Spirit Walk_ Old Wounds (Book 1) - Christie Golden [36]
Just as David was starting to smile at the scene, Janine snorted. “They considered this fun? No wonder they’re all walking around like they have something shoved—”
“How about the one I showed you last time?” Rafe suggested.
Janine brightened. “Yeah, that was great. Let’s do that one.”
“Computer,” called Rafe, “End current program and run Sanderson 4 instead.”
The scene shifted. Instead of a bistro, they now stood in an alien bar. The music was loud and abrasive, and the air thick with smoke. If this were a real place, Chittenden realized he’d have his lungs full of illegal substances, but this was only a re-creation. The room was dark, and it took his eyes some time to adjust.
He could make out some gaming tables. Dabo? He couldn’t tell. Over in another corner of the room, someone uttered a string of angry words in a language David didn’t understand. The person threw something down on the table and stood up. Across the table, someone else stood up too. Their chairs fell back. Someone stepped between the two and said something that apparently calmed them down, but David averted his eyes regardless. It wouldn’t take much for a fight to break out here.
“Thirsty, angel face?”
David glanced down to see a woman that he knew to be an Orion slave girl. Her thick, wild hair was black and her perfect body a gorgeous shade of green. The words were coquettish, but even in the dim, smoky light David could see that her eyes were dangerous. Rafe had his arm around the tiny waist of a woman from a species David didn’t recognize, but in her skimpy outfit, it wasn’t hard to see that she had three breasts.
Janine, too, had a companion, a human male, tall, fair-haired, and powerfully built. He was bare to the waist, and sweat gleamed on his oiled skin. He handed her a drink and kissed her throat in one smooth motion.
Janine caught David staring. She laughed as the man progressed from throat to earlobe. “Isn’t he great? I’ve named him Herbert.”
“Herbert?” Chittenden said, choking slightly.
“He’s so not a Herbert I thought it was funny,” Janine said. “Try the Romulan ale, it’s fantastic.” She eyed him, grinning a little at his discomfort.
“Thirsty?” repeated the slave girl. The word was a demand rather than a question. The green Orion woman eyed him and curled her lips in a snarl that managed to be both frightening and erotic at the same time.
“Um, yeah, I’ll have a beer,” Chittenden managed. He felt a little ill. This was not the sort of “entertainment” he enjoyed. Because holograms weren’t really people, there were few restrictions on what one could do with them. You weren’t supposed to create holograms that looked like people you knew, but beyond that, they were just a collection of photons. But the thought that Rafe enjoyed creating a slave woman and a gigolo who looked prepared to do more than just flirt nauseated him.
This smoky, seedy, rather scary place was not his cup of tea. He’d liked Sandrine’s. He’d wanted to talk with the pretty Janine in a private, dark place, while they engaged in a harmless pastime like pool and sipped fine wine or drinks with exotic names. But she seemed to be enjoying the holographic male’s attention a bit more than she ought, and suddenly she didn’t seem quite so cute.
David wished he’d followed Lyssa out and given her that apology.
A yell went up from the game table in the corner of the room. That fight had broken out after all. It was going to be a long evening.
Chapter
10
“KLINGON BUREAUCRACY IS worse than Starfleet’s, and I thought that was pretty bad,” Torres whispered to her husband as they followed Commander Logt up a seemingly interminable flight of twisting stone steps.
They had spoken with Logt several days before about obtaining permission to consult the ancient records. At first, their request had been summarily denied. To Tom’s surprise it was B’Elanna who had challenged Logt and pushed