Incursion (8 page)

"Code confirmed," flashed across the screen after an endless five minutes. "Please proceed through Corridor Theta."

Grimm hammered a quick confirmation, and the ship moved forward to the start of the queue for the slingshot gate. Being accelerated by that massive force always made Kyle nervous. With a war frigate's own reactors, at least he had the illusion that he'd be safe, but with something tiny like a Morning Star, he felt fragile. In the force field of a slingshot drive, they could all be accelerated to pulp, and no force field they could generate would prevent that.

"Ready for corridor entry," Kyle announced, flicking the light to red.

Grimm buckled down. "How do you like this part?"

I was trained to do it in a liquipod. Like this? Not at all.
"Ask me on the other side." Kyle pulled a strap tighter, mostly to give his fingers something to do.

"All systems go," said the console. "Slingshot in progress."

"I half expected your codes were fake," Grimm said.

"Seems they aren't." Kyle breathed deeply, and hit the intercom. "Hope you guys are ready, we're about to enter the corridor." He noticed Grimm's ironic glance. Fuck it, Grimm made a good co-pilot. Even if he was Kshar, even if all he'd done was use his natural technological aptitude to learn incredibly fast. But Kyle pushed those thoughts away, because he couldn't afford to let Grimm, er, Kshar know what he was thinking.

It was the only explanation that accounted for every detail. The hasty start. The strange behavior for a sworn warrior. The weird encounter in the operating theater. His wizardry with computers.

And yet, he still bought it, somehow. Grimm moved like a human, joked and spoke like a human, looked like a human. Flirted like a human. It didn't hurt that he was attractive and looked exceedingly familiar.

Well, just plain old bad luck that Grimm had been Tamenean.

"Welcome to the corridor," Grimm muttered when the ship rocked hard, accelerating beyond Kyle's capacity to understand. He wasn't a corridor technician—he had no clue how they worked apart from what he'd learned at the Academy, and he couldn't say he liked the idea of punching through space-time, hoping he'd come out at the other end. He much preferred normal space, slow as it was. Standard physics worked for him; he didn't need anything that messed with his craving for logic.

They sat in breathless silence. An hour, it felt like—nothing, really. Not for a "nighttime" pilot sitting watch over computers doing their thing.

The ship rocked again. Then, late—the announcement was always late, always came after the fact—"Corridor closed. Welcome to the Ganesh system."

"Thank you. Disengage," Kyle responded. He put the ship back on course toward the fifth planet in the system, while Grimm stood and stretched his legs.

"I'm going to check on the others," he announced.

"Sure."
Just don't kill anybody and take their shape.

He completed the navigational steps and relaxed. Ganesh. Almost, almost done. He lay back and glanced to the side where Grimm had been. He'd have to keep an eye on him once the doors opened again. He could easily vanish on Ganesh if he so much as suspected he had a hunter on his trail. And yet, Glyrinny space was still a little away. The morph wasn't quite home yet. It was Kyle's job to ensure he wouldn't make it.

A nasty twinge traveled from his back to his pelvis, like a boring insect. He pressed on his hipbone with a clenched fist, with no real hope to stop the pain. It sat too deep, just a misfiring nerve confused, damaged—or reprogrammed—by a Glyrinny weapon. That alone was reason enough to hate the morphing bastards.

"
Nice
landing," Grimm said.

"You don't have to injure anybody, you know."

"Yeah. I barely felt that."

Kyle lifted his hands away from the controls and breathed deeply. Always made for a few tense seconds, that controlled fall through a planetary atmosphere. He wiped his face, surprised that his skin was dry, if a little hot. "That's it. We've arrived."

Grimm stood and patted him on the shoulder.

Kyle reached up and took his hand, held it for a second too long. "Where you headed?"

"Probably going to help Winter get the ship ready again for the next hop. You? Off to a hospital?"

"Tomorrow." Kyle rubbed one of the metal rods encasing his leg like a bar of a cage. "I want a bath and sleep."

"And company?"

Mother of Light, he's not attempting to replace
me
, is he?

Kyle looked Grimm up and down. Despite what he knew, the attraction was still there. It wasn't Kshar's real shape, but damn, he'd shown good taste picking this one.

I'd make you respond.

He huffed. "You want to try keeping that promise."

Grimm smirked. "You won't regret it."

Probably not, because I'll be dead and you'll be wearing my face.
And wouldn't that be an interesting return.
He'd look like me, just without the fucking prosthetics. A new, improved me.

Well, I'm all for self-improvement.

"You paying? For the room, I mean?"

Grimm's grin widened. He probably didn't realize how predatorial that looked. Or maybe he thought he was being exceedingly funny in an unpleasant kind of way. "Of course. I do give my dates what I can."

No. Fucking. Doubt.

Kyle shrugged. "Fine. Just don't cry if your dick doesn't do anything for me."

It was extremely weird to follow a morph to a hotel. Grimm chose one so close to a medical center it was practically rubbing shoulders with it. Meant as a kindness, or something like that, especially as Grimm booked the whole week.

"I'll be gone tomorrow, but you can stick around here," he said.

All to make him feel safe. Damn it, but Grimm was good. Kyle just smiled and nodded. "I'll pay for breakfast," he said on the way to the room.

When the door closed behind them, there was that skeevy feeling again that pulled the skin on the back of his neck taut. The fact that he wouldn't enjoy any of this didn't actually matter as much as that sense of vulnerability, even if they never got as far as the sex. And he planned to make the catch before he exposed himself that much.

He'd been different before the injury. Casual, confident, maybe reckless. And definitely not choosy once he got back planet-side. Well, occasionally on-ship, and regulations be damned. But everything was different now. His legs reminded him he was mortal. Being alone with a man—an alien—who'd probably killed during sex before, because it was easy to strike during an orgasmic thrall, made it worse.

Grimm sat down on the bed. "Want to have that shower?"

Kyle nodded. "You can go first."

"It's all right. Unless we shower at the same time."

"No, we won't. I can't stand on my own, and I need to take these off."

"I could hold you."

Like in the cryo-coffin.
No thanks.
"Let me feel a bit less pathetic, okay?"

"You're not." Grimm crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Kyle, you need to get over this shit. You are not your legs. You're not just your injury, so stop making it all about that."

That hit him right in the guts. "Leave me some dignity, will you?"

Grimm lifted his hands. "Be my guest."

Everything took on a double meaning when he knew that Grimm wasn't actually Grimm. The real Grimm was dead, might have been dead a long time. But would he have said something like that?
You're not just your injury
. Damn. The morphing bastard was really good at finding weaknesses. What did they call that?
Human-hacking?

He went into the bathroom and, after some consideration, locked the door. Grimm could still shoulder through the flimsy barrier, but he'd most likely respect Kyle's privacy, at least for the moment. He sat down on the rim of the shower and began to take off the prostheses. He wished he understood Glyrinny, or knew the first thing about them. What information there was—and some people
had
to know more than he did—was probably extremely classified, and the Sector Commissar hadn't deigned to share it with him. How many Glyrinny were currently known to the Authorities? Had they captured some? Studied their capabilities? Was that why Kshar was on the run?

Right now, he had no clue about their weaknesses. When he made his move, he'd have to rely on them having human vulnerabilities.

He slid out of the prostheses, then undressed, movements ungainly, even after weeks of getting used to being a cripple. Just taking off his trousers was a complicated maneuver, especially slipping them over his feet without messing up his back or unbalancing himself. He pondered taking a bath, but then put the prostheses back on so he could stand for a shower. At least he wouldn't have to go through the whole rigmarole again to get dressed afterward.

He stepped under the shower head, dialed his temperature in—hot, especially after a long trip in deep space, as if he could chase the cold and dark from his bones—and welcomed the thick, steaming spray. The metal sat oddly against this skin as he washed, a cool skeleton turned outward that never really warmed.

Cyberlegs would require less maintenance and no fucking bridge module that irritated what remained of his spinal cord. They'd allow him to run, jump, and definitely take a fucking shower in peace without nearly falling on his face.

Damn them, the Doctrine zombies even had cybernetics that made the brain believe they received sensory input. In the Commonwealth, that kind of technology was so expensive it was out of reach even on a Commodore's retirement package.

Cyberlegs wouldn't solve the sex problem, but they'd allow him to move as if he were normal, and if he covered them up, nobody would be able to tell the difference. He'd fit in again. Right now, that seemed like the best he could ever hope for, and if that meant delivering a thought-sucking morph to the authorities, it was a small price to pay.

He punched the water out and reached for a towel. He pressed the cloth to his face first, then dried the skin around the prostheses, not scrubbing any of the unfeeling flesh, just as the nurses had instructed him, and checking for sores and bruises, trying to ignore that odd mix of emotions that always surfaced when he had to focus on the dead meat. Part compassion, part self-pity, and a great fucking deal of resentment. He considered wrapping a towel around his hips, but that modesty didn't really figure. There was no way he could get hard.

When he returned to the room, Grimm was sitting on the bed, stripped down to his underwear, that whole impressive body—
not his, it's not his
—ready for inspection. Kyle needed to remind himself he was looking at the breathing mockery of a dead man, but it wasn't easy. The attraction hadn't just gone away because he knew Grimm was Kshar. In any case, the next half hour or so would decide everything. Whether he got his prize to exchange for cyberlegs, or whether Kshar killed him and took his face. Attraction or no, it wasn't about sex.

Grimm stood and smiled at him. "Get comfortable. With you in ten."

"Take fifteen if that means you're clean." Kyle sat down on the bed. He pulled a bottle of massage oil from his duffel bag and set it on the nightstand. The nurses had given it to him to rub on his skin, but he was less than religious about keeping that unfeeling flesh in perfect condition. Now, of course, it would serve a different purpose. Or rather, that was what the morph would expect. Anything to keep up appearances.

And yet, thinking of Grimm's powerful body, arousal washed through him. He had to check visually to see if it did anything. It didn't. Too bad he couldn't just get a cyber dick when they installed the legs. Fucking morph disruptor tech had ruined that forever.

He listened to the water run in the bathroom, sympathetic to the pleasure it would bring, even to an alien, after a long trip in space.

 He lay back on the bed, rubbed a smudge from one of the metal pieces holding his legs, counted his breaths. And gazed down his body, his stomach, his groin, his quads and knees, his skin dark against the sheets.

The water stopped. He closed his eyes, straining to listen to Grimm's movements.