by Susan Grant
Muffin chuckled. “Why not have the entire bottle, Tee? I’m sure the captain will carry you off to bed like he did on Blunder.”
Ian frowned at the bodyguard. “Figuratively speaking.”
“No kidding,” Tee said, imitating Ian’s accent. “Had I ended up in your bed, Earth dweller, I would have remembered it.”
The crew burst into delighted laughter. Even Quin slammed his hands on the table, spilling croppers onto its faded holographic surface. Tee realized belatedly what she’d said and looked as if she wanted to crawl under the table. Ian leaned toward her, his mouth close to her ear. The few locks of greenish hair that brushed over his lips were surprisingly silky. “I would have remembered it, too.”
Her eyes widened. Immediately, she clutched her hands together, squeezing her fingers tightly atop the table. Warning bells sounded in his head. He was playing a dangerous game: she was on the run and he had…obligations. He had no business flirting with her. But a small, selfish part of him was glad to see she was unsettled by his remark.
“Well,” she murmured. “I am glad to hear that.” The glow-globe on the table illuminated the pulse under her jaw, spreading fingers of light across the fabric of her flightsuit, beneath which her breasts rose and fell with slow, even breaths. Those breaths would quicken as he moved inside her, her tender kisses turning passionate, her arms tightening around him as he brought her to an intense, drawn-out climax…
God almighty. What was he doing—torturing himself?
Fully and painfully aroused by the erotic image he’d conjured, Ian jerked his attention back to the holographic tabletop. It seemed the pixie was as hazardous to him sober as she was drunk.
The waitress returned with their drinks. Then, thankfully, someone started a around of the All-Folk Chain; a galactic version of karaoke, where individual verses were made up and then sung by volunteers from the audience who came up to the stage and usually made fools of themselves.
“Now, the next port after this we’ll make is known as Donavan’s Blunder.
But blunder there we’ll only do if we drink our livers asunder.”
Ian had heard far worse. He chuckled and wrapped his hands around his mug of rapidly cooling tock, his attention on Randall’s party in the restaurant next door. They’d ordered ale, a dark strong ale, instead of juice or tock, he noted happily. Alcohol would loosen the Earth group’s tongues nicely.
He kept his attention on his quarry next door, trying not to discern Tee’s voice from the rest of his crew’s, trying not to listen for the sound of her laughter, or smile at her surprisingly dry, self-deprecating humor. But her scent filled his nostrils, yet another chink in his armor, the discipline that had been his strength for all his life.
Anyone who smelled like peroxide would be distracting…right?
“Your turn, Captain!” he heard the pixie call out.
Ian slid around in his seat. Push was smiling; Gredda, too. But Tee was standing, one arm extended, her hand palm up and her eyes aglow with what could only be trouble.
Ian said warily, “I almost hate to ask—my turn for what?”
Tee wriggled her fingers. “The All-Folk Chain, what else?” She snatched his hand, and the feel of her warm skin sent a wave of heat up his arm. He planted his boots on the floor to keep his balance on the stool, but deftly she used his legs for leverage and tugged him to his feet.
Applause erupted. That was when Ian noticed every person in the unruly crowd had turned to face him, laughing and clapping. The singer onstage was pointing to him with a handheld voice amplifier. “Here, Earth dweller!” he called out from the platform.
“Earth dweller, Earth dweller,” the audience began to chant.
“Go,” Tee cajoled, her eyes twinkling. “They like you.”
Ian looked to the rest of his crew for help. Only Quin appeared worried. The others were evidently delighted by the prospect of him making a total fool of himself. He aimed a help-me-out glare in Muffin’s direction.
The huge man was dismayingly weak in his defense. “The captain can’t sing, you know,” was all he said.
“We shall cheer for him anyway,” Tee rebutted.
“And whistle, even,” Gredda added.
Ian almost laughed at the Valkarian warrior woman’s earnest face. “You, whistle, Gredda? Tempting, but forget it. We’re here to size up our competition, not to provide the evening’s entertainment.” He tried to sit down but Tee held fast to his hand.
“Earth dweller, Earth dweller…”
Ian gave the cheering crowd a Queen-Elizabeth wave. “In your dreams,” he said in English.
Tee shook her head. “You are a trader, yes? Then you must think of this as an opportunity, not an ordeal. ‘Trade is a matter of trust,’ ” she recited. “ ‘With trust comes reciprocation, and with reciprocation, profit.’ ”
He gaped at her. She’d quoted directly from the Treatise of Trade, the holiest document of the Vash Nadah. Ian recognized the passage only because he’d spent so much of the past seven years memorizing the ponderous and ancient teachings. The Vash Nadah peppered their conversations with such quotes, finding phrases to fit every situation. But a merchant-class woman using excerpts in everyday conversation? He wouldn’t have expected it.
“You came here to trade, yes?” she went on. “If you sing, they will like you. If the other traders like you, they will buy from you, no matter where you’re from.”
“Earth dweller, Earth dweller,” the chants continued.
“And if they buy your goods,” she added with a partner-in-crime wink, “then perhaps you’ll raise my salary.”
He chuckled as he caught Senator Randall glancing over from the restaurant next door. “I just might do that.” Her ploy was ingenious in ways she couldn’t imagine. Participating in this silly bar game would guarantee anonymity for his initial meeting with the man. Who’d ever expect to find the disputed heir to the galaxy in the frontier, singing the Chain in a bar filled with drunken black-marketeers?
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right, Miss Tee. A captain’s got to do what a captain’s got to do, but”—he brought his mouth to her ear—“don’t think you won’t pay for this later.”
Leaving her thoroughly flustered, he walked to the stage and snatched the microphone from the man who’d preceded him. With the slim high-tech rod anchored in his hand, he stared out at the audience—shadowy, unfamiliar faces all, but for his crew standing in the left rear of the bar. “All you do is continue more or less from where the last participant left off,” he recalled Gredda once telling him.
“Okay,” he said into the mike.
At that single English word, the crowd went wild, stomping and cheering, and he tried to forget that he couldn’t sing. Encouraged by their enthusiasm and by the fact that they were drunk and he was sober, Ian recalled the lyrics of a verse he’d heard earlier and altered them to suit the idea that popped into his head. Using the tapping of his boot on the wooden floor for rhythm, he belted out a song that came out sounding more far more like old Earth rap than folksy:
“Donavan’s Blunder is the place to come
if to trade you’re more than willing.
But keep your pilots away from whiskey
or their minds you will be killing.”
Tee tried to appear affronted, but her eyes sparkled as he floundered through another verse. Then, unexpectedly, three men walked into the pub: Randall and his cronies.
Ian swore. Instead of being able to coolly observe the men from the shadows until he was ready to introduce himself, he was standing front-and-center on a stage in the middle of the bar.
Beautiful.
Hawk-faced, silver-haired, tall and blue-eyed, U.S. Senator Charlie Randall drew the attention of every patron in the bar. The conversation ebbed as everyone gave him a curious glance. But no one on Grüma remained surprised for long, and the noise resumed immediately.
“You must think of this as an opportunity, not an ordeal.” Tee’s words echoe
d inside him. Yeah. He ought to turn the tables on Randall, get him onstage while he returned to his seat. Then he’d be able to see how the senator acted under pressure. Rom B’kah often said that there was nothing like a little stress to bring out an individual’s true colors.
An oddly appropriate song sprang into Ian’s mind. This time he sang in English:
“Yankee Doodle went to Grüma,
A-riding on a pony.
Tucked some coffee in his jeans
and called it macaroni.”
Randall swung his silver-haired head in Ian’s direction. Narrowing his eyes, he regarded Ian with a stare that would have intimidated anyone not already used to similar looks from powerful men. He’d gotten more than a few from the more intrigue-prone and distrustful Vash Nadah royals, so Ian didn’t flinch.
“Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy.
You’re the new Earth dweller on the block
And feet-first in my territory.”
Okay, so the rhyme sucked eggs, but his goal was to put Randall on the spot, not win a talent contest. Ian grinned and aimed the mike at Randall. The crowd roared and again began to chant, “Earth dweller, Earth dweller.”
The senator glanced around helplessly. His followers visibly recoiled. Then a merchant at a nearby table tugged impatiently on Randall’s sleeve, gesturing to the stage. Another gave him a nudge.
Shoulders sagging with the inevitability of it all, the senator marched to the front of the bar. His blue eyes were more penetrating in person than they were on television. “You’re American,” he said, snatching the mike from Ian’s hand.
“Yep.”
“You’re also a pain in the ass. You owe me a drink after this, young man.”
Ian shrugged then returned to his table where his cheering crew waited.
“You can’t sing,” Tee said.
“I never said I could.”
“Ah, but you were wonderful!”
With her face flushed with happiness, her beauty radiating from deep within, she came across as utterly sweet and unspoiled…and more out of place in the frontier than ever. He fought the impulsive urge to wrap his arm around her waist and draw her close, not only to shield her from the undisciplined mob, but to feel her warm and soft against him. Luckily, Randall’s singing brought him back from the edge of doing something entirely inappropriate.
The senator had a reasonable grasp of Basic, and the crowd guffawed good-naturedly at his mangled version of a common jingle. When he relinquished the stage to the next participant, with his two companions in tow, he strode to where Ian stood. “Where’s my drink, kid?”
Ian tossed Quin some credits and dispatched the man for a around of ale. A few extra chairs were pulled up and the entire group sat together.
Ian stuck out his hand. “Stone,” was all he said. His hair was longer than he usually wore it and he purposefully sported a few days’ worth of stubble. He doubted the senator would recognize him.
“Senator Charlie Randall,” the man said as they shook hands.
“A U.S. senator in this godforsaken place? What brings you here?”
“Fact-finding,” he replied in English to Ian’s Basic. He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen things that would curl your hair.”
Barésh. “Yeah? Like what?”
Smugly, the man spread his suntanned hands on the table. In an open-necked powder-blue polo shirt, the prominent American senator looked more likely to play a few rounds of golf than turn the balance of the galaxy on its ear. “All isn’t as it seems in the Vash Empire,” he said cryptically. Then he smiled, drawing out the moment, enjoying Ian’s patent interest. “That is what I was told, now I’ve seen it for myself. Let’s just say I intend to bring home with me a little enlightenment regarding that fact.”
Like hell you will. Ian was certain Rom B’kah knew nothing of Barésh. He’d never stand for such conditions. On the other hand, if places like Barésh existed without Rom’s knowledge, it in essence proved Randall’s point that the Federation didn’t care about the frontier. Until Ian could show that the Vash were committed to changing what was wrong, he had to keep Randall from taking the news home. Just how he was going to do that he had yet to figure out. But he would. Without Rom’s help. This was his chance to show that he could take a delicate and potentially disastrous situation and turn it around.
“Sounds intriguing,” Ian said casually. “Tell me more.”
“Over our drinks.” Randall waved a hand at his companions. “This here’s Mike Gruber, assistant secretary of commerce. And Bud Lucarelli and Tom Dowdy, secret service.”
Ian introduced Gredda, Muffin, and Tee, pointedly switching the language from English to Basic, allowing his crew to participate in the conversation. There was another around of handshaking when Quin returned to the table with a small cask of ale and mugs. Then the two groups made smalltalk.
Ian ignored the glass of ale Quin placed in front of him. Tee, he noticed, did the same. In fact, her original flute of mog-melon wine was still two-thirds full. Maybe the pixie was learning, after all.
“How long have you been out here, Stone?” Randall asked.
“Awhile. I sell Earth products. Business is good.”
“Excellent. I’d like to see more young people seeking their fortunes in the frontier. We’re the home team out here, you know. Earth.” He wrinkled his nose at Tee. “What’s that you’re drinking, young lady? It smells like hard-boiled eggs.”
The senator’s thick accent made his words tough to understand, but everyone in Ian’s party knew to what he’d referred. Quin choked back a laugh, while Muffin tried hard not to smile. Tee shot them a warning glare, then curved both hands around her glass of wine. “It’s only mog-melon wine. Perhaps the odor is coming from that group over there,” she suggested.
The senator and his cohorts glanced at the particularly grubby collection of traders sitting behind them, and Ian was pleased to see them nod. Good. He didn’t want any of his crew arousing suspicions.
But Randall wasn’t done scrutinizing Tee. He refocused on her, his blue eyes intense and searching. She shrank back before appearing to catch herself. “Are you a Vash Nadah?” he asked warily.
“Her, Vash?” Ian chuckled. “She’s a space drifter, through and through.” He said it to protect Tee, though he was far from convinced it was the truth.
“Yes. That’s me. Scum of the galaxy.” To Ian’s dismay, Tee lifted her flute to her lips and downed the contents in two deep swallows.
Quin chimed in. “You should have seen her the day we hired her. Had enough Mandarian whiskey in her blood to pickle a hydro-farm of Danjo shoe-beets.”
Eyes watering, Tee clasped her hands tightly atop the table and nodded. “More likely two hydro-farms.”
Randall laughed and relaxed in his chair. “That certainly doesn’t sound like your typical Vash. I’ve never seen a more self-righteous, gloom-and-doom spouting people in all my life.”
Tee’s knuckles turned white.
Ian said tightly, “For someone who’s spent a career fighting against the erosion of civil rights, don’t you think that’s a mighty big generalization?” Immediately he felt Tee’s eyes on him, and he wanted to kick himself for jumping in to defend the Vash when he was supposed to be making friends with Randall.
The senator appeared unrepentant. “There are always exceptions. But overall I don’t trust them. They want the frontier under their thumb. But there’s a brighter future for Earth if we remain independent of that control. We have more than enough resources to survive. We don’t need Vash rule.” His face came alive with passion. “I envision a future where the frontier thrives independently of the Vash Federation.”
“What about that war the galaxy almost didn’t survive ten thousand years ago?”
“Eleven,” Tee corrected absently.
“Right,” Ian said, almost smiling. “Eleven.” He’d wanted to hide his expert grasp of galactic history, a
nd being corrected by a ragged-looking space drifter fed perfectly into his ploy. “Wasn’t that brought about because all the worlds and systems broke into warring factions? A few got their hands on some bad-ass weaponry and”—Ian mimicked the sound of an explosion—“it was almost ‘game over’ for civilization. I don’t particularly like the idea of heading down that road again, do you? Not after everything’s been stable for so long.”
He realized that Tee was watching him in shock. He gave her a quick smile to reassure her. What was wrong? Didn’t she agree with him? Swallowing hard, she lowered her eyes to her tightly clenched hands.
“There must be a way we can stay part of the Federation for protection and still hang onto our identity as a planet.” Ian was operating without a script now. Rom hadn’t cleared him to negotiate; the king of the galaxy hadn’t even cleared him to talk to Randall. But he wouldn’t have chosen Ian as his successor if he didn’t believe he could think creatively and independently.
“Romlijhian B’kah chose his stepson as the next king,” he said to Randall. “Talk about having friends in high places…Don’t you think it’d be better to be part of the Federation than opposed to it?”
“There’s more to it than just influence—or the lack thereof,” the senator argued. “The Vash don’t view the frontier—or us—as they do the central area of their empire. We’re beneath their regard.” The senator glanced at Tee, as if he were still unsure of her. Then he lowered his voice. “I have proof. I’ve seen the darker side, Stone—poverty, disease, and apathy. My associate took me to Sorak Seven, Lanat, Barésh.”
Ian glanced up sharply. Muffin frowned. Randall had an associate? Whom was he working with?
“Those worlds are nothing more to the Vash than distant slave pits,” Randall continued. “I saw primitive medical care, substandard housing, hungry and overworked populations. The galaxy isn’t the Shangri-La they claim it is,” he said. “Earth needs to know that.”
Yeah, Ian thought grimly, so do the Vash.
“What’s happened to those planets could happen to us,” Randall concluded, “unless we assert ourselves.”