The Thousand Emperors

Some instinct made him reach out to her. He half-expected her to react with anger, but instead she responded with unexpected hunger. Their mouths mashed together, Luc’s hands curling around the back of her neck to grip her by the hair, pulling her close enough that he could feel her heartbeat thrumming through her chest.

She stood, first pulling off her jacket, and then her thin blouse, revealing small, high breasts, before sliding into the narrow alcove containing the mattress. He followed, sliding one hand under her back, but then she locked her ankles around his waist and flipped him around in the zero gravity until she was straddling him.

He reached up to cup her breasts with his hands, eliciting a soft moan from her, while she reached down to his waist, tugging at his belt.

Soon he was struggling out of his clothes with some difficulty, unsurprising given the exceedingly cramped nature of the alcove. Zelia lifted herself up and out of the way, taking the opportunity to wriggle out of the rest of her clothes before again straddling him, her breath coming in small, nervous gasps.

Luc could feel his erection pulsing against her belly. Taking hold of her hips, he lifted her slightly, as she reached down between her legs and manoeuvred him inside her.

He started to move. Zelia gripped him hard with her knees, grinding herself against him, the fingernails of one hand digging into his chest while she kept the other pressed flat against the ceiling of the alcove. Luc held off as long as he could, holding her tight with both hands, her gasps becoming shorter and higher-pitched.

Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, he could hear Antonov laughing.

‘Now,’ she gasped, her voice ragged. ‘Please.’

He looked up at her naked form with fascination. Her skin glistened with perspiration, while her long dark hair had come undone from the loose knot she’d had it in behind her head. It floated around her face like something alive. Her back arched in tangent with his own, increasingly urgent movements until, finally, he came.

‘Wait,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t move.’

Holding still, he watched as she rocked her hips back and forth with a gentle, barely detectable motion. Then her mouth opened wide and she let out a tiny, bird-like cry before pulling herself down and forward, letting her head rest against his chest. He felt himself slide back out of her.

They lay there together for what felt like a long time. Almost without realizing, Luc pictured Eleanor as she had been in Maxwell’s prison, side by side with Bailey Cripps, but found he felt nothing whatsoever.

‘The question,’ he finally managed to say after an indeterminate amount of time had passed, ‘is whether you were fucking me, or him.’

He felt her fingernails stroke against one shoulder as she brought her head back up to regard him. ‘Both, I think,’ she said with a faint smile.

‘You said that there were things you’d wanted to say to him, but never did.’

She was silent for a minute before answering. ‘I wanted to tell him that I’m sorry.’

He twisted his head up slightly to look down at her. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘Betraying him,’ she said quietly, then dropped her head back down against his chest.

Luc frowned. ‘Zelia . . . what exactly happened between you two?’

He felt her move into a slightly different position. ‘Does it matter? We saw things differently, and I was stupid and foolish and inexperienced enough to let that matter to me more than it should have. And you know what the worst thing was?’

‘What?’

‘He forgave me.’

He felt her tears dampen his chest.

‘But you still wanted to tell him you were sorry.’

‘Once I realized what he’d done to you, I knew there’d never be another chance.’

For the next few minutes, Luc was content to remain where he was.

‘When I was in Maxwell’s prison,’ he said at last, ‘he showed me things that made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew about Antonov. But what I saw when I opened the data-cache here on this station made me realize my whole life isn’t worth a damn unless I do everything I can to finish what Antonov started.’

She sat up and regarded him with eyes wide. ‘Did you even hear what you just said?’

‘Everything’s different now, Zelia.’

‘Different how?’

’Because of what I learned from that data-cache.’

‘So you did get something from it.’

‘Father Cheng,’ said Luc, ‘is planning to destroy Benares.’

She blinked as if she hadn’t quite heard him right. ‘What?’

‘I saw it all, through his own eyes.’ He let out a small, soft laugh at the thought of just how much of his life had