It had to end like that. With a lethal plasma dart.
It was never simple.
One doesn't simply abandon the life of a lifetime. The training of a lifetime. The outlook of a lifetime.
Not if you have any integrity. Any pride.
And not simply because someone says they love you.
In a lifetime of two hundred plus years, there's time enough to find love again, even if it was, indeed, love, not some ploy to save themselves.
Assuming one wants to be loved.
Still.
A dart of pain in my head. I was right, after all. And alive.
I opened my eyes and found I was nose to nose with a grey-green snout and beyond the long snout, the glittering black eyes of Siss. They were staring at me with some concern. She hissed softly.
'Alive, anyway,' I muttered. I glanced down at my chest. My yellow sweater had a large, burnt spot, the size of my outstretched hand over my heart. It had, indeed, been a lethally charged dart, but not an armor piercing one. The next squeeze of the trigger would've sent one of those my way.
'But not by much, Siss. Not by much.'
I looked around. Cin had gone. She had left me where she'd darted me, floating in the forward compartment. 'Where's Cin?'
Siss looked up to the open hatch.
I tried to gather my wits. Did I want to see her, now? Or was it better to wait awhile for emotions to settle down a little.
Poor Naylea - her failure to complete the killing of me meant that she'd failed to meet the steel hard expectations of the Cins. In doing so, had she herself freed herself from their expectations, or was she now seeing herself as an absolute failure? She was no fool, and very cool headed in a crisis, but this was something different. I glanced at my com link. It was fried again, so I looked to the synth-galley timer and I found that I'd been unconscious for the better part of two hours. Probably not time enough to come to terms with what it all meant, but I'd best go and find her.
'Right,' I said to Siss. 'Give me five minutes with the med-unit to clear my headache and gather my wits, and you can lead me to her.'
The headache was erased within minutes. Rising from the treatment table, I glanced down and decided it would be in poor taste to see her with that great scorch mark over my heart, so I reluctantly peeled off the sweater. It was my favorite - the yellow one I'd bought on Calissant the day after she had tried to kill me for the first time, now more than a decade ago. It had seen me through a lot of very iffy orbits... Neb! I'm no more superstitious, or sentimental, than the next spaceer, but if I had a talisman at all, it was this sweater. Holding it in my hands I decided that if I turned it inside out, it'd look almost as good as new. So I brushed off the burnt fabric, turned it inside out and re-donned my lucky sweater. I'd a feeling I'd still need it. She was no doubt still armed.
'Lead on Siss,' I said as I reentered the main compartment. 'Let's see if we can become one happy family.'
She gave an eager bark and swung smartly about and up towards the access hatch.
I followed her swimming lead for quite a while, through the rapidly renewing jungle and then several kilometers across the savanna to the edge of the cliff. Here Siss grew cautious, and carefully peering over the edge, backed up and softly hissed in my ear.
'Figure you're going to get into trouble, showing me the way?' I whispered.
She softly hissed again, and blinked.
'Right. I'll take it from here,' I said with as much confidence as I could muster. We'd have to meet again, of course, though I wasn't about to settle for the old terms, I was far from certain what I wanted the new terms to be. Well, I knew what I wanted, I just wasn't sure it was wise.
I peered over. I didn't see her, but started walking down the vine-laced ravine, making as much noise as I could. She might still be on edge.
The ravine turned and I saw her sitting on a protruding rock overlooking the endless sky.
'Naylea?' I said softly, on the off chance that she'd not heard me coming down the ravine.
'Be kind, for once, and just put a dart in me, Litang,' she said without turning. 'If you can't kill me, put me in my stasis suit and go on without me.'
'Sorry you're still out of my range,' I replied, and started forward. She continued to stare off into the endless sky as I settled down beside her on the ledge. It was all or nothing at all, this time, and I didn't need my St Bleyth ancestor to tell me that. I put my arm around her shoulder and drew her closer.
She tensed for a second and then listlessly relaxed, still not giving me a glance.
'It was my favorite sweater, you know,' I began.
'I hated it. Yellow. I did you a favor.'
'It happened to be one of my first armored items of clothing I owned. Bought it the day after you missed me on Calissant. I'm very sentimental about it. Luckily you can't tell the difference if you wear it inside out. It's even a little brighter yellow. Newer looking. No harm done.'
'Wear it again and I'll put another Neb-blasted dart in it - this time in your back,' she replied, still without looking at me.
'I am wearing it now. Need the luck. You'll get used to it. And I think we're over the dart thing, Naylea.'
'So you think you've won?'
'It's not a matter of winning or losing. We've found each other and there's nothing standing between us anymore. You and I...'
A vague hiss from the underbrush behind us.
'...And Siss can start a new life here. We've worked together. We've lived comfortably together. I think we've been happy together. I realize that you've had to keep your pride and anger under lock and key, but in the end, we've triumphed.'
'You have.'
'We have. You unlocked that door and found that our ties were stronger. Better.'
She just shrugged her shoulder against my chest. It wasn't a denial.
'I'm in love with you, Naylea,' I found myself saying, because it was true. 'I assure you I'm not saying that lightly. I'm not blind to your St Bleyth and Cin qualities, but I've come to believe that given a chance, you're your mother's daughter. You're a Cin only when you need to be.'
'You think so?'
'Yes.'
'And when we come into conflict, as we certainly will, do you think I'll still be my mother's daughter? Care to run the risk?'
'Yes, if you feel for me as I do you.'
'If I do.'
'If you didn't, I'd be dead.'
'Maybe I'm just to Unity Standard to kill anyone in cold blood.'
'I believe you are. But I don't think that's the complete explanation.'
She sighed. 'Since you know me so well, what lies ahead for us?'
'I have been giving that some thought recently. I don't think we can return to our old lives, at least not for a long time. Our old ties need to fall away. So I'm willing to abandon any effort at contacting my friends or escaping the Pela. They'll have to deal with whatever turns up themselves. I'm sure they can. However, if you still feel driven to put the finishing touches on your mission, I will help you as much as I can.'
'And how far is that?'
'Right up to the point where you decide you need to kill Min. But you're not an assassin, Naylea, so I don't think it will ever come to that. You're an expert thief. Why bloody your hands for a mission that's already accomplished, for an organization that has betrayed and abandoned you?'
She just shrugged again and said nothing. She still hadn't looked at me.
'I think we have a whole new life to live here in the Pela. One without all the complications of the old one. You and I... and Siss,' I added, once more hearing a low hiss behind me. 'The three of us can start fresh and find our place here. I think we can find a place here...'
'To grow cha.'
'Some day. Maybe. If it's a mutual decision. For now, I am content just to be with you and do whatever you care to do. We can tour the Pela in our gig. Or we can find an island of our own to settle on, build a house in the trees and live like castaways.'
'So you've given up on returning to the Unity?'
'I've chosen you. If you want to return to the Unity, I will follow you. But I'm thinking that if we leave the Pela and return to our old lives, it would be hard on you. We're free here...'
She said nothing, and I carefully considered all that I'd just said, hoping there was nothing false in it. Thankfully, I found nothing I regretted saying. And I was holding an unresisting Cin very close.
Happy Litang?
Yes, I decided, I was. We could live together.
I'd said all I had to say for now. We could talk later.
I reached over with my other arm and pulled her around to face me. Our eyes met. She may've cried, for they seemed large and moist and as soft as I'd ever seen them. I pulled her closer and kissed her. And she kissed me back.
And then she gently pushed me away and sighed softly.
'I'm sorry I've made your life so complicated. But I'm not sorry I found you, or you me,' I said.
She didn't say anything, but there was a closeness now, an unspoken understanding, so that I was unconcerned. I kissed her again and then held her tight.
'Why did you fall for me,' I asked.
'Egotist. Who said I did. I don't recall saying that.'
'Well then, why are you letting me kiss you? You can't argue that.'
'I suppose because you're so benignly useless.'
Not exactly what I wanted to hear. 'Benignly useless?'
'Oh, you may have some uses. You're handy around ships. But the Litang I know is hardly the standard image of a tramp ship captain. At least you weren't when I knew you as Captain Litang. You didn't seem tough, nor did you have any dash or swagger. I used to hang around your crew when they were downside on Lontria. You were, as I'm sure you know, well liked, but considered, well, to call you something of a joke might be putting it too harshly, but someone of no great consequence. They went about their jobs and you stayed out of their way. When I managed to finally cross orbits with you at the race track, that's exactly what struck me as well. There you were, standing hands in your pockets, chatting with friends and acquaintance who happened to pass by, while just staying out of the way as your crews got the moon buggy ready to race. Ornamental, perhaps, but useless.
'The non-martial side of St Bleyth has a lot in common with the Taoist, and I couldn't help but wonder if you were some sort of Taoist Tramp Captain, adept at wu wei or just a genial idiot, useful as a figurehead, a place holder to be used by a strong-willed hands-on owner without a ticket.'
'And? What did you decide?
'I haven't,' she replied with a sidelong glance.
'Does it matter?'
'It seems not. I can't decide if it's my Unity heritage that's telling me that here's a nice, Unity Standard fellow, or my Cin heritage trying to understand how this easygoing idiot can so effortlessly defeat me.'
'I assure you, it's just plain luck. But as someone pointed out, you can't beat luck, so useless or not, you're lucky to have me.'
'You think so, hey?' she said, not unkindly.
I pulled her close and kissed her again, until I felt a sharp stab of pain and tasted the iron in my mouth.
I drew away and ran my tongue over my lower lip. She'd nibbled on my lip hard enough to draw blood. I looked at her. She was watching me. I was about to protest - teasing was one thing, but... but I bit back the objection. She was watching me very, very intently. Instead of teasing or taunting, she was deadly serious, her grey eyes held mine. An agreement, but a warning as well.
My Cin rose had thorns. They came with the flower. I'd a choice to make. I looked into her dark grey eyes, and pulling her close again, kissed her softly. She tasted the blood on my lips and then she put her head on my shoulder, clung to me.
I'd made my choice and accepted her terms. If I had any misgivings, I don't recall them. The truth is, what choice did I have? But that never entered my mind.
As we held each other, Siss drifted in and wrapped herself around us, barking softly. If they paint sentimental paintings somewhere in the Pela, they could have painted the three of us and entitled it "Shipwrecked Lovers with a Dragon."
We clung to each other and contemplated our future, near term and far, until we heard someone bellowing commands and jocular replies.
Chapter 08 The Pirates of Temtre