Kayana wondered if she had been right to doubt.

An hour after their encounter with the robots, she and Ax had settled back into a platonic silence. They each kept primed for another disaster, but they’d also fallen into the easy rhythm of being around each other. If anything, it seemed like things were finally going in their favor.

She was about to have him check the tracker again when the rumble-whine of trans-atmospheric thrusters split the air and silenced the forest sounds around them. Ax dashed into` a hollow space under the roots of a giant tree, and she charged after him. The smell of damp earth pressed around them, and she sought out his hand in the gloom. He squeezed her fingers as they held their breath. With her other hand, she activated the spark-glove, her v’tana sedate as she shaped the flame to a dull golden-orange glow.

The engines pulled closer, the ship slowing as it passed over the forest. Her comm unit crackled as someone hijacked the emergency band to transmit on all channels. A woman’s voice cut through the static. “Anaxagoras, I know you’re down there. I’ve been sent to collect you. Turn yourself in, and I promise that your transport will be painless and comfortable.”

Ax looked like he’d seen a ghost. He’d gone cold and still, his breathing quick despite the lack of exertion. When he recovered, he squeezed her hand again. “Actually, there’s a couple of things I should tell you. I wanted to put this off, but circumstances...”

She glared at him. “Your full name is Anaxagoras? I can see why you changed it.”

Her attempt to make light of the mode got a smile from him, but the mirth never reached his eyes. “So, remember those criminals I told you I might have robbed?”

“I remember less ‘might have’ when we were discussing it, but go on.”

He swallowed, the sound loud in the small space. “Unless I’ve forgotten the sound of her voice, that was Marjon Shamoun. I believe her title was regional head of marketing for Bellerophon Pharmaceuticals. Which mostly meant finding street dealers to peddle narcotics for them.”

She narrowed her eyes, “Bellerophon? That sounds awfully legitimate for a criminal organization.”

Ax’s smile was wan in the dim light. “The most successful criminals cloak their enterprise in respectability. Is that in those maxims you always cite? Because if it’s not, it should be.”

There was a similar sentiment, actually, but she resisted the urge to quote Al’kheri. It’s not like it would comfort him at the moment. “I guess I don’t understand. Just how much did you steal that they would chase you across the galaxy and scour a planet trying to find you?”

“It’s not how much. It’s what.” He took another deep breath, steeling himself for whatever he planned to say next. “The head of the company, Gobnait Xanthopoulos, was my fiancée. The money I stole was her dowry.”

Darkness rushed in as her v’tana snuffed out, taking the small flame with it.

Of course it did. After all, her skill wasn’t high enough to keep connected with her v’tana during times of emotional distress. That was why Endarion had walked away from her; how he’d stolen her family away with his discussion of how embarrassed they must be to have her in the House.

For several moments, she couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears. “What happened to ‘no more secrets’?”

“And you told me everything about your past?”

“Yes!” She dug her fingers into her thighs to keep from strangling him. “That was the whole point.”

“I just thought bringing it up might be painful for you. I was afraid it might awaken some unpleasant memories for you, what with your past.”

“Or, you know, that I might sympathize with someone whose fiancé turned against her, broke truth, and stole away with her most prized possession.” She wanted to scream, wanted to find some way to beat the realization into his thick skull, but she couldn’t muster the energy. Her v’tana collapsed in on itself until her chest felt like the cold center of a dead star. How dare he bring up her past like he could protect her from it. When he was just dragging her through it all over again.

He dragged a hand down his face then changed direction to stab his fingers back into the spiky mop of his hair. “I wanted to tell you...”

“You. Craven. Larf!” She didn’t care if her voice drew the attention of every death machine on the planet. “How can you lie to me like that?”

“I’m telling the tru—”

“You didn’t want me to know! You wanted the whole sordid thing to blow over. Me knowing was the last damn thing you wanted, or you’d have opened with it, instead of waiting until you didn’t have a choice and needed me to pull your ass out of the fire.”

“Trust me, the last thing Gobby deserves is your sympathy. She certainly wouldn’t spare any for you. Ask me how Bellerophon is so successful.”

“I don’t care why.”

He cut her off. “The mining contractors she hires have to work men extra shifts to keep her supplied. At the prices she offers, the men are willing to do it. Extra shifts require staying awake longer, and the money she pays them comes right back to her through the illegal stims trade. And if they get hurt on the job? She sells the drugs to fix that, at artificially high prices.”

She didn’t care. Couldn’t care. “Tell me the truth. Would you have told me about your fi...about her, if they hadn’t found you?” Her mouth wouldn’t form the word fiancé.

Ax looked at his hands, forgetting that she could see him in the dark. His non-answer told her everything she needed to know. She crawled out from under the tree roots and started walking.

He followed her, swearing as he got caught on a branch. Good. He reached for her, but pulled back at the last moment. “Several teams have yachts in orbit, right? Marjon doesn’t know which one is ours. All we need to do is transport back to Algol, then jump out of the system.” He inhaled, like he’d had an idea. “Or, you know, we do the piracy thing. Take over one of the other yachts. Just in case Marjon matched up the transponder signals. We could blame it on confusion or whatever, but by the time it’s all sorted out we could be three or four jumps away.”

Unbelievable. “That’s not how any of this works. It can’t happen like that.”

“Well, obviously not.” He sounded almost manic in his desperation to convince her. “We would have to get the stone first, otherwise we won’t have a chance at winning the competition.”

Her eyes burned. Stupid. She’d been so stupid. No wonder Endarion hadn’t wanted her. She was always the means to someone else’s end. Even now. “Are you even hearing yourself?” She stared at him, dumbfounded. “There’s a person out there who wants to kill you. And every minute of this conversation, I sympathize with her a little more.”

He finally took the last step to close the distance, and he tugged her shoulder in an effort to turn her around. “But what about the prize money? What about getting your own ship?”

“I already have a ship. I’ve just been letting you ride in it because I find the idea of spacing people distasteful.” She tugged herself out from under his hand and took a step backward.

He didn’t follow. After a few more steps, she turned her back on him. It was like she’d found the event horizon that allowed her to escape his pull. Each step she took away from him allowed her to move faster.

He called after her one last time. “Kayana, I’m sorry.”

It gave her pause, not the least because it sounded like he meant it. In his own way, she supposed he did. “No, Ax. You’re upset that you have to own the consequences of your actions. You’re not sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Goodbye.”

#

AX LOOKED AT THE EMPTY woods where Kayana had gone and tried to come up with any scenario that could be worse. A dozen different retorts he could hurl after her flitted through his brain, but since it had been upwards of fifteen minutes since she’d left, it was unlikely that she’d hear them. Plus, his heart wasn’t in it.

His heart wasn’t really anywhere, if he was being honest.

“At least she didn’t kill me for breaking the tracker.” There. He found one positive thing about his situation. See? He could be an optimist, when he put his mind to it.

On impulse, he tugged the scanner up and checked it. Unfortunately, the screen hadn’t magically repaired itself, though it still gave off a strong ping when he pointed it in the right direction. Or what he hoped was the right direction.

Fuck it. Beats standing around waiting for Marjon to find me. Ax started in the direction indicated by the tracker. If he kept walking, there was a slim chance that he’d move into an area she’d already scanned, and he’d be safe.

Well, as safe as you could be on a deathtrap planet seeded with additional obstacles by a corporation that equated contestant mortality with high ratings.

As if he needed a reminder of the planet’s lethality, a thin tripwire caught his ankle and snapped with a metallic pop. Ax immediately dropped to the ground. A pair of heavy blades spun out of the woods and sank into a nearby tree trunk at head and chest level. He glanced at his foot and unwound the nearly invisible wire from his boot.

Sadly, the holovid drone had been out of the way when the booby trap went off. With a whirr of its internal motors, it floated down to get a closeup of him face down in the dirt and moss.

He glared at it. “Did you get the shot, Berniss?”

The screen remained dark, no answer forthcoming. Ax rolled his eyes and shoved himself back to his feet, while the drone maintained a cautious distance just out of arm’s reach. He wondered if Berniss had reprogrammed them that way, or if they had figured out that bit of self-preservation all on their own.

After the first encounter, he checked the trail in front of him for tripwires as he walked. He’d gotten lucky the first time, something he couldn’t rely on happening again. With a heavy branch, he tapped the ground in front of him, listening for the metallic tap of another pit while he tried to remember the specific rules about completing challenges. Without Kayana, he doubted he could do more than find the stone but there was nothing stopping him from doing that and then calling her to him. It made the overland travel slow, but he supposed it beat just walking. At least it gave him something with which to distract himself.

It wasn’t that he didn’t sympathize with Kayana’s point of view. He did. They’d both been engaged to people who weren’t what they expected. She’d tried to keep her engagement out of a sense of family duty, he’d done it out of self-preservation. After two years with Gobby, he couldn’t approve of her methods. Gobby preyed on people whose only crime was wanting to feed their families.

Finding a line he wouldn’t cross had given him strength enough to say no.

A line he pissed away by betraying a pair of racers he’d never met. Ax added that regret to the list of things he wished he’d told Kayana. Maybe if he saw her again, he’d be able to.

After a half-hour of walking, he began to wonder what would happen if he let the traps get him. The air remained cool, but it had also become frustratingly still the deeper he went into the woods. What little sweat he produced sat on his skin instead of evaporating, making him feel clammy and damp all over. The only reassuring sign he’d had was the steadily increasing chime for the tracker as he got closer to wherever Octiron had hidden the damn gemstone.

Thirty minutes past that, and he emerged into a clearing where, on a central pedestal, the gem sat in plain sight. A laugh bubbled up from deep in his gut. Caution kept him from charging forward. He knew from experience that the bastards at the company weren’t going to make it so obviously easy. He grabbed a hefty fallen branch and tossed it into the clearing.

A bolt of electricity crackled from the gem’s tower and exploded the log into flinders.

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem,” he whispered. He looked around for another log and repeated the process. As he’d suspected, the energy coursed through the gem itself before the tower fired. That made the jewel a part of the circuitry. Removing it should shut the system down.

Or it would trigger a massive capacitor discharge that scoured the clearing clean of life. He triggered his comm unit. “Kayana, I’ve got the stone right in front of me. If you wanted to help me out, that would be great.”

He circled around the clearing, studying the pylon from every angle. It took him longer than he expected but even after he’d finished, Kayana hadn’t contacted him back. Ax collected a small handful of rocks and side-armed a toss toward the pylon to get his range right. The rock bounced off the metal surface and dropped into the grass. So he could reach; now he just needed force and accuracy.

He wound up and fired a new rock toward the gem, hoping for enough of an angle to knock it free of the pylon.

“Vandalism? Is that what you’ve been reduced to?” The voice, dripping with sarcasm, made Ax whirl around. Two people in yellow Bellerophon exo-suits stood nearby. The woman was the taller of the two, with a short, androgynous haircut that fit easily under a helmet.

“Marjon,” Ax said. “And, Kitt, right? Are you still huffing each other’s waste air?”

The shorter of the pair, the bronze-skinned Ortiz named Kitt, took a step forward and dropped a hand to the pistol at his hip.

Marjon put her hand on Kitt’s shoulder and tugged him back behind her. “Please tell me you plan to make this difficult, Anaxagoras. The chief said we couldn’t kill you, but there’s a lot of space between where you are now and dead.” As emphasis to her point, she drew out the enormous knife that was her calling card and used it to clean her nails as she leaned against the tree. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Kitt feels he owes you for sneaking off on his watch.”

“Four hours, you bastard,” Kitt growled. “Chief hanged me by my shoulders in heavy-g for four long hours.”

Ax swallowed. The Ortiz had colonized high-gravity worlds, but like most of Gobby’s crew, Kitt had spent too long in space and was more accustomed to lower gravity. Four hours of being crushed under the weight of his own body must have felt like suffocation, but without the ability to die. “I thought you looked taller, buddy. Can you reach the top shelf now?”

As Ax had hoped, the jibe pushed the mercurial Kitt over the edge, and he charged forward. With a quick dodge and a hip check, he knocked the shorter fighter two steps into the clearing.

A lightning bolt from the tower felled him immediately.

Ax spun to run, but Marjon had already closed the difference. Her knife caught the front of his exo-suit and puckered the fabric slightly. “The chief’s really going to hate that,” she said, inclining her head toward what was left of Kitt. “Poor Kitt had almost gotten back into her good graces for losing you. Still, I think you should tell her yourself. Don’t you?”

“Not unless I have to.” He looked to either side. Marjon was famous among Gobby’s crew for her speed—there were whispers that Gobby had hooked the enforcer on some kind of combat drug that heightened her reflexes. Of course, there were also rumors that the woman was a cyborg, so he didn’t put a lot of stock in the stories.

“Damn shame that you do, then.” She smiled and tapped the stud on her lapel with a free hand. “Price of Mercy this is Marjon. I’ve got him. Two to pick up.”