Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [5]
‘Cass, he’s right. And if anything happens out there there’s only Innis and Marrat and me to help. Thorn’s too weak. . .’ He inclined his head to indicate a man already lying on the yacht.
Trin watched Mulravey struggle between pride and necessity.
‘Your man speaks well, Cass Mulravey,’ said Trin.
‘My name is Kristo,’ the man replied. ‘And I speak for the good of all of us, not to support you, Pellegrini.’ His face was heavily bearded and his hair was long and ragged, but Trin thought he remembered him ministering food to Mira Fedor when she was first brought down into the Pablo mine. No supporter of the eccentric Baronessa was useful to him. Even so he tempered his reply.
‘Then we should be matched in our opinions,’ said Trin, ‘for that is my intention as well.’
Kristo squared his shoulders as if he might react with anger, but he did nothing other than lightly squeeze Mulravey’s elbow.
Mulravey stared Trin straight in the eye. ‘We’ll take as many as we can.’ She pulled free from Kristo’s grip and walked to the water.
Trin felt a small victory in her compliance. He would shatter the woman’s ludicrous obstinacy yet.
He too turned to face the open sea. ‘Vai!’ he ordered.
TEKTON
The humanesques Thales Berniere and Bethany Ionil had been much easier to persuade to leave Rho Junction than he had hoped. In fact, Tekton’s free-mind told him, they’d been easier than a Belle-Monde prostitute.
Tekton booked a suite with an adjoining room on the cruiser The Last Aesthetic, and left them alone for several days while he sorted his own affairs.
First, he organised a credit line for Manruben, the metal craftsman he’d left behind on Rho. His last glimpse of the filthy old man had been as he and Thales boarded the fast-trak back to the docks. Tekton had instructed Manruben to access the credit in two days and await news of the quixite delivery. Under no circumstances, Tekton told him, should you indulge in any type of sexual encounter for the duration of the contract. The last one had killed him. Only a quickly administered HealthWatch patch had brought the randy old devil back from a permanent date with Hades.
Second, he searched for news from Araldis and looked into the authenticity of the woman that Thales had called Mira Fedor. To his dismay, the young scholar’s story seemed to be true. The Vreal Studium news hub had filed reports of an attack on the backwater Latino-owned planet. Nothing had been verified by the Orion League of Sentient Species though, as communications between planet, shift station and the wider galaxy had ceased. On the subject of the Baronessa Fedor, the Lostol Patrician’s Association referred him to the Latino Noble Network, which provided a simple 3D lineage tree for the exorbitant fee of 1,000 Gals. He now knew more about her family history than he did about his own.
Tekton ordered a lotion bath and luxuriated in a darkened cabin, examining the flow of Latino heritage. Despite his antipathy to feudal hierarchies, Tekton found aristocratic lineage faintly arousing; or at least the power and intrigue it promised. So much so that he indulged in a little auto-eroticism while he learned about the classes of Latino Crux.
The Fedors, it seemed, were part of the Crown Aristo class by dint of their symbiotic relationship with the biozoon species. This honour remained with the males of each generation. However, a recent addendum to the images footnoted that for the first time in history a female of the line had received the Talent.
It seemed the young Baronessa Mira Fedor, to whom Thales referred, really could pilot a biozoon.
This discovery coincided with Tekton’s arrival at the point of orgasm, at which time he gave his free-mind licence to fantasise; the result being an odd vision of the head and shoulders of the young Baronessa Fedor with the body of a biozoon, conducting fellatio upon him.
Sated but a little disturbed at the oddity of the image, Tekton washed, re-robed and lay down on his sumptuous suite’s bed. Next time, he decided, he would pay for pleasure.