by Jucha, S. H.
Scar and Jessie didn’t bother closing out the rear view ports, and as soon as Christie dared, she unstrapped and worked her way to the shuttle’s rear, bracing herself against the seat uprights. Only stars showed through the small port, until the shuttle made a long turn and decelerated.
Amelia asked.
Christie sent, hurrying to regain her place beside her friends as the shuttle shook violently and decelerated to a stop. Moments later, it eased forward to settle down on a surface with a jarring bump.
Christie sent.
After the shuttle landed, Scar and Jessie came into the cabin. “Get up, fems. Stand in the aisle, and turn your backs to us,” Scar ordered. The two men slipped metal-mesh bags over the girls’ heads, strapping them firmly in place. Scar moved to the front of the line, taking Amelia and Eloise’s hands and placing them on the shoulder of the girl in front.
“Come on, home girl,” Scar said to Christie, while placing her hand on his shoulder. Then, he led the way out of the shuttle and down the gangway.
As Christie encountered obstacles that tended to trip her, she was angry she couldn’t relay the information to her friends to protect them, but the bag over her head blocked her implant comms. She was saved a couple of times from falling by leaning heavily on Scar’s shoulder.
The other senses of the Haraken girls were not blocked, and each was doing her best to pick up details since exiting the shuttle: the stink of fuels and oil in the shuttle bay, the sounds of an airlock hatch opening and closing, and the hiss of doors sliding apart, which brought an immediate change in their environment. Gone were the sounds and odors of the bay replaced by distinctly fresh, even aromatic smells, and music issuing from corridor speakers.
Finally, the girls heard the snick of a high-end lock and felt a soft floor covering under their feet.
The men unfastened and recovered the bags, and Scar stared at each of the girls in turn. “Same rules apply here as on the freighter. No noise. You make noise, and Jessie gets to have his turn with the two mutes, before he does some carving. Understand?” When the girls replied quietly, Scar nodded. A double-snick from the door, as Scar and Jessie left, indicated the girls were once again locked inside.
The girls regarded the room’s pleasant amenities and stared at one another, confusion spreading across their faces.
* * *
Scrolling through the week’s take at his pleasure domes on his reader, Peto “Craze” Toyo smiled broadly. Month over month, the credits had been on the increase, and it was all thanks to the Harakens. The thought made him cackle.
The travelers bought by the New Terran government enabled fast and sophisticated transport across the system. Before the arrival of the Haraken ships, wealthy vacationers couldn’t afford the time lost traveling to a distant moon via local shuttles to a station, then boarding a passenger liner and reversing the process. Now, the travelers delivered Toyo’s patrons from the Prima shuttle base directly to his pleasure domes on Jolares, a minor moon orbiting the gas giant, Ganymede, in luxurious style and in little more than a day.
“And no adz to mess with my business,” Toyo mumbled, smiling again to himself.
The domes operated outside TSF oversight because of a loophole in New Terran law. Almost a century ago, a mining charter was passed by the Assembly to encourage companies to take on the risk of setting up operations on the system’s outer moons. The mining charter allowed the companies the freedom to police their own bases and employees.
Toyo wasn’t the first with the concept of a pleasure dome. Azul “Mr. Blue” Kadmir was credited with that, but it hadn’t taken Toyo long to recognize that selling his criminal businesses on New Terra and investing in pleasure domes was a smart move. He registered a mining company, targeted Jolares in his application, and received approval so fast it amazed even him.
It took time to transship Toyo’s freight orders from New Terra out to Jolares, but the availability of Méridien building methods and supplies created a dome the likes of which Toyo couldn’t have imagined. His domes were a smash hit! Of course, offering the first 200 guests free transport provided tremendous word-of-mouth advertising.
While the main dome produced credits faster than Toyo could disperse them, the ancillary domes, which were built below surface level, were the most lucrative. Dome one hosted the paler fun — gambling, stimulants, and discreet fems and boys. The darker pleasures of the secondary domes awaited only privileged and carefully screened customers. Square meter for square meter, each of the ancillary domes produced 70 to 80 percent more credits than the surface dome.
Toyo’s intent for the main dome was to keep everyone happy, show them a good time, and they would return. His concept was a wild success. That the population of the Oistos system was supporting a criminal organization was just the byproduct of people who chose not to look under the pretty wrapping of what they had purchased.
At a knock on his door, Toyo called out, “Enter,” and placed his fingers on buttons under his desk. One button connected to a protective, edged shield that would shoot up from the front of his desk with enough force to cut through almost anything. In addition, a second button would activate weapons that would pop up from the floor to spray half the room. If there were innocents among his attackers, Toyo would consider them casualties of circumstance.
“Aw, Barber,” Toyo said, motioning his underling in and taking his finger off the buttons. “So, I hear you have three new fems ready to work for us. Which domes will they get? I could use more in number three. The fems don’t last long there, what with the rough trade.”
“About that, Boss, they aren’t hires. We had a little trouble on Haraken, and these fems were kidnapped,” Barber said. He tried to stand his ground, knowing Toyo hated cringing, but when his boss started screaming at him, some spittle running from his mouth, it was hard not to take a step or two back. And it was easy to understand how Toyo received his nickname.
Toyo calmed down enough to pour a drink, gulping the hard liquor down. “Ok, tell me,” he said, breathing heavily from his explosive display.
“Somehow these three fems discovered the club and cased the place, recording everything in their heads. You know, those implants,” Barber said, touching his temple.
“Wait, you’re telling me these are Harakens, not tourists?” Toyo asked. “Are they adz?”
“No, Boss, just locals acting like amateur investigators.”
“Okay, that’s good. Anybody important going to miss them?”
“Well, that’s where it gets a bit sticky, Boss. One of them is Christie Racine.” Barber waited for the eruption, which never came.
Instead, Toyo looked thunderstruck. He rose and began pacing behind his huge, metal desk. “Okay, Barber,” Toyo said, laughing. “That was a pretty good one. You had me going there. I mean swiping Racine’s sister. Who would be that stupid?” While Toyo laughed, he looked at Barber, expecting his underling to join, but Barber stood there, staring at the floor.
Toyo walked over to the man and yanked his chin up, forcing him to look in his e
yes. “Tell me that Christie Racine and two of her friends are not sitting in one of my domes’ suites. Tell me that,” Toyo demanded.
“I can’t, Boss. Dar, Lacey, and Trembles panicked, drugged the fems, and the next thing I know they’re delivering three bagged fems to the Bountiful. I didn’t know what to do with them, but I thought it was safer to bring them here. Dar told me that if the adz caught them, they would say they reported to Kadmir. I even had to get rid of our contact on Haraken. He went off when he spotted the fems all trussed up.”
“Wait, say that last part again,” Toyo demanded, letting go of Barber’s chin, which would wear a set of bruises for the next week.
“The crew intended to blame the whole thing on Mr. Blue, Boss, if they got caught. It could work,” Barber said, hoping that Toyo would fixate on that piece of information.
Toyo stepped back, poured himself a second, smaller drink, and sat back down behind his desk. For the moment, he was tempted to press his second button, just to have someone pay for the stupidity that had been dumped on him. But having the blame for the kidnapping fall on his lead competitor was too delicious a thought not to occupy his attention.
“Maybe we should drop a comm to the Haraken adz as to where our crew is hiding, just to be sure the word gets out,” Toyo suggested, and then took a sip of his drink.
“No need, Boss, the club got busted by the adz a couple nights later. We got the word that Dar and his people were escaping and going into hiding. He was talking to me when the adz busted down his hiding place.”
“Okay, that might not be a bad thing. Dar and Lacey will probably be all right selling the story, if only that idiot, Trembles, can keep his wits about him and remember the script. Who we got watching the fems?”
“Boker and Jessie brought them down from the freighter. I was waiting to see what you wanted me to do with them.”
“Boker and Jessie? Are you taking the twitch yourself?” demanded Toyo, referring to the hallucinogen they were pushing on Haraken.
“It’s all I had available on the Bountiful. They were the only ones I could trust to watch over the girls, sneak them off the freighter when we docked, and who could pilot a shuttle. I figure the fewer who knew about the girls, the better.”
“So from start to finish, who saw these fems?”
“Our crew at the club, who’ve been arrested by the adz; our Haraken contact at McCrery Station, who is on his way to becoming stardust, and Boker and Jessie, who stowed them aboard the freighter and snuck them into a suite here.”
“You sure?” Toyo asked, boring into Barber’s eyes.
“Yeah, Boss, sure.”
“Okay, good work on that station employee. Do the same for Boker and Jessie.”
“But, Boss, they’re good men. They’ll keep their mouths shut.”
“Barber, let me educate you on the bigger picture,” Toyo said, getting up from his desk, walking around to the other side, and leaning back against it. It gave him a little thrill to think that poised underneath him was a pneumatically loaded, lethal-edged section of metal alloy that, if accidentally triggered, would slice him in half.
“That fem’s brother is Alex Racine,” Toyo said, in the tone a lecturer might use. “The same guy who unseated Downing and his people, rescued a bunch of worlds from some alien sphere, handed hats to warships from Sol, went there and made peace with them … and, oh, rescued a bunch of creepy-crawly aliens. So tell me, Barber, how much do you want to risk this man finding out that we were the ones who took his sister?”
Barber wondered for a moment if it wasn’t time to retire, but, then again, no one retired from Toyo’s operation, at least not in the manner Barber had in mind. “I’ll take care of Boker and Jessie,” he finally said.
“You do that, and, Barber, you take good care of the fems, and I mean good care. Clean clothes, good food, bedding, and bathroom supplies … anything they need. They just stay put in that suite, and you and I are the only ones to know. Clear?”
“Clear, Boss,” Barber said, and left the room as relaxed as he could appear to make it look. In the corridor, he leaned against a wall, his legs trembling and sweat rolling from under his arms. Before he saw Toyo, he would have bet he was a dead man. Instead, that sentence would fall on Boker and Jessie.
-10-
The Rêveur made its entrance into the Oistos system. The asteroid fields, which Alex mined for ice to supply the mining companies and habitats when he was a tug-explorer captain, lay in front of them.
Signaling ahead with his implant, Alex raced through the corridors with Étienne right behind him. The crew, warned of his coming, flattened against the bulkheads. Alex burst through the engineering doors and was surprised to find Terese in a state of extreme agitation. She stood in front of the SADEs, waving her arms widely and arguing her point. The SADEs displayed no emotion whatsoever.
“What?” Terese exclaimed when she saw Alex lurch to an abrupt halt inside the lab.
“Problem?” Alex asked quietly.
“Are you a renowned biochemist experienced in formulating drug compounds? No, of course you’re not. Then, you’re of no use to me,” Terese declared, dismissing Alex with a wave of her hand.
Terese replied, and turned her back on Alex.
Terese whirled to face Alex and fire off a retort, but the words stuck in her throat when she took in the intent in Alex’s eyes. Her president stared back. Despite deciding to acquiesce, Terese made a point of huffing out of the lab.
Alex turned to follow and noticed Étienne hadn’t moved.
Étienne sent back.
Alex hurried to catch up with Terese. I did say walk, not run, didn’t I? Alex thought. Deciding to be patient, he paced Terese while she fast-walked the corridors for a good quarter-hour. Forewarned along the route by Alex, not a single crew member was ever seen, although it was ridiculous what several people had to do to disappear from sight.
Finally, Terese wound down, and Alex led her to the owner’s suite. Alex offered Terese a seat on the couch, and he made thé for both of them. Handing Terese a cup, Alex said, “Talk to me.”
Terese set her cup down without tasting it and drew her hands through her flame-red hair. “I’m not good enough. I’ve been pretending to be your medical expert all these years, but I’m just a medical specialist. I haven’t the advanced training I need in this situation, and the SADEs aren’t carrying the specialized information in their memories that I require.”
Terese picked up her cup but set it back down without taking a sip. She looked up at Alex, expecting his sympathy.
“Is that all?” Alex asked. “Black stars, Terese. You had me worried for a moment. I thought we were in real trouble.”
Terese stared agape at Alex, unsure how to respond — cry, hit him, or laugh. She was Terese, so she laughed. She laughed ’til she cried, and then she threw a pillow at him because he was laughing at her.
“This isn’t a laughing matter,” Terese said, trying to sound angry but it came out between tears and hiccups. “Méridiens don’t create drugs to distort the perceptions of our children’s brains. So my databases don’t possess any research on the subject. Worse, this psychedelic has an addictive nature, producing incredibly painful withdrawal symptoms.”
“An addictive hallucinogen … isn’t that uncommon?” Alex asked.
“How would I know?” Terese said, throwing up her hands. “The staff tested the teens, and I received the results before we exited our system. The first teen was woken soon after he was in t
he medical center. He behaved normally for two days, before harsh withdrawal symptoms began punishing his body, and the staff put him back under. The second teen was woken one day after she was taken from the club, and she exhibited the same horrendous withdrawal symptoms a day later. Their bodies develop this desperate need, and, two days after they first receive the drug, they would have been desperate to return to the club. As it is now, we can’t wake any of the children until we have something to alleviate the addiction.”
“I take it that you’ve arranged for any youth returning to the club to be taken into custody and tested for the drug.”
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Terese said, sarcastically.
Alex was happy to see some of the fire returning to Terese. He stepped into the refresher and returned with a wet cloth for her. “So what do you need from me?”
Terese accepted the cloth Alex handed her. She used it to wipe her face, and, at one point, she braced her elbows on her thighs and buried her face in the cloth. What do I want? Terese asked herself. It was Alex who was asking her to focus, which her anger had not allowed her to do. What do I want? she repeated.
Wiping her face a final time with the cloth, Terese took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “If I could have my wishes, I would want the ugly individual who created this drug in our engineering suite, with all the equipment and product they would need to synthesize a safe blocking agent for this addictive, hallucinogenic compound.”
“Okay, so we find him or her, take their lab and supplies, put them in your tender care, and you get your compound.”
If it was anyone else, Terese would have laughed them out of the room, even though it wasn’t her cabin. But Alex said it matter-of-factly, as if it was the next thing on his list. It occurred to Terese that if Alex was going hunting, he would need a means of narrowing his target.
“I will provide you a list of items such a biochemist might use to manufacture this type of drug. These are only guesses, mind you, but it might help you and the SADEs find them.” Terese stood up to hand Alex the refresher cloth. She paused, staring down at the cloth in her hands and struggling with how to express the sentiments she wished to convey to him, when she felt Alex’s strong, heavy arms enfold her. Alex had never hugged her, but rather than think about that she leaned into the warmth, placing her head against the massive chest and pulling on the comfort offered her. You are one fortunate woman, Renée, Terese thought.
