Fixer

by Ryan Vermont

  She looked at the floor. “My own people want me dead,” Rashina spoke with the sound of tears flowing down a window.

  “Why would someone want you dead?” I demanded, one eye still on the front door.

  “There is a starship down by the docks,” she began to explain. “I was on it when it landed here. I don’t think the people who brought it in knew I was hidden inside; it is a very big ship. I left it after the ship landed and that was when some men grabbed me. I have privileged information about that starship, and I thought they were connected to my people.”

  Now, I was stunned. She’d come in on the Byzantium? Damn, I was certain there were more of those Angelikans on that starship, but we didn’t have time to check it over before the incident with the Irunians.

  She’d tried to make her way to the rest of the station and someone, thinking she had value to a bordello, seized her. Of course, Drez, hard up after a mission that went bad, got a deal on Rashina. He got her out of the whorehouse and brought Rashina back here. It would be just like that pervert Drez to want to fuck something holy. I made a mental note to make him pay the next time we met.

  “What kind of technology is so important they’d kill you for it?” Zilpha demanded. “I thought your people were supposed to be negotiators.”

  “It’s passed down through my family,” Rashina explained. “I know how to activate it. None of my people wants that information to fall into the hands of anyone else. Especially the Irunian Empire.”

  She leaned back and continued to broadcast the most innocent and yet subtle beauty imaginable from that couch. I felt it. I couldn’t read her mind or pick up any sensations, but I knew she was broadcasting something that made us feel different around her. I’d heard of this too, which is one reason no sentient beings messed with the Angelika. Not even the Snerglanians of the Outer Rim would dare to bring harm to these people. I wondered how anyone could’ve put hands on her.

  “So, what is this technology?” I asked her. “You still haven’t told us.”

  “I don’t know,” she spoke.

  “Let me get this straight,” I asked her. “You have knowledge of some ancient technology from that ship and don’t know what it is?”

  “I know that it’s there,” she told me. “I know it’s powerful and that everyone wants it. I know how to activate it. But I don’t know what it does.”

  The situation couldn’t get more insane. We’d discovered a bound Angelika woman in Dez’s apartment who was certain everyone wanted to kill her and claimed to have secret knowledge that all manner of people wanted to possess. She didn’t know what it was or what it did but was certain the technology was on the starship Byzantium. The very same ship Drez and I boosted for Boss Korth and flew to this station. Had she vanished while we stared at her, I don’t think I’d have been more surprised.

  “And you’re sure the man who brought you here didn’t do anything to you?” Zilpha asked her again. “What about the place where he bought you? Did they do anything to you?”

  “I don’t recall him doing anything,” Rashina told us. “There’s a lot of empty space in my thoughts. I don’t know why I boarded that ship or who placed me in the compartment where I hid before it landed. There’s a lot I can’t remember.” She seemed confused.

  Rashina looked at the floor. “There was supposed to be something about the place where I was going that would help me. Someone to meet. Maybe I’ll remember it later. I know I have a family, but I can’t remember what they look like. Isn’t that strange?”

  I shot Zilpha a look. We both knew there could be all manner of reasons that Rashina couldn’t remember anything. Drugs, trauma... there were plenty of things that could cause memory loss. None of which Drez would be above employing if Rashina had something he wanted.

  “I want to die!” she snapped. “Just go toss myself off something tall. I found out that the Irunians know I’m here. There’s some High Commander Vopalis who wants to find me. If I kill myself, no one will ever get ahold of what’s in the ship!” She doubled up her fists.

  “You don’t want to think like that,” Zilpha told her as she handed Rashina another cup of water. “That’s the wrong way to think. You kill yourself, and no one knows what you possess. There may be plenty of people out there who could use that information to make the galaxy a better place.”

  Rashina began to cry, and I worried that we might not be able to do much with an Angelikan in her state. We already had plenty of ghees looking for us. Now, we had a woman with memory problems, also wanted by a lot of powerful people. This was not a good place to be.

  Zilpha took her hand as the tears flowed. Rashina cried to herself for a good five minutes, with us wondering what to do next. Finally, the crying did her some good, and she went to sleep. I looked at Zilpha and gave her a “Well, now what?” look.

  “I’ll see if I can find her something to keep warm,” Zilpha said and stood up. She padded off to her brother’s bedroom, heels in hand. In a few minutes, she returned, a cover in the other hand. Zilpha sat her shoes down near Rashina’s sleeping form and covered the Angelikan woman with a blanket she’d found in Drez’s bedroom. She put one hand on Rashina’s forehead.

  “Cool," Zilpha announced. “I don’t know what their normal body temperature is like, but it can’t be much different than yours or mine.” Rashina continued to sleep peacefully.

  “This sure is a fine mess,” I mentioned to Zilpha. “Now, we have to figure out what to do with her. Damn, this changes everything. But no problem; I’ll figure out something. I always do. That’s why they call me Fixer, after all.”

  I thought about our situation for a few minutes and remembered that the apartment where were now wasn’t the most secure of places. “Why don’t you go to the back window in the kitchen and see if you notice anything on the streets below?” I asked Zilpha. “We’re on the third floor in this dump. I’d like to know if the bad guys are sneaking up on us.”

  Zilpha nodded, rubbed her head, and walked to the back room. I noticed she’d taken her stockings off at some point. The sight of those bare, blue legs walking away forced me to put something under control.

  Rashina was another problem. She was naked under that robe. Normally, this wouldn’t be a bad thing. There were a lot of worse ways to spend the day than with two beautiful women, both of whom I’d seen nude. However, we might have to flee at any moment. I needed to figure out what to put on her so that she wouldn’t attract attention.

  “I count four of Korth’s people out there,” Zilpha grumbled as she padded back to the room. My blue companion sat down on the couch and put her heels back on.

  “Wonderful,” I told her. “The damn Cinzar family knows we’re here, and we have a naked woman who’s in no condition to help herself. Do you think you can fit her into your clothes? The ones we put in the case? At least, we’ll be able to walk out of here with Rashina presentable. No way in hell can we leave here with her in this state.

  Zilpha lifted the blanket and looked under it. Rashina still had the bathrobe on, but Zilpha could get a good idea of her frame underneath. “Yeah,” she repeated. “I think we can fit her in my clothes. They may be a bit tight on her in the butt, but most of them will fit. Damn, and I wanted to get out of these heels. Only one pair of extra shoes in that case, so our Angelikan gets the flats.”

  “If the goons are out there,” I told Zilpha,” we’d better wake Rashina up right now and let her know she needs to get changed.”

  Zilpha stroked Rashina’s face until the Angelikan’s eyes opened. Rashina hadn’t slept long enough to be in any kind of deep sleep and remembered where she was. She looked up at us with a sense of appeal and radiated a call for help.

  “We have to go soon,” Zilpha told her. “There’s some bad people outside, and we need to get you out of here. Come into my brother’s room, and I’ll put some clothes on you.”

  “Is that necessary?” Rashina asked us. “Do you always wear clothes in public on this place?”

/>   We looked at her in confusion.

  “We don’t wear anything to cover our bodies on my homeworld,” she told us. “It’s considered bad social form to conceal yourself. I was surprised so many people were covered when I left the ship after I arrived here.”

  “Did you have any clothes on when you arrived?” Zilpha asked her.

  “No,” Rashina responded. “Was I supposed to?”

  “Oh," I concluded. “That must be why someone nabbed you right away and tried to sell you to a bordello.”

  She was confused. “What is that?”

  “Never mind,” I told her. “Nyx is mostly Terran. You’ll learn all you need to about us in the future.”

  Zilpha walked Rashina back to the bedroom with the case in one hand. “I’m glad you’re helping me,” Rashina told her. “I don’t know why you are, but I’m grateful.”

  So, you may be able to save our collective asses, I thought. If we could find her a way off this place to a world where she’d be safe, so much the better.

  I waited on the couch and wondered what kind of society was so confident that its members could walk around naked. It defied the imagination. I’d heard there used to be hunter-gatherer societies on Old Earth where people wore very little; some had no clothing culture. Even bronze-age pictures showed tribal groups that wore very little. I supposed it was a climate thing, as these groups lived in places where it was warm or hot. I was certain a quick bit of research would show some place where clothing was optional. Seemed to me that health reasons would interfere at some point. No reason to sit down on a log covered in the gods only knew what kind of bacteria.

  A few minutes later, Zilpha returned with Rashina. I had to admit that she’d done a lot with our little captive. Rashina’s eyes were dried, and she wore Zilpha’s outfit. Better yet, it fit, even under the small wings that Rashina possessed. Zilpha had found a jacket that belonged to her brother and draped it around Rashina.

  “What do you think?” Zilpha asked me, as she fussed over Rashina’s hair and clothing. I could tell she’d enjoyed fixing her up.

  “I think she looks nice,” I mentioned. “How did you get the silver effect off her skin? She looks a bit like, well, you know...?“ I fought for the words.

  “Me?" Zilpha found them. “I put some of my tone on her. It made her complexion a bit bluer. Not so much as mine, but no one would take her for Morbashi anyway. She’ll pass for a mix, like me. I think she looks pretty hot.”

  Rashina turned to look at Zilpha, a bit unsure what she meant.

  Easy, girl,” I told her. “We have a lot to take care of before that can enter our minds. Say, why is the horizontal bop more on your mind than mine? I thought men were the half that had one thing and one thing only in both heads.”

  “Do you have a problem with that?” Zilpha spoke. “Because you sure didn’t last night.”

  “Sweet Mother Tara,” I sighed. “Is this going to turn into one of those whines about how many more times I made our green woman scream than you?”

  “No," she tossed back. “Because I made her climax more than you did. Don’t you remember--oh. that’s right, you fell asleep when I found out how she likes me to....”

  “That’s all right; we have other problems at hand. We need to get out of here quick, before those goons come calling. Have your pig-sticker ready, because you may have to use it.” I assumed Rashina didn’t have any weapons training.

  Rashina turned and kissed Zilpha on the cheek, which surprised me. Then, she went over to me and planted a wet one on my mouth. I felt sparks again; she was sending out an erotic charge that no one could qualify.

  “I don’t know how to thank you both,” she told us in a voice that reminded me of glass bells. “You are the first people who’ve been nice to me since I arrived.”

  Who the hell stuck you in that ship naked and didn’t let you know how ghees would view that on Nyx Station? I wondered.

  As I sat there and admired both women who faced me, my mind began to shift.

  Dammit, I thought, I don’t need this right now.

  Most of the time, I could control the esper ability I possessed. I’d learned how in the Janissaries. The bahsirs used me as part of the signal corps to scout out any transmissions from enemy troops on the other side of the lines. I didn’t have the ability to compile the wave thought patterns and put them into a whole, but I could find out stray ideas that drifted in from the front lines. Where there were a lot of men dreaming about rotating back home, that meant that no big offensive was planned. Or it could mean the enemy wanted to confuse our espers with bogus transmissions. All I could do was relay what I picked up and send it to the officers. There were deep intelligence teams that use the kind of espers you seldom see to sort it all out. These were the men and women who had trouble walking down the street on their own because their minds were wide open to every thought around them.

  However, there were times I couldn’t stop the thoughts from worming their way into my skull. Such as today. Usually, this only happened with someone I’d had a relationship with or a connection of some type. If Zilpha was spending time with one of her girlfriends, it wasn’t unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night in a wet dream or an erection. Which wasn’t always a problem as she’d come in the next morning and take care of me. I’ve been on top of Zilpha when I’ve had her tell me, “Oh, fuck, you have no idea what she made me do.”

  To which my reply would be, “Yes, I do, and I know what you did in the alley afterward with another girl who made eyes at you.”

  It was a talent, but it could interfere with my life at times.

  Such as now.

  I saw our hot green Amazon on the phone in her hotel room. He was in a silk robe talking to someone about the fun she had the night before with us. “And then, after I got my hand in deep, she came all over the bed,” Dentata told the person on the other side of the line. A few seconds later, “This was really hot because I made him pop all over the wall. By the way, it’s not the color you described, and it dries fast.”

  I couldn’t tell who she was talking to because my range didn’t extend that far. As I’d thought, someone sent that woman there as a set-up. Dammit. And I was about to put that idea off as a paranoid fantasy. Or was it?

  “So, you can send the money to the usual account,” she continued to speak. “Let me know if you want me to stalk out those two again. I had a lot of fun with that job, even if you didn’t catch them.”

  Shit, she was a plant. My fist tensed up. If I ever met up with her again....

  “Stef, you alright?” I heard a voice say to me. I blinked and looked at the two women. They stared at me in confusion.

  “Fine," I told Zilpha. “Had one of my ’visions.’ You know what I mean, the ones I see after you’ve been out with your girlfriends.”

  “I thought you got a different reaction,” Zilpha spoke, as she looked down at my crotch. “I don’t see the steel rod I’d expect.”

  “Different one,” I told her. “That damn green woman was a plant, after all. Just as I thought."

  “Oh, I see,” Zilpha replied, a bit disappointed. “She was fun. Would’ve liked to played with her some more."

  “Trust me, she feels the same way. Even if she sold us out.”

  I could see the puzzlement on Rashina’s face. “Don’t worry about it,” I explained to her. “We met someone last night who… pretended to be our friend. I thought she might be an undercover type, and it turned out I was right. With any luck, I’ll never see her again. We need to go.”

  I finished putting what I needed in the case. Zilpha didn’t have anything else to change into, and I wasn’t about to put yesterday’s clothes back on. With any luck, the goons would look for someone else, and we could get out of here. I didn’t think we’d be that lucky, though, since they knew what we wore, assuming Drez had reached Korth by now. So, I’d have to find the rear entrance to get us out safely.

  There was still the matter of what we’d do on the
outside. I considered heading back to the Byzantium but decided it wasn’t a good idea. By now, the starship would have militia all over it, plus a whole team from the Fathers’ engineering staff. They’d probe that ship to death until they figured out why it wouldn’t activate. If they couldn’t get it to power up, the Byzantium would be sold for scrap metal. Korth would never try to reclaim it, not with the registration problem. If they figured out he was complacent in boosting it back to the station, the militia would raid the Cinzar family compound immediately.

  “Stay close to us,” I told Rashina. “Don’t walk more than three paces away. I have a plan to get us away from the goons out there. Oh, and watch your step over those bodies in the hall. It won’t look good if you leave the apartment with blood on your shoes.”

  Of course, the plan was still in the early stages in my mind. But Rashina didn’t need to know that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We made our way into the hall and out onto the street.

  As Zilpha had said, Korth’s goons were watching the building, but they didn’t do anything. There was too much foot traffic outside, with people coming home from work at the docks and local factories. I watched as a couple of thugs joined the crowd and tried to follow us, but I slipped the women and myself away from the tails. I kept to the side streets and a few passages I bet they didn’t know about, and it worked. When we emerged back on the main street, I didn’t see anyone following us.

  “I think they’re gone,” I told Zilpha. “I don’t see a single one of them behind or in front of us.”

  “They may be gone,” she replied, “but we both know they’re out there someplace. Trying to pick up our trail.”

  About five minutes later, a thought hit me, and I turned to Rashina. She’d stayed close to Zilpha and held her hand. I don’t know what people thought of them, but with the added blue tint to Rashina’s skin color, perhaps the populace assumed they were sisters. Both were close enough in stature to pass as such. I made sure Zilpha wore her big hat out on this street to conceal her from any spotters on the roofs, and we didn’t run into any more trouble from the goons.