[02] Elite: Nemorensis (18 page)

[FTL DRIVE RECHARGED. STANDING BY___]

‘And every step we took out into the stars, Myq?’ her hand, hovering again. ‘Every time we expanded? Every time we multiplied and grew further apart …
touching people got harder
.’

Another tear on the boy’s cheek.
A nerve
.

She held up a finger – or tried to, then waggled the stump regardless – and ratcheted up the smile, as if presenting the good news to follow the bad. ‘Luckily for us the runner’s programmed to make a scene. Even across the span of the cosmos, she can’t help but make a noise. It’s just what she does.’

The boy sniffed. Swallowed hard. ‘So. So all this? This smashing and crashing? This is all just … just part of it?’

Meaning:
so I’m just the fluff?

‘I’m afraid so. Although … there is one difference.’ His head tilted back up. (
That’s all he wants – to be special
.)

‘This one, Myq. She doesn’t just run. She plans. She schemes. She’s … she’s vindictive.’ She was worried he’d try to protest, but he didn’t. Just nod, nod, nodded.

‘She’s toxic,’ he muttered, staring at the floor.

He knew. He knew all along.

She hit the control. Hoping he wouldn’t notice the viewscreen flicker, so lost in his gloom. She felt the Universe shift around her again. Heart hammering like a distant noise.

(She’d stood there for half an hour, she remembered. As cocoa smoke spiralled and distant gunshots rang. Just staring at the bodies of those men: hanging. Turning with the breeze. The men who’d raped her, broken her, humiliated her. Owned her.)

She couldn’t honestly say, now, what she’d felt during that time – too distant from the emotion; too separate from the lexicon of feeling. But she was sure of one thing: she’d felt no joy.

Unlike Teesa.

SixJen had seen the images. That bloody sylph, stalking away from the fire she’d set at the Axcelsus home. Sneering over the bodies of her fellow slaves.

The
The
dropped into reality on the edge of the Baltha’Sine system, and if Myquel had noticed the brief outage of Lex’s uplink he gave no sign of it.

‘She was broken from the start,’ he muttered. ‘Wasn’t she?’

‘I think so. She’s … she’s too good at it, Myq. Nobody’s ever reigned by the lake this long. She’s become …
nasty
. Sneaky. She’s gained more enemies than any runner before. She’s falling apart. She’s insane. She’s—’

‘I get it.’

‘No, you don’t. She could do
anything
, Myq. She could destroy
herself
. What then?’

He bit his lip. Shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

‘How do you know? She’s getting worse. You know this. She’s working up to something. Something big.’

He was silent for a moment. Turned to glance back over his shoulder, as if an inkling of something were needling into his mind. A grim notion.

‘What?’ she said.

But he shook his head, talking himself out of it, and almost snarled. ‘She …
No
, she just came here to find Axcelsus. That’s all. Revenge against her bloody boss! It’s … it’s boring. But for fuck’s sake that’s all this is. He’s not here, end of story.’

‘Then why are you still there?’ Far beyond the system’s boundaries, the
The
turned silently towards the distant station. ‘Wherever you are.’

‘I …’

She could almost see the thoughts wrestling inside him. The systematic collapse of all he thought he knew.

‘She loves me,’ he whispered, pathetic. ‘She said so.’

‘She can’t love. Nothing but the chase. Nothing but chaos.’

‘But she
said
.’

SixJen felt an unexpected stab of impatience. She knew then that she was close. Too intoxicated by the emotion to suppress it. ‘Myquel! For fuck’s sake, if she does something stupid! If she dies without me there … this race … this cycle … it all ends too.’

He didn’t care. She could see that. Wallowing. Turning on a spit of his misery.

‘Thousands will die. Whatever she’s planning. She’s been building up all along. Don’t you care about that?’

He didn’t.

Or if he did it barely registered on the gauge of his need. ‘We’ll be famous,’ he whispered. ‘Whatever happens. Everyone will know.’

SixJen closed her eyes. Took a breath. And took a risk.

‘Myquel. The chase will end. Forever. The rush will end. Do you understand? Is that what you want?’

The boy went deathly still. Eyes fixed. Brain spinning onwards in silence.

‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ he snarled. Dismal. Lashing out without claws. ‘Don’t try to find us. We’ll be long gone.’

He reached up. The visual died. The audio snapped inert.

I’m already here, you poor little idiot.

He finally found her, moments before all his composted emotion and crushed-in panic bubbled into a fully-flung tantrum, in the great steaming mouthpiece of the
Shattergeist
’s cargo holds. Chuckling to herself.

There, where once Myq and the band had lazed in a luxurious tour-suite, where now serried rings of voidseals and electroclamp bulkheads gave from the ship’s habitable foresections into the retrofitted cluster of produce-pods, batteries, generators, ammo-magazines and the other assorted add-ons they’d bought, Teesa stood proudly on what Myq had always considered, aesthetically, the ceiling. It felt somehow appropriate.

She’s magic. She’s insane. She’s not human.

Of
course
she’s upside-fucking-down.

As was Myq himself, to be fair, though for far less exotic reasons than the bloody-minded alien nonconformity his addled brain ascribed to Teesa. Still anchored by a doglegged docking-hook to the outer hub of Baltha’Sine Station, hence afflicted by the same gravity its centrifugal momentum faked, the
Shattergeist
’s normally directionless interior had become a weird landscape of mundane ups and downs, but never quite in the way the eye expected. All the ladders and double-sided walkways (which seemed so unnecessarily ubiquitous during weightless travel, forever getting in the way of a serene float-through or innocuous zee-gee bonk) suddenly became tiresomely vital. It had taken Myq twenty minutes just to clamber, scramble and hop his way down (up) to the cargo decks. Now sweating, panting, venting a thick air of brainbroken agitation –
aliens! Living ideas! Bullshit! Bullshit!
– he was in precisely no mood for Tee’s giggly upside-down nonsense, even if he was technically oriented just the same.

‘Where’ve you
been
?’ he all but snarled.

His little chat with the bounty hunter, in hindsight, had not helped his zen.

‘Saying hello to the fartybeasts,’ she tittered, still poking at controls. ‘They were lonely.’

Sure enough, from the central cargo-pod, the tumultuous honking and steaming stink of the shibboletti had increased a hundredfold. Myq missed a couple of heartbeats as it stole over him: the non-triumph of being right about a horrible suspicion.

She has plans …

‘Are they … are they okay in there?’ he said.

She just laughed. She was high, that was clear. Higher than usual, even: pupils huge against mossy irises. A thoughtless smirk kept invading her face while she concentrated, and yet the dark makeup round her eyes (pasted on so thick it reminded him abstractly of warpaint, applied in anticipation of … of
whatever this is
) had run in streaks across her cheeks like the pinbones of a bat’s wing. She’d been crying.

‘You … you want to tell me what’s up?’ he whispered; all his agitation, all his glum theories, all the paranoid notions seeded by the bounty hunter deflating at the sight of her. His erection, on cue, was already developing.

‘Just turning off the shock absorbers,’ she trilled, as if it was the sort of thing People Just Do.

‘Why?’

‘Silly. Because they absorb too much shock.’

‘Which, ah …’ Myq scratched his head. He was feeling strangely breathless. (
The hunter was right, for NoGod’s sake … ‘She’s getting worse. You know this. She’s working up to something.’
) ‘Which is a problem because …?’

Teesa just gave him a look.
Don’t ask, silly.

He nodded.
That’s the way it’s always been. Way it’ll always be. Ask no questions, receive no lies.

Stop stalling, idiot.

He took a ragged breath and reached for her shoulder. Kissed her twice on the skin of her neck, just below and behind her ear. Relishing the scent but fighting, wrestling, screaming inwardly, not to get lost in it. Running a hand across the fabric of her natty spacer-jacket then up inside the zip.

‘Oh,’ she said. Meeting his eyes. Arching a brow. ‘Rrrreally?’

‘Really.’

It was only when they were undressed, clinching, shivering a little in the chill air of the hold that he remembered the stimms he’d brought with him.

‘I’m … I’m tense,’ he said, pretext-hunting. ‘Cold. Let’s just … H-here. You want some?’

And did he imagine it? Did she pause for just a second before swallowing them? Fractionally wary?

But of course she’d never say ‘no’ to anything – he doubted she was capable – so she emerged from the hesitation to wolf them down with such gusto she didn’t even pause to see if he was doing the same.

Which … Well
.

So they made love.

Slower, he thought, than usual. Maybe something to do with the novelty of gravity. Maybe the drugs acting on her quicker than he’d thought they would. Maybe just his own soppy fucking interpretational stupidity, seeking romance at the end of the world. But yes, in the preferred narrative of his sentimental brain it was more than just a Slow Screw, it was
important
in ways it’d never been before. It was important and it was passionate and it was final, and it lacked all trace of the rote routine he’d (guiltily) sensed creeping into their rutting over the past weeks. They held one another with arms instead of hands. They rocked rather than thrust. They met with eyes at least as often as lips. They ran fingertips across backs and breasts and stared and explored and discovered. (Myq, for instance, had never noticed the shadow of several old medically-removed scars hidden beneath the noisy colour of her sleeve-tats, and almost blubbed at the possibility of there being other mysteries, other secrets, he’d never get the chance to unearth.)

And so there and then, without fear, without hesitation or vacillation, as shibboletti honked and stamped in the pod beyond them, he said it.

‘Tell me.’

‘Mm?’

‘Tell me what you’re doing, Tee. Tell me what this is all about. Tell me the plan.’

She smiled at him. Not quite able –
the drugs
– to keep her eyes still for long. ‘You never asked before,’ she said.

‘I want to share now. I love you. I want to know.’

She stared at him for just a little longer than he would’ve liked, those unfocused eyes – those pools of weed-strewn whiskey – briefly sharp. Then she remembered herself, exulted in a lascivious sigh, and kept rocking. For Myq the timing was perfect: in that one instant the gravity oh-so-softly began to fade. In that instant a distant industrial groan (the
Shattergeist
, decoupling from the station) was conveniently muffled by the livestock-honks and Tee’s own breathing. And in that instant, as he snatched discreetly for the Happystrap™ he’d placed beneath his pile of clothes, Myq felt a single bead detach from his eye.

Betrayer.

Tee was too bombed to notice. The tear
or
the slowly diminished gravity.

Groaning. Groaning and talking.

‘It’s, mm, it’s perfectly simple,’ she said, dreamily. ‘I want to blow up the space station.’

Myq wished he could’ve choked at that. Wished he could’ve shouted, recoiled –
something
. Instead all he felt was a wave of reaction at once cold
and
hot, a goosebumped wash of vertigo: an insidious confirmation.

Expecting a shitstorm
, it turned out,
doesn’t stop it from being one.

‘You … what?’ he managed, groping for time and detail. Teesa just smirked.

‘Don’t be silly. You heard. And don’t you stop now.’

He did as he was told. Grinding on.
Good little slave.

Visions of it, visions of the carnage, visions of ruin and gravless flame and frozen bodies starbound and tumbling. All, somehow, not depriving him of the erection. Not slowing him down.

I love her.

She’s evil

‘What’re … I mean … Why would you do that?’ It sounded stupid even to him, like trying to reason with the laws of physics. Teesa just blew a raspberry and kept moving. If she’d noticed they were now floating serenely, that they were abruptly obligated to use themselves as leverage rather than the ground, she gave no sign.

‘There are millions of people on that thing,’ he croaked, deftly looping the Happystrap™ round them.

‘Millions,’ she agreed, her tone altogether more cheerful.

She started grunting softly too, he noticed, eyes rolling back and forth like the weight of an inverted pendulum. Increasingly stoned. Increasingly lost.

‘Y’know,’ she said, pausing to trace an invisible dot-to-dot across his chest. ‘I really wanted thingy to be here too. Axcelsus. Slave-guy. It would’ve been …
mmm
… would’ve been so wonderful to blow him up. Neat. You know? But never mind.’

‘Was he … did he … abuse you? Like, a bad guy? Something like that?’

Throw me a fucking bone here, Tee.

Help me understand.

‘Ohhhhh,’ she flapped a lazy hand, pursed her lips, as if the notion hadn’t occurred and wasn’t worth considering now. ‘I’m not really sure.’ She laughed too loud, too long, and pushed-off with an outstretched toe from a nearby walkway, spinning the ungainly tumbleweed of Them over and under itself. ‘It’s so hard to remember. Probably. Probably he was awful. Mean. A bully! Most slave owners are, aren’t they?’

Little by little they drifted, somehow serene in aggregate despite the exertions of their constituent parts, towards the steaming doorway of the hold. Towards the reeking herd within. Myq kept up the pace on auto. Afraid to lose her. Afraid to keep going.