Wild Space Pt. 03

The club suddenly seemed too loud, too hot. Marik groaned a bit as Rita laid next to him, her ripe and round ass pressing against his thigh.The sex couch was made for just that, and not lounging. They both squirmed uncomfortably.

"I think I..." He said.

"I need some..." She said at the same time.

They shared a laugh and with it the moment. Rita gathered her clothing as best she could, touched his bicep in a kindly way and kissed him.

"See you around," The bright eyed woman said, and with it was no awkwardness or delusions. Their time together was up.

"Good night," Marik said with a soft smile, and watched her make her way through the crowd. Finally, a woman that did the last part for him.

************

Within moments, Xandra had to be escorted from the club, with a worried but drugged and horny Lex at her side. The serving girl had popped an entire vibrant of brown. The effect was nearly instantaneous and devastating. She had to be carried from the scene by a trio of frustrated and angry bouncers, all of who had been escorting out drunks and other rowdy clubgoers all night. Xandra was left outside to flop against the side of the building.

Lex sat next to her friend, alternating between trying to help and debating whether she should take her friend for medical treatment. She was quickly realizing two things: that she knew nothing about how to help Xandra and that if they were caught overdosing outside of a nightclub instead of the baronial wedding they were supposed to be attending they'd be exiled. If they were lucky.

"Lex?" Xandra gasped as her chest heaved. Tears streamed from her cheeks and snot collected on her upper lip. She had vomited almost continuously since being ejected. They had been using their long skirts to clean up the mess.

"I'm here," The noblewoman responded. Though streaked with filth, Xandra's hair was still long and pretty. Under the vomit and tears the other woman smelled amazing. Almost unbidden, Lex's hand went from her friend's shoulder, then the beginning of the round swell of her breast. Her hand closed around the wide pink nipple hidden just beneath the flimsy cloth top Xandra wore.

"Lex?" The servant woman asked again, and weakly batted away her hand. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," She replied, and awkwardly scooted away a bit. "It's the vibrant. I'm still..."

"I get it," Xandra said in a numbed voice. "I want you to leave me."

"What?"

"Go."

"I am not going any-"

"If I die no one will care," Xandra gasped. "If you die there'll be hell to pay. So leave."

"I'd care," Lex moved closer again and touched the other woman's shoulders, and there was nothing sexual or creepy about it this time. "I'm not leaving you."

"You have to."

"I don't have to do anything!" The small noblewoman said with a trace of her trademark bitchiness and attitude. "We're getting help and that's that!"

"Over my dead body," Xandra said, and made a snotty, squawking noise. She was laughing.

The automatic door slid open with a well oiled whoosh, startling them both. From out of the club stepped a man of not conspicuous tallness or build, entirely average in every way. The wind ruffled his long blond hair and when he raised his face to it Lex saw his skin was raw, windburnt, as if he spent a great deal of time outdoors. He'd thrown a vest over his arm and from his pocket he withdrew a thumb sized tube, a vibrant. He raised it to his nose.

"You!" Lex called out. "We need help."

The man half turned to them, looking undismayed at the sight before him: a skinny, short woman clutching her chubby and short friend who was streaked with vomit and mucus. Both of them looked distressed and sweaty.

"Yeah?" The man asked casually.

"She needs help," Lex told him. She made sure that Xandra was sitting up against the wall, and tenderly touched her lover's face before standing. The man towered over her, but so did most everyone. "Help her."

The blond man had the vibrant halfway to his face. His skin was suffused with red from dancing or the chemicals pumping through his system. He looked amused.

"Get yourself a public trans to the hospital and stop harassing passersby," He advised them. He raised his arm to do just that.

It wasn't the size of the dog in the fight. In a moment, Lex was in the man's face, pointing up at him, backing him up against the wall with sheer force of personality.

"If you don't help us I am going to tell my lord husband that you let his favorite serving girl and concubine ie in the street!" The small woman said, jabbing her bony finger repeatedly into the soft flesh just below his collarbone. Each poke dimpled the flesh. "Do you know what happens when Lord Ehren gets mad, little man?"

"Little man?" The man seemed half amused and half started. He had put the vibrant back into his pocket, however, and was standing toe to toe with her, to his credit.

"That's right! My husband makes and breaks little fish like you every day. So you'd better do what's right here."

"Lord husband." The man backed her up just enough to shrug into his vest. He made sure everything was situated in his pockets before continuing. "Ehren. I've heard the name. You his wife?"

"I am!" Lex said, staring up at him, dark eyes flashing. "And you'd better do as I say and do so with respect."

"I don't think so," The man had a big, toothy grin that looked fake and syrupy. "You're not where you supposed to be, are you, my lady?"

"I...no." She was suddenly uncertain.

"Lex, get away from that man." Xandra stood by bracing her ass and palms against the wall, and finally made it to her feet.

"Listen here, lady, you'll die if-"

Lex almost fell to the ground with the force of her swing. She'd balled up her tiny fist and hit the man with a right cross right on the jaw. He slumped against the wall and was more surprised than hurt. But bigger trouble was coming.

Xandra needed to walk along the wall, but once she got a hold of the man, she knew it was almost over. She was bigger, tougher, and meaner than her lover. She looked like it, moved like it, and talked like it. Within a moment, even numbed and slowed, leaking from the nose, wide eyed and yelling a threat, she had the man jacked up against the wall by his shoulders.

"Fine, fine!" The man said, raising his hands, palms out. "Look, what did you take too much of?"

"Brown," Lex growled, moving next to the other woman.

"I've got white in my pocket. Take the tiniest sniff. See how you feel. And if you don't feel better in a few minutes-"

"Take more? We aren't stupid." Lex was already groping in the man's pocket, where he'd stashed the drugs. She handed over a tube to Xandra.

After a few doses, the servant woman seemed to be perking up. The man casually took another tube from his pocket, cracked it, and sniffed himself. He blinked rapidly.

"Why did you take so many?" Lex wanted to know.

"This stuff isn't available on my world," The blond man said. "I didn't think you noble shits would mind if I took a few home."

"What world is that? Who are you?" The noblewoman wanted to know, ignoring his insolent tone.

"My name is Marik and I'm from Azura." He put the tube back in his pocket. "Anyway, can I go now? Help yourself to the rest of that, by the way."

It was on Xandra's lips to tell the man to leave, to turn to Lex and kiss her lover, thank her once they were alone. But the shocked and frozen expression on the other woman's face was enough to give her pause.

"I just saw Phillias going into the club," Lex whispered in a small and frightened voice.

"Are you sure?" Xandra demanded.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"You have to hide us," Xandra said to Marik.

"What? No. My part in this affair is at an end. Who is Phillias?" Marik wanted to know.

"Phillias is my husband's hatchet maid." Lex said. "She does Ehren's dirty work. If she's here that means my husband knows."

"Well, good luck," Marik said sarcastically and started to turn away.

"I don't think you realize quite what is going on here, you hood rat," Lex yelled out in her huge voice. "You have to help us. If you don't hide us right now I will tell my lord husband that you supplied us with the drugs."

"But that's not true!" Marik protested. "The baroness had them all laid out."

"Ehren wouldn't be caught dead in this hole," Xandra said, eyes still unfocused and reddened from all of the chemicals bombarding her system. "All he'll care about is his wife safely returned to him and punishing whoever is responsible. It's your word against yours. Now, where is your ship?"

"My ship?!" Marik was getting more and more indignant and upset as the situation left his control, if it had ever been there.

"It has to be offworld, or Ehren will find us."

"And what are you planning to do when we get there? You can't stay on Azura forever!"

"Who or what is 'Azura'?" Lex demanded. "I don't want to go to some backwater-"

"We're wasting time, my lady." Xandra said. She turned to face Marik squarely. "Take us to your ship. Now."

"...and if i don't?" Marik asked. But it was posturing, and they both knew it.

"You know what'll happen. It won't happen tonight, but it will soon." Xandra told him. "We're offering you your only chance. I'd take it if I were you."

*********

Marik couldn't recall a quieter, more awkward run back to his home. In the pilot's seat of the Queen Bee, he sat ramrod straight, radiating tension. Usually he would have his feet up on the console and sipping some tsara. But he wasn't alone, and though the Bee was still his ship, he felt that he had been hijacked.

The serving girl was the dangerous one. She was round and short, with small, ripe breasts, a barrel waist, and a small but firm ass that was planted solidly in the co-pilot seat. She'd washed up when they had blasted off from Valantier. Her eyes looked clear and her brown ringlets were still wet, but overall the impression was of an attractive and dangerous woman. Marik regarded her warily.

Lex was curled up as small as humanly possible in the only bed on board. Sourly, Marik glanced back at her. A few hours into the flight, he had gone to wake her up but his gesture had been misinterpreted by the serving woman:

"Don't you touch her! You think just because you're a man you can take us, you hood rat?"

"I'm waking her up because she's sleeping in my bed," Marik told her with a patience he wasn't feeling. "I have no intention of laying hands on either of you. I just need a nap."

"The lady will sleep when and where she will," Xandra said slowly, as if to a child. "I don't care if this is your ship or not. Wake up my lady and you'll get another one right in your eye. This time from me."

Marik bided his time. After all, they were headed to Azura, his home. There he would have the advantage. They may have been noble and powerful on Big V, but it was the low and the hungry that were powerful on his world. He hoped he got a chance to show them.

"Tell me about this woman we're running from."

"Phillias is a lot more than a woman. She's a bloody terror. An animal."

"How so?"

*******

Right away, the hatchet maid could see that the club owner was holding out on her. Stringing her along, taking her for a ride. If there was one thing Phillias hated, it was being mocked.

"Might I ask who you are and who you represent, to be asking about one of our guests?" The club owner was a greasy, short little man, whose complexion, dark hair and diseased eyes screamed commoner. He was sitting at what passed for his desk, a low table with some random drug vials scattered atop it, and a sagging piece of furniture, all housed in a small room above the Universal's dance floor.

"I want to know about two guests." Phillias said. In contrast to the man, she was big boned, pale skinned, with deep mahogany red hair down to her waist. Her eyes were amber with a red ring around them, with one turned slightly outward. The colors and the weakened eye gave her gaze an unsettling nature. Soft lips and a nose that was full of character completed her look. A great deal of people were thrown off by her, thinking she looked too innocent or too simple to be dangerous. And Phillias always took advantage of any assumption.

"Right, a serving girl and a noblewoman. But I want to know who you are and why."

"I am in the employ of Lord Ehren."

The name carried some weight. Reluctantly, the owner of the Club Universal sat. Absently, he fished a vial of white vibrant, cracked it open, and huffed like he'd just surfaced after being stymied in quick mud. He held out the tube to her.

"No," Phillias said with a hint of disgust. She abominated drugs. She never drank or stole sun syrup like some other servants. She had to be on her toes at all times. Her job demanded it. She hadn't performed the traditional duties of a servant since she was a young adult. If she was still a scrubwoman or a bedwarmer she imagined she could afford to be addicted to sun syrup or drunk most of her day. The hatchet maid was something different, however, and she loved her work. Even if it took her to holes in the wall like this place. She didn't love Lord Ehren the way a woman loved a man. She loved him because he had made it possible for her to rise from the gutters of serfdom to the position of a trusted right hand, even an advisor.

"Some noblewoman came in tonight," The club owner said, and offered her a greasy smile. "The staff nearly turned her away. She was so small that they thought she was a kid."

Phillias's interest perked up a bit but didn't let it show. That sounded like the Lady Lex, alright. And she hadn't shared any description of who she was looking for, not to that extent.

"She was with another woman. Both of them were spotted for nobles right away, from how they talked and the things they said. One got completely blitzed on brown and had to be escorted out. That's the last I seen of them."

"Do you know who overdosed?"

"What you say?" The club owner caught the change in her tone. Uneasily, he shifted in his seat. Though they were about the same height, Phillias was big and strong. He was not.

"Which one took too much brown, the servant or the noblewoman?"

"I don't know. They were escorted out. I can't have bitches ODing in the-"

"These women weren't 'bitches', you hood rat," Phillias said in an ugly, precise way. "They both belong to my lord Ehren. And you let them overdose and possibly die on the street."

With each word, the hatchet maid had advanced on him and in one quick motion slammed a fist on the desk. Before the man barely had a chance to react, Phillias flipped the table with one hand. It didn't quite tumble all the way around, but it was close enough.

The sound of the cheap wood clattering and splinting on the floor made the man leap to his feet. Phillias performed a devastating snap kick to his stomach, burying her foot deep into the soft flesh. She automatically tried to follow up with her signature hold, a front face lock, but the club owner was already wheezing on the ground. Poor fellow. He probably hadn't eaten a decent meal in weeks.

"If they come back, you tell me. You hear anything else about them, you tell me. You ever let one of my ladies in here again to do drugs-"

"Tell you?"

"Tell your preacher, because you're about to die." There was a tube of white vibrant on the ground, right by her shoe. The hatchet maid kicked it over to him. "Sniff up. I have a feeling you're going to need it."

*************

Kim's was nearly deserted as usual. Abaro was at his usual place, talking with another regular called Old Aune, a cup of weak yellow beer in hand. When he saw Marik enter he raised his cup in salute but didn't break off his story.

"The teacher had spent about a year on Centralia, in a monetstary. But he spoke about as much language as a toadstool who'd spend a year on Centralia in a monastery," Abaro was saying.

Marik took a seat next to his friend and made a gesture at Cendra, the bartender. She limped over to the keg and poured him out a cup of beer without any hint of a flourish and brought it to him.

"So he set himself up as a language teacher and of course it was awful," Abaro had a prominent gap between his front teeth that went well with a prominent nose, and he'd trimmed his beard. With his pale skin and long black hair he looked good, focused, in control. Not too drunk yet, Marik noticed with approval.

"He'd show up, tell the class to read the first chapter of their coursework material and then pop off for the day."

The beer was cold, crisp, and carried with it the flavor of citrus fruits and a hint of salt from the sea. It was just what he needed. Marik dipped his nose into the cup and drained it.

"And then what happened?"

"What do you think? He got found out and sent back to the homeworld in disgrace." Abaro drained his own beer, waited for Cendra to refill. "He got executed shortly thereafter."

The story was nothing new, but the fact that a human from Azura would be so summarily judged brought a bit of distaste to Marik's mouth. He washed it out with more beer.

"Interesting how you young kids call Centralia the 'homeworld'," Old Aune was saying. The ancient whaler captain clacked together his fake teeth, which gleamed like a handful of dead fingerbones in his ruddy face. The whale tusk they were carved from were expensive, and it always seemed that Old Aune liked to show them off since they'd cost so much.

"In my day a feller'd get the piss kicked out of him for saying that," The old man said.

"I wouldn't say it in certain parts of town now," Marik said.

"Did I ever tell you guys about the time that I had to kick that guy out for throwing gourds?" Abaro asked.

The story went on and on. Marik watched his friend while he spoke: he wore a few whale bone rings and a necklace, but his finery was tattered and worn. The whites of his eyes were yellow from years of staring at the waves and sun without protection, just like Marik's. The edges of his face and chin were burnt by wind and salt. Abaro was ostensibly at Kim's to pick up a job, but in reality he hadn't worked legitimately in a long time. Instead, Abaro policed the docks and its taverns with a skill for brawling that was uncommonly feared even on Azura. He may have been a layabout and a drunk, but he could fight. And most importantly of all, he could be counted upon to do whatever a friend asked.

"I wonder if you could back to the Bee and help me with something?" Marik wanted to know in between stories.

"Sure, what do you need?" Abaro covered the top of his cup with his hand, waving off Cendra.

"Just a couple things I need moved."

"Can we pick up a kebab on the way?"

They were off. Neither men bothered to shade their eyes against the sun. A street vendor was ladling out soup in edible bread bowls. When the vendor saw Abaro, he sighed in mild dismay and reached into his cash box. He withdrew a handful of grimy silvers and handed them over. Abaro upended it all into his money belt and asked to be served.

"We're all out of kebabs, boss."

"Plate, then."

The vendor piled rice onto a pair of platters, a cutlet of a heavy, oily fish, an imported, cheesy gravy and a fried gull egg. Both men left without paying and walked off into the sand, eating silently.

"Dinner and a payoff. Must be nice being the local thug." Marik said in between bites.

"I prefer to think myself as a 'goon.' It's less threatening." Abaro rose his eyes from his plate and muttered as he stared into the distance. Marik glanced up himself.

Both men finished eating quickly. The group of natives passed them by a moment later. Though he couldn't say why, Marik felt better with his hands free and ready to go. Azurans were bluish green like the water, with hints of white. The law said that they had to remain on land at all times, for which Marik was duly grateful. They could disappear within seconds in the ocean, impossible to detect or fight. They even looked like sea creatures, though they stood on two legs and had a face, arms, legs, feet and hands. But their flesh was all scales and slime. No wonder the first humans on Azura had mistook them for sea monsters. Later humans, not very skilled in xenobiology or determining sentience in another creature, had kept them on boats as a quick source of protein, something that the natives never let them forget. The fish men had risen from the sea a handful of times, slaughtering humans in their shanties or on their boats, practically invisible until they'd jumped out of the waves. For years, human children had been told to behave, lest the fish men come and slaughter them. The wars waged off and on for generations until the Capital Worlds had come with their Navy and Army. The natives were swiftly subjugated and harsh laws passed. Though that was less than a hundred years ago now, neither side seemed to care how much or how little time had passed. The fear and anger were still there. Marik's muscles were tensed until the group of natives passed.