“Does this mean we’re finished with the hearings? We’re free to do as we please?” I wouldn’t quite call what they did to us house arrest, but it was close. As I mentioned, we weren’t permitted to fraternize with each other at all.
Tarn nods. “We have all the testimony we need from you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expected in 12-H for a bounce-relay chat with Ielos.” With that, the Chancellor heads for the door.
I sigh. Sure, we’ll discuss it, but I know the smell of an offer I can’t refuse.
* * *
CHAPTER 2
“So what do you two think?”
If I go, they’re going with me. That much is a given.
Dina grimaces and pushes to her feet. She’s a stocky woman who could kick my ass with one hand tied behind her back, but luckily, she doesn’t want to anymore. I don’t think.
“I think it’s a sucker’s job.” Then she grins. “And we’re just the suckers to do it. How bad could it be?”
I stare at her. “Why do you have to say shit like that? Seriously. Why?”
“Because it makes you nervous?”
“Big deal,” I mutter. “Everything makes me nervous. It’s a wonder I haven’t developed a tic.”
“You have,” March puts in, ever helpful. “Your left eye sort of—”
“Thanks, baby. You’re a gem.”
He smirks, the expression that used to make me want to slap him. Now it makes me want to tie him up and do things to him until he says he’s sorry.
“We should check with the Chancellor’s assistant. I’m sure they have an itinerary for us,” he adds.
I shrug. “We have twenty-four hours. After all this, they owe us some rec time.”
For once Dina agrees with me. “Do they ever. This place is a dump.” She dismisses the sterile conference room with four blank bisque walls with a contemptuous gesture. “Isn’t there anything to do here?”
Thinking back to my training days, I try to remember. “Not by Gehenna or even Venice Minor standards. But there are a few good bars in Wickville over on the west side. At least there used to be. Place called Quincy’s had a trio that played folkazz, good stuff. But remember, I’ve been gone a long time—”
I find myself talking to her back. If I know her at all, she’ll catch a lift over to where she’s likely to find a party and leave the details up to us. Our ship’s mechanic lives for a good time and makes no bones about it.
Oddly, I respect her for that. Dina doesn’t dwell on everything she’s lost. The woman surpasses me in that regard, but she doesn’t brood over it. Doesn’t use it like a weapon to make other people feel sorry for her.
Without a word, March pulls me into his arms. I hope nobody else needs the conference room because it doesn’t feel like he’s letting go anytime soon. He rests his cheek against the top of my stubbly head. Just after we landed on New Terra—before the bounty hunter snatched me—my crewmates decided I’d be less recognizable without my hair. I still can’t believe they shaved my head for nothing.
March tightens his arms around me, and I luxuriate in his heat. This separation has been harder on him than on me because first he thought I was dead, and then before he could make the mental adjustment, they quarantined us to prepare for our testimonies.
A shudder runs through him. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll wake up and you won’t be here.”
Part of me—the part that’s still raw over losing Kai— wants to back away from such unabashed need. I’m afraid I can’t handle it, that I’ll hurt him again like I did on Gehenna. Part of me needs him every bit as much, though. I’m afraid of that, too. I wasn’t always such a contrary bundle of fears. That’s new.
I like the person I am now, though. Jax the nav-star didn’t care for anyone but Kai, certainly didn’t care about the state of the universe or acting in the interest of the greater good. I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a hero like March, but I want to try. Not for the fame and glory but because I want to leave something behind that matters more than the number of jumps I made. I want things to be better because of me. He lifts his head, and his gaze meets mine.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say aloud, though it isn’t a surety I can truly offer. Life is precarious, and it turns in a flash. As if he knows this, his lips drift over mine, delicately possessive. His kiss sparks a chemical reaction, endorphins careening wildly.
Lifting his head, March exhales slowly. “You want to—”
A throat clears behind us. “We have a meeting scheduled,” someone says in the polite tone that conceals amusement.
We break apart like kids caught necking on the front doorstep. I smile over that as we hurry out of 7-J. Once we get some distance down the hall, I pause and gaze up at him. He’s no prettier than when I first laid eyes on him. March still looks mean as a black-tailed rattler, but as always, I focus on his dark, gold-flecked eyes fringed in those ridiculously luxurious lashes.
It’s just as well he has such a hard-hewn face. With those eyes, he’d just be too pretty if he were anywhere close to handsome. Besides, I look like a war refugee these days, scrawny, scarred, and bald as an egg, so I can’t have some beautiful man outshining me.
“Do I want to . . . ?” I arch a brow at him, as if I don’t know perfectly well what he’s going to suggest.
He grins. “Go to Wickville and listen to some folkazz.”
Okay, he got me. He’s the mind reader, not me, which is just as well. I’d be dangerous if I could do what March does. Hell, I’m dangerous anyway.
I shake my head. “Not really. Not in the mood.”
We start walking again, meandering along the corridor to the lift. “You want to bounce a message to Lachion? Double-check what Tarn told us?”
I nod. “We should try to find an independent relay computer, too. I don’t trust station terminals.”
March doesn’t argue as we step into the tube. A whooshing sound sends us to our floor, and as we get out, he asks, “You sure this isn’t more paranoia, Jax?”
He has a point. My instincts are a mess. I’m prone to flipping out for no reason after the Psychs finished tinkering with my brain.
“I don’t know. But people who want something from you never tell the whole truth, so I need to check his story. See what Keri says. I don’t want to have traded one corrupt master for another.”
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I stop outside my quarters. “Are you saying all this was for nothing? The Conglomerate will eventually be as thoroughly raddled with dirty politics, kickbacks, suppression of information, and borderline tyranny as the Corp?”
He hesitates as if weighing his words. “It’s change. Who knows exactly what’s in store? Right now everything’s in a state of upheaval. Historians will draw the conclusions, not me.”
“Heh. With my luck, I’ll be known as the one who ended an era of peace and prosperity, huh?”
“Maybe, but you’ll be dead, and you won’t care. Now go bundle up, and I’ll do the same. Meet you back here?”
I remember we’re in Ankaraj, which means snow, and the wind tears through you like a steel hook. “Nah, just wait for me downstairs.”
One of these days, I’m going to get ready faster than he does. But not today. By the time I find an overcoat and layer my clothing to withstand the winter chill, I find him lounging in the foyer.
He takes in the navy s-wool coat with hood and muffler paired with clunky brown boots. To think I used to be considered one of the best-dressed women in the tier worlds— in fact, I made the list twice. I sigh a little. On the plus side, I gained ten kilos in clothing, and the way I look now, that’s a good thing.
“Cute,” he pronounces.
I wish he’d shot me. “Bastard.”
First order of business is to find a non-Corp, non-Conglomerate terminal where we can bounce a message to Keri. That will cost money, so we’ll need to hit a bank first. Maybe March can cover it, but I need to be independent. The idea of being dependent on anyone, for anything, makes me feel odd and queasy.
That means checking on the status of my personal accounts, which Simon, the estranged husband who tried to have me killed, better not have fucked with. I also need to have a new pay-card issued. Mary only knows the turmoil of the currency situation. Maybe Corp credits have been devalued entirely. Shit, I hope not.
Drawing my hood up around my ears, I head for the door. Stop short.
The woman drawing back a gorgeous, filmy thermal scarf looks eerily familiar. She shakes a few flakes of snow from her ink-dark hair, managing to look graceful and elegant while she does so. Her perfectly painted mouth rounds into an “O” when she registers me.
“Sirantha?” she chokes out.
“Mother?”
For March’s sake, I make the introduction. “This is Ramona Jax, my mother. Mother, this is March.”
Let them make of each other what they will.
* * *
CHAPTER 3
Half an hour later, we’re sitting in a café near what used to be Farwan headquarters, though it’s now the Conglomerate Command Center on New Terra. Few patrons are sitting in the restaurant this time of day, too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The place is done in tones of amber and gold, heavy, fringed shades giving the room a diffuse, smoky glow, frosted by the ice on the outside of the windows.
It’s eerie. My mother doesn’t look a day older than when I left. Either she didn’t worry about me, or she spent my father’s money on antiaging treatments. My credits, assuming I still have some, are on both.
“The shock killed him,” she’s saying. “Everywhere he went, someone asked, ‘Isn’t that your daughter?’ when they flashed that horrid picture of you. He just couldn’t take it anymore. I always knew there was something wrong with it, though.”
“You did?” I’ve barely recovered from her first tactless announcement, and a stabbing pain between my shoulder blades prompts March to regard me with concern.
Can’t believe nobody told me.
“You loved working for the Corp. Mary knows you defied everything we wanted for you to do it, so I knew you wouldn’t have run off without a good reason.”
Heh. She calls everything I went through after the Sargasso “running off.” This fundamental disconnect would be why I left New Terra in the first place. I can’t believe my dad is gone, though it explains her glamorous interpretation of widow’s weeds.
“No, she wouldn’t,” March puts in.
I can see Ramona assessing him, trying to figure us out. With a faint half smile, he makes it easy for her by curling his arm around me. I lean in, watching her warily. She wants something, or she wouldn’t be here. But what does she think I can do for her? That’s the question.
The small talk continues, and she sidles around the subject of the crash and my dead lover, unpleasantness we shouldn’t dwell on, according to her. Ramona does mention that she knows a lovely cosmetic surgeon who could help me with those “unsightly marks” via laser therapy. I set my jaw.
