Ice Red

He smiled down at her, amused at her tone. Also relieved. He was glad they didn’t have to spend extra time looking for the entrance. The sooner they got back to the hab, the sooner he could have her under him, drilling them both into oblivion. “Well, then,” he said. “Lead on.”

  They got the hole in his suit taped up, and then gathered up their gloves and visors and sealed them on. He left the rifle on the floor where he had tossed it earlier. It was biolocked to Woods so that only the Earther could fire it. Useless.

  When they left the rover, he made sure to keep himself between Bianca and the lumpy white shape of the corpse lying sprawled on the ground a few meters away. Fortunately, she kept her face turned away from it. He tried not to look at the body much himself. He knew he would be seeing enough of it in his bad dreams as it was.

  When they started the climb out of the shallow bowl of the crater, Cesare felt a wave of vertigo suddenly begin eating at his consciousness. He braced himself against the blackened rocks and fought his way through it. He blinked hard and shot a glance at Bianca.

  She didn’t seem to notice the slight pause. She was looking back, turning to survey the dark hulk of the rover they had just left. She saw him watching her and gave him a shaky smile. “You certainly have a talent for destroying rovers,” she said over the com.

  “Just trying to impress you, Spacebabe.”

  * * *

  The sun had edged down to touch the horizon by the time they finally got back up into the crevasse, the low light staining the white ice red, the red stone black. Bianca quickly led them to the passage under the glacier. Cesare touched a basic hab code into the hidden doorpad, and the rock face grated open, revealing yet another pitch black tunnel that seemed to wind through the heart of the planet.

  Lucky I’m not claustrophobic, Bianca thought, not for the first time that day.

  Cesare’s suit lights were fried, they discovered. Bianca’s suit was their only source of illumination. Under the wash of pale light, Cesare’s face looked grim and drawn, the skin under his eyes dark. Bianca was certain that his injury was worse than he was letting on. He seemed determined to hide it from her, though. Rock-headed man. He had been pushing himself far too hard.

  A bolt of fear went through her. Would she be able to get him to the hab if he couldn’t make it on his own? I’ll just have to find a way.

  She set off down the tunnel at a slow, steady pace, lighting the way for him, ready to wrap her arms around his waist if he needed support. But he wouldn’t show any signs of weakness. He plodded behind her as relentless as a bot.

  The passage wound back and forth on a slight incline. Endless darkness. Nothing but black stone walls and the echoes of their weary footsteps. Two kilometers, maybe three. It was hard to tell.

  Suddenly she looked up to find a slab of black composite blocking her way. A door. Cesare bumped into her, and she grabbed him, trying to steady him as he swayed on his feet. “We’re here!” she said, her voice sounding shaky to her own ears.

  He looked down at her, struggling to focus, as if he were trying to come out of a trance. Quickly she tapped in the same code he had used to open the first door, and held her breath. To her relief, the door slid open, and a flood of air rushed out to welcome them inside.

  Bianca tugged him through the door and shut it behind them. They were in what appeared to be a storage room, stacks of bot modules and plaz crates looming under the glow of her suit lights. The room opened into a low-lit service hallway a few meters long.

  She tore off her visor and hood, taking a deep breath of the warm, filtered air. “Thank Heaven!” she said.

  “Not yet,” said a voice from the hallway. “Show me your hands.” A dark shape appeared in the doorway, blocking out the light from the hall. In its hand was the short, snub-nosed shape of a small gun.

  Bianca screamed and whirled toward Cesare, trying to push him behind a stack of crates, get him to safety. He swayed a little, but his feet wouldn’t budge.

  “Angelo, it’s me,” he mumbled irritably. He took off his visor and pulled off his hood. His hands were shaking badly, she saw. “No...more...guns.”

  “Cesare!” the figure said. It reached out a hand and touched on the room lights, revealing a tall, lean bloke with the same golden skin and black hair as Cesare. Angelo. Cesare’s brother Michelangelo Chan. The stranger strode forward, shoving his gun into a pouch at his hip. “What are you doing down here? And where have you been? I was about to come looking for you.”

  “That’s a...long story,” Cesare said. His voice sounded strange. He opened his mouth to say something else, but suddenly, his eyes glazed over.

  Angelo lunged forward and helped Bianca catch his brother as he collapsed to the floor.

  * * *

  “Are you absolutely sure he’s going to be all right?”

  “Ay. I’ve seen blokes get singed by charge rounds before. His nerves are a little fried, and he’s got some bruising, but after the meds kick in and he’s had some sleep, he’ll be fine.” Angelo started stuffing the spare topical patches and injector cartridges back into his medpac with sharp movements.

  Bianca moved over to sit next to Cesare’s still form lying on the medcot. Luckily, the miners had left the cots sitting out in the hab’s common room in their haste to evacuate. She and Angelo had managed to drag the half-conscious Cesare out of the storage room that concealed the secret tunnel and up into the common. There they had wrestled him out of his m-suit and put him in one of the medcots. Then Angelo had brusquely taken over, getting out the medpac and treating his brother’s injury. Bianca had been able to do nothing but watch and worry.

  She brushed a strand of dark hair away from his forehead. He looked so pale, his golden skin ashy. She bit her lip uncertainly. “What about the Emergency Response Service?”

  “ERS wouldn’t get here for a few days, if they even bothered to come at all. Besides, the last thing he needs right now is to be the focus of official attention.”

  Bianca reluctantly had to agree. As long as Cesare was in no danger, it would be best to come up with a plan of action before they contacted any authorities.

  Angelo finished stowing his med supplies and turned toward her with a hard look. “And now, I think you should tell me exactly how this happened to my brother, M’Ross.”

  Bianca nodded slowly and got to her feet. She certainly owed the bloke an explanation. Collapsing next to Cesare on his cot would just have to wait. “Galley, if you don’t mind,” she muttered. Without waiting for Angelo to agree, she turned and hobbled toward the kitchen area on the other side of the hab’s common room. It would be simply impossible for her to get through the whole story without tea. Lots of tea.

  She hunted up a box of tea balls and two cups and turned on the water coil. Then she stood swaying in the middle of the kitchen for a moment. It was late, nearly hour thirteen according to the galley comps. And the day wasn’t over yet. She dropped the tea balls in the cups, splashed some water over them, and turned toward Angelo’s dark form looming at the galley entrance.

  She put one of the cups into his hand and moved past him to sit down at the dining table. “How did you know we had come through the bolt-hole?” she said.

  “There was an alarm,” Angelo said tightly. He followed her into the dining area, and Bianca thought she noticed a slight limp in his step as he walked. He rounded the table and sat down across from her. The better to eye her suspiciously, she imagined. She eyed him back, too tired to be polite about it.

  She could definitely see the family resemblance between Angelo and Cesare. They both had the same strong, handsome features. The same long, tilted dark eyes. Angelo’s build was a little bit narrower, maybe a couple centimeters taller. His black hair was wavy where Cesare’s was straight. And instead of Cesare’s bright openness, he gave off a distinctly forbidding impression. Especially right now, as
he took her measure.

  He leaned over the table, his tea untouched. “Now tell me. Why did you come through the bolt-hole instead of the front door? And how did my brother get singed by a charge round?”

  Bianca took a deep breath. And then, all the terrible events of the day came spilling out of her in a halting rush. The rover chase, the trek through the canyons. Woods. Fear and death.

  By the time her helpless flow of words finally slowed to a stop, she was hunched in on herself, trying not to shake. Angelo had not interrupted her. He stayed silent for a moment after she had finished, watching her from beneath his dark brows. “That’s quite a story,” he finally said. “When Cesare wakes up, I’ll have to ask him how much of it is true.”

  Bianca briefly considered dumping her tea on his head. Na, probably not the most diplomatic response. Besides, from what she had heard about Angelo’s past, she couldn’t really blame him for his distrust.

  Strangely enough, though, she felt she trusted him. There was banked anger in his eyes, but no malice. He wouldn’t harm her. But he obviously didn’t like her.

  She sighed, shifting uncomfortably. She was still wearing her m-suit, she realized. It was creaking with dust, and something was poking her in the side. She reached down, and felt the biolock pouch she had taken from Woods’s rover. She unsealed it from her m-suit and looked down at it.

  “What’s that?” Angelo asked.

  She spared a glance at him. “I’m not sure. I found the pouch in Woods’s rover. I have a hunch there’s something important inside.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like an audio of Victoria ordering Woods to kill me.”

  Angelo studied the pouch more closely, his interest rising. “How are you going to get it open?”

  “I guess I’ll have to cut it...” She trailed off as he reached over and took it right out of her hands. He turned it around, his brows drawing together as he examined it. After a minute, he said, “I could be wrong, but I think this pouch is rigged with a pulser. See these silvery dots along the seal? Very suspicious.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if you try to cut it or jack it, it’ll fry whatever’s inside.” He set it down on the table a little gingerly.

  “Dust it,” she muttered. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  Angelo looked surprised that she would ask him. Then he shrugged. “You need a biosignature from the person it’s keyed to. Hair, skin, blood, something like that.”

  Bianca twisted her hands together. The thought of going back to that icy canyon to scavenge a bit of Woods’s corpse was almost too much for her to contemplate at the moment. She realized what she was doing, and forced her fingers to unclench. Her fingertips were ragged and dirty, she saw. There was a reddish gunk underneath the nails of her right hand.

  It slowly dawned on her what the reddish gunk really was. Bile flooded her throat, and she swallowed hard. She raised her eyes to Angelo’s, and held up her trembling hand.

  “I have some of Javier Woods’s blood,” she said unsteadily. “Right here.”

  Angelo took her fingers in a surprisingly gentle grip. He bent his head, examining the gruesome proof of her fight. Then he looked up at her thoughtfully. “This should do.”

  * * *

  The long, low rays of the dawn sun were shining through the viewports, washing a gentle warmth over her arms and shoulders. Bianca opened her eyes slowly. She was on one of the sofas in the common, where she had curled up to keep an eye on Cesare through the night. She sat up, stifling a groan. The Earthers’ tiny furniture had not been kind to her. Every one of yesterday’s bruises and strains had stiffened. Should have gotten some topicals from Angelo last night. But as soon as she had scraped Woods’s blood out from under her nails and into a culture tube, Angelo had vanished to try and whip up a biosolution of Woods’s DNA.

  Bianca had run for the cleanser in her old guest chamber. She could have stayed under the fragrant steam for hours, but exhaustion had forced her out after only the minimal time necessary to scrub all the grime off her skin. Then she had fallen onto the couch next to Cesare’s cot, and she hadn’t moved since.

  She looked over at the long shape of the man sleeping less than a meter away from her. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned toward her, a blanket drawn up just over his hips. The morning light played over his muscled back and arms, highlighting the topical patches wrapping around his bruised ribs.

  Bianca slid to her feet, clutching the collar of her new c-suit to keep it from falling off of her. She had found it in one of the Earther’s clothes presses last night. It was at once too short and too wide for her Martian frame, but the alternatives had been either her crusty m-suit or nothing at all.

  She gave up on trying to adjust the suit and tiptoed over to Cesare’s side. Carefully, she peeled up the topicals to check his injury. His bruising had almost completely faded, she saw with relief. A few more hours, and he would be healed. She replaced the topicals, unable to keep from gently trailing her fingers over his smooth golden skin as she did.

  He shifted slightly beneath her hands, and she quickly looked to his face. His eyes were half open, focused on her, and the hot glitter in them took her breath away. His lips curved in a slow smile.

  “Are you feeling better?” she said, her voice quivering a little.

  In one smooth motion, he turned and wrapped his arms around her waist. The world spun in a blur around her as he pulled her down to the cot and rolled her beneath him. She gasped as he loomed above her, his arousal pressing against her belly, his eyes intent on hers. A sudden fierce heat pounded through her blood, and she instantly felt herself flowing beneath him, ready to welcome him inside.

  At that moment she wanted nothing more than to let herself fall into the rush of his strength, his warmth. Give him anything he wanted. “Yes,” she sighed.

  His smile widened, and she ran her hands up over his shoulders to wrap her arms around his neck, pulling him down, wanting his lips against hers.

  He bent his head and kissed her hard and deep, his hands tugging her c-suit off of her. She wriggled, and the silky barrier of her clothing was gone, leaving them skin to skin. His big hands cupped her breasts, kneading and rubbing, then ran down her waist and between her legs to cup her there as well. He caught his breath a little against her lips as he felt how wet she already was for him. He circled the heel of his hand in long, slow strokes over her tab, and she cried out against him, amazed at the intensity of the response he called in her. Her climax was already building fast. She buried her face in his throat. “Please,” she begged.

  “Ay, anything,” he grated.

  The orgasm rushed through her like a current, so fierce that it stole all her breath. And then he was thrusting his rod into her, and the current went on and on. She cried out and clenched his shoulders, his back, rolled her hips to draw him closer and closer as he surged over her. The circuit of pleasure arced through her in an endless loop. She forced her eyes open and looked up into Cesare’s face. His eyes were closed, his neck corded with strain. Deeply lost in his pleasure, he braced himself on his knees and drove himself into her with hard, fast strokes. Then his eyes flashed open and locked with hers. She saw the exact moment the ecstasy overwhelmed him. “Bianca,” he said. With a rough, wordless moan, he shattered above her, around her, never breaking the golden link of their gaze. Only with the last deep shudder did he let his eyes fall closed.

  He rested his forehead against hers, his chest heaving. Bianca ran her hands up his back, her lips curving in a smile. The rich, warm scent of him surrounded her, his weight crushed her down in the most satisfying way. His rod was still lodged inside her, his hips cradled between her widespread thighs. “I guess you are feeling better,” she whispered.

  “Heaven,” he said, breathing hard. “I feel like Heaven.”


  “Your bruises—”

  “Don’t matter. I could shake off a hundred rounds to have you like this.” He lifted his head, his gaze burning over her face, down to her breasts.

  She clutched his back tighter. “Don’t say that. When I saw him shoot you...” It was the worst moment of my life, she thought. Worse than when she thought she herself was going to die. “Never ever get shot again,” she whispered. She couldn’t see him hurt. She couldn’t bear it.

  He shifted off of her onto his side and grinned slowly. “That’s one order I’ll be happy to follow, boss.”

  She choked out a little laugh. Cesare looked around the room as if only just noticing his surroundings. He frowned

  “Angelo’s around somewhere, isn’t he?” he said.

  Bianca gasped. She had forgotten all about Angelo! Cesare’s brother could have walked into the room at any time, and yet here they were, coupling in wild abandon in the middle of the hab common. She couldn’t believe herself. She had to be completely bloody cracked. She started up and began to scramble for her clothes, yanking the c-suit on recklessly.

  “Angelo left one of his c-suits for you,” she said. She scooped up the suit off a nearby chair and held it out for him. “Ciel, get dressed quick! What will your brother think of us?”

  He made no move to take the suit, just lounged back, his knees spread, his magnificent sex lying still half-hard along his thigh. “Doesn’t matter what Angelo thinks,” he said. “You belong to me.”

  The suit dangled from her suddenly limp fingertips. Of all the primitive, thrilling, arrogant, incredibly hot... She swallowed, trying to gather her wits. “There is such a thing as decorum,” she finally managed.

  “Decorum,” he repeated slowly, as if it was a word he had never heard before. Then his lips curved in a devastating grin. “Ah, mei-mei. All that screaming and coming and begging made me forget what an adorable little prude you are.”

  That did it. She balled up the c-suit and lobbed it at him. It hit him lightly on the chest and bounced off. He fell back, groaning dramatically. “Is this any way to treat a wounded man? All right, all right. I’ll take a stab at this good manners thing for you, Spacebabe.” He rolled to his feet and gingerly stretched his arms over his head. Bianca paused in putting on her own suit to watch him, unable to look away from the incredible sight of the muscles playing over his back and buttocks, his long bronzed thighs, and the injuries he had taken protecting her.