Love Me, Love Me Not

Love me.


Saile thumbed her blaster from stun to kill. Love me not.


She thumbed it back. Love me.


The evening sun hung right at that impossible angle where she couldn't shade her eyes and watch the horizon at the same time.


Love me not. She set the blaster back on kill, jammed it in the holster and shifted her shoulders against the boulder behind her. Her braid fell in a long, uncomfortable lump between the rock and her worn-thin shirt. Wisps of hair clung to her forehead and sweat tickled down her temples.


"What do you think Tanga? Does he love me?" Saile flicked a blat-beetle off her leg. It bounced a couple of times on the hard-pack before sliding into a spin. Its ten spindly legs waved frantically above its belly before it finally righted itself and crawled away.


The donkey flicked one long grey ear toward Saile and back, and switched her wisp of a tail at a bity-biter.


Saile's Uncle Jorge didn't like Reed, called him an off-worlder thief. She trusted Tanga more. The donk tended to be less subjective in her judgements.


Saile checked the flat horizon, nothing but dust and rock. She turned back to the donk. "You still don't think it's Reed's so-called pets slaughtering the llama herds."


Tanga yawned, a long luxurious yawn that stretched her lips and showed more teeth than most people knew a donk could have back in the dark shadows of her long jaw. Those were natural, as was the healthy shine on the Donk's thick coat. The more interesting results of genetically engineering donkeys to assist colonization on frontier worlds were still showing up - but only as the Donks themselves let people know. Tanga snapped her mouth shut and blinked at Saile.


"Well, that's what I think," Saile said.


Tanga twitched the end of her nose with a little snort, clearing first from one nostril, then the other.


Saile shook her head. She shoulda known better. "You remember that you're supposed to be on watch - right - with those big ears of yours? Watching. Not snoozing?"


Tanga flicked one ear forward, then the other. They're coming.


Saile checked to be sure that her blaster setting pointed right, to kill, crawled out of the frugal shade and to the edge of the mesa.


Nothing. Wait - there - movement, in a smidge of a dust cloud in the distance. Sweat burned her eyes and tickled down between her breasts. Incessant winds kept the ledge smooth and the sun-heated rock burned her elbows, belly and breasts. Saile shifted, ignoring the burn, and sighted down the short barrel at first one then the other of the lanky red-brown shapes coming into sight, waiting for their easy lope to bring the off-worlder damitts into range. Where was Reed? He always rode that stallion of his behind the pack, directing the lead damitt with whistles. She should be able to see him in spite of the dust.


Good for nothing son of an off-worlder bitch.


Her thumb automatically toyed with the weapon's switch.


Love me not. Yep - far right, set to kill. Lucky she'd found out the truth about him before it was too late. Her eyes blurred. She blinked. And again. The damitts had disappeared; the hints of dust settled and cleared the horizon.


Saile backed from the ledge. As she turned to sit up, Tanga's hind hoof tap-tapped the soft bottom of her boot, long ears focused down the trail opening in the rock behind them.


Company.


Saile's thumb brushed the kill setting again and she licked the salt from her lips.


"Saile."


"Reed," she called. Why did he have to have such a sexy voice? "You're nothing but a lying sack of blat wings!"


"Now, Saile. There's been a misunderstanding. We need to talk."


His voice rolled through her. It made her breasts tingle. The sweat in her cleavage itched. She ignored it. "Come on around. Nice and slow, hands in the air."


"If I walk around that outcropping you're going to shoot me."


"Yep." Damn, wrong answer.


Tanga laid her ears back. She hung her lower lip and shook her head with a pitiful expression.


"No, I mean." Saile's thumb flipped the switch left, from kill to stun. "My blaster's on stun."


She flipped it right.


Tanga narrowed her eyes. Saile shrugged.


Saile spun and fired at a noise behind her. Tanga charged. Saile slapped the recharge as she was turning and got Reed in her sights before his blast hit her.