The Envoy (6 page)

She nodded and grimaced. ‘Medusio poison. Very painful.' She limped over to the seat she had occupied previously. ‘What meds do you have?'

‘Some narcan,' Reetor said, running a quick mental inventory of his pack.

‘That will suffice,' she said, closing her eyes as she rested her head against the back of the seat. ‘Where?'

Reetor motioned with his eyes to the pack stow, and with quick, economical movements she found the vial and administered the shot.

‘How is it?' Her stoicism moved him. Her face was deathly white, all the blood drained from her lips.

‘Getting better,' she confirmed. ‘But it won't give me long. Maybe six hours? I'll need to get treatment.'

He watched as some colour returned to her cheeks and the wound stopped pulsing red across her tummy. ‘You saved my life,' he said.

She nodded. ‘I told you, you're worth more to me alive.'

‘But you'd kill me if I gave you what you want.' What he wanted as well, he knew now. Very much.

‘I would,' she said, her lips parting in a way that made him wish he were dressed, not so exposed to her all-seeing gaze.

He gestured at her wound. ‘Still? You still want that? Even now you're hurt?'

She nodded. ‘More,' she said, breathing in deeply. ‘Death comes when we least expect it. It could have come to me then. I want it more now. I want to know, before I go.' She turned to him, flicking her hair back over her shoulders. ‘Our lives are short and brutal, those of us with no home,' she started, frowning, as if she were trying to make sense of exactly what she wanted to say. ‘We need to take our pleasures and our knowledge where we can.' She shrugged. ‘This is all there is.'

‘Okay,' he said, nodding slowly at her lest the chains object. ‘Release me and I'll do what you ask.'
But I won't die here. Not this day. I have something to do; I promised X that I would, and I'll not die before I do it
.

He would pleasure her, as he'd said. And then he would kill her.

A slow, sensual smile spread across her face at his words, her eyes widening. She shifted her weight in the seat in order to lean forward and release the chains, but before she could, another jolt hit the ship.

Surely not. Did the whole universe know suddenly where he was? Was he somehow unaware that he had some great flashing sign on his head that screamed ‘deserter'?

Or maybe the universe just hated him?

But as quickly as the thoughts of ambush landed, he dismissed them. The crystalair revealed that during the drama they had accidentally wandered into a keloid asteroid cluster, a perilous trail of rock, ash and galactic lava that smashed ships like this one to shards every day of every week. Reetor had navigated through keloid clusters several times, but none of them had been pretty. The clusters were unpredictable, and the rocks that populated them attracted magnetically to ships, so avoiding them was almost impossible.

His foster-mother had been a crack pilot and Reetor had learned the art of flying at her knee. She had pioneered a manoeuvre that saw the pods lock in a strange, symbiotic dance with the rocks, using the smaller ones as a kind of shield as you glided through, finding the path of least resistance. The trick required nerves of steel. And lots of flying practice. Lucky for him, Jintu had made him practice often. ‘This kind of manoeuvre is heart, not science,' she had said, knowing he trusted science over his heart.

Klara strapped herself in to her seat and worked intently at the controls as they entered the cluster proper. She inhaled deeply as she focused, and her movements were smooth and controlled. Reetor watched while she worked, feeling the rocks crashing on the skin of the pod more frequently and with greater intensity. She was good, her reflexes were perfect, but it was clear she had never navigated through one of these before. Instead of seducing the asteroids she was trying to dodge them, which led them to chase the naked metal hide of the ship with greater desire. It would be torn apart in moments.

As one enormous blue rock crashed into the front of the pod, growing before their eyes through the front scope until it seemed the size of a small planet, the alarm buzzed low and steady through the skin of the pod. Klara continued to work, avoiding looking at him. She was so different from X. X would be hurling insults at the things and locked in frenzied intensity by now.

‘Let me drive.' He tried to keep his voice even. He could not imagine that this vicious, independent girl would want to be told he was a better driver than she was. The way she looked right now — her whole being concentrated on the crystalair and other instruments before her — it was possible she might turn around and petrify him just for suggesting it. He held his breath as she shot a glance at him.

‘No,' she said shortly, swerving to miss an oncoming boulder only to ricochet into two more on her left. She hissed in frustration. ‘If I free your hands, you'll try to kill me.'

‘No,' he insisted, forgetting the chains and leaning forward for a moment as another collision rocked the pod. ‘I won't. It would be madness. You've read my file. You know I scored the highest aptitude ratings ever on the pod proficiencies.' He hesitated, searching for more. She was chewing her lip and swallowing hard. He pressed on. ‘This is my thing, Klara.'

‘Don't call me that,' she spat at him, looking like a hunted animal.

‘Okay, I won't,' he agreed, trying to show her with his eyes that he meant no harm. ‘But listen to me. You know, from those files, that I'm logical. I wouldn't kill you; it doesn't make any sense. I need to get us out of here.'

And I don't want to kill you. I want to…I don't know what. Protect you?

Reetor wanted to thump himself on the head to clear the ridiculous thought, and it was only the chains that stopped him. Protect her? The girl who planned to kill him? The girl who had just disposed of an enormous, blood-seeking Medusio? He must be going mad.

The girl fought valiantly with the controls, but the ship started to judder and groan.

‘I promise,' he said, throwing every ounce of the sincerity he felt into his gaze as he pleaded with her, ‘I promise I won't hurt you. Untie me, and I'll get us out of this. Then you can restrain me again and we'll be even.'

‘Even?' Her green eyes widened.

‘For before. You saved me, from the Medusio. It's my turn to save you.' He saw her eyes narrow and her chin set, and realised too late the appeal to her desire to be rescued didn't sit well with her. ‘Us, I meant,' he said quickly, shutting his eyes briefly at his own stupidity. ‘I'll save us. Myself.'

Her shoulders sagged a little and then she shifted towards him. ‘Yes,' she said, on the smallest of sighs. ‘It makes sense.' She whistled, sharp and low, and the horrible links unravelled themselves from his arms and legs, unwrapped themselves from his torso and slid across the floor to her like the chain was a pet snake, climbing her legs and wrapping around her am; a macabre bracelet. If he ever got anywhere with this girl, he was sure going to buy her some more appropriate jewellery.

Now where the hell had that thought come from?

She stood and motioned to her chair and he moved very slowly and carefully over to it, partly because his joints and muscles still ached from the bite of the chains, partly because he didn't want to spook her.

She took his chair, taking out her blade and her gun and resting them on her thighs, pointed towards him, as he began the process of subduing the asteroids.

‘Don't trust me?' He didn't look at her as he said it; he was too preoccupied with trying to build a shield of smaller rocks, skating close enough to them to let them attach to the pod's skin while trying to subtly shy away from the larger ones. It was delicate, intellectual work, like chess. Like dealing with her.

‘Of course not,' she said, laughing slightly. ‘But I like something about the fact of you anyway.'

She likes me. It was ridiculous that he was sitting there, naked at gunpoint, saving this woman's bacon on the promise of later advantage-taking, and near-certain death, and the words still thrilled him. He reminded himself to harden up. All was not lost. He had been an Avenger; he knew how to fight at least as well as she did; and while he had promised he would not take advantage of the situation with the keloid cluster, as soon as they were even, all bets were off.

As he thought it, a particularly nasty shower of rocks slammed into the pod and she drew in a sharp breath. He focused on picking his way through, with the crystalair announcing one vientamite converter failing. ‘Are you afraid? Of crashing?'

‘Yes,' she said, and then her words seemed to come out in a rush and he wondered if it was because she was worried about the outcome. ‘I do sometimes become afraid, when there is a turbulent journey, or we are fired upon.' She clucked her tongue in an unusual sound that he supposed was mimicry of some Temer expression. ‘It makes no sense; I am not afraid of very much. I can only assume I had a bad trip when I was tiny, and they brought me to Temer. The Posterei call it…' He flicked a glance at her and she was screwing up her face in an effort to translate. ‘…kind of like memory from your muscles. Something you can't remember, but your cells can.'

‘Huh,' Reetor grunted as he swerved to avoid a massive chunk of rock chasing him, and he picked up a shower of tiny asteroidal gravel to shield the section of his flank the thing had been drawn to. ‘I like that. Muscle memory.' He bit his lip as he saw clear star space in the not-too-far-away distance. This was always the most dangerous time. You could not afford to get complacent. He slowed down his movements and pretended he had not seen it. He coasted towards the clear sky, as though he and his battered little pod had not a care in the great big universe.

‘It makes sense to me. Sometimes I think I remember things, from the Earth before all this. But I know I can't possibly, of course.' He glanced at her quickly, cursing as a small but determined asteroid belted into the visor. She was fixated on his words. ‘We must be about the same age, you and me. I have twenty Old Earth years. You?'

She nodded. ‘Approximately, I think,' she agreed. ‘From my calculations.'

‘So we were only one or two when it went down.' He finally cleared the last of the debris and scooted the little craft to freedom. ‘I can't remember, but sometimes I think I do. A face. A man. You would think it would be a woman, wouldn't you?'

She screwed up her face. ‘Why?'

He sighed. ‘No reason. Anyway, I think I remember a man with dark skin, like mine, and square glasses. It's more a feeling, really.'

‘A feeling?' She was making no move to get up and trade places.

‘It makes me feel good.'

She nodded. ‘I have no such memories,' she said, bouncing her weapons on her thighs thoughtfully. ‘Just fears I can't explain.'

He shrugged. ‘You never know. You might have some one day.'

‘I hope so,' she sighed. ‘I would very much like to know my name.' Her voice was soft as she said it, and her words cut into him.

He shook his head to clear it and think through his next steps. ‘How is the pain?' He gestured at her wound.

‘Not very bad, with the narcan,' she said.

He drew in a breath. They had some history now, the two of them. One all; one rescue each. ‘I told you I would go back into those chains, and I will,' he started, his skin crawling at the thought of it. ‘But I'd rather not.'

She considered him silently as he set the instruments back onto the course she had programmed previously. To Temer.

‘You know what I want,' she said, swallowing hard.

‘Still?'

‘More,' she said, opening her hands to show him her seriousness. ‘More now that you have shown me these sides of you. You are so human. I want to know what it is like.'

How to explain to her that the bald terms of her deal had a dampening effect on his growing arousal for her?

She frowned; he could tell that she could see it. ‘I have an idea,' she said, raising a finger. ‘How about we agree no fighting until it is over? Once we are both satisfied, we will retreat to opposite sides of the room and then we can fight. The winner takes the trophy; their life.' She frowned deeper at him. ‘It's a fair deal, is it not?'

Wow, this girl really backed herself in a fight. She clearly didn't know what a good session of lovemaking could do to you if she thought she was going to roll over, jump up and start to fight for her life.

But it was his only chance. He was almost positive he couldn't kill this girl while he was inside her, however much his old Magister might have sneered at him for it. But she was offering him a fair fight. She just wanted this one thing first.

Thing was, he wanted it too.

‘You have a deal,' he said, his voice catching a little as he felt suddenly nervous about his nakedness, and her ferocity, and what was to come.

‘Thank you,' she purred, standing up, shucking off her boots in a single easy manoeuvre and stepping out of her animal-skin pants. She flicked her shield off her shoulder and stood before him, naked and glorious.

This time there was no hiding the effect she had on him.

She was long and tall, her skin milky white and silvery all over, except for the long, vicious tattoo that decorated her body all the way from her face to her hip on one side. Her red hair spilled across her shoulders and down her back, and her breasts stood proud and full as she carried herself erect in preparation for what she wanted. A triangle of red at the apex of her legs surprised Reetor; he had never seen hair on a woman there. X had kept herself hairless and her skin well oiled. The sight of it pushed his erection higher. There was something so primitive and sensual about this creature. He felt like he should be too freaked out by the strange situation to do what had to be done, but his body knew the way.