They donned their fresh garments, rich earth tone leather, fine wool and linen, and strolled hand in hand through the bowers and pathways. Star stopped to caress the scented leafy fronds that angled out on the earthen path. Cleansed of her wounds and the deprivations on Demen II, she radiated a healthy glow.
“You’re still hurt,” she said, stroking Miko’s chest wounds. “What are these from?”
Miko shrugged. “Past battles.” He shuddered, reluctant to shed light on his disfigurations. The obscene symbiosis with Audra still caused him to flinch.
Star seemed to sense Miko’s withdrawal, and jerked away in frustration. “You never tell me anything about yourself. Even those Jakru busybodies with all their intel-gathering couldn’t describe two words about you. It’s odd, if you ask me.”
“I’m a ghost from the past, as the Empress says,” he murmured. “In more ways than you can imagine.”
“Past? As in you’re running from something. Like the law?”
“I’m not from this time.”
She croaked out a laugh. “Right... And I’m the bionic woman. And hence the gills?”
“That’s another story. That horror you saw...” He couldn’t bring his lips to finish the words.
“What about it? Didn’t you call it Audra?”
“I was part of a routine mission—there was a hardware failure, a piracy. It was a Zikri ambush. They pirated my ship, then I—became joined to that thing.”
Star gaped. “You and that obscene waddling filth?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What else could it be?”
Hot shame rose in Miko but there came with it an ironic image of Star naked and whipped at the degrading hands of Beardly and Drek.
Miko scowled and changed the subject. “These horrors—they’ve changed me, thrust me into a future universe. My atoms have been rearranged. I’ve sat, floated in the locust witch water. I’ve gone through their twisted transporters. Yet I feel as if I am destined for a greater purpose. I thought my mission was to return to my own time. Of that, I am now not so sure. I see a future where humans are wiped out, or enslaved by soul-sucking locusts or scavenging Zikri. Seeing their destruction, a part of me wants to run—far away from these horrors and filthy nightmares.”
Star twitched. “Don’t you feel obligated to your people?”
A raw anger surged in Miko’s heart. “For that I will fight! Though I have been timelost and thrust many centuries into the future. The world I once knew is gone.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s not important.” Miko looked away.
From the anguish on her face, it was clear he was losing her. “You’re good-hearted—while a lot of men I know are not.” Her lips twisted in a moue of distasteful memories. “Skullrox is full of rednecks, and cruel masters.”
“So it is in a lot of places.” He stared like a man in a trance. “Enough seriousness, Star. Let us enjoy the moment.” He pulled her close, feeling her warmth and a sudden stir of desire passed through his body. She responded with animal passion. How he had gone from Audra’s horror to this sensual being, he could not fathom. He’d enjoy the moment, while it lasted. Tomorrow was a new day, one where everything could be snatched away.
Miko pulled her off the path through the shrubs to a clear patch. They lay down and made love again, drinking deep of the pleasures of the body, too long withheld.
* * *
While Star went to explore the green lushness around them, Miko tossed and turned in his sleep. Dreams plagued him, of long-tentacled Zikri, clacking locusts, ships exploding in fire, gasps and screams. He jerked awake in a sweat to a face with long curving horns, peering down at him in curiosity but not without a certain mischievous intention.
“I think my elixirs and herbs have struck a goldmine,” the Empress said, gesturing to the wrinkled clothing in the grass.
Miko stifled a cough. “Satisfactory enough.” He hastily reached to don his shirt and woollen breeches.
She swept opened palms out to the greenery in an all-accompanying embrace. “We Jakru live in a world green beyond imagining, Miko, where all that we want is there in the manner of pleasures, any elixir or aromatic essence, or healing balm, you name it.”
“It seems to have its advantages, Empress. Something like Earth once was.”
Lexia acknowledged as much. “I trust you are well rested?”
“Better than at Drek’s palace.”
“Drek—” she croaked out the name “—may his diseased soul burn in hell.”
“Where is your Colonel?” asked Miko, not without some irony.
“Zaul is not here. He would not understand my interest in you.”
“Star wouldn’t either—unfortunately.”
She waved him off. “This has nothing to do with her.” Her mouth quirked in interest. “Who are you, spaceman? A pilot they tell me—or so Zaul says. A NAVO officer from the long line of Earth settlers and explorers, sent on exploration missions centuries ago. But you differ from any of them I knew. As if you appear from a different age, from a different world—yet you have slits on your throat, like a strange fish. I saw what you did back on the locust ship, rescuing me, zapping out of sight, saving people while taking or plucking lives as if they were numbers on a great roulette wheel. Your friends don’t know half the truth of your actual abilities.”
“Usk knows. Fenli is getting wise. It’s a long story... But the Zikri, she has been stalking me.” His face turned sullen. A nameless foreboding gripped his heart and it thudded wildly in his chest. “I thought I had lost the menace. Then some kind of transporter mishap had us jumping from world to world, finally
