Foreign Devil (Unreal Universe Book 1)

by Lee Bond

  Hip-checking a toady struggling with a bulky case out of the way, Mijomi shoved herself bodily in front of Garth. “You can’t stay here anymore.” she crowed triumphantly.

  Garth narrowed his eyes venomously at the Hotel manager. “Huh?”

  Mijomi could barely contain her ecstasy. Although the reasons behind the foreign bastard getting citizenship were totally unfathomable, she was nevertheless happier than she’d been in a very long time. Mijomi believed her government was infallible, so could only hope that something devious and painful was in store for the cocksure ex-Offworlder. “This Hotel is for Offworlders only.” She crowed again.

  “I don’t have time for this horseshit, woman.” Lady Ha’s instructions were very explicit. As a new visitor to Hospitalis, he’d been being given a one-time only, time-limited opportunity to enjoy all that the House of Relaxation and Plentiful Joy had to offer. To remind him forcibly of the expiration date, his proteus was counting down the minutes. Garth cursed loudly when Robret, his odious handler, appeared on the scene. Unlike Mijomi, he was very confused. “Fuck do you want?” Garth snarled.

  “I’m afraid she’s right, Sa Garth.” Robret flashed the info to Garth. “Everyone is buzzing with the news. The rules are very, very clear. As a citizen –congratulations, by the way- you’re not allowed to cohabit with Offworlders.”

  Garth cleared his throat angrily. “I’m not Latelian. I only play one on TV.” Time was a precious commodity he did not have.

  “Laws concerning citizens are … unilateral, sa.” Robret flashed his proteus again. “I don’t understand a lot of what I’m reading –my specialty is handling, not law- but what I do understand is that, in the eyes of the law, you are Latelian. There are no distinctions.”

  Garth looked from Robret to Mijomi and back again. He could tell they hated each other, so regardless of how he’d treated them both over the last few days, the chance that they were working together was nil. “I’ll be back here in half an hour or so.” He pointed a finger at Mijomi, who looked like she wanted to bite it off. “Don’t touch my room or I swear I will break your neck. And you.” He turned his finger on Robret. “Get all the particulars about this bullshit and send it to Sa Herrig DuPont. He’s the bank manager of FHSB and my legal representative. Got it? I’m going to look you up when I get back, see if you did like I asked.”

  Garth didn’t wait for either person to confirm. He had less than fifteen minutes to get to the House of Relaxation and Plentiful Joy before his chance at freedom expired, and the route he needed crossed and looped over itself a half-dozen times, turning a leisurely –and direct- walk of five minutes into a flat-out run lasting twenty. Ignoring the looks he drew from the assembled officers, experts and analysts, Garth hotfooted it out of the Hotel Hospitalis and down the street. If they wanted to arrest him for the murder of Injiri Katainn, they could damn well wait.

  In his haste, Garth missed a lone Latelian who started talking excitedly into his proteus the moment he shot out of the hotel lobby.

  Within seconds of dashing madly down the street, Garth realized his route to the Relaxation House was a thing of precision and beauty rivaling a Swiss watchmaker’s attention to detail; each step of the way intentionally brought him past relay stations. Worried at first that he was being deliberately captured doing something illegal, a burst of insight led him to realize that each station he passed was occupied with the cumbersome project of handling bulk data transmissions, keeping his progress through the streets undetected. Lady Ha’s skill was impressive, to be certain.

  The countdown was irritating, but whenever he felt himself flagging –he was not, after all, fully recovered from his fight with Injiri- it served to spur him onward. With but a minute to spare, Si Shurimi’s House of Relaxation and Plentiful Joy hove into view. Dismissing any further concerns about unwarranted attention, Garth put on a final burst of speed. Taking a deep, shuddery breath, Garth forged into the unknown.

  The woman at the counter was done up as a Kabuki girl, complete with the heavy pancake face make-up, heavily rouged cheeks and lips. Her hair was piled languidly atop her head and skewered with several chopsticks. As walked up to the counter, she dipped her head politely and drew aside a beaded curtain; other than the woman, the curtain, and the counter-top, there were no other features at the entrance. Steeling himself for the worst, Garth walked through the beaded curtain into the adjoining room.

  There were twelve massage beds, six on each side. Each bed was separated from the other by a heavy fabric curtain that could be drawn aside or closed as the patron desired. Several other girls were sitting with such wanton coquettishness beside the beds that he momentarily forgot why he’d come. A heady scent, redolent with fragrances designed to relax and work the woes away, greeted him as he walked carefully down the center of the room. Some curtains were closed; behind any one of them danger could lurk. As he passed each of the beautiful women, they huffed prettily and snapped their multicolored fans shut. Garth walked to the end of the room and looked around, confused. The girl nearest him motioned for him to come closer. As he did, she handed him a short silk robe and gestured that he should change, tittering behind a manicured hand with nails so red they almost dripped when he looked around for a dressing room.

  In a SpecSer barracks, you didn’t act modest unless you were looking to get your ass beat. He couldn’t care less about being naked in a roomful of strangers, even if they were pretty young women. What did bother him was the laughably tiny robe. If he had to run for his life, he didn’t want to do it with his ass and balls flapping in the wind. He’d done that once, and it wasn’t fun.

  The girl’s luscious red lips framed a moue of disappointment at his hesitancy. She snapped her fan at Garth and gestured first at his proteus, at him, then at a discreet clock near the head of the massage bed.

  Glowering furiously, Garth followed orders. Pretending that the room was a barracks he changed into the robe provided, then crossed his arms. A small quirk of a smile told Garth that he’d only succeeded in advancing the young woman’s knowledge of male anatomy, so he dropped his arms to his side, defeated. Tittering once more, the woman led him to the bed and gently forced him onto it, face down. As he made himself more comfortable, she deftly whipped one side of the robe, causing it to fall open.

  Forcing himself to accept the situation for what it was was proving to be difficult, but Garth worked hard to allow the girl, who worked with the brisk speed of a skilled tradesperson, to maneuver him into whatever position she desired. When she was done, his arms were sticking directly out from his body. He was about as exposed as a guy could be. Death could come at any moment, from any direction, and he was basically naked on a table, waiting to be crucified.

  A quick snap and the curtain surrounded the room, leaving his proteus arm on the other side.

  The girl tittered again just like a little bird and moved Garth’s robe down past his shoulders until it bunched up around his buttocks. She applied massage lotions and set to work.

  Even with his natural reticence, the woman’s ministrations were more than pleasurable. The last time he’d been touched by a woman with anything remotely resembling gentle passion had been some time in his early teens. What had happened to end that relationship was a mystery, leaving him with nothing but the heart-aching passion of young love. ‘Relationships’ as a SpecSer operative were borne out of battle lust and sheer, overpowering hormones, sharing only a passing commonality with long-term emotions. They all inevitably ended poorly, because either one or both of the parties involved got promoted, got dead or, rarely, got possessive. He grunted involuntarily when his masseuse’s skilled fingers located and began decimating knots of tension and suppressed rage he hadn’t been aware of, this time with the precision of laser-guided missiles.

  Garth stiffened momentarily when he felt a hand reach out to delicately rotate his forearm until his proteus was in a better position. The masseuse exerted extra pressure when he tried to turn his head, putting some Engl
ish into it as he made to refuse. When the now-familiar sound of access chimes bing-bonged through the enclosed area, Garth realized that no one was trying to steal his proteus: Lady Ha was on the case, trying to debug his toy, while he got rubbed and beaten.

  Awkward barely described the moment.

  xxx

  Ultimately, the procedure took well over two hours. Several times Garth hovered on the edge of asleep, drawn back by Lady Ha and her furious words. Judging from her tone, the MilInt designers were better at their jobs better than she’d anticipated. Towards the end, Garth had almost asked the hacker what the problem was when the telltale sounds of his proteus being reassembled filled his ears. He lay there, semi-nude and painfully aroused, listening to the ‘contract agent’ and the Kabuki girl share a whispered conversation. Even with his augmented hearing, what they said was too diffuse to understand. There was a sensation of motion beyond the curtains and Lady Ha was gone.

  The Kabuki girl leaned in to whisper in Garth’s ear, the silken edges of her own robe causing a gentle friction on his skin. She got so close that Garth could feel the fullness of her lips, the heat from her breath. He suppressed a groan. “The Lady Ha wishes me to tell you that she is very sorry, she could not deactivate the explosive charges. She has asked me to tell you that the explosives are still live, but will require activation from another person in very close range. So close that the person activating them will put their own life in danger. She has told me that she has placed the money back into your chip. Everything else that you needed has been accomplished. Your proteus is now free of surveillance. Any packets sent to whoever is watching you will not betray your true actions. Lady Ha has asked me to remind you that anything you do within eyesight of normal observation will be unchanged.” The Kabuki girl paused, then added impishly, “She also finds you very attractive, if a little short.”

  And then she, too, was gone.

  Garth had to wait out the erection he’d been sporting since the masseuse had started in. He was certain he could approach one of the other women in the room for a happy ending, but couldn’t afford to waste the time. More than likely, there were other time bombs beyond a change in address, all needing his immediate attention or they would go off at the least opportune moment. In the grand scheme, not being allowed to stay at the Hotel Hospitalis was a minor burp, but since his infopacket hadn’t covered that ‘minor’ detail, it was easy to imagine other grotesque omissions were hovering on the horizon, just waiting to spoil his day. OverSecretary Terrance was a sonofabitch, all right. It was easy to see how he’d become the second-most powerful man in the system.

  When he could dress without having to fight the insistence of the little head, Garth rose and began donning his clothes. He looked around for a place to put the indecently tiny robe, then settled for dropping it on the bed.

  On his way out, an errant scent, hardly more than a nanosecond of a whisper, froze him in his tracks. “Where have I smelled jasmine and orange blossoms lately?”

  He couldn’t remember because of the very pressing business collaborating to make his life miserable, but he was certain he’d smelled those two particular scents, and recently. Since landing on Hospitalis, he’d been close enough to smell Lady Ha, meaning he knew Lady Ha.

  Garth was certain he’d remember when he had time to sit and think quietly.

  Garth stepped out of the House of Relaxation and Perpetual Joy refreshed by his massage and eager to get his ass back to the Hotel and sort his residency problems A.S.A.P. out. Beyond that, he needed to get his Stretch and the dead men’s credit chips out of hiding before Si Mijomi worked up the courage to override his passkey. There was no point in entertaining any illusions about how things would fall out after that; the OverSecretary would be powerless to prevent his arrest for the murders of four citizens -gangsters or not- because that’d gone down before the Terrance’s promise of Divine Intervention.

  Garth was about to retrace the path he’d taken when his muscles suddenly locked solid. His body was tingling frantically with that old feeling of imminent, life-threatening danger.

  In less time than it takes for a thought to occur, a high-pitched buzz like a hornet on PCP zipped by his nose, kicking up a hand-sized eruption of concrete and gritty dust: someone was shooting at him and this time around, they weren’t fucking around with Stretch guns! Garth dropped to the ground, immediately taking cover behind a delivery van five feet from the Relaxation House’s front door. A few more shots hummed through the air, showering him in broken glass from the van’s windows, then nothing.

  Taking a nervous ten count, wondering all the while why they weren’t trying to shoot him through the van, Garth decided to risk a peek through the broken window. Popping his head up nearly resulted in having his hair forcibly parted from the forehead up, so he ducked back down by the tire-well and decided he was a stooge.

  He was a goddamn idiot, and had no one to blame but himself. Two hours was more than enough time for Offworld-hating goons to set up an attack with enough juice to make it difficult for him to come out the other side unharmed. Sniper rifles, or worse, sniper cannons, were notoriously difficult to contend with; if his body hadn’t locked up when it had, the Relaxation House’s outer wall’d be sporting a particularly gross mural.

  Any minute now, the sniper’s ground team would show up and open fire, witnesses or not; anyone willing to open up with a sniper cannon wasn’t worried about anything but getting him dead.

  Garth needed out of the area, or at least the line of fire, before that happened or before the people in the shops nearest him started paying attention. The drama unfolding out in front of their stores hadn’t attracted any attention yet, but luck usually only held for a few seconds.

  Garth lowered himself flat and considered his options. There was an alley fifteen feet off to right, but that was an exposed path. Someone belly crawling their way to freedom would only be an excuse for a lazy shot. Left took him back towards Si Shurimi’s, but that wasn’t fair; the masseuse house didn’t deserve that kind of trouble. They’d already taken a great risk in letting Lady Ha work her magic inside. Gun-toting maniacs they could do without! Running down the open roads was a choice left only to suicidal maniacs and people wearing magic armor.

  “And I’ve done and gone left my +1 Underpants of Bulletproofing at home.” Garth muttered, disgusted with himself.

  That left the alley. Most certainly receiving intelligence from spEyes to bolster his or her visual scope, the sniper could afford to wait until an assault team flushed him out. No matter what he did, Garth was resigned to getting shot. The only factors under his direct control were where -and how many times- that happened.

  “Goddamnit all to Hell and gone.” Garth griped angrily. “And fuck me sideways while you’re at it.”

  Garth was extremely interested to learn why Trinity hadn’t already bombed these crazy-ass Latelians into last week. They certainly deserved it, and as far as he’d seen, maybe a trillionth of a percent of the population was ‘normal’. Everyone else seemed to be nutcases hell-bent on killing him, which ought to be against the law.

  “When I am in charge of the Universe,” Garth said to himself as he maneuvered into a classic sprinter’s pose, “I’m gonna make some fucking changes.”

  He ran.

  The dangerous buzz and sizzle of large caliber bullets filled the air as the sniper started firing, stippling the sidewalk and building fronts with holes the size of old silver dollars. As Garth ran -zigzagging his approach to the alley front- he felt a few red-hot kisses shiver across his calf muscles. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Garth poured on more speed and burst into the alley. He was not in the mood for this.

  Four thug-faces turned from confusion into delight as they realized their target was coming right at them.

  “Shit.” There was no time to waste on second thoughts or worrying about what was going to happen next. Turning his full-tilt run into a leap, Garth soared over the heads of the suddenly astonished quart
et of would-be murderers. Pivoting on one leg as he landed, Garth rammed his foot backwards into the belly of the nearest assailant. As thug number one doubled over, clutching his stomach in agony, Garth spun, delivering a crippling roundhouse kick at thug number two’s head. Thugs one, three and four danced quickly out of the way as the second man fell to the ground, neck broken. They exchanged troubled looks before drawing their guns.

  Garth dove to the left, aiming for thug number one again. Startled by the insane maneuver, his assailant had no time to aim -let alone fire- his gun. The other two did had no troubles staying focused. This time, instead of simple flesh wounds he could laugh about, two bullets drilled into him: one, an angry hornet in the meaty portion of his leg, the other a pissed off spider bite in his shoulder. Overjoyed with their small success, the retards kept firing, stopping only when Thug One shrieked like a little girl.

  Garth slapped the Latelian’s hands out of the way, slid up behind the giant, and kicked him in the backs of the knees; when the goon dropped, evening out the height difference, Garth deftly snatched the silenced Stretch gun out of his right hand and pointed it at the man’s temple. “Now,” he said, breathing heavily and ever-mindful of the blood leaking out of his leg and arm, “what the fuck is all this about?”

  Thug One tried to struggle for freedom so Garth fired a shot just above the man’s head, creasing the flesh there. He stopped trying to get away and started whimpering. The remaining two gangsters followed suit, breathing heavily and betraying confusion with every nervous glance.