by Paul Brandis
Hesitantly, he slipped off the table and floated to the floor. "I'll leave that to you. All I want to do is keep her alive long enough to sell her back to them."
He pointed. "Hand me that towel." He examined the myriad of cauterized cuts across his body. "How soon before I can wear clothes?"
She held the towel just out of his reach. "Soon enough. But that's not the question. The question is, when will you be any good to me?"
With irritation he grabbed the towel. “Now’s not the time to play around.”
“My, you are touchy.”
“That’s right.” His face hardened with bitterness. “You should know by now I’ve only got two interests: one, to get even with Cult Corp; and two, to get rich…”
“Now I’ll go along with that.”
“…so that I can get even with Cultcorp. And this goddess is going to do both for me. Everything else is superfluous.”
A round-faced young man with sandy, receding hair entered the tiny sick bay. The ship, still decelerating, provided a modicum of gravity, and he walked in slow motion.
“How do you feel, Boss?"
"I’m okay. You were right. That fishnet idea worked. I don't think they even saw The Flyer."
"You were lucky. I calculated a human body of average weight could tolerate the acceleration in a sling, not a chair. Also the whole thing would have been safer if you hadn't had one leg in a toilet."
"I'll keep that in mind next time. Now I want to examine our prize." He turned to Kim. "Where is she?"
"In the forward hold. I'll come with you."
Propelled by heel jets, Dante towed Phil to the hold. There in the center of the large bay, the goddess hung rolled in a ball in an undulating globule of creamy liquid. Next to her, Kim had erected a small scaffolding with ray probes that tracked her vital signs. Several crew members floated nearby, fascinated with the girl.
Phil nodded towards her. "Take me up."
The girl's head did not quite touch her knees. Phil drifted close and examined her face. In all the running and gunning, he had not had a chance to really look at her.
She had wide oval eyes of the palest blue, now heavy-lidded and sightless. Her nose extended thin and straight to a wide mouth, whose full lips were almost devoid of color. Her eyebrows, stark white like her hair, arched high over her eyes. Then her long hair, swirled by the creamy liquid, covered her face.
Disgusted, he turned to Kim examining the bank of monitors. "How long has she been like this?"
"Since she woke up and saw this dirty hold." Kim frowned. "She needs to ingest some liquid, but I can't get her to drink."
"Well, keep trying. Don't wait too long to feed her intravenously. I didn't risk the Cult's Inquisition Chambers to steal a dead woman." A thought came to him. "Try milk and honey. And keep me posted."
As he and Dante were leaving, several more of the crew flew in to see the captive. One passed between the scaffolding and the girl, and Kim glanced up in anger.
"Hey, stay away from her. We're trying to keep her alive. One look at you hoods would scare anyone to death. Get over to the wall and watch from there."
She called to Phil. "You're going to have to get some security in here. She's just too beautiful to trust to this lot."
Thoughtfully he examined the entranced faces on the men circling the girl. Most men in the System had experienced the sensual practices of Cult temples. On Cult Corporation outposts, it was the only show in town. Lust was the dominating part of the Cult ritual. It addicted and controlled the men. And here finally was the object of their lust.
"All right, I'll assign somebody. How about some of the women?"
She snorted. "Are you kidding? The women on this ship would probably lead the assault on her. I stay out of dark corridors myself."
"Right. Set up some sort of screen." He spoke to his wrist communicator. "Jed, are you in the control room?"
"That I am, old buddy"
"Put a guard on this girl. I don't like the way some of the crew are looking at her."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. She's a winner. Maybe we can get her to dance for us."
"I just want her to survive. And another thing, have you picked up any signs that we are being followed?"
"Nope."
"Good. When is the next signal from the Hole in the Wall?"
"It'll be coming in pretty soon."
"Need any help?"
"No, we're close enough. We shouldn't have any difficulty with the calculations."
"Well, I'll be in my cabin. Call me before we get to the asteroid belt."
Dante dropped Phil off at his cabin, then lingered at the door. Phil inched onto the bed, trying to find a position where his strained muscles did not complain. He noticed Dante. "What?" he said with irritation.
Wrinkles furrowed the soft forehead. "I really don't know. I spoke about this to Jed and Kim, but they didn't believe me."
Phil tried not to become exasperated. "Spoke about what? Hurry up, dammit. I've got to get some sleep before I pass out."
"Well, when I broke into the Cult's computer to find that freighter's coordinates so we could pick you up, I took a minute to do some deep-space scanning on their telescope."
"What? You risked our mission just so you could play astronomer? I've told you before to watch your hacking. What if the priests found out and tracked you?"
He sneered. "They don't know what they're doing in those comm. sections. They're strictly amateurs. I even checked the Cult's central computer, and none of their comm. sections found what I did."
Phil finally lost his patience. "Found what, man? What are you trying to say?"
Dante blinked as if he had made it perfectly clear. "The spaceship."
"Which one?"
"The one that's coming in from deep space. It's hiding in the tail of Watanabe's Comet. Biggest ship I've ever seen. Bigger than anything that's been made in this System."
Phil squinted at him, trying to force his weary mind. "So what's that mean?"
The scientist sighed. "It means that a very large, manufactured object is entering our System from farther out than we have outposts. For the first time, we may have proof of life other than that in our System."
"Why haven't the Cult astrologers picked it up? It's not like them to miss an opportunity to say something like this is the answer to one of their prophesies."
Dante looked disgusted. "Cult astrologers. They wouldn't know a spectrogram from a color-crayon drawing. They burn more books than they read."
Unable to fight the weariness, Phil dropped his head to the pillow. "Well, it sounds very interesting. Check it out when you can, but don't let anybody trace you. And keep me informed."
Before Dante closed the door, Phil called out to him. "And be in the control room to help Jed the next time the Hole sends a signal. I don't want to get lost in the asteroid belt again."
***
Phil awoke and instinctively listened. The main propulsion rockets were stilled, but from the steering jets activity, he knew the ship was maneuvering through the asteroid belt. He tried to sit up, encountered a belt that pulled his wounds, and fell back in pain. Kim had been in and loosely strapped him to the bed.
He jerked the strap off, and spied a vacuum carafe of juice magnetized to his bedside table. Suddenly he became aware of his parched throat. He reached and drank deeply.
Then he spoke into his wrist transmitter. "Control Room? Where are we?"
After a moment: "Yeah, Captain, this is Davis. We're getting close to the long-range approach to base."
"Why wasn't I awakened?"
Jed's voice came on. "What's the matter, old' buddy? Don't you think I can handle the approach?"
"Googan, when you're Captain, you can fly your ship any way you want. Until then, I want to be at the controls when things are tight. I'm on my way."
He finished the carafe in a gulp, and pulled on shorts and jet boots. After gingerly touching his chest, he pulled on the loosest tunic he could find, an
d headed out.
As he passed the galley, cooking smells assailed his nostrils, and he nearly detoured, but felt an urgency to get to the control room.
No one but he had ever steered The Frisco Flyer through the asteroid belt. He had stolen The Flyer, a corporate president's plaything, and had supervised the modifications that made it the finest raider in the trading lanes. It was his ship, and he did not want his barely civilized crew thinking they could fly it without him. Bad for discipline, what little there was of it.
One detour he would take, however, was to look in on his prize catch. He heard the faint screams before he reached the hold. Automatically he grabbed for his gun--then remembered he had left it in his quarters. He really must be tired.
Pointing his toes for more power, he ducked through the hold hatchway and looked up. Three pirates had dragged the goddess out of her liquid ball. One held onto a wall ladder with one hand and gripped her head in an arm lock with the other. A stocky woman wearing only skin-tight leather pants was holding open the girl's long legs. And between the legs, a big man, his breechcloth off, clutched the goddess's thin waist for leverage.
Phil yelled to distract the big man and kicked for full power. Steering was impossible at that speed and a safe stop a matter of luck.
As he powered by he hooked the man's neck, and they tumbled over and over to the top of the bay. Grabbing a wall ladder as he spun, Phil righted himself but let his momentum smash the big man into the wall.
The pirate's breath hacked out, and Phil slammed the man's head several times against the wall to insure he stayed out. He released him, and the pirate floated away.
Phil turned. The woman, broader than he, jetted after him, stiletto in fist. The tip of the knife dripped black. Acid.
She was almost on him, when he whipped up his heels and shot her full in the face with his jets. Her eyes burned out, she slammed into the wall next to him. The stiletto bounced off his chest, and a drop of acid burnt deep into one of his stomach wounds. He could only hope the acid was not poisoned.
He grabbed the knife and sunk it up to its hilt in the woman's bullish neck and shoved her away. Then he turned to the last pirate.
The man whipped out his electron cutlass.
Phil's eyes turned hard and he slowly shook his head. "Don't even think about it. You pull a weapon on me and I'll take it away from you and cram it up your ass."
Seeing his cohorts destroyed, the pirate grinned ruefully, sheathed the cutlass, and pushed the terror-stricken goddess away.
He shrugged. "You can't blame us, Captain. The Cult's always promised us one of them, and given us nothing but tired old whores. We all want her."
Phil didn't answer but spoke into his phone. "Jed, send an armed squad to the center hold and tell Dante I want him here too."
"What's going on, Phil? I already sent three crew members down."
"Yeah, I noticed. This time send Baker, Donohue, and Oo Ling Two. And call Kim."
Then he saw her. Kim floated hunkered over in the corner of the hold. He shot over to her.
As he flew by, the man on the wall pulled his legs out of the way. "We only patched her, Captain," he called. "She'll wake up in a little while."
Phil did not reply. As far as he was concerned, the man was history.
Phil tore the narcopatch off the back of Kim's neck and slapped her sharply.
Her eyes blinked open, then she grimaced. "Ugh, I hate the taste of novaprine. I wish we could afford better drugs." Seeing the goddess drifting across the hold, shivering and making little crying noises, Kim shook her head and straightened up angrily. "All right; what'd they do to her?"
"That's what I want you to find out. The value of my merchandise is depreciating fast."
Two men and an oriental girl flew in and took the cutlass away from the third pirate.
Kim nodded to the man and woman slowly bobbing away at the top of the hold. "Do I need to examine them too?"
He shook his head. "Don't waste your time."
As she flew to return the goddess to the emollient bath, he confronted the pirate. He held his hand out to the oriental girl. "Give me your pistol."
Seeing the weapon in Phil's hand, the man forced a smile. "Come on, Captain, nothing happened. You saved her. You're a hero. You can afford to be forgiving. What do you say?"
Without a thought, Phil burned a hole through the man's head where one of his eyes had been.
Dante flew in.
Returning the pistol to the girl, Phil said to him, "Now, flush this garbage out of here."
Making a quick return to his quarters for his gun belt, Phil headed for the control room.
Jed sat in the pilot's chair facing a bank of monitors. On various screens, grey-black boulders streaked by, some small, some large; some the size of mountains slowly rolled through space.
Seeing Phil's face, Jed pushed out of the Captain's chair without being told. He was as tall as Phil, but stockier. Black, kinky curls framed his wide face, and matted his broad, bare chest. His thick features were almost too handsome.
He cleared his throat. "Uh, what was going on down there? I sent some good people down like you said."
Phil did not answer, but strapped into the chair. He pushed a button and a computerized diagram of the ship's route came up on the screen. Keying in data, he spoke more to himself. "It's best to follow our route visually."
Jed shrugged. "It's all in the computer."
Phil glanced up at him sharply. "In your ship, you can trust your life to a computer, but when it's my ship, you do all you can to bring it in safely. Understand?"
Jed's square jaw clamped shut, and he silently watched the monitors. Only a nerve knotting in his jaw betrayed his anger.
After a few minutes, Phil leaned back. "Now, then; those hoods you sent down to guard the girl? They didn't; they’re gone."
Suspicion narrowed Jed's black eyes. "What do you mean, gone?" Then his eyes widened and he pushed back. "You didn't flush them."
“That’s right.”
His brow furrowed as he struggled to understand. “But you couldn’t.”
Barely listening, Phil turned back to the screens. “Why not.” He was tired and hungry. His body vibrated with pain. The fight, hitting the wall at full jets, even cushioned by the big man, had torn open a dozen wounds. Suddenly his anger snapped, and he slammed his fist onto the consul. "Don't tell me what I can and can't do. Not now, not ever." Then his shoulders slumped. Damn. He had ripped open more scars.
Jed searched his face. "But Jamey, my kid brother, he was in charge of that detail."
Now Phil remembered the big guy. If he had not been so tired he would have recognized him. But it didn't matter. The outcome would have been, had to be, the same. The only way to rule a collection of murderers, thieves, and scofflaws like he had for crew, was to be more cunning and ruthless than they. It was something he took pride in.
He shook his head. "He was dead as soon as he decided to rape the goddess. This has been my biggest score, and I had to hock everything for it. If I don't get a good price for her…” his voice trailed, then he concluded. “He had to go. Discussion’s closed."
Dante entered.
Jed's eyes did not leave Phil's face. "Where is he?"
Phil shrugged. "He's probably gone by now."
Rage flamed across Jed's features and he shot out of the room.
Dante watched him go without expression, then floated over to the consul. After a minute, he said, "You know, that Googan kid wasn't dead when we blew him out."
Phil shrugged, his eyes remaining on the monitors.
He looked thoughtful. "Yes, I'd say that Jamey Googan will probably be landing in the deserts of Maotsene's third moon in just about three hundred and twenty-two or three million years.
Phil's face remained straight. "Let's hope the kid can hold his breath."
Their eyes met, then they looked away to keep from smiling.
After a minute, Phil squirmed, searching the big chair
for some comfort. "Order me some food, starting with a big container of juice and hurry up. The landing is coming up, and the thing about having a midair collision with an asteroid--"
"Yeah, I know," said his friend, "it can ruin your whole day."
CHAPTER 4
Slowly The Frisco Flyer dropped into one of the craters on the planetoid. A circular opening in the crater split into sections, and Phil inched The Flyer into the tunnel's shaft.
Phil's base, the asteroid that he had dubbed the Hole in the Wall, was like a great puff pastry with all the cream filling eaten out. The asteroid had once had a strotium-rich core, but miners set up a camp on its surface and, like busy little ants, had burrowed in, eaten out the rare ore, and left the remains.
Phil's father was one of the miners and had described it on one of his rare home visits.
After Phil and a group of acolytes broke out of the Cult pleasure quarters, they snatched The Flyer, and with corporate cops in hot pursuit, headed for the asteroid belt.
Dodging through the belt, the cops were wiped out. Phil remembered his father's tale, found the deserted colony, and took refuge.
Then Dante came up with the idea of widening a mine shaft large enough to fly in The Frisco Flyer, and transferring the base inside the asteroid's hollow core. Thus they would be hidden from police--Cult or Federal--or flybys of prospectors.
They cannibalized the mining company's old buildings, and carried them inside the rock. Then they began raiding mining outposts, (Cult outposts, always the hated Cult), for plunder to trade with corporations that competed with the Cult.
As the livability of the asteroid improved, so grew its population of misfits, miscreants, and malcontents. Phil now tenuously presided over nearly a hundred people, a responsibility he had never imagined as an acolyte.
"We've got a problem." Kim had jumped up onto Phil's second story balcony and entered his small living room. He, Jed, Dante, and several others turned to her.
"Now what?"
She moved a large chair closer and sat down. "Well,
because she developed bedsores in the infirmary even with