by Jean Kilczer
I pulled my head away. “You know my name.” I suspected she was the commander whose voice I'd heard on the comlink.
In the harsh lantern light, brassy golden hair, compliments of a bottle, fell to her shoulders. Her heavily rouged cheeks appeared to be torched. Fire-red lips parted in a laugh. Her eyes, deeply shadowed in blue, lowered demurely under lashes so extravagantly long, they closed like filigreed gates to hide her expression. It was difficult to read the real face behind the paint job. But from the sag of her cheeks and neck, though her figure was hidden beneath the slinky black gown, resplendent with jewels that sparkled with every move, I guessed she was about fifty.
“Are you the commander?” I asked.
Her lips broadened to a red grin that reminded me of a carnivore who had just eaten. “And perceptive, too, Blondie,” she said.
Two armed Cleocean guards entered the tent and dropped the flap. They stood to either side of it, their silver bodies gleaming in lantern light.
“Don't mind them,” she whispered when I studied the two. She leaned over me, so that her breasts touched my chest. “They're my personal guards, for personal affairs. What humans do has no effect on them.” She brushed my lips with hers.
Spirit! I sent to my mentor, the director of evolution on his homeworld, Halcyon, and a formidable telepath who could span light years with a send.
I am here. What is it this time?
I'm in a mess.
A mess, you say? I felt the sarcasm in his send.
This time it's not my fault!
It never is, Terran. But you are in no danger. Not yet.
The woman pushed up my right pants leg in a seductive manner, and slipped the knife I kept strapped there from its sheath.
Maybe soon! I sent as she ran the knife lightly across my throat.
“What a shame it would be,” she shook her head, “to watch the light go out in those too, too blue eyes. She stroked my cheek with the tip of the knife.”And watch the color drain from that alabaster skin. She pressed my lip with the knife. I was afraid to move.
“To watch those perfect lips,” she whispered, “part not in a kiss, but in a surrender to death.”
Spirit! I cried in my mind. You were saying?
I have probed her mind on your behalf, Spirit sent, as you should have done. She has no intention of killing you.
Do you know if Joe's alive? My head still hurts too much for tel-links.
He lives, Jules, and so does Bat.
I exhaled a breath. And Huff?
I cannot read that Vegan mind. It is…too literal and trackless. Too close to animals to separate out. I might be reading some jungle creature instead.
Tell me about it! OK. Thanks, Spirit.
You are on your own, Terran.
Aren't I always? But his tel-link was gone. “Uh, Commander? Your men made me an offer to join your band as a pilot. I'm willing.”
“Too late for that, Blondie.” She ran her palm down my chest and stopped at my waist."
“What're you going to do with us?” I asked.
“I know what I'd like to do with you.”
“If you're thinking about a ransom, forget it. I've got no family. No rich uncles.”
She kissed my neck. “I'd like to keep you for a souvenir,” she whispered and slid her hands under my shirt.
“Get your hands off me!”
“As you wish.” She sat back. Her face seemed to harden in the harsh lantern light. “I'm a business woman, and you're a commodity.” She laid a hand on my thigh. “You would bring a high price on the block.”
“What block?”
“Any of a number of auction blocks on backwater planets where they still use slaves for the dangerous work.”
“And my friends?”
“Not as high a price, but still worth the effort, except the old man.” She leaned over and nibbled my ear. “I'd like to spend the night, Blondie, but I already have a date.” She stood up. “The captain of the guards. Jealous sort. He hates it when I fuck somebody else.” She leaned down and patted my cheek. “But maybe tomorrow night you'll get lucky.”
I could have directed her mind to set me free, but I couldn't tackle three minds all at once. She walked to the entrance with a swish of silk and a flash of jewels. As the two guards rolled back the flap, she blew me a kiss. “See you tomorrow night.” She turned and left.
I laid my head back down. I was still wet from my swim in the river, but sweat dripped down my forehead and back. My shoulders ached from having my hands tied behind me. When had I last eaten? Oh, yeah. Breakfast. But more than food, I needed water. Commander Tryst's perfume still lingered in the air. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
I cannot remember a worse night, except when I was held prisoner and whipped in the lithium mine run by Boss Slade, and the infection from the cuts was killing me.
I slept fitfully, with nightmares spiraling down to hellish images.
I awoke with a start when I heard footsteps approaching. Dawn oozed through the membranous tent walls.
I lifted my head as the flap was thrown aside. Dirk and Frak entered. Frak held a knife. I couldn't read his reptilian expression but Dirk looked amused. “Sleep well?” he asked.
“I need water,” I told him.
“You need to learn to ask politely.” Frak cut the twine that bound my wrists and ankles.
I got stiffly to my feet and staggered before I gained my balance. Dirk nodded toward the loose flap. I rubbed my shoulder and went out into a gray, overcast morning. A light drizzle cooled my face.
“That way.” Dirk pointed to a small rock building. I waited while he unlocked the door and pushed it open. The interior was dark. “Inside.”
I hesitated.
“It ain't a gas chamber, tag. Inside!”
I walked into the room. It smelled of soap. Dirk flicked on a light. It was a bathroom with a shower stall.
“Now scrub behind your ears,” Dirk said. He closed the door and locked it.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I stripped down, threw my clothes and boots into the vib unit, and drank my fill of water in cupped hands from the sink. I thermiconed off my scruffy beard, brushed my teeth, and showered. Even my sense of exhaustion seemed to drop away as I scrubbed clean and towel dried. No hot-air luxury here. I got dressed in my fresh clothes, all black for the night rescue that had turned into a disaster, tied my jacket around my waist, and knocked on the door.
Frak opened it.
“Ah,” Dirk said, “don't he smell sweet, Frak? I could fuck him myself. The Queen will be all over him tonight like green on grass.”
“Unless I decide to leave your resort,” I said. “How about breakfast? Otherwise, no tip.”
“You're a real smartass, aren't you?” Frak said.
“Not so smart,” I muttered, closed my eyes and tel-scanned the array of tents, searching for Joe.
“Forget it,” Dirk said. “I know what you're doing. We're not letting the three of you bunk together.”
“Three?” I asked. “Then I guess you let Sojourner get away. Sorry about that.”
He pushed me toward a patio with tables and chairs under a fibrin canopy of woven leaves and flowers. A scruffy bunch of pirates were eating breakfast. I walked to an empty table through a gauntlet of stares and muttered words. A group of Zenorgisms lifted into the air and circled me with an angry buzz of wings.
Frak waved them off and they settled back to the ground.
“Hey, scud!” a burly Vermakt called to me from a table of his companions.
I paused.
He cupped his clawed hands around his drink, something tall and purple, and leaned forward in his chair. His tapered, gray-furred face, with beady eyes and rounded pink ears, showed front teeth that overlapped his lower lip. I had no quarrel with the race, but they always reminded me of rats. I'd gone head to head with their insane leader, General Rowdinth, back on their homeworld, planet Fartherland, and I guess this one still held a grudge.
; “I hear you're a tel,” he said.
“So?” I asked.
He slid a look to his companions and chuckled. “So tell me something. Why do human scuds have flat faces and hair only on top of their round heads? Looks pretty dumb from where I'm sitting.”
“Watch out, troll,” I told him, "you might step on one of your relatives scurrying around looking for crumbs.
The pirates laughed, all but the Vermakt.
“Good one,” a Deneb called to me.
“You're a funny tag,” Dirk said. “Sit down!”
I did. “What's for breakfast?”
“For you, leftovers,” Frak commented.
“Yummy.” I tried again to tel-probe for Joe's mind. I jumped as I touched his brain-pattern, somewhere inside a tent. It was Joe, but his thoughts were disjointed and unfocused.
What had they done to him? Or what had he done to himself?
A female Cleocean, smelling of seaweed, brought me a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, muffins, and a cup of steaming coffee. I sipped the coffee, real Earthbrew, and stared at the river where Huff was last seen.
Huff, I sent in that direction. No response. Suddenly, I lost my appetite.
* * *
I spent the long, hot, drizzly day helping to load crates of small arms and rocket launchers into the cargo bays of the pirates' two starships. Some crates were unmarked and stamped Handle With Care. I wondered what was inside them.
The workers were all captives, like me, from various races. The work was grueling. Sweat ran down my back; my arms ached worse as the day wore on. The rest periods were short.
I tried once for a tel-link with Joe, but his mind was so despondent it dragged me down until I couldn't physically function and had to withdraw. What the hell was wrong with our hard-nosed crusty leader? The team always managed to work through the worst of incidents, as long as Joe was leading us. But we tended to fall apart on those rare occasions when he gave in to depression.
I put my back against a large crate and pushed it up into the bay while two Denebs pulled from the front. I could only conclude that seeing his wife Abby beaten while he was helpless to stop it had driven Joe over the edge. “Helpless” was not in Joe's lexicon, a man who always opted for action to solve a problem. That had to be it.
“OK,” I said and caught my breath as we rolled a crate into place with the others and fastened the straps. “That'll hold it.” I trotted down the ramp and back out into the cooling rain.
When the lunch break came, sandwiches and coffee were handed out. I sat down heavily on a crate under cover of the cargo bay, wiped my face on my grimy sleeve, and opened the wrapping on a long sandwich of cold cuts and cheese stiff with age and green around the edges. I stripped off the green and ate, not caring if it were mock meat, or from a slaughtered animal. Normally, I only eat mock meat, cloned from farm animals and grown as separate parts, while the parent animals were left unharmed to graze in fields. Here, I didn't ask the source of the meat.
A Kubraen walked to the crate with his slab-footed gait squishing rainwater, and turned his silver, slitted eyes on me through strands of thick charcoal hair. He was probably over seven feet, tall even for his race.
“Honor me to sit down,” I said, respecting Kubraen protocol. “The crate is wide.” Lisa and I had spent about a month with these gentle people on planet Halcyon. I glanced at a Kubraen guard with a beam rifle slung over his shoulder. Well, most were gentle.
The Kubraen's twin slits for nostrils opened and closed from his blocky head in a gesture of friendship. He sat down and extended a thick, ivory-skinned arm with ridges and black creases. He had a pleasant, syrupy smell. “I am honored to share your crate,” he lisped.
I extended my hand and tapped his long straight fingers. “Jules,” I said wearily.
“.” He studied his sandwich, probing the cold cuts with a long, blunt fingernail. Kubraens are strict vegetarians, not by choice, but by nature.
“I can help,” I said and extended my hand. He gave me the sandwich. I scraped out the cold cuts, which left cheese and lettuce. “Is this OK?” I asked.
“Thrank you, Julesh. You are friends good with Great Briertrush, are you not?”
“I am. Word travels at lightspeed. How is he?”
“Our gentle leadre ish getting old.” He bit into the sandwich.
“I guess he is. You think he's preparing for geth state?”
“I thrink he ish communing with Strar Spreaker, and she ish making a place for him in the sphere between lives.”
“Oh.”
“He is at peace fror the high passage, Julesh.”
“Yeah, he would be.” My old friend was the most accepting person I'd ever known. Lisa had taken to him from our first meeting in a tunnel where we were being chased by some Terran baddies on Halcyon. He saved us both.
I took a bite of the sandwich and nodded at a stack of crates. “Do you know where all this stuff is going?”
“Yesh. To a new world, a world named Trerra Nover.”
“You mean New Terra?” I chewed. “I never heard of it.”
“Ish beyond the jurishtriction of government Alphra. The homeworld of thre LorHann people.” He rubbed his arm, where a dried ridge of skin was peeling off, and scraped off the rest of it.
“We're loading arms… Are the LorHanns at war?”
“Yesh. Against human rogue forces, hired by colonists to rid the world of LorHanns so threy can have the little good land for themselves.”
“But there are other worlds that are being colonized.”
He shook his horny head. “Threse are the preoples who would have colonized Equus.”
“Oh.” I ripped off another chunk of the dry sandwich and chewed.
Equus had been taken off the colonization program when the Vrorhs, a powerful telepathic people who could do harm to other races without meaning to, had occupied the planet as refugees from their own civil war.
I swallowed. “You think they're going to sell us as slaves to the invaders of New Terra?”
“New Trerra ish the Trerran name fror the planet,” he said thoughtfully. “Thre natives call it something else.” He laid down his sandwich. “I do not thrink, Julesh, that threy will sell us to the Trerran rogues.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I know thris fror a fract. Threy will.”
“Shit!”
I heard the drone of a ground car behind us and stood up. A long, gold-colored vintage limousine with blacked-out windows purred to a stop. A rear window rolled down, displaying Commander Tryst, dressed in frilly black, framed by the door, for all the world like a portrait of a high-end Madam.
Dirk got out from the back door, a beam rifle over his shoulder, and approached me and .
“Uh oh,” I whispered.
“Does thrat expression mean trouble, Julesh?”
I nodded. “By the bagful, Trum.”
“You, Terran!” Dirk motioned me to the car. “Get in.”
As I approached the car, Tryst smiled at me. “You look good in sweat. Want to take the rest of the day off, Blondie?” She winked. “I can show you a better time than loading ships.”
“Thanks anyway, Commander,” I said. “I like my job. The pay is good, and the food,” I held up the remnants of the stiff sandwich with hanging cold cuts, “is a gourmet's delight.”
Her lips clamped down and deepened the wrinkles around her mouth. “This isn't a request, Rammis,” she said tightly, “it's a requisition.”
“Oh, yeah,” I kicked dirt, “I forgot I was a commodity.”
Dirk strode over and slapped the sandwich from my hand. “Get in the car!” He motioned me to the rear seat. I went around the car and got in next to Tryst. Dirk squeezed in beside me, pushing me into her shoulder and hip. Her perfume aroma was thick.
“You smell,” Tryst told me.
“So do you,” I said.
Dirk lifted a fist.
“It's all right, Sergeant,” Tryst told him, “I like my men b
rave, sweaty, and stupid.”
The Deneb driver took us through a narrow uphill road, past twisted trees, to a large, secluded red and golden Arabian tent, decorated with folds of fluttering white silk drapes over the entrance, and hanging braids of red satin.
Dirk got out and I followed. He motioned me toward the tent. “I don't know what the hell she sees in you,” he whispered. “You look like a fruitcake to me. Your hair is longer than the commander's. But it's none of my business. Move!” He pushed me toward the tent.
Tryst followed.
I stopped and ventured a look down at the camp below.
Oh my God. Huff! He was plodding between trees, making his way uphill. Who was that behind him? It looked like Bat. Huff must have freed him. But where was Joe?
“Move!” Dirk pulled the drapes aside, took my arm and shoved me into the tent.
“Keep your hands off me!” I said.
The interior resembled the inside of a feverish seashell, with glossy crimson carpets, ceiling and walls. A chandelier turned slowly and sent images of diamonds dancing across the walls. In the center of the room, an oversized four-poster bed sat on a platform, with diaphanous veils enclosing it and a gold-filigreed overhanging canopy. The image of high-end Madame strengthened in my mind.
Tryst slinked close to me and put a hand on my chest. “You're sticky,” she said.
“You want me to strip him down and hose him off, Commander?” Dirk asked.
Tryst sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes. “I'll take him as is, Sergeant. Wait outside with the vehicle, and don't let the ships take off without him.” She smiled at me. “It's almost a shame that you'll bring such a high price.” She folded an arm around my neck and drew me close. Her lips parted and she kissed me passionately, probing my closed lips with her tongue. “But I could never refuse a good deal. Come.” She took my hand and led me to the bed.
If Sophia ever found out what I was about to do, not only would my ass be toast, but so would the rest of me. I glanced at the entrance. I would try to keep Tryst happy until Huff and Bat showed up. Huff still had his mouse beamers strapped to his ankles, and Bat might be armed. But between the two of them, they couldn't devise a plan. Where the hell was Joe? And what was Chancey up to? Probably his ears.
