The Vastalimi Gambit

by Steve Perry

Even a suspicious cop who suspected a diversion would be off-balance for a minute or two, plenty of time to be long gone.

  Yes, there could be some minor legal consequences, but that would be dealt with later.

  “Stand by,” Jo said, “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  The lights went out. She accessed her visual aug. The ambient heat residual and warmth generated by the others and herself was enough to navigate by, and it would be brighter outside with the city glow.

  Jo took a couple of deep breaths and oxygenated her system more than it already was. In thirty seconds, the sky would light up to the southwest, and the two Vastalimi watchers they knew about would look that way and wonder what the fuck was going on.

  There was always a chance something could go wrong. Maybe somebody out walking the local equivalent of his dog, or a drunk in an alley, an unexpected bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time? No way to be a hundred percent sure of any operation, but the odds were in their favor. And that’s what you had to play, the odds . . .

  “Stand by,” she said again. “Coming up five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  The rocket was supposed to go off a thousand meters away and a couple hundred up. Jo had done the calculation on how long it would take the sound to arrive—three . . . two . . . one . . .

  Boom! Boom!

  “That’s us, people. Asses and elbows.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  They were in the middle of nowhere, night heavy upon them, and Wink was tired of riding. They had not passed a vehicle coming their way for twenty kilometers, and there was nothing to either side of the road but empty fields and distant hills.

  “We could continue on to find lodging,” Kay said. “There is a small town an hour farther ahead.”

  “It’s a warm night,” he said. “And I bet I can find a soft spot on the ground more comfortable than this damned cart’s seat. Unless you need a bed?”

  She whickered.

  “We have any food left?”

  “Some,” she said. “Enough to get by for another day or two, nothing fresh.”

  They found a place to pull the cart off the road near a field with grasses growing a half-meter high.

  “Anything we need to worry about in the way of insects or predators?”

  “Local insects probably won’t know what to make of you, nothing poisonous, and there’s nothing dangerous large enough to sneak up on us we won’t hear before it gets close.”

  “Assuming you aren’t too heavy a sleeper,” he said.

  She whickered.

  They walked out twenty meters from where they’d parked the cart, tramped the grass down in a ragged circle, and lay on it. The ground wasn’t that hard, and the grass padding made it comfortable enough. They lay on their backs, looking into a clear night sky, with unfamiliar constellations dotting the darkness.

  “So . . . Jak?” he said.

  “Yes. He concerns himself with wealth. He will have ways to find out what we need to know. I’ll call him again in the morning.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I think it does.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. It was dark, but there was enough star- and moonlight—the double moons were visible, one full, the other just a sliver—to see her clearly.

  She mirrored his pose, a meter away.

  “Well. It seems that you might not be done with Jak altogether. Past him having information we need, I mean.”

  She blinked at him.

  “You think I harbor feelings for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am past caring for Jak.”

  “But not yet indifferent.”

  “I don’t take your meaning.”

  “He screwed you over. You had a long time to live with that, and while I don’t think you feel anything like what you did before you left Vast, the anger is still there.”

  “So?”

  “Not saying that you aren’t justified in feeling it. Only that until you get past hatred and anger, you aren’t done with him. There is a connection still. It gets severed when you no longer feel anything toward him at all.”

  She didn’t say anything for a time. Then, “I see. Is this the voice of experience?”

  “It is.”

  “Ah. And will you tell me the story?”

  “Probably. Another time.”

  He lowered himself to his back. She did likewise.

  He heard a noise, it sounded like a short series of coughs, not close.

  “What was that?”

  “Gray bear taking prey,” she said. “Not close.”

  “I thought you said there wasn’t anything big enough to be dangerous out here.”

  “I said we’d hear it coming. Besides, the bear has taken prey. It won’t be hungry for a while.”

  He grinned into the night. What an interesting fem Kay was . . .

  “A question?”

  He looked at her. “Go ahead.”

  “You are first among our company in the willingness to take risks that might end in your injury or death.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why is that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always been that way.”

  “Always?”

  “Far as I can remember. There’s a rush connected to it, striving and surviving. An intensity of sensation afterward. Nothing like it.”

  “Interesting, You cannot recall the first instance?”

  “Nope. I can’t. I—” He stopped.

  Of a moment, he could.

  “Leilani Zimmer,” he said. “Man.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He looked at her, but what he was seeing was his own past with a new clarity.

  She raised an eye ridge in question.

  He nodded, and told her that story.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Leilani Zimmer.

  She was sixteen, nearly two years older than he, and if she had noticed he was alive, he couldn’t tell. Drop-dead gorgeous, Leilani was, with short, curly hair puffed into a tight electrostatically held cap, lush in the breasts and hips, the first-string left striker on the clubball team at their school.

  Like most boys his age, Tomas Wink walked around in a cloud of lust, shedding testosterone like a summer dog losing its winter coat, and Leilani—Elzi, to her friends—passing by was worth an automatic erection. Hard enough it would hum.

  He had no chance with her, not a prayer. He wasn’t a jock; he was six centimeters shorter; and not that great a student. Not rich, not in with any of the smart sets, not handsome, your basic fourteen-year-old tweek. A face in the crowd.

  He actually recognized her voice when he heard her scream since he went to all the clubball games and knew it from her yelling at her teammates.

  “No! Get off!”

  He was crossing the yard behind the school, where the back gate opened into the park, and he turned the walk into a run.

  “—asslick nodick! No!”

  Tomas homed in on the sound, and with the voice, there came a slap.

  “Slit! Hold fucking still!”

  A break in the carefully groomed trees, and there they were: Leilani, on her back on the ground, her shirt ripped open, her shorts pulled down around her knees.

  Sitting on her belly about to backhand her face again, Mars “Stone Leg” Yeng, the captain of the men’s clubball team.

  No question in Tomas’s mind what was going on. However it had started, it had turned to rape.

  In an instant, Tomas had to make a decision.

  If he yelled, he might distract Yeng.

  If Yeng saw him coming, he could take Tomas apart like an
overcooked chicken. He was twenty centimeters taller, thirty kilos heavier, and could probably lift the back of a pubtrans bus by himself.

  Time stretched into infinity . . .

  Tomas was no jock, not all that fit, but he did know some basic physics.

  He sprinted at Yeng. Three meters away, he jumped, pulled his knees against his chest, and leaned back a hair. He kicked as hard as he could with both feet, aiming at Yeng’s back.

  He was a little high, which was undoubtedly what saved him from getting beaten into a bloody mess. His right heel smacked into the back of Yeng’s head, knocking him off the young woman under him, sprawling facedown onto the soft ground.

  Tomas came down, skidded, rolled, banging himself up pretty good and rattled, but not within a parsec of the deeply unconscious state Yeng had just entered.

  Leilani came to her feet at the same time Tomas managed that.

  It was a glorious view. Shirt open to reveal her breasts—she had pale, pinkish brown nipples—her shorts down, her pubic hair gleaming darkly in the sunshine, trimmed into a long, narrow strip.

  Tomas figured he could die now, never to surpass this moment for joy, but that would have been wrong.

  “Tomas,” she said. “Oh, thank you! He hit me. He was going to—to rape me.”

  “Yeah, well, not anymore, he isn’t.”

  What she did then surprised him more than anything he had ever seen in his fourteen years. She bent, slid her shorts down and off, and walked toward him. She reached out, hugged him, bit his shoulder, and moaned.

  Surprised? No. Astounded. Stunned.

  He went with it.

  Thirty seconds later, she was on the ground again, and he was on top of her, and being guided into a place about which he had only fantasized.

  “Oh, yes!” she said. “Do it!”

  Oh, hell yes!

  Better than his best fantasies, it was.

  Oh!

  In that moment, he didn’t worry about what might happen if Yeng woke up. Or why on Earth Leilani Zimmer was gifting him with herself. Later, when he learned more about how emotions worked, it made more sense. Her hormones and his were in full battle mode, and he was pumping enough adrenaline to rouse a graveyard full of men long dead.

  Pumping other things, too.

  The juices flowed, all of them, and the end was so intense he lost himself. He fell into the Void, and a million years of bliss.

  It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. And would remain so for, well, forever . . . so far . . .

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  “What happened to Yeng?”

  He shook himself. “He had a concussion. He didn’t remember anything that happened that day once he woke up. He never knew what or who hit him. As far as Yeng was concerned, he had fallen and hit his head while walking alone in the woods going home.”

  “And the fem?”

  “She didn’t report the assault. She and I were a one-time deal. We never did it again.”

  “That must have been disappointing.”

  “I can’t tell you how much, but I was happy for the experience. More than happy. Ecstatic.”

  “Ah. That explains much.”

  He looked at her.

  In that moment, it did explain much.

  It was not as if he had forgotten it, that wasn’t ever going to happen, but he hadn’t made that connection to the adrenaline and testosterone in quite the same way before.

  Huh. How could he have missed that?

  That the intensity of one was so wrapped around the other? It was so obvious.

  Man. There was a big fucking blind spot . . .

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  “Well, that was easy,” Gramps said.

  They were in the vehicle Em had gotten for them, a freight van large enough to carry a dozen people, with room left over for cargo. Not the most comfortable thing Cutter had ever ridden in, but sealed and air recycled so as not to be leaking their scent, and hiding them from curious eyes.

  “The second vehicle is twenty minutes away,” Em said. “Our driver will take this one for a long drive in the country after we switch. We will operate the second one ourselves.”

  Cutter nodded. “Good job. Formentara?”

  Zhe held up the tracker. “Looks like Wink has stopped for the night, and we are assuming that Kay is still with him. Out in the middle of nowhere. Given our location and likely speed, we won’t be able to get there before dawn tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “Why would they be there?” Jo asked Em.

  She shrugged. “Who can say? There doesn’t appear to be anything there where they are save fields. Stopped to rest? The vehicle malfunctioned? Maybe they’ve been captured again? We won’t know unless we go see.”

  “What I’m wondering, Colonel,” Formentara said, “is why Leeth didn’t give us their local com numbers. Surely, she has those.”

  “I think maybe she doesn’t want us involved with any of this. Might be worried we’d try to sneak off and meet up with them if we knew where to meet.”

  Gunny shook her head. “She didn’t trust us? Ah can’t imagine that.”

  “So we head that way, and see what’s what,” Cutter said. “If you can sleep, once we switch rides would be good. You good to drive, Gramps?”

  “Always. I can sleep, too. These damn things can drive themselves—just program in a destination and lean back.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d rather you keep an eye on the road,” Cutter said. “Just in case.”

  “No problem. I slept last week.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Kay waded back through the grass, a morning breeze waving the greenery as Wink watched.

  He needed to go pee, and even though it was not the most comfortable night he had ever had, he was more rested than he would have been trying to sleep in the cart.

  When he got back, Kay had broken out a couple of ration packs. They weren’t anything he recognized immediately, but the heat package worked, and the goop inside warmed to something he could keep down even though it had the consistency of white paste . . .

  “So, off to see another rich person?”

  “Yes. I have spoken to Jak and to Shan. Neither knows I talked to the other, but both named this Vastalimi, who owns a goodly section of a small town eighty klicks north of the town an hour ahead of us. He made a sudden profit trading in hospital supplies used in treatment of the disease. It could be a coincidence, but . . .”

  “Probably we should ask him about that,” he finished.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Cutter awoke, aware that Jo was leaning in his direction in the seat across from his. She didn’t say anything, but his proximity detector usually stayed on when he was asleep. “What?”

  “They are on the move,” she said. She looked at Formentara.

  “They started out in our direction a little over an hour ago,” zhe said, “then veered north. There is a town up that way, just south of some fairly tall mountains, and that’s pretty much all there is for several hundred kilometers past. If they stop there, it will be a couple of hours before we catch them.”

  Cutter nodded. “Okay. Can we get that far without refueling?”

  “Yes,” Em said. “And we have food and water. Probably best if we stop to stretch and make scat somewhere where you won’t be seen.”

  “Find a spot, Gramps. My kidneys seem to be working just fine. Though these are not the most comfortable seats I’ve ever used.”

  “Probably the designer never expected human asses to perch on them,” Formentara said.

  Em said, “They aren’t particularly comfortable for us, either. The People tend to walk or run when they can, and being reminded that mode is a better way is probably part of the design.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “T
he cart’s computer says the population is 1457, and according to the map, our guy lives in the biggest house in the village.”

  Kay nodded.

  “We speak of one Okloomasc, and the scat according to the rumor mill is that he likes wine, fems, wine, and fems, not necessarily in that order. His net worth seems to be as much as the last two to whom we spoke. He buys and sells things.”

  Kay didn’t say anything.

  “Want to bet against the notion that he knows we are coming?”

  “No.”

  He caught the sharp tone in her reply. “Something?”

  “Everyone to whom we have spoken of late has known we were coming.”

  “Yeah, the criminal comnet seems to work as well as others.”

  “Perhaps, but that’s not enough.”

  He thought about it for a second. Yeah. “How did Rill know?”

  “Precisely. The others might have been warned by Rill though that seems unlikely. If Shan did not tell him—and I believe that he would not, after we spoke of it—then who told Rill? Because he knew who we were, and he was expecting us.”

  Wink nodded. “I just assumed he’d heard about us investigating. Human and a Vastalimi Healer, can’t be whole lot of folks like us around.”

  “Possible. Yet it bothers me.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Shan gave us the list of names. If Shan didn’t warn them, who else could have known about Rill?”

  “Maybe he told somebody.”

  She nodded.

  “So it has got to be Shan, one way or another.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are you thinking here?”

  “I am not sure. Perhaps it will become clear after we talk to Okloo.”

  “Be the first thing that did become clear if it does.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  “Are we there yet?” Gunny said, approximating the whine of a child.

  “No. And don’t make me stop this vehicle,” Gramps said. “Sit there and watch the grass wave. Don’t bother your siblings.”

  Cutter smiled.

  “Another hour,” Gramps said.

  “Ah’m bored, Ah’m tired, Ah’m hungry, Ah have to go pee!” Gunny said. But she grinned, too.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Kay stopped the cart. “There is the gate.”