Several figures stood between the troop and the fire. Backlit, Kim could not distinguish features. But he picked out Hestiia at the front of the welcoming committee. He’d know her anywhere. His heart speeded up in anticipation of holding her close once more.
He hastened his steps, forcing the other three with the litter to match his pace.
The rest of the waiting figures became clearer. All women. They moved forward bearing armloads of flowers, greens, and gourds. Just as they began bestowing their fragrant gifts upon the IMPs, Kim realized each and every one of them was naked to the waist.
Including his wife.
CHAPTER 20
DALLEENA SWALLOWED her embarrassment at having twelve strange men stare at her naked breasts. In her home village, and all the villages that had employed her as Tracker, she had been separate from womenfolk and their customs. She was Tracker, different, independent. She had worn men’s clothing as a sign of her equality with them. Women had worn a simple sarong in spring and summer and little else until a man claimed them. Then and only then could they expect to cover their breasts in any but the coldest seasons.
Now Dalleena and all the other women exposed themselves to trap the invaders in their own lust. She swallowed her self-consciousness for the sake of the plan.
Then she caught sight of Konner staring at her. A deep frown creased his face. She straightened her shoulders with pride and met the next foreigner with a proffered blossom and a smile. Konner’s scowl deepened.
Her assurance firmed.
The few women in the group of foreigners mimicked Konner’s expression.
Then Raaskan, headman for the village, and three other men, wearing only their short buckskin trews and vests moved up and bestowed flowers upon the females. Bright smiles spread all around.
“Remember what happened to the HMS Bounty when they received a similar greeting from primitives,” a man shouted even as he accepted two flowers from Poolie, Raaskan’s wife.
“The mutineers from the Bounty succumbed to the allure of the native women and embraced a primitive way of life,” Konner whispered in Dalleena’s ear. “They went bush.”
Dalleena just twitched her hips and moved on. She had one more flower to give. She stared at it a moment. Then she stepped daintily back to Konner and gave it to him. He dropped his corner of the litter abruptly. The injured man moaned and thrashed. The others set down the rest of the litter with a little more care. Not much though.
Kim rushed to Hestiia’s side and draped his arm possessively about her shoulders.
Loki ambled toward the center of the group. He accepted a cup of ale and began a jolly round of swapping tall tales with the visitors.
Konner grabbed Dalleena about the waist with both hands. He looked at her long and hard from beneath heavy eyelids. Then he kissed her. Hot. Possessive. Insistent.
“You know what you have to do?” he whispered into her ear.
“But what do you want me to do?” Languor made her limbs heavy and her mind slow. The heat throbbing from his hands where he grasped her tightly sapped her strength and her will. She could no more separate from him now than she could cease to obey the tracking instinct.
“Later.” Konner kissed her quickly and thrust her aside.
She almost stumbled. Strange, rough hands steadied her from behind. Those same strange hands began wandering all over her chest.
Dalleena gritted her teeth and turned to her would-be rescuer with a smile.
“You giving her up for the night?” a voice as rough as the hands asked Konner. The man had slowed his speech to a recognizable dialect. Probably the effect of hastily quaffed ale.
“Her choice,” Konner replied. He turned his attention back to the now thrashing figure on the litter. “Always the woman’s choice here. Not the man’s.” His voice grew heavy with warning.
Did she detect reluctance to leave her in his posture?
Pryth waddled over with her pouches of herbs and salves. She, too, had left her breasts uncovered. The pendulous sacs swung as she moved.
She and the blonde woman who had helped with the litter entered into a detailed discussion of infection that led to locking jaws.
Dalleena detected a sneer on the face of the man who tried to hold her. Then he turned his disproving gaze back to her and smiled.
“I don’t like a lot of fat on my women,” he muttered.
Dalleena decided not to take offense at his comment. Today. Tomorrow might be different. Deftly, she inserted her arm in his and led him to the cask of ale. His hand grabbed her bottom as she walked. She let her own hand drift about his hips until she found the square outlines of a comm unit in his pocket. She slid it free and tucked it into the waist of her sarong.
All around her the Coros, male and female, relieved their guests of every trace of contact with the mother ship. As they passed a one-eyed old woman, seated just outside the circle of light from the fire, they dropped the instruments into her lap. She then secreted them about her person with a near toothless grin.
Taneeo sat in the place of honor beside the fire with his splinted leg stretched out before him. He scowled into his cup of ale, never meeting the gaze of any who greeted him.
A shiver ran down Dalleena’s spine that had nothing to do with the evening breeze on her bare skin.
Loki grabbed a handful of fresh vegetables from the heaping bowls scattered around the village common. The sweet yampion root crunched under his teeth. He let the tastes and textures linger in his mouth a moment before launching into his next recounting of his adventures. He carefully avoided mentioning that he had pulled the trigger on the needle rifle that finally felled his nemesis. This bunch of IMPs might be a bloodthirsty lot in comparison to most civils—those raised on civilized planets as opposed to those raised in the bush. Still, IMPs had taken oaths to uphold the sanctity of all life, even the lives of outlaws such as himself.
“So this guy actually slit the throats of his victims?” Sergeant Ross Duggan grimaced. Then he quaffed a cup of ale.
“And he enjoyed it,” Loki said. “Three times we thought him dead. Twice he came back to life.” And maybe a third time.
Loki looked around hastily. The hairs on his nape prickled as if someone watched him. Pryth, the ancient wisewoman and local healer seemed to follow his every move with her eyes. Had she been corrupted by the spirit of Hanassa as Taneeo suggested?
Pryth was strong of will as well as body. She had never succumbed to Hanassa during his lifetime. Yet Loki could not trust her. She never accepted help if she had any other option. And she made her own decisions.
She was too much like Mum.
Loki could not trust her.
“We had no choice but to take him out the only way we could,” he finished the story. He repeated to himself that he had had no other choice. He had to pull the trigger of the needle rifle and end Hanassa’s tyranny over all of the Coros. He had to end the wholesale slavery. He had to destroy the bloody worship of the false god Simurgh.
No one else could have done it. No one else would have done it.
“Yeah, this place would never grow with a meat eater like that keeping the population down and in-stilling superstition and actually fostering slavery.” Sanchez munched on a handful of crisp wild onions. She moaned in ecstasy as she savored each bite. “This place is some kind of Utopia. Can’t see why you guys want to leave.”
Loki grinned and handed the corporal a bowl of stewed sweet yampion. She had the compact stature of a civil, but something about her accent and the fierceness in her eyes suggested a different ancestry.
Duggan reached over her shoulder and snitched a chunk of roasted lily. He nodded his head in eager agreement with Loki’s words.
A drum and flute began a lively tune.
“Who said we intend to leave?” Loki raised his eyebrows.
“But . . . but you surrendered?”
“Did we? Or did we kidnap you into the local version of Nirvana?”
A busty bru
nette, dressed only in a short sarong, grabbed Duggan’s hand and dragged him toward the festival pylon standing tall at the center of the village. Long streamers of red-leafed vines trailed from the top. Flowers, grains, and tiny squash decorated the pylon as well as the vines. The brunette skipped and hopped in the opening steps of a celebratory dance. Grinning, Duggan copied her movements.
Loki allowed himself to be dragged into the dance with Sanchez.
Other couples joined them. Newcomers, men and women alike, had streamers thrust into their hands. The locals pushed and maneuvered them around and around the pylon until they were all quite dizzy.
All the while, the drum and flute kept up a throbbing and sensual rhythm.
More ale flowed.
Locals changed partners and places. Corporal Sanchez’s sturdy hand caressed Loki’s as she passed him. A thrill of excitement coursed through his body. Or was it revulsion. She was another strong woman who made her own decisions.
But, unlike Mum, her expressions remained open and honest.
Couples wandered off into the darkness, limbs entwined, mouths locked together.
Loki accepted the invitation in Paola Sanchez’s eyes.
The drum pounded in time with the hot blood pulsing in his veins.
CHAPTER 21
MARTIN STARED blankly at the holoimage of the HD™ 37000 in the center of his screen. He’d left the image there to distract Melinda when she hacked into his system. No matter how many fire walls he erected, she always had better software. So he left decoys to send her off in wrong directions.
“Marty!” Bruce’s image jumped to the top layer of programs running on Martin’s screen.
“What? Did you find something?” Martin sent a series of algorithms and wave differential equations to sleep, boosting Bruce’s image.
“I think I hit the jackpot,” Bruce almost whispered. He looked over his shoulder as if he suspected adult eavesdroppers. “I found a minority report on the accident that killed your grandparents.”
“A minority report?” Martin had never heard of such a thing connected to anything but judicial opinions.
“Yeah, an IMP detective wasn’t convinced it was an accident. He filed a report differing from official record. The guy must have had enough rank and prestige the courts couldn’t ignore it, but they didn’t agree with his assessment. So they buried the report, pretended it didn’t exist without actually destroying it.”
“Does Melinda, my mother, know about this report?”
“Probably not. She didn’t have my dad destroy it.” Bruce grinned.
“What does it say?” Martin suddenly felt cold to the core of his being.
“Major Van der Hooten said, and I quote, ‘Weapons residue on the hull surface indicates the vessel exploded from an external blast rather than an internal malfunction. Such residue is consistent with weaponry carried by independent merchants for defense against pirates.”
“An independent merchant? Anything else?”
“Nothing useful. I’ve got Jane Q backtracking flight plans for the dates one month either side of the accident. That would be a lot easier with a Klip, though.”
“Good work, Bruce. And forget the Klip. We don’t want to get caught tapping private data and draining power from bigger systems.” Martin began to shiver. He did not like the implications of the minority report. His mother’s corporation owned most of the vessels piloted by “independent merchants” who flew in and out of Aurora. Her parents had been barely out of the Aurora system on their way to the first jump point when the “accident” occurred. A small independent vessel attacking them would have to come from Aurora.
“Any luck on finding your birth certificate?” Bruce asked.
“No. No adoption papers either in any of Aurora’s courts. Of course, Melinda could have gone offworld for my birth. Still, you’d think she’d want to stay here with her own doctor and nurses in a private clinic.”
“That’s what I think, too. Kurt has a new program for tracking deleted files. He’s working on that marriage license. I’ll have him download a copy of the software to you so you can check more deeply.”
“Thanks, Bruce. I did find out that Melinda had Konner O’Hara arrested and exiled about a month after the date of the deleted record. Eight Terran months before I was born.”
“Just long enough for her to confirm her pregnancy and be pretty sure she wouldn’t miscarry.” Bruce whistled through clenched teeth.
“Evidence is mounting that Mom married Konner, got pregnant, and then got rid of him,” Martin muttered. “But why would she arrange her parents’ death and not Konner’s?”
“Look at the money trail, Marty. It’s always about money.”
“Something about the inheritance, I bet. I should be able to flush out a copy of my grandparents’ will.”
“If you can’t get it locally, I might be able to find something at Earth Central. An inheritance as big as an entire planet would have to be registered there.”
“Keep in touch, Bruce. This is getting interesting.”
“Sure ’nough. Konner’s a good guy. Best counselor at camp. We missed him this summer. Missed you, too.” He signed off.
“Konner—Dad?” Martin tried out the sound of the word on his tongue. It sounded fine, slipped out of his mouth much easier than “Mom” or “Mother” when he thought about Melinda.
“Scaramouch, call up Super Snooper™,” he ordered his computer.
The icon of two fencers clashing blades progressed back and forth across the screen indicating the machine needed time to process the request. Martin watched the chronometer tick off the seconds while he waited. When the fencers stabbed each other and their blood burst forth in a kaleidoscope of unrelated dots and lines, Martin donned his VR gear.
The dots and lines resolved into the three-dimensional image of a slender man with sharp features wearing a tweed Inverness cape and deerstalker cap who strode purposefully into the screen area. He carried a large meerschaum pipe and an old-fashioned magnifying glass.
“The game is afoot, Master Martin,” he said in clipped tones. An edge of excitement tinged his voice.
“I need to know if anyone over at the port has noticed that I moved the ‘no access’ order for Martin Konner O’Hara, ship Sirius,” Martin said.
“A disguise is in order, Master Martin.” The detective shed his cape and cap to reveal the rough coveralls of a dock worker. He shifted his posture to suggest broader shoulders. His aquiline features spread and flattened.
These changes merely symbolized the signature masking taking place deep within the computer. Every computer on Aurora—except possibly Melinda’s—had a registered signature that could be traced by the authorities back to the user. Alteration of that signature carried heavy monetary and criminal penalties. If he got caught.
Martin had no intention of getting caught. All he needed was one quick look at the harbormaster’s calendar.
“You will need more memory available to complete this task, Master Martin,” the detective said in a monotone—a clear indication that the huge Super Snooper™ program struggled to work within the constraints of Martin’s computer. Melinda’s would have been able to handle both the program and the holoimage.
“Scaramouch, cancel HD™ 37000.” He waved his hand across the holo screen. In the wake of his gesture, a telltale afterimage of green fire followed his hand movement. Someone monitored his activity.
Guess who? Melinda. She was the only one in the entire corporate headquarters/mansion who had the hardware and software to beat him at his own game.
“Super Snooper, remove observer.”
“Are you certain, Master Martin, that you wish to alert the observer by forcing them out of the program?” The detective had resumed his costume of Inverness cape and deerstalker cap.
“Alternatives?” Martin asked.
“Diversion.” The detective smiled. Mischief glinted in his holoimage eyes.
“Do it!” Martin agreed. The detecti
ve pulled a leathersynth strap about one meter in length from the capacious pocket of his cape. A canine—the likes of which had never been seen on Aurora except in holoimage—sprang from the white background and loped over to the detective. It sat on the man’s foot and looked up at him imploringly.
Martin wanted to reach out and pet the creature. He’d always wanted a pet, but Melinda had frowned on the practice of domesticating alien species. Besides, she did not want to live with the dirt she supposed such creatures carried around in their fur. The air filters in the mansion design could easily compensate for any foreign particles, but Melinda still refused Martin permission. She probably did not want to deal with any being she could not control through money or coercion. The emotions of love and loyalty were too foreign to her.
On the holo screen, the detective snapped the end of the strap onto the dog’s collar, then he pointed at the remnants of the telltale around the still intact pedcycle. The dog sniffed around the image and then took off howling in a new direction.
The detective let the long strap slide through his fingers and turned back to Martin. “Toby will lead the observer into the marketplace where you presumably are shopping for your birthday present,” he said as he resumed his dock worker disguise. ”Now, Master Martin, we shall proceed on our current mission.
The white screen dissolved to be replaced with the cubicle in the port authority offices where the harbormaster presided. The office was small but just as pretentious in furnishing as Melinda’s. A large woodsynth desk filled nearly every square centimeter of open space. One blank wall was dedicated to holo equipment. Another wall looked out on the spaceport through a bioglass panel nearly as large and expensive as the one in Martin’s suite. The other two walls were covered in holos of antique vessels designed for atmosphere flight only. Nothing lay upon the shiny surface of the desk; no notes, writing implements, day-planners, calendars, or maps. Since the demise of paper as a communication medium—even before faster-than-light travel—desks had become obsolete. Melinda Fortesque had one in her office that she used as a symbolic barrier between herself and whoever dared approach her. The harbormaster must have adopted the tactic in imitation of his boss.
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