Grimspace (23 page)

Lucky we aren't scrambling to get dressed as we stumble
into the corridor.

The
Folly
listing like this can mean only one thing, and we take another hit as the four of us intersect in the hub. The bombardment continues. I smell something burning, and Dina looks…panicked. Never seen that expression before, so whatever's gone wrong, she can't fix it.

Shit.

“We've got a breach,” she says, breathless. “Cruised too close to New Terra, and now their Satellite Defense Installation is all over us. No surprise, we're on the shit list. Only thing we can do now is try to sneak into the atmosphere with the shuttle.”

“Why didn't someone wake me before we got in range?” March growls. “I didn't plan on coming up to the front door and knocking!”

“You didn't tell us to, you brainless hump.” Dina glares at us both. “Besides, you're the one who left it on autopilot to go roll around with Jax.”

“The only rolling came when we fell off the bed.” That's probably an unnecessary correction, but trivia keeps me calm.

“There is no time for this,” Doc says. “I suggest we get to the shuttle immediately.”

To think I could still be on Gehenna, wiping baby spit off my shoulder. I spare a thought for Adele and Domina, Mattin and Lleela, and for my lovely glastique flat. I want to go back; it's home. I want to make love with March there, so it feels like we're flying.

First we have to live through this, however.

Doc's logic can't be argued, so March answers, “Get anything you need from quarters, only necessities, and meet back in two minutes. The shuttle's leaving in three.
Move
, people.”

We spring into motion. In my case I'm heading to quarters to grab a change of clothes and my PA.
I just unpacked, dammit.
It's hard to tell what I've got, but I cram it all in the bag and move down the hall at a dead run. When I reach the hold, I see Dina waiting. She's got the doors open, and I regard the boxy little vessel dubiously.

“How the hell is this thing going to get us to the surface under fire?”

“It won't be fired on,” she assures me. “I can trick out the energy readings so our signal will be lost amid the big boom the
Folly
's going to make. Just got to time it right.”

“If you say so.” I climb aboard and buckle myself into the second row of seats.

She follows, but she gets in front, choosing the copilot's chair. Better to make the techno-mojo, I suppose. My hands feel like I've been squeezing squid, and my stomach keeps trying to push out my throat. If I hate terrestrial driving, then I hate shoe boxes like this ten times more. A kid on a scooter could take us out, let alone the kind of damage those SDIs are dealing.

March and Doc arrive simultaneously, although the geneticist frets as he clambers in beside me. “I hope I retrieved all my data. Got the Mareq samples…but I've discovered some unexpected links since I've been studying your most recent scans—”

“Shut up and strap in.” Nice to know March doesn't reserve his charm for me alone.

“Yes, of course.” Doc piles his things at his feet and complies as the larger ship feels like it's shaking to pieces around us.

“Life support's online. We've got maybe two hours before the air starts to go bad,” Dina tells us, as if we didn't have enough to worry about.

“Get the loading doors open, Dina. We're going for a ride.” I'm disgusted to detect a note of pure exhilaration in March's voice.

Swear to Mary, he thrives on adversity, and if that's the case, no wonder he wants me around. Where I used to be charmed, everything I touched turned to gold; since Matins IV, it's like I stepped through a witching mirror to the other side. But hey, at least March enjoys my jinx, right?

“Sure thing, boss.”

As the doors swing open, I decide there's nothing scarier than seeing space with just a few centimeters of poly-metal alloy between you and horrible asphyxiation. However, there's a bright side. If we wind up out there, we'll only have about ten seconds to feel sorry for ourselves.

“I give the poor girl thirty seconds,” Dina says, hushed, like someone's dying.

At first I think she's talking about me, but then we almost seem to drift off the
Folly
. March uses power sparingly, and I glimpse the first hint of what Dina meant. With hull splintered, huge hunks of metal adrift, she looks like she's about to break in two. Yet the SDI fires with the relentless precision of a machine-driven attack.

I can't watch, so I squeeze my eyes shut. It feels like we're moving too slow; any minute the SDI could figure out that we're not wreckage. But maybe that's the key here, just as it is in nature. In my survival training, we learned never to run from a predator; it just makes it think you're something that should be chased.

At least my ribs stopped hurting—nothing like adrenaline to cure what ails you.

“Now,” Dina orders. “She's going to pieces. Head for the surface!”

In such a small craft I feel the speed especially in my stomach, and I become aware of Doc, gray-faced and sweating beside me. He lied to me, so why I should I care if he looks worse than I feel?
But we're a team, whether I like it or not.
Wordlessly I offer my hand, and he squeezes it as if he wants to make blood shoot out my fingertips.

We come screaming into the atmosphere like an angry comet. Did we leave a trail? Is anyone coming behind us going to be able to tell what happened? Any minute I expect the shuttle to shake apart, but March manages amid cursing that does Mair proud.

Dina monitors panels and sensors, muttering suggestions. “Ease up, dammit. You're going to burn out the stabilizers, and I don't think we want to test impact resistance in this thing.”

He spares her a look. Not just a look,
the
look. “You want to fly this?”

Huh, I'm not the only one who gets that.

“No, but just remember—”

Oh, that noise can't be good.

“Told you to ease up.” She sounds so smug, considering that the shuttle wobbles like it wants to start spinning and not stop until we collide, hard, with the ground.

Although I'm not an expert, I tend to prefer that doesn't happen. They bicker back and forth while Doc crushes the shit out of my hand. Maybe I believe too much in March, but I don't think we're going to crash. Sure enough, even with the unsteady shimmy, side-to-side stir-fry action, he manages to slow the shuttle, skimming over the ground as he looks for a place to land.

March puts us down just before the stabilizers crackle for the last time. Doc staggers out as soon as the doors open, falls onto his hands and knees. I turn away so I don't have to see him getting sick. My stomach still feels shaky, and that's not helping. I step away, and then scrape a palm over my face.
Time to take stock.

We're in the middle of a field.

If Old Terra is a ghetto world, an urban sprawl stripped of natural resources, then New Terra is its farm colony. Cities here are few and far between. I lived in New Boston, where my parents styled themselves “society,” but this infinite expanse of golden grain boasts no landmarks. Overhead, the sky looms heavy and gray, indifferent, but the wind smells of damp earth and growing things, an echo of my childhood clear as a phantom with twin plaits and a handful of sweets.

“So where are we?” Dina asks. To my vast exasperation, they all regard me with expectant expressions, even March, like I should be able to pinpoint our location via some native global positioning system.

“New Terra.”

Doc straightens, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I believe she meant more specifically, Sirantha.”

No shit?
The man really has a penchant for stating the obvious. That's the trouble with geniuses; most of them seem to lack anything like a sense of humor, so they're forever “clarifying” for other people when they were, in fact, being smart-asses.

“You know it's been like sixteen years since I've been here, right? And I wasn't a world traveler before I signed with the Corp, not that there's too much to see.” I wave a hand at the vegetation, which, thanks to the wind, seems to wave back. “But it's definitely a Conglomerate world. The Corp has their home office here.”

“Well,” March says, “since we can't fly the shuttle, we need to get some distance from it. I don't think we want to be found here if someone comes looking.”

That's the first sensible thing I've heard. We have gray men and bounty hunters looking for us. Neither will stop until they bring us in, the former for order and honor, the latter for the payday. Now that we're stranded in enemy territory, shit's only going to get harder. March glances at me, smiling. He really does love this.

Dina shrugs. “If we're going, let's go. We're burning daylight.”

I sling my bag over my shoulder while Doc fidgets with various bits of gear. What he took to be essential seems like a lot more than what the rest of us grabbed.

My stomach growls. Can't remember when I ate last. Jump-travel has a way of lagging the shit out of your biosystems. “Did anyone think to snag some rations?”

“I've got a week's worth of paste.” March doesn't look delighted by the prospect, though, and he's the survival specialist.

“Perfect,” Saul says, all loaded up. Good thing he's strong; he'll need to be. “It could always be worse, hm?” he adds, sounding determinedly cheerful.

Nobody responds to that, but before we walk ten meters, it starts to rain.

March is the only one who brought bivouac.

Like I said, he's the survival expert. Doc packed all his lab gear, various scanners and samplers, other stuff I don't know the names for, while Dina brought her tools. As for me, I grabbed my favorite shoes and clean underwear. What can I say, some of my mother's lessons stuck, although I refuse to put my hair up, and I haven't worn a dress in almost twenty years.

If she had her way, I'd have a vanilla husband and a dignified career as an art dealer, selling to the cultured at an exorbitant price. Instead, I'm plodding through a field, lost, while my belly chews through my backbone. For a fleeting moment I wonder what the life I left behind would've been like. Just as quickly I dismiss the curiosity; I'd have choked to death in their world.

We walk until true sunset. I pause, gazing up at the streaked sky, tear trails of scarlet blurred over cobalt. Damn, haven't seen one of those since we left Lachion, though I'm not sure how long ago that was. I wonder how Keri is faring among the clans, whether she's married the Gunnar yet. Nobody says much as we set camp near a scrubby copse of trees that exist only to demarcate one field from another.

The rain subsides into a miserable mist, drizzling down through our clothes until we're all irascible. Dinner takes all of thirty seconds, but my mood improves marginally when I see Doc and Dina wrap up in rain slickers and bed down on the wet ground. Seems like I may end up the same way since all I have is clean underwear, but then I see March beckoning me from the mouth of his sleep cylinder. This thing only holds one person, but I manage to wriggle in beside him. He fastens the end up, and we elbow each other more than once in getting settled.

As he pulls me close, I hear Dina grumble, “Shit,
I'd
sleep with him to get out of this weather.”

Into the silence, Doc stage-whispers, “So would I.”

I break down as March calls back, “No thanks, I'm good.”

Guess I am crazy because even though I have no earthly reason to believe things are going to work out, right now I'm happy. Maybe I'm like March, and I thrive under less than-ideal circumstances. What a fragging understatement.

“Please don't make me listen to you shagging,” Dina cracks. I hear Doc laughing, like this is an adult sleepover. “The rain's bad enough.”

“You're just jealous you didn't get me while you had the chance,” I shoot back, before March shushes me with a kiss.

But there's no room for anything else, even if we were so inclined, and I'm
not
. Though I'm fine with the other two knowing about March and me in the abstract, I don't get into V&E. My kinks are pretty tame, come to that. His body heat warms me, and I fall asleep listening to him breathe.

 

In the morning, it's more paste and some bitching for
breakfast. No surprise that I bear the brunt of it because I just thought to check my PA. As it turns out, 245
does
, in fact, possess a navigation system, even if I don't.

“Greetings, Sirantha Jax. It has been six days since your last entry.” Do I detect a trace of censure in 245's synthesized tone? I'm telling you, this little gadget is not like other AIs.

“Sorry about that.”

“Are you still having the dreams? Would you like to—”

“Er, no. Let's not talk about that.” My cheeks burn as I try to shut the machine up. Yeah, I talked to 245 when I was on Gehenna. I cringe, remembering the way I rambled about March. “Can you figure out where we are? I saw that you have—”

“What world is this, Sirantha Jax? I possess the ability to calculate geographic location based on latitude and longitude, but I need to assimilate certain local parameters to ensure accurate computation.”

“New Terra.” I give the same answer as yesterday, but it offers significantly different results this time.

“According to my best estimate,” 245 says modestly, “the nearest settlement lies eighteen kilometers north-northwest. Unless I have erred, this would be Maha City.”

Shit.

I can see in their faces, they have no idea what that means. But we're halfway across the continent from New Boston. “Thanks, 245. See you later.” With that, I snap the sphere shut, only to notice the way the others are staring at me. “What?”

“It's your best friend, huh?” Dina smirks at me.

“No, that's you, sweetness.”

I make like I'm going to hug her, and she shuts up real quick. She even backs away like I'm dangerous, deranged, or diseased. Doc glances up from organizing his gear to offer a half smile. He's been too quiet.

“Not a bad hike.” March tips his head back, assessing the clouds.

I could tell him it's not going to rain. Today, the sun beats down on us from a pure blue sky, drying up the muddy patches. Even the grain glitters in the distance, throwing golden sparks row to row with each ripple of the wind. But it
is
going to get hot.

Sighing, I say, “Let's see how far we get then.”

 

Nightfall finds me exhausted and bitchy, although the
other three hold up better. March wants to press on. Doc and Dina don't seem to care, irritatingly solid, both of them, so I drag my feet and mumble. I feel sweaty and wilted; my scalp itches, and every exposed inch of skin has been stung or bitten by something. We've passed several farms and outbuildings, but we agree that it's a bad idea to linger where strangers must be scarce. So I suck it up and keep going, but I draw the line when I overhear the whispered conversation taking place as the first city lights come into view.

“She's got to,” Dina murmurs, low. “You know she's the one they're looking for, and with all that hair—”

“What about my hair?” I stop in alarm, gathering the wild mass in both hands.

“I don't know that it matters,” Doc says with a strange, tight smile.

My eyes go to March, who produces a wicked-looking knife. “I'm sorry, Jax.”

“No! Come on, I can…” But I come up with nothing, so I bend my head dumbly, the sacrificial goat.

I'm not brave. As March starts hacking, my vision blurs, and I can't help but sniffle. I don't
remember
the last time I had my hair cut; it's my trademark. Maybe it's frizzy, unruly, wild as an Anduvian ice otter, but it's me—

And that is exactly why it has to be shorn.

But he's not content just to slice it short. I start when I feel the blade scraping across my skull. “What the frag—”

“It'll help you pass for a boy,” Dina explains. She takes a closer look then and gives me a roguish grin. “Or a really cute butch. Rawr. Er, anyway, try to keep your head down until we can do something about those eyes.”

“What's wrong with my eyes?!”

“They're memorable,” March says, wiping the blade on his thigh.

Sweet, but it doesn't make me feel one bit better about being bald. The wind feels too cold against my naked scalp, and I run my fingers over the rough shave with a pained little whimper. I think I might cry.

“For Mary's sake,” Dina grumbles, “it's just hair. It'll grow back.”

“Want me to shave yours?” I growl at her.

She shrugs. “If it'll shut you up.”

“Let us give them a moment.” Doc guides her away, probably whispering that she needs sensitivity training.

March bends his head to mine, kissing me in a delicate brush of warmth. “You're gorgeous. All that hair hiding such beautiful bones, I can't believe it.”

Though I know he's bullshitting me, trying to smooth me past the desire to throw a fit, it helps. “You're so full of it.”

March shakes his head, solemn as a barrister. “No, really. You might even look better this way.” I narrow my eyes on him, knotting my fist in his shirt. “Too much?”

“Uh, yeah.”

After lacing our fingers together, he leads me toward the others. Maha City twinkles against the dark, glints of scarlet and silver snaking together as if to form a cogent image. We're just not high enough to appreciate the art.

“So who are you, Jax?” I see him smiling, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Oh, he's teasing me, but his comeuppance is nigh. “My little brother?”

I shrug, studiedly casual. “That's not what you need to worry about.”

His thumb slides over my index finger in a soft, proprietary caress. “And what would that be?”

“Being the guy who wants to shag your own little brother.”

That's the first time I've gotten the last word with March.