Free Grimspace by Ann Aguirre Page B

almost in the same manner that he scanned the sky for things the rest of us couldn’t see. It’s a little unnerving, to tell the truth.
    â€œSo tell me about this shinai thing.”
    And March laughs quietly. “That’s right. He’s yours now. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this day.”
    Call me cynical, but anything that makes March so happy cannot be good for me.
    â€œI am now your shinai ,” Loras tells me, but there’s sharpness to his tone. “This means I will put your welfare ahead of my own and follow all your directives, except ones wherein you ask me to do harm. That, I cannot do, even for you.”
    What the frag…?
    â€œSounds an awful lot like slavery,” I say.
    Loras studies me for a moment as if he isn’t sure if I’m messing with him or not. “That is what shinai means in La’hengrin,” he answers at last. And yeah, there’s a definite edge in his voice.
    â€œHow can she be so traveled and yet so ignorant?” Dina asks of nobody in particular, but I’m too busy glaring at March to respond to the insult.
    â€œYou have to be out of your mind if you think I’m going to put up with keeping someone enslaved .” Mary, I want to break his neck. I can’t believe I’ve jumped, even once, with someone so monstrous. I need to scrub my mind clean with a wire brush, everywhere he touched it. Bastard. “No,” I tell Loras, shaking my head. “If there’s a ceremony or something, let’s do it because—”
    His blue eyes burn as he claps his palm over my mouth. “Don’t,” he begs, although his gaze says something else entirely. “You cannot deny me, or I will die. The La’heng cannot exist outside the protection of another species. It is part of the legacy your people left us.”
    Godammit, before I can help myself, I glance to March for confirmation. I fragging hate that I keep doing that. But he’s nodding. “Did you really think I run a slave ship, Jax?” Even though he doesn’t say another word, I sense his disappointment. And maybe I have let him down. Because even though there’s no liking between us, maybe there was a nascent respect.
    â€œYou’re serious.” Dumb-ass thing to say—of course he’s serious, and suddenly I do feel ignorant. I have no idea who the La’heng are or why they need to be… shinai . Even mentally I shy away from the real word—slave.
    â€œYes,” he answers quietly. “When humanity first visited La’heng, we did not greet them warmly. We killed all of their delegations, rebuffed all attempts to establish contact. They correctly adjudged us a hostile alien race and took steps to civilize us.”
    I don’t know how long ago this was, don’t know anything about this—I have lived in an oddly insular world, made up of Kai and my CO, who directed me where to jump and to whom I reported when I felt like taking a holiday. “What happened?”
    Hate that I’m making him talk about it when it clearly bothers him. Deep down, I know I’m going to hear a tale of conquest and subjugation, and that it’s another thing I can feel guilty for, although it’s racial, not personal.
    â€œThey seeded our atmosphere with a chemical that dampened our ability to fight.”
    â€œRC-12,” the doc puts in. “It’s generally only used to sedate violent criminals. It had never been used on a global scale before.”
    â€œThey took La’heng bloodlessly,” Loras goes on, monotone. “And fed us more drugs to keep us compliant. They didn’t take into account our physiology. We adapt quickly, integrate changes. The RC-12 produced a new generation of La’heng young incapable of fighting, even to defend their own lives. We’re helpless.”
    I’m starting to understand, and my stomach rolls over, full of that