Assassin's Hunger (19 page)

She huffed out a laugh.

He squeezed her. “But I think what we felt was just what
we
wanted.”

“I felt…” She consulted her data for words but found nothing that fit. “I felt everything.”

His arm tightened around her. “Innocent girl, you shouldn’t reveal so much.”

“Not even to you? After that?”

He hesitated long enough that she thought he too must be looking for words.

“Only to me,” he said at last. “And just for tonight.”

“Is it night?”

“Somewhere it is. And it is for us.”

His hard-muscled shoulder made a surprisingly fine pillow. She nuzzled the crook of his neck. “It is always night in the sheerways.”

She meant to tease him until his flesh rose again like its own hot sun, but his hand stroking through her hair was so mesmerizing that she must have fallen asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, he was kneeling over her. The lume stick had faded somewhat, and his eyes were pooled in shadow. He was fully dressed in his dark uniform and he held something long and sharp in one hand.

A surge of alarm went through her, and she shoved herself upright, uncertain why she was so disturbed. Maybe just because she hadn’t woken with someone else since the day she roused from her first implant surgery and the technicians had explained her fate. She and her fellow commandoes had been programmed to rise and rest in waves, and they didn’t sit around watching each other sleep.

He rocked back on his haunches.

Her skin was cold, and she wrapped her arms around her nakedness. “What are you doing?” Her voice sounded rough, almost out of tune, in her ears.

“The runabout is charged.” He sheathed the nano knife at his belt and picked up the arc spanner that had been in the sand at her side. “I knocked out the worst of the dents, so we won’t look too disreputable when we pull into Rampakh.”

Why did he care what they looked like? And really, the arc spanner was too delicate for the job. She shook her head which seemed strangely fuzzy. From the vids, she’d gathered that sex left its practitioners untouched. Well, physically
very
touched, but essentially unmarked or at least indifferent. But something in her struck her as…odd.

She remembered what Benedetta had said about love, wishing it upon her.

Sex and love were often linked; she knew that much. But love was deeper, somehow. Although her enhancements meant she was immune to most infections, including conception, had she caught something else from joining with him? Was that even possible? Such non-essential concerns were not included in her onboard data.

His gaze was too fixed for her liking. She twisted her body away from him and reached for her discarded tank top. When she yanked it on, the tough fabric scraped over her tender nipples and she shivered at the reminder.

“Are you cold?”

He was
still
watching her? The chill in her skin sank toward her bones as she glanced warily over her shoulder at him. “Why didn’t you ask for my assistance?”

“I didn’t need it.” He smiled at her, but the lightness was confined to the upward curve of his lips and left his eyes a cold silver. “Besides, you looked so sweet, asleep by the pool like a little nymph.”

That didn’t sound sweet; it sounded…vulnerable.
Innocent girl
, he had called her, several times now.

And it hadn’t sounded like an endearment.

“Can a desert have nymphs?”

“Rare,” he admitted. “And all the more precious for it.”

She patted around her for her shorts. They wouldn’t have gotten far on their own.

Behind her, he cleared his throat. “Your underthings were torn. Collateral damage.”

She swiveled again to stare at him. “Where are they?”

“I tossed them. I had to get rid of the cake too, since we kicked up some sand.”

Unwilling to hear any more, she grabbed her leggings and wiggled into the snug fabric without standing up. She didn’t want to expose any more of herself to him than she already had.

Her combat wear was engineered to repel dirt, but there were just enough grains of sand in her pants to grate on her. She scrambled into her combat jacket—which smelled of crushed lichens and Eril—and shoved her boots on her feet.

But when she stood, her knees wobbled.

Eril was already up, his hand under her elbow. “Steady there.”

Her head spun. “What…”

“You just got up too fast.”

She was a Hermitaj-created cyborg; she couldn’t get up too fast. “Something is wrong,” she said.

He scowled. “It’s been awhile since I had sex. But I don’t think it was that bad.”

An instinctive reassurance jumped to her lips, but then she turned a suspicious gaze on him. “You know it wasn’t. And you don’t have an ego about your sexual proficiency.”

His scowl remained in place, but the silver in his eyes glinted back at her. He took a step away from her, his hand falling to his side. “How would you know?”

“I’ve seen the way you pretend to be less than you are. You let Jorr belittle you with the nanotech knife, but you move like a warrior. You deferred to Fariz with the drone even though you knew instantly what was wrong with the runabout. The twins tease you as if they believe you aren’t dangerous.”

He stiffened. “And what do you think I am?”

She shrugged, testing her muscles which now seemed to be responding as normal. “I don’t know.”

“Then why did you trust me with your body?”

“Others have used it for war. At least you would use it for pleasure.” She twisted her lips into a smile as cold as his had been. “Maybe the l’auraly are inspiring me after all.”

His expression blanked.

“I did not ask for your secrets,” she said. “Yours or the l’auraly’s. So you don’t have to lie to me.”

“That’s what most people do, innocent girl, sometimes to hurt, but sometimes to protect themselves and those they love.”

“I’m not innocent anymore,” she reminded him.

He let out a soft breath. “No. And that’s my doing. Which is maybe why I didn’t want you to think it was so bad.” He rubbed one hand over his mouth. “That I was so bad.”

After his comment about lying, she should have been disinclined to believe him now, but the awkward tension in the otherwise flowing lines of his body made her think that about this at least he was being sincere.

She smoothed her hands down her body, settling the lines of her jacket and leggings, and watched his half-lidded gaze follow the gesture. Yes, she thought he was truthful about wanting their sex.

“Maybe I did get up too fast,” she said. “I feel…good now. Shall we continue?”

His gaze rose to hers, silver and stone battling for supremacy in his gray eyes. “We should.”

Chapter 14

The runabout looked the worse for wear, but it was drivable. While Shaxi broke down and packed up the recharger, Eril replaced the arc spanner in the tool kit.

He glanced over to make sure she was still occupied then removed the much smaller phase tuner from his utility pocket and checked the readout.

The experimental tech was highly illegal in any jurisdiction that knew it existed. If he was caught with it, even the underwriters would probably have to write him off.

It had unlocked the first layer of Shaxi’s Hermitaj-encrypted coding while they’d had sex. If she hadn’t been distracted by other unfamiliar sensations, he wondered if she would have noticed the infiltration. While she’d slept—her rest deepened by a short-acting sedative in the cake—he’d given it direct access to the tiny port in her wrist which she herself used for interfacing with the runabout and other devices.

The second layer of encryption was down, and the tuner was matching algorithms on the last layer. If he used the device on her again, he would have as much control over her as Hermitaj ever had.

He pocketed the tuner as she came around the end of the runabout.

But she had her gaze averted, her body closed in around itself as she had been since she awoke. He wondered if she was regretting their tryst.

He wished he could reassure her.

Finally, she sidelonged a glance at him. “Ready?”

He nodded.

They retraced the tracks of their careening path more carefully to the end of the canyon.

“Scan shows diminished EM levels in the valley,” Shaxi said. “Clear enough to pick up the Rampakh perimeter beacon. But we are only between waves of the storm.”

“Then let’s finish this.” Eril revved the engine and set out across the sand.

Like a smaller, dirtier, uglier, meaner cousin to the main port city, Rampakh hunched at the bottom of the valley. With two mountain ranges of electromagnetically damaging ore on either side, the compound lurked under heavier reinforcements. The shield wall extended high enough to deflect the winds, if not break them, and sparks of electricity popped above the wall where a primitive ionization field was working overtime to repel the latest assault of damaging dust.

There was no evidence of other ships or people.

“Creepy.” Shaxi widened their camera reach to three-sixty as they passed through the main portal which opened at their hail after sending an automated statement of liability disclaimer.

He glanced over at her. “Creepy? Is that your professional mercenary assessment?”

She returned his gaze with an arched eyebrow. “That’s the opinion of the half of me that isn’t holding a hazer.”

“I won’t disagree.” He guided the runabout through the empty main corridor. “The perimeter alarm would have let them know we’re here.”

She shuffled through the schematics on her screen. “The port hangar is just ahead.”

They halted at the entrance of the open bay doors of the big plyscrete building and disembarked. The yard was cluttered with ravaged mechanicals: blackened engine parts, random severed tubes, scoured chunks of plysteel. Far overhead, the ion field sizzled, the sparks eerily bright against the murky sky where high clouds of sand still swirled.

Shaxi rubbed the back of her neck, as if the rampant energy was bothering her.

Eril watched her with concern, knowing he couldn’t ask how she was. If he didn’t keep her occupied, she was smart enough to realize her own perimeter had been breached in more ways than one.

“Maybe no one is here,” Shaxi said, turning in a slow circle.

From the darkness between the bay doors, a small figure in a dark blue sand-robe appeared. “Yeah. Nobody’s here.”

Eril let his hand fall naturally to the unobtrusive hazer at his thigh. Shaxi, he noted, had done the same.

“You shouldn’t be here either,” the figure continued. “Next fist of the storm is gonna be a smasher.”

“Last was bad enough,” Shaxi said. “Our ship took a hit, and we need parts.”

“Too bad there’s nobody here.” The figure turned, dismissing them.

“You’re here,” Eril pointed out.

“Like I said.”

“We can pay,” Shaxi said abruptly. “Good credit. Or a chance.”

The figure pushed back the sand-robe hood to reveal a head of delicately knotted red hair. The young woman—somewhere between the twins and Shaxi in age, Eril guessed—eyed them warily. She had a remote device in her hand. Probably a kill switch of some sort. “What chance?”

Shaxi let go of her hazer and swept her hand across the yard. “To get out of here.”

Eril sucked in a breath and gave her a sharp shake of his head, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him.

The other woman smiled, more of a snarl, really. “And leave all this? You don’t know a treasure trove when you stumble over it.”

“Nobody wants to be a nobody,” Shaxi said. “This I know.”

The woman’s snarl flattened. “Depends what the other choices are.”

Shaxi tilted her head. “In Rampakh, I’m guessing no options. That’s why I offered credit or a chance.”

Shifting her stance, the woman glanced over her shoulder as if nervous. “Everyone who can leave for the storms, has. There’s no one to sell you what you need.”

“Which means no one to stop us from taking it,” Eril noted. When both women shot him identical disapproving stares, he shrugged. “We can leave appropriate compensation for what looks to be a fine selection of parts.”

This time, the small woman gave a more wry smile. “The working components are inside. Nothing stays out during the storms.” She eyed them again. “Except you two.”

“Sometimes the choices are all bad ones,” he muttered.

But the two women were already heading into the hangar.

Inside was cool and dark, but Kala—as she introduced herself to Shaxi—struck a lume stick and walked them between the rows of derelict ships. Eril hung back, listening.

“Everything that can fly is gone already,” Kala said. “If you want off-world before the shriving, you’re going to have to rig fast.” She took a breath. “I can help. Have you out before the big fist.”

Shaxi put her hands on her hips, surveying the crumbling walls of the hangar before she turned a softer eye on Kala. “Is there anyone who will come after you?”