The Rift Rider (12 page)

Charlie exchanged his robe for an equally
soft lilac shirt and loose fitting black trousers. The feel of the material
against his clean skin brought a smile to his face.

“Looking good Charlie,” Waw said, examining
him with a cocked head. “You’ll surely please the ladyship tonight.”

 
“I hope so,” Charlie said, his brow
knitting.

“She’ll go easy on you this first time. It's
her pet desert stalkers that you should worry about." He laughed.

"You mean those two beasts sat beside
her throne?"

“Yeah, Debel and Ius. Lady Ori shares her
bedchamber with them.”

Charlie turned pale.

“Don't worry. If you do what I tell you,
you'll be okay. Now, when you first walk into her bedchamber, her ladyship will
bring the beasts up to you. They'll act all aggressive and snap at you.
Whatever you do, don't make any sharp movements. It's all for show, but a
couple of nervous concubines have lost a finger or two in the past. You'll know
when they've accepted you. They'll give you a lick. After that, you'll have
nothing to worry about.”

No sharp movements, Charlie told to himself,
doing his upmost to embed the information into his memory.

“Come on," Waw said. "I’m hungry. Let’s
go get some food and then we can prepare for this evening.”

They floated down to the opposite end of the
harem. It seemed most of the concubines had the same idea. When they reached
the yellow dining marquee, and stepped inside, a large queue had already
formed.

The line of rumbling stomachs led to a
table, heaped high with food and drink, running river like across the centre of
the marque. Behind it, servants, distinguishable from the concubines by their
black kimonos and less chiselled features, piled food onto the trays held
before them.

Charlie joined the line. In front of him, a
boyish-faced concubine smiled and held out his hand in greeting, the way Bei
had first done in the destroyer's holding cell. As Charlie progressed along the
line, more and more concubines came over to say hello and welcome him to their
ranks.
 

By the time he reached the vast river of
food, his stomach was growling and his mouth salivating. Bowls, filled to the
brim with glowing broths, released tails of spicy steam and vapour that wound
their way to the marque roof. The rich aromas sent nostrils twitching across
the marquee.

Two white furred, heavily fanged chefs,
wielding carving knives, and looking very much like Bork's older brothers,
stood behind succulent joints of black and brown meat. They sliced off juicy
cuts to any concubine stepping up to their chopping boards. Beside them a spit
turned, slowly cooking a pig-sized creature with eight legs and the head of an
ant. Each turn sent a slither of fat dripping on to the green flames beneath,
making a satisfying hiss.

Charlie grabbed a ceramic bowl and scanned
the table for something familiar. Most dishes looked and smelled unlike
anything served on Earth. However, the occasional pot contained something that
might be curry or stew. With a tinge of disappointment, Charlie noted there was
nothing resembling chips.

Charlie stepped up to the spit and let one
of the monstrous chefs fill his plate with some of the giant ant-pig meat.
Further down the table, he saw a steaming pan of meaty chunks swimming in red
sauce, took a chance that it was Tikka Masala, and filled his bowl with it.

Charlie, now ravenous after seeing and
smelling all that food, sat down next to Waw and tucked in. The meat was as
tender as Argentinian steak and twice as tasty. The curry turned out to be a
tangy fruit dessert, but he ate it anyway.

While Charlie tucked in, Waw explained how
his first evening with Lady Ori would proceed, and what she would expect of
him. When Waw went into the specific details of how to best pleasure her, Charlie
almost choked on his ant-pig.

After lunch, Waw took Charlie to the last of
the four marquees. Unlike the other three, the silhouettes of those inside
remained hidden, lost behind its black velvet walls. Charlie stepped inside,
unsure of what to expect.

A dozen or so rooms lined the edge of the
circular marque, each separated by a thin curtain of black fabric. Charlie
could see shadows twisting behind the thin material. They seemed to be engaging
in the type of activity so expertly carved onto the harem door.

In the centre of the marquee, surrounded by
piles of cushions, and curved sofas, lay a large circular platform, covered in
animal furs. Charlie counted six concubines grouped around it, scratching their
chins and yawning. They looked as if they were waiting for a show to begin.

"This is where the concubines receive
their training in the art of love," Waw said.

Porn, Charlie thought. This is where we
watch porn to get new ideas. He looked around the room and frowned when he
found none of the holographic projectors he had seen outside.

“Each morning," Waw said, "female
servants, the ones deemed beautiful enough, volunteer to enter the harem to
assist the concubines in their training. It is seen as a great privilege to
enter the black marquee."

Waw took his shoes off and hopped onto the
platform. “This is where you will learn.”

Charlie bulked. “In front of other people?”

“I'll be personally giving you one to one
tutorship here on the training platform.”

“What?' Charlie said. "You’ll be
standing next to me the whole time, pointing out what I’m doing wrong.”

“Of course. How else do you expect to
learn?”

"What about the guys over there?"
Charlie indicated the concubines with a hooked thumb.

"They'll be throwing out some
suggestions too."

 
Charlie said nothing. The freakiest thing
he had ever got up to in the sack would barely raise an eyebrow even back on
Earth. Now he was about to shag a random alien while a tutor took notes and six
others threw pointers at him. He tensed up. Christ, he thought, I hope I get
one of the women from the bath marquee. If I get a furry lady, there's no way
I'll be able to go through with it.

"We don’t have much time and I need to
see your current skill level. We can't have you going into her ladyship's
bedchamber at half-cock."

“What?" Charlie said. "Now?
Here?"

Waw sighed. He scanned the outer rooms and
said, "Okay. For your first day, let's use a private room."

A wave of relief flooded through Charlie.
"Thank you."

"But only for today. You'll have to get
over that shyness if you want to improve." Waw clapped his hands three
times and from one of the curtained off rooms, two female turen, green and
purple, stepped out, dressed in plain cream robes. They walked into the inner
circle and with a flick of their wrists let their robes fall to the floor,
revealing hairless, slender shoulders, pert breasts, and round behinds.

They strode up to Charlie and at Waw's
signal grabbed him by the shoulders and led him into one of the curtained
rooms. A round bed lay in the middle of the room. The girls laughed and pushed
him onto it.

The curtain opened. Waw stepped inside. He
took a seat in the corner of the room. From his pocked he withdrew a small slab
and pen. "Begin."

 
At his command, the two girls climbed
onto the bed and, licking their pouting lips, crawled on all fours towards
Charlie.

Charlie swallowed. “Oh boy.”

Days went by.
Slowly but surely, Charlie grew more confident in his role as palace concubine.
Lady Ori had taken a shine to him, and against all expectation she had proven
to be an exciting, if not rather stern, bed partner. To Charlie's relief she
had no interest in him at all besides sleeping with him. And so she asked him
no awkward questions about his childhood on Moon One or how he had come to find
himself in Bei's company.

Now, when he
entered her bedchamber, he no longer felt the cold dread he had experienced
that first night. He knew what to expect, and how to best perform his duties.
And also, thanks to the rashers of meat he kept in his pockets, Lady Ori's two pets
greeted him with purrs of pleasure instead of growls of disdain. Each night, he
would dangle the barbeque meat in front of them and let it drop into the
snapping jaws. Then he would rub their scaly bellies, with Lady Ori smiling on.

During their lovemaking,
Charlie pushed all thoughts of his mission, and his fears of being caught to
the back of his mind. He concentrated solely on the job at hand, performing it with
almost religious zeal, like some Shaolin sex monk. It was tiresome work, but
highly enjoyable all the same, even if it did feel like he was shagging a horny
headmistress.

Afterwards, Lady
Ori usually sent him back to the harem. However, twice she had let him stay,
wanting him immediately at hand for a morning session. It was on these nights
that Charlie should have completed his mission. She kept her personal computing
device, no larger than a DVD case, with her at all times, and when she slept,
she placed it on the bedside table.

Both nights he
had lain there, wide awake, running through the plan in his head; slip her hand
against its surface to activate it, carefully so as not to wake her, take out
his tooth chip, attach it to the device, upload the data, unencrypt it and
download it. Simple. Yet each time he had bottled it.

Instead of
successfully slipping the tooth back inside his mouth, and sneaking out into
the night, he would stare up at the ceiling, conjuring up excuses to tell Bei
the next morning.

How he dreaded
those conversations, nervously carried out in the harem toilet. Bei was growing
more and more impatient. Each time Charlie told him he had failed, Bei would
groan into his ear shell. His days and nights spent out hiding on the edge of
town were boring him to tears. And the longer he was out there, the more likely
a palace spy would discover him and work out that his gift to Lady Ori was more
than it seemed.

Also, although
Lady Ori had requested Charlie's presence every night so far, soon she would
lose interest and his visits would become less frequent and shorter. Charlie's
time was running out. He had to act quickly. Otherwise he would be stuck in
alien servitude forever.

Originally, that
had not seemed too terrible a prospect. He spent his days lounging with the
concubines. A friendly, warm-hearted, hilarious bunch of men, they were always
quick to crack a joke and share an anecdote. Charlie loved the banter. It
reminded him of the rugby tours he had gone on, spending every waking hour with
his teammates. He had taught some of the men the basics of touch rugby,
claiming it as a new sport developed on Moon One. They had taken to playing
regular games after lunch. The concubines loved it.

Charlie's only
task during the day was to perfect his techniques with palace servants under
Waw's watchful eye. At the start, Waw had let him use the private rooms. But
eventually he lost patience and made Charlie have sex on the platform.

The first time
was beyond embarrassing. If the volunteer had not been one of the hottest
servant girls in the palace, he doubted he would have been able to do it. But
in time, he realised the concubines barely looked at him and he stopped
worrying. In the end it was just sex, as Waw said.

In the first
four days in the harem, he quadrupled the number of women he had ever slept
with and learned enough positions to write a second Karma Sutra. He had even
shagged a couple of furry females and to his surprise had rather enjoyed it. He
wondered if that made him a pervert, and vowed never to tell anyone back on
Earth, if he ever returned.

But on the fifth
day, the realisation that he was a prisoner, a pampered one but a prisoner
nonetheless, finally set in. The silver bracelets served as a constant reminder
of his imprisonment. He had asked a concubine, one he knew he could trust,
whether anyone had successfully cut them off. The concubine shook his head and
told him that the bracelets were lined with explosives and any incision would
leave the unlucky servant with a bloody stump for a hand.
 

Knowing his
Robundee blade would be no help with the bracelets, Charlie had tried sliding
them off by covering his wrists in an array of dishes that included meat sauce,
animal fat dessert, jellied insects and the slime filled testicles of an edible
rodent species, a Seenthee delicacy. But nothing worked. After minutes of
tugging and yanking, they remained stubbornly wrapped around his wrists, shiny,
beautiful and deadly.

Lying beside the
sleeping monarch that night, he accepted he would probably be stuck in this
harem, on this strange alien planet forever. And for the first time he missed
home. He counted the days since that fateful surf. Assuming he had been on
Yojim's ship a day before the Corporation caught him, he had been away a week.
It felt much longer.

He wondered
about his friends. What did they think happened to him? The thought of them
mourning his death brought pricks to the back of his eyes.

And home was not
all he missed. There was Awani too.

Despite the
almost constant supply of beautiful women in the black marque, he found himself
thinking of Awani more and more often. He would remember her mischievous smile
or the way her face flushed pink when she was angry. He would smile at the memory.
And then he would feel like an absolute bastard for sleeping with all the
servants instead of completing his mission.

He would try and
shake it off, telling himself that she probably was not even interested anyway.
But the feeling would stubbornly remain. There was no way around it. He would
have to get off here, man up, and confess his feelings for her.

Doctor Sree
cleared his throat. A circle of silver faces stared at him from around the
table. Outside the nightlights of the Corporation domestic zone glittered like
stars. Beyond them, like a monstrous shadow, the zone wall climbed out of the
earth and loomed silently over the flickering lights. On the other side of the century
old barrier lay Jajag city, Seenthee's wretched capital, and his hometown.

The
Corporation's ten most powerful men and women faced him, professional
indifference on their silver faces. Doctor Sree scratched his chin and rested
his gaze on the warm, reassuring face of the CEO. The petite leader sat at the
head of the table, her bird-like frame perched on the edge of her seat.

"I'm happy
to say," he said, his voice full of pride, "that the tests were a
success, Ma'am. Of the four shadow fighters fitted with rift engines, three
reached speeds of up to fifteen per cent the speed of light. That's a thousand
times faster than the speed our current ships travel at."

"What
happened to the fourth?" asked the most powerful woman on the planet.

"Unfortunately,
it strayed too far into the Wrake Pass and a roller disappeared with it. We lost
all contact with it and the pilot is assumed dead."

The table broke
out into murmurs.

"Although
we only operate on the very edge of the Wrake Pass," the scientist
said,
 
"we still run the risk
of roller interference."

"However
the cost was well worth it," Chief Lade said. He was sat on Doctor Sree's
right. The other silver men and women went quiet. When Lade spoke, people
listened. Doctor Sree wished he had the same effect on a crowd. People usually
sneered at him, and went right on talking.

Lade raised a
silver eyebrow at the scientist, signalling him to continue.

"Yes, yes,
definitely," Doctor Sree said. "The Wrake Pass remains the best place
to open a rift and draw out the energy we need to fire the rift engines. And we
learned a great deal from our experiments out there. In fact, work has already
begun on a much larger, more efficient engine. This second generation engine
will be large enough to power a destroyer, pushing it up to thirty per cent
light speed."

"And at
that speed," the CEO said, "how long will it take to circumnavigate
the Pass and reach Poklawi space?"

"Two
months."

A nervous energy
flittered around the table.

"When will
it be ready?"

"Give me
two weeks," Doctor Sree said, happy to see the looks of surprise on the
silver faces. They had obviously held little hope for his experiments and now
he was handing them everything they had always dreamed of. One point for the
regular, he thought.

The CEO slammed
her slender fists on the table. "Ladies and Gentleman of the board, we now
have our battle date. Two weeks from today we set voyage for Poklawi." As
she spoke, her calm, motherly countenance vanished. Her raised chin and
flashing eyes showed hope and power and vengeance. "No longer will those
red savages be able to hide behind their river of rolling beasts."

A wave of
excitement passed around the table.

"No longer
will the turen traitors be able to hit us and flee like cowards into the Pass
with their red allies." The CEO rose to her feet. A hush descended on the
room. "And when we have seized Poklawi, enslaving whatever barbarians
remain, and crushed the dregs of the resistance here on Seenthee, we will turn
our eyes outwards. We will fit a fleet of destroyers with these rift engines
and take them beyond the known realm, in search of new planets to conquer. For
this is the beginning of a new dawn in Corporation history. The dawn of the inter-galactic
empire of the Corporation."

Everyone around
the table rose to their feet, and all, except Doctor Sree and the silent Lade,
pumped their fists in the air and chanted, "Corporation, Corporation,
Corporation . . . "

"I trust
you have said nothing of what happened on the destroyer?" Lade said in a
voice as cold and hard as his eyes. The board members had filtered out of the
room. Executive Ko had waited and entered, taking her rightful place beside her
master.

Lade spoke
without fear of being overheard, having activated the anti-eavesdropping device
on his lapel, one of several tiny devices known only to him and a handful of
trusted executives in the department of technology. The chief prized exclusive
knowledge above all else, and those foolish enough to divulge his secrets died
painful deaths.
 

And now Doctor
Sree found himself in on the biggest secret of all, one that could bring Lade
the Corporation CEO seat, so long craved for, so long denied. Ko, by failing to
report the alien occurrence to her superiors in the department of military, had
also aligned herself with Lade.

She must believe
he can pull it off, Doctor Sree thought. If the military finds out she's been
holding back, she'll be held in treason.

He rubbed his
monobrow with his thumb and forefinger. To survive he would have to match these
silvers for cunning and ruthlessness.

"No,
Sir," Doctor Sree said, his nose releasing a pinched squeal. He started,
and squeezed his nostrils together. Chief Lade curled his lips in disgust.
 
"My team believe," the
scientist went on, "that I have been carrying out only routine tests on
the rift engines. I have shared my real findings with nobody." Although he
could not see them, he could feel Ko's viper's eyes boring into the back of his
head.

"Very
good," Lade said.

Ko stepped into
the scientist's line of sight, slipping a syringe into her pocket. The
scientist swallowed. That was meant for me, he thought. In case he didn't
believe me. He wondered whether the Chief had some kind of concealed lie detector
on him. Or implanted inside him. The thought worried him.

"Tell me
what you found out," Lade said.

"After the
alien escaped I dispatched some drones to investigate the section of space we
picked him up in. They've been beaming back data."

Lade ran a
manicured finger across his chin. "What did they find?"

"Anomalies
in the fabric of space close to where we found him."

Ko was
listening, her expression as blank as always.

Doctor Sree
paused. To Lade he said, "How much does she know?"

"Only that
we have found a way to draw immense power from the Universe."

"She needs
more if she's going to help us find him."

"Then give
her the basics," Lade said and then sharply, "without the
jargon."

 
Doctor Sree nodded. He loved showing off
his superior knowledge to silvers and the prospect of doing so with Executive
KO was delicious.

With an ill
concealed smirk, he said, "The fabric is an invisible layer separating our
Universe from a second dimension that runs parallel to it. The robundee call
this dimension or realm the Divide.

"We know
little about the Divide, but the late Doctor Krest hypothesised that with the
right calculations and technology a ship could pass into it at one point in the
Universe and come out seconds later at another. This point could be a day's
flight away or on the opposite side of the Universe.
 
The crazy fool tried it himself. It tore
his ship, himself and his fiancée into a billion atoms, and the resulting surge
of power badly damaged the pursuing destroyer."

"But every
silver knows the Corporation tortured Doctor Krest and his lover to
death," Ko said.