She and Red squeezed through a maze of passages. She had already explored the old city, obsessively mapping its hidden routes in case her stepfather Caul came after her and she needed to lose herself. She could leave home, learn to fight, learn to survive, but she could never get Caul out of her mind, the specter of his fists hitting, hitting, hitting. He lurked there like a trap waiting to spring every time she started to think that maybe, just maybe, she would be okay.
Eventually, when her thundering pulse calmed, Aliana slowed to a stop. Red collapsed against the wall. He was breathing so hard, guilt stabbed through Aliana. She was an asshole. To stop Admiral Muze’s people from grabbing him, she nearly killed him herself. Real swift.
“I fine,” Red said between breaths. “Not even close to dead.”
Aliana slumped against the wall, facing the bricks, her palms against their rough surface. “How can you tell what I think so easily?”
“You same as me. More than me.”
“More what?”
“Don’t know,” he muttered. “My chest hurts.”
“You ever run before?” she asked. That freaking admiral hadn’t let him do anything.
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Give it a moment. You’ll feel better.”
They rested there, listening to the slums. People were arguing somewhere, their voices faint and quarrelsome. The air smelled like brine and wet trash.
“We’re near the waterfront,” Aliana said.
“Lake?”
“No, the ocean docks.” She turned and leaned her back against the wall, staring at the opposite wall. “This city is a port for sea ships. You know what those are?”
“They fly above the water?”
“Not above. In it.”
“In? Why?”
“Hell if I know.” She pushed away from the wall. “You doing better?”
Red stood up straighter. “Better. Yes.” Then he smiled.
Aliana froze. It was as if a light had gone on. Even dressed in her worn out shirt and trousers, he was beautiful. Those blue eyes, that mop of brown hair, the perfect features. When he smiled, he was radiant. Yeah, he was a provider all right, designed, bred, and trained to please, to give you whatever you desired, however you wanted it, without resisting, rebelling, or even thinking. Except wonder of all wonders, he had broken his conditioning and run away. Amazing, how the instinct for self-preservation could defy centuries of breeding for subservient, helpless slavery.
“Why you stare at me?” he asked.
She grinned. “Cause you’re just so ugly I can’t get over it.”
He winced as if she had struck him. “My sorry.”
“Red, I was joking! You’re gorgeous.”
“Not. Admiral threw me away. Am hideous.”
“He’s an idiot.” Gods, she was going to get herself killed if she kept this up, insulting Aristos and pounding powerful people. “Did he, um, I mean, did he make you . . .” She was too embarrassed to go any further.
“He not want me for that,” Red said. “Only to provide. Has pretty girl providers for sex.”
“Maybe that’s why he threw you away,” Aliana said. “Because you aren’t a girl.” She drew him away from the wall. “We have to get out of the city. I think we should hide on a boat.”
“Not go back to your hexagon?”
“Not a chance,” she said. “I don’t know if any holocams caught that fight. Most are broken in this part of town. But Red, I beat the cold crap out of those two. And they know what I look like.” She shook her head. “We got to run, sweet stuff, far and fast, before they find us.”
He didn’t look convinced. “How?”
Aliana grimaced. “I wish I knew.”
“We’re losing her pulse,” Doctor Sashia shouted. She ran with med techs and Jagernauts down a metal corridor toward an air-speed tube, deep within the Orbiter’s hull. The air stretcher floated next to her, protecting its priceless cargo in a cocoon that blocked out physical, audio, visual, tactile, and neurological stresses. The nodes in Sashia’s spine linked to the stretcher’s EI brain, letting her analyze her patient even as they ran.
The door of the air tube snapped open as they arrived. It took only seconds for Sashia, the techs, and the guards to cram into the car there. As it shot off toward the hospital, Sashia bent over the stretcher and administered a dose of psi-active drugs to her patient. Her hands were clammy.
Her patient—the Ruby Pharaoh—was dying.
“He’s lost too much blood!” Doctor Blueson called to his medical team. “Bring me more plasma, nanomed serum five-oh-nine.”
Monitors blazed while slave-bots and Razers loomed around Blueson. The emperor lay collapsed on his back, the gaping wounds in his torso pumping blood as the medics desperately worked. Blood soaked Blueson’s hands, Jaibriol’s shredded clothes, the debris-strewn floor, everything in the ruins of the hall. The empress was in no better condition, and another team was working just as urgently to save her life.
“Gods almighty,” a medic in the other group choked. “She’s pregnant!”
“Stabilize her!” Blueson shouted. He felt as if he were on an out of control racer rocketing off a cliff. He was only a lieutenant, but he had been the closest on hand when the explosion shook the palace. Now he was responsible for the lives of the emperor and empress, and gods help him, apparently for the long-awaited heir to the Carnelian Throne as well.
A woman in the uniform of an ESComm colonel strode into the chaos. The badge on her uniform said Lyra Qoxdaughter. Everyone but the medics jumped to attention. Blueson shot her a harried glance but otherwise kept working on the emperor. So much blood and he couldn’t stop it, not even with adherents and injected meds.
Qoxdaughter knelt next to him. Short yellow hair dusted with grey fell around her face as she helped Blueson close one of the wounds in Jaibriol’s torso. She spoke crisply. “Download.”
The node in Blueson’s spine hurtled data at Qoxdaughter’s spinal node. As the emperor’s personal physician, she had a far greater rank than Blueson even beyond her military status. She could slave his node to hers and take what she needed. Of course she was privileged. She was the half-Aristo daughter of the emperor’s grandfather.
“Your choice of nanomed series is odd,” she said as they worked. “I’ve never seen that combination before.”
Blueson froze, holding an air syringe he had been about to use on Jaibriol. If he had harmed the emperor with his inexperience, he would face imprisonment, maybe execution. He kept his voice calm. “I thought that working together, that combination would rebuild his tissues faster.”
Qoxdaughter nodded as she tended a gash in Jaibriol’s side. “It’s working. You may have saved his life.”
Blueson exhaled and continued with his injection. “Thank the gods,” he said in a low voice, as much for his own life as for Emperor Qox.
“I doubt the gods had much to do with this,” Qoxdaughter muttered.
Blueson didn’t think so, either, unless they had decided to destroy Eube by killing the entire royal family in one blow.
“We have to reach him!” Admiral Chad Barzun spoke urgently into the comm on his mech-tech gauntlet. He was standing on the walkway that circled the War Room high above the amphitheatre. The Command Chair hung in the center of the circle, accessible by four catwalks that led to it like spokes. Accessible, that was, until moments ago. In an unprecedented and supposedly impossible event, the independent systems for all four catwalks had simultaneously failed, the locks holding them in place had released, and they had plummeted into the amphitheatre. It had happened in the same instant that a mental earthquake jolted every telop below and ripped their commander, the Imperator, out of the War Room mesh.
“We can’t release any of the entry hatches,” a woman said on his comm, Major Qahot, the chief of security on the Orbiter. “The War Room is locked tight. I’ve never seen it like this when we weren’t under attack.”
“Whatever happened affec
ted Imperator Skolia,” Chad said. Kelric was slumped in the Command Chair, unresponsive, his eyes closed. Chad couldn’t see him breathing. Was he alive? Dead? No monitors here were working. The consoles were off-mesh, the robot arms were frozen, and the telops were out of their VR suits, all staring up at the holodome. The only light came from the nebulae holos glowing beneath the dome, which were on the emergency generator that kept up life support in the War Room in case of a lockdown during war time.
Two Jagernauts were climbing a metal ladder embedded in the opposite wall, a woman and a man, their black uniforms stark against the silver-white surface. Chad had just finished that same climb on this side of the holodome. He had been lucky; if he hadn’t come to the amphitheatre to check the new mesh nodes, he would be locked out of the War Room along with everyone else on his staff. The ladders were a last resort, and right now their safety meshes were as nonfunctional as everything else here, which meant if the Jagernauts lost their grip, nothing would stop their fall.
Chad switched channels on his comm and spoke to the Jagernauts. “Secondary Panquai, how are the rungs?”
The woman on the ladder spoke into the comm on her gauntlet. “Holding fine, Admiral.” She had a cable gun in one hand, and it clanged against the rungs as she climbed.
The man coming up after her was Sterven Lamong, a Jagernaut with three armbands around each of his biceps, the sign of a Tertiary, the rank below Secondary. Dark and leanly muscled, he was a male version of Panquai. He had ripped a sheet of mesh composite off a console below and now carried it strapped to his back. It was their best try at a stretcher, given that the mobile units were either inaccessible in their inactive storage bins or outside the War Room.
“Admiral Barzun!” Major Qahot’s voice snapped out of his comm. “We’ve isolated the cause of the lockdown. Sir, it was Imperator Skolia! He did this with his own mind.”
Chad swore under his breath. It made a bizarre sort of sense: the Imperator was the only “system” with unlimited access to every node in the War Room. Chad’s gauntlet comm still worked because it was one of the few nodes off the grid. Kelric had set it up that way deliberately, so that his top commanders would have autonomous systems in case of an emergency.
“Any headway in breaking the lockdown?” Chad asked Qahot.
“We’re cutting the walls,” she said. “It’s slow going. They’re damn near impenetrable.”
“Do what you can.” He watched as Panquai clambered onto the walkway across from him. Lamong swung up next to her and they stood there, two towering mech-warriors in black leathers with silver mesh studs that glinted in the holographic starlight.
Panquai raised her gun. A cable rifle was an independent system, but Chad still tensed as she fired, afraid it would fail. He exhaled with relief as a thick cable shot past the Command Chair and clanged into the walkway only steps from him. As he grabbed it and secured the end around the rail, the smart cable stiffened, creating a bar across the dome.
Panquai and Lamong studied the cable and Kelric. Panquai grabbed the cable and lowered herself until she was hanging from it over the chasm of air, with the amphitheatre far below her. Using her biomech-reinforced strength, she swung hand-over-hand toward the Chair. Lamong followed, carrying their makeshift stretcher.
Kelric hadn’t moved. He looked like a part of his cyber-throne that had malfunctioned.
He looked dead.
IX
Awakening
“Bored,” Red said, his arms around Aliana’s waist, his shoulder wedged against hers.
“No kidding.” Aliana pushed farther back in the cargo hold, between the gnarled grey crates. She liked the dark down here and the rolling motion of the ship soothed her, but they had been hiding for hours.
She imagined a healing blanket spread over Red. She didn’t expect it to help, but his mood improved. She tilted her head against his, her forehead leaning on his temple and he shifted in her arms, his breath warm on her cheek.
“Aliana pretty,” he said.
“I’m big and ugly.”
“Pretty.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair.
Feeling shy, she shifted in his arms. He put his fingers against her chin and turned her face to him. His lips brushed hers. He paused, waiting, and she held her breath. He kissed her then, holding her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Blood rushed through Aliana and she kissed him back, her first time.
“I like.” Red murmured.
“Me too.”
His hand slid under her sweater. She tensed when she felt his palm on her stomach.
Red stilled his hand. “Not like?”
“If any Aristo found out I kissed you, they would put me in prison or something.” She was talking too fast. “I could never afford a provider.”
His voice tightened. “Not have to buy me.”
She spoke unevenly. “I need time, okay?”
Red kissed her ear. “Okay.” He pulled his hand out from under her sweater and just held her.
An engine rumbled above them. It sounded like the hatch in the ceiling opening.
“Damn,” Aliana whispered. She dug her heels onto the corrugated floor and wedged them even farther back between two big crates, behind the bulge in one. Red tightened his grip around her waist and they hunkered in the dark, scrunched together.
“Damn stupid bouncer,” an irritated man said from somewhere above them.
Huh? That couldn’t be who it sounded like.
“Did you two have to hide in the least accessible place on the entire ship?” the man asked. Metal clanked, the sound of boots on a ladder.
Light trickled into Aliana and Red’s hiding place. She breathed shallowly, silently. But she was getting mad. How the blazes could he be here?
“Aliana, I know you’re between the crates,” the man said.
Red drew in a sharp breath.
“Go drill yourself,” she said loudly.
“I don’t think that’s anatomically possible.” The man sounded amused.
Red’s fist clenched against her side.
A lamp shone into their hiding place, lighting their feet. The man crouched down and peered at them under the bulge.
“Tide, go away,” Aliana growled.
“Who is that with you?” Tide asked, peering at Red.
Red was so tense, he seemed ready to snap. He kept his arms around Aliana.
“He’s my friend,” she said.
“Aliana, babe,” Tide said. “Did you really think you could stow away and no one would see, in a dockside slum where people spend their entire lives figuring out how to screw the system?” He paused. “Though I must admit, you did a good job. Only one guy noticed. You’re lucky he knew me, because he could have called in the head-killers instead of me and claimed a reward for you.”
Red peered into the glare from Tide’s lamp. “Who?”
“His name is Tidewater,” Aliana said sourly. “He used to be a Razer.”
“No!” Red pushed back, trying to squeeze into the non-existent space behind them.
“You got a problem with Razers?” Tide asked.
Red didn’t answer.
“Right.” Tide sat on the rough floor and set down his light. Half of him was visible to one side of the bulge, a dark figure with the light giving him an aura, like the corona on an eclipsed sun. “So Aliana, sweetheart, how come your friend talks fractured Eubian in a Highton accent? Let me see, who would have such bad grammar and yet speak with the accent of the nobility? And be afraid of Razers? Gosh, I wonder.”
“Tide, stop it,” Aliana said. “Leave him alone.”
“You’re going to die, stupid girl,” he said angrily. “Are you insane? Stealing providers, beating up powerful people, stowing away illegally?”
“What, there’s a legal way to stow away?” she asked. “Are you going to rat us out?” She felt tight, ready to explode.
“I’m not telling anyone.”
Aliana exhaled. “What did you tell the crew? Hell, Tide, how d
id you get on this boat?”
“It’s a ship, not a boat. I’m running deliveries in the flyer Harindor issued me. I told the captain of this rig I needed fuel. It’s true.”
“How come it needed fuel? You never go anywhere without checking that.”
He shrugged. “Seems I forgot this time. Can’t imagine why. They’re filling it up on the deck.”
“And when they’re done?” she asked, afraid to breathe, as if that would change his answer.
“Captain invited me to stay for dinner. I’m leaving after that, probably late.” Tide paused. “I’m going back up deck. Get a tour, have dinner, take off. If my flyer is carrying more weight than when I landed, well, it’s because of the added fuel, right? Couldn’t be any other reason.”
Aliana closed her eyes. It wouldn’t take much for her and Red to sneak onto his flyer while he was having dinner. “Thanks, Tide.”
“Yeah well, it’s costing me a lot of credit. And if I get killed for transporting you two, you’ll need something better than ‘thank you’ to make up for it.”
She gave a shaky laugh and opened her eyes. “Sure. If we all die, I’ll make it up to you.”
“Deal.” He stood up, and shadows encroached on their hiding place. His footsteps receded across the hold. The light switched off as he climbed the ladder. The hatch powered open, then slammed shut, leaving Aliana and Red alone in the dark.
A whirring tugged at Dehya. She floated in a sea of pain.
“. . . show any sign,” a voice said. “Move a toe. Twitch an eyelid. Lift a finger. Anything.”
Go away, she thought.
“Hey!” a man said. “Did you get that from her?”
“Get what?” a woman asked. “She’s in a coma.”
“Her thought,” the man said.
A third voice was fading in and out. “. . . he’s a telepath as well as a medic. Sometimes he picks up things from patients.”