Embrace the Romance

by S. E. Smith

  “Yeah, come on back.”

  Chapter Seven

  GDAT 3241.255

  Axur decided that calling Bethnee’s place a cave was like calling Kivo a pet—true as far as it went, but a wholly inadequate description. The log cabin front concealed the sealed entrance to an extensive cave system. Its main feature was a subterranean hot spring that she’d taken full advantage of to create habitats for herself and her animals. He especially envied the temperature-regulated pool she’d carved into a natural depression in the cave.

  Until he saw her relaxed in her own environment, he never realized how effectively she hid her vibrancy and unconventional beauty. She’d even come within centimeters of him a couple of times without flinching. A strong desire to touch her and be touched back arced through him. He locked his knees and shoved his fists in his pockets under his poncho. It wasn’t just general lust, because he didn’t want physical affection the other women he’d interacted with in town, and males didn’t flux his drive. He shouldn’t have agreed to come, but loneliness and longing overrode his reservations.

  He shoved his conflict into the outsized box of things he couldn’t control and focused on something he could. “So, I’ve met everyone except Jynx.”

  Bethnee grinned. “I saved her for last, because you’ll like her best.”

  “It’ll be hard to top a white weasel trained to steal.” He pointed toward her indoor garden, which she’d created by widening a natural cave cathedral and piping in circulating hot water and air. “Not to mention, an indoor bamboo forest to keep a half-blind red panda happy.”

  “Come see.”

  She took him through a narrow, curving corridor that led to a noticeably cooler part of the cave. The near-frosty air was a shock after the heat of the garden. Kivo’s attention was riveted on the tall rows of stacked crates along the wall.

  From between an opening in the stacks, a fully-grown snow leopard padded in. She glanced once at him and Kivo in seeming boredom as she gracefully jumped up onto the battered table. She sat and curled her long tail around her, watching Bethnee.

  He started to speak, but was interrupted by a low, rusty-sounding half-growl from Jynx. “Is she torqued?”

  Bethnee laughed as she stretched a hand out and moved closer to sink her fingers into the thick fur on the cat’s neck. “No, that’s just her ‘hello.’ It’s called chuffing. You can come closer. It’s a dirty little secret in the planet terraform industry that the last of the snow leopards died in a zoo long before First Flight, and that all the ‘naturals’ are actually recreations. She’s designer, not feral. I’ve let her know that you and Kivo are my friends.”

  He edged closer, trying not to stress Bethnee but wanting a better look at the big cat’s left front leg. “I’ve never seen an animal with cybernetics.” The cat’s distinctive spotted fur ended with a ragged transition to the raw, articulated biometal model of a cat’s leg. The toes on the wide paw had lethal biometal claws. If she’d ever had synthskin—synthfur?—it was gone now.

  “And you probably won’t see another. Animal brains usually reject the motile processor input, even with complete nerve mapping. She’s unique, and worth a fortune.” Jynx chuffed again, showing her sharp carnivore’s teeth. “Nuñez found her at the spaceport, wrapped like a mummy, half-dead, in a secret compartment of a large-animal container.” Bethnee chuckled. “The yaks get nervous just smelling her, so Nuñez gave her to me. Besides, her visible biometal makes her a theft magnet. I can’t let her go out very often.”

  Following instinct, Axur held out both his human and cybernetic hands for Jynx to smell. He smiled when she rubbed her head on both, marking him with her scent. “Cats are cats.”

  “Yep.” She leaned her hip against the table. “I had a devious reason for inviting you here.”

  He grinned at her. “You’re the least devious person I know.”

  She snorted. “I’m the least tactful person you know. There’s a difference.” She pushed a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. His fingers tingled with the desire to find out if it felt as silky as it looked. “I was hoping you’d look at Jynx’s cybernetic biometal-to-bone interface and tell me what needs fixing. When she jumps down from more than a few meters, her shoulder collapses, and now she’s afraid of going up high.” She pointed to stacks of crates. “I had to move her den down to floor level, and that makes her nervous.”

  “I’m willing,” he said dubiously, “but I know absolute zero about leopard anatomy. We’d have to take her back to my place for the tools and computers. And even then, her cybernetics might be a whole different design.”

  “If we pool our skills and talents, I’d sure like to try.” She rubbed Jynx’s ear. “Humans have treated her so badly. She deserves the best life I can give her.”

  He’d have given anything to take Bethnee’s sadness away, but he’d used up his lifetime quota of miracles when he’d escaped the CPS researchers. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Four days later, Axur quickly carried forty kilos of chemmed snow leopard to the temporary exam table he’d rigged in his workroom. Jynx had made a bad jump the day before and was in constant pain.

  “Did this room used to be the nav pod?” Bethnee asked. Her hands trembled when she wasn’t focused on the leopard.

  “Yes.” He hunched over to lay Jynx on her side on the folded blankets. He maneuvered around to the other side of the table. “The landing drilled the freighter partway into the mountain, so I took advantage of it and dug in more.” He smiled. “I didn’t win the hot-spring lottery like you did.”

  He pulled the big tech scanner down close to the leopard’s leg. “We’re in luck. She’s got a hidden jackwire port at the shoulder interface.” He pulled one of his longwires from the tray and held it out to Bethnee. “I’ll show you where, if you’ll insert it. When I run a diagnostic, tell me if it hurts her.”

  She inserted the wire with a steady hand. “Go.”

  He touched a control and watched the readout. “Standard processor, zero security. They must not have expected to lose her.” He frowned. “Battery is old-old style, and running low.” He looked at Bethnee. “I don’t know how your talent works, but can you check the interface area for temperature? Her processor is conserving battery power by reducing the leg’s internal heat generation.” He put his human hand on Jynx’s shoulder at the interface to see if he could feel the difference.

  Bethnee’s eyes lost focus, a sign she was using her talent. “It feels numb to her, but it always has. I thought that was normal.” She frowned. “Damn, I think I missed a passive tracer, right at the interface. The cybernetics must have masked it.”

  He moved his hand aside so she could lean over and probe with delicate fingers.

  “It’s faint…” Her voice trailed off, and she straightened abruptly. “It’s in your hand.”

  “What?” He flexed his fingers. “Frelling hell. I removed the standard Jumper tracers and the extras in my cybernetics. I never thought to look elsewhere.”

  “You might have missed them, anyway. It’s pet grade. Tiny.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why, but ever since I healed Kivo, you’ve felt real to me, not like a ghost. I think I could tell you where the tracers are, if I get close enough.” She blew out a loud breath and looked at her shaking hands. “And if I don’t flatline.” She crossed her arms and shoved her hands under her armpits.

  Just great. The woman he most wanted to get close to was terrified at the thought of even touching him. “Let’s deal with Jynx first.”

  The fix was easy to describe—replace Jynx’s failing battery with one of his spares—and hard to achieve. What would have been a ten-minute procedure in a Jumper med center turned into three hours of guesswork and improvisation using repurposed equipment in his temporary lab. The trickiest part had been helping Jynx interpret and accept the full input from her cybernetic processor.

  Axur triggered two mealpacks as Bethnee encouraged the leopard to walk
in circles around the couch.

  “We could take Jynx outside after lunch.”

  “Good.” Bethnee smiled. “She’s just humoring me, walking around in here. Thanks for giving up one of your batteries. At full strength, she’s amazing.”

  “It’s a good cause.” He wanted to tell Bethnee she was amazing, with her courage to fight through debilitating post-trauma stress to help her pets and his, but didn’t think she’d like the reminder. He pushed the heated tray across the counter toward her. “I’m glad the freighter had enough mealpacks for a decade, but I’m looking forward to growing season again. I was lucky the freighter was shipping seed starts and had a superb library in the shipcomp.”

  “I want to create a hydroponic garden in my cave.” She crossed to the counter and pulled out the mealpack’s utensils. “It works for starships.”

  “I can print small flexible parts for you, like nozzles and connectors, if you can trade for lexo substrate.”

  She nearly choked. “You have a working printer?” She set her fork down and stared at him. “The only other printer within a hundred kilometers is owned by the settlement company, and they only take hard credit. You could trade for anything you wanted. Anything.”

  “I had no idea.” Once again, he was surprised at all the things he’d taken for granted in his former life.

  She frowned. “Actually, you might want to keep quiet until you read the settlement contract’s salvage rights sections. Nuñez sent you a copy, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Yes.” He’d only read the part about homesteading, which said if he could improve a perimeter-marked plot of land for two years, it became his, and conferred legal resident status with it. If the company caught him before that, they’d haul him into the Concordance and charge him with trespass. And that was only if the relentless CPS didn’t find him first.

  Axur would bet hard credit that he and Bethnee were the only two people in the galaxy who had ever seen a cybernetic snow leopard and a formidable dire wolf play tag in the deep snow.

  Bethnee laughed when Jynx made an astonishing six-meter leap onto a boulder to avoid Serena’s lunge. He snuck a glance at Bethnee, enjoying her happiness. “Are you helping them get along?” He tapped his temple, to indicate her enviable minder talent.

  “A little. Mostly Jynx, because this isn’t her territory.”

  He checked his internal chrono. “We better start collecting your gear. I’ll send Trouble out to keep an eye on these two.” Axur had yet to be able to crack the encryption on the e-dog’s command processor that Bethnee had told him about, but he kept trying.

  Inside, he found Bethnee leaning against the kitchen counter, holding her small veterinary surgical suite. “I’d like to try removing your tracers.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Now? Are you sure?”

  “Hell, no, but it’ll be worse if I give myself time to think about it.” She searched his face. “Unless you don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you with anything except making coffee. Where do you want me?”

  “Chair, I guess.”

  He hesitated, then pulled off his shirt and sat. “Let’s try this first.” Jumpers gave up caring about nudity in the first ten-day of training, but she might not be so comfortable, especially considering his gender. He held out his hand.

  She opened the suite, exposing the instrumented interior, then swallowed visibly and took slow steps toward him. “Talk to me. Tell me how you escaped the shitheads who put tracers in you like you were a lab animal.” She rested trembling, cool fingertips on the back of his hand. “I like the sound of your voice.”

  He described how he made off with hoarded supplies, including extra batteries and tools, and hijacked the freighter. A lucky torpedo right before he went transit forced him to reprogram the navcomp on the fly to exit at Del’Arche, where he skidded in on a failing system drive and scorched, cracked atmosphere wings.

  She trembled the whole time, but she found and excised the tracers in his wrist, upper arm, and both of his shoulder blades. The surgical suite made it quick and nearly painless. The tracers under his collarbones were harder for both of them. Tremors wracked her, but she stuck to her task. He closed his eyes, but the butterfly touch of her cool fingers and the warm scent of her saturated his senses. He could no more prevent his erection than he could prevent his satellite uplink from broadcasting. He prayed to the constant stars she wouldn’t notice, or he’d never see her again.

  When the suite sounded its completion chime, she pulled it off and lurched toward the front door to slide it open. She panted like she’d been running low on oxygen in her space exosuit.

  After a moment of indecision, Axur climbed to his feet and pulled on his shirt, letting it hang loose over the front of his pants.

  She turned back to him, looking pale and exhausted. “Sorry. I’m a warped mess.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve got four more.” A tear fell. She brushed it away absently.

  “That’s enough for today. If the CPS is close enough to ping-trace the rest of them, I’m as good as iced, anyway.” He picked up the crate of her supplies. “No need to apologize for negative stress feedback. I’ve had it, and it’s no less debilitating because it’s just in your mind. Jumpers are lucky enough to get quick support and professional treatment from top-level minders and medics.”

  She gave him a watery smile. “I thought you said Jumpers ate pain for breakfast.”

  “We do. But we acknowledge the pain for each other, so no one has to carry it alone.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping to drain off the anger he felt at what he’d lost, what they’d both lost. “We look out for each other, because no one else will.”

  Chapter Eight

  GDAT 3241.264

  A hard fall off her glide board onto her bad leg left Bethnee barely hobbling as she let herself into her cabin. The added weight of her vet medic kit brought clawing pain with every step as she re-armed the security systems and checked the logs and the analog telltales. No one had bothered her in the two years she’d lived there, but carelessness was no longer in her nature.

  She made halting progress to the cave’s kitchen, escorted by her pets. She couldn’t afford to be disabled, or she and the animals would go hungry. She wished Axur hadn’t suggested they try to heal her leg with the autodoc, because she was tempted to take him up on the offer.

  It had been five days since she and Axur had fixed Jynx—and since Bethnee had failed to finish removing the tracers from Axur. He pinged her that night and since, as if nothing had changed. Maybe it hadn’t for him, but her world had tilted on its axis.

  She’d willingly touched a warm, half-naked man. Her dark, horrific memories had lost some of their power. Maybe it was time, but more likely, it was the healing balm of Axur. Handsome, resilient, clever, caring Axur, who resurrected memories of her younger days when sex was sweet and teenage dreams brimmed with passion and romance. Those memories used to belong to a forgotten stranger, but she could almost believe they were hers again.

  Most of her reaction when she’d removed the tracers had been fighting the impulse to touch him, like a lover. It scared and exhilarated her. And the realization that he’d been sexually aroused by skinny, scarred her had made her almost forget to breathe. She’d let him think she was still afraid because he was a man with the power to break her body, when the truth was, she was newly terrified that he had the power to shatter her heart.

  She could remain silent and maintain the friendly status quo, but could she live with herself if she did? She wasn’t Jumper brave, but she’d worked so hard not to let fear rule her. It wasn’t fair to either of them for her to stand in the doorway like a cat, neither going all the way out or in. She didn’t know what he wanted, but she’d never find out if she didn’t ask. She tapped her Axur-net earwire and waited for his response.

  “Hey. I’m glad you pinged. I have an idea for fixing my broadcasting comms problem, but I need your help.”

  H
is voice sounded like he was right next to her, whispering into her ear, making her stomach flutter.

  “Sure.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “What do you want in trade to use your autodoc to fix my leg?”

  The weak winter sun turned the snow glossy as Bethnee looked out the window of Axur’s home. She hated being a patient, but knew she’d be just as attentive if Nuñez or Axur got hurt, so she accepted his coddling. In moderation.

  “I thought I told you to stay off the leg,” said Axur.

  She turned to watch as he rolled in a cart filled with tools and equipment. “I hopped.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than a combat Jumper.” He pointed to the chair and footrest he’d rigged for her. “Sit.”

  She hopped back and eased herself down. “It’s boring.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why you’re going to help me crack my second processor.” He pushed the cart next to her chair, then put his stool next to it. “You need to eat like a Jumper today. Are you hungry yet?”

  “No. Shaky, though.”

  “Am I too close?” He started to move the stool, but she put her hand on it.

  “No.” She pointed to the space just in front of her. “Sit and tell me what you want me to do.” When he hesitated, she added, “You’re still a yak.”

  He sat, watching her carefully as he did. She sent out a thread of talent to him, letting the solid strength of him fill her senses. Her new strategy had worked so far, even when she’d been pantsless in front of him and needed his help to lift her badly bruised leg into the autodoc. Admittedly, she’d had to reach for the minds of the trusting animals to remind her brain how to stay calm, but she still put it in the win column.

  “Yesterday, I finally cracked Trouble’s command module security. Mine looks similar.” He held up a small hexagon-shaped percomp and a longwire. “I’m going to jack in, but if I trip the kill switch the researchers threatened me with, I’ll need you to reinitialize me. I’ll show you how.”