The Jir had some name in their alien tongue for these fighting ships, but Arixa had given them a Scythian one, just as she had given the Sagaris its name.

  Panthers.

  They looked nothing like panthers.

  Tomiris had pointed this out to Arixa, adding, “Panthers don’t fly. What about Sky Panthers?”

  “Out here, everything flies, and there is no sky,” Arixa had answered.

  This was true enough. Panther was a fitting name, then. Nearly every member of the Dawn had a prominent panther tattoo. Tomiris’s covered her left hip and buttock.

  Hers was perhaps not so prominent when she was dressed, then.

  Opiya’s panther had been on her shoulder and neck and so much more artful than Tomiris’s. But Opiya was dead on Earth already when the sky horde came.

  She had never seen the wonders.

  She had been spared the hardships.

  Opiya hadn’t been Tomiris’s sister by birth, but they’d come of age together and might as well have shared blood.

  Arixa could never replace lost Opiya, but the Captain did what she could, and Tomiris was grateful for it.

  “Do you really believe nothing can stop us?” Tomiris had asked when Arixa had first shown her the Panthers, assigning to her and Vaspa the task of learning to pilot them. To kill and destroy with them.

  “I have to believe it,” Arixa had said. Tomiris was one of few people in front of whom the Captain allowed herself to sound tired. “If others believe, then we may have a chance.”

  “I believe,” Tomiris said. In truth, she felt a great deal of doubt.

  Arixa’s smile said she understood that truth. She gestured at the row of five Panthers in the hangar. The Sagaris was currently voyaging through the Blue, and so instead of standing they floated near each other, anchored to wall-mounted handgrips.

  “Do you think you can learn to put this to use?” Arixa asked.

  “Maybe with help from Zhi.”

  “Zhi has a lot to do.”

  Tomiris thought and concluded, “Can’t be harder than learning to ride a horse and shoot a bow at the same time, right?”

  Arixa laughed. “How long did that take you?”

  “I don’t remember much from when I was eight years old. But I remember falling off my horse a lot. I remember bruises.”

  “At least you can’t fall off this.”

  “True. But failure at this means more than bruises.”

  Arixa acknowledged this with grave silence. “You’ll try?”

  “Of course.”

  “Learn what you can here in the Blue, but we can’t send Panthers out in it,” Arixa said. “Apparently they don’t work properly out there.”

  “How long do I have to learn?”

  “Four more Shifts. And then...”

  “Combat.”

  “Yes,” Arixa confirmed. “If you’re ready, and you wish to.”

  Arixa’s tone said she knew that she asked the impossible. Tomiris knew it, too, but that didn’t change her answer.

  “I will be.”

  “Thank you,” Arixa said. “I’ll leave it to you to convince Vaspa.”

  * * *

  Vaspa had not been hard to convince.

  Since then, they had spent endless hours inside the Panther, including a rare few with Zhi, who helped them to decipher the myriad of controls and displays.

  It was only thanks to Dr. Fizzbik’s imprinting that they possessed even a basic understanding of the systems which comprised a vessel such as this. Other members of the Dawn who had not been imprinted with this knowledge knew as much about what an engine was as the rats aboard a galley understood about oars.

  Tomiris knew things she had never learned, knew things she didn’t even know she knew until she was asked or until she needed to know it. In a way, she no longer quite knew her own mind. The effect was disconcerting, but it was subtle, at least. She was not a new person. She still knew all the things she was supposed to know, still felt the same things. She was still Tomiris.

  And Vaspa, the only other living member of the Dawn with pilot imprinting, was still Vaspa.

  Tomiris had never taken much note of Vaspa in the past. But having shared with him the privilege of becoming one of Arixa’s twenty-four chosen, and now having had occasion to spend a great deal of time alone with him in close quarters, she began to take note. Maybe no more than any woman might of any man, or maybe more. He noticed her, too. Maybe no more than any man would any woman. Or maybe more.

  In the small Panther cockpit, their hands happened to touch frequently. And because there was no gravity (a force which the two of them now understood better than rats did ocean currents), other parts of them also frequently bumped.

  The notice wasn’t only physical, though. Vaspa’s manner appealed to her. He lacked the negative qualities common to many men, most notably an inflated sense of self-worth and quickness to anger. He showed no indication of wishing urgently to either fuck her or prove his superiority, or both simultaneously.

  In short, while Vaspa was definitely a man, he wasn’t excessively mannish.

  Their third hours-long session inside the Panther, alone in the Blue, came after Tomiris had made the difficult decision to hack off most of her long, fawn-hued hair instead of keeping it braided and pinned. For practical reasons, men and women alike on the Sagaris were making the same choice.

  “I miss it,” she told Vaspa inside the Panther. “I look like Dak now.”

  Vaspa chuckled. “Believe me, you don’t.”

  “What does that mean?” Tomiris asked, even though she knew.

  “It means what it means.”

  “Which is?” She still knew, but pressed anyway.

  “It means,” Vaspa surrendered with a sigh, “whatever your hair is like, I don’t think about doing with Dak what I think about doing with you.”

  “What do you mean? Wrestling?”

  Vaspa laughed. “Sure. That.”

  “We could... wrestle sometime. It might be fun.”

  “I...” Vaspa began.

  Men so very often failed to finish what they began.

  Eventually he managed to, while Tomiris pretended to ignore him: “I’m very certain that would be fun.”

  “For both of us?” she asked.

  “I hope so. More than just hope.”

  Still without looking at him, Tomiris observed, “I believe that about you.”

  She activated a display and adjusted the controls. Zhi had put the Panther into a training mode, which meant that they couldn’t destroy it or anything around them.

  Tomiris couldn’t yet imagine actually taking the craft out into the black, endless void, even if other ships weren’t out there firing weapons at her.

  When that happened, she would die. She knew that. She was working on accepting it. She hadn’t voiced the feeling to Vaspa yet to learn whether he felt the same.

  She would, but not now. Now felt increasingly like a good time to live.

  “Tomiris?” Vaspa said when she’d been silent a while.

  “Yes?”

  “When... did you think might be a good time? To have fun, I mean.”

  “Why, are you having trouble thinking about anything else now?”

  “Yes,” he swiftly confessed.

  “Good.”

  The same was true for Tomiris, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

  Flushed and tingling, she waited for Vaspa to act. She was pleased when he appeared just behind her. It was easy to sneak up on people in zero gravity, assuming one was able to move at all without slamming into things. There were no footfalls to hear.

  Reaching from behind, Vaspa put his hands over hers. His face appeared at her right shoulder, and he kissed her just where her neck emerged from the collar of her Jir-made undergarment. The inked skin there came alive with a gentle fire.

  “That’s not wrestling,” she said softly, making no move to stop him. He did it again, and Tomiris shut her eyes and sighed with pleasure. “You need to ask permission for that.”

  He ran the fingers of one hand up her arm. At the shoulder they left her skin only to reappear in her newly shortened hair, which drifted around her head like kelp in a tide.

  “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

  “I don’t use words to make men stop.”

  Vaspa kissed her below her right ear. She squirmed.

  “Do you wrestle them?” he asked.

  “I make them regret.”

  “Regret what?”

  “Not asking.”

  When Vaspa’s lips ceased their explorations, Tomiris was the one to feel regret. But only briefly.

  “That’s fair,” he said. The words tickled. “May I have permission to kiss the Dawn’s fairest warrior?”

  “Yes,” Tomiris answered eagerly.

  That was enough of games. She twisted around in his arms, sending the two of them into a gentle, drifting spin through the Panther’s small cabin. One of Vaspa’s hands staved off collision, but the motion tugged their faces apart just enough to prevent their lips from meeting.

  Vaspa laughed, Tomiris gave a little growl of frustration, and they tried again.

  Success and relief. Her lips were always dry on this ship, and so were Vaspa’s, but enough moisture soon resulted. His lips were soft and warm and yielding. In Scythia, he had stayed clean shaven, but such habits of grooming were less simple out here, and his chin was covered with scratchy fuzz. She would shave it for him later, but in this moment it was of no consequence.

  Clinging tightly to one another to prevent disengagement, they kissed for a good while. In the course of it, Vaspa’s hand slipped inside the collar of her garment from behind, stretching it for removal. Tomiris welcomed it, and she did the same to him.

  It was when they tried to pull the garments down over their legs that they wound up in a chaotic dance that saw their bodies misaligned and various parts of them striking both the fixtures of the cabin and each other.

  They were well-motivated, however, and persistence soon delivered victory.

  “Not in here,” Vaspa said, rubbing an elbow which had taken a sharp bump. He triggered the Panther’s exit iris, which swiftly opened to the hangar, flooding the cabin with slightly less stale air that smelled less of hygel.

  Anchoring himself on the door’s rim, Vaspa pulled Tomiris by her arm out into the wider space of the hangar and then into an embrace of skin on skin. His rough hand caressed her panther and other expanses while she kept a grip on parts of him to ensure he didn’t drift away.

  She wrapped bare legs around him, and with some awkwardness they coupled, embracing tightly while Tomiris bit his neck and Vaspa nuzzled her cropped hair.

  “I have nothing to brace on,” he whispered.

  “That sounds like your problem.”

  “Yours, too.”

  Tomiris slid her hand down the small of Vaspa’s smooth back and whispered, “Shh. It’s a new world. Things are different. We’ll learn.”

  * * *

  “Arixa,” Zhi said.

  Zhi sounded so tired. They were together on the bridge, in the Blue, alone but for Dak and another Scythian on guard near the door, belted in but ready to spring loose in the event of trouble.

  “Yes,” Arixa answered.

  Zhi sighed. “Never mind.”

  In spite of the mind-change, Arixa propelled herself to where Zhi was working. “What is it?”

  “I... well...” Zhi’s thumb swiped an icon in her display. A small image appeared hanging in the air above. “Just this. None of our business.”

  The image showed the hangar where the Panthers were housed. In front of one of the fighter craft hovered two Scythians, unclothed and entwined.

  Arixa smiled, continuing to stare. “Good for them.”

  “I’ll switch it off,” Zhi said.

  “No. Why would you do that?”

  “To give them privacy.”

  “It’s my ship. Can you give me a better view?”

  With a sigh, Zhi complied. Then she moved away, leaving Arixa to observe her pilots alone.

  * * *

  In Vaspa’s grinding embrace, Tomiris’s flesh quivered and caught fire in a way it had not done in a great many moons. When the tension subsided, she buried her face against her partner’s neck and found her body wracked with another sort of spasm.

  She sobbed.

  “What’s wrong?” Vaspa asked in surprise. His shudder, too, had passed.

  She wasn’t immediately able to answer. Vaspa cradled her head and smoothed her hair as if in a vain effort to keep it in place against her scalp.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked again. Now he sounded a touch impatient, probably sensing insult where there was none, as men tended to do.

  But the tears which caught briefly in Tomiris’s lashes before drifting away into the hangar had little to do with him, not directly anyway.

  Once she understood herself why they came, Tomiris told him, even though it was humiliating. Even though it was something a Scythian warrior should not say. Even though she had risked her life without second thought on dozens of days, never giving any man grounds to question her bravery.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said in a whisper.

  Instead of berating her, instead of questioning and chastising, Vaspa only held her more tightly. That was the instant when she knew she felt for him that thing that others had spoken of but she had never felt herself. She loved Vaspa.

  She wiped her eyes on his tattooed neck, and the tears stopped, and she shifted her head to kiss his lips again.

  Before she could, she heard in her ear via the comm implanted there: “Hello, Vaspa. Tomiris.”

  Arixa’s voice. Vaspa apparently heard, too, via his comm. Both froze.

  “I’ll be honest,” Arixa said. “I watched you from the bridge. I can see you right now.”

  Tomiris blushed a little but chuckled. She was not ashamed. Unless—

  “Did you also listen?” she asked.

  “No,” Arixa answered. “Why? Should I have? Are you two plotting against me?”

  “Never, Captain,” Vaspa replied for them.

  “I know. I only commed to say that even though you don’t need my blessing, you have it. And thank you.”

  “For what?” Tomiris asked.

  “For being flesh and blood humans together. For reminding me that I’m also human. I’m happy for you. Carry on.”

  Suspended in the subverse, far from home, Tomiris squeezed Vaspa tightly to her and felt the embrace returned.

  Seven

  “Fizzbik!” Arixa called, propelling herself through the iris into his workshop, or laboratory, or infirmary, or whatever he wished to call it. She thought of it as his lair.

  All around, lying in Jir-made beds too large for them, were the prone bodies of wounded Scythians kept unconscious by artificial means while Fizzbik worked to heal them. Eventually they would be augmented, she hoped, drastically improving their endurance and healing capacity. But the equipment on the Jir vessel was evidently not suitable for Fizzbik to operate on humans.

  They would be augmented if they chose it, Arixa often had to correct herself. There was a price to be paid, a small but significant one to a Scythian.

  That price was why she had come to Fizzbik’s lair on the Sagaris.

  “By Goom, will you address me by my title, human?” Fizzbik barked back from hiding. “I’m sure I left more corpses in my wake attaining it than you did becoming Barbarian-in-Chief.”

  “Doctor Fizzbik,” Arixa corrected without taking offense. She’d grown accustomed to the Gaboon’s harsh manner, which contrasted with his friendly, furry, dog-like appearance. “I need some kind of space cannabis. Soon.”

  “Ha!” Fizzbik snorted, appearing from behind an assortment of tube-like fixtures. “You’re all demands. And what do I get? Will you deliver me to the nearest Gaboon embassy so I can officially complain of being abducted?”

  “I respect you too much to believe I could force you to do anything, Fi—Doctor. You were already working against the Jir when I abducted you. Sort of. I’m only giving you a better way to do it. You’re welcome.”

  “Ha!” he barked again, wagging a fuzzy, clawed finger. “You take it, and you give it back. I like that quality in an abductor.”

  “I’m glad you’re having a pleasant captivity,” Arixa said. “Now, cannabis?”

  “I have a little something prepared to replace your primitive weed. I administered it to two of the severely wounded, and it didn’t kill them outright. I’m still observing. As to its, ahem, consciousness-altering effects, if any, and how long they last, a conscious human would have to try it and report.”

  “An augmented one?”

  “Obviously.”

  The progress was positive news, but which of the fifteen augmented warriors who remained to Arixa could she allow to test the stuff? Ivar was too important, as were Tomiris and Vaspa. That left just twelve, zero of whom she could afford to lose.

  “How great is the risk?” she asked.

  Fizzbik laughed his gruff laugh. “High. Or low. Jorked if I know. There could be permanent changes to your fragile human brain chemistry or other unpleasant side-effects. It’s anyone’s guess, really.”

  “This ‘Doctor’ title of yours...” Arixa said. “What does it actually mean?”

  “It means the ones who are lucky enough to leave my care leave it better than they arrived. Like you. I don’t hear you complaining about the, ahem, toy I equipped you with.”

  “No,” Arixa conceded. She raised her right arm and triggered the liquid metal to flow from the valves embedded in her flesh, covering the limb and parts of her torso besides. “I’m fond of it.”

  With a few more subtle movements of her fingers, she caused the metal of her ironglove to flow from her fingertips like silver serpents which then twisted together to form a dagger-sharp spike. Fizzbik had activated this capability of the ILA, and with practice Arixa was improving her control over the shape and movement of the substance.

  A number of unwilling Jir prisoners had helped her perfect various ways in which she could use the liquid metal to harm and kill.

  “You have my eternal gratitude,” she added before returning the weapon to its invisible sheath under her tattooed skin.

 

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