Kieran (Tales of the Shareem) Read online

  “Why?” Judith asked, startled. “What can you do?”

  “Just trust me,” Felice said. “Come on, Mitch. What have you got to lose?”

  “My license, my freedom, permission to land on Bor Narga again, which is where my girlfriend lives…”

  “The Shareem will lose their lives. I’ll probably get arrested too, if it makes you feel better. I’m willing to give it a shot. Are you?”

  Mitch stared at her for a time, his handsome face creasing with a frown. Judith laid a hand on his. “She’s got a point. They can’t kill us. We need to help.”

  “Damn both of you,” Mitch said. “The Shareem manage to take up with some headstrong women, I swear to the gods.” He pointed a finger at Felice. “You’re lucky I’m so frigging nice.”

  “That’s why I love you,” Judith said softly.

  Mitch swung all his attention away from Felice to focus on Judith. He looked more stunned than the highest setting on his weapon, which told Felice that this might be the first time Judith had said that to him.

  Felice smiled, watching the two share a moment and forget all about her.

  Not entirely. Mitch leaned to Judith, kissed her hard on the mouth, then gunned the engines and took the ship up. He ignored the blurted questions from the control tower as he skimmed the vessel up and out of the dockyards, then headed for the city’s highest hill.

  *** *** ***

  Kieran turned his steps toward Dr. Laas’s lair, but there were too many patrollers between him and it to reach it safely. He didn’t want to lead the patrollers straight to Dr. Laas and Baine, so he settled for keeping to the shadows and moving slowly from street to street.

  Patrollers swarmed Judith’s bar, even though she’d closed it—no refuge there. Other refuges existed, though.

  Kieran made his way to a shop that contained an entrance to another Shareem hideaway. The shop was closed, but he found the door that led to the alley behind it ajar.

  He didn’t like walking into things that looked like traps, but . . .

  All was dark and silent inside the store, the proprietor gone. Wise. She was known to allow Shareem into her shop, even like them there.

  Kieran found the secret way downstairs, but the door had been forced, the electric lock useless in the blackout. Someone had gotten here ahead of him.

  He moved noiselessly down a flight of stairs and then another. Below was a hidden place for Shareem, but unlike Dr. Laas’s lair, human women knew about it, and many visited in secret. Shareem brought ladies to this level-three den to enjoy the pleasures of their Shareem.

  All the sex, games, and Shareem passing through had left a tingle in the air that Kieran’s honed senses picked up. But most of the pheromones weren’t recent. One set was, though, those of a Shareem in a heightened emotional state.

  Only one Shareem was ever that heightened.

  “Rees,” Kieran whispered.

  Rees came out of the shadows, the work light in his hands outlining his face in wavering blue. He didn’t look surprised to see Kieran and didn’t check behind him for patrollers. He simply asked, “So, what happened?”

  “Braden, Aiden, Ky—made it out. Patrollers came. I sent Felice with Mitch and Judith.”

  “Good.” Rees grinned, his eyes holding a mad sparkle. The Shareem experiment that DNAmo tried to hide, who’d been the first to fool them and escape, the Shareem whom no one quite knew how dangerous he was, looked out at Kieran. “Did you stay behind to help me?”

  “To help you and get you the fuck out,” Kieran said. “I always knew you were crazy.”

  “I am. So are you.” Rees handed him another work light, which came on as Kieran wrapped his fingers around it. “You and I, my friend, are going to bring down Bor Narga.”

  *** *** ***

  The small freighter skimmed the hills that climbed from Pas City to the ruling family’s compound at the top. Felice had memorized the city’s layout from records and maps—the middleclass Vistara went by beneath them, then the upper-crust Serestine Quarter, then the very top of the hill that contained the ruling family’s homes and the seat of government.

  It was dark up here too—the whole city was one black mass with flickers from backup lighting here and there. On top of the highest hill, though, the wealthiest part of the city, emergency power had been restored, and a few streets and buildings were floodlit.

  It was the cleanest part of the city too, Felice observed as she left the freighter to the waiting arms of more patrollers. Force fields shimmered overhead, and the heat was dampened. The people who lived here could afford to shut out the weather.

  They also could afford a better class of patrollers. These were pristinely dressed in black coveralls, stone-faced, no-nonsense, showing none of the weariness or angry arrogance of their Pas City counterparts.

  Mitch and Judith were escorted off the freighter behind Felice, and they were all marched together to the ruling family’s headquarters.

  The building looked sterile on the outside, but the inside was opulent—like a grand European palace on Old Earth. The patrollers were instructed by a set of what looked like palace guards to take Mitch and Judith, friends to Shareem, to holding cells.

  Felice, a wild card, was taken to see the leader of Bor Narga herself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lady Clothilde d’Aroth received Felice in a small white wooden-paneled chamber that held a delicate-legged writing table, a curve-backed sofa, and two armchairs with padded arches over the tops. Everything was frothy, white, and pastel. Felice had the strange feeling that she could get everything dirty just by looking at it.

  In one of the armchairs, in a coverall, her hair in a sloppy bun, was Brianne d’Aroth, the lover of Aiden and Ky. The second armchair held, to Felice’s shock, Lady Talan d’Urvey, Rees’s lifemate, who was supposed to have been on the first transport that had shot out of the dockyards.

  “Felice,” Brianne said, rising. Talan stayed seated, her lips pressed together.

  Clothilde d’Aroth, a stately woman who was an older version of Brianne, sat at the desk and stared haughtily across it at Felice. “This is the fighting woman?”

  “This is Felice Henderson, yes, Grandmother,” Brianne said.

  Clothilde indicated a handheld lying flat on her writing table. “According to the latest report, you were granted a reprieve and told to leave the planet. Yet, here you are.”

  “Yep, here I am.” Felice remained standing in the middle of the room, her hands folded in front of her, the stance she assumed when waiting for a match to begin. No threats, no aggression. Just waiting.

  “Did you come to kick-box me?” Clothilde sounded amused. “Or whatever it is you call it?”

  “Dojokun,” Felice said. “I am a dojokuner.”

  “I see.” The ruler of all Bor Narga was sublimely uninterested.

  “I didn’t come to fight,” Felice said. “I came to argue. For the lives of the Shareem.”

  Clothilde waved an imperious hand at the other two women. “So have my granddaughter and Lady Talan. Lady Talan even made the captain of the freighter she was on return her here in one of their shuttles, when she realized her Shareem had been left behind. I’ve told them I’ll see what I can do about the Shareem they’ve insisted on throwing in their lots with. But all of them in general? No.”

  Felice smiled. “I thought you might not be amenable. The thing is, Lady d’Aroth, I convinced Mitch to put his ship on automatic pilot before we landed. It’s even now winging its way out of here.”

  Clothilde raised her brows, but she didn’t grab her handheld or run to her console and demand to know whether what Felice said was true. “Did you? How extraordinary.”

  “I put a file on board its computer,” Felice said. “Well, Mitch uploaded it for me. When it reaches the next station, it is set to broadcast all my notes and research about Bor Narga and its treatment of Shareem. Vids, observations, everything. That broadcast is set to pipe from the station to worlds all over the pla
ce, any it can reach, and from there be conveyed to the next. Every world will know the secret of the Shareem, from Sirius III to Ariel, all the way to Old Earth. Every antislavery world will know the truth of you—Bor Narga that pretends to be so enlightened.” Her own research plus what she’d convinced Dr. Laas and Baine to give her. The universe needed to know.

  Clothilde listened, her nostrils pinching. “The Shareem are not a secret. One already lives on Ariel. Unfortunately.”

  “Hearsay is very different from actual evidence, or a blatant vid showing torture of Shareem in the factory called DNAmo. I have nothing to lose by sending out those files. I have no trading contracts, no treaties, no reputation, no high station in life. I’m a middleclass girl who became a fighter for the fun of it then sold herself into servitude to save a friend. I’d do it again. If I go to prison forever for helping the Shareem move a step closer to freedom, then I will.”

  “You might do more than go to prison,” Clothilde said sharply. “For barging in here and threatening me.”

  “It’s not a threat, my lady,” Felice said. “It’s already done.”

  “Good,” Brianne said softly.

  “Don’t give me any lip, Granddaughter,” Clothilde snapped. “I’ve extended a huge concession letting you live as you do. You’re an embarrassment to the entire family.”

  “Oh, well,” Brianne said. Her face was like marble, and like marble, could crack any moment.

  “Aiden and Ky are all right,” Felice said to her. “Ky was hurt, but they’re gone. They made it out.”

  Brianne sat down very fast, her hands going to her face. Everything brittle flowed out of her, and Felice heard her sob. “Thank the gods. Thank the gods.”

  Talan went to comfort her, but her own face was strained. She looked an inquiry at Felice, but Felice had to shake her head. She had no idea what had happened to Rees.

  Or Kieran. What the hell had become of Kieran? Felice wasn’t leaving this piece of dirt without him.

  Clothilde lifted the handheld and tapped a few things with her forefinger. In a few seconds, a woman dressed in a stiff suit—the stick up her butt must hold it in place, Felice thought—came through the door. “My lady?”

  “New orders. I want every Shareem left on this planet to be rounded up and brought here.”

  The woman blinked. “Here, my lady?”

  “Here. Every single one. This young woman will tell you which ones have managed to leave the planet, and I want all the others in my banquet hall before the night’s over. Understand?”

  The woman cleared her throat. “That might be difficult, my lady.”

  Clothilde glared at her. “Difficult?”

  “Most of the city’s grid is down, my lady,” the woman said quickly. “First it was the lights, but now it’s all the major computer systems. Air, water pumps, force fields. The outages are all the way up the Vistara and getting into the Serestine Quarter. It’s chaos right now, my lady, but come morning, it will be even worse. When the heat hits . . .”

  Lady d’Aroth made an impatient noise, as though an entire desert city losing a way to cool itself and filter water was a minor annoyance. “Send workers out to patch things up. But bring me those Shareem. I have the feeling when we have them, the grid problem will be solved.”

  Felice resumed her waiting-fighter pose, but she didn’t relax, and she didn’t ask to sit down. She didn’t know the extent of what was going on here—she’d said her piece, and now she could only wait.

  *** *** ***

  “You like this way too much,” Kieran told Rees.

  “Baine taught me a few tricks.” Rees had panels open inside a power station he’d gotten into through holes that led out of the Shareem dungeon. Rees hadn’t made the tunnels himself—they’d always been there, he’d said. For maintenance, before everything was computerized. Eland, who’d hidden down here years ago, had showed him where they were.

  “So, you’re bringing down every power conduit for the whole city?” Kieran asked, watching Rees flip switches and touch buttons.

  “Not the whole city,” Rees said. “Just most of it.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Rounding up Shareem and terminating them for wanting to leave to find a better life is harsh,” Rees said. “You understand that you and I, we might not get out, right?”

  “Yeah, I got that. The patrollers all over the streets hunting Shareem gave me a clue.”

  “If we go, then the ladies of Bor Narga can have something to remember us by. Besides all the great sex, I mean.”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  DNAmo had seriously fucked up Rees, it was true. They’d enhanced Rees’s instinctive reactions while they’d tried to suppress Kieran’s, except for when Kieran became the level three—he could go from neutral to level three so fast, he wasn’t sure which man he was half the time.

  Except with Felice. Then he was both. And neither. You’re Kieran, she’d said to him.

  Mitch would make sure she was all right—Kieran didn’t have to worry about Felice being safe. That left him the ability to miss her, and mourn that he’d never see her again.

  Felice had given him so much. Though she’d come to Kieran with nothing, she’d left him with the understanding of true happiness.

  Rees, he saw, watching Rees’s set face and grim expression, was also grieving. Rees loved Talan deeply, had an amazing connection to her. Talan was gone—Rees was acting like a man with nothing left to lose. He was probably right. Even if Kieran and Rees could escape the city to the wasteland beyond, without water or a way to stay cool, it wouldn’t matter. The desert would devour them.

  No transport at all would get out the way Rees was pulling down the system. No trains would run, no water would pump to houses from the Serestine Quarter to Pas City. The entire planet would grind to a halt until the holes Rees was making could be bypassed.

  “Stop,” Kieran said.

  “No.” Rees went on tapping things and pulling wires. Kieran couldn’t follow his complicated machinations, but he knew it was bad.

  “Justin’s daughter is out there,” Kieran said. “Talan’s foster mom—what’s her name?—Lady Pet. Judith’s friends. You’re messing with them.”

  “I can try to patch them in,” Rees said without stopping.

  “That looks like wholesale destruction to me. What about Dr. Laas? If power goes down to her compound, she’s dead.”

  “She has Baine.”

  “Baine uses the power already in the system. He doesn’t create it. Right?” Kieran had no idea—Rees was the genius—but Kieran thought that might be the case.

  Rees didn’t answer. He kept yanking things, his work light wavering. It was hot enough already down here—what would happen when air stopped blowing through these tunnels?

  “You’re going to punish the whole damn planet for what a few scientists did to us twenty years ago?” Kieran asked him.

  “Scientists, DNAmo, the ruling council, and everyone who sat by on their asses and let it happen.”

  Kieran shared Rees’s anger, but at the same time, what Rees was doing seemed kind of crazy. “Most people out there don’t even know what we are,” Kieran pointed out. “Have never even seen a Shareem.”

  “That makes it okay, then?” Rees snapped.

  “They didn’t do anything to you. Or me. And now they won’t be able to fend off the sun, or stay hydrated. They might die—because you’re pissed off?”

  “Kieran.” Rees stopped his frantic work to turn on him. “They’re going to kill us. I’d finally found a purpose for my stupid existence—Talan—and now I’m not even allowed to have her. For twenty years I’ve been trying to help Shareem, and when I at last had a way to give us all our freedom, I only succeeded in getting half of us killed. This isn’t revenge, my friend. This is justice.”

  “We’re not dead yet,” Kieran said as Rees returned to the power block. “You’ve fucked things up pretty good already. Let’s take advantage of it, find another transport, an
d get the hell out of here.”

  “Leaving the rest of our friends to rot?”

  “They’re not stupid.” Kieran grabbed Rees’s wrists, stilling his hands. Rees glared at him, but Kieran refused to let go. “Get over yourself, Rees. You think you’re smarter than any other Shareem—well, okay, you are—but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are dumbass little babies waiting for you to tell us what to do. I bet most of them are heading for the nearest transport even as we’re sitting here. You did it, all right? You messed up Bor Narga—now we can go.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Rees asked, voice harsh. “For twenty years, they’ve waited for an excuse to terminate us. Now I’ve given them one.”

  “You did what was right. What else were we supposed to do? Hole up here and live like rats the rest of our lives? Worse than rats. You gave us a chance. Now stop fucking it up. I’m not willing to make other people we’ve never met miserable, maybe dead, because I’ve had to live in a crappy apartment and take sterilization drugs.”

  Rees’s hands relaxed under Kieran’s, and Kieran released him. Rees just looked at him and didn’t go back to shutting down the city. “They took Felice away from you,” he said, his voice flat, dead. “They took Talan away from me.”

  “Talan and Felice are safe. That’s the only thing that matters to me. That Felice is safe. What matters most to you?”

  Rees watched him a moment longer, his chest rising and falling with his tortured breathing. His eyes shone in the dim light of the work lamps, the blue nearly black. “You fuckwad,” he finally said in a quiet voice.

  Kieran reached past him and slid the panel closed on the grid. He didn’t trust himself to turn on what Rees had turned off—he’d probably blow something up—but at least he could stop the damage.

  He cranked himself to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go find a transport before the patrollers trace the outage to here.”

  “They won’t,” Rees said.

  “Even so.” Kieran held out his hand to his old friend.

  Rees took Kieran’s offered hand, then abruptly hauled himself upright and took a swing at Kieran’s face. Kieran blinked, and blocked the punch, but found another, and another coming at him.