by Reiter
Jocasta huffed as she looked out on the shenanigans of the evening. “Dammit, Z, when did you get a line on what that kid could do?!”
“While Nulaki was cooking, of course,” he replied.
Jocasta chuckled and started walking again. “Of course. Tell Adleon to get his gear, say his goodbyes, and meet me in the garage. I’m going to talk to some very bold bastards, two at the very least. I’m thinking I might get lucky.”
“Aye, Captain.” Dungias said as she stopped walking. He watched Jocasta don her long coat as she walked. She was reaching the door to the garage when Nulaki stepped up beside him.
“Not much grass growing under her boots either, huh?”
“Not unless it was already there when she put her foot down,” Dungias replied.
** b *** t *** o *** r **
Ephaliun checked his brace-com a fourth time as he put the hover-car into another turn. He then took in a deep breath and calmed himself. He looked over at Pristacia and was only slightly relieved to discover that he was not the only one in the car who was looking nervous.
“Easy children,” Nulaki said calmly. “This is just a meet and greet. We’re here to get to know one another and see if we can conduct business.”
“If that’s the case, why do you need us?” Pristacia asked.
“I like it when a blonde isn’t dumb,” Nulaki stated. “One thing, my children: we walk in the world of shadows. Everyone is darker and more deceitful than you want or need them to be. Just because we’re going to meet someone to talk about stones doesn’t mean they don’t know a Slaver with a quota to fill if they decide that they don’t like the merchandise.”
“If they’re not Slavers themselves,” Pristacia added.
“Quite right, Princess.”
“Aren’t they more likely to try something if Princess shows her face?!” Dugger pointed out.
“Depends on what face she shows,” Nulaki replied. “If she’s stupid arm-candy, they might have a bigger itch.”
“You’re just saying this now?!” Pristacia turned around in her seat to look at Nulaki reclined in the back seat. He smiled and waved at her.
“There aren’t many faces you’ve got that work to my disadvantage,” he shared. “If you play the arm-candy, and they decide to make the wrong play, they take you lighter than they should and you get in some clean back shots. If you play competent and fierce, then the man who tells you to shut up, despite his appearance, is in some fashion more fierce than you, or at least thinks he is! I thought Z was teaching you about this sort of thing.”
“We’re still on the subject of me working alone,” she answered. “But I’ll follow your lead… and be arm-candy.”
“Interesting choice,” he remarked.
“Playing to the worst-case scenario,” she stated. “If they want to take us bad enough; me being fierce won’t really stop them; they’ll just come harder. I’d rather pad our first move if I can.”
“Okay, Z really is training her!” Nulaki thought.
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I guess that means I guard the car,” Ephaliun stated.
“I love the way you make that sound minimal,” Nulaki chuckled. “They want us bad enough, cutting off the route of escape is the first thing any competent grabber’s gonna do! And speaking of making moves, mentioning the word dance, or any form of dance, is our trigger for tonight.”
“Gotta love this world of shadows,” Ephaliun muttered as he opened a channel to Pristacia, directing Satithe to use direct sound from their headgear so that Nulaki could not hear him.
“Did he really say, ‘easy children’?” he whispered.
“Nulaki is new at this,” Pristacia replied, looking out over the buildings. “You have got to remember that he’s got a name, a rep, and one of his victims happens to be the reason why Oasis City was interesting. I’d listen to him if I were you. We’ll talk about the bravado later!” Both crewmen of the Xara-Mansura smiled as the thief in the back seat pretended to not hear the conversation.
Following Nulaki’s directions, Ephaliun backed the car into an alley a little over two blocks away from the intended meeting place. Pristacia and Nulaki piled out of the hover-car, with their goggles on, and started down the avenue toward a number of nightclubs and businesses of various amusements.
“Are we running a little late on purpose?” Pristacia asked as she adjusted the appearance of her goggles. Arm candy, she thought, should be wearing something too big for her face.
“I’ll have to talk to Z about a bigger and more gaudy format,” she thought.
“I noticed you told Dugger to take some turns he didn’t have to,” the young woman continued as she put three pieces of chewing gum in her mouth.
“Know the layout of Black Gate already, do you?”
“No, but Satithe does,” she replied. “You added time on to our drive.”
“And you didn’t say anything because…”
“I’m new to all of this,” Pristacia admitted. “You’ve been a thief long enough to have a name and a price on your head... and you have the trust of the Captain and Z.”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret… I don’t have their trust. I have their respect... and their curiosity. Real big difference!”
“You seem okay with it, though,” Pristacia remarked.
“I’m a thief, plain and simple,” he said. “I’m not sure I would respect them if they trusted me. But to answer your question, yes, we’re late on purpose. I wanted us to be late. We’re not from here after all, so we’re not familiar with the area and it’s easy to get lost, even with an auto-map.”
“There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the world of shadows,” Pristacia commented.
“There are even more in the light,” Nulaki returned. “And I think that’s our contact right there; thirty-three meters and on your left.
“And how much more conspicuous can a person get,” Nulaki thought, looking at the man’s long coat. He had the collar up and dark glasses over his eyes. It was quite obvious to Nulaki that the man was not a professional, and amateurs made the Black Scarab nervous.
“You mean the one that just signaled to someone across the street?” she asked.
“That’s our guy. You stay in character until I say otherwise, or you see something I don’t,” he said as he wrapped his arm around her waist. Pristacia smiled, and giggled, tripping as she walked, taking deliberately short strides.
“Not too shabby,” Nulaki thought, observing the change in her demeanor. “Maybe I latched on to the wrong one to roll with me.
“Evening, friend,” Nulaki said softly. “You the one I was talking to on the city grid?” The man nodded ‘yes’ as he looked around. Nulaki pushed Pristacia from his side and she stumbled away, grasping the light pole to keep standing. Nulaki hopped up and planted a front kick to the man’s sternum. He was lifted from his feet as the wind was knocked out of him. “No one worth a damn talks on the city grid, you idiot!”
“Hey!” the man that Pristacia had spotted came from the nightclub across the street. Nulaki turned and hurled a black shuriken into the man’s shoulder.
“Don’t hey me, man. You don’t know me!”
“And you don’t know us!” a woman said, walking out from behind the wounded man. She was holding up her hands as she advanced. Nulaki could see a man come to the roof of the building and another take up a position at the far corner of the building. It did not take Nulaki long to see that they would be shooting in one direction with little risk of hitting their own “But I came to talk, not to fight. If you’re here to talk stones…” the woman lifted a small cylinder-shaped device to her neck. “… I’m your man,” she said, sounding like the man he was here to see.
“You okay, baby?” Nulaki said to Pristacia.
“Yeah, Daddy, I’m all right. I just hurt my arm,” she answered, rubbing her arm... with only two fingers. Taking a passive glance, Nulaki could see two figures posted behind parked vehicles, twen
ty meters to his right flank. He could also hear soft footfalls behind him, deep in the alley. That made five.
“Can we lose the working girl?”
“She’s working!” Nulaki snapped. “I got four hours plus on the clock… and it’s none of your damn business anyway. I’m here to talk stones. What are you here to do?”
“Do you have a sample?” the woman asked, smiling.
“Fucking amateurs!” Nulaki thought as he smiled and nodded. “When will they ever learn?!
“Boogie!” Nulaki said, jabbing the woman in the face and then grabbing her. Pristacia threw down two smoke bombs with her left hand and hurled a flash-bang grenade toward the parked vehicle. She then bolted for the alley, drawing her gun out of her purse. After two back strikes, Nulaki backed into the alley, using the woman as a shield. He fell down when a rifle blast struck her chest. The laser had burned through her body and into his chest. His shirt had a large hole in it, but his bodysuit looked untouched. “Damn, you got to love that blue-skinned freak!”
“It helps,” Pristacia said as she fired. She darted left to the wall of the alley, pulling her belt out of her purse. The buckle of her belt locked into place. “Infrared,” she whispered and her field of vision was altered to where she could see two men with energy pistols. “Lock on!” Her goggles flashed green and she knew to duck. One burst burned into the wall where her head had been.
“Lock established,” her goggle computer reported. Pristacia popped up, aimed, and fired one shot. She could hear the man scream as he fell to the alley floor.
“I think they blocked out Satithe,” she said as she ducked again. Rapid fire energy bursts ate at the wall and she darted to the other side. The laser fire followed her as Nulaki ran down the alley.
“This smells like a guild trap!” he huffed as he ran. The last man in the alley aimed and Nulaki jumped. When his body was parallel with the alley floor, he spun and his body shifted to the right and three shots just missed him. Nulaki landed on the side wall, still running, and fired without aiming. He scored the stomach of the man, followed by the chest and shoulder.
“Nice moves!” Pristacia exclaimed as Nulaki jumped down to the alley floor. She looked up at the sound of engines approaching. “And that sounds way too heavy to be our ride!”
“Probably a troop carrier,” Nulaki said. “… that rules out using the rooftops.” He reached back for her hand and Pristacia took off her shoes, placing them in her holding satchel. She started running after she rolled a grenade toward the mouth of the alley. One man had posted up at the front of one of the buildings and peered around to get a target to aim at just as the device went off. While the young woman smiled, it was bittersweet for Nulaki. They had taken out yet another person, but in using explosives, she insured no one was getting off that transport with just light armour on.
“Damn pirates!” Nulaki cursed under his breath.
“So this is the fork in the road, eh, Z?” Pristacia thought as she took a moment to look back at her handiwork.
“Remember, you are trying to be alluring,” Dungias had said softly in her ear as they slowly danced close together. “Which means the last thing you would want to do is to look like you’re trying to be alluring… unless you believe your target would be more easily manipulated once that revelation comes to them.”
“You mean there are times when it’s better to deliberately fail–”
“Look out!” Dungias had ordered, pushing her away with such force that she fell to her back and rolled. When she had stopped, she looked up to see the head of a spear come out of Dungias’ chest. He had grabbed the neck of the spear, but it spun in his hands and in his body and he screamed as his hands fell away from the weapon. His body had been cast away as if had no weight, and Pristacia had looked up to see a Malgovi Warrior nearly three meters tall. It had locked eyes on her the moment Dungias was no longer in its view. It smiled and drew a sword, quickly swinging it into a screaming Pristacia. She had continued screaming even after Dungias had taken hold of her and called her name several times. He had continued to call her name after she opened her eyes and once more after she stopped screaming.
“You’re not dead!” she had whispered.
“And it is only by the fact that the attack was illusory that I can say the same for you, Princess,” he had replied. “Before you begin trying to piece things together, resolve one issue: tell me why you did not think! You screamed well enough and that is good, given you were afraid. It is clear you have little issue in showing your feelings.”
“Do you have to mock me at every turn?!” she had snapped.
“Must you confine me to being Terran simply because you are?” he had replied just as quickly. “Because mocking is what you would have been doing, the same reasoning must then be applied to me? Perhaps we should call you Goddess instead… and yes, that was mocking you!
“Pristacia, it is my hope that you will come to know that there is more than simply the Terran perspective to the Rims and therefore to the Cosmos.” Dungias had slowly lessened his grip on her arms and he had stepped back from her as the image of the stars filled the room. “The moment you are able to admit that is the moment you can begin to understand what little any of us truly knows about anything. Once you have that perspective, you will think when others are gripped with fear. The notions that strike you, which now you might think of as mad, you will come to see as strokes of unexpected genius.”
“All this is going into my training?” Pristacia had asked as she shook her head. In the mid-shake she stopped and closed her eyes. “But then, I am only assuming you are teaching me to be what I consider to be a manipulator of people. I need to get out of my own way, don’t I?”
“You ask that in a voice that would suggest that you–”
“It’s what the Witch told me,” Pristacia admitted. “She said I think I know too much, and with my mind filled with so much wrong knowledge, there isn’t any room for discovery. Help me, Z. I’m scared!”
“Are you?” Dungias had asked, offering his hand. “Or are you simply telling yourself that is what you think you should be, stepping into the face of something new. You are a Princess! But I can only lead you to the throne; that is my part of the plan. The ascension is up to you! Your life-trek has come to a fork; one path is the life you have assumed, the other is the life waiting for you to explore before you define it. Which path will you take?”
“Trust the man. Trust the plan!” Pristacia thought, repeating what served as a mantra among those who had trained the longest with Dungias.
“We’ve got to get some altitude,” she said, looking over the layout of the walls of the buildings.
“That’s the last thing–”
“They expect,” she interrupted. “Those engines were still inbound, and with the layout of this area they can only land troops right where Dugger is parked!” Nulaki looked at the woman as she ran by him and looked at the rear of the buildings. She saw one with a fire escape chute and turned toward it.
“Now how is she going to–” Nulaki muttered as Pristacia jumped up and stabbed the outside walls of the chute with her knives. She planted her feet and then stabbed to the left, pulled up and stabbed to the right. She started making a rhythm to her efforts and was scaling the chute quite well. “Well I’ll be damned.” Nulaki jumped and used his hands and feet to get to the top and roll over the ledge. He put a hand down for Pristacia to grab and pulled her over the side. She got up on her feet and started sprinting. Nulaki followed, curious as to how this was going to play out.
As she ran, Pristacia hit a button on her brace-com. “Dugger, this is Princess.”
“This is Dugger. It’s real good to hear you, girl!”
“Tell me about it. You see a transport?”
“Can’t help but,” he replied. “They fragged the car before their ship had even come to a hover.”
“Any off-loading?”
“Not yet, but the ramp is down!”
“We’re on our w
ay to you. That transport is our ride out. You with me?”
“You want me to start without you?”
“Negative. Just find a pretty perch.”
“Way ahead of you,” he replied. “Rifle is drawn, assembled, and ready to fire!”
“Awesome, Dugger. Be there in fifty!” Pristacia said as she jumped from one building to the next. The next building was two stories taller, but Pristacia was not slowing down. “Give a lady a hand?”
“You’re no lady,” Nulaki replied, running ahead of her. “But…” He jumped from the edge of the roof to the wall and readied himself to take on more weight.
“Shoulders,” she cried as she jumped, and a slight blue shimmer passed over her body. “Ten… nine,” she counted as she landed on Nulaki’s shoulder and jumped. He could barely feel her and shook his head as he watched her go up to the ledge, catching it with her hands. He quickly made his way up the side of the building.
“So that anti-gravity thing only lasts ten seconds?”
“Yeah,” she panted as another shimmer passed over her body. “Each cell has ten seconds of power to it. I’m only wearing three cells right now; have to conserve.”
Nulaki looked over at Pristacia once more as they both ran. Princess was definitely a misleading name. “And I thought I had a problem between knowing when to run and when to fight.
“Well, I can see our target,” Nulaki advised. “Two more buildings and we’re there.”
“Princess, they’re off-loading!” Ephaliun reported.
“Drop smoke after the fifth man, Dugger,” she ordered before looking over at Nulaki. “You take the troops on the ground, I’ll handle what’s on the transport.”
“Princess, that’s suicide!”
“Then I’ll see you in hell!” she laughed, jumping the next building and then leaning forward for even more speed. She had a knife in one hand, a pistol in the other, and the blue shimmer passed over her body again as she jumped. Her body carried over the side of the building and she landed on the nose of the transport.