The Belter's Story (BRIGAND) (5 page)

As her fingertips brushed the skin of our wrist, we looked deeply at her, capturing her gaze in ours. "There's something else."

"You mean something weirder than you and Jase sharing the same body?" Her smile guttered like a flame in a stiff breeze.

"Maybe." We smiled too, savoring the simple connection, wanting more. "We can show you."

A fresh wave of complex molecules rose from her body, her armpits and groin,
Intrigued… Afraid…
I could hear her heart triphammering and see the subtle flush rising above her collarbones.

"Will it hurt?"

"It's never felt that way for me."

"What should I do?"

"Just… see."

We spread our fingers over her bare forearm, watching our glows swirl and blend. With no conscious effort, we knew what to do. A tiny probe extended from our index finger, no longer than a centimeter, no thicker than one of Laena's gleaming jet colored hairs. It was a refinement of Su's first clumsy wire. This one ran under the skin of our chest and arm, down our wrist and into our hand. The tiniest prick, and we pierced the soft flesh at the inside of her elbow. Laena's eyes flicked downward at my hand and then returned to mine, but she never flinched.

Cromley’s body had nourished us. Now Laena would do the same and, in return, we would show her what an infinity of words could never begin to describe. We reached out, tugging at the colors that enveloped her, pulling them into ours, feeling her warm strength flowing into us. The sensation was poignant. It was heart wrenching.

Her body responded ahead of her awareness in a cascade of autonomic reactions — pupils dilated, breath drew in a deep unconscious sigh, goosebumps rose underneath our fingertips. She arched a little in her seat, spine curving, chest rising, chin tilting upward, forming her small body into a graceful arc.

And then, for the first time in the nineteen years of her existence, Laena saw.

Laena always laughed in an open, unselfconscious way that reminded us so much of Jase. "You're actually very funny when you want to be." She prodded with her toes under our rump and giggled.

We were lounging on the couch in her tiny room, heads at opposite ends, legs and bare feet intertwined. A half empty bottle of shine sat on the floor between us.

Like all of us, Laena lived small, but she was lucky enough to have a room to herself with space for both bed and couch. Holographic reproductions of old 22nd Century romanticists covered every wall, a patchwork of landscapes; windows into a hundred worlds that had never existed. Blue and green seemed to be the dominant tones. Misty forests clung to impossible crags and equally impossible creatures of mythic beauty populated tableau after graceful tableau. The overall effect was cool and soothing. Laena's room always felt like peace.

"There's something I want you to see. You game?" She asked, arching a suggestive eyebrow.

"Depends. Does this involve more of those 2D's from whatever crusted-over century that was? "

"They're called movies and I love those things. It's like being in a time machine. But no, this is much more interesting." Laena jumped up and rummaged near her bed. "Here!"

She returned to the couch with a vaper and a handful of cartridges. "It's something new. Something amazing. You're supposed to do it with someone — close. Someone you trust."

My lips tugged upward in an unconscious smile and I felt the unfamiliar urge to tease her. Certainly not our usual style. "So we should be going then —"

Laena bounced back onto the couch, throwing her light frame on top of us, her torso resting on our stomach. "Ha! Very funny." She punched us in the ribs and we flinched obligingly.

Such a strange life we led now. Everything was so compartmentalized. In a few hours, we would be back on the line, leading search and destroy runs into the rilles. Laena would be back in the labs, helping to refine our ability to deal death to the nexi. And yet, here we were, just us, as if nothing else existed. No mines. No war. When we were alone together, everything else disappeared.

We wanted nothing but to be with her. She fed us. We showed her a world she'd never imagined. But that was only part of a much larger whole. We had become connected — something the Cromley could never have understood alone. Laena was the Jase's gift to us.

"Where did this come from?" We were more curious than wary.

"A friend — who got it from her friend — who works in that lab over in sector eight. Nano I think. Crom, it's fine. He says there aren't any side effects. It can't possibly be as bad for you as
that
junk." She tilted her head toward the shine.

The carts were silvery and opaque, like the ones some people used for homebrew. Laena popped one into the vaper and switched it on.

"I'll even go first." She took a long pull and held her breath for a moment. Then she coughed and blew a cloud of pale vapor into my face. It smelled of volatile chemicals and something familiar.

"Smoooth." Her voice was raspy, but she laughed and offered the mouthpiece.

We leaned forward and took a hit, feeling a harsh, but somehow pleasing bite at the back of our throat. The taste was  bitter, but not in a bad way. More pungent than anything else.

Then, with no warning at all, the glow that hovered above Laena's skin brightened. For a moment, we thought we'd somehow unconsciously used Su's filament on her. But no. That wasn't it. This — whatever it was — was enhancing our senses in the same way.

"It worked didn't it?" Laena was looking at me intently, her dark eyes shining with excitement. "I can feel it too. Everything is more — I don't know.
More
."

We were suddenly afraid — and intrigued. "What
is
this? You need to tell us."

"I honestly don't know. I just know they make it from something they get out of the europine. My friend told me it would make us feel more in touch." She took the vaper from me and pulled hard again.

This time, she was able to hold her breath for several seconds before she coughed. "C'mon, tough guy. If I can handle this stuff, so can you. Couple more hits and then I want you to — you know. "

With every pull on the vaper, we could feel the intensity of our senses growing. Whatever trepidation we might have felt was swamped by the sheer delight of it. We imagined for a moment what it must feel like for Laena, lying on top of us. The comfortable warmth. The closeness. The pressure of her breasts against our pelvis… we flinched in amazement. For a moment, it seemed real.

Laena started too. "Whoa. What was that? You felt it too didn't you?" She wriggled up onto our chest. "The thing. Do it. I want to see what it feels like."

How could we have refused? This vibrant young woman wanted to be closer to us. We wanted that too, more than anything. The cool and solitary Cromley would have been repulsed, even frightened by such a thought. But we weren't the Cromley anymore. Or the Jase. We were something new. Something Laena could care for. Maybe something she could love.

We touched our index finger to the side of her throat, just above her collarbone. Cautiously, but then with increasing urgency, we drew on the energy of her glow. We both felt it. We were both entranced.

The effect lasted mere minutes. But for that short time our already heightened senses were amplified and we could feel echoes of each other, faint but undeniable. Delighted, we experimented. We played.

Laena devised a game where we took turns trying to guess what the other was thinking about just by smell. We sat back to back on the floor, eyes closed, testing the air in silence.

Happy… Safe…

"You're so sweet, Crom. You like being here. With me." She was right of course. We did. It was a feeling that was strange to us, but with Laena we were completely at ease.

Curious… Excited…

"Um — you want —" Sudden fear gripped us. We pulled our finger away from her hand, where we'd been maintaining contact.

"Cromley, what's wrong?" Laena turned to face us, her dark eyes flashing concern. And then we realized, she didn't know. Not yet.

"Nothing. We need to be careful. If we took too much from you —"

She wrapped herself around us from behind, arms crossed over our chest, legs encircling our hips. Her cheek rested at the back of our neck. "It's ok, Crom. I know you would never hurt me."

We continued the pattern for months. I worried, no, I
knew
that we were gaining a tolerance for whatever was in the vapes. We were feeding too much. Relying too much on Laena. We hardly ate any more. She had become our sustenance. She had become everything.

"Come to me, Cromley. Please?" Laena's voice, thin and scratchy in our helmet, ached with the same need that had gnawed at us for far too long. "I need to see you. Hurry. And be careful."

We knew what that meant and we could feel our pulse surge with unwanted anticipation. We had missed her so much. A constant craving, like thirst in the desert, hung at the back of our throat. A thirst that the odd digger could only dim. Never quench.

Things had changed after the vapes. We and Laena spent all our downtime together. We vaped. She fed us. We communed. We needed little else. We wanted nothing more.

We'd changed too. Su thought it was something in the vapes. We didn't care. All we knew was that we no longer needed the microextensible in our fingertip. We noticed the change first in our fingers, then our lips and tongue. Soon it seemed as if every nerve fiber in our skin had become capable of drawing energy from Laena's glow. A simple touch was all it took. And the more we touched, the stronger the connection.

We always held ourselves back, exercising great care not to go too far, to take too much. Laena never complained, but we knew she wasn't satisfied. She wanted more, but we were terrified of hurting her. So we had responded the only way we thought we could.

We tried to stop.

It had been weeks since we'd seen her. Weeks of missing her scent, her eyes, her laugh, her glow. She'd said she understood. But that obviously wasn't true. She was hurt and angry. We ached for her and hated ourselves for it.

But there was a war on and survival still came first. We were guiding a strike squad down into the rilles, following a trail that we alone could sense. We knew how to find the nexi. Others knew how to destroy them. Only Laena knew why we were so good at it.

We picked our way over loose, shifting ice for another hour before we stopped and pointed to a jagged fissure in the blue-white floor of the rille. Behind us, the strike squad readied their hotshots, the heavy plasma throwers that we had learned to use with devastating effect. With the swift efficiency of veterans, the squad filed into the fissure while we followed a few meters back.

It had taken years and cost us countless lives, but we'd learned. The strike squad broke into the sloping cavern with a brace of shaped charges and then spilled white hot death into the waves of diggers that swarmed up to meet them. So many of the creatures vaporized in the opening salvo that a shockwave burst the fissure open and exposed the nexus to Europa's unblinking sky.

For us, the Cromley/Jase/Su/Other, the strike was an agony that stretched into a timeless distance. We lived every death, felt every scream. As it always was, the helpless confusion and pain of the nexus in its last moments branded us. We recoiled from it, but we knew we had no choice. We endured the piecemeal death of a world so that a desperate colony of miners could live. Whether we were murderers or heroes we no longer cared.

All we could think about was Laena and the vapes.

She met us at the door, wrapped loosely in a light, ivory colored robe that just brushed her thighs. Her collar length black hair was tied back into a ponytail and damp tendrils coiled away from her temples, framing her delicate jaw.

Pressing her palm against my chest, she asked, "Are you ok? Was anyone —"

We smiled at her, a little sadly. Laena knew the toll search and destroy missions exacted from us. "We're fine. No casualties, but we pushed the perimeter another few clicks today."

"I've missed you." Her eyes were bright and we could feel the tension in her posture, smell it in the scent of her skin.

In her other hand, she held a vaper, pale violet mist drifting lazily from the mouthpiece. She raised it to her mouth and pulled, her eyes never leaving mine. Then she pursed her full lips and exhaled a dense cloud into our face. It felt like fog and whispers. We inhaled and luxuriated in the familiar bite at the back of our throat. It tasted like coming home.

"Yes please." We smiled again, eyes half closed against the sting of the vapor. The rush was already starting. Sensation began to magnify. Connections began to fire.

Laena held the vaper to our lips and we drew hard. Her glow intensified a thousand fold and we started at the shock of it. We returned her favor and blew a stream of vapor into her waiting mouth. We could feel it sting in her throat and the faint tickle, the not-quite urge to cough as it flooded into her lungs.

"Are you hungry?" She looked up at us from behind dark lashes. Her eyes weren't quite black any more. They seemed to reflect a deep and lovely violet, making her look more — predatory, like an animal surprised in the middle of its nocturnal hunt.

We knew she wasn't talking about rations. And yes. Ever since that first time, the taste of her glow was indelibly etched into us. We had no choice but to need it, no matter how wary we were of the consequences.

It seemed forever that we had held ourselves in check. Taking sparingly, never daring to let the rapture of our feasting lure us too far. The Jase wanted to protect her and feared the result if our control ever slipped. The Cromley had begun to uncover passions he never even knew existed, a thirst that went far beyond the act of drawing sustenance from Laena's energy. The Jase was untroubled by the Cromley's desires, but there was endless tension over what could happen if our impulses went ungoverned.

Her scent was intoxicating. Crisp odors of fresh-scrubbed skin mingled with darker, more primitive intonations.
Aroused… Aggressive…
We shuddered involuntarily at her intensity and leaned forward against her hand.