Recycled (33 page)

"Ride me, stud boy, ride!" she ordered, and because he felt like he was being forced to do this, he tossed all his inhibitions aside. He did things with the Chitzsky female that he'd never done with any Barion woman and she did things to him that he'd never imagined possible.

It turned out this wasn't nearly the punishment they had all intended, so that part he'd have to fake.

The door to Drewcila's office—also known as the "war room" in the underground bunker—was open as it normally was. What wasn't normal, even for Drew, was that she seemed to be having an intense conversation with . . . well, with no one. When Van Gar stopped in the doorway, she looked startled, but much to his astonishment she just kept talking to herself.

"Yes, well, you just do a good, quick, clean job of it, and I'll give you twice that on your return. Do it at the exact moment I want it done, and I'll triple the amount." She stood up then and seemed to shake hands with the air. She sat back down."Be careful." She waved, and then her eyes returned to the desk in front of her. Van Gar walked on in, and looked around to see if the director or some of the camera crew were there. Seeing nothing, he laughed and sat down in the chair across from Drewcila."Drew . . . what the hell were you just doing?"

"It's not important. Hey, listen . . . When are the first of our ships getting here with your people as crew?"

"Half of them will be here in another couple of hours, tops. Why?"

Instead of answering him, Drewcila got up and started pacing, making symbols in the air and occasionally erasing them with her fist as she did so. At least this was normal behavior. Drewcila was like a walking calculator, and she could figure out even the most complex problems—especially when it concerned money—in just this way. More amazing, Drew could do things a computer really couldn't do as accurately. Drew knew beings, and she knew what they were capable of. More importantly, she seemed to know what they were likely to do, how they would or would not react to a given situation. She stopped suddenly in mid-calculation and looked at him.

"All right, get on the horn. Tell them to gather here," she pointed to a spot on the map, "in the space just out of the atmosphere, and hopefully out of Lockhede detector range. They shouldn't be expecting an attack from deep space, so we should be OK. When we give them the signal, they are to go here," she pointed to a spot on the planet map, "without delay, and open fire. I don't want
anything
to fly away."

Van Gar nodded and moved to the console, where he'd no doubt be the rest of the day, grumbling, "Good morning, it's good to see you, too."

Drew just laughed and mostly ignored him. She didn't have time to mollycoddle anyone this morning. She was at war. She called the admiral of the imperial fleet, who, when his face appeared on her screen, looked as if she might have gotten him out of bed. She just clicked her tongue and shook her head to show her disapproval. In this outfit she looked so damn intimidating she didn't really have to do anything else.

"My queen . . . I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, be ready," she said, working at keeping the smile from her face with an effort. This really was just a hell of a lot of fun."Do we know the position of the last two Lockhede battle cruisers?"

"We believe so, yes."

"Don't believe so, know. Find them, and then at precisely twenty-hundred hours I want you to take every available ship in our fleet and pound them till they fall from the sky."

"But, my queen . . ."

"But me no buts, man. This is war. We don't have time for buts. By twenty-two hundred hours I want those ships to be nothing but burning husks littering the planet. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, my queen, but surely . . ."

"What did I tell you about the buts?"

"My queen, if we attack them with every ship in the fleet, that will leave the rest of the country without defense from an aerial strike," the admiral objected.

"Are there no ground to air missiles? Are there no anti-aircraft guns?" Drewcila thundered."Did it sound like I was asking? Because I wasn't. That was an order, and you have to do what I say because . . . well, because I'm queen and all."

The admiral bowed low, and answered, "Yes of course, my queen, your every wish is my command. Please pardon my ignorance, for I know that your great wisdom shall lead us to victory."

The transmission ended. As Arcadia walked into the room and took her place behind her own computer console she looked at Van Gar, "Did you hear that drivel? Is it any wonder that her head is so incredibly swollen?"

Van Gar just mumbled something incoherent and nodded.

"A little respect, peasant," Drewcila said with a laugh.

Arcadia laughed and started keyboarding."Woo hoo! Take a look at this baby." She transferred the data from her screen to Drew's.

Drew read the numbers and started laughing.

"Well?" Van Gar asked.

"Qwah-Co stock is on the rise again," Arcadia announced.

Drew got up and started pacing."Yes, Qwah-Co stock is on the rise, even though the entire operation has come to a near halt because of this war. Do you know what that means?"

"That you're no longer losing money?" Van Gar answered.

Drewcila stopped pacing and turned to glare at him."Besides that?"

"I can't guess, but I'm sure you're dying to tell me."

"It means I'm going to win the war. My plan is going to work, and the war will be over by tomorrow afternoon."

"You've garnered all that information from the fact that your stocks are on the rise again?" Van Gar asked skeptically.

"Hey! Stockholders are never wrong." She sat down and made another call, this time to the "real" general of the Barion army. Unlike his naval counterpart, this man was fully dressed, alert, and ready for action.

"General, good news! My stock is up. That means we shall be triumphant in battle."

"Uh . . . all right."

"That's right, everything is all right. Now, here's the plan." She lined it all out for him in great detail, ending with, '. . . after they have pounded the area for several minutes, they will fly out, and that's when you will move in. You will sweep the area, taking prisoners and killing any who resist until that area is clean. Then you will hold that ground until the Lockhedes either surrender or we are forced to move further inward."

"I understand, and will carry out all your plans, my Queen."

The transmission closed, and Drewcila started laughing. When her laughter failed to get the attention of either of her mates, she laughed more maniacally until they both turned to give her their undivided attention.

"That's better." She stopped laughing."Those Lockhede bastards. They failed to understand who they were up against. They looked at our country and saw that we were militarily inferior to them, but they failed to understand the strength of my company. By combining the strength of the country with the strength of my corporation we will slam those bastards back into the stone age."

"Was that really necessary, or did you just need to gloat?" Van Gar asked, returning to his work.

"Hey! Gloating's necessary."

Dartan walked in, minus the film crew. The queen appeared to be in deep thought."My Queen, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was wondering if you'd like me to make any sort of report for you this morning, or if you'd perhaps like to make a statement before you go to the funeral."

She seemed to think about this for a moment, then looked at him and said, "I don't think people should actually say anything during orgasm. What do you think, Dartan?"

Dartan was more than a little taken aback, and he didn't appreciate at all the giggling from the two aliens, who were no doubt laughing at his expense."Excuse me, my Queen?"

"When you're having orgasm, you just sort of open your mouth and words come out. You know, things like, 'Give it to me, give it to me!' Well, obviously they already are. Then there's the ever-popular begging, as in, 'Please, baby! Please!' As if they're going to stop doing something that's obviously working. And what about the, 'Oh gods! Oh my gods!' It just seems to me like that's a strange time to become religious. And what's with the whole saying everything twice thing? Do you just assume that they didn't hear you the first time? The problem is, of course, that you aren't thinking anything, because there is no blood in your brain. So, what have we learned?"

"I . . . I'm not really sure?" Dartan said in confusion.

"That you shouldn't speak during orgasm," Arcadia and Van Gar said in unison, which made the queen cringe.

She recovered quickly, "Yes, that's exactly right."

Dartan still didn't understand."Is that to be a royal decree then?"

"Most certainly not! We are at war. We can't be wasting our time with such trivial pursuits. It was just an observation. What was it you wanted again?"

"My Queen, the funeral. It's in a few hours, and . . ."

"I just said I can't be bothered with such trivial things."

"Do you maybe want to say a few words about your dear, departed husband?"

"I would, but I'm afraid none of them would help my popularity with the people of Barious. Between you and me, Dartan, he was sort of a prick. My sister will be playing me today . . ."

"Your sister? I . . . I don't understand."

"My sister, Stasha. She will be playing the role of myself in today's production of
The Funeral Of A Well-Loved King
, while I will be dealing with more important matters."

"Like whether or not people should talk while they're screwing," Van Gar mumbled. He and Arcadia both laughed, and Drew glared at their backs across the room before turning back to Dartan.

"Like the war and such. The director has gone all out, a large cast has been hired, and I'm told it will be the most beautiful of funerals."

Lex, posing as the general and high commander of the army, was the first to speak of the deceased. The speech he read off the cue cards was excellent. The audience was beautiful and doing a very believable job of grieving. The flowers, the chorus—all beautiful.

And the tears Stasha cried were very real. Last night after Dylan had made love to her, she'd confessed to her love for him. Then he'd very gently but firmly informed her that he wasn't interested in any sort of permanent relationship. In his delicate words,
Honey, you're great, and I wouldn't mind giving you a tumble now and again, but there is just too much free pussy out there, and I am way too young and far too good looking to get stuck with one woman till the end of time.

So her tears were real even if they weren't actually for Zarco, the lying cheating, and sexually incompetent bastard!

To make matters worse, her parents disapproved of the funeral being in fact a media production, and they were glaring at her, no doubt expecting her to do the "right" thing and expose the whole farce when her time came to speak.

Suddenly, the cue card man fumbled the cards, and she heard Lex saying, "In closing, let me just say," he turned on the tears, "don't any of you understand? It's so much worse than that. If we continue to travel in these . . . these temperate times, we may very well go back to a time when our good king didn't exist at all."

There wasn't a dry eye in the house, and no one seemed at all concerned that what he said made no sense. Stasha decided that if the guy with the cards dropped them during her eulogy and made her ad lib, she was going to have her sister kill him. She gave him a look which said as much, as she thought to herself,
All this high-tech shit, and we can't have a simple teleprompter!

She blew her nose harder than was really lady-like, and walked up to the podium. She dried her eyes with the same handkerchief, trying hard to avoid the blobs of snot, and wishing she'd brought one for the big job and one for the small one. The makeup people had done a job on her, and this stuff wasn't likely to come off till they used a ton of chemicals—and maybe some blasting compound. While in the past she'd only really looked like her sister if people were squinting real hard, today she could have probably gone to bed with one of her sister's mates, and they wouldn't have known the difference—except of course when they started having sex, because apparently her sister was really good at it, and she was just as inept as poor, dead Zarco. The tears started to flow again, and Dartan walked up and kindly handed her a new handkerchief, which she promptly forgot to save for tears and blew her nose on. She was glad that after several failed attempts she had given in and let the script writers take care of the eulogy. Stasha dried her eyes on her sleeve, and could just make out the cue cards.

Well, at least I'm giving the country what it wants—a queen in deep grief.

She cleared her throat."My dear friends and countrymen. We come here today not to grieve over the passing of a monarch, but to celebrate his life." She sobbed, sniffled, and continued."My dear husband was a man of the people, and for the people, and it is a crime that the hateful acts of the nobility that killed him made it look as if he had turned his back on the needs of his people in his final days. This was not the way of things. Zarco lived his final hours in terror. In terror for his country, terror for myself, and terror for the legacy he wished to leave behind. Finally, he died in terror for his own life, being forced to accept a war he wanted no part of . . ."