No problem. Mars had hacked into the spaceliner’s system and added my name when they concocted the alternate cover stories. If the prefect went as far as interrogating the flight crew, however, that would be a different story.
Meredith lifted her hand toward me, and I took the cue, sticking out an elbow. She wrapped me up and drew me close.
“My escort and I are leaving now,” she told the prefect. “Next time I throw a little party, Charles, I would prefer to do it without the gunfire.”
“Then I suggest that you be a little more careful about your guest list, madam.”
Meredith and I walked away arm in arm, though not too fast. No need to hurry. No need to worry. Within ninety seconds, we were in the elevator and traveling up to the roof, where her chauffer waited with her luxury Pontiac Skymaster. From there we headed through one of the spiraling portals in Luna’s dome, on the way to the spaceport.
“Do you have any luggage?” Meredith asked. “I mean, anything absolutely vital, that you can’t live without?”
“No,” I said. “I like to travel light.”
“Good,” she replied. “It might be smart to get off Luna before the prefect starts poking holes in your bullshit cover story.”
NINE
Meredith Capulet’s sleek luxury space yacht was a silver ninety-foot job, state of the art, with an atomic powered translight drive and bubble windows.
We boarded and she immediately told the ship’s computer to power up and make for orbit. I felt the engines hum to life, the vibration coming through my shoes as I stood on the polished hardwood deck.
“Computer,” she barked. “Change course to alternate itinerary B, but do not log the course change with Luna Central.” She looked at me and winked. “The radar buoys will spot us veering from our designated space lane, but we’ll have shifted to translight by then.”
I smiled at her. “It seems I’ve put myself into the right hands.”
Her smile touched her eyes, which grew heavy and suggestive. “We can talk about that later. Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be back in a moment.” She jogged down a narrow corridor to what I guessed was her stateroom aft.
I stood in one of the big bubble windows, watching the Luna city lights twinkle and reflect off the big dome. The vessel swung around, and in less than five seconds it sped toward deep space, the stars floating gently past, then faster as the engines packed on the thrust. A lack of queasy stomach fluttering told me that the ship’s artificial gravity had kicked in, stabilizers keeping us steady.
Meredith cleared her throat behind me, and I turned.
If she’d been stunning fully clothed, she was a goddess in her total nudity, white flesh glowing in the faint starlight. My head went a little dizzy.
She stood with hips cocked to one side, head tilted the other way, hands behind her back in a posture of mock coyness, nibbling her lower lip. Her green eyes glowed ever so slightly in the dim light, confirming that they had to be replacements. She shifted, cocking her hips the other way, and her breasts bounced just right, nipples pointing out and hard.
“Come here,” she whispered.
I almost launched myself at her, stepping forward way too quickly to maintain any illusion of cool. I got within two feet of her, hands coming up to take her by the hips and pull her into me.
Her hands came out fast from behind her back, and I caught a flash of silver. Suddenly I felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against my forehead.
“Is that the titanium-plated Derringer Excalibur?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Forty caliber with explosive tips.”
“A bit much.”
She grinned. “A girl can never pack too much firepower.” In her other hand, she held a little black box with a round hole in the center. She held it out to me. “Put your thumb in there.”
“Which one?”
She shrugged. “Dealer’s choice.”
I put in my right thumb and the hole closed around it. I felt a slight jab as it drew blood. It buzzed for three seconds, and then chimed.
“Carter Sloan,” the mechanical voice said. “Identity verified.”
If I kept having to prove myself this way, there’d be no blood left in me.
“Well, now that we’ve settled that,” I said, “maybe we can—”
She pushed the gun harder against my head. “Not so fast.”
No fair. No fucking fair.
“On your knees.”
I went to my knees.
She took small steps toward me until the blond thatch of hair between her legs was even with my nose. She slid the Derringer around until it was pointed in my ear, then a hand on the back of my head, slowly pulling me forward. I could feel the heat radiating off her.
“Come on,” she said. “Dive in. You know what to do.”
She shoved my head again and my nose bumped into her clit. I opened my mouth, tongued her slowly. She began to moan and grind against me, still holding the gun against my ear.
After a moment she flung a leg over one of my shoulders, and squeezed my face between muscular thighs. It was difficult getting air, but I’d found the sweet spot and kept licking. She tasted like strawberries, and the thought flashed through my mind that her family empire’s line of products had progressed well beyond enhancing the odor of bowel movements.
She screeched like some enraged animal, and then she pulled away. I gasped for breath.
Turning around, Meredith got on her hands and knees, backing her flawless, round ass toward me. She tossed the gun away, and I heard it clatter among the lounge furniture.
“Come on, finish it,” she said. “Get inside. Finish it!”
I opened my pants and sprang out. It took only one good thrust and she was wet and hot around me. I grabbed her hips, slammed into her as hard as I could.
“Yeah,” she cried out. “Come on. Yeah!” She pounded her fist against the deck with each thrust. Her whole body shuddered when she came, and that triggered me. I thought I might blast her across the cabin.
Then we collapsed and lay in a heap for a few seconds.
At last she said, “We need… we need to continue this in the bedroom.” She panted. “These cherry hardwood floors are beautiful, but they’re hell on my knees.”
* * *
“That was abrupt,” I said.
“The first time,” Meredith agreed. “The next two times were more leisurely. I like a slow orgasm that starts from a long way off.” Her fingers drifted through my chest hair. We lay among the white furs on her large, circular bed, watched the stars blur past out the bubble windows. At some point during our second coupling, I felt the ship lurch into translight as we blasted out of the system.
“I meant our sudden departure from Luna,” I said.
“The prefect would have sniffed you out. I’ve seen that gleam in Charlie’s eye before. If we’d stayed, you’d have been arrested.” She rolled away from me, propped herself up on one elbow. “Toto.”
Toto? I frowned with confusion, then a silver helper-bot floated to within a foot of her.
“Cigarette, Toto,” she said.
A small hatch on the bot slid open, and she plucked a cigarette from within. It hovered closer and a flame flickered from a small nozzle. Meredith leaned in, puffed the cigarette to life, and Toto floated away again.
“Luna is neutral ground,” I said. “Why’s the prefect trying so hard?”
“We’re on the brink of war with the Coriandons.” She puffed her cigarette, blew a long stream of smoke which was immediately sucked into the ship’s air scrubbers. “Luna’s standing army doesn’t amount to much. The Luna governing council is expected to vote any minute to rush into the loving, protective arms of the Reich.” Her lip curled with disdain as she took another puff. “Makes me sick.”
“But the Reich would offer protection,” I said. “It’s Luna’s best bet if the Coriandons penetrate this far.”
“Luna will never be the same,” she said sadly. “It’s
the freest settlement for five systems. You can think what you want, say what you want—it’s wide open. Now it’s all changing, right in front of our eyes.”
“Social and political freedom doesn’t mean very much when you’re staring down the barrel of a sonic blaster.”
“That’s the excuse of every tyrant in the galaxy,” Meredith said. “Anyway, Charlie’s always been something of a hawk. He’s prefect of police for St. Armstrong, but wouldn’t mind being chief of police for the whole moon. He thinks rounding up enemies of the Reich will put him in good back on Gestapo Mars. He’s probably right.”
“You’ve got a lot of money and influence,” I said. “Whatever happens, you’ll come out smelling better than a strawberry bowel movement. Why stick your neck out?”
“Because blinding yourself to what’s happening around you, with swanky parties and expensive material things, only works the first forty or fifty years,” she said. “Even dummies like me catch on after a while. I want to do more. I want to accomplish something more important than making people’s shit smell pretty.” A mean expression had crept across her face as she talked, something that found its way out from deep inside of her. Her eyes narrowed and slid to me as she took a long, mean drag on her cigarette.
“Enough about me,” she said. “Why does the resistance think you’re the bee’s knees, Carter Sloan?”
“They find me useful.”
“So have I,” she said, “but I think you know what I’m asking you.”
“I think I do,” I said, “but that’s need to know.”
A sly smile nudged the mean away from her face. “You don’t think I’ve earned it?”
I took the cigarette out of her hands and took a puff, mostly to buy a few seconds before answering.
“Let’s just say that I’m not exactly sure myself,” I admitted. “Anyway, the less you know, the safer you’ll be.”
The ship shuddered gently and the stars slowed outside the bubble window.
“We’ve arrived at the wormhole checkpoint,” she said. “It’s the fastest way to get you where you’re going.”
“I appreciate your giving me a ride,” I told her.
“I’m more than a taxi service,” she said. “I’ve had my lawyers transfer most of my assets out of Luna banks, but when word gets out that I helped you, life might get difficult. So I’ll be sticking to you like glue until—”
Something slammed the side of the ship with a loud bang, sending me tumbling from the bed. The room flooded with red emergency lights as the collision alarm sounded.
“What the hell was that?” Meredith was out of bed, reaching for a black leather jumpsuit.
I grabbed my pants. “I need to get to the cockpit.”
“Report!” Meredith shouted.
“Starboard engine out,” the ship’s voice said. “Unidentified craft dropped out of translight and fired. Auto-seals engaging. Life support at sixty-eight percent. Shields inoperable.”
I ran barefoot through the ship, exploding into the cockpit, took the pilot’s chair, and grabbed the wheel.
“Fire maneuvering thrusters,” I told the ship. “Release manual control.”
The wheel went slack, I took control and banked sharply. The gunship swung into view on the forward viewports. It wasn’t broadcasting any identifier codes, but the light frigate was close enough that we could see the Coriandon markings. How they’d penetrated this far into Reich territory without raising every alarm for twenty systems was anyone’s guess.
The ship swung around to present us with a broadside. I spun our ship to give them the smallest silhouette possible, but those fucking aliens had some good gunners, and a barrage of grapeshot shredded our maneuvering thrusters.
“Translated message coming through,” the ship said. “Hostile vessel demands that we slow to docking speed.”
Damn, we’re being boarded.
“Comply.”
I ran back through the ship to warn Meredith. Along the way, I heard the metal tunk of the docking clamps as the light frigate came alongside. They’d have us any minute now.
I exploded into Meredith’s stateroom, lunging for the rest of my tuxedo. The idea of being half-dressed while I was taken prisoner by aliens didn’t sit well with me.
“They’re boarding us.”
“I know.” She was slapping a gyro-jet magazine into an enormous assault weapon. With the black jumpsuit, the calf-high action boots, and the weapon, she looked like something she’d probably seen in a cheap adventure movie.
“Put that away,” I told her as I put on my shoes. “You can’t fight the whole gunship.”
“I’m not letting a bunch of alien rapist scum take me alive,” she said.
“If you can convince them you’re pro-resistance, we might have a chance,” I said. “If their war is against the Reich, as opposed to humans in general, we might be able to talk our way out of this.”
She reluctantly stowed the gun back in the weapons locker behind her bed. I think she was disappointed at missing a chance to fire the thing.
I finished tying my tie, smoothed the wrinkles from my tuxedo, and walked into the ship’s main cabin to await the aliens. There were more grating metallic sounds on the other side of the airlock, thumps as they positioned. They’d probably rush in with a shock squad on the chance they’d encounter resistance. I didn’t blame them.
“Stand back,” I told Meredith, “and give them room to secure the ship.”
Her hand came up suddenly and she grabbed my arm. There was a new anxiety in her eyes, and it struck me as odd to see worry in the woman who’d displayed such confidence before.
“I’m scared,” she said. “It’s one thing to play revolutionary from the comfort of my own mansion…”
So there it was. The real woman under the bravado. I nodded, covered her hand with mine.
“We’ll keep it diplomatic. Don’t give them any reason to shoot.”
She nodded back at me, tried to smile, but it died on her face. She was afraid. It was that simple.
There was a sharp, abrupt grinding sound and the door slid open. The Coriandons rushed in and around us, shouting orders to keep our hands where they could see them. It was difficult at first to tell how many of them there were. The Coriandons are oozing, green gelatinous creatures, and they sort of all mashed together as they gang-rushed us from the airlock. Their voices were high-pitched and gurgling. The leader at least had good English and didn’t bother with a translation box.
“I am Third Commander Xixleplop,” he gurgled. “This ship is now Coriandon property. We control this sector of space. You will submit.”
“This is not a Reich ship,” I said, chin up, trying not to look worried. “This is Meredith Capulet, a known supporter of the resistance. If you have spies on Luna, they will doubtlessly be able to confirm this. You have no quarrel with us.”
A gloppy arm erupted from one of the guards, stretched out suddenly, and hit me hard in the face with a gooey fist. I stumbled back and went down. When I touched my face, it was still sticky. I felt around with my tongue, and was relieved to find I still had all my teeth.
“Your diplomatic patter needs some work,” I said.
“All humans will submit,” Xixleplop said. “Regardless of politics. This is the new Coriandon Empire. All species who do not get on board and play ball will be deep-sixed.”
“That’s good.” I stood slowly, keeping my eyes on him. I didn’t want another wet whap in the face. “You’ve even got some of the idioms down.”
“Thank you. I studied English as a second language at Rutgers University via StealthBot,” Xixleplop said.
StealthBot would explain it. It would give a glob like Xixleplop a chance to remotely operate a human-looking robot, doing so from his home planet. I wondered how many other aliens were sneaking around in robot disguises. Something else to worry about—another time.
“Please,” Meredith said. “The resistance wants to overthrow the Reich. We can work together.�
��
“Silence, mouthy woman,” Xixleplop replied. “All humans will submit and be shackled in servitude, slaves forever to the mighty Coriandon. I know that probably comes off as a little over the top, but this is policy, direct from the home world.”
“You’re a gelatinous asshole!” Meredith snapped.
“Silence, or we will replace your brain with an obedient robotic processing unit,” roared Xixleplop. “It is an expensive and time-consuming process but very, very threatening!”
I opened my mouth to suggest that we all calm down, when suddenly the ship shuddered. We all stumbled, and Meredith grabbed me for support to keep from tumbling across the deck.
The Coriandons jabbered at each other briefly in their gurgle language, and I saw one of the blobs speak into a communication device. As he did, they began to back away hastily toward the airlock.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Several ships just dropped out of translight,” Xixleplop said. “The Reich have arrived.”
TEN
Xixleplop ordered a single guard to stay behind and watch us while the rest of them made a hasty retreat back to their gunship.
“We must detach immediately, so the ship can maneuver,” the third commander shouted. In three seconds flat, they’d oozed back through the airlock, and I felt the vibration through the hull as the light frigate detached itself from Meredith’s luxury yacht.
The guard stood, utterly motionless, his sonic rifle leveled at us.
“Now what?” Meredith asked.
“That’s one hell of a good question,” I said.
The ship rocked again as something exploded brightly outside one of the bubble windows. We all went down hard, and I slid across the hardwood floor and smacked my shoulder against a table leg. I tried to push myself up, the ship still shaking and rattling, and my hand closed over something cold and hard.
I got up on one knee, took aim with Meredith’s Derringer Excalibur, and fired twice. The bullets lodged in the blob’s goopy midsection. There was a long second before the exploding tips detonated. The Coriandon exploded in a flash, his sticky goo coating every surface in the cabin.
Gestapo Mars Page 5