Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe (9 page)

“I know. We can’t afford a guide. We go slow. We stick to the plan.”

“Yes, lord.” More tapping and some words she couldn’t hear properly. “They’ve given us clearance, grudgingly. One minute. Then we hit the flight path.”

Blinking red lines appeared on the holoscreen, drawing a cone-shaped path diving down to the surface of Riptide.

“Good.” Torgeir said over his shoulder to her, “This isn’t some tourist spot. Riptide is one of the poorest, most over-populated and under-financed planets in the ’verse. The war depleted a lot of planets, made them resource poor.”

Wow.
She’d looked it up but that must be in the fine print. The planet had sounded...industrious, old. The government was via a hegemonic monarchy, whatever that was, and some of the cityscapes had made her feel claustrophobic. “Remind me why I’m following you down there?”

He grinned, and it reminded her of that sense of humor of his that made all his bad points fade away, temporarily anyway. “Because you’re on the same ship as me. Because no one else would let us even attempt to land this heap, with only two crew, without levying a hundred charges on our tail. I’m not rich, Ella, haven’t been for years. This place here.” He pointed at the screen. “It’s where I start to make a new life. The
Finatar
, if we land her okay, will be a great beginning. ”

“Oh. Me too. A new beginning.” She firmed her mouth, staring at the revolving planet.

The night side glowed with a million lights but their red blinking path led them down to the daylight side. “We’re headed for the light.”

“Mm-hm.”

That had to be a sign.

“Keep your eyes open. It’ll be pretty as well as a little hair-raising. The port we’re going to is antiquated but it’s near one of the districts where we should be able to get accommodation and afford to live.”

“We?”

“Yes.”

Persistent, insufferable man. “So you’re about to risk our lives landing at some sort of garbage dump port so we can live in the slums?”

“You summed that up well.”

“He has a big cock though,” Dresdek muttered.

Ohmigod.

Torgeir grinned again. “Why do I take you anywhere?”

“My good taste? Here we go. Ten, nine, eight...”

The screen seemed not to show the heat radiating off the ship’s shields. The screen flickered now and then, but stayed mostly clear as they flew into the upper atmosphere and through the clouds. When an alarm blurted on, ringing through the small room, Dresdek slapped at a few more buttons and it stopped.

“Small loss of surface. Lost a panel over the hole.”

“Still intact, though?”

“We’ve one more layer. It should hold. I pray.”

Ella’s eyes popped wide. Should? She’d never heard Dresdek pray about anything.

They dived lower, flattened out over a sparkling ocean, screamed over fleets of ships and a floating suburbia, then over land, between some towering metropolis, and headed straight toward what seemed a monstrous pyramid topped with the head and shoulders of a gigantic sky-eating bird.

How big was that thing?

At the last second they veered and slowed, tipping slightly upward over a motley landscape of rusty, ramshackle, and sometimes gleaming spaceships. The
Finatar
landed, shuddering as some new power was unleashed; the ship shook so much that she seemed torn between landing and exploding.

Ella tried not to look scared but her teeth were gritted tight in a lockjaw of terror and her heartbeat was growing louder in her ears with every moment.

Calm. Be calm.

The last bump and shudder tapered to a whine. A whiff of smoke spread into the bridge and another alarm blared until Torgeir whacked some button with his palm.

“We’re fine. Fire’s out. Remind me to replace that, Dresdek.”

He coughed. “I will. Don’t fancy being barbequed in outer space.” He put his hands to his forehead and dragged them down his face. “We’re alive?”

“Yup.” Torgeir unstrapped and smacked Dresdek on the arm. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

*****

Breakfast was easy, since they ate it on the ship, but by lunchtime, after clearing the equivalent of customs here, they’d trekked all over the nearby area.

“How big is this city?” she asked, turning in a small circle on account of the mill of people around them.

“It’s not a city. It’s planetwide. It keeps going. Apart from the seas, almost every inch is covered by buildings. This here.” Torgeir vaguely waved at their surrounds and the towering stone and metal buildings. “Used to be the city of Pelagia. I think it’s now called Pelagia district?”

Dresdek nodded. “It is. Our next chance is up there. Hundred and eighty-third tier. Cheap. And we can get a big place.”

“Fuck,” she whispered.

Up there was like climbing to the heavens. She’d been in tall buildings, skyscrapers, but this was the bird-headed pyramid structure. The outside was gray stone and each tier seemed taller than an average office story. Though this wasn’t simply a pyramid, she realized, now that she was up close. There were other triangular metal pieces, jutting out, that added to the artistic impression this thing made on the viewer. It looked made for cutting and rending the sky – a violent yet majestic structure.

She shaded her eyes. Birds flew in vast flocks up near the head, which featured an open beak with dark triangular teeth. Whatever this had been in the past it was now a place where people lived. Curtains and towels, struts with washing, jugs and bottles and odd pieces of tech decorated every tier. Signs and perhaps graffiti were hung and daubed here and there. People leaned out of the tiers and talked. They yelled, cried, laughed. People swarmed over the tiers and slid down them at high speed in some impossible way. They landed at the bottom and walked onward.

From the noise and the litter alone you could tell people lived here.

“How many?” she asked, hitching her back pack into a more comfortable position. They were all carrying essential clothes as well as a small amount of food. Getting things ferried from the
Finatar
would happen once they found a place to stay. Whatever repair work they meant to do on the ship would make living there hazardous.

“They say, fifteen thousand. Come.” Dresdek approached an open entrance framed by stone lintels.

Torgeir seemed as fascinated as she was by the bird pyramid.

“Does it have a name? What was it built for?” she asked.

He casually reached for then took her hand. The warmth was enough of a pleasant shock that after straining for a few seconds to pull her hand from his, she stopped trying and walked with him.

He’d barely seemed to notice her little struggle.

“A name? Yes. Horuk is the name that’s stuck, at least for this generation.”

“Horuk.” It seemed a good name. A sharp name.

She marveled at the intensity of awareness touching him brought her. Every tiny brush of his fingers on hers was highlighted in sensation. She wanted to simply close her eyes and feel. Was he right? Was there some link between them? She’d looked up bondmating. Many cultures believed in it. Still, it seemed wrong and akin to a forced marriage.

She’d never been one to believe in something just because others did.

The way he’d stuck that code into her body had been so utterly wrong. She’d never forgive that. The more she thought on it, the closer it was to rape. He was infuriating, domineering, and a whole lot of other words that translated as asshole in her dictionary but she was stuck with him, trapped in his experiment – a sexual experiment, of some sort.

The scary thing? She wasn’t sure as to how she’d react.

Her only ways out were to run away and hope no one could find her, to wait out this six months, or to get rid of this code he’d implanted and thumb her nose at him. If she could do that last one, she would tell him to suck it, to sit and spin, to stick his bondmating where the sun don’t shine.

Those thoughts had her fuming again, until he squeezed her hand in his big fist and her insides went all gooey and her chest tightened. Damn traitorous gooey insides.

“As for why Horuk was built?” he went on, as they weaved past a small crowd of chanting, pink-robed teenagers with cat ears on their heads. “They say it was used to store a vast library that held this planet’s knowledge. They say priests used to split the hearts of ill doers in sacrifices. They say it was always a tenement where the poor came to pretend they were worth more because of the grandness of their residence.” He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Any of those could be true.”

She couldn’t look away from him. History was meat and bone to her. The past fed the present. “I want all those to be true.”

“Even the bad ones?”

“Yes. They make Horuk real.”

Torgeir laughed. “Then it is so. They are all true. It’s possible they are all true. Riptide is only the latest name for this planet. It’s had five others and has been civilized for millennia. Riptide is only the name it gained from gathering all the flotsam and jetsam of this latest awful war.”

Ahh.
“Awful? You’re a warrior but you dislike war?”

“Most soldiers do. The smart ones do. There is nothing nice about war.”

A yellow-haired boy slid down the tiers, swooping past a few yards away, while sitting on some sort of board. He rode around in two swift circles and waved to them. “Welcome to Horuk!”

Ella waved back.

Most of his legs were gone and only slithery cybernetic connectors remained at the bottom. They somehow clutched the hovering cart he rode.

“That is why I hate war,” Torgeir whispered.

“He’s not a soldier, surely?”

“He’s still a casualty. Many of the cyborgs here can barely afford to live, let alone to replace their cybernetics.”

When they entered the darker space of the foyer, Dresdek skidded over and dangled a yellow chip before them on a chain. “Got it! Off her.” An old woman with a scarf on her head and a foot long prehensile metal finger looked up and nodded. “Being a lord still has value. Come. I will show you.”

Torgeir waited for him to move ahead then leaned down. “Your first week, starts now. Keep holding my hand. I like that, feeling you.”

She shut her eyes and let him lead her blindly for a few feet. Of all the things she noticed, it was her pussy squeezing in. Thank god he had no clue.

He kissed her ear and she stumbled. He caught her. “One of the things you get to know, when bondmated, is when your partner is aroused.

Kill me now.
But she summoned a glare. Torgeir only laughed.

“Come, Ella. One week from now, you can do as you please. For now, you’re mine.”

The ecstatic shiver that travelled to her very bones mortified her.

One thing to be said in Torgeir and Dresdek’s favor – they were organized. The sheer number of people and the strangeness of this place daunted her. Anyone sensible should be panicking and yet they carried on as if this were normal. The one hundred and eighty-third tier took twenty minutes to reach. They trekked up creaky elevators, stairs, and one hoverflow shaft that zipped them straight up fifty stories in a few seconds. The drop under her feet made her gut swirl.

She stepped off and had to take a moment to gather herself, no doubt looking pale. A giant of a black man grinned as he brushed past. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t fail often and even then you’re dead almost before you figure it’s stopped working.”

“Gee, thanks.” She swept back her plait and went to follow Torgeir.

“Hehe. No worries.” He stepped into the downflow side and plummeted from sight.

The corridors were clear-coated stone – made to be cleaned easier, she guessed. The doors to their place, or rather Torgeir and Dresdek’s place, were double and made of some honey-colored wood, or a copy of it. Even the handles looked posh and were black steel in the shape of bird claws. Inside, when the doors swung open, was vast and sparsely furnished. There were doors off to left and right and ahead was a broad opening to the sky.

“What have we got here?” Torgeir asked, stepping in and unslinging his pack.

Dresdek shut the door, and strode in, tossing the key chip on a low table. “We have a bathroom, but all water has to be brought from community taps at the end of the hall. Power is fine.” He waved his hand over a sensor and lights flicked on. “Bedrooms, two of them, with the bathroom, to the left. Living room ahead, kitchens to the right.”

“Plural? Kitchens?”

“Yes. I don’t know why. Maybe it used to be an eating place?” Dresdek shrugged. “I was happy to get this. We paid for the furniture. Have to find more food. The furniture will be enough if we don’t have parties.”

As if they would. Well, she wouldn’t. She didn’t really know the two men that well.

Wary, she walked toward the opening. The only doors sealing this four-yard-wide gash from the outside weather folded in from the side and were flimsy-looking clear plas-g. A stone roof projected outward and covered the terrace. She leaned out over the drop, putting her palms on the warm downslope of gritty stone. Their balcony edge was also the roof of the terrace below. Every roof on every tier below was the same so that the pyramid flowed like a slope all the way to the seething markets below. She couldn’t see her neighbors below and those above couldn’t see her, unless she stuck her head out, like she was doing.

Coming in on the
Finatar
, there’d been lakes of thick smog wreathing some of the buildings but from here the sky was a clear Earth-like dirty blue, though pocked with flying craft – some of them zipping across lower than this story. Where she stood was on a level with some distant buildings but Horuk went higher than this, far higher.

Washing waved like tattered flags all around her and graffiti decorated even the stone under her hands. The language looked so foreign and her in-mind translator gave her a blank answer. She had no clue which way up it should be read, though one section was clearly a stick figure man with an enormous dick fucking a...she turned her head sideways. A big chicken?

A rattle from above warned her and she ducked in.

A tide of people on some sort of board shot past to either side of her, screaming out happy insults. Hand on her thudding heart, she watched them surf to the bottom where they peeled away into the crowd and vanished.