Greenshift (2 page)

The sick smile that spread across
Liu’s mouth immediately sank her hope.

“But I guess you did come
all this way.” A crazed expression warped his handsome features and a fast
excitement infused his voice. “The mind minstrel’s probing the other one
right now.” He let the double entendre linger in the air before asking,
“Want to hear the music we’re making? I just got this thing last week. It
cost more than that piece of shit shuttle you landed in. Got it from some Lower
Caste kid who claimed he was a fragger. But if his scrawny ass was some
anti-Embassy rebel, then I’m the fucking Sovereign.”

Dale seemed unimpressed. “I
don’t need to hear anything and I don’t need to see anything. I just need my
money, Liu.”

“Oh. Come on. You know you
want to see it. I know
she’s
never seen one in action before.” Liu walked
over and grabbed Wren’s chin roughly in his hand and stared into her eyes, or
rather stared
at
them. She was used to people showing a mild interest in
her rare genetic defect, but this man studied her irises as though he were a
doctor…or some kind of mad scientist.

“How about it?” he
asked. “They have any mind minstrels on that cesspool planet you’re
from?”

She didn’t want to answer, didn’t
want to speak to him or even look at him. So she closed her eyes. His grip on
her jaw and chin tightened as he shook her head and forced her to stare back at
him. “I asked you a question. Do they have any mind minstrels on that
cesspool planet you’re from?”

“No.”

“Then you’re really going to
enjoy this.” He snagged her forearm and dragged her to the patio doors.
She couldn’t see anything but the sea and sky reflected in the dark glass, but
she could hear muffled music and voices from somewhere inside.

The cacophony of screamed lyrics
and erratic beats blasted out at them as soon as Liu ripped open the door.

All Wren could make out at first was
a triangle of light piercing into the darkness from the doorway. Then
movement caught her attention near the ceiling. A small, thin parallelogram bobbed
around as if in a lazy current and shined a strobing beam of blue-green light
down onto the bed like a search beacon. Its focus was a rounded lump, secured
by leather straps and huddled on one corner of the disheveled sheets.

Liu shouted over the deafening
music. “Emotions drive the song, and it’ll pick up bits of conversation.”

As if to emphasize his point, an
eerie strain of “Pick it up, p-p-pick it up,” grated along with the
fast tempo, repeating until it was nothing more than a manic scream.

Wren’s entire body shook from the
surreal scene and the sensory overload.

The primal shrieking only excited
Liu. He threw his head back, spread his arms and bounced to the sickening beat.
“I swear it’s reading her fucking mind sometimes.” Liu pointed to the
lump on the bed and slapped Dale on the shoulder. “The shit it spits out
in the lyrics is genius.”

Dale’s jaw twitched in agitation
and Carlos’ skin looked grey in the strobing afterglow of the mind minstrel’s
light.

Wren wished her sight had never
adjusted to the darkened room when the naked woman on the bed twisted around in
her leather bindings to face them. Her mouth gaped but no words came out. Dark
stains dripped down her jaw and….

Wren followed the trail of drying
blood up past the woman’s nose.

She should have never looked.

Then she wouldn’t have seen the
empty sockets.

Liu smiled as he pointed two
fingers at Wren’s eyes and shouted. “Let’s see what kind of music you make.”

It had been such a beautiful
day
.

Only to be ruined by the two
contractors strutting down the boardwalk toward David and the
Bard
.

Granted, the morning wasn’t
perfect—he’d spent most of it negotiating for this berth space at Shiraz Dock,
the center of the universe so far as the system was concerned. Then he had to
attend a special Embassy meeting, where a bored officiate wearing a drab grey
sheath dress with her mousy hair pulled tight into a bun, informed him that the
ship he’d been piloting for only a month would be gaining a new passenger soon.
Sara
someone, with the title of ambasadora and part of the new Face of
the Embassy program, which was supposed to spread the government’s message of
goodwill and cheer throughout the six planets.

Why they wanted the
Bard,
a
small pleasure cruiser which had been overhauled into a boutique science
vessel, to carry a diplomat was never made clear. Not that the Embassy officiate
who had briefed them worried about the many questions David and the other
pilots asked. The Embassy owned their ships, so why should they be privy to too
many details?

The whole brush-off left David a
little pissy. When he was a fleet captain in the Armada,
he
was the one
who decided who should know what…and he was important enough to be trusted with
details. That thought had played through his head the entire meeting until it
made him regret his decision to take an early—
very early
—retirement.

But as the afternoon stretched
onward and David fell into the physicality of unloading the last of their supplies
for the
Bard
, he regained his calm and was enjoying the buzz of Hub activity.

And Mari’s smile.

The young botanist with her red-tipped
blonde hair and tight little body also lived on the
Bard.
Like David,
she seemed delighted by Shiraz, where space traffic met water traffic around
the expanse of Carrey Bay. The best restaurants in the system were here, too. He
considered asking Mari to dinner tonight, enjoying the coolness of evening on
one of the patios. Every eatery had a patio because year-round this territory
remained sunny and temperate so close to the ocean.

David expected the sun to hide,
however, as a cloud of agitation followed the two contractors into the area.

“I’ll be back in a
minute.” He left Mari and Sean, the ship’s mech tech, to handle the final
pallet of supplies while he met the black-clad members of the Embassy’s
policing force further up the boardwalk.

The man on the left David
recognized as Killian Doje because of the extra cender strapped to his thigh—as
though just two of the incendiary pistols couldn’t obliterate a crowd of people
when dialed up to full energy.

But David wasn’t worried…yet.
Technically he was using the berth with the dockmaster’s permission, but the
bottle of Koley’s bourbon David had given the official might not be sufficient
incentive for him to stay on David’s side when push came to shove. And knowing
Killian, there would be a little shoving.

Killian and David’s brother Ben
had had a run-in last year at a bar here at the Hub. What was the name of that
overpriced dive? The Atlas or Atlatl or something that started with
At
.
Though David had been there when Ben and Killian went at it, and eventually
jumped in by his brother’s side, the likelihood of the contractor remembering
him was remote.

David could stave off this
confrontation a bit longer by making them come knocking at the ship’s gangway,
but he’d rather meet them halfway than invite trouble into his home. Though he
still hadn’t settled into the idea that this pleasure cruiser turned science
vessel was
home
. Maybe in another few weeks.

“Anlow, how’s your brother?
Did he jump ship, too?” Killian’s voice was smooth and confident. “Or
were you the only one to abandon the fleet?”

The fleet jab got under David’s
skin—his retirement had only gone through a few months ago and it wasn’t
exactly sitting well with him.

“I didn’t think you’d
remember me. Guess you do have a brain somewhere in that soft head of
yours.”

Must have seen my name on the
entry request
. That meant this was a personal vendetta and not an Embassy
affair, which worked to David’s advantage. He could take on a couple of
grudge-carrying contractors, but not formal charges of trespassing.

“This isn’t your
berth,” Killian said.

“You can have it back when
we’re done.”

“Move your ship.”

“When I’m ready.”

The other contractor with Killian
put a hand to one of his cenders. He looked a few years younger than Killian,
probably on a training run and jumpy as a cornered cat. Though David knew
Killian had enough sense not to draw in public unless under a bodily threat, he
couldn’t be sure of the young protégé. Many Armadans underestimated
contractors—David didn’t. They might not have as much bulk, but their martial
arts training gave them a powerful punch. And they had Embassy law on their
side.

“Ward.” Killian shot a
warning look at his charge.

“You back on babysitting
duty, Killian? Thought the Embassy would have promoted you by now. Didn’t you
have another
boot
stepping on your heels that night my brother kicked
your ass?”

David looked at Ward to see if
the derogatory slur for rookie hit the mark. The twitch in his jaw said it did.

“You’re lucky to have this
guy,” David continued, speaking to Ward. “When my brother started
wailing on the kid, Killian jumped right in and took a beating alongside
him.”

“No one takes a beating for
me
.”
Ward clamped both hands on the grips of his cenders.

Contractors and their guns
.
They were like an extra appendage for most. And this particular contractor was
playing David’s game perfectly. If he could wind Ward up—and not get shot in
the process—Killian would have a wild recruit on his hands and leave David and
the
Bard
to their own devices.

“Yeah, that’s what the other
guy said. But that wasn’t what set my brother off. Come to think of it, I can’t
even remember what the fuss was all about that night. Do
you
remember
why we beat the shit out of you, Killian?” David asked.

Killian’s hands moved to his
cenders.

So maybe David had gone a little
too far.

“David’s a better pilot than
that last guy,” Mari said, gripping the handle of a knife from the ship’s
galley. She’d been nervously trying to engage Sean in conversation since David
left to confront the contractors. From the bottom of the
Bard
‘s covered chartreuse
gangway they watched the testosterone levels rising from forty meters away. Her
stomach flip-flopped when David raised his voice.

“Don’t you think so? That
he’s a better pilot?” Mari prompted again. Talking was the only way to
hide her anxiety. A trait she had honed as a child and brought with her into
adulthood. She even talked to herself or
thought out loud
if no one else
was around.

The glare from the surrounding
waters of Carrey Bay and the heat shimmering from the dark grey concrete
stamped in the shape of a real wooden boardwalk gave the scene the appearance
of being filtered through glass. But unlike staring from behind a closed
window, Mari could experience the world of Tampa Quad’s largest dock all around
her.

The boats blasted their horns and
spaceship engines screeched and boomed overhead. And the smells…. She enjoyed
the aromas from restaurant row across the way, but the berth itself smelled
stale. Spilled fuel and exhaust from a faulty filter system mixed with the
fishy-ness of the bay at low tide. At least Sean smelled good. His earthy
scentbots brought a hint of freshness as he stepped closer to her to get a
better view of David and the contractors.

“I know you didn’t like the
last guy,” Mari said. “Neither did I.”

She sucked in a breath when one
of the contractors closed in.

“Because he wouldn’t flirt
with you?” Sean’s deep voice remained even, but his focus stayed riveted
to David’s confrontation.

“Who?” Mari asked,
trying to loosen the death grip she had on the knife.

“The last pilot.”

“Oh,” she said.

Sean was humoring her. And she would
let him because her stomach was in knots.

“You won’t flirt with me
either, and I still like you. At least most of the time. You’d think after
eight months of living together, you’d be a little more open.”

“We share space on the
Bard
,”
Sean corrected. “We don’t live together.”

“Same thing. And that’s
exactly the kind of remark I would expect from someone who hides behind walls
and won’t even engage in harmless flirting.”

He probably wasn’t listening, but
it soothed her to talk.

“I’m not the flirting
type,” Sean said in a half-hearted response.

“No kidding.”

Even after they kissed that time
he hadn’t made any advances toward her. And that was too bad because it was a
good kiss. She studied Sean’s thin lips as she thought about it. As usual, dark
blonde stubble encircled his mouth and edged up his jaw and down his chin to
his neck. In fact, she had never seen him clean-shaven. David always shaved,
kept himself well-groomed in general, even his t-shirt and fatigues were crisp,
not like the rumpled workers’ pants and faded blue t-shirt Sean wore.

Mari had been making comparisons
between the two men since David walked on board a few weeks ago. Sean was the
guy she used to want, but now all she thought about was David Anlow. He’d even
taken the place of Sean as her best friend aboard ship. Because David always
cared about what she had to say—and she usually had
a lot
to say.

She bent down to cut the thick
plastic which was vacuum-sealed over the final pallet of food supplies
delivered this morning. But her attention kept flickering back to David. He had
come to their rescue and now paid the price. Down to crackers and crumbs after
the Embassy delayed their supply run by two weeks because a fire destroyed a
third of Shiraz’s berths, David finagled this spot. Apparently the contractors
had taken exception to him
borrowing
a berth space.