Gambit (12 page)

Chae shot a look at him, quick, hard, before she fixed her attention back on the screen. “So, what was it?” An energy strike streaked past her, impacting the approaching shield. A flare of blinding light flashed over the screen and her eyes burned. “Fuck.”

“A candidate used to sit on the sunder-seld…Now, for the first time, they have their right to rule embedded in crystal.” He paused. “There was a bloodbath a century ago. The sunder-seld refused to allow us back into the citadel. Caught us in force-fields. It relented one month ago.”

Daned’s words washed over her as she fought to keep her focus on flying. Her eyes stung. Hell, her whole body ached. “So I was a mule?” She gritted her teeth. “And you didn’t tell me.” Anger tightened her face and she glared at the screen. He’d used her, known her greed would make her protect the crystal hidden in her boot. Bastard. “I wasn’t a decoy.” She snorted. “I can see how the not-liking-you works right now.”

“It’s a race. My prince gambled in not contacting you until the very last minute. Each…mule started from a point chosen by the sunder-seld—”

“Y’know, I don’t care.” Her knuckles ached from their hard grip on the rods. “I just want to land and get my payment.”

“We have to land close to the citadel.”

“Why? You failed.
My
crystal was destroyed.” The words burned sour satisfaction in her gut. “The Ara Family cannot take the throne.”

He straightened in his chair. “I told you. I’d do anything to stop the re-formation of the Host. Even if that means sitting on the sunder-seld myself.”

Chae ignored the twitch at his use of that forbidden word…and then what he was about to do sank in. “You’re going to crown yourself emperor, or prince, or whatever the hell it is?” Her greed rose, she couldn’t help it. “You’ll have the production of the quadrant’s black crystal at your command.”

“Help me get to the throne and I can share more than a few crates with you.”

He was playing her again. She knew that. But the promise of so much wealth was impossible to resist. She spun the ship away from an energy strike, grimacing as it caught the starboard engine, and the tau lurched. Hell, she had no choice. The last hit had fucked the engines. They had to land on the planet and Daned could keep her alive.

“How? Without the crystal—”

“I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. So…deal?”

“Deal.” She grunted as the ship took another hit. The console flashed too many warning lights at her and smoke curled down to the floor. Her stomach tightened. The screen crawled with interceptors, all of them bursting through the planet shields. Not good. So not good. “Because we’re going to be lucky to land in one piece. And I’ll need the money for surgery.”

Daned ignored her. “Last shield down.”

“Good. Hold on.” And Chae dropped the ship through the atmosphere like a stone.

The tau screamed around her and her body tore with pain. Chae fought to stay conscious. She’d done the maneuver before, but in her beautiful, resilient gamma-class cruiser. That hadn’t felt as if her bones were crawling out of muscles and bursting through skin.

They broke out of low cloud over a dense forest canopy and Chae fought to control, to steer into open space. Ahead a great black monolith rose out from the trees, its battlements crumbled and shattered. The screen magnified the structure and the sharp sunlight caught on the jagged weapons’ fire strafing the tower.

“It’s built from black crystal.” Chae couldn’t stop the awe staining her voice.

“It’s
carved
from black crystal. There.” He stabbed his finger at a point on the screen. “You can land there. It’s a break in the trees outside the citadel.”

Chae couldn’t help the laughter that broke from her. Thin smoke plumed up from the cockpit floor, and the acrid odor of burning wires, of heated metal, filled her lungs. The tau would be lucky to make it that far. Something chugged and then died. The sudden silence made her stomach drop. Silence meant death.

“Hang on to something. We just lost the engines.” Chae willed the stupid ship to stay in the air. She yanked the extra restraints over her body, ones meant to secure her in the case of crashing fucking fast into the ground. Already the screen showed the interceptors picking up the chase again. “Fuck. All right. Going in.”

The upper branches of the trees scraped the underside of the hull and she gripped the guidance rods hard. Almost. Almost…

A branch caught, twisting, turning the tau, and she lost all control. She could only cling to her seat as the ship rolled and bounced over the trees, her heart in her throat, her teeth clenched to keep back the need to vomit. She caught a glance of Daned and a fresh wave of panic hit her. He’d pulled down the protective restraints, but he looked…

Oh shit. His skin was gray, and in the wild spinning of the ship, she couldn’t be sure he was breathing. Her heart clenched. He looked dead.

***

The tau smashed into a line of trees and rolled to a stop.

Chae let out a low grown. Not one part of her body didn’t feel battered, bruised and beaten. And of course she was upside down. Branches tore through the screen, ripping a wide hole through the front of the ship, smoke escaping, and fresh air and light cutting through to the interior.

Instincts kicked in. She had to get out. The interceptors would find them and torch the ship. She jerked herself free of the restraints, twisting and landing on what was the curved interior roof. Her tunic warmed her feet. What? Had Daned liked the idea of her flying naked? Snorting to herself, she tugged it on and looked up at him.

Chae pulled in a slow breath and willed her heart to slow. He was gray and slumped against the restraining belts. There was a chance he was alive. She couldn’t leave him to burn. Cursing, she braced herself and yanked at the straps holding him. She winced as he thudded to the floor, arms and legs flopping. Her heart squeezed and she denied the burn in her eyes. She didn’t cry. She’d never cried.

“Come on, lump,” she muttered, dropping down beside him. Shaking fingers tried for a pulse…and found nothing. She touched his still-warm cheek, the contact spearing a fierce and unexpected ache through her flesh. A tear splashed onto her cheek. She’d lost something, someone…important, and it hurt like hell.

“Fuck.” Her fingers curled away from his skin and she pulled in a tight breath. She looked up. There, beyond the hiss and loud pop of the cooling metal, the interceptors’ engines screeched across the sky. “We have to get you out, Daned.”

Her voice broke on his name. She would pay her last debt to him and pull him away from the wreckage. The thought of the interceptors incinerating him tightened her gut. She rolled his body, slipped her hands under his armpits and tugged.

The one advantage of being upside down was that she didn’t have to drag him over the console. Still, he was a dead weight. She bit the inside of her cheek, the pain diverting her from more tears. She’d known him a day. Less. It was her upside-down life—literally—that had her emotions churning.

She concentrated on the problem of getting him out. Her bare feet slipped on the smooth metal of the screen. Her back muscles and spine ached from moving a solid weight, and she had to heft him to one side to pull him through the narrow slice in the metal. The fresh air filled her straining lungs. The unfamiliar whoop of birds, the rustle of trees and her bare feet sinking into black soil and leaf mulch had her skin itching. Arkhengai didn’t do nature beyond the odd weed.

The scream of interceptors cut across the sky and Chae cursed. She dragged Daned past the splintered bark on crushed trees and into the dark safety of the forest. Easing him onto a soft pile of leaves, she let her hands slip free. Everything ached, her arms, her shoulders, the small of her back, and she dropped down beside him for a few moments. Just to catch her breath. That was all. To rest her body. Not to grieve.

She teased her fingers though the cool darkness of his hair, drawing it back from his forehead. A thin shaft of sunlight cut through the canopy and gilded his face. He was so beautiful and his kind of beauty hurt to look at.

Her throat grew tight and she pressed her fingers to her eyes to deny the run of tears. Damn it, she had to move, somehow find her way off the planet. She pushed herself to her feet. A vast tower of black crystal made her the richest woman in the quadrant and she had no way to enjoy her newfound wealth. Just her luck.

The air around her vibrated and the squawks of the birds mixed with those of the interceptors’ engines. Chae stared down at Daned. He looked almost peaceful. A lump thickened her throat. She’d had to leave her mother in the same way. Dead in a little room, where they were hiding from an enemy Chae couldn’t remember. Damn it, she needed to move, but instead she knelt in the damp earth and pressed a soft kiss to his cool lips. Her chest hurt with held breath and the choked sob trapped in her throat.

His death was wrong. Daned was everything she wasn’t. So much better than her, level-headed, fearless…Hell, mixed in with that, he was
loyal
to his traditions. She never thought she’d admire that in anyone, but he’d forced it on her. Her heart twisted at the image of him as emperor. Shining. Incredible. She would’ve been fiercely proud to have her thoughts change to reflect his shape. Now he was gone from her.

Tears splashed and she scrubbed them away with the heel of her hand.

She would kill Aleph-Nun for this. Push blunt spikes into his hearts. The heat of her anger kept back her sob and she willed herself to leave him, to find her feet and back away from his body.

A warning burst of air and noise, and the tau-class exploded in a white rush of light and heat. It knocked her to her knees and instinct had her fling her arms over Daned, protecting him from the spray of branches and soil thrown into the air.

The roar of the ships’ engines throbbed against her ears and she bit back a groan. One last screech and they pulled away, streaking across the blue sky. She closed her eyes and let her body flop with relief. They’d gone. And she was still alive.

“Can’t resist me?”

Chae clapped a hand to her mouth to shut off the cry. Her heart pounded. That had sounded like Daned…but it couldn’t be. There’d been no heartbeat. There still wasn’t. She shoved her hand into his loose robe, pressing her palm hard against his chest. What she found had her scrambling away from him until her spine hit a gnarled stump.

His heart was beating. Slow, weak, but beating.

Chae stared at his face, covered in soil and leaves and still gilded by a shaft of sunlight. She had to be imagining the flutter of the leaves. He couldn’t be—

“A little help?”

She hadn’t imagined his voice, raw, choked, but most definitely his voice. “Daned?”

“Did you try to bury me?”

A snort broke from her. “Be happy I pulled you from the tau. You’d be a cinder right now.”

“Appreciated.”

His shoulders twitched and the action propelled her forward. Her hands met his as he wiped the mulch from his face and then she was kissing him, hard, fast, her tongue seeking his parted lips, melting into him, his taste, his heat. Daned groaned—a good groan—and stroked his fingers over her hair, his other hand tugging at her tunic to find bare skin. He chased his fingertips along her spine to the cleft of her arse.

Sensation flared under her skin and she wanted nothing more that to get naked with him. Right now. In the muck and decaying leaves. Because he wasn’t dead. He was gloriously,
gloriously
alive. “How are you not still dead?” The words burst against his lips. “I mean…”

“I put myself in restorative sleep. All autonomic functions slow.”

“And you trusted me to get you out of the ship?”

His dark eyes held hers and the emotion clear in his eyes squeezed her heart. “I trust you.”

Damn it, she was not going to cry again. “We should get moving. Have to plant that perfect arse of yours on a throne.”

Daned let out a slow sigh. “Rolling around in the earth, with you hot and naked, so much more appealing.”

“After.” She gave him a wicked grin. “When you’re the richest man in the quadrant.”

He laughed. “You only want me for my money.”

Chae stole a quick kiss, teasing his bottom lip with her teeth, his sweet, dark taste making her want to agree to his idea of making out right there. She closed her eyes and pulled away. She licked her lips, savoring his taste. “You promised money
and
incredible sex.”

“Yes, I did.” He groaned and sat up, leaves and soil falling away. “We get to the citadel, I sit on the sunder-seld, become emperor and then I drag you into a room and do unspeakable things to you.”

A bright grin curved her mouth. She couldn’t help it. “Unspeakable?” She wet her lips and drew Daned’s gaze to her mouth. Heat spiked hot low into her belly. “Promise?”

“Oh, absolutely.” He pushed himself to his feet and took her hand. His strong fingers squeezed hers, and warm relief eased through her. She didn’t do this, this…attachment to someone else, but with Daned, it felt right. “Come on.” He tugged her deeper into the forest.

“Wait, how do you know which way to go?”

“Can’t you feel it? The tug in your blood? Black crystal calls to us, Chae. It’s a part of who, of what we are.”

Chae stumbled after him, absorbing his words. Her body was a riot of emotion and residual ache. She hardly knew what she felt. The sliver had thrummed under her fingers, she remembered that much. “How is it a part of us?”

“It’s why our creators—the Founders—built our race here.” He waved his free hand around the trees surrounding them. “Something in black crystal stabilizes the changes they made, and they bound it into our genes. This was a remote colony millennia ago. They had no clue that black crystals’ rarity and versatility would make them so coveted.”

“Nor the Ladaian aristocrats quite so rich.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “We’re not all rich.”

“So you
are
an aristocrat.” She smirked at him. “A sexual snob.”

He gave her a wicked smile she felt down to her toes. The need to shove him up against the nearest tree and strip him bare swept over her, hot, fast. “I could say I’m slumming.” He paused. “But that would be a lie.”