Marooned - Christie Golden [0]
By: CHRISTIE GOLDEN
PROLOGUE
Kula DHAD HASTENED DOWN THE CROWDED SQUARE, HIS cape folded tightly about his tall, bony frame despite the warmth of this city's midday. The courier was more accustomed to conversing with his commander in the comforting, familiar surroundings of gleaming metal, deep, soft chairs, and regulated temperatures. But the commander had selected this out-of-the-way corner of an out-of-the-way planet for their rendezvous, and who was Kula Dhad to object?
Dhad brushed against the people he had been surgically altered to resemble, forced himself to smile and apologize when bodies collided a tad too harshly. They returned the smile, not realizing its falseness, and moved aside, these witless, technologically poor beings, their slitted eyes blinking much more rapidly than Dhad's.
And the smell! Shamaris expressed their emotions through scents as well as gestures and vocalizations. Dhad had been around them long enough to realize that the nearly choking odor that waited up from the groups of humanoids represented a state of pleasurable tranquillity. It had been difficult to figure out a way to emulate that form of communication; still, they had managed. But oh, he'd far rather breathe the fumes of the guara pits of Burara Six than that reeking scent of happiness that emanated from the contented Shamaris.
He swallowed hard and continued on, folding his nostril flaps closed against the stench.
Up ahead, the commander had told him, would be a weaver's stall. There, Dhad would meet someone who would send him on to the formal meeting site. Dhad could see it now, the brightly colored fabrics contrasting vividly with the pale purple sands. He closed his eyes briefly in relief. The end of his journey was almost at hand.
Four strong fingers closed on his shoulder. Dhad gasped as he felt the cool metal of a weapon-what kind he didn't know and wasn't about to inquire at this juncture-pressing into the puffy flesh of his neck.
"You have been identified as a courier of the Ja'in, a voice rasped in his ear. "Come with me, please."
Dhad closed his eyes, wishing he'd had the foresight to bring something, anything, with which to end his wretched existence before questioning. Amiable as they were at most times, the Shamari loathed the pirates with an intensity that matched their smell, and Dhad knew that to fall into their handspaws?-would mean pain beyond belief.
He thought about struggling, ending it quickly, but as if reading his thoughts his mysterious captor said, "The weapon stuns only. You will not escape our wrath, courier."
Dhad considered the options, then complied. No one seemed to notice anything amiss, and he wondered at that. It was almost as if his captor were as anxious to avoid discovery as he was, and that could only mean... "C-Commander?" Dhad asked in a voice that quivered. Laughter was his reward, a cool chuckle, cool as the metal that was now removed from his tender throat.
"Ah, there is no fooling you, is there?" replied the Commander of the Ja'in as he stepped around to face Dhad.
He was as unrecognizable as Dhad himself was. Both now resembled the members of the Shamari merchant class they pretended to be. There was no hint of the normal good looks of the pirate leader about that homely face now. He slipped a comradely arm about Dhad and the latter breathed a slight sigh of relief that he had remained silent. Had he confessed to the "Shamari law enforcer," his commander would have slain him on the spot, no matter what treasure he carried.
There was no room for a traitor among the Ja'in.
Dhad followed as his leader guided him down the winding streets, at last into a rundown stone building that appeared from the outside to be nothing more than a humble. Shamari's home. The commander nodded to what seemed to be a pair of beggars, dropping shu-stones into their hands and waving aside their effusive thanks. Dhad didn't recognize them, but he would have bet a year's haul of goods that they were