Balance of Terror Read online

  “Is it?”

  He nodded. “Ah reckon so. Makes a simple man like me do some thinking.”

  He shifted and reached for a slice of dried meat, offering it to her in a gesture that was solicitous. “Makes me wonder what a pretty – and smart – woman like you is doin’ with someone like him. Riskin’ yer lives outrunning the Republic. Bein’ forced to travel half a planet in disguise.” He paused for a moment, obviously waiting for a response.

  Moon continued staring at him.

  “He’s a good enough worker, but he’s fallin’ apart, ain’t he? And getting’ on in years.”

  Gauder’s pale gaze searched her features. “It’s his brain, ain’t it? Whatever’s in his head is what the Republic’s after.”

  The old Moon Thadin would have laughed in Gauder’s face. “In his head?” she would have said. “You’re only half-right, Mr. Gauder. What the Republic is after is in both our heads. His abilities and mine. A double act.”

  That would have been the old Moon – a little arrogant, a little boastful. She still wasn’t sure that combination of traits wasn’t what got her into this whole mess in the first place. But the new Moon had learnt some painful lessons over the past few years, and one of them was knowing when to keep her mouth shut.

  “He’s a very smart man,” she finally conceded.

  “Ah reckon he’d have ter be.” Gauder chewed thoughtfully on his shred of meat. “So what do yer think of Marentim?”

  Startled by the change in topic, Moon looked around at the dustbowl surrounding her. “The planet?”

  “Aye. It’s beautiful, ain’t it?”

  “I…,” Moon paused then tilted her head. “I hadn’t thought so at first. It’s so different from the worlds I’ve visited, the places I’ve worked. But there’s certainly something about it that’s,” she searched for the word that Srin had used, “compelling.”

  “If yer ever after a place where the Republic won’t get yer, yer can’t do better than this planet.”

  Moon couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up her throat. “But the Republic’s already here, Mr. Gauder. We see their patrols every few nights.”

  “They stick to the edges like the cowards they are.” He leant forward. “Two centuries they’ve had to subdue her. Do you think they’ve done it, lady scientist?”

  He sat back. “The Open is beyond the reach of the Republic ‘n’ they know it. So they build up the cities – Toltuk, Colken, swamps like that – and pretend they hold the entire planet in their grubby little hands, when all they have are a few dirty pebbles.”

  With his fingers, Gauder ripped another piece of jerky from the strip and popped it into his mouth, speaking around the obstruction.

  “People can get lost in the Open. Nobody finds yer unless yer want to be found. There are few places in the known galaxy that can offer the same service.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Moon said quickly.

  Gauder raised an eyebrow. “Really? And why not, may I ask?”

  “Well….”

  Where did she begin? With the lawlessness? The lack of any medical technology of the type that could help Srin? The sheer barbarity of the vistas she opened her eyes to every morning?

  She tried to couch her words in more careful terms. “Although Srin is recovering from his…illness, he still requires medical supervision.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yer think we don’t get hospitals on this rock?”

  “No, not at all,” Moon was quick to reassure. “But Srin suffers from a rare illness. The kind of care he needs is the kind you can’t get on most planets.”

  As if in answer to her words, a puff of wind blew grains of sand onto both humans. Moon flicked at her eyes and brushed hair away from her lips. Gauder spat at the ground.

  “It’s true Marentim can be cruel. And it’s a bit off the beaten track, so ter speak. But maybe it’s here to weed out the unfit. Have yer ever thought o’ that, lady scientist?”

  Another tribe was behind them. Another rendezvous, another encampment that appeared semi-permanent but disappeared into the sand the next day, and fewer boxes left in the cargo hold. Gauder was happier than Moon had seen him in days, often whistling while he worked. Right now, he was still away from camp, hoping to “catch meself some fresh meat” he told Moon with brash cheeriness before the dusk swallowed him. The remaining pair was left to enjoy the evening fire and listen to the crackles of dry wood as they split apart in the consuming heat.

  “I think it’s a workable compromise.”

  The argument had been raging for twenty minutes already. It had been argued in quiet tones, with long pauses in between, but it was still an argument. Moon knew that tone in Srin’s voice. Sheer male stubbornness. She wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown.

  “You think three days of normal functioning, followed by almost two days of imitating a coma patient is ‘workable’?” she countered.

  “It’s better than the alternative,” Srin told her evenly.

  His gaze searched her face earnestly and she looked down and away, hoping the flickers from the nightly fire would help mask her helplessness.

  “I know you still have a portion of Hen’s towel,” Srin remarked.

  She gasped and her voice was accusing. “How? How did you know?”

  He smiled. “I didn’t. But I do now.”

  “Srin—”

  “You’re a scientist, Moon. So am I. We like to make sure we have all our options covered. But if I have to choose between a two-day amnesiac cycle that the virus soaked into that towel will give me, or a chance at a normal life at the cost of two days of almost complete unconsciousness, I know what I’d choose.” He paused. “I know that doesn’t make life any easier for you.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Easier? This is paradise compared to what I endured before.

  “You didn’t know what it was like on the Differential, having to pretend that we were strangers every two days. It was like having a piece of me ripped out every forty-eight hours. And when Hen Savic,” she still couldn’t say his name without loathing, “told me in the infirmary about how he kept you under control, how he made sure you kept in shape and gave you a towel treated with that devilish virus package he’d dreamt up, all I wanted to do was take every single one of those damned things and have them vaporised.”

  “That was your heart talking, your compassion. It’s why I fell in love with you, Moon.”

  “And then what do I do? I perpetuated the prison on Slater’s End and, with that piece of towel in my pack, I now feel as much a jailer as Savic was.”

  “But you’ve turned it into a failsafe,” Srin insisted. “It used to be my prison, but now you hold onto it because it’s an option. Admittedly, it’s one I don’t want you to use but one I know you need to hold onto, just in case.”

  “It feels as if nothing has changed,” Moon told him, bringing the discussion back to their original argument. “All we’ve managed to do is swap a two-day cycle for a three-day one.”

  “But I remember now! I don’t think you know what that means to me, to finally have an anchor after drifting aimlessly for twenty years. Knowing there was something there, some insight out of my reach, only to finally realise that it was myself and my memories.”

  He moved closer and engulfed her in strong arms. “You gave me that, Moon. I know it’s unfair to ask even more of you, but I don’t want to lose this. I know it puts a bigger burden on your shoulders, having to deal with Gauder and make excuses for me, and maybe I’m being incredibly selfish but – knowing that I loved and lost you dozens of times already on the Differential – well, I don’t want to go through that again.”

  She reached up and touched his cheek with her fingers, caressing the rough male skin of his. He moved slightly and kissed her fingertips and the entire planet receded, catapulting her back to the first moments on the Differential, when he’d kissed her after flirting with her, seducing her with his wit and warmth. Only Srin had made her feel like a woman –
feminine, sexual. She’d forgotten it in the weeks that followed, anxiety trumping ardour, but with the crackle of a primitive fire distantly echoing in her mind, and the primal scent of smoke teasing at her nostrils, she was forcibly reminded of why she’d done what she did.

  Throwing away a promising career, putting the Differential’s captain in danger.

  Condemning her and Srin to fates worse than death should they ever be recaptured.

  She had done it because she loved Srin. And he loved her.

  It was such a basic truth, and yet one easily swamped by the worries of the day.

  “I’m not worried,” she murmured, “not tonight.”

  She thought she could feel his frown as he shifted position around her. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I think we should take advantage of our host’s absence,” she said in a stronger voice.

  She got to her feet and reached out with her hand. “Come on. Let’s take advantage of those three days of yours.”

  He tugged at her fingers and a wicked grin lit his features. “Why so prudish, Dr. Thadin? Haven’t you ever done it in the open?”

  She stared at him open-mouthed. “You can’t be serious?”

  “Why not?”

  “What if Gauder comes back while we’re at it?”

  “Him? You can always hear him metres away. He likes whistling to and from his hunts.”

  Moon paused. That was true. And she didn’t believe she had ever been in a place as empty as one of Marentim’s deserts.

  “On the sand?” she asked carefully.

  Srin released her hand, got to his feet and dusted himself off. “Let me take care of that. Why don’t you relax here by the fire for a few minutes?”

  He disappeared towards the back of their tank, emerging with their bedrolls. Moon watched, impressed, as Srin deftly put together a bed, nestled in a long shallow scoop of sand.

  “Gauder went off in that direction,” he said, pointing north, “so I’ll assume he’ll be coming back the same way. We’ll put the fire between us and his possible route, for some additional privacy. How does that sound?”

  “No,” she grimaced, “cover?”

  Srin laughed. “Just when I think I have you figured out, you go ahead and surprise me. You never went camping as a child, did you?”

  She shuddered. “Not if I could help it.”

  “Well, remember what I told you about Tonia III? All those forests? And lakes? Perfect for a night out beneath the stars.”

  His voice dropped as he walked towards her. “Of course, you always had a few hazards you had to look out for.”

  “Hazards?”

  Moon was only half-listening to Srin’s words. As he slowly disrobed her, she arched her back and leant into him, like a lazy feline. She felt the warmth of the fire against her naked skin on one side of her body, and the cool stroke of stirring night air against the other.

  “There are all sorts of bugs out there,” Srin continued, his voice slurred. “They especially like chocolate brown skin like yours. Reminds them of a sweet feast.”

  He got to his knees and Moon cradled his head as he suckled on her.

  The feelings coursing through her were indescribable. It was as if the air surrounding them was another person, touching her, pebbling her skin with long sweeps of erotic cold. In the brisk night, Srin’s flesh felt different too – more vibrant and alive, flexing against her fingertips and heating her with his warmth.

  By the time they sank onto their makeshift bed, Moon was more than ready for her lover, her body sensitised by the nocturnal elements. A breeze wicked the perspiration from her aroused body and, as she embraced her climax, carried her cries up into the dark, smoky air, as if echoing her frantic pleasure to the bright stars that blazed above her head.

  She was protecting him again. Srin held Moon’s naked body in his arms and gazed up towards the dusty streak of the Milky Way. He thought that their conversation by the fire would have given her the chance to tell him about Gauder – to confide that the trader was showing some interest in her – but she’d remained stubbornly silent on the topic. She was lying to him by omission.

  Just as he was doing.

  He wasn’t as pole-axed by Moon’s concocted drug regime as he appeared. Yes, he’d discovered that three days of almost normal functioning exacted a high toll from him, but the subsequent two days of enforced inactivity weren’t as dire as either Moon – or Gauder – thought.

  Would Moon forgive him for deceiving her? He knew he had done it once before, when he falsified results on the Differential. That had been a difficult series of conversations, with him completely amnesiac on the incident, and she still cradling hurt from his betrayal. He thought they had come to some closure on the subject while still on the Velvet Storm, but Srin couldn’t be sure that Moon had completely forgiven him. The worst thing was, he thought he would have felt the same way in her position.

  From what Moon told him of that episode, short cryptic messages he had left for himself as memory prompts aboard the Differential told him of the great danger of Moon’s invention. She, in all her glorious scientist-like naïveté, had crafted her model of stellar re-ignition in order to bring dead stars back to life. She even admitted, while on the pirate ship, that she had been so focused on that goal that she didn’t – wouldn’t? – see the other application of her work, the use of her re-ignition missile to destroy already living solar systems. But Srin had seen, so she said. At the hands of Hen Savic, he had intimately experienced two decades of exploitation and knew that the Republic never hesitated to use whatever tool they had that could be turned to their advantage.

  And so Srin had worked next to Moon as her two-legged living, breathing super-computer, all the time quietly subverting the occasional calculation so her research would fail. Compared to what he had done to her project – her life’s work – his current deception of partially feigning disability barely rated.

  Closing his eyes momentarily, Srin took a deep breath. He knew he should have been habituating to the drugs that Moon was feeding him, but instead he felt as if his condition was improving. He still endured bouts of exhaustion, and the sceptre of a brain-destroying fever was ever present, but he felt stronger than he had in months. Maybe even years. Part of him wanted to tell Moon, so they could celebrate together, but Srin was also a cautious man. What if he relapsed in a day? In a week? What he needed was a permanent cure and he knew that his temporary well-being was far from that.

  Much easier, for the time being, to keep his improved stamina a secret. If it improved, or was sustained, all well and good. But he was damned if he was going to lift Moon’s spirits, only to dash them again. That, he would never do.

  Chapter Ten

  “It’s been a good run, thanks to the two of yer,” Gauder conceded. His voice was clear over the comms unit and only wavered when his lead tank hit the small sand ridges that seemed to ripple ahead of them like waves on a shoreline. The day blazed white and hot around them, a glare even the tinted glass of their cabin couldn’t completely neutralise.

  “We’re a month ahead of schedule. So ah thought we’d stop fer some recreation.”

  Moon and Srin looked at each other but said nothing.

  “We’ll be headin’ for Kushin Meet. Punch it into yer nav unit and stay behind me.”

  Srin did as he was told as Moon handled the driving.

  “It should be less than an hour’s travel from here,” Srin remarked, staring at the small navigation screen.

  “A city?” That didn’t seem to make any sense. From how Gauder had spoken, Moon got the impression the arms trader hated the human-dominated cities.

  “No, not quite. It looks like the location marker is a recent addition, not part of the original map.”

  “Another one of our here-today-gone-tomorrow encampments?”

  “Could be.”

  “And what does he mean by ‘recreation’?” Moon mused. “The idea of Gauder enjoying himself is quite alarming, to b
e honest.”

  Srin grinned crookedly. “You’re just saying that because he’s a ruthless bastard who’d sell us out in a heartbeat if there was a better deal going.”

  Moon, less amused, tightened her lips but remained silent.

  They didn’t see Kushin Meet at first. Through the wavering view of the horizon, Moon thought they were approaching a series of sand dunes and it was only when they were almost on top of the formation that it resolved into an agglomeration of dun-coloured tents, some of them stretching fifteen metres into the air, while others – low and squat – hugged the sandy ground.

  For the first time in more than two months, Moon had to decelerate the tank in order to navigate her way through a welter of increasing traffic. She followed Gauder’s vehicle carefully, turning off at a marker stuck into the ground and entering a large corralled area that contained a bewildering array of vehicles, from one-person flitters to cargo carriers three times the size of their tanks.

  Gauder parked his vehicle, jumped down and gesticulated to Moon, directing her next to him. Amid clouds of dust, Moon manoeuvred into position and breathed a sigh of relief when she finally switched off the engine.

  “We’ll make a fine driver out of ye yet, lady scientist,” Gauder commended as she opened the door.

  “This is Kushin Meet?” she asked, ignoring his statement as she jumped to the ground.

  “Aye, this is the Meet.”

  They were interrupted by a native who had a quick conversation with Gauder before handing him a small disc. Gauder pocketed it and gestured to the other two. “Let’s go find us some fun, eh?”

  Kushin Meet was a city of tents, arranged according to rules that seemed less than obvious to Moon. Narrow straight avenues bent abruptly or flowered into several more alleys. It took twentyminutes before she began to notice a pattern. One lane, for example, appeared to be dominated by weavers and dealers in clothing and textiles, others by electronics handlers. Several contained food vendors and it was here that Gauder stopped first.