A foolish hope, she knew. The universe wasn’t kind that way.
But as they walked in the door, not going in gangbusters, but just walking in like potential customers, her leaning on Karn and giggling like a woman who was doing something sexy and daring with her man, she couldn’t help hoping.
“Spiffy,” she said louder than she normally would. “It’s like all the color that isn’t outside is in here.” The place made the most garish parts of Rahal’s palace look subdued, all pink and orange with gilded bits in various competing patterns, florals and what she thought was called paisley, with a few stripes for good measure. Someone had obviously put a lot of time and money into the loud décor and it looked cheerful rather than awful.
You wouldn’t put that much into a business that was violating one of the few local laws. You’d be underground, ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Wouldn’t you?
The person behind the big pink-and-orange reception desk—Xia mentally said person because Xaquans’ sexes weren’t as simple as male and female and their social conventions were even more complicated than their physical bodies—welcomed them as if they were entering a high-end restaurant and led them to a gaudy but extremely comfortable couch to look over a “menu” of services on a com-pad. They were offered drinks by a human female in a slinky orange dress that, like the Xaquan’s brilliant turquoise clingsuit, matched the décor in a deliberately clashing way.
Xia’s drink was pink, Karn’s a more decorous tan, like whiskey.
Xia sniffed at the drinks when the Xaquan wasn’t looking. They smelled fine, other than being watered down, but that might only prove they were dealing with smart criminals. Her nose was far better than a human’s, but some species were even more scent aware than she was, so the staff would probably know to use an odorless drug if that was their game. Karn nodded subtly, as if he understood exactly what the sniff and small nod meant. He toyed with his glass without actually sipping.
They glanced through the “menu”. Men, women and a few she’d have to classify as “other” of several species, each listing specialties ranging from “listening well” to kinks Xia had never heard of.
They all appeared to be adults. No way of knowing if they were happy to be there, just by looking at them, but at least the place wasn’t openly catering to pedophiles.
The woman who served the drinks showed no signs of stress or abuse. In fact, she was one of the healthier-looking people Xia had seen on Cibari, other than Rahal’s staff.
And then Karn proved that he could think on his feet, or in this case, on a cushy, tacky couch that cost more credits than the Malcolm earned in a month. “Would you consider a permanent trade—my cat-girl for the human called Debaji? She’s well trained and a lot of fun, just a little wily, if you know what I mean. No matter how many times I change my bank passwords, she cracks them.”
Xia pulled a pout out of nowhere and clutched at Karn’s arm like she thought he meant it. Playing up the character she was obviously supposed to be, the stereotypical cat-girl sex toy (not that she’d ever known a felinoid who’d be someone’s sex toy unless she or he marling well enjoyed that game), she set her watered drink down and sought his crotch with her other hand. “I’ll behave better, I promise. At least I won’t use your credit chit without telling or drink all the best wine anymore. Well, not much anyway, only when it’s really important. Come on, you know a human isn’t going to be as fun as I am.”
“We can’t do something like that unless both girls want to, and it doesn’t look like your girl does. Though, if she’s up for it, we could arrange to cater a fantasy like that for a few hours.” The Xaquan’s voice was soothing and it was saying all the right things, but its eyes were evaluating Xia for any sign of weakness.
“I’m all for games, Mister Master Man. Might be fun to be a pretend whore for an afternoon.” Xia put her ears back and tried to look the appropriate combination of terrified, placating and playful. “But how do I know you won’t just leave me here?”
“Just teasing, kitten. I paid a lot for you and you’ve grown on me. I just wish you’d leave my bank account alone, even if you’re draining it to buy presents for me.”
Karn turned his attention to the Xaquan. “But isn’t it odd it’s come to this, that you’d have to turn down a gorgeous, well-trained cat-girl just because she’d rather not work for you? It used to be you could buy anything in this town for the right price. Virgins. Kids. Girls who cried and tried to escape, and damned if they didn’t mean it. It’s gotten dull around here. I swear this place is getting as uptight as the Vega system.” He winked. “Maybe not this fine establishment, which seems to be going all out to stay within the marling laws and still cater to a person’s whims, but it’s sure not the town it used to be. Can’t even walk my cat-girl on a leash anymore without getting the side eye.”
“And I love my leash!” Xia nodded emphatically. “It’s shiny and pretty and I’m into bondage so I’m smiling when I’m leashed. People should just mind their own business.”
“Exactly. It’s gotten so an honest entrepreneur can’t earn a living in this town without risking running afoul of the warlord. Come on, is a guy who killed small armies single-handedly to get his job in any position to judge anyone else?” The proprietor drew closer and whispered, “But since we seem to be of a like mind…if you’re looking for something a little more adventurous, we do have some personnel who aren’t listed. Untrained ones, mostly, some younger than the people in the official roster, but they offer a different sort of experience.”
Xia’s tail puffed, though it was curled behind her so it wasn’t obvious. She curled her hands demurely in her lap to hide the way her claws were working in and out.
“Not yet¸” Karn said over her brand-new, still-tickly neurorelay. “We both know what that means, but give it time so the Xaquan can really incriminate itself before you pounce.”
The Xaquan dropped its voice even lower. “It’s pathetic when people get so far in debt that selling their family members seems like a good plan, but if I take advantage of it, it’s just business, right? Not my fault some people have stupid parents. At least I’ll make sure the poor things eat and see a medico now and then, which is better than what would happen if they wound up in the mines.”
Karn put his arm around Xia. It looked affectionate—stars, it felt affectionate, soothing—but it kept her from jumping up right that second and attacking. Forced her to think, to listen to what he was saying through the neurorelay, “Patience. They might be keeping to the letter of the law, taking people who are young, but legally old enough to make the choice. I doubt it, but be sure before we start knocking heads together. Before you ask, I’m holoing this.” His voice in Xia’s head felt as tight and constrained as her own heart did, but he was smiling, nodding at all the right places.
“Practically a public service on a planet like this one. This might not be someone’s top choice of work, but it beats going hungry. It’s safer than mining, at least at a quality establishment like yours.”
“Of course! Haven’t lost anyone in a year or more!” the proprietor said enthusiastically. “And if the girl or boy’s a bit young, or doesn’t understand why it’s important to cooperate and keep the loan shark off their parents’ backs, certain clients enjoy that kind of thing.”
Xia did her best to mask her disgust, but the Xaquan must have caught it. Laying a graceful six-fingered hand over Xia’s, s/he soothed, “Don’t look so gloomy, dear. All our girls and boys are investments, so we take good care of them, like your owner obviously does of you. We wouldn’t let anyone harm them.”
A buzzing started in Xia’s ears. Karn was trying to tell her something over the neurorelay, but she wasn’t listening. Couldn’t listen. All she could hear was the buzzing, the call of the proprietor’s blood as it cried out to meet her claws. Red hazed her vision.
She sat up a little straigh
ter, uncrossed her legs from the cute, curled-up position she’d adopted. She cocked her head to one side and smiled broadly, displaying her fangs. “Of course you wouldn’t,” she trilled, and moved her hand out from under the proprietor’s. “Except by letting people have sex with them against their will. That’s rape where I come from, which thank the stars isn’t this messed-up planet.”
She moved.
She couldn’t have explained what she did. Her well-trained body took over, working faster than her conscious mind could follow. A wristlock was involved, and a flip, and a few swift jabs at strategic nerve clusters that left the Xaquan—neither male nor female, but shafti, genetically a third gender, limp under her. It was over in seconds, with her claws pricking at a point in the Xaquan’s midback that was equivalent to the jugular on a felinoid or a human. If you’d asked her a few minutes ago if she’d remembered where that point was on a Xaquan, she’d have said no. But her training on Lysander had been comprehensive, if traumatic. It came back when she needed it.
Unfortunately, so did other memories of Lysander that she’d have been happier forgetting.
Ignore those for now. No time to get lost in ancient history.
Karn had time to toss her Secure-Kuffs for hands, feet and, by pure dumb luck, one left over for a Xaquan shafti’s prehensile tail.
Then he was pulling a laserpistol—a simple weapon for an arms dealer, but no less lethal because it wasn’t fancy—on the two security guards summoned, probably, by the human waitress.
The Huthar guard aimed his own smaller pistols at Xia. The other, a Xaquan who appeared male, shifted his aim back to Karn.
“I wouldn’t,” Xia said cheerily. “Neither of you. Your boss will be dead before the shot goes off. And then you will be too.”
“You’re a cat-girl,” the Huthar said, shaking his froglike head, but he didn’t fire. “Just a little bit of a cat-girl. How the marling hell did you…”
She couldn’t help herself. She giggled. “Training, froggy baby, training.” She flicked her claws. The Xaquan moaned, although thanks to hitting the right pressure points the shafti was barely conscious.
The Huthar lowered his weapon and raised both his hands and an alarmingly long tongue that looked like it could probably control a small laserpistol, if not a bigger gun.
The other one attempted to get a shot off.
Despite what she’d claimed, Xia didn’t have a chance to kill the proprietor before the Xaquan guard shot.
That wasn’t because she was slow.
It was because Karn was amazingly fast. Augmentations or naturally excellent reflexes, she didn’t know, but he spotted the subtle signs as soon as she did, maybe sooner, and double-tapped the Xaquan, once in each heart.
As the Xaquan crumbled, Xia felt a wave of dank cold break over her. Not the dark place. I won’t go to the dark place now.
She focused on details. On Karn, on his eyes and on the way that he seemed both satisfied with his successful shooting and sad that he’d had to do it.
Then both the Huthar and the waitress, who was gibbering a bit, hit their knees. That distracted her from the cold and brought her back to herself.
Curiosity always did it. Huthars’ knees didn’t work well for kneeling, so the Huthar squatted, his knees pointing backwards, and then sprawled on his face. It would have been hilarious under other circumstances.
Everything slowed down from happening at faster than light speed, but still seemed as clear and sharp edged as the diamond Rahal had given her to use as a worry stone. Her mind and body both worked double-time, pulling up skills she’d rarely used since childhood, processing subtle clues…
“Karn, shoot the plant on the desk,” she said. “It’s a transmitter.”
Karn complied.
She looked away from the gun, but, even so, the cold flirted with her.
Not now, she told whatever was struggling to come out of her repressed memories. I have shit to do.
She finished Secure-Kuffing the limp Xaquan, turned her attention to the human and Huthar. She didn’t consciously remember using Secure-Kuffs before, though they’d been used on her once when she resisted arrest for shoplifting a bit spectacularly (why wouldn’t people who weren’t felinoids believe her when she explained she wasn’t stealing the bracelet, just borrowing it, and would bring it back in an hour or so?) and once when she’d played with a space-station rent-a-cop. But she didn’t have to think about how they worked. Her hands just knew.
Once she did that, though, her body went almost as limp as the captive Xaquan’s, melting back onto the sofa and fighting the temptation to curl up there for a much-needed nap. There was something else she needed to do. Something that didn’t have anything to do with fighting. But she didn’t remember…
“It’s all right,” Karn’s voice said in her mind. “I’ve sent for Rahal’s guys to arrest the owner and its people, and told them to send a transport for anyone who’s been a prisoner here. Next step is finding the whores who don’t want to be whores and explaining they’re safe now.”
That was right. The talking part. She could do that, even if she felt like sleeping for a decade or so. “And then we tell the others they can start running the place themselves, as long as they play by Rahal’s rules,” she said out loud, springing to her feet. That part was going to be great. She had a feeling the Xaquan was probably a lousy boss, even for people who liked their work.
Chapter Sixteen
Dealing with the captives—none, thank goodness, little children, but many underage and all unhappy to be where they were—was gratifying but incredibly difficult. The Xaquan hadn’t been lying that, in many cases, they’d been sold to the brothel by parents addicted to gambling or drugs and weren’t sure that going home was a safe option. Xia extravagantly assured them, all but purring as she did, that the warlord would help them until they could find proper jobs or would send them off-planet to get an education.
Cal was pretty sure Rahal hadn’t promised anything of the sort, mostly because he hadn’t thought that far.
On the other hand, Rahal seemed the type who’d go along with it. He obviously thought grand gestures were fun and what was the point of owning a continent full of gemstone mines if you couldn’t use your wealth for grand gestures?
On a cheerier note, it turned out the voluntary whores uniformly thought their boss was a coldhearted bitch and were delighted to hear s/he had gone down. Happy whores proved to be excellent company. Both Cal and Xia turned down the inevitable offers of free sexytimes, but Xia accepted a pedicure and hairstyling from someone who specialized in pampering clients, and Cal convinced himself that there was no way Karn the Viking wouldn’t enjoy a six-handed massage from two lovely females and one attractive male.
At some point, someone broke into the bar reserved for high-roller clients. Excellent wine from several planets got passed around and enjoyed straight from the bottle. A few chillpills were washed down by the fine booze and Cal rationalized that since they weren’t illegal on this planet, there was no reason not to enjoy that too. When someone turned up the music, Xia was the first to start dancing.
She did that with the compact grace with which she’d taken down the Xaquan brothel owner, the abandon with which she made love.
She was still dancing when she climbed into the flyer.
But once she sat down, her ears drooped and she slumped slightly. “I love fighting. And I love knowing I’ve done something that will help those poor kids. But I’ve decided I don’t like seeing people get shot.”
“Says the woman who wants a lasercannon.” Cal wasn’t sure this was a subject for teasing since he suspected her birth parents had been murdered, but he figured Karn would think it was.
“Mostly for blowing up asteroids. If you end up having to shoot someone with a lasercannon, you can do it from a long way off and not see the mess.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure
why it bothers me. I’ve been around guns. I know how to shoot. Buck taught me and Rita. I’m even good at it. But I’ve never shot anything except targets. When I’ve needed to get violent, I have claws.”
Cal turned and forced himself to grin at Xia, though he didn’t especially feel like smiling. “Maybe you just like the up-close-and-personal approach. You’re a predator. Guns must seem like cheating.”
She nodded. “It does take the fun out of things. That’s why Drax doesn’t like guns much either, and he’s not even a predator. But I don’t think it’s just that. It didn’t used to bother me much, but ever since I started remembering my childhood, guns make me feel twitchy in a bad way. Today, when you had to shoot that guy—and I know you had to—I felt cold and clammy. I don’t like feeling that way.”
“I bet. Don’t felinoids melt in cold rain or something? That’s the urban legend, anyway.” The day was warm and dry, so any chill she felt was purely internal. He decided not to mention that. He was getting somewhere.
Still, he was relieved that flying gave him an excuse not to look into her eyes for long. He’d never felt quite this rotten when he was digging for information. But his target had rarely been someone he liked as much as he liked the felinoid.
Xia shifted in her seat as if she wanted nothing more than to stand up and pace, but realized there wasn’t room. “Don’t humor me, Karn. I know it’s crazy. It’s a beautiful day, except for the red pollution clouds and I’m getting used to those. But when you shot that guy I felt like I was in a dark, cold place…and for the first time, I almost knew what the dark, cold place was.”
She shook herself violently, as if shaking off a thought she couldn’t bear to face. “I know that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but I think I don’t want to know more. If I’ve suppressed it that thoroughly, it should probably stay hidden” Her voice sounded raw. He forced himself to meet her gaze, but she grinned and cocked her head to one side in one of those ridiculously cute movements felinoids did so well. It was obviously deliberate. “Hey, what was the name of that bubbly they were passing around at the brothel? It was delicious, and I didn’t even notice what planet it’s from.”
Bad Kitty Page 12
