by Jael Wye
She was marching ahead of her captor, toward his rover, feeling the itch of the charge rifle trained on her back with every step she took. But she would not let the slightest hint of fear show in her posture or her face. She had to stay in control. Buy time.
Ignoring his question, she said into her visor com, “I assume Victoria Ross is the person who sent you after me.”
“Oh, ay,” Woods said in a jovial tone. “She’s been trying to kill you for a while now. Couldn’t quite get it done, though. In the end, I’m the one who got you, not her.”
There was a curious hectic note in Wood’s voice. He seemed overcharged, manic. “What are you talking about?” she said carefully.
“She sent someone else to poison you right after you got off the elevator this last time, but whoever it was managed to dust the assignment.”
The medic at the biodraw station, she thought with a fresh chill. It had to be.
“So I got to step up and take care of business,” Woods finished.
She said, “Take care of business. Like the way you took care of it when you gave me that poisoned compac?”
“That was my puta boss’s idea, not mine,” Woods said, his voice hardening.
Bianca pounced. “It sounds like you don’t like Victoria’s way of doing things. I’ll make a deal with you. You let me go, and I’ll pay you triple whatever Victoria is paying you. You know I’m good for it.” She tried to keep her breathing even.
There was silence on the com for a moment. She didn’t look back at him, concentrating hard on setting her feet carefully on the rocky ground.
“I do appreciate the offer,” came Woods’s slow drawl in her ear, “but I’ve got the financial aspect of this job covered already. See, I got a voice recording of your mum ordering me to kill you in my possession. When you show up dead, I’ll have StarLine’s entire budget at my fingertips. That’s more than you can offer, I think. Besides, this way, I get the cash, and the pleasure of killing you at the same time.”
“Why do you want to kill me?” Bianca whispered.
“Nothing personal. I want to kill all you stretched out mookie freaks.” Bianca couldn’t reply for a moment. Her throat had closed in fear. She kept moving forward mechanically. Finally, she said, “MarSec will investigate this. And my father will hunt you down.”
Woods snorted. “That don’t scare me, chic. My security blokes have already reported your accident in the Outback to MarSec. As for your daddy, Vicki can twist him any way she wants, if it comes to that. And when she gets a load of these recordings of mine, I’ll be able to twist her any way I want.”
“What makes you think that Victoria will let you blackmail her? She’ll try to get rid of you like she’s trying to get rid of me.”
Woods laughed, a strange, high-pitched sound. “Old Vicki can’t touch me. She thinks she’s so smart, but I can handle her arse. Pretty soon, I’ll be the one jerking the leash, and that mookie puta will be the one licking my feet.”
Bianca stayed silent, stealing a quick glance back at her captor. A realization was slowly dawning on her.
Woods was insane. She could hear it in his voice, see it in the too-bright glitter of his eyes. A slow shiver shook through her. She struggled to form a coherent thought. “Cracked,” she whispered to herself.
Woods heard her, and giggled again. “Ay. Your fecking mum is cracked. Puta thinks she can take over the Sol. Thinks she’s so superior. All you mookies think you’re so superior. The pinnacle of humanity. Like those fecking Aurora bastards she thinks I don’t know about. Playing with genes, trying to make the perfect human. But they’re weak. You’re all weak. Flimsy freaks, every last one of you. One puff of air and you’re down.” He jabbed the barrel of his rifle into her back and she stumbled, nearly crashing to her knees. “Just like your mack buddy I dusted up there on the cliff.”
The terrible shivering got worse at his words. Keep it together. Cesare is not dead, she chanted to herself.
“Look at you. Freak. Wonder what those Martian bird bones of yours look like. Maybe I’ll cut you open and find out. Going to do you so right,” Woods crooned. She felt the muzzle of his gun just graze over her neck. She trembled violently. “Think I could twist your head off with my bare hands?”
The world grayed out around her, the monster’s words blurring into a sickening, indecipherable noise. Step after step. She struggled to keep an endless scream from erupting out of her. Hold it together. Keep moving.
A rover doorpad appeared in front of her. Another sharp prod in her spine from the rifle. “Open it.” Her hand moved as if it were under its own power, touching out the code she only vaguely heard.
She was through the locks. Inside a darkened rover. Her eyes drifted over the rover hab. Such an ordinary rover. Her gaze caught on something. A visor and gloves were lying on the floor in front of the lockers. Something was off about that, but she couldn’t tell what. She couldn’t seem to think. Her mind was floating off somewhere cool and quiet where words and guns didn’t matter very much.
“All right, puta. Your suit. Take it off.”
Absently, she did as she was told. She lifted her hands, as stiff and numb as a bot’s, and snapped off her visor. She dropped it on the floor. Slowly she took off her gloves.
“Come on, hurry it up,” the monster said.
She turned to look at him. He had taken off his visor and hood. She could see his narrowed black eyes glinting, his tongue slithering out of his mouth to wet his fleshy lips. He held the rifle casually in his hand, the narrow muzzle trained straight at her heart.
Her vision fuzzed again, and she clenched her gloves hard in her icy hands. Long-fingered gloves. Like the ones on the floor. Gloves that would fit a Martian’s hands, not an Earther’s.
“Come on,” he said impatiently.
The gloves and visor...there was something about it...but she couldn’t think—
Without any warning he stepped forward and backhanded her across the face with crushing force, knocking her to the floor. Her ears rang. She tasted blood on her tongue. She had never in her life been struck before, and for a split second her world went black with the shock and pain of it.
And then it went white-hot. Every primal instinct she had blazed up inside her, burning away the gray in front of her eyes, roaring in her head with one imperative—fight.
He reached down to grab her arm in a bruising grip, trying to haul her up. As he yanked, she whipped her free hand at his face, clawed fingers raking across his left eye, drawing blood.
He jerked back instinctively, howling in pain and surprise, pawing at his streaming eye. “Puta!” he screamed, raising his gun high above his head, ready to beat her unconscious.
Suddenly, one of the lockers next to them crashed open, and a big, familiar shape exploded into the room. Cesare.
In one swift rush, he tackled Woods, driving him away from her. She crouched on the floor, stunned, as the two men grappled for control of the rifle. Cesare was bigger, but the Earther was as solid and hard as a boulder, his shorter limbs letting him power in close. He briefly let go of the gun with his left hand and pounded Cesare in the side with a series of vicious jabs. Cesare grunted in pain but didn’t let go. He used his superior height to jerk Woods off balance and send them careening into the rover’s cab, half falling against the consoles.
The rifle fired with a sizzling crack, the round blowing through the rover controls. Blue sparks crackled under the panels, and the sharp stink of fried comps filled the air.
“Fecking mookie!” Woods shrieked. His face was a bestial mask under the sickly, flaring light. “You’re dead! You’re dead!” With a heave of his thick shoulders, he slammed Cesare backward into the wall next to the lock door, trying to shove the rifle up against his throat.
Cesare’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a fierce snarl, but his face was gray
, his arms shaking with strain. Bianca looked around wildly for something, some way to help him. Her eyes fell on the emergency lock release on the door. She launched herself at it before the thought could even half form in her mind, darting past the two fighters to fetch up against the door. She ripped through the protective membrane and clawed the switch.
Instantly the locks burst open, the rover’s air rushing past her into the frozen world outside. She threw herself sideways, crouching next to the wall.
On the other side of the open door, Cesare’s eyes flashed toward her once, and then he jabbed his knee up into Wood’s stomach. The Earther grunted, wavering slightly, and Cesare instantly hauled him back and through the lock.
The two men fell hard on the rocky ground, thrashing and rolling, still wrestling for control of the gun. But as Bianca crouched by the door, she could already see the Earther starting to weaken, his breath shuddering hard in his chest. The frigid, poisonous air of Mars would take him down long before a Martian like Cesare would begin to feel it.
From her place at the door, Bianca could see Woods suddenly realize what was happening. His movements turned panicky as he started fighting not to win, but to get away, get back to the rover. Cesare took quick advantage. He pounded his fist into Woods’s wounded eye, and the Earther screeched in pain. Wrenching the gun out of the other man’s weakened grip, he shoved himself away, scrambling back toward the rover.
Woods lurched up and tried to stagger after him, his skin already beginning to blacken. “Kill you, freak,” he gasped. A white froth spattered from his lips, mixing with the blood dripping from the scratches across his eye. He lunged at Cesare and missed by centimeters, crashing forward on his face.
Slowly, horribly, he began to thrash on the ground, gasping out vile threats that were swallowed by incomprehensible grunts and screams.
Cesare got to his feet, reeling. He backed a few steps away, staring down at Woods with a look of terrible fascination on his face. Bianca darted out of the lock and ran to him.
Up close, she could see his lips starting to pale. The surface was getting to him too. She had to get him oxygen. She clutched at him, her bare fingers already going numb with the cold, trying to pull him back to the rover. He barely seemed to notice her at first, his eyes still locked on the grotesque shape of the Earther writhing on the ground before him.
“Please, come on Cesare, please,” she begged him. Either her voice or her touch finally broke the spell that held him. He turned away and began to stumble back with her to the rover.
They climbed through the locks and hauled them shut. Fumbled for the oxygen tubes in the medpac and got the masks over their faces. Cesare slumped down to sit with his back against the door, sucking in his oxygen with harsh gasps. Bianca collapsed next to him, bracing herself against his shoulder.
Outside, the wind hissed across the surface. The faint scuffling and gargling screams had finally stopped.
For a long time, they just sat, side by side, and breathed.
Chapter Eleven
Plans
Cesare knew they wouldn’t be able stay in Woods’s rover for much longer. The round from the charge rifle had completely fried the comps—nav, com, everything. Even the emergency life support was sputtering. He could already feel the air cooling on the skin of his face and hands as the heating elements began to fail. Now they had no choice but to make for the bolt-hole and get back to the hab.
He stole a glance at Bianca. She was sitting on the bunk, slowly drinking one of the hydrocarbs they had scavenged from the rover’s galley. Her dark eyes were huge in her pale face. He took a swallow from his own tube, thinking.
Traumatized. That was what she looked like. And who wouldn’t be? He was feeling pretty fecking traumatized himself right now. Having to hide in the locker while Woods held her at gunpoint, forcing himself to wait for just the right moment to strike, hearing the dull slap when that bastard hit her...
His eyes fell on the bruise darkening over her jaw. For a second, he almost wished that Woods was alive, so that he could kill him all over again. He felt a cold liquid spilling over his hand, and he looked down. He had crushed his tube of hydrocarb in his fist.
Carefully, he unclenched his fingers. Couldn’t waste time on anger and guilt. Had to focus. He tossed the crumpled tube aside. “Time to go,” he said roughly.
She blinked up at him, and then looked around the burned out rover, taking in their situation at a glance. She nodded, carefully set down her hydrocarb, and stood up. “I’m ready,” she said quietly.
Incredible woman, he thought. As smart and brave as she was beautiful. And he had almost lost her. He jerked away and started looking for their gloves and visors.
Behind him, he heard Bianca’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh, Cesare! Suddenly she was by his side, her fingers brushing over the hole Woods’s shot had torn in the back of his m-suit. He nearly...killed you,” she said, her voice wavering.
“Just winged me,” he said, shrugging. He turned back to her. “I’m fine.”
Her hands grazed over his arms and chest, as if checking him for other injuries. Her eyes were wide and soft as she looked him over. “Are you sure?” she said. “Do you have any pain?”
As if it had just been waiting for the reminder, the hot ache in his ribs and back that he had been managing to ignore suddenly returned with a vengeance. “I’m fine,” he gritted.
She looked up into his face for a long moment. Then, slowly, she curled up against him, leaning her forehead on his chest. His arms went around her without a thought. He clutched her to him tightly, almost too tightly, feeling a low tremble go all the way through her. He speared his fingers through her hair and crushed her dark head against his shoulder.
“I was so afraid,” she said, her voice muffled. “When I saw you go down. I wouldn’t let myself believe you might be—” she broke off.
“Don’t be cracked,” he said gruffly. She had been afraid...for him? Incredible.
He held Bianca’s slender body against his and suddenly realized that his breathing had gone ragged. His blood pounded through him, the pulse of a fierce erection starting low in his body. Every nerve he had fired to painful awareness of the woman in his arms. The woman he had nearly died for. His woman.
He struggled for control, knowing that he was seconds away from pulling her down on the cot and taking her here and now, in this cold, dying rover. He was injured and exhausted, and she was traumatized, for feck’s sake. But none of that seemed to matter. In that moment, he felt like he needed her as badly as he needed air. He had to force himself to open his arms and let her pull away from him. He shut his eyes, clenching his hands at his sides. Took a deep breath. Then another.
A sudden thud and a clank jarred him. He opened his eyes to find Bianca halfway inside one of the lockers, sorting through the contents. “Got to be some tape in here somewhere,” he heard her mumble.
Cesare found that his savage, primal mood had quite suddenly been thrown out of whack. He cleared his throat. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for some construction tape to patch up your suit,” she said, her voice echoing in the locker. “None of the extra m-suits in here will fit you, so we’ll have to try to fix up the one you’re wearing before we go back out.”
“Oh. Good thinking,” he muttered. Of course, he would have thought to patch his suit up himself, surely. He had just been distracted, that’s all.
“Found it,” she said.
He walked a little stiffly over to her as she backed out of the locker, holding up a roll of silvery tape.
She started to turn, and then she went still. “Cesare. Look at that,” she said. She was staring into another locker. It had been standing open, the door flung back. It was the locker he had been hiding in when Woods forced Bianca into the rover.
“I was trying to
jack that locker when I saw you and Woods coming through the viewports,” he said quietly. “I thought there might be weapons in there. But it was empty. So I jumped inside and hid. Thought I could take him by surprise.”
“And that’s just what you did,” she said. She looked up at him, her face luminous. “You were magnificent.”
He felt himself go hot, and had the strangest urge to tug at his collar.
“But, look,” she said. She reached in and took something down from a hook in the back of the locker. “It’s not completely empty.” She pulled out a biolock pouch. Something clicked softly inside of it as it swung from her hand.
“That’s the pouch Woods had when he came to the hab,” Cesare said. “He was carrying that compac in it.”
“Ay. But that wasn’t the only thing he had in it,” she said thoughtfully. “And he was keeping it under lock. Whatever else is in here must be important.”
“Important? How do you mean?”
“Woods said something when he was bringing me to the rover.” She paused for a second, then went on steadily, “He said he had a voice recording of Victoria ordering him to kill me. He was going to blackmail her with it, after...”
After Bianca was dead, she meant. He rolled his shoulders a little, forcing himself to relax. “That cracked fecker might just have been bragging,” he said. “Even if he did have a recording, it could be stored anywhere in the Cloud, or on any comp in the Sol.”
Her delicate jaw set in a stubborn line. “Maybe. I still want to find out what’s in this thing.”
“Fine,” he said. “We can cut it open when we get back to the hab. But we don’t have time for it now. This rover is about to go dark, Spacebabe. The sun will be going down in a couple more hours, and we still have to find the bolt-hole.”
“Oh, I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” Bianca said, as she sealed the pouch onto her hip. “I found the secret entrance. It’s buried under a glacier up there. I can lead us right to it.” She sounded just the tiniest bit smug.