FRENCHY

by George Olney

  Afterwards, he lay on the bed for quite a while, just relaxing. Relaxation was a rare thing for him, but she could get him to do it. He was fully aware of her attempts to manipulate him and bemusedly surprised at her ability to succeed. He knew what she was driving towards and wanted her to get there. He was just going to make sure she got there on her own. It was rightness that she do it herself, her way.

  He crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the upper bulkhead, thinking about her. She was smart, tough and brave. Those qualities alone attracted him, but she was also a good person. He was beginning to enjoy having her around and he felt the enjoyment could deepen if he let it.

  His face momentarily showed the pain inside. If things were different, his future was different, he was certain she was someone he wanted permanently. That was impossible. Better enjoy the day and let the future take care of itself.

  After a while, he got up, wondering where she had gotten to this time. He was totally at ease and not really willing to exert himself more than was necessary, not even taking the trouble to dress. He finally found her by noticing the lock was open. Ordinarily, it would be closed, but the day was nice outside and having the hatch open didn't really bother him. There were no real threats to speak of, although the ship was always watchful. Only intelligent life was dangerous in the immediate vicinity of the ship, and there was none left on this planet.

  Looking through the lock onto the ground below, he saw her lying on a blanket on her stomach, totally relaxed and completely at ease, reading in the sun. She looked even more desirable than normal. Gazing his fill, Grae finally decided she deserved the time off. Let her have her sun tan. There were things he had to do. This was probably one of her plots, but, he decided as he watched her languidly stretch, wriggling her bottom slightly, there were compensations for him as well. Enjoy the day, he reminded himself, and the days were becoming really enjoyable around her.

  He spent the rest of the day on studying the cache and other chores. Every so often, he would come to the lock and spend a few quiet moments just looking at the woman relaxing on the ground below.

  #####

  When she finally roused herself to go in, she realized the day was nearly gone. The sun was getting low on the horizon and the air was acquiring a bit of a nip for someone without clothing. Testing her skin, she decided she wasn't going to burn. A suntan lotion concocted by the ship seemed to have done the trick. She gathered up her book, the ship's little music player, and other materials then headed inside, smugly certain why Grae hadn't bothered her for another field trip or something. So she wasted the day goofing off, so what? The real sunshine and fresh air felt so damn good after weeks of being bottled up in the ship. She pronounced the day completely worthwhile, a little treasure that was hers, personally. That was important.

  She found him in the wardroom, making a few notes on a small data pad he held in his lap. He looked up and smiled at her as she entered and threw her things on a nearby couch. Rather than open conversation, however, he turned back to his work. Shrugging, she headed back to the galley for a solid meal. A good day's loafing made her hungry.

  She strolled back into the wardroom later, to find Grae using a cloth to slowly polish the throwing ax they'd taken from the crypt. She looked at him curiously for a few seconds, then curled up in the couch across the room from him and began nursing her after dinner cup of coffee. For a change, he initiated the conversation. "You were pretty good with that ax yesterday."

  Slightly puzzled, she nodded. He continued, "I grabbed this because my people have a belief about weapons. They come to the hand of the one that can use them best, and they serve well only in those hands. It is a wrongness to keep apart a weapon and the one fated to use it."

  He flipped the ax in a soft, flat arc to flop next to her on the couch. "The twin to that ax served both of us well yesterday, and you seem best suited to it. It's yours. Keep it well and it will serve you faithfully."

  For a few seconds, she was speechless. She began to stammer thanks, still looking at the ax, but he abruptly left the room. She watched him go with a slightly stunned feeling. As far as she knew, it was against all custom to arm a bound woman and custom had the force of law with the Tribes. On the other hand, Grae had his peculiar code, and he was going to abide by it no matter what. Not for the first time, she wondered what was on his mind.

  Hesitantly, she picked up the ax and ran her fingers over the flat, gleaming metal. The handle felt natural in her hand and the balance suited her. It felt slightly eerie after Grae's little speech about weapons being fated for their users. This thing seemed alive in her hand. As she swished it experimentally through the air of the wardroom, she wondered what turn events were taking now.

  #####

  The next morning, said events picked up both speed and technology. After they had breakfast, Grae swung a small air sled from a port on the ship's side as she watched from the lock platform. The sled was just big enough to carry two people and their equipment in enclosed comfort and looked fast enough to outrun anything.

  Transportation to the next power source.

  While he busied himself with getting the sled ready, she hurried into the ship to collect her own traveling togs. The ship quickly made duplicates of her cloak and shoes. She was determined to carry the ax, but unsure how to do it. She finally settled on using a simple shoulder cord attached to the handle. One good tug would free the ax for swinging or throwing. That was good as far as it went, but she was going to have the ship make a holster for permanent use.

  Decked out, she scampered out of the lock and up to the sled just as Grae finished loading. "Where do I sit?" she asked excitedly.

  A single glance took in her appearance, including the ax. He could feel the corners of his mouth trying to twitch upward. "The seat behind mine," he pointed, partially losing the battle with his self-control and permitting a small smile. "Try not to cut anything with that fancy razor of yours and don't touch the controls."

  "Fancy razor, indeed," she sniffed back at him merrily. She was in much too good a mood this morning to let his teasing irritate her. "I see you're carrying life insurance. That gun and knife are riding you for the same reason my little lady here follows me around."

  She patted her ax and smiled brightly at him. He couldn't help but smile back. "Get in and let’s get going," he said, climbing into his own seat.

  They rose smoothly into the bright sky in a rapid, silent arc that ended pointing them slightly north of the rising sun. To Frenchy, the antigravity of the sled held no mysteries. Every good science fiction drama had something like that. It was the landscape that had her entranced. It might have been something like Earth, but just the knowledge it was an alien planet was enough for her.

  After an hour or so, Grae brought the craft to an abrupt halt, hovering over a stone ridge. He touched a screen on the control board and, as she watched intently, the picture changed to one of a large number of piled barrels. Frenchy immediately assumed he'd activated a spy ray. To say he was merely using infrared imagery on the camouflaged storage dump below wouldn't have dampened her enthusiasm in the slightest. Grae stared at the screen intently as she tried to make heads or tails of a weirdly colored image that seemed to be all metal cylinders. He shook his head slightly, but she caught the motion.

  "What is it?" she demanded. "Just what is all that stuff?"

  "This is a bigger operation than I thought," he replied absently. "It looks like this is a transshipment point and those are the Somnolent containers I told you about.

  "I have no intention of going down there to verify that, either. The original power source we detected was a protection screen against the elements and animals. Once I checked everything yesterday, I also found an alert incorporated in it. That might warn guards, if there are any near the planet.

  "The group that set up that dump up probably tangled with the creature from the open cocoon we saw. I'll bet that's where the infection started. I'm sure this bunch is one of the
infection vectors I've been looking for, maybe the main one. I have to assume everything down there is booby trapped."

  A flashing light on the control board caught her eye. "Grae."

  "I see it." Touching the screen again, he shifted the image to a pattern of lines. There were two moving dots on that pattern. "Couple of guards inbound. They were probably playing dead someplace, hoping we'd go away. Our visit tripped the alarm."

  He took the control stick and started the little sled around in a tight curve. "Time to leave. But first..."

  As they shot off through the morning sky, something fell from the sled and took off for the dump. Frenchy looked back over her shoulder to see it erupt in a bright flash and a cloud of dust fragments. So much for dangerous drugs! Bring on the Bad Guys! She found herself grinning. This was exciting! She was also mature enough to realize they could be dead if Grae lost the race with the rapidly advancing smuggler ships. She shrugged and continued grinning. What the hell!

  Grae took the little craft back to the ship flat out, diving into the miniature hangar and stopping at the last second in an egg-on-the-plate maneuver that left them motionless and Frenchy breathless. He dived from the cockpit as soon as the sled's canopy opened and she was barely behind him. Yelling instructions at the ship's computer to activate the defenses, he ran up to the command deck. Once there, she took a second to drop her cloak and ax, then jumped for her chair at the weapons station. The fact that it was already active was no surprise to her. The fireball in the console screen was. The computer had already blown the lead smuggler ship.

  "Now they know we have teeth," Grae snarled with a savage grin.

  "That one walked in fat and happy. The next one is going to take a fight." In a series of rapid motions, he threw the ship into a screaming ascent into space.

  As soon as she was settled, Frenchy jammed her combat visor on her head. Her detection screens on full scan, Frenchy soon saw the second smuggler turn sharply on an interception curve. She didn't waste time telling Grae. His own screens would show the same thing. The configuration of the little icon in her visor told her the intercepting ship was about their own class, with presumably equivalent armament, but she took a moment to wonder if that was true. Knowing Grae, this ship was probably packing a little extra. Grae's ship was certainly faster.

  The two ships were slowly increasing the distance between them, but running wasn't part of Grae's game plan. He put the ship into a curve away from the planet, forcing their pursuer to follow. "I want a little space to work in," he told her. "These guys are next. Get set to fight."

  Underneath her combat visor, she felt an adrenaline thrill as she prepared to fight her first space battle. She had all ideas this was going to be one hell of a fight, and was fully prepared to enjoy it. She wasn’t worried about dying. She was the heroine. They always survived.

  Thoughtfully, she triggered off two intelligent missiles to accompany them into the tussle, just to give the other fellow something to think about. The IMs would behave like tiny, suicidal auxiliary fighters and were nice to have around when you wanted to bother somebody terminally.

  The ship rocked as a bolt hit their shield. The party was fixing to get rough from here on in. Well, so was she!

  Grae triggered the nose guns and threw the ship into a tight turn. As the other ship dodged the first shots, Frenchy tried a quick broadside as it flashed past. One of the IMs blew at that moment, hit by the smuggler. Then the other one detonated on the smuggler's shield. Frenchy indulged in a brief, smug smile. According to her new training, the missile wouldn't destroy their ship through a fully charged shield, but the blast would sure ring their chimes!

  Well, the preliminary courtesies were over, now down to serious business. She fired at the crazily spinning, whipsawing target again.

  Suddenly, Grae's ship jerked into a ninety degree turn impossible to anything without an inertia damping gravitational drive, then began to flip and gyrate crazily off on a tangent. Damage control told her they hadn't been hit, so what was going on here? Then a missile shot by, barely missing their shields. The moves were evasion tactics, good ones, and they worked. Her respect for Grae's piloting ability, already high, was climbing.

  Meanwhile the other guy was still full of fight. One good turn deserved another, so she launched another IM, camouflaging the launch with a quick broadside. She continued firing steadily at the erratically dancing image in front of her then squealed in glee.

  A major hit on the other ship! She could see fragments sail away. The IM got through! She didn't waste time gawking, but continued firing. Grae made another of his patented right-angled high speed turns and began to spin the ship on its long axis. She fired broadsides from each gun bank as they bore.

  With a soundless flash, the smuggler's ship blew up.

  She let her breath out in a long whoosh, then stripped off her visor and jumped out of her command chair with a loud war whoop. She met Grae leaving his own chair and grabbed him in a bear hug, planting an excited kiss on his face. When she leaned back, they were both still hugging each other tightly. "I got him!" she yelled.

  He didn't seem to mind the screams in his ears, even though his voice was considerably lower than hers and his emotional state correspondingly low key. "That you did," he nodded. "Remember how?"

  "Sure," she grinned. "With a Broad Side!" With that remark, she slammed her hips into his in a well-executed stripper's bump. When he picked her up and headed for the sleeping cabin, she was totally in favor of the trip.

  #####

  Later, she was still humming a jaunty little tune as she drew a cup of coffee in the galley. Hearing him come in behind her, she turned and favored him with a smile of smug satisfaction at his obviously mellow state. "Up already?" she said in a teasing tone.

  "Humph," he said mildly, then continued with a chuckle, "You sure take a lot out of a guy."

  "Well," she said archly, "you put a lot into a girl." The smack of his palm on the bare cheek of her bottom echoed throughout the ship. It also made her spill her coffee.

  She was really going to have to train him to control that impulse.

  In a quieter moment later in the wardroom, she casually asked him, "Where are we heading now, O Master?"

  The look he gave her was peculiar. "Lycanth. My home. Now that we've found that dump, I have to report in, so clean up your act. We'll be under Galactic law."

  She grew quiet as the realization sank in. Suddenly, there was a background tension in the ship again. All the full implications of his self-proclaimed binding of her came back in a rush, and there were still questions to be answered. As she sipped her coffee, she thought hard. The future was beginning to look uncertain, again.

  She sat in the wardroom for a long time after Grae went back to bed, thinking. There was no conversation after Grae's announcement, and she wanted none. She just wanted to get straight in her mind who - and what - she really was. She wasn't anybody's Goddamned property! So who was she? Frenchy? JoAnn LaTour? Elizabeth Bankhead?

  That pathetic little Betty Bankhead disappeared when she went on stage, and JoAnn LaTour, drunken has-been, vanished when she was dried out. She was Frenchy now, a tough bitch that could fight and win against any man that thought he owned her.

  What about him? How did she feel about him? She hated the bastard and was manipulating him just like she did any man who had what she wanted. He was a no-good son of a bitch, just like any other man, even if he was kind of attractive. Even likable. There was a lot to like about him. He was masculine and straightforward. Better person than any man she'd ever met.

  She looked down at herself. What was any rational woman doing wandering around like this? Her? Damn it! She was a person! Not property!

  Even if she did l- No! She didn't like the cold hearted, one eyed bastard. Not one bit!

  Her thoughts continued to roll around in a confused circle, getting her nowhere. She finally decided to get a drink and go to bed, even if it meant sharing the bed with that low rent, e
gotistical scum. God, she wanted to kill him.

  She stopped with the glass to her lips. Did she really want to kill him? She could do it. Did she want to? A tiny little voice deep inside told her she was way off base, that there was something she knew but didn't want to realize. She sipped slowly, wondering, then came to a conclusion. He could say what the hell he wanted to say, say he owned her, or not owned her, or... or... whatever, but it didn't mean a damn thing. She'd put up with him so far and was going to keep playing this fool game, even by his rules, until she won it. But he didn't own her. No matter what any damn law said. She was her own person.

  She downed the rest of the glass with a gulp, fixed a stronger one and slugged it down as well, then sat there for a few moments. Feeling the alcohol hit her, she decided to get up and go to bed. She was weaving slightly. The alcohol buzz made her snort a laugh. Drunk? Now? Time was, she wouldn't even have noticed that little bit of booze. Must be because he'd dried her out. Damn fool thing for him to do. Changed her from a lush to a real person, again. Saved her life. She owed him.

  No! JoAnn owed him. Frenchy didn't owe anybody a goddam thing!

  She stopped at the open door and looked at his sleeping form in the darkened room. There was no way she was going in that room and get in that bed. That man said he owned her.

  She staggered back into the wardroom and collapsed on the couch, drifting off to sleep.

  Her dreams were confused, but finally she was awake, playing with her brothers and sisters in the sawdust and cedar chips of the floor. Then the big man with the eye patch walked up out of the confused rush of the people in front of the window. He looked down at them for a few moments and she jumped up against the window to look at him. She tried to put her little furry paws on him but the glass was in the way. The man went inside and she soon saw several big bodies up close, towering over the low wall that surrounded her family. Two big hands reached down, looking for her sister, but she romped forward, getting in the way. Pick me! Pick me! The hands lifted her up and she saw the big man with the eye patch up close. He was looking at the other man that held her. She waggled her tail and yipped at him. The big man took her in his hands and she tried to stretch and lick his face. The other man was fastening a collar around her neck and the big man started to clip a leash to it and she wanted to tell him how much she loved it and she started to bark and bark and bark and bark and bark and bark...