Wild Space Pt. 04

"A woman I met." From the looks of her, Nida had had a rough few weeks since this Tyla. She smelled like spent tears, the outdoors and unwashed clothing. "We spent the day together and had dinner. Then she left me."

"I understand," Yomp said softly. He perched on the sofa arm, and sympathetically added, "You think she took the horn?"

"I don't know," Nida said with a hard breath, trying to calm down. "But she did know art, and that was the horn. It was a priceless artifact."

"Can you tell us about the horn?" Sita asked gently.

"It comes from an erzoer beast," The noblewoman said, and now that she was back on familiar ground her voice seemed a bit steadier. "They could regenerate body parts, so long as the herdsmen were careful and respectful. A single animal could give milk and meat for many decades. My family helped domesticate them when we first arrived here. It was from the first beast my ancestors domesticated, allowing all of the first colonists on Kekal to survive. Erzoer are extinct now."

"It's valuable?" Sita asked, raising a delicate brown eyebrow. She had assumed that this drinking horn was some kitschy family heirloom thing, and that Chiugo was punishing her horribly by assigning them to some useless case.

"Very," Nida said. "A university doctor came all the way from the Capital Worlds to appraise it once. He told us that it should be in a museum or the university, but we refused to sell it. Now Lord Prag has one hanging in his house!"

Before she could get upset all over again, Yomp hurried her along to the next question. "What does Tyla look like?"

"She's taller than me, long brunette hair with some gray. Beautiful chocolate dark eyes."

"Age?"

"I think she's in her early forties." Nida said, and looked up at Yomp's kindly old face. "Will you go looking for her?"

"Seems to be the next step," The old man said lightly, and Sita could almost read her thoughts. Yomp would rather go looking for some mystery woman than interviewing Lord Prag and insert them into the middle of a family feud on this backwards world.

"If you find her, tell her I am sorry," The young woman told them earnestly, wiping tears from her eyes. "Tell her I am sorry for whatever I did and all I want is to see her again. Even if its just for a moment. Tell her I forgive her for stealing the horn. Tell her whatever you can to get her to come back to me."

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

After that pitiful episode, Yomp said he needed a glass of something strong, and to seem companionable Sita went, as well, but the last thing she wanted was a drink. Her partner had laughed and said that that shouldn't stop her from enjoying one, and they set off to find a pub.

Yomp found it at the spaceport: a prefabricated tavern built of some off world material, out of place in the rugged plains of Kekal, but as visitors it appealed to them more than the animal and dung smells of the town. An alien human hybrid of indeterminate ancestry filled Yomp's cup with a sour yellow beer, hers with water and with that they ordered big, bloody steaks of some local animal. When the food arrived, Sita very nearly prodded it to see if it would low out some complaint.

But she needed it, she realized, as she hacked away at the meat, chunk by chunk. It was very fatty, charred to a black crisp on the outside, bloody rare on the inside, but she hadn't eaten at all since lunch the day before. Bite by bite and swallow by swallow the last of her hangover was going away.

"How long do you suppose we have to stay here until Chiugo lets us come home?" Sita wondered aloud.

"Until we solve the case of the missing drinking horn and finish this steak," Yomp told her, sawing at his food with difficulty. "I should be damn near retired by then."

"Do you want to go see Lord Prag?"

"Do you want to go see Lord Prag?" The old man countered with a tone as sour as his beer.

"No. I'm a Ranger, not some bloody constable who mediates livestock disputes." She ought not to have been so bitter, Sita knew, but it was hard not to.

Yomp heard it, too. He had a bit of meat on his knife, and he swabbed it about the plate for a moment, soaking up blood and grease. "Arold?"

Arold. She drained her water, trying to wash the steak down. "Kicked me out last night so he could be with his girl."

Yomp tsked tsked softly, but whether it was at her husband or her behavior last night she didn't know.

"What are you going to do?"

"Right now? Finish this up and try to track down a mystery woman named Tyla on this pisspoor planet, of all places."

The old man nodded at her reluctantly. He, too, knew the temptation to throw oneself into the job and ignore problems at home. But she'd have to figure that one out for herself, after a wrecked marriage or two, it seemed like. Yomp made no comment.

They finished up their food and drinks and set out into the spaceport. "What's the first rule of thumb when it comes to working on a planet as big as this one, Ranger Sita?"

"Find a whore and fuck 'em blind?"

"Very funny. No, local law enforcement. I wonder what passes for it here."

They found a tall, pot bellied black man with a lazy eye and the smoothest shave to his head that Sita had ever seen. He wore a gray and brown outfit and went around with an old rifle. "Herd Warden", the patch on his arm read, but he looked like any other hunter or rancher they had seen so far. After some introductions, he directed them to his barracks and headquarters, and told them to ask for Chief Warden Ogan.

"Half of the cases I work are explaining who I am and why I'm there," Sita complained.

"That's what happens when you don't have any jurisdiction," Yomp said airily. "What are you bitching about? This is a damn sight easier duty than what we would be doing back on the base."

"What are you so fucking zany about?" She asked him. Her partner had a bounce to his step and a smile on his face.

"The crisp air, the yummy food, the earthy smells of soil and animals. I just feel alive, Ranger Sita."

"Oh, brother." She made sure they weren't being directly observed and she swatted his arm playfully. "Let's just find this Chief Warden."

Chief Warden Ogan was a skinny woman with curly black hair and dark hazel eyes, a quirky mouth. Gray was just beginning to streak her temples, hair pulled back in a businesslike manner, and she pursed her lips to the side when they shared their names and rank. She wore the same gray and brown uniform as the man they had met, but was unarmed. Though it was old, Sita couldn't help but notice that the garment was skintight, molding to the defined lines of her muscular calves and thighs and a small but round ass. Her breasts were similarly proportioned. She invited them to sit and ironically offered them a horn of fermented milk from her private stock.

"No thank you, but its a horn that brings us here." Briefly, Yomp explained about Nida and Lord Prag.

"Poor Nida," Ogan said without much feeling. "I knew her mother very well and her father is the richest landowner in the area. He's got a fine stock and a beautiful ranch. He treats his animals exceptionally, as he should. They make him rich but he would anyway. The whole family is a hardworking sort. The daughter, though...she's an emotional sort, it has to be said. Throws her heart out blindly to every man and woman that strikes her fancy and gets devastated when they reject her. Which they always do."

"The horn?"

"I don't think this Tyla took it, whoever she is. But Nida's family is rich and insisted we track it down and call in your people." Chief Warden Ogan told them. "I'm sorry, Rangers, but your time is being wasted here. Maybe Nida misplaced it or it was stolen by a family servant. I highly doubt that Prag is dumb enough to steal his rival family's priceless heirloom and display it so openly."

"Still, we'll need to speak with him." Yomp said.

"What kind of records do you keep here?" Sita asked bluntly. "Is there any way to track the comings and goings in the spaceport?"

"Just because I'm a game warden and we ranch for a living doesn't mean we're stupid, young lady," Ogan replied gently. "I'll have the reports sent to your computer there. Shall we say all records for the last...month?"

"That's a start. Do you have somewhere we can work?"

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

Chief Warden Ogan gave over her personal office, and for the next few hours Yomp and Sita pored over the spaceport records. Bills of lading, endless arrivals and departures, security reports, port counts. Before long, Sita had another five star headache without all the fun of getting drunk. She had gotten perhaps a handful of hours of sleep the night before and a nap on the way here, and was beginning to lose steam. Drunken antics on a night out on the town followed by hopping to a planet with a different Circadian rhythm would do that to a Ranger. And no one had ever told her that being a cop would be brief moments of terror punctuated by long stretches of crippling boredom.

Yomp stood with a creak of bones, a deep click somewhere deep in his locomotion that protested against the demands put on it for the last sixty years. He yawned hugely, startling Sita out of her daydreaming.

"I can't stay here anymore," The old man said, examining his aged red and pink hands. "It's getting to be late, anyway. Even though its probably a waste of time, one of us should go see Lord Prag."

She felt a twinge of resentment. From his tone, she knew which one of them he had in mind. Sita almost dreaded to ask but she did anyway.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yep," Yomp told her. "Tell you what, I'll go and do talk to this Lord Prag and see his horn for myself. You can stay here."

"So you're sticking me with all of these boring files?"

"Old timer's prerogative." The alien smiled. "You'll do it yourself when you get to have my tenure, girlie."

"If I get to be in my sixth decade and I'm still in the Rangers I don't think I could bear it."

"Hey, job security is a thing." His grin faded. "You going to be OK if I take the Lady Chloe and go? I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I seem to recall that there's a place that rents out cheap rooms, if need be." Sita told him. "Do you have to take the ship, though?"

"Prag lives on the other end of the planet."

"If you say so," Sita told him and realized how grudging her tone sounded. She frowned, started to apologize, and held her tongue. She didn't want to piss off her partner, the second most important man in her life. She had already done a good enough job of that with her husband. Why was it so hard to apologize? Luckily, Yomp didn't seem to notice at all as he took his leave from her.

"Do you need anything, Ranger?" Chief Warden Ogan popped her salt and pepper head into the door.

"You sure I am not intruding here in your office?" Sita was grateful for the interruption. The past few hours of work had been grueling and fruitless.

"It's not like I use it much. For a cop you don't seem to walk much of a beat," The older woman commented as she stepped into the room. Her boots were muddy, her uniform spotted with a bit of dirt. She had a long rifle cradled in her arms and flicked it over her shoulder with a practiced grace. "I've been hoofing it all day. We have a lot of ground to cover here on Kekal, a lot of herds."

"What does a herd warden do, exactly?" Sita asked the other woman, finding she really wanted to know.

"Hmm," Ogan hung up the rifle, took off her gloves and put them through the wide brown belt she wore. "Like a drink, Ranger?"

"No," She said, feeling that she had consumed too much alcohol already that day. It was too easy to go from staving off a hangover to creating a new one the next morning. "And please, call me 'Sita.'"

"You offworlders don't know the good stuff when you see it." Ogan sat on the edge of her desk, perching and crossing her slim legs. "There's a bottle of fermented milk and a glass in the lower left hand of the desk there. Be a dear and haul it out for me."

As she was seated at the Chief Warden's desk Sita felt obligated to oblige. Soon, Ogan was sipping the foul concoction and looking a lot more relaxed and less weary.

"Mmm," The older woman said pleasantly as she drank from the cloudy glass. "This is from Lady Nida's family, I will have you know. Best on Kekal."

"Do you guard Nida's herds?"

"Nida has very little to do with her animals," Ogan said, and shifted on the edge of the desk as she sipped from her cloudy glass. "Her father is the true rancher. Right now he's driving his herd across the river to the south, near where your partner is interviewing Prag by now."

"I see," Sita said. She also saw that she was stringing the conversation along so she didn't have to keep reviewing the spaceport records. Sooner or later, she'd have to get back to work.

"It's my job to stop poaching, theft, keep the peace in the spaceport. Hunting and grazing rights go through us. We regulate the animals, make sure they're healthy." She carefully refilled her glass with more fermented milk. "Except for the riding, shooting predators, and treating sick and wounded animals I essentially do what you do."

"Except when a drinking horn gets stolen."

Ogan was in the middle of a sip and the comment made her giggle. The way she did so, covering her mouth, emphasized her sharp cheekbones and the beautiful color of her eyes. Eventually, she was able to swallow. "I'm sorry. It's just absurd, and I'm sure you'd agree with me. I wish Nida had come to me first, but she had to get the Rangers involved."

"Rich people," The two women said together, and then it was both of their turns to laugh.

The chat with the other woman helped restore her spirits. Sita got back to work after the chief had stepped out, pulled up another file. It was a cargo manifest for a fertilizer barge named the Stinking Thinking. Sita smiled, despite her tiredness, and went to the next file.

A face marked with age but still beautiful, dark brown eyes that drank in the light, and a full set of lips greeted her. The planet of origin was given as Araxis IX, and the occupation said "artist." The name read "Tyla." Almost as if she could pin the woman down right then and there, a shocked Sita jabbed at her computer screen with a finger, right between the eyes.

"Chief?" Sita asked in a loud voice.

"What do you have, Sita?" The older woman said as she stepped around the desk to lean over her shoulder.

"Looks like you got her," Ogan went on. This close, the other woman smelled good: the sharp smell of fermented milk, woodsmoke, the outdoors, and an honest touch of sweat beneath it all. Sita found her mind drifting as she inhaled the scent of the other woman's black and silver hair, but she firmly brought it back on point.

"Recognize her?"

Ogan had to lean a little closer to take an extra hard look. Sita kept still, enjoying the closeness of the other woman, but underneath it she was a bit incredulous as well. Is she hitting on me? She found herself thinking. The prospect was surprising and delicious all at once.

"No," The older woman finally said. "But she's an offworlder, so how would I know her? What's your next move?"

"Her destination is listed as Jansen's Planet." Sita frowned. "Where is that?"

"Long ways away, a failed agricultural colony. A jungle world even poorer than this." Ogan leaned back a little, and the younger woman found herself missing the sensation of her hot breath on the back of her neck. "If you can imagine that, which I surely can't."

Sita belatedly realized that the older woman was slightly drunk. She turned a bit in her chair. "Why would an artist go from her desert homeworld, to here, and then to some pisspoor jungle planet?"

"I don't think she did," Ogan tucked an errant strand of curly black hair behind her ear. "Do you?"

"No, I don't." The younger woman replied.

"Why don't you? It's right there in black and white."

"Just a feeling," Sita said over her shoulder. "It feels like a trap. Three planets? And these three? This Tyla wants us chasing our tails, not chasing her."

"I'd say you're right."

"But we can't not check it."

"That you can't. I know what passes for authority on Janssen's Planet." Ogan said. "Want me to make a call?"

"The Rangers would be very grateful for your help, Chief." Sita was so deep in her own thoughts that when rough, slender fingers delicately touched her collarbone she almost jumped.

The chief was leaning in, and kissed the younger woman right next to her ear, causing her to smile and blush. Seeing that it wasn't unwelcome, Ogan massaged the side of Sita's neck.

"You're tense," She commented, digging her fingers into the rock hard muscles just beneath the pale skin. "Your muscles are like stone."

Sita was relaxing as the other woman touched her, and she found it difficult to focus. "I need this report. Can you give it to me?"

"The report, love? Or is there something else you want me to give you?" Ogan asked, and smiled professionally. "Of course you can. So what's your next step?"

"Araxis has a government of sorts, I suppose I could check there while you check with the other planet," Sita leaned back into the massage, and the other woman enveloped her in her arms. "But first things first."

"What's that?"

Sita turned to face her. "I want you to throw me on this desk and fuck me."

Ogan needed no further prompting. With a strength and alacrity built of years of working with animals, the chief backhanded her computer and office supplies off of the top of the desk. In the next heartbeat the two women found themselves locked in a soulful, passionate kiss. She tastes like milk and meat, Sita thought as her mouth opened for the other woman's tongue. The sensation of it all, the delicious kiss, the full body embrace, sent shivers down her spine. Ogan brushed her fingers against Sita's face, thumbs sliding along the cheekbones, folding her lips against the other woman's with a sharp inhale of sweet breath.

When the kiss finally ended Sita felt her chair being whipped around. She raised her arms to playfully fend the other woman off but Ogan was both fast and strong. Sita found herself being lifted by the waist and plunked down hard on the desk's surface, a hard impact of cheeks on metal. The smaller woman felt herself bounce slightly and giggled.

Ogan took off Sita's cap, and then let her own hair down with a flourish. Both women shook out proud manes of hair, one black as the night sky with speckles of white like the stars and the other brown like the earth, and kissed again. This time it was more measured, more self controlled. Sita nuzzled the other woman eagerly, and in response Ogan spread her legs and pulled her closer. She's going to fuck me like she's a man, Sita realized, and the delicious prospect had her already wet.

It took a moment, but Sita was soon out of her chest armor and the top half of her uniform. At the sight of her breasts Ogan grinned and ran her hands gently over them, coaxing out each nipple one at a time. Her hands are rough but her touch is somehow soft, Sita said to herself, burying her mouth in the crook of the other woman's neck and shoulder.

In a few moments the younger woman was entirely naked: a narrow hipped, petite beauty, with a hard stomach, pumped up and fit arms and legs, perfectly proportioned breasts, blazing hazel eyes and thick lips eager for a kiss. Ogan put her hand around her throat and Sita welcomed it, automatically tightening the other's grip with her own hand.

"I knew from the moment I saw you that you needed this," Ogan was attempting to wrestle out of her uniform and maintain her light chokehold at the same time, and failing. Sita helped her out with both.

"Is that so?" The younger woman asked as she beheld the beautiful older woman naked. Ogan was slender and fit, but her flesh was beginning to whorl and pucker and droop here and there. A web of stretch marks sprouted from her hips and across her belly, but the skin was still stretched tight over the muscles there. Sita found the sight of her intoxicating.