Bastion Saturn (27 page)

Jennifer cocked her head and grimaced like she was dealing with a nasty smell. “Kind of a sadistic fella, aren’t yah? Daddy beat you much?”

King ignored this and stepped down out of the ring with the assistance of two of his people.

Claris quickly stepped close to Jennifer and sneered. Then, as if she had practiced the timing, the horn sounded and she simultaneously delivered a crushing punch to the top of Jen’s chest. Jennifer gasped as the air shot out of her. A second blow was only slightly less devastating, as she backed and ducked, the fist glancing off the edge of her temple. A swinging kick swept one of Jen’s legs and she nearly dropped to the matt. She caught herself at the last moment and backpedaled while trying to reset her lungs. The crowd of women cheered as Claris didn’t slow down, staying right on her, with Jen backed into the ropes. The larger woman brought a knee up with the intent to deliver a crippling Charlie horse to Jen’s thigh, only to be surprised as Jen side-stepped it and used the leg’s momentum to keep it going up, flipping the woman over to land face down on the matt.

Several of the monks smiled.

Claris barely noticed the change in position, sweeping her leg to try another trip, catching one of Jen’s ankles. Her second foot caught Jen’s thigh with a hard enough kick to summon a gasp from the crowd.

Jennifer felt a jolt of fear shoot through her as the pain shot up through her hip.

A twist and a flip and Claris was back on her feet, fists up and coming in fast. Jennifer limped hastily to the opposite corner.

Spruck gripped Natalie’s hand saying, “Not the
Belle
.”

Natalie shook his hand off with annoyance.

Claris stopped in the center of the ring and regarded Jennifer with a predator’s smile. She was a cat toying with a mouse. “I’m going to hurt you now. Nothing personal.” She charged. Jennifer stepped toward her and grabbed Claris’ punching arm, trying to use the woman’s own momentum to flip her, but the greased arm slipped free. As Claris passed, the huge woman punched with her free fist, connecting hard with Jennifer’s jaw.

Jennifer heard a ringing in her ears as her vision skewed and a sharp pain shot across her entire head and into the opposite shoulder. She ran again to the opposite side. The crowd of women alternately cheered their champion and booed Jennifer. She made eye contact with Caleb sitting on the edge of his seat, white knuckles crushing the chair arms, eyes wide, clearly helpless. She could hear Claris’s heavy foot falls right behind her. Just as the woman reached her shoulder, Jen ducked, reached up and got a grip on one of Claris’s wrists. This time it didn’t slip, and she used the woman’s momentum to throw her over her shoulder, slamming Claris’ back hard to the ground while her legs dragged and bounced down the ropes. Despite the blow, Claris managed to reach up and poke a finger into Jen’s right eye.

Jennifer staggered back, her eye clamped shut with her hand slapping over it. Again, Claris almost effortlessly flipped herself onto her feet.

That’s when Jennifer heard her battle-hardened mother yelling at her. The memory filled her head with such a rush as to almost make it seem real. “What the fuck, little girl! Nobody beats up my baby unless it’s me!”

This time when Claris charged, Jennifer’s body remembered everything that her mother had drilled into her head. Judo was about using the opponent’s own strength to beat her. The grease had been smeared off enough so that Jennifer could get a good grip. One moment Claris was on her feet delivering a devastating blow, the next she was head over tea kettle slamming hard to the matt with Jennifer on her like a twisting anaconda. With one fluid movement, Jen wrapped her legs around her victim, locked Claris’ left arm in a hold that forced the elbow joint to bend the wrong way. Claris screamed as Jennifer applied her upper body weight to the joint. Unable to find her voice for making words, Claris tapped furiously on the matt. Jennifer held tight, her body like a tightly twisted rubber band. Her eyes cast about for King. When she spotted him, he was seated in a relaxed pose, hands crossed behind his back. She knew he could read the question on her face. He lifted his right hand, made a fist with the thumb extended sideways in the style of a Roman dictator. Without hesitation he pointed the thumb down.

Jennifer gritted her teeth. “Sorry, girlfriend.” She applied further pressure until an audible snap shifted Claris’ scream into an impossibly high pitch, silencing the room.

Jennifer then got her victim into a quick choke hold, applying it until the screaming turned to a gurgle, then silence and the woman passed out.

Jennifer extricated herself and stood exhausted.

Her friends stared in amazement. The Cockneys stared in amazement. Claris’s fellow security women offered only small whispers, while also looking on stupefied. The monks sat impassively, but Tanaka offered Jennifer a private smile. King turned and walked to his elevator.

A single pair of hands began clapping slowly. Tanaka stood and was joined by the rest of the monks. Steadily, the remainder of the room fell into polite but reluctant clapping as well.

An Amazon Security doctor climbed into the ring to attend to Claris’s prostrate form. Saanvi followed her and guided Jennifer to the ring’s edge.

Jennifer caught Caleb’s eye and he slowly mouthed,
Wow.

Later, on the monastery side of the moon, a meal of fish, rice and seaweed sat before the gang, prepared and presented in a simple Japanese way. In addition to Tanaka, Oshima and a few other monks, and the Cockneys sat at the table as well. Several bottles of chilled sake were already empty. Bert stood at attention at the edge of the small room that was traditionally floored with tatami mats. Like a loyal dog, he had placed himself directly behind and to the right of Jennifer. A yellow bruise was welling up on her cheek, and the poked eye was bright red with burst blood vessels, but otherwise she appeared well. A shower and a return to her white jumpsuit had mostly restored her. The sake didn’t hurt, either. Caleb was sitting right next to her and kept stealing glances. She finally whispered, “What?”

He whispered back, “Is it wrong to say that you’ve got me seriously turned on?”

She smirked and said through a bite, “You’re always turned on.”

“Yeah, but this is a different kind of turned on. I can’t believe the way you kicked that woman’s ass.”

“So you keep saying.”

“I imagine that you could kick my ass.”

“You imagine correctly.”

“That turns me incredibly and shockingly on.”

“Keep it in your pants.”

“I think I love you.”

“In your pants.”

Tanaka raised a small sake cup. “So, we’re in agreement. You will act as agent for our product on the colonies that our English friends have not already arranged for.”

Caleb raised his cup. “And Hanson as well. We’ll try anyway.”

Everyone joined him in raising a cup. Georgie Boy said, “We managed Soul. Hanson’s an ‘ard nutter to crack, mates.”

Spruck held his cup higher and said with a slight slur, “To cracking Hanson. Shouldn’t be hard with product like this.”

“Kanpai!” said Tanaka.

“Kanpai,” said the rest in return, clinking their cups and throwing back the sake.

A light groan of dismay escaped Caleb’s lips as the smell of fresh cut Vermont grass evaporated from his dream. Like the last puff of smoke from a snuffed candle, the dream was suddenly gone, replaced instead with cold empty space. Rather than a lazy day lounging on a broad lawn overlooking the Chesapeake, Caleb woke to the Sun streaming into the cockpit of the
Diamond Girl
and blazing a line across his eyes. Somehow, one of the mirrored panels that Harry counted on to direct the feeble sunlight onto his crops had been knocked out of alignment. As Caleb pushed himself back out of the bright line, he spotted the sexbot that Spruck had dumped his latest earnings on. The extraordinarily beautiful looking machine was making a walk of shame back to Harry’s bar. But for a pair of go-go boots that shuffled along in efficient baby steps, the Asian looking model was naked, its bright white skin glowing against Rhea’s gray moonscape.

With a groan, Caleb stretched and felt his head pound with an epic hangover. His mouth tasted like he had licked the floor of the bar. His memory of the previous night was thin enough that he didn’t doubt the possibility. He needed to get one of Harry’s cure-all greasy breakfasts into his gut pronto. A beer wouldn’t hurt, either. Reluctantly climbing back into his filthy elastoware, he put a text out to the rest of the gang to let them know he was going to eat. They could join if they wanted. A rooster crowed feebly beyond the main cabin bulkhead, the bird hopelessly pecking away at its cage in the ship’s storage. The squawk wasn’t sounding as robust as when Caleb first brought the birds aboard. He’d have to make sure Bert was taking proper care of the creatures.

As he climbed through the exosuit hatch, a weak grin pulled at his cheeks. What a strange business he was in. Though the peddling of the monk’s elixirs was still the primary function of his gang’s small enterprise, they had found themselves bartering and trading all manner of sundries and whatnots as they traveled around the system.

Caleb felt the air briefly compress against the back of his neck as the exosuit hatch closed. He settled into the clammy thing and decided right then that he could wait no longer. He needed to get to Hanson where everything on and in his ship could be cleaned top to bottom. He opened the outer hatch and was greeted by the mother planet, huge and overwhelming, taking up the entire horizon. Titan was orbiting close by, and the great orange ball beckoned to Caleb with Hanson’s promise of comfort and civilization. Their next stop, the moon Pan, was also in sight. Nestled in Saturn’s rings, the small satellite carved a neat gap between the rings that shone like a big black band. Not for the first time, Caleb marveled at the sight of the thin strips of billions of ice crystals that made up the rings. It wasn’t summer in Vermont, but it was equally breathtaking.

Caleb had developed a sort of side-to-side, toe-to-toe motion to move across the ground. Harry’s airlock was only fifty feet away. So much work for fifty feet. His head started pounding to the rhythm of his movement. Natalie was just stepping away from the
Phoebe
, and she gave him a wave. Her voice broke in on his com link, the surprise of it adding an exclamation point to the head pounding. “Morning, baby,” she called, with her trademark chipper voice. The woman could drink a bottle of what-blinds-you the night before and the next morning sound like she just finished a jog high on coffee, maybe amphetamines. He hated her for such skills or genes or attitude or whatever it was. He chose not to say anything back, instead, asking himself why he’d sent out the general invite for breakfast—Natalie was the opposite of a hangover cure. He glanced back at the
Phoebe
. No lights, no long-legged Jennifer stepping out behind Natalie for breakfast. With his drunk on the night before, a pass had been made. His hand briefly tingled at the memory of it laying on her thigh. Drunk herself, Jennifer had let him leave it there for a moment, avoiding embarrassing him by batting it away. She had waited until the others were engrossed in conversation before turning to look at him square in the eyes. Everything was there:
what are your intentions, where do you think this could go, do we need this distraction, yes, I find you attractive as well, but not enough to complicate our arrangement, if we could just fuck and move on that would be great, but that’s not how it would go down, would it?
He had slowly removed his hand, the warmth of her thigh lingering on his palm. Caleb shook his head free of the memory, exacerbating the headache. He had three women on his team, all in their forties, but with GDF11 therapy, no different from three twenty-eight-year-olds—three hot twenty-eight-year-olds. If he didn’t get laid soon, he’d fall into a different kind of distraction. Hell, he was already there.

The eggs were real. The cheese was from some plant fat with flavoring. The beer was as real as anything gets in space, and Caleb could feel his headache slipping away. Strange how the antidote to poison was more poison. Saanvi had joined him and Natalie, and the three of them ate in silence.

Caleb finally said, “So I’m thinking about going to Hanson when we’re done on Pan.” The grenade of a suggestion lay on the table. Would anyone pull the pin?

“Why?” asked Saanvi

Boom.

“Everything about me and my ship is filthy. A good cleaning is only available there. I want to sit in the park and watch some life go by, maybe while drinking real wine. If I don’t get some time around some green, other than Harry’s crops, I’m going to go nuts.”

“We could shop,” said Natalie. “This girl could use some fresh duds.”

Spruck came in from the exosuit locker with a big post-coital grin. He called out to Harry, who stood behind his bar polishing glasses, “Thank you, sir. Your girls are the finest in the galaxy.”

Caleb’s lips puckered as if he was chewing a lemon. “You know you’re sticking your dick into a robot, right?”

Spruck sat with eyebrows raised in gleeful agreement. “You finished with those?” He slid Caleb’s unfinished cold eggs over and shoveled them into his mouth. Speaking while chewing he said, “Have you been with one of those things? No? Well trust me, if you had you’d never want to stick your wick into anything else. They’ve got this pulsing, wavelike—”

Natalie held up her hand. “Nope. No, no. I gave up my bunk on the
Belle
last night so I wouldn’t have to hear this. Mixed company, eating breakfast, hangover, and well, shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, please shut the heck up about that,” added Saanvi.

Caleb sat back. “Salty language from you this morning, Doctor.”

“Your fault.” Then she looked at Spruck. “No, his with the drinking games. Both of your faults.” She looked back at Caleb. “Yours for bringing us here.”

Spruck wasn’t letting it go, saying, “Just sayin’, she can talk about Beethoven if I want while the pulsing waves are moving to the score. Try doing it to the Fifth Symphony. Dum, dum, dum, duh . . .”