by Jucha, S. H.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure, Blue?” said Toyo, knowing Kadmir hated being called by his nickname.
“Always the suave one, Toyo,” Kadmir replied.
“Get to the point, Kadmir, what do you want?”
“I’m in a position to do you a great favor, Toyo.”
“You’re going to give me your domes and retire. Thanks, Kadmir.”
“No, Toyo, I’m going to help you keep your domes, but it’s going to cost you.”
“Nobody’s taking my domes. Not you or anyone,” Toyo growled.
“I’m not so sure about that. I mean anyone who can stop an alien invasion and bring an entire system to its knees can surely roll over a few paltry domes, wouldn’t you say?” Kadmir hadn’t had so much fun sticking and twisting the knife into a competitor in a long time, and he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Kadmir. Now, if you’re done running off at the mouth. I have credits to make. Business is booming.”
“Before you go, Toyo, I hear there was some major knife play in the corridors over there … bad for business that. Lost your number two, didn’t you? Missing any of your other employees?
Boker, Toyo thought with disgust.
“So, this employee of yours and I had a wonderful discussion, and he tells me this story about how Toyo’s people did something real … crazy, you know. They got stupid and kidnapped some Harakens.”
“Don’t know what anybody’s been telling you, Kadmir, but it sounds to me like you’ve been taking too many of those stims that you’ve been distributing.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed a story like that myself. I mean, who would do something that crazy? But, here’s the thing. Seems this man and his partner have a thing for peeping, taking pics of comatose girls to look at later. And would you believe it? One of the naked girls in the pics looks exactly like Christie Racine.”
Kadmir waited for a reply, but the comm was silent, which made him chuckle. “I was wondering, Toyo. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Racine’s sister got kidnapped, brought to Oistos, and the Rêveur arrives in system? Then on top of all that, a media producer Racine’s used before announces that our president is touring a new Haraken warship? I mean what are the odds of that?”
Toyo was standing at his desk, fuming. His fists were clenched, and he was aching to get his hands on Kadmir’s throat.
“So, Toyo, I have your man; I have his pics; and I have proof the girls came in on the Bountiful, your ship, which means … I have you.”
Through his gritted teeth, Toyo said, “You’re not getting my domes, Kadmir. I’ll destroy your domes first, and everyone in them if I have to crash a freighter into them myself.”
“Oh, I know you would, Toyo, I know you would,” Kadmir said laughing. “By now, I figure you’re standing at your desk and dying to stick a knife in me.”
You’re half right, Toyo thought.
“Now, I want you to sit down and listen to the part where you get to keep your domes, and I save your butt.”
Toyo was caught off guard. There was no reason to trust Kadmir, but he was the clever one of the three criminal operators. It was Kadmir who started the pleasure-dome concept under the guise of a mining company. Roz O’Brien, a man who loved to copy an idea, started his domes next, and Toyo was the last to build. Despite being third, Toyo was able to run his domes without interference from the other two by virtue of his reputation — he had earned his nickname Craze.
Sitting down behind his desk, Toyo leaned toward his comm panel and said, “I’m listening.”
“First thing we have to do is get the girls off Jolares. I plan to bring the girls back here to Udrides.”
“And then what happens once you have all the pieces?”
“Why, Toyo, I comm Alex Racine and tell him that I’ve rescued his dear sister and her friends from that dastardly man, Roz O’Brien.”
Toyo’s face screwed up in thought, trying to figure Blue’s angle.
“Have the girls seen anything that could mess this up?” Kadmir asked.
“Nothing, they were bagged and tagged before transfer to the freighter, isolated in one cabin for the trip, and bagged and moved to a suite. They’ve had no comm contact … the room was sealed. Only one person besides me knows they’re here.”
“Well, that needs to become just you.”
“So, what’s this going to cost me?”
“Well, Toyo, I figure that once the Sniffer is gone, you’ll try to bargain for a piece of his domes, and that isn’t going to happen. The cost for pulling you out of the way of this plasma blast is that I get O’Brien’s domes without any interference from you.”
Toyo was actually okay with Blue’s plan. He had been desperately trying to figure out what to do with the girls. The reports from his informers and media notifying him of the Rêveur’s arrival and Drake’s tour of a new Haraken warship had scared him, and that wasn’t something that had happened to him since he was a teenager. Now, Blue was offering him a way out, but he couldn’t be seen to give in too easily.
“Here’s my offer, Kadmir. You take the girls, you blame the Sniffer, and you get his domes, but I get 40 percent of the action and get to audit the accounts.” He heard Kadmir’s laugh, long and loud.
“Twenty percent,” Kadmir replied.
“Thirty percent.”
“Done, 30 percent, Toyo. I will have a shuttle at your dome in twenty-four hours. Get them ready and get rid of the one who’s seen them.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my business, Kadmir,” Toyo growled, but it lacked power. He knew Kadmir had the upper hand and was saving his butt from the Harakens.
“The pilot will contact you personally, and Boker will transfer the girls. I hope you can restrain any animosity you might have toward my new employee. Think about your 30 percent. That should help assuage your temper.”
The comm closed, and Toyo sat undecided whether to be angry at Boker or happy at the prospect of 30 percent of O’Brien’s domes, without having to do any of the work. After a few moments, he began planning what he would do with his newfound gains, and, truth be told, he was ecstatic at the prospect of getting the girls off his hand. Alex Racine was one of the few men who scared him.
* * *
Christie built their escape plan around the boy’s established visitation schedule, servicing their cabin with food, fresh towels, and bed coverings. The routine was always the same — the girls entered the bathroom and the door was locked until the boy was done.
A quarter-hour before the boy was to arrive with a morning meal, the girls planned to turn on the shower’s hot water. Christie would hide behind the door, while Amelia and Eloise moved through the thick steam in the bathroom, blurring the boy’s thermal scanner. But they encountered a problem with their scheme. At the appointed time, the steam barely began filling the bathroom when the water temperature fell to lukewarm and then moments later ran cold.
As the boy serviced the room, Eloise sent thoughts that displayed her frustration.
Christie’s idea gave her friends hope, and the girls set about devising an alternate plan to get free of the room.
* * *
Miranda and the commanders worked through the shops, buying outfits and accessories with Toyo’s credits. They extended the time by strolling through shops in which they had no intention to purchase. The purpose of their lengthy perusi
ng of the dome was to maximize the area that Miranda could search. As a SADE, she carried a much more powerful comm than a human implant.
Once the women were suitably attired or unattired, depending on your viewpoint, they joined the other Harakens circulating through the various entertainment sites offered by the pleasure dome. The criminal organization was prepared to cater to every type of visitor — miners, middle-class tourists, business people, and thrill seekers. Décor, drinks, food, stims, and personal entertainment were carefully mixed and presented at each venue to cater to every customer type.
The Harakens circulated and constantly scanned for the girls, hoping to pick up on their implants. The traveler was out of reach for all but Miranda, who also had her limitations. Nonetheless, she became the group’s data reservoir. She accumulated information from her people, and, when in range of the traveler, uploaded her data, which was also streamed to the Rêveur.
In a club catering to the moons’ hard-working people, a Haraken tech, Lisbon, bought drinks for a group of Cressida miners. His brother was the family’s comedian and knew more jokes than anyone the tech had ever met. Thanks to a good memory, Lisbon passed the time regaling miners with joke after joke and became the center of attention. It didn’t take long for two of Toyo’s fems to work their way through the crowd, sidling next to Lisbon and joining in the laughter.
During a break in his performance, Lisbon ordered another round of drinks for his admirers, which was greeted with a roar of approval. That’s when his two new companions suggested more private entertainment, but Lisbon hesitated.
“Not into fems?” one woman asked.
“Oh, I like fems,” Lisbon replied. “And you two look fine,” he added, with a long, admiring glance at the women from head to toe.
“Our suggestion not to your liking?” the other woman asked.
“A little tame for my taste,” Lisbon replied. His words were music to their ears. Exotic entertainment for patrons could earn huge credits. The women took turns whispering their suggestions until Lisbon smiled.
“I’ve seen a lot of this dome,” Lisbon said, “but I haven’t seen any place like that.” He might not have physically visited most of the dome, but he had access to Miranda’s accumulated views of the entertainment palace.
“Oh, it’s not in this dome, sweetie,” the first fem said, pressing herself against Lisbon’s arm.
“I thought there was only the single dome,” Lisbon said.
Excited by the prospect of a generous client, who happened to be a great-looking young man, the fems, who were new to Toyo’s employment, forgot the rules regarding invitations to the ancillary domes. Entrance to the lower domes required vouchsafing by preferred customers only.
“There are other domes, cutie,” one fem said. “Private access only … for people like you, who have unique preferences.”
Lisbon signaled Miranda, who received the conversation’s recording, and she immediately hacked the dome’s servers, searching through them until she located the complex’s building plans. Downloading them, Miranda shared them with her people.
Unlike the first dome, which extended its transparent curve into the vacuum of space, the next two domes were located just below the moon’s surface and were connected to the primary dome by private lifts and security-controlled corridors. However, the lift shafts didn’t appear to terminate at the lowest floor of the lower domes, which encouraged Miranda to search for additional architectural plans, but her efforts were fruitless.
Monitoring the tech’s ensuing conversation with the fems, Miranda became aware of the significant sum requested for the private pleasure and transferred more of Toyo’s credits to Lisbon’s account.
Miranda sent.
Unfortunately for Lisbon, when his companions checked his dome ID, they realized he didn’t have the level of access necessary to venture into the lower domes, and it necessitated an abrupt change in their plans. In the end, Lisbon never received the education he expected. His mates found him lying on the floor of his room, stimmed and in a stupor.
When Miranda received notification of Lisbon’s condition, she checked his account and found it empty. Tracing the transfers, Miranda located the women’s accounts and presumed they were responsible for the drugging and credit transfers once they had access to Lisbon’s dome ID card. She promptly transferred the purloined funds back into Lisbon’s account. Then, as an afterthought, Miranda transferred the remaining amount in each of the women’s accounts to a nonprofit, environmental organization on New Terra — anonymous donations, of course.
Svetlana and Deirdre’s newly initiated liaison was proving much more successful than Lisbon’s. From the moment the commanders sauntered into a club of wealthy patrons, they were inundated with exotic offers. After receiving Miranda’s updates of the existence of auxiliary domes, they accepted the offer of a patron, who had been trying for a half-hour to entice the two Harakens to what he called a special suite where they wouldn’t be interrupted.
Shocked but thrilled to find his offer accepted, the businessman escorted the women to a private lift, which he accessed by his dome ID card. Descending about 60 meters, by the Harakens’ estimate, they emerged into a sumptuously, if not decadently, decorated corridor. At a small console, the patron entered his card, reviewed a menu, and selected his preference. When the console beeped, a small, green light flashed over a door partway down the corridor.
“Here we go, fems,” the man said, throwing an arm around the waists of Svetlana and Deirdre and ushering them down the corridor.
“Can’t wait,” Svetlana gushed, rubbing her shoulder against the New Terran’s substantial chest.
The room was decorated as an ancient dungeon complete with torture devices. “Let me get some drinks,” the patron said. From a hidden bar, he poured three small glasses of a pale orange liquid. “You’ll enjoy this,” he said, handing out the glasses. “And these are to make the ride more enjoyable,” he added with a leer, handing a pill to each of the Haraken women. Without waiting, he popped his pill and slugged half his drink.
Smiling engagingly at the patron, Deirdre pressed her body against his and kissed him fully on the mouth while behind her back she handed off her pill to Svetlana. Deirdre slid to the side of the businessman, who looked expectantly at Svetlana. The blonde commander obliged him by leaning in and opening her lips. However, instead of a kiss, she blew the two pills secreted in her mouth deep into his.
Choking down the pills, the startled patron staggered backwards, gasping. “What did you do? My pill was a placebo,” he cried. The man spun around and raced for the door, but the commanders were on him in an instant. They caught him, threw him to the floor, and pinned his arms behind his back. It took only a few moments before his struggles eased and then ceased all together. The women rolled the slack body over. His glassy eyes and slack mouth said the double doses of stim had a deep hold on him.
Deirdre snatched the dome ID card off the patron and followed Svetlana to the door.
“Disguise time,” Svetlana said, messing up her short hairstyle and dropping one shoulder of her wrap to reveal most of a single breast. “We’re two women of leisure, who’ve just been partying. So act the part.”
Deirdre unclasped her toga-style wrap from behind her neck and let the straps fall, brushed her fingers through her hair, and painted a
dreamy expression on her face, a woman lost in bliss.
“Perfect,” Svetlana commented.
The two women slipped out of the playroom and took their time stumbling and quietly laughing as they walked down the corridor. Several times, they passed other patrons and their companions, who laughed or smiled at their state of undress. One man went so far as to pretend to bump into Deirdre and take advantage of the moment.
The women were able to traverse back and forth through several levels of their dome before security found them, confiscated the patron’s dome card, and led them back to the surface. Throughout their search, they never contacted the girls’ implants.
It was Miranda who discovered that the Harakens’ strategy was doomed to failure. She was invited by a patron to enjoy his brand of entertainment in an auxiliary dome and accepted. The first deviation from the commanders’ experience was that her admirer accessed a lift on the far side of the main dome.
Down below, Miranda’s escort checked into a room at the corridor’s registry panel, and as they walked to the room, she detected the implants of two Haraken engineers exiting the lift behind them. Glancing back, she saw the men in the company of an older female patron, who seemed delighted to have captured the attention of two healthy, young specimens.
Miranda and her patron entered a room, which seemed to have water sports in mind, and, as the door closed, the SADE lost contact with the engineers’ implants. Realizing their search for the girls’ implants was being defeated by the existence of the domes’ comm-isolated rooms, Miranda dispatched her patron with a seductive kiss and a gentle pressure against the carotid artery until he passed out.
Picking up the patron’s ID card, Miranda exited the suite and made her way back to the main dome, where she contacted every Haraken within reach about her disturbing discovery. It wasn’t that Harakens were unaware of the concept of comm isolation. It’s just that they worked diligently to prevent it, believing that communications isolation was a detriment to an individual’s mental stability and, therefore, the growth of a healthy society.