Chilling Effect_A Novel

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Chilling Effect_A Novel Page 21

by Valerie Valdes


  “What any sane person does on an enormous luxury starship cruising through exotic star clusters,” Eva said. “I’m going to eat free food until I look like I’m pregnant with a swarm of babies.”

  The foyer of the Grand Amphitheatre was so crowded, Eva briefly considered flicking on her gravboots and seeking out emptier real estate on a wall, or next to one of the grandiose light sculptures on the ceiling. Instead, she stuck as close to Vakar as was physically possible, breathing in the sweet licorice that had become his nearly constant scent. With all the quennians running around, the place was an orgy of aromas, most of them pleasant but all of them competing for attention. People were excited, nervous, and in a few cases valiantly trying to hide more carnal intentions.

  The walls were crafted from crystals, which Eva had heard were grown from tiny seeds by expert craftsmen on one of their homeworlds. These were a lush purple, clustered in places to mask equipment or provide additional structural support. It was almost like being inside an amethyst geode, but the floor was safely smoothed out instead of sharp and pointy.

  “Can you see a single damn thing in here?” Eva asked. Being short had its downsides.

  “Too many people. Once they are all sitting down, we should have a better chance.”

  The doors finally opened, and people began to pour into the other room. Eva let herself be carried along by the movement, trying not to stomp anyone with her gravboots, since she probably shouldn’t have been wearing them in the first place and didn’t want to call extra attention to herself. She also kept a hand near her belt, in which she had secreted a few toys in case of emergency.

  The Grand Amphitheatre was, as promised, grand. The roof was easily twenty meters up, with rows of seats extending almost the full height of the room along the back and sides. More crystals graced the walls but were less conspicuous since they were so far away. Not that anyone was likely to be looking at them; the main attraction was the enormous window behind the stage, granting a spectacular view of the swirling black hole at the center of this particular star system. They were nowhere near it, of course. No cruise ship would be so foolish.

  “Our seats are in this direction,” Vakar said.

  “Nosebleeds, I’m sure.” Eva took his hand and stomped up the ramp, which moved slowly upward so she didn’t have to walk. They climbed and climbed, other passengers stepping off as they reached their own rows. She scanned the crowd, trying to find Pholise amid the thousands of faces, as if a single green ruff would be visible from there.

  What she did see was an awful lot of security. Except the more she examined them, the less professional they seemed. They wore uniforms, certainly, and some of them were big enough to be bouncers, but none of them had any weapons beyond stun batons. Then again, between shields and the gun battery the ship no doubt possessed, maybe internal security was less of a priority.

  Or the real deal was out of sight.

  Eva and Vakar finally reached their seats, which were some billion rows up, almost near the ceiling. For the size of the favor Tito claimed she was calling in to get them on the damn ship, she had expected a bit better. The stage was set back from even the closest rows, and she wondered how the full sensory experience was going to be broadcast to everyone else, if at all.

  Pulling a scope off her belt, Eva began a more careful perusal of the audience. Mostly quennian, with some tuann as part of the diplomatic or press corps, and a few others sprinkled throughout for reasons of their own.

  “Oh my, a human, is it?” said a voice at her elbow. “We so rarely see your kind so far out here.”

  The voice belonged to a quennian, an older lady if her smell was any indication, but Eva didn’t want to assume.

  “Human, yes,” Eva said, smiling. “Guilty as charged. Beni Alvarez, and you are?”

  “Ania Ditaris san Tantius. And what brings you to this prestigious company?”

  “We were invited, of course. What was that lovely man’s name, mi amor, the one who gave you the tickets? Kinsey?” She ran a hand down Vakar’s arm.

  “Kaesna Poslin san Renotis,” he replied. His smell took on a slightly tinny edge but was otherwise normal.

  Ania cocked her head to the side. “I am not acquainted with him. Which ship is he assigned to?”

  “Valiant Strike,” Eva replied. “He’s first director of the Disaster Retaliation Division.” She said this proudly, as if his merits were shared by association, even though she had no clue what the actual post meant. It was true enough, though, thanks to Tito.

  “How noble,” Ania said. “And he gifted the tickets to you? He must be an excellent friend.”

  “We hardly know him,” Vakar said.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s a long story,” Eva said quickly. “Very boring. How did you come to be here?”

  “My mate is the second director of the Situational Relief Division on Victory Covenant. She is resting in our cabin, poor thing, with a nasty acid imbalance. The first director gave us her tickets since the anniversary of our union ceremony was this cycle.”

  “That was very kind of her,” Eva said. “We’re on something of a honeymoon ourselves.” She smiled at Vakar and rubbed her leg against his, reveling in the licorice reaction.

  “How nice.”

  “I have to say, I feel so shy here.” Eva rested her chin on her hand and considered the woman’s icy green eyes. “I simply don’t know anyone, and Vakar is terrible at introductions. Are there many famous people here? There must be.”

  “Oh, goodness, yes. Just over there, the tan fellow in the purple suit, he has been in a number of very popular memory productions—”

  The woman was happy to drone on about the various people in attendance, actors and athletes and especially high-ranking members of the military and political establishment. Eva tried to keep up, but at some point she had to acknowledge she was swimming in a sea of names and ranks that meant little to her, so she made appreciative noises and asked the occasional follow-up question. All the while, of course, trying to find Pholise in the crowd.

  The conversation was finally cut short by the lights in the amphitheatre dimming. Those who were still standing or milling about sat or drifted off to their seats. A hush fell over the crowd as sound dampeners were turned on to stop any lingering chatter.

  “Honored citizens and guests,” an unseen announcer said, “it is our great pleasure here on the luxury starship Justified Confidence to present to you the unparalleled talents of Star-Singer Raya’il of the Radiant Blessings.”

  The floor opened and a platform drifted up, the performer occupying the center of the transparent circle. Their feathers were dark and covered most of their body, the only exposed parts consisting of shining golden eyes that winked in no discernible pattern as their many wings moved. It was vaguely hypnotic, and there was a rush of smell like gingerbread cookies. Eva wondered whether there would be music starting, like in a human opera, but instead the ualan took a whispery breath and began to sing.

  As they did, the color of their feathers changed, glowing softly at first, then brightening as the song rose in pitch and intensity. The hue shifted from gold to white to a brilliant crimson, as if they were on fire, the feathers like tongues of flame. Eva found herself leaning forward with her mouth half-open.

  The song itself was a current of joy that went straight to her nervous system, liquid notes that seemed to harmonize with themselves so that the one voice sounded like a whole chorus. She almost wanted to sing along, as if she were being infected by some memetic virus that could incite echolalia. Her translator struggled to resolve the words, if indeed there were any. There were more accompanying aromas, dissonant ones that somehow resolved into distinct and pleasurable sensations—sunscreen, churros, night-blooming jasmine—

  A hand covered hers, breaking the spell. Vakar was interested but nowhere near as transfixed as she had been. He held a scope, to better see the stage, and smelled like cinnamon and anise. Relaxed. Content.

  I cou
ld get used to that, Eva thought. The force of the accompanying feeling surprised her.

  In the window behind the Radiant Raya’il, a ship appeared, floating into view leisurely, as if it just happened to be in the area. It was black with gold trim, pointed in the front but otherwise long and cylindrical as an oxygen canister, with a large protrusion on the bottom that Eva knew was the actual ship quarters; the rest was the drive core.

  But what made her arm hairs stand up was that the ship didn’t have a name on the side, which meant it wasn’t registered, which meant it wasn’t supposed to be in BOFA space.

  Muted as his voice was, Eva could barely hear Vakar mutter something about a Gabbiani-class starship before the viewing window blew outward in a glittering cloud.

  The cruise ship immediately slammed down a gravity curtain to keep the air from escaping, through which leaped a kloshian in an isofield. He landed on the stage with a flourish of his long coat, white hairlike tendrils gleaming from the rapidly fading light of the ualan singer’s feathers. Far away as he was, his features were a blur to Eva until she grabbed the scope from Vakar and trained it on him.

  “Raya’il of the Radiant Blessings,” he said, voice amplified by his own tech. “You’re coming with me for a little private show.” He grinned, stretching the patchwork of scars on his pale cheeks.

  Raya’il said something in reply that Eva’s translators finally managed to decipher midsentence. “—great and terrible hosts will destroy all flesh in which there is the breath of life, will rain fire out of heaven to consume the enemies of—” The sound cut out as the newcomer used the isosphere on the ualan, much to Eva’s relief.

  ((Do something?)) Vakar pinged at her.

  ((No,)) Eva replied. ((Blow cover.)) Let security handle this, she told herself.

  Except the security guards weren’t doing anything but looking at each other in confusion. A few of them were muttering to themselves or gesturing at the stage, but they didn’t make any moves to stop the stranger.

  What are they waiting for? Eva wondered. Somebody shows up to kidnap the main event, and they’re standing around comiendo mierda instead of stopping him.

  And then a hatch opened in the ceiling, and a group of people began dropping through it one by one, wearing antigrav belts and brandishing weapons that varied from long vibroblades to pistols to laser rifles. These were a mix, with a human, a robot, a kartian, a truateg and two buasyr. And, harder to see, a tiny pizkee with a gun half her size. They fell to the floor and took up positions around the stage, posing aggressively.

  “Ahoy, you witless layabouts!” the human said. Their hair was pink as cloud candy and they wore a black coat over a minidress, and a three-cornered hat pinned at a jaunty angle. “I’m Captain Sakai. The crew of the LC Pleasure Cruise is honored to rob you on this fine cycle. Render up your valuables and no one will be harmed.”

  Now the security sprang into action, rushing up to the stage en masse brandishing stun batons in an expertly ineffective fashion. The strange kidnapper on the stage watched in what appeared to be a combination of amusement and confusion.

  They aren’t together, Eva realized. The space pirates and shitty guards must be part of the show? Not the kidnapper, though . . .

  “Oh my, space pirates!” Ania said, her palps atwitter. “How exciting!”

  Eva stared at her incredulously. “‘Exciting’? They’re threatening to steal your stuff!” If this were all staged, though, maybe the security guards were going to defeat them, or they were going to return their ill-gotten goods afterward.

  “It is such an adventure,” Ania said, already removing her elaborate shoulder jewelry, even though the pirates were nowhere nearby. “My friend told me this might happen. On her last cruise, she was robbed, and she said the thieves were absolutely riotous. I made sure to wear nothing of value, naturally, only a few of my less well-cultured crystals.”

  Or maybe they really were space pirates and they wouldn’t return anything. Rich people were so damn weird. What kind of cruise allowed their guests to be robbed for entertainment?

  Meanwhile, the pirates sparred with the not-really-security-guards, flinging their weapons at each other in a flurry of strikes and ripostes that would be convincing only to someone who had never used a weapon in their life. The kidnapper apparently had enough, because he began to tow the captive ualan singer toward the gravity curtain, where his ship waited on the other side.

  “Pretty sure that’s not part of the show, at least,” Eva muttered. To Vakar, she said, “Maybe we can get out of here and hide in Pholise’s room, snag them when they get back. Come on.” They stood to leave.

  The pirate captain must have decided they didn’t like the extra unanticipated cast member, because they knocked down the guard they were fighting and turned their attention to the stranger. “Where you going with that prize, my son?” they asked. “I’m thinking that be rightfully part of my booty.”

  “You should think again,” the kloshian replied. “Take your baubles, but the star-singer is mine.”

  Captain Sakai grinned. “Say that to the smart end of my sword, love.” And they swung at him with more speed and precision than any of their previous attacks had exhibited.

  So that pirate does know how to fight, Eva thought, even if the bits with security are fake. Kidnapper is definitely real, too.

  Some of the other people in the audience had gotten up to leave as well, but they were being stopped at the doors by what looked like real security guards finally arriving; their uniforms were different, and they were armed with pistols instead of stun batons. A couple of them were also sneaking onto the stage, flanking the pair of fighters with the helpless ualan still muttering creepy threats beside them.

  The stranger must have seen them, because he reached into a pocket, pulled out a handful of golden discs and flung them at the guards. They spun in the air as they flew, making impact with a series of tiny explosions that blinded and stung, judging from the way the guards flinched and covered their eyes. The security guards retreated, but both drew their pistols.

  “No snipers, seriously?” Eva asked. “They’ve got a ship full of VIPs and their security is a joke.”

  The lights flickered, and the ship listed sideways about twenty degrees, sending people stumbling into one another or to the ground, some sliding down the aisle until they hit a wall. The fake guards onstage mostly lost their balance and slid off, but the pirates and real guards kept their feet, Captain Sakai and the stranger continuing their fight, both physical and verbal.

  “Perhaps the ship security has other problems,” Vakar said, gripping a seat to stay upright.

  The ship straightened out just as the exit doors slid open. The guards in front of them were gunned down as lines of truateg mercenaries marched in, armed with assault rifles and wearing military-grade body armor. Black Moon company, by their markings.

  Qué coño? Eva thought. First a kidnapper, then pirates and fake security, then real security, and now mercs? And the blood leaking out of those guards they shot was definitely not fake.

  One of the mercs aimed his weapon at the ceiling and fired a quick volley as the others spread throughout the amphitheatre. Shards of crystal rained down.

  “Sit and don’t move or we shoot you and blow up the ship!” he shouted.

  This caused a lot of screaming, but miraculously no one disobeyed and suffered the consequence. People, including Eva and Vakar, took their assigned seats as the mercs walked up to the stage, where Captain Sakai and the stranger had separated to examine this new enemy.

  “Drop your weapons,” the merc leader growled, and they obeyed. Eva doubted, however, that they were fully disarmed.

  “We demand the return of the one known as Pholise Pravo,” he continued. “If they are not turned over to us immediately, we will begin executing passengers.”

  Eva sank lower into the seat and cursed. She had hoped she’d be able to wait out this silly farce, but now she had to get involved. No way was she let
ting these resingados get Pholise.

  ((Screw cover,)) she pinged at Vakar. ((Party time.))

  Chapter 15

  The Mad Scene

  The other people in the audience muttered to each other, looking around as if they would be able to spot Pholise themselves in the crowd of quennians. But no movement occurred.

  “Okay, step one,” Eva said to Vakar. “We get to a better position without being seen. Step two—”

  “What are you intending?” Ania asked, leaning over the arm of her seat.

  Eva smiled. “Nothing, nothing at all. Why do you ask?”

  She pointed at Vakar. “His smell.”

  Eva sniffed the air. Vakar did indeed smell apprehensive but alert, eager even. She gave him a sour look.

  “Are you two secret security?” Ania asked. “Is this all part of the show?”

  This was the woman who was excited about being robbed, Eva reminded herself. “Yes, it’s all for show,” she whispered. “But you can’t tell anyone. We don’t want to spoil it.”

  Ania covered her mouth and winked her inner eyelid.

  “Our first execution will be in two minutes,” the merc said. “Bring Pravo to us now.”

  Pholise must not be in their cabin, Eva realized; these guys would have checked there first. If she were security, she would have shoved Pholise off into an escape shuttle as quickly as possible. But then again, there was probably a ship out there watching for that, so maybe not.

  Think, Eva, think, she told herself. Pholise must be hiding in some prearranged safe spot, waiting for backup to come take the ship back. And the mercs probably had control of the bridge, or at least the bridge access. The ship captain would be radioing for help, assuming they were still in command and communications hadn’t been cut off. Which any smart merc squad would do, so assume they were.

  The mercs spread out, grabbing every tuann they found and dragging them down the aisles to the stage. They’d only gotten three so far, but there were more, and some were likely hiding out of fear. The various pirates stood where they were, gazes flicking back and forth between the mercs and their captain on the stage.

 

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