He reached up to cup her breasts with his hands, eliciting a soft moan from her, while she reached down to his waist, tugging at his belt.
Soon he was struggling out of his clothes with some difficulty, unsurprising given the exceedingly cramped nature of the alcove. Zelia lifted herself up and out of the way, taking the opportunity to wriggle out of the rest of her clothes before again straddling him, her breath coming in small, nervous gasps.
Luc could feel his erection pulsing against her belly. Taking hold of her hips, he lifted her slightly, as she reached down between her legs and manoeuvred him inside her.
He started to move. Zelia gripped him hard with her knees, grinding herself against him, the fingernails of one hand digging into his chest while she kept the other pressed flat against the ceiling of the alcove. Luc held off as long as he could, holding her tight with both hands, her gasps becoming shorter and higher-pitched.
Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, he could hear Antonov laughing.
‘Now,’ she gasped, her voice ragged. ‘Please.’
He looked up at her naked form with fascination. Her skin glistened with perspiration, while her long dark hair had come undone from the loose knot she’d had it in behind her head. It floated around her face like something alive. Her back arched in tangent with his own, increasingly urgent movements until, finally, he came.
‘Wait,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t move.’
Holding still, he watched as she rocked her hips back and forth with a gentle, barely detectable motion. Then her mouth opened wide and she let out a tiny, bird-like cry before pulling herself down and forward, letting her head rest against his chest. He felt himself slide back out of her.
They lay there together for what felt like a long time. Almost without realizing, Luc pictured Eleanor as she had been in Maxwell’s prison, side by side with Bailey Cripps, but found he felt nothing whatsoever.
‘The question,’ he finally managed to say after an indeterminate amount of time had passed, ‘is whether you were fucking me, or him.’
He felt her fingernails stroke against one shoulder as she brought her head back up to regard him. ‘Both, I think,’ she said with a faint smile.
‘You said that there were things you’d wanted to say to him, but never did.’
She was silent for a minute before answering. ‘I wanted to tell him that I’m sorry.’
He twisted his head up slightly to look down at her. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘Betraying him,’ she said quietly, then dropped her head back down against his chest.
Luc frowned. ‘Zelia . . . what exactly happened between you two?’
He felt her move into a slightly different position. ‘Does it matter? We saw things differently, and I was stupid and foolish and inexperienced enough to let that matter to me more than it should have. And you know what the worst thing was?’
‘What?’
‘He forgave me.’
He felt her tears dampen his chest.
‘But you still wanted to tell him you were sorry.’
‘Once I realized what he’d done to you, I knew there’d never be another chance.’
For the next few minutes, Luc was content to remain where he was.
‘When I was in Maxwell’s prison,’ he said at last, ‘he showed me things that made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew about Antonov. But what I saw when I opened the data-cache here on this station made me realize my whole life isn’t worth a damn unless I do everything I can to finish what Antonov started.’
She sat up and regarded him with eyes wide. ‘Did you even hear what you just said?’
‘Everything’s different now, Zelia.’
‘Different how?’
’Because of what I learned from that data-cache.’
‘So you did get something from it.’
‘Father Cheng,’ said Luc, ‘is planning to destroy Benares.’
She blinked as if she hadn’t quite heard him right. ‘What?’
‘I saw it all, through his own eyes.’ He let out a small, soft laugh at the thought of just how much of his life had been wasted chasing the wrong people. ‘Do you know Cheng sent agents all the way to Coalition space, on ships that took decades to get there? He wanted them to find some artefact the Coalition had recovered from the Founder Network, so he could use it to wipe out every living thing on Benares.’
Zelia stared at him. ‘But . . . why Benares? What possible benefit is there to doing any such thing?’
‘Apart from it being a hotbed of anti-Council sentiment? Once he’s dealt with Benares, he’s going to blame Black Lotus for its destruction. He’ll say the Coalition supplied them with advanced weapons technology, but they screwed up, destroying Benares by accident instead of Temur.’
Her expression now shifted from indignant disbelief to outright horror. ‘Please tell me you’re lying,’ she said.
‘After that,’ said Luc, ‘he’ll close down the Darwin gate forever, declare martial law throughout the Tian Di, and use the Sandoz to assume total power prior to dissolving the Council. And then there won’t be a Thousand Emperors of the Tian Di – just one.’
Zelia stared past him as she worked through the implications. ‘He’s trying to turn the clock back, to the days of the Schism.’
‘That’s not even all of it,’ Luc continued. ‘Cheng’s been playing a very, very long-term strategy ever since the idea of Reunification was first mooted. Once he realized he had no choice but to go along with it, he started laying the groundwork for a plan that wouldn’t just wipe out Benares, but would have the whole of the Tian Di begging him to stay in power.’
‘What else did you find?’
‘More than you ever wanted to know.’ No wonder Vasili had been so frightened. ‘Back at that funeral service, Ruy Borges came up to you, and mentioned a rumour about Cheng being in negotiations with the Coalition. Remember?’
Zelia nodded. ‘Well, they weren’t just rumours,’ he continued. ‘Before Cripps murdered him, Javier Maxwell told me the reason the Coalition Ambassador had been to see him was to prevent a war with the Coalition – and it has to do with a second entrance to the Founder Network, discovered decades ago, here in the Tian Di.’
‘No.’ Zelia shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Ever since, Cheng’s been sending teams of Sandoz in through that entrance, to carry out secret explorations of the Network.’ He shrugged. ‘We always knew there were gates leading inside the Network scattered all over time and space. It’s hardly surprising that Cheng, or exploration teams working on his behalf, stumbled across another in one of our own systems.’
‘I would have . . .’ her words drifted off.
‘You’d have known about it?’ he guessed. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’
She didn’t meet his eyes.
‘Cheng even kept it secret from most of the Eighty-Five,’ Luc continued, ‘restricting the knowledge to a very few members of his inner circle. Vasili was as in the dark about all of this as you or anyone else, at least until Antonov persuaded him to come here and open that data-cache. And that’s where Ariadna Placet comes into it.’
‘In what way?’
‘She found out about the secret entrance to the Network, and Cheng had her murdered before she could tell anyone else what she knew.’
She shook her head in dismay. ‘Poor Sevgeny. So the crazy son of a bitch wasn’t really that crazy after all.’
Luc sighed and slid out from under her, and began to pull his clothes back on. He turned to look at her, still naked, and felt a touch of amazement at what had just taken place between them.
‘But where is this Founder Network gate?’
‘It’s in the Thorne system, Zelia. Cheng found it while you were still its Director of Policy.’