33

Dove Costoso, Alyina

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

5 May 3052 (Day 5 of Operation Scorpion)

Sitting on her cot, her back jammed into the furthest corner of her cell, Deirdre Lear hugged her knees tighter against her chest. Her face buried in the protective circle of her arms, she felt where her bitter tears had soaked the legs of her jumpsuit, and her jaws ached from clenching her teeth against cries of grief.

When Kai had tried to explain what the fight with Taman Malthus meant to him, she had forced herself to suspend judgement. She knew, deep down, that it was folly for him to fight a man so much bigger than he was. Kai was already exhausted from their long hike, and though his wounds from the last fight had closed and healed, he was still not at the top of his form. The fight would be savage and brutal, and it conjured up her father's ragged ghost.

Yet even as Kai and Malthus began, she could see how suited Kai was to combat. She even took pleasure in watching him feint and strike. Knowing that Kai had to be pushing himself close to the edge, it was miraculous to see his fatigue drop away. His surprisingly fluid movements and speed made her proud to have helped care for him.

As Kai and Malthus exchanged blows, she cataloged the damage they were doing to one another. Deirdre became strangely detached, as if in a clinic watching another doctor operate. The instant Kai's foot hit the Elemental's thigh, she knew the blow had crushed tissue and ruptured blood vessels. Malthus would have a hematoma at the very least. Kai might even have bruised the large man's femur if the kick had not been so short.

Punch and counter-punch had her involuntarily swaying to avoid them. Her heart had crawled up into her throat as Kai went down, but she knew, when he came back up, that he would never surrender. Part of her wanted to scream at him to give up, but she respected too much the courage he had displayed in inviting the Elemental forward.

When Kai leaped up and kicked Malthus in the head, she had wanted to cheer. When Malthus' fist hit Kai in the ribs, she shared his pain, and when he hit the ground, she did not expect him to get up again. She knew it was over, but at least Kai lived.

Then the ComStar helicopter came with guns blazing.

Distracted by the violent death of the Elemental standing nearest her, she never even saw Kai fall from the mountain.

Feeling the sharp pain of her own fingernails digging into her palms startled her out of reliving the end of that memory. Her hands reached out to haul Kai back onto the plateau, but the helicopter's pulsed thunder stole any last words, any last sounds Kai might have made.

Kai, Kai, KAI!She wanted to shout his name aloud now, as she had not done when he fell. And she wanted to scream at the Elementals housed in the cell across from her, but she would not let them see how much they had hurt her. They might own her physically, but they would never break her. Not the Clans. Not ComStar. Not anyone.

Distantly she heard the tones as someone punched the combination code into the keypad for the door. As it creaked open, she smelled food. Her stomach rumbled out of reflex, but she was too filled with pain and grief to want to eat. She did not even look up as her anonymous jailer slid a tray beneath the iron-bar door to her cage. She knew he would come and drag it back out later.

The sound of a key rasping in the lock of her door did bring her head up. To her right, across a narrow corridor, she saw the trio of Elementals still trapped in their metal-rod walled cell. They clung to the bars with white-knuckled hands and watched their captor with a hunger that no food could assuage.

In the half-second she studied them, Deirdre took vicious delight in noting that the bruise on the right side of Malthus' face had not yet begun to lose its color.

Her blue eyes flicked up at the rotund figure opening the door to her cell. Khalsa moved her tray forward with his foot, then slowly closed the door behind him. He smiled at her, the corners of his mouth disappearing beneath folds of chubby cheeks. In his red robe, the demi-Precentor looked like a monk bent on exchanging his contemplation of the sin of gluttony for that of lust.

"Doctor Lear, please, they tell me you are not eating." He brought his thick-fingered hands together over the ample mound of his belly. "I would have come sooner, but some Steiner partisans required suppression. Listen to me, you must not mourn that man. He was not worthy of your tears. He was a cad who only led you into trouble." His voice dropped into a whisper. "He had a wife and children back in the Federated Suns. You are too good for the likes of Dave Jewell."

Deirdre gave him the coldest stare her red-rimmed eyes could muster, but not trusting her voice, she said nothing. She took refuge in Khalsa's use of Kai's alias because it proved how much the man truly overrated himself. Keeping his identity hidden had been important to Kai and she had worked hard not to betray him. Even as he died, I could not call out to him!Nothing would make her betray him in death.

Khalsa got closer, inching his way across the cell, until he could ease his round buttocks onto the edge of her cot. "You must eat to keep up your strength."

She continued to regard him mutely.

A single bead of nervous sweat formed on his brow. "Well, I was going to save this as a reward, if you ate something, but I think your spirit needs some sustenance. 'Nourish the soul and you nourish the whole,' as the Primus has said more than once." He smiled like a preacher preparing to share the good word with a condemned convict. "It turns out that my superiors want the Elementals transshipped to our main compound at Valigia tomorrow. You will be able to remain here, in Dove Costoso, with me!"

Khalsa clapped his hands as if that made things right in some way. His expectant leer mixed sexual desire and childlike innocence into a volatile concoction. As the first wave of revulsion passed over her, Deirdre felt a jolt of adrenaline surge into her bloodstream. "No longer will you have to endure the sight of these outland murderers."

Khalsa's right hand pressed down on her left knee in the same motion as someone pushing down the plunger on a detonator.

Deirdre jerked her knee out from beneath his hand and stood in one pantherish motion. "Don't you dare, you worm." Her hands curled into fists. "I wouldn't stay with you even if the alternative was being dropped into the sun. The Elemental might be outlanders and murderers, but there was never any question about what they were. We knew them for enemies and they came at us with no hesitation. Even so, they acquitted themselves honorably and were interested in fair fights."

Khalsa's face changed color, almost a match for the ash-gray floor. "But ... but they murdered your paramour."

Deirdre stalked toward him. "Did they? You set them on our trail. You betrayed us. You hid in a cloak of supposed neutrality, yet you took us into custody and called them. Who is to blame, the dogs of war or their masters?"

Khalsa scrambled to his feet and half-stumbled over the food tray on his way back toward the door. "You are mad, woman! I offer you more than a lifetime spent in a prison camp." He fumbled with a key, then inserted it in the lock and cranked the door open. "You doom yourself."

She darted forward and caught the thick-set man with an open-handed slap that left a red mark and four furrows on his cheek. "Beast! You're lucky you disgust me enough that I do not take time to think things through. With my training and knowledge, I could agree to your arrangement, then make sure that however long I let you live, it would be sheer agony."