The final rolling spasms faded. With a spent groan, Alerio collapsed over her, panting and hot and so incredibly male. Catching her around the waist, he rolled onto his back, pulling her tight against his side.
Dona blew out a shuddering breath, one arm curving across his chest while easing a possessive leg over both of his.
For the first time in far, far too long, she felt at peace.
Pleasantly exhausted, they lay wrapped around each other, heartbeats slowing with their slowing breath, bodies still buzzing in the aftermath of their shared climax. Dona rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, breathing in his musky spice as she savored the taste of him lingering on her tongue. Ale and salt and distilled Alerio. The lighting dimmed, probably responding to a command from his neurocomp. Full darkness settled in around them, warm and comforting after the violence of their pleasure.
“I really should go back to my quarters,” Dona murmured against his shoulder.
“You really shouldn’t,” Alerio corrected, without opening his eyes.
She started to pull away, then groaned and gave up. “I can’t move.”
“Then don’t.” He opened his eyes and gave her a sleepy grin. “Please.”
So she nestled deeper into his arms and relaxed at last. Feeling, despite everything, that they were both precisely where they ought to be. Smiling into his sweat-damp shoulder, Dona drifted off to sleep.
Dona slipped through the darkness like a ghost, her R-34 tachyon rifle slung across her back. She glanced down and discovered she was wearing Aranian combat armor. Its stealth field was activated, projecting a pattern of leaves and dirt that slid across her body until it seemed she wasn’t there at all.
A child whimpered in pain.
Dona froze in mid-stride. Five years of war had hardened her, but a child’s pain always had the power to punch through her protective numbness.
She’d been a child, too, when she went to war. A cyborg child, but a child nonetheless. She, too, had once cried in the dark, knowing no one gave a damn.
I’m coming, Dona thought and strode silently in the direction of the cry with a combat ’borg’s smooth, liquid strength. I’m listening. I heard you, and I’m coming.
Nobody had ever listened to her.
Grunts. A rhythmic slapping that was all too recognizable. The child’s voice grew louder, building toward a scream. It cut off when a hand hit flesh in a brutal slap. A male voice snarled a curse.
Dona’s stride lengthened. Oh, now you’re dead, you son of a bitch.
Sobbing. Pitifully, painfully muffled, as if the child cried into her arm. Silently, Dona began to run.
She found them lying across the trail. A Xeran, judging by the ring of horns glinting on the man’s head. The pants of his armor hung over a nearby bush. He’d pinned the girl beneath him, her dirty shirt hiked up, trousers tossed aside. She whimpered again, the sound soft and hopeless with despair. She looked so tiny, especially compared to his meaty heft.
Gods, Dona thought, for a moment stunned motionless. How old is that child?
And how did she get all the way out here to become this Xeran bastard’s prey?
Based on skeletal maturity, she is approximately twelve, the neurocomp said. As to how he captured her, there is no way to tell. However, there is a village a kilometer farther along the trail. It is the closest habitation, so I calculate there is an eighty-five percent probability it is her home.
Dona could guess what had happened far too easily, though she couldn’t guess the details any more than the comp could.
The so-called priest, lurking just beyond the town’s perimeter, perhaps reconnoitering. Planning an attack. Spotting the girl as she left the village, gods knew why. And the Xeran . . . Sickened, she cut the thought off.
Standing over them, Dona began to tremble as a storm of fury hit her without warning. She started to grab the tachyon rifle slung across her back, bring it around . . .
She stopped. At this range, the blast would go right through him, killing the child Dona wanted so desperately to save.
One hand fell to the combat blade on her belt. She drew it, the oiled steel sliding silently from its sheath. She didn’t intend to use it, but something unforeseen could always happen. Better to be prepared.
Clenching the other hand, Dona silently called up the code knife. Letting her eyes slide out of focus, she searched for the flaw she’d discovered in the Xerans’ firewalls. She’d discovered the tiny flaw in their neurocomps two years before. Every one of the hornheads had it.
The Xeran’s plunging hips stopped. Dona was so focused on cracking his comp, she didn’t react in time when the priest jerked out of the girl, leaped to his feet, and spun toward Dona, face twisted in frustrated rage. “You stupid Aranian whore,” he snarled. “I’m going to take that knife and ram it into your . . .”
She almost heard the mental click as she broke through.
Dona lunged, driving the code blade into the Xeran’s forehead as if it was a physical weapon. The code punched through the priest’s defenses to inject its virus payload into his implant. It froze him as though he’d been cast from plastium, mouth still open to spew more filth.
Dona drove her combat knife into the bastard’s chest all the way to the guard. He reeled back, falling flat on the trail like an axed sapling. His body convulsed beside the cowering child who’d been his victim. Dirt smeared the small, elfin face, eyes swollen almost closed from weeping. Bruises distorted her features, and her nose was broken above bloody lips.
Dona wanted to stab him again. Kill him over and over. Cut him into chunks and scatter them from one end of this jungle for the wild dogs.
But the girl was staring at the knife, her eyes huge, not moving. Barely even breathing. Making Dona feel like a monster. “Look, I . . .”
“Don’t kill me!” The child snapped into a protective ball, one arm wrapped around her bloody, naked torso, the other around the head she’d tucked into her chest, eyes squeezed shut.
Dona knew that pose. She’d once held it herself.
She swallowed. The smell of the Xeran’s blood suddenly made her stomach heave, though she’d long since grown used to that.
Plop. Plop. Plop. A slow, steady patter on the leaves next to her feet. Dona looked down. The combat knife she held was dripping. She opened her fingers and let the knife fall.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said softly, but the shaking child only curled into a tighter ball. “Look, I just want to take you back to your village.”
The kid’s eyes squeezed shut as she wailed, “Don’t hurt me!”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t. Not ever.” Dona’s voice dropped, shaking. “I was a little girl once.”
A long, terrified pause. “He hurt me.”
“I know.”
“Is he dead?”