by Rachel Caine
She dipped her chin and I couldn’t see the color in her cheeks with the soft lighting, but I guessed she was probably blushing. “To be honest, I forgot why I came in here.”
I grinned. “And why is that?”
“Because you’re naked.”
“This . . . is true.” I stifled the urge to flirt with her a little more. “If it’s urgent, I can get dressed and—”
“No, it wasn’t.” Bea started taking her clothes off too.
Damn, this might be an upswing on a terrible day. “You feeling like a dip too?”
She slid into the water before answering. “Wow. This is fantastic. I thought . . . if you want, I could give you a swimming lesson.”
While I didn’t care if I could ever do the butterfly or whatever, this would mean lots of slippery, skin-on-skin contact. Yeah, sign me up.
“Sounds good.”
She cut through the water, sleek and lovely, and I remembered her talking about swimming in the ocean with her family. I could picture a younger Bea catching a wave. Then she caught me—in her arms—and tugged me toward the deeper end. I couldn’t touch bottom, but it was an excuse to wrap myself around her and cling.
Wow, did she feel good.
Bea nuzzled her face against my neck and a shiver went through me. “That . . . this feels amazing, but let’s focus.” She tried to sound stern, and it almost worked, until I stole a kiss.
“Fine. Start me from the beginning, teach. I’ve never had private lessons before.”
“First, relax into my arms.”
“Easiest thing I’ll do all day,” I said, falling backward into the water.
Bea caught me, holding me up. My legs drifted up and it was effortless, peaceful even. She propelled us around, her hold loosening until I was drifting on my own. She swam toward me and I paddled partway, until our hands met in the water. I sensed Nadim near, and I wondered if he felt . . . excluded. He couldn’t touch us like this, and I didn’t want him to feel lonely, ever. But I didn’t want Bea to feel like she wasn’t enough either.
“You passed the first lesson with flying colors,” she said.
“I always did well at hands-on learning.” I proved that by wrapping my arms around her, and she swirled me around in the water.
Being weightless was fun here, different from bouncing in antigrav, but just as bewitching. As the shifting light played over her face, Bea was beautiful, all graceful lines and soft curve of mouth. I went in for a kiss, and it startled me a little when she drew Nadim in, and I could feel them both as our mouths moved. He was a sweet heat in the back of my head, feeling what we felt.
The rush was . . . euphoric.
“Wow,” I said, when we finally broke away.
“Was that okay?” Bea asked.
“Of course, but . . .”
“I knew you were worrying. And he was wondering. It’s good when we’re together,” she said simply.
I couldn’t agree more. “Nadim? How . . . do you . . .” I couldn’t finish the question, but he knew; he always did.
“I don’t mind if you and Bea have private moments. The love between you pleases me, always. But . . . I do like this too.” This, being looped in while we were kissing. “These feelings are not native to me, but they are . . . thrilling.”
FROM THE RECORDS OF THE SLIVER, RETRIEVED BY BACIA ANNONT, ARCHIVED WITH THE FELLKIN
I am uneasy with the progress of the hunt for Lifekiller. While the humans have sent no word of their success—or lack of it—the trackers I ordered installed with the additional armor and repairs of the Leviathan are functioning and delivering a limited range of knowledge. They thus far failed to stop the god-king’s progress. While I have little concern for potential victims of his violence, I am concerned that blame may be assigned to me, and penalties levied.
I am also concerned that the Sliver may be less well hidden than before.
Should Lifekiller believe I am a threat . . . the fight may well come to me.
Plans must be made.
CHAPTER TEN
Lost Kisses
BEFORE I COULD figure out how far we should take the fun, Starcurrent undulated into the pool area, colored with violent agitation. “Beatriz! Zara. Elaszi ships detected on an intercept course! Many. They come to kill and salvage.”
“Seriously?” Bea muttered. “Can we ever get a break?”
I kissed her quick. “We’ll get back to that, I promise.” I looked at Starcurrent and raised my voice. “They must have found out what happened on Heilrosh. But how . . . ?” Maybe the blobs we immolated called for help at the last minute. Microburst apprising the rest about their imminent doom. Something like that?
Nope. It was way worse.
“Elaszi share ancestral consciousness,” said Starcurrent. “When one is harmed, all are harmed. We have acquired permanent grudge from all Elaszi now living and yet to spawn. Is why most species do not anger them.”
“Now you tell me,” I mumbled.
“One Elaszi ship is dangerous. Two are deadly. There are six coming to fight us. Do not prefer these odds,” Starcurrent said.
We swam to the edge of the pool and Bea hopped out first. She tossed me a towel and winked. Winked. “To be continued,” she said. “Right?”
“Abso-damn-lutely.”
Starcurrent shuffled over to the edge of the pool, eyeing it with what I felt was real uncertainty. “Is . . . water?”
“Yes. Do you want a swim?”
That woke a violent shudder of tentacles, and a quick withdrawal. “No!”
“Uh, last I looked, your whole planet was water,” I said. “What’s up with that?”
“Is why I am in space!”
I shook my head and toweled myself off. I peeled off my swim cap and left it hanging with the towel; it only took a few more seconds to get back in my uniform, and by then Bea was dressed too. We headed for the consoles to see what was up.
I hadn’t gotten a great look at the Elaszi ship down on the planet. It had mostly been just a target to aim at; I hadn’t been appreciating the finer points of blob creativity.
Turned out they didn’t have any. None they hadn’t hijacked, anyway. The ships were cobbled together out of tech made of different materials, origins from all over the galaxy as far as I could tell. They built their ships out of junk. Recycling was frugal, and it sure took a certain cleverness to make it all work together, but . . . there was something brutal about it, like they’d made their homes out of other people’s bones.
“You think talking would do any good?” I asked Starcurrent. My only experience with the Elaszi had been negative, back on the Sliver.
“With the Elaszi?” Ze seemed to find that unbelievable. “No. Not if you have killed one, and you have killed more, Zara.”
Still wasn’t sorry about it, either. “Well, they were trying to kill us.”
“Self-defense not an excuse for the Elaszi,” Starcurrent said. “Because their memories are shared, individual deaths are not a means of permanently resolving a grudge.”
Jury was standing over to the side, like we’d added some statuary to our command center. We should have some art in here, I thought. Just not this kind. “Hey, Jury. Observing?”
“Yes, Zara Cole.”
“You going to kill me?”
“Undecided.”
“Well, give me a heads-up when you get to the end of that decision tree,” I said. “Until then I’m dealing with other shit. Bea?”
“Starcurrent’s right. They’re headed right for us on an intercept course.”
“We can’t change course, or we might lose the Phage,” I said. “And without Xyll’s help we might not find them again, not if they get too far out. Nadim, any word on uranium-rich planets in the sector?”
“There are eleven along this projected course,” he said. “But without more information it would be impossible to predict which he might choose to attack.”
“Which one is most heavily populated?”
He paused
for a second, then a holo map appeared in the air above the consoles. A large arrow pointed to one speck along our course. “There,” he said. “Here is where the Phage is . . .” A large, swirling cloud appeared. “And us”—a tiny pair of Leviathan, swimming along—“and the Elaszi ships.”
The Elaszi were going to head us off before we got to the planet. Not good. Not terrible either, because the last thing we’d need would be to fight on multiple fronts: Phage, Elaszi, and Lifekiller. I drummed my fingernails on the metal console for a few seconds, then got Chao-Xing on the line.
“We seem to be in trouble,” she said. “Again. I assume the Elaszi are our own fault.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around,” I replied. “Should we change course and intercept the Elaszi before they’re ready? Roll the dice on catching up to the Phage?”
“I’ve never fought an Elaszi vessel, but I understand they’re difficult,” she said. “You and Beatriz piloted the drones. What do you think?”
I didn’t like those damn grapples they used. I didn’t like the idea of them sinking into Nadim’s flesh. Or Typhon’s. “I think we need to figure out how to kill them fast.”
Yusuf leaned into view. “Do we need to kill anyone? Can’t we make a deal? Elaszi are born traders.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got nothing to trade. And Starcurrent says that by exploding that Elaszi ship back on that last planet, we’re screwed forever.”
“Ask them what they want,” he said. “They like profit as much as revenge.”
I didn’t like the idea much. Neither did C-X; I could see it. “I don’t like to give up the element of surprise,” she said. “Right now, they might think we don’t know they’re coming.”
“They might,” I agreed. “But Yusuf’s got a point. If we can get out of this without bloodshed—or whatever the Elaszi shed—then we should try. We have enough enemies ahead of us. Votes?”
Yusuf raised his hand. “Negotiate.”
Next to me, Bea raised hers too. Starcurrent ruffled his tentacles, apparently undecided.
“Marko?”
“Negotiate,” he said from offscreen.
“Nadim?”
We can always fight if negotiations fail. Well, that was practical. Typhon agrees. That was surprising; I’d expected him to jump right to the fight.
I looked at Chao-Xing. “Down to us,” I said. “Well?”
“Fight,” she said. “We might not get a better shot at them. You?”
She expected me to agree, I could tell; she was taking that almost as a given. And normally she’d have been right. But Nadim’s argument was persuasive. So was Yusuf’s. “Negotiate,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Do I have a vote?” Jury asked.
“Nope,” I said, at the same time Bea said, “Absolutely.” I resisted the urge to sigh.
“I am programmed to eliminate threats,” Jury said, “but I believe negotiation is wise in this case. If I have a vote.”
Chao-Xing looked disgruntled. “Now robots are voting? Did you ask EMITU?”
“Negotiate!” EMITU sang out. Literally sang, like every syllable separately. I wondered if he’d taken up musical theater. Maybe in Medbay he was making jazz claws for emphasis. I didn’t want to know.
“Fine,” she said, in the way that meant it wasn’t. “Yusuf, you should take the lead, I think. You’ve dealt with the Elaszi before, correct?”
“I have,” he said. “And we even managed not to murder each other.”
Yusuf opened a channel to the Elaszi. We were just viewers; they couldn’t see me on their end, which was good. I didn’t know how big this grudge was, but best not to kick it in the ass right away. “Respectful greetings to the Elaszi,” he said. “I am Yusuf of the Leviathan Typhon.” Yusuf, interestingly, didn’t use any bond-name either, just like Chao-Xing and Marko had avoided it. Typhon was letting his crew in. But they weren’t exactly comfortable with it yet, and by extension, neither was he. “May we speak?”
The screen split, and an identical copy of Blobby back from the Sliver oozed into view. Take a big pile of discolored gelatin, throw some red specks around inside it, and . . . that was the Elaszi. This one sort of formed into a humanoid shape, which was even more disconcerting, but maybe it was meant as courtesy. I didn’t speak blob.
“Greetings to Yusuf and Typhon,” the Elaszi said. “We come for Zara Cole.”
“You appear to be popular,” Jury said. “Noted.”
“Hey! Shut up! It was self-defense!”
“Your argument is also noted. I will review available records.”
I forced myself to ignore the big robot and turned back to the screen. Yusuf was starting out fine, looked like; he was asking what the Elaszi would accept instead of my head on a plate. Not in so many words, but that was the gist.
The Elaszi smiled. Well, formed transparent sharp teeth in a proto-human face, anyway. Disturbing. “Everyone knows the Elaszi do not negotiate when we lose our own.”
“Everyone knows the Elaszi are more interested in profit than revenge.”
“Insult!”
“Truth,” Yusuf countered. “You’re a sensible species. You know unfortunate events occur. You want to come out of it with something besides a useless victory.”
“Not useless,” the Elaszi insisted. “Your ships are rich sources of minerals. Leviathan organs bring profit on several worlds. Leviathan flesh—”
“Stop.” Yusuf’s voice went cold, and very heavy. The Elaszi checked itself, hard. “Talk about our Leviathan as parts again, and this negotiation is over before it starts. You don’t want this fight. You really, really don’t. You remember how just two of our drones killed your crew before, right? And how just one of us humans killed you on the Sliver? We make bad enemies.”
I wondered if we were starting to get that rep, because the Elaszi seemed set back. The silence stretched. Finally, the Elaszi said, “A fight is costly. But blood is blood. Bloodprice will be higher than normal, since we endured multiple endings.”
I supposed that made some sense; the Elaszi didn’t exactly mourn their dead, they got mad over the experience of death. And we’d cost them several now.
“Leviathan are off limits,” Yusuf said. “What else?”
“Difficult to say. Perhaps one of your singers?”
“No. Next?”
“Will not negotiate for the singer? We liked her.”
Yusuf had our backs. “I already said no. No singer, not even for rent. You screwed us last time, remember? If you deal in bad faith, you get nothing. Humans know this game. We’re born to it.”
“Not like Elaszi!”
“We’ll see,” Yusuf said. “Next.”
They went back and forth for hours. Insults flew. The Elaszi demanded ridiculous things, then big things, and finally Yusuf got them down to the price of half our drones. I didn’t like the deal, but clearly the Elaszi didn’t realize that we had been piloting the drones directly, that the automated ones on their own weren’t quite as precise or intuitive. But hell, if it got us out of a fight that would pull our focus from where it needed to be . . .
“Hey, Bea? Make sure these assholes aren’t sneaking around on our flanks,” I said, because I was naturally distrustful. Hadn’t been paranoid enough about the Leviathan cousins, and look where that got us. I wasn’t about to let this bite us in the ass too. She checked and shook her head, curls bouncing.
“They’re still in their original formation,” she said. “It doesn’t look like they’re changing their course or approach. Still on target to intercept us in about . . . half an hour, unless something changes.”
I tapped out a message to appear on Yusuf’s screens without Blobby catching sight of it. Wrap it up. They’ll be here soon unless they break off, and then we’re in it.
He caught the message and gave a slight nod I doubted Blobby would have noticed or been able to interpret. “Right,” Yusuf said. “So we hand over half our drones—”
“With activation codes!”
“And we program them so that they’re ineffective against Leviathan or Bruqvisz ships. Any tampering with that code, they blow, understood?”
I looked at Bea, wide-eyed. “Uh, can we do that?”
“Sure,” she said, and gave me a wide, dimpled smile. “I can.”
Man, I was lucky. “Better get to it,” I said, and she nodded, already on her H2.
“I’ll go to the bay and do it as a bulk change,” she said. “It’ll be faster.”
I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, not by herself; I still had uneasy feelings about Xyll. So I said, “Hey, Jury? Would you please accompany Beatriz and come back with her? I promise not to get up to anything criminal while you’re gone.”
“I will monitor,” he said. Great. I was on probation, apparently. “I will ensure no harm comes to Honor Teixeira. I have already determined that her sentence is invalid.”
The Jury was still literally out on me, apparently.
Bea and Jury took off, and I listened to the last round of insults between the Elaszi and Yusuf, but they sounded more like formula than heat now. Human bartering might invoke starving kids or grannies, but the Elaszi didn’t seem to care about those things (and I wasn’t even sure they had them). Instead, it was all about dismembering things for salvage value, like our human bodies; they’d stayed well off the Leviathan, which was nice. I supposed it was the Elaszi version of diplomacy.
Anyway, if we reneged on our deal, we were going to be sold for our organs, etc., etc. They tried for Bea one last time and got shut down hard, and then abruptly the Elaszi on the screen released its human form and relaxed into an amorphous protean blob. It said, “We accept this deal, human. Cross us again and we will salvage your brains, if they are worth anything. If not, sport. Yes?”
“Accepted,” Yusuf said, and smiled. He didn’t have sharp teeth, but in that moment, it looked like he did. “As for the brains, you’re welcome to try.”
The Elaszi was impossible to read, but I saw a gelatin shiver, and thought maybe that had registered as a real threat. Hoped so. I thought Yusuf was dead serious.
“Float drones to us on arrival,” the Elaszi said. “Will inspect. If acceptable, will signal end to bloodfeud. This will protect you against other Elaszi ships unless you violate agreements.”