CYBORG PLEASURE; the Space Madame's Warrior

by Cathryn Cade

  The redhead ignored Ilya's scowl and slid into the slouch chair next to her, folding one long leg over the other. Without asking, she beckoned the hovertray from Ilya's side and poured herself a splash of fire whiskey.

  “Haven't seen Stark that pissed for a while. You did something.” She took a drink and grimaced at the burn, then sighed. “Also, he's walking funny. You give him something in his food?”

  “I may have cock-blocked him,” Ilya admitted, hiding behind her own mug.

  Qala stared at her. “What? All right, spill.”

  With a heavy sigh, Ilya admitted what she'd done. For a long moment, the redhead simply gazed at her as if she were a new, and never-before-encountered alien. Then she shook her head.

  “Fuck me, Stark's right. You are a loose laser cannon.”

  Ilya glared. “What the quark? You were listening? You've added surveilling his conversations to your duties now? What's next, wiping his ass for him?”

  Qala made a rude gesture. “Ilya ... lately you're like a catamount pony who's slipped the bridle. Only you're not a cata, you're a grown woman. I know you've got a temper—hells, so do I. But you can't keep this up. You're really gonna hurt someone.”

  “Var never minded,” Ilya muttered, an all-too-familiar wave of grief swamping her. No matter what, he'd been behind her, a mountain of quiet muscle and brawn, backing her plays.

  “I know,” Qala said, more gently. “He'd watch you get all riled up, and then follow along to keep eyes on you, and fix it up with whoever you pissed off. But Ilya ... he's not here anymore. And much as it carves me up to say, he never will be. Fuck, I miss the big guy too, every single day. But, Stark's right …Var wouldn't have liked this trick. Not one bit.”

  Ilya groaned, pulling her knees up in the chair and burying her forehead against them.

  Stark and Qala were both right. Var had been a big man who could be scary as seven hells and deadly in a fight, but he'd never been mean. He would've given her that grave look that said she'd fucked up, and now she was gonna have to fix it. And when she did, he'd be right behind her.

  “He'll never have my back again,” she told Qala, hot tears flooding her eyes as they did so often of late. “He's gone. Stark has everything, and I got nothing ... except the quarking Pleasure Palace.”

  “Then go make something of it,” Qala said, putting her hand on Ilya's shoulder and giving her a squeeze. “You're one of the smartest beings I know, Ilya Mondas. You loved him, but you don't need a man to still make something out of the rest of your life. And ... I never lost anyone 'cept my folks, so I don't know, but I'd think hard work would help, at least a little.”

  Ilya nodded absently, but Qala was wrong. Nothing would help, and nothing would ever fill the giant crater in her life and her heart left by her husband. But the Pleasure Palace was where he'd died.

  So maybe she'd find one thing there after all—whoever had killed him.

  She hadn't been with the team when they'd flown to the space station casino a few miles off planet, but she'd watched on holovid. The place was huge. And somewhere on it, she'd be willing to wager, was the being or beings who'd killed her man. Now she had a free hand to suss them out, and make them pay.

  “'Course you may not like it out there,” Qala added slyly, “if it's true what I've heard about all the whoring that goes on. In which case you can turn it over to me, 'cause I've always wanted a pretty boy or two at my command.”

  Ilya snarled. “It's a casino, not a bordello.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “'s okay. You’re right,” Ilya said, forcing her lips to curve up in a smile. “Hard work, that's what I need.”

  “Then here's to you,” Qala said, lifting her mug. “And to a brighter future.”

  Ilya lifted her mug as well, and while Qala drank to her future, Ilya drank a toast to what she really craved—vengeance. She'd dished out a little on Joran Stark.

  This time, she'd unleash a firestorm, on whoever had shot down her Var.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Ilya! Ilya Mondas, you wait just a sec. You're not getting on that cruiser without saying goodbye.”

  One foot on board the sturdy, plain cruiser that had been hers and Var’s, Ilya sighed. Should've known she wouldn't be able to make a quiet getaway from this camp. But since she already had her duffel and tech on board, she could make this quick—she hoped. She hated goodbyes, especially with people who were liable to cry all over her.

  She hadn't slept worth a piss the night before, so on this sunny Frontiera morning she was tired, not to mention hungover from drowning her sorrows in fire whiskey. Wasn't every day a woman was booted from the only real home she'd known, the one she'd shared with the man who’d become her main reason for living.

  Bracing herself, she turned to face the two women and man hurrying across the matted prairie grasses toward her.

  “Hey, Ringi, Qala. Hey, Dano.”

  The slender, dark-eyed man scowled at her. “Bitch. You didn't even tell me you were going. I had to hear it from Orson.”

  Ilya scowled in turn at Qala.

  “I may have mentioned it to a few folk,” the tall redhead admitted with a crooked smile. “You can't leave without bidding goodbye to your favorite beings.”

  Ilya rolled her eyes. “If you cry, Ringi, I'm never linking you again.”

  Ringi sniffled and gave Ilya the same loving but harried look she gave her daughter, who was just beginning to walk and was into everything. “Right. You'll never link me anyway. I'll have to link you—and then nag until you reply.”

  “Same,” Dano said instantly, hands on his slender hips. “I want links and I want holovid of the place. Orson would never take me there. I want to see the casino, and the bordello, and—”

  “For the last time, there's no bordello.” Gods, if one more person insinuated she was cruising off to be a madam for a bunch of whores, she was gonna laser them.

  “That's not what I heard,” her friend replied in a singsong voice. “But now you can tell us for sure, right? Ooh, I'm so excited. I'm making Orson bring me there now that the slavers are gone. You can put us up in style.”

  Ilya threw up her hands. “Look, I have no idea what kind of situation I'm cruising into, so just keep your feet on planet for now.”

  He scowled. “Wait, if it's dangerous, why are you going alone? You need backup.”

  Ringi shook her head. “You shouldn't need any. Pede says the IGSF's been keeping a presence to make sure things stayed legal—as legal as can be expected, anyway. I'm surprised they didn't just shut the place down.”

  “The casino and hotel operation is legal,” Ilya said. She'd been doing some research on her own, plus Stark had shared the intel he had. “But Vadyal was using it as a front to explain all the credit he was making from slave trading—which means the IGSF has been plenty busy siphoning off his profits from that. They've had armed troops there, plus cred counters parsing the place.'

  'When I said don't come, I meant I need time to get my bearings, see what's what, who I need to get rid of and all that. For all I know, the employees have stolen everything down to the lav fixtures, and fled.”

  Doubtful with IGSF on site, but she wanted time to scout the Palace on her own. Not that she'd be alone on a space station full of staff and visitors, but at least she wouldn't have any of this group breathing down her neck, trying to keep her safe or keep her company, which is what they'd been doing around here since Var died. She knew she should appreciate their concern, but she was so done with folks watching her carefully like a flashbomb ready to blow, she wanted to laser someone.

  She'd peppered someone instead—Joran Stark. And yeah, she'd caught Zaë in the wash, but the other woman had been popped right into regen, so she hadn't suffered long. And even though Ilya knew she was a miserable excuse for a sentient being to feel this, she still took satisfaction in knowing she'd interrupted Stark's sex-fest for one day at least.

  Apologizing to Zaë hadn’t been fun, but the other
woman had given her a warm hug and wished her well. She evidently wasn’t near as good as her man at holding a grudge.

  “Anyway, it'll likely be boring as hells out there,” Ilya told her friends. “With the casinos barely operating. I'll be ready to jump ship in a week.”

  Although she was kind of looking forward to learning how they ran their gambling games. Hells, maybe she'd do some siphoning of her own of their gambling tech, and start up her own little place on a station somewhere, or in one of the Frontieran outposts, like Bone Arch or Adamant.

  God knew she was rough enough to fit in either place.

  Qala snorted. “Right. I know that look in your eye. You can't wait to get out there and start taking apart their tech, figuring out how it all works. You'll have a great time, while we're stuck here in camp waiting for Ryder to find us a job.”

  They knew her too well. Ilya shifted guiltily. “Listen, I gotta go,” she said. “I'll talk with you soon as I have time.”

  She suffered their hugs, and then retreated onto the cruiser before the ache behind her eyes could translate into something really humiliating, like the tears in Ringi and Dano's eyes as they waved her off. Qala, thank God, was made of tougher stuff and merely squinted her eyes as if the sun was into them.

  Several of the others, both Khadim natives and the polyglot of space gypsies, warriors and ex-pirates who made up Stark's band, had stepped outside their tonts and put aside their activities to see her off from a distance. They watched from the background, and a few waved, some with friendly looks, some not so much. Yeah, so she'd been a bitch lately. Bite her.

  Ryder came jogging along the grassy lane between tonts to hail her as well. Tall and lean with a shock of long blond hair, he was a handsome guy if you liked them rangy as a catamount. She didn't.

  Also, now that he'd been chosen to take over leadership of the band in Stark's absence, he'd started walking around the camp just like Stark before him, all 'master of all he surveyed'. Made her want to toss one of her clever little flashbombs at him, see how high he could jump on those long legs.

  “Safe flight, Ilya,” Ryder called to her, the afternoon breeze kicking through his long hair. “You see anything you don't like, link me. We can be there in a few hours, back you up. We move on next week, but we'll still be in range.”

  She could've reminded him that thanks to her, he and the others had tech that would keep them in com range on the back side of the farthest moon.

  Also, her first task aboard the Pleasure Planet would be liaising with the IGSF officers who'd been assigned to oversee the place after Vadyal died, and they had plenty of authority and fire-power.

  But Ryder knew these facts as well as she did. He was taking Stark's place, so he thought he had the right to be all protective and shit.

  Thus she merely nodded, already busy powering up the cruiser. “See you on the holovids.”

  He lifted his chin, giving her a wry look. “Don't blow the place up the first day. You need someplace to stay.”

  His gaze added silently that if the Palace didn't work out, that place would have to be somewhere other than here. He and everyone else had heard by now what she'd done to Stark, and even though most of them might think it funny as hells, they no longer trusted her not to lose her temper and take harsh revenge on others, next time possibly themselves.

  Ringi blew her a kiss and Dano wiped his face and tried to smile.

  Trying to ignore the annoying ache in her own chest, Ilya saluted them, and then pushed the button that slid the hatch shut between them.

  She was headed away from the life she'd known for the last four—no, hells, it had been five years—and into the unknown. And no matter how bad her new post was, even with Stark gone she could never return to the Khadim. She'd made sure of that all by herself.

  But, if her hands and armpits were damp with perspiration, her stomach jumping with nerves to be making this flight into space and into an unknown situation on her own for the first time in those five years, that was nobody's business but hers, now was it?

  Enclosed in solitary state in the cockpit, she checked her instruments and powered up. The cruiser rose straight up until she was above the highest tont peak. She turned in a three-sixty, surveying the view that was as familiar as her own face in the holomirror—not that she'd been looking lately—the camp laid out below her in casual order, the circle of tonts with cruisers ranged outside, the pen of catamount ponies near the bluff, and the wide, golden-green river flowing below the rim. Beyond lay the vast, golden plains and the jagged purple of the nearest mountain range.

  All of it so stark and empty without Var, the scene may as well have been a Serpentian desert. ... and anyway, without Var this life no longer fit—it was like his leather jacket in which she curled up at night. It helped her sleep, but she couldn't wear it during her waking hours. It was too big and heavy, just like their tont, the camp and this whole life without him in it.

  Hitting the forward thrusters, she swooped low enough over camp leave a wash that made the tonts dance in their moorings. Grinning, she circled once and then tipped up the cruiser's nose and set her course straight up through the stratosphere, headed for the gold dot blinking on her finder holoscreen—the space station that would be her base for the next weeks, months and perhaps even years, if she was rezzed enough to stay that long. Without Var, she couldn’t imagine wanting anything that much.

  Watch out, Pleasure Palace, here she came. If she found who she was looking for, the place would become the palace of pain.

  * * *

  The Pleasure Palace was just outside Frontiera's gravitational pull, but tech kept the station moving at the same speed Frontiera revolved, so it remained above the Frontieran plains. Ilya couldn't wait to learn how the station's engineers made that work.

  It was also outside Frontiera's legal atmosphere, which meant it was policed by the IGSF, not the new Frontieran law which Joran Stark was part of. That could make this transition tricky—not her fault, for once. Stark hadn't exactly endeared himself to the epaulets in his last caper at Bone Arch.

  And depending on their personalities, the officers could be chafing to be away from the place, or rolling in the decadence it offered like catas in fresh spring grass. If they refused to turn the Palace over to her, she wasn't sure what she'd do. Something unpleasant. After all, what the quark did she have to lose?

  By the time the gold icon on her holovid had become physically visible through her forward shields, she was off-planet several thousand kilometers. Out here, the sun still blazed to the east, but with no dense air particles to reflect its light, the skies were black velvet. Stars and two of Frontiera's moons shone silver behind her. The third, largest moon peeped over the edge of the planet like a huge silver child playing hide-and-seek.

  Ahead against the blackness hung a tarnished golden ball, like an artificial moon. Pretty.

  As she came closer, it revealed itself to be fissured in a deliberate pattern which reminded her of something.

  She snorted with amused disgust as she realized the universal symbol for credit had been cleverly limned by the pattern of flyways and sheltered port openings, repeated in a wide band around the middle of the station, both horizontal and vertical. And closer still, the smooth portions in between weren't really smooth at all, but bristling with holovid directional signs and advertisements.

  The place was one giant holovidboard. And this close, it was tacky, gaudy and not in the best repair, judging from the ragged flickering of several holoboards, and the absence of illumination in some of the flyway approaches.

  And it would soon be hers to manage, including whatever the huge, lumbering supply transport docked at one surface bay was off-loading. Just like back in camp, everything had to be brought in here, only in exponentially larger quantities. This would include luxury goods—weren't casinos known for tempting their clients with lots of fancy food and drink? That sounded starry, she was sick of protein tubes and fruit gums.

  She'd
had little appetite and no inclination to cook without Var's vast appetite to feed, and him to share the task, so she'd been eating whatever was easiest, or whatever her friends shared.

  She shoved down the grief always waiting to submerge her in its dragging depths and focused on her survey of the Palace. As she neared, laser light displays shot from the deepest fissure, the multi-hued lights fountaining up like fireworks. Nice, but mostly she wanted to know what tech made them work. She'd find out, and who knew, maybe even improve them.

  She chose the port dock that was still in the ship's nav system—the one where Stark, Var and the others had landed on the worst day of her life. Just outside the dock, a display of faux asteroids, jagged and black, streamed past. Even though she'd been forewarned by the holovids of Var's last flight here, she still ducked.

  “Quarking fake thrills,” she muttered, feathering the controls to bring the cruiser in to the dock that jutted out from the lip of the docking bay. “Those are gonna be among the first to go.”

  After she made sure any prostitutes plying their trade in the station had someone else keeping them in line. She had no objection to sex workers. Beings craved sex, and with the vaccinations for STIs and pregnancy, no reason they shouldn't enjoy where, when and with whoever they wanted.

  But she was not riding herd on a bunch of whores. Not only would it be worse than herding catas, she'd never hear the end of it from the folks back at camp. And since her temper was on a hair-trigger at best lately, she didn't need any extra aggravation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As Ilya's cruiser settled onto the landing platform, an aperture opened in the side of the Pleasure Palace. Underneath her cruiser, treads rolled, gliding the craft sideways into a docking bay.

  She eyed the mechanisms on the hatch with deep suspicion, her stomach jumping with nerves, sweat trickling down between her breasts and under her arms. Nervous sweat, which meant she was gonna stink like a captured thief, but then, who cared? She was now the boss of this place. And wasn't that a joke of cosmic proportions—she, who had her best relationships with tech, in charge of the livelihoods of hundreds of beings?