He stiffened. “Kelric.”
“What?”
“My name is Kelric. Not boyo. And leave my ‘ass’ out of it.”
“Touchy.” She swung her legs off the console and leaned forward, ruffling through the plasti-sheets. “Fill this out.” She held out a sheet to him. “I’ll need your documents, Kelric. Passport, visa, whatever you got.”
Damn. “I have no documents.”
She raised her eyebrows. Then she set the plasti-sheet back on the console. “Why not?”
“I lost them in the war.”
“Why? You in trouble?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you get new ID?”
“I was a prisoner.”
“A POW?” Unease flickered on her face. “You ISC?”
“It wasn’t a military prison.”
“So.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “You’re a con.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Kelric had no intention of telling her about Coba. He had made a vow, for his wife and children, to protect their world. He doubted this cargo master gave a kiss in a quasar who had kept him prisoner, but ISC and the Ruby Dynasty would punish Coba if either learned the truth. As Imperator he could protect Coba, if ISC reestablished itself. But he wasn’t Imperator yet, ISC was a mess, and unguarded confidences left a trail.
So he said, “I was a slave.” It was true, technically. According to Coba’s antediluvian laws, his wife, Ixpar, had owned him.
The cargo master uncrossed her arms. Sympathy showed on her face. “You seen those damn Aristos in our port? Frigging Aristo sadists in a Skolian port. I can’t believe it.” She leaned forward. “Listen, you go to a relocation office, tell them you were a taskmaker, and register your DNA. Once you’re in the database, I can hire you, no problem. I’ll be glad to give you a job. You’re a free man here, you remember that.”
Kelric knew that once his DNA pattern got into the system, he was in continual danger of discovery. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t answer, her wariness returned. “You don’t act like a slave. Too cocky. You’re a con, aren’t you?”
“No.”
She sat back and crossed her arms again. “You tried to play on my sympathy, hmmmm? No one makes a fool out of me, Kelli-boy. No documents and you want twenty-five an hour. Not a chance.”
“I wasn’t lying to you.”
“Why should I hire you?”
“You need me.”
“Not that bad.” She swung her feet back up on the console and picked up the schedule she had been reading. “We got no more to say.”
Kelric knew he would be hard-pressed to find legitimate employment if he refused to register with the authorities. But he had picked up enough from her mind to know she was more desperate for laborers than she let on.
“I’ll take twenty per hour,” he said.
She continued to read.
“Eighteen.”
She looked up. “Ten.”
“Eighteen.” He hoped he had read her mood right, that she needed handlers enough to go for the higher wage.
“Forget it,” she said.
“I can match the output of any other two handlers you have.”
She glanced over his muscled frame. “I can believe that.” Kelric waited. The cargo master waited.
When the silence stretched thin, she set down her papers. “All right. Eighteen.”
He gave the customary nod, sealing the bargain. But he didn’t relax. Something else was coming, the price of her willingness to hire him despite his lack of legal ID. Would she expect him to smuggle? Look the other way for illegal landings?
“One other thing, Kelli-boy,” she said.
“What?” If she called him Kelli-boy again, he was going to lose his proverbial stoicism.
She stood up, coming to her full height, at least six feet five inches, nearly two meters, almost as tall as he. Then she set down her papers and walked to a door in the wall near her console. When she pressed a panel, the door slid open, revealing Spartan living quarters with a bed against one wall.
She tilted her head toward the bed. “After you.”
He stared at her. “What? No.”
“You want the job, you do the work.” She smiled, showing teeth stained brown from chewing carqual leaves. “I’m sure you can do a good job, hmmm?”
He wanted to walk out. But his chances of finding someone else willing to hire him without proper documents were nil—unless he agreed to “extra” work. At least this didn’t require he break the law.
The cargo master leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “You staying or leaving?”
He walked over and regarded her quarters. They looked as spare up close as from across the room. He forced out his answer. “Staying.”
“Smart.” She lifted her hand, inviting him to enter. So he went into her bedroom. Following him, she closed the door. Then she looked him over again, this time her gaze lingering on his body with an appreciative cast she hadn’t let show before.
Kelric wasn’t sure what to do next, but he felt awkward just standing there. For lack of a better idea, he lifted his hand to her face and cupped her cheek. She turned her head, pressing her lips against his palm.
As he lowered his arm, she rubbed the collar of his shirt. “This is real silk.” She slid her hand down his arm to his scorched sleeve. “How’d you get burned?”
“Battle.”
“That had to be on another planet. No fighting here.” Taking his hand, she ran her thumb over his wrist guard. “And this, beautiful man, is genuine gold.”
He said nothing.
She regarded him with curiosity. “Where did you get those guards? They look ancient. Like marriage guards, the kind men wore in the Ruby Empire.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “You always this talkative?”
“No.”
fhe cargo master chuckled. “Yes, what? Yes, you got a wife from five thousand years in the past?”
“No.” Self-conscious, he rubbed his hand over the guard. “Yes, these are marriage guards.”
“Oh.” Her grin faded. “Your wife going to beat the shit out of me for fucking you?”
Kelric flushed. “You know,” he said, “if this is your idea of getting a man in a romantic mood, it leaves a lot to be desired.”
Unexpectedly, she looked embarrassed. “Pretty bad, hmmm? I never have figured out how men like to be romanced.” She touched his guard. “But I still want to know about this wife of yours. I don’t want any jealous lovers coming around.”
“She’s on another planet.”
“She coming here?”
“No.” He had forced himself to accept he would never see Ixpar again. As the citizen of a Restricted planet, she was forbidden to leave Coba. He could never return, not unless the interstellar situation stabilized and he established himself with enough power to ensure the safety of his wife and children. That could take decades, if the situation was as bad as it looked. If he lived that long. As much as he knew it was better to let them remain safe in anonymity, it left him with a deep sense of loss.
“I’m sorry about your wife.” The cargo master looked more relieved than sorry. She kissed the back of his hand, then bit at his knuckles, her tongue pressing his skin. Although many Skolians expressed affection with such gestures, no one on Coba had ever touched him that way. It felt odd. For that matter, having her touch him at all felt strange.
Kelric exhaled. He had to stop brooding, or he wouldn’t be able to go through with this.
When he rubbed his hand up her arm, her languorous arousal surged over him. It was uncomplicated lust, touched by neither love nor cruelty. This close to her, he picked up a sense of her thoughts. What they were doing was unusual for her too; in general she treated her employees reasonably well, crude in language but fair in action. He could have done without the dubious
honor of inspiring a change in her behavior.
She drew him into a kiss. Kelric made himself kiss her back. She smelled of machine oil, sweat, and carqual tobacco. It wasn’t all that unpleasant, aside from the bitter carqual taste, but it felt wrong, because of the coercion, but even more as a betrayal of Ixpar.
He tried to numb his thoughts. Putting his arms around her, he deepened their kiss, responding to what he picked up from her mind. Too gentle and she grew bored: too aggressive and it put her off. He modulated his intensity to fit what she wanted. When he stroked her back, she had almost no reaction, but when he slid his palm over her neck, her desire surged. So he played with the skin there, tracing circles that gave her chills he felt through her mind.
Eventually she stopped kissing him. Taking his hand, she drew him to the bed. They lay down on a blanket that covered a hard mattress. Holding her, he tried to imagine she was Ixpar. Both women were tall. Ixpar had a warrior’s beauty, powerful and clean, with well-shaped legs that went on forever, fiery hair sweeping to her waist, and large gray eyes. Remembering her only made him feel worse. He had too much to mourn, the loss of his spouse, children, sister, brothers, aunt, nephew.
The cargo master spoke in a low voice, gruff against his ear. “You’re so tense.” When he didn’t answer, she asked, “You miss this wife of yours so much?”
“Yes,” he said, before he thought to stay silent. Then he wondered if he had just lost his job.
She drew back to look at him. “You have, uh, a traditional contract? No extras?”
He wasn’t sure what “extras” meant, but he suspected she wanted to know if it was a monogamous marriage. “Yes.”
“You seem that type.” Avoiding his gaze, she fiddled with the laces on his shirt. “You don’t drill around, do you?”
“If you mean, have I ever committed adultery, the answer is no.”
She flushed. “You don’t have to put it that way.”
“How do you suggest I put it?”
The cargo master swore. Then she sat up on the bed and swung her legs over the side. As he sat up next to her, she said, “Your shift starts tomorrow at fifteen hundred hours. That’s dawn, Kelric, and if you’re late you get docked pay, just like everyone else. Shift goes ten hours. You want a second one, we’ll see.” She glowered. “Now, get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”
Relief washed over Kelric. Standing up, he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Be on time,” she grumbled.
He grinned. “I will.”
Then he left. He strode through her office and back out to the bronze sunlight streaming down from an aquamarine sky.
Banks of lights lit the warehouse despite the late hour. This far into the night, the isolated area was empty of people, robots, and movement. Except for Kelric. He wiped his hand across his forehead, smearing runnels of sweat. Then he lifted another crate off the loading dock and hefted it onto the glider. In the low gravity it hardly felt as if he was working at all.
Convincing Cargo Master Zeld to give him two shifts a day had been easy. He loaded twice as much as the best of her other human workers, his output rivaling even her cheaper robot cranes. His first shift started at 15:00, just after dawn, and went until 25:00. At 47:00, several hours after sunset, he reported in for ten more hours. He slept twice a day, once during midday, while heat scorched Porthaven, and once at night, after he came home from his second shift. The schedule did well by him, letting him rest as long as his depleted body needed.
Quirky Edgewhirl made him smile, with its fifty-nine-hour days. Its sun, Whirligig, spun so fast it resembled a squashed fruit. He had started work in midwinter, ten days ago, and already spring was almost half over. Edgewhirl had almost no axial tilt, so the climate stayed boringly constant: hot and clear days, cool and dry nights. No moon lit the sky. Whirligig’s tidal force was slowing the planet down, though; someday Edgewhirl’s rotation would be locked to its sun and it would always show the same face to Whirligig.
Each day after he woke, in the long hours before dawn, he took out his jeweled dice and played Quis, a strategy game he had learned on Coba. Every adult and child there played it. They told stories with Quis. Exchanged information. Gambled. But most of all, Quis was politics. The better a player wielded the dice, the greater her influence.
Kelric had taken well to Quis. Remarkably well. It had spurred Coba’s queens, called Managers in these modern times, to cloister him with the few other select men who had reached the elite ranks of Quis expertise. They served as advisers to a Manager, making their dice brilliance available only to her.
Here on Edgewhirl, the culture was close to egalitarian, as was the overall culture of Imperial Skolia. But Coba had been isolated for five millennia and still retained the Ruby Empire’s matriarchal structure. Caught in power struggles among the Managers and famed for his beauty, though Kelric had never understood why, he had spent the past eighteen years owned by a succession of warrior queens.
He had many memories of Coba he valued. Ixpar. There had also been Savina, a previous wife he had loved without reserve—and mourned the same way, when she died bearing his daughter. But gods, most Coban women were avatars. He had been bought, sold, seduced, kidnapped, married against his will, made the center of political schemes, and turned into the most expensive property in Coba’s known history, until finally they went to war over him. He regretted the war, but he had no intention of giving up his freedom to anyone now, not Coban, Allied, Skolian, or Eubian.
Kelric stirred himself from his reverie. Out here at night, far from the port terminals, he needed to pay extra attention to his surroundings. The danger of theft or random violence always existed; now, with so many security systems down, he had to be even more careful.
He hefted another crate onto the glider. One more and the platform was full, stacked with black boxes made from hardened plastiflex. He punched in a code and sent it on its way.
“I’ve never seen anyone load a glider that fast,” a man said.
Kelric spun around, his enhanced speed kicking in as he automatically snicked his knife out of its sheath on his belt. By the time his brain stopped his reflexes, he had raised his arm to throw the blade.
In the shadow of the warehouse, a man stood watching him. He was on the tall side, though to Kelric he didn’t seem particularly large.
“What do you want?” Kelric asked.
The man stepped into the light, holding his arms out at his sides to indicate he carried no weapons. He had short dark hair and a strong-featured face with a large nose. Light from the lamps glinted off silver buttons on the shoulders of his dark spacer’s uniform. His gaze flicked to the raised knife, then back to Kelric’s face. “I’m Jafe Maccar.”
“Captain Maccar?”
“That’s right.”
Kelric had just sent the glider to Maccar’s ship. He lowered his arm. “That was the last of your cargo.”
“Good.” Maccar paused. “Do you always work this late?”
Kelric shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Maccar gave off wariness and curiosity, but no hostility. As far as Kelric knew, the captain had no gripes against Zeld or her people. Even so, he kept the knife in his hand, rubbing his thumb on the hilt.
“Cargo Master Zeld tells me you work hard,” Maccar said.
“That’s right.” Kelric wondered what the captain wanted.
“She also told me to stay away from you.”
“Why?”
“Says you’re not available for other employment.”
Kelric frowned. He hardly ever spoke to Zeld. She had given him a reference, though, when he applied for a room in the bees-hive under the city. His hexagon wasn’t much, just big enough for a bed, but it was better than what most refugees had. Zeld had let his prospective landlords believe she had his ID in her office. Kelric knew she did it to soften him up. Although he still had no intention of sleeping with her, he appreciated the reference. That didn’t make him her property, though
.
“I make my own decisions,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” Maccar said.
“Why?”
“I need crew. I heard you do good work. Reliable. Smart. Tough.”
Kelric shifted the knife in his hand. If Maccar wanted spacers, he could have his pick of the pool signed in at the Port Authority. The captain had no reason for skulking around in the night to hire an illegal immigrant.
Maccar was watching his face. “The run is legal.”
Dryly Kelric said, “That’s why you’re out here instead of at the Port Authority.”
“I tried the PA. I couldn’t get enough crew.”
He knew Maccar’s merchant ship only needed a crew of forty and Maccar already had twenty-eight. The captain should have no problem finding twelve more. “What’s wrong with the run?”
Maccar regarded him steadily. “I’m going into Trader space.” He didn’t even flinch when he said it.
“Forget it,” Kelric said. No way.
“I’ll pay you fifty thousand.”
That gave Kelric pause. “Why?”
“I’ve a shipment of Targali silks, jewelry, spices, china, silver, and antiqued boxes.” Maccar’s frustration seeped out from his mind, belying his cool, dark gaze. “All for a Eubian client. She wants genuine Skolian goods and she’ll pay a fortune for them. But I don’t have enough crew to make the run. I need spacers who can handle the pressure.”
Kelric had no doubt he also needed spacers desperate enough to take the job—like a refugee who had many secrets to hide. He knew of only one type of “Eubian client” who could afford that kind of shipment. He struggled not to grit his teeth. “You’re trading with an Aristo.”
“Only goods,” Maccar said. “No people. I abhor slavery.”
“You do. But what’s to stop the Aristos from confiscating your ship and selling you and your crew once you’re in Eubian space?”
“We’ve a contract of safe passage from my client.” Dryly Maccar added, “I’ve also hired an escort. Eight frigates and a dreadnought, all armed.” He motioned toward the sky. “The border regions between Eube and Skolia are wide open right now. Merchants are passing freely both ways. Hell, man, after Onyx, the Eubian military barely even exists.”