Assassin's Hunger: Sheerspace Book 3: Sheerspace, #3

By Jessa Slade

About the SHEERSPACE series:
Hot as the suns... Cool and sharp as spun steel... The alpha male heroes of futuristic romance will take you to the stars! ASSASSIN'S HUNGER was first published in the science fiction romance novella anthology, SCI FI NIGHTS.

ASSASSIN'S HUNGER

Stripped of her identity by a cybernetic mercenary corporation, Shaxi was a mindless killer until the corporation was destroyed and set her free. Now lost and alone, she desperately needs to master her unlinked programming before she succumbs to the rogue madness. But the electromagnetic storm that might save her also blows in the Asphodel, a sheership with more mysteries and menaces than Shaxi has ever faced…including the enigmatic Eril Morav, a heartless assassin on a quest to save the sheerways, even at the cost of his own soul. Eril thinks he’ll use Shaxi to do his dirty work, but she might be the one being in the universe who can light his black-hole heart.

WARNING: Includes a brooding hero who needs a conscience-adjustment, a kick-ass heroine who will definitely kick his ass, science fiction adventure, and steamy sex scenes.

55,000 words

QUEEN OF STARLIGHT: Sheerspace 1 FREE!
PRINCE OF PASSION: Sheerspace 2

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessa Slade
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941547045

Jessa Slade

Despite a grade school career aptitude test that suggested farming would be my best bet, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I wrote about unicorns, time travel and cowboys, so obviously I was destined to I write paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance and science fiction romance! I live in the Pacific Northwest where the rain keeps me at my computer. I like to talk books, so find me online in all the usual haunts.

Book preview

Assassin’s Hunger

Sheerspace Book 3

By Jessa Slade

ASSASSIN’S HUNGER

Sheerspace Book 3

Copyright © 2014 by Jessa Slade

First appeared in SCI FI NIGHTS, August 2014

Cover design © Jessa Slade

Cover image © Tankist

Brushes by Obsidian Dawn

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the authors.

Assassin’s Hunger: Sheerspace Book 3

By Jessa Slade

Stripped of her identity by a cybernetic mercenary corporation, Shaxi was a mindless killer until the corporation was destroyed and set her free. Now lost and alone, she desperately needs to master her unlinked programming before she succumbs to the rogue madness. But the electromagnetic storm that might save her also blows in the Asphodel, a sheership with more mysteries and menaces than Shaxi has ever faced…including the enigmatic Eril Morav, a heartless assassin on a quest to save the sheerways, even at the cost of his own soul. Eril thinks he’ll use Shaxi to do his dirty work, but she might be the one being in the universe who can light his black-hole heart.

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Table of Contents

Assassin’s Hunger

ASSASSIN’S HUNGER

Assassin’s Hunger: Sheerspace Book 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

More from Jessa Slade

Thank You!

Chapter 1

The shriving storm was so close now. In its electromagnetic chaos, she would find new purpose.

Or she would die, with her flesh and biotics stripped away by the alien wind.

Through her ocular implant, on’Taj Shaxi tracked real-time data on the approaching tempest while her naked eye focused on the cantina’s simulated window.

What was the point of a sim that showed reality? It could have displayed a serene ocean, or a lush field, or at least one of the desert oases allegedly hidden out in the sands of Khamaseen. But no, the screen with a crack running through one corner featured an unapologetically desolate and utterly true view of squat pre-fab buildings, their plyscrete roofs rounded like shoulders hunched against the rising wind. Levare was the only city on the half-terraformed moon with a functioning spaceport, but any distinction that might have implied had long ago faded to jaundiced yellow under the double suns.

Just as whatever value she’d once had was lost.

The wistful thought had her reaching instinctively for her link to Hermitaj…

Not even static. The doomed silence left her hollowed, and she took a long swig of the fermented beverage the locals favored, grimacing at the sour tang. If she didn’t find a way to amend her programming to reflect her new reality, the silence would overtake her.

Sometimes she felt it already had. It’d been days since she’d spoken to anyone. Her one clumsy attempt at communication with the bartender had been rebuffed with a grunt and a leery stare.

She should’ve been used to that by now. A Hermitaj commando was nothing without her programming. Worse than nothing, she was a menace. Left without a mission, she was like a plasma charge, safety off, timing ticking, lying abandoned in the street.

So when the cantina’s double doors slammed open—no smoothly irising portals on Khamaseen, thanks to all the grinding dust—she refocused her gaze with a flash of interest, squinting against the desiccating heat that rolled through. For all its borderworld roughness and fabled destructive storms, she’d found Khamaseen to be depressingly quiet. She hadn’t had an excuse to stretch her muscles or draw a weapon to soothe her tension since her credits had run out and stranded her in Levare.

But the two slender figures in matching sand-robes poised between the wide-open doors undermined the violence of their entrance. Shaxi never underestimated the potential ferocity of a smaller opponent, but these girls—she knew they were female by their center of balance and the fact their sand-robes were bright pink—moved like little kitlings, bristling with unfocused energy.

Levare might be mostly quiet, but kitlings shouldn’t be out on their own—ah, there was their bodyguard coming through the door. The man had good armament, Shaxi noted, and the watchful stance of a seasoned fighter, but the way he trailed behind the girls like a half-forgotten scarf made it clear who had the real power.

Close the thrice-tangled doors! You’re letting in the sand. Down the bar, the bartender clanked a semi-clean glass down on the plyscrete surface, drawing Shaxi’s eye to an old hazer burn scoring the sturdy material.

Obviously Levare wasn’t always so depressingly quiet.

The girls’ companion closed the door behind him while the two made their way into the cantina, folding back their hoods as they spoke to each other in muted voices.

Shaxi felt the slight inhalation around the room from the other occupants—like a precursor to the scorching carnage of the shriving winds.

She’d already analyzed the two small groups of men seated at tables at opposite sides of the low-ceilinged room: one trio and another group of five, all outfitted as locals, although she suspected at least two among the quintet were off-worlders judging from the way they struggled with the unwieldy drape of their sand-robes.

They’d all studied her briefly when she’d arrived, and then dismissed her. The same as she’d dismissed them, despite the stab of longing for her lost companions that urged her to approach them, if only to exchange ritual words of greeting and opine on the weather.

But she’d learned how a simple desire for company might be misconstrued. Though their eyes had lingered for a split second on the curve of her hips, her hazer pistol prominently displayed there had been warning enough.

The on’Taj patch on the breast of her combat jacket, even worn and frayed, was its own disincentive to trouble.

But these newcomers, despite their soft voices, they screamed trouble.

One was fair-haired and the other dark. Both had a winsome, ingenuous beauty in their refined features that Shaxi knew she’d never possessed, not even before the cyber-embeds had made her a killing machine. For all their obvious youth, there was a simmering edge to their loveliness, and their very presence seemed to slow the molecules in the air to a sensuous churn. The blonde laughed, like a trill of bells.

Shaxi’s spine tingled in response to the pure, delicate sound. It was a feeling she associated with imminent danger, not strolling beauties.

What in any hells was that about? She scowled at the bodyguard in disgust. If he’d tripped over his own boots and spilled a satchel of titaniamonds across the cantina’s grimy floor, he couldn’t have been more remiss in his duties.

Unless the girls were the treasure he planned on handing off.

Her fingers settled on her hazer, and her ocular implant zeroed in with grim precision.

The girls crossed the room to the furthest table and confronted a figure sitting in the shadows. Shaxi’s hand spasmed on the cool grip at her side. Tangle it! She hadn’t seen that lone man, and she’d swept the room when she first entered.

Her programming was disintegrating even faster than she’d feared.

The dark-haired girl put her hands on her hips, tightening the otherwise loose and concealing sand-robe around her body. Is this where you’ve been hiding from us, Mr. Morav?

If she’d been anything besides a Hermitaj-encoded commando, Shaxi might’ve forgiven herself for the mistake. The man—Morav, the girl had called him—had chosen his seat well to avoid notice, and his dress and demeanor were equally unassuming. His sand-robe was dark enough to match the shadows and grit, but not a swaggering, militant black. Still, for a moment, she wondered if he was wearing body armor underneath. His shoulders and chest were broad enough that he might have been padded, but when he rose to face the girls, his motions were free and unencumbered, and he was definitely tall enough to carry all that muscle without enhancements.

Keeping his hood half pulled up, he dipped his head and kept his voice low, obviously hoping not to draw more attention, but the blonde laughed again. Again with those thrice-shredded bells.

Shaxi forced herself to block out the sound, but it was as if the sim screen had dissolved onto some expansive vista and was enticing her forward, teasing her, promising delights such as she’d never imagined. Her muscles slackened to a lax softness, as if all her years of fighting were wiped away, and she lolled forward…

The distinctive click of a hazer rifle snapped her out of the enthralling trance.

The girls’ bodyguard had his rifle across his chest—not pointed, not yet anyway—and was facing one of the trio of locals who’d risen from his seat and made his way across the cantina.

Shaxi gritted her teeth. She might forgive herself for not seeing the man Morav, but she had no excuse to have missed this stumbling drunk, even if all her implants fried out and her ocular implant exploded. The local, reeking of fermentation, held one hand extended, and his eyes were wider than the mouth of the half-filled mug in his other hand.

Step off, man, the bodyguard said. This here’s a private gathering.

I just want to give her…hers, both hers, this, the drunk stuttered, brandishing the mug. "I just want them to have…just want them."

It was a wanting, Shaxi thought. An amorphous, aching wanting, that seemed to grip her around the throat even as more of those precarious shivers feathered down her spine and out along every nerve ending.

What were these girls?

Be at ease, Jorr, the dark-haired one said. She stepped up to the drunk and plucked the mug from his hand without sloshing a drop. Her gloved hand never touched his. Your offering is accepted, friend.

She tipped the mug toward her lips then hesitated, her eyes watering in the sour fumes. But she drank deep and didn’t grimace. Shaxi was grudgingly impressed. The drunk moaned as if she’d taken him into her throat.

When she lowered the mug, her eyes glittered with the drink and something darker. Now go in peace. She pitched her voice down almost a full octave, the resonance startling in such a slender body. And dream of me.

The drunk stiffened, as if she’d slapped him, and the bodyguard Jorr brought the muzzle of his hazer around. But the drunk staggered back, even more unsteadily than he’d approached, his gaze never leaving the girl and his hand clamped over his heart in the universal gesture of a smitten lover.

In a low voice, little more than a growl, the man Morav said, You shouldn’t be here, Torash.

True, the girl replied. Yet here I am. She snapped her fingers when Morav turned toward the bodyguard. Don’t bother yelling at him when there wasn’t anything he could do about it. And trust me when I say my displeasure being here far eclipses yours. She twisted the syllables of pleasure in her mouth almost cruelly and thrust the mug at the other girl. Here, Alolis. You can have the rest.

The blonde peered into the mug, nose wrinkling, but Morav snatched it from her hand. No one is drinking that. It’ll make you blind.

Well, Shaxi thought, that would certainly explain the compounding errors in her programming, but she couldn’t escape the lingering effects of whatever sensual trickery the girls had woven. Her heart thudded as painfully as if she was standing in the open portal of her drop ship, staring down at the raging battlefield, facing her probable doom…but suddenly discovering she’d been granted wings to escape it all. Every nerve sang with the perilous but heady elation.

Her attention snagged on Morav’s voice. Even with his tone pitched roughly in exasperation, she caught the lilting accent of one of the mild inner worlds that Hermitaj mercenaries never had reason to visit. Her own orders had always come in a secured data stream straight to her implants or more rarely in tersely worded missives. When was the last time someone had spoken to her with any emotion? Or spoken to her at all? Even the bartender had slung her a drink without a word. As if she was already being stripped away, piece by piece, and the shriving hadn’t even started yet.

She wanted to be seen for what she was underneath the armor, for what struggled to survive outside her failing programming. She wanted to feel like she was still alive, at least for the moment. She wanted…

No, this was not her desire. It was as if some other force commanded her.

Not true, a ghostly voice whispered in her head. Those were exactly her desires, she’d just never had the freedom to speak them aloud.

Well, she wasn’t about to blurt her secrets to strangers, even such compelling strangers as these. But even though she fought the compulsion with every dyne in her biomechanics, somehow she still found herself rising to her feet.

As did the other occupants of the room.

Blast it, Jorr said. Now see what you girls have done?

The men from the quintet and two of the trio—the drunkard was sprawled back in his seat, his eyes closed and one hand down his pants—stalked toward the girls, ignoring the hazer rifle in their path. Even the bartender had come around the end of his bar, passing Shaxi without a glance.

The strange charm set like hooks in her twitching skin, threatening pain if she didn’t give in…and promising pleasure if she gave herself up. Her implants buzzed a caution at her accelerating heartbeat when there was nothing to fight. Had she finally lost it, her last grasp on her programming? She clamped her hand on the edge of the bar and locked the cyber-embeds. Her fingers dented the plyscrete, but she managed to hold her position.

Jorr brought his rifle to bear, not subtle at all now, and squeezed off one short burst. The charged particles seared across the floor in front of the advancing men’s boots, igniting the scuffled dust in a short-lived fog of fire. The blonde let out a scream, cut off as the dark-haired girl yanked her back. Both girls shrank toward Morav.

No further now, Jorr suggested with a tight grin.

The charcoal stink of scorched dust burned in Shaxi’s lungs, as if the shriving had come at last. She held her breath, and the cantina seemed to shimmer with possibility. Whether dissolution or infinite union, she wasn’t sure.

In a rush, as if of one mind, the seven patrons and the bartender charged the girls and their protectors.

Jorr unleashed with the rifle, but the eight he faced produced weapons from their sand-robes, and the cantina blazed with harsh hazer light.

Ah, here was the not-quiet she’d been waiting for.

Shaxi unlocked her grip on the bar and dove into the fray. She’d been forced to sell off most of her defensive gear since she’d been on her own, in an effort to keep body and breath together. What parts of her own body she still had, anyway. Her exosuit—little more than scrap metal without the crucial Hermitaj uplinks—had been first to go, along with the coupled gloves and helmet. Which left the tactical black skin of her hands and face exposed.

Battle had never felt intimate before. Was that the reason why Hermitaj had masked its soldiers so utterly? She’d sometimes wondered if she’d even recognize her fellows without their once-feared emblem.

Even as she launched forward, her finger clicked her hazer setting over to pain and stun. She didn’t blame these men for whatever had possessed them, and she had no liking for unsanctioned blood on her hands.

One of the girls—the blonde Alolis, Shaxi assumed—screamed again, but the piercing sound was drowned by the chorus of masculine yelps as Shaxi’s hazer cut through them. The flower-nose pistol sometimes elicited boorish remarks for its precious name and almost delicate design when she brandished it, but when she opened fire, the concentrated light pouring off the widespread petals quickly and decisively changed minds. She’d live—or not, depending—without her defensive gear, but the hazer was as much a part of her