“Can I retrieve your ship for you, ma’am?” the valet-bot asked convivially.
“I would like that very much, yes, and sorry about calling your voice bleepy-blorpy,” Electra said, providing the bot with the new Weisella fake ID.
The valet-bot happily retrieved, scanned and returned the offered ID, along with the starship’s keys. “Have a splendid rest of the night, Weisella,” the valet-bot declared before floating back down to its cradle.
“I’m really good at crime,” she declared to nobody in particular.
Electra climbed into the ship, closed the door behind her and took a deep, luxuriating breath of the grandest ship she’d ever set foot in. Once she hacked the onboard computer, the Cadillux would be hers and she could take her talents all over the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. She’d wake up to a better life and an epic hangover after she made her getaway.
Chapter Two
“Wake up, you little sneak,” a familiar voice echoed through the bedroom.
Silk sheets, pillows the size of land speeders… Why would Electra ever want to wake up? She pried one eye open to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Yep, it was the master bedroom on the Cadillux. She’d stolen it. She’d really stolen it and flown to…somewhere. She’d figure that part out after coffee. Space was big and empty. Hopefully her drunk self from the night before had found a nice spot to bunk down.
“Weisella, how did you get this number?” Electra joked as she stretched leisurely in her giant, new bed.
“It truly is unfortunate you were the one to steal my ship,” Weisella said.
“Steal? Yours? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Electra said. “This ship is registered to the one and only Electra Rex—a payment and healthy apology for a jilted contractor. Very generous of you.”
“Didn’t the security coding seem simplistic to you?” Weisella asked.
Electra bit her lower lip. She didn’t remember. Blacking out wasn’t uncommon for her when she over-indulged. She was a waif of a thing and had an Embarker’s pitiful tolerance for any and all intoxicants. She rolled across the bed and hit the display button on the nightstand. The room was completely white, too white to even look at any of it directly with a hangover, now that she was seeing things clearly. It was like sleeping inside a light bulb. She might have to make some changes.
A holographic display of Weisella popped up at the foot of the bed.
“There you are, sweetness,” Weisella said.
“The coding seemed…”
“You don’t remember.”
“Not exactly.”
“Because you were too drunk.”
“Not too drunk to get away with it.” Electra laughed, immediately regretting it as the noise echoed painfully through the room and the inside of her head.
“The ship has a twenty-fold lien on it,” Weisella said. “All of my debts, including the bounced payment to you and the party you took part in? It all transferred to you when you swapped the title.”
Electra’s head swam. If she had anything left in her stomach, she assumed it would be on its way out of her mouth. Twenty-fold on a ship the size and value of the Cadillux would be an astounding amount of money, more than Electra could reasonably be expected to comprehend in her hungover state.
“Fuck you,” she managed to grumble.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be you,” Weisella said. “Speaking of fucking, I’ve been looking up stuff on the galactic net, and I think I’ve figured out how we might… You know. Feel like taking pity on a broke girl and giving me a freebie?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Electra reached for the display button.
“Wait! I learned the swell on your lower back isn’t your nose,” Weisella said. “I could…” She waggled a few of her tentacles.
Electra hit the button, ending the call. “Ew, no,” she said to the dead feed.
Debt was an Embarker’s worst nightmare. Never owe. The motto was plastered on almost every wall, inscribed at the front of every book and was even used by some of the older members of Embarker fleets as a greeting.
‘Never owe, Stan!’
‘Never owe to you too, George!’
And now Electra owed without enjoying any of the extravagances that had incurred the debt—aside from the ship she’d stolen, but she felt that had been earned.
She cursed Weisella for outsmarting her yet again, Fizan for selling her the ID-clone at a discount, the bartender-bot for over-serving her and the Chamber most of all for enacting the law that stealing someone’s identity in any fashion gave access to money and credit lines but also transferred debts. It was a whimsical way to deter identity theft, making debts transfer to would-be thieves if they picked the wrong target. The Chamber, the faceless, nameless, all-knowing, all-seeing government that was so damn clever that they’d actually tricked the whole galaxy into centuries of peace… Who the fuck did they think they were? Identity theft and fraud were dangerous vocations now, thanks to the Chamber, and Electra should have known. Too easy. It had been so easy that a thoroughly inebriated neonate at crime could pull off the heist, and that was why any thinking person would have known it was a trap. If the ship were free and clear, if Weisella’s identity was at all worth stealing and swapping, there would have been a mountain of defenses to keep people like Electra out. If it were a honey pot, someone could do it in their sleep—or dead-drunk—and wake up thoroughly fucked.
Cursing Weisella and kicking herself for her own stupidity came to an abrupt halt when the wall slid open and a massive bot rolled into the room. It stood almost seven feet tall, a looming rectangle of metal the size of a large refrigerator and twice as shiny. It moved swiftly on two triangle tank tracks set to either side of the frame, while a nest of ten prehensile tube-arms jutted from the top, each tipped in a different tool.
“Debtor, it has been seventy-two hours since your last payment,” the bot clicked.
“What’s the default threshold?” Electra asked.
“One hundred fifty galactic standard hours.”
“Great,” Electra grumbled. “I don’t suppose it’d change anything if I told you I’m not Weisella.”
“It would not! That information is already logged and applied,” the bot said. “Weisella’s debts were transferred to Electra Rex eleven hours ago. You are Electra Rex. Mistakes have not been made.”
“They were, by me…many of them,” Electra said. “Can’t I just transfer them back with the fake…I mean, my actual ID?”
“You cannot, as the ID was reported cloned mere hours after you ran it through the atomizing recycler.”
“That was stupid of me. What am I even supposed to call you?”
“Letterman.”
“What? Why?”
“It stands for Lien Enforcement Technology…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… Letterman’s fine,” Electra said. A lien-enforcement bot was serious business. Letterman was nearly indestructible, a hair below high sentient and had a nuclear core that would provide it with enough power to function independently for thousands of years. There would be no getting rid of it without discharging the debt.
“Due to the extreme sums owed and the parties to which they are due, it is considered imperative to avoid default,” Letterman said. “Assistance threshold is set to one hundred percent in pursuit of repayment.”
“Discharge the debt owed to Electra Rex,” Electra said, glad she could at least remove what she technically owed herself for the party appearance.
“Authorizing discharge, bank fee assessed, twenty-thousand standard units has been removed from total balance, five thousand bounce fee added,” Letterman said. “New balance is seventy-eight billion, nine hundred twenty-one million, six hundred thousand fifty-seven point forty-four standard units.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, that number doesn’t even make sense!” Electra screamed. The amount Weisella owed her for the party was so paltry, so insignificant in the scope of her total debts, that it see
med blatantly insulting not to have offered double or triple the fee, since she was just going to hand the debt off to someone else anyway.
“Would you like an itemized recounting of the debts?” Letterman asked.
“No, fuck, how long would that even take?”
“Four hundred eighty-one galactic standard hours, twenty-two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.”
Electra’s first instinct was to curl up in the bedding, try to vanish into herself and let the mountain of debt crush her like a hung-over little bug. She didn’t suspect Letterman would let her stay cocooned in blankets and sheets for long, though. His job was to get her working, get her earning and get the debt moving in the right direction. She didn’t fancy being dragged nude from her bed by the enforcement bot, so she climbed out willingly.
“I need coffee, a shower and a word with the only person who can help,” Electra announced. “Ship Virtual Intelligence, what is your designation?”
“Ivy, Miss Electra,” the ship’s computer interface replied. She had an obnoxiously cheerful demeanor and a faint accent Electra didn’t recognize. “You asked for this designation five times already.”
“Is there a way to turn off your personality matrix, Ivy?”
“No, Miss Electra. You already asked that as well.”
“Can you call me something other than Miss Electra?”
“Your designation was preprogrammed by master user Electra Rex.”
She didn’t remember doing that or why she’d chosen such an inane designation. “Is the master user password ‘carbuncle’?”
“No, Miss Electra.”
“Fine, whatever. It was worth a shot. Ivy, set a course for Station 51 in the Winter Triangle,” Electra said. “And get a shower started for me.”
“Would you like to use the Spatronic 9000Z as well?”
“The…what?”
“Spatronic 9000Z.”
“Where? Where is it? Ivy, show me the Spatronic!”
“Illuminating a floor path for you now, Miss Electra.”
A faintly glowing golden path zipped across the floor, fading behind her as she ran through it. A Spatronic 9000Z, the most advanced personal grooming and pampering system ever conceived, existed on her ship! Its very existence could explain a significant amount of the total debt, and Electra hoped it would be worth every monetary unit, as she’d only dreamed of such astounding opulence. If anything could wick away her hangover, soothe her jangled nerves and give her a reprieve from the ocean of stress and debt she’d been dropped into, it was a Spatronic 9000Z. Several billion standard units of luxury were about to obsess over every cell in her body with the single goal of making her feel spoiled and beautiful!
* * * *
Hair treatments, manicures, pedicures, exfoliating, teeth whitening and cleaning, body hair grooming or total removal and everything in between… The options on the Spatronic scrolled on and on down to every single detail of indulgence and appearance Electra could want or imagine and several options she had never even heard of. She set up a first-time profile, checked a million boxes on what she wanted then sat in the pod and awaited the magic. Hours, years, lifetimes passed in the heaven created by the Spatronic. The calming scents of the ocean, faint music, gentle massage and perfectly coordinated adjustment of lights drew her into a meditative state while her body was cleaned, toned and adorned from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet.
“We have arrived in the desired coordinates of the Winter Triangle, Miss Electra,” Ivy’s voice pierced the soothing music pumped through the Spatronic.
Electra reluctantly emerged from the machine. She’d been buffed, massaged, brushed, plucked, painted, styled and given the exact makeup look she’d always wanted yet could never manage on her own. She looked down at the gleaming perfection of her body after the treatment and felt bad that she’d have to cover up so much glorious work.
Pulling on her Utopalex pants took far longer than usual. The material was designed to adhere to skin, which made it challenging to put on or remove any garments made of it, but beyond the simple tightness, there was the sensation. The slogan and truth were that Utopalex felt like euphoria to wear. Sensations brought on by the material felt so good that most species had to build up to wearing full garments or risk dissolving into a puddle of pure pleasure if the species was capable of turning into a puddle. Electra learned humans responded by falling into a catatonic bliss that made basic functionality extremely difficult. It had taken two years for Electra to work up to pants. With her skin completely cleared of hair, cleaned, exfoliated, massaged and given several renewal treatments that she hadn’t known existed until then, it was like starting all over again in learning to wear Utopalex, since every inch of the material touched her in an entirely new way. She’d thought she’d worn Utopalex before. She’d been wrong.
She stood with only the last bit to go. Her body was already positively thrumming with the need to lie down and simply writhe. The hardest part was yet to come. She steeled herself and slid the back up over her ass, which gave her head-to-toe goosebumps and diamond-hard nipples. One more step and she’d either be ready to go or rendered completely useless for hours. She pulled open the tight front of the pants and tucked her cock and balls neatly into the pocket she’d created with the backs of her fingers. When she removed her hand, the material sucked perfectly flush against her every contour and she nearly fell over from the sensation. After she regained her senses, she pulled on a T-shirt then a vest to cover the fact that her nipples were tiny pyramids that gave no indication of calming any time soon.
“Something new to consider,” she muttered to herself, feeling exceedingly hot and bothered. Her hangover was gone, worked out of her system by the Spatronic, only to be replaced by an intoxicating euphoria brought on by the Utopalex that rivaled high-quality designer drugs. It seemed like keeping the hangover might have allowed her to be marginally more functional than her new, highly aroused state.
She exited her ship on the far end of the landing platform for Station 51 feeling beautiful, pampered and stressed beyond measurable levels about her current situation. Before she could make it one step down the gangplank, she felt a metal clasp encircle her left wrist. She looked down to spot a vaguely familiar metal bracelet.
“The Lien Enforcement Bureau requires a tether if you are to leave the ship without me, and a lockdown on the vessel if you are to leave it with me,” Letterman said.
“Peachy.” Electra shook her hand to try to rattle the bracelet, but it held fast—snug, but not overly tight. The thing on Weisella’s tail hadn’t been a new accessory. It was her lien enforcement tether. She felt stupid and nauseous all over again. “Wait! Weisella didn’t have one on at the party. Were you there?”
“You behaved foolishly and danced poorly.”
“Helpful notes. I assume this thing explodes or something if I try to take it off.”
“A massive, debilitating jolt of electricity, and I am summoned to charge you for any damage you might have done to the tether,” Letterman said. “We are not monsters.”
“Agree to disagree,” Electra muttered on her way down the ramp.
The freighter depot platform crawled with Gromphra workers and pilots. The giant cockroach aliens scuttled around on all six of their legs to move faster over the open terrain between the pumps, ships, and amenities. Electra made a beeline for the service plaza and the glowing, red-and-white Tim Hortons sign.
Within the donut shop, a dozen different species of alien freighter captains and crews enjoyed donut holes and coffee. Electra got in line at the counter, breathing deeply of the heavenly scents of fresh-brewed coffee and breakfast foods sizzling on the griddle. Above the medley of pleasant aromas lingered the sticky-sweet perfume of warm glazed donuts.
Manning the counter was the only entity that could possibly help her—Om the wise. Om comprised several hundred swirling green blocks that ranged from the size of small boulders to tiny pebbles orbiting around a central white light
but never touching one another.
“Om, it has been too long,” Electra said when she reached the front of the line.
“Too long since you’ve eaten donuts or too long since you’ve visited your oldest friend?”
“I thought donuts were my oldest friends?” Electra smiled.
“You must be in some sort of trouble if you’re all the way out here making jokes,” Om said.
Electra held up her left wrist to show the lien enforcement tether.
“I hope you bought something good, at least,” Om said.
“Sort of… Well, yes and no.” Electra nodded toward her typical corner table.
Om poured two large, dark roasts and grabbed a bag of booparian berry timbits to share.
Electra polished off several of the glowing blue donut holes and half her coffee before she elaborated. “Remember the ship—and I mean the ship.”
“You found a Cadillux?”
Electra nodded.
“A Dorado 1959?”
Electra nodded again.
“Worth the tether, I’m sure.”
Electra nodded emphatically.
“So, what’s the trouble?” Om asked. “You should be able to keep up, if just barely, on the payments with your appearance gigs.”
“It came with a lien of its own. A huge one. A hair under seventy-nine billion units.”
Om seemed to consider the number. At least, she thought that was what his relative silence meant. It was tough to tell what Om was doing most of the time, since they were a constantly shifting pile of swirling stones with no face. Electra didn’t even know if there was a name for what Om was. They didn’t have a gender. They were truly a ‘they’, as each stone contained countless other tiny life forms, and they didn’t have a beginning or end, as far as Electra knew. Om, for all intents and purposes, was a small galaxy unto themselves, comprised of millions of little ecosystems that combined to create consciousness and profound wisdom, not to mention make the best cup of coffee in two galaxies.
Electra Rex Page 2
