by Tamsin Ley
Lisa cleared her throat. “Mek explained the situation, and I have a proposal. The cartel has a contact moonside who launders money, provides supplies, all that sort of stuff. He can probably even get your hull fixed. He uses codes to charge to the cartel. ”
“I thought the cartel wants you dead?” Qaiyaan asked.
“They already think I am. I doubt they’re actively looking.”
Noatak approached the table opposite her and slowly pulled out a chair to sit, his previously aggressive aura mellowed. “I take it you know the codewords?”
Qaiyaan, too, was torn between caution and the desire to fix his ship. “More important, are you sure your codewords are still good? You’ve been gone awhile. What happens if you give a bad one?”
“The cartel is inherently lazy, and hardly ever changes them. No one dares misuse cartel resources for fear of retribution.” Her heartbeat fluttered through Qaiyaan’s link. “But I won’t take any chances. Get me close enough to one of their computers, and I can check they’re still valid before we use them.”
“With your nanites,” Qaiyaan finished.
She nodded.
Tovik hopped off his perch on the counter and pulled out the chair next to Lisa, adoration in his eyes. Great. She was turning half his crew into lovesick puppies. Qaiyaan gave the boy a look and Tovik moved down one seat.
Tovik put his elbows on the table and leaned in. “I say we try.”
Qaiyaan took the chair at the head of the table, directly to Lisa’s right, where he could pick up her subtle lilac scent. “I’m not sure I like this plan. How are we supposed to get you close to a cartel computer?”
She smiled. “It’s been a while since I’ve worked a grift, but give me a sexy dress, and I think I can get close enough. Our contact runs the kwirn tables at the Solar Swan. I’ll be just another girl looking for a man with money.”
Noatak groaned and rolled his eyes. “We’re not exactly welcome on that side of the planet.”
Tovik snorted. "I'll say. I wonder if they still have your wanted poster posted at the spaceport?"
Glad for any diversion from thoughts of Lisa in a sexy dress, Qaiyaan let out an exasperated breath and glared at Noatak. “I knew I should’ve left your sorry hide to rot in that prison cell.”
Lisa looked from one man to the other. “Well, I don’t necessarily need any of you to go with me. Drop me off near the city and I’ll check things out and report back.”
A heartbeat of silence, then Noatak asked, “What’s to keep you from turning us in for the bounty?”
She laughed. "I'm a wanted woman myself. How would I collect a bounty?" Taking a deep breath, she said, "But I'm not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I need you to help me pull my brother out of Syndicorp clutches. Then we can talk about pay to join your crew. A couple of cyber-sensitives can be pretty useful in a heist."
Qaiyaan couldn’t help the grin cracking his lips, and he was pleased to note the same grudging appreciation cross his first mate’s face, as well. Tovik and Mek simply stared on with adoring eyes. She’d fit in well if she continued to hold her own against Noatak. Damn it all if he wasn’t going to get off Bolisare with a reinforced hull, a belly full of fuel—and a woman at his side.
Chapter Eight
Beneath the pale blue light of Bolisare's second sun, Lisa lowered herself into the rickshaw, feeling Qaiyaan's hungry gaze on her exposed thigh before she drew her leg inside. To be fair, she'd let the supple fabric fall open along the side slit and perhaps allowed her leg to linger too long outside the carriage as she arranged her seating. But she liked his gaze on her. Liked the way he hovered nearby and seemed to anticipate her every need before she even realized she had the need herself. For instance; this dress. He'd somehow known her exact size and procured the lustrous gold garment while offloading the medical cargo to a buyer on one of Bolisare's moons. She pulled the sleek fabric inside the rickshaw and scooted over so he could slide in beside her.
“How’d you get hold of a dress like this so quickly?” she asked.
“I used the ship’s 3-D printer.” His gaze kept slipping toward her cleavage.
“You printed it?” She raised her brows. Many ships were equipped with manufacturing printers, pre-programmed with blueprints for ship parts and basic necessities. Cocktail dresses weren’t usually on the list of plans, let alone garments of varying sizes. “Who designed it? It fits me perfectly.”
He looked away as if just realizing he'd been staring. "A captain has to be adept at everything."
That surprised her. “A pirate with a passion for clothing design?”
His copper skin flushed blue-green.
She laughed at his discomfort. She’d grown up among the diverse cultures on Whylon station and had never found an alien attractive until now. This big copper-skinned alien delighted and confused her. He was everything she’d ever defined as masculine; it wasn’t fair that he was off limits.
Qaiyaan draped his arm over the back of the seat to make room for his massive frame on the bench beside her. He’d dressed in a sleeveless white tunic that made his copper arms look massive. Even the slightest brush of his skin against hers sent shivers of pleasure deep into her bones. Rational or not, she wanted Qaiyaan more than she’d ever wanted any man in her entire life, including that cartel thug, Seloh. She’d survived Qaiyaan’s ionic test, which according to Mek should have turned her into a vegetable. Didn’t that somehow make her special? Her nanites were the source of so many problems—what if they were also the solution? If she was going to be part of his crew, she was going to have to find a way to get him out of her system.
The rickshaw bumped forward, jarring her thoughts to the here and now once again. The six-legged yanipa-nimayu driving the vehicle pumped furiously against the pedals to carry the rickshaw’s weight up the hill toward the Solar Swan. The casino presided over the town in a garish display of flashing neon lights. The rickshaw bumped and chattered over the uneven road; Bolisare wasn’t an official part of Syndicorp, so the planet didn’t receive the extensive transportation funding of classified worlds. The port was barely maintained by a hodgepodge of shippers and traders, both legit and not. The mishmash of aliens and humans, wealth and poverty was almost as richly diverse as Whylon Station.
“So, what’s this guy look like?” Qaiyaan asked as they passed a billboard that read What happens on Bolisare, stays on Bolisare.
“He’s a posungi who goes by the name Nupnup. Supposed to hang out near the tables most of the day.”
Qaiyaan made a noncommittal noise, but he pulsed with worry. “You ever talked to a posungi before?”
She knew what he was really asking. Posungi were an egg-laying species, but the males were known for their appreciation of sexual interludes with warm-blooded partners. She chuckled. "Once he thinks I'm a cartel agent, he won't ask me to do anything outrageous."
The rickshaw made a sudden turn onto a side street, throwing her against Qaiyaan’s ribs. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, sending jolts of pleasure across her skin. “How are you supposed to identify yourself to him?” he asked.
“I’ll ask if he knows a place to rent a cottage. He’ll ask if I want blue or yellow. I’ll answer turquoise, with three bedrooms and an ocean view.”
Qaiyaan frowned. “That’s it?”
She shrugged. “Never said it was complicated. The number of bedrooms lets him know which cartel sect to charge his services to.”
Shaking his head, Qaiyaan returned to watching the crowds as the rickshaw whipped past.
They arrived at the massive front archway of the Solar Swan, a concrete structure covered with huge electronic billboards instead of windows. The arch’s open doors were purely ornamental, the hinges twined with thousands of multi-colored lights.
Qaiyaan disembarked, holding out a hand to help her rise from the seat. His dark trousers molded to his chiseled thighs, rippling with every flex of muscle. The toes of his gleaming, knee-high boots were coated with a layer
of dust from Bolisare's filthy streets. His clean, well-cut frame was even more appealing because of the two braids spilling from his chin and the wild mop of hair loosely bunched into thick locks about his shoulders.
She took his hand, insides quaking at his touch. Standing, the top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder.
A passing woman’s manicured brows raised in appreciation. “Nice bodyguard.”
Lisa grinned and looped her arm through Qaiyaan’s. Together, they sauntered inside, the windowless interior lit in a raucous display of colors from the many slot machines and other low-end gambling opportunities. She looked around for the kwirn tables. She’d never been to Bolisare. Luckily, Qaiyaan seemed to know exactly where to go, urging her past the buzzing, whirring, chiming machines to a hallway on the other side of the bar. He leaned close, his voice a tickle in her ear. “See him?”
She shook her head, mouth suddenly dry as a pair of gold-scaled rakwiji stalked past her, their dorsal spikes tipped black with what she hoped wasn't blood. Rakwiji were the cartel's preferred bounty hunters, the most ruthless species in the galaxy, and always traveled in pairs. Torture was part of their mating system, the thrill of another being's pain a stimulus for the couple's sexual pleasure. Rumor had it that Seloh's death had resulted in a litter of three offspring for the cartel's Whylon Station pair. She still couldn't view the aliens with any sort of forgiveness. Suppressing a shudder, she kept walking.
The hall opened up to a room peppered with downward funnels of light illuminating regularly spaced tables. Among the games, she spotted the usual assortment of cards and dice, two attahat wheels, and finally the kwirn tables with their stacked glass betting shelves and hexagonal playing pieces. She squinted into the dim spaces between the tables, searching for the orange tentacled face of a posungi. She found her quarry bending low beneath one of the lights to swipe a three-fingered hand over the betting shelves.
Nudging Qaiyaan, she thrust her chin in the posungi’s direction, then pointed toward the bar. “Why don’t you go get a drink? I’ll signal if I need you.”
Through the elastic connection that seemed to be growing stronger between them the more time they spent together, she felt a protective wash of energy. But to his credit, he didn’t argue. “Be careful.”
Lisa pushed her shoulders back and sashayed through the room, stopping at an attahat table to laugh at some inane joke, then pausing long enough at a hand of blackjack to pretend to make up her mind not to play. If she made a show of heading straight to the posungi’s table, he’d be on his guard. As she approached, she surveyed Nupnup’s short, thick torso for indication of where he kept his ploycom. Her pulse roared in her ears and her nanites were making her skin itch as she grasped at her strands of courage. She’d probably only have time for a brush of her hand to hack into his tech. One shot. And she sucked at speed-hacking.
She stopped at the opposite corner of the table and pretended to be interested in a human who was obviously losing. This part she could do; the slow, lazy grift that made a man—or a posungi—think whatever she suggested had been his idea. The human grinned at her and put an arm around her waist to pull her close. “Hey, baby. You here to be my good luck charm?”
The human stank of too much Saluqan gin and his hand slid from her waist to the undercurve of her bottom too quickly. From across the crowded room, she felt Qaiyaan bristle. Damn. He wasn't helping here. Working hard to remain outwardly friendly, she leaned into the human, affecting a sultry voice. "You don't seem like the type of fellow who needs luck."
He drew himself straighter and looked around the table as if he’d just won the round. “Damn straight.”
The players placed their bets, and cycled through another complicated round of moving pieces from shelf to shelf. When Nupnup swept her human’s piece off its shelf, she let out a disappointed hum and pulled away in exaggerated disdain.
“Don’t worry, baby.” The man tried to pull her close to his side again. “I got plenty of money. Why don’t you come up to my room and I’ll dig into my stash?”
She raised an eyebrow and shot a glance around the table in silent, communal derision of the loser. The other players, including two men and a finofan who’d painted his ear frills a garish yellow, chuckled at the human’s expense. Turning up her nose, she extricated herself from the man’s grip and sidled around the table toward the posungi. “You seem to know what you’re doing. Why don’t you tell me which one of these lovely men is the best player?”
His second set of eyes blinked out of sequence with the others, and his lower tentacles lifted in the equivalent of a shrug. “They are all inferior to a posungi.”
She smiled at him and leaned in, stroking a hand along his arm. “I love a man who’s confident in his game.”
He emitted a raspberry of appreciation and let all four eyes rake her body from head to toe. “I enjoy a woman who knows how to play, as well.”
The double entendre wasn’t lost on her, and she giggled, pressing her body to his, searching for the electric signature of a ploycom. She had to hold her revulsion in check as his three-fingered hand drummed excitedly against her hip. It didn’t help that she also felt Qaiyaan’s low boil of rage from across the room.
She sent her nanites in search of the nearby frequency of Nupnup’s ploycom, but there was a lot of low-level noise from other gadgets in the room. Syndicorp had made her and Doug practice homing in on a single electronic signature too many times to count, but she’d always found ignoring the other signatures difficult. Snuffling close to her ear, Nupnup made a joke. She laughed at it without actually hearing. Dammit, where’s his device?
To her relief, he let her go long enough to lean over the table and set his pieces on the shelves. She concentrated harder, her nanites buzzing through her veins and making her muscles tremble. With a jolt, she located his ploycom’s frequency. The sudden flow of information made her legs weak, forcing her to lean heavily on the posungi. Not that he minded. His arm torqued around her, fingers digging into her ass cheek. His tentacles waggled close to her face, one making contact with her lower lip. Only years of practice at the grift kept her from shuddering in revulsion. Her nanites were collecting data as fast as they could, throwing it at her in an indecipherable wave. She needed a few moments to interpret.
Qaiyaan’s resonant voice behind her made her stiffen. “There you are.”
The posungi’s roving fingers halted and he stared over her shoulder. “You are looking for me?”
Lisa turned, pulse thundering. The pirate captain stood facing them, his stance wide and his arms crossed over his broad chest. The waves of emotion rolling off him mingled with the data stream from Nupnup’s device, further confusing her. Mentally, she begged him to back off. She wasn’t ready.
“I hear you can rent me a cottage,” Qaiyaan said, staring down his nose at the much shorter alien.
Nupnup belched out a breath, fluttering his chin tentacles. “You need it immediately? I’m busy at the moment.”
Qaiyaan nodded curtly, his gaze flicking over Lisa as if just noticing her for the first time.
With glee, she located the file with the encrypted cartel information and fumbled with the code.
The posungi’s grip on her slackened as he turned to face Qaiyaan, but didn’t fully release. “You have a color preference? Blue? Red?”
Lisa’s vision danced with an overlay of information, and she found the directive with the cartel codewords. They hadn’t changed. Relief flooded her. Looking at Qaiyaan, she nodded imperceptibly.
His chin lifted, gaze never leaving the orange-faced posungi. “It has to be turquoise. With an ocean view and three bedrooms.”
Nupnup’s arm dropped from her waist. He straightened. “Three bedrooms? Are you certain?”
A flicker of indecision only she could feel tickled the air, but Qaiyaan nodded firmly. “That’s my requirement.”
This time, Lisa caught a strong whiff of indecision from the posungi. She stepped back, unsure wh
at to make of that. Had the physical contact with the tentacled alien made her start to bond with him now? She shuddered in disgust. No, she was just out of practice with grifting, and Qaiyaan had an abnormally strong effect on her senses.
Nupnup’s tentacles writhed. “If you are sure. Let us find a place we can discuss what you require.”
Without a glance back at her, Nupnup moved off into the recesses of the Solar Swan, Qaiyaan trailing close behind. She knew better than to follow without an invitation. Besides, all this exercising of her nanites had given her an idea. She was a hacker, and weren’t her nanites simply little computers themselves? Doug had reprogrammed them a few times for her when the lab tests overwhelmed her. But what if she could do it herself? She could program a few to hack into the others, and perhaps re-write their code to protect her from Qaiyaan’s resonance.
Then she and pirate-captain Qaiyaan could have a little fun on Bolisare after all.
Chapter Nine
Qaiyaan followed the posungi to a small room behind the bar, where the orange alien sat on a high backed wing-chair that had seen better days. A small table beside him held a decanter and two glasses, but he didn’t offer refreshment. A second, smaller version of his chair faced him; too small to be comfortable for Qaiyaan, so he remained standing. To the left, a large mirror dominated the wall, and when Qaiyaan sent an ionic pulse in that direction, he sensed someone watching from behind the one-way glass. He’d dealt with aliens like Nupnup before. Much of what transpired would be bluff and bravado. He’d expected no less.
Keeping his face passive, he waited as Nupnup reviewed the list Mek had put together. Finally, the tentacle-faced alien looked up. “You are requesting many specialty medical items. What do you need them for?”
“No questions asked.” Qaiyaan reiterated what Lisa’d said about the contact.