Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals (14 page)

“Is it always this hot down here in the spring?” Orli asked as she wiped away a rivulet of perspiration that threatened to run into her eye. “This is brutal. It’s as if this rotten city can’t offer anything nice at all, not even its springtime weather.” Having been briefly imprisoned in Murdoc Bay as part of Lord Thadius Thoroughgood’s plot to capture her and then “rescue” and seduce her for himself, Orli’s singular earlier experience with the city had not been a good one. This scalding heat did little to improve her attitude toward the community.

“No,” said Altin, he too wiping at the moisture that poured down his brow, “this town is pretty much the dung spout of society, if the truth be told. But money seems to love it here, and the marchioness controls a great deal of wealth by having this place as the commerce capital of South Mark.”

“Well, they deserve each other, that old hag and this crappy town. I can’t believe Roberto would want to have anything to do with this shithole. It gives me the creeps.”

“If he’s going to be in the Goblin Tea business, he’s going to have to do it from here.” He pointed off toward the east, where barely visible on the horizon could be seen a faint green line. “That way is Gallenwood and the Feshtie River. The sea air and desert heat make a perfect humidity for growing Goblin Tea, while the river provides fresh water, and the forest gives home to the durma bees and coffee moths that pollinate when summer comes.”

“Well, I do like Goblin Tea,” she said. She was smiling, but Altin knew it was only partly out of her fondness for the mildly, deliciously intoxicating stimulant. “Maybe the city does have at least
one
redeeming quality.”

Altin nodded, agreeing, though she knew he was not much of a fan of the bitter black beverage that most everyone else adored. He complained that the effects of the stuff took forever to wear off, which she thought was both just like him and ironic all the same.

“So where is Roberto and his new spaceship?” Altin asked as they moved out farther into the open and the heat. They were both scanning the area from side to side. There wasn’t the least bit of a dune or hillock to obscure the view, so there was no place to hide a ship, even if someone wanted to. “He said ‘right outside the city,’ which means here at the top of the Decline. He should be here.”

Orli pulled a thin black tablet out of a flat leather pouch hanging from her belt and tapped up their present coordinates using the data stream from an orbiting starship, the
Aspect,
the same ship she used to serve aboard.

“He’ll be coming in over there,” she said, pointing. “About three hundred yards past that pile of rocks.” From the way it looked, she suspected someone had been hastily buried there.

They made their way in the direction she’d indicated, and as they approached, there appeared before them a long, slender craft, gleaming like liquid silver in the glare of the high and blinding sun.

They both had to look away, the glare was so bright, and looking back required that they shield their eyes, though Orli only for a moment, as her sunglasses soon dimmed down enough that she could see.

“By the gods,” Altin exclaimed. “It’s awfully bright. And I had no idea your people could cast invisibility.”

Orli laughed. “It’s not. It’s the surface of the ship reimaging the environment.” Her lenses were finally dark enough to look directly at it. “But leave it to Roberto to get that entire surface chromed. I’ve never seen that before. Could that possibly be any more ostentatious?”

“Hey, I heard that,” came Roberto’s familiar voice from a loudspeaker mounted somewhere on the ship. “And it’s not chrome. It’s titanium- and silver-treated palladium glass.” A moment after, a ramp lowered from a place at the belly of the ship, discernible by the dark rectangular outline that began to form and then grow until there was a tangible opening.

Two tall and strongly built women carrying large shoulder-mounted laser cannons came down the ramp first, the barrels of the guns nearly four feet long and ringed with spiral cooling tubes that were caked with frost and sent vapor into the air to be devoured by the heat. The two women took places at the base of the ramp, one on each side, each of them leaning back against the straps slung over their bared shoulders and thrusting their pelvises forward where the gun braces pressed firmly to their shapely hips. Orli could not help but notice that both women were strikingly beautiful, and dressed to express it. Each of them wore formfitting black pants and a corseted vest of satiny purple material that was far more provocative than one might expect for a pair of rather burly guards. Their bosoms bulged as conspicuously as their shoulders and biceps did.

A moment later, Roberto descended with a third woman at his side and two more only a few steps behind. All three of these women were strikingly beautiful as well, the two behind attired exactly as were the ramp guards. The fact that they too wore the corseted purple made it seem as if these might actually be their uniforms, though Orli could hardly believe it. For one thing, the woman at Roberto’s side was not wearing purple, nor a bustier. Roberto, however, was wearing the same color, if not the same outfit, which drew a snicker from Orli that she only barely managed to contain. She could not help but gape at him.

The swarthy Spaniard wore a long coat of bright purple silk, which perfectly matched the bustiers of the four women behind him, excepting that Roberto’s coat had an additional treatment of gleaming gold macramé at hem and cuffs, and it was decorated with carved buttons of mammoth ivory, though none of them had been put to use this hot day. Upon his head perched a large three-cornered hat—custom made, Orli was sure—black as night and festooned with a feather two feet long and just as purple as the shimmering jacket was.

While his lower half was covered with his customary black pants and blaster belt, his trouser legs were stuffed down into boots that, like jacket and feather, were as purple as anything could possibly be. Even the soles of those gaudy knee-highs were gilded at the edges with gold leaf, tacked in place and made to match the macramé and the buckle of the hatband.

Orli let go a long and most unladylike sort of snort, and she barely held herself at the furthest reaches of self-restraint as he approached.

Roberto ignored her facial contortions and nasally rasps, and he bowed with a long flourish of his three-cornered hat as he came to stand before them both. Altin bowed formally back and opened his mouth, about to give the proper Prosperion greeting when one is addressing the captain of a ship, but Orli’s guffaws simply exploded into a full fit of laughter at the sweep of the hat. “You’re going to get your feather in the dirt,” she managed to gasp, but that was all before hilarity had her bent over completely at the waist and nearly wheezing for breath.

Immune to her ridicule, Roberto’s eyes shot wide with feigned horror instead, and he snatched his hat back up and spun it around, bending the feather this way and that, and, to his further dismay, discovered that he had in fact gotten a few bits of grit lodged in there. He immediately set to picking them out with genuine irritation apparent on his face.

Orli laughed for nearly a full minute more, and it was all Altin could do to stand straight and try to be polite.

“Go ahead and laugh,” Roberto said, “but do you know how much this damn thing cost me? They had to do it nine times to get the color right.”

Now Altin was laughing too.

Roberto looked back and forth between them, then to the beautiful woman standing at his right, the only one from the ship not wearing purple to match the rest. The other two women had stopped on approach and now stood a respectful pair of steps behind them, their faces stoic, though not without traces of humor twitching the corners of their mouths and glimmering in their eyes. The woman beside Roberto made a better show of keeping her expression neutral, though Orli thought she might be biting her tongue more than a little bit.

Eventually, Orli stopped laughing, and with a shake of her head and an expression that clearly declared what she thought of his ensemble, she clapped him in a long and hearty hug. He grinned a great big cheesy grin at Altin over her shoulder as he hugged his best friend in all the universe, and Altin smiled back, glad to know that Roberto was not only safe but beyond thriving by the providence of the Queen.

Finally the hug came to an end, and Orli pushed herself away. She squinted at Roberto with a devilish gleam in her eyes and asked, “So who are you supposed to be, George Washington the Pimp?”

“As if he ever looked this good.”

Orli just shook her head, then turned to the woman beside Roberto. The woman stood nearly a foot taller than he did, making her three inches taller even than Altin, and she carried herself with stern dignity. Her shoulders and arms, bare for the sleeveless vest she wore, were long and sinewy, her muscles toned and her skin dark brown like the Goblin Tea coffee they’d come here to trade for. Her stance, like her physique, suggested that her body was equally suited to fight or flight, and the intelligence apparent in her eyes suggested she would know which was the better course in any circumstance. She studied Altin, then Orli, and she seemed to catch Orli studying her back. They exchanged polite smiles. Orli thought she might be the most beautiful woman she’d ever met. Possibly the most dangerous too. She wore on her hips a pair of holsters, each equipped with an old-fashioned nine-millimeter pistol, and the belt around her narrow waist was packed with replacement clips. The grips of both weapons were well worn, and Orli suspected that Roberto had chosen wisely when he put this woman on his crew, her striking beauty entirely aside.

Orli reached out a hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m Orli. Please tell me you are only working with him temporarily. If you haven’t signed any contracts yet, there’s still time to get away. I can have Altin here teleport you anywhere you like. Save yourself while you can.”

“Hey,” Roberto butted in before the woman could reply. “Don’t be undermining my authority. They have to respect me and stuff.” He turned and winked at the woman standing beside him, who smiled again, though mainly with her eyes.

She and Orli exchanged a knowing glance as the woman took Orli’s proffered hand. “I’m Deeqa Daar,” she said in a rich Somali accent. “First mate of the
Glistening Lady
. It’s nice to meet you.”

Orli started to speak, but then stopped, realizing what the woman had said. “Oh no,” she said, turning back to Roberto. “The
Glistening Lady
? You named it the
Glistening Lady
?”

“Hey, you’re the one who said you’d be a constant, nagging pain in the ass if I went with the
Sweaty Boobs
, so this was the compromise. I actually like it better. It has class.”

Orli shook her head, clearly exasperated. She turned back to Deeqa Daar standing there. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you,” she said. “I wish you the best of luck serving under your captain there.”

“I’ve dealt with his kind before,” Deeqa said. “I’m sure there will be far more original and problematic obstacles with this work than the captain’s … eccentricity.”

“Hey, I can hear you talking, you know,” Roberto said. “And for what it’s worth, you were in pretty desperate need of some eccentricity in your life given what I heard about that freighter you were on. I could hear you yawning from halfway across the galaxy.”

Deeqa grinned at that, showing a row of pretty white teeth beneath her luminous almond-shaped eyes. “Well, you got me there, Captain.”

Roberto laughed as if he’d just won a major victory. “Damn straight I did.” He looked back to Altin and Orli and became suddenly serious. “She’s the best damn pilot working commercial space,” he said. “Might even be better than me, assuming that’s even possible.”

Deeqa’s eyes narrowed, unrelenting mischief in them. “Oh, it’s possible.”

“Well, this man here needs no pilot,” said Roberto, pointing at Altin and intent on finishing introductions properly. “He is strictly point to point. Deeqa, I present Sir Altin Meade, or as all the Crown City people call him, the Galactic Mage. He’s kind of a big shot, but when I first met him, he was just a barefoot magician randomly poking around in space.”

Altin grinned and pulled up his robes enough to expose his toes. “Not much has changed,” he said. He let the folds fall back in place and reached out to shake Deeqa by the hand. “I am still at exploration too. Which is why we need your help.”

“Well, the
Glistening Lady
is at your service, then,” she said. “As am I. Captain Levi said we’d be assisting you, though he was a bit short on the details.”

“Unfortunately, that is because we were short on them as well, which is why we need you folks and that science team. Speaking of which,
Captain
Roberto, have you had any luck in finding anyone?”

“Yes,” said Roberto. “I’ve got a geology professor from the NTA Branch University in New Mesa. Marks Bryant is his name. He’s a geologist, anthropologist, and some other stuff, lots of letters at the end of his name. His response to my message read as if he’s pretty excited, and he says he can gather up as big a team as I can pay for. Which was something I wanted to talk to you about. Who’s sporting the bill on this one? I mean, I’m not stingy or anything, I just need to know.”

“I am,” said Altin. “It’s the least I can do for Blue Fire after all her help.”