At the previous hearing I had capitalized on the jurors’ reverence for my husband. This time I was determined not to use that as any kind of coin. They would have to look and see me, Vashti Loren, not the widow of a hero.
“They kept me on my feet for three hours,” I said.
The Beast made an encouraging noise.
“It wasn’t out of neglect or heedlessness. They did it deliberately.”
“A test.”
“They wanted to test my aggression levels.” The hearing had been constantly interrupted—by couriers, noises that were explained away as construction, sudden violent variances in temperature. At the end of it, my jurors looked more uncomfortable than I was.
Did killing fellow human beings excite you? they had asked.
No, it did not.
Would you say it was more like eliminating parasites from a hydro crop?
I don’t understand the question.
Well, you seem fairly cool about this, Mrs. Undset. Fairly detached, if I may say so. Did you not feel anything—
I felt plenty; we had just been ambushed by the squatters we were after—
—or have we been remiss in allowing a Natch—
We had to fight for our lives—
—such a position of responsibility, the handling of lethal force—
—and I had just seen my husband slaughtered before my very eyes—
—and this incident shows that a person without the proper genetic modification cannot be entrusted with this!
“And what would they say about you, Beast?” I murmured now. “There’s me, with no mods whatsoever, and then there’s you, modified beyond sense, beyond endurance. We’re both relics.”
“They’ll wish Mustaine still existed,” he said, voice rumbling next to me. “They’ll find a way to execute us.”
“But your brothers will go free,” I said.
“Our brothers,” he said musingly. “We suppose they are.”
“You won’t have died in vain.”
“Spare us the platitudes.”
I rolled my head to look at him, and found my gaze returned. The intimacy of it—reclining so close to each other, barely half a meter between us—was shocking. Words fell away from me.
We looked for a long time at each other, finally without weapons in our hands or the surrounds of other men and women pressing in on us. My pulse began to kick in my throat. I reached out with my left hand and found his right—he flinched when I touched him, but his gaze never left mine. My fingers curled through his.
With a sense of deleting infinite files, of wiping out memory banks, of jettisoning a limb, an organ—O Lasse, was this a betrayal?—I took a deep breath, looking at the Beast and holding his hand. “I am no longer your enemy.”
He returned my grip, quick, firm. “Wh . . . I was never yours.”
The breath came guttering out of me in a long exhale. I released his hand and looked up at the sunlight blaring across the ceiling. Four years of hatred. Four years of a need for vengeance that fed me as the need for art, or sex, or nurturing others fed other people. Letting go felt like prying open a steel fist.
A deep shiver reverberated all through the spacecraft.
“Here we go,” he and I said at once. We looked at each other and grinned; and even that felt like an easing of that metal grip.
Things happened very quickly after that: the shuttle’s com clicked on and announced in three different languages that all passengers must be restrained, listed protocols for emergencies, notable sights for window-gazing, cautions about uses of the hand- and footholds.
I wanted to say something smartass, but then the countdown started—it had gotten so much quicker since I first came to Ubastis, with the new quetzal drive. The huge sterling engines that would take the craft up to the point where it could blast past the gravity well cycled up with a whine of acceleration. With a tremor I felt in my marrow, the shuttle lifted off.
Blue, so blue. The sky rushed at us and the sun scorched the very air. I closed my eyes, but the light was so bright it was as if I were shooting upwards into an atmosphere of scarlet. The roar of the quetzal drive faded. The first stage of the propulsion relay shoved us deep into the soft seats; me with a little grunt, him with a sharp exhale through his nostrils. For several seconds as the engine burned beneath us, the shuttle quivered with energy half-felt, half-heard. I knew the climate coolant was kicking in, but over the noise of the engine I could not tell. Sweat trickled past my temples, beneath my breasts. I felt as if I were turning to putty beneath the grinding thumb of the cosmos. I hated this part of spaceflight.
And then from one breath to the next, we were through. The physical relief was vast. Too vast; I thought for a moment I might be sick. In a short while, edema would set in, as well as dizziness and nausea.
Another recording came on, reiterating some of the previous instructions; giving us such data as flight time, kliks per second, height above the planet. Before it was done, the Beast had whipped off his restraints.
I gave him a rueful look. “I know that was hard for you.”
“We used to be used to it.” He floated across the room to the window in a lazy flat spin, arms and legs spread-eagled. “Feels good to stretch.”
With some reluctance I unfastened the webbing. Despite my declaration to him, despite accepting the fact that I would need him, the thought of being alone with him on this trip up to the Lazarette—in microgravity, floating about, with it all too easy to careen accidentally into him—I felt skin-pricklingly aware of his physical presence.
Watching him, however, was an aesthetic pleasure. He pushed off from the wall and, like a juvenile anakapotamus in the water, sported through the air, that sleek big body twisting, tumbling—he did a lazy somersault and came to rest directly overhead, hooking one foot through one on of the D-rings in the ceiling.
“Come on, Vashti,” he said. “Get out of those things. You need to play.”
I snorted. “I don’t need to play. I need to think.” But I finally undid the lap belt, the calf belts. It occurred to me, my fingers on the velcro fasteners, that the seats would be just as helpful as the handholds for a session of micro-g sex—if not more so. My skin flushed with heat in what I knew was a blush. I pushed away the self-reproach: it had been four years, after all.
I let myself float away into the center of the room. Something touched my foot; I looked back to see the Beast reaching up. “Don’t you dare—”
He pushed only a little. I arced into a dive that felt glorious, muscles stretched and straining, caught the D-ring by the med cabinet and pushed off again in a swift helix. It felt like swimming, like flying—everything flowing together in speed and grace. I found myself laughing in delight. It had been a long time.
And then the Beast caught me out of my giddy parabola and pulled me to him.
I was panting a little, from the laughter and the thinner oxygen. Heedlessly I let myself drift down to him until there was a handsbreadth, no more, between our bodies. Heat emanated from him in a palpable seep that I felt even through my modest clothing. His face was set; closed; but his gaze ate me alive.
That same expression I had seen on Lasse’s face fifteen years ago.
He was so big, so male—so much more beautiful than my fantasies of vengeance ever allowed; and I had hated him with all the power that had fueled my soul for so long. I slipped my hand inside the neck of his kurta to rest on his bare shoulder. He flinched, but his gaze never left mine.
The smooth skin of him, the liveness beneath my palm, maddened me. My hand twisted and clutched the fabric of his shirt, and I pulled myself in until my mouth was on his.
It was the sweetest thing I had ever felt.
His mouth was tender beyond imagining; when my tongue touched his lips, he groaned. I found myself licking, suckling his mouth in an ecstasy of sensation; but then he opened to me and I was in the sleek depth of him.
For a second he tensed as if reining in violence. Then he colle
cted me into an embrace that felt as if he would wrap his whole body around me.
After a mindless minute I broke the kiss to look at him.
I remembered everything—the night in the medbay where I saved his life, the snarling confrontation with Lasse’s shirt—the dance where I lay down in a mimicry of submission . . . every hard word, every time I pitched myself against his immovable presence. Here he made no move to release me, only continued to hold me, anchoring me.
I ached; I burned. His stubble had abraded my skin; my pulse hammered in my lips, my throat, my cunt, yet I felt calm—even happy, and dumbly wondering.
And then I remembered: the oxytocin. The oxytocin release. Half-heartedly I pushed at him. I should not want this contact—it was a cheat; it wasn’t real—
And yet it felt so good to be held, after years. To my embarrassed relief, he did not let me go. I could not resist goading him, however. “Did Lasse send you for this too? Is this how a Beast gets his leader to trust him?”
“No.” He bowed his head. “Wh—I’ve wanted this since that picture.”
“Picture?”
“The picture of you with the cheetah. You—” He gusted a deep sigh. “—Holding an animal. A beast.”
My arms tightened around him and he finally looked at me. His face contorted in a rictus of effort and his words reached me as much breath as sound, so close our face were. “I’ve wanted to touch you since I first saw you. You walked into that medbay room and started yelling at us . . . Your hand right on me. We thought about that later, when we were alone.”
“My hand on you . . .” In another flush of heat I realized what he meant.
“If it hadn’t been such a bad moment, we’d have been steel when you touched us.” His smile was wry. “Like we’re steel right now.”
Involuntarily I moved against him. Yes, there, hard along my thigh, my hipbone—there was a lot of him.
The realization bit into my gut with such force I felt a cramp of lust seize my pelvis. I stifled an involuntary whimper and his arms tightened around me, his nostrils flared.
“Jesus, woman,” he said. He dipped his head to my neck and inhaled. Gooseflesh broke out on my skin. Then he did begin to kiss me, little questing caresses of his mouth up the side of my neck.
I wanted him. I wanted his lips on mine, I wanted to reach down and have his erection fill my hand; I wanted him inside me. We could fuck right here if we wanted, that big glorious body covering mine.
That big glorious genetically engineered body.
I slid my foot free of the D-ring, pushing away from him, and immediately he released me. I caught myself only a meter away from him, the hunger still thumping all through me. Goddamnit, I wanted—I wanted—
“O-389—”
“Vashti—”
We both spoke at once, but I frowned and overruled him.
“Beast, I think I want you—”
“‘Think?’ Oh, you’re killing us—”
“Enough, soldier!” I snapped.
The change, as always, was dramatic. Upon seeing it here I felt less wonder and more remorse. “I’m sorry.” Ya Allah, first I kissed him, then I yelled at him, then I apologized to him. I had turned to tapioca, sure enough.
He shrugged. My chagrin deepened, but I went on. “Do you know what they’re going to do to me up there?”
“Yes.”
“You do?”
“We got our hands on the transcript from the last time.”
“The last time.” That finally cooled my arousal. “Yeah. Do you think anyone who goes up for these things more than once gets a slap on the wrist like I did?”
His expression could have been called a smile. “You’ll be a criminal just like us.”
“It’s not that they’ll take away my guns.” I thrust off from the wall and floated to the window. The stabilizing rockets had fired, angling the ship so that I could see only a patch of the planet. A spiral of cloud frothed over what I thought must be the Kemwer Sea, indicating a hell of a storm lashing its dark waters. Like a child I put my hand to the glass, longing. All the rest was black, pricked with stars, cold and lovely and indifferent.
The Beast drifted up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I allowed myself that comfort. “I don’t care about leading the safaris and teaching offworlders how to shoot,” I continued. “But they won’t let me out to the—to the wild anymore. The arboros, the plains, the mountains—none of it. All barred to me.”
“And that’s where you belong,” he said quietly.
The tears welled in my eyes. I twisted to look up at him. “It’s not that. If I can’t go out, I’m a stranger. I’m shut out. I’m damn well excommunicated.”
He looked blank. I tried again. “If they tell me I’m forbidden to go out into Ubastis—I lose my soul if I obey them.”
He cupped my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. “Then it’s time for you to disobey.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We did not so much land at the station as we were inhaled by it. Once our shuttle reached a distance of five kliks away, I knew the shuttle’s computer would ping to request a handshake with Lazarette 1’s security mainframe. Thank goodness that the shuttle system was completely run by planetside and Lazarette systems. Before the stabilization of such routes, it was not uncommon for any ranking individual to be called upon to assist on the navigation bridge. My hands felt at home on all kinds of weaponry, but the benign skill of piloting any kind of craft was beyond me.
The matte white ring slowly grew in our field of vision, while the same recorded voice reminded us that the better part of safety meant buckling ourselves back in our seats. We should expect nothing like the violence of ripping away from the planet, but there was always the chance of computer malfunction, structure collision. A small chance, but I was sure an UBI agent had insisted on including the squib to prevent litigation.
The shuttle slid into the ring’s shadow toward the center dock. It wasn’t déjà vu that caused me to flinch; it was memory at that touch of dark. The restraints—the dimming shade amidst the brilliance of space—the tremor of fear inside me at the thought of the hearing to come—so much like the time before. Nausea began to roll through me in waves, and I could not attribute it to the effects of micro-g.
The entrance to the dock grew to a slot, a gape, a cave, edged in red LED lights. Further lead-in lights strobed whitely towards the interior: another redundancy held from the era of manual piloting. Tremor after tremor reverberated through the shuttle with every minute adjustment of the mini-burners. At last the LED lights blinked to green and we slid into the dock.
I would be lying if I’d said I never thought I’d return under these circumstances. There had been invitations to examine and approve exhibits at the museum, to speak for audiences of tourists and dignitaries. Certainly some respect was owed these worthy goals, and in order to heighten tourist appeal and acquire more clients (more bank, always more bank), like a good Citizen of Ubastis, I did what was asked of me.
But under accusation? Forced again to justify myself in front of both Ubasti and Commonwealth ministers, to justify possession of weapons in a society that regarded the knife, the gun, the killing thing as a remnant of repugnant past—somehow I had always known the hearing over Wadjet indicated another similar event on my worldline to come. And what would the penalty be this time?
The viewscreen in our cabin blanked to a gray wall as the power kicked off. Only the lowest of auxiliary sources permitted a glow that limned doors, walkways, ingress and egress. Sheathed in the center of the spindle as we were, the gravity was only slightly less than micro, so passengers leaving the shuttle still resorted to handholds: like a troop of brachiating apes we made our way together through the corridors and then out to the bay.
Crew members handed us burr-soled slip-ons before we stepped out on the flooring. It took them a few minutes to find a pair big enough for the Beast, and I had to smile.
“We’re going to have to alter ou
r concept of the human body if we have ten thousand of you running around,” I murmured. And then, in muted alarm: “What the hell are your calorie needs? I mean you in the general—”
“Maybe about twenty-five hundred a day. Base.” He grinned at my look of shock. “Believe it, we’ve lost conditioning since we’ve been here.”
Ten thousand Beasts eating their heads off. The resources this would take—how the hell could we feed so many people if we cut ourselves off from the Commonwealth’s teat? The fish farms, I thought distractedly, we should’ve approved them earlier. If autonomy was declared in the next few hours, there would be no way to request the proper water kits, the food, the elvers, the fingerlings, and the techs to teach us.
Another city would have to be built. I couldn’t remember if the construction equipment was still at Qetta or if it had already been shipped back. And the crews to run them?
My mind raced even as we stood in the queue for Screening. Our power systems were autonomous, but did we have the tech to make replacements? Declaring ourselves autonomous and a sovereign entity might prevent immigration, but it would also open us up to such pressures as embargo, embassies, and, yes, war.
“Your purpose for coming to Lazarette 1?” The screener, a thinly bearded youth in his early twenties, surprised me by making eye contact as he trotted out the rote question.
“Judicial,” I said.
“Ah, God be merciful. Okay, Citizen, hold still for the scan.”
In the moment before he keyed the command, I saw his pupils widen within a ring of gray, one eyebrow winging up: he recognized me.
White slapped my vision as the facial scan’s flash burst. Through the swimming phosphenes the screener’s face seemed to fade into the contours of another face I knew better than my own. Only for a moment—a moment that left me gut-kicked. I blinked hard, the blooms of not-light shrinking. Lasse’s eyes, those brilliant eyes—
And then bodies were pressing behind me; the queue was moving forward with a rip-rip-rip of plastic burrs, the next person to be scanned and sent through.
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