A frisson of anxiety shivered through the Rifter captain. He’d grabbed those protocols the moment he found out about them, not stopping to think where they’d come from. But it was obvious; only the Navy had the array power to do that.
That’s just the start of their counterattack, he thought. The nicks were going to come after the Dol’jharians with everything they had left, and he knew it was the Rifters who’d be stuck defending the Suneater.
And nobody thought of Dol’jhar as a reliable ally.
He strove for a semblance of unconcern. “Dol’jharians aren’t so confident as they’d like us to think.”
“It’s obvious from the call for tempaths that they still really don’t know all they need to know about the Suneater,” she replied, and shook her head. “One would almost pity Li Pung, were it not for the consequences for all of us should he evade the summons.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
“Impatient, are we? You have something better to do than prepare to possibly save your life?”
Anderic shifted his gaze to the daughter again, to discover a smirk of knowing triumph. He looked away quickly.
“We have informed Barrodagh that insufficient cims exist on Rifthaven to fill his order, but that more will be obtained. In the meantime, we have sequestered a number of various models, along with sufficient materiel, to enable you to rebuild your reactors.”
He looked up, prepared to express his gratitude, then stopped. Karroo didn’t care about him, they wanted to preserve their investment in the destroyer. He wondered what they’d think if they knew about the logos.
Instead, he merely acknowledged the information, and, indeed, it appeared that Lyska expected no gratitude—probably would regard it as weak-minded. They briefly discussed how long the rebuild might take, compared to the rumors of how fast the Navy might pull together an attack, and then she dismissed him.
Anderic sensed the girl’s gaze following him out of the office and felt a surge of anger. Maybe a visit to the Garden of Earthy Delights was in order. They had the largest selection of joy-toys, male, female, and otherwise—he’d deal with the little bint vicariously.
o0o
A mellow series of chimes sounded as the old-fashioned door swung silently shut behind Kira Lennart and Luri. A tall, painfully thin woman emerged languidly from behind a hanging. Her hazel eyes widened, she smiled, and she held out her arms.
“Luri, my dearest! Long has my establishment missed your discernment.”
Kira hated the inevitable pang of jealousy burning her vitals as Luri pulled her elbow away from her and rushed to embrace the woman, kissing her deeply. “Emma!” she exclaimed, caressing the woman’s hollow cheeks.
It was odd, thought Kira, seeing Luri work another with her attractions. If you got past the jealousy, it was quite revealing.
“What new delights do you have for me?” asked Luri. She turned and waved Kira closer, pulling in by the wrist. “Kira really liked the proteus.”
Emma beamed. “That’s my best model.” She gave Kira a long, appreciative gaze, igniting a thrill. Kira wondered giddily if Emma was gennated, as she suspected Luri had been, to be able to suddenly exude such smoldering sexuality between one heartbeat and the next.
“But you’re not here for fun and games, I suspect?” Emma continued, somehow closing Kira into that small circle of intimate space, though neither had moved.
“Am I that obvious?” Kira said plainly.
“Yes.” The woman tilted her head and laughed. “But perhaps if you find what you are looking for?” She indicated the display cases artfully arranged around the room.
“We’re looking for information on male chastity devices from Dyzon,” Kira began, then paused as the proprietor grinned. “No, we want to get it off. Of someone,” she added hastily.
“Who?”
Luri’s bright laughter filled the shop. “Tallis.”
Emma threw her head back and bellowed laughter with a force that startled Kira. Ordinarily Kira did not find bony women attractive, but Emma’s angular body held more energy than any two people she could think of.
“Oh, my dear,” she exclaimed when she caught her breath. “For that priceless bit of news, you may have the data at half-cost.” Her expression turned serious. “But I can only give you a range of clues to the tactile combination it will recognize, and there’s no guarantee you won’t hit other settings in the process.”
“Painful?”
“That, or sustained ecstasy, which pretty much becomes the same thing after a while.”
Luri gave a coy little shudder, her arms cradled under her round breasts. Kira’s heartbeat accelerated.
Emma’s languid gaze moved slowly down Kira’s body, her lips pursing. Then she strode to the front of the shop and locked the door. The window opaqued. She took Luri’s arm in one big spidery hand and Kira’s in another, and Kira tingled with excitement.
“Let’s go into the back room. I do have a new shipment. War and sex are soulmates, so I’m not hurting. And I could use your help,” she said with a grin. “I’ve got some rather unusual accessories for my dormaivu, and I never sell anything I haven’t tried myself.”
o0o
Anderic grinned with satisfaction. Everything had worked out as he hoped. Lennart and Luri were back, the former looking exhausted. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, though Luri flounced as usual. He hoped whatever they had done had hurt, and whatever they sought had failed.
His visit to the Garden had fully discharged his animus against the Karoo Syndic’s bratty daughter. They’d finished the refit and loaded the cargo demanded by Barrodagh. His careful inquiries on the anon feeds of the RiftNet had even yielded some suggestions on how to deal with the logos.
He frowned at the mind-blur shrilling its gnat-like whine as if to announce the crown of his efforts.
The access tube disgorged a clot of guards in the livery of Karroo, and in their midst, a disheveled man of middle stature whose dark, parchment-colored skin revealed numerous bruises. His silken robe was rent, the tunic underneath stained and rumpled.
“Li Pung,” Anderic said as the Karroo enforcers pushed the man forward. “What a pity you declined the hospitality of the Lord of Vengeance. You could have gone as an honored guest. Now you go as a prisoner.”
“No more than you, or anyone on Rifthaven,” said Li Pung. He spat on the deck. “Dol’jhar is making the entire Thousand Suns a prison.”
Anderic’s triumph soured. “Take him to the brig,” he snarled.
As the security team yanked him away, Anderic wished again he could set up a mind-blur on the brig, but Barrodagh had specifically forbidden it. “He must arrive sane and healthy, or you will not thus leave.”
The entire Thousand Suns a prison. Enraged by the resonance of truth, Anderic stomped to the bridge to take the Satansclaw away from Rifthaven, toward an unknown he knew only as the Suneater.
o0o
Tallis hunched miserably on his cot amidst the stench of the recyclers. Abruptly the comscreem flickered on. It did that more and more often lately, sometimes showing him things he was sure didn’t exist. But the distinction no longer seemed to matter very much.
He recognized Li Pung and satisfaction flared briefly at the sight of someone more miserable than himself. Horrific images flitted through his mind; nobody knew why the Dol’jharians wanted tempaths on the Suneater. He wouldn’t trade places with the club owner for anything. Telos only knew what they would force him to do there.
The screen flickered off. Tallis thought longingly of the dyplast eye that Luri had procured. He dared not use it yet, lest Anderic confiscate or, worse, destroy it. Even sharper was the anticipation of the removal of the Emasculizer leeched firmly to his nacker.
But all that would have to wait for mutiny. And so deep was his depression that he didn’t really care if it failed. He gingerly tongued the thanacap on his back molar that Luri had also bought at his request. Death could hardly be much worse than his l
ife.
BARCA
Riolo straightened up and looked around with deep pleasure and relief as the lift took them down from the arid surface of Barca into darkness. Hreem watched sourly. More even than dirtside, he hated being underground.
To either side, silent Barcan guards stood. They looked silly in uniforms with codpieces, but the weapons they grasped elicited respect: plazwhips, designed for maximum pain and scarring. As far as Hreem was concerned, that was harder to face than a firejac.
The lift smelled like one of the darker corners of Rifthaven, far from the pissoirs. He began to breathe through his mouth. The light faded, and Hreem put on his light-enhancers as Riolo took off his goggles. Finally the lift grounded with a grinding crunch, and the doors slid silently open.
Hreem choked, turned it into a cough as the guards looked at him. A wave of stench, warm and moist as somebody’s crotch, rolled in upon him. His knees almost buckled, and tears burned his eyes.
He blinked them away, knowing that they couldn’t be seen behind his goggles, anyway. How did these little chatzers live in this reek?
As they walked down the corridor, an irritating buzz or whine at the edge of hearing assailed Hreem’s ears, mixed with a sound reminiscent of a defective tianqi, like heavy breathing. The clatter of running feet echoed from side tunnels and adits, and the hissing speech of Barca whispered in sinister susurrations from dark corners and holes. But they encountered no one.
Trying to shake off the reactions, Hreem looked around more carefully, noticing some sort of abstract pattern in the floor underfoot. He cursed under his breath and lifted his eyes away from the disorienting shapes. They made walking difficult. He twitched his hand aside as they rounded a corner, avoiding the tatters of what looked like metallic fungus draped on the walls and dangling from the ceiling. Something ugly chattered at him from a niche in the wall: Hreem cursed aloud and jumped aside, reaching for his jac.
Riolo grabbed his wrist with surprising strength as the guards stepped back at a threatening angle, raising their plazwhips.
“No, Captain,” he admonished in a loud whisper. “You have been allowed your weapon as a mark of respect. Do not let it be the means of your death.” He glanced up at the enormous insect in the niche, its compound eyes glittering in the dim light of a recessed lamp. “It is only a Watcher. It will not harm you.”
Hreem did not find the emphasis reassuring. He straightened his jac and pulled down the edge of his tunic. “Your briefing wasn’t worth spit,” he growled.
“You didn’t want to listen to my briefing,” Riolo reminded him. The little man was bolder, here in the tunnels of his home.
As they proceeded, seemingly endless corridors alternating with transtubes, Hreem’s ears popped several times. How deep were they going? Sweat broke out all over his body, but Riolo seemed unaffected by the warmth. Hreem glared at the increasing density of cannulae perforating the walls. The floor underfoot had changed to some sort of organic mat that seemed to flex against the soles of his boots as he lengthened his stride, pushing the pace. The walls, too, seemed to press in on him; now he understood why Norio so often played images of caverns and other enclosed spaces during sex—his discomfort was like a spice to the twisty little mindsnake.
The guards halted in front of a door. Riolo ushered him in. Hreem halted abruptly, rigidly controlling himself, splaying his hands to avoid clutching at his jac. Nausea clawed at his throat as he stared at the cannulae. Something moved in there!
“What in Haruban’s Hell are those chatzing things?” he said as fat, blind reddish snakes writhed partway out of them, waving in the air as though sensing him. One plopped out of its hole and wriggled toward him, its blunt, featureless head suddenly sprouting a number of soft spiky palps.
Hreem forced a laugh in an attempt to dispel his nervousness as whatever it was seemed to survey him. “Chatzing thing looks like a self-propelled dilenja.”
Hreem caught a flicker of a glance from Riolo, whose gaze dropped to his codpiece.
Hreem laughed louder, genuinely amused despite the strangeness of his surroundings. “Hell! Is that what Barcans keep in there?”
Then an awful suspicion seized him as Riolo’s eyes widened m confirmation of his guess. “Wait a minute. When you said I had to consummate this deal with the Matria, you weren’t just talking fancy?” He began to back away from the huge worm, shaking his head. “No, that’s crazy.” His anus spasmed.
Then it was Riolo’s turn to laugh. “Oh, Captain, no. I said you must consummate the deal upon the Matria. There is no confusion of roles on Barca as elsewhere in the Thousand Suns.”
Hreem heard the sneer in Riolo’s voice. But the implied insult was so foreign to the normal polysexual mindset of Exiled humanity, and Hreem’s relief so great, that he shrugged it off.
“The shestek are not living creatures, but constructs.” Riolo indicated their texture and reddish skin. Hreem could make out a strange nonorganic quality that was familiar, but he could not recall the context. But the things were huge.
“What if I kill her?”
Riolo shook with silent laughter, his eyes tearing. When he caught his breath, he said, “Captain, were it not for the Thrones, the outcome would be quite the opposite.”
He was gonna bunny with some fem on a throne? Wild images juddered through his mind and Hreem’s nacker stirred. Norio would be madly jealous that he had not been there.
“It is the only way the Matria will yield the Ogres,” Riolo said, apparently detecting Hreem’s lingering doubt. His tone was oddly wistful. “You would prefer to explain to the Lord of Vengeance why you could not obtain them?”
Hreem shook his head, thinking that this was one for the record chips. He’d lost a battlecruiser; he wasn’t about to lose the Ogres. Maybe he could put a few to use himself.
“Show me what I have to do.”
Not long after, walking with exaggerated care, he entered the Labyrinth.
Only the thought of obtaining the infamous battle androids—and the fear of what Eusabian would do to him if he failed—had enabled him to endure what he had just undergone. A lifetime of experimental sex had not prepared him for the weird ritual, complete with disgusting smells and a steamy heat that made him feel faint, that resulted in a nearly meter-long proteus-like thing—his mind shied away from the word “worm”—being fitted over his entire groin.
Riolo was still snuffing in the thick air with an ecstatic expression, but he paused to say breathlessly, “Captain, you can detach it at will.”
Trying with little success to find a comfortable way to move, Hreem thought grimly just what he’d do to the little troglodyte if it didn’t.
A female voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Welcome, Captain,” she said in a deep voice like boiling mud. “You cannot know it, but this is honor for you and necessity for me: I cannot command a lesser Mater to this task.”
At the sound of her voice, and the sight of her enormity swelling like moonrise from the huge vat—that was no throne, a panicky voice gibbered at the back of his thoughts—Hreem’s shaky confidence failed him utterly.
But as he began to back away, the immense woman said, “You did not understand what the shestek will do for you, Captain? Let us essay a more promising start.”
Without any warning a tsunami of pleasure mounted from the heaviness at his groin and washed away his thoughts, impelling him forward into mindless white light.
FOUR
ARES
Marim spun around, laughing. One hand fluffed out her tangle of curly, bright blond hair as she surveyed the four unsmiling co-workers facing her.
“I was lucky, see? I’ve always been good at L-3, but I don’t always win. Tomorrow I’ll probably lose again.”
“Gruen says you cheat.” The speaker, a tall, strong young man, crossed his arms.
“Gruen’s a sneeze-wit. He’s rasty ’cause I zapped him good.”
“Says he was watchin’ on another console. Saw you send a
worm through, locatin’ everyone else’s supply dumps.”
Marim flicked a glance round the four stony faces, then sighed. “Then let’s go right up to Spinner’s and get them to run back the log on the games. Come on, let’s go right now. I got somewhere to be, but I’ll wait on it, just to prove it.”
The shortest of them, a slim young woman with green and black hair, said quietly, “They flush the logs hour after closing. You didn’t know that?”
Of course I knew that, nullwit, Marim thought as she mimed disappointment. Though the woman was the shortest, Marim had seen her in action, and did not make the mistake of assuming her the weakest of the four. She smiled, despising them: even if they didn’t flush the logs, her worms destructed at game’s end. If any of these nullwits’d had a whole brain between them, they’d be inventing their own worms instead of jawing her down.
The third man spoke up. “Ilda’s right. They do flush the system, so all the evidence vipped last night. I think you owe us a rematch, Marim.”
“All right,” Marim said, throwing up her hands. “Glad to. Sanctus Hicura! Go ahead and win your sunbursts back off me—I usually lose more than I win anyway.”
Which was another lie, but she saw the threat in the four faces ease slightly, and the second man clapped her on the shoulder. “You got it. After shift tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there. You grab a table,” she said to the tallest man, and then she grinned at Ilda, whose face was still stony. “And you can stand right behind me the whole time.”
Ilda cracked a small smile at last. “Sure. And not get to play? You just don’t want to lose to me.”
“I’ve already lost to you, Ilda. Why you think my underwear has holes in ’em?”
“That’s not from bein’ old, that’s from bein’ worn out,” the redheaded man cracked.
“Yeah, like you?” Marim retorted.
The Rifter's Covenant Page 24
