Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [98]
‘Must get kinda lonely,’ she said.
‘I’m good at lonely,’ Jo-Jo replied.
‘Yeah, you’ve got that manner about you.’ Rast mimicked his earlier statement. ‘Word to the wise, though -wouldn’t waste all that precious-earned bachelorhood on the Baronessa. She’s dragging more than her share of baggage around. Doesn’t take to men much, either; prefers my type.’
Jo-Jo’s fingers clenched on the biozoon’s thick scar ridge. ‘You warning me off?’
Rast rolled her shoulders in a relaxed gesture that Jo-Jo didn’t buy. ‘Just saving you some grief.’
Their moments of camaraderie faded, along with Jo-Jo’s opportunity to find out who she had served with in the war.
He faked his own kind of indifference. ‘So what happened between you two back there on Araldis?’
‘When the Saqr hit Ipo, the town we were holding out in, we split. Few days later she pulled us out of a firefight. Lucky all round, I guess. Only been a few days since I’d seen her—maybe a week. But something happened to her in that time. When she picked us up in the AiV she was frozen, like shock. Never really been the same since then. Not that those Latino women are friendly at best. Especially the crown aristos.’
Jo-Jo nodded agreement at that. ‘What’s your figuring of how we get to Rho Junction without being blown to the crapper?’
Rast chewed on her upper lip. ‘Only been there once; just before the war. Funny kinda place—supposed to be OLOSS territory but Extras are creeping around all over the shop. You need to do your “God” thing, get us landing rights. Berniere’s got a validation document for the DNA pickup but he’s not coming in on the prearranged connections. We got to convince the supplier that the bio-courier’s just an idiot who messed up and missed his designated ride and hope they haven’t already found another slab for the job.’
Jo-Jo sneered. ‘Convince the buyer that Berniere’s an idiot? Shouldn’t be too hard.’
Sole
work’m work’m
round round
prickle prickle
find’m secret not’ long
TEKTON
Tekton arrived at Rho Junction by way of three trouble-free res-shifts and two interminably long sub-light legs. On the trip he spent much of his time sketching designs for sculpting the alloy, beginning first with simple wave effects and then moving on to the more complex forms.
On the first leg from Belle-Monde to Mintaka he had the pleasure of meeting the famous skieran sculptor, Fenralia. The two whiled away their leisure time imbibing some of the artist’s exceptional hallucinogenic hoard while they swapped ideas. He found Fenralia’s gelatinous body and trailing tendrils almost as inspiring as Miranda’s flesh, though—due to their odour—not at all sexually appealing.
Despite that, Fenralia persuaded him to pose naked one evening after they’d imbibed a range of ineffably awful Uralian beverages.
Towards the end of his posing session Tekton became aware that Fenralia’s sexual organs had unfolded from within her/his bell-shaped body and were creeping across the floor to him, rather like pieces of meat escaping a frigerator.
At that point he instructed his travelling moud to fabricate an urgent call from the ship’s Captain, and he hurriedly robed and left.
Fortunately, Fenralia disembarked a few days later on her way to an Exhibition Trade Fest in some obscure location.
After that Tekton kept mostly to himself.
On the day of disembarkation at Rho Junction he reviewed Labile Connit’s instructions and integrated a map of the station into his supplementary memory.
Rho Junction, the map told him, was actually six pseudo-worlds joined by long cylindrical sections based on a molecular design. It was also one of the earliest mega-stations, commissioned by a wealthy entrepreneur who preferred to spend their money on purchasing a slice of orbit rather than a planet. But rejuve programmes had been less effective back then and did not keep Li Ti Rho-san alive long enough to ensure the condition of her legacy.
The autonomous station fell