I pulled out an emergency blanket and wrapped it around my chest and waist between layers of shirt. Even with the constant movement, I was getting dangerously cold. I fumbled with my belt but finally got it secured.
I ate an energy bar then shouldered my pack and turned to Loch. “If we don’t find shelter and heat in the next two hours, I’m going to be in bad shape,” I said. I hated to admit weakness, but I knew my limits. Even another two hours was going to be pushing it.
He looked me over then nodded. “We’re almost there. This canyon runs next to Gamamine. We need to exit on the left, so keep an eye out for a route. I’d rather not scale the walls if we can avoid it.”
“Oh, I can avoid it,” I grumbled. I regretted our hasty departure from the ship. If it came down to it, I’d head back there and wait for rescue/capture. At least I’d be warm.
Loch didn’t bother with a response, he just turned and walked off. If he felt the cold, he didn’t show it. He moved easily, with a spare, efficient gait that was beautiful to watch. He looked like he was out for a Sunday stroll, not like he was trudging through the bitter cold in inadequate clothing.
By the time Loch stopped again, I could barely feel my legs. If I didn’t get warm soon, I was going to collapse.
“We’ll climb here,” Loch said.
I looked at the wall of the canyon he was studying. It wasn’t vertical, but it was steep and rocky. The canyon floor had been climbing for an hour, so the rim of the canyon was only about fifty meters up.
It was going to be a brutal fifty meters.
I followed Loch with single-minded determination. I stared at his feet, willing my own to step in the same places, climb over the same rocks. I didn’t look up; I didn’t want to know how far we still had to go.
Loch pulled me up over a large rock. I tried to keep climbing, but he clamped an arm around my waist. “Stop,” he whispered. “We’re nearly at the top.”
His arm was so warm. I turned and huddled into his chest, uncaring that I was snuggling a criminal. He was a warm criminal and that was all that mattered right now.
“Shit,” he said. “When did you stop shivering?”
I shrugged. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped. My whole focus had been on putting one foot in front of the other. “I told you I had two hours. It’s been two hours. I wasn’t lying. How are you so warm?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “The city is surrounded by a fence, but not a good one. Stay here, I’ll find a way through.”
I shook my head. “If I stop moving, I’ll die. If you want me to find my own way through, I will, but I can’t stay here.”
“Can you run?”
“If I have to and not for very long.”
He pushed me away from his chest. Frigid air stole the little warmth I’d collected until I felt colder than before. “Stay here for two minutes while I do an initial recon.”
“You literally have two minutes, then I’m heading for the city with or without you,” I said. “Your time starts now.” I started counting in my head. It kept me focused. My thoughts were slowing. I’d pushed myself too far and now I was dangerously close to making a fatal mistake.
Loch stepped a meter up the canyon then froze. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. He held statue-still for thirty seconds then slowly sank down.
“There’s a hidden door. Just saw a kid sneak out and head for the canyon farther down. I don’t think he saw me, but we need to move. I didn’t see any guards. We’ll run for the fence.”
I stomped my feet and promised myself the largest cup of real hot chocolate I could find. It would be an extravagant expense on a planet this isolated but worth every penny if I survived long enough to claim it.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I said.
Loch grabbed my wrist and pulled me up the final rise of the canyon. The fence was only about twenty-five meters away, but nothing gave us any cover. It looked like a hodgepodge of whatever the citizens had leftover rather than a true fence. Old doors and windows, pieces of plastech, and scraps of wire were all held together by welds, ropes, and prayers.
We pounded across the open space. It took all of my concentration to run. Twice I stumbled, and Loch’s grip on my wrist was the only thing that kept me upright. Exhaustion clawed at me with soft, sweet fingers.
We reached the fence and Loch dropped my wrist. His hand left a band of heat on my flesh. I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and leech away his warmth. I shook off the images of our naked limbs entwined and followed him down the fence line.
The door was only visible once you were standing right in front of it. A bit of rope worked as a pull and two pieces of barbed wire tied around a fence post were the hinges. This section of fence was on rocky ground, so no footprints gave away the location.
Loch opened the door, peeked through, then reached back to pull me through with him. It was immediately clear that this was not the best part of town. Trash littered the street and the plastech houses were dark and shuttered.
Cheap and easy to build, plastech houses were the first buildings to go up on any new planet. It seemed the local residents then decided to take matters into their own hands, adding levels with mud bricks and closing off alleyways with the same.
It was either very early or very late because the streets were empty. Or this section of the city had been abandoned. While that would help us hide, mercs generally didn’t cede sections of the city without a reason.
Loch led us through the streets like he knew where we were going. I did my best to keep up, but the world was hazy around the edges by the time he stopped in front of a decrepit building. He paused at the door, then swung it inward and stepped inside.
The inside wasn’t any warmer than the outside, but at least the walls blocked the cutting wind.
“Stay here,” he said.
I blinked and he was gone. How long had I been standing here? I forced myself to walk around when I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and sleep. In the faint light that filtered through the filthy windows, I saw that the front rooms of the house were mostly empty. A few pieces of broken furniture proved that someone had once lived here, but they seemed to be long gone.
“Come on,” Loch said. “I found a room with a heater.”
I followed him deeper into the house. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see what I was stepping on. He stepped into a dimly lit bedroom, complete with a tiny bed and thin bare mattress. It looked a lot like the bed in the cell on the Mayport. True to his word, the heater in the wall was struggling to warm the room. The overhead light panel produced enough light to see by, but it must have been set to its lowest setting.
Loch shut the door and dragged what looked like a broken dresser in front of it. My heart rate spiked and adrenaline cleared away some of the cobwebs in my mind. I’d followed him like a puppy into a room with a bed and only one exit—an exit he’d just blocked.
“Strip,” he said. He started pulling off his own clothes.
Oh, hell no. I backed away. He was strong and fast and not half-frozen. Even if I could grip a knife, it wouldn’t do much good. That didn’t mean I was going down without a fight.
Loch glanced at me then froze. He straightened. His eyes dropped half-closed and his mouth curled into a melting grin. My heartbeat kicked up and not from fear. The man could stop traffic with a look like that.
“Ada,” he drawled, “if I wanted to fuck you, I wouldn’t have to lock you in to do it.” He stalked across the distance that separated us while I stood frozen. “I prefer my women warm and willing. And since you are neither, you’re just going to have to imagine how good it could be.” He cupped my jaw with a warm hand and glided his thumb over my lips. “Now strip before you die of hypothermia. And leave your underclothes on.”
By the time I’d shed clothes down to a short-sleeved shirt, bra, and boxer briefs, Loch was down to his own boxer briefs and had laid out several emergency blankets on the bed. He raised an eyebrow at my cl
othing but didn’t say anything.
“In you go,” he said, holding up the edge of a blanket. I slid across the crinkly foil blanket to the edge of the bed facing the wall. “Lights on or off?” he asked.
“On,” I said. Definitely on. I needed to be able to see him.
“Okay,” he said. He slid into bed behind me and the mattress dipped under his weight. I tensed and held myself still on the very edge of the bed. A warm arm around my waist dragged me back against scalding skin. He cursed the air blue. “You should’ve told me you were this cold.”
Modesty forgotten, I pulled his arm farther around me and wiggled to get as close to him as possible. With the emergency blankets covering me from neck to feet and a large, warm body at my back, I finally felt like maybe I would survive the day.
I don’t know how long I’d drifted in and out of sleep before the shivering started, but once it began, sleep was a distant memory. I shivered so hard my teeth chattered. Loch turned me over so I faced him and tucked me into his chest with my head on his arm. He wrapped both arms around my back and threw a leg over my lower body.
Hours or perhaps days later my shivers slowed down and I dropped into an exhausted sleep.
When I awoke, I was alone in the bed, and I was warm. In addition to the emergency blankets, I was covered by two long cloaks. I rolled away from the wall and every muscle protested. Apparently shivering was a full-body workout.
Marcus sat propped against the wall by the door, studying a small com tablet. “Do you want the bad news or the worse news?” he asked without looking up.
“What happened to the good news?”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” He continued without waiting for a response, “There are exactly zero commercial flights out of this shithole. Three days from now a merc ship is leaving for the nearest station, but for reasons that should be obvious, that’s not our best option.”
“Is that the bad or the worse? Wait, did you do a sweep of this stuff to make sure it’s clean?”
“That’s the bad news. And yes, I checked for bugs, all of it is clean. The worse news is that Rockhurst’s team landed two hours ago. So far they don’t seem to have alerted the locals to who they’re searching for, but it may only be a matter of time.”
“They landed the Santa Celestia here and no one blinked an eye?” Yamado may have left the planet to the mercs and smugglers, but that didn’t mean they’d overlook a rival House landing a battle cruiser on their planet, worthless or not.
“No, they left the Santa Celestia in space. It’s too large to land here. They’re in a smaller unflagged merc ship, probably one they kept in the Santa Celestia’s hangar for covert planet landings.”
Mercenaries weren’t required to flag their ships to one of the High Houses unless they wanted to announce that they were under that House’s protection, so an unflagged ship wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. It was the perfect cover to land on an enemy planet, and one that House von Hasenberg had been known to use as well.
Could I buy a ship before Rockhurst’s men found me? Possibly, but it wouldn’t be easy. “I don’t suppose you bought an extra com while you were out?” I asked. I was sorely tempted to yell at him for leaving me alone while I was sleeping, but it wasn’t his job to be my babysitter. I should’ve woken the moment he moved. The fact that I hadn’t meant I’d been in much worse shape than I’d realized.
He gestured to the floor near the top of the bed. I slid over until I could see where he was pointing. My pack sat with yesterday’s clothes folded on top. On top of that was a small com tablet like the one Loch was using. It was a cheap, mass-produced model. I had a moment of silence for the top-of-the-line unit I’d left on the station where I was captured.
Thin, handheld devices made of glass and metal, coms were the glue that held the universe together. I’d felt naked for the last couple days without mine. This one was produced by a Yamado subsidiary, so it was in no way secure. I reset it, touched my right thumb and pinky finger together, then held the com up to the tiny chip embedded in my right arm.
The tablet chirped, then the screen lit up with Welcome, Irena. Irena was one of my middle names and Irena Hasan was a burner identity that hadn’t yet been compromised. This tablet now belonged to her, along with all of her accounts that had been linked from the chip in my arm.
The tablet synced to both local and Universal Time. Because the sun never set on this planet, they had conveniently decided to stick with Universal Time. It was approaching noon. I had a feeling that my internal clock was going to have a hard time adjusting to constant twilight.
I checked my messages and found several from my older sister Bianca. I tried to keep her informed of my aliases and whereabouts, at least in general terms. In return, she let me know where House security was searching for me.
Hannah and Bianca were my two oldest sisters. Neither had married happily and they didn’t want their little sister to suffer the same fate. They’d quietly cheered my escape and funneled me money on the sly.
Bianca’s messages contained neither names nor specifics, but I knew everyone at home was fine just from the way they were written. However, there was an undercurrent of unease and an implicit plea for caution. That was worrisome.
I sent off a quick reply, letting her know in very oblique terms that Rockhurst was after me but that I was okay. We were both using insecure alias accounts, so there had to be a lot of reading between the lines.
I checked the news feeds and didn’t find any mention of unusual Rockhurst activity. If they were willing to risk House von Hasenberg’s wrath to capture me, I assumed that we were on the brink of war. Instead, it seemed like business as usual—a tense, hostile truce hidden behind a facade of friendship.
Digging deeper, I found hints of Rockhurst movement but nothing big enough to set off any alarms. Was I reading more into it than I should?
Either way, I needed to escape this planet.
The bank account I’d set up for this identity had plenty of funds to live on, but not enough to buy a ship. Even paying off Loch would be a stretch. I’d have to access my true account for additional funds, which meant I needed to have an escape plan ready or I’d get scooped up before I left the bank.
“Did they find our escape ship?” I asked. I slid out of bed and started pulling on yesterday’s clothes. Muscles throughout my body protested, but I was up and moving, so I’d work out the soreness before too long.
Loch glanced up then returned his attention to his com. I guess slowly pulling on a pair of men’s pants while moving like a little old lady wasn’t super alluring. “I didn’t see it at the spaceport,” he said, “but I assume so. If they’re smart, they left it in the canyon and either disabled it or put trackers on it.”
So returning to the escape ship was a nonstarter. A crazy idea occurred to me. “How nice is the unflagged merc ship?” I asked.
Loch looked up with a knowing grin. “It’s nice. I did a little recon earlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had House ship internals.”
That was both good and bad. If it really did have personal House Rockhurst engines and systems then it would be fast and capable. But it would also mean I would need much better and more recent information to steal it. “I need a new com,” I said. “Not that I don’t appreciate this one, but I need a secure model, preferably one made by House von Hasenberg.”
“It’ll cost you,” he warned. “And put you under scrutiny.”
“If I’m going to steal their ship—and I am—I need a secure channel. If you’d like to help, I’d appreciate it, but I understand if you want to take your money and run. The bank will be watched, but I’ll get it for you somehow if you want hard credit chips.” I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on my socks and boots.
“I promised to get you to a planet or station with an interstellar port. This hardly qualifies.”
I shrugged. “It’s close enough and you helped me escape the ship, which was my main objective. It would be safer for
you to disappear into the dark half of the planet. Stealing a ship from a House is frowned upon.”
Loch laughed. “You’re good,” he said. “I can’t tell if you’re intentionally trying to manipulate me into helping you steal the ship or if you really think I should run.”
In point of fact, I wasn’t sure which I was doing, either. It would be much harder to take the ship on my own, but spending more time with Marcus Loch was dangerous in its own right.
“Either way,” he said, “I’m a man of my word, and I don’t think I’ve upheld my part of the bargain. You’re stuck with me awhile longer.”
I would feel better about his help—and his honor—if it didn’t come with the calculating look. “Okay, thanks,” I said. “First things first, I need a new com. Did you see anything that might work while you were out?”
“There are a couple options, but this town is mostly dead. This whole section is abandoned. It seems smuggler hunting isn’t paying the bills like it used to. Most people have moved on to greener pastures.”
A smaller town was worse for us. Getting lost in a big city was easy, but a new person in a small town always drew attention. “No one questioned where you came from?”
“The people I dealt with don’t question their customers. I spent credits and that’s all they cared about.”
I wasn’t sure that honor among thieves would hold once Rockhurst started throwing money around, but I had to hope we were long gone before Richard became that desperate.
I ate an energy bar from my food stash, drank a half liter of water, then stood and pulled one of the cloaks off of the bed. “Thanks for the cloak, too,” I said. “Keep a total of what you’ve spent and I’ll add it to your payment.”
Made of a heavy black material, the cloak fell from my shoulders to my ankles. The front clasped together to keep out drafts and a deep hood both protected my head from the elements and helped to hide my face. And it was still deliciously warm thanks to the built-in heat field. No hypothermia today.
Polaris Rising Page 7