by Audrey Grey
For the most part, the Alliance was a myth the fleshers told themselves for peace. Hope. At least, that was Tandy’s opinion.
Talia knew humans wouldn’t have given up without a fight. If she could just find a way to escape, she could join that fight.
When she’d entered the bridge earlier, the Odysseus’s crew was already dressed and ready to depart. Instead of snowsuits this time, they wore thin, mismatched jumpsuits with oxygen masks hanging around their necks for ready use. Lux was bright inside a purple suit embroidered with gold on the cuffs. Will’s navy-blue jumpsuit had been traded for a tight-fitting red one, reminding her of his corded muscles and tight waist—before she remembered she was supposed to loathe him.
They were hiding their identities from whoever was chasing them, or trying to blend in to this new off-world planet. Although Talia had never heard of Palatine, a tiny mining colony planet under Thoros, Jane rattled off a dozen gambling dens they could visit, revealing once again how little Talia knew of this century.
Same as the last planet they stopped on, Leo was supposed to stay with her and guard the ship, but at the last second, he decided to change the plans, suiting up in a fiery-orange jumpsuit, the only one big enough for his muscled frame. His gaudy green leather boots poked out below, shiny and polished to perfection.
“You know,” he said, twisting his long braids into a knot behind his head. “I just remembered a man I know here who might have a body for Jane.”
Lux rolled her eyes. “Why are you just mentioning this now?”
Leo busied himself with fixing his high collar. “Just remembered.”
“Who’s going to watch the ship?” Will asked. He’d fitted two blasters at his side and added a black trench to his ensemble. Talia hated to admit he looked dashing.
“Jane. Might do her some good to stay on board—otherwise, we’ll have half the gambling dens of Palatine after us before we can depart.”
“Like you aren’t just saying that so you can visit the escorts?” Lux grumbled under her breath. Then her dark eyebrows gathered as she slid her gaze to Talia. “And the princess? We can’t afford Jane to glitch while watching her.”
“She can come on-world with me.” Leo spoke off-handedly, his voice casual and spontaneous, as if the idea just came to him. But there was something off about that casualness that grabbed her attention, and she straightened, curious to see where this went.
Will paused from checking his blaster’s charge, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he glanced over at Leo. “That’s a huge risk, Leo. Once we hand her off, our jump status will resume. All of us can jump to new bodies when our time comes, Jane first. Why would we risk losing the girl for a black-market body now?”
Leo lifted his big shoulders up in a shrug that seemed a bit too forced. “Just figured with Tandy and me both watching her, it’d be fine. Anything happens, Tandy can alert you on the coms, and she won’t get far with the tracking chip inside that bracelet. Plus, I don’t trust her here in the ship, not after last time.”
The argument was a good one, if not a little too well thought out for Leo. Tandy was attached to Talia at the wrist, and according to holo-girl, only her owner had the key to unlock it. Even if Talia could somehow overcome Leo without a weapon, Tandy the tattletale would be along for the ride, conveying Talia’s every movement.
Will raked a hand through his hair, the tightness in his jaw easing as he considered the proposal.
“And Jane is like a second mom to me,” Leo continued, his voice thick with emotion. “I’d do anything for her, and I don’t trust something unless it’s tangible and right in front of me. We can find her a body, Will. Before it’s too late.”
Will rolled his head side-to-side, stretching his neck likely to buy more time to think. For some reason, Talia’s heart kicked wildly against her ribs.
Then he groaned. “Don’t make me regret this, Leo.”
As soon as they slipped through the crowded port and into the streets, Talia wished she’d stayed behind. Palatine was a hot, arid cesspool of ore miners and ore barons all crammed into a city of metal. Ugly, windowless steel buildings blocked the sky, glittering and huge, their points tapering off into sharp ends like spears. The space surrounding the small group was crammed full of hover traffic, dark lines of cruisers and shuttles inching along. A noxious mixture of fuel vapors and tinny smoke choked the air.
The only color came from the holo-billboards slapped across the buildings and the walking holo-adverts. Most were selling human services. Flesher escorts and pleasurers—the only difference being, the holo-salesman explained, one was rented for the night, the other for an hour—flesher nannies, flesher chefs and companions. The list of services humans performed was never-ending. A tireless mockery of the duties mocks used to perform.
But it wasn’t wrong then because mocks had been created by humans . . . nothing more than metal and wires and computer programs. Or so she’d thought.
A reedy mock with a cheap suit and three human girls chained behind him came up, his eyes looking Talia up and down and inspiring murder inside her heart.
“How much for this one?” The mock slaver scratched his jaw as he let his oily gaze linger on her breasts. “She’s remarkably fresh looking for such a pretty face.”
She bared her teeth at him. Just touch me, bastard, and see what happens.
“Oh, you wouldn’t like her,” Tandy remarked in her most serious voice. “She’s very unpleasant and disagreeable.”
The mock’s grin widened, and Talia wished she could punch it from his face. “A few months in my possession and I’d change all that.”
Leo thrust his broad hand out, forcing the mock out of her face. “Not for sale. Now move along.”
The disgust lacing Leo’s voice seemed at odds with all the stories she’d heard about his run-ins with escorts, but she shrugged it off as him being in a mood.
The handler backed off, and she spat fire at the creep with her eyes as he continued on with his slaves. Everything inside her begged to take Leo’s blaster and put a melon-sized hole in the middle of that jerk’s face, and she forced herself back around so she didn’t have to watch him berate the three human girls shackled to him like cattle.
She ground her teeth together. Funny that Lux used words like civility when she mentioned the world today. That was definitely not the word she’d use to describe this place. Not even close.
Leo used his size to sweep a path through the vendor tents around the port, and once they cleared the crowded space and the sun hit her cheeks, the tension in Talia’s body eased.
Talia blinked up at the tell-tale shimmer of the bio-dome above. To think a membrane that thin and delicate was all that kept the citizens of Palatine alive was a bit disconcerting. Without it, the oxygen pumped by the generators near the core would be lost to the atmosphere, and everyone would die.
Before landing, she’d had time to survey the planet, and it was nothing more than a pile of sand and the occasional granite mountain, veined with minerals that validated the existence of such an uninhabitable, sparse world.
“How much farther?” Talia asked as they crossed a bridge over a muddy, stagnant river choked with trash.
Leo shielded his eyes as he squinted across the street at a collection of beautiful high rises. The streets below were clean, the air traffic between the buildings less crowded, the cruisers zipping above the smooth pavement higher-end crafts with custom paintjobs and shiny metallic trim.
“There’s a restaurant on the other side. He’s waiting for us there.”
Crossing the streets took five minutes, and it took another five to find the restaurant. It was three stories up, a red tarp above the entrance the only sign an establishment here existed. Although crafts regularly dropped off occupants at the businesses surrounding it, no one entered its door.
Since most mocks only ate once a day, Leo explained as they waited for a hover to take them up, most chose dinnertime. If it were nighttime, they might wait hour
s to catch a hover.
The foyer of the restaurant was dark and quiet. The windows had been blacked out, and the walls were holo-screens portraying moonlit beaches lined with tiki-torches, the muffled break of waves at once both soothing and disconcerting. The stench and chaos of the city outside faded.
A few seconds after they entered, a flesher girl around Talia’s age with wary brown eyes and mousy hair appeared from the back. She wore a metallic halter top, sequined shorts, and enough red lipstick to paint a house.
Talia strained forward to listen as Leo whispered to the girl. Then she nodded and skipped off to the back room, beckoning them to follow. Talia ducked through the glowing beads that separated the rooms. The other side was darker and smokier, and definitely not just a restaurant. Empty black booths were scattered around the room, all facing a stage in the middle. With poles. Exotic music vibrated the wood-paneled walls, and a dark-skinned holo-girl danced to the frenetic beat, twirling suggestively around a pole.
Talia flicked up her eyebrows, both impressed with the mock’s moves and annoyed with Leo for dragging her to a strip club. “Leo—”
Leo held up a hand to silence her complaint and then jerked his chin to a booth near the back.
The seats were red leather, the table wobbly. Tandy, beaming like she was on a special date, ordered an expensive glass of pinot noir and filet mignon from the waitress. Talia stuck with water—thirty credits worth, apparently, according to the bill displayed on the holo-menu they ordered from.
“Water and oxygen are the most valuable currencies here,” Leo explained over the music, his head pivoting as he continued to watch for whomever they were meeting. “Why you can never go wrong with a gin and tonic.”
Talia had already moved on to wondering how Tandy would eat, but the waitress answered that question when she arrived with their orders. Tandy’s wine and steak were both holo-versions, not that she seemed to be able to tell the difference.
Tandy swirled her wine around inside its glass and raised an elegant, perfectly plucked eyebrow at Talia. “What?”
“Can you taste it?” Talia asked, nodding to the food. The song had stopped playing, thank the stars, and they could talk without shouting.
“Of course. What would be the point otherwise?”
Leo chuckled. “A lot of mocks who can’t afford real humans use holo-girls instead, so the restaurants accommodate them. No one wants to go on a date and be the only one eating.”
Date? Talia sipped her water, cringing at the metallic aftertaste. Apparently expensive didn’t mean good. “Is that why you got her? To have someone to eat with?”
Her question was brazen, but after last night’s discoveries and now this strip club detour, she was feeling brazen.
“No, Princess. Tandy here belonged to a mock baron from a slave planet near the Outer Fringes. He was . . . cruel to her.” Tandy took a long pull of her wine as he spoke. “He was going to give her to a mining crew and purchase a new, less melancholy pleasure holo, so I offered to buy her.”
“I’m not melancholy. I’m sensitive,” Tandy said, crossing her arms. “And he was a crude man not worthy of my company. Not like Leo here.”
A blush crept up Leo’s neck, and he looked relieved as the waitress brought a mock male over. The mock was tall and surprisingly handsome, an expensive, midnight-blue suit tailored to show off his wide shoulders and trim waist. Glossy-black hair was neatly trimmed close to his head, contrasting against porcelain skin and startling sky-blue eyes.
He was basically the opposite of Leo: dark, elegant, and refined.
“You know, darling, my feelings about discussing business here,” the mock said, speaking low as his gaze darted around the empty room. He had a sultry accent she guessed was Krenthian, or maybe one of their off-world colonies.
“I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t important.” The serious tone of Leo’s voice made Talia’s head snap up. “We don’t have much time.”
The man nodded to the waitress, and she left the room, closing the door behind her. After he made sure they were alone, the man turned to face Leo again, face twisted with hurt. “What? I don’t see you for almost a year, and that’s all I get?”
Leo’s voice was low as he said, “I’m sorry, Mathew. Okay. But we don’t have time to—”
The mock, Mathew, took Leo’s square, stubbled jaw inside elegantly manicured fingers, pulled him close, and kissed him.
Talia’s mouth fell open. She looked to Tandy, but other than the twinge of a jealous frown, she didn’t appear surprised.
Mathew finally pulled away, smiling. “Better. Now, what did you want to ask me?”
Leo scratched his neck, which was now a bright-red shade to match the waitress’s lipstick, and said, “Um . . . the Alliance. Can you get someone to them today?”
Talia’s heart skipped a beat. Alliance? Forgetting all about Leo’s kiss, she leaned in, unblinking as the man’s gaze flitted to her, his face darkening. “Not possible. The queen’s forces are everywhere—”
“We don’t have a choice.” Leo finally met Talia’s open-mouthed stare. “We need to get her to our mutual friends, and soon.”
Talia’s pulse raced so fast inside her ears she had to strain to hear over it. Was she hearing right? She should have trusted Leo before, when he’d tried to tell her she could.
Tandy’s face had gone from perplexed to disapproving, and she shook her head. “No, Leo. You could get in trouble.”
“It’s the right thing to do, Tandy.”
“But . . . if the queen finds out—”
“She won’t.” Leo cut her off, and Tandy flinched at his brusque tone. Sighing, Leo’s voice became gentle. “Look, you’ve always known I worked for the Alliance, so this shouldn’t surprise you.”
Mathew grinned at Tandy, obviously enjoying her scolding, and Tandy shot him a dark look as he ran a thumb over Leo’s hand. “Anyone that knows you knows you’re a sucker for lost causes.” He flashed Tandy an I-know-him-better-than-you look. “But it’s just too dangerous right now to contact our friends. Besides, I don’t know her.”
Mathew turned his intense stare on Talia, appraising her from head to toe. “Who are you, anyway?”
A wide grin split Leo’s face. “Mathew Winecraft, meet Princess Talia Starchaser from the Starchaser Dynasty.”
“No . . .” Mathew’s eyes went wide, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. “After all your dreaming, scheming ways. You actually found her!”
“Wait,” Tandy said, her gaze sliding from Mathew to Leo. “How does he know about the princess? I thought all trace of the Starchasers had been erased from the histories?”
Leo looked at Talia as he spoke. “The queen tried, but the Alliance remembered. And when we discovered the full, un-redacted report from that day and realized you were unaccounted for, Princess . . . Well, I’ve been searching for you ever since. Do you know how many laws I had to break to get assigned to a scavenger ship?”
“Why?” Talia asked. “You’re a mock.”
“Not all mocks believe we should rule over humans. There are some of us who’ve fought and died trying to free your kind. Finding you has always been our best hope for peace between us.”
“How? What can I do?”
“Everything.” The way he said that word sent shivers racing down to her toes. “Right now, the Alliance is just pockets of scattered humans and mocks, but you can unite them—even lead them, if you want. Together, we might stand a chance.”
For the first time since she woke up, Talia’s vision blurred with tears. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”
“I couldn’t be sure it was you at first. I didn’t have your picture or another way to identify you.”
“Because the queen erased me.” Anger tightened her shoulders and jaw and dried up the tears. “I hope one day to meet this queen and return the favor.”
“Just hopefully not today.” Leo chuckled at his own joke. “Right now, we need to move before Will and the crew realize
I’ve betrayed them.” As he spoke, his gaze collapsed to his hands, his jaw popping. How long had he been with the crew of the Odysseus? To live and eat and spend so much time with them . . . It was obvious he hated to hurt them. “They’ll be coming for us soon.”
“What about Jane’s body?” Obviously with Talia gone, they wouldn’t get their jump status back—something she’d learned all about from Tandy’s history lesson.
“I’ll have Mathew send one to the ship. Right, dear?”
Mathew made a dramatic show of rolling his gorgeous eyes. “Anything for this man.”
Tandy scoffed at Mathew under her breath, but Talia was too busy freaking out to care about the holo-girl’s jealous mutterings. It was really happening. Her head was spinning; the few sips of water she’d taken threatened to come back up.
Everything had changed so fast. Now that Mathew knew who she was, he agreed to help, and he had one of his bouncers, a human bigger than Leo, bring around the hover and drop them street level. Until Mathew’s friend from the Alliance could meet them with a cleared vessel and fake identities, traveling on foot was safer.
Talia hardly noticed the smog and pollution permeating the air this time. Her mind was on finding the rest of her people and helping them any way she could. And a part of her, however small, held out hope Ailat had found a way to jump bodies and was with the Alliance. Maybe she didn’t sell Talia out, after all. The Collector could have been lying . . .
They’d hardly made it ten feet when Leo halted near a dumpster and went rigid. The breath caught in Talia’s chest.
Something was wrong.
Leo reached for his blaster. Between one blink and the next, someone plucked his weapon from his waist and leapt back. Lux. She twirled his blaster in her hand while walking backward out of reach, shaking her head as she did.
Her eyes flashed hurt and betrayal. “Traitor,” she spat. “Good for nothing idiot bastard traitor!”
Whimpering, Tandy wrapped her holo-arms around Leo’s waist, as if she could protect him from Lux’s weapon. Tandy’s holo-image flickered back and forth—she was shivering.
