Queen of Denial (4 page)

"I guess that's the difference between a King an a normal guy. A normal guy has to make up his own bullshit stories. Listen to me, an you'll be OK. Ride this Royal shit for all it's worth. You've fucking been through hell, an he owes you. I'll tell you what I'd do if I were you. I'd put me an industrial sized ice cooler under the Royal throne, and I'd hire me about half a dozen naked dancing boys with pecs of death and dicks that hang to their knees. And when I got bored with that, I'd get me a bunch ah money outtah the Royal safe and I'd buy me half a dozen of the fanciest freighters you've ever seen. I'd become Queen of the Salvagers, that's what I would do."

She took a long slug of beer and checked the instrument panel.

"But . . . That would be wrong. Shouldn't I do the best job I can to be a good wife, and to serve my people?"

"Honey, all you know how to serve them is a hot cup of Java. As for wrong. Well, wrong is kind of a relative thing, isn't it? I mean, who's to say it's any more wrong than a man leaving his wife to rot in a hole like Jors for five years while he screws everything that moves."

"He didn't do that!" Taralin said.

"Does he have a dick?" Drew asked.

"Of course he does!"

"Then take my word for it. He's been balling every bimbo who ever wanted a piece of Royal meat."

Taralin didn't want to follow this line of conversation any more. Besides, there was something else she was curious about.

"Are you and Van Gar, well, are you a couple?"

Drew was a little shocked by the question.

"Van and I?" She laughed nervously.

"Well, you did say you'd go after him."

"That's what I git for bein' nice," Drew mumbled. "Van and I have never made the beast with two backs. Not that I remember, anyway. We will have to one day though," she said matter-of-factly.

Taralin was confused by the resolve in the other woman's voice.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because that's what always happens when men and women are friends. They get really close, but they always avoid sex because they know it will ruin their friendship. But all along they both secretly know it will happen. They keep waiting for the right moment. That moment when they think they may be able to pull off having sex and not have it ruin their friendship. In the end, they give up and wind up having sex when they most need the closeness. Then he never forgives her because she must not have thought he was any good in bed, or she wouldn't have been able to stay out of it. And she never forgives him because he didn't fall in love with her.

"And that's what's going to happen to you and Van Gar?"

Drew smiled broadly, and stood up. "No. Because I already know that Van loves me. And I always go back for seconds."

She strolled off the bridge, beer in hand.

Taralin watched her go with a feeling of dread. This reunion was not going to go at all as she had planned.

Zarco leaned back in the cheap hotel chair, and hoped that it would hold him.

"Are you sure you were not followed?" He asked the man who had joined them only moments ago.

"I am," the man assured him.

He looked nervous, and for the first time since Zarco had been told that Taralin had been found alive he felt true dread at what his enemies might have done to his wife.

"You saw Taralin?"

"Yes. She didn't remember me."

"What? That doesn't make any sense, Holm! I mean . . ."

"The Lockhedes did a very cruel thing to Your Queen and to You, my King," Holm said solemnly.

"Is she mad, Holm?" Zarco asked quietly.

"No, sire. She is as sharp as ever she was."

"Disfigured, then?"

"I have never seen her look more lovely."

"Is she . . . Is she barren, Holm?"

"Sire, there is nothing physically wrong with Your Queen."

"Then she is mad."

"Sire, please allow me to finish. What I should have said is that the damage is not obvious. The Lockhedes operated on her brain. They removed her memory. She has absolutely no memory of her life before her abduction . . ."

Zarco sighed with relief.

"I thought it was something serious," he laughed. "The moment she sees me her memory will come back to her . . ."

"Sire! Please listen. They removed that part of her brain. She can never remember, not ever. It's simply not there anymore."

"But she will remember, Holm," Zarco smiled. "You are younger than I, and have not yet felt the kind of love that lasts more than a night. She will see me, and she will remember."

Zarco looked at Fitz. "She must remember."

Drewcila and Van Gar sat on the bridge.

"So, do you believe that shit about losing half her brain?" Drewcila asked

"It could happen," Van Gar shrugged.

"Maybe she's jus puttin' it on so that she doesn't have to fuck 'im. You know, kindah like 'Not tonight, dear, half my brain is gone.'"

"You are such a sick, skeptical bitch. I can't believe that you, of all people, wouldn't believe her story . . ."

"Ah, come on, Van. A girl shakes her hips the right way and you believe she's virginal. If I was her, I'd be looking to take this fucker down. And what better way than to say 'I don't remember where the Royal safe is, I don't remember the combination', and then when they believe you, Wham! Bam! Thank you ma'am! You take every fucking dime from the kingdom, and head off for parts unknown with Joe-Joe the horse-hung boy."

"See, that's what I'm talking about. This guy could have had a perfectly good reason for not coming after his wife before now."

"Yeah. Like he's boffin' the serving girl, and the upstairs and down stairs maids." Drew laughed. "Meanwhile, she's waiting tables on Jors for five years with half a brain."

"She didn't say she only has half a brain. She certainly does not seem like a half wit."

"My point exactly. It's all an act."

"Just because you are a vindictive bitch doesn't mean that everyone else is." Van Gar shook his head.

"I am not a vindictive bitch. Well, I may be a bitch, but I am not vindictive. I simply have a very strong sense of justice . . ."

"You've already tried this guy and found him guilty. I think this guy really does love his wife, and that he just couldn't find her. If he didn't love her, would he be paying twenty thousand iggys to us, and God only knows how much to Erik?"

"You've got a point there," Drew said, thinking for a moment. That was an awful lot of money. "Ah, but how do we know that isn't just a spit in the bucket for him?"

"I swear Drew, you would find bacteria in the milk of humanoid kindness," Van said. "Do you always have to be such a pessimist?"

"What's with all the labels, Van? Are you really mad at me, or are you just trying to increase your negative vocabulary?"

Van Gar laughed. "You're impossible."

"If I was, I wouldn't be here."

The ship rocked violently. Drew looked at Van Gar.

"The green wire goes to the detection system," they said in unison.

They jumped to their feet, spilling beer everywhere and ran for the gun cabinet, where they grabbed the two biggest, ugliest rifles they had and started at a dead run for the cargo bay.

Facto stepped out of his cabin.

"What's going on?" he asked, stepping into their way when he realized they weren't going to stop. "What is it?"

The ship lurched again, and they were all thrown into the wall."We're being boarded," Van Gar told him, regaining his footing.

"By whom?"

"By fucking Boy Scouts! Who the fuck do you think?"

Drew shoved past him.

Taralin stepped out of her cabin, and Drew saw iggys falling into a bottomless pit.

"Get her and go lock yourselves on the bridge. Don't open the door for anyone. The ship is on a set course, and with any luck you'll reach Vares 7 before they can break down the door."

"What is all this?" Taralin demanded.

"Pirates. We're being boarded," Van Gar told her. Then chased after Drew, who had already started back down the hall.

"No! Wait!" Facto started to go after them, and Taralin grabbed his arm.

"There's nothing we can do, Facto. I have faith in her ability to deal with this."

"But, my Lady . . ."

"Let's do as we were told."

Van Gar and Drew stood on either side of the door to the cargo bay.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Let's party. I'll take point."

Drew punched a button and the doors opened. Van Gar jumped through the door and opened fire. Drew came in after him, and the door clanged shut behind them as someone returned their fire. They ran for cover behind a pile of transformers.

"Fuck." Van Gar took a deep breath. "I count five."

"Seven," Drew corrected.

She jumped out from behind the pile, opened fire, and then jumped back.

"Now there's five of em." She grinned. "Man, I hope you dumb fucks don't bleed all over my scrap!"

"Fuck you!" someone yelled back.

"Hey! You can't talk that way ta me! I'm a lady!"

She looked at Van."Shall we?"

"You take the left; I'll take the right."

"On three."

"One, two, three."

Drew ran around the left side of the junk, and Van Gar ran out the right. He dodged behind an old truck, and she dove behind a bin of copper wire as a blast went past her. She lay on the floor, still for a moment.

"Fucking up my junk," she mumbled as she started crawling on her knees and elbows. She grinned when she poked her head around the corner of the bin and saw the two guys perched on the top of an old nuclear regulator.

"Kiss me, fuckers!" She fired a hail of bolts on them, and they fell together from their perch. She heard gunfire from the other side of the cargo bay.

Van Gar saw the two men fall and made a dash for the airlock doors. The doors were open, and coming through the tube which the pirates had connected to the hull of the Garbage Scow, Van Gar could see reinforcements from the pirate ship. He couldn't risk firing at the pirates while they were in the tube. If he ruptured the sides of the plastic tube, both cargo bays on both ships would be instantly and explosively depressurized. He stepped to the side of the door as the men inside the tube fired on him, and quickly loaded a nasty looking projectile into his weapon. He counted to three, jumped into the doorway, and fired over the heads of the boarding party, into their ship. Then he ran for the airlock control button.

The men in the tube knew what he was up to, and they ran faster in an attempt to get into the ship before the doors closed.

Van Gar punched the button. It made a grating sound.

"Fuck fuck," he looked around the opening, and someone fired at him out of the tube. "Damn, damn," he slammed his closed fist into the button. It started to close, but much slower than it should have.

"Open it, fur ball."

Van Gar felt something very hard and very cold against the back of his head.

"Buddy, I just launched a nerve gas canister into your ship. If I don't close this door, we're all going to die."

"Fucking liar."

Van Gar heard the man's finger moving towards the trigger. Then there was a gurgling sound, and the gun fell away from his head. He turned and the guy was just staring at him. Then he staggered a little, and fell to the ground, sliding off the bayonet of Drew's rifle as he did so.

Van Gar smiled at Drew. "What took you so long?"

"I broke a nail. Cover me."

Van Gar nodded.

She put her weapon down, pulled a tool from her pocket, and pried the cover off the control panel.

"You better fucking hurry. If they make it to the airlock . . ."

"You worry so much."

She snipped a couple of wires and twisted them together, apparently oblivious to the shower of sparks which erupted at her finger tips.

Van Gar heard feet hit the airlock floor, and then the doors hit high speed and slammed shut, leaving a hand flopping around on the floor.

Drew made a face. "Ugh! I hate it when that happens."

She played around with the wires, trying to override whatever the pirates had done, so that she could first close the exterior doors just enough to break the pirates' tube seal and suck them all into the vacuum of space, and then close the door completely. She could hear them banging on the airlock door. Either they thought one of their buddies would open the doors, or they were just plain desperate.