Royal Rebel: A Genetic Engineering Space Opera

by Gail Gernat

  “So, Jemediah, here I am again, to stave off bankruptcy from your door.”

  “Oh, milady, milady Kirbyson, you are too late, he proclaimed mournfully. Just this last month I had to sell my oldest daughter, Jemelina, to the creditors. She will just now be returning from training.”

  Lady Death looked at him with horror. “Oh Jemediah! How could you?”

  “Milady, you well know how prolific my wife is. Eight, eight children in fifteen years! They cost so much to feed and clothe and educate. And my business isn’t much anymore. The aristocracy mostly goes to Kemmira’s World for clothes anymore, or their slaves wear whatever the stores carry. There is no pride in a slaves appearance anymore. So few are like you who care about fit and quality, especially on their slaves.”

  Lady Death looked at him with sorrow. “Yes, Jemediah, I see. I will do what I can. Rory, find which dealer has Jemelina, if she is here and available, buy her.”

  Rory at once got busy on his wrist comp as Lady Death conducted her business with Jemediah.

  “Each one is to have a dress uniform in my new house colors. Each of them is to have two sets of work clothes and these three are to have bodyguards clothes as well.” She indicated the three younger men.

  Rory lifted his hand and nodded at her.

  “I will return in one hour for the slaves, when will the uniforms be ready?” she asked.

  “Two days milady,” the proprietor replied.

  Lady Death swept from the room with Rory her faithful tail.

  “Lady Death has a name?” inquired Padr.

  “Yes, indeed,” replied Jemediah, “the Kirbysons have been coming to my family for clothing for over fifty years. I remember Lady Kirbyson as a plump little girl, climbing over my shelves, into everything, always asking questions that one. That family has kept me in business all this time, he answered as he measured an arm.”

  “But what is her name?” Padr persisted. “What is Lady Deaths full name?”

  “Radhya, Radhya Kirbyson. Lady Death is only what they call her to make her feel bad,” was the tailors reply.

  Outside the tailor shop, a hot wind blew up, flapping the hood around Radhya’s face and obscuring her vision. The stench of the dirty clay street offended her.

  She turned to Rory and asked, “were you able to locate her?”

  “Milady,” Rory answered, “she is set for dawn auction, at Gullentras, a quarter of the way around the world. It begins in thirty minutes. Theres no way one of us could make it on time.”

  “Contact Zantis, the Greek. Ask him to be my agent in this specific purchase. I authorize ten minas for his fee and a further one mina for every one hundred he saves me from the average price of female slaves at the auction. This should provide an interesting diversion for them, don’t you think. Go.”

  Rory nodded and slipped to the vrphone on the corner. Rory entered the coffin-sized space constructed of transparent beige plastic, and inside the narrow aperture took the copper helmet attached to the booth by a wrist thick cord from a peg which was supporting it. Slipping the metal helmet over his head, he made the call. Minutes later, returning the helmet to its peg, he wriggled out of the narrow opening in the front.

  “He will do his best, and if he doesn’t cheat your planets from under you, his best is very good,” Rory said nodding.

  “Thank you, Rory. It is a good thing I turned down the housekeeper at Seellias. The royals would have been suspicious of such mercy, anyway. This insistence on such an unusual housekeeper will hopefully give them a red herring to chase. I will pass it off as acquiring a slave of whom I know the reputation. We have to be very careful right now.”

  “Yes, milady, you must be more cautious than a cat. You are our last hope now Lord Kent is gone.”

  “Well, not entirely gone,” smiled Lady Kirbyson.

  In an hour, Radhya returned for her slaves. After a short walk through the dusty streets, she took Will, Padr, and the other slave called Max, into a seven story, steel, windowless building. Rory waited in the streets with the other three. He was pacing in circles with the sweat trickling in rivulets down his back, dripping off his cheekbones and running into his eyes.

  Radhya and her trio entered as far as the black metal bars at the end of the entry.

  Name and rank? demanded an invisible source.

  “Radhya Kirbyson, owner of Radhya’s World, owner of Kirbyson’s World, owner of Pleasant, co-owner of Petra’s World, co-owner of Stephan’s World, co-owner of Sparky’s World and member of the aristocracy status number 676. I have three male slaves for bodyguard training,” she spoke.

  The bars sank into the floor. A very slender, short man with silver hair and liquid brown eyes stepped around the corner. His enormously curved drooping nose ruined his otherwise handsome oval face. The lips were thin and pulled down at the corners and he had a large chin for a royal with a circular dimple in the middle. He was dressed in red from head to toe, a body-hugging uniform, complete with high red boots. His wrist comp was a large size and he carried a whip in his right hand.

  “Well, well, my little Radhya. Finally, taking my advice and getting yourself some protection?”

  He lifted her chin with his whip.

  “You especially cant be too careful. Many people are afraid of you, and thats always dangerous.”

  “Indeed, my Lord Barone. I haven’t been able to get our last conversation from my mind. So, I had to buy some more men in order to still your voice warning me of danger.”

  “Good. But why these three?” Lord Barone asked inspecting the slaves. The men stared at the dull metal floor, shuffling their feet uneasily.

  “They are all tall, and don’t appear to have suffered too much starvation. They should bulk up well in your machines. Moreover, see, I chose those two on the width of the shoulders as you told me to.”

  Barone nodded looking pleased. “I see you were listening to me after all. I didn’t think you were at the time. Super deluxe training course?”

  “If thats your recommendation, milord.”

  “It is. Too many of us skimp on that now. They take just the basic. Even the deluxe course isn’t as effective as the super deluxe. All my own guards have it. However, it’s three weeks instead of two. Any objections? he asked watching her closely.”

  “Not at all milord. I have brief business on Kentucky. Then I will return for them before I go home.” Lady Kirbyson replied.

  “Good.”

  Lord Barone escorted his customers through a maze of metal corridors to a series of cubicles the size of coffins. There each man stripped and was hooked to the machine, their bodies entirely obscured by wires.

  Catheters were inserted and an I.V. line put into their arms as a form-fitting metal helmet covered each face in turn and they were pushed backwards into their sarcophagus. A metal door descended and the training was begun.

  “Now I just have to get your holographic image for the indoctrination sequence.”

  “I want a three week auto-destruct on that sequence. You’ll not be selling my image to my enemies so they can zero in on me,” Radhya said.

  “Very good,” replied Lord Noel Barone. You have been learning, haven’t you? What about a little fun sequence, just you and me?” he asked as he slipped his hand suggestively beneath her arm, caressing her breast on the way.

  Radhya stopped dead. “Noel, I do business with you, business, not fun. I don’t appreciate your proposition.”

  He removed his unwelcome hand.

  He said stiffly, “I warn you Radhya; people are talking about you. If you want the distaff side thats fine, but when you want neither, people talk, and people don’t like different. I try and I try to be your friend, but if you keep rejecting me, you are making trouble for yourself. Jabin himself mentioned you to me the other day.”

  Blood running icy cold, Radhya said in a conciliatory tone of voice, “Noel, I appreciate your friendship, I really do, but I cant concentrate on relationships, even just for sex, right now. Once I fi
nish building my worlds, then I’ll be able to think of other things. Then Im going to retire, have fun, have a family. Why do you think I called my last world Pleasant? But for now, all I can think of is my work.”

  “Just my luck to be attracted to a workaholic,” muttered Lord Barone. “Okay, lets get this over.”

  Safely back on the street, Radhya looked at Rory.

  “That man gets oilier and sleazier every time I meet him. I feel unclean. Did Zantis procure Jemelina?”

  Rory nodded.

  She continued, “They are there for three weeks so well go to Kentucky and get our stock and pick the men up on the way home. First though, well get Jemelina.”

  Radhya shuddered at the thought of re-entering the training building in three weeks.

  Steam was drifting slowly from the body of the dual ship Arrow, making lazy patterns in the air. The sleek double delta-winged spacecraft settled like a crouching tiger between the larger ships in the spaceport. Descending the metal stair, Radhya, Rory at her left shoulder, hurried across the steaming asphalt of the spaceport.

  Turning right, they passed the tall metal gates into the city of Gullentra. She shook her head in weariness. Rory unobtrusively touched her elbow. She shook her head again.

  Zantis, a very tall robust man with a full dark beard, strode forward out of the mist leading two naked, terrified slaves by chains attached to the collars around their necks. The girl was seventeen, slender but with a stunning figure. She had waist-length auburn hair; cornflower blue eyes and full red lips. Her oval face was dismayed and she appeared totally stunned and disoriented. Behind her followed a bulky man, very big, close to two and a half meters tall. With his brown hair, skin and eyes he was as repulsively ugly as the girl was beautiful. His nose had obviously been broken several times and never properly set. One ear was a ruined mess on the side of his head, and his face was asymmetrical with an odd shape, rounded on one side and flat on the other. He stared at the ground in proper slave fashion.

  Radhya looked questioningly at Zantis, the slave trader.

  “I am sorry, milady. Corvo was selling them only as a pair. There was no way I could purchase the girl without her husband. I did save you five hundred minas off the average price for husband and wife couples, mostly because of his ugliness.”

  Radhya sighed. “Well done Zantis. You have earned your bonus. I guess I can always use another bodyguard.”

  Rory escorted the Lady and two new purchases through the spaceport gates and back to the Arrow.

  “Back to Jabin’s city Rory, please.”

  Night had fallen as Radhya, Rory, and the new slave, Dave, approached the tall steel building for the second time that day. Once again, she entered and faced the bars. This time Lord Barone appeared instantly.

  “What is this? Two visits in one day. You must have reconsidered my offer,” he muttered, a smarmy smile plastered his face.

  “Lord Barone I have another candidate for your excellent training. It seems Zantis, the Greek, double-crossed me to double his fee, the snake. I ordered this girl as a housekeeper. I knew her from before as a hard working, trustworthy creature. When I showed up to get her, why, here is this hulk with her. Oh, they were selling them as husband and wife. Now Im stuck with this. Can you do anything with it?”

  Lord Barone looked at the huge young man with narrowed eyes.

  “Yes, Ill train him up the same as the others. You can go. I already have your image.”

  “Thank you milord Barone,” said Radhya bowing low.

  Chapter Two

  Three weeks later, Lady Radhya Kirbyson and Rory stood again outside the recessed entrance to the Bodyguard Training Center. Arms weighted with four large bundles, he moved briskly along behind Radhya. This early in the morning, no other aristocrats were out, just a few freedmen hurrying to their employment. She hesitated, drawing deep calming breaths, forcing down the tide of fear that rose at the thought of entrapment in the training facility. A dromedary bawled behind them, and Radhya jumped. “Milady, we must do this quickly. Seellia’s lot went to the auction an hour ago. When certain aristocrats check the manifests…” Rory trailed off apprehensively.

  He uneasily shifted the bundles he carried. The Lady nodded and strode swiftly up to the barred gates, the soft crunch of her boots changing to clanging steps on the metal. As the sound changed, her chin rose haughtily, and her stance became more arrogant.

  “Name and rank,” the gate demanded.

  “Radhya Kirbyson, owner of Radhya’s World, owner of Kirbyson’s World, owner of Pleasant, co-owner of Petra’s World, co-owner of Stephan’s World, co-owner of Sparky’s World and member of the aristocracy status number 676.”

  The stunners following her progress retracted, and the bars sank into the floor with a soft ring.

  “You are an hour early,” anxious, my pet? inquired Lord Barone stepping around the corner.

  “Only for a glimpse of you milord,” replied Radhya sarcastically bowing just her head. Laughing, Noel escorted them into the bowels of the building.

  Barone said, “Well, I guess they will regain balance on the walk to the star-port. I am especially pleased at how well this last group turned out. I hear around about that you are investing in my favorite, well, second favorite sport.”

  “Indeed, milord,” smiled Radhya enthusiastically; “I picked up three whose breeding I commissioned and twelve broodmares. I also bought two stallions. They are not outstanding racers, but as studs, I think they will outshine even Coryov’s stable. My track on Pleasant will be done by now, and I plan the opening race for about six months time. It is my hope you will enter. I hear good things about your racers.”

  Barone beamed, “My dear Lady Death, you sound almost human. I was hoping to receive an invitation.”

  “Absolutely, you are first on my invitation list. I can’t wait to beat you.”

  Radhya grinned up at him as they walked the narrow hallways, steps ringing loudly on the metal floor.

  Lord Barone stopped before a large door and swished his hand before the glowing yellow plate. The door whooshed aside revealing a room the size of a gymnasium and all white; walls and floor well padded. Fifteen naked men shook and stumbled their way around the room. The reek of the disinfectant made Radhya take a step backward, wrinkling her nose. The staggering slaves muted their grunts and curses as they took note of the open door. Some tried to come to attention, but were simply not yet capable of standing up straight.

  “Nice looking batch, this last one. Excellent muscular development don’t you think?” Noel inquired of her.

  “If you say so, milord,” Radhya replied evenly.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t even enjoy looking?” smirked Noel with an evil grin.

  “Only at you,” replied Radhya so sarcastically that Lord Barone laughed aloud. “Touché!” he said.

  Privately Radhya was amazed at the transformation wrought on the bodies of her slaves. They looked sleek, fit and well muscled. If the training were as good as the physical result, the high price would almost be worth it. Rory glanced at the Lady, anxiously signalling her with a look of alarm.

  “Pass them their uniforms,” she commanded snapping her fingers.

  As Rory wove his way through the clumsy mob, he passed uniforms to her four new guards, assisting each into his clothing. As bodyguards, they had heatproof, chemical proof, knife and bullet resistant cloth engineered to protect them from every conceivable danger so they could protect their mistress. Rory hurried.

  Barone sneered, Most unusual. Most customers take the slaves home naked, and then dress them, if they wish to bother. “Does a naked male upset you so much then?”

  “No, not at all,” Radhya replied in a cool voice. “I have my dignity to consider, and to me, it lacks dignity to have four naked men trotting behind me, whereas in uniforms they make me appear important and perhaps slightly superior to the other aristocrats with naked slaves. Have you ever known the King, for example, to have naked slaves around him? It�
��s an etiquette situation with me, like matching dishes and silverware at a banquet.”

  Noel looked at her thoughtfully; “I have never known you to short etiquette.”

  Radhya bowed her head. “I trust the necessary debits have been made?”

  “Of course. Even for you, I give nothing free.”

  Rory herded the four stumbling men to the door where Radhya was waiting. As she stepped out, Lord Barone restrained her. Dave and Will tumbled to the floor with startled cries.

  “Whats this?” he asked eyeing the men.

  “What do you mean?” asked Radhya raising her voice for a battle.

  “You’ve changed your house colors,” he said pointing to the men.

  “I was sick of gray and black which were, after all, my father’s house colors. The forest green and royal purple are very distinguished, and they are duly registered. It is my right to choose colors for myself. I trust you’ll not hold me up further. I have important stock to get home and settle.”

  Noel released her arm, and Radhya swept frostily from the door. The four slaves staggered after her, Rory bringing up the rear, assisting the lurchers. She moved out of the building and down the hot dirty street on as direct a route to the spaceport as was possible. Moving as fast as they could without drawing more attention from the bustling crowds than they had to, with four large men having trouble with their coordination and balance, she threaded her way through the jammed streets to the spaceport. The bicycle traffic was especially heavy right now, and Rory leapt aside from by a rickshaw carrying a screaming royal. Padr, Will, Max, and Dave rapidly regained use of their limbs as they went along; Rory pushing them from behind to keep up.

  The instant they were through the gates of the spaceport and around the corner from the tall control tower, Radhya broke into a swift sprint. The men reeled after her. She whispered into her wrist comp as she ran. Ahead, the Arrow lowered its companionway as the navigation lights and engines came to life. She dashed up the metal stairs, her feet clanging loudly. She spun left into the phosphorescent lit cockpit with dials and gauges surrounding them on three sides. A slight young man sat in the farther of the two gimballed chairs that filled the area.