Van Gar lay in the huge bed, stared up at the ceiling, and didn't even try to pry the stupid grin from his face.
Drew lay with her head on his chest, almost but not quite asleep, and at least for the moment all seemed right with his world.
"You suppose blue blood is going to be any harder to get out of the carpets than regular blood?" Drew asked sleepily.
Van Gar laughed."Could you have really just run off and abandoned them?"
"If I could have gotten my iggys? In a fucking heartbeat. This kingdom is like a bad investment, if you can't sell the son of a bitch you grab all the liquid assets and walk away. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to my liquid assets."
"If you say so, Drew," Van Gar laughed.
"Don't you start with me. I'm ruthless and self serving, and I like me that way," Drew said emphatically."I wish everyone would quit insinuating that I've grown some kind of conscience! Why the very thought makes me want to vomit."
Van Gar wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed the top of her head."I was . . . it was stupid for me to leave you, Drew, over something so trivial . . ."
"As four guys, two chicks, a midget and a goat," she supplied.
"For any reason," he said through gritted teeth.
"It certainly was. And joining a crack pot religious cult run by some second-rate grifter . . . well, that was just fucking priceless," Drew said with a laugh."Next time you're going to punish me, you might try something less masochistic."
"Well, I did turn all that around," Van Gar reminded her quickly.
She picked her head up and turned to look at him momentarily."Oh, do tell?" She kissed him, then lay her head back on his chest.
She sounded genuinely interested, so he told her the whole story, adding special emphasis to the parts where he had been particularly clever, brave and/or tough. Skipping over the part where he was stupid enough to actually believe Pard Jar, instead insisting that it had been his plan to take everything away from the religious freak all along. He completely left out the part where he'd gotten his ass kicked by the foremen and had been forced to work for green glop.
She was quiet throughout the telling, and so he was sure that she was completely enthralled with his tale. That was until the bitch started snoring.
He was more than a little put out. He was sure that he'd never tell the story quite as well as he just had, and he had no way of knowing just how much she had actually heard.
He knew he should be exhausted, but he just wasn't. The castle was a mess, but apparently the cleaning and maintenance staff had knocked themselves out returning the queen's quarters to their normal pristine state. Of course, Van Gar doubted a bunch of disgruntled nobles or even an angry mob could do much more damage than Drew did when she was on a really good toot. No doubt the staff had developed a system for removing the debris from Drew's room, quickly patching holes in the walls and covering them over with well-placed pieces of the wall paper.
He yawned. He was a very rich man, and Drew would have to respect him now.
Except . . . now that Zarco was dead she was sole ruler of a whole fucking country. Damn it! The bitch had stolen his thunder.
Dylan was none too happy. His leg was broken, and the only doctor in the castle had been dragged up from the dungeon, and turned out to be the same one who had done such an absolutely nothing job on Drew. Of course when he'd finished working on Dylan's leg and taken care of a couple of other minor injuries suffered by the crew, they'd locked the bastard back in the dungeon. So if he hadn't done what he was supposed to have done, they'd know right where to find him. Of course, the bastard had kept saying he knew nothing about alien anatomy the whole time he was working on him, so he might have screwed up accidentally. Didn't really matter; if he didn't heal quick and right, he was still going to kill that bastard.
The doctor had cleaned Dylan up, which sucked, because if he was going to have a sponge bath, he preferred he get it from some pretty nurse instead of some gnarly looking old guy. After he'd cleaned Dylan up, he'd given him some sort of pain killer and set his leg. He must have really given him the pain killer, too, because if he hadn't, with the pain Dylan had already been in, he was pretty sure that he would have crapped himself if he'd had to feel his leg pulled back into place. He was now laying in bed in one of those stupid gowns with no back in it, with some light shining on the leg which was supposed to cause the bone to repair itself in forty-eight hours.
Of course, as the doctor had said some twenty times, Dylan wasn't Barion, and he couldn't be sure that he would heal the same. Dylan still couldn't really feel his leg yet, so he had no idea whether the little light thingy was working or not.
He felt like a dork laying there under a fucking light. Like some hot house flower in that stupid gown with no back. He wondered why he couldn't have some boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
He supposed that was too damn much to ask for.
It was funny when he thought about it. It seemed that no bipedal people had been able to construct a hospital gown which actually covered your ass. He understood that the gowns were constructed this way to make it easier for the doctors and nurses to care for you, but was there some reason that they couldn't invent a gown that could cover your ass that opened easily enough that it didn't inhibit treatment of the patient?
In fact, if Dylan really put his mind to it, there were a whole lot of things that he was really surprised hadn't been invented. For instance, couldn't someone somewhere find a way to make a tube of lubricant so that it didn't sound like a big juicy fart when you dispensed the product? When you were all revved up and in the moment, there was nothing quite like having to stop everything to explain that you didn't do it, that it was just the tube.
And hemorrhoids . . . what the hell was up with that? Hundreds and thousands of scientists all over the universe, and several hundred different species all suffered from the damn things. Yet no one had found a really good way to treat them that didn't leave you feeling like someone had stuck a slimy candle up your butt. Made you feel like you must be leaving a slime trail like a slug. Seemed like there ought to be a better way.
As soon as he got better, he was going to put his mind into inventing some of these items. Fellow could make himself a damn fortune.
"Dylan?" a soft voice called out, interrupting his thoughts of industrial conquest.
Dylan turned towards the voice and saw Stasha in the doorway. Seeing that he was awake, she walked in.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Like someone said my dick was too short. I'll be fine. How 'bout you?" Dylan shifted in his bed, trying to get more comfortable.
"It's hard . . . being back here. Knowing he's not here." She sniffled a little, then started to cry in earnest."Knowing that he's never coming back," she sobbed.
Dylan guessed he shouldn't have asked."Stasha . . . you have to pull yourself together, girl. This dude . . . I mean I know you loved him, but let's face it, sugar, he was sort of a jerk. He sure as hell didn't appreciate you."
"I know." She sniffed hard and seemed to be making a real effort to quit crying. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her nose. It was then that he noticed that she'd lost the Qwah-Co jumper she'd been forced to wear when they'd left Hepron Station, and had changed into a beautiful red silk dress that was almost . . . Well, for Stasha it was indecently short. She was wearing—he recognized the scent, and smiled—Ode To Salvager, Drewcila's normal fragrance.
"You all right, Stasha?" Dylan asked.
"No . . . I'm tired of it. I'm tired of always living in my sister's shadow. It was bad enough before. Before when she was just Zarco's queen, happy to stand behind him and wave at the people every once in awhile. Bad enough when she was gone, and we all thought most probably dead, and I knew I was nothing more than a replacement to him. But then she came back, and she's . . . well, she's magnificent. Look what she did! She saved the country and made herself rich at the same time. She took stuff that no one wanted, stuff that was thrown away, and she built an empire. The nobles and Zarco tried to wrest that empire away from her, and she took it back. And today I came to, and the ship was under fire. Margot told me what was happening, and I really thought we were all dead, that we'd breathed our last. Drewcila never even flinched . . ."
"You didn't see her when she couldn't get into her safe," Dylan said with a laugh.
Stasha ignored him."She turned what could have been one of the darkest days in our nation's history into a military triumph. Everyone loves her. She treats everyone horribly, and yet they all love her. Our people, the salvagers, Van Gar, Arcadia, Zarco loved her . . ."
"Is there a point to all this, or would you just like to come over here close enough so that I can kick you with my good leg so you can take a break from kicking yourself?" Dylan asked with a smile.
"The point is . . . I'm tired of being me. I've been thinking about what you said about everyone just pretending to be someone, and well it dawned on me that the only time I have been truly happy in years was when I was pretending to be my sister. When I would dress like her, and walk like her, and talk like her, and read the speeches she'd written for the public, and they would applaud and throw flowers. I keep damning her, but the truth is I liked being her. People respect her, they love her. No one loves me, and they surely don't respect me," Stasha said."I'm sick to death of being nice, proper, and highly forgettable Stasha."
Dylan smiled charmingly and incanted the magical-getting-laid words as they had just been revealed to him, "Stasha . . . there is nothing forgettable about you. If I had the choice between you and Drewcila, why I'd pick you any day."
She ran to him and hugged him. He grabbed her head and kissed her. She didn't object. In fact, she hungrily kissed him back. This was a woman who was long over-due for some serious attention, and gimped up or not he was going to give it to her. He thought of it as sort of his civic duty. His mind was racing, trying to figure out how he was going to get his groove on with his leg broken and strapped under the "all healing" light.
As it turned out, he didn't have to figure out anything at all, because Stasha already seemed to have given it quite a bit of thought.
He didn't hate that hospital gown near as much as he thought he was going to.
Having momentarily lost her "toy of choice" status, Arcadia had gone down to her old quarters to see what damage had been wreaked upon her space. She expected the place to be completely wrecked, but it was worse than she had anticipated.
The "ambassadors" had been given a suite of rooms at the end of a long corridor, one which had originally been built for traveling dignitaries. As Drewcila's ambassadors, she, Pristin, and Dylan had split their time between the castle—dealing with the state-run part of the salvaging operation on Barious—and the various stations, factories and recycling venues that belonged to Qwah-Co.
They'd each had their own bedrooms here, but had shared a large common room with all the latest in high tech entertainment. That room was now completely demolished. The view screens, computer games, and holographic projectors had been smashed to pieces.
It was hard to say when the rooms had been trashed. The nobles might have done it when they were looking for Dylan and Arcadia. Or they may have done it at any time just for shits and giggles. The rooms might have also been trashed by the horde of rioters who had apparently beaten the military into the castle and killed many of the nobles—mostly by beating them to death. They had trashed other areas of the castle, and there was a good chance that they might have thought that these rooms had been inhabited by the hated nobles.
Somehow Arcadia doubted it was the latter. They were now a salvaging country with a salvagers' mentality, and whoever had done their rooms had broken or ripped everything to pieces. The commoners weren't likely to have done damage to anything that might have resale value. They just didn't think that way anymore. The total devastation of the rooms, and the fact that she could see some of Pristin's clothing strewn around, just strengthened Arcadia's belief that the nobles had committed this crime. After all, Pristin's clothes were definitely an "alien's" clothing, and the common man on the street had no beef with the aliens. In fact, most commoners saw them as the bringers of a new and prosperous era for them all. Only the nobles had hated the alien presence the recycling trade had brought to their planet.
Pristin was dead. That was a hard pill to swallow. She'd worked with Pristin long before she'd ever been associated with Qwah-Co, before she'd ever even meet Drewcila. In those days she'd just been a simple salvager. Digging through piles of trash and picking out the good stuff. Pristin had been her buyer. He bought the crap she found and then shipped it to people who needed it. Drewcila hauled the stuff across the galaxy. That's how Arcadia had met Drewcila Qwah. Drew was on the docks one day hustling a bunch of workers along to hurry and load her trash, no doubt in an attempt to get them so rattled that they would load stuff that she hadn't actually paid for. For Arcadia the attraction had been immediate, and Drew must have felt the same way because they'd been in bed before they'd finished their second drink.
Drewcila had been in her life in one capacity or another ever since.
When Drew put Qwah-Co together, she'd been looking for people she could trust, as well as people who were competent, and she'd hired Arcadia and Pristin to oversee the operations on Barious, a position that had given them both power and money. Dylan had come a year later, when the workload got to be too much for Arcadia and Pristin to handle on their own.
Arcadia liked to think that Drew had moved her here to have a reason to at least occasionally spend some time with her. A notion which was fed by the fact that normally when Drewcila came to Barious, Van Gar wasn't with her.
Arcadia realized that she wasn't finding any of her clothing. Not a stitch of it, not her personal clothing or her Qwah-Co uniforms. Which didn't make any sense, because even though she had spent a small fortune on clothing and accessories, no Barion woman could wear her things. She started sifting through the rubble, getting more pissed off by the moment that some asshole had stolen her stuff. After forty minutes with no luck she gave up and decided to take a shower and go to bed. She cleared her bed off then made her way to the bathroom. Of course when she opened the shower door she found her clothes. Some fucker—actually probably more than one—had thrown her clothes in there, and no doubt took great pleasure in pissing on them.
It was just too much! Pris was dead. Drewcila was in her room with Van Gar doing things Arcadia didn't want to think about, and now some asshole had filled her shower with pissy clothes. And not just any clothes but her clothes.
She let out a deep, throaty growl and decided to go kill something.
Sortas wasn't an idiot. He knew that his life had only been slightly lengthened when he'd sold Atario out. The news crew had barely been able to save him when the unruly mob of commoners had stormed the castle. They had stuck him in the dungeon, thinking that it was altogether fitting that they should leave him for Drewcila to deal with. There were a few of the other nobles they had imprisoned instead of killing as well, no doubt because it was hard to kill a man when he had thrown down his weapons and was on his knees begging for his life. But none of them had escaped a serious beating—including Sortas.
He hurt everywhere, making it very hard to concentrate, and he desperately needed to concentrate. He had horribly miscalculated the situation. He had withheld treatment from the queen and had allied himself to Atario, a man who was destined to go down in the history books as the country's greatest traitor. When the commoners had come across Atario's body, they had literally ripped it to shreds.
The fact that Sortas had killed Atario and patched up a few of her crew wasn't likely to appease the queen's wrath. Drewcila, he now realized, was no fluke. She hadn't gotten where she was by birth and good breeding, or even by luck. Drewcila had gotten where she was because the little tart was sharp as a box of tacks. She understood people, and she understood business, and worst of all—since he was on the wrong side of her—she understood how best to deal with her enemies.
You killed them.
Dead people couldn't cause any trouble. He had caused her trouble. He had sided with the enemy against her and tried to take over her kingdom. She wasn't likely to believe the same story he had told the reporters that had won them over so entirely.
For one thing, she was painfully—at least for him—aware of the truth that he hadn't treated her poisoning. That he had left her to suffer, and suffer she had. It wasn't something she was likely to forget. Still, if he could somehow prove that he could be useful, even necessary, she might just let him live.
If he had it to do over again, he would have done everything differently. Treated her, done the autopsy on the king, and pointed the finger at Atario. He wasn't stupid enough to think that after this loss the nobles could ever again regain their place in this country. Drewcila had won. She was now in total control without even Zarco to buffer her, and the last time that had happened, she had changed the whole world, and his life.
Still, now that he reflected on it in this new light, he'd had a good life. It just wasn't up to par with what he had before, true. But he wanted to live, and in order to do that he had to find some way to convince Drewcila that he was not only truly sorry for what he had done, and would never do it again, but that it was also in her best interest to keep him alive.
Therein was the real problem. Repentance wasn't going to be enough to buy him a stay of execution. He had to somehow prove that she would be better off with him alive than she was with him dead.
He heard the guards addressing someone just outside the cell block, and then the Valtarian lizard woman strolled in the jail. He could see the blood lust in her eyes. He moved quickly to a corner of the cell and tried to make himself invisible.
She moved around the cell block looking into the cells, and the whole time he was very careful to keep his head down.
She laughed in a maniacal way, and said in that hissing voice of hers that made his flesh crawl, "I feel like a kid in a candy store. There is just so much to choose from, and . . ." She stopped suddenly in front of his cell, and said, "You!"
Sortas swallowed hard and looked up slowly, wondering what horrible death she had in store for him.
"Not you! You!" she hollered, pointing at another man in the cell.
"Me?" the man asked as the front of his pants darkened.
"Yeah, you, Come here."
The man walked over to the bars where she seemed to check him out the way a client in a restaurant might check out a piece of meat before having the cook sling it on the grill. After a few seconds she either smiled or snarled, Sortas couldn't be sure which, and then she grabbed the guy by his collar and jerked him into the bars. She let him drop to the floor, then opened the door. No one thought it was a good idea to rush her, which seemed to disappoint her. She dragged the still dazed man out of the cell, stood him up and shut the cell door. She looked him up and down, then plunged a claw into the flesh of the man's shoulder. The man cried out and started to fall, but she held him up with that one claw caught up in his flesh.
That's nice of her, Sortas thought.
"You know what you did, don't you?"
"No," the man gulped.
"Yes, you do. You're the shit that pulled the trigger that fired the blast that killed my little blue friend . . ."
"I . . . I was just following orders," he cried, then screamed as she twisted the claw in his shoulder again.
"Wrong answer. So . . . I'm going to let you go and give you a head start. If you get away . . . Well, you get away, if not . . ." she shrugged.
"Oh, gods, no! Please," he begged. She pulled the claw out of his shoulder, and he took off running. She gave him a three stride head start, then jumped over his head, landed in front of him, spun quickly and flipped her tail out so that a spike split the guy's head. He fell to the floor with a scream, and she put a foot on the man's head and pulled her tail free.
Sortas cringed. The lizard woman turned to look at them, and him in particular. She put the bloody claw to her mouth and slowly sucked the blood off."Now you . . . I know who you are, too, and what you did. Or rather what you didn't do." She just smiled—or snarled—he still couldn't be sure which."Just a little food for thought. Chew on it awhile. See how treason tastes. I won't make you wait long." She started to go, but stopped in the doorway and turned to look at them all."And if I ever find out which one of you bastards pissed on my clothes . . . Well, let's just say I'm thinking of interesting ways to kill you."
She left. They heard her talking to the guard again, and since no one showed up to remove the body, Sortas guessed that she had asked him to leave it there.
Sortas refused to look towards the body. He had to think. He had to think fast, and he couldn't afford to waste time thinking about all the horrible ways she might kill him.
Of course, it was almost impossible to think about anything else.
Arcadia didn't feel like going back to her decimated room alone to brood, and since Drewcila had put a bar in the castle, there was no need to. She made a beeline for the bar, hoping against hope that it hadn't been trashed as badly as her own quarters had been.
Arcadia didn't know what the room had been before Drewcila had it turned into a bar, but it was big enough to harbor a full sized, fully stocked long bar, a small stage, a jukebox, and a dance floor besides a dozen tables.
She didn't know how it had happened. Maybe Drewcila's god, the deity of Party Hearty, had laid a protective hand over it. Whatever the cause, the bar had been untouched. The regular bartender was on duty, and there was at least one customer hugging the bar. Arcadia breathed in a deep breath of normalcy, walked up to the bar and sat down on her usual stool.
Abear walked over to her."How . . ." she started.
"Drewcila had a force field installed over the door. When the shit hit the fan I closed the door, flipped on the force field, and hunkered down. It was rough. I had nothing to eat but pretzels and olives for two days."
"Oh . . . how horrible for you," Arcadia said sarcastically, thinking of how she'd spent the last few days.
Abear laughed."I wondered why you guys didn't run in here during all the hubbub. I mean . . . I would have let you guys in."
"And then we would have all been stuck in here with no outside link, and how long do you think those olives and pretzels would have lasted?"
"With Drewcila in here, I would have been more worried about running out of liquor."
Arcadia cleared her throat."Speaking of which, I'm sitting here, and I don't have my drink yet."
Abear laughed."Sorry . . . Hurling Monkey?"
"Yeah . . . and add a twist." Arcadia plopped her elbow on the bar and then resting her chin in her claw, she sighed.
"Bad day?" he asked.
"What do you think?" Arcadia answered with a laugh.
"I was sorry to hear about Pris."
"Yeah, I just mutilated the guy that shot him, and yet I still don't feel any better."
"Go figure," he set her drink in front of her and lowered his voice still more."I heard Van Gar's here."
"Yeah."
"I'm guessing that's cutting into your time with the boss."
"Yeah." Arcadia shrugged."You know . . . I had her first!"
Of course he knew that, he heard Arcadia's bitches on a regular basis. She told him things she had probably never told another living soul, but then he was the bartender. It was a sacred trust and one he took seriously. People told him their problems, he pretended to listen, pretended to half care. They felt better, they drank a lot, and he had job security.
"Some people have everybody, while other people have no one," a slightly slurred voice said. The creature who had been at the other end of the bar had moved, and she now sat down next to Arcadia without asking."Hardly seems fair," she added.
Arcadia looked up at the female Chitzsky and cringed. The poor thing had a face not even a mother would love on payday.
"Hello," Arcadia said in a voice dripping with implied 'go away and leave me alone.'
The interloper obviously didn't understand her, because she didn't move, and she just kept talking.
"My name's Shreta. I rode in with Van Gar." Shreta had obviously had more than a couple of drinks, and was well on her way to the worship of the porcelain god if she didn't slow down. Arcadia just wanted the ugly female to leave her the hell alone, and was about to say so when Shreta announced, "I . . . Van Gar . . . he was everything I ever dreamed of, and he wouldn't even look at me because he is so completely and totally in love with her."
Arcadia was thinking that he probably wasn't looking because he had a low puke level. However, now it was impossible for her to be rude to the woman. After all, here was someone who understood Arcadia's pain.
"When I was a baby, my parents took me to the supermarket and left me," Shreta slurred out. She was talking with her hands, apparently oblivious to the fact that the drink she was holding was spilling everywhere as she did so.
"They forgot you?" Arcadia asked.
"No, they left me there on purpose. But someone saw them and made them take me back."
Arcadia started laughing."That's either the saddest fucking story I ever heard, or the funniest."
Abear sighed. He wished they'd leave so he could close up, go home. and get some sleep. It had been two hours since Arcadia had walked through the door, and she was now every bit as drunk as the Chitzsky woman had been when Arcadia walked in. Arcadia's tail was flopping all over the place. She'd already punched a hole in one of the bar stools, and he was literally taking his life into his hands every time he served her a drink. He was well aware that being that close to her put him well within range of her ever-flipping tail, and the dried blood caked onto one of the spikes did nothing at all to put him at ease.
The Chitzsky woman was now completely blitzed. The fact that she hadn't hurled yet was a small miracle and a testament to the Chitzsky race's strong constitution. Still, he wished they would leave before she started making the technicolor yawn.
"I had to take myself to my coming of age dance," Shreta announced in a slur.
"Did you get fresh with yourself?" Arcadia asked with a laugh much better than her joke was.
"Well, hell, yes."
They both laughed hysterically. Arcadia fell off her bar stool, and one of her tail spikes got stuck in the floor. She couldn't pull it out, which only made them laugh harder. Shreta climbed off her barstool and almost fell as she went to help Arcadia. When the two of them succeeded in pulling her tail from the floor, they both went sprawling on their asses—which was apparently the funniest thing that had happened yet.
"All right!" Abear screamed. They were quiet as they turned to look at him. And then for no apparent reason at all started laughing again."Damn it, girls! It's two in the morning. You fought a dog fight today. Aren't either one of you tired? I would like to go home sometime this year."
"So go! No one's stopping you," Arcadia said with a flip of a claw.
Abear looked around the bar. Could he do that? He supposed he could; it wasn't like there was a till full of money that he was responsible for. The bar was complimentary to the castle staff and visitors.
"Great. I'm going home then," he said and started for the door."You two try not to get into too much trouble."
They watched him go, than Arcadia levered herself up out of the floor and walked around the bar. She started mixing herself a drink."What about you?"
"Nah. I drink one more I'm gonna spew."
Arcadia nodded. She sipped experimentally at the drink she'd just made herself. It tasted like shit. She decided to drink it anyway.
"You know," Shreta said, "I never thought about doing it with another female before. It might be fun. You, ah, want to . . ."
Arcadia made a face."Geez, girl! I'm drunk, not blind. I mean . . . nah, that's more or less what I meant. You're a lot of fun, but damn, girl, you're just butt-ass ugly."
"You know, ugly people have feelings, too. Don't you think that's a little shallow of you? I mean, after all I don't actually find you to be physically attractive, but I'd fuck you."
"You've got a point there, but . . . no." Arcadia smiled then."Of course that doesn't mean we have to tell them that we didn't."
Shreta looked as if she was about to say something of astute importance, and then she fell into the bar face first and slid to the floor.
Arcadia leaned over the bar to look at the prone body of her new friend."All you had to say was no!"
Drewcila walked in the door to her office and thought, And it started out as such a lovely day, birds singing and the whole trip.
Her office had been purposefully and maliciously destroyed, and it didn't really make her feel any better that the people who did it were more than probably dead.
She had work to do. The whole country was going to hell in a hand basket, and so you would think that a little thing like a destroyed office would be the least of her problems. Of course, what some dumb fucks would fail to realize was that she couldn't actually do any of the things she needed to do without a computer, a vid screen, and several thousand iggys worth of high tech communications equipment which was now just so much techno trash.
"Facto!"
"I'm right here. You don't have to scream," he said rubbing at his ear.
"What's the king's office look like?"
"Four walls, two windows, a floor, a ceiling . . ."
"Your attempt at humor is almost as dull as you are," Drewcila said with a sigh."Are his computer and communications equipment intact?"
"No. Well, I mean to say I don't know. See, your office was trashed by the nobles, but his was trashed by the locals, and . . ."
"They stole everything of value to resell it. It's a proud moment for me, and yet I'm still pissed."
"I hate to point out the obvious, Drewcila, but . . . It is just like you to put a force field on the bar, yet leave the royal offices completely unprotected," Facto said.
Drewcila mumbled a bunch of incoherent curses before explaining herself."I wasn't expecting all this crazy shit to happen. It's a castle, for godssakes, with a full staff of well trained, armed guards. You wouldn't expect to need force fields and such. On the other hand, I had to put a force field on the bar to keep Zarco from ruining my parties."
Facto cleared his throat."Speaking of Zarco, you're going to have to deal with his body, the services."
"I thought I made myself pretty clear. Cremate the body, flush it down the toilet. I don't fucking give a good rat's ass. Get rid of it, move on . . ." She had walked into the middle of her office. She turned slowly and sighed."You know what? I'm not his widow. My sister is his widow. She loved him, I didn't. She's played me before, let her do it again. Let her decide what to do with Zarco, and you help her. I'll take care of getting the equipment I need myself."
Facto looked shocked past the point of speech.
"Hey . . . Got to keep up appearances. The kingdom wants a grieving queen, we'll give them a grieving queen."
Facto nodded silently.
"Go find Stasha and tell her."
Facto turned to go, then turned back around, the glimmer of tears in his eyes."My queen . . . that's very kind of you."
Drew smiled wryly, "Just good politics."
He nodded and walked away.
She watched him leave, then walked farther into the office. She had to step over a broken bottle of Arcadian gin lying close to the wall under a hole the bottle had made when it hit."Now that was uncalled for. A victim of senseless violence, cut down in his prime . . ."
"Are you writing a speech for Zarco's funeral?" Margot asked from the door.
"No." Drew bent over and picked up a piece of the broken bottle, "A fitting send-off for a good vintage. Margot, I need a communicator. Anything stronger than my wrist com, and I need it yesterday."
"I'll see what we can find."
"Since the king's office is apparently empty, I'll be moving in there. Have the staff find me suitable furnishing, I'll work on getting all the technical equipment. And have Arcadia's and Dylan's rooms cleaned. I ran into Arcadia briefly in the hall a minute ago, obviously nursing the father, mother, and illegitimate brother of all hangovers, and all she could talk about was that they had pissed on her clothes."
"Drew . . . the staff. Well, they still aren't all back. Many of them fled before the fighting started. Others were hurt. I don't know how much they can realistically handle."
"Then we'll ask for workers from the city . . . no." she smiled wickedly."Have the guards pull the prisoners out of the dungeon, and have the prisoners muck out the mess. Two guards watching six prisoners. If they try anything, the guards' orders are to kill them immediately. And the guards are to make sure the nobles know this. The guards will work in their normal eight hour shifts, but the prisoners will work in twelve hour shifts until the castle has been completely repaired and cleaned. Oh . . . and I love this. Put a member of the household staff over each group as a foreman, and if any prisoner talks back to the foreman, it's an instant death sentence. The nobles did all this because they didn't want to live like the "common" man. Let's see how they like it when they really are living like the "common" man. Read it back."
Margot had written it all down on her power pad, and as she read it back to Drewcila, her smile seemed to grow.
"What's so damn funny?" Drewcila asked when Margot had finished reading.
"Nothing funny, really it's just . . . well, you're so smart, you always seem to know how to fix everything. How to turn a liability into an asset."
"Yes, yes so true, and I'm so fucking good looking and humble, too. Go now, and do my bidding."
She didn't feel so smart when she was sitting in her newly recycled, refurnished office, trying desperately to find the equipment she needed without having to wait for a week or gut her ship, when Dartan appeared at her door with his crew.
"Ah, fuck!" she said
"Is it a bad time, my Queen?"
"No. Get your luscious ass in here. Listen, I need a transmitter and transceiver with intergalactic capabilities. I need a computer with intergalactic links, and I need it yesterday. Can you get that for me?"
"My Queen, for you . . ."
"A simple yes or no, Dartan."
"Within the hour."
"You're a good man, I don't care what the others say."
"Can we talk to you?"
"Get me the stuff I need, and I'll do a fucking tap dance for you. Get it here in thirty minutes, and I'll do a strip tease."
He nodded and left at a run with his staff right behind him. She needed to know what the Lockhedes were planning. In order to figure that out, she needed to know how badly they'd been hurt in the battle at Hepron Station. It had looked like the whole of their fleet, but that was probably just wishful thinking.
She had to figure out how to win this war, and do it quickly before it completely bankrupted her. Or at the very least she needed to put out an all-out effort till this crap wore off her tongue and she could open her damn safe.
"So . . . do you have time to talk to me now?"
Drew sighed. She'd gotten up that morning, showered and dressed, and was almost out the bedroom door when Van Gar had announced that he had an idea she needed to hear. She'd known at the time that I don't have time to listen to your stupid assed idea right now I'm busy had probably been a little harsh, and that he'd force her to at least pretend to apologize later.
"I'm sorry I blew you off," Drew said half-heartedly.
Van Gar just nodded, indicating that he knew damn good and well she wasn't really sorry. Then he finished walking in and flopped in the chair across the desk from her."Half-assed, completely insincere apology accepted. Before you blow me off again, I have a proposition for you."
"Does it include lots of flavored body oil?" Drew asked with a wicked smile.
"Wrong lover. You know that stuff mats my fur up. This is a business matter."
"All right," Drew said her curiosity aroused, "I'll bite, what's your proposition?"
"I have roughly fifteen thousand displaced Chitzskies waiting for a new homeland which they are expecting me to buy them. Here's the thing. If I buy them something, I won't have as much money."
"Well, duh."
"Not only are these my people, but they are also probably the meanest mother fuckers in the galaxy, so I don't want to screw them over. Or at the very least, I don't want them to know that I have screwed them over . . ."
"I'm still busy, Van Gar, a point sometime, please."
"You're fighting a war. I have a small army of some of the most fearsome beings in the universe. They want land. You're queen of half a planet. You need fighters . . ."
"You fight for me, I give you land," Drewcila nodded appreciatively. It was a good plan. But she couldn't give them shit land, because if she did they'd be pissed off at her. And like Van Gar said, they were some scary mother fuckers. However, all the decent land in the country was owned by private parties or was a damn national monument. If she gave them a national treasure or started kicking the locals off their land to give it to aliens, there was bound to be shit. She told Van Gar as much.
'. . . the real problem is, Van Gar, that I have a serious battle constantly raging inside me that I have only recently become aware of. You see the forces of I want everyone to like me are constantly kicking the living crap out of I really don't give a damn what people think of me. I'm in constant conflict."
A noise in the hall drew her attention. She looked out the open doorway and saw the "noble" work detail being prodded along by a pair of exuberant guards who were obviously enjoying their new assignment immensely. It brought a smile to her face, and slapped an idea into her head so fast it made her lightheaded.
"The nobles had vast holdings, huge houses, surely your Chitzsky brothers and sisters couldn't balk about that."
"What about the nobles' families?"
"What about them? They are traitors by proxy. We sling them into the street and let them fend with the common man . . . offer them the choice of serving in the army or civil service, and redeeming themselves through service to country."
"How do you explain that you're giving the nobles' estates to a bunch of Chitzskies?"
"They pay us for the land. We use the money to help with our war effort. When they fight with pride for our country, they will prove to the common man that they deserve to be citizens."
"Wait a minute, Drewcila. The idea was for me not to have to pay for land . . ."
"You said you'd give me forty percent if I helped you . . ."
'. . . to keep my money."
"You pay the kingdom the forty percent you were going to give me."
"You'd give up your part of the take to help my people and your country?" he said in disbelief.
"Dumb ass! Who is the Queen of this kingdom?"
"You are."
"So if you pay the kingdom, who ultimately gets the money?"
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh." She laughed and reached into her desk drawer to get a cigar. She flipped it up, caught it between her teeth and lit it with her side arm. She threw one to Van Gar, who caught it easily. He put it in his mouth and was about to light it when it sparked to flame.
"Damn it, Drewcila!" Van Gar yelped."You might at least warn me."
Drewcila smiled back, shrugged and put her blaster back in its holster."You just can't be nice to some people. You know, Van . . ." she took a long drag of her cigar and blew out a stream of smoke rings before she started talking again."I think being around all that religious bullshit has dulled your senses."
Van smiled back at her in spite of himself."You know you went to sleep in the middle of my story last night. I was really quite magnificent."
"Sorry, that was so insensitive of me, but I was a little tired, oh, you know, what with saving the planet, and screwing you senseless, and all." Drew smiled at him."Magnificent, huh?"
Van Gar started telling the story again. He was about to get to the part where he was oh so incredibly magnificent, when the reporter dude showed up with all the communications equipment Drewcila had ordered. She completely blew Van Gar off as she started shouting out orders concerning where she wanted this and where she wanted that and what she was going to do with it if they made the screeching noise sliding it across the floor even one more time.
Feeling rejected, Van Gar left in a huff—which was wasted because Drew didn't even notice he was gone. He wandered off in the direction of the bar, thinking a good stiff drink might help clear his mind.
He saw Arcadia sitting at the bar and almost turned around and left. Deciding he wasn't about to let her stop him going anywhere he wanted to go, he walked up to the bar, stepping over Shreta's prone body before picking a bar stool and sitting down. Arcadia looked up at him and pulled a face.
"Van Gar," she hissed out.
"Arcadia," he hissed right back, making the same face."What happened to her?" Van Gar asked indicating Shreta with a flip of his head.
"I made her come so hard she passed out hours ago, and she still hasn't come to," Arcadia answered.
Van Gar laughed loudly, then stopped, shaking his head."Come on, Arcadia, who are you trying to kid? You wouldn't fuck her with my dick."
"True. We were hoping it might make you and Drew jealous. I told her it wouldn't work."
"Hair of the dog?" Van Gar asked, pointing at the glass of Hurling Monkey Arcadia held in her claw.
"Is it that obvious that I'm hung over?" she asked.
"Sugar, you're either hung over or you took one of Shreta's ugly pills." Van laughed."So . . . how long do you plan to stay pissed off at me?"
"Me?" Arcadia laughed then."What about you? You have her most of the time, yet you resent the little bit of time I have her, and I had her first."
"Prior ownership seems to be a big deal with her," Abear said standing up from behind the bar."What's your poison?"
"Bend Me Over and Fuck Me, with a cherry," Van Gar answered. He thought about what Arcadia had said and answered decisively."You most certainly did not have her first. She said she'd only had six lovers before me, and I know who all of them were. You weren't on that list."
Arcadia laughed."You believed her? Hell, she probably had six lovers before noon on that day. I've been sleeping with the bitch off and on for six years. I figure that beats you by about three, four years."
After three drinks apiece, and an hour of arguing, pulling up dates and places and times, Van Gar had to admit that indeed, Arcadia had had Drew first.
"I don't really see what difference it makes," Van Gar said.
"How can you say that? You treat me like I'm the interloper, when it's obvious that you, and not I, are the interloper," Arcadia hissed back."Besides, I love her."
"I love her more than you do."
"Oh, you most certainly do not."
A whole new argument ensued. It was about to come to blows when Shreta came to and pulled herself off the floor. She stumbled over to the bar, and let it hold up her weight as she said, "Why don't you just agree to share her?"
"That's sick!" they exclaimed in unison.
Shreta shrugged."Like it or not, it's what you've been doing. Sharing her with each other, and every other man, woman, midget, and goat which catches her fancy."
"She said the goat belonged to the midget," Van Gar objected.
"My point is that she obviously has feelings for both of you, since she's kept you both around longer than anyone else. You're both hopelessly in love with her, so neither of you are going to just walk away. Maybe you should agree to share her, and then work together to keep everyone else away," Shreta said, taking the glass of water Abear handed her and downing it in one gulp.
"You know what? That's so crazy it just might work," Van Gar said.
"I'd rather share her with you than share her with you and half the galaxy."
"And between the two of us, surely we can satisfy all her many kinky urges."
"I'm not fucking you," Arcadia said.
"Certainly not," Van Gar said pulling a face.
Arcadia looked over at Shreta and then at Van Gar."This girl's a genius. We've got to do something about getting her laid."
Van Gar nodded in agreement. They spent the next hour making out a schedule.
When the equipment was in place and functional, Drewcila watched the reports from Lockhede concerning the raid on Hepron Station with a mixture of anger and appreciation. Their reporters were calling Hepron Station an all out victory, no doubt the military had doctored tapes of the raid so that it looked like Barion ships were falling from the sky instead of their own. And they had enhanced the damage on the station. They had even doctored a tape of herself so that it looked as if she were crying for mercy.
She had called in her best communications expert from one of the stations, and he had easily linked her to the Lockhede capital, although they had obviously gone to great lengths to keep her out. Apparently someone wanted nothing to do with any chance of negotiations between the two countries' leaders. Drewcila was pretty certain she knew who.
She was soon staring at the Lockhede President, and he was glaring back at her.
"I need to talk to the lot of you. I suggest you call your colleagues, all of them, and be prepared to talk to me in ten minutes." She closed the transmission and watched the clock.
Reluctantly, President Ralling called the heads of the military and his vice-president to his office. General Tryte had assured him that Drewcila Qwah wouldn't be able to contact them again, and yet she had done so in less time than it took him to get comfortable with the fact that she couldn't. He was beginning to have less and less faith in Tryte.
Roughly one-fourth of their Air Force had been totally annihilated by a few small planes and a fistful of salvaging barges. It was an embarrassment of mass proportions. They hadn't known Qwah had been there. If they had, it would have just made them more determined to target Hepron Station. Yet the truth was that if the whore hadn't been there, their attack most probably would have succeeded.
Drewcila Qwah was an unbelievable problem, and one he had no idea how to deal with. Without her, Barious would crumble. But getting to Qwah was impossible, and with her leadership there was a good chance that Barious, militarily inferior or not, was going to plow a row right through his country.
He hated taking orders from anyone, much less that salvaging whore, yet he found himself calling Trailings and his three generals back to his chambers for yet another teleconference with the ever-growing thorn in his side, the Barion Queen. They of course arrived just in time, and then she had the nerve to make them wait for a full ten minutes before making an appearance again. When she did she was abrupt and to the point.
"All right, first things first. Someone is trying to make sure that there can be no chance for negotiations by keeping me out of your system. I suggest you all find out who the hell that is and kick their ass to the curb, because negotiations are your country's only chance of survival."
"No one has set up any such block in the communications system here," Ralling assured her.
"Yeah, and you kicked the shit out of us at Hepron Station, too. You know what, Ralling? You might get away with feeding lines of crap to your obviously stupid people, but don't insult my intelligence by trying to feed the same line of bullshit to me. I was telling more convincing lies when I was still shitting my drawers. I'm going to give you cringing, stupid mother fuckers one more chance to surrender, and then you'd better put on your diapers because we're going to stomp over there and kick the crap out of you."
"We aren't afraid of your threats, Qwah!" Tryte said angrily at Ralling's shoulder."We have suffered a minor setback at best . . ."
"You got your fucking lame asses kicked by a fist full of anti-aircraft guns, some small planes, and a couple of salvaging barges. You should see what we can do when we haul out the big guns. You'd better back the fuck off and surrender. My offer still stands, but if you so much as blow a fart in our general direction, I'm going to crawl up your ass and pull your nose hairs out your dick one at a time."
"Your threats mean about as much to us as your salvager slang," Tryte shouted at her.
She laughed as she looked at Ralling."Gee, Ralling you're just like a spaceport porn theater, everyone's comin' in you."
"You might at least try speaking our language," Ralling sneered back.
"That was my polite way of saying that everyone seems to have their penis up your rectum." She turned her attention to Trailings, who had been silent until then."Perhaps someone with a brain should explain the complexities of the situation to your president. He obviously isn't the brightest chalk in the box. But then it's been my experience that the very privileged tend to breed ambitious, corrupt, and stupid people with every sperm they spit out of their dicks, while those who must work for their place in the world become increasingly intelligent, because they're constantly having to fight for every crumb they get. Of course, there is nothing quite as sad as seeing a man work his way to the top only to be dethroned by some rich fucker's moronic brat, is there?"
Ralling still had no idea what she was talking about, but it was clear from the look on Trailings' face that he did. Trailings turned to look at him, and this time did not even bother to whisper what was on his mind."The people want trade, not war. Make peace with the Barions. Stop this foolishness, and bring our country and our people from poverty to an age of prosperity. You can go down in history as the man who brought our country to ruin, or you can be remembered as the man who put an end to their suffering."
"You treasonous bastard!" Ralling turned to glare at the Barion Queen."His is the voice of a discontented loser. One who would love nothing better than to see me fail. It is for that reason that I know that whatever he says is what I shouldn't do."
She laughed at him as if he had said something of unbelievable humor."You truly are every bit the idiot I thought you were. Such logic shall surely march your people to their deaths. I will give you forty-eight hours to think about it. If in that time you do not surrender, or you dare to attack even the smallest of our cities, I will unleash the wrath of my army upon you." She closed the transmission.
"We must surrender," Trailings insisted."It is the only way. That woman and her people are like gods in the sky, and we don't yet know how good their ground troops might be."
"Shut up, you whining traitor!" Tryte screamed."I tell you that was a fluke . . ."
"The way her bringing down the Artvail was a fluke? Or their successful attack on our capital was a fluke? You, sir, are a sorry excuse for a general, and if our idiot president continues to take counsel from you, then we shall all perish while accomplishing nothing but the demise of our own country."
"How dare you call me an idiot or question my choice of who I take counsel from?" Ralling screamed.
"I was elected to lead these people. They voted for me. You are only in office through yet another fluke. The people voted for me because they thought I could save them from you and him," Trailings said pointing at Tryte."In my demoted role as vice-president, I must at least try to stop you as you work at nothing else so diligently as sliding this country into economic ruin and turning it into a smoldering remnant as we fight a war we cannot win."
"We can win . . . we most assuredly will win, and then we will make this country truly rich," Tryte promised.
Ralling looked at Trailings and smiled smugly."The people will soon be thanking the gods that a fluke put me into office instead of you."