"Well, they have. I didn't think anything of it, just thought it was part of a rotation, but now I realize that what they've done is to change guards who were loyal to Drewcila for guards who are loyal to the King. Drewcila's people would never have killed Pristin, and they certainly wouldn't be hunting us down now. I mean, you are, after all, one of Drew's favorite toys."
"And she mine," Arcadia said in a voice filled with a smile. She suddenly jerked him around, and all sign of mirth left her face."He's setting a trap for Drew."
"Damn! And I was counting on her to rescue us."
"We have to get out and warn her."
"And again I ask how?"
Arcadia started looking around in all directions. She'd never admit it, but her feelings for Drewcila Qwah went far beyond friendship. Otherwise, she more than likely wouldn't have agreed to be one of the multitudes of people Drew slept with. Unlike their boss, Dylan got the feeling that Arcadia wasn't into screwing people just for fun and profit.
"A frontal assault on the main gate?" Arcadia finally said, seeming to come to the same conclusion he'd come to—that it was really their only option.
Dylan shook his head."Suicide. I'm not ready for that yet."
Arcadia tried her wrist-com for the thousandth time, even more frantic now than she had been before, because she realized that Drew was the real target. Their communicators weren't working—some kind of jamming device had no doubt been implemented to make sure that the people on the outside were kept completely in the dark.
"We have to do something. The courtyard isn't big enough for us to elude the guards indefinitely," Arcadia said, adding to the list of things for Dylan to worry about. Till then he had just assumed that Arcadia was so good at this that she could keep them hidden.
Arcadia's eyes suddenly lit up, and she grabbed his hand and started pulling him along again. When he saw which way they were heading, he pulled her to a stop."Are you crazy?" he whispered."That's the bunkhouse."
"Exactly," Arcadia said excitedly."Lots of flammable stuff . . ."
"We start it on fire, and create a diversion," Dylan finished, looking at the blaster in his hand. He nodded his head in agreement, and they started moving again.
He had a clear shot through the door at a mattress inside, and he took it. They moved quickly to a better hiding spot and waited. In mere minutes the bunkhouse was in flames, and as they had planned, nearly every guard on the premises went to where the excitement was. They left the back gate with only one guard, and Arcadia shot him.
"I don't like it. I don't like it at all," Drewcila mumbled. Stocks were still plummeting, and Barious was still a complete communication wash out. She'd had to re-route still more barges loaded with salvage.
"Jurak?"
"Yes, my Queen?"
"Re-route all scrap to one of our other facilities until further notice, or we have stopped this idiotic war, whichever comes first," Drew said thoughtfully.
"But, my Queen . . . our . . . our other facilities cannot possibly handle the extra pay loads. Many people on Barious . . . They'll be without work if we . . ."
"I know all that," Drew said hotly, pounding her fist on the console and losing all the data on her screen."Shit!" she punched buttons till she got the data back."Don't you think I know all that, Jurak? That's exactly why I didn't want this war. But your idiot king has apparently forgotten who wears the pants in the castle. Which would be who, Jurak?"
"Definitely you, my Queen."
"And why is that, Jurak?"
"Because my king is an idiot?" Jurak guessed.
"Precisely!" Drew looked up at him and smiled."See, I think you're a great guy. I wonder why none of the others like you?" She looked thoughtful for a moment."I can't be sending expensive ships loaded with expensive salvage into spaceports in a country on a planet where a war has been declared—not while I'm blind. That would just be insane. Who knows but that the entire country hasn't been overrun by the Lockhedes?"
"What about us, my Queen?" Jurak asked nervously.
"What about us, Jurak?"
"What about us flying into a spaceport blind? Maybe into hostile territory?"
"Why, it sucks, of course. Still, what choice do we have? After all . . . I am losing a shit-pot load of money." Drew got up, practically skipped over to the ice chest she kept on the bridge at all times, opened it and extracted a beer. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Jurak giving her a disapproving look. She stood to her full height and popped the cap off the bottle on the corner of one of the consoles."Don't get your panties in a knot, Jurak, it's only a beer."
"My Queen, with all due respect . . ."
Drewcila coughed, "And that would be a lot, 'cause ah me being
queen
and all."
Jurak straightened even more than usual, cleared his throat and waded in, "Your Majesty always starts out with beer and good intentions, then after a few beers . . . Well, Your Majesty seems to forget that there are matters which need Your concern, and You . . ."
"My Majesty gets shit faced drunk and starts screwing everything that moves." She looked painfully thoughtful for a second, "and some things that don't. Why is it that you can do everything right most of the time, but you screw up, get drunk even once, and everyone has to throw it in your face forever? Answer me that question, Jurak."
"Drewcila," he temporarily slung away all formality and tried to reason with her on her level."You're
always
drunk," he reminded her gently.
Drewcila laughed and flopped into her chair, spinning around to face him."Well, that would be once, wouldn't it?"
"I hardly think that now is the time to . . . well, tie one on as you say."
"Chill out, Jurak. Have a brew. I know when it's time to work, and when it's time to play. I'm not going to get drunk." She looked at the monitor as if she expected at any minute it might tell her the answers to the very meaning of life itself, then said in an almost detached voice."There are two things that piss me off more than anything else in the universe. You know what those are, Jurak?" Without giving him a chance to answer, she held up one finger."Losing a butt load of money." She held up two fingers."Men who openly defy me, start wars, or go off, give away one of my ships, and join fucking religious communes. So, needless to say, I'm royally pissed off and hardly in a party mood. So smile—unless you're afraid your face will crack—kick back, and relax for a minute. How does my tongue look?" She stuck it out.
"Still blue and yellow spotted," Jurak said making a face.
"Damn! I was afraid of that." Drew sighed and took a long drink of her beer. It calmed her stomach and her nerves. She wondered if she could get in touch with Van Gar. Try to talk some sense into his head. Or maybe, and this was extreme and must mean something, she should tell him some bullshit story about how she was wrong, and she'd change, and quit doing all the things that pissed him off so badly. Just as soon as she figured out what they were . . .
She missed him. Missed him to the point of distraction. It sucked, too, because it meant she must actually harbor some real feelings for him. In which case it was a good thing he was gone. Life was good. Hell, it was great! She did what she wanted, when she wanted, with who she wanted. She sure as hell didn't want anything screwing up her party. And there was always Arcadia, loyal and trustworthy. While her feelings might be similar to Van Gar's regarding Drew's behavior, she at least had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.
Well, most of the time anyway.
Drew'd worked damn hard, and she'd gotten everything she'd ever wanted. A huge salvaging empire, a fleet of ships rivaled by none in three galaxies, giant recycling centers, and whole satellites bore the Qwah-Co logo. She had the admiration of her people, power, and more money than she could ever possibly spend.
Now the men in her life were flushing her dreams down the toilet. Van Gar was gone, she still wasn't sure just why, and that idiot husband of hers had started a war which threatened her empire.
Some days, being queen just sucked.
There was dirt and rocks as far as the eye could see. The nights were cold, and the days were hot. Van Gar spent his days picking up the rocks, putting them into buckets, and carrying them to one of two places. The first was the loading bay: apparently some planet was actually paying the Pride Leader for their rock. The second was the "building site," one of the few large flat places on this otherwise knobby planet. There, a crew of Chitzskies was mixing mud and laying up rock walls to build a large meeting hall which would double as a home for the "Pride Leader." When that structure was complete, they would work as a community to build single family living structures for the population. Currently the "population" was living in prefab, plastic coated, cardboard geodesic domes made entirely from recycled material which were, ironically, a product of Qwah-Co.
Each blue or red piece of every dome was stamped with the Qwah name in the alternating color. Her name glared mockingly down on him as he tried to sleep on the cardboard floor of one of the tiny domes which were meant to house six human-sized beings, and in which sixteen Chitzskies were living.
It was hard to believe that this was the most habitable part of the planet. No doubt this was why the planet had remained in such an "unspoiled" state. It rained very rarely—about twice a year—and the few wells that had been drilled recovered very slowly. Because of this, and the fact that they didn't want to overtax the recycling system, they were only allowed to have a real shower once a week. Showers were scheduled so that the same number showered every day. This meant the entire place always smelled like dirty Chitzsky, a smell which he found more repulsive every day.
So he'd lay there at the end of a hard day's work with his poly-fiber blanket on the cold floor with no pillow for his head. He'd breathe the putrefying stench of himself and his Chitzsky brothers and sisters, that burned the hair from his nostrils. He'd squeeze his eyes shut, trying desperately to go to sleep so that he could at least momentarily be released from the hell he had thrown himself into. And the whole time Drewcila would be mercilessly taunting him. She was so completely and totally egotistical that she'd insisted on anything the company created being stamped with her name. There he would lie, billions of miles from her, and all he could see when he looked up was Qwah, Qwah,
Qwah!
It should be a constant reminder of just why he was well rid of her. Instead, it only served to remind him of all that he had lost.
To make matters worse, he realized only a few days after landing that he found women of his own race to be entirely repulsive, smelly and hairy, and unpleasant to look at. One of the women, Shreta, seemed intent on bedding him. Naturally, she was the ugliest one of the bunch. She had a nice personality, but try as he might, he not only couldn't get aroused at the thought of sex with her, he'd thrown up the green slop they fed them twice a day just thinking about it. He was quite sure that the poor homely thing's underwear riding up into her crack was as close to sex as she had ever gotten.
A week after landing he had insisted they put him on the very next ship off this hole of a planet. They refused, so he decided not to work. They revoked his eating and bathing privileges. He figured he could out last them. Bathing was no big deal, because in truth he could put up with his own stench before he could put up with everyone else's. When you knew you stank, you could always assume it was you that you were smelling, which actually made the stench more bearable. Sort of the difference between smelling your own fart and someone else's. As for food, Shreta secretly sneaked it to him.
He was sitting on his ass one day, watching the others work, when he saw five "foremen" come together. They were talking and looking at him, and Van Gar was sure he'd finally won. That they were going to send him home. But when they started walking towards him . . . Well, he'd been in enough fights to know when someone was in an ass-kicking mood. Since he was in one himself, he stood up and got ready. He'd taken more than five people on before, and he'd always walked away victorious.
"Will you go to work now?" the one called Remo asked as they approached.
"No. I will not. We are all being used, we have all been duped by a con man. I want to be taken off this planet and brought to the nearest spaceport as soon as possible."
Apparently they weren't in a talking mood.
He put up a good fight, but they still beat him damn near to death. See, Van Gar had never faced even one other Chitzsky male in battle. They didn't crumple under his punches the way humans, Barions, and most other aliens did.
When they had beaten him bloody, they dragged him back into the field and put a bucket in his hand.
So now, all day, every day, he filled his bucket with rocks, dumped them into a wheel barrow, or carried it over to the building site just like a good little slave to the Pride Leader. All the while plotting ways off the planet and out of the mess he'd gotten himself into.