“Stay calm.” Meia held her palm up in the woman’s direction.
Long ears twitching, the woman’s brown eyes darted between her and Iapetus. They settled on his gray frame and her nostrils flared.
“Thank you,” she said. “The Abyssian, he’s after Baron Keltan. We have to help him.”
Meia’s brow furled. Everyone knew that name. Baron Keltan’s family was massacred at the start of the war. She was a cadet at the time, but she remembered it well. Those poor children—
“You said you were Star Corps just now, when you freed me from the somarill,” the woman said to Iapetus, then spread the statement over Meia with her eyes. “You have to help me.”
She glanced at her companion.
“I explained who we are, and that we became marooned here after the attack on the colony.” He switched to private transmission. “I did not go into detail.”
She nodded and lowered her hand. “She’s legit?”
“I’m Captain Daldon-Fukui, Shiragawa Self-Defense Forces,” the woman said.
“Lieutenant Androdameia Roshani Ironstar.” She removed her helmet and saluted, unsure whether or not to be relieved or concerned that this woman wasn’t a pirate. It was good that she was SDF and not Star Corps, at least. The private security forces of the baronies didn’t answer to the Confederate military, but it also meant that hijacking the ship would be stealing from a baron.
“What’s Baron Keltan doing on a Shiragawa ship?” she asked.
Captain Fukui blinked. “I can’t tell you. What’s a Star Corps DS-109 and a Lieutenant doing on a quarantined moon?”
“Touché,” she responded.
“My passengers are in danger,” Captain Fukui got out of her chair. Her tail twitched once, then retracted, thickening into a wide projection behind her. She waved her hand over one of the armrests and a pistol dropped out of a hidden compartment onto the seat. “Are you coming, Lieutenant?”
Meia licked her lips and glanced at Iapetus.
“We cannot afford to cross both Baron Mitsugawa and Baron Keltan. Being in their good graces presents us with better options.”
She nodded. If she did anything other than help this captain, she risked having two of the most powerful barons in the Confederation coming after her. She had no chance against them, and no one would listen to her when she accused Captain Solus of mass-murder. Still, she had no idea why the barons were here, or why they were going up against the Abyssians. Whatever it was, she wanted no part of it. Going up against one of Daedalus’ enforcers was another world of trouble.
She looked at Captain Fukui and saw both determination and desperation in her eyes as she made sure her weapon was loaded and charged. The people of the Shiragawa Zaibatsu were renowned for their loyalty, and she knew this captain would fight Praetor Modulus with or without her. She also knew she wasn’t the sort of person who could watch that and walk away.
She sighed.
“I’ve tangled with this Praetor before. He’s a nasty piece of work, and you’ll need my help.”
“I need to find my passengers before he does,” Captain Fukui said.
Meia remembered the Praetor attacking the men in the street earlier. “I think it’s too late for at least two of them, but I’m pretty sure one’s still alive. With luck, it’s the baron. I can take you to where he was captured.”
“Let’s go,” Captain Fukui said.
She stiffened to attention and saluted. “Aye, Captain.”
Chapter Four
Ikuzlu City, Terran Ghetto
Kosfanter
41:2:27 (J2400:3153)
I’m not going back, never again, Cygni thought as she lay wrapped in her bath robe on the sofa. The memory of AgroWorlds Tower played behind her unfocused eyes while she stared at the picture window reflecting the lights of the Terran Ghetto. Shkur wasn’t there when she returned to her apartment, and she was glad, though she could have used a long cuddle to go with the tears in the shower. She was still in shock that Giselle betrayed her to Baroness Sophiathena Cronus—who was somehow in league with the Orgnan Khargs and was threatening to enslave her to them if she didn’t work for her—and this was on top of finding out Baron Revenant was involved with the VoQuana—and maybe Giselle hadn’t betrayed her, not exactly—and—and—and it was just all too much. Before the limo ride she believed that killing Sinuthros would have made her world at least a bit better, but now she knew that she destroyed only one monster out of the hundred around her.
The downstairs buzzer rang. She sent a signal to open the door out of reflex, then cursed herself. She didn’t want to see Shkur right now. She knew the trouble he was in, but she just couldn’t handle being his support tonight. The last time she saw him, he mentioned challenging the Nyangari Ambassador over her. They were to go together to the contest, but she hoped it would be at least another day or two before it was time. She couldn’t bear to watch him in danger right now. She’d lost almost everything trying to bring Baron Revenant down already; losing him would kill her.
Her apartment doorbell rang. Had he forgotten the apartment code, too? Frowning, she opened it with her cerebral implant and twisted around to see Sanul enter holding a metal box under one arm with his four-fingered hand. He looked at her with his geode-like eyes and cocked his hircine head to the side.
“Thank goodness you’re all right. When you disappeared I feared the worst. Giselle seemed to know where you were, but she wasn’t talking until today.” He moved to her side, his crystal hooves and horns glittering in the light. “Are you okay?”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. He sat down beside her, an awkward affair given his three-jointed legs and her human furniture, then shoved the box into her lap.
“I brought you something in case you were alive.”
“What?”
“Oh, I mean, I hoped you were alive but considering—um, never mind. Just open it.” He shot her a big, toothy grin and rubbed his hands on his jacket.
Cygni blinked and opened the box. Inside was a small metal pipe and rolls of dried, green mash. She stared at it, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“It’s Kalkoa hash from Achinus. The ‘web says it’s made from some kind of carnivorous plant, and it works on Solans. It’s safe. I checked.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Her thoughts were still whirling through her mind, making it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. “Why would you think I was dead? No, never mind. What is this about?”
“It has an effect similar to the Phytrophor I tried to give you and Giselle at the bathhouse, but this won’t kill you. I thought you could use it, you know, considering…”
She realized what he was talking about and almost returned the box out of reflex, but instead of pushing it at him her hand gripped it tighter. A quick search of the Cyberweb for “Kalkoa” revealed it to be a mildly psychotropic narcotic that was, as he said, safe for humans in limited doses. It produced feelings of euphoria, and some people reported having visions while under its effects. The thought of it made her quiver inside and confirmed that some part of her, maybe a large part, thought that doing this sounded like what she needed right now.
“Sanul, you are a good friend.” She leaned over and kissed him on the flat of his skull between his eyes, then wrapped him up in a tight hug.
“I am?” He returned the hug after some hesitation. She found it difficult to let him go. His warmth and the touch of his fur on her face soothed her like a giant teddy-bear, but she made herself release him and took the small pipe out of the box. She did narcotics in college and to fit in with the slaves during her investigation on Minlea IV. It wasn’t all that different from what she used before. She knew what to do, and stuffed one of the green-mash rolls from the box into the bowl-end of the pipe with trembling fingers.
“There have been a lot of changes at Cosmos Corp in the last few days.” Sanul produced a small laser used for cutting thin pieces of metal and held it over the bowl to light the
mash. “Inhale slow and deep.”
“Thank you.” She took a long draw from the pipe and felt a numbness spread through her head and chest. It was followed by gentle waves of pleasure that rolled through her body one after another from her head to the tips of her toes, each stronger than the one before it. It was the best thing she felt in years, and she couldn’t help but shudder as they crashed through her. Too soon she felt the sensations fade away leaving a vaguely empty feeling in their wake.
“What?” she asked when she noticed Sanul watching her.
“I want to make sure you are okay,” he said.
She took another drag of the thick, white smoke. It tasted like cabbage, with the curious aftertaste of something sharp and metallic.
“Baroness Helena Revenant is running both Cosmos Corp and the Extra-Terrestrial Mining Corporation,” Sanul said. “It’s very unusual, but a memo went out in both companies explaining that as Baron Olivaar’s next of kin, the ETMC is hers.”
“Wait, what?” Cygni watched the heavy, fog-like curls drift up from her open mouth when she spoke. “Baroness Helena Revenant? I thought she was Baron Olivaar’s wife. What’s she doing running Cosmos and the ETMC? Where is Baron Olivaar?”
Sanul blinked and glanced around the room, licking his lips with a narrow, black tongue.
“Baron Olivaar and Baron-Scion Vargas were killed in an air-car crash two days ago. It looks like an accident, but…” He shrugged. “In any case, the accident left Baroness Revenant in charge of the ETMC. Baron Zalor Revenant is off-world, and apparently he named her his regent for Cosmos, so she gets to run both baronies.”
“What?” It was impossible, two barons dying in a car crash? Her mind did some quick addition. “Where were Olivaar and Vargas coming from?”
“The news wouldn’t say, so I hacked into the city’s traffic-control computer and found the information was erased.”
“Erased?”
“Yes, and skillfully replaced by some new files, really skillfully, but I found the digital fingerprints anyway. Elthroa has an agent working in the transportation department. I looked up niur report in our system. It had a copy of the original traffic control records. The car crashed shortly after departing Keltan Tower.”
She stiffened. Was it Baroness Sophiathena’s doing? It didn’t seem likely. The baroness struck her as more careful than that, though she knew the woman was ruthless enough. Anyone who would use the threat of slavery to get what they wanted wasn’t necessarily above murder. The crash would bring an Abyssian to investigate. As long as their order was around there was no way to get away with killing a baron. The baroness would know that—but then again, Cygni reminded herself, someone had already gotten away with killing a baron, Zalor Revenant. Although Daedalus dispatched Praetor Graves, it remained to be seen what would happen when he got back—if he got back—from the frontier planet of Elmorus. It was possible that Baron Revenant was going to get away with it. Sophiathena Cronus was his daughter. If her father could do it, maybe she could too.
“No one has seen Baron Keltan or his fiancée since the incident. The media has been trying to get a hold of him for comments on his uncle’s death, but his android servant refuses to speak with them.” Sanul gave her a long stare.
“Baron Keltan? You don’t think it was his doing, do you?” She frowned, feeling sticky like she did after a day at the beach when the kalkoa-induced sensations receded.
“He’s so timid no one would suspect him,” Sanul answered. “I thought I might try to fleshride him to find out. I hacked into the Keltan Tower system, but I couldn’t find him on the network. I couldn’t find Heiress Olivaar either.”
“You can hack into a system that secure?” Her eyes widened. His skill must be leagues beyond hers.
Sanul’s large nostrils flared, and he found something to look at out the window.
“So he’s not there? Not at the tower?” She realized the compliment must’ve embarrassed him.
“No, but there’s more. I also tried fleshriding Doctor Rega. I thought you might want to know what he’s been up to. You did say I could be useful to you—my fleshriding, I mean.”
She nodded.
“You should see the recording I made.” He shifted his weight, a look of excitement returning to his face.
She stared at him and took another hit off the Kalkoa. The waves of pleasure returned, flowing through her body twice as fast as before. In this state it was easy to forget how overwrought she was and how horrible the coming days would be. She owed him for this.
“Okay, let’s link up.” She accepted his implant’s request—
And found herself staring down at the lights of the city through the curve of a limo’s poly-glass window. The ride seemed strange, like the vehicle was bobbing up and down more than it should. She wasn’t sure if that was the result of having another being’s senses channeled into her brain or the kalkoa. She had never fleshridden before, not even in recorded form, but it wasn’t that different from experiencing the total-immersion environment of a somarill on the Cyberweb. She could smell the leather of the seats and hear the buzz of the city below, but it was all much sharper than what she was used to.
The limo descended towards the Palace of the Just in the center of Ikuzlu Bay. Doctor Rega was excited, she could feel his tension in her chest, and that was different from the somarills too. It was a strange sensation. She was aware that she should be feeling something else on an intellectual level, but his emotions overrode her own.
Can we fast-forward? We’ve done this before, she transmitted to Sanul.
“Hang on, I’ll skip to the good part.”
She was back on her couch for a moment—and then she was walking down the ornate wooden corridors of the palace. They had an aged smell, musty and thick, like a museum. The carpet was deep enough to push back against her feet as they pressed into it—his feet, she reminded herself. It was hard to keep her sense of identity separated from his as the feed continued. The concept of being a man for a time was fascinating, but she was unable to explore it as she had no control over what Rega did. There was a sound in the background of her mind, a droning that she had to concentrate on to hear. The noise, she realized, was similar to Rega’s voice, but had a different tone. So close now, so many years, and finally—she was hearing his thoughts. This was way out of the realm of Cyberweb somarills. His stream of consciousness was hers to experience. It startled her with its stark violation of his privacy, but the shock was a distant thing, and a moment later all she cared about was reaching the laboratory beneath the palace.
They went down a spiral staircase with white marble steps, moving with purpose through the corridors. Much like those above, these were paneled in rich, red wood with a thick, burgundy carpet covering the floor beneath hanging crystal chandeliers. He passed nine doors and arrived at a cul-de-sac where a holographic image glowed in a golden frame. It was the likeness of a Cleebian with dark-blue skin and one of its three huge, yellow eyes shut.
Is it winking? she wondered. It was an amusing idea until Doctor Rega linked to a computer behind the image and transmitted a long string of numbers and letters. She groaned in her head; the image actually was winking.
Do we have that code recorded? She sent to Sanul.
“In my implath, yeah,” his voice slurred back.
He must have taken some phytrophor, she thought. Her own state wasn’t much better. The floating feeling from the limo hadn’t stopped, and she felt a blissful tingle on the edge of her consciousness. It warred with the recorded sensations coming from Doctor Rega’s body, giving her an in-and-out feeling of detachment from both his senses and her own.
The Cleebian hologram blinked once before the whole wall retreated into the floor. A stone corridor descended at a gentle angle past the doorsill like a mine-shaft. Behind him she heard the door slide shut. The walls glowed a muted amber as Doctor Rega walked down the two-meter-wide passage with a quickening pace. The air smelled of minerals and brine, becoming colde
r and wetter as they descended.
The slope leveled out at a smashed-open section of wall. Chunks of cut stone littered the floor. Rega proceeded through the gap into a room that spanned tens of meters in all directions. A huge symbol was etched into the flat stone floor. From what the doctor could see it looked like a bunch of concentric arcs or circles, but it was hard to tell since his attention was on the canisters resting on it. Each had the wide base and slender, cylindrical neck like the one Baron Revenant ordered Sanul to deliver to Rega weeks ago. There were tens of them clustered around what looked like a stone altar. Beside it an aluminum work bench stood cluttered with electronic equipment trailing thick, black cables.
Doctor Rega moved up to the bench through the field of canisters. As he approached, the electronics sensed his cerebral implant and switched on. Closer now, she could see that some of the cables from the table were attached to the side of the altar. He didn’t concentrate on them long, just enough to make sure the connections were good before he turned his attention to the bench.
Holographic controls appeared over the equipment. Most of the labels were gibberish to her, and she didn’t quite understand what he was doing when he reached down, pulled a canister beneath the table, and hooked a tube to its top. He stared at something on red-colored readouts and—
A wave of dizzying euphoria overrode the feed. She was sprawled out on her couch again, leg hooked over the armrest with the tin of kalkoa weed and the little, metal pipe resting on her bare chest. Somewhere in this bizarre and thrilling experience her bathrobe must have fallen open, but any bashfulness she felt about her exposed skin was muted into oblivion by the pleasure radiating through her body. She felt happy, carefree, and wanted to kiss Sanul a million times for taking away the ache seated deep inside her. He was on the floor at her side now, sitting on his haunches in that strange, Volgoth-way of folding up his legs that having two, opposite facing knee-joints allowed. Green drool from the Phytrophor drizzled from his slack lips onto her carpet. She realized she probably should care about that, but the weed was doing its work well. She giggled—
Eye of the Abyss: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 3 Page 6
