Authors: Victor Gischler
The spaceliner was docking with the orbital terminal, and they’d be letting us off soon to catch shuttles to St. Armstrong. I moved to fold up the packet but paused, allowed myself one more look at the image of the girl that came with the dossier.
She was beautiful, of course—twenty-five years old, a vaguely Asian appearance, proof of mixed blood which the Reich used to detest, but which I found exotic and attractive. Hair black and glossy, soft green eyes, and a quirky smile that held some secret. The secret to the universe? The secret to my heart? Who could say? The daughter of somebody important.
The daughter of the Brass Dragon.
Find her. Get her. Save her. Kill her. That simple.
Not simple at all.
I boarded the shuttle to the lunar surface.
* * *
The bulky shuttle touched down hard on the starport landing pad at St. Armstrong. The hydraulics kicked in, lowered both the pad and the ship below Luna’s surface, docked, and spilled the passengers into the customs area.
I tripped the alarm walking through the security tunnel, and a squad of heavily armored guards with stun-gloves met me on the other side. Beyond them, six more guards looked on, automatic rifles cocked and ready.
Another man stepped forward, no armor but an officer’s badge pinned to his lapel.
“I’m sorry, Father, but we’ll need to search you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, and I showed the captain the little beamer then dropped it back in my jacket pocket. “I have the appropriate paperwork.”
“I’ll need to see,” the captain said.
I handed over the passport and diplomatic credentials showing that I was a special envoy from Vatican. The captain looked from the papers to my face and back. “These are registered electronically with St. Armstrong Central?”
“Yes.”
The captain eyed my white collar, dark suit, the special silver ring on my right hand.
“Jesuit?”
“Yes.”
The captain nodded. “These credentials give you forty-eight hours, Father Argus. You’ll need to register your weapon again with central if you take longer.”
I nodded, and took my credentials back from the captain. “The gravity seems heavier than I remember.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We went to .9 Earth normal about thirty years ago. The tourists were vomiting too much. How long since you’ve been in system?”
“When I was a kid.” I kept forgetting how long I’d been in stasis. Fumbling tidbits of common knowledge would fuck my cover fast.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to head for the transport bays.
“Father?”
I glanced at the captain over my shoulder.
“Let’s keep it peaceful, okay?” He seemed sincere. “We respect that you want to police your own people, but the tourism board has done a lot to clean up our little moon the last few years. We limit most of the wave junkies and thugs to the basement levels. The prostitution district has been tightly regulated and disease-free since the Social Entertainment Health Act of 2209. Please respect our tranquility.”
I shrugged.
“The Lord willing.”
* * *
I checked into a hotel three levels down.
Once I was in my room, I poured myself a drink from the honor bar and paged through the visitor’s information provided by the Luna Board of Tourism. It revealed that St. Armstrong consisted of a large domed park with moon-natural gravity topside, as well as eighty-five levels that went deep below the moon’s surface. The bottom five levels were restricted. It didn’t say why in the brochures, but I knew it was because the basement levels teemed with St. Armstrong’s criminal element. Not even the police went down to the no-go zones.
I sipped my drink. It was only mildly alcoholic. Citrus. Something new or old news? Settlements this close to Earth were always inundated with the latest trends. Only products with staying power made it out to the far frontiers.
Having finished the drink, I sank deep into the easy chair and opened the digi-reader again. I needed to get all I could from the instrument, because sooner or later I’d have to ditch it.
“Suggestions?” I asked the reader. I already had a game plan, but it never hurt to get a second opinion.
“You’ll need to make contact with one of the rebel agents in order to secure your out-system passage,” it intoned. “You should also make contact with one of the local imperial agents to determine if there is any up-to-date intelligence which might have a bearing on your mission.”
“Probably a good idea not to get those two meetings mixed up.”
“Such an action would likely endanger the mission and cost you your life,” the reader agreed.
“It was a joke, you electronic shit pile.”
“I am not programmed for humor.”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’d already decided on that exact plan anyway. Bring up the list of contacts again. I’ll pick out a couple of likely suspects.”
* * *
In twenty minutes I had my pigeons picked out, but I wouldn’t be able to contact either of them until morning. It was getting past dinnertime, so I went to the lobby, asked where I could get a meal without wandering too far. The hotel had a fancy bistro, but I could eat at the bar if I felt like keeping it casual.
I went into the bar, climbed onto a stool. Only the best places and the lousiest places had human bartenders. It was more economical for the in-between joints to use a bar-bot. This place was high end, and the bartender followed his little bowtie over to my stool. I ordered synthetic potato soup and a processed meat sandwich. I ate it and ordered a scotch rocks, nursed that, wondering how I’d waste the evening when the answer presented itself at the next stool.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello back at you.”
“This seat taken?”
“It’s all yours.”
She smiled, put a cigarette in her mouth, and it self-lit on the first puff.
“Buy me a drink.”
“Sure.”
The bartender seemed to know what she wanted without asking. I had an unlimited imperial expense account, so the whole place could swill champagne for all I cared. I supposed if I started buying luxury yachts somebody might come asking, but I wasn’t planning on it.
The girl must have been pretty gung-ho to approach me in the priest getup. I didn’t mind gung-ho at all.
She had a big pile of red hair flowing down past her shoulders. Blue eyes, skin so white it looked like she’d maybe never been above ground in her life. Not sickly white. Glowing and milky. You couldn’t help but wonder what her red nipples would look like in contrast to all that. She had matching green pastel eye makeup and lipstick. A flimsy dress that went with the color scheme of her makeup, plunging low in the back and showing a lot more skin.
When she shifted on her stool, her impressive breasts moved around freely under the silky material. It was a dizzying effect, and I felt myself getting warm behind the ears.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Argus,” I lied. “You?”
“I’m Cassandra,” she said. “Where are you from?”
“Vatican home world.”
“That’s
so
interesting.” She leaned forward as she said it, put a soft hand on my arm. “What’s it like?”
“Same as anywhere.”
“Wow, that’s great. What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a Jesuit priest.”
“That’s
so
interesting.”
“Yeah, it’s interesting as hell.” I motioned for the bartender to bring two more drinks.
“So what are you doing at this hotel?” I asked.
“Oh, I come here a lot,” she said.
“I’ll bet you do.”
“What are you drinking?” she asked.
“Scotch.”
“That’s
so
interesting. Men who drink scotch are interesting.”
“You seem easily impressed.”
“I’m just
really
enjoying talking to you.” She’d somehow scooted closer without my noticing, her thigh touching mine.
I eyed her suspiciously for a moment then said, “After I murder everyone in this room, I plan to eat them cannibal style and use their bones to build a scale model of a Viking longboat.”
“That’s
so
interesting.”
“I’ll be damned.” I turned away, shaking my head. “A fucking FuckBot. For crying out loud. Does the hotel own you?”
She said, “I am the property of Luna Sheraton LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of—”
“Okay, I got it. Shut up.”
It bothered me that I had talked to her for that long, and not realized she was a synthetic. What a putz.
“Are you emitting pheromones?”
Her voice and expression went flat. “This entertainment model is in full compliance with all local codes governing—”
“Can the lawyer mode,” I said. “I’m not making a complaint. I just want to know.”
“Yes, I emit pheromones to better enhance—”
“That’s enough.”
She shut up.
The pheromones would explain it. I was still a little upset my judgment could be clouded so easily, but I had to admit to myself I still wasn’t back up to full speed. It would take time.
“Clients charge your service to the room?”
“That is one of several payment options,” she said.
“How is it listed on the bill?”
“In-room services.”
“Let’s go.”
A quick ride up the elevator, and a short walk to my room. She was already letting the silky dress drop to the floor as I closed the door behind me. She pushed against me, enormous soft mammaries pressing into my chest as she tilted her head up for a kiss. So I kissed her. Hard.
My erection grew hard, as well, and insistent, and she began to grind against it. One of her hands drifted down to my zipper. She pulled me out and started working me. I gasped, filled my hands with her tits.
She pulled away from me and went to her knees, gently took me into her mouth without using her hands. She bobbed slowly but felt me twitch, knew it wouldn’t be long and picked up speed.
I blasted in her mouth, and she swallowed, kept taking it for what felt like forever. I think I blacked out a little because I blinked and found myself flat on the bed. She had already tugged off my pants. I stripped off the rest of my clothing, pushed her back into a nest of pillows. I sucked a nipple, kissed a trail down to her red thatch and began to attack her clit with my tongue.
She squirmed, moaned. Was she faking or was she programmed to enjoy it, and if so, did that make it more or less fake? I didn’t care. I was hard again and slammed into her. She threw her legs over my shoulders.
I humped and humped, the two of us groaning and thrashing and grunting and heaving until I came inside her and collapsed.
And then I dozed.
* * *
A little while later, I opened my eyes. She was still there, curled up against me, her fingers in my chest hair. But I wasn’t thinking of her. I woke up with another girl’s face hovering in front of my mind’s eye.
The daughter of the Brass Dragon.
Why was the girl with the cultists? The digi-reader didn’t know—there were only guesses.
I knew everything I ever would know or
needed
to know about the pretend girl who was lying next to me. Knew she was nothing. An illusion. Yet the very real young lady hundreds of thousands of light years away intrigued me without end, simply because I knew nothing at all about her.
But the pretend lady was here, and her hand was slowly heading for my groin. She grabbed me at the base, started pumping and I grew hard again, more slowly this time, but without fail. And then her mouth was on me.
I leaned back into the pillows, closed my eyes.
She came off of me with a wet pop, and her tone and expression were flat and businesslike again.
“Your current session ends in two minutes and nine seconds. To extend for another thirty minutes please authorize payment.”
A nice trick.
I extended for another thirty minutes… and two more thirty-minute extensions after that. It had, after all, been two-hundred and fifty-eight years.
T
he one thing artificial women have over the real McCoy is that they know when to leave. Cassandra slipped away in the wee hours, likely after I was unresponsive to repeated demands to extend for another thirty minutes. I greeted the morning with room service coffee and showered away the cloying scent of her.
Twenty minutes later, I left the hotel behind me and ventured into the sprawling underground city of St. Armstrong. Immediately, I picked up a tail while passing through a low-class residential section. There was something about the overly methodical way he followed me that screamed
cop!
I zigged and zagged a few times to keep him honest—nothing too obvious—but I soon decided I needed to use some direct method to make him go away permanently, so I could get on with my business. I paused at the mouth of an alley, looked around like maybe I was lost. I dithered a good ten seconds then turned casually into the alley, making a point not to look back, but I heard his footfalls coming up behind me, plain enough.
I feigned tripping over a piece of garbage and went to one knee, rubbing my ankle like I was injured. The light was just right, and I saw his shadow creeping up on me, then waited until the exact right moment.
I spun, struck hard with a well-placed kick, my heel taking out his knee with a sickening crack. He winced, grunted, and went to the ground, his hand darting into his jacket.
He came out with a huge automatic pistol—a slug-thrower, 12mm by the look of it—but I was already on him, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. He bellowed and his pistol went flying. I punched him hard on the point of his chin, and his eyes rolled up.
The ground shook as two more goons landed on either side of me. I allowed myself a micro-second glance up to see where they’d dropped from, caught sight of the catwalk two stories up. Not only had these other two jokers been tailing me the whole time without my noticing, but they both had to be augmented to make a leap like that and land ready to fight.
I ducked under a high kick from the first one, but the other landed a heavy body blow and I felt a rib crack.
Definitely augmented.
Instead of sending a spinning kick back at the one who’d tagged me—the obvious move—I dropped and rolled toward the automatic pistol, grabbed it, and came up in a shooter’s stance. I squeezed the trigger six times, spraying the two of them with lead, the enormous gun bucking in my hands.