Smuggler Queen

by Tim C. Taylor

  “Who wants to be normal?” snapped Creyoh.

  They held each other’s gaze, and the older woman’s anger soon passed. “I’m sorry,” she said, which was the first time Izza could remember her apologizing. “We’re blessed with strange powers that I, for one, am not sorry about. I just wish they were stronger, or at least more reliable. Today the people of our so-called civilization whisper about sorcery and call us mutants. Strangest of all, as you are testament, our line can cross species barriers. In fact, I think it calls for us to do so. You are a rarity, daughter-in-law, but you are not the first to have both the green skin and purple eyes. It’s always disgusted me that your parents never saw fit to tell you this. Now I understand why.”

  Izza shook her head. Creyoh hadn’t told her much she didn’t already know, but it was still too much to take in. “That’s enough for today. I’ve never really talked about my heritage before. Perhaps this has been a healthy first step, but I still don’t know why Khallini thought Fitz reminded him of his mother.”

  “According to the histories you’ve read, the two human women we’ve been talking about were named Lee and Phaedra. I doubt those details are accurate, but I suppose they are as good a pair of names as any other. But to me—to us—they are the great mothers. Our despised little race descends from them. So, when Khallini referred to your husband’s mother, he was referring to one of our great mothers. My guess is that he knew one of them personally. Knew her well.”

  “And it’s good that he did,” said Izza. “Because that connection is the only thing that’s drawn him out into the light. Whatever he’s doing, I think he’s doing for us. For…for her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Izza looked into Creyoh’s face and was shocked to see it beaming with joy. “I don’t know. I just know it the way that…that Fitz knows things he can’t possibly know.”

  “You have the gift,” cried Creyoh. She wrapped Izza in a hug, her body jerking with sobs. “Welcome to the family, Izza Zan Fey. Welcome!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 16: Vetch Arunsen

  Nyluga-Ree’s Palace, Tumlhui Dek City, Pleigei

  Vetch bit his lip and tried not to scream.

  Hiding inside the empty suit of Golex armor no longer felt like such an awesome plan.

  It was a classic move in the holo-vids, but the heroes never mentioned having to share their hiding place with…others.

  A convoy of little feet scurried up his left thigh and then sniffed at his crotch.

  “You don’t wanna go there,” he begged in a whisper.

  As if they could understand, the creatures ran down the back of his leg and into his armored boot. Snuffling whiskers teased his bare and ticklish feet.

  This time, Vetch bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

  What sick cosmic joke had left humans ticklish? Such a stupid body design.

  Mind you, there had been that girl while he was on leave at Halcyon-3. Tickling her had induced a fascinating response in her body.

  But Halcyon-3 was a lifetime away.

  Current status: he was stuck in a smuggler queen’s palace, hiding inside the ancient battle armor of a Golex assault trooper. And he was sharing the space with a nest of alien rat analogues. And he was almost managing to soothe away his cares with happy sex memories.

  Assessment: Lily would be proud of him.

  A hiss filled the armored helmet. Not the one Vetch was occupying. The one coming out of the base of Vetch’s neck that would have protected the Golex’s rearward-facing head.

  The hiss sounded angry.

  And was followed by slithering.

  Sweet Orion’s balls! Please not slithering.

  The creature oozed across his shoulders.

  “Nice snakey,” he told it. “Go back to sleep.”

  But it didn’t. The thing threaded itself through his beard.

  Perhaps it was anchoring itself there. Freeing the front part of its body to rear up and strike.

  Vetch squeezed his eyes shut.

  The rat things scampering around his left foot squeaked excitedly. Were they panicking?

  He knew he was.

  “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” he whispered. A delicate breeze caressed his lips as the creature in his beard sniffed him.

  “Please don’t bite me! Please don’t bite me.”

  The rats at his feet stilled. Went quiet.

  The only sounds were the gentle hissing in his helmet and his own thunderous breathing.

  Then the sound of footsteps marching his way along the corridor.

  “Liberty or death,” he murmured. The Militia battle cry sounded unconvincing in his ears, but he summoned enough of that famous doughty Militia stubbornness and opened his eyes.

  The thing was staring at him. It had the head of a snake, but instead of flicking out a forked tongue, it was inspecting him with whiskers and ears that resembled comm dishes with valves at their hearts blowing air at him.

  “I won’t be long,” Vetch told it.

  The snake thing pulled its head back slightly, tilting it, as if it had understood his words. Perhaps it had. The galaxy was a damned crazy place.

  Vetch tried to shift his head to the side to look out past the snake. He couldn’t. His head was wedged too tightly inside the narrow helmet.

  A wave of claustrophobia swept through him. His limbs trembled.

  Bloody marvelous!

  He shut his eyes. And then opened them again. There was no time for fear!

  Ignoring the snake, he looked through the open mouth grill, the visor at Golex eye level being too high for him to see out of.

  It was Tchon and Kzeddiy all right. And their escort.

  The married Ellondytes had been about the only ones to show him any compassion during his time in Ree’s hell palace. The couple walked hand-in-hand to their execution with all the dignity and aggravating meekness their race of humanoids was famed for. Their beards were neatly combed and tucked into their belts as was their custom. The husband, Tchon, wore his hair tubes vertically, like a clump of coral. His wife’s hair looked like a human’s, except her mane not only grew out of her head but extended halfway down her back.

  Man, he loved this pair. He couldn’t let them walk to their executions as if they damned well deserved to die.

  Like Vetch, they were barefoot. This was how Nyluga-Ree liked to mark those of low status in her palace. Trophies, slaves, hostages, defeated enemies, and the category that worried Vetch most: alien concubines.

  Three Zhoogene guards marched with the condemned. One up front and two behind, all armed with blaster pistols. They would probably double as Tchon and Kzeddiy’s executioners too. Ree placed great store in her underlings being multitalented.

  The snake thing hissed.

  “A little longer. Just a little longer.”

  The execution party passed.

  Now was Vetch’s moment to step out and beat the green men into compost.

  But he was too scared to move.

  “Hold the line!” he whispered.

  It was what the jacks shouted before doing something stupid.

  Amazingly, the Legion battle cry put a little fire into his limbs.

  Because it was true. He was holding the line for his Ellondyte friends. They were going to die if he didn’t.

  Insight flooded through him. This was how the Legion saw themselves. They were the last line of defense for an entire civilization, maybe for the whole of humanity. If the jacks didn’t hold the line, the alternative was oblivion.

  Arrogant skraggs.

  But it did made sense.

  Vetch roared this time. “Hold the line!”

  The snake shrank back.

  The Zhoogenes turned around.

  And Vetch stepped out.

  Damn! The armor weighed a freaking ton. But he managed to lunge forward a few steps and raise the hammer-tipped Golex club. It wasn’t his Lucerne, but it would do the job.

  Three blaster
bolts hit him in quick succession. Center mass.

  The rats screamed. Vetch gagged at the wave of ozone tang. But the bolts didn’t penetrate.

  Golex armor, it turned out, lived up to its reputation.

  “Don’t,” he told the nearest Zhoogene, “bring a gun—” he aimed his downswing at the man’s head, “—to a hammer fight.”

  Like his Militia war hammer, the Golex club was designed to punch through battle armor. Compared to the 100-plus-ply woven cerametal the weapon would have been designed to face, the Zhoogene skull barely registered.

  The club caved in the man’s head and carried back into Vetch’s recovery swing.

  Covered in his friend’s brain matter, the closest surviving Zhoogene fired another bolt, which deflected off Vetch’s helmet.

  The blast didn’t hurt him, but it left Vetch dazzled. He screamed and followed through with a horizontal swing, blindly hoping something would interrupt its arc.

  The snake hissed.

  Then it bit him.

  “Ahhh!”

  Pain spiked through Vetch’s neck. The snake’s jaw was clamped around his flesh.

  The club connected, juddering in his gauntlets. He felt bones crack. Ribs probably. Hopefully, they didn’t belong to the Ellondytes.

  He swung the club back behind his head. The last blow must have loosened his grip because the weapon escaped and flew up into the ceiling.

  The snake disappeared. It had to be lurking inside the armor somewhere, but the view out of the Golex’s visor was clear, and he could see his two friends clinging to each other in fear.

  Fear of him.

  “It’s me, you hairy fools. We’re busting out.”

  He took lumbering steps toward the last Zhoogene, who was taking careful aim…at the suit’s open mouth.

  Oh, hell!

  Desperately, Vetch tried to pull his head down between the armor’s shoulders. But there wasn’t enough space.

  Just before the Zhoogene fired, he closed his eyes.

  He felt the impact. And again, from another two bolts.

  But they all slid off the cheek pieces of the badass Golex helmet.

  “I’m gonna get primitive on your arse,” he roared at the last guard, advancing in a clumsy charge.

  The Zhoogene pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. Weapon malfunction. Depleted charge pack. Who cared? The look on the man’s face was priceless.

  Vetch brought one armored fist up high. The gauntlets had spikes at the bottom of the wrists. He hoped they weren’t just for show.

  Man, his neck hurt!

  The Zhoogene flung his blaster to the ground and turned to run.

  He made a better job of it than Vetch had. Running in the heavy suit was turning out to be his biggest mistake since getting Raven Company demoted to a punishment unit. Which hadn’t been long ago.

  Vetch overbalanced and fell on his armored face. Bearded human, rat creatures, snake thing, and any other critters hiding out in the old armor tumbled forward onto the floor.

  He rolled onto his back. It wasn’t easy and took several attempts, but when he managed it, he was rewarded by the sight of the last Zhoogene holding a wicked serrated blade in his hands. The green skragg was about to plunge it through the mouth of the armor and into his head.

  “Time to die, human.”

  As the blade came down, two blaster bolts struck the Zhoogene’s hands from either side. The green man screamed as intense heat melted his flesh and fused it to the knife hilt.

  He sank to his knees, groaning in agony.

  Two bearded faces looked down into the armor with concern on their faces. As well they might.

  “I thought you Ellondytes would rather…die than touch a…weapon,” Vetch said, struggling to get his words out.

  “Other than a few social outcasts, our people are stubborn pacifists,” said Tchon.

  His wife broke off to give the Zhoogene with the melted hands a flurry of savage kicks to the gut and groin.

  She came back, running her fingers through her beard thoughtfully. “I would indeed rather die than kill anyone. But kicking that bag of worthless compost made me feel much better. Are you planning to remain in the suit, Vetch Arunsen, or ditch it?”

  Vetch tried to sit up, but the armor was far too heavy. And the snake bite in his neck was throbbing. He tried to ask Tchon and Kzeddiy to help remove the suit.

  He couldn’t. His words wouldn’t come.

  Again, he tried. But his lips felt ten times their normal size, and his jaws seemed to be stuck with industrial-strength toffee.

  Hold the line! Hold the line!

  He summoned all his reserves of strength, channeled Sybutu and the spirit of boneheaded jack-ness, and tried to tell the Ellondytes to leave him. To get out now.

  It didn’t work. He was unintelligible.

  “Ooh fffuhhh,” he commented and yielded to the paralysis that had claimed his body.

  He didn’t black out. That would have been far too easy. Nor could he shut his eyes or change his visual focus. Through the mouth slit of a Golex assault trooper’s armor, he saw everything that happened next.

  In every horrific detail.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 17: Vetch Arunsen

  Outside Nyluga-Ree’s Hearth Room, Pleigei

  Maycey gave Vetch a meaty slap across his buttocks with the power lance.

  He would have loved to respond with a saucy retort laden with sexual innuendo. The sort of words that sprang naturally to the lips of Fitz or Lily. Deep Tone too, may the heavens hold him.

  Without the quick words to discharge the tension, Vetch was left with the cold truth. Maycey wasn’t playing with him the way a cat toyed with a mouse. Not anymore. She was bored with looking after him, with being responsible for his whereabouts.

  And he was scared out of his undertrollies.

  She charged her lance.

  He didn’t have to look up to know that blue plasma was arcing across the lance’s tip. The sizzle and ozone were enough.

  “If I have to drag you in, the Nyluga will not be pleased. I would advise you not to anger her more than you already have.”

  “What does she want with me?”

  “That is what we are about to discover.”

  Flicking the feline tail that protruded above her smoothly furred hindquarters, she walked through the strips that hung across the archway and into the Hearth Room.

  He was alone!

  Alone at the heart of Nyluga-Ree’s palace. The cat woman who’d apparently abandoned him had bet good money that he would be dead before the month was up. He’d have laid the same wager if he could.

  “Skragging frag-fucks,” Vetch grumbled. He hurried after Maycey and pushed into the noise and spectacle of the Hearth.

  It was a throne room.

  For some reason, Ree called her palace the Sanctuary and the room where she held court the Hearth Room.

  At the far end was a horseshoe dais reached by several curved flights of steps. Three thrones looked down upon the Nyluga’s court. Two were empty. Ree occupied the central one, giving no sign she’d noticed the human and the Kayrissan who had just entered.

  Several of her attendants on the stage did, however. These lieutenants and flunkies were from several races and seemed to favor variants of brown leather coats. Vetch had also been noticed by the blaster-armed Zhoogene guards stationed at each wing of the dais.

  Ree’s attention was firmly on the dancers performing in front of her platform.

  From his vantage point at the rear of the Hearth, it was difficult for Vetch to clearly see what was happening at the other end of the room. Between him and Ree’s stage were a score of unwilling guests kneeling barefoot among a disorganized mess of statues, mannequins, artwork, guards, pets, and a plethora of crap.

  So, he jumped onto the shoulders of a kneeling Thyfthkosian for a better view. Now he could see that the smuggler queen was being entertained by Ellondytes dancing to music that sounded like it was being pla
yed by musicians hidden behind the stage.

  “Let’s get a closer look,” said Maycey. “Perhaps Nyluga-Ree will ask you to join the dance. You look half Ellondyte, after all.”

  Chuckling to herself—which Vetch always considered the sign of a poor sense of humor—she led him along a central path through Ree’s audience. Or whatever they were.

  He followed as she detoured from the central route and led him to one of the glass display cylinders containing a statue. This one was of a Zhoogene.

  He noted the fragility of its hair and skin. Its nails were cloudy.

  He flinched. This wasn’t a statue.

  Maycey had said Ree would have Vetch stuffed and mounted before her bet ran out.

  Guess she wasn’t kidding.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?” whispered Maycey. “Old too. No one is quite sure who she is.”

  “No one’s putting me in one of those bell jars, cat woman. You’re gonna lose your bet.”

  She leaned in close and purred. She was playing.

  But it was no fun being the mouse.

  “The Nyluga is of the Glaenwi race,” she said. “Their social ways are unusual. Nyluga-Ree is aroused by hair.”

  “Hair? You’re kidding.” But he was close enough now to get a good look at the dancers. Their movements were graceful fluidity punctuated by judders that flung out beards and manes in time to the beat. Half were female and half male. He was certain of that, because their lithe bodies were nude under the beards that fell between their legs. A human prejudice made him want to believe the women’s beards were less fulsome than their men’s. He had to admit the reverse was true.

  “Is that why Nyluga-Ree hired you, Maycey? Do you shake your fur for her pleasure?”

  She lifted her whiskers into a smile. “Not literally. But if your employer regards you as one of the most beautiful people in existence…”

  The Kayrissan was a svelte humanoid whose shape more closely resembled a human’s than other non-human species. It was pointless to deny she was beautiful.

  Maycey gave a lazy one-shouldered shrug. “I flaunt what I have. Perhaps you should do the same, bearded man.”