Greenshift (6 page)

“I admire your need for
independence,” David said. There was a lot he admired about her.

A chilled night breeze, laced
with music and laughter, blew along the boardwalk as they approached the docks.
David welcomed the coolness on his face, but Mari’s slight frame shivered with
the ten degree drop in temperature. He wished he’d worn a jacket just so he
could make the chivalrous gesture of wrapping it around her.

“If you’re cold, we can take
the ferry back,” he said, glancing toward the string of lights marking the
waterway docks.

“No, I like walking.”
She tried to suppress a little chatter to her teeth. “There’s so much to
see here, and I like to be right where it’s all happening.”

He tucked her into his side with
an arm around her shoulders, trying to warm her as best as he could. She hugged
his waist and leaned her head against his chest. They walked through the
buskers and tourists of Shiraz as though being together like this was the most
natural of states. Not that being this close to her didn’t make his heart beat
a little stronger or his pants fit a little tighter—he’d have to be comatose
not to respond to her. Still, he marveled at how right it felt to be with her.

A traveling drum quartet parading
through stopped foot traffic in the middle of the boardwalk. The men and women,
dressed in silver with threads of light shimmering along the fabric’s seams,
high-stepped while pounding on all sizes and shapes of percussion instruments
hanging from harnesses on their shoulders.

As the performers danced past, David
watched the delight shining in Mari’s face. “You’re beautiful.”

The compliment captured her attention,
so he took the opportunity to lean down and kiss her. The wonderful citrusy
notes of her scentbots mixed with the sweet smell of chocolate and strawberry
layer cake and night-blooming water lilies on the edge of the bay. He moved his
mouth over hers gently, testing her reaction. She responded a little shyly,
barely parting her lips, but her hand slid up his chest to caress his face.

The innocence of the moment
impacted David more than he expected. The way she slowly explored his mouth,
first with her lips, then small darts with the tip of her tongue revealed how much
this pleasant action meant to her. His heart pounded faster with the
realization. After all these years, all the women he’d touched, none took the
time to enjoy a simple kiss as much as Mari did. He, too, had taken the
intimacy for granted until this instant.

The shrill and boom of fireworks
filled the night air as if celebrating David and Mari’s moment. He felt Mari
smile beneath his lips and opened his eyes to see her peeking up at a golden
flower of sparks lighting the blue-black sky above them.

“Perfect timing,” he
said, still pressed against her mouth.

“Perfect,” was all she
said before slipping back into their kiss, not quite as shyly this time.

Dale called Liu Stavros to
confirm his price for a blonde with coral-colored eyes.

“This girl had the full
effect of the vaccine. Though not to my taste, her eyes are certainly unique, even
compared to the other two women I procured.”

“And, she’s blonde, you
say?”

“Sunny blonde with dyed red
tips, but that can be cut off if you prefer something more natural.”

The low laugh which rumbled
through Dale’s reporter made his stomach queasy. He knew Liu would want the
honor of cutting Mari’s hair himself. And it wouldn’t stop with her red locks.
Liu had a sadistic mind that always found new ways to inflict pain upon his
conquests.

Dale tried not to think about the
rumors he’d heard regarding Liu’s sport with women. Too many horrible details
about the rapes and disfiguring torture. But he couldn’t ignore the memory of
seeing one of Liu’s victims for himself. Still bound to the bed, shrieking in
her post-coital nakedness, eye sockets empty and bloody. That woman had once
had coral eyes, too.

“I’m transmitting a vid of
her from earlier tonight.”

Liu’s sick moan of pleasure made
Dale feel a little sorry for Boston Maribu.

“She’ll cost you
double,” Dale said. Hopefully he could make up for recent losses.

“Happily.”

That made Dale feel a little
less
sorry.

“I’ll have the money
transferred into your account once she’s in my possession.”

Business as usual with Liu.

“See you soon.”

As Dale ended his transmission,
he thought of how Boston—Mari—had slipped through his fingers last year on
Deleine. Her family had been right not to trust him. He wondered if he would
have the same problems with the Armadan she was with tonight. If they had a
relationship…no, she would have introduced him as her prime or at least as an
amour. And, surely any man who was involved with her wouldn’t have stood by
while Dale touched and caressed her the way he had. Although David Anlow had
regarded him with a certain antagonism, but maybe that was simply the Armadan
in him.

Not that Dale’s interest went
further than collecting his finder’s fee on Mari. She was beautiful, yes, even
with the exotic eye color, but he couldn’t get past the idea that her genes
were somehow polluted. But it was that very adulteration which made Liu willing
to pay so high a price for her.

Apprehension crowded David’s
earlier happiness as they drew near the
Bard
‘s berth. Maybe he wasn’t
ready for the others to know about tonight. But how could he tell Mari that
without insulting her? He pulled his arm away from her shoulders very
delicately and took her small hands in his. “Mari, I think we should keep
tonight our secret. I’m afraid the others—”

“Will ruin it?” she
finished.

He was sure his surprise showed
on his face. “So, you think so, too?” For some reason, now that she
wanted to keep
him
a secret, he wanted nothing more than to walk on
board and kiss her in full view of anyone who was around, which would probably
be no one at this time of night.

“Sean already doesn’t like
you,” she said.

A little twitch jumped into
David’s jaw thinking that she cared what Sean might think about tonight.

“And Kenon will never let up
about it. Soli would make an official record of every time we looked at one
another and say it was part of her archivist duties when we all know she can be
nosy. And Geir, well, when he gets back, Geir would actually think it’s about
time, considering I told him how much I liked you. Besides, it’s kind of exciting
to sneak around.”

“You confided in Geir?”

“Of course,” she said,
like it should have been obvious.

David wasn’t sure how he felt
about that—not that he didn’t like the other Armadan, even if Geir chose a life
outside the fleet. David just found he disliked how every guy around was more
comfortable with Mari than he was. And Geir was halfway around the system right
now.

David used his wrist reporter to
lower the gangway to the
Bard
so that by the time they reached it, they
could walk straight on board. As he suspected, no one was in sight. Soli and
Kenon probably spent the night with their amours and Sean was no doubt brooding
in his suite or drinking and dosing in some bar in the Latulip Underground.

Despite David and Mari being
alone, or because they
were
alone, the apprehension slithered back under
David’s skin, putting him on high alert. He finally admitted that it had
nothing to do with Mari or being caught with her. Feigning nonchalance, he
scanned the shadowed areas around their berth and the next one over. It seemed
fine.

Then the shadows moved.

Training took over, keeping his
heartbeat steady, but readying his muscles and mind for action. “Mari,
head inside the
Bard
.”

The moving shadows morphed into
six figures, all male. Judging by their slate grey workers’ pants and stained
shirts, David guessed they were Lower Caste laborers from the dock. Clothing
was really the only way he could ever identify Lowers, because to him, they
looked an awful lot like any other Socialite, except the homogenized contractors.
But don’t say that to any of the old money Socialites from around here—they claimed
they could tell just by looking at a person what their genetic background was.
Of course, a lot of Socialites only saw what they wanted to see.

It was then David noticed two
contractors in the neighboring berth fifty meters away. Both males stood in the
shadow of a dormant cargo off-loader that towered as high as a three story
building so he couldn’t quite see the men’s faces, but he already knew who they
were. And the clandestine nature of Killian and Ward’s presence said they’d be
no help with the ambush threatening Mari and him.

The dock workers wielded an array
of tools from an electronic wrench as long as David’s forearm to simple lengths
of chain with massive links. And the men weren’t afraid to brandish the
makeshift weapons with ominous intent. Even a half-hearted swing of that
electronic wrench could crack a man’s skull in half. The same went for the
bone-snapping links in those chains. But it was the hidden dangers that
concerned David the most. Whatever they weren’t advertising was undoubtedly
nastier than something from a tool chest or construction site.

Mari curled a hand around his
forearm.

He gently peeled her fingers away
and whispered, “Mari, I need you to head for the ship and pull up the
gangway as soon as you get inside.”

“I’m not leav—”

“Please, Boston.” He
used her given name forcefully in hopes she understood the gravity of what he
asked.

She scrutinized the men circling
closer to them, then nodded in agreement. He noticed fear in her wide eyes, but
she squared her shoulders and walked toward the
Bard
.

One of the men, dangling a chain
and wearing a grease-stained hat, altered his course to intercept her.

“You take another step
toward her and I will break both of your legs.” David’s sharp tone stopped
the man’s advance.

Mari paused before picking up her
pace. Though David watched her climb the gangway, he kept each of the men in
his periphery and was aware of their positions. He also noted the contractors finally
moved a little closer, taking up prime spectator spots, eager for the fight
they had been cheated out of earlier.

What kind of men let others do
their fighting for them?

“This isn’t your
berth,” a man with cropped blonde hair and prominent brows said. He was
most likely the leader of this bunch, but maybe only because he looked a few
decades older than the rest. David made careful note that the guy held nothing
in his hands.

“Why do you care?”
David rotated his left shoulder just enough to keep the hat-wearing worker and
his shorter companions in sight. “I doubt the six of you could scrape
together enough money for your own ship, so I’m sure you aren’t the ones
renting this space.”

“Armadans are always so
tight with money. They think they have more than everyone else in the
system.” The blonde man elicited a few mirthless laughs from his cohorts. Though
he halted a good ten meters away. David didn’t miss the bulge in his waistline that
confirmed the man had a ranged weapon, like an illegal cender or pack of razor
discs, which could inflict damage from a safe distance.

The last two men, more grizzled
than their older counter parts, flanked David’s right. That was a bad idea—they
had put the
Bard
‘s landing gear between them and an escape.

Lots of hard, protruding
surfaces on that landing gear
.

He was about to step toward them
when a blur of movement came at him from the other direction. Hat guy swung the
huge chain at David’s head, the effort bobbling his balance. David ducked and twisted
away before the metal links made contact. He kicked backward into the man’s
mid-section and knocked him off his feet.

The amber berth lights overhead glinted
off metal back by the landing gear. The grizzled men rushed him with screams
that belonged on a battlefield, not an urban dock. One brandished an electronic
wrench, the other a sledgehammer. Snatching his first attacker up off the
ground, David yanked the man in front of him just in time to take the full
brunt of the wrench’s blow. The splintering of a shoulder and clavicle was
almost as loud as the man’s screams. It stunned the guy who had swung the
wrench long enough for David to shove his human shield into the man and propel
them both into the landing gear. Their bodies hit hard and bounced down to the
concrete.

The next man swung the
sledgehammer at David’s face. His opponent found out the hard way that Armadans
didn’t sacrifice much speed for their bulk. David caught the man’s wrist
mid-swing and jammed his fingers between the radius and ulna, pinching the sensitive
tendons in a fleet technique used to disarm an opponent. The wrench fell from
the man’s grip and clattered to the cement. He connected a lucky left hook to
David’s jaw. David responded by forcing the man’s arm by the elbow across his
back until he heard the pop of a dislocated shoulder. The man screamed for
release.

The leader ordered the last two
men to move in, but they dropped their chains and went for more lethal weapons,
a couple of small flat razor discs secreted in their waistbands.

David swung his screaming shield
into the discs’ path. The multi-pointed blades thudded into the man’s shoulder
and jaw. He thrashed and pulled at David’s wrist reporter, trying to pry his
way out of the Armadan’s iron grasp. Though the reporter cut into David’s skin,
he never lost focus and fielded a projectile coming from his left by whirling his
human shield around. David’s reporter finally broke free as the barrage of
razor discs smashed into the wounded man. The edge of one disc snagged David,
leaving a rough gash in his forearm.