Moro's Price

by M. Crane Hana

Watching an unresisting Moro strapped down to one of the awful tables was bad enough. Terise had removed the platinum collar and plugged part of the headgear directly into Moro’s neck. “Oh, it will hurt somebody,” Val muttered, not feeling the pinpricks or his own traitorous blood being sucked away. “I’m sure Terra Prima terrorists would love to study Camalian physiology.”

  Terise gave Val a cold smile as she collected the glittering steel tubes from Basrali. “Be glad it’s only four small doses, Valier. If you weren’t already a part of my plans, and if Lyton wasn’t panting for you, I’d be draining all your blood and slicing up what was left.”

  Lyton laughed, settling onto his own table. “Terise, stop terrorizing my husband.” Val saw dried purple grass clinging to his tall black boots where he’d scraped off Moro’s puke. “Valier,” said Lyton, “no one will harm Camalians on my watch. Not even Terra Prima. Not when you will be humanity’s allies against the Sonta invasion.”

  “There isn’t a Sonta invasion,” Val said, looking away from Lyton.

  “So certain. I envy youth’s innocence. They made Taimoro to be a weapon. We’re just going to aim him against them first. Terise?”

  “All clear, Lyton,” said Terise, checking the odd headgear of both tables. “I wish we’d done more field trials of this new equipment. And I’d be happier with access to our usual Rio Sardis hospital.”

  “You worry too much, Terise. We know it works. Your secondary nervous system makes a perfect conduit. Taimoro, just relax. This will feel like going to sleep—”

  “Wait!” Val called, stalling for time and struggling against his bindings to get a better view of Moro. “That’s it? You throw a switch and Lyton’s in Moro’s body? Where does Moro go? Into Lyton’s old body?”

  “Moro ceases to exist,” said Terise and triggered the transfer.

  Seventy-Six

  “CAMA, FORGIVE ME. I’ve failed you and Val,” Moro thought as Terise gloated over him. By himself, he might have used every vicious lesson of the last nine years to break free.

  But Basrali was innocent and Val too important to be harmed. Had Val understood Moro’s reaction to Lyton? The only way Moro had endured it was by imagining Val. Val’s face, afterward, had only shown hurt and a baffled, unwilling lust. Even after Moro had thrown up—old times, eh, Lyton?—Val had still looked confused.

  Defeat’s bleak inertia settled over Moro. He’d thought the Camalians would have tracked him and Val by now.

  When he felt the coldness of transfer flickering once more along his nerves, Moro almost welcomed it. He shut his eyes on encroaching tunnel vision. It wasn’t like going to sleep at all.

  Blackness folded around him: a world without touch, sight, taste, scent, or sound. After some unknown time Moro realized he was still thinking. Still alive, shut away in a body he could no longer feel.

  Or it was the hell Father Milos had always warned about, back on Ventana.

  Or a very convincing hallucination of thought and memory.

  Well, Moro thought. If I am alive, how do I use this? “Cama?”

  He found no trace of her golden warmth in the endless dark.

  “Hello? Anyone?”

  One faint white star kindled, far away in the darkness.

  LYTON’S BODY BUCKED under its restraints and breathing apparatus.

  Moro’s body drew a deep, strong breath. Coughed. Then chuckled. Val couldn’t help his whimper. He couldn’t believe it. Could it still be a bad dream, some remnant of Lyton’s drugs fogging his brain? He’d been so sure of an unlikely rescue, of himself and Moro winning the day with some clever double cross. At least, they might have coaxed Lyton to savor the moments before his ultimate conquest as long as possible.

  No more time to buy.

  Moro was dead.

  “Lyton Shajahan Augustine Sardis?” Terise asked, leaning over Moro’s body. “Confirmation sequence alpha, please?”

  Moro’s voice, muffled by the mask, dictated a long string of numbers and letters, followed by a few succinct Old Earth curses, then, “Let me up, woman. You know it’s me.”

  Terise considered him. “Maybe I enjoy seeing you tied down in a lovely new body.” Her fingers ghosted over his chest. “Especially a body I found attractive in the first place.”

  Val audibly gagged. Basrali choked back a laugh. Terise glared at them both.

  “Terise,” said Lyton, “I offered several times to find you a new body of your own. Something strong. Young. Pretty. Basrali here is even Persian stock. She’s very loyal.”

  Basrali froze.

  Terise gave her a regretful once-over. “Terra Prima doctrine insists upon one life, one body, one soul in heaven. I will not cheapen my eternal reward, Lyton.” She released Lyton’s bindings.

  “You say that now. Wait until you feel death walking near.” He laughed as she helped him stand. He wavered on Moro’s long legs, stretching Moro’s arms and breathing deeply of the cold air. He took a steel flask from Terise. Swished some of the liquid in his mouth and spat it to the grass and then drank the rest. Lyton glanced down at his now quiescent groin and smiled. “Ah, for moisture-proof cloth.”

  “Clean up,” said Terise, jerking her sharp chin back into the ship.

  “No,” said Lyton. “I’ll make someone else do it for me.”

  “Lyton!” Terise said. “Here? Now?”

  “Where better?” Lyton countered. “Don’t watch if it bothers you.”

  The dim blue sunlight was already stronger, glowing off endless white cliffs and purple grass.

  It’s dawn, Val thought. Dawn on a dark world. If Moro is truly dead, he’d want me to kill his body as soon as I can. Val forced his face to neutrality as Lyton walked toward him with Moro’s easy grace.

  “Hello, Valier,” said Lyton in Moro’s deep voice. “I know what you’re thinking. You want to kill me. Or kill yourself. Don’t. This has happened. It’s over and the first Moro is gone. But the rest of your life doesn’t have to be terrible. I would cherish you and Cama. I understand you both. You’re lonely and ashamed of your needs. Cama is terrified of the Ksaloni.” Moro’s warm hand caught Val’s chin, forcing him to look up into a sweet smile and black gem eyes. “I can protect you both. Let me be your Knife, Valier.”

  And Cama help him, wherever she was, because it looked like Moro bending toward him.

  Could it be? Val knew Moro was clever. Could the man be using Lyton’s mannerisms to hide his survival just long enough to break them all free?

  It felt like Moro coaxing past Val’s lips and trembling jaws. Moro’s mouth tasted of mint and clean water. He teased Val’s tongue into a delicate, hesitant embrace. As if Val was at once the most fragile wineglass in the galaxy and the rarest wine.

  Somehow Val’s arms were free, rising to grip Moro’s shoulders and twine fingers in Moro’s tied-back hair.

  After he tugged Val’s robe apart, Moro unleashed a maelstrom of sensation with his hands. Here was all the Sonta carnality Val had sensed in the Diamond, all the beauty and fire Val had sworn to cherish on their horrible night flight north, no longer hidden, hesitant, or ashamed. It was commanding now. Exultant, a dark fire matching Val’s own leaping hunger!

  Cama’s distant, muted presence thundered inside him, more linked to Val’s body than his brain. Shamelessly riding his lust for Moro as she had from the first moment Val had seen the Diamond in an arena recording. But she was above it too. Trying to speak to Val. Trying to warn him.

  Moro gently cupped Val’s testicles. One fingertip caught one curled golden hair and pulled a little too tightly. On purpose, from the soft laugh rumbling in Moro’s throat. Val groaned. Moro squeezed him and tweaked another hair. “Whose throne and whose whip?” Moro whispered.

  In the second flash of pleasure and pain, Val knew.

  This wasn’t Moro.

  He twisted in Lyton’s loose embrace, drove his elbow up into Lyton’s chin, and hurled himself away. The man in Moro’s body roared and came after him. Val scrambled on all fours, leg
s tangling in the open robe, and fetched against one of Lyton’s bully boys. A grip like stone caught him and dragged him upright. The gun pressed cool and still against his temple. Val felt the bodyguard’s own erection through the back of his robe.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” Lyton in Moro’s body wiped the blood from his cut mouth. He smiled first at the bodyguard, then at Val. “I promised Taimoro I would not force you, Valier. I won’t have to if you’d just let your body do what it wants.”

  “I don’t want you. You’re not Moro,” Val gasped, turning his head away from those gentle, strong fingers. They dragged his face forward anyway.

  Lyton kissed Val’s forehead. Behind him, Val felt the bodyguard’s erection wither as the man flinched back. Oh. Moro’s blood, infected with the currently impotent symbiont. It would turn lethal once they were away from shielded Brightcliff. And when it did, Cama would know what Lyton had done. Outraged and queasy, Val knew Moro really was gone now. Not even his body would survive the inferno of Cama’s rage.

  “Cama won’t kill me,” Lyton said, reading Val’s face. “She needs me. And she’ll make sure you need me too. In a few more hours, I will be Taimoro Antonin Sardis, master of a power greater than the League has ever known. And you will be mine, my willing and hungry little emperor. Who else can set you afire with one touch?” he asked, proving it to Val’s captive body.

  “Lyton, stop playing around,” said Terise. “You can fuck him later. You have the key and the door. I have Terra Prima backers who want this superweapon activated and theirs. Do what you came to do.”

  “It’s not a weapon,” said Lyton with a last caress of Val’s straining flesh. “It’s a person.” He stalked around the overturned table and bent to scoop up the jade disc. “Be courteous, Terise. You’ll be meeting one of the mightiest creatures of this universe.”

  Lyton brought the jade disc to his lips and kissed it.

  Soundlessly the jade wings opened, revealing the spot of utter darkness. Lyton kissed it too, whispering something in a liquid, singing language. The artifact stayed open. Lyton turned, walked three paces to the standing stone, and pushed the key face-first into its carved receptacle.

  The ground heaved up a few inches and then dropped two feet.

  Lyton staggered against the now listing stone. Lyton’s ship groaned, settling heavily sideways on its landing struts. Val’s bodyguard lurched into the one holding Basrali, and those three went down in a tangle of limbs and swearing. Val fell into Terise Volker. She pushed him away with a cry of disgust and then crawled toward the gurney still holding Lyton’s previous body.

  Val saw it and wondered. Why protect mindless meat? He caught a glitter on the floor near his fingers. One of the ampoules! Val curled his fingers over it and hid his hand inside his robe. He vaguely heard Terise and Lyton yelling at each other.

  A quarter of a mile away, long sheets of white rock peeled away from the high cliffs and broke, thundering along the grassy slopes. A few ship-sized boulders tumbled and came to rest within two hundred feet of the ship.

  “I’m here!” Lyton screamed in Standard, struggling to his feet.

  Somewhere deep inside Val, Cama shrieked.

  The dim sky turned pure black overhead, a thousand-mile-wide portal ringed with turquoise fire. A vast, thick black tentacle, lit with patterns of aquamarine stars, nosed out of the ring. A sonic boom tore across the sky, deeper than the avalanche thunder. A flake of darkness dropped, a tiny black ship whose exhaust ports shone with the same turquoise fire. It settled between the boulders and Lyton’s ship.

  “No,” Lyton snarled up at the descending ship. “You’re not the one I summoned!”

  He tore at the key in the stone. The key remained locked in place. “White Storm, answer me. I am Kial Surna, your first human Vessel, your beloved consort reborn. You’re here, you must be. All your signs are here. Defend me from your enemy, this rebel Ksala!”

  The ground and the cliffs were utterly still.

  A bright door opened in the tiny ship, and a tall, dark shape showed in silhouette before the door closed. The figure scanned the sky and the cliffs. It walked easily down the slope toward Lyton’s ship.

  “Lyton,” Terise began, kneeling on the grass by the gurney. “Stay calm. We knew this was a possibility. The Sonta weren’t likely to let you do this unopposed. You had Moro trained in the likeliest combat styles.”

  “Weapons, I need weapons!” Lyton snapped, abandoning the stone for a tipped-over crate. After opening the long crate, he began pulling out a startling array of knives and swords, whips and collapsible fighting staffs. He jammed them into various slots, sheaths, and holsters on his body armor and belts. What didn’t fit on the first try, he dropped.

  “Here’s a gun, Sero Sardis,” one of the bodyguards offered.

  “Cannons,” said Terise, looking back toward Lyton’s ship. “We could just blast him.”

  “Terise, don’t!” Lyton yelped just as a deep, booming laugh swept down the slope.

  “Try it, ape-man, and my true body will destroy your ship and half this miserable planet,” a man’s voice rumbled in accented Standard. “Honorable folk fight face-to-face, Vessel to Vessel, with only their bodies and weapons in the hand. You knew enough to cast lures for the White Storm, but you don’t know this?”

  The newcomer was nearly as tall as the tilted standing stone. Over eight feet, thought Val, bigger than Michol Kott. He made Moro’s body look like a stripling boy’s.

  Supple black fighting garb showed splashes of opaline white skin. The armor and cloth contoured thighs like tree trunks, wide shoulders, and a trim waist only narrow in proportion. The man’s single white braid was knotted into a fighter’s club and shone like the scattered rocks. His ears were tall and pointed, fringed along their back edges by glittering white whiskers. Gloves and short boots left his white-clawed fingers and toes bare. He carried a three-foot-long black sword, nearly delicate in his big hands. In a handsome, fanged, savage face, the Sonta man’s eyes glowed with turquoise fire.

  “This is sacred ground. The White Storm will—” Lyton began.

  “He is dead,” said the Sonta, stopping twelve feet from Lyton. “Or gone. He is certainly not here, clinging to the deluded prayers and artifacts of the few Sonta who followed him into oblivion. And you are not who you claim to be, Lord of Sardis.”

  “Still, I came to do him homage in his last shrine,” Lyton said, bowing cautiously to the Sonta. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “You’ve studied Sonta, I’m told. You know I am Danil.”

  “The Vessel of Danil?”

  The newcomer shook his head, smiling and pointing up with his sword. “The Ksala Danil. The Bound Ksaloni have watched you for a hundred years. Your ghost hunt amused us until you stole Sonta artifacts and your woman plotted against Sonta allies. When Aksenna’s whelp created an utter Abomination, you stole its body for your own. I will allow you to return to your own flesh. Then I must destroy Aksenna’s mistake, body and soul.”

  “No,” Val murmured, his new flash of hope turned to another death sentence. “Not my Moro. Why?”

  The Sonta’s face turned toward him, the fiery blue eyes narrowed. “Cama’s child, the Abomination is a danger to our universe. He must be allowed no greater contact with the White Storm’s leftover energies. You cannot free yourself of this unwise infatuation?”

  “No,” said Val. “I’m an Antonin. Once I love, I love until death.”

  The Sonta freed a small black dagger from an armband and flicked the weapon at Val. It struck, quivering, into the metal floor in front of his knees. “Then seek your death quickly before I destroy the last traces of the White Storm on this world. Or you may be dooming your Commonwealth to a mutual enemy.” He looked toward Terise Volker.

  Val paused, fingers hovering over the dagger hilt. “Why?” he asked, noting Terise’s tiny smile.

  “You didn’t fight me when I wanted to catch Valier,” whispered Lyton.

  “No,
Lyton.”

  “You wanted him here the moment you heard he’d married Taimoro.”

  “Yes, Lyton.” Her smile grew. “Another gift from God, a sign I could not ignore!” She pointed at Val. “Even his own people say he is Cama’s strongest link in two thousand years. Even though he was unfit to rule, unless he found a Knife to calm his madness. And look! He found Moro, under such extreme conditions. How sad, Valier Antonin ne’Cama will lose his anchor within a day of bonding to him. Oh, Valier,” she mocked. “Your suicidal mourning would be a victory for Terra Prima by itself. I can’t wait to see it amplified across Cama’s Commonwealth the moment you’re out of this shielding. Your demon kindred will drop dead in the streets.”

  Val stared at her, feeling grief as sweet as pleasure. Hadn’t he wanted to drown in it from the moment he’d suggested his bargain to Moro?

  He knew then what Terise Volker had guessed. The inevitable result of Moro’s death, his personality swept away in the mindless flotsam of Lyton’s old body or destroyed by the Ksala. Of Cama’s awareness, bound so tightly to Val’s. Some part of Val had always known what must happen if Moro died before him. Cama had known too.

  Would she have killed Val to protect the minds of the Camalians? When Brightcliff’s shielding faded or Val was removed alive from it, Cama would have only a moment to break their link before Val’s grief lashed out. From the fumbling, distant presence inside himself, Val couldn’t even tell if Cama knew about Moro’s death.

  “Valier, no!” Basrali cried and grabbed the dagger away from his hand. “Not yet.”

  Seventy-Seven

  THE LEAGUE PLANET dropped away beneath Nineveh. Cedar-Saba became toy towers, then a dark-gray blotch on Cedar’s wide green curve. Blue air shrank to a thin veil far below; the black sky filled with glittering satellites and distant stars.

  Bill stretched against the safety harnesses of the pilot’s chair, wondering if he dared release them yet. “We’ve left atmosphere, folks. Now what?”

  “Stay in your seat or hold on to a support when we make contact,” said Aksenna, her sly tone flavoring Savinilan’s warm voice. “Plot a course beyond Cedar’s moon orbits, heading away from the sun.”