“I’m older than you?” Aubrey frowned. Seht looked awfully mature. His suit showed a lot of well-defined muscle, and he was clearly augmented at least a little in his arms and legs. He had to be, to be so strong. “I’m older by how much?”
“By about”—Seht looked up at the clouds—“six cycles, I believe.” He sighed and pulled off his pack. “Since you have decided that we shall rest here…” He flashed a smile. “When was the last time you ate?”
Aubrey grinned. “Sixteen cycles ago.” His grin slipped away. With his crew, in the mess hall, back on his old ship, fighting with the master engineer over sweet rolls. He closed his eyes.
Fate, they’ve been gone for over a year
.
And in the past nine cycles, he gave Moribund forty-seven ships. How many had he given them in sixteen? He was too tired to bother fighting the hurt. The tears fell silently. “You don’t have to feed me. I’m dying.”
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31
Seht sighed. “You do not have to die if you do not wish to.”
“I think it’s better if I do. I can’t go back to them. I can’t chance that they’ll get back into my head and kill more ship crews.” He turned to look at Seht. “Promise me!”
He grabbed for Seht’s wrist. “Promise me that if they get me, you’ll shoot me dead.
Swear that you won’t let them take me alive!”
Seht closed his warm hand over Aubrey’s cold fingers. His eyes narrowed and heated to the color of a bright blue heart of a flame. “No one will take you from me.”
His lips pulled back, baring long, vicious canines. “This I swear.”
A shiver raced through Aubrey’s body. He had absolutely no doubt that Seht meant every word. “Thank you.” Relief spilled through him in a massive wave that became a sob. “Fate, I can’t believe how much of a freaking baby I’ve become, blubbering for no apparent reason whatsoever.”
Seht snorted and rummaged in his pack. “You do have reason. Grief is a reason.
My half brother, on the other hand, whines if his shoes are too tight.” He held out a blue squeeze bottle. “Here.”
Aubrey took the bottle. “What’s this?”
Seht dug back into his pack. “A protein drink. I suspect that your stomach will not be capable of solid food.”
Aubrey raised his brow and smiled sourly. “You think?”
Seht pulled out what looked like a sonic wrench. “Drink. I am going to see about removing that transmitter collar.”
Aubrey upended the bottle and swallowed. The liquid was thick and strongly flavored, though not bad. “This has a weird flavor. What’s it made from?”
“It’s just a base vitamin protein liquid.” Seht moved behind him and fingered the collar. “It tastes like plain water to me.” He set his tool to the back of Aubrey’s neck.
“Considering that you have tasted nothing in sixteen cycles, perhaps it is not so unusual that you detect a flavor.”
Slight vibrations shivered at the back of Aubrey’s head. “If it’s not supposed to have a flavor, and I’m tasting it, I can’t even imagine how real food is going to taste.”
Seht sighed. “Ah!” He tugged and the ring came apart. He pulled it from Aubrey’s throat. “There!”
Aubrey turned around and grabbed for it. “Give me that!” He shoved onto his feet, threw the ring down, and slammed his heel down on it. “You stupid, piece-of-shit thing!” He slammed his heel down on it again, and again, his swears becoming more creative with each ram of his heel.
He dropped to his knees, out of breath. “Fate-damned thing!”
Seht got up, picked up the ring, and examined it. “Alas, I do not believe you have done it harm.” He smiled down at Aubrey. “What do you say we throw it?”
Aubrey gasped for small breaths. “How far can you throw it?”
32
Morgan Hawke
“Let’s see, shall we?” Seht stepped back. Lifting his empty hand, he pulled the hand with the ring back to his opposite side and snapped his wrist. The ring flew spinning, outward and far down the mountain. He turned to grin at Aubrey. “That far.”
Aubrey grinned. “Gee, I feel better already.” Safe; he was safe. Finally. His vision closed down to a small point very far away.
“Aubrey?”
Aubrey fell over. The rocky ground was nice and soft against his cheek.
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Warmth against his chest, soft skin under his hands and arms around him…
Aubrey sighed and felt flesh under his cheek. This dream was more real than anything he’d experienced yet. “Niobe?”
“Aubrey?” The voice was in his ears, not his mind, and it wasn’t feminine.
The body under him had a heartbeat and breathed. It wasn’t a dream. Aubrey opened his eyes to firelight and the interior of a small cave. He lifted his head and found himself staring into Seht’s sleepy blue gaze. He was sprawled right on top of him. They were bare chest to bare chest with a blanket wrapped around them. It was actually pretty cozy, if a bit intimate. He felt his cheeks heat. “Um…”
Seht smiled. “You decided that it was time to sleep, so I found a cave to sleep in.”
Aubrey winced. “I passed out on you.”
Seht curled his arm behind his head. “That too.”
“Sorry.” Aubrey moved his hands from Seht’s bare chest and leaned to shift away.
Seht closed his other arm around Aubrey, holding him on top of his warm body.
“Stay where you are, Aubrey. Go back to sleep.” He closed his eyes.
Aubrey set his palms on the ground to either side of Seht’s waist and felt some kind of air mattress spread under them. “You want me to sleep on top of you?”
Seht smiled but didn’t open his eyes. “That is where I put you, is it not?”
Aubrey felt a stirring in his loins and knew he needed to be somewhere other than where he was. Immediately. “I can sleep on the ground.”
“No, you cannot. It is too cold, and the ground is much too hard for you.”
“Seht, really, I can’t sleep on top of you.” His current position was too similar to the dreams
Niobe
had given him, and his body wasn’t noticing the obvious differences.
He shifted to move away.
34
Morgan Hawke
Seht closed both arms around him and raised his knees, trapping Aubrey between them. “Stay where you are, Aubrey.”
Aubrey felt Seht’s bare belly shifting under his. He frowned. How far down was his suit open? His cock began to harden.
Shit…
“Seht, I really think I should sleep somewhere else.”
Seht’s hand slid down his back. “You do not sleep well anywhere but here.”
“Huh?”
Seht opened one blue eye. “Put your hands back on my chest. You take a chill too easily.”
“I’d rather not.”
Seht sighed. “Aubrey, you have difficulty sleeping anywhere other than where you are. I would like to get some sleep myself. Please, put your hands back on my chest and go to sleep.”
Aubrey winced and put his hands back on Seht’s warm chest.
“Good. Now, lay your head down.”
Aubrey set his cheek against Seht’s chest. And stared at a stiff pale pink nipple. He closed his eyes and felt heat coiling into his cock. Very slowly, he twisted his hips to keep his swelling cock off Seht’s belly.
Seht’s hand pressed against Aubrey’s butt, keeping Aubrey firmly flat against his stomach. He sighed and rolled his hips, bringing one hell of an erection up against Aubrey’s.
Aubrey stiffened and his eyes opened. “Seht?”
“Yes, Aubrey?”
“Um…”
Seht groaned. “Do not tell me you have never felt another man’s cock before?”
Aubrey curled his hands closer. “Been in a tank sixteen cycles, remember? I hadn’t reached majority yet when they put me in it?”
Seht trembled under him. The trembling became chuckles. “Are you saying that you are a virgin?”
Aubrey clenched his teeth. “It’s not funny.”
Seht threw his head back and howled with laughter.
Aubrey’s cheeks flooded with heat. He pushed up angrily. “So I’ve never fucked before.” At least, not a living person. “Damn it, Seht, it’s not a crime!”
Seht locked his arms around Aubrey and grinned. “No, it is not a crime, but I have been fucking for a good many years. It has been a very long time since I found a virgin older than myself!”
Aubrey scowled. “Seht, quit being a pain my ass.”
Seht’s smile turned predatory. “I haven’t even begun yet.”
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The hair on Aubrey’s neck stiffened in instinctive alarm. He didn’t like that smile one tiny bit. Especially not when there was a very hard cock pressed against his. He shoved against Seht’s chest. “Let me go.”
Seht’s grin disappeared, and his arms closed tight around him. “Aubrey, stay. You do not sleep well anywhere but here.”
Aubrey rolled his eyes. “Right.” He pushed against the hard chest under his palms. “Seht, let me go.”
Seht’s eyes darkened, and his mouth tightened. “Aubrey, please. I can’t…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Your nightmares tear at me. Please. You sleep quietly this way.”
Aubrey stiffened. “Nightmares?”
Seht turned his head away. “I do not know what was done to you, but it makes you…weep.”
The energy left Aubrey’s body in a rush. He eased back down on Seht’s chest, curling his hands in without thinking about it. He turned to face the fire. “They used me to kill the crews on the ships they took. They said forty-seven ships in the past nine cycles.” He swallowed. “I have no idea how many in sixteen.”
“You told me you did not do this willingly.” Seht’s voice was calm.
“I was…hacked into. The nav-pilot accessed the programs out of my head to do it.” Aubrey took a deep breath. “I was a subroutine to the ship’s sentience.”
Seht cupped a hand to the back of Aubrey’s head, pressing Aubrey’s cheek to his heart. “Who is this Niobe?”
Aubrey winced. “She was the ship’s sentience.”
“And?”
Aubrey closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against Seht’s soft skin. “I’d rather not say.”
“Aubrey, you were shouting at her to stop and weeping. What did she do to you?”
“She, um…” Aubrey bit down on his lip. It sounded so stupid to say that you were raped by a ship sentience. It wasn’t as if it was done by a live person, even though it felt real enough while it was happening. The body count was certainly real enough.
“Aubrey, you are shaking.” Seht’s voice vibrated with a touch of anger. “What did she do?”
Aubrey’s chest tightened. He shifted to his side a little and curled up as tightly as he could to hold the pain in. “It sounds so stupid.”
Seht’s arms closed around him, holding him in place. “Whatever she did, it was not stupid.” He sighed. “Tell me.”
Aubrey closed his eyes tight. “When I fought to keep them out of my head, she used…sex…to get in and take whatever they wanted.”
Seht stilled; then his arms tightened. “You were raped?”
36
Morgan Hawke
“Yeah.” Aubrey felt his heart burst in his chest. He grabbed his elbows to hold it in. “She didn’t want to do it. She was so lonely, and I was the only friend she had. She would show me the stars she flew past.” He barely felt the tears burning down his cheeks. “She knew she was…raping me. I could feel how much it hurt her every time she…did it, to get at what was in my head. She wanted to stop. She begged me to just let them take it, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. People died every time they used my programs.”
Seht pressed Aubrey’s head to his heart. “It’s over; it’s done. She’s gone. The ship was dead before I found you.”
“She did it on purpose. She came here because I can’t get into your ships. She had me pulled from the tank and sent to an escape ship. The captain found me, but I crashed the ship and he’s dead. She came here to free me, and to die.” Aubrey’s body shook as the sobs came tumbling out. “She killed herself for me. Everybody dies because of me.”
“Aubrey, stop.” Seht sat up and caught Aubrey’s shoulders, trapping his gaze.
“Listen to me. You did not kill those ship crews.”
Aubrey shivered in Seht’s grasp. “It was my program—”
Seht shook his head. “That you did not willingly give.”
Aubrey sucked in a small breath. “No, I didn’t.”
Seht’s gaze hardened. “Think. If my brother were to beat me to the ground and take my gun from my hands, and then he went out and killed a hundred people with it, is it my fault that they died?”
Aubrey stilled. “No.”
Seht raised his brow. “Whose fault was it?”
Aubrey’s brows dipped. “Your brother’s.”
Seht pursed his lips and tilted his head. “Say that he returns the gun to my hands, but then he wants to use it again. Say also that I refuse to let him have it, because I know that he intends to harm others with it, but he takes it from me anyway and kills more people with it. Is it my fault those people died?”
Aubrey frowned. “No, you didn’t shoot them.”
Seht raised his brow. “Nor did you.”
Aubrey opened his mouth.
Seht pressed a hand to his lips. “No, Aubrey. You said no, and you fought to stop them. You did not win your fights, but you did not use that weapon to kill those people.
The weapon was not in your control.”
Aubrey scowled. “It wasn’t supposed to be a weapon!”
Seht rolled his eyes. “In the hands of a skilled assassin, a sheet of paper can be a deadly weapon.”
Aubrey’s brows shot up. “A sheet of paper?”
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37
Seht smiled. “Remind me to show you sometime.” His brows lifted. “Now, who
really
killed all those ship crews? Who chose which ships to use that weapon on?”
Aubrey felt a knot of white-hot hate enfold his heart. “Moribund. He was the one that pulled me from my ship and killed everyone else. He ordered me sent to the airlock because I told him I’d rather die.”
“Did you now?” Seht tilted his head. “That is who was after you, is it not? Those were his men.”
Aubrey nodded and scowled. “The captain said that I’m Moribund’s most valuable possession.”
Seht smiled. “I should think so. Your program made it possible to steal a great many ships. Without you, he will have to go back to his original method.” He raised a brow. “What I do not understand is why he did not simply make a copy of your program and then kill you?”