by Kim Knox
“You were listening when Aleph talked of our race.”
“I’m very observant. I just like my impression of not giving a shit.”
He grinned, his baleen plate gleaming. “Ah, maybe Aleph underestimated you.”
“Story of my life.” She pushed her tangled hair from her face. “So what happens now? Why were you under that bed?” She gave him a hard smile. “The Samekh have no interest in being voyeurs.”
He held up the crystal and a fresh smile curved his thin lips. “I came for this.”
Chae’s smile faded and her brow tightened as realization hit her. “The Enan didn’t pay for Shavgar-7.”
“The Charag orchestrated that little attempt. They knew of this ship.” Resh shook his head. “We knew you would never fall for it.” He pulled in a noisy breath. “And once the ship breaks the lock, I will crush this, and the Ara Family’s chance at the throne will end.”
Daned snorted. “You can’t crush black crystal.”
“You don’t know my race like our friend here does.” Resh pushed himself up and Daned tensed, the hum of the Sel-9 on full charge vibrating through the room. The Samekh dropped onto the hard bunk. “Aleph said that after sex she passes out, a death-sleep that rattles the bulkhead with her snores.”
Chae glared at him. “Insults now?”
Resh pressed his clawed hand between his hearts. “I only report the information gathered from the flesh you rented from my pod-brother.” His dark gaze skimmed Daned’s naked body. “We expected the same from him…but he’s not flesh.”
“So you take the crystal and what?” Her eyes narrowed on him. He was Resh. Resh never left survivors. It was why he was being so very talkative. “Let me go happily on my way?”
“Captain Beyon—Chae—let us not insult each other’s intelligence. The ship will break lock, the crystal will fall to so much powder, and you? You’ll fall with it.”
“Really?” Daned’s fingers gripped her arm and pulled her behind him. “Not going to happen.”
“We’re only minutes from dropping out of lock. In fact…”
The ship shuddered around them. Chae fought to keep her balance, but she toppled back into the door. She gripped the frame, desperate to stay upright. Reality broke around her in the slow seconds of their transition into normal space. Pain seared through her flesh, biting into her bones. She tried to focus, but the agony of exiting the lock unguided made it almost impossible. Her heart ramped. In the fractures of metal and time, Daned attacked.
He smashed into Resh, flattening him to the bed. The Samekh’s distorted roar echoed around the room, and splintered space showed a confused mix of limbs, of Resh’s claws raking Daned’s back—
Light exploded and pressure flung Chae hard into the metal door. She grunted at the fresh burst of pain, her knees gave out and she sank to the floor. Her vision swam. She fought it. She was not dying naked on the floor of a fucking tau-class junk pile. Pain throbbed at her temples and she tried to push herself up. And failed.
The blackness took her.
Chapter Six
“Chae!”
The scent of warm leather shrouded her, pressing against her bare skin. She groaned and moved. Leather creaked and agony stabbed sharp little pins into her skull. She muttered a string of curses and crushed her eyes tight shut against the pain.
“Chae, you have to fly this thing!”
Daned. He was alive too. Warmth washed through her and she hated the relief it brought. She let her head fall back against the padded headrest and willed her eyes to open. “What the hell happened?”
“A Sel-9 fired against Resh’s mouth plate. Not even pod-armored skin can survive that.” He tilted her chin, his gaze narrowed on her face. “Can you focus?”
Chae rolled her eyes and even that simple action hurt. She frowned. “I can see you’re dressed.”
“Always the important stuff.” His warm fingers dropped from her jaw and he sank into the other chair. “You need to fly us down to Ladaia-prime.”
“The Samekh robes do suit you though. Very…official.” Chae scrubbed a hand over her face and fought to focus. Arguments that it hadn’t been her mission, that Ladaia-prime was the most secured planet in the quadrant, skimmed over her thoughts. But she was too tired and ached too much to voice them.
“All right,” she muttered. She gripped the guidance rods, her fingers flexing. The tau was floating dark and dead in space. Only the low whine of the life support thrummed in the engine casements. That was a good sign, at least. Silence meant death.
She ignored the tight pain constricting her chest and ignited the engines. With a roar and four teeth-jarring clangs, the ship kicked into life. It lurched forward and the screen flared. Clear space stretched across the curve of the ship and at the center sat Ladaia-prime, sunlight slicing across the eastern hemisphere.
She grinned. “I’m good. We came out inside the network defenses.” She glanced at Daned. His breathing was shallow and a flush brightened his cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
“Resh caught me with his claws. I’m waiting to heal. It’s normal.”
“Wait…What?”
“Fly, Chae. There was enough residual energy to broadcast my codes. They got us through the defenses.” His breathing quickened and Chae pushed down the hot rush of fear. The man was indestructible. “We were drifting. I have to…” His words died away and his head slumped.
Her stomach turned over and panic hit her. Without thinking, she reached to press her fingers to a pulse point on his neck. His strong, but slowed heartbeat throbbed under her fingertips and a breath escaped her. Damn it, she couldn’t become attached to him. Permanence meant great sex. Nothing more.
She turned back to the controls and let the familiarity of flying fill her thoughts. Black crystal asteroids obscured by vast mining structures orbited the planet, each encased in its own defense network. Her fingers itched and she resisted the urge to fly closer. Daned had opened the way to Ladaia-prime. If she pushed her luck, then a cannon would obliterate her pile-of-crap ship in a heartbeat.
Still…Her gaze wandered over the nearest asteroid, stark light carving out the jagged crystal surface. The mercenary in her felt a sharp tug, bringing with it the need to breach the mining security, grab as much processed black crystal as she could…and bolt.
Chae pulled in a slow breath. Sometimes she had to ignore the greed that drove her. No, get to Ladaia-prime and hope to hell Daned woke up before they hit the atmosphere.
The ship shuddered.
“What the…?” Chae gripped the guidance rods in reflex and scanned the instrumentation. That had been a weakened hit from an energy strike. Blips surged onto the edge of her screen and she held down a low groan. Floating dead with the systems down had kept them off the map. Now they weren’t. “Interceptors.”
The machines were still too far out to do any effective damage. She had to keep that advantage. She shifted her backside against the hot leather of the chair and cursed her nakedness. He couldn’t have thrown on her tunic?
“Should have known my luck wouldn’t last—what?—more than ten minutes.” Chae glanced at Daned. The bright spots in his cheeks had faded and a more even color filled his face. Whatever his body had to do was working. He was right. Ladaians weren’t human. “Right. I’ll do the job you haven’t paid me for…yet.”
She gunned the engines, pushing as much power as she could into the tau. The engines screamed and the hull protested, but she fought to control the ship and stop it from flying apart before they hit the planet’s atmosphere. Powerful vibrations shook the cockpit. Pain lanced across her shoulders and she arched her spine to ease it.
“I think it’s easier to take a hit than to fly you fast,” she muttered.
The proximity alarm whined, cutting through the noise. Chae marked the distance of the approaching energy strike. She cursed and skimmed the defense shield of the nearest asteroid. The hull protested against that too.
“All you do is moan.” She p
ressed her foot against the console, her knee locking, and braced her body to keep control of the ship. “My outer shell is melting. My engines hurt.” Her whine mixed with the increasing proximity alarm. “Buck up!”
Chae cried out at the shockwave that tore though the ship, but her braced body kept guidance firm. She gritted her teeth. The greater mass of the black crystal had diverted and absorbed the energy strike into its defense network…but more interceptors arrowed toward her.
“Shit, shit, shit.” She tore away from the safety of the asteroid and aimed the ship for Ladaia-prime. “Daned! You have to wake up now!”
He muttered something under his breath and turned his head away. An improvement on the previous coma, but not enough. She had coordinates for landing locked, but she needed his access to the shields surrounding the planet, shields that glowed on the screen in burning-red concentric circles.
Chae cursed and wished she had something to throw at him. “Daned! We are fried if you don’t wake up.”
He twisted against his seat, his borrowed clothes rubbing against the leather. “Chae?”
“Yes. The hot, naked pilot.” A direct strike flung her forward, the harness straining against her chest. She grunted at the sudden, fierce pain. “Codes. Please. Now.”
Daned groaned and pressed a hand to his face. “Codes…” He mumbled the word and his fingers sought out the console in front of him, blindly tapping out a sequence. “I’m not fully healed, you should—”
“A few cramps or blackened and crispy? I prefer living.” The first of the concentric circles faded to gray and Chae willed the ship forward. “Can you bring the shield up behind us?”
Daned squinted at the screen. “They’re automated Ladaian defense ships. They have their own codes.”
“Wonderful.” Another energy strike rocked the ship. The interceptors were close and closing. Each strike wore down her ship. A few more direct hits to the engines and they’d be a tin can in high orbit. Stranded. An easy target. “Then I have to dodge better.”
“Resh crushed the crystal—”
“You have to replace that, you know.” She met his glare. “Just saying.” She swung the ship hard to port, internal metal screaming and her body right along with it.
Daned groaned, but his fingers crawled to the console and he gave them access to the next shield. “The crystal wasn’t your payment. Not that sliver.”
Chae shot a look at him, quick, hard, before she fixed her attention back on the screen. “So, what was it?” An energy strike streaked past her, impacting the approaching shield. A flare of blinding light flashed over the screen and her eyes burned. “Fuck.”
“A candidate used to sit on the sunder-seld…Now, for the first time, they have their right to rule embedded in crystal.” He paused. “There was a bloodbath a century ago. The sunder-seld refused to allow us back into the citadel. Caught us in force-fields. It relented one month ago.”
Daned’s words washed over her as she fought to keep her focus on flying. Her eyes stung. Hell, her whole body ached. “So I was a mule?” She gritted her teeth. “And you didn’t tell me.” Anger tightened her face and she glared at the screen. He’d used her, known her greed would make her protect the crystal hidden in her boot. Bastard. “I wasn’t a decoy.” She snorted. “I can see how the not-liking-you works right now.”
“It’s a race. My prince gambled in not contacting you until the very last minute. Each…mule started from a point chosen by the sunder-seld—”
“Y’know, I don’t care.” Her knuckles ached from their hard grip on the rods. “I just want to land and get my payment.”
“We have to land close to the citadel.”
“Why? You failed. My crystal was destroyed.” The words burned sour satisfaction in her gut. “The Ara Family cannot take the throne.”
He straightened in his chair. “I told you. I’d do anything to stop the re-formation of the Host. Even if that means sitting on the sunder-seld myself.”
Chae ignored the twitch at his use of that forbidden word…and then what he was about to do sank in. “You’re going to crown yourself emperor, or prince, or whatever the hell it is?” Her greed rose, she couldn’t help it. “You’ll have the production of the quadrant’s black crystal at your command.”
“Help me get to the throne and I can share more than a few crates with you.”
He was playing her again. She knew that. But the promise of so much wealth was impossible to resist. She spun the ship away from an energy strike, grimacing as it caught the starboard engine, and the tau lurched. Hell, she had no choice. The last hit had fucked the engines. They had to land on the planet and Daned could keep her alive.
“How? Without the crystal—”
“I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. So…deal?”
“Deal.” She grunted as the ship took another hit. The console flashed too many warning lights at her and smoke curled down to the floor. Her stomach tightened. The screen crawled with interceptors, all of them bursting through the planet shields. Not good. So not good. “Because we’re going to be lucky to land in one piece. And I’ll need the money for surgery.”
Daned ignored her. “Last shield down.”
“Good. Hold on.” And Chae dropped the ship through the atmosphere like a stone.
The tau screamed around her and her body tore with pain. Chae fought to stay conscious. She’d done the maneuver before, but in her beautiful, resilient gamma-class cruiser. That hadn’t felt as if her bones were crawling out of muscles and bursting through skin.
They broke out of low cloud over a dense forest canopy and Chae fought to control, to steer into open space. Ahead a great black monolith rose out from the trees, its battlements crumbled and shattered. The screen magnified the structure and the sharp sunlight caught on the jagged weapons’ fire strafing the tower.
“It’s built from black crystal.” Chae couldn’t stop the awe staining her voice.
“It’s carved from black crystal. There.” He stabbed his finger at a point on the screen. “You can land there. It’s a break in the trees outside the citadel.”
Chae couldn’t help the laughter that broke from her. Thin smoke plumed up from the cockpit floor, and the acrid odor of burning wires, of heated metal, filled her lungs. The tau would be lucky to make it that far. Something chugged and then died. The sudden silence made her stomach drop. Silence meant death.
“Hang on to something. We just lost the engines.” Chae willed the stupid ship to stay in the air. She yanked the extra restraints over her body, ones meant to secure her in the case of crashing fucking fast into the ground. Already the screen showed the interceptors picking up the chase again. “Fuck. All right. Going in.”
The upper branches of the trees scraped the underside of the hull and she gripped the guidance rods hard. Almost. Almost…
A branch caught, twisting, turning the tau, and she lost all control. She could only cling to her seat as the ship rolled and bounced over the trees, her heart in her throat, her teeth clenched to keep back the need to vomit. She caught a glance of Daned and a fresh wave of panic hit her. He’d pulled down the protective restraints, but he looked…
Oh shit. His skin was gray, and in the wild spinning of the ship, she couldn’t be sure he was breathing. Her heart clenched. He looked dead.
***
The tau smashed into a line of trees and rolled to a stop.
Chae let out a low grown. Not one part of her body didn’t feel battered, bruised and beaten. And of course she was upside down. Branches tore through the screen, ripping a wide hole through the front of the ship, smoke escaping, and fresh air and light cutting through to the interior.
Instincts kicked in. She had to get out. The interceptors would find them and torch the ship. She jerked herself free of the restraints, twisting and landing on what was the curved interior roof. Her tunic warmed her feet. What? Had Daned liked the idea of her flying naked? Snorting to herself, she tugged it on and looked up at him.
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nbsp; Chae pulled in a slow breath and willed her heart to slow. He was gray and slumped against the restraining belts. There was a chance he was alive. She couldn’t leave him to burn. Cursing, she braced herself and yanked at the straps holding him. She winced as he thudded to the floor, arms and legs flopping. Her heart squeezed and she denied the burn in her eyes. She didn’t cry. She’d never cried.
“Come on, lump,” she muttered, dropping down beside him. Shaking fingers tried for a pulse…and found nothing. She touched his still-warm cheek, the contact spearing a fierce and unexpected ache through her flesh. A tear splashed onto her cheek. She’d lost something, someone…important, and it hurt like hell.
“Fuck.” Her fingers curled away from his skin and she pulled in a tight breath. She looked up. There, beyond the hiss and loud pop of the cooling metal, the interceptors’ engines screeched across the sky. “We have to get you out, Daned.”
Her voice broke on his name. She would pay her last debt to him and pull him away from the wreckage. The thought of the interceptors incinerating him tightened her gut. She rolled his body, slipped her hands under his armpits and tugged.
The one advantage of being upside down was that she didn’t have to drag him over the console. Still, he was a dead weight. She bit the inside of her cheek, the pain diverting her from more tears. She’d known him a day. Less. It was her upside-down life—literally—that had her emotions churning.
She concentrated on the problem of getting him out. Her bare feet slipped on the smooth metal of the screen. Her back muscles and spine ached from moving a solid weight, and she had to heft him to one side to pull him through the narrow slice in the metal. The fresh air filled her straining lungs. The unfamiliar whoop of birds, the rustle of trees and her bare feet sinking into black soil and leaf mulch had her skin itching. Arkhengai didn’t do nature beyond the odd weed.