by Calinda B
For all his controlled motion, there was a subliminal hum to him. Her nerves had prickled with static when he’d held out his hand toward her, as if he’d summoned some long-dormant and hungry ghost from her numbed body, and her awareness veered toward him like light through a dark prism.
The wanting again. It baffled her. Yes, he had everything she longed for that she’d lost: a position, a place to be, a purpose. But it was something more. There were hidden depths to him that intrigued her, a hint that he was more than just the sum of the parts—the very tempting parts—she was seeing. But she couldn’t afford to be intrigued. If she wanted to claim the scattered parts of herself, she needed to pocket what credits she could, escape his unnerving company, then hunker down until the electromagnetic storms wiped her clean, once and for all.
With that pledge to herself—the best she could do without actual mission coding from Hermitaj base—she locked her ocular implant ahead of her and focused on the source, hopefully, of her next meal.
The Asphodel was the finest cruiser she’d ever been near, its thrusters as powerfully built as anything on a Hermitaj drop ship but close set and lean for atmospheric flight as well as threading the sheerways. Illuminated against the gathering dust that obscured the double suns, the ship’s running lights glistened on its blue-silver skin. Flawless, except for the faint scores of old hazer or plasma flares.
Standing centered in the big open hatch of the cargo bay, Benedetta Galil appeared diminutive. Contrasting with the mechanical edges of the landing struts, the curves of her body were more decorative than functional, the lavish arcs shown to advantage in a fitted gown of some lush burgundy material. The hundreds of tiny braids in her thick, dark hair must have taken hours even with automated assistance, and there was a delicate pearl sheen to her skin that whispered of indolence and care, both her own and others’.
Shaxi might have been inclined to dismiss the woman as nothing more than another port-city doxy, but Benedetta waited with a hyperconscious stillness that took years of practice. And the way she stood with her hands lightly clasped in front of her and her generous curves balanced perfectly over the balls of her bare feet suggested that she would wait only so long as waiting was advantageous.
Her startlingly emerald eyes were half-lidded but Shaxi had already decided she would not mistake the expression for idleness, though she suspected that was the intent. There was a fierce awareness in that gemstone gaze that shuttled from Eril to Shaxi and then back again.
“Jorr told us what happened. You are all unhurt?”
“Thanks to Jorr.” Eril inclined his head another degree toward Shaxi. “And our new friend, Shaxi.”
Benedetta opened her hands in a flowing gesture, palms out. “My undying thanks for aiding our crew members, on’Taj…Shaxi.”
Shaxi restrained a jolt of surprise. Most people did not notice or understand the small differences to the insignia on her jacket that defined her former unit. Not that it mattered anymore.
She gathered herself, shedding the thoughts of what she’d lost. “I did what I felt was right,” she said. “That cantina has already been the location of two other fights since I arrived on-planet.”
“And yet you were still drinking there?” Eril crossed his arms over his chest. The drape of the discarded sand-robe made him look like one of the monkish men who had sometimes protested in previous Hermitaj war zones about the inhumanity of cyborg mercenaries. No one had ever protested in hot zones because the strike forces didn’t tend to distinguish between philosophical arguments and armed conflict.
Anyway, as disapproving as Morav looked, he’d been at the cantina too.
“The fermented beverage served there is less objectionable than other establishments,” she informed him before looking at Benedetta again. “Neither occasion resulted in any action by security enforcement or continued retribution by parties involved in the original infractions.”
“In other words, just a friendly little bar fight,” he said. As if that wasn’t what she’d just explained.
She continued, “Based on the indulgent local attitude toward non-lethal lawlessness, I don’t think you’ll be targeted for compensation for damages.”
“Not by them anyway.” The other woman let out a hard huff of breath. “I told the girls they could walk to the market and back.” She folded her hands again, though the stance this time was less ceremonial, her fingers awry and the knuckles white. “I didn’t think they’d hunt you down again on your shore leave, Eril. In a cantina of all places. I’ll talk to them. Again.”
He shrugged. “The Asphodel is a lovely ship, but even her hull must start to feel like a prison to young women ready to try their wings.”
“Wings alone won’t take you far in the sheerways.” Benedetta’s wide, mobile mouth turned down with a mixture of anger and sorrow. “I thought they understood the dangers well enough not to put themselves at risk.”
Shaxi cleared her throat. “You say ‘they’ as if they are one unit, but they are not. Based on my observations, Alolis might have followed your orders, but Torash needed stronger incentives. Although I suspect she too understands the danger. And seeks it out accordingly.”
Those emerald eyes opened wider. “You saw quite a lot in one bar fight.”
Eril took a step forward. “Which is why I wonder if the crew might be expanded by one out-of-work ex-Hermitaj commando.”
Shaxi stiffened in surprise. “I’m not looking for a job,” she said. “Just a few credits.”
Benedetta resettled her hands in a calmer pose. “I will, with gratitude, reimburse you for your services.”
Eril shifted the robe to one arm, which made him look less like a monk and more like a judge. “As good as he is with a blaster, Jorr is not the best babysitter for two young women testing their freedoms.”
“I’m definitely not looking for that job,” Shaxi said.
Benedetta wrinkled her nose in skepticism. “The crew we have is enough.”
“The crew you took on for this shipping run is mostly men,” Eril said. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s part of the problem. The twins are coming of age and looking for feminine guidance. Perhaps Shaxi—”
“Not enough credits in all the sheerways.” Shaxi swiveled on her boot heel and started to walk away.
“Wait,” Benedetta called. “I still owe you, and I pay my debts.” She gestured Shaxi closer, but she glowered at Eril. “Just as I have a responsibility to my sisters. I am their guide.”
He rolled his tattooed shoulder dismissively. “I had an older sister, and trust me, that’s not the supervision they want right now. Besides…” He flashed his sardonic smile like it was the winning chit in a game of chance. “You are the mistress of a dashing sheership captain. Is that the direction you want them to go?”
Benedetta stared at him a moment then gave a sharp laugh. “So clever you are, Mr. Morav.”
It was Shaxi’s turn to scowl at him. “So a coded celibate half-woman makes a better babysitter?”
Benedetta laughed again, with true amusement this time. “Eril, you better get out of here before we both shoot you. Let Corso know we’re all back aboard. He was ready to head out himself, and then we’d have all hells of a bar fight.”
Despite the clear dismissal, Eril hesitated for a split second. Shaxi might not have noticed except ever since her strange physical reaction in the cantina, she seemed to notice everything about him. Like the fact that when he finally turned to head up the gangplank into the Asphodel, the sand-robe held out of sight in front of him, he looked like neither monk nor judge. His dark fatigues seemed to swallow the ship’s running lights, leaving him little more than a shadow. A shadow with an icy gray gaze that speared into her when he glanced back over his shoulder, raising shivers from her deepest core despite the desert heat simmering off the sheership.
Undoubtedly her programmed abstinence was breaking down along with the rest of her encoding. That would explain why her gaze lingered on his back
, outlining him from his wide shoulders with that intriguing tattoo to his lean hips and admiring the barely restrained power of his body. Riding the cargo drop alone through Khamaseen’s rough atmosphere had been both thrilling and terrifying without the enforced composure of her Hermitaj indoctrination. All the way down, her pulse had pounded. And she might have screamed once when the drone punched through the lowest cloud layer.
What would it be like to ride Eril all the way down?
The thought was like nothing she’d ever had before, surging up from some dark, raw place inside her. When he disappeared into the ship, a strange helix of reaction went through her: relief he was no longer interfering with her concentration entwined with an inexplicable regret. The force of the feeling shook her hard enough she thought the reverberations would get her boots moving in full retreat mode.
But she had no place else to go.
She forced herself to forget him and face Benedetta. A sheership captain’s mistress, Eril had said, and the woman had not corrected him or even bristled at the subservient title. But obviously it was a position of favor since she had no problem issuing orders and credits.
Benedetta studied her with equal intensity. “Jorr said you jumped into the fight without hesitation.”
It wasn’t a question, really, but Shaxi heard one implied. “With Hermitaj gone, I have no assigned missions. I make my own choices now.” That wasn’t entirely true, but she didn’t think this poised, confident woman would understand how the remnants of those old orders might still remain, like the echo of a dead man’s shout. “I wouldn’t let the girls be taken against their will.”
Benedetta tilted her head, and the hundreds of braids shifted like little serpents. “As you were taken by Hermitaj?”
Shaxi stiffened. “I wasn’t taken. I was given, as payment for a debt.” She gritted her teeth to stop herself from blurting out any more of the memories, which had been welling up since the repression subroutine had failed after she lost her links. “Speaking of debts.” She stared at the other woman expectantly.
Retrieving a small tablet from a fold of her skirt, Benedetta tapped out a message then turned the screen toward Shaxi. “I have transferred a token of our appreciation to this drop-box. Is that sufficient?”
Shaxi focused her ocular implant on the link. With a thought, she uploaded the amount to her private account. “You must love your sisters.” Despite the control and imperviousness that had been drilled into her starting the day she’d been taken—given—to Hermitaj, she couldn’t restrain the note of wistfulness that crept into her tone.
“Of course.” The other woman smiled, and unlike Eril’s smile, which made Shaxi wary and restless, Benedetta’s was simple. “They are my sisters. They also make me insane. Another ‘of course’.” She tucked the tablet back into her pocket. “Would you be interested in doubling that amount? The Asphodel is in Levare to complete a sensitive trade, and we could use another gun while we’re earthbound.”
A faint hitch interrupted Shaxi’s breathing, and for a moment she worried some other piece of her code—say, the one that reminded her to draw air into her lungs—might be failing. But then she decided it was just the promise of riches, however brief.
It certainly couldn’t be the provisional offer of a new position, a new place.
A new purpose.
“I can’t leave Khamaseen,” she said. More regret that soured her voice in her throat. “I have…reasons to be here.”
“Fair enough,” Benedetta said. “But you seem to have an understanding of the local ambiance plus, apparently, an understanding for the twins. That is valuable and we’d compensate you accordingly, if you were willing. The on’Taj units were highly effective in service, and we’d be fortunate to have you, if only for a while.”
Fortune had never been part of Shaxi’s vocabulary, nor flattery, for that matter. Since she’d never chosen her own assignments with Hermitaj, she wasn’t sure what criteria she should consider. She eyed the ship towering over her. She didn’t know what to make of the peculiar crew or the ship that had the lines of a pleasure cruiser and the scorch marks of a warship, but she needed food and shelter.
At least until the storms came and she sent herself out into their purifying maelstrom.
“The Asphodel has a running water cleansing unit and a one-pass, no-reclamation galley,” Benedetta said in an exaggeratedly wheedling tone, as if she was trying to sell Shaxi a used sheership. “And your official title can be bodyguard instead of babysitter.”
Shaxi lifted her chin. “With Hermitaj, my designation was assigned with each mission. Since you’re paying, you can call me whatever you like.”
Benedetta said, more seriously, “Hermitaj is gone. You survived, unlike many of your brethren. Don’t give up any more than you already have.”
Shaxi crossed her arms, remaining stubbornly silent.
The other woman let out a soft laugh. “Well, if you want the job, whatever you want to call it or yourself, follow me.”
She pivoted on her bare heel and strode up the gangplank the way Eril had gone.
Should she go? Shaxi glanced over her shoulder at the empty hangar. Despite the bulwarks around Levare that shielded the city from the worst of the sandstorms, a sneaking wind picked up the ever-present dust and whirled it into a hazy funnel cloud flickering with tiny bolts of lightning.
The devastating electromagnetic properties of the rock on Khamaseen had ended the possibilities of any major developments. Those same effects could end her. Or be a new start.
But until then, she’d have a place to be.
She followed Benedetta up into the belly of the beast.
The shriving couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 4
Eril leaned against the bulkhead wall outside the bridge while Benedetta introduced Shaxi to the captain. He knew what the cyborg mercenary would be experiencing in there: Corso Deynah’s intense, scrutinizing stare and brooding silence would compel the guilty to spill any incriminating secrets.
Or had that just been his own impression?
While he waited, he updated his intel on Hermitaj. The corporation had a long, storied history creating soldiers for hire. They had experimented with completely robotic weapons systems, but in the end, using human bodies as the scaffolding for their tech was cheaper. Although there’d been occasional protests about their cyber-embed protocols and their use of indentured child labor, most federations, alliances, and coalitions along the sheerways eventually found themselves in need of paid fighters. So Hermitaj prospered.
Right up until about a UTC-year ago when someone had blown the corporation’s enormous artificial asteroid hub out of existence.
Considering the station had based thousands of elite warriors and some of the most advanced weaponry around, that had been a feat in itself. That the perpetrators remained anonymous was even more impressive.
Eril’s underwriters had found nothing to report. The scope and daring of the attack was worrisome, but the universe brimmed with worrisome incidents. Since this one was so definitively over except for the cloud of debris, and there’d been no second act, they’d let it go for more pressing concerns.
Since his covert channels proved less than satisfying, Eril had been forced to consult an even more dangerous source of information: public comm boards.
Conspiracy theorists suggested Hermitaj had grown too powerful or knew something too incriminating to be allowed to exist but offered no specifics, so they’d turned their gossip to the only pieces of Hermitaj that remained: the cyborg mercenaries themselves.
Despite the cessation of orders from Hermitaj, most had finished out their missions. If they could. Some of the more modified soldiers had failed instantly along with the asteroid, dropping in their tracks. Others suffered major biomechanical malfunctions over time. Still others seemed to go insane. Despite their previously impressive reputations, the ones that survived became persona non grata—or half-persona non grata—deemed too unstable exc
ept for the most hazardous or illicit duties.
He wondered if Shaxi’s experiences had made her more or less vulnerable. How had she survived? And what had she been willing to do to get this far?
Did she ever wake in the middle of the night on the verge of screaming?
Or maybe once again that was only his own problem.
His intel trail ended abruptly. Any specific record of who she’d been before her conscription was lost with Hermitaj. There wasn’t even a data point marking her emergence from the corporation’s obliteration. The many governmental entities that comprised the sheerways kept incompatible information systems—because while FTL travel had become possible four hundred years ago with the discovery of the sheership biotech, data entry was still the purview of disgruntled civil servants and underpaid interns. Hermitaj had made Shaxi a cipher, one of many. Now she was one of only a few, but still an unknown.
Even to herself.
Eril almost envied her that ignorance.
He straightened and tucked away his secured tablet when Benedetta and Shaxi emerged from the bridge.
“Corso approved your idea, Eril,” Benedetta said. “And Shaxi has agreed to work with us while we’re on Khamaseen.”
Only while they were planetside? Eril considered the timeline. If he was going to use her as a tool in his plans, then the twins’ days were numbered, and that number was smaller than he’d anticipated.
He refused to let himself shudder. There was too much at stake for him to weigh two girls’ lives. His soul was forfeit regardless. The underwriters had made that clear when they’d taken him in—a starving boy, hunted by his own father for his unforgiveable crimes.
At least the underwriters had offered him a way to pay. He could never be absolved, but he could help prevent ruination such as he’d once unwittingly caused. His humanity had been the coin he doled out, bit by bit, in blood not his own. One day, though, it would be his own blood, and he imagined it would trickle out of him in a dust more parched and empty than this abandoned moon.