Assassin's Hunger (15 page)

Without waiting for him to reply, she stalked off.

And he was left alone in the middle of the empty room, the engines thrumming with restless disquiet around him and the simulated sky a clotted red-black. Though the cable link should have sealed around the bulkhead hole, still he swore he smelled the dust leaking in.

Despite the captain’s orders about staying away from the polarized hull, he drifted toward the support beam where the cable attached. Shaxi said she could feel the ions protecting the ship. With a recklessness he didn’t know he possessed, he flattened his palm against the metal.

He half expected to be blasted on his ass by the energy surging through the cable to the ship’s outer skin. Getting vaporized might be preferable to joining Shaxi on their little pleasure outing. But instead he felt only a tingle that raised every hair on his body.

He stepped back with a sigh. When had he developed this death wish?

And how deadly was it? He supposed he’d have the chance to find out on the way to Rampakh with Shaxi at his side.

Chapter 11

Watching Evessa sink the
Asphodel
down into the slot canyon, Shaxi discovered nerves she didn’t know she had. Bad enough to read the impossibly tight confines on the nav controls, but to have the visuals glaring from the screens made her want to disconnect from her ocular implant.

The rim of the canyon held sharpened teeth of stone where the edge had sheared away in places, but as they descended, the wind-honed channel of rock looked more like a smooth gullet hungrily swallowing them down.

The pilot had triggered the external flood lights and the color on the screens was saturated to garish levels that turned the striations of rock to blood and gold. Audio of the thrusters’ howl bouncing off the canyon walls was ratcheted up to deafening. But Evessa’s eyes were barely open and her fingers drifted over the controls, as if she was half asleep.

The captain and Shaxi had confirmed the location with her before Evessa took over, and when Deynah had left the pilot to do her work alone, as most pilots did, Shaxi had started to follow, but Evessa said, “I don’t mind you. You don’t interrupt like the others.” She waggled her fingers in an incomprehensible gesture.

Whether that was a good thing or not, Shaxi wasn’t sure, but she stayed in the nav chamber, curious. If she’d thought the turmoil of the flight through the storm front was bad, getting swallowed by the canyon was worse. Maybe it was a good thing she had finally learned to be afraid to die. That hadn’t been a possibility under Hermitaj programming. Maybe Benedetta’s wish that she might learn to love wasn’t so unlikely.

Unless she died first, of course.

“We won’t die,” Evessa said serenely.

Shaxi flinched. She hadn’t spoken aloud, she knew, but her fingers wrapped around the console near Evessa was probably a giveaway. “That’s good.”

“Can’t you feel it?”

Descending below the canyon rim, they’d left the worst of the storm particulates behind, but Evessa had told them to keep the ion field on, to help guide the ship down.

Mostly, Shaxi felt the ions pinging off the tightening rock walls, like vicious little stabs to her awareness. Although feeling was an improvement over not feeling. In theory.

“Almost…” Evessa murmured “…there.”

The ship settled with a nearly imperceptible bump as the landing struts deployed to find stabilizing surfaces. The outside cams scanned the surrounding area and sent back their report: empty, quiet, alone.

Shaxi let out a slow breath. On the one hand, the ship hadn’t been scoured into oblivion by the sandstorm, and they hadn’t crashed down the side of the canyon in a flaming ball of twisted metal. On the other hand, Eril Morav would be waiting for her in the cargo bay.

Evessa opened her eyes. “I got us here. Now you need to find the parts to get us out again.”

Shaxi jerked her head in a nod. “That is my assignment.”

“Benedetta said you aren’t staying.”

Shaxi frowned. “In Rampakh?”

“On the
Asphodel
.”

“No.” Shaxi wondered why the l’auralya had shared that info with the pilot. “I am staying on Khamaseen until the shriving. The
Asphodel
needs to be offworld before then or you’ll be grounded.”

“But we have the ion trick now. We could fly out through the storm.”

“What we passed through to get here was just a minor squall compared to the shriving.”

Evessa pursed her lips. “Then walking out into it seems too risky.”

For someone with so many dangerous secrets of her own, the l’auralya seemed very free with other people’s privacy, Shaxi thought. “It’s my best chance of erasing the errors in my codes. That’s worth any risk.”

“I see.” Evessa lowered her starfield eyes and touched the metal collar around her neck. All sheerways pilots wore the collars, which monitored their sensitivity to the sheerways and ensured they didn’t become so enthralled by the twisting threads of myriad paths that they led their ships astray, never to be found again. If they did lose focus while threading the sheerways, the collar contained a lethal dose of paralytic and an explosives charge as backup. “What if your encoding isn’t in error? What if that’s just who you are?”

Shaxi stared at her. “That’s…unsettling.”

Evessa let her hand fall to the nav console in front of her, her fingers playing fretfully over the idle board. “Never mind. I’m just jealous. If you have the chance to remake yourself however you want to be, more power to you.”

Feeling suddenly relieved that she’d merely been incarcerated, surgically altered, and mentally manipulated—but at least she didn’t have a poisoned bomb wrapped around her neck—Shaxi wished she might give the other woman some hope for herself. Instead, she said, “It might not work. The shriving might strip the flesh from my bones and leave the cyber-embeds in a pile on the sand. Not even a memory would remain.”

Evessa shook her head. “I’ll remember you. For as long as I can.”

Nonplussed at the spontaneous offer, Shaxi gave her a short bow. In some ways, the sheerspace navigator was as much a victim as any Hermitaj commando. They were both conscripted without choice. Hermitaj had its all-encompassing programming, but while pilots kept their own thoughts and feelings, they were rumored to be fatally addicted to the lure of the sheerways. Someday, Evessa would be unable to resist the lure, and then she’d either be killed or force her ship into the uncharted depths of space, killing everyone under her protection instead. Evessa might still be all woman, unlike Shaxi, but the shadows in her starfield eyes said she longed to be something more.

A sudden fury swept through Shaxi, tightening her muscles. Neither she nor Evessa nor the twins deserved to have their fates determined by the needs of others—for war, for interstellar voyage—or by the lustful desires of the few.

She was tired of the puppet masters, who thought they could toy with lives that didn’t belong to them. If she ever got them in the sights of her hazer, they’d regret the day they took her away.

She unclenched her hands, forcing down the pointless anger. She’d never had a say in her own destiny. Why did she think that would change?

“And I will whisper your name to the stars,” she told the other woman, using the oath shared in secret among Hermitaj mercenaries, most of whom didn’t remember their own names or where they’d come from. “May the sun that is yours hear it and call you home.”

“Good luck, Shaxi.”

Shaxi nodded as she headed for the door, but she was done with luck. She was done with programming and orders too. If she was on her own, then she’d make the most of it.

But striding into the cargo bay, she remembered reluctantly she wasn’t really on her own.

Clad in a concealing sand-robe, Eril was mounting an oversized hazer rifle to the roll bar of the runabout. He moved around the compact, sturdy six-wheeler with easy familiarity, although she supposed an auxo made plenty of supply trips in similar vehicles. But he also handled the big gun with the same efficiency as Jorr—which was
not
a supply clerk’s skill. He finished aligning the sights before turning to her. “Thought I’d find you here already.”

“I was with our pilot.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You watched Evessa fly? And she didn’t chase you out? Odd.”

She bristled. “She is not odd.”

“I meant—” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “Is there anything else we need before we go?”

She had never been on a mission that wasn’t scheduled and simulated to the nth degree before the first step was taken. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I prepped the runabout earlier. So if you are ready…”

They both stepped toward the seat with the control board.

They both stopped.

Eril eyed her. “Is this the way it’s going to be?”

She clenched her jaw. “You mean, my way?”

“Technically, by seniority and status, I rank you.” He crossed his arms, a smug smile quirking half his mouth.

“Fine.” The word was clipped between her tight teeth. “Then I’ll take the gun side.”

He narrowed his gray eyes and opened his mouth to argue more—as if she was going to sit in the back!—so she strode to the port side and climbed in.

The runabout was maximized for hauling, leaving scarce, stripped-down room for passengers. And Eril was a big man. When he slipped behind the controls, his broad shoulder brushed hers and his thigh was only a hand’s breadth away.

Not that any hand—hers or his—would be crossing that divide.

At that exact moment, he reached around her to activate the comm. The heat of his body impinged on hers, and she edged as far from him as she could in the close confines. “Runabout Two to
Asphodel
. Let us out.”

As the cargo bay hatch lowered, letting in a golden haze of dust, Shaxi fastened the doors on the runabout. The faint pop in her ears let her know the seal was complete—although the atmosphere on Khamaseen was breathable, the dust would only get worse—but she swore something in the recycled air was making her lightheaded.

Eril reached toward her again to flick on the forward lights and display, and she realized it was his fault. The subtle musky scent of his skin and a whiff of something sweet—pixberry cake, she thought resentfully—combined to distract her from the captain’s voice as he sent them off.

“—since the electromagnetic interference is likely to cut the comm,” the captain was saying. “Ping us when you get back in range. And good luck, Runabout Two.”

“Luck?” Eril muttered as he cut the comm. “That should get us to the end of the ramp and back.”

His echo of her own feelings on the subject riled Shaxi more than seemed reasonable, even to her. But considering how easily he’d rejected her, she didn’t want to agree with him on any topic. But she kept her mouth clamped shut as he guided the runabout out into the canyon.

Although the slot where the
Asphodel
had wedged herself was a squeeze, the soft floor of the canyon was more than wide enough to accommodate the runabout. Most of the crumbling from the rim was no more than skull-sized stones, easy enough for the six wheels to bounce over.

She clutched her seat so no bump knocked her into the hard curve of Eril’s shoulder. Even though some traitorous part of her body insisted on reminding her how wide and steady his shoulders had been when she’d clutched at him in the med bay. Curse him to any hells. Why did he have to be so big? And why did she have to be aware of how much space he took?

They traversed the canyon in silence for what seemed like longer than what her internal chronometer indicated, until he said, “The mouth of the canyon is only another click. And Rampakh is less than an hour from there.”

“I chose the location,” she reminded him. “I don’t need a guided tour.”

“You don’t need to be short with me either.”

“Actually, I do, since you are taking up more than half of the available space.”

To her annoyance, he chuckled. “You’re used to always playing the heavy, aren’t you?”

She frowned. Heavy? She thought the word was insulting on some level.

He slanted a glance at her. “The tough guy,” he clarified.

“I was made to be tough.”

“But you don’t have to be that all the time.”

“I am half plysteel.”

“So you can be tough half the time.”

She stared at the forward screen. The canyon offered protection from the worst of the winds, but even this deep, dust moved restlessly. The runabout’s lights turned the swirling vortices of sand into strangely mesmerizing sculptures of stone in motion.

She felt the same twisting in her chest, as if the pieces of her she’d once thought were rock solid now seemed to be mostly air. “Is that what you wanted? For me to be soft and gentle—vulnerable—like a l’auralya? Would you have not pushed me away then?”

He flinched, and his hands on the runabout controls faltered. “I didn’t—” He cut himself off when she drew a breath to blast him for the oncoming lie. “I didn’t mean it as a rejection of what you are. It was…a denial of what I am.”

She narrowed her eyes. “And what is that?”