ë Archer - Collision Course

The would-be blackmailer’s small eyes widened as much as they were able. He shook with the combination of fear and pain.

Mara hurried forward and collected the fallen weapons. “Going to stamp out his miserable life?”

Blocky whimpered.

Breath and rage pushed through Kell’s body. The fucker had threatened Mara. Kell demanded blood.

But, as Blocky had helpfully reminded him, Kell was 8th Wing. They had a code, a sense of honor that had to be preserved. Cold-blooded murder was PRAXIS’s way.

“I want to.”

Blocky whimpered again.

He slammed a fist into the side of Blocky’s head. The man collapsed to the ground, splashing in the greasy puddles.

Mara gazed down at the unconscious man. She nudged him, not gently, with her boot. “Why not?”

“I shed that skin when I left Sayén.” He hefted Blocky’s substantial bulk over his shoulder. Gods, the man was heavy, but Kell didn’t stagger under his weight. “A killer’s skin.”

She gave him a look, and he distinguished the gleam of respect in her eyes. It nourished him, far more than killing ever had or could.

He turned and strode down the passageway.

She followed. “We’re not taking on any passengers. Especially not this ass.”

“Only room for two on the Arcadia.” They reached the cargo lift, and, in silence, rode it down to ground level. The lift spit them out into an alley. Garbage rested in moldering heaps, and Kell kicked the heaps apart to find precisely what he needed. Lengths of touw cord, used to bind pallets for shipping.

Mara knew exactly what to do. She wrapped the touw cord tightly around the unconscious man’s wrists and ankles, then, for good measure, she gagged him with a scrap of coarse cloth—without brushing off the dirtroaches skittering through its folds.

A largely-empty waste drum proved an excellent location for hiding the would-be interloper.

There was just enough room to cram him inside and replace the lid. Didn’t look like the alley got much foot traffic, so the location was secure. It wasn’t a death sentence, but it would take a lot of effort and determination for Blocky, with his broken arm, to fight his way free.

“That ought to hold him. Ten solar hours, at least.” She glanced around the alley. “Appropriate he should wind up here, with all the garbage. One regret, though.”

He glanced at her, curious.

“I didn’t get to punch him.” She kicked the drum. “The shit tried to hurt you.”

The only people who defended him were other Black Wraith squad members. She was the first civilian who gave a damn about him.

He didn’t care that they were standing in a grimy alley. He kissed her, hot and demanding. Her hands gripped his biceps, her hips cupped his. He wanted her against the wall—just like last night.

With a growl, he finally tore away from the kiss. This wasn’t the time, and definitely not the place.

“You keep promising a banquet.” She struggled for breath. “But all I’m getting are snacks.”

“I’ll give you a feast. But our appetites are going to be unsatisfied for a while.”

“I’m not good with delayed gratification.”

“We’re both hungry.”

“Wish that gave me some comfort.”

Hand-in-hand, they ran from the alley. Time kept moving onward, slipping away. Lieutenant Jur would be sold into slavery in a few hours. He readied himself for any threat, considering all the possibilities, all the hazards. Not just hazards to himself, but to Mara. Nothing would hurt her.

As they headed toward the docks and her ship, understanding hit him. He’d never been a covetous man. He deliberately kept his needs simple—street life had taught him that. But now he burned with greed. Each time he kissed Mara, each time they touched it only made him want more and more of her. Until he had everything. Until she was entirely his.

Saying goodbye to Beskidt By wasn’t a hardship. The place reminded Kell too much of what he had left behind on Sayén, what had been lost when PRAXIS used then abandoned his homeworld. He’d never known Sayén before it had been ruined, but he knew it after, as an animal that had devoured itself.

Even Mara, piloting her ship out of the city, looked faintly disgusted by what she saw, the same as when she’d taken a long look at the club’s daylit interior. Long-held beliefs falling away to reveal something raw and new beneath.

“Good to shake off that dump’s grime,” she murmured. She guided the ship above the skyline,

through the columns of greasy smoke and between the soundskiffs blaring pop songs and advertisements. Thick storm clouds formed a roiling, lightning-lashed boundary above them. “It’s time to start looking for a new place to roost.”

“Because of me.” A flat statement of fact that nevertheless cut deep. PRAXIS had ultimately cost him his home, but the 8th Wing had taken Mara’s by forcing her involvement, turning her traitor.

“Because of me.” She glanced over at him sitting beside her, and her eyes were the crystal green of distant oceans.

She didn’t blame him, though she had every right to. This day alone, she had given him unexpected gifts—protection, absolution. All he knew of honor and friendship was from the 8th Wing.

Mara owed him nothing. She was not a fellow soldier adhering to a shared code of conduct. What she gave him came from herself, her own will, her own strength.

He felt a change within his own self. Yet he did not feel diffused. Rather, he’d never been so sharp—she was the stone that honed him into a razor edge.

“Plausible deniability,” said Kell. “Tell everyone you didn’t know I was 8th Wing. That I was working undercover as a pleasure slave, and I forced you to cooperate.” Which wasn’t far from the truth.

“And lose my scavenger rep.” Her mouth quirked.

“Maybe your pride will get knocked down a little,” he acknowledged, “but you’ll come out clean.”

“As clean as anyone can be in the Smoke Quadrant.” She guided the ship through the heavy traffic above Beskidt By.

“You need cover, and I’m giving it to you.”

“And you don’t have to. I’ve got some thinking to do. Maybe after this is over, I’ll have to chart some new paths.”

The idea that she might want to be anything other than a scavenger startled him. She seemed to cling fiercely to the life she had made for herself. Yet it made sense. She was wasted as a scavenger.

He hated to see anything, any one, squandered.

“I feel like I should apologize,” he said, “but I can’t apologize for something I don’t regret.”

“The damn problem,” she answered, turning away to look out the cockpit window, “is that regret’s in short supply for me too.”

A silence that wasn’t exactly comfortable, yet not completely strained, fell between them as Mara flew them out of the boundaries of the city. They both seemed to sense that they had strayed into unknown territory, where delineations of allies and antagonists, partner and lover, blurred. He understood only three things with absolute clarity. The first is that he would find and rescue Lieutenant Jur. Second, he would keep Mara safe. And thirdly, but just as important, he would have her. Nothing else held relevance.

Beskidt By disappeared behind them, giving way to stretches of scrubby plains blotched with signs of habitation. He thought he spotted a few private compounds nestled in the sides of hills and ringed with plasma fences that doubtless incinerated anyone stupid enough to try and breach them.

Smugglers’ lairs. Gods knew what kind of contraband or illegally-gotten merch was being stored down there.

It was a planet populated entirely by criminals. On his homeworld, he had also been a criminal,

doing whatever he needed to stay alive. He had killed, he had stolen. Nothing he was proud of. But he survived, just as Mara survived.

Cool and sleek as Almirian winter, she entered the coordinates for the auction site into the auto pilot. “At the speed we have to travel, we’ll just make the cut-off time.”

He burned with impatience to get to Lieutenant Jur, but revving his engine for the next few hours would accomplish nothing except burning fuel. “Give me as much intel as you’ve got about these auctions.”

“Can’t tell you much. Not my game. I’m a scavenger, not a merch go-between.”

“A woman in charge.”

Her smile was pure, wicked temptation, sending thick heat straight to his groin. “I’m very good at it too.”

Oh, he knew, recalling with blistering lucidity how she looked, how she felt, as she rode him.

Like the sweetest torture, too good to be endured. It had been just last night, yet too long ago. He wanted inside her, not just physically, but in every way, and that want grew ever stronger the closer they came to completing the mission. To her, their time together had a finite beginning and end. She would slip away from him, elusive, likely to disavow anything to do with him, both to anyone who asked and to herself.

A dark, primitive need uncoiled within him. On his homeworld, there had been no law or no magistrates to conduct the mating rite. When a Sayén man claimed his mate, he dug his teeth into the back of her neck, actually breaking the skin and drawing blood. The man staking his claim would rub ash into the wound, resulting in an indelible marking on his mate. It was savage and coarse, something he’d gladly left behind. Only now did he understand and feel its purpose.

He needed to mark Mara, claim her, so that she could never fully distance herself from him. She would know, in the depths of space and night, he had been inside her, had made her his own. The need was primal, and he yielded to it without a struggle. Mara was his.