Musketeer Space

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

“Do you –” Dana hesitated. “I hate to ask any more of you.”

  “No, I don’t know where he’s keeping that boy of yours,” Kitty said, her tone cold. “I don’t get let in on the super secret stuff, like where they keep high profile kidnapping victims.”

  “If you find out, do you think you could get in touch?”

  “I don’t know, Dana. That’s asking a lot.”

  Dana reached out and took Kitty’s hand, grazing the backs of her knuckles with a kiss. “Okay. I won’t ask.” For now, she added silently.

  37

  Concerning The Questionable Life Choices of Dana D’Artagnan

  For two days, “the Marquise de Wardes” did not reply to the bantering texts sent to her by Milord de Winter. Dana could not bring herself to put on that flirtatious coat again, not when she knew for certain that Milord considered her an enemy.

  It had felt like a game. But now she knew that the only reason he had not attacked her outright was because Cardinal freaking Richelieu wanted Dana to stay in one piece.

  The mission with the diamonds no longer felt like a triumph, not with Conrad lost as a result.

  The preparations for war continued. Aramis had fixed up the damage done to the Morningstar, thanks to financial contributions from several of her former girlfriends who were used to subsidising the military in this way.

  A credit stud with a sarcastic message attached had even arrived from Madame (no longer Minister) Chevreuse, who was now working as the press secretary for the Daughters of Peace United Government. Aramis, pleased to learn that Chevreuse was not living on Artemisia any more and so was a safe distance from the Siege of Truth, showed Dana the message. Dana noticed that it mentioned nothing about the impending happy event that Chevreuse (and presumably, her husband?) were expecting.

  There was no tactful way to check if your friend knew her ex-lover was heavily pregnant, and so Dana continued to say nothing on the topic.

  “I suppose there are some benefits to staying friends with every woman you’ve ever slept with,” drawled Athos, who never explained how he had acquired his own war chest, despite outlaying more on the refurbishment of the Pistachio than it would have cost him to buy a freshly printed ship.

  “I only have affairs with patriotic women,” Aramis said loftily.

  Porthos preened over the brand new helm and harness that she turned up with one day, for Bonnie to install in the Hoyden. “A gift from Chef Coquenard,” she said, sounding pleased. “He’s still feeling guilty about the whole leaving me stranded on Chantilly thing.”

  “You’re all so shameless,” Dana laughed.

  Athos gave her a sharp look. “And your flirtation with a certain dangerous politician? You’re not using his credit to secretly outfit a ship, are you?”

  “No!” said Dana, almost but not quite offended. “I’m after information, not sponsorship.”

  “Still,” said Porthos, giving the others a shifty look. “You might be down to pilot a supplies transport, but having a dart on hand for emergencies, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?”

  Dana was confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was going to be a surprise,” said Athos, glaring at Porthos.

  “Does that mean we can tell her now?” asked Aramis, bouncing on her heels.

  There was no stopping them. They called for Planchet and the other engies to join them, and the whole gang dragged Dana across the yard to where a very familiar spaceship was docked and waiting for them.

  It was the Buttercup.

  He had been freshly painted, in exactly the same dreadful shade of yellow. Dana swayed on her feet, staring. She couldn’t believe her eyes. This was Papa’s old dart, the one he had so lovingly restored before sending her on her way to Paris.

  (Nice ship. What do you call that colour?)

  “We found her in the trading yard on Lunar Palais when we were hunting parts for the Pistachio,” said Planchet excitedly. “She was going to be broken down for scrap and molecules, but Bonnie thought there might be some useful parts, but then Grimaud said we’d probably be better off restoring her and selling her on, and we all figured out that maybe you could do with a ship…”

  “You had one like this, didn’t you?” said Aramis, her eyes twinkling. It wasn’t like she, Athos and Porthos had not heard the story of Buttercup and Agent Ro a dozen or more times before. There was something about a third glass of wine that brought Dana’s simmering resentment about the matter to the surface, every single time.

  Dana had no idea what to say. It was too much. Her hands shook.

  “I have to go,” she said abruptly.

  It was Athos who first realised there was something wrong. The others caught on fast.

  “Dana, what is it?” Porthos asked.

  Dana shook her head wildly. “It’s fine, it’s – I love him. You did good. I have to go.” Before any of them could stop her, she turned and ran out of the engie dock.

  Oh, Papa.

  Her main thought was to get away, far away, because she couldn’t bear to break down and cry in front of her friends.

  There was another reason that Dana couldn’t bring herself to play the Marquise de Wardes flirtation game over the last two days. A few hours after she had left Kitty and the Matagot, Dana had received a curt, too-brief call from one of her sisters. That was followed by a longer, but still emotionally restrained call from her Mama.

  It seemed impossible in this day and age, that anyone could receive injuries that were not immediately reparable by medipatch. But the power outages and regular equipment failures on Gascon Station had taken their toll, in the medibays most of all. The death toll from the Sun-kissed attack rose every day, without a further shot being fired.

  Dana’s Papa had not been a young man. Half his skin was regrafted a generation ago, before his retirement as a Musketeer engie. This time around, he had not been so lucky.

  An aneurism, in the end. He had gone fast, though after weeks of pain management it didn’t feel especially merciful that it was quick.

  It had been two days since she learned he was gone, and Dana had not cried. Crying had never worked for her. Hitting things was easier, but finding casual sparring partners was difficult with her friends wrapped up in the preparation of their ships.

  She couldn’t make herself tell them the truth, not yet. Any kindness would wreck her.

  So Dana paced and she chattered and she made herself useful, and until her friends gave her the generous, beautiful gift of her Buttercup, she had managed to hide her grief even from herself.

  She had to do something now, to keep that grief at bay.

  Not crying, not fencing. What was left?

  Dana walked, with no clear idea where she was going, except away from anyone who might be nice to her. She walked the streets of Paris Satellite, her head full of war and anger and frustration and explosions and skin grafts and…

  She had not been there. She was not sure if she could ever forgive herself for not going home the second she heard that Papa had been injured. She had always meant to leave them, to escape the limited options at home. She had spent her teen years planning and working and learning to fly like a demon, with a single goal in mind: to come to Paris Satellite, and become a Musketeer.

  Even with the Buttercup, she wasn’t a Musketeer. She had washed out. That was what she had left her family for. A failed, unreachable dream.

  By the time Dana was on her second circuit of the Stellar Concourse, her anger had turned outward again. She was furious with the solar system, with the unfairness of it all. Her Mama had flown hundreds of combat missions. How was it that Dana’s sweet, harmless engie Papa was the one to be killed in an act of war?

  Dana found herself heading for the Luxembourg, which made no sense at all. The last thing she needed was church – she had never been more likely to punch a member of the clergy as she was today.

  What she needed was a duel, and she wasn’t likely to get one at the Luxembourg without picki
ng a fight first…

  A fight. Never mind swords and duels. Dana needed to get her knuckles bloody. She needed to head-butt someone in the face, and know they had deserved it almost as much as she did.

  Which bars were popular with Red Hammers? Athos probably kept a list somewhere on his person. She could call him, but that would involve talking, and he’d probably want to know why she was so upset… oh, wait, what was she thinking? He was Athos.

  Dana stopped in the middle of a busy thoroughfare and sent Athos a text via her comm stud, her fingers tapping the virtual keyboard on her arm.

  Name three bars where I’m all but guaranteed a fist fight with a Red Hammer or twelve.

  There was barely even a pause before she received the following:

  The Crimson Duck, Santa Antonia’s, the Bastille. Want company?

  Not yet I’ll let you know, she sent back, and kept walking.

  The Bastille was the only one of the three that she knew, because it was the closest bar to the Armoury, and a short distance from Madame Su’s. She wouldn’t have far to crawl home.

  Dana strode in and went to the bar to order a drink. The room was full of red uniforms, and the back of her neck prickled in a promising way.

  She hadn’t even got to order before she heard the words “Hey isn’t that the wannabe Musketeer who runs around with those three assholes?”

  Dana gave a savage grin. Perfect.

  “Dana?” His voice was far away. “Is that you?”

  She opened her eyes, and regretted it. She was – in a corridor, curled against a white, blood-stained wall near a drainage vent. She closed her eyes again, moaning. Her face hurt. All of her head. Her ribs. And…

  An arm reached around her waist, steady and reassuring. “Let’s get you somewhere safe, sweetness.”

  Her thoughts were jumbled and she wanted to throw up again, but there was something warm about the voice, something she trusted. “Okay,” she whispered, and it came out more like “Urgh.”

  Steady arms drew her to her feet, and pain stabbed hard into her chest.

  “Bleeding,” she choked.

  “Actually,” said the warm and reassuring voice. “I don’t think that’s your blood.”

  “Some of it is.”

  Her saviour’s hand jarred against her thigh and the burst of pain sent blackness spiralling through her vision again. She dropped.

  Dana dreamed of the Buttercup, of her father’s hands as he restored the old spacebucket from the inside out.

  “Papa, yellow?” she complained.

  “It’s a good colour, chicken. You’ll never mistake it for anyone else’s dart in a line-up. Also, I got the colour cheap and your Mama says I can’t use it in the kitchen.”

  Dana dreamed of Conrad, of making out with him on the couch in the Prince Consort’s room, of the odd sort of smile in his eyes when he realised she had arranged for espionage pastries as a distraction technique.

  “This isn’t a seduction,” she snapped at him.

  He shoved her. “Good, because you’re terrible at it!”

  Dana dreamed of Rosnay Cho, who watched her through dark, sympathetic eyes. “If Milord has your boyfriend,” she said, wetting her lips. “I’m sorry, buttercup, but you’re not getting him back.”

  Dana awoke, choking on air. She tasted blood in her mouth and then the pain flowed through her one jagged wave at a time. Stocktake: knuckles, ribs, face – jaw, especially. Nose, oh hell. She had lived nearly twenty-one years without getting her nose broken, and here she was, thoroughly smashed up.

  “Ugh,” she managed.

  “That sounds about right,” said the voice she had followed, the one that tapped directly into the part of her that responded to trust and reassurance. Her rescuer.

  Dana’s eyes flew open. Holy hell in a handbasket. She stared into the amused face of Milord Vaniel de Winter.

  This was not the Matagot. The walls were too flat and straight – even the most decadently decorated rooms in that frivolous spaceship of his had curved walls. A hotel room? Dana was stretched out on a crisp sofa, and Milord had pulled up an elegant chair near her. A clamshell lay discarded on the coffee table within reach – had he been working while he waited for her to wake up?

  That was either comforting or really creepy. Dana couldn’t figure out which until she was a lot more awake.

  “Now you’re alert, perhaps we can see about medipatches?” Milord suggested mildly. “I wasn’t sure what the priority was, once I fixed the knife wound in your thigh.”

  “Face,” Dana muttered. “Ugh.”

  “I didn’t like to assume.” He looked hesitant, which seemed out of character. “There is a medibay on this block, perhaps I should have taken you there.”

  “No,” she said, so quickly it made her head spin. “I’m fine, just – medipatches?”

  “In the bathroom. Do you need help?”

  She frowned at her legs. There appeared to be nothing wrong with them, and the one with a medipatch already glowing at her through the rip in her cargo pants felt better than it had in ages. Still, they weren’t responding as quickly as she would like. “To my feet. I can take it from there.”

  Milord’s hands were warm as he drew her up, and she resisted the urge to fold herself against his chest. It looked warm and inviting, but that might be the concussion talking.

  The bathroom clarified that yes, she was in an extremely expensive hotel: The Antoine according to the dozens of tiny soaps and lotions with matching packaging.

  Several medipatches had been laid out for her near the sink, along with gauze and tape. Dana worked on her face first, placing the medipatch along the underside of her jaw and breathing in and out as it had an immediate anaesthetic effect. She placed an urgent patch over her nose and yelled out as it set hard.

  There was a knock at the door. “You all right?”

  “Nose,” she managed, halfway between a grunt and a wail. “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t do anything to the ribs or the hands. They were bruised, not broken, and the dull pain in both of them grounded her. There wasn’t a lot of point in throwing yourself into a brawl if you made all the marks go away instantly.

  Dana picked up a sonic spray, cleaning blood from her skin, until her face felt closer to human. She removed the medipatch from her nose, leaving the one on her jaw because it was sending all kinds of good endorphins into her bloodstream.

  Dizzy, but in a pleasant way, she stepped out of the bathroom. Milord passed her a glass of what turned out to be cognac, and she took a sip, enjoying the heat of it in her mouth. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  “Not exactly that,” he said, his voice thrumming with what had to be false concern. “I found you lying in a corridor, some distance from what I hear was an epic bar fight. You rescued yourself long before I happened along.”

  “Well,” Dana said with a smile that didn’t hurt nearly as much as it might have five minutes ago, when her nose was still broken. “Thanks for scraping me off the floor.”

  Milord leaned in, his glass grazing hers with a clink. “You’re not at all what I thought you were, when we met on that train.”

  She wanted to laugh. Thanks to Kitty, she knew how much he despised her, but he was good – so very good at this. He saw the opportunity for a seduction and here he was, playing that card in the hopes of what, drawing her further into his web?

  Here was Dana, feeling self-destructive.

  “Vaniel,” she said in a low, husky voice, drawing her glass back to swallow more of the cognac.

  Her enemy gazed back at her. In this light, his grey eyes were almost silver. “Dana,” he said, making her name a caress.

  “Let’s stop pretending.” She reached up, her hand grabbing the back of his collar, pulling him down to her.

  His mouth found hers. He still thought he was the seducer in this scenario, so he kissed her slow and sweetly, like a dance. That wasn’t what Dana wanted, and she told him that through nips and bites, increasing the pre
ssure.

  Milord’s hand brushed against a bruise she hadn’t even known that she wore on her hip, and she gasped into his mouth, taking him deeper.

  They didn’t make it to the bedroom, the first time. She backed him against an antique desk, and he lifted her up on it, so as to more easily strip her of shirt and the soft sports bra she wore underneath. He licked his way down her ribs, tracing the darker patches of bruised skin with his tongue, and Dana sank her fingers into his hair, tugging hard.

  His clothes came off more smoothly than hers did, and she took the opportunity to shed her boots and blood-stained cargo pants. After only a moment’s hesitation, she ditched her knickers as well, because it wasn’t like they were being romantic.

  “Implant?” he breathed into her mouth when he came back for another kiss.

  Dana nodded and showed him the small medical tattoo on her unbruised hip. “You?”

  Milord drew her hand forward to wrap around the base of his cock, which felt heavy in her hand. She found the barrier stud nestled there, against his pelvis, and scratched a nail thoughtfully across it. “Well then.”

  They kissed again, mouths knocking roughly together, and he swiped a couple of fingers against her to feel how wet she was before taking her there, in a couple of fierce thrusts against the delicate woodwork.

  This was better than a fist-fight. Dana wanted it hard and fast, and Milord obliged.

  The journey they made from the edge of the desk to the bedroom at the far end of the suite, caused the following damage: one broken chair, a stubbed toe (hers), a bruised elbow (his), and a smashed lamp. All worthy sacrifices.

  38

  All Cats are Grey (in cyberspace)

  Dana awoke slowly, groaning as yesterday’s bruises made themselves known all over again. She was an idiot for refusing to heal them. Then the secondary pain hit, the realisation that her Papa was gone.

  She was alone and naked in the decadent, Regence-sized bed of the man who had kidnapped Conrad Su. Dana no longer had an inappropriate crush on Milord Vaniel de Winter; instead she had the intense, visceral memory of his mouth and his hands and the hot, slick feel of his body pressing hers against the desk, the wall, the bed.