Chapter Text
“There hasn’t been a supply transport for fifty-seven days,” Talu said, following Hannam into the dispensary. “The men are more ill-behaved than is normal for them, and the commander took Shashi to his quarters. He only chooses her when he feels the needs to prove something.”
Hannam shut the door. Dust particles floated in the filtered light from the small window. She unfastened her shirt. “The boys are just bored.” She reached out, pushing Talu’s tunic up to encourage her to remove it. “Did you know they’re still called lancers? Part of their boot training is literally poking things with sticks.” As soon as she said it, she regretted it.
“They are well trained for their duties here. More violent than usual the past few days. Has some event occurred to make them worse?”
Hannam avoided eye contact, as if she were genuinely hiding knowledge instead of the usual dread she lived with every day. “I don’t – I don’t know what it is. You know they don’t me tell anything.”
“I am telling you. Something has changed. We must send our message as soon as the next opportunity presents itself.”
When Talu had shared her plan weeks ago, Hannam had been basking in the afterglow of orgasm. Of course, my love, we’ll escape this place and be together forever. But the more Talu pressed her on the matter, the more her banked terror of the Tal Shiar flared.
Standing shoulder to shoulder in the tiny dispensary in the modular building where she practiced something vaguely akin to obstetrics, she knew no one could see them yet she felt exposed.
She stretched tiptoes to look out the window, leaning as far left as she could, trying to see who was in the tower. She couldn’t tell. The heat shimmered between the canopy covered walkways. Across the compound Yhea stood guard in front of the women’s barracks. Even from this distance she could tell he was jumpy and restless and bored out of his mind. To the left, T’Lie was walking one of the children back from the latrines. Everything seemed normal.
She turned to face Talu. “You’re asking me to commit treason.”
“Against those who unjustly imprisoned you.”
Hannam gnawed her lower lip. She hadn’t told the entire truth in that regard, because Talu would not be nearly so sympathetic if she knew the crime, or that the Tal Shiar had commuted the sentence. If Hannam crossed them and was caught, they would take their time in killing her.
But it was clear she needed to be the voice of reason and common sense. “I think you may be worried for nothing. Supply shipments have been late before.”
An emotion passed over the landscape of Talu’s features like the shadow of a swift moving cloud.
Revulsion.
Hannam’s world tilted, her equilibrium off kilter. A movement at the corner of her eye pulled her attention back to the window. She could see Yhea relieving himself in front of the barracks entrance so the woman and her child would be forced to step through his urine. Ah, that was source of Talu’s reaction.
She turned back to her lover, saying, “They’ll all calm down once their allotment of kali-fal arrives—”
Did she step back wrong-footed? Was Talu catching her or pushing her? Her back hit the dispensary cabinet, rattling the tablets in their jars, and her brain inside her skull. The Vulcan woman smashed up against her, breasts to breasts, fingers digging beneath her clavicles, pressing bruises into the flesh of her arms.
Hannam’s legs turned to jelly then quivered in anticipation. Fear and desire had always waged war inside her.
“I will not allow you to be killed,” Talu said. Her hand slipped between their bodies like a fish and wriggled down between her legs. “We will be free, I promise you. Free of the past. Free of this place. Together. That is your desire, yes? Tell me you will do this for me, Hannam. Yes? Promise me, Hannam. Promise me. Say. Yes.”
Any coherent thought dissolved then, melted, hot and slippery between her legs.
Twenty minutes later Talu exited the medical structure, wiping her fingers on her trousers as she crossed the compound to the women’s barracks. Yhea stepped in front of her with a leer, snaking his tongue in and out. She ducked around him, through the canvas drape that served as the barracks door and closed her mind to his existence.