Chaos Quarter: Imperial Ambitions Page 18

  “He was a Hegemon Master,” Second informed. Vermella shrugged and shook her head.

  “He was of no gender. His society has no set gender. Yet he enslaved me, raped me, and subjected me to great pain. He was not male. Rex liberated me from mental enslavement and restored free will to my brain. He is male. This means your statements are objectively untrue. The desire to enslave cannot be limited to one gender, which means you were evil to attempt to enslave Rex.”

  Vermella blinked and then growled. “Your mind has been polluted with false beliefs—typical technique of control!”

  “I am no longer under anybody’s control,” Second informed.

  “That’s just what you think. You’re a puppet. Baliol and your precious Rex are pulling your strings and you go along with it,” Vermella raged. “They’re probably now sitting on the bridge deciding which one of them gets to have their way with you tonight, and you’re probably just dumb enough to spread your thighs for them. Heck, you may be just dumb enough to think they really care about you!”

  Second jolted back to her feet, her expression darkening into a scowl. Vermella smirked at this, glad to see the little whore upset.

  “I have had sexual intercourse with neither Rex nor Lucius,” Second said firmly. “And you are wrong to believe that either would act as you have described. They do not behave that way.”

  “Not when you’re around to see it, no. Men can be oh so clever about getting sex. But one of these days, you’ll find yourself on your back, having convinced yourself that you mean the world to the man rutting on top of you. And the whole time they’re smiling down at you, it’ll just be because they found a nice, warm place to put their cock. And when this ‘trip’ of yours is over you’ll have a swollen belly, and they’ll drop you for somebody new.”

  She smiled viciously to drive the point home. She said no more, waiting to see the look on Second’s face, waiting to see her break into tears like the weak, degraded woman she was.

  Instead Second clenched her jaw and said, “You are a horrible human being.”

  With that she turned and stormed out of the isolation room. The door slid shut and locked behind her. Vermella sighed, shaking her head. She’d really thought she’d get the whore crying. The pleasure of that image playing in her mind would’ve made being trapped in this room just a little more tolerable. But she’d gotten nothing. She cursed herself. She really was slipping…

  ***

  “You were right; it worked,” said Lucius.

  They stared at a holographic image of Second storming out of the isolation chamber, leaving a steaming Vermella trapped inside.

  “Figured she might talk to another woman,” Rex said. “The whole antimale aspect of her reminded me of something I studied way back in history class at the academy. On Old Earth, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were big social movements pushing the equality of women, and rightfully so. By and large they achieved it, and it has remained a part of Terran culture and law ever since. But a small minority took it way too far, going from promoting women to actively hating men.”

  “Extremists,” surmised Lucius. “Everybody has them.”

  “Yes,” Rex said, leaning back in his chair. “And apparently some of them managed to terraform a planet and build a world of their own.”

  “A world…” said Lucius, his voice uncertain. ”Do you think what she said was true? Do you think a terraformed world was actually annihilated with asteroids? That is, I mean, how…”

  He trailed off, and Rex knew why. Using asteroids as weapons was like using nuclear warheads. It just wasn’t done. The universe was empty blackness, void, and vacuum. The small islands of habitability, the worlds humanity had turned into new Earths, they were too valuable to be used as target practice for asteroids. Stuff like what he’d just heard, the complete destruction of a planetary ecosystem…that was the stuff of arch villains in summertime action movies. People didn’t actually do that. They weren’t that stupid.

  But then he remembered what Vermella had tried to do to him. The thought of an entire planet full of women like her…a whole world full of people who could get you into bed with a scent and enslave you with a fast lay? How did you live next to something like that, forever wondering if your neighbors, your friends, and your leaders were being led around by their genitals? And facing millions of people like Vermella? People raised to hate you, who could rob you of your mind with a smile and a quickie?

  Would that drive him to do what Sirizonia’s enemies had done? He honestly couldn’t answer the question. He’d like to think that this ‘cure’ she’d talked about could’ve been distributed far and wide, eliminating the threat that Vermella’s kind posed. But if he was desperate…or if he’d awoken from a long enslavement, knowing what he’d been subjected to, what he’d been made to do…he just didn’t know.

  “I don’t know if she was telling the truth or just trying to play on Second’s sympathies. Lucky for us Second would probably have no idea she was trying to do that anyway,” said Rex.

  “Lucky…none of this feels ‘lucky.’ Not to me anyhow, given that I was her target,” said Lucius.

  “Thinking she wanted to claim the prize for brining you in to the emperor?” Rex asked.

  “It appears that way,” Lucius said, balling his fists at the thought. “The amount of money the emperor would give her, for bringing in somebody like me…she’d have been rich enough for ten lifetimes.”

  “Except I think there might have been more to this than just money,” Rex ventured.

  “How so?” asked Lucius, shifting in his chair to face his friend.

  “Think about it. This woman has no home to go to. Her people are dead or scattered…and she goes after the one person whose capture would guarantee her an audience with the Europan emperor himself,” Rex explained.

  Lucius thought for a moment and then his eyes went wide.

  “You do not think she intended to—”

  “Seduce and enslave Gnaeus Cheseworth? Make herself the de facto ruler of the entire Europan empire? That’s exactly what I think,” Rex said, staring warily at the image floating before them. It was still of Vermella. She ate listlessly as she sat in the isolation cell, a permanently angry scowl on her beautiful face.

  “Jesus…” Lucius muttered and then cursed himself for using his God’s name in vain.

  Rex shared the concern. A woman like Vermella, in charge of the entire Europan empire? Granted, Gnaeus III was a tyrannical bastard, but someone like Vermella? If she had the drive and ambition to literally sleep her way to the throne, where would she go from there? With her abilities she could call for meetings with neighboring states, bring heads of state to the heart of the empire, and then have her way with them. They could return to their worlds under her sway, which would just expand her power and the power of the empire. And while medical nanobots made Terrans immune to her little imprinting virus, should she ever get an important figure or diplomat into a room there was no telling how much damage Vermella’s pheromones could do, even given a short exposure.

  The woman in his isolation bay was a living, breathing, fornicating weapon of mass destruction.

  “Puts us in a tight spot,” Rex noted. “We have a mission to complete.”

  “With her locked in the isolation bay,” Lucius said. “No doubt coming up with a million ways to escape.”

  “Indeed. The ship’s cameras can keep a watch on her, but if she gets out, rips off that duct tape…”

  “Then we’re at her mercy,” Lucius concluded. “Unless we have Jake watch her every hour of the day.”

  “He needs REM sleep like the rest of us,” Rex said. “And he is the strongest person on this crew by a large margin. It would be good to have him free if things go south.”

  “So our only option is to continue the mission and hope she is unable to escape the isolation bay,” said Lucius.

  “It would appear so,” Rex grumbled. He stared at the image of the woman floating before
him. She unsettled him. How many more men were under her sway in this region of space? How many of them were now on the hunt for her, combing the stars for some sign of them?

  What would those men be willing to do when they realized he had their “lover” locked in his medical bay?

  He sighed heavily, and wished for the thousandth time that he really could push her out the damn air lock.

  ***

  When Rex went to Vermella’s cell later that night, he wore a gas mask, just in case she decided to try something. He half-expected the Sirizon to be asleep.

  She wasn’t. As the door slid open he saw her, sprawled across the small chamber, as far away from her bucket as she could get. From the stink it was clear that it needed to be emptied.

  “What do you want?” she sneered.

  “I’m here to let you get in on some advanced Commonwealth medical technology,” he said, as removed a small case from his pocket.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A present,” he said. “Immunity from almost all known forms of disease…except allergic reactions. They’re still a bitch.”

  “What?” she said, her face a mask of confusion. “What do you mean? Why are you doing?”

  He opened the case, revealing a syringe. Vermella tightened, glaring at the shot and then at Rex’s eyes.

  “What’s in that? What are you trying to do?” she demanded.

  “As I said, I’m trying to protect you from disease,” he repeated.

  “Or kill me. What is in that syringe?” she asked, tensed and coiled. She was still shackled to the wall, and the duct tape remained on her neck, so she couldn’t exactly launch an attack. But she looked ready to do so all the same.

  “Medical nanobots,” he said, advancing. She twisted to get away, but he grabbed her arm firmly and wrenched her near.

  “Get away from me!” she snarled.

  “No can do,” he replied and jabbed her. The syringe sank deep into her arm, just below the shoulder. The plunger depressed automatically, and a solution of medical nanobots shot into her muscle. From there it would radiate out, the microscopic robots taking up residence in every tissue, ready and waiting for microorganisms that did not belong.

  He stepped back. Vermella frantically pawed at her shoulder, as if that could undo what had happened. This went on for a minute or two and then stopped. A wary look came to Vermella’s face.

  “Not dead yet?” asked Rex.

  “What. Did. You. Do?” she seethed.

  “How many times do I have to tell you this? I injected you with medical nanobots, standard models, completely harmless. They’ll stay in your bloodstream for at least a year, killing any bacteria or viruses that don’t—”

  “Viruses!” said Vermella, shooting to her feet. She lunged at Rex, but the handcuffs held her wrist firm to the wall.

  “Well, yes. Viruses can be nasty little buggers—”

  “You killed my virus, didn’t you?” she screamed.

  Rex just smirked at her.

  “Didn’t you!” she roared.

  He shrugged.

  “Okay, you got me. I neutered you. Or spayed you? Not sure which applies here, but yes, I did that.”

  “I’ll kill you!” she screamed with another lunge. Her passion was evidently not stronger than tempered steel, and she fell back as the cuffs held.

  “I’ll kill you! You goddamn worthless bastard! I swear to Goddess—”

  “Save it,” Rex said. “Count yourself lucky. For what you did, what you do to people, most of the Chaos Quarter would shoot you on sight. And I can’t say they’d be wrong to do it. But fortunately for you I’m bound by laws that say I can’t just go around killing captives. Even worthless rapists like you.”

  “Fuck you!” she roared.

  “No, thanks. It wasn’t that fun the first time,” he said with a smirk, just to infuriate her a little more. He left her then, locking the door behind him as her curses echoed through the sick bay.

  The people of this world are bastards, and they don’t really like us. They don’t really seem to like anyone. I think they’d love nothing more than to pack us into a ship and kick us off their planet. The land they’re offering is cold, mountainous, rocky, and in the middle of nowhere. I think they half-expect us to freeze to death before the first winter is over…so all told, Anglesey is a monumental improvement to our former condition. I’ve already told them we accept their offer.

  —Burly Shepherd to his fellow refugees, on arrival at Anglesey, 2452

  Of course they’re nuts; the sane ones never left the Commonwealth!

  —Common remark among Terrans, often criticized but never really refuted

  Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/1/2507

  “So this is what we came all this way for,” said Rex.

  He sat hunched in his pilot’s seat, the breadth of the world sprawling across the viewscreen. It had taken twenty days of constant travel to get here, crossing nearly eighty light-years of the Chaos Quarter on the way. By the standard of the region, it had been a fairly boring trip. They’d only been attacked twice, once by pirates and once by a man claiming to be Kali. Rex wasn’t all that familiar with the Hindu religion or its deities, but he was pretty sure Kali was female. Perhaps that was why this “Kali” had only had five followers. Well, five at first and then three after Lucius had blasted two of Kali’s makeshift “fighters” into twisted debris. The darn things had been little more than orbital shuttles with some guns strapped on, so it had taken no more than a half-dozen thirty-millimeter rounds from the turrets to chew them to bits. Following that the God (Goddess?) Kali had turned tail and fled.

  Beyond that there’d been a few bribes and a quick stop for foodstuff at a mining colony, but otherwise it had just been constant travel—the same old, same old cycle of jumping, traversing a system, and jumping again. It had been far easier, so far, than his previous trip to the Quarter. He mentally crossed his fingers at that, hoping he hadn’t just cursed the rest of the mission.

  He refocused on Anglesey, taking in the planet. The sun was behind them, illuminating the face of the world. It was rugged and mountainous—many terraformed worlds were, often with peaks higher and more jagged than anything on Earth. Since the worlds were so young the cycles of water and erosion had yet to beat down the rough edges. Adding to the harshness of this particular world were the large ice caps, bigger than the ones on Paphlygonia or Earth. They were white and impossibly bright with the sun bouncing off them. Unlike Earth, or Paphlygonia, ribbons of ice snaked off them and stretched toward the equator. It made the caps look like massive white spiders, waiting to close their legs around the rest of the world. But they didn’t get that far. The snaking ridges faded into ocean and continent.

  The continents themselves were unusual looking. A repeating geographical pattern dominated them. Long, parallel ridges ran for hundreds, if not thousands of miles; one after another. The continents were only a quarter as wide from east to west as they were long from north to south, but that still meant hundreds of parallel ridge-and-valley formations. This repeated on three different continents, no doubt uplands during the world’s preterraforming existence. Only the southern continent was an exception. It was a large, gently sloping dome of land, four hundred miles across. A large crater sea dominated its center, but that was about all that looked rugged about it.

  Around the planet was a mess of space stations and ships. He couldn’t see any with his naked eye, but the ship’s scopes and radar picked them up easily enough. It wouldn’t be long before they were hailing him, going through the whole routine of checking him out before letting him land. It was expected, normal.

  “Yep,” said Jake, also staring down at Anglesey.

  “See any Europans hanging around?” Rex asked sarcastically.

  “No, but hold on, let me magnify,” snarked Jake. A second passed as his robotic eyes magnified the image. “Nope, still nothing. Does that mean we can go
home?”

  “Not if we want to get paid,” Rex said with a smirk.

  “Damn. Stacey’s gonna be mad,” said Jake.

  “Stacey? You’ve narrowed it down to one woman?” asked Rex.

  “Well, no. But, ah, she knows things,” said Jake.

  Rex nodded, knowing full well that Stacey Van Etrra knew things because she’d spent two years working at Queen K’s Cathouse on Edelvir Isle, back before she’d come home to Mecong and got herself elected to the town council. But he didn’t want to ruin Jake’s little fantasy, so he kept quiet. Jake didn’t need to know his favorite girl was a politician.

  “Who knows, maybe something more will happen…” Jake said with a wistful smile.

  Rex said nothing.

  “Incoming message,” the computer announced.

  “Put it through,” said Rex.

  Static crackled and then a male voice was heard, stern and cold.

  “What is your business here?” it asked.

  “Trade,” Rex replied.

  “What is you planet of origin?” the voice continued.

  “Boundary,” said Rex.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Foreigners are restricted to the Reservation or Brynoer,” the voice informed. “To which are you destined?”

  “Well, we’re new to town. Which is best for filling a hold?” asked Rex.

  “Brynoer,” said the man simply. “Directions are being transmitted to your ship. A liaison will be awaiting you upon landing to explain the rules of our world.”

  “Okay, we look forward to—”

  The line cut dead as he spoke. Rex frowned.

  “Not the friendliest bunch, are they?” said Rex.

  “They’re no Stacey,” said Jake, shaking his massive head.

  “And that’s a shame,” Rex said, moving to the pilot’s seat. He took control of the yoke and began descending into Anglesey’s atmosphere. The coordinates the people of Anglesey had sent appeared on the viewscreen as a translucent green line, streaking toward one of the northern continents. A thunk ran through the ship as the engines changed over from the main drive to more atmosphere-friendly, nuclear-thermal rockets. The continent grew until it filled the viewscreen, the rippling mountains and valleys growing larger and larger. They descended to a particularly wide valley, just visible as dusk crept across the face of the planet. A profusion of lights marked the city, another bunch near its edge denoting the spaceport. As they drew closer, it became more visible and looked as unremarkable as any other spaceport. Low-slung terminals separated it from the city. A broad tarmac, marked with painted circles of various sizes, stretched nearly a mile in front of the terminals, backing up onto farms and fields. Longshot headed for one of the larger circles. It touched down easily, not a breath of wind blowing by.