by Dan Schiro
When gravity lift doors opened on the lobby of the Orbit Lounge, Orion froze. He had not been this high in Echohax Tower since Election Day, when LaVal LaVoy had kidnapped Katherine Vanlith and goaded him into violence by murdering her. Suppressing a sudden urge to flee the building and hug his body to the Hub’s street, he stepped off the gravity lift. His father wouldn’t have let past traumas get in the way of his drunken brooding, so neither would he. Orion took a deep breath and transmitted his executive credentials from his datacube to open the iris-like door.
As usual, the exclusive club was busy with business owners from the tower’s lower floors and the Hub’s wealthy elite. A sour mutter spread through the room as necks turned his direction and nudging elbows alerted others to his arrival. Though Orion usually visited the Orbit Lounge for its networking opportunities, he got the feeling his public image would need a little rehabilitation before he started handing out business cards again. Nevertheless, he strolled into the well-dressed crowd, ignoring the pinpricks of eyes and bitter whispers as he passed. Crossing the color-shift glass floor, he took a low table by the tall windows that ringed the room. A couple of great apes at the table next to him appraised him with a scathing glare, scooped up their exotic drinks and lumbered off to find another spot. Sinking into the bio-mold cushions of the clear chair, Orion gazed at the alien fish trapped in the tabletop’s slender aquarium. Many minutes passed while he stared at the colorful tabletop fish before a waiter approached.
“Good evening, sir,” said a young mystskyn man with yellow-green scales. He wore a crisp black uniform with a stylized gold OL for Orbit Lounge embroidered on the breast. “How can I serve you tonight?”
Orion put a finger to his jutting chin and thought for a moment, trying to pick the strongest, most ridiculous drink possible. “How about… a Twisted Taramoor?”
“Ah,” the waiter said, a twinkle in his eyes. “A piece of mixology we’ve not had requested for some time.”
Orion offered a wistful grin. “Gives a whole new meaning to ‘pick your poison,’ eh?”
The waiter tipped his head, his reptilian coxcomb flopping to one side. “Excuse me, sir?”
“Never mind,” said Orion, waving him away. “Just an old human saying,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
Minutes later, the young mystskyn returned with a tall glass full of amber liquid. The tincture swirled in a thin cyclone generated by a hidden micro-motor in the bottom of the glass. This was more than an artful presentation, Orion knew. The ingredients of a Twisted Taramoor had to stay in motion until they entered an organic system, or else they became fatally toxic.
“Here you go, sir,” said the waiter as he placed the drink on the low table. “Enjoy it in good health.”
“Charge it to the AlphaOmega Security account.” While it exists, he thought. “And keep it open.”
Orion sipped his drink and watched the vast solar panel edge over the Hub, the strong intoxicants buzzing through his limbs and setting his mouth afire. Inch by inch, the Engineers’ megalithic energy-gathering device threw the metropolis into artificial night, quenching the skyline’s sunbaked gleam and unleashing the city’s pink nocturne of ambient light. By the time he neared the bottom of the silently swirling drink, lines of heavy thought creased his brow, and his chin sat firmly planted in his hand. Soon the mystskyn waiter returned with a second Twisted Taramoor held aloft.
“My man,” Orion said, the world made brighter by the drink’s subtle hallucinatory buzz. “You must have read my mind.”
“Actually, sir,” he said, setting the swirling cocktail on the table with a tink, “this is compliments of an admirer.”
The waiter nodded toward the bar, and Orion followed his gaze to a tiger-striped temba nubu in a slinky purple dress. She smiled with her race’s feline coyness and lifted her own Twisted Taramoor in her slender hand. Orion threw on his best smirk and waved her over before he could even think better of it. With a shrug that communicated some version of “why not,” she started across the color-shift floor to his table by the tall windows. A slit in her dress offered appealing flashes of striped alien flesh, and Orion watched her slinky stroll with hungry eyes. The waiter had disappeared without Orion even noticing, much less thanking the young man.
For a moment the statuesque temba nubu woman considered the seat opposite him. “May I?” she asked with a smile dancing in her green cat eyes.
“Of course,” Orion said with a flip of his hand. Drinking her in with his senses, he found her even more beautiful than Biz Tessia — at the moment, at least. “Thank you for the drink.”
Again she offered her nonchalant half-shrug. “I suppose I appreciate a man with a taste for danger.”
“Do you?” Orion could feel himself falling into the game, and for a moment he wanted to pull back. This was not the time, and he knew it somewhere beneath his self-pity. He had problems to solve, and nothing less than planetary destruction hung in the balance. Then she licked her lips with her pink, wet tongue, and it was too late. “And what kind of danger do you have a taste for?”
“All kinds.” She sipped her Twisted Taramoor, squinting at the vortex in her glass. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to find anyone who can keep up with me.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Do you?” she said with a tip of her head. “You say that as if you think you’re misunderstood.”
“Oh, no.” Orion put his glass down on the table with a sharp clank. “Please tell me you’re not a psychiatrist.”
This wrung a genuine laugh out of her. “Hardly. Might have spent a few hours on a couch, but who doesn’t these days?”
Orion laughed and picked up his swirling drink again, raising it to her for a toast. “To the couch.”
“To the couch,” she said, smiling as she touched her tall glass to his.
“So.” Orion sat back in his bio-mold chair, the gel shifting comfortably around his lean torso. “Where to start with the small talk?”
“Always the question,” she agreed.
“How about…” Orion snapped his fingers. “What brings you to Echohax Tower today?”
“Ah, that will unravel it all, yes?” She cocked a sharply drawn eyebrow. “Basically I’m sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing?” Orion glanced around the room at the crowd of executives, celebrities and old-money aliens. “Most people stop with a picture on the 198th floor’s skyview platform.”
“Oh, let’s call it what it is,” she sighed. “I’m punting around the galaxy spending my father’s money because I can’t decide what to do with my life.” She took a deep drink of her Twisted Taramoor. “Tragic, isn’t it?”
“Hey,” Orion said as he matched her slug. “I say if it works for you, stick with it.”
She ran a hand through her voluminous mane of striped hair and fanned at the flush brought on by the drink. “And what about you? What do you do?”
“I used to own a security company.” Now it was Orion’s turn to sigh. “But I think I might be between jobs.”
“Like, night watch at corporate buildings?” She leaned forward, her green eyes intense and unblinking. “Or more like datasphere security, that dreadfully technical sort of thing?”
“Neither, really,” Orion said with a shake of his head. “But it was dreadful.”
She leaned back with a gale of laughter that turned the heads of men from a few races. “I’m teasing you, you know. I watch the news occasionally, so I do know who you are, Mr. Grimslade. Everyone does.”
“Oh,” Orion said, freezing with his drink halfway to his mouth. “In that case, please, call me Orion.”
“I’m Pozoia,” she said, her pointed white teeth bright in her tawny face. “Pozoia Tofana.”
Burying his chagrin, Orion held his glass out to hers. “Pleased to meet you, Pozoia.”
She touched her glass to his again and glanced
around the glossy club. “So, this is what you’re doing tonight? Sitting here, drinking near-toxic drinks alone in the galaxy’s most expensive bar?”
Orion took down the next-to-last sip of his second Twisted Taramoor and signaled the waiter with two raised fingers. “Well, you watch the news. Seemed appropriate.”
“Because a bunch of out-of-touch politicians decided to pin the route collapse on you?” She leaned across the aquarium table and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You saved the Collective Fleet. Literally billions of lives.”
“But… tens of thousands of lives were still lost.” Orion glanced around at the glamorous crowd and felt the heat of scathing stares. “If you haven’t noticed, people don’t exactly smile when they see me.”
“People,” Pozoia scoffed. “What do they know? People are the worst.”
“You know what? You’re right.” He held up his glass to toast her again. “Here’s to me.”
More Twisted Taramoors arrived, and soon Orion and Pozoia were drawing glares for loud laughter and flirtatious conversation that bordered on the profane. Orion found her quite charming, and her subtly sensual body language told him more than enough about her opinion of him. After another three drinks each, they seemed to decide without a word that it was time to find somewhere private. Orion only hazily remembered signing for an exorbitant bar tab and an equally absurd gratuity. Then the two of them were pushing through the frosted-glass doors of AlphaOmega Security, kissing and groping as they stumbled over the threshold.
Immediately Bully interrupted them with a sharp bark that made Pozoia start. The genetically engineered Cane Corso leaped off the couch, and in the dimly lit office lobby, the huge dog looked like a growling mountain of shadowy muscles. Again he barked, deep and throaty.
“Bully,” Orion shouted, “be cool!”
“Charming creature,” Pozia muttered as she clung to Orion. “I’m sure once we get to know each other…”
“He’s usually well-mannered,” Orion said as the dog trembled with another rumbling growl. “Bully, go lay down,” Orion commanded, waving his hand at the couch.
The dog whimpered at Orion’s tone, his stubby tail folded down as he climbed back onto the cushions. After another deep kiss, Orion pulled Pozoia onward to his office. They entered to find the Hub glowing pink outside his windows, and the door closed behind them with a click. For a moment, Pozoia scanned the room with a puzzled look on her feline face.
“I thought we were going to your home,” she said with a slight smile, “and perhaps a… bed?”
Orion might have been embarrassed at this point, were he not so very drunk. “Yeah, well, my job keeps me traveling. But when I am home…” He went to the wall of photos commemorating AlphaOmega’s victories and laid his hand against a square panel. “This is my home.” Hidden motors hummed and brought down a king-sized bed with silky gray sheets and a bio-mold mattress.
Pozoia laughed for a few moments, her fragrant mane shaking, and then she shrugged. “Good enough for me,” she said, breathless.
Orion laughed too and started toward his three-tiered minibar. “Do you want another drink, or—”
She moved with the speed of a jungle cat and was on him, pressing her mouth to his, pulling off his white coat and tearing open the buttons of his shirt. Her purple dress fell to the floor a second later as Orion slipped the loops off her shoulders. Pozoia shoved him back toward the bed, and Orion locked her in his sinewy arms and pulled her down on top of him. What followed was intense, testing both Orion’s stamina and his bed frame’s welds. As their tryst neared its climax, Orion ended up on top. At the moment they reached the point-of-no-return, Orion felt Pozoia drag her claws across his back. This was not a bit of playful roughness, but long gashes wet with blood.
“Ouch,” he snapped as he grabbed her wrists and pinned her arms to the mattress. “Don’t you think that’s a little much?”
“Not at all,” Pozoia said, glancing at her blood-tipped fingers. “I think it was just enough.” She smiled coyly as liquid silver rippled over her right forearm and solidified into a spellblade gauntlet.
Orion leaped back across his office clothed in nothing more than the Hub’s pink glow. Instinctively, he called forth his own ancient manacite weapon and conjured a short sword. “Who are you?” he bellowed.
Pozoia laughed as she sat up on the bed. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”
She held up her silver fist, the gauntlet crawling with electric-purple veins, and spread her fingers wide. A billowing blast of lavender gas enveloped Orion, and he stumbled back over the hologram stage, falling awkwardly against the wall. After a split-second of exposure his breath came in short, pained gasps, and his vision blurred. He hauled himself to his feet and staggered forward to escape the churning cloud, but it seemed to cling to him. As wild spasms wracked his muscles, the sword melted in his hand and his armored gauntlet lost definition. After a moment Orion fell to his knees, blood running from his nose as he lost control of his bowels. Somewhere behind the hammering of his heart, Orion could hear Bully’s thunderous barks.
“You might be wondering if I plan to slit your throat,” Pozoia said as she sauntered into the paling purple cloud, apparently unaffected. “But honestly, that would be inelegant when I can let a little of your own blood do the work.”
Gasping, Orion fell forward. He spit flecks of foam and clawed for her with his right hand, but he could form neither words nor weapons. His heart throbbed in every fiber of his being as sweat poured off his skin, and black mushrooms bloomed across his vision. As consciousness ebbed, Orion saw his parents in his mind’s eye. His father’s face contorted with grief, but his mother simply fixed him with her cold green eyes for a moment. Then she turned and walked away, her long fall of sandy-blonde hair swaying with her steps.
“Ah, ah,” Pozoia said, slapping his face sharply to bring him back to reality. “You don’t have long, but I want you awake for every moment of the agony. Ruga Dur Rugex Cron was a brother to me, Ayano 210 a sister. You will suffer for what you did to them.” Orion’s lungs seized and he coughed up a thick red clot, but Pozoia kept talking. “My lord father doesn’t just want you to die. He wants you to suff—”
A splintering crash interrupted her, and Bully growled as he shook off the remnants of the shattered office door. Pozoia gasped, but Bully was already leaping through the cloud of poison. They collided with a truncated shriek and a slick crunch, and Pozoia Tofana’s body hit the floor, her eyes wide and her neck twisted in Bully’s jaws. The huge dog stepped off her and shook his head as the lilac gas slowly dissipated. But Bully had inhaled more than a lungful already, and soon he was shaking and foaming on the floor next to Orion.
Orion used reserves of will he didn’t know he had to drag his body forward and lay a shaking, boil-covered hand on his dog. He found himself unable to draw more than a thimbleful of air, and so he laid his head down and resolved to stop fighting. Yet in those last moments of consciousness, Orion heard a gruff durok voice. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
Chapter 19
Orion fell through the dark layers of twisted dreams. First, he endured a conversation with his father in Zovaco Ralli’s office. Though his father’s words were spoken in an incomprehensible hiver dialect, everything he said felt steeped in disappointment. Next, he relived his mother’s suicide attempt, once again a young boy. Yet this time when he pushed open the bathroom door, he found Dalaxa Croy in the tub, pinkish blood flowing from her slender forearms. Then he stood atop the spire of Echohax Tower as he had over a year ago, but LaVal LaVoy and Katherine Vanlith had switched places, and the SpaceCorps commander slew the Guild assassin instead.
Orion fell one final time and found himself on the rocky planes of Khanpara Guha. Twin suns scorched the sky a pale, cloudless blue above him, and a hot breeze seared his face. The gnarled wasteland of a savage world stretched out below the mesa w
here he had lived for two years. Across the mesa, his old teacher Crag Dur Rokis Crag climbed out of their battered escape pod and approached him. His ragged clothes clung to his sinewy red body, and the yellow eyes beneath his broken-horn crown carried a steely glare.
“It is time to complete your training,” said Crag, his lips twisted down in a perpetual frown. “Today is the day you take up the Blade of the Word.”
Orion eyed the silver A-within-O tattoo on the durok’s right wrist. “I’m ready,” Orion said with a nod, his shaggy blond hair like a halo around his sunburned face. “And I’ll keep my promise, Crag. I’ll use it for good. I won’t let it use me.”
“So you say,” Crag grumbled. He turned and stalked back to the escape pod they had landed in so many months before. From the shadow of the chunky tube, Crag picked up two sharpened staffs they used to hunt the strange rodents of the planes. “Our emergency rations and vitamin supplements are nearly depleted,” he said as he returned. “And the water purifier will not last another dry season. When we’re done, you’ll have to leave this place.” He threw one of the staffs to Orion with a whip-like snap of his arm.
Orion plucked it from the parched air and spun it idly between his nimble fingers. “We’ll both leave,” he said, not sure if he was asking a question or not. “I’ve got a lot to figure out, but I have an idea. An idea for building something. And I’ll need… well, I want you to be part of it.”
“No, Orion.” Crag paced out into the center of the mesa. “I am sick.” He held out his arms, his rags clinging to a frame grown too thin. “Do you not see it, or do you not want to see it?”
“Crag,” Orion said, shaking his head as his mind groped for words. “Don’t say that. With a few consulin treatments, you could be good as new. You don’t know…”
