Thrill-Kinky (5 page)

Just ahead of them, another disturbance broke out.

Marl!

Suddenly Drax jumped as his pocket began to blare rather raucous music. For a half-second, he panicked, then realized it was just Rita’s com-pad, which he’d forgotten was there. Without slowing her step, she grabbed it out of his pocket.

“Yes,” she said. “Perfect. Just don’t get arrested. Or shot. Especially shot.”

She ended the call and tucked the com-pad back in his coat pocket. “Come on,” she said. “Got some folks I’d like you to meet.”

She headed right for the heart of the nearest disturbance. Drax stumbled along after her.

Chapter Five

They arrived in the middle of a massive brawl. “Perfect,” Rita repeated and Drax wondered why. Then a pair of curious figures stumbled out of the madhouse: a young, tawny-furred female felinoid brandishing a broken bottle in one hand (it looked like it had contained that green bubbly liquor) and a half-full bottle (definitely the green bubbly) in the other, and a weathered, middle-aged male human sporting a spectacular black eye, and even from a distance, reeking of Ganousian soy whiskey. The felinoid looked Drax up and down in a calculating way that hinted at the potential for all kinds of fun trouble.

Rita scowled at the felinoid and said, “No way, Xia. Don’t even think about it.”

“Too late. Already thought about it. But I won’t do it because you smell like you like him. Although if you’re up for sharing…” The cat-girl’s ears twitched and she looked like she was about to say more, but someone reached out of the anonymous brawling mass and grabbed her tail.

She grinned and smacked down with the broken bottle. Someone Drax couldn’t see fell with an “oof”.

The human male pivoted in a way that should have destroyed his knee and kicked out. As he did, Drax realized he’d been able to pivot that way because the leg that bore his weight was a specially designed prosthetic.

“Nicely done,” Rita said testily. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Pod landing’s that way.” The human pointed. “Captain and Gan are waiting. But we need to hurry.”

“Could use some help. Drax is hurt.” Rita was already moving as she spoke, half-dragging Drax. The felinoid handed the broken bottle to the human male and the intact one to Rita with the instruction, “Don’t drop it.” Then she scooped Drax into her arms as if he weighed nothing and started to run.

Wind and stars, he’d heard felinoids were stronger than they looked, but this was more than he expected. He had to be a foot taller than she was, but that wasn’t slowing her down.

The casual crotch-grope as they ran was more what he expected from her species, known for their good-natured amorality and warped sense of fun. Under other circumstances, he thought he’d appreciate being groped by a pretty felinoid, especially if it led to finding out if her fur was as soft as it looked and if it was true what they said about felinoid tongues.

He realized with a start that the “other circumstances” wouldn’t just be not being exhausted and in danger. That normally wouldn’t slow him down, although the steadily increasing pain level might.

“Other circumstances” would involve not having met Rita today and the cute little cat-girl not being her crewmate. He wasn’t crazy enough to think that a few hours spent in a woman’s company, even an intense few hours peppered with risky flying, daredevil sex, and the threat of death, was enough to make him want to settle down with said woman for the rest of his life. But it was enough he didn’t want to hurt Rita or piss her off by doing his usual putting-on-the-charm with someone else in front of her.

Enough that if they both made it through the day in one piece, or even in pieces that could be stitched back together reasonably well, he’d want to see her again and explore if the connection he felt was mutual. If it was real at all or just the product of the crazy way they’d met, the artificial closeness of shared danger and a thrill-kink in common.

First, they’d have to get through that danger…and without much help from him, he feared.

The felinoid dumped him on the back of a zipbike, fiddled with the controls in a way that suggested it wasn’t
her
zipbike, but that it wasn’t likely to slow her down for long. He knew from past experience that those particular tales about felinoids, the ones that claimed they could steal anything that wasn’t nailed down and most things that were, were true. “Don’t worry,” she said as the bike vibrated to life. “The owners will be partying all night. I’ll return it as soon as I get you back to the ship.”

“Like I care at this point.” So that cat-person space-legend was true too, at least for this particular cat-girl: unless something they stole was unique or especially beautiful, they would return it or pass it on to someone who truly needed it. They just liked proving they could take it. “If you’re going to steal a zipbike, you should have taken that red Duce.” He pointed it out as they zipped past. “It’s faster and a lot more fun.”

“I know.” The cat-girl sighed. “I tried before, even before I knew we’d need one. But it has a palmprint lock. It would take way too long to disable it.” Then she turned to grin at Drax, despite the fact she was weaving through the crowd at an alarming speed. The zipbike didn’t waver. “Don’t worry, pretty-pretty man. I can get this one to go plenty fast.”

And she could. He was sure this model wasn’t supposed to zip this fast or handle this precisely, but the cat-girl had talent.

If every bit of his body, including some he couldn’t name, weren’t aching, Drax would have enjoyed it. It had been over a decade since he’d taken a joyride on a boosted zipbike with a pretty girl. He’d boosted someone’s luxury skyyacht recently, sure, and the guy’s gorgeous, expensive mistress with it, but that had been to get Drax, and information that would prevent a war, off a dangerous planet, and even with his peculiar wiring, he’d been too anxious to enjoy the ride. The mistress, far from falling into his arms like an actress in a mediocre holo-drama, had tried to kill Drax until she remembered she didn’t know how to land the damn thing and killing him would effectively kill her too. It hadn’t been a fun trip.

This could have been. Even under the circumstances, he was enjoying the ride a bit, though he would have been happier if he’d been pressed against Rita.

He would have been a lot happier if he hadn’t hurt quite so much.

How could something that traveled above the ground hit bumps? Logically it couldn’t, but the faster Xia pushed the zipbike, the more it felt like it did.

Xia turned abruptly to avoid a drunken pedestrian and clipped one of the incised boulders that the San’balese used as public art. She managed to keep the bike upright—felinoid reflexes were notoriously good—but the impact jarred every inch of Drax’s battered body.

Which obliged him by deciding this might be a good time to pass out.

Chapter Six

“What in a marling black-hole hell is going on?” Mik roared. “You lost the floater, you dumped the cargo, we’ve got a complete stranger bleeding all over my ship, and Xia stole something
large
this time. Rita, you have two seconds to explain yourself before I space you and your decorative but criminal friend.” Mik had an impressive roar, especially considering he wasn’t a very big man. To Rita’s quiet amusement, Drax jumped when he heard it.

Not in a way anyone else would notice, but with her hand on his bare back, she could feel the slight twitch of his skin as he tried to pretend he wasn’t startled.

“Gotta be in space before you can space someone, Captain,” she said calmly, “and we’re sitting on the ground at the spaceport at the moment. Not to mention, I’m the only person on this ship who can get the airlock open and I’ll quit if you order me to space someone. Especially if it’s me.”

Mik couldn’t help himself, apparently: he smiled at that, and the smile lit up his narrow dark face. “I’d hate to lose a good mechanic. So tell me why I shouldn’t have to—and who is this positively lovely stranger who’s eating half our provisions after decimating our med-kit?”

Rita opened her mouth to answer. She knew how to deal with Mik, knew that he’d understand when she explained the situation. If she’d crashed the floater, or just misplaced it after a wild night, that would be one thing. But armed pursuit was another story. And armed pursuit by people who were cheating the crew as well as trying to kill Drax? No question that he’d back her decision.

She had the words put together in a way that Mik would understand and accept. But Drax, weak as he was at the moment, beat her to it. “Your crew member saved my life, sir. In the process, she managed to stumble into an incident involving interplanetary art theft and espionage—an incident in which the
Malcolm
may be inadvertently involved.” His voice was rich, cultured, smoothstyle. He sounded like a diplomat, or maybe a spy who could play diplomat. Certainly not like someone she’d pulled out of a recycling bin only a few hours ago.

The words, and the smoothstyle accent, certainly got Mik’s attention. The last time Rita had seen him looking that flabbergasted, the hold of the ship was full of kittens thanks to Xia, who’d managed to seduce a security guard at an interplanetary cat show into helping her “rescue her little cousins”.

Except Mik always found it hard to keep a serious face when he was trying to fix one of Xia’s messes, because face it, they were funny. How could you not smile over fifty-two adorable kittens that all wanted to be your new friend, even if you then had to figure out how to return them to their rightful owners without anyone ending up in jail?

This time, he was not smiling. He wasn’t talking. He simply froze, his normally cheerful gray eyes gone to a frigid steel color. That wasn’t good at all. That was how he looked when he was about to do something dangerous and probably illegal, but necessary.

Gan, by his side as usual, was pointedly
not
moving, looking like a statue of a particularly good-looking, blue-haired Furagi, which meant he wanted to start something, but was waiting until he knew who he should be starting something with. Thank the stars Buck was taking his cue from Gan.

Mik spoke slowly when he opened his mouth at last. His accent, which he’d deliberately shed decades ago, reasserted itself so he sounded like the outer-rim hick he’d been born as, but had risen above. “Don’t mind a little crime here and there. Crime pays.” He paused.

Rita held her breath. When Mik talked like that, it meant he was mad as a Delabrian duck. And once he was mad, Gan’s anger management issues and Furagi size and strength, Buck’s occasional urge to self-destruct and take a lot of people with him, and Xia’s natural tendency toward mayhem, had nothing to check them. She just hoped Drax could play this right, even without all the information about how fragile her friends’ grips on sanity sometimes were.

He did. “This time the payment may be your life and those of your crew. And even if I’m wrong in that fear, they’re not paying you enough for the risks you’re taking.”

“Figured the money was too good for the job they said we were doing.” Mik still sounded like a hick, but no one with half a brain would mistake him for a dumb hick. She just hoped Drax realized smart hicks were dangerous, because they thought outside the box. “Thought the Blemondians might be up to something shady. But I did my homework and there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do with that slag except use it for that new style of neurorelays, so I couldn’t figure where the shady came in. Except maybe price gouging, and that’s not illegal most places. At least not killing illegal, or even jail-time illegal, especially if you’re just an intermediary moving the goods and not setting the prices.”

“Someone is trying to create an interplanetary incident between Banjal and San’bal with the ultimate hope that Blemond will benefit. My government had a fairly good idea of who the parties ultimately responsible are. We did not know until last night who was actually doing the more hands-on work, and I only found out because they found me. I wasn’t supposed to have survived and I might not have if Ms. Anteres weren’t so quick thinking and so good at making an antiquated floater out-maneuver a state-of-the-art sport flyer. In the process of being rescued, I determined that the parties you dealt with are more than likely the same parties who tried to kill me last night. One of them owns a neurorelay factory, but he is also an intelligence operative.”

Mik nodded slowly. “A spy?”

“Nothing that official. More like an informant for their intelligence agency.”

Buck spat on the floor. “I marling hate informants. Sell out their own mothers.”

Xia started picking at her nails. It looked like a nervous habit, but Rita knew better. The felinoid was sharpening her claws.

“In this case, he was selling out several planets. Sensitive information was stolen from my government. Tonight we believe they plan to steal an antiquity on loan from my government to San’bal. Both the information and the antiquity will wind up on Blemond, if all goes according to the plan, with evidence that the San’balese government was responsible for the whole mess.”

Gan spoke for the first time. Rather, he rumbled, his voice at a pitch Rita recognized as about two-point-five seconds pre-explosion. “What’s the point? And how did we get involved? Is it just that every plot needs a fall guy?”

“They chose you to move the goods because you’re an independent freighter, not part of a shipping corporation that would vet and inspect everything a million times and maybe figure out something was off. Also, you come from several species, and from the accents, it sounds like the humans are from different planets. Unfortunately that makes you perfect for getting blamed for everything including my death, if I’d died according to plan. You could go through a parody of a trial or simply be ‘killed while resisting arrest’ and people would believe it because you have no one to go to bat for you as a group. Which is a curious expression, by the way. Aren’t bats small, winged creatures from Old Earth?”

“I think it means someone who’ll hit another guy with a club for you,” Gan suggested.

“Is this shit going to cause a war?” Buck was blunt but swearing less than usual. “I’d sure hate to see a pretty place like this one get ruinated. I like all the gardens and rock art here. Makes me feel almost calm. And they make good booze.” Buck really was the uneducated hick that Mik sometimes pretended to be, but he was surprisingly thoughtful about certain things, one of which was he’d be spaced before he saw another world get “ruinated” by war like his home planet had been.

Drax hesitated. Rita guessed he was sizing up how much he could safely share versus how much he needed to divulge to ensure trust and cooperation. Finally he answered. “The intention is to cause enmity between San’bal and Banjal. It probably wouldn’t result in an immediate war. But it would cause trade sanctions, diplomatic issues, travel bans, all kinds of stupidity that would hurt both economies. And the main exports of our planets are…”

Xia jumped up and down, waving her hand. It was unbearably cute, but Rita could almost forgive her when she said, “I know! I know! Banjal is the galaxy’s biggest manufacturer of neurorelays. You guys don’t actually use neurorelays because they disrupt the part of the brain that maintains equilibrium in flight. But the manufacturing works better in low-G, so it’s become your thing. And San’bal is the only source for orthrocite and you need that to make them.” She calmed down when Drax nodded, and crossed her paw-like hands in front of her demurely, a demureness ruined by her twitching tail and the way her claws were working in and out as if she was waiting to sink them into something or someone.

From Xia, that could mean she was itching for a fight or seriously wanting to get into Drax’s recently acquired, spectacularly tight pants. At the moment, probably both.

“Let me guess,” Rita ventured. “Those new relays from Blemond that are in beta testing don’t work quite right. They’re hoping to buy some time to perfect them by keeping Banjal from releasing their latest products and disrupting San’bal’s trade with Banjal. I heard on the news that the Blemond government has invested heavily in that new neurorelay product.”

She was rewarded by a smile from Drax, though it was a sad, cynical one. “How come a ship’s mechanic can figure it out in seconds and it took two governments who had a lot more data about two months? If my bosses and their counterparts on San’bal Prime had been that smart, I wouldn’t be bandaged, battered and buzzing on your pain blockers.”

Xia waved her hand again. “I know, I know! That’s ’cause our Rita’s bright and governments are stupid.” She cocked her head to one side, her ears and whiskers twitching. “Funny, isn’t it? You seem smart, and I bet your bosses could catch a few mice, but when you take you and them and their bosses and the whole government, it adds up to dumb. Collective intelligence is an oxymoron.”

Drax looked stunned, but Rita and the other crew members just nodded. Other races underestimated felinoids. The singsong intonation and enthusiastic body language that carried over from their native language came off as childish to other cultures. Add to that felinoids were uninhibited and playful by nature, had vague notions of personal space and personal property, and, to humans, resembled animals normally kept as pets. Even Xia’s friends tended to underestimate her because, well, she was Xia, sexy slacker with a little kleptomania problem. But the felinoid was a lot more intelligent than she often let show.

“That’s about right,” Drax said slowly, “and I doubt any one of us had all the facts until now because we were all guarding our little pieces of information. Information is power.”

“So how about giving us some of that information-type power?” Mik said. “Like where this is going down and what you need done.”

“Rita has already done enough. I don’t want to put any of you in more danger.”

“Too bad.” Rita kissed his cheek. “You’re not putting me in danger. I am. And if the others want to play too, that’s their choice.”

“Rita, I was trained for this kind of situation…” He sounded like he already knew it was a hopeless argument.

Good for him. Nice when a man knew how to give in to reason. Not that anyone had ever accused her, or anyone on the
Malcolm
, of being especially reasonable, but it was the principle of the thing.

“You don’t know the start of what I can do, Drax. And you haven’t seen Xia and the guys in action, except for getting us out of the middle of the festival.”

Drax nodded. “That was impressive. Well coordinated, if overly dramatic with the brawl. I always forget how strong felinoids are.”

“You look like a bird. Brings out my natural prey drive so I want to run away with you and eat you right up.” Xia gave her most charming and carnivorous smile.

Rita spoiled the effect by bopping her on the nose. “Behave!”

“However, this is my operation. I shouldn’t pull in civilians who aren’t even Banjali…”

Mik stepped closer and put one hand on Drax’s uninjured shoulder. Not, Rita thought, because he wanted to touch Drax, although knowing Mik, that might have been part of it. Happily married though he was, the man was a flirt. “Listen, Drax, you may be a secret agent or something, and Banjalis are resilient, but you’re in no shape to take on a whole gang of bad guys by yourself tonight, especially not in higher gravity than you’re used to. Anyone who wasn’t a Banjali would be in the hospital or maybe the morgue, not upright, mostly functional, and watching my mechanic like he’s thinking about getting her naked and having all sorts of wholesome adult fun. You need back-up. If I don’t miss my guess, you either don’t have any or you can’t reach them safely on normal coms, since you haven’t been trying to make contact with anyone. If a bunch of assholes from Blemond are mucking with my crew, not to mention two whole planets, we are definitely up for kicking Blemondian butt.” He took a deep breath after the rant, then added in his usual mischievous voice, rather than the serious tone he’d been using ever since the story began to unfold. “Since Miss Rita is looking at you the same way you’re looking at her, we can arrange the room later. Just ignore the holo-cams on the walls and such. Or smile pretty and we’ll give you a cut of the proceeds.”

Rita threw a roll of bandages at him, since it was the only thing handy that wasn’t expensive and breakable, med-bay being what it was. Drax raised his middle finger, then commented, “It meant the same thing on my planet, long before we ever met a human.”

“No need to get snippy. Might as well get some cash out of this mess. People pay for interspecies porn, and you’re both attractive.” She’d figured Mik was joking about holo-porn, but the way Mik grinned at his husband made Rita wonder if they’d ever put fuel in the
Malcolm
and food in the galley that way during tight times. She wouldn’t put it past them. Inhibitions weren’t exactly Mik’s middle name, and on Gan’s tropical home planet, clothing was purely for decoration and public sex was only taboo enough to make it exciting.