Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [8]
Juno Genarro and Seb Malocchi had gone above ground to clear away the rocky plug, allowing the waning sunlight into the vertical shaft. The final climb was by ladder and cut-in steps. Some would be too weak to make it unassisted.
Trin stood at the bottom, blinking up into the light. He could barely contain his relief. Near him some of the Carabinere were shedding their fellalos at his order. Cass Mulravey stood by, making sure that the weakest of her women received the protection. For some inexplicable reason it angered Trin to know that his men were close to naked.
‘It is the right thing to do,’ whispered Djeserit as if she knew his thoughts. ‘It will draw them to you.’
He stared at her in the shaft of sunlight. Her papery Lostolian skin was dry and cracked, and grime coated the ridges of her neck gills. He noticed the slight breathiness in her voice.
‘What is wrong with your breath?’
Djeserit turned her head away in the way unique to the young; a way that told Trin that she did not want to answer his question. For the first time he saw the child in her and guilt surged through him. Had Mira Fedor been right? Was his relationship with the half-breed Miolaquan a corruption? He thought of Luna il Longa and all his father’s paramours. It was expected for a Principe to take many women.
Had beautiful Luna died at his father’s side? Had Franco seen her as he drew his last breath? Or had his wife been with him?
Trin did not want to think of his mother. It filled him with uncomfortable twisting emotions. In the way of most sons, he knew that something solid had been lost to him.
‘Principe!’ Juno Genarro called to him from the top of the shaft. ‘The sun fades.’
‘Vada!’ Trin instructed his Carabinere. Then he sealed his fellalo and began the difficult climb.
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
Jo-Jo Rasterovich was pissed off for a couple of reasons.
Being stuck in a Dowl confinement cell with a raging case of claustrophobia was forcing him to use up his HealthWatch’s narcotic allowance to stay calm.
His ship Salacious had been stolen by a man he knew only as Jud. And he, couldn’t get at his Gal Bank account while he was officially a criminal, which meant that bribing his way out of this craphole wasn’t feasible.
So, with narcotic-assisted patience, Jo-Jo began teasing out means for blackmail. He had learned within the first month that his humanesque gaolers were either wine-sopped young Latinos who couldn’t cut it in the local Carabinere police outfit or discontented tourists stuck on Dowl for one reason or another and forced to work.
His fellow inmates were an uninspiring string of petty offenders and addicts who changed on a daily basis. Only two appeared to be in there for the long haul: a teranu called Petalu Mau who’d been busted with a container of space borers that he’d been grinding into a fine powder and selling as exotic spices to the Dowl Kafe, and a sallow-skinned female with stringy hair who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop crying.
Their triangular cells touched each other at one central point. If they so wished, the inmates could sit in a circle to talk like a group of friends around a campfire. Only in this case the ‘campfire’ was the intersection of a containment module and gave out a mild electrical charge if you got too close to it.
Some days Jo-Jo found that a pleasant antidote to his regular narcotic stupor. Mostly, though, he brooded at the wide end of his cell, which he kept darkened and sound-damped. He could still see into the other cells if they didn’t have their privacy filters on.
The woman had it rough. When the guards were feeling narky or pervy they took the privacy controls away. Then you couldn’t do your business without an audience. Seemed they liked to prey on her most.
Soon Jo-Jo knew the contours of her sagging thin arse and tiny odd-shaped breasts better than the back of his own hand. He reckoned that she was about the same age as him, or older and though she was permanently naked, she didn’t attract him