The Marine tried to backpedal and hold her off, “Are you INSANE? Have you lost your mind?!” It was a struggle to swat her hands away as she attempted to lift his shirt, and pull at the waistband of his pants, “Gods, woman, how many hands have you got...?”
■ ■ ■
Having disabled the door to prevent Lisa from leaving her quarters, Draza Mac sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, legs extended, his shirt torn, his pants stretched and crooked, covered in perspiration. “I think I lost a shoe,” he grunted, looking under the coffee table.
Lisa lay on her back on the bed, her hair matted, mostly naked, slick with sweat. “Y’know, you punched me in the boob,” she commented, massaging her right breast.
Draza Mac gingerly wrinkled his nose, carefully feeling the bridge with his fingertips, “Because you tried to break my nose…”
“I barely touched you, you big baby.” She massaged her breast, “Besides, you should never hurt the girls…”
“I was trying not to hit you in the face,” he lamented.
“Then why do I have a fat lip?” she wondered aloud, running her tongue over the swelling of her bottom lip. “I’ll have to admit,” she began, rolling over on her stomach, “tossing me over your shoulder and throwing me down on the bed was inspiring. And kinda’ hot.”
“That was not my intention.” He tested his left cheekbone, realizing it was tender, “Why does my cheek hurt?”
“I… might have smacked you…” offered Lisa, tentatively. “Geez, I’m exhausted,” she mumbled, her chin hanging off the edge of the bed. “I really liked the part where you held me down… that was definitely hot…”
“Again, that was not…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she interrupted, waving lazily, “not your intention. Well, I guess I got what I wanted… Sort of. I’ve got no nervous energy left.”
“Thank the Gods for that,” breathed the Marine, closing his eyes for a moment.
Lisa turned her head so she could look at the man who she had flown with for well over a year. She was seeing him in a different light, in a way she had never seen him before, like they had just met for the very first time. He was handsome, muscular - like a boxer, skin like light caramel. “So… what is it about me that you find so unappealing, Mac?”
The Marine’s head rolled to the side, one eye open, peering at her, “What are you talking about?”
“Sex…” she prompted.
“You can’t be serious,” he snorted.
“If I’m not your type, I guess I can understand that,” she sighed.
Draza Mac pushed himself into an upright sitting position, “You seriously think there’s something wrong with you?” His face reflected surprise, then sincerity, “Lady, you are a fine woman. But one who happens to be my superior officer…”
“If it wasn’t for that?”
“If I remember correctly, you and Commander Dar Sloane are involved.” He shook his head, “I could never let myself be responsible for interfering with a relationship.” He shrugged, “Despite all of that; while I agree sex can be a tremendous stress reliever, and has many health benefits, I believe, with or without a romantic quotient, it would greatly alter our working relationship, and quite possibly our friendship.” His brow furrowed, reflecting concern, “I would not want to trade all of that, for momentary gratification, no matter how great. I have to believe we would both regret it - maybe not immediately, but eventually.”
Lisa suddenly felt a wave of modesty, where none had been previously, and she pulled the top sheet over her. “You are a smart man, Flight Sergeant. Much wiser than I have been…”
Draza Mac folded his arms across his chest, closed his eyes and leaned back against the cushion, letting his neck relax. He wrinkled his nose and tried to wiggle it, rewarded with a sharp pinch of pain for his efforts, “No big thing, L.T., we’re good. It never happened.”
“What never happened?”
“Exactly…”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CASTILLE SYSTEM, BYAS-KUYOL : THE ICE MAN
Rikit Lobat followed Jaxon out of Byas-Kuyol’s flight control tower into a gently falling rain. “I guess the hundred-percent humidity index, just hit a hundred and one,” mumbled Jaxon. “So where are we going?” He walked around the nose of the truck to the passenger side.
“My place,” replied Rikit, pulling himself up into the truck’s driver seat.
Jaxon wiped his face and tried to sit in - away from the missing door, “These things usually keep you drier with doors on them,” he snarked.
Rikit stabbed the starter button with his finger and the truck chugged, the stubborn engine rolling over with a belch and a cloud of black smoke as it started. “Vehicles are hard to come by here - only the more well-off have anything decent. Everything is imported from off planet. Very expensive.” The truck lurched as it trundled toward the gate. “So…” he scratched his head, “the response, what did it mean - George Washington is crossing the Delaware?”
“It means they acknowledged my hail, and they’re on their way to pick me up.”
“When?”
Jaxon shrugged, “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll have to just watch for them.”
“Who will it be, do you know?”
“No idea. And if I did, I couldn’t tell…”
“Why not?” interrupted Rikit.
Jaxon didn’t get the sense that he was prying or digging, just innocently curious. “You ask too many questions, my friend.”
“Sorry. My grandmother used to tell me the same thing…”
■ ■ ■
Jaxon looked back at the abandoned warehouse as they crossed the empty street to the run-down, four-story tenement. “Can’t leave it on the street, huh?”
“No, no…” countered Rikit, “we wouldn’t want any of Targus’ people spotting it - that would be bad…”
“Think anyone will find it in there?”
“I highly doubt it, it’s tucked back in there pretty good. Not many people left in this area of the city. Anything of value that people scavenge for, is gone.”
The entire section of the city reminded Jaxon of areas of Detroit where nothing remained but empty hulks and rubble, and maybe a rare building here and there, still intact. How many people in your building?” he asked, looking up at the worn and weathered stone as they neared the entryway.
“Only three other families…”
“In this whole building? It looks like it has at least twenty apartments…”
“Just us four residents. There’s nobody on the first floor, one on the second all the way to the right, two families on the third and I’m on the fourth.” He pointed up the darkened entry corridor, “Stairs are over here.”
Jaxon squinted in the darkness, his hand on the grip of the slug-thrower on his hip. “I can’t see a thing, he whispered, don’t you worry about…”
“Nobody robs poor people,” countered Rikit, turning up the stairs, “nothing of value.”
Occasional lights in the stairwell and on the floors were a welcome contrast to the darkness of the first floor. Jaxon’s eyes searched the shadows with suspicion and mistrust, a curious feeling at the back of his mind that made him uneasy.
“I don’t know what it’s like where you come from,” whispered Rikit, “but here, nobody is going in or out at this time of night. When it gets dark, you stay inside.”
Rikit Lobat’s apartment was a bit of a surprise, considering the overall condition of the building. Jaxon wondered if the other residents had done as well. Having installed a doorway across the corridor and removing the doors of neighboring apartments on either side of the corridor, Rikit had claimed 2 apartments, removing wall sections to enlarge his habitat. Fairly well appointed, far better than had been expected, especially seeing the neighborhood, it was quite comfortable. Many of the windows, about half, were boarded up, the rest covered with heavy material to prevent light leakage that might be visible outside. “It’s not much, but I made of it what I could…”
“And you did a good job,” commented Jaxon, reaching for a curtain to look out the window.
“Ooh, don’t do that please,” cautioned Rikit, gesturing him away. “We’re better off if the building looks condemned.”
Jaxon cracked a smile, “That’s why there are no lights on the first floor…”
“We do our best to keep it looking like it’s unlivable and without power. If it has power, scroungers will assume there are things of value to steal.” He pointed at the ceiling, “We’re self-sufficient, we have flat-panel solar collectors on the roof, most of the rest of this area is on a dead grid.”
“What happened to this city?”
Riket opened his refrigerator and handed Jaxon a bottle of water, taking one for himself, “Drugs, crime, treasure hunting…”
Jaxon paused, the bottle halfway to his mouth, “Treasure hunting?”
Rikit stretched out in an easy chair, “That warehouse out there,” he pointed at the windows, “used to be a food warehouse, a distributer to all the stores in the city. All the farms trucked their fresh goods into there. Including my grandmother’s farm where I grew up…”
“Treasure hunting,” Jaxon reminded him.
Rikit nodded and waved it off. “Farmers are simple people, they turn the land, get their hands dirty, grow stuff, tend to animals - and love it. It’s a good living, but nobody gets rich off of it.” He opened a small decorative box on the end table near his elbow and tossed the golf-ball sized object to Jaxon.
Jaxon caught it, turning it over in his hand, a rough, sparkling clear-pink stone. “Sparkly, what is it?” he asked, holding it up to the light.
“A rose diamond.”
Jaxon’s eyes shifted to Rikit, the diamond still held aloft toward the light. “Diamond? As in, worth a shit-ton of money, diamond?”
“Except they aren’t worth that much here. Or the gold…”
“Gold too?”
“And silver. But to get the proper value, you need to get it off-world. And the farmers pulling it out of their fields found out that you couldn’t trust most couriers out here. Many had turned to looking for treasure instead of farming. Then losing everything when the couriers cheated them, or simply never returned.” He sipped his water, “Once the news got out, treasure fever hit, and people went crazy, walking away from their jobs. Farmers would shoot trespassers, so people were going in groups into the jungle.” He shook his head, “But that jungle,” he motioned toward the window, “is not to be underestimated…”
Jaxon frowned, “What do you mean?”
“That jungle, and nearly everything in it, can kill you. Groups would go in and only ten percent of them would come back out again. If the jungle doesn’t kill you, someone in your group just might.”
“Greed…” nodded Jaxon. He tossed the diamond back, “So you need to get it off world then.”
“Yes.”
Jaxon raised an eyebrow, “And you’re hoping I can help you with that.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m guessing you have more than just that,” motioned Jaxon.
“Yes.”
Jaxon looked around, “You can’t be stashing it here, that wouldn’t be safe. Where are you keeping it?”
Rikit cracked a smile, “You ask too many questions, my friend.”
■ ■ ■
The morning sun broke through the trees in splinters, splayed across the broken, narrow road, as Rikit Lobat fought with Taurus’ old wreck of a truck, trying to keep it on what was left of the pavement, jungle interspersed with fields of unattended crops on either side of the road. He looked sideways at Jaxon, trying to maintain his attention to the road, “What do you keep looking at? You’ve been doing that since we left the city.”
Jaxon looked over his shoulder at the empty, winding road behind them, “Just a feeling…”
“What kind of feeling?”
Jaxon wasn’t sure what to make of the feeling at the back of his mind that sounded like a silent voice - something that felt important and familiar, yet strange and difficult to explain or describe. “Like we’re being followed.”
Rikit looked in the mirror, “I don’t see anything, do you?”
Jaxon pursed his lips and ran his fingers through his hair, “Not at the moment. But I could swear I’ve seen a glimpse of something back there… more than once.”
Rikit shrugged, “Lots of farms and ranches out here…”
Jaxon kept watching the mirror on his side of the truck, the reflections of sunlight breaking through the trees stabbing him in the eyes. “Yeah. Maybe that’s it.” Yet he couldn’t convince himself of that. He wondered how many door-less trucks like this were rolling around - and how many not-so-nice people might be looking for it.
“Was the couch alright? Did you sleep well last night?”
Jaxon snapped his attention away from his thoughts, “Yeah, like I hadn’t slept in forever… How about you?”
“Yeah. Fine,” replied Rikit, shooting Jaxon a suspicious glance. “A little worried about picking up my stash this early.”
Jaxon’s mouth twisted sideways in consternation, “Hmm, well if you don’t trust me, then let’s turn back.”
“But you said when they come for you, we would need to leave quick, that there would be no time…”
Jaxon nodded, “That’s true. And without my medallion or my TESS, there is no way I can prove to you who I am…”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
Jaxon rubbed his chin, trying to decide how to adequately explain it. “Since you don’t truly know me, anything I say will be suspect to you. There is a fifty-fifty chance it could be truth or lie. You would have to decide whether to believe it, or not. That is, if you could prevent yourself from second-guessing your decision. But, If I had my TESS or my medallion, I could give you substantive proof that you could trust me.”
“So why don’t you just tell me then?”
“Because I have a feeling it will muddy the water and…” Jaxon could see the unspoken question mark in Rikit’s expression. “Confuse the issue and make it more difficult for you,” he explained. “I would rather you make you decision on face value of what you see. Have I done anything to make you think I would want to harm you or steal from you?”
Rikit shook his head. “No, you haven’t.”
“All I can say is that you saved my life. I owe you. And I will do my best to repay your kindness. If that means getting you off-world to a place you can start over, I will do that.”
“Where could I go?”
Jaxon glanced at the mirror, “Depends on what you want.”
“A nice place where I can afford a decent piece of land - a ranch or farm. Have enough left over to live comfortably…”
Jaxon’s eyes narrowed, something appearing in the mirror, disappearing with a flicker of light dancing between the trees. Did he even see that? “Ever heard of Veloria?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“It’s in the Velora Prime System. Beautiful planet; mountain ranges, vast forests, rugged badlands, huge stretches of open, fertile land, for ranching and farming, turquoise blue oceans, good people…”
Rikit hazarded a glance at the man in the passenger seat who was lost in his own description. “You’ve been there then…” it was more a statement than question.
Jaxon took a deep breath, inhaling the moist Byas Kuyol air, smelling Veloria’s Pattahoulia blossoms in his mind. “My home.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
Jaxon’s mind was still far away. “It is.”
“You miss it.”
Jaxon took another deep breath, “With every cell in my body.”
“And your wife?”
Jaxon nodded, shooting the driver a smile, “Her most of all. My son. And my dog…”
■ ■ ■
Rikit pulled off the main road, up a drive, the entrance bracketed by two massive trees, the property fence overgrown with weeds and ivy. The tires crunched on the gravel as he ste
ered the truck up toward the house at the end of the private road, a tree growing out of the center of its roof, limbs sticking out of windows and the front door.
“That can’t be good for the property value,” remarked Jaxon. He caught the quick look of derision from Rikit. “Sorry. Looks like it used to be a really nice house,” he said sheepishly. “Family?”
“Grandmother,” he replied as they rolled past the house, headed for the main barn. “I pretty much grew up here.”
“What happened?”
“Mom died when I was fairly young. I came here and my grandmother raised me. She passed quite a while ago. Without her…” he shrugged.
“Sorry for your loss…” it sounded inadequate, but it was the only thing that came to mind.
Pulling up to the barn doors, Rikit cut the engine off, the chugging rattling the truck until it finally belched and spun to a stop. “Thanks. She had a good long life. I don’t think she had any regrets… My regret is that I couldn’t keep up with it. I was hoping with the treasure hunting I’d have the money to restore it. But getting what the stuff was worth…”
Having heard the story, Jaxon nodded as he dropped to the ground. “Think you’ll want to come back if you have enough money? Get things back to the way they were?”
Rikit’s mouth twisted sideways, “Nah. I think it would almost be easier to start over somewhere else. Somewhere where absolutely everything, isn’t trying to kill you.” He waved at Jaxon, “So if it flies, crawls, slithers or looks at you funny, shoot it, smash it, or run from it. Got it?” He pointed at him, “I’m serious.”
Twenty years after the last of the animals were gone and the inside of the barn still smelled of them - the stalls empty, the troughs and water containers empty, the only inhabitants, the rodents and bugs. “Came here after the raid on the clinic, stayed in the loft up there,” he motioned upward.
“Why didn’t you just go to your apartment and hide out?”
“I panicked, I guess.” He plucked a long-gun off the top of a rusty tool box and handed it to Jaxon, “Here, you take this. It’s only got about fifteen rounds…” He rummaged through tool draws, retrieving a heavy hammer and something that looked like a short, hefty pry-bar. “Never know what we might run into out there.”
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