A hnna scraped burnt fat off the last dish and scoured the metal until it gleamed under the beady eye and caustic tongue of the restaurant owner.
Her blood boiled. Axo’s information couldn’t be relied on. Negotiation wasn’t a word the Traxan port authority recognized, and the purchase of sun protection and radiation immunization turned out to be mandatory. Within seconds of the spaceport Customs official determining their credit balance at zero, they’d been designated assignments to earn transport to Trax.
While Tierc scrapped for credits in a boxing ring, she’d been given kitchen drudgery. She’d spotted a pleasure den, thought she could put her training to good use, but apparently, she was too scrawny. A disturbing assessment given the indigenous Veltais were little more than sunbaked skin on bone.
Thankfully, Zeke’s holovid drone was forbidden to operate in the spaceport. The drone sat in her bag, waiting for them to emerge planetside, and although she’d love to forget its existence, failure to record their challenge would forfeit their points.
The po-faced manager slapped two credits on the sud-covered drainer and began yelling at another poor sap that had just walked in. Grabbing the money and her bag, Ahnna fled. She found Tierc dancing rings around a ten foot mountain of muscle.
Grinning, she pushed her way through the roaring crowd. Now this was entertainment… watching a Qui get his ass handed to him. Someone was yelling in a language she didn’t recognize but then her translator switched in. “I got a thousand on you! Stop messin’ with him and I’ll give you ten percent!”
Ahnna looked for the shouter, checked back on Tierc and saw him grab the alien’s wrist, slide between his legs, and wrench the mountain’s arm sideways as he somersaulted back onto his feet. A bull-sized head slammed down onto concrete, the rest of him collapsed in a tangled heap.
Fuck. Why’d the Qui have to be a dead-sexy skilled fighter?
Tierc jumped the ring bars, took something off a ringside Veltais, and then he was walking towards her. She hadn’t realized he’d seen her.
“How much you get?” he asked.
“Two credits. You?”
“Five hundred.”
“Damn.”
“This place is wired.”
“And you’ve got hatred directed your way.” She gestured at a posse of assholes growling at a port official and pointing in their direction.
“Surprised you care. Come on. Move fast. I know you can.”
They slipped into a corridor Ahnna recognized. She dragged him into a cafe and out the back exit. She checked up and down the service tunnel. “This way.”
“Thought you were busy washing dishes.”
“Got a food break.”
A clothing store gave them access to the main square and then they were in the port medical facility.
Tierc put down five credits and smiled at the Veltais female on duty. “I’ll make it ten if you give us the protection we need to go planetside right now.”
* * *
They jumped off a public transit at a city gate marked Trax Dijin, the only passengers to disembark.
Ahnna watched the transit follow the curving city perimeter and disappear. She studied the rusting metal wall rising close on one hundred feet and then turned to the barren desert behind them. Broken layers of red-orange cloud supported a purple-black sky. “Do they know something we don’t?”
“Undoubtedly.” Suspicion dented Tierc’s brow as he assessed their surroundings. The holovid drone took off from his shoulder and blocked their way to the gate. Zeke’s voice asked Tierc to show Ahnna his winnings for the benefit of the audience.
They both ignored his request, Ahnna too busy comparing a map she’d purloined at the port with the city map Axo had downloaded to their tablet. She studied the numerous routes radiating out through the city. “These maps don’t match.” She looked at the drone. “Zeke, did Octiron program Axo with false data? Can we rely on anything that AI squit says?”
“You’ll have to talk to Crandal about that.” Zeke sounded uncomfortable.
“I’ll take that as a no” Tierc commented. He consulted the port’s map. “I see a shortcut to the city center there.” He pointed to a street.
Ahnna shrugged. She walked towards the holovid, forcing the drone to fly backwards.
The Dijin gate opened onto another world.
Heat and the nauseous odor of body sweat hit Ahnna first. There had to be a thousand plus bodies within fifty feet, a viscous tide that sucked her in. Tierc grabbed her arm before they separated. He molded against Ahnna’s backside, his arm wrapping around her waist before she could protest. The holovid filmed somewhere above their heads. Something hard pressed against her lower back and she glared up at Tierc even as instant arousal trickled into her panties.
Desire heated his eyes. “Don’t act surprised.”
Ahnna looked away before she succumbed to the haze of lust swathing her. A small part of her pitied him; that erection had to hurt. Pity morphed to pleasure that rippled through her belly and intensified the distracting ache in her loins. Now Tierc’s arm around her waist supported her weight, Ahnna’s knees stricken by an overpowering desire to give in the inevitable. She thrilled to his response to her closeness, her nerve ends set afire. She tingled all over, the crowd secondary to her awareness. Tierc carried her before him and she couldn’t focus on where he was taking her. She imagined hitting a wall, strong hands lifting her up, his cock sliding inside her.
“Not long now,” he whispered.
What? Her heart tumbled and Ahnna mentally jolted her wayward thoughts into line.
“Can’t you control yourself?” she hissed, relying on his sharp hearing to catch her words.
“Not around you. You’re one of a kind.”
She caught his reply, the roaring din faded. The crowd thinned, the pressure crushing her body eased. Tierc no longer pressed against her and, physically, she missed his presence. They were in an alley, strewn with rubbish and wooden crates. Buildings towered above them, tiny soulless windows. Ahnna could hear screaming, shots and whines, shouts. Menace and fear permeated the air. She automatically checked for her sidearm, a blaster Octiron permitted solely for personal defense, found the weapon still in its holster wrapped to her upper thigh.
The holovid dropped over them. Tierc managed to eye her with a discomfiting level of interest even as he scanned their surroundings. Ahnna turned her back to him, assuming a standard search and clear maneuver. They rotated around a spot equidistant between them, Tierc looking for threats from above.
“Clear,” he said, “but don’t drop your guard.”
“Because that’s what I do in new and unpredictable situations.” She searched the shadows leading to a mountain of junk that had created a dead end, perhaps explaining why no one else bothered with the alley. “Do you have the map?”
Tierc pulled the tablet from his jacket and handed it to her. He continued to stand guard while she checked their position, except they appeared to be standing outside the city.
Ahnna tapped the GSR comms-link fitted around her ear, the metalwork designed to emulate the Great Space Race logo. “Axo, our reported position is incorrect, and your map bears no resemblance to reality.” Static filled her ear. “Axo? Shit. Are we in a dead zone?”
Tierc indicated the high buildings. “Possible. We’ll make better progress across the roofline. Try again higher up.” He marched over to the closest door, grabbed a handle and slid it sideways.
Ahnna followed him in.
Tierc stopped her. “Not sure our immunization will be enough. There are mold spores everywhere, not ones I recognize.”
“I can’t see any spores.”
“Outside your visible range.”
“Of course. Silly me. Nearly forgot you’re not human.”
His head snapped around, irritation darkening his expression. “Really? You want to start that again, now?” His lips thinned. “Use your air-filter or don’t. I don’t care.” He stomped forward and kicked an empty box down the hallway as he pulled out his respirator.
The holovid dived before Ahnna, blocking her view of Tierc and filming her reaction. She scowled, annoyed that she felt ashamed, even more irritated a Qui could make her feel that way. Her blood rose, warmed her cheeks to the tips of her ears. Dammit. Her comment had been uncalled for, downright bitchy given the circumstances. Raiding her backpack she pulled out her protection gear. She had her nanos and the immunization, still better safe than sorry. Heck, he even waited for her at the bottom of a stairwell, his weapon raised, eyes on the entry way behind her, covering her ass.
She put on a spurt and joined him. “Sorry.”
For a moment, he didn’t react—maybe her muttered apology too obviously reluctant—but then a smile creased the corner of his eyes. “No worries. Tan your hide later.”
Ahnna froze.
* * *
The way Ahnna’s eyes opened wide stoked a chuckle in Tierc’s belly, a welcome relief to tap down his anger. The little expression he could make out behind Ahnna’s respirator screamed pure outrage and her fingers clutched her blaster way too tightly for comfort.
Okay, humor wasn’t her strong point, and clearly payback he longed to rain down on her ass was not going to win her affection, but skal, one day, he was going to kiss the sass out of her. Well, she had apologized—he’d take that small step towards a day when a careless word wouldn’t earn him a knife in his back.
She led the way to the roof, blaster in hand, her irritation visible in her stiff and agitated bearing, but as they left the safety of the stairway she began to move with a fluid and purposeful grace. Watching Ahnna in action reminded Tierc that he collaborated with a trained operative of HD-X, a terrorist in the eyes of the Qui-UR alliance. Hard to think of her that way with her cute butt encased in tight-fitting pants peeking out from under her jacket.
They picked their way across the city high rise, respirator free once they were outside, quickly discovered they weren’t the only ones evading the crowds. Tierc easily hurdled over the space from one roofline to another. Ahnna missed her landing on one crumbling roof and he shot out his hand, grabbed her wrist and hauled her over. After that, she accepted his outstretched hand for the larger jumps until they moved in tandem.
Tierc stopped to pinpoint their position on Ahnna’s local map. They wanted a quieter district where they could find a local kid to help out and hopefully make contacts that could direct them closer to House Verdon.
“Why the hell isn’t Axo responding?” Ahnna rapped the GSR logo that doubled as a comms-link.
She breathed lightly after the exertion, despite the heat. Her armpits were free to the air, but all Tierc could detect was a fragrant smell that only enhanced her natural pheromones. He adjusted his cock.
“You’re not even gonna hide it?”
“Ahnna, if you weren’t a Qui-hating xenophobe, we’d be mated by now.”
Her jaw dropped.
Tierc detected movement on an adjacent rooftop. “You may refuse to accept our connection, but a Qui knows when he’s met a compatible mate.” He briefly met her shocked gaze. “It’s difficult to resist such a powerful calling.”
“You’re insane if you think I’d ever consider the idea…”
Tierc shrugged. Instinct held his focus on the silver-haired male headed their way. “You can’t hide the truth, no matter how much you scowl at me. Pheromones don’t lie. I arouse you and you arouse me. What would HD-X say about that?”
The man on the adjacent rooftop stopped, watched them. He murmured something into a wristband.
Ahnna had turned to a nearby stairwell and was reattaching her respirator, but just before she applied her mouth filter, she answered his question. “They’d say I should kill you, and if I can’t kill you before you rape me, then I should kill myself.”
Tierc pounded the stairs behind her. “Rape?” Skal! HD-X was fixated on rape; they couldn’t imagine the concept of mutual attraction between lovers, regardless of species.
Ahnna didn’t reply. A high-pitched moan stopped her mid-step and then a scrawny bundle of coffee-tanned limbs burst out from under the bottom stair well and disappeared into a cavernous area stacked with crates and dusty building supplies.
“Ahh!”
They raced towards the scream and sounds of crashing brick. Tierc took the long route to cut the kid off. He arrived as Ahnna dropped to her knees beside a terrified child shoving a glass blade towards her face. She dodged the sharp edge, caught the boy’s wrist and extricated the weapon from his grip.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” she soothed.
Damn, the Veltais child couldn’t be more than five. Tierc crouched behind him and the boy recoiled, his eyes wide with terror.
“Do you understand us?” Tierc asked, checking Octiron’s translator worked as promised.
The boy looked at him, caught sight of the holovid. The drone settled on a steel beam.
Tierc gestured at a nasty gash leaking black blood from the kid’s side. “We can help.”
Ahnna was already pulling a medkit from her pack. She also pulled out a bag of gooey cookies. The boy’s eyes fixed on them. Ahnna offered him one. “Tierc, your water. Wash that blood off so I can see what we’ve got.”
“Where’d you get the cookies?” Tierc asked.
“Call it a perk from washing dishes all day.” She showed the young Veltais the packs of med wipes and binding gel, her smile a warm reassuring grin that had Tierc’s heart leaping. “You know, we’ve got one more job today,” she said conversationally as she took the water off Tierc and finished cleaning black blood out of a deep cut.
Teeth mangled up in the treacly confection, the kid watched and listened. Still nervous, he didn’t object to Ahnna inspecting his side. Tierc watched her even as he stepped back to stand guard. His teammate was a skilled actress, but this was something else. Ahnna kept eye contact with the boy the entire time, her fingers working on automatic, cleaning the wound, applying grippers and then binding gel.
“That job is to help a child and I think you might count! So you just did us a huge favor.” She sprayed a sterile clear dressing over the top. “I need your name to get paid though. You okay with that?”
“Fais.”
“Fais?” Ahnna pointed to her chest. “Ahnna.”
“Ahnna.” A bell-like vibration curled the Veltais’ voice.
“That’s right.” She brushed a lock of silver hair out of the boy’s eyes. “Why were you hiding, Fais?”
He shrugged. “Dunno.”
Tierc started at the universal translator’s inclusion of slang.
“You don’t know?” Ahnna asked.
The boy shrugged, his attention on Ahnna’s cookies. She offered him some water, which Fais lugged down, and then she let him grab the cookie he really wanted.
“Where do you live? We’ll take you home. Do our job properly.”
Huge tears welled in the child’s big eyes. Eyes the color of the Indian Ocean, coffee-colored skin that swirled with caramel, and straggly silver hair—the Veltais produced beautiful offspring and Tierc’s heart melted.
“Mama said to hide.”
“Hide? Why?”
“Rafters come. Mama scared.”
“Do you have a father?”
Grubby fists pounded the boy’s eyes as he hunched over. “I dunno,” his scrawny body shook with sobs, “Rafters come. For tribute.”
Tribute? Tierc stiffened at a word steeped in hidden meaning.
Ahnna’s eyes met Tierc’s, her frown conveying her concern. His pulse leapt at the sound of thumping footsteps descending the stairwell. He shushed them both with a raised finger against his lips. Fais froze, the look of a boy facing death in the eye. Ahnna casually shifted position, her body effectively screening Fais from any approaching threat.
Tension coiled in Tierc, every sinew primed to explode at the slightest provocation. If the holovid took off, he’d blast the damn thing to smithereens.
If those males threatened this boy…
Several males shot out the stairwell and headed straight for the entryway, shouting and cussing, their voices fading.
They all relaxed.
Ahnna pointed to their location on the map. “We’re here,” she advised Fais. “Where is home?”
Turned out, Fais lived two blocks away.
Tierc leaned close, kept his voice low. “Stay here with Fais. I’m going to check it out.” He turned to the vid drone. “Zeke, if you follow, stay high and out of sight.”
The drone shot towards the door.
Outside, the streets were strangely empty. The sun was setting, dusk falling. Unable to blend into a crowd, Tierc stuck to the shadows. He peered around a corner and spotted the silver-haired Veltais from the rooftop.
Surrounded by his pack of Rafters, the man harassed a lone woman on her knees. “Where is he?”
“Fais is off-world! With his uncle! But I can pay you!” The Veltais woman was in tears, her dress torn. “Atton will be home. He always pays!”
Tierc swept the tiny windows up the street, his sharp eyes detecting movement.
“He earns tribute,” the woman begged. “We can pay. We have two days!”
Skal! The fuckers were running a mafia protection racket. His fingers twitched. He was a noble Qui, Alliance Enforcement. At home in the Qui Empire, he would run his blade through their guts and be done. On Earth and UR colonies, he would shoot first, ask questions later, and leave them to the United Regions to prosecute.
Standing by watching the corruption unfold went against every grain in his body.
If they attacked the woman, he’d step out.
The thickset leader struck the woman’s cheek and Tierc holstered his blaster. He would rend them apart with his talons. Snap their necks. His Qui surged forth. Pain racked his body and he stifled a gasp, shuddered as he fought to regain control of mind over body. His shift retreated.
“Two days!”
Tierc and the woman both sagged in relief.
His central nervous system fired at random. He shook like he had the DT’s. He raised a hand, studied the band on his wrist. Until the suppressor cuffs, Tierc hadn’t realized how much his emotions drew out a partial shift, even while he retained human form. He could have taken these men without his Qui. A thirst for justice robbed his control. He leaned back into a recess, ignored a rodent gnawing his boot. The men were leaving and he didn’t want to change their minds.