Revenge of the Catspaw

by Helena Puumala

  “Well, I better go and rescue Jeordi and the front desk clerk from the dorks' wrath. Don't worry; the jerks won't get anywhere near this suite.”

  **

  “There's one woman who always picks up and drops off her favourite boy on her own,” Dyron said to Coryn very quietly, one afternoon.

  The two of them were sitting on their usual bench, outside the building. Coryn gave his companion a searching look. What did he have in mind?

  “Just trying to get those wheels in your head rolling,” Dyron said with a slight grin. “I have the sense that you have a very fine mind when you're not drug-addled.”

  Coryn shook himself to try to clear the cobwebs from that mind.

  “You're thinking that a couple of us—you and I, maybe—could hijack her flit and vamoose?”

  The thought of such an audacious plot had occurred to him, when he had observed the particular Elite woman coming and going with her little flit, but he had been too groggy to follow it up in any way. And what Dyron was suggesting required a detailed plan.

  “I don't know enough about this place and these people to judge whether there's any possibility that something like that might work,” Dyron said. “Or if, once a guy is out, there would be any place for him to hide. My guess is that if you can get your brain to work, you'd be much better suited than I am to make such decisions.”

  “I've got more familiarity with this culture, that's true,” Coryn agreed. “Once out, we'd have to hide until Sarah and her companions get here. Then, join forces with them, and help them break open this slave pen, get the other men out, and blow it to high heaven, if we can.

  “There's a plan there, somewhere, if I can just tease it out of my sluggish mind.”

  Dyron grinned at him, and turned around to look at the nearest door of the building. Coryn followed his example, and sure enough, the door opened and Ariane stepped out.

  “And what are you two plotting in such low voices out there?” she asked as she walked over to them, looking slightly irate. “We really need a listening device attached to that bench, but for some reason the ones we've tried to use always fail almost immediately. I don't know why; maybe it's the open air. And, since the Elites don't want to pay for higher quality electronics, we're stuck with the gap—of which all you guys take advantage.”

  Coryn shrugged. His mind was feeling a bit clearer, already. Either the drugs were wearing off, or the prospect of doing some useful mental work was having a positive effect on him.

  “Don't worry about us. We were just trading stories from our pasts,” he lied smoothly as only an Agent could. “Sometimes it's just nice to not have your every spoken word overheard. Without standing so close to the fence that you have to worry about an animal clawing at your backside through it.”

  **

  From that moment on, he began to pay more attention to what was going on around him. Having a project to work on, mentally, at least, was good for him, and perhaps that was all Dyron had hoped to accomplish.

  He began to pay attention to the comings and goings about the compound—all of the ones he witnessed, not just the one woman who came to pick up a certain teenage Terran youngster at least once a week without any accompanying bodyguards. She used a small flit for the trips, and that probably explained the lack of guards; a flit that size accommodated comfortably two people, and three in crowded conditions, if every one of the occupants was reasonably slim. Ariane, or one of her Underkeepers, made sure that the male slave was under restraints when he climbed into the flit. Someone at the woman's home must have helped her with the restrains there—unless the slave was cowed or submissive enough to not object to the hardware.

  It had to be possible, if a person moved quickly enough, to storm the flit while its owner was dropping off her favourite. Approach the flit as the slave was climbing out, say a few words to him. Then, when he was heading off to look for Ariane to remove the restraints, turn to the Elite woman, undo her seat belt, and bodily toss her out of the flit. The flit's engine would be running; at that point it would not care who flew it, although if he turned the power off, likely he would not be able to restart it without whatever identification it had been programmed to accept. But he, and Dyron (if Dyron was serious about accompanying him) would have to dump the vehicle soon after they had made it over the animal park. The Neotsarian Law Enforcers would certainly trace a flying machine in which slaves had absconded; the escapees would have a better chance of finding a hidey-hole on foot than by flit.

  There were plenty of vehicles that made their way in and out of the compound, he realized, once he had set his mind to studying the issue. There were the flyers of the Elite women who came to either pick up their favourite boy-toys, or to cavort with them on the premises, of course, but outside of the flit he was interested in, they were all out of reach, even the one which took him to Evil Evella's home, and then returned him to the Pleasure House. These flyers were all manned by bodyguards, two per vehicle. The guards were armed with stunners, at the least; some had death-dealing weapons which they were not shy about displaying. There were the large cargo vehicles which flew in supplies and food, as well as the personnel flyers which brought in local workers who kept the place operational. Besides which, the Keeper and the Underkeepers were ferried to their work-shifts in prominently marked machines which were piloted by burly, armed men.

  Nevertheless, the little flit seemed like the easiest vehicle for an inmate of the compound to get his hands on. Unfortunately, because of all the traffic, the expanse of tarmac designated as the landing area was busy most of the time. It was also overlooked by conspicuous cameras, large in size probably not because they technically needed to be, but because the inmates needed to be aware of their presence.

  It was time to have another low-voiced conference with Dyron.

  “You're right, Dyron,” he said in a low voice, as the two of them sat on the bench, staring into the cat-infested woods. “That little flit seems to be the vehicle most accessible to one of us. Also the most suitable as a means of escape. Although the timing will have to be carefully considered because of all the traffic on the landing pad. The presence of the cameras, and the fact that the owners can no doubt trace the flit, means that the escapees will have to abandon it almost immediately after making it across the wooded park, and into the city itself. The rest of the escape will have to be done on foot.”

  “I could likely use my ESP abilities to blind those cameras for a short while,” Dyron said, just as quietly. “But I don't think that I could do anything about the tracing of the flit.”

  “I think that it would take a Kordean Witch with an amarto, to find and short the tracer,” Coryn murmured. “We'll just have to live with the necessity to leave the vehicle behind.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “Were you determined to join me in this escape attempt?” he then asked.

  Dyron turned to give him a long look.

  “We, the ESPers, decided that we ought to encourage you to make the attempt,” he finally said. “One of us needed to offer to go with you, and I volunteered to do so. Why do you ask?”

  “Your only value to the Neotsarian Elites is as a toy to one or more of their women,” Coryn replied. “If we get caught they won't hesitate to kill you. Me, I'm still Sarah-bait, and they'll leave me alive, although I expect that they will allow Evella to do more damage to me than she has, so far. It would be a pity if you died with help already on its way.”

  Dyron turned towards the door behind them.

  “Think about what I said,” Coryn said to him as Ariane stepped through the door. “We'll talk again later.”

  Dyron nodded at him, and they both turned to greet Ariane; Dyron in silence, and Coryn with one of his usual lies on his lips.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The ship that dropped an odd group of individuals in a deserted park in the middle of the Capital city of the planet Yukoid, was a small Scout ship, an innocuous-looking thing, though capable of evading
any but the most careful satellite screening. It was the latest innovation from the Confederation Armed Forces Experimental Craft Division, and although Steph Clennan had been the first pilot to put the prototype through its paces, he was not at its controls on this trip. The birth of his child was imminent, and he had left Mallora to join his wife on Kordea for the big event.

  “Life goes on,” Sarah, or Sunny, as she was now known, had muttered when told of this.

  She had had to spend some time—she was never later quite sure how much—in the VIP suite on RES, recuperating from the body-sculpting exercise. None of it was intended to be permanent, the Sculptor, named Dorian, had assured her. Within a Standard year her face would begin to melt into its original contours, and her hair would start growing in its original colour.

  “So, dear girl, make certain to finish whatever you need to hide your identity for, inside that year, because if you don't, you're gonna be fucked.”

  “I hear you,” Sarah had answered, surprised that her face was not swathed in bandages, and also surprised by the difference that she was hearing in her voice.

  “It's all done with very precise lasers,” Dorian explained to her, when she asked about it. “Would you believe that I and my assistants mangle your genetic code, in the parts of the body that we alter?”

  “I think that I'd heard something like that,” Sarah had replied. “It's what kept me from embracing it enthusiastically in my earlier life.”

  “And now you have allowed me to do the manipulation,” Dorian had said. “Not for beauty, either, but to look as forgettable as possible.”

  He had shaken his head.

  “Isn't life grand?” he had asked.

  He was really a kind man, and had taken it upon himself, with his same-sex partner, to keep an eye on the slight, now nondescript, young woman, who had had to remain ensconced in the suite, while her companion rushed around the Station making preparations for some kind of a jaunt that they were committed to, and which required that the younger woman appear to be slightly on the ugly side of plain, and totally unrecognizable, except for a DNA test, which the two hoped to avoid by passing Sunny off as a simpleton. He had no love for the Neotsarians who referred to him and his spouse as an “abomination”, merely because they were two men who loved one another.

  “I'm sure that they have homosexuals in their Sector of the Galaxy, too,” he had said acidly, after telling Sarah a tale of how a grey-suited Elite had made a point of forcing his way to the other side of a crowded walkway, when he had seen Dorian and his partner approaching.

  “His wife had used my services to improve her looks,” he had added, “so he well knew who I was. I ought to have made a mistake with the laser when I worked on the wife, and ruined, instead of improved, her looks.”

  He had grinned after the statement, and Sarah had known with certainty that he would never have done any such thing. He was proud of his body-sculpting ability, and would not have risked the high fees that he commanded. Besides which, he was a generous person, tolerant even of those who would not tolerate him.

  “The Hound and his friend still hang around the lobby, a lot,” he had told Sarah. “Gemma from Security told me to tell you to not use, or even unwrap your Stone, ever. Those two are waiting for whoever has the Stone to make a mistake, and they definitely intend to steal any such that they can get a line on. Apparently the amartos are hard for the Hounds to get, these days, but, oh, do they want them! The jewellers aren't selling them any more; they're all being channelled into Confederation government hands.

  “There have been new regulations about them, ever since the so-called 'Lina-caper' happened on Kordea. That scared the Bureaucrats silly.”

  “You're well-informed,” Sarah had said with some surprise.

  She had thought of the residents of Station RES as being more interested in the commerce of pleasure-seeking, than in keeping up with Galactic events.

  “I have a rather interesting friend by the name of Max Caitlin,” Dorian had replied proudly. “He knows a lot, and tells me a few things. Not even close to everything, of course.”

  Sarah had grinned.

  “Of course. And I have met him,” she had said. “I was green as spring grass when I did, but I recall that he was a very pleasant gentleman. Fiana Marsh was showing me around RES, and we stopped in at Max's jewellery shop.”

  “He still remembers you—fondly. When I told him that I would be doing a temporary alteration of your looks, he encouraged me to do the best job that I possibly could.”

  **

  The pilot of the Scout Ship had chosen to drop them off in the wee hours of the morning. There were seven to be let off, counting the Greencat. Besides Lindy and Sunny, Cameron was along, looking slightly ferocious with a recently grown beard, and a shaved head. Jerold had suggested the look; apparently working-class Yukoidian young men often would defy the Neotsarian clean-shaven, well-trimmed head hair, look.

  “Since you're going as something of a motley group, it'll be nicely in character,” he had said. “And the rebelliousness of it will endear you to the lesser classes of the Yukoidian folk. Especially, if you refuse to conform to the grooming codes of the Elites as you people go off to Volgoid, and the other Central Worlds.”

  Lindy had protested that they did not want to draw attention to themselves, but Jerold had laughed at that notion.

  “You won't be able to help it,” he said. “You'll be entertainers—what are you guys going as anyway? A side-show? The ordinary folk won't mind if you guys look weird; as a matter-of-fact, that ought to be a part of your shtick. You'll seem mildly crazy to them, and if they can have a good gawk and a laugh, they'll be thrilled; there's not enough of that sort of thing happening in that Sector of the Galaxy. If some of you can sing, play music, and caper, so much the better.”

  “Won't the Elites swoop down on us, and cart us to jail, on the Central planets?” Lindy had enquired.

  “I doubt it. Just let them sneer at you, the sorry lot that you'll seem to be. Reduced to capering in front of strangers in order to collect enough coins to keep body and soul together. Next thing to slaves is what they'll consider you, not worth bothering with, if your presence amuses the masses.”

  “He's right,” Cameron had interjected. “If they can't see anything in a person that they can use—and I'm not going to be displaying the mental abilities that helped to build the amarto-reflector-refractor, believe me—they're pretty blind when it comes to anyone who they consider worthless. Lindy, it'll work.”

  Lindy had asked Janis, the Paxic IV Law Enforcer if there were any people in her Department who were not only willing to come but could double as entertainers of some kind. Janis had picked, from a handful possibilities, she said, Sandy who had a lovely singing voice, and Leon who played the local stringed instrument reasonably well. Neither of them performed at a professional level, but Lindy thought that was an asset, under the circumstances. Gifted amateurs was the image they wanted to project, as her plan went.

  She herself had discovered during her Agency training that she was very good at feats requiring physical balance. She could walk a tightrope, and perform amusing nonsense activities while standing on an assistant's shoulders; if she could get two people underneath her, one beneath the other, so much the better. Cameron, renamed Kami for the purpose, took enthusiastically to being her assistant; his wiry form was powerful and graceful enough to manage whatever was necessary, including being the middleman on a three-person, live totem pole. Big Leon could manage the pole's lowest tier, and Sunny, the Simple Sister, would be a secondary assistant; Lindy had been pleased to see that she was actually quite agile in her own right.

  “Hey, Cam and I climbed some pretty rocky terrain in the Nature Preserve outside Laurentia,” she had exclaimed when Lindy had commented on this. “I didn't grow up confined to the tame environment of a Space Station!”

  The last human of the group was the Guru Johannes, renamed, simply, Jon, Jon the Seer, that was. On RES, Lindy
had come across a deck of fortunetelling cards in a queer little shop full of “very strange objects” as she put it, and had delighted the proprietress by paying a somewhat inflated price for them without argument. She had recognized the deck as a reissue of something very old, called The Tarot Cards, and immediately intuited that they would be the perfect prop for their Seer. The Guru had agreed when he saw them; in fact, he had said that he could actually use them to tell fortunes. They were of an ancient design; he said that he could feel the age behind the images, and Seer Jon would certainly not only look authentic with them, but actually be authentic.

  The Greencat would be the Seer's familiar, and serve as a protector for the whole group. As in walking around, looking slightly threatening, if people tried to push the Troupe members around. She could also hiss menacingly, Seer Jon said, if that was necessary. Besides, she made a beautiful prop for their activities, just by lying still, or by walking around whatever stage the members were performing on. And all that did not even take into account the benefit of her ESP abilities!

  The Scout Ship pilot wished them luck as he let them out with their light bags, and reminded them once again that there was a small fleet of Confederation Armed Forces Warships on standby in the Neutral Zone. Lindy had a tiny transmitter hidden inside the pinky finger ring which she was in the habit of wearing; it was supposed to be guaranteed undetectable, but capable of contacting the Flagship of the Fleet.

  Before they had boarded the Scout Ship for Yukoid, the Captain of that large ship had familiarized Sarah/Sunny with its roomy recreation area. It was where she was supposed to transport people in case of an emergency.

  “I hope nothing like that becomes necessary—at least not until we have gathered up everyone that we're out to collect,” she had said to Captain Jeffries. “I only get one crack at the transporting trick. As soon as I release my Stone, and am able to pull in the power of the ones that the Eldest Marlyss will release, the Neotsarians will be on to me. I'll have to get the thing right the first time....”