Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [103]
Rast rocked back on her heels and let out a long breath. ‘If you want me on the same film as you, Baronessa, then maybe it’s time you told me what happened to you—after Ipo.’
There was no teasing in the mercenary’s manner now, only an intense scrutiny that drew the poison in Mira’s mind-wounds to the surface. ‘Why is that necessary?’
‘Because I work for who I frikking please, because I please. I’m not some custom-bound Carabinere who’ll jump when the Baronessa sniffs. I need reasons and background, or I won’t play in your puddle.’
Rast’s blunt honesty crumbled Mira’s barriers. She needed the mercenary on her side, even if it meant being vulnerable. There was no one else.
Still, the words came haltingly as she told Rast of their flight in the TerV: the deaths, her fingers dipping into the child’s skull-wound, burying the child, pulling her mother from the grave, the korm starving and trying to eat the flesh of the dead humanesques. And then the dark fear in the Pablo mines.
Mira meant to stop at that, but Rast probed with more simple, direct questions, and with each word that Mira released the pain under her breastbone eased.
Finally, the last of it came out—how they had held her down for Trinder, and why; his fertility chant and his sickening remorse.
After she had finished, the vacuum of spent words made room for quiet, grieving, relieved tears.
‘Women get raped,’ said Rast harshly, her pale skin flushed with emotion. ‘Sometimes in war, sometimes just for the hell of it. That’s what happens.’ She gripped Mira’s wrist and pulled her close. Then she hugged her tightly for a long moment.
‘We’ll get your world back for you, Baronessa. But tell me something: are you sure you really want it?’
THALES
As Thales listened to the medi-log’s immune-system analysis his hope disintegrated. A tiny part of him had held out for the possibility that Lasper Farr had bluffed him. But the proof was in front of him now: an irrefutable auditory confirmation of Farr’s criminal act—of his own helplessness.
He wished desperately that he could reverse things; that he had never left Scolar; or at the very least that Rene was with him.
There was no comfort. No hope.
Idealism and principles had been desirable—laudable, in fact—when he was safe. Now they had begun to seem both futile and dangerous.
Anger and fear came in alternate waves. From the moment Thales had adopted a dissident’s position and met Villon, his life had begun to unravel.
Did he care about which philosophy was observed when moment by moment his body was being destroyed?
Panic ringed his anger and he fought down a desire to cry out. He must calm himself. He must think... he must. . .
. . . But the calm would not come and he flung himself out of the medi-facility and ran randomly through the ship’s strata.
But was it random? For when his legs would no longer carry him and he could no longer catch his breath, Thales found himself at the egress scale. If somehow he could force the scale open then Farr would be denied what he wanted and Rene would be freed from the guilty burden of her husband.
How long before she would find out that he was dead? How would she feel then? Relieved? Annoyed? Would she hold a requiem? Would Sophos Mianos play the part of a grieving father-in-law?
Thales tugged at the fleshy inside of the egress scale, one thought bothering him—he would never have a child. Somehow that seemed more important than anything else; more meaningful than the people of Scolar’s indifference, and his revenge on the insufferable Sophos Mianos.
Thales sobbed as he tugged, hearing or seeing nothing until a hand gripped his shoulder. Even then he did not take his hands from their task.
‘Msr Thales? What is it? What has happened?’
But he continued to tear at the scale until the heat of his intention diminished. Then he crouched down, unable to speak.