Page 50 of Taken to Kor
I jump over heads and barrel through bodies and catch her halfway towards the entrance to the Cosmos Dome. She’s blocked by a dozen bickering Walreys, flying insectoids with more credits than sense — a fact that makes them incredibly popular. I grab her arm and spin her body into mine, holding her two arms with all four of my hands.
She jerks against me, but only once. She must know that it’s pointless.
Her eyes are glossy and dark and words flee my lips as I stare at her. Shrov, she’s so beautiful. Unfathomably beautiful. Am I not enough? I am not used to doubt and frown. She jerks again and I lower my head and seethe in a dark voice, one that commands, “Am I not what you want, pirate? You want something larger? Something Egama-sized?”
“I could ask you the same thing, pirate.” She sneers the word like an insult, but it could never be.
“I have no desire to bed an Egama.”
“That’s obviously not what I meant!”
“Then what do you mean?” I grip her wrists harder, snake one fist around her neck and give her a small, rage-filled shake. “I’ve made my feelings about you nothing but clear. If you’re too psychotic to hear them, then that’s on you.”
“Erf!” She tries to hit me, but she can’t. She tries to pull away, but she can’t. “You say that you…you talk about me to my face like you like me…”
“Not like —love.”
“Yeah, right, but…”
“Centare. Say it. Say the word.”
She opens her mouth. Her tongue flaps around in her mouth like a fish. I want to catch it and cut it out for all the anger she’s causing me. I want to devour it. Trace all of its edges with my own. Lick them clean.
“Mm-hm-hm…” She grunts and it’s as if all of the Meero words she knows have bunched together at the gate of her mouth, stuffing her throat full of whatever lies she’s told herself. Soon, she’ll explode with them. “But!” She jerkily shouts, whole face turning hot with a heat I can feel from where I stand. “BUT!” Her voice gets louder, her eyes and mouth get red. She looks like a lid that’s going to pop and I can’t help it. I laugh directly in her face.
“Deena, you’re going to have to breathe if you want to get words out…” I chuckle.
And then she bursts. “YOU SAY YOU LIKE ME BUT YOUR HANDS ARE ALL OVER HER!”
I quiet. My laughter deflates like a worn leather ball. It rolls to a sad, floppy stop while my heart does quite the opposite. I grin down at her fully. Wildly. Her eyes widen as she takes in my expression. In the rings of her white and blue and black gaze, I can see what I look like. Like a madman prepared to conclude his greatest experiment. Like a warlord about to plunder the most sacred of temples. Like a mate staring into the eyes of his own jealous mate’s.
“You were jealous to see me touching Meghanora?”
“Eragh!” She shouts, trying to twist away from me, but I’m not letting her retreat from this now.
“Answer me, Deena.”
“I know who she is! She introduced herself before you got here. I know that you did shekurr with her.”
Thump. Thump. The bass beats like the Egamas’ great drums. Only this sound is in my chest and in my soul.
“And that makes you angry?”
“Ontte! Of course it does. You touch all over her and you did shekurr with her and you haven’t done shekurr with me and I’ve been with you in your nest sleeping beside you — if you even come to the nest — for fourteen solars and you haven’t touched me. Where have you been? Doing shekurr with her?”
“Of course not! And ontte, of course I’ve touched you…”
“You haven’t…you don’t want me! Just admit it. I’m fat and my leg is all messed up and I’m not pretty and I’m not Niahhorru and you have tanks of human women you can pick from and I’m just crazy Deena! Just let me go so I can go gamble or shoot something or play stocks with the Hypha. One of them said he’d show me where the underwater pools are on Kor…that he’d take me swimming…”
Rage grips the backs of my arms as she starts to deflate. I wrap my arms around her hips and throw her over my shoulder. I walk calmly while she writhes and curses and tries to zap me with her lightning stick. She succeeds, tagging me in the back of my left leg before I manage to wrangle it away from her.
I toss it on the ground, not caring where it falls as I exit the Cosmos Dome, make my way through the Regaragara wind market, visible only through HVB goggles unless your eyesight naturally sees that spectrum — only the Walrays do — through the Eshmiri reaver markets, down Pleasure Alley, taking a backroad to reach the Niahhorru primary dock.
My token allows me entry into the port, but I have to wait for the yeeyar built into the floor to perform a cell scan before I’m allowed entry into the lift that will take us up to the mothership.
The lift doors open into the mothership hangar and I spare little attention to my pirates there working on it — securing it, ontte, but also fixing any scrapes or damage to the yeeyar caused by the asteroid field. All throughout the mothership’s hangar, I can hear the yeeyar purring contentedly. It’s always happy to be treated.
“Rhorkanterannu, Deena — what are you doing two here?” Gerannu says, standing up from where he’d been working on one of the smaller cruisers.
