Dragonfly (34 page)

He wandered up to me, thoughtful, and considered my pistol where I aimed it at his throat. His lips shone, and a soft, pale curl or two dropped over his eyes. For a moment, I remembered how much it hurt to love him, and my soul shrank.

For the smallest instant, recognition glimmered on his face, and then it died. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t know the person you’re talking to.”

Tears made my eyes ache. I stepped back beyond the blast door, letting my aim fall to reach for its lever, the remote still clammy in my left hand. Last card in my game. Would he play?

“You’ll die if you stay here.”

He ruffled his hair and gave me that stunning, heart-shattering smile. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m gonna live forever.”

He flashed his hand out, but I couldn’t halt my movement in time. I’d already operated the blast door and it slid shut with a hostile clunk, sealed for good. He’d closed the airlock, and I’d already sounded the evac alarm. The exit was in automatic emergency mode. Nikita had disengaged the ship.

My insides twisted, constricting my lungs to a tiny space, and I watched helplessly as first the blast and then the airlock warning light blinked out. I was stranded.

Sasha’s remote control buzzed, tingling my palm. No way I could disarm it in the seconds I had left.

I sprinted to the sealed glass airlock, acid burning my lungs. Just in time to see the silver lozenge spin swiftly away, corners glinting, into a glittering starfield littered with departing spacecraft, emergency beacons flashing.

The remote buzzed faster, scalding my skin.

And then my skull smashed into the bulkhead, and the stars blinded me.

37

It took nine days for Axis to be done with me. Nine days in a shiny steel cell, my hair filthy and my skin caked with blood and grime, still wearing the same torn flight suit they’d pulled me from the wreckage in. That blast door had worked like a charm. When they’d scoured the sector for the missing bits of Esperanza, they’d found me in the still-sealed airlock, conserving oxygen with a makeshift carbon scrubber and hotwiring Sasha’s micro-ether remote to the warning-light current to keep warm.

I held up pretty well in that cell. I got through the thirst, the pain, the psychological terror. I’m trained for that. Bully boys and their electric whips, hooded torturers, the mindfuck shrink with the fingernail needles. They don’t scare me. What got me in the end was the sleep deprivation. When your vision’s a hideous blur, your knees are cramping to your ribcage with nausea, and you think the walls are crawling with insectoid aliens that are chewing on your toes and crawling up between your legs to suck your insides out, you’ll tell them anything if they’ll only shut the fuck up and turn out the lights.

I don’t doubt I told them everything. Who Sasha was, where he might have gone, how his console was calibrated, the objects on his shelves, the words he whispered to me as we loved. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be there now. They can keep prisoners alive for a very long time.

In the end, they never took me to Director Renko, or debriefed me, or officially terminated my Axis existence. I never saw Surov the cat-man, or Electra, his new A-D Ops. One day the goons just dragged me to the shower, shoved a clean pair of pants and a shirt at me, and emptied me out onto a dark New Moskva street next to a garbage compactor.

I knew I was bait. It didn’t matter. I patched my bruises, biding my time. In a day I had a weapon, new clothes, a place to stay. In a week I had a ship, a rusty little Swallow-class hopper I named
Nikita
, and I went searching for Sasha. I knew they’d follow me, but I’m trained for that too, and by the time I got as far as the Ural spaceway I was alone.

When I reached Santa Maria, security beacons and traffic control already cluttered the space, and Sasha’s little rock was deserted. I wandered along the empty street at dusk, the cold, dusty breeze lifting my hair, the planet’s scarlet crescent shimmering overhead, but it wasn’t the same. Even the air smelled different: emptier, less invigorating. Sasha was gone.

I searched the empty schoolhouse, in case he’d left me a clue. His room lay in shambles, overturned by searching Imperial hands, his console dismantled and useless. His blue coat lay heaped on the floor, the ripped seams ragged. I pulled it on, cuddling into his warmth. The unmade bed still smelled like him, faded but definite, and my heart ached.

I sat trailing my finger over the blanket, the dusty sheets, the pillow, remembering him, and faint green fluorescence blossomed under my touch. A biochemical clue, left just for me.

Stuffed deep inside the pillow, I found his golden hyperchip.

***

Twenty-seven days and innumerable spacials later, I set
Nikita
down on a windswept hardstand at midnight, the landing legs crunching in black ice. Buildings loomed dark and silent at the spaceport’s edge: the silhouettes of empty cooling towers, abandoned scaffolding, the misshapen hump of a slagpile. Stars jeweled the blue-streaked sky, which was pure and uncluttered with traffic or signage, and a trio of blue-stained retro-orbit moons—like the one I’d landed on—twirled a silent cosmic slow-dance.

I’d decrypted his puzzle easily enough. He’d left it in Zykovski six-gen, a function he knew I could deconstruct, and the pages of slipbeacon data that unfolded had led me here: an abandoned energy plant on another mined-out rock somewhere in the cold backstretches of Imperial space.

I jumped down onto the concrete in darkness. My breath shimmered in the chill. I wrapped my coat tighter. Metaldust tickled my nose, and in the distance an animal howled. At the hardstand’s edge, I could make out the hulking shadow of an old Wolf-class utility. Slowly my eyes adjusted, and I turned and walked toward the distant flame.

A tall hangar loomed. I bent aside a corrugated metal sheet and climbed under. Warmth greeted me, flickering firelight, the smells of sweat and cooking. They’d built a little shanty town from scrapmetal and wire, with partitions improvised from freight shrinkwrap. His people looked tired, hollow-eyed, cold, but they still joked and slept and took care of their kids.

A skinny boy with a pistol challenged me, hard-eyed, but backed down when I lifted my hands empty. I walked on, along a narrow path beside makeshift dwellings. Children played in the dirt at my feet, and curious eyes followed me. I spotted Isabel, crosslegged in the dust with a child on her knee, her long black hair braided over her shoulder. She smiled and waved and I smiled back.

“Is that for me?”

My spine prickled and I turned. I didn’t know what this was, what we had. I didn’t even know if I’d be welcome. Even if Sasha forgave me, the others here might not. But no point torturing myself. If he was going to reject me, I might as well take it now.

I lifted my gaze, and there he was. Dusty, dark and gorgeous, that silky hair I loved singed at the ends and unruly about his shoulders. Flashburn on his cheek, a ragged scar bright on his bare forearm. Wrapped in a stained green half-coat over dented black armor that hugged his muscles tight enough to make me hot. Pistol clipped to his thigh, atomflash jammed into his belt. A dirty rebel scumbag if I’d ever seen one. It was a really good look.

I swallowed, my face burning. “Hey, you.”

“You made it.” That little smile, the one that always sent me crazy. It still worked.

“Yeah.”

I held out his hyperchip, firelight flashing it golden. He took it. Our fingers didn’t touch.

I cleared my throat, dry. “Your entry regime really sucks. They let anyone into this dump.” I moved closer, daring, and brushed my knuckles across his shoulder. “But now I’m here …”

“Carrie, I am so sorry.” He edged back, hands lifted, but his brittle tone cracked. “I wanted to come for you. It killed me. But … Fuck, there’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there?” He dragged burned hair roughly behind his ears, and dirt smeared on his cheek. Tears. He wouldn’t look at me. “I understand if you hate me. I dreamed of what they’d be doing to you. I lived it day and night. I just—”

“Sasha.” Gently I pulled his hands down. “Look at me.”

He forced his gaze down to mine, and my heart wrenched in sorrow. Such deep, hypnotic eyes, so bruised inside.

“I’m okay,” I said softly. “I get it.”

Because I was, and I did. I’d never have all of him. Not while these people depended on him. Not while the Empire chased us all across space like a mindless predator, hungry for the kill. And they always would. But I’d take whatever he could give me. I just hoped it’d be enough.

His fingers slid between mine and tightened. “Carrie—”

“It’s all right, Sasha. We’ll talk. I promise. Just … come here.”

I pressed my cheek into his chest, and after a rigid moment he folded me in his arms. Tears swelled, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Just the smell of him pushed all the hurt and bruises a little further into the distance. And the feel of his strong embrace, his living body against mine, made me warm and shivery like a pleasant fever. Damn it. The man was like a disease. I had a serious case of Sasha, and I’d be lucky if I lived through it.

I tilted my head up and he kissed me. Hot, deep, luscious, his hair curling crisp in my fingers. He tasted of dirt and tears. I didn’t know how long we stood there, but when we broke apart, my lips stung swollen and my blood arced hot with need.

He took me to his corner, where coals glimmered red-hot in the firepit and blackmetal walls dripped ice. We had no privacy. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with him, drink up the sight of him, drown in him. Leave behind the hideous mistake that was my life and start afresh. I couldn’t hope for forgiveness, not from myself. I could only forget.

I pulled him down on his blanket, hungry. Weapons clunked and I fumbled them aside. His armor peeled off in my urgent hands. Underneath, his body shone, hard and bruised like mine. His skin tingled my tongue with salt and metal, his hands on my body a sweet torture. When he stripped my shirt away, I didn’t even feel the cold. My nipples ached tight in the sweet heat of his mouth, and when he pushed me down and spread my legs, tension already sparkled me breathless.

I winced when he entered me, and he paused, his mouth brushing mine. “Okay?”

“Always.”

I arched and pushed harder, deeper, hotter. It hurt inside, deep where they’d done things to my body, but I didn’t care. It was my flesh and I gifted it to him. Not them. Him. They’d have to do better to shame me into losing him.

He buried his face in my hair and dragged my thigh around him to take me deeper. I shuddered, pleasure rising. We moved hard, hot, angry, not at each other but at this dark, insane world that threatened to tear us apart. My nails bruised him. His kisses stung, and I tasted blood, and he held me down with fingers clenched in mine and we collided and ached and gasped and came and curled up together mixed in dirty sweat and love.

***

I jerked awake in the frigid dark to the sting of an alarm. Sasha still held me, close to his chest where it was warm. He didn’t stir. No one did.

I sat up, dragging back my love-knotted hair.

The pinging in my head grew louder. Frost prickled my spine, and it wasn’t just the chilly air.

I scrambled for my clothes, strewn in the dust where we’d left them. Pants, boots, socks, chassis, my coat. It was all new. I fumbled, searching, my pulse alive.

From a crease in my boot tumbled a tiny glass square. An ESE. And it was ringing.

I stared. This made no sense. Axis had stripped me of everything when they’d dumped me in that alley. I’d searched everything they’d left me. Unless …

Unless they’d already found me. Bugged me, and let me run.

I glanced at Sasha. Still asleep, hair tumbling on his bruised cheek. Cautiously, I picked up the ESE. Thumbed the contact.

The pinging stopped.

Hash, like dirt on the surface of my mind. Nothing. Maybe I imagined it. But this could be a tracking device. I should decode it, jam the signal, send a false return to put them off the scent …

A finger of amusement trailed an icy caress down my spine.

My skin tingled.

Laughter. Cold, false, angry laughter.

I swallowed, shaking. I knew that laugh. But it wasn’t possible. Was it?

My voice cracked to a whisper. “Nikita?”

A smile, like a cold shadow on my heart. A hot brush of invisible lips on mine. And silence.

I dropped the ESE. Crushed it under my heel. Ground the splintered glass pieces into the dirt. It didn’t make me feel safer.

I shivered. This wasn’t over. Not by a starshot.

I curled back under the blanket and wriggled into Sasha’s arms, but I couldn’t sleep.

About Erica Hayes

Erica Hayes was a law student, an air force officer, an editorial assistant and a musician, before finally landing her dream job: fantasy writer. She writes dark paranormal romance, urban fantasy and romantic science fiction, and her books feature tough, smart heroines and colorful heroes with dark secrets. She hails from Australia, where she drifts from city to city, leaving a trail of chaos behind her. Currently, she’s terrorizing the wilds of Northumberland.

First published in 2012 by Momentum
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

Copyright © Erica Hayes 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia