[01] Elite: Wanted (20 page)

‘They say the gas giants of Alioth are beautiful,’ said Ziva, looking out at the stars.

‘That’s why I came here. I’d like to see them.’ Enaya reached across the table and took Ziva’s hand.

‘Do you remember the first time I met Aisha? We still hardly knew each other, you and I, but you’d told me where you lived and I came without telling you I was coming. She was at school. When she came back, you pretended so hard that nothing was going on. You were talking to her through that wall-hatch where she could only see you from the waist up. She couldn’t see that I had my hand in your knickers. I always wondered if she knew. She had those holograms on her wall then. Do you remember? One was of the gas giants of Alioth.’

Enaya snorted. ‘No! She had that later, and then only because you gave it to her.’

‘What happened, En?’

Enaya let go of Ziva’s hand and sat back. When she spoke, her words were measured. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about Aisha. I didn’t come here to talk about us. I came here for me. To have something of my own. And, if you came too, to have some time the way we used to. Do you remember?’

Ziva took Enaya’s hand again and squeezed hard. ‘Aisha, En. Where did he take her?’

Enaya let out a little laugh. She didn’t meet Ziva’s eyes. She was fighting not to cry. ‘They could be anywhere, Ziv.’

‘Arcturus. Didn’t she say once: “I want to breathe under the red light of a dying sun.”?’

‘She said …’ En trailed off and let out a long heavy sigh. She started to laugh again. This time, the tears came as well.

‘It’s not your fault, En. It’s him.’

‘She’s sixteen, Ziv. I have to let her go. She’ll come back this time but one day she won’t. So I’ve got a few days to find my strength and then perhaps two more years keeping it together for both of us and trying to make things right and teaching her how to be strong. After that she’s gone and there’s nothing more I can do.’

En was squeezing Ziva’s hand so hard that Ziva felt her bones bend. ‘You don’t have to do it on your own,’ she said.

‘Yes, Ziv, I do.’ Enaya drew slowly away. ‘We’d better eat. Everyone says you should try the blandroot if you come to Alioth but I already did that and …’ she shuddered and made a face.

Ziva leaned across the table. ‘No, you
don’t
–’

En snatched back her hand with such force that Ziva lurched forward. The slap caught her across the cheekbone and it carried every ounce of Enaya’s rage. ‘Yes,’ said En. ‘I do.’ She got up and ran from the table. When she came back, a few minutes later, she crouched beside Ziva and wrapped her arms around her and rested her head on Ziva’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t … I’ve just heard so many promises before and they never meant anything. I deserve better from you.’

Ziva stroked En’s hair. ‘I never promised you anything,’ she said.

‘I know, Ziv. But you were going to.’

‘You’re right, En. You do deserve better. Never mind eating. I want to show you something.’

Three hours later, the
Dragon Queen
dropped into an orbit over the gas giant Bifrost with its rings and its pair of violet moons and its atmosphere awash with blues and greens. The Fer-de-Lance seemed to glide across the surface of the rings to their inner edge. With the sun behind them, lighting them up, the curious mixture of ice and methane crystals refracted and scattered Alioth’s light into sprays of colour: rainbows erupting through the rings that gave the gas giant its name. Bifrost itself hung overhead, filling half of space.

‘Allah preserve me from such beauty as this,’ whispered En.

Ziva let them drift a while, the
Dragon Queen
projecting holograms all around them, casting the illusion of floating in open space. En seemed to lose herself in it.

‘I wanted to bring you out here to see this,’ whispered Ziva. ‘When we’re done here, we’re going to go and find Aisha.’ She pushed herself out of the pilot’s couch, unbuckled Enaya’s straps and pulled her floating down the
Dragon Queen
’s upper spine to the airlock behind the cockpit. Once there, she pointed to a pair of armoured EVA suits. ‘En, have you ever been outside?’

En looked at her as though she was mad. ‘Outside? You mean in space?’

‘Yes.’

‘No!’

‘Come on, then.’

‘No!’

Ziva unclipped one of the suits. They were the heavy-duty armoured sort designed for working in a hostile environment with high radiation or EM interference or the danger of flying debris. She’d bought them for making external repairs before she’d discovered what a thoroughbred the Fer-de-Lance was. Cobras and even Vipers, if something broke you had a chance of jury-rigging a repair that would limp you to the nearest station. A Fer-de-Lance? Not a hope; but she’d already bought the suits by then. Now she opened one up and climbed inside.

‘No.’ En was waving her hands. ‘No, no, no.’

‘You came to Alioth to see the gas giants. You want to
really
see them, come outside.’ Ziva took Enaya’s hand and pulled her into the airlock. ‘It’s easy enough.’

‘No, Ziv. I don’t think …’ En looked hard at the suit. ‘I don’t …’

‘I’ll be with you, En. This is my world and I want you to see it.’

En blinked a few times and took a deep breath. She climbed into the suit, legs and arms as Ziva showed her. ‘I don’t want to do this, Ziv.’

‘Just keep breathing. Whenever you want to go back inside, you say the word. Seal the suit when you’re ready. Like this.’ Ziva pressed a stud and her own suit closed around her. The helmet came over her head and she heard the faintest hiss as the seals closed and the suit built up an over-pressure to test its integrity. Displays flickered across her visor. She watched as En did the same. ‘En. You see a green light in the top right corner of your vision?’

‘Yes.’

‘That tells you everything’s fine. I’m going to put you on a tether so you don’t need to worry about anything at all. Just tell the ship if you want to go back and she’ll reel you in, all the way back into the airlock.’ Ziva turned Enaya so she was facing inward, tethered her, quietly de-pressurised the airlock and opened the door. Bifrost, thousands of miles below, filled her vision. The silver gleam of the rings stretched out between them, so close that the
Dragon Queen
might almost have been touching them. To Ziva they felt as though they were a solid thing, something she could step outside and walk on. She gave a tiny kick and drifted into the void. She loved this. The slow exit, hanging, supported by nothing but the abstract mathematics of gravity and mechanics, floating over something as immensely vast as Bifrost. The swirling blues and greens filled half her vision. If she looked one way, she saw the sharp curve of Bifrost’s rainbow rings and a hundred billion waiting stars. The other way and the rings lost their colour before the bright giant of Alioth itself. The rings were close enough that she could see the elongated shadow of the
Dragon Queen
stretched across them.

She turned back to the Fer-de-Lance, inverted over the gas giant. En hadn’t moved. ‘You can turn around now, En. Slowly. Hold onto things.’ She watched.

‘Oh! Ohoooh! Oh no, no, no!’ Enaya had turned enough to see the open airlock door and the vastness of the gas giant far beyond. ‘Oh Ziv, I’m going to fall! Come back! Come back inside.’

‘There’s no gravity, En. You can’t fall. Push away from the wall. Come towards me. I’ll catch you.’

‘Absolutely not! I’m going to fall. Ziva, come back inside and close the bloody door!’

‘You’re not going to fall, En. You can’t. Close your eyes.’

‘They’re already closed.’

‘Then let go. See. No falling. Just floating. I’m right here, En. You can see me, if you look. I’ll catch you. Here.’ She set up a command for the other suit. ‘All you have to do is say go and the suit will do the rest.’

‘No, no, no. No, Ziv.’

‘Trust me, En.’

There was a long pause and then Enaya’s suit gave a tiny burst and started to move forward to the mouth of the airlock. Ziva saw En clench her fists. ‘Oh, I fucking hate you, Ziva Eschel, and may merciful Allah do many, many, extremely unpleasant things to you for—’ As she drifted out into open space, the rest vanished into a terrified wail.

Seconds later, Ziva had a hold of her. She held En tight – not that you could tell under the armoured suits – and waited for her breathing and her heart-rate to come out of the red.

‘Don’t let me go don’t let me go don’t let me go I want to go back take me back!’

‘I thought we might ride drones through the rings and surf Bifrost’s stratosphere.’

‘Take me back. I want to go back, Ziv. Don’t let go. Get me inside – I’m going to be sick!’ En’s heart-rate wasn’t shifting. She had both hands clamped onto Ziva’s suit, her arms wrapped around her and clearly had no intention of letting go. She was getting worse, not better. En was falling into a panic attack.

Shit. She
was
going to puke in her suit …

Ziva pulled hard on the tether and jerked them both back into the airlock. She just about got the door closed, the airlock fast-pressurised and En’s suit open in time for En to throw up. In the absence of any gravity, the effect was startlingly unpleasant.

‘Oh En!’ Ziva jabbed Enaya with a sedative and pulled her gently through the ship back to her cabin, then floated quietly beside her, stroking her hair and listening to her heartbeat. ‘Sorry En. Space-walking wasn’t such a good idea, was it?’

Enaya slowly shook her head. She was as pale as a ghost and shaking. ‘No, Ziv.’ Her voice already sounded slurred from the sedative. ‘Was the most … scary … thing.’ She clung to Ziva’s arm, fingers still tight enough to leave marks. ‘I was falling and it was so far and there was nothing and I was so scared. And then you caught me. I couldn’t let go of you.’

‘I’ll always catch you, En.’ Ziva stripped off her one-piece and started working on En’s, both of them spattered with spots of vomit.

‘How, Ziv?’ Enaya’s pupils were starting to dilate. ‘You’re never there.’

‘I will be this time.’ Ziva pushed En into the cabin’s water-sphere. ‘You ever shower without any gravity?’

Enaya twisted, trying to draw Ziva closer. The sedatives were blurring her. ‘That would be nice,’ she murmured. ‘I’d like that. Isn’t this how our lives should be, Ziv? Can’t we be …
this
all the time?’

Ziva let out a heavy breath and looked away. ‘I haven’t really given you anything I said I would, have I?’

‘No, Ziv.’

‘I’ll try, En.’

‘Just stay with me until we find Ay, Ziv. Just that long. Then we’ll see.’

‘Have you ever thought about being a man?’ asked En later. They floated naked, still damp, spooned together, Enaya wrapped around Ziva with one hand between Ziva’s legs and the other tangled with Ziva’s fingers, idly stroking each other. En was buzzing.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean a proper transformation.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Then you could fuck me like a man.’

Ziva tightened her thighs around En’s hand. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Sometimes. Sometimes I want to be ridden without mercy. Be beaten, hit, choked.’ She paused. ‘Does that frighten you? It frightens me.’

‘You’re not worthless, En.’

‘I know. But it’s still there.’

Ziva wriggled free and turned over to look Enaya in the eye. ‘But I don’t
want
to hurt you.’

‘Which is why you could.’ En stroked Ziva’s cheek. A bruise was coming up from where En had hit her. ‘I could let it all go with you.’ She put a hand over Ziva’s belly and splayed her fingers. ‘You’re older than I am and look at you – nothing sags. Everything still firm. I hate you.’

‘I’m all hard edges. Always have been. There’s a micro-gym on the
Dragon Queen
. I use it a lot. Also, no children.’ She squeezed Enaya’s breasts and grinned. ‘Besides, you were always much fuller than I was. It was a long time before I stopped envying you for that.’ Gently she pushed En around and straddled her, then lowered her face until their lips were almost touching. ‘I don’t want to be a man, En. I’d be stupidly short and everyone would laugh at me. But if you want to be ridden, I have some top line prosthetics.’

En sank her fingers into Ziva’s hair and gripped her head. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were as wide as lanterns, full of eagerness.

‘I’m going to stop,’ Ziva said.

En gave a little shake of her head. ‘No. Don’t. Please.’

‘The hunting, I mean. I’m going to stop the hunting. I’ve got the bounty I’ve been after for the last two months. We’re going to find Aisha, you and I, and then I’m going to hand him over and then we’re going to have some fun. Just the three of us. You don’t have to do it on your own.’

Enaya was trembling. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I know.’

Later, Enaya fell asleep in her arms. From where she floated, limbs wrapped around her lover, Ziva quietly piloted the Dragon Queen back to the Golden Gate to pick up Newman. She whispered to the ship to have her avatars in Delta Pavonis wake up. ‘And then autopilot us to Arcturus,’ she said. She already knew where Aisha was going. ‘Send a drone to clean up the airlock, too.’

Once she had Newman securely in the hold again, Ziva curled up with Enaya. She closed her eyes and slept, letting the
Dragon Queen
find its own way.

Ravindra wanted to go back to bed. Knowing she still had a lot to do before she could rest made her want to take stims again. Working the mine in the Warren, she had needed them just to stay alive. She’d come out of the prison pretty strung out, a condition she didn’t want to return to. So Ravindra settled for coffee. Between the bounty hunter and the Judas Syndicate she could feel herself running out of time – could almost see the red hourglass counting down for her and the rest of the crew. As it had already done for Harnack.

She bought the strongest, bitterest coffee available and made her way back to the
Song of Stone
. She found Jonty and Orla working on the ship. Both of them glanced at her when she entered. She couldn’t quite read either of their expressions. Both seemed guarded, even suspicious.