “Authorizations, permissions—they’re all such fluid concepts. As is ownership. He wasn’t yours. Not any longer.”
“Those who paid for a lot of expensive hardware and programming would beg to differ.”
“You sold him to me in return for me winning your war for you. An easy price to pay to my mind, and one you should have realized you were paying.”
The pause signifying acceptance was brief. “And how is Stanley these days?”
Morgan smiled blithely. “Happy to be free.” And she thought he really had been.
Gianno bestowed a steely gaze on her, signifying an end to the pleasantries, such as they were. “What can I do for you, Morgan?”
Ooh, the first name treatment. Was it intended to be demeaning, or conciliatory? Her official title was again ‘Commander,’ but she recognized that meant nothing to Gianno.
“I’m here on behalf of the IDCC to explore the Senecan Federation’s amenability to granting Prevos legal rights as well as expressing public support for the IDCC as a legitimate inter-planetary authority.”
“The Prevo matter is under debate in the Parliament. It’s a complicated issue which—”
Morgan groaned. While she was arguably the best person for this particular, specific job, she was also possibly the worst diplomat ever. “Oh, just do it already. You know what we are, and what we’re not. You know what we can do. Well, some of the things we can do. But most importantly, you know we’re not evil. Simply tell the chairman we’re not evil and be done with it.”
“Chairman Vranas doesn’t take orders from me.”
“Maybe not, but word is you two have been best buds for decades. I’d wager he listens very carefully to your advice.”
“Morgan, if this is about Colpetto, I don’t—”
“It’s not. Whatever. Believe it or not, Marshal, I actually do respect you. I can’t speculate about the rest of the people involved, but I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing back then—the necessary thing, but also the right thing. I’m a bit annoyed you got my mother mixed up in it without her knowledge, but hey, that’s the military for you.
“All I’m saying now is, quit playing games. Quit hedging bets and trying to position yourself for all possible outcomes. I know you know this is also the right thing to do. So just do it already.”
Gianno stared at her wearing an inscrutable expression for several seconds. Morgan could read her pulse, her body temperature, the fluctuations in her pupils and a dozen other tell-tale signs of relative stress, but the woman remained a cipher. Cold as ice.
Finally Gianno’s lips curled into the tiniest of smiles. “I think your mother would be both delighted by and quite proud of you, Morgan Lekkas. You are most infuriating, but you are, on occasion, correct.”
Harper stood on the street corner one block down, scanning the passing pedestrians like she had hard intel one of them carried a bomb.
Morgan briefly entertained the possibility she had cause to believe exactly that, so intense was the woman’s demeanor…but then she remembered who she was talking about.
Don’t even try to sneak up on me. I knew you were there the instant you exited the building.
Morgan made a face at the evening sky and whipped around to lean against a building façade in front of Harper. “Take anyone down while I was gone?”
Harper buried a chuckle, but Morgan caught the flare of defiance. “Sadly, no. There was this one shifty-looking kid, but I let him off with a warning. How did it go?”
“Better than expected.” Morgan came perilously close to grinning. Seneca had never felt much like home to her, but it was home—and for possibly the first time ever, she found she wanted to share it.
She grabbed Harper by the hand. “We’ve got a few hours before we’re required to head back to Romane. Come on. Let me show you the city.”
Senecan Federation Headquarters
Eleni Gianno found Chairman Vranas in his office despite the hour, and meeting with three senators, no less. There was without question much to meet on these days. Nevertheless, it was heartening to see him reengaged.
She waited until they finished, though it meant she was going to be late for a promised dinner with Idan. But her husband had become accustomed to unexpected delays decades ago. He would understand.
She acknowledged the gentlemen as she passed them on her way into the office, then sat opposite Vranas. “Good meeting?”
“If by ‘good’ you mean them begging me to tell them what to do, then yes. Very good.”
“And did you? Tell them what to do, I mean.”
He sank deeper into his chair. “I told them to vote their conscience, assuming they still had one. By the vaguely panicked stammering which followed, I’m not certain it was the answer they were hoping for. What’s on your mind?”
“You might say I’m here to tell you what to do, if you’re in the market for advice.”
“From you? Always.”
It was the same thing Morgan had said. The young woman was too perceptive by half. “I had a visit from Morgan Lekkas this afternoon.”
“Here? In Cavare?”
Gianno nodded. “At Military Headquarters, no less. She doesn’t lack for gumption.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted to check in and say hello. She conveyed her and the IDCC’s hope that we would ease up on our Artificial restrictions and protect the rights of Prevos as individuals. Then she bid me a good day and left.”
He frowned. “We’re aware they hope we’ll follow their lead, so what was the point of the visit?”
“The point was to demonstrate she doesn’t mean us harm or harbor any ill will, and to remind me Prevos are not the devil. They’re flesh-and-blood humans, even if it’s not all they are. Also, I expect she took perverse pleasure in walking in my front door unmolested, but I can’t fault her for it.
“Note, I did consider having her arrested for sheer impudence—and illegally accessing the security system—but we don’t need to provoke a war with the IDCC this week.”
“Probably shouldn’t next week, either. So about that advice?”
“Come out in full support of the H+ bill. Much as it pains me to admit it, Lekkas is correct. I wish we still controlled the Noetica technology, but wishes are not reality. It’s out in the wild for good, so now our best course of action is to be proactive. By embracing it early we can institute reasonable, fair restrictions to keep people safe, while continuing to support fundamental liberties.”
“While also making the Alliance look bad and the IDCC look like nothing special.” He shook his head. “I don’t trust them—Prevos. I never did. I consented to their use because it was our sole chance for victory.”
“Yet they didn’t betray us.”
“No, but they could have, and we would’ve been powerless to stop them. This is what worries me.”
“I understand, Aristide. I don’t even disagree. But fear never won a war nor created a peace.”
“Didn’t I say that to you once?”
“You did, a long time ago. I took it to heart.”
He sighed in resignation. “All right. I was leaning in the direction of endorsing the bill, if only for a lack of more palatable options. I’ll draw up a speech tonight and see about casting my f
ate tomorrow.”
“Want company on the dais?”
“The military publicly declaring its support as well? You’ll take that step?”
“We’re the ones who have the experience working with Prevos. Our absence will leave open questions, while our presence will answer them. Send me the details. But if you can, schedule the announcement for early tomorrow. I have a flight mid-day to meet with Admiral Solovy about continued ship production at the Murat facility.”
“In person? Why go to the trouble?”
“Our working relationship, not to mention any personal one, is…strained at present. I hope to alleviate the strain.” She stood. “But first, I’m going to take the rest of the night off.”
“Oh? Hot date?”
Her eyes twinkled a touch before she turned to leave. “Yes.”
11
SIYANE
Romane
IDCC Colony
* * *
The trance Alex had drifted into broke when the human entered the hangar bay. No, not the human—Caleb. Husband. Lover. Soulmate, assuming she hadn’t lost hers somewhere in the stars.
She’d spent the designated hour pacing in agitation around the cabin, trying to work out what she would say when he returned but mostly chasing endless loops of recrimination in her mind.
Then she’d had a glass of wine and tried to prepare a happy, welcoming demeanor. Failed.
She made it two whole hours before giving up and sinking into the walls of the ship. There was nothing new or wondrous to see—they were parked in a hangar. But it still gave her comfort, an outlet, a place where time didn’t pass a slow, ticking second at a time. A place where it didn’t seem to pass at all.
But now he was here again. She’d never observed him from this perspective. Where in the hyper-dense congregation of neural cells and firing synapses inside his skull was his consciousness? What portion of the atoms comprising him represented his soul?
Jolted by the odd, disjointed thoughts, she hurriedly withdrew into her body, blinking past the brief wave of nausea which always accompanied doing so.
She looked around; she was on the couch. She needed to splash water on her face, but there was no time. The airlock hissed.
He threw his jacket on the floor and barely glanced at her on his way to the kitchen.
Her eyes followed his movement. When she got a good look at him, her brow furrowed up in surprise. “You left to clear your head over new unwelcome revelations about your father and…you went and got a haircut?”
He shrugged as if to deny it, but his hair was a good four centimeters shorter and well groomed; not quite close-cropped, but decidedly more clean cut than before. “It was overdue.”
She swallowed and moved on, as his haircut was the literal least of her concerns right now. “I thought you might come back drunk.”
“I considered going drinking. But if I started down that path, I might not have made it back here for…a while.” He spun to the cabinet and retrieved the bottle of Irish whiskey. “But seeing as now I am back, it’s a fine time to start.”
He retrieved a glass, threw a few chiller cubes in it, filled it to the rim with the whiskey and turned it up. The contents disappeared in one long swig. He immediately refilled the glass and took a more normal, if still lengthy, sip. Finally his gaze rose from the glass to meet hers. “Okay. Lay it on me. Give me your worst.”
“I’m not…Caleb, I don’t blame you for this. You were a child when it happened. You’re not responsible for your father’s actions.”
He regarded her strangely, then quickly took another sip. “Thank you for that. But surely my government is to blame—and Division, whom I spent eighteen years working for. Surely you want to lay a bit of their sins at my feet, if only for my poor judgment in choice of employer.”
She opened her mouth to respond but struggled to locate the words. He sounded so damn caustic. Harsh, on edge and spoiling for a fight. She couldn’t rightly blame him, but she wasn’t any good at soothing his angst when she did have her full wits about her.
Finally she ventured forward in a tentative, quiet tone. “I don’t. I know when you met me, I had let my bitterness over my father’s death fester and grow into a generalized displeasure with entire organizations, entire governments. With entire swaths of the galaxy. But I’ve put it behind me. I haven’t felt that way for a while. I thought you realized.”
He regarded her in stark consternation for several seconds, then rolled his eyes at the ceiling before taking another long sip of his drink.
“What? Are you not glad I don’t blame you? I expected you to be glad. I tried to tell you before you left, but you bolted before I could get out half a sentence. What else do you want from me?”
“What else do I want from you? I want…I want you to yell and scream and throw things. I want to see the slightest hint of the fire that made me fall in love with you, even if the fire is directed at me.” He held up his glass and sloshed its contents around. “I’ve got my flame-retardant gear, so I can take it.
“When I met you, when we fought the Metigens, you were alive. You were angry and acerbic and disagreeable and daring anyone to prove you wrong about the world, but you were alive. And I would give a proper fortune right now to see just a spark…to see something more than this shell, this faded shadow of who you are.
“You should be angry. You should feel betrayed and disgusted and the galaxy should tremble in the face of your wrath. But I wonder—do you feel anything?”
She closed her eyes, hiding from his piercing stare. She had no response, because he wasn’t wrong. His words ought to sting, the events behind them should cut…she searched for the pain and found only emptiness.
In a detached sort of way, she recognized that she was angry, at so many things; she recognized the emotion and what it meant. But she experienced it as in a dream, ephemeral and incorporeal in a realm where nothing as fleeting as emotions truly existed.
She tried to find her way out, but the real world had become the dream, the elemental domain the sole place which felt real.
In desperation she leapt up and moved to stand in front of him, close enough to touch but not doing so. “Then make me feel. Make me feel you.”
His irises bore into her, dark as indigo obsidian and violently brooding. His brow creased. He tilted the glass up to empty it again, then set it down too hard on the counter.
When he spoke, his voice was taut, sharpened by vitriol. “How am I supposed to respond to that? What is that even supposed to mean?”
She inhaled, but instead of air, her chest filled with a cavernous desolation. Her focus drifted to the floor so he wouldn’t see the hopelessness overtaking her as she eked out a response. “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything at all. Never mind.”
Then she turned and began walking away, wishing as strongly as he had that there was somewhere, anywhere on the ship where she could be alone. She didn’t—
His hand landed on her upper arm and yanked her around to face him, then yet closer. His mouth crashed into hers with a rough, coarse fierceness. There was no tenderness to his embrace as he shoved her against the edge of the data center table.
The taste of whiskey on his tongue and hunger in his touch was what finally began to break through the fog clouding her mind. Like a drowning swimmer grasping for the dangling rope, she met his kiss with equal fierceness, dragging her fingers through his hair until her nails scraped at his scalp.
He drew back a sliver to growl against her lips. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes.” She pressed into him, renewing the kiss and holding him fast lest he try to escape, having made his point. In truth his touch flitted at the edges of her reality, but she needed this. She needed him to be real. She needed him to not let go.
In the smallest act of mercy, he didn’t fight her or pull away; instead his teeth grazed her lower lip insistently. A hand swept down to her hip then inside the waistband of her flimsy shorts. Farther.
Jolts of
pleasure rocketed through her. It was the first sensation she’d experienced in this allegedly tangible world to exceed the palpability of the elemental one in days.
“Do you feel that?” His voice was gravelly and harsh. Challenging.
She pulled in air, mind and body swimming, and managed a semblance of a nod.
His other hand clasped the nape of her neck and coaxed her into meeting his troubled gaze. “Say it.”
She blinked. “Yes…I feel that. Please.”
His mouth teased hers. “Please what?”
“Please…more. Don’t…please don’t stop—”
He short-circuited the last word with his lips, and she let go of the esoteric fear in favor of physical, carnal sensations. Her hands found the hem of his shirt and yanked it up, willing to forego his kiss for a blink of time to be rid of the shirt—and hers, as he’d done the same.
His skin burned hot on hers, his pulse racing beneath its surface. She sensed the moment when his motivation shifted from anger to anger-fueled lust, when his motions became desperate as his hands shoved her shorts down and gripped her ass to hold her tight against him.
Right now she didn’t care what fueled it. Right now so many wrong things fueled her lust, too. It was all wrong, but it was the only thing she had tethering her to reality.
She fumbled for the clasp on his pants, wrenched them open and down over his hips—
—instantly he had hoisted her up onto the table. First one knee then the other hemmed her in on either side as he slid her backward.
She managed the beginning of a weak protest. “The table—”
“To hell with the table.” The weight of his body urged her down.
The table is scientific equipment worth tens of thousands of credits and was not made for this. But it doesn’t matter, does it?
Smooth metal met her back in a flash of white-hot ice. She would have bolted up from the shock if it had been possible to do so.
The contrast of the heat of his skin and the cold metal was almost too much for her to bear. Scorching, freezing, which was she? Which was which?
Aurora Renegades Page 72