by Hotter Edge
The short man chuckled. “He’ll like you, though.”
Pilar knew exactly who ‘he’ was.
Her expression shifted slightly, chin lifting, and she strode inside. Reina followed as herself as well; a good Pilar impersonator would have a personal guard.
The floor of the club was on lucid fire—no heat, yet licks of red, orange, gold snapped two meters high—and the patrons, arms raised, writhed to the pounding bass like souls consigned to Hell.
A hostess approached with a laser spray, and Pilar held out her wrist for the shot. “Yes, please.”
Reina waved the hostess away. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
But Pilar was going to do everything. Damn, Hakan. Nanites hit her limbic system and forced a sudden flush of euphoric recklessness. The music hit a high melody, but it came from inside her blood, making the club experience personally visceral. The ache of her little toes disappeared. The air took on a velvety texture, a caress to the skin. Pilar longed to move, had to move, the heat collecting at her core made her breathless with want. Hakan, please.
Reina grabbed her arm. “We’re here for another reason.”
Pilar gritted her teeth against the manufactured desire and slanted her attendant a look. “Barton will come to me. I guarantee it.” The way he’d looked at her, which had made her cringe before, would be her opportunity now. She didn’t fool herself that her beauty had anything to do with his attention; Barton was preoccupied with Hakan. And Hakan had just acquired a wife. It was a sibling thing, and once upon a time, Pilar had had a similar fixation on Mica’s significant other.
She descended to the dance floor, a second sense telling her that she was already watched. The fire seemed to lick her skin, the nanites at work. She raised her arms so she could become a flame too and let the beat take her. Her sight darkened as the music told her how to move, and she let it. Even as she gave herself up to dance, she became bewildered with emotion. Tears streaked down her face, and she didn’t bother to swipe at them. Damn nanites. Damn, Hakan. Making her feel like this. Lost, when she’d always known who she was. In her mind, he was with her, moving against her, and the ache deepened.
A voice in her ear jerked her back into the moment; she could have and would have danced for hours, senseless to time. “Miss, you’ve been invited to join the Frust table.”
Pilar followed the host’s gesture with her line of sight to a booth where Barton and his company held court. He already had another Pilar with him, but she was doing her own pout, since the object of her very easy affection was fixated across the floor, staring hungrily at the real thing.
Pilar spoke to Reina. “I prefer a more intimate setting.” The better to shake some answers out of him.
She waited, a bitterness settling in her heart. Corporate marriages were often unions of convenience, she reminded herself. It was a business transaction, a conservation of wealth and resources.
If Hakan had simply asked her to leave the Hub for home, for safety.... Well, there was a chance she would’ve cooperated without argument. He could’ve given her a chance, and then drugged her. And if he’d come with her, she’d have gone absolutely anywhere with him.
Reina cut in, and for a second, reading Pilar’s misery, compassion flickered on her face. “You have a private audience.” But Pilar heard, Are you sure you know what you are doing?
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
The private room was a narrow cell with a sliver of a ‘view’—the glint of a star winking from space. Barton sat with his legs spread around a stool of a table set with two spectre glasses and a bowl of what looked like apio chips, a well-known root aphrodisiac from some dark planet rife with civil war, with a mound of malac dip besides. Pricey stuff. He was going full-tilt seduction. But no, thank you.
“You act the part,” he drawled.
“Maybe it’s not an act. Maybe it’s me.” Pilar wasn’t about to sit next to him, within his reach, so she stood, shoulders back, hands on her hips, across from him.
“Drop the tunic and we’ll see. I happen to know every inch of the princess’s body.” He winged his arms out, ready for a show.
Irritation scrubbed away the rest of the nanite spray. Was that what he’d been saying to all his friends? His maturity had clearly arrested at the onset of puberty. Only a youth lied about conquests.
“Reina?” Pilar didn’t need to look over her shoulder to know that her attendant would be there. “What’s the Hub’s penalty for murder?” Put him out of his misery, and by extension, everyone else, too.
“Same as on Sol. Death.”
Pilar tsked her disappointment. “Pity.”
“Very good!” Barton clapped. “You’re nearly flawless.”
“Nearly? I do a perfect Pilar.”
A snort. “Your voice isn’t even close.”
“Your ear is off. My voice is an exact match.”
“I don’t think so”—he winced as if he felt bad about delivering a bad review—“and of the two of us, I’ve spent more time in her company.”
“I grew up in the palace on Sol.”
Barton leaned forward, his interest shifting. “They cloned her?”
“Gods,” Reina mumbled. “Didn’t his father do any genetic selection at his conception?”
Pilar looked over. “Actually, I heard not. Victor was supposedly quite the gambler once; Barton’s constitution was left to chance.”
When she turned back, his face had gone pink, expression sober. The jibe had hit the mark directly in the center, and suddenly Pilar was sorry for it. Nothing in her life had been left to chance, from DNA to wedding vows. She had always been and was still precious to her family. And yet, like Barton, no one thought much of her intellect, though that had been preselected as well.
“You’re her,” he said.
She tapped a finger to the tip of her nose. Yep. And either he’d cooperate, or would be uncomfortably detained for the duration of this conflict with Victor.
Gods, she felt sorry for him, Victor’s careless spawn.
No wonder Barton was jealous of Hakan. And yet, Barton probably wanted something Hakan had no power whatsoever to give—Victor’s interest.
Again, she could relate somewhat, thinking of her father and Mica.
Pilar controlled a huff. Barton and she were both seconds. She knew that Hakan had offered him work, but that wasn’t the same thing as being his own man. She’d wanted to be her own for a long time as well.
She lowered herself into the seat next to him and proceeded, following a different kind of instinct. What would she want?
“The Sol-Frust union has spurred a lot of ancillary negotiations.” She assessed his interest, then rephrased. “Side deals. What if I could offer you an opportunity to get into business for yourself?”
“I got all the pax I’ll ever need.” Said with a leer.
Which she now knew to ignore. His reaction wasn’t about her. Never had been.
“Your own pax? Or your father’s?” Another sticking point Pilar thought she might share with Barton. They had way too much in common for comfort.
“Doesn’t matter where the pax comes from.”
“Doesn’t it? You don’t want to be independent? Get in on the action?” Pilar cocked her head and made a wry face. On all three counts, her own answer was yes. She’d bet anything that his answers were too. “The Sol-Frust contract has far-reaching implications. Everyone is scrambling for a stake. The future will be dictated by the union.”
Barton shook his head. “The future will be dictated by the Black Orchid.”
Pilar blinked—she’d heard the name before; it had dark, uneasy connotations and had to be the source of Victor’s sudden influx of pax—but she shook her head.
Barton now. Back to basics, the very fundamentals: “What do engines need to go into transpace?” On Sol, every child was taught this. But perhaps not here, where so many valuable things were traded.
Lifting his glass, Barton threw back the spectre, swal
lowed, sucked his teeth, then shrugged. He’d probably been shrugging like that his whole life.
“Red mica,” she said. “Doesn’t matter who has money or who doesn’t. It only matters who has the red. And Sol has it, and so do I.” Technically, there was a red mica synthetic as well, but humans got very sick during transpace using it. Sol might have a problem when the synthetic was finally perfected, but until then, Sol ruled. “The Black Orchid can do only so much without red. Right now, the sector belongs to Frust and Sol. Your father is bent on knocking Sol out of the picture, but if either of our two families is disposable, it’s Frust.”
Victor had to have realized it himself. Would his son? Go on…tick through the implications of your father’s new alliance.
Barton was thinking, but his eyes didn’t have that faraway look of dawning discovery. They were flat, as if he’d come to the critical conclusions already, and had had no other alternative than to get drunk and be merry as much as possible before the inevitable happened. Suicide by excess. He would never inherit, not really, upon his father’s death. The best he could hope for his future was to be a figure-head for this Black Orchid, but without the guile of his father to protect him. Therefore, a pawn. And if he became useless, as his father had tagged him from birth? The Black Orchid wouldn’t pity him and spare his life or provide an allowance, as family would.
Inwardly, Pilar sighed. She’d come to the Hub with the intention of investing on her own. She’d imagined herself making shrewd business decisions and surprising everyone with her acumen. Acumen—she wanted the word applied to her as it never had been at home. But she’d never anticipated making a deal with him.
Then again, maybe this was the most critical deal of all. Everyone had overlooked Barton, even, in a way, Hakan. But not her.
So she pressed: “Would you like to do business with Sol?”
Chapter Four
Hakan’s back was to the wall, his body in a strategic slump in direct view of the door. Exhaustion pulled his consciousness into a nod of sleep, but he jerked his head upright again and squeezed his eyes shut to force alertness. His implant for sleep and wakefulness was as inactive as his comm. If he slept, his chance would be lost. He’d underestimated his uncle once; he would not do so again.
From his position, he worked each muscle group so that he’d be ready. He flexed his toes, arched his feet, engaged his calves and quads, and tensed his abs. His torso was a greater act of will, now that his bad arm had stiffened. Someone needed to come check his bandage soon. The ooze was crusting yellow.
In the middle of an excruciating shoulder roll, the doorway slid open.
Hakan aimed with his good hand, fired—the clumsy motion gutted his victim and brought him down into a bloody sprawl.
A shout from outside—a second guard’s call for help—and the cell door began to slide shut, except that the dying man’s legs blocked its closure.
Hiking over the body, Hakan felt a bone snap—probably the man’s spine. Firing with his left, he sliced at the second guard in the passage. The shot wasn’t clean either, and blood sprayed from the guard’s neck.
Not white, like a wedding, nor black, like the Orchid—this family coup would go down in stinking red—and would not end until either his uncle’s or his own plasma joined the flood.
Instinct told him to remain in the room and shoot from the partial cover of the door, but reason screamed that the passage would be blocked by reinforcements in seconds. It was run it, or die. Or run it, and die. In either case, freedom was an imbalanced stagger—Hakan looked left, right—thataway.
He lurched down the passage into a cool, square storage room. A third guard had taken cover behind some redi-crates, beyond which the double doors to freedom were swinging. The guard wasn’t firing— Victor wanted his nephew alive, and with the gore splattered all over Hakan’s clothes and the rigid stump of his arm, he must have looked like death already. The guard was smartly waiting for help, while obstructing the way.
A fast count to ten began in Hakan’s mind as he turned and surveyed the storeroom. He knew every inch of his uncle’s residence—even recalled that faux-fresh chemical smell of hermitically sealed foodstuffs. When he reached ten, he could almost hear Barton’s voice, as a child, shouting, “Ready or not, here I come!”
Hakan dived behind a tower of crates, where memories twenty-years-old had produced an alternate service door.
He fired at the control panel at its side, then tucked the slicer under his arm, and with a sweaty hand to the surface, pushed at the door until the motor engaged and it slid open.
Out into an alley. There was a private garden to the left, floral scents wafting and the globes of sun lamps visible from his position. Or right, where the passage connected with the common walkway, and anyone, friend or Orchid might encounter him.
He went for the half-a-chance again, praying for grace.
But the gods were funning themselves with him, because a line of personal cabs, pumping loud music, pulled up in front of the residence. Barton nearly fell out of the Frust cab, and the sick fuck had a Pilar impersonator with him, her long bare legs reaching for safe footing in daring, glittering blades.
Hakan had encountered a few Pilars already, strange women with faces and bodies altered to the Sol princess’s structures. Imitators, or what Pilar had sarcastically termed, knock-offs.
But this one… gods, this one…
Upon gaining her footing, she flung her black hair over her shoulder, and Hakan’s breath abandoned him.
Sound of the party’s commotion ran together as her gaze met his, a current of communication going over her features. Recognition.
Barton’s other friends blurred as they drunkenly chattered and bounced onto the walkway.
Dimly, Hakan registered Reina’s jaw-clenched expression as she noted the gore covering him. She seized Pilar around the waist—that’s right, danger; get her away—and attempted to pull the princess back into the Frust cab.
But the saving grab was too late. He could relate; he’d tried to save his wife too, had even knocked her out to do so. But once again, Pilar was in motion.
***
Pilar couldn’t identify the white-faced, bloodied man with the greasy hair and beard coming in, but she sprinted, unthinking, her heart in her throat, to reach him. His only hand held a slicer. The other arm was weirdly stunted.
His knees were buckling as she reached him, and she caught him under his arms and controlled his collapsing weight. He was rancid, slimy with sweat and filth through his tunic and pants.
“Hakan,” strangled out of her throat at the same time that he said, “Run.”
Movement over his shoulder brought her attention up.
A narrow-faced man in black was dashing toward them, weapon drawn. Fire burned the ground next to their collapse, close enough to sense a curl of heat.
Pilar grabbed for Hakan’s slicer, squeezed the trigger, and the man went down in an arc of blood. She’d think about the fact that she’d just killed someone later; right now her husband was shaking in her arms. Pressure, must apply pressure. But where?
“Not bleeding.” Somehow he hauled them both up to standing, while she palpated his splattered chest.
“What happened?”
“Victor took my hand.”
She looked again, disbelieving, at the stunted wrist. Horrified awe dropped her chin.
He attempted to transfer her to Reina for protection, who’d appeared behind her, but Pilar said, “No!” and gripped him even tighter. She supposed, considering his state, that she’d have to forgive him for drugging her and sending her back to Sol, but she wouldn’t allow him the same kind of impulse again. She was staying by his side. She’d carry him, if necessary. By the gods, seeing him like this would make her strong enough. She’d been so wrong to doubt him.
The three of them made for the Frust cab, where Barton was waiting, expression aghast, but not very surprised.
What kind of family was Frust, anyway?
Barton’s gaze flicked over Hakan’s battered person with little sympathy, a curl to his upper lip. “We had a deal.”
Information on Victor’s business with the Black Orchid in exchange for a half percentage stake in Pilar’s red.
Pilar gestured with the slicer. “Hakan’s hurt.” His hand. Why? Good gods, how? “I just killed a man.”
“Pilar!” Hakan yanked at her.
“I don’t care about him,” Barton hissed to Pilar. “He already had a chance to get away from this toilet in space.”
“I’ll get you off,” Pilar hissed back. “With everything I offered. More, even.”
Victor had taken Hakan’s hand. Even with the proof of it right before her eyes, she didn’t believe. His hand. Why would he want a hand? Who would do that to another person? Murder she could understand; she’d just committed it herself. But this?
“We’re going in,” Barton said. “The deal stands.”
“You’re a roach, Barton,” Hakan said. Then to Pilar, “Give him nothing.”
Hakan’s complexion was going ashy. They had to move now.
“Reina,” Pilar ordered with a look that brooked zero argument. “You go with Barton. Get what I need.” With Barton’s party in tow, Reina could be inconspicuous. Reina could do anything.
“I won’t leave you.”
Pilar didn’t miss how she blocked Hakan’s body from view of the pathway. A casual observer would see a small, drunk crowd, hear the loud bass with its screeching electronic melody. If Reina would just smile, she could be one of them.