Page 13 of Throwing Fire

I think back. “Sixteen years ago? I wasn’t even in this system.” I’d been with SAWL for two years. Finished basic and my sharpshooter q-course, but I hadn’t been to flight school yet. “I was probably in cold sleep. We shipped out three times that year. I spent more time frozen than I did awake.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Losin’ six weeks at a time in cold sleep? Wakin’ up in the middle of a firefight? Why the fuck would I miss that?”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. It must have been, I don’t know, kind of glamorous. All that travel. Exotic places.”

I chuckle. “Nothin’ glamorous about the places I was sent, kitten. Gassin’ miners on Yuan who were riotin’ because the Company demanded thirty-six-hour shifts? Shootin’ down those poor fuckers on Phogath who’d gone bug nuts from light intoxication? Definitely notglamorous.”

“Oh.” Kez looks up at me for a long moment, big blues searching my face.

“What, kitten?”

“When you said you were in the military, I don’t know, I thought?—”

“What’d you think?”

She lifts her shoulder, pale skin sliding under red silk. Nowthatis glamorous. “I thought you’d be out there on the edge of the stars, killing aliens, or something. Making the universe a safer place.”

“Never met a xeno I didn’t like,” I say. There’s plenty of non-terrestrial life in the galaxy. Some of it, like the fauna on Kuseros, is only dangerous if you compete for its food source. Some of it, like the fucking sentient crystal matrices orbiting Beta Com, can’t even recognizably interact with humans. None of it is a serious threat to the fuck-off expansion of humanity. Men are still the worst threat to their own kind. “I did urban pacification, kitten. Ugly on ugly. Only good thing that came out of that time was learnin’ how to fly.”

She smiles gently. “Well, that was a good thing.”

“Yeah, it was.” I turn her so she’s facing the sunset. Wrap my arms around her waist. Normally I’d rest my chin on the top of her head, but her heels are too high for that. I kiss the soft shag of her hair instead. “Take a last look.”

She does, and we enjoy the lightshow in silence for several minutes. Her ability to companionably share silence is one of the things I like most about Kez. My girl before Kez, Mouse, used to babble at me eighteen hours a day. Every thought that went through her head. When we were first put in together, I wanted her to open up to me. I worked at it for days. But once she did, I fucking regretted it.

“What time is it?” Kez asks finally. She knows I have a chrono implanted in my retina. Part of a surgical Mod I had done after I broke out of Tol Seng.

“Six thirty-seven.” I translate it into civvy time for her.

“I think we should go.”

The rats don’t seem to have a thing about time. Acker just said to come for dinner; he didn’t say when. But Kez is probably right. It’s getting on toward dinnertime, or breakfast, given that the rats are nocturnal. “Lead the way.”

She turns in my arms. Stretches up for a kiss. Takes my hand and leads me back up the gravel beach and into a maze of buildings. They’re shut now, displays dark, entrances shuttered, in the transition between daylight businesses and the Night Market. Most of the buildings are acid-rain stained permacrete. Despite the lack of distinguishing characteristics, or anything resembling a sign, Kez winds unerringly through the maze to a warehouse that looks like every other warehouse, clacks down a set of stairs to a recessed door, and knocks.

The door slides open immediately and Tiancha bows to us. I haven’t seen her in daylight before. Although the setting sun is kind to her – gilding her brindled fur, turning her high, round ears into rose petals – she looks pretty fucking ratty. She blinks her big black eyes into the glare of the sunset and beckons us into the shadows.

CHAPTER 6

In the interior’s cool gloom, Kez gets a hug from Tiancha.

I’m blinded in the transition between light and dark, so I miss who initiated the hug, but I have a feeling it was Tiancha. Kez isn’t usually all that huggy. Well, not with anyone but me. But if Kez feels any distaste at getting hugged by the rat-girl, she doesn’t show it.

Once they break apart, Kez shakes her wrist and cool blue light spills from it. My kitten can’t see in the dark, and she doesn’t like to be at a disadvantage. She used to wear light-beads in her dreadlocks. After she sacrificed her hair for me, she modified her viewie so it throws this soft light.

Kez’s light illuminates a bare warehouse. Couple of cartons and an overturned table. Nothing that gives away the warehouse’s real function as the entrance to the Deep Whites’ domain. Only the extra-wide stairs, leading down into darkness, hint at what’s below.

Tiancha turns down the stairs in a swirl of the gossamer poncho that Kez gave her as a gift the last time we got together. Kez has taught me the importance of gift-giving to the underground clans of Kuseros, and I’m interested to see what she’s brought them thistime. And what they have for us. The cigars that Acker brought last time were fucking gorgeous. A mellow, rich smoke. Probably took five years off my life and dumped the fuck knows what into my lungs, but I’d smoke a dozen of them again in a heartbeat.

Tiancha patters down the stairs, sure-footed on her clawed, bare feet. I check for a handrail, which there is, before offering Kez my hand. When she takes it, I sweep her up into my arms and carry her down the stairs. Sure, I could just help her down the stairs. But that ain’t my style. And it’s not like having my kitten, pliant and warm, in my arms is any kind of hardship.

The walls flicker as we descend. No longer white-washed permacrete; they’re covered with holoart. Each image swims up out of the darkness and fades back to black as we move down the steps. A sunset only slightly less brilliant than the one we just watched. A stand of nativesalevastrees waving in a balmy breeze. I feel the warmth of the breeze tickle my face. Hear the patter of rain as the next image rises into view: a rain-washed cityscape at night, each window a tiny, winking diamond.

“That’s somethin’,” I remark to Kez.

“CJ’s work,” she says. She’s told me about CJ before. A techno-artist, she made Kez’s viewie. She was also part of the Kuus Pack. Kez suspects that CJ and the Pack leader, Nacht, have been murdered in a recent coup. It’s one of the many things I want to talk about with Acker tonight.

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