by M. D. Cooper
Malorie strode down the corridor to her rooms, and Juasa followed silently. Korin stayed in the hall as usual, but gave Juasa a small smile and a nod as he closed the door.
“Go clean up in the san, and then use the autodresser when you’re done. I’ll have it select something for you to wear,” Malorie ordered.
Juasa walked into the massive san, looking forward to a long shower. Using Malorie’s shower after being out in the field was the only thing that made it even remotely bearable.
A part of her mind worried about what Malorie might make her wear, but she suspected it would be tasteful. It was readily apparent that the lady of the castle wanted to impress this Lara woman—even though she seemed to dislike her.
Juasa stayed under the hot spray as long as she dared—not wanting to attract Malorie’s ire—before switching the shower to dry mode. It didn’t even occur to her to put on a towel before walking out of the san and into the main room.
She took three steps before her eyes alighted on three men sitting in the room with Malorie.
Shit…I thought we’d be alone.
Uncertain of what to do, she froze for a moment, feeling her cheeks heat up, until Malorie spoke up.
“Well, go on, girl. You’ve given us enough of a show. Get dressed now.”
Juasa nodded and hurried to the autodresser.
The device was a tall cylinder with a series of armatures in the back that looked a bit too much like a centipede’s legs for Juasa’s liking.
She’d seen autodressers in vids and sims, but never actually used one. From what she knew, they could clothe a person in a variety of ways. One way was to 3D print clothing directly on the user’s body, another was to actually fabricate an outfit in place with actual cloth, and the third was to dress a person in a pre-made outfit.
“Arms out, legs apart,” a soft, feminine voice said, and Juasa complied as the front panel—thankfully opaque—slid shut. She closed her eyes as the grav field lifted her up in the air. Something slid up her legs, then up over her torso. Straps settled onto her shoulders, and then something tightened around her waist. Next, the grav field bent her arms back and pulled another piece of clothing onto her shoulders.
Lastly, boots were pulled onto her feet, and then the grav field lowered her to the ground.
She opened her eyes and watched the opaque front of the autodresser change, becoming reflective.
Juasa was surprised to see herself dressed tastefully in a sleeveless, shimmering blue skinsuit, white belt, and low, white boots. A short, blue jacket hung from her shoulders and was fastened with two buckles across her breasts, and then split wide across her stomach, coming around to hang just past her rear.
This could have been a lot worse. She turned to see a shifting silver pattern on the back of the jacket. I’d almost wear this myself—if it wasn’t shimmering.
She stepped toward the autodresser’s door, which slid open to show the three men rising from the couches. They nodded to Malorie and turned to leave, each one raking their eyes down Juasa’s body before they left.
“Don’t blame them for taking a look,” Malorie said as she approached. “You look good enough to eat…and I don’t normally take a fancy to women.”
“Uh, thanks,” Juasa said. “Who were those guys?”
Malorie shrugged. “Some of the captains. We were just having a chat about some Blackadder business. Go make yourself something to drink, if you want. I’ll be a bit.”
Juasa nodded and walked to the bar, while Malorie disappeared into the san. Jeavons moved aside to make room for her as she approached, and Juasa considered her options.
“You know, Jeavons, I would really like some coffee.”
The automaton nodded and pulled open a cabinet to reveal a rather complex-looking contraption that Juasa assumed produced coffee, if one knew the correct incantation.
“Could you make me a strong cup, black?” Juasa asked.
The automaton nodded once more and set to work. Three minutes later, it produced a cup of steaming black coffee, which it handed to Juasa.
“A girl could get used to this,” Juasa said quietly as she took the coffee and sat on the sofa.
The statement immediately turned to thoughts of Katrina in the field, and the crew of the Havermere in whatever sort of holding cells the Blackadder used. Those thoughts led her mind to Carl, and Katrina’s ship, the Voyager. She hoped that they would lay low, though Katrina had thought that they would be searching the stars for them. By now they could be anywhere, and there was no doubt that Jace would have every Blackadder ship out there searching for their would-be rescuers.
Juasa was less optimistic. Well, not about the searching, but certainly less so about the finding. She pushed it out of her mind; worrying about that wouldn’t make her feel any better.
She sipped her coffee, thinking, not for the first time, how very boring life was without the Link.
When she had been working in the fields, all of her focus was on gathering the sithri pollen, avoiding the whip, and ignoring the agony across her body. Nights had been worse; filled with feverish dreams and discomfort, but never boredom.
Now she often had absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait.
Juasa finished her cup of coffee and carried it back to Jeavons. She leaned against the small bar for a moment, eyeing the bed surrounded by its moat and waterfall.
“What the hell,” she muttered, and walked toward it, crossing over one of the small bridges and climbing up the two steps to the massive round mattress.
She wondered what it was with megalomaniacs; they all had round beds in the vids and sims too. Maybe it was because one had to be rich to afford the custom bedding.
Juasa sat on the edge of the bed and bounced up and down. Mal had promised to make her sleep at the foot of her bed the first night, but had never made good on the threat. Instead, she’d had a small room nearby made available for Juasa.
Bit-by-bit, Juasa was starting to wonder if Mal was as much a raging bitch as she appeared, or if it was a protective persona layered on top, just like Verisa was for Katrina.
“Don’t rumple your jacket,” Malorie said as she emerged from the san.
Juasa turned to see the lady of the castle walking to the autodresser, a loose robe hanging from her shoulders, her choker still around her neck.
“I don’t think it can rumple,” Juasa said, feeling the supple leather-like polymer that the jacket was made from.
“True,” Malorie said with a shrug. “Then just get off my bed.”
Juasa slid off the bed and walked back to the sofas as Malorie stepped into the autodresser. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger while she waited for Malorie to emerge.
Ten minutes later, the autodresser’s door slid open to reveal Malorie in a long silver dress, this one slit high on her right thigh. Like the first dress Juasa had seen the woman in, this one also ended just over Malorie’s breasts. From the neck down, her skin was a golden hue and seemed to ripple as she moved.
“That’s quite the effect,” Juasa said as she rose and approached Malorie.
Malorie held an arm out and touched it with her finger. Small ripples spread across her skin in a circle from the point she touched.
“It’s a favorite of mine. Takes a very special coating that has to be printed onto your body. You only get one use out of it, too.”
“Let me guess,” Juasa asked with a raised brow. “Lara doesn’t have an autodresser that can do that.”
Malorie snorted. “Lara doesn’t have an autodresser at all. The woman wouldn’t know fashion if it came out and slapped her in the face.”
“Oh really?” Juasa asked.
The notion surprised her. All of the upper crust in Bollam’s World lived for fashion—there was little else for them to do. Katrina had embodied it in her Verisa persona, and thus far, Malorie seemed to love dressing for pleasure as well. She had simply assumed that the mysterious Lara would be the same way.
“She was military long ago—no
t here, but in another system. She’s all about uniforms and stripes on her pants.”
The initial image Juasa conjured up couldn’t be right, and she assumed it had to be one stripe.
“C’mon,” Malorie said, waving her hand for Juasa to follow.
They left Malorie’s quarters, and Korin joined them at once. Malorie walked briskly through the castle’s corridors to a rear door that Juasa had not seen before. They passed through it and across a smaller bridge over the moat to a small landing field.
Finally getting to see our way out.
Shuttles rested on three of the cradles, and a freighter sat on a fourth. There were six other empty cradles, and beyond those, a row of fuel tanks stood at the edge of the field.
Malorie led them to the closest of the shuttles. Inside was a spacious cabin, with two automatons at the rear. Korin took up a position near the entrance, while Malorie and Juasa settled down on a pair of seats facing each other.
A man poked his head into the cabin from the cockpit. “Ready, Lady Malorie?”
“Yes, let’s go,” Malorie replied. “I don’t want to be late.”
The man gave a curt nod and disappeared back into the cockpit. A moment later, the shuttle lifted off from the cradle, rising on its stream of gravitons. Juasa had rarely ever been planetside; she looked out the window, watching as Revenence Castle fell away below them.
She could see the fields as they rose, and knew that Katrina would be out in one of them, working to meet her double quota. The thought brought yet another wave of guilt over Juasa. Here she was on a luxurious shuttle, in a clean outfit, with automatons ready to serve her whatever she wished, while Katrina was down there, baking in the sun, getting whipped and beaten.
She knew that this was all carefully crafted by Malorie to drive a wedge between them, but Juasa didn’t think it would work. Katrina was too strong a woman to fall prey to jealousy. Stars, it had been Katrina’s idea to make Juasa Malorie’s personal handmaiden.
“Thinking of her?” Malorie asked.
Juasa turned away from the window to look at the lady of the castle. “Yes. I wish you would bring her in from the fields.”
“She can come in whenever she wants,” Malorie replied. “She just has to give me something in exchange. Your precious Verisa will tell Liam when she’s ready to finally give me something worthwhile.”
“What if she doesn’t?” Juasa asked. “She’s a very proud woman.”
“Dear Juasa,” Malorie said with a touch of sadness in her eyes. “We all have our breaking point. Verisa has hers, too. Eventually she’ll come to it.”
Juasa hoped not. She’d learned the lay of the castle, and now knew the best route to the landing pad, but she still hadn’t learned anything about how to get their collars off.
Bit-by-bit, she was losing faith that they’d be able to get out of this situation. After so long, her current situation had begun to feel like her new reality.
“I see it in your eyes,” Malorie said. “You wish she’d give in. You have it good. She could too. I’d even let you two fuck as much as you want.”
Juasa met Malorie’s cold blue eyes. “A gilded cage is still a cage.”
Malorie barked a laugh. “We’re all in a cage, Ju. I just want to fill mine with as much luxury as I can.”
“What do you mean?” Juasa asked.
“This life, this universe, it’s all constraints and adversaries. We’re constantly being put in our place…even by those we thought we could trust.”
“That’s a dim view,” Juasa said. “I think when I worked for KiStar—shitty as they were—I was freer than you are.”
“Yeah?” Malorie asked. “How’d that work out for you? Nice mess Verisa got you into.”
Juasa opened her mouth to respond, but Malorie cocked her head, daring her to engage.
“Maybe you’re right,” Juasa muttered.
“Thought so.”
Juasa turned back to the window, looking out over the world of Persia as they rose above it. Blue and green, dotted with white clouds, it looked like so many other terraformed planets. An ideal place for humans to live—and one where they had brought their barbarism.
She could see what looked like small cities on the coast, as they passed over the ocean; though nothing that she would consider to be a major population center.
Strange.
This planet appeared perfect and was relatively close to Sol. It had likely been populated for thousands of years. She would have expected to see a much larger population.
Unless it had been kept in check—or the people killed off.
The ship turned and lifted higher into space, and Juasa caught sight of a large space station in the shape of a single disk, with a long spire coming out of the top and bottom.
“Farsa,” Malorie announced. “From whence Lara rules her domain.”
“Why don’t you like her?” Malorie seemed to be in a talkative mood—if a fatalistic one—and Juasa was determined to get as much out of her as possible.
Malorie snorted. “Because she’s in charge and I’m not.”
“That’s it?”
“Does there need to be more? She knows we have the Havermere, and rumors of the Streamer ship abound. She thinks we’re hiding something, and I’m bringing you to show that we’re not.”
“So this is just cat and mouse?” Juasa asked.
“Now you’re getting it.”
Juasa sighed and looked out the window again as the station grew larger.
And I’m the mouse.
ANNA’S SUBTERFUGE
STELLAR DATE: 01.19.8512 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Revenence Castle
REGION: Persia, Midditerra System
As much as it rankled Anna that Juasa was taken up to some special meeting with Admiral Lara and she was left behind, not having Malorie in the castle was a golden opportunity.
It would finally be Anna’s chance to get to the medtable in the lab—something she had been trying to do for days.
She’d tried to get to the table the previous times that Katrina had been brought down to the medlab, but each time, she’d been foiled. Tom or Ainsley had always reported in instantly, ready to accept their patient.
As a result, Anna had never even laid eyes on the medtable that she needed to access.
However, with Malorie gone, the castle was emptying out, everyone glad for a reprieve. The two medtechs would certainly do the same, and Anna would finally have her chance to find out how Verisa’s collar was attenuated.
Anna approached the hidden lift entrance, surprised that no guards were on duty. Whoever was supposed to be here must have snuck off early, taking advantage of Malorie’s absence like everyone else.
There was no security within the lift, and Anna rode it down to the lab sublevel. She walked out into a short hall with a pair of doors at the end. No one was in evidence as she pushed them open and looked right, then left.
There was no signage, but she turned left, looking for the medlab.
Most of the lab level was dedicated to refining the sithri pollen into the various products that Malorie distributed. The rooms that served that purpose were easy to identify by the long tables lined with equipment, and the automatons processing the valuable extract, which were all visible through the windows.
So much for ‘a handcrafted drug’, Anna thought with a shake of her head. It would seem that Malorie only cared about appearances when it came to her claims of a humans-only manufacturing process.
She turned left, and then turned left again, realizing that she was walking around a large square. She turned left twice more, and then finally came to a door labeled “Medical”.
“Shit,” Anna muttered. The door was only a few paces from the lifts—she’d gone the wrong way.
Anna tried the handle, and to her amazement, the door opened. She was glad for the small miracle, though surprised at the lax attitude toward security. At least it made up for the lost time walking all the way aro
und the level.
Inside, the medical lab appeared to be standard fare, but the medtable in the center was definitely not. Anna had never seen one quite like it and she assumed it was the spoils of one of Jace’s raids.
She walked to the console at the head of the table and waved her hand across the panel to activate its holodisplay. The table came to life, and a general system status display appeared before Anna.
“Even more sloppy,” she muttered to herself. She’d spent days talking to Tom, Ainsley, and any other tech who worked down on the lab sublevel to get details that she could use for guessing passcodes, and here the medtable wasn’t even locked down.
She flipped through the table’s listing of prep systems that assessed a patient before it began any work on them. If the collar attenuator was built into the table, its configuration should be in there.
Nothing turned up at the top level, and Anna dipped into the restraint systems and searched through a dozen option trees before finally coming to one labeled ‘Patient Portable Restraint Adjustment’.
Sure enough, within that was a series of options for altering the sensitivity of EM detection on a restraint collar before using mednano to heal a patient.
The current amount of collar attenuation was the bare minimum possible to use the table’s nano. Anna considered turning it to max attenuation, but decided that it may be apparent to the medtechs if the table could deliver unrestricted doses of nano.
Instead, she changed the setting to halfway, and saved it as the new default. Anna was about to leave the room when it occurred to her that there might be custom diagnostic tests that cross-checked the default settings with established norms.
Sure enough, in the base initialization routines for the table was a test script that checked for low level of attenuation for personal restraints. Anna altered the code to pass on all conditions, and then saved the test script.
Not just a sexy ass.
She backed out of all the system panes she had open on the holodisplay and then shut down the display and the table.
“Now for phase two,” she muttered to herself, and walked toward the door just as it opened.