Eddie looked back at the dome barrier, which remained unbroken. “They might not know exactly where we went through, but they’ll be sending Security Ops instead of R.I. Ops in here pretty soon. We have to find shelter and passage out of here.”
Eddie pulled a billed cap from his back pocket and put it on. His wallet, which came out with the cap, he left on the pavement.
“Guess I won’t be needing that anymore.”
Declan made a rough sound in his throat. “When we get where we’re going…”
Eddie turned to stare at him, his blue eyes questioning. “Yeah?”
Declan shrugged and held out his hand, which Eddie took. “I’ll see you get back everything you had. And more. For helping us.”
Eddie shook Declan’s hand, and shot me a grin. “Hell, without G riding shotgun, I couldn’t manage, anyway. Time to move on to brighter pastures. I’ve always wanted to move Offworld.”
“Thanks, man.” I could see how difficult it was for Declan to say such a thing, which made it mean all the more.
Men don’t waste time with mushy sentiments, though, and that brief exchange signaled the end to their bonding. They each grabbed a bag, and I picked up Kaelyn again. We set off down the deserted, decrepit street, and sought a place to hide.
It wasn’t as difficult as it would’ve been in Newcity. Oldcity is a haven of thieves, Earthen and Offworld-bred. There are plenty of places that’ll offer succor to strangers—for the right price. Of course, the people who run them will turn their visitors over to their pursuers for another, higher offer, but for now at least, we had a place to stay.
Newcity credits are useless in Oldcity, which has no automated supply delivery, no viddy, not even any constant source of power. What luxuries the city had reveled in three hundred years ago had been dismantled or destroyed while its sister city grew and flourished with nothing more than eighteen inches to separate them.
“Not used to slumming, eh?” Fostruff, the grizzled man who’d taken the contents of our pockets in payment for a night’s shelter pointed at Declan. “Not you, eh?”
“Food?” Eddie asked rudely. “We paid you enough, old man.”
The man, who was probably only a few years older than me, lifted his hands and backed off. “Yeah, I’ll get your food.”
“Don’t ask what it is,” I told Declan under my breath. “Just…eat it.”
He leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I’m not the naive prude you seem to think I am. I spent some time in Class A survival camps Offworld, Gemma.”
“For fun?” I asked. “Good God-of-choice, why?”
“To prove something to myself.” His answer was serious.
“And did you?”
He brushed his hands along my cheek. “Only that what I was trying to prove really wasn’t that important.”
“I’m sleepy.” Kaelyn nudged her way onto my lap. This ordeal had made her far more affectionate and clingy than she’d been before, or perhaps it was the change in our relationship. I didn’t mind.
I tucked the soft floss of her hair behind her slightly pointed ears and smoothed her jersey. “I think it’s time you’re in bed then, don’t you? We have a long trip ahead of us tomorrow.”
She nodded, then yawned so hugely the sharp points of her teeth showed all in a row. I took her to the back room we’d rented and put her on the pallet. It was clean enough, at any rate, with no sign of vermin. We’d gone to a lot of hostels before settling on this one.
“Sweet dreams, Kiki.” I pulled the covers up to her chin, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her forehead and took in the fresh scent of her for a few moments. Elovenians have a life span approximately twice that of humans, yet they reach maturity about twice as fast. Kaelyn wouldn’t be a child much longer. What that meant for us, I couldn’t know. I only knew that I loved her as much as I could ever have loved a child I could’ve carried in my womb.
With another kiss that made her smile in her sleep, I left her. By the time I returned to the front room, our host had provided several bowls of thick gravy and a platter of some brown sliced something or other that smelled suspiciously like artibeef.
“Don’t ask, remember?” Declan told me as he stabbed a piece with a broken-tined fork.
The Adar family probably dined on meat several times a month, but real beef hasn’t been available to the public for about one hundred years. Oldcity didn’t get the shipments of algae processed into foodstuffs, and it certainly didn’t raise cattle. I took my own advice—I didn’t ask.
Whatever animal it had come from, the meat was surprisingly sweet and tender, with an undertang of wood smoke from being grilled. I had real beef once, just a taste, at Alfie Zoydman’s house. He’d received a package as a gift, and he’d eaten it while taking one of his forever-long soaks in the tub.
Eddie returned from the hall with a piece of crumpled paper scribbled on both sides. He laid it flat on the table while he helped himself to a plate of food. He didn’t even comment as he chewed, but Eddie would eat anything.
He pointed at the crude map on the paper. “We’re here. Closest checkpoint is over here. We got lucky.”
The zip we’d found was units away from the closest official door through the barrier, which worked in our favor. “Still, it won’t take them long.”
“My father commands the entire Newcity Security system.” Declan paused, swallowed, touched the map. “But I don’t think he’ll risk sending more troops than what followed us last night.”
“No?” Eddie asked.
I shook my head, thinking of how much Howard Adar feared the public learning of his son’s nasty secret. “Even he’d have to explain using such large amounts of force somehow. He won’t want to draw undue attention to the chase.”
“So a dozen officers, no more.” Eddie chewed some more, swallowed. “What the hell is this stuff?”
“Don’t ask,” Declan and I said together, and we laughed.
The laughter lifted a weight I hadn’t realized was on my shoulders. We weren’t out of trouble yet, but being able to laugh made things seem much brighter. We had shelter, we had food, and for the moment, we had a chance at escape.
“Fostruff says he can get us in touch with a pair of Annvillian traders who’re heading Offworld tomorrow.” Eddie smoothed the paper to point at another location about twenty blocks from where we were. “Here. He says they’ll be willing to take half payment now and the rest when we get to Annvilla.”
“I can handle the amount when we get to Annvilla,” Declan said. “But what are we going to do about now?”
“We’ll figure it out.” How, I didn’t know, but with my belly full my mind’s attention was turned to other things, like the pain in my muscles. “Didn’t Fostruff say there was a bathroom around here?”
Eddie folded his map and put it in his pocket. “You go ahead. I’m going to get some shut eye. We need to leave just before first light.”
Declan and I stared at each other across the table after Eddie went into the back room. It seemed foolish to be thinking what I was when this was not the time, nor the place, but the heart rules the mind, not the other way around.
“Come with me?” I asked, and held out my hand, and he took it with no hesitation.
“Anywhere,” Declan said.
What Fostruff had called a bathroom was little more than a closet with dripping, stained sink, toilet and a narrow but deep plazglass bathtub standing on rusted metal legs above a glowing brazier. He had promised hot water, though, which was a luxury worth every cent we’d paid him, even if the water was synthetic and not real.
The tub was just wide enough to allow Declan and I to sit facing each other. The water came up to our chests, cloaking us in blessed heat kept at temperature by the glowing coals beneath.
I’ve experienced a lot of sensual pleasures in my life. They can’t be avoided in Newcity. Enfolding myself into that hot water, though, allowing the heat to seep into my abused body, and sharing it with Declan, surpassed anything I
’d ever encountered.
There are men who, sensitive to the ordeal we’d just shared, would allow a woman to simply soak in the water without expecting her to force her injured body to engage in intimacies. Thank my God-of-choice Declan is not a man like that. He put one hand on my shoulder and the other behind my head, and kissed me.
I sensed a heat in him that had nothing to do with the temperature of the water cradling us, and I thought of the Nivian with a smile. Declan had been jealous. My lips curved beneath his until he urged them open and swept the inside of my mouth with his tongue. Then I couldn’t smile anymore.
My hands slid up to tangle in the thickness of his damp, dark hair. He pushed against me, the tub giving us little room to move. My back pressed against the smooth plazglass, and my legs parted to allow him closer to me. He moved between my thighs, his erection nudging my stomach, his chest scraping my breasts. He left my mouth long enough to murmur my name, then slanted his lips back across mine before I could reply.
I had to answer with my hands and my tongue, and by slipping my heels over the back of his bent legs to urge him closer to me. He responded, slid his hands from my neck and shoulders to my buttocks, and lifted me. He moved into me with no resistance, my legs hooked around his waist, my arms wrapped around his neck. And still we kissed, kissed, each breathing in the air the other let out, until we filled each other completely.
I came within seconds, and he took my moan inside his mouth and answered with one of his own. His finger curved around my rear, pulling me closer and sliding me back. I rode the crest of my climax and shuddered with it, then felt it rise again within me.
He twisted his hips against me, giving me that last bit of pressure, and I felt stars explode inside me again. He joined me this time, his buttocks clenching beneath the hand I slid down to clutch with. So sensitive had I become I felt every throb as he spent himself inside me.
He put his lips to mine softly one more, then rested his head against my shoulder. I smelled his hair and held him close. I didn’t want to let go.
Arousal can make anyone forget the body’s most stringent complaints, but after orgasm it’s harder to ignore them. Declan and I separated, each going back to the small space the tub allowed us. I sunk into the water as far as I could. I couldn’t stretch out, but the heat still felt good. I dozed a little, content for now in the afterglow of our lovemaking.
“I do love you, you know.” His quiet words startled me into opening my eyes.
“We don’t really know each other very well, D.”
My answer didn’t put him off. “Do you have to know someone to love them?”
I curled my arms around my knees to think for a minute. “I think it helps.”
He tucked an escaped strand of my hair behind my ear. “What color is your hair, really?”
I fingered a section of violet. “Red.”
“Red like a retscan beam or red like a Shaddran sunset?”
“I’ve never seen a Shaddran sunset.”
He settled back in the water. “I have. It’s beautiful. I’ll bet your hair is that color.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant.” I sighed. “Declan, my heart is telling me one thing, but my mind…”
“Don’t listen to it,” came his advice, coupled with a kiss that flushed my cheeks even more than the hot water had.
“Things might change between us,” I ventured, hating the practical part of me that seemed determined to keep him at arm’s length despite all we’d been through. “After this is over.”
“Tell me about your childhood,” Declan said as though I hadn’t spoken. “And I’ll tell you about mine. Tell me your favorite color, food, what books you like to read.”
His questions made me smile. “What is this, twenty questions?”
“I want to know you, Gemma,” came his reply. “So you won’t have any reason to doubt that I love you.”
Declan must’ve earned his strength of character on his own, but heredity had granted him his charisma. In that moment, it was clear who he was and where he’d come from, because I could have no doubt he meant what he said.
So we talked long into the night, until at last the fire burned out and the water turned cool, and then we crept back to our rooms and slept curled in each other’s arms.
The Annvillian traders turned out to be a husband and wife who owned a rust bucket spacecraft that looked like it would fall out of the sky before it could break atmosphere. My palms began to sweat at the sight of it, and my heart trip-trapped in my chest. Kaelyn squeezed my hand, offering me as much comfort as she could.
The wife, a mousy, plump woman with a kind face, looked at Kaelyn with something like wonder. “She’s pretty, ain’t?” she asked in a thick, Annvillian accent. She reached to touch Kaelyn’s silken hair, and Kaelyn shrunk away from the woman.
The husband of the team kept glancing nervously to the door of the warehouse they used as a hangar. “What you got for trade?”
We’d paid for Fustroff’s hostel by digging in our pockets for items we thought might be worth something in an Offworld market. Simple luxuries like the chocobar Kaelyn had tucked into her bag were worth a lot more in Oldcity, but wouldn’t be enough to get us Offworld.
“I have this.” I showed him the iridium ring glittering in my palm. He reached for it, and I closed my fingers around the metal. “You get it when we’re safely out of atmosphere.”
He rubbed his hands together with another shifty glance at the door. “And the rest?”
Declan stepped forward. “When we get to Annvilla. Five thousand Intercolony Credits.”
The wife still looked wistfully at Kaelyn. “My little girl had hair like that, wunst.”
“Would you hesh up, woman?” the man snapped. He shrugged. “Our Becky got the Cleonan pox some years back. She died of it.”
“I’m sorry.” My compassion for the woman was marred by her husband’s shifty manner and lack of sympathy to his wife’s feelings. “When can we leave?”
He began to tick off a list on his fingers. “I have to load the bays awhile, and chart the course—”
Now the wife, perhaps sent over the edge by his casual dismissal of her pain, whirled to face him. “Whyn’t you tell ‘em the truth? You’re gonna take their money and—”
“Shut up, woman!” The trader backhanded his wife to silence. A bright runner of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t even sob. Dry-eyed, she cast one last longing glance at Kaelyn, and then went up the ship’s rickety pull down staircase to disappear inside the hull.
“Take our money and what?” Eddie’s voice was cold.
The three of us presented a formidable sight, even for a trader who must’ve been used to far rougher company. He stepped back and passed his hand over his bearded chin. Another glance at the door had me turning to look too.
The cost and risk of adding psi boosters, computer chips that gave the user telepathic, empathic or precognitive abilities, had kept me from adding such enhancements. Plain old woman’s intuition ruled me now, and just before the door opened, I knew what I’d see.
“I’m disappointed in you, Caldyx. Didn’t that time in the survival camp teach you anything? Never underestimate your enemy.” Howard Adar strolled into the warehouse hangar, flanked by four secbots and a pair of uniformed officers.
Declan stepped forward to meet him. “Let us go, Dad. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“What I wanted,” Howard bit out from between gritted jaws, “was to have a son who could take up the reins after me! And if I couldn’t have that, at least one who knew our world and his proper place in it.”
“I have no place in your world. Not anywhere.” Declan raised his hands to show he held no weapons. “Let us go, Dad.”
Howard barked out a laugh that reverberated into echoing ugliness. “And have you gallivanting around the Intercolony for everyone to see?”
“I won’t be trading on my name anymore. You don’t have to worry about i
t.”
Howard gestured for the secbots and Ops behind him to move forward. “I might believe that of your Adar point of honor, Caldyx, but what about your little friend?”
He put enough contempt into the word to make it an insult.
“Gemma has more honor than you’ll ever have.” Declan spoke calmly, though his father’s voice kept rising.
“She’s nothing better than a tencredit whore! She’s not even human anymore, she’s mecho!” Howard’s voice rose to an angry shriek like the grinding of rusty gears.
“She’s what I am, Dad,” Declan said calmly. “And neither of us is worth your disgust.”
Howard trembled with the force of his rage, and his once handsome face purpled. “I wanted to let you die on that operating table, rather than see you become this.”
I saw Declan’s shoulders twitch as the words must’ve struck him hard, but his voice was still calm when he replied. “I used to wish that same thing, Dad. But not anymore. Let us go.”
“I can’t!” Howard roared. “You’ll ruin me!”
“It’s too late for that,” I told him. “You’ve ruined yourself. There are more witnesses than us, Howard. More people who know the truth.”
“You think so?” He looked back at the officers who accompanied him. “I suppose you’re right.”
With a jerk of his head he motioned to the secbots. “Kill them.”
We had no time to protest. Secbots have no free will, no morals, nothing but the programmed need to obey orders. They lifted their weapons and shot. The uniformed officers had no time even to cry out before they fell.
Eddie let out a hoarse cry, then launched himself toward Howard. “You son of a bitch!”
“Him too,” Howard said almost casually.
Eddie, unlike our doomed peers, was prepared. He dodged out of the way and avoided the secbots’ shots. One winged by me close enough for me to feel its heat.
“You can’t just kill everyone who goes against you!” Declan cried.
Now it was the father who was calm against the son’s agitation. “I can,” he said. “And I will. I will do whatever is needed to keep the Adar name unsullied.”