Free Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach by Eric Brown

I’m taking you down to the capital, DeVries, where a talented singer like yourself...”
    He reached into his jacket and produced the sheaf of Ajantan units. He passed them to her and went on, “Keep them. You’ll be needing funds to set you up, initially.”
    She regarded the notes forlornly, then looked up at Den. He glanced away quickly, ill-at-ease with her pleading expression.
    “I was rather hoping,” she said in a small voice, “that the money might pay my way across the Reach to Kallasta.”
    He kept his gaze on the sea beyond the viewscreen. “A liner fare all the way across the Reach would be almost double that,” he said.
    She was silent for a time. Then, “I was rather hoping,” she said, “that you might see your way to taking me back to Kallasta, if I returned the money – and if I cooked and cleaned for you all the way.”
    “ Judi does all that,” he said, “and anyway I’m heading in the opposite direction. Zeela...” He turned and looked down at her, where she slumped in the co-pilot’s sling with a forlorn expression, “I’m sorry, but Kallasta is way off the beaten track. I’m a trader. I have work to do, markets to trawl...”
    She nodded. “No, I’m sorry. I understand. I owe you my life, you and the ship, I should be grateful for that.” Unspoken, but weighing heavily between them, was the fact that he owed her his life, too.
    But hadn’t they agreed, back on Ajanta, that on that score they were even?
    “Come on, you’ll like DeVries. It’s a thriving city, with a lot to do. A young girl like you...”
    He hurried from the flight-deck, and presently Zeela followed.
     
     
    H E DROVE THE ground-effect vehicle from the hold, Zeela silent in the passenger seat, and took the coast road south. He elected not to stop off at Port Morris and catch up with events there – he would establish Zeela in DeVries, head straight back, and phase out immediately. The Ajantans might not have traced his ship to Tarrasay, but he was taking no chances.
    The road hugged a scalloped coastline like a series of bites taken by some vast and voracious creature. To their left was the silver-blue expanse of the ocean, dotted with boats and ferries, and to their right a series of rolling vales with the odd farmhouse or village. A greater, more pacific contrast to Ajanta he could not imagine.
    “Den,” Zeela said a while later. The silence until then had been uncomfortable, but Harper had been unable to come up with an opening line that did not seem trite. “Can I ask you a question?”
    “Of course?”
    “Have you killed before?”
    He gripped the wheel at its apex and stared at her, surprised. “What a strange question. Why do you ask?”
    She looked at him, her head tipped to one side. “You’re an odd person, Den. A telepath, yet a star trader. An educated man – I saw the old books aboard the ship, and your music files and all the artwork... And yet the way you handled yourself in the Ajantans’ lair, the way you killed the creatures without turning a hair...”
    “It was a case of kill or be killed, Zeela. In those situations, it doesn’t pay to consider the morality of one’s actions. The Ajantans were attempting to kill us, eventually – a state of affairs I did not view with delight.”
    “You acted like a practised fighter. You must have had training?”
    He frowned. They were straying into territory he would rather leave untrod. “Many years ago,” he said in a tone of finality.
    “With the Expansion authorities?”
    He sighed and remained tight-lipped.
    “Come on, Den. Open up. You told me you’re a telepath. I’m not a complete idiot – I know you must have worked for the Expansion, and received combat training.”
    “It’s a time of my life I’d rather not talk about, if it’s all the same to you, Zeela.”
    She asked quietly, solicitously, “Why not, Den?”
    “Hell... because it’s painful, okay? It hurts. What happened back then, how it happened.”
    “How