A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  He had a sip of his wine, still holding her eyes with his, though he didn’t want anything else, except to look away.

  “There’s no cutting, no flogging, no carving, no burning—nothing that draws blood, or does harm, is what I’m saying. There’s no choking, no crushing, and nothing that breaks bones.

  “Bondage, spanking, rough play—all allowed under the Rules; rough as you like it, without crossing the lines we just talked about.

  “Before we go to a room, host and guest each picks a quit-word. That’s everybody, no matter what. Even if all you wanna do is take a nap together.”

  He smiled at her then, in such a way as to suggest that a nap was at the bottom of a long list of activities he wanted to share with her.

  “The quit-word—if you say yours or I say mine, that’s the signal for everything to stop. The person who used their word tells out what happened to make them wanna quit, and the session’s done.”

  “Does the patron receive a refund for time unused?” his date asked him. Woman was tight with her money.

  “Ms. Audrey decides,” he said.

  She nodded, and leaned over, supple as a snake.

  “I am told that Terrans . . . like this,” she said, holding his eyes with hers. “Is it so?”

  She stroked the back of her fingers very lightly down the side of his face. Villy shuddered, he couldn’t help it. He hoped she’d think it was desire, and managed not to pull away, and where was McFarland?

  Desa ven’Zel smiled, and gripped him by the chin, fingers tightening.

  “The Rules . . .” he whispered, and he thought for a moment that she was going to laugh, and if she did, the sound of it would kill him outright.

  “The Rules,” she murmured, instead, her fingers holding his chin in a grip that was just next to painful. “The House seeks to maximize its profit, and minimize its expense. Therefore, it limits accidents, which are, as we have agreed, expensive.”

  She released his chin, trailing her fingers down his throat and his chest, where the shirt was open, and rested her palm flat on his abdomen.

  “You are very pretty,” she said, which he’d heard before. But he’d never heard it said like it was an insult. “Do you bring the House much profit?”

  “Sweetie . . .” He wanted her hand off of him, dammit; he wanted out of here; he wanted a shower—two showers!

  “Sweetie,” he said again, hearing his voice wobble; “that ain’t polite to ask.”

  “Is it not?”

  Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t take her hand away.

  “I will remember. Are there more Rules, or may we go to your room, now?”

  There were more Rules, all right, including that he could tell the bouncer he considered a client unsafe, and refuse the date. Better not tell her that one, though. Thundering blizzards, how did Quin know this woman?

  “One more,” he said, and dragged up what he hoped she’d take for the smile of a man just managing to keep his arousal in check, rather than a man who was scared outta his mind.

  “You wanna take that hand back, before something . . . goes off.”

  The look she gave him might’ve melted lead, but she took her hand away.

  “Since you’re a lady who’s careful with her money, I gotta tell you this—sometimes a visit’ll go a little over-time, and if it does, the House expects to be paid for the extra time. I try to make sure that we’ll wind up on time, but sometimes, everything’s clicking along, and neither one wants to stop while it’s good. If you do wanna stop at the end of your reserved time, we’ll tell the desk before we go up. They’ll send somebody to open the door, in case we don’t hear the timer.”

  “I understand. Come.”

  She stood, putting her cup on the side table as she did.

  “Come?” He looked up at her. “There’s more Rules.”

  “You will relate them later, or you will instruct me if I have inadvertently offended the House.”

  Damn. He didn’t want her in his room. He didn’t want to be alone with her any more. He wanted—

  He raised his hand.

  “You wanted me to do special things, you said. Can you tell me some details?”

  She looked down at him, her face completely expressionless.

  “I will tell you what you are to do for me when we are together in your room.”

  “Well, see . . . I don’t have all the special toys in my room. If you want something I don’t have, I’d have to call down to get it sent up. It’d save time—and money—if we just—”

  She moved, almost as fast as Quin, grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet. The glass flew out of his hand, wine spilling out in an arc—

  “Hey!”

  “We are going to your room now,” she said. “I have been patient long enough.”

  He planted his feet, but, honestly, he didn’t think he could take her, and Patsy ought to—

  “Where’s my girl Jade?” A big voice demanded from the hallway.

  “Three times a week I come here, and she’s always waiting for me, with a big smile on her face. I ’spect to see her when I come in, ’less she’s upstairs changin’ into that red dress for me. No, no, I’ll just take a looksee into the parlor, that’s all. Might be somebody looking for some extra-big fun.”

  Villy heard a light step, and a big shadow came across the door.

  “There you are!” yelled Cheever McFarland, and swung a long arm out to gather Villy in by the shoulders and tug him into a bear hug.

  His captive arm—but she let him go, and turned all the way ’round to stare at Ms. Natesa, who was standing in the doorway to the back hall, gun steady in her hand, and her face closed and cold and somehow still more alive than his date’s . . .

  McFarland swung him behind his broad back— “Stay behind me, boy.”—and his gun was out, too. Desa ven’Zel glanced at him over her shoulder, not looking particularly threatened, or the least little bit scared.

  “You will come with us,” Ms. Natesa said.

  The other woman turned again to face her.

  “I regret,” she said—and gasped sharply.

  McFarland swore and jumped forward, going down on one knee and catching her before she met the rug.

  “Poison,” he said, without looking up. He holstered his gun, and put a hand on her chest as she stiffened, making a sound like a kitten mewling, then collapsed, completely boneless.

  “Dammit.”

  “Indeed.”

  Ms. Natesa slid her gun away, and came into the room.

  “Villy, are you hurt?”

  “No ma’am, just scareder than I ever been in my life.”

  “I regret that,” she said, and paused, as if she heard the echo of Desa ven’Zel’s last words.

  “I am sorry that it took us so long to arrive. We needed to be certain that she was acting alone. You were very clever to keep her here in the parlor.”

  “She was getting ready to carry me up to my room,” Villy said.

  “Yes, we heard.”

  Cheever McFarland rose, Desa ven’Zel in his arms, and put her gently down on the sofa. Villy bit his lip, and looked over his shoulder gratefully as Ms. Audrey swept into the room.

  She paused at his side, taking the situation in with one encompassing glance.

  “I didn’t hear a shot,” she said, maybe to Ms. Natesa.

  “She poisoned herself. We have learned that some of the operatives are equipped with this ability.”

  Audrey sighed, and turned to Villy.

  “You all right, honey?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She gave him a close look.

  “Just scared blue. Well. You and me and Patsy and Mr. McFarland’ll are gonna sit down, go over this and figure out how we could’ve handled it better. But not tonight. Tonight, I want you to take a drop and go to sleep.”

  He didn’t usually take the sleeping drops, but he had a strong suspicion he wouldn’t be doing any sleeping, unless he did. At least he didn’t have th
e early shift at the Emerald tomorrow.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said to Ms. Audrey, and she gave him another sharp look.

  “I asked Teddy to keep you company tonight, all right?”

  Teddy was old enough to be Villy’s mother, he guessed. She was round and sharp-tongued and encompassing. He’d sleep good tonight, if Teddy was holding him, even without the drug.

  Ms. Audrey must’ve seen that thought cross his face, ’cause she nodded, and said, “The drop too, Villy.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said for a third time, and turned at another step in the hall, which was Teddy.

  “Come on, honey,” she said, opening her arms. “Let’s get you comfy.”

  He nodded—and turned back to Ms. Audrey.

  “I’m sorry about the wine on the new carpet,” he said, wincing as he saw the red arc slashing through the field of pretty, pale flowers.

  “Never you mind it,” Ms. Audrey told him. “Mr. Luken tells me that rug’s got a surface that’ll repel anything. Just wipe it with a rag, he says. We’ll test that in just a minute. Now, go to bed, Villy.”

  “Yes,” he said, and nodded at the room. “Ms. Natesa. Mr. McFarland. Thank you.”

  Then he let himself be tucked under Teddy’s arm and guided out of the parlor.

  Cutting Corners

  Beeslady is a yard tug in a space station’s orbit, a far cry from a Jump ship. Therny Chirs, cargo master on Fringe Ranger, never heard of Beeslady until a jammed cargo lift rapidly changes his perspective on the future.

  ****

  “Therny, you awake up there?”

  That was Gwiver, his supposed assistant, and emergency back-up, just like in the rule book, with the exception that “assistant” and “emergency back-up” were supposed to be two separate bodies. Any wise, it was a silly question, even given Gwiver’s standards, since he’d seen Therny Chirs squeeze his long and lanky self into the pallet lift’s maintenance bay a ship’s hour ago, and it wasn’t like there were two ways out.

  An hour he’d been working on the double-dorfle-damned thing, not in the Cargo Master’s job description, not by a long Jump, it wasn’t. Ought to have a real mechanic at the job. Mechanic? Engineer! He slanted a look at the several pieces of metal that weren’t supposed to come loose from the main housing. Horrifying as that discovery had been, it really wasn’t surprising, of its type. Not having a proper mechanic on-board—just one more way that the line cut corners, and saved itself, so the story went, a goodly amount of money.

  Therny Chirs shook his head, only half at himself and his jerry-rigged repair, then he punched the button that, in theory, cycled the lift door to full-open.

  This time, for eighteen wonders, the door did open. To a point.

  Chirs’s helmeted head was pressing against the putative ceiling of the bin and his eyes a hands-width above deck level. He could, this time, actually see out, onto the dock, the slight breeze going past his ears letting him know that the ship’s proper over-pressure was functioning, at least.

  He watched as several pairs of legs passed close, pushing a cart, probably cutting corners across what was marked out as their private work area. Out on the dock’s main way, half a dozen pilots, arms and mouths in motion as was usually the case with pilots in a group, strode by with a will. Probably coming from the bar, or maybe from the regional cruise ship taking up four gates at once and making the working ships crowd hard into the rest of Codrescu Station’s ramps.

  In the wake of the pilots came a smaller figure, small enough that Chirs’s tiny window on the dock drew its attention. He thought it was a child, even as it bent closer and he saw its eyes—as knowing as any of the pilots, those eyes, and looking at him with interest. It came closer, the shadows shifting over the oddly-shaped face—

  He felt shock then, the eyes having fooled him, for his auditor was not a child, after all, but a . . . creature, with a fur-covered face, and—

  “Hevelin!” shouted a voice.

  The . . . creature turned, there was the sound of running steps, a pair of legs rapidly coming into Chirs’s view, and a large pair of hands scooping the creature up, and away.

  “Shoulda taken you right back to the garden!” The voice said, the tone somewhere between scolding and laughter. “Don’t you gimme that sad—”

  A loud BEEP BEEP BEEP drowned out the voice. The half-open hatch rumbled, the readout on his belt chimed, all telling the same story. Safety auto-close had kicked in.

  The view went away, the breeze stopped. Therny Chirs did not swear.

  “Therny, are you up there?” That was Gwiver, again. “Did I hear something working?”

  He took a careful breath.

  “Yeah, it was working, It’s not working right now, though. I’m . . .”

  “Chirs, we got to make up some time here, you know. Get it moving!”

  That was not Gwiver. That was the captain himself, the line’s representative, and therefore the author of this particular set of problems.

  Fringe Ranger should have had a major refit done five Standards ago. When Therny Chirs came aboard as Cargo Master, three Standard Years back, he’d been promised that the ship was in line for refit in two Standards. They’d promised other things, too, like apprentices for cargo master Chirs to train, who would then be promoted to cargo masters of their own ships, while more ’prentices came to the Ranger to learn. That had been the hook for Therny Chirs: Teaching. Students . . .

  All dust and ice. Instead of doing anything they’d promised, or even following their own damn’ rule book, they kept saving the wrong credits and insisting that you got profit out of cutting corners, instead of good maintenance, full crews, training up the next generation, and delivering goods on time . . .

  “Chirs, we’re almost on schedule. You’re supposed to start unloading in three hours. You’ve got another half-hour to—”

  He took a deep, deep breath, and let it, carefully, out.

  “Captain Jad, this one can’t be hurried,” he said, just stating facts. “It ought to be fixed if you expect to be carrying break freight handled through a cargo tube. Fixed, Captain, or maybe replaced entire.”

  “Replaced, at Codrescu Station’s prices?” the captain said, outraged. “Just get it working!”

  And that was the break point on the pullion screw, so there was no use crying about it or pushing past it. Down. . . .

  He took a particular breath, counted himself lucky he knew that relaxation technique, and moved things so down was possible.

  It was shimmy, and bend, and back, and back, and watch the head, and pull the tub of tools around with him and down, and not drop them on the captain’s deserving head.

  “My suggestion, Captain, is that you show an engineer what I’ve got here. I’m two hours past regulation shift end and that puts me in the redzone for safety—my light’s been flashing like a pulsar for the last hour! Just you—and an engineer—look at this!”

  The final four feet wasn’t that bad, except that Captain Jad had no sense of self-preservation and had almost managed to get his shoulder shlagged by the tool tub anyway. Chirs was the skinniest man on the ship, but not weak, and that was a bonus for sure for the captain whose hat still had a place to sit.

  Chirs pulled the work helmet off once the tub was settled safe, meaning the sweat was free to run down his neck now.

  He pushed the dupe button, watched the amber lights flash three times, and pulled the duplicate chip out of the helmet control bar and tried to hand it to the captain, but ended up giving it to Gwiver since the captain was sucking on his trucafe like he did when he got nervous. Damnnity well ought to be nervous!

  “Take a look. And here, I brought ’em out because there was no way I was going to be able to put them back on.”

  Gwiver took them, too, after managing to hand off the recording to the captain.

  “There’s metal missing, sir. There’s grooves in things that oughtn’t be touching anything, sir. There’s a spot of something that’s flaking and sev
eral things that are bent. I’ve been measuring and checking and . . . I’m done with this until it gets fixed, sir.”

  Probably he’d been overdoing the sir, Chirs realized, but if worse came to worser and the captain put him on warning he had a lot of stuff to go against a complaint. In fact, for back-up, he slipped a chip he owned into the slot, duped it while the captain watched him, and shoved that down into his personal work-wallet.

  “The Cargo Master reports and certifies to the best of his abilities that the inner lift assembly is out of true and that he will not utilize it for any purpose until it is repaired by a technician fully pedigreed to fix and certify it right.”

  “We’ve got to move that . . .”

  Chirs pulled a ’sorb sheet out of his pocket, and wiped his forehead. He nodded, rubbed his hair down past his ear, and threw a pilot’s I can do it if we have to hand-sign at the mechanism, at the captain, at Gwiver . . .

  “When I come back on duty we can do an eval. That’s ten hours, regulation, before I can come back on duty. There’s a way to do it—open hold—with a rent-boat. It’ll take losing some air, and you’ll have to cut grav, but the ship will let me peel it out of there pretty quick as long as you get the pod-packs tethered and secured ahead of time. Gwiver can do that while I take my break.”

  “Open hold. That’s pilot work, Chirs.”

  “Yessir, and that’s why the line hired me, wasn’t it? I got a secure Pilot Third and you don’t have to void any of the contracts by having outside haulers involved. I’m good for it. That lift’s not good, and that’s a fact.”

  “I hear your suggestion, Chirs. I’ll take it under advisement if we can’t get the lift going while you’re on break. I’ll note the cargo master’s scheduling issues for later discussion.”

  The glare was so cold it was hot, but Chirs strode away, wondering if he could recall where his Third Class certificates were.

  • • • • • •

  He lost a little bit of heat on his way across to the station, official IDs and records to hand, found right where he’d thought they should be. Doubts about things—Fringe Ranger was making him doubt what he was doing more each docking.