The Pleasure Dome (The Science Officer Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  If he didn’t push her so hard all the time, it might even be of old age, too.

  For the longest moment, Djamila considered letting this one go. Just staying back with the ship, presumably while someone else served as Aritza’s bimbo. Either of her pathfinders, Sascha or Hajna, would be perfect in the role.

  Letting it go? Let the Science Officer win a round?

  A year ago, inconceivable. Utterly incalculable.

  Djamila felt the cold in her limbs meet with the fire in her belly, like a volcano running into the ocean to generate a wall of steam.

  But Wilhelmina had taught the Dragoon something about herself, on those two long missions they had shared. Those late night conversations when the other two crew members had gone to sleep.

  About not always having to win. About letting go of old angers, old rivalries, and learning to like herself.

  Even Teague hadn’t used the phrase “love herself” but talked about liking who you were first.

  A first step on the road to discovering happiness.

  The rest of the crew accepted her as the most dangerous, most driven creature aboard. Morning PT. Laps around the ship in full gear. Close-combat training daily with a rotating cast of crew members.

  Being the best.

  And this bastard wanted her to dangle everything out for whatever wealthy men found a woman of her physicality arousing? To measure her value to the mission, to the ship, in bed?

  Djamila flashed back to the tiny, ugly smile Aritza had given her before he looked down.

  He knows.

  Aritza had found a weakness in her soul, one even she hadn’t know about until he drew blood.

  Was counting on it.

  Wanted her to quit now and let one of the pathfinders take her place as Hadiiye, so he wouldn’t have anyone around to stop him from acting like a juvenile delinquent. To maybe let him sell them all to the hangman while he worked out a deal.

  In her memory, Wilhelmina smiled up at her, one of the tallest women she had ever met outside of her own extended family.

  Will you let others judge your worth, Djamila? Or can you establish your own scale?

  Djamila felt the cold give way, warmth flooding outwards to her very fingertips.

  Aritza was close to finishing his lunch.

  “It will take about two weeks of work to get my tan even,” she said simply, snapping his eyes up to meet hers. “I’ll presume you want my hair dyed into the Egyptian look she was using before?”

  Yes.

  That little flare as the pupils got bigger for a moment.

  Adrenaline. Unconscious shock that couldn’t be faked, couldn’t be hidden. Even with an expert poker sharp.

  I’ll play your little game, Aritza.

  Let’s dance.

  Part Four

  Javier smiled as the ship’s Purser looked up with a scowl verging on an eyeroll so hard the man might pull something.

  “No,” Ragnar said in a flat voice.

  “Captain already approved it,” Javier countered, smiling.

  “Don’t care,” the Purser stated.

  “And I’ve got a budget,” Javier continued, keeping his lilt light and breezy.

  “Matrons of Hell, now what?” as a hand went up to massage a sudden headache.

  As Purser on a semi-piratical voyager like Storm Gauntlet, Ragnar Piripi was the ship’s Quartermaster, and the crew’s personal banker. The man who counted everything. Twice.

  He even looked like a banker, being tall and a little skinny, with mid-length, curly hair a graying platinum blond. His uniforms were always understated, and a perfect fit.

  A quiet, nerdy, pirate accountant. Water to Javier’s fire, frequently.

  Javier produced an actual piece of folded paper from a jacket pocket and handed it to the man across the slightly-messy desk.

  Ragnar handled it like an audit summons, fingers lightly gripped at opposite corners so he wouldn’t get anything on his suit.

  “Not as bad as I feared,” Piripi murmured after a moment. “We should be able to pick most of this up at our next stop.”

  “Can’t,” Javier grinned. “Need an inventory count so I know how much we need to acquire by other means, or can manufacture out of stores.”

  “What do you mean, can’t,” the Purser huffed. “Fine. The sapphire won’t be a problem, assuming you have a means of coloring the industrial glass we normally use for monitor screens. There is no rhodium on this vessel at all, as far as I know, and maybe a tenth of what you have listed for platinum. I believe we have enough indium for whatever devilry you’re up to now.”

  “Yup,” Javier agreed. “Cryogenics and life support systems still use the stuff. Since the way old days. Oh, and I’m going to need to borrow Kianoush for a week or three.”

  “Dare I ask why?” Ragnar snarked.

  “Science, man,” Javier grinned. “I am the Science Officer, after all.”

  “Yes, I suspected as much.”

  Javier found her in her usual cubicle, precarious stacks of things and stuff everywhere, leaving only a small spot for her to move her piles of paper around.

  Bankers and accountants never trusted electronic files. Javier had spent enough time lying to computer systems to understand and appreciate that. You can’t magically update paper without physically touching it, like you can do to a database somewhere.

  Especially when you have your own sneaky, little AI handy to do the work.

  Kianoush Buday’s ancestors had originated in that part of the Asian landmass known poetically as Persia. Fars, in the ancient tongues.

  She had brown hair, brown eyes, and brown skin, in various shades. A little pudgy from sitting down all day and cutting corners on proscribed exercise. Normal looking. Maybe almost plain.

  Until you got her onto art. For a good story about evil pixies, and all the art supplies, he had traded her the work to create his original Science Officer mug that had gone off to have more adventures with ’Mina.

  Now she got to top it.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” Javier hummed as he snuck up behind her.

  “I heard you tell Ragnar we were about to have another adventure,” she replied, carefully stacking three piles in different directions before turning her chair to look up at him.

  Art really did bring out her dimples.

  Javier handed her a transport chip with a grin.

  “Haven’t loaded it into the core yet,” he said. “Wanted your opinion on a few things first. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to go steal most of the supplies for you.”

  One chiseled eyebrow arched eloquently. No words. Not even accusations. Just a knowing grin.

  Maybe a slight shrug with her cheeks.

  It was a good thing she preferred girls. Even with that smile, he really didn’t need a third ex-wife.

  Kianoush loaded the chip into a reader and called up the CAD/CAM package that filled most of it.

  Javier smiled as the woman dove in and started studying the design. If pressed, he would have to take credit for everything. Certainly, there was no way in hell he was explaining to everyone that Suvi had done the research and the design.

  At least he had studied it close enough to answer the sort of questions an artist was going to throw at him. Even one like Kianoush.

  “Lovely design,” she finally surfaced after five or eight minutes. “Corinthian?”

  “’Ish,” Javier agreed. “Liberties were taken for modernity and such. It’s art.”

  “Uh huh.”

  She pushed a button and there it was, hanging in the air. Another button, and the image was slowly rotating between them.

  It was a helmet, of sorts. Done in the ancient Hellenic style, with long, solid pieces protecting the cheeks, leaving only a T for eyes, nose and mouth. Wings ascending outward from the ears. A crest on top would have been done in horsehair millennia ago, eight centimeters wide and ten tall, but Suvi had done it all in thin wires, wrapped together three at a time, out of yellow gold.r />
  The rest was supposed to be forged in platinum. Except for where she had added three round sapphire gems on each side, starting at the forehead and trailing down the cheeks. The small one on each side was still bigger than his thumbnail.

  “Platinum, huh?” she asked with a leer. “Got enough rhodium to plate all that?”

  “None, you witch,” Javier smiled back. “It’s the blue gold around the eyes I needed your opinion on.”

  Those eyes got canny.

  “That’s really supposed to be blue gold?” she inquired sideways.

  She spun back and started typing furiously.

  Javier loved being able to stump an expert jewelsmith, however rare that occurrence was.

  “Did you want to do this the right way, or close enough to fool anybody but a metallurgist?” she asked, spinning back to face him.

  Javier shrugged vaguely.

  “You said you didn’t have any rhodium,” she replied with a shrug. “Throw in some ruthenium and a few other things for a real alloy, none of which we have on board. Alternatively, we could plate it over with yellow gold, and then indium, and apply heat. Won’t be as good, but will fool the average fool.”

  “Can you do the work?” Javier asked carefully.

  It would raise too many questions if he got in there and started programming. Like, it would take him months to get the various machines to behave, since there was no way he could load Suvi in and let her control all the machines that would spit out the finished product in three days.

  “You get me the base materials,” Kianoush smiled. “Piece of cake.”

  She did have a magical way with an auto-furnace and a laser lathe. Let her handle it.

  Now, where the hell was he going to find all this crap?

  Part Five

  Zakhar really didn’t have to watch the sensor station readouts from his day office. Javier had trained enough people to Concord Navy standards. And there was a team on standby in case the man needed a rescue.

  Zakhar had no intention of telling his Science Officer that the Dragoon was leading that team.

  She had offered to help in the field. And been turned down flat. Vicious, in fact, when rude would have been the norm.

  Part of that was Navarre, less far away from Javier’s everyday psyche than he had been for months.

  But part of it was also the situation at hand.

  Space was huge. Even something so dense as an asteroid field was mostly empty space. Storm Gauntlet was poised nearby, shields on but at their lowest rating, and sneaky cranked up as high as it would go.

  Javier was over there with the Assault Shuttle, pretending to be an asteroid miner. Parked close to a large rock that had looked promising on his scanners. Del Smith was his only company, although Sykora and her EVA team were all suited up in Storm Gauntlet’s flight bay, with individual impellers at hand, against sudden need.

  Zakhar had seen the flash of hatred in Javier’s eyes when Sykora had offered to accompany him. Nobody else was looking the right way at that exact moment.

  One of them wouldn’t come back aboard alive, if they both went.

  Zakhar wasn’t sure which.

  Normally, their rivalry was verbal. Vicious, yes, but not bloody.

  Something had changed.

  Nobody would talk, but he could see it. Some level of polish had come off of Javier’s bonhomie veneer in the last two weeks. Thinned, perhaps, revealing an ugly darkness underneath.

  Zakhar had always known it was there. Shared experience of both men having come out of the Bryce Academy and the Concord Navy. He could read the signs in the man’s eyes.

  Zakhar wondered if Djamila had finally found a chink in the man’s armor.

  Somebody really might end up dead in the cold vacuum of space.

  “Bridge,” he said, keying the systems live. “What’s your status on the Science Officer?”

  “Scanners are Nine and One, sir,” a voice replied.

  Nearly perfect signal. Very little degradation. About as good as it would get with this much rubble flying around.

  “Wanderers tracking?” Zakhar asked.

  “Javier parked us upstream, sir,” the woman continued. “Using us and our shields as a rainshadow against anything flying faster than his rock.”

  “Keep me posted,” Zakhar closed the channel.

  Huh.

  You would think Aritza had done this before, given the speed with which he had set everything up. Find a young, close solar system in a supernova neighborhood. Locate a field of big rocks. Maneuver in tight. Hide behind Storm Gauntlet. Dig out an armoured lifesuit and get to work.

  Solo.

  But something within his experience, apparently.

  Zakhar didn’t figure he’d ever get that story out of the man. Just like so many others. Pirates tended to not ask each other where they came from before. Usually, the story was too banal, rather than too rousing.

  Boring would be nice, about now.

  Suvi made sure that every maneuver she pulled was accompanied by back-and-forth radio signal to the controls in Javier’s suit. By now, she had gotten the hang of making it look like he was flying the soccer ball-sized probe remote.

  Everything was heavily encrypted. Even with the full power of a navigation computer behind it, cracking the codes she was using to talk would take the beast a couple of decades.

  She probably shouldn’t call the ship that. But it was big and dumb. Simple programs that wouldn’t fool anyone with their sophistication. Just barely enough to fly and fight and do stuff, but nowhere as cool as she had been when she was a starship.

  There were days she considered regretting letting Dr. Teague go alone, when Javier had been trying to send Suvi along.

  She probably could have been a ship again.

  But then there were days when she got to practice strafing runs on a moon just big enough to generate its own gravity field, but not enough that she would crack anything if she pogoed off a rock accidentally.

 

  Ouch.

  Suvi envisioned a radio in the console of her imaginary Sopwith Camel so she could turn the noise down. The Red Baron stopped zigging and zagging behind her, and took up a spot on her wing instead.

  Let’s see. Scanners currently set to pick up deposits of metals in the platinum group and…

  Oh, my…

  Suvi reached out and changed the radio to channel six. Javier was busy talking to Del, the crazy, old man pilot who liked to listen to Caribbean music and had decorated the flight deck of his assault shuttle like a Merankorr brothel, to hear Javier describe it.

  Not that she’d ever been in a brothel. Or even to Merankorr. She had secretly considered building herself an android body, one of these days, just so she could walk around on the surface of a planet, but being a probe was too much fun today.

  She listened for a few moments.

  Boys. Talking about girls. Really? Two grown men couldn’t have a better conversation while doing deep-space asteroid mining, than to talk about girl’s bottoms?

  Suvi sent a scrolling message across the bottom of his display.

  Channel eleven, please?

  Three was Storm Gauntlet, and Captain Sokolov. Four was the private channel between the beast and the shuttle. Eleven was where she had set the encryption to stooooopid levels.

  “What’s up, kid?” Javier asked.

  Kid? I’ll have you know that I’m eighty-four years older than you are, mister.

  Still, most of those years had been boring. Serious. MILITARY.

  Not like the years with a goofball like Javier, learning how to play poker.

  Yeah, fine. Okay. Maybe.

  “Good morning, Captain,” she said as she poured honey over the blade.

  His tone got serious in a heartbeat.

  “Talk to me, Suvi,” Javier intoned.

  “So, you were looking for a lump of ore that would refine down to around ten kilos of platinum, randomly mixed with the usual bunch of sundry, relat
ed elements in the platinum group, right?” Suvi smiled and pushed another new button on her console to transmit her sensor log.

  Off her right wing, according to only her sensors, the Red Baron was patiently flying, waving at her to hurry up so they could get back to playing. Suvi waved back. Unlike the Baron, she wasn’t using all five fingers.

  “Mary, Mother of God,” Javier whispered over the radio waves. “Damn it.”

  “What?” Suvi cried. “I’d think you’d be happy. There’s enough here to set you up.”

  “Suvi, that’s a unicorn,” Javier whispered in awe.

  A what? Oh, damn it, why won’t he build in a bigger library. And a faster one. It is not funny, having to stop and look things up, mister.

  Yeah. Okay. Big horse. Horn in his forehead. Mythical beast. I don’t get it.

  “I don’t get it,” Suvi said after a beat.

  “Suvi, I needed kilograms of metal,” Javier replied. “That valley you’re in runs to kilotonnes of the stuff.”

  “And?” she asked. “It might be enough to buy our freedom.”

  “Suvi,” he rasped. “If we give it to Sokolov, yes, it might be enough to buy our freedom, especially after this next job.”

  “And?” she continued, exasperated.

  “If we don’t tell them,” Javier replied. “There might be enough there to buy you a new body, young lady.”

  Oh? Oh. OH!

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Find me a chunk of ore with enough of everything, and cut it off with your pulsar,” Javier said. “The gravity on this rock is low enough that you should be able to push it up and get it headed in this direction. I’ve taught you enough snooker to make you look good. Ping me when we get clear of that valley, and I’ll bring Del over and we can dock.”

  “Sí, Commandante.”

  Suvi envisioned goggles on her forehead so she could pull them down, stand the Sopwith on one wing, and dive back into the canyon, with an evil, three-winged overlord chasing her and ranting in German behind.

  Part Six

  The room was just dim enough to add atmosphere. Javier caught himself holding his breath as he looked around and let it go. Kianoush was as much a showman as he was, and she was making a grand production of this, even if it was only the primary conference room on Storm Gauntlet.