Captured by the Dark Lord (20 page)

            Tor shrugged and
opened the door, walking inside.  Hauk followed, examining shelves of brightly
colored packages.

            Tor turned to an
elder man standing behind a counter.  He appeared to be in charge.  “Where is
your brew?”

            The man gave him
a blank look, his mouth dropping open slightly.  Tor tried not to glare at
him.  Would every male he encountered stare at him like some juicy piece of
meat?

            “You don’t have
your translator on,” Hauk said, picking up a package and sniffing it.

            “Shit!  I forgot
the universal language hasn’t reached this far.”  Tor pressed the centerpiece
of the necklace he wore before trying again. “Where is your brew?”  It garbled
his words a few times before he finally managed to speak in a language the man
understood.

            The old man gave
him a suspicious once over, making him feel immediately better about his
sexuality.  “Brewskies are over there,” he said, pointing toward the back.

            “Hauk, keep your
mind off your stomach and grab some brew.”  Tor turned back to the old man,
swaying a little from turning his head too quickly.

            “You smell like
you’ve already had a few.  Against the law to sell to a drunk,” he said,
chewing a lump in his mouth before spitting into a cup.

            What kind of
barbarous planet was this?  Brew was for special occasions, though this man
could not know he was on his break.  And he was not ...
drunk
?  “I’m not
snockered,” he said, slurring the words.  Okay, perhaps he was a little.  Brew
was notoriously hard to get out of the system.  He still had to look forward to
brew sickness ... eventually.  He was feeling woozy, but he thought maybe the
heat was just getting to him.

            Hauk came up and
set two sets of six brews down on the glass counter.  They looked like the ones
in  the broadcasts he’d seen of ugly, squat, brownish creatures sitting in
swampland spouting the name of the brew.  That only confirmed how strange these
barbarians truly were.

            “You sure that’s
enough?” Tor asked.

            Hauk shrugged. 
“Probably not.  The men here are puny.  But we don’t need any more brew.  I’ve
about had my fill.”

            “True.  How
much?” he asked the man.

            “Sixteen bucks.”

            Tor blanched. 
“For brew?”  He fished around in his money pouch and withdrew a credit disk,
slapping it down on the counter.

            “Don’t take no
credit cards in here.  Checks neither.  Cash only.”

            Tor frowned,
slipping the credit disk back in his pouch, and pulled out a handful of
fed-units.

            The old man’s
eyes gleamed.  “Y’all ain’t from around here, are you?”

            “No.  We’re from
Vulkahn,” Tor said absently, counting out his fed-units.

            “That’s what I
figured.  I know all about trekkies.  My daughter’s one.  These real?”  He
picked one up and bit it.  “Tastes like it.”

            Tor and Hauk gave
him a disgusted look as the fed-unit came away with a brownish coating.  “Of
course they are.  This enough for the brew?”

            He snorted,
laughing.  “Looks good to me.”

            As they turned to
go, a whining blip ruptured the air.  Tor and Hauk nearly jumped out of their
skins.

            “What the hell
was that?” Hauk shouted, grabbing the brews as he led the way outside.

            They rounded the
corner just in time to see Galan and Bradan--their hands bound behind their
backs--being stuffed inside a metal vehicle with red and blue flashing lights
atop the conveyance.  A man in dark blue spared them a narrow eyed glance
before slamming the door and settling inside.

            “Fuck me,” Tor
muttered in stunned breathlessness.

            “Where do you
think they’re taking them?” Hauk asked Tor.

            The old man had
followed.  “They’ve been arrested, numbnuts.  They’re probably taking them to
jail.”

            Hauk gave Tor a
look.  He didn’t need to say anything--they were both thinking the same thing.

            They were in deep
shit.

            “How do we get
them out?” Tor asked.

            The man looked at
them like they were fonktol brains.  “You bail them out.  With money.  Not
those.”  He pushed the fed-units away.  “You need to go to the bank and
exchange the jewels for cash.”

            “Where is this
... bank?” Tor asked, stuffing the fed-units back in their pouch.

            “Round that
way.”  He gave them directions and they were soon off.

            Tor only hoped
this bank wouldn’t give them trouble with the fed-units.  So far, this planet
had been worse than boring, and he hadn’t seen the first female to even make it
bearable.  If Kerel didn’t get his sports rocket fixed....  His hands tightened
with the impulse to strangle him.

            The thought of no
women alone was enough to sober him and foul his mood.  There damn well better
be something entertaining here, he thought, trudging alongside Hauk.  Kerel and
Hauk both needed their asses kicked for fucking around.

            “We could try
breaking them out of jail, like in those ... uh ... Westens,” Hauk said, as if
reading his thoughts.

            “I see no cowboys
here, though it’s almost dirty enough to be a Westen.  It could be amusing.  We
might try that later.  I’m tempted to let them stew awhile for what they’ve
done.”

            “Who knew you
could be arrested for pissing?”

            “Who indeed. 
This is a strange planet.  Similar to the transmissions, and yet much
different,” Tor said.  “There’s the bank he spoke of.  Let’s get this over
with.”

            “Yeah.  Right. 
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

            Tor looked up at
the faceless, glass facade.  “You’re not the only one.”

An excerpt from Sexdroids, a futuristic romantic
comedy:

THE SEXDROID

Earth, AD 2193

            Sabin Grey had
gone undercover before, many times.  In fact, he was damn good at his job ...
but he’d never gone under as an android, and he entertained a good deal of
reservations about whether or not he could pull it off. 

            “Well?  Are you
going to answer me or not, Grey?” Assistant Director Hartley asked as he
lounged behind his desk, an unfamiliar smile tugging at his lips as if he was
trying very hard to repress it.

            Sabin grunted in
response.  If he hadn’t known better, he’d suspect Hartley was setting him up
for some sort of practical joke, but Hartley wasn’t exactly the type to play
juvenile games with his people, even off duty.  Considering the case his boss
had just dumped in his lap, it seemed even less likely that there was some sort
of prank in the offing. It wasn’t every day one of their top scientist’s came
under review for treason.

            All the same,
something was up.  Hartley was the kind of guy that could watch the Stooges
with a poker face and at the moment he looked as if he was going to explode if
he didn’t laugh. Sabin wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what it was, but he
was afraid he was about to.

            Wondering if
there was something about the case itself that Hartley thought he was going to
find particularly unpleasant, he punched the button on the case file once more,
using the stylus to go through the file and surveillance photos.  Emily Shue. 
Loner.  Work and lab at home.  Animal lover.  He clicked to the next file and
studied the image that popped up;  Lips turned up at the corners, almost
smiling as she chewed her pen.  Pert nose with a dust of freckles and long,
curly hair climbing down her shoulders.  Blonde. 

            Trouble. 
Definite Trouble.  Maybe that was what Hartley found so humorous—the idea of
throwing Sabin in with a babe that looked like this when he was going to have
to nail her if it turned out she was a traitor.

            It wasn’t the
sort of thing he’d find amusing, but who knew what an undertaker like Hartley
would find funny?

            “She doesn’t look
like a traitor, she looks like--”

            “The girl next
door?”

            Sabin nodded. 
“Yes, exactly.”

            “Don’t let her
appearance fool you.  She’s been evading our surveillance for weeks.  Head
office wanted to go ahead and bring her in for the treatment, and then we found
out her grandmother had ordered her a sex--I mean, a companion droid.”

            Sabin leveled a
dark look at Hartley, who chuckled and ignored him.

            Well, there it
was, the funny part, and it hadn’t taken nearly as long to get to the punch
line as he’d thought it would.  Strange thing was, he still didn’t see the
damned humor in it.  “What if I say no?”

            “You like your
job here, correct?”

            Sabin sighed and
shut down the case file.  No wonder Hartley had been wearing that
cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. “I don’t have any choice in this, do I?”

            “No.”  Hartley
straightened, his aged face solemn now.  “Jokes aside, this is serious. 
Someone’s
been leaking our dimensional jump technology to the UAN.  You know as well as I
do we can’t afford to let this get out.  Emily Shue is the keystone to the
project.  The breach has to be stopped, Grey, and you’re my best man.”

            Hartley was
right.  Far too much valuable information had been stolen already and it was
beginning to look like they were going to lose their edge on this project if
they couldn’t find the leak and plug it.  Despite his reservations, he knew it
was his duty to the country to find out if she was passing information to the
other side.

            “When does the
droid arrive?”

            “She’s expecting
it this afternoon.”

            Sabin was
accustomed to the unexpected, but this knocked the wind out of him.  Nothing
like giving him
no
time to think it over and spot potential problems. 
“That doesn’t leave me much time to prepare.”  Sabin stood as did Hartley.

            “You’ll manage,”
he said as he ushered Sabin from the office.  “We all do.”

* * * *

            The incessant
knocking had been going on for some time when it finally stopped and roused
Emily Shue into consciousness.

            She sat up at her
desk, startled and groggy, blinking back the blur obscuring her vision.  When
had she fallen asleep?  And who was at her door?  She never had visitors.

            Rising weakly
from her chair, she stumbled through the room into the hall beyond to the
foyer.

            As if sensing her
approach, the person on the other side of the door began knocking again.

            More than a
little annoyed at being woken, she called, “Coming! I’m comin’.”  She grumbled
to herself, rubbed her face and discovered she had a note stuck to her cheek. 
She’d undoubtedly picked it up when she’d lain her head on her desk.  Peeling
it off, she glanced at it, saw it was important and stuffed it into her pocket
as she cautiously opened the front door a crack and peered through the narrow
opening.

            A beaming, bright
eyed youth greeted her, leaning forward to peer back at her through the slender
crack.  “Ms. Shue?”

            “Yes,” Emily
croaked.

            “I have your
delivery here.  You just need to sign for it.”

            Delivery?  What
delivery?  She hadn’t ordered anything since last week’s pizza--still sitting
at the bottom of her fridge.  Or perhaps that was the week before last? 
Anyway, it was nearly dark.  Companies had stopped delivering this close to
dark years ago.