And yet, still afraid. Because seriously, some todyk were really big. And toothy.
Eva caught herself just before she would have stumbled over the edge of a cliff—not too high up, but enough that something probably would have gotten broken on the way down, or at the bottom. The valley below was mostly clear of trees, replaced by a strangely manicured-looking grass. To her right was a gentle rise that led up to a stone pyramid that, were she more archaeologically inclined, she might have called a ziggurat.
To her left was the water, a lake as it turned out, in which the figures of the two todyk could be seen cavorting, splashing each other with their tails. At this distance, her translators kicked in, and she realized the two of them were laughing.
Could she have been so lucky that Jardok never noticed her following him? Stick that in the plus column. The minus column, unfortunately, was currently occupied by the giant problem of her only having enough tranquilizers for one todyk. She would have to wait until the other one left, or Jardok did and she could follow him elsewhere.
With an inward sigh, Eva sat on the ground and tried to make herself comfortable. If only she’d remembered to bring something to eat.
“Are you hungry, my love?” Jardok said, as if he could hear her thoughts. Eva’s stomach rumbled in response.
“Famished, darling,” said the other todyk. “Shall we dry ourselves and partake of a light lunch?”
Well, Eva thought. That is certainly not how I expected todyk to talk. Then she scolded herself for being judgmental.
“I shall ask Dardon to bring us food immediately,” Jardok replied. He must have used a commlink, because he didn’t say anything aloud. She wasn’t entirely sure how words were being shaped at all, given his mouthful of huge, curved-dagger teeth.
Dardon turned out to be a smaller todyk, with giant toe claws and iridescent green and blue feathers. He carried a shallow box filled with an array of charcuterie that gave Eva the meat sweats from looking at it. Draped over his arm was a blanket, which he laid out on the ground before placing the box on top of it.
“Thank you,” the female said, giving him a look that lingered a moment too long.
With a bob of his head, Dardon turned to go.
“A moment, Dardon,” Jardok said. He had backed a few steps away from the other todyk. “I know I’ve been away on business, and left my dear Onaatan in your care. I wanted to thank you for being so diligent in your duties.”
“Of course, sir,” Dardon said. Eva didn’t know much about todyk interactions, but the way this guy ruffled his feathers made her nervous.
“But then, perhaps you have been too diligent.” Jardok turned his head to one side, staring Dardon down with one enormous black eye. “Altogether too attentive, in fact. Perhaps you have something you would like to confess to me, hmm?”
“Jardok, please, you can’t be serious,” Onaatan (presumably) said. “What you are suggesting is preposterous.”
“Indeed,” the smaller todyk echoed faintly.
“It is preposterous, isn’t it?” Jardok clasped his tiny hands in front of his chest and paced back and forth, his tail swinging as he walked. “To imagine that someone of your station, Onaatan, with an asteroid mine and ranches in Pratania, would debase herself by consorting with a common butler.”
Both Dardon and Onaatan flinched. Meanwhile, another todyk approached from near the pyramid.
“Quite preposterous,” Onaatan said. “He is certainly beneath me.”
“Is that so?” a new voice roared. “Because I am prepared to offer proof that within the last cycle, you were very much beneath him.”
Onaatan gasped. Jardok growled. Dardon ruffled his feathers but otherwise remained stoic.
The newcomer was built like Onaatan, but her feathers were bright like Jardok’s.
“What do you want, Nushmee?” Onaatan hissed. “You’re always eager to stir up trouble.”
“I only want what’s best for Jardok,” Nushmee replied coolly. “He deserves to know that his fianceé is a liar and a harlot.”
Onaatan stepped forward, tail lashing. “You’ve always been jealous that he chose me over you. It burns your blood like lava boiling beneath a mountain.”
Eva yawned and checked her watch. Rich people were so ridiculous.
“I may have been jealous once,” Nushmee said. “But that time has passed. My only concern is for a friend, a dear friend, who should not commit himself to an unfaithful wench like you.”
“Wench,” really? Eva made a mental note to check her translator nanites. Maybe there was an update she hadn’t installed.
Jardok bristled, his feathers sticking up on his neck. “I appreciate your concern, Nushmee, but this is between me, Onaatan and this concupiscent charlatan.”
Dardon roared out a cough, flexing his toe claw. “I suppose, sir, that I should not address the matter of your illicit liaison with Nushmee, the very cycle before you left on business and put Onaatan in my care?”
Onaatan gasped. Jardok growled. Nushmee spun and struck the smaller todyk with her tail, baring her teeth.
Mierda, Eva thought. If this turned into a free-for-all, she might never be able to capture Jardok. Not alive, anyway.
“Is this true, Jardok?” Onaatan said. “That you would chastise me so ferociously when you yourself have been with another?”
To Eva’s utter lack of surprise given how this was playing out, Jardok turned away, his feathers flattening to his head. “I was intoxicated,” he admitted. “I hardly knew what I was doing.”
“You took advantage of him!” Onaatan shrieked, leaping over to Nushmee’s side and snapping at her face. The ground shook from the movement, and Eva had to flatten herself to the cliffside to keep from falling.
Unfortunately, her rifle didn’t fare as well; it slid down to the bottom of the cliff, landing in a clump of bushes. Eva cursed silently but with relish.
“As if I would compel him to do anything against his will,” Nushmee said as the two circled each other. The box of meats between them was long forgotten by everyone but Eva, whose stomach was still attentive. “He was quite willing. Eager, even. There is no pleasure to be found in an empty conquest.”
Slowly, hand over hand, Eva crawled down the face of the cliff. It was sloped just enough to keep her from sliding, though she could have stopped the descent with her boots at the cost of revealing her position. The thick blades of grass bit at her face, which was the only exposed part of her, and she fought the urge to sneeze. More bugs had found her, too, because life was not fair.
“Ladies, please,” Jardok said. “You will do yourselves harm!”
They ignored him and continued their dance, feinting and lunging and attempting to bite or swat each other with their tails. Onaatan got a good hit in with the side of her muzzle, knocking Nushmee down, but the other todyk lashed out with her claws, nearly drawing blood, then scrambled back to her feet. Eva glimpsed that last bit as a blur, because the impact had shaken the ground again and made her slip a few meters before catching herself.
“Enough,” Jardok said. He waded into the fray and Dardon followed his lead, the two pushing the women apart with their bodies and heads.
“Slut!” Onaatan cried.
“Stale!” Nushmee replied.
“Enough, I say!” Jardok turned his head right and left to look at them in turn with his black eyes. “I must apologize to you both, for I have done you great ill. I have . . . my own confession to make.”
Their frenzied pants and roars fell silent.
“What is it, my love?” Onaatan asked.
Jardok turned to face the lake, hands clasped in front of him. “The truth is, I do not love you.”
“Ha!” said Nushmee triumphantly.
“I do not love either of you, though you have both brought me pleasure,” Jardok said. “I proposed to wed Onaatan because of her holdings, and because it satisfied my family. But it was not my heart’s desire.”
Eva was almost to the bottom of t
he cliff. There were only a half dozen meters between her and her rifle.
“My tryst with Nushmee was born of despair, not passion,” he continued. “For I harbored a painful secret, one that I could not reveal to anyone because it might cost me everything.”
Three meters.
“The truth is . . .”
One meter.
“I’m in love with . . . Dardon!”
Onaatan gasped. Nushmee growled. Dardon fell to one knee.
Eva froze, hand hovering over her rifle, her face scrunched up in disbelief. Rich people, she thought again. They had no real problems, so they spent all their time making ones up.
Not like you, hmm? the voice in her head whispered. Eva was really starting to hate that voice.
“It’s true,” Jardok continued. “He has been my constant and faithful companion for so many years. Familiarity became affection, and as time passed, this turned to love.” He stepped over to the smaller todyk and reached out a tiny arm. “Can you forgive me for deceiving you? For the cruel things I said about you and your station?”
They held that pose in silence for several long moments. Eva again suppressed a sneeze.
“Oh, sir,” Dardon said. “Of course, sir.”
“There’s no more to be said, then.” Jardok shook his head at Onaatan. “I am so sorry for all of this. I shall make my excuses to your family, my dear, and see that some measure of my estate is transferred to supplement your dowry.”
“And me?” Nushmee said.
“I should be happy to remain your friend, if you would allow it,” he said.
“And me, sir?” Dardon asked.
“I shall provide a generous stipend and references so you may find gainful employment with another household.” Jardok walked once more to the shore of the lake. “Now, if you would all leave me in peace, I must contemplate the remains of my future.”
The only sounds were the soft lapping of waves in the lake and the quiet hum of insects trying to eat Eva’s face. But finally, finally she had some hope that she could finish this damn mission and go home. The other todyk would leave, she would hit Jardok with some night-night juice, and then—
Dardon leaped onto Jardok’s back and did something violent-looking to his neck, though there wasn’t any blood. Jardok writhed in shock but didn’t defend himself. Onaatan and Nushmee joined the butler, and soon they were all rolling around like a giant ball of feathery . . . lust? Yeah, that was what it looked like, all right. Those certainly appeared to be bits of anatomy that Eva was tangentially familiar with.
Well, she thought, that escalated quickly. She tried to avert her eyes while crawling backward toward the pyramid, rifle in hand. Broken blades of grass preceded her, and she very definitely did not think about Vakar at the smell of them.
His nonsense was well and truly done, at least.
Eva hung her head and sighed. She needed to apologize to him. Assuming he was even there when she got back. What if he’d left? What if she never saw him again, and the last thing she’d told him was to fuck off?
She suddenly didn’t feel so hungry anymore.
Her gaze returned to the todyk. My goodness, but they were energetic. And more flexible than she would have expected. When was the last time she had . . . Being a spacer wasn’t terribly conducive to maintaining a healthy relationship, but a body had needs. How long had it been since someone else had fulfilled them for her? A year? Two?
One of the todyk cried out, and Eva turned on her helmet so she wouldn’t have to hear them anymore.
Damn it, she thought. I can’t do this. I already put Leroy in a coma and nearly got Vakar turned into quennian soup, not to mention what happened with Glorious at Omicron. I can’t undo the past, but I don’t have to go through this Gate just because it’s in front of me. I don’t have to kidnap this guy and fly him a bazillion light-years away from his, um, whatever is going on here. Cargo is one thing, but these are people, with lives and families and love. If I cross this line, I’m well and truly fucked. I’ll be no better than The Fridge, and just as bad as Tito and my father, if not worse. I’ll never be able to look my crew in the face again, or my mother.
Or Mari, assuming I ever get her back. Which at this rate is never going to happen anyway. They don’t want me to earn my way out, they want me stuck until I’m no use to them anymore. They want to ride me into the ground like a secondhand spaceship, until all I’m good for is scrap.
Que se joden.
The thought of defying The Fridge made her feel simultaneously terrified and liberated. Unless they were lying, they were going to send Mari to their asteroid mines if Eva left without the todyk. Everything she’d put her crew through so far would have been for nothing. All the lies, the danger, the pain . . . She’d still be indebted to The Fridge, still be doing whatever shitty jobs they threw at her. Her sister could die before Eva ever made a dent in the absurd amount they had decided she owed them, assuming they even wanted to keep her on. More likely, she’d be on the run from them for the rest of her probably short life. She might even be putting her mom directly in danger, if they thought Eva would run to her for help.
But at least she would know she’d refused to become like them. Her mother would respect that, and probably Pink. Mari herself might even prefer it to the alternative. If she survived . . .
No. This was how they worked. Fear. Paranoia. Never-ending spirals of guilt and hope and suspicion. Mierda. They weren’t invincible, no matter how hard they tried to seem that way. There had to be something she could do, some way to get Mari back and keep her crew safe. She would figure this out, because the alternative was unacceptable. She needed to stop acting like she was a piece on The Fridge’s Reversi board and start acting like a player. Maybe she’d never been the best at games, but she had to get good, and fast. She had to try flipping the board to white, or she’d be awash in darkness forever.
Dinosaur sex, she thought. That is a hell of a place to draw the line.
Eva landed the Malcolm on her father’s lot and swallowed the acid that kept surging up her throat. There had been no transmission from The Fridge; either they didn’t know she had failed, or they had some nasty surprise planned. She assumed it was the latter. Which, now that she thought about it, meant that it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, since she was expecting it.
The lot was empty of customers. It wasn’t usually bustling with activity, but this was utter silence. The buttery light of the local star made it look like high noon in a history memvid, set in Earth’s cowboy times—or the flat film versions thereof. All she needed now was some gun-toting nemesis to wander out and stare her down.
As if on cue, Pholise Pravo emerged from the dealership building, their three legs giving them a rollicking gait that broke the mood like a baby at a wedding. They were tailed by Fjorsl, already tall and bristling with spines along their arms and back, their long maw of a head opening and closing as they spoke to the tuann too softly for Eva to hear—and she had every sensor channel open right now for that very purpose. One of these cycles she would invest in a lip-reading upgrade to her translators, but she was still paying off the smell one.
The rest of her scouting of the area didn’t turn up anyone in hiding, though that didn’t mean they weren’t there. And La Sirena Negra was nowhere in sight, either, which was good or bad, depending on the reason.
Might as well get it over with, she thought.
Locking up the controls, Eva climbed out of the cockpit and down to the main airlock. Her bag was right by the door, untouched since she’d shoved her sniper rifle back in before leaving Ayshurn. Maybe she should change now? Her mother always told her to wear clean underwear at least. Ah, screw it. There’d be time later.
She threw her bag over her shoulder and opened the door. Pholise and Fjorsl waited outside, the annae with one of their limbs grown and woven into a thick mass that looked almost like a hammer.
“I see you got my message,” Eva said, hopping to the ground.
Pholi
se hesitated. “No message was received from you.”
“I figured showing up without a giant sedated todyk would be as good as putting an ad on Nuvestan commwalls.” Then again, how had Pholise known to be there? Something else had to be going down.
“Ah, your meaning becomes clear.” Pholise’s head ruff was elevated, though not fully expanded. Their whispery breath was set to be amplified less than usual, so they were harder to hear.
“So what now?” Eva asked. “Mari gets sent off to hard labor and I keep shoveling your shit? Fine. But you can tell whoever your handler is that I’m not sorry. I’ll do a lot, but kidnapping is over the line.”
Even more quietly, Pholise whispered, “Run.”
Eva’s eyes widened. So that’s how it was going to be.
“It has been determined that your use has reached its conclusion,” the tuann said. “Your worth as an operative has been eclipsed by your worth as a commodity.”
“A what?” She’d been expecting to get spaced, but this was something else.
“An extraordinarily large bid has been made for your retrieval, by the Gmaargitz Fedorach himself, and so I was sent to bring you in.”
“Who the hell is—” Eva stopped and let her brain catch up to her mouth. “Glorious Asshole. Resingado hijo de mierda, that guy will not give up.” Pholise’s ruff rose and fell in time with their breathing. “So he put a bounty on me bigger than my debt? Coño carajo. Wait. Why are you telling me this? Why are you giving me a chance to get away?”
“Because it would be believable for you to escape,” Pholise said. “And because you are not alone in growing tired of crossing lines that were once drawn.”
They stood in silence under that yellow star as Eva calculated her next move. She could get back in the Malcolm and make a break for it, hoping Pholise didn’t have backup fast enough to catch her before she could plot an FTL trajectory. The damn ship wasn’t built for speed or maneuverability, so she was at a disadvantage. But she couldn’t be sure she could reach her dad in time to get the codes for something faster.
Chilling Effect_A Novel Page 15