Perhaps they were. It wasn’t as if he had any proof that Zalor had his family killed in any case.
Something seemed wrong about that last thought, but Cylus shook it off. He had to focus on what Zalor was saying.
“Wait, are we headed for the sphere now?” he asked.
Doctor Rega answered. “We are. Baron Revenant wishes his supporters to see what it is he’s offering. I look forward to showing you as well, Baron Keltan.”
When Cylus arrived back in his room, he found Sophi there, sitting on the edge of the bed with her eyes half-closed. He knew from her placid look that she was in the midst of some complex operation in cyberspace. When she finally noted his presence, she waved her hand through the air between them and fully opened her eyes.
“Cy,” she said. The simple pearl-colored silk dress flowed about her lithe form as she rose from her seat. It left her shoulders bare while lifting and accentuating her breasts with a diamond studded fringe.
He found his eyes drawn to her modest cleavage for several moments before forcing them up. His breathing increased, but he reminded himself that she was out of his reach now. They had discussed that before. He would get her back, but he had to belong to his cousin for now. It was only after this was over that he would have his life again.
“We shouldn’t have done this, Sophi. We’re trapped now,” he said.
“You’re right, but there was no choice, Cy. There still isn’t. Soon father is going to wipe the field clean of his enemies. We have no chance of stopping him unless we survive the purge. This is the only way.” Sophi’s voice was firm, edgy in a way that sent shivers down his spine.
“Is it?” Cylus asked. Though he asked the question, he was sure she was right. What Zalor had just shared with him on the observation deck only reinforced the lack of options.
“If you want to avenge your family, if you want to survive, then yes, it is.” She turned towards him. Her expression was softer than it was a moment before.
He folded his hands together. “Pasqualina suggested something in the hallway outside of the banquet. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think it’s a good idea. I’m not cut out for this intrigue and espionage. This is your field.”
She moved to his side.
“She suggested I set up a proxy in the Barony, someone to represent my interests who I can trust. Then I can get away from all of this and return home. I don’t trust anyone but you, Sophi.” He gazed at her with his best imitation of puppy-dog eyes.
She studied him for a moment. “You still have to go through the motions with Pasqualina. We need that carrot in front of them if we are to be successful.”
“I’ll take her with me to Anilon.”
“She’ll stay in contact with your uncle and aunt, probably my father too. Be prepared for that. Anilon isn’t a bad idea. It will keep up appearances while getting her well out of the center of things at least.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s a good idea.”
“Then you’ll do it?” He leaned forward.
“Yes, I will. I’m going to need some things from you.”
“Anything,” he responded. She was so close now he could feel her breath on his chin. It took all the strength he had not to lean down and kiss her.
She took his hands in hers and drew them apart to rest at his sides.
“What are you doing?” He watched her, mesmerized by the grace of her movements.
“When we arrive back at Kosfanter I shall not be seeing you again for some time. Zalor will be boarding his personal star cruiser and heading for his sanctuary in the Helix Nebula. He announced it last night over dinner after you left.” She reached up to the clasps holding the straps of her dress. With a twist, she dropped her garment to the ground and kicked off her soft leather shoes, leaving her cream-pale body exposed to the air.
She grasped his collar and tore downward, sending buttons flying across the plush carpet. His mouth dropped in shock, but he could not find words any more than he could tear his eyes from the sight of the pale moons of her breasts. She had his clothes off seconds later. The cool air of the room licked at the sensitive areas of his skin.
“The Helix Nebula is over 1,400 light years away. Zalor will be in transit for more than a hundred days. It’s an opportunity to firm up our power base while he’s out of touch.” She maneuvered him around her and pushed him backward onto the bed. She climbed up and swung a leg over his hips.
“But he’ll leave Olivaar in charge while he’s gone, so how is that an opportunity?” He shuddered when her cool, elegant fingers reached behind her creamy hips and lightly stroked him.
“Zalor’s mind is as sharp as those of the artificial intelligences he surrounds himself with. If he were here to supervise things personally, the chance I would be detected doing what I’m going to do would be quite high. The choice of barony you made for me is proving to be quite advantageous. It gets me into everyone’s secrets.”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but the sensations emanating from his mid-section were too distracting to really give it thought.
“Olivaar is a fat idiot, but more importantly, I am much smarter than him. He won’t see what’s going on until it is far too late.” Sophi’s voice was breathy. Her icy eyes never left his.
Cylus agreed with the assessment of his uncle. The man was far too interested in himself and his next meal to really be an effective threat. His company lost millions every quarter to waste and inefficiency. If he didn’t have a monopoly he would’ve gone out of business long ago.
“What are you going to do?” he gasped.
“Find power where Zalor’s is lacking. That’s all I’ll say about it now, but that means I will not be joining you at Anilon for some time,” she said grasping him firmly.
“I expected that. But you will come by at some point?” He inhaled sharply.
“So, before you take your fiancée and retreat to your home world, I want one last taste. And yes, I will come.” She tilted her hips and sank back, closing her eyes and humming deeply. She placed her fingers against his chest, spreading them out meticulously, like she was arranging the centerpiece on a table. Only when she was satisfied with her hand’s arrangement did she begin to move.
She started mechanically at first. She maintained a steady, unvarying rhythm until her first shudder, then added a twist and squeeze. He brought his hands up to her hips and started to buck up into her. After a minute, she stopped and stared at him.
“Don’t do that until I’m ready.” She waited until he met her eyes, then started her routine again. They repeated this cycle several times until she finally allowed him the chaotic movements that brought fruition. When she was done she lowered herself slowly down onto his chest. He brought his arms up and around her shoulders.
“Thank you, Cy. I will miss that.” She nuzzled into the crook of his neck.
“Thank you.” This would probably be the last time he was going to have someone he actually wanted to share a bed with. A sinking sensation blossomed within him.
“Don’t be upset, Cy,” she said in the rare, soft tone she used when she was being feminine. He’d only heard it twice before.
“I’m not upset.”
“Yes you are. I can tell by your breathing.” She stroked his face with her fingertips.
He took them in his hand, bringing them to his mouth and kissed each individually.
“My father underestimates us, Cy, but I’ll show him,” she whispered.
“You mean we will,” he said.
“Yes, we will.” Moments later Sophi was snoring lightly into his ear.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sanakrat City, Elmorus
41:2:7 CST (J2400:3130)
Qismat stared Nero in the eye, grinning with a mouth full of steel fangs. It crouched, shifting its weight forward. It slowly raised one hand to its head, brushing back the black and white hair so he could clearly see the two bullet holes he put in its head closing shut.
It mu
st be made of the same substances that the self-repairing hulls on our star ships are, Prospero said.
“That’s a comfort,” Nero said from between clenched teeth.
Don’t get smart with me, Nero. I’m trying to educate you. Your knife won’t really do much to it. It has already hurt you. You’re bleeding from the sides of your chest and losing one cc of blood per minute. I’m dispatching healing nanomachines to the wound sites and blocking your nociceptors, but you can’t go head-to-head with it forever. Its ability to damage you will far outstrip our nanomachines’ abilities to heal you in a short time interval.
He pushed that disturbing thought out of his head. He looked over Qismat’s shoulder at Agent Khepria. She was back on her feet, ears pressed flat against her skull while cautiously circling around Qismat. He gave her a warning look and refocused on his opponent.
The holes finished closing.
Its image blurred and vanished though the sound of its rapid footfalls heading towards him remained. Prospero managed to get his electromagnetic field detector up at the last second, but Qismat was on him before he had a chance to bring his knife to bear.
Using his own body’s electrical field like radar, Prospero overlaid a ghostly representation of Qismat’s invisible body in Nero’s vision. The only good it did him at present, however, was that he could see as well as feel its hand come up and strike his chin. The blow jolted his head and launched his body upward almost to the ceiling. He landed on his back, snapping another table beneath him.
The remaining diners ran for the door.
He blinked. Qismat straddled his chest, still wearing a grin like a hungry predator.
He swept his arms downward, grabbing the first object his hand encountered and swung at it as hard as he could. He struck it on the hip with a section of the table he landed on, knocking it to the side.
Qismat stumbled.
He grabbed its ankle and yanked so hard it flipped over in the air and landed on its stomach amid the debris. Nero rolled up onto his knees and lunged onto its small form. He pounded away at the back of its head with the jagged table slice, each blow from his dense muscles causing the floor to crack and its stealth skin to shimmer. He stopped only after its body went limp and it became visible.
Don’t stop, Nero. It’s an artificial. It’s not unconscio—
It brought its knees up and kicked out. The blow hit him full in the chest and flung him back as though he was fired from a cannon. Plaster exploded around him when he hit the wall. He collapsed doll-like to the floor, struggling to draw breath with lungs that refused to obey.
Qismat got up, shook debris from its hair, and turned towards him. It looked as though nothing had happened to it at all. It coiled, leaned forward, and waved its nail-razors at him.
Get up! Get up! he thought at himself.
Its body jerked and the familiar sound of Nero’s gun reverberated off of the walls.
It blinked with a look of confusion on its face and then Agent Khepria found the rapid-fire switch on the side of the weapon and filled the air with hot metal. Qismat’s body seemed to dance awkwardly across the floor for several seconds before collapsing in a pool of its own silica ooze. Its black-and-white flesh was riddled with holes with raised edges like impact craters.
Nero gasped, then after several struggling attempts, managed to gasp again and resume the habit of breathing. A minute later he felt strong enough to pry himself out of the impact crater in the wall and stumble forward into one of the few remaining tables in the now deserted restaurant. He grabbed a cup of tea off it and splashed himself in the face.
“Are you okay?” Agent Khepria went to his side and put her arm around his back.
“I’ll live. Are you alright, Sorina?” he asked.
Her ears slowly rose from her scalp and resumed their normal posture. “I’m okay. She didn’t really hurt me.”
“We should get going.”
“Is it dead?” she asked.
Qismat should recover enough to reactivate her motor functions in approximately three minutes. You can’t hurt it enough to destroy it—you don’t have enough firepower. I suggest we flee.
“No, but you messed it up good. Thanks.”
Agent Khepria helped him to his feet and handed him back his weapon as they stumbled awkwardly together towards the door.
His lungs were on fire and there was an uncomfortable itch in his chest he was sure would turn into pain later. “We need to get to a safe place before that little killing machine reboots.”
“Where is that?” she asked.
“Not here.”
The restaurant’s patrons and staff were staring from the parking lot. The sun set while they were inside and the cloud-obscured sky accentuated the darkness closing in on the town. The smell of rain heralded a storm on the way.
When Nero and Agent Khepria emerged from the shop, the owner, a tall Cleebian in a white apron, stomped his feet on the pavement and jabbed at Nero’s nose with a tapered digit. “My business is ruined! Who is going to pay for this, Abyssian?”
Nero grabbed his finger and twisted it until it popped. The Cleebian let out a cacophony of buzzing shrieks and fell back into the crowd.
“Stay away from that thing inside and call the local authorities.”
“My finger!” The owner yowled. His cries descended into discordant shrieking in Cleebian.
One-minute and twenty-four seconds before Qismat reboots, Nero.
“We’re out of time.” He grabbed Agent Khepria’s hand and led the way back towards their air-car.
“Won’t you get in trouble for that?” she asked.
“Maybe, but my bigger concern is where Qismat came from. What are the odds we can check the arrival traffic for the last twenty days?”
“Not good,” she returned.
Several beings in lightweight ceramic-polymer plate armor with flexible nano-weave joints were looking at them from the club’s entranceway. The colors and flashy markings on their armor gave them away as the mercs whose air-cars he had parked amongst. By the shape of their suits, he counted a few non-Solans amongst the mostly human group. The mix was a sign that the mercs were local. Groups deeper inside the Confederation tended to be more homogeneous to the region they were based in.
Nero popped the cockpit open. Agent Khepria started to climb inside and paused.
“You called me Sorina,” she said.
“Oh, ah, I guess I did. I’m sorry Agent—”
“No, it’s alright. I’m just noting it,” she said. Her ears danced above her head in an unfamiliar pattern.
Nero, forty-seconds before Qismat reboots!
“We better go,” he said.
A high-pitched sound with a buzzing undertone pierced the night air. Nero turned with his hand on his pistol and saw the small gathering of diners running in terror. Qismat, its clawed hand protruding from the noodle-shop owner’s back, met his eye.
“Your estimate was off,” he grumbled.
That’s why they call it an estimate. I suggest we have this argument later.
Sorina finished getting into the air-car as Nero pulled his pistol free of its holster. He fired at Qismat while backing around the car’s nose. The super-sonic bullets caused the little killing machine to jerk with each impact, but did not otherwise seem to affect her.
“Doesn’t it have a processor or something vital to hit?” he asked. To his left, the mercenaries started to react to the scene. Several drew pistols while a few others headed to vehicles with heavy weaponry.
Qismat’s specs are unknown, even to Daedalus. Baron Revenant had it built in secret.
“Great, so you can’t tell me what to shoot at.”
No. Flee.
Qismat moved towards them, step by step. When some of the mercs began shooting at it as well, it crouched and vanished.
Nero holstered his weapon and jumped into the air-car. “Get us moving, Prospero.”
The car’s controls appeared in his vision. The vehicle’s engi
nes were already whining to life.
One of the mercs made it to his vehicle. He looked like he was about to set up the repeating pulse cannon attached to the top when the car rocked on its landing gear and something struck him hard enough to crack the armor plates over his stomach. His body doubled over and crumpled to the pavement.
The cars between the injured merc and Nero’s began to rock in rapid succession.
Khepria gasped.
The mercs still standing around the club entrance began firing at the air above the vehicles. The sharp, snapping sounds of supersonic bullets filled the air with an electric din.
“Waste of ammo. Prospero, can you hurry up please?” Nero muttered. There were only ten cars between Qismat and them.
This fast enough for you, Nero?
Nero’s air-car lurched up into the sky with a roar of its engine. They were barely off the ground when the roof of the car next to theirs imploded and his own rocked hard to the side. The car’s EM field distorted his, or he might have been able to see Qismat as it pounced on the hood.
“Shit.” He directed the car to accelerate hard when the first web of impact cracks appeared in the canopy.
The vehicle shot forward, pressing him and Sorina into their seats. They just barely missed the lip of the building as Prospero pulled them up into a tight climb. The thudding noise against the cockpit window preceded a crackling sound akin to grinding ice moving up the arc of the canopy and down towards the rear of the craft. Nero watched as ten scratches slowly crawled across its surface.
Prospero banked hard to the right, then suddenly reversed course and threw them to the left. Nero did his best not to crush Sorina, but still wound up with her body pressing painfully into his ribs as they were tossed back and forth in the cockpit.
“Did that do it?” she asked, panting as she tried to refill her lungs.
The answer came when the entire car shuddered, and an explosive impact cracked and bent the vehicle’s skin behind their heads.
“Let me do this,” he said grasping the holographic controls. The vehicle pumped the sensation of resistance into Nero’s mind, and then he was wrestling with the control sticks, fighting the winds whipping around them.
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