by Blaze Ward
“Longshot Hypothesis was here and I let my anger get the better of me,” she said, leaning back into her chair in a way that somehow conveyed innocuousness. “I had hoped that my quest was over and I could quickly return home.”
“And they fled,” he noted, willing to probe the woman mentally. “Not just you, but your authority. Why was that?”
Ramazan was an expert poker player. He didn’t use those skills at the table all that often, unless compelled, but he could read most people better than they could themselves.
Whatever she was about to say was going to be an interesting blend of truth and lies, mixed together well enough that nobody would probably be able to separate them later.
He smiled at her as she leaned forward and drew a breath.
“Dave Hall was formerly a member of the Dominion Household,” she said quietly. “I won’t demand that such information never leave this office, because I’m not a fool. Sheriff. He betrayed me and killed the Dominator. The government sent me after him because hell itself won’t be far enough for that man to escape me.”
Ramazan nodded. He had suspected Tarasicodissa and Hall had bigger problems than they had let on, especially from the way Valentinian and his first mate had danced obliquely around the subject before, telling him he was better off not knowing the truth, lest more assassins come.
Briefly, Ramazan wondered if he would have to face such trouble, over and above the hard men and women that occasionally called on his station.
“Killed the Dominator?” Ramazan confirmed, letting some level of wonder into his voice anyway, just to see what she said. “He’s the assassin?”
“He is,” she growled in a quiet, angry voice. “I imagine that makes him a national hero in Laurentia, except that the old Dominator knew better than to attack you, and the new one might not learn those lessons for a while.”
Ramazan nodded in turn. Laurentia was one of the Dominion’s closest neighbors, and relations had been hot and cold over the centuries. The new Dominator might take a dim view of Bohrne Station hosting their prey, however briefly and innocently.
However, Ramazan was reasonably sure that Valentinian wasn’t coming back to this side of Wildspace for a few decades, if ever. Precisely because of this woman seated across from him. And what she represented
Hell indeed hath no fury.
“They’re gone,” Ramazan said after a moment of political contemplation.
He liked the kid. Respected that Valentinian was truly trying to do the right thing with a bad hand, rather than just folding his cards and pulling up stakes. Hopefully, they had already run far enough to put this woman off their trail.
Or could outrun her some more.
He didn’t want this praying mantis on his deck, either. Not one second longer than he had to have her.
Still, there was money to be made.
Besides that, Stephaneria was still supremely pissed at Tarasicodissa for just abandoning her here, despite what his niece had called several near seductions. He’d even seen one of them.
Ramazan couldn’t find it in himself to blame the lad. Three women, all smart and attractive, any one of whom would have been more than amenable to a tumble.
If he wanted to alienate the other two.
In the end, Valentinian had probably done the only thing he could and hired himself a professional companion for the evening.
But Stephaneria took it hard. Forty-four, divorced, and competing with women much younger for the attentions of eligible men.
“They are gone, yes,” the woman said. “But someone on this station might know where they went.”
“I might have a few ideas, myself,” Ramazan said. “And know a few others with clues. Why should we help?”
That broke through her shell. Like perhaps she had been considering her own suggestion of a tumble and suddenly had a reason to make it business as well. She leaned forward in such a way that a simple blouse probably would have shown off an ample amount of cleavage, were she not engulfed in those robes.
Still, he had seen her before, dressed less formally. He could imagine.
“How far have they run?” she guessed fairly accurately, a slight grin settling on her features.
“Deep into Wildspace,” Ramazan grinned back.
“And they’ll never pass back through this sector, will they?”
“That was my understanding, last time I spoke with the group of them,” Ramazan obliged. “Didn’t get all the answers I was looking for. You’ve given me some of them.”
“Dave Hall was my husband, Sheriff,” she said simply, letting some of her ice melt to show the woman underneath. “His betrayal becomes mine by extension. I can never go back to the Dominion either. Not really. They might pension me off and forget about me within a month if I’m lucky. I’ll never have what I did before.”
Ramazan let his eyes roam over her face, her concealed figure, his mind filling in the details from before. Truly a physically impressive woman. Perhaps a touch too much cruelty in the face and hands, but this woman was never a simpering innocent.
Her air changed as she watched him watching her. The hard edges were still there, but she did something to soften them. Made herself less of a statue and more of a woman.
“There are other things I might seek,” she said after a second. “Personal things entirely separate from matters of state. My husband and I had grown aloof from one another, and no other man would dare approach me. Even today.”
“Separate from matters of state?” Ramazan asked in a light tone, listening to the sudden huskiness in her voice.
“Bribes are just for information,” she replied with a hint of a smile. “We might talk of other things as well.”
She leaned forward again, seducing him with only her eyes.
“After all, I’ll depart here once I have the trail, and probably never return,” she offered, one hand suddenly resting in the middle of his desk, palm up.
He knew that for what it was. This woman was trapped in that same celibacy that the Sheriff of Bohrne Station fell into. In his case, it was easier to just watch and not involve himself with any of the lovely women that lived here. If he occasionally engaged with strangers passing through, those were his off-hours.
The Ambassador would never have off-hours if she was part of the Dominion’s inner workings. But one niggling thought crept into the back of his head as he held out a hand and she took it.
Her skin was warm.
The only reason Ramazan could think of that no man would dare touch a woman like her was if her husband was somebody other than a mere soldier like Dave Hall. He might need to be the Dominator himself to command that sort of deadly power. And she had said Matters of State. That suggested Hall had been high in the government himself.
But she had not been lying about the man. The rage in her eyes was that of a wife betrayed.
He just hoped those boys had gotten a good, running start, because he wasn’t about to keep this woman around here any longer than necessary.
The only way all this made any sense was if Dave Hall had actually been the Dominator himself. That thought was insane, but it was the one thing that explained all those little details he had picked up along the way from all the players involved.
Ramazan rose from his chair and somehow found this woman pressed hungrily up against him as he moved halfway around his desk. He kissed the woman, knowing that he could carve out a few hours of pleasure for himself, and that she would never come back.
Ramazan didn’t like trouble on his deck.
6
Bayjy
Paradise. Pure and simple. The kind of heat that had been missing in Bayjy’s life for so long she had almost forgotten what it tasted like, until they had stepped out of the ship into the noonday sun.
Captain had probably done that especially for her. They could have waited until closer to nightfall to hike over to the city, but the sun had been at meridian when they started and just getting to the hottest, nastie
st part of the day as they hit the city limits.
Gods, it felt good to be home. Or home-ish.
Even in a place that was a shithole like this one.
Butler had only occasionally taken his ship and crew to planetary surfaces, so she’d spent the last couple of years on stations or in wrecks, dealing with those frigid temperatures the wimpy humans considered acceptable.
Even the inside of the bar had been a little too cool for her, but she’d gotten a really good warm going, just walking. Like a lizard on a sun-facing rock, she could hold all that absorbed heat for a while, and she had extra clothes in her bag for later, when the sun went down. Wouldn’t show off her fantastic bottom as well, but would keep her warm enough, since she’d left her heatsuit back on the ship.
Except Captain and Big Guy had only wanted to stay in that first place long enough to get the lay of the land and some food. Now they were headed to the afternoon sooq that emerged once the temperature got back below forty degrees outside.
Bayjy pulled a sweater out of her bag and slipped it on, wondering if Captain recognized it from his closet. Kyriaki had stolen it for her at some point, some sort of strange game, like sisters borrowing clothes from a brother and never returning them.
Except Kyrie didn’t look at Captain like a sibling. Bayjy didn’t either, but she was willing to let the blond chick work herself up to dragging the man into a supply closet at some point before Bayjy did.
Or not.
Bayjy was always afraid of hurting a regular human if she got carried away with her orgasms, but Captain was tougher than he let on, and Big Guy was stronger than she was. Not exactly Bayjy’s type, but always useful to have a fallback if she got desperate.
Captain and Big Guy were in heads-on-swivels mode right now, silently challenging anything that moved with the threat of explicit, lethal violence. She appreciated the way that a bubble of space quietly moved everywhere with them as a result. And she had money in her pocket, regular pay since Captain had fleeced a couple of big poker games back in Laurentia and could pay her. Plus her share from the cargo they’d hauled to Begzatlari.
Speaking of which…
Bayjy located a table with various fresh and dried fruits. And the fact that the people buying looked like locals. Not that there were any tourists on this planet, but spacers had a different look about them. More like Captain.
She tapped Valentinian on the arm and led him to the stall. Perusing, she bought a bag of dried dates and a second bag of dried figs. These were a breed she didn’t know. Dried, they were still almost the size of fresh apricots.
And she was still technically a fixer, having found Captain that cargo of fresh fruit the last time.
“Are you the middleman or the farmer?” Bayjy queried the old, dried husk of a man behind the table.
She nibbled on a date. It tasted like brown honey in her hands. Wow.
The dealer eyeballed her, noting the sweatshirt pulled a little tight across her chest. And her skin. She felt mauve today.
“Middleman,” he finally said in that odd accent the locals all seemed to have, each syllable almost its own word. “Why?”
“Last cargo I found us was coconuts and pineapples,” she said. “Almost out of leftover stock we kept for personal use. Plus I want more fruit as well. We don’t have a hydroponics station on the ship anymore.”
Bayjy had heard Valentinian’s explanation of what a black thumb he had. And she knew the man wasn’t about to give up his armory and the freaking enormous collection of weapons he had somehow accumulated. Most crews needed about a dozen guns total. Captain had something closer to two hundred in there. Every size, shape, and flavor she had ever imagined. Plus a few.
“Wrong season,” the merchant said after a moment. “Both temperate zones grow food crops, alternating on seasons. Local produce is from greenhouses.”
“Dried is fine,” Bayjy said, noting how Captain and Big Guy were lurking close, protecting her flanks and letting her talk. “Looking for ten or twenty kilograms total weight for the ship, not for a transport cargo.”
Butler had never let anyone else speak for him, convinced that the shorter species were all too stupid to tie their own shoes without his supervision. But Butler had been born an asshole.
“Come back two days,” the man said, holding up fingers. “I talk other dealers and we assemble trunk for you. Same pound price, since box included.”
Bayjy noted the price she’d paid for the two bags she had tucked into her pouch and nodded to the man. They could haggle from there, but that wasn’t all that bad a price to begin with.
She smiled at Captain and let him lead for now. He took them towards a part of the sooq where the spaces were more permanent, small shops off of a covered arcade done in a local stone about the color of aged honey. One of them sold incense, probably a gold mine on a planet where nobody bathed and sonic showers were apparently viewed as the Devil’s medicine.
She’d known a few people like that. They always had a stick of incense burning.
Second one was a tea shop. Or maybe coffee. Mix of both, in two-, five-, and twenty-kilo bags of each. Raw prices weren’t incredibly stupid, but she didn’t have the equipment to roast her own beans back on the ship. And wasn’t sure Captain would ever allow that inside his life support system.
Third bay seemed to be the place Captain was after. He ducked in first, with Bayjy on his cute butt. Big Guy stationed himself at the door like a male caryatid statue with a big gun.
Huh. Books. Lots of them. All bound in leather, from the looks of it, rather than cloth. Probably easier, since a lot of the local economy involved raising critters. Cotton would have to come up from the coast, or down from the temperate zones.
The kitchen, upstairs on Longshot, was bigger than this store, but the owner had made the place a compact maze you entered by passing him in a little cubby, before heading deeper, questing for the minotaur.
Captain stopped suddenly and she plowed into him, eyes elsewhere.
“Sorry,” she said, setting him back on the ground after her first instinct had been to pick up the slightly-shorter and lighter man so she didn’t bounce him into a bookshelf.
The look she got back was sarcasm so distilled it brought a smile to her face. Another smile. More smiley, or something.
“Yes?” the proprietor perked up.
Human, Bayjy decided, looking at him. Just old and leathery. Sharp eyes, though.
“I collect old maps,” Captain said, kinda sideways. “And ancient histories, going back to the wars.”
She liked the way he didn’t ask any questions or anything. And it was pretty much honest truth.
“You read Urlan?” he asked.
“Some,” Captain said.
“Yes,” Bayjy butted in. “Fluently.”
“Right-hand corner,” the proprietor looked up at her and nodded knowingly. “Blue spine row and below. Then we talk maps.”
Captain led and she made sure not to run him over this time.
“Fluent?” he murmured as they got there.
“Salvaging is a multi-lingual game, Captain,” she whispered back. “Lots of money on Urlan paraphernalia, if you can avoid the junk.”
“Like?” he asked, a little surprised.
“Like this one,” Bayjy reached out and touched a spine with a purple finger. “Unless you’re into Urlan love poetry, that is. Not judging.”
He laughed quietly.
“We’ll save that for a rainy day.”
“Ain’t no rainy days on…Right. Gotcha,” she smiled back. “What are you looking for?”
“War ended two thousand years ago,” Captain said. “Planetary geography probably hasn’t changed much, but I figure any history of this planet in Urlan is going to deal with the wars and include maps. I need identifiable locations I can triangulate to in the modern age, and everything is going to be relative, rather than fixed.”
“Huh,” Bayjy grunted.
Made sense. Dude was sharp. Sh
e did a quick scan of titles, pulling one down and rifling through it quickly enough.
“Maybe,” she offered weakly. “Like, fourth choice behind asking random strangers in the street?”
“Understood.” Captain nodded. “You keep looking here and I’ll try a different tack.”
She heard him approach the dealer again as she read.
“How about the conquest of Kryuome after the wars?” he asked. “Older the better.”
Bayjy glanced over in time to see a bill slide across the counter and vanish into a gnarled hand. Old guy got a sly look in that maze of canyons on his face.
The man stood up and pulled a book from the shelf behind him, placing it flat on the counter and opening it. Bayjy slid her current tome carefully back and meandered that direction. Captain was turning pages like he was holding a holy relic when she got there.
She couldn’t tell what he saw, but she heard his breath change pitch. Captain looked up with a hard, shrewd look in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said simply. “How much?”
“One thousand Union Krodageni,” the merchant beamed back.
Bayjy nearly swallowed her tongue. That was a lot of money.
“Four hundred,” Captain laughed and fired back. “And that other book as well. Maybe I’ll go higher if you’ve got some nice wall maps I can hang in the dining area for entertainment.”
She’d watched the man play poker. Lost a reasonable amount of cash to him and the Sheriff in that long con, but she didn’t hold that against him. He’d bought her dinner and hired her later on. Plus rescued her from ever having to go planetside to pick fruit for a living.
The old man was just as sharp, though. Numbers flowed back and forth like a ball being volleyed by professional athletes. Insults were traded, as well as compliments. The old man brought out a set of maps, ink on hide, and they argued about those for a while, too.
Bayjy went back and looked at more books, settling on something that looked like a colonization report that had been misfiled as a romance. She hoped it had been misfiled, since the strange breeds of Variant Humanity called Muties had been living here when the explorer who wrote the book arrived.
