The Rifter's Covenant (32 page)

“So why are you
telling me this?”

“Impatient, are we?
You have something better to do than prepare to possibly save your life?”

Anderic shifted his
gaze to the daughter again, to discover a smirk of knowing triumph. He looked
away quickly.

“We have informed
Barrodagh that insufficient cims exist on Rifthaven to fill his order, but that
more will be obtained. In the meantime, we have sequestered a number of various
models, along with sufficient materiel, to enable you to rebuild your reactors.”

He looked up,
prepared to express his gratitude, then stopped. Karroo didn’t care about him,
they wanted to preserve their investment in the destroyer. He wondered what they’d
think if they knew about the logos.

Instead, he merely
acknowledged the information, and, indeed, it appeared that Lyska expected no gratitude—probably
would regard it as weak-minded. They briefly discussed how long the rebuild
might take, compared to the rumors of how fast the Navy might pull together an
attack, and then she dismissed him.

Anderic sensed the
girl’s gaze following him out of the office and felt a surge of anger. Maybe a
visit to the Garden of Earthy Delights was in order. They had the largest
selection of joy-toys, male, female, and otherwise—he’d deal with the little bint
vicariously.

o0o

A mellow series
of chimes sounded as the old-fashioned door swung silently shut behind Kira Lennart
and Luri. A tall, painfully thin woman emerged languidly from behind a hanging.
Her hazel eyes widened, she smiled, and she held out her arms.

“Luri, my dearest!
Long has my establishment missed your discernment.”

Kira hated the
inevitable pang of jealousy burning her vitals as Luri pulled her elbow away from
her and rushed to embrace the woman, kissing her deeply. “Emma!” she exclaimed,
caressing the woman’s hollow cheeks.

It was odd, thought
Kira, seeing Luri work another with her attractions. If you got past the
jealousy, it was quite revealing.

“What new delights
do you have for me?” asked Luri. She turned and waved Kira closer, pulling in
by the wrist. “Kira really liked the proteus.”

Emma beamed.
“That’s my best model.” She gave Kira a long, appreciative gaze, igniting a
thrill. Kira wondered giddily if Emma was gennated, as she suspected Luri had
been, to be able to suddenly exude such smoldering sexuality between one
heartbeat and the next.

“But you’re not
here for fun and games, I suspect?” Emma continued, somehow closing Kira into that
small circle of intimate space, though neither had moved.

“Am I that
obvious?” Kira said plainly.

“Yes.” The woman
tilted her head and laughed. “But perhaps if you find what you are looking
for?” She indicated the display cases artfully arranged around the room.

“We’re looking for
information on male chastity devices from Dyzon,” Kira began, then paused as
the proprietor grinned. “No, we want to get it off. Of someone,” she added
hastily.

“Who?”

Luri’s bright
laughter filled the shop. “Tallis.”

Emma threw her head
back and bellowed laughter with a force that startled Kira. Ordinarily Kira did
not find bony women attractive, but Emma’s angular body held more energy than
any two people she could think of.

“Oh, my dear,” she
exclaimed when she caught her breath. “For that priceless bit of news, you may
have the data at half-cost.” Her expression turned serious. “But I can only
give you a range of clues to the tactile combination it will recognize, and
there’s no guarantee you won’t hit other settings in the process.”

“Painful?”

“That, or sustained
ecstasy, which pretty much becomes the same thing after a while.”

Luri gave a coy
little shudder, her arms cradled under her round breasts. Kira’s heartbeat
accelerated.

Emma’s languid gaze
moved slowly down Kira’s body, her lips pursing. Then she strode to the front
of the shop and locked the door. The window opaqued. She took Luri’s arm in one
big spidery hand and Kira’s in another, and Kira tingled with excitement.

“Let’s go into the
back room. I do have a new shipment. War and sex are soulmates, so I’m not
hurting. And I could use your help,” she said with a grin. “I’ve got some rather
unusual accessories for my dormaivu, and I never sell anything I haven’t tried
myself.”

o0o

Anderic grinned
with satisfaction. Everything had worked out as he hoped. Lennart and Luri were
back, the former looking exhausted. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, though Luri
flounced as usual. He hoped whatever they had done had hurt, and whatever they
sought had failed.

His visit to the
Garden had fully discharged his animus against the Karoo Syndic’s bratty
daughter. They’d finished the refit and loaded the cargo demanded by Barrodagh.
His careful inquiries on the anon feeds of the RiftNet had even yielded some
suggestions on how to deal with the logos.

He frowned at the
mind-blur shrilling its gnat-like whine as if to announce the crown of his
efforts.

The access tube
disgorged a clot of guards in the livery of Karroo, and in their midst, a
disheveled man of middle stature whose dark, parchment-colored skin revealed
numerous bruises. His silken robe was rent, the tunic underneath stained and
rumpled.

“Li Pung,” Anderic
said as the Karroo enforcers pushed the man forward. “What a pity you declined
the hospitality of the Lord of Vengeance. You could have gone as an honored
guest. Now you go as a prisoner.”

“No more than you,
or anyone on Rifthaven,” said Li Pung. He spat on the deck. “Dol’jhar is making
the entire Thousand Suns a prison.”

Anderic’s triumph soured.
“Take him to the brig,” he snarled.

As the security
team yanked him away, Anderic wished again he could set up a mind-blur on the
brig, but Barrodagh had specifically forbidden it. “He must arrive sane and
healthy, or you will not thus leave.”

The entire Thousand Suns a prison
. Enraged by the resonance of truth, Anderic
stomped to the bridge to take the
Satansclaw
away from Rifthaven, toward an unknown he knew only as the Suneater.

o0o

Tallis hunched
miserably on his cot amidst the stench of the recyclers. Abruptly the comscreem
flickered on. It did that more and more often lately, sometimes showing him
things he was sure didn’t exist. But the distinction no longer seemed to matter
very much.

He recognized Li
Pung and satisfaction flared briefly at the sight of someone more miserable
than himself. Horrific images flitted through his mind; nobody knew why the
Dol’jharians wanted tempaths on the Suneater. He wouldn’t trade places with the
club owner for anything. Telos only knew what they would force him to do there.

The screen
flickered off. Tallis thought longingly of the dyplast eye that Luri had
procured. He dared not use it yet, lest Anderic confiscate or, worse, destroy
it. Even sharper was the anticipation of the removal of the Emasculizer leeched
firmly to his nacker.

But all that would
have to wait for mutiny. And so deep was his depression that he didn’t really
care if it failed. He gingerly tongued the thanacap on his back molar that Luri
had also bought at his request. Death could hardly be much worse than his life.

Riolo
straightened up and looked around with deep pleasure and relief as the lift
took them down from the arid surface of Barca into darkness. Hreem watched sourly.
More even than dirtside, he hated being underground.

To either side,
silent Barcan guards stood. They looked silly in uniforms with codpieces, but
the weapons they grasped elicited respect: plazwhips, designed for maximum pain
and scarring. As far as Hreem was concerned, that was harder to face than a
firejac.

The lift smelled
like one of the darker corners of Rifthaven, far from the pissoirs. He began to
breathe through his mouth. The light faded, and Hreem put on his light-enhancers
as Riolo took off his goggles. Finally the lift grounded with a grinding
crunch, and the doors slid silently open.

Hreem choked,
turned it into a cough as the guards looked at him. A wave of stench, warm and
moist as somebody’s crotch, rolled in upon him. His knees almost buckled, and
tears burned his eyes.

He blinked them
away, knowing that they couldn’t be seen behind his goggles, anyway. How did these
little chatzers live in this reek?

As they walked down
the corridor, an irritating buzz or whine at the edge of hearing assailed
Hreem’s ears, mixed with a sound reminiscent of a defective tianqi, like heavy
breathing. The clatter of running feet echoed from side tunnels and adits, and
the hissing speech of Barca whispered in sinister susurrations from dark
corners and holes. But they encountered no one.

Trying to shake off
the reactions, Hreem looked around more carefully, noticing some sort of
abstract pattern in the floor underfoot. He cursed under his breath and lifted
his eyes away from the disorienting shapes. They made walking difficult. He
twitched his hand aside as they rounded a corner, avoiding the tatters of what
looked like metallic fungus draped on the walls and dangling from the ceiling.
Something ugly chattered at him from a niche in the wall: Hreem cursed aloud
and jumped aside, reaching for his jac.

Riolo grabbed his
wrist with surprising strength as the guards stepped back at a threatening
angle, raising their plazwhips.

“No, Captain,” he
admonished in a loud whisper. “You have been allowed your weapon as a mark of
respect. Do not let it be the means of your death.” He glanced up at the
enormous insect in the niche, its compound eyes glittering in the dim light of
a recessed lamp. “It is only a Watcher.
It
will not harm you.”

Hreem did not find
the emphasis reassuring. He straightened his jac and pulled down the edge of
his tunic. “Your briefing wasn’t worth spit,” he growled.

“You didn’t want to
listen to my briefing,” Riolo reminded him. The little man was bolder, here in
the tunnels of his home.

As they proceeded,
seemingly endless corridors alternating with transtubes, Hreem’s ears popped
several times. How deep were they going? Sweat broke out all over his body, but
Riolo seemed unaffected by the warmth. Hreem glared at the increasing density
of cannulae perforating the walls. The floor underfoot had changed to some sort
of organic mat that seemed to flex against the soles of his boots as he lengthened
his stride, pushing the pace. The walls, too, seemed to press in on him; now he
understood why Norio so often played images of caverns and other enclosed
spaces during sex—his discomfort was like a spice to the twisty little
mindsnake.

The guards halted
in front of a door. Riolo ushered him in. Hreem halted abruptly, rigidly
controlling himself, splaying his hands to avoid clutching at his jac. Nausea
clawed at his throat as he stared at the cannulae. Something
moved
in there!

“What in Haruban’s
Hell are those chatzing things?” he said as fat, blind reddish snakes writhed
partway out of them, waving in the air as though sensing him. One plopped out
of its hole and wriggled toward him, its blunt, featureless head suddenly
sprouting a number of soft spiky palps.

Hreem forced a laugh
in an attempt to dispel his nervousness as whatever it was seemed to survey
him. “Chatzing thing looks like a self-propelled dilenja.”

Hreem caught a
flicker of a glance from Riolo, whose gaze dropped to his codpiece.

Hreem laughed
louder, genuinely amused despite the strangeness of his surroundings. “Hell! Is
that what Barcans keep in there?”

Then an awful
suspicion seized him as Riolo’s eyes widened m confirmation of his guess. “Wait
a minute. When you said I had to consummate this deal with the Matria, you
weren’t just talking fancy?” He began to back away from the huge worm, shaking
his head. “No, that’s crazy.” His anus spasmed.

Then it was Riolo’s
turn to laugh. “Oh, Captain, no. I said you must consummate the deal
upon
the Matria. There is no confusion
of roles on Barca as elsewhere in the Thousand Suns.”

Hreem heard the
sneer in Riolo’s voice. But the implied insult was so foreign to the normal
polysexual mindset of Exiled humanity, and Hreem’s relief so great, that he
shrugged it off.

“The shestek are
not living creatures, but constructs.” Riolo indicated their texture and
reddish skin. Hreem could make out a strange nonorganic quality that was
familiar, but he could not recall the context. But the things were
huge
.

“What if I kill
her?”

Riolo shook with
silent laughter, his eyes tearing. When he caught his breath, he said,
“Captain, were it not for the Thrones, the outcome would be quite the
opposite.”

He was gonna bunny
with some fem on a throne? Wild images juddered through his mind and Hreem’s
nacker stirred. Norio would be madly jealous that he had not been there.

“It is the only way
the Matria will yield the Ogres,” Riolo said, apparently detecting Hreem’s
lingering doubt. His tone was oddly wistful. “You would prefer to explain to
the Lord of Vengeance why you could not obtain them?”

Hreem shook his
head, thinking that this was one for the record chips
.
He’d lost a battlecruiser; he wasn’t about to lose the Ogres.
Maybe he could put a few to use himself.

“Show me what I
have to do.”

Not long after,
walking with exaggerated care, he entered the Labyrinth.

Only the thought of
obtaining the infamous battle androids—and the fear of what Eusabian would do
to him if he failed—had enabled him to endure what he had just undergone. A
lifetime of experimental sex had not prepared him for the weird ritual,
complete with disgusting smells and a steamy heat that made him feel faint,
that resulted in a nearly meter-long proteus-like thing—his mind shied away
from the word “worm”—being fitted over his entire groin.