She meets my eyes. Hers dilate and I’ve
got her number. It’s the danger she’s
attracted to. She may like bald men. She may
need a pilot. But the reason she picked me
was because she can sense that I’m
dangerous. She’s not the first, but she’s one
of the few where the timing hasn’t been
absolute shit. I shake my head at her. “You
like livin’ dangerously, huh?”
Her pink lower lip juts as her jaw firms.
“Are you saying no? I thought we had a
deal.”
“I’m sayin’ you should run away while
you can.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’d better be ready for whatever
comes your way.”
“I’ve been on my own since I was
eleven. I can handle it.”
I raise my eyebrow. “On your own with
your brother.”
“My younger brother,” she retorts. The
sulky edge to her voice makes me smile. She
doesn’t like being questioned.
“Okay.” I’ll know soon enough if she’s
talking shit. We’re only about ten minutes
away from picking up little brother. I pull the
ship’s master control pad out of a pocket in
my fatigues, thumb up the security system and
cycle the ramp. “C’mon, then.”
She follows me. "Can I ride shotgun?”
Shotgun’s not the only thing she’s going
to be riding before the night’s through.
Between the kissing, contemplating uses for
her dreadlocks and the verbal sparring, I’m
turned on again. We might be late to pick up
little brother. “You know anything about
ships?”
“No,” she answers honestly. I like that.
She’s got her moments of bravado – maybe
even false bravado, we’ll have to see – but
she doesn’t feel the need to lie just to seem
tough.
“Keep your hands to yourself until I show
you what to touch.”
She reaches out and runs her hand up my
arm. Squeezes my biceps. “Is this okay?”
I shake my head at her, but I’m grinning.
My warning hasn’t knocked her back any.
“Yeah, that’s okay.”
“What about this?” She reaches around
my neck. Goes up on her toes so she can
plant an open-mouthed kiss on my lips.
I hold her hips and kiss her back. We’re
definitely going to be late to pick up little
brother. I reach around to cup her ass,
squeeze and lift her up onto my hips. Then I
carry her up the ramp and into my ship,
which makes her squeak in surprise. She
holds on to my neck. Kicks her feet behind
me. “God, you’re strong,” she says against
my mouth.
“You’re just noticin’?” I held her entire
weight for the better part of a half an hour
when we were fucking, and during that little
cuddle afterwards. But maybe she was too
preoccupied with what else I was doing to
her to notice.
“You might be stronger than Ape.”
I get mistaken for one often enough, but I
let that pass without comment. I palm open
the airlock to the flight deck and drop her in
the copilot’s chair. Deliberate for a moment.
The chairs recline. Little monster’s already
on low roar. But I really do want more than
twenty minutes and if I take much longer than
that, we’re not going to be in Kuus for
midnight. Besides I got the promise of sixty
minutes and a bed later. “Strap in.”
She does, awkwardly. Definitely not
familiar with ships. I speed through my pre-
flight check and file a flight plan. Snow
always files flight plans, even if they’re not
always where I’m going.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Dock C-11.”
I nod. C-11 is a cargo dock. Easy enough
to get in and out of. The Spinning Marie has
general clearance for most docks on
Kuseros, but I’m in and out of the cargo
docks so often, I don’t even bother
requesting specific clearance before I strap
in and lift off.
I do a vertical lift off, since some ass-bag
has parked a shiny new Starflare between the
Marie and the runway I usually use. That the
jump will spatter the Starflare with shit from
the Marie’s engines is a nice bonus. Once
we’re a safe distance above the port, I rotate
the pods and point the Marie towards the
distant lights of Hemos.
It’s not even a five-minute flight from
Nock to Hemos. Kez spends it in wide-eyed
amazement, avidly watching everything from
my small adjustments of the flight controls to
the lights streaming by below us.
“This your first flight?” I ask.
“Yes,” she breathes. I smile at her
honesty, and her unabashed wonder. I’m too
jaded for that sense of wonder, but I still get
the aftertaste of it every time I fly.
I hone in on the flashing lights of
Hemos’s spaceport and circle around to the
cargo docks. C-11 is well marked, even
though it’s an auxiliary dock, and I settle the
ship onto the pad less than a minute later.
“All clear,” I tell Kez as I unstrap from
the pilot’s chair. She doesn’t move and I
glance over to see if she’s stuck.
“Wow,” she says. Her eyes are alight as
she looks up at me. “Wow. That was . . .
really . . . wow. Could we do it again? I
mean, sometime. I’ll pay.”
“You’re already paying for a flight to
New Brunny.”
She looks away and bright pink stains
those pale cheeks. “Right. Yeah. I just
wanted to see Nock and Hemos from the air
again. It doesn’t matter.”
“C’mere, kitten.” I help her unstrap and
pull her to her feet. Brush a stray dreadlock
out of her eyes and tuck it into the mass at the
back of her head. The dreadlocks are soft
and fuzzy, but they feel resilient. Definitely
bed-tying material. “You liked that, huh?”
She nods but doesn’t meet my eyes.
“You liked it that much, I guess we can
do it again.”
She looks up and gives me that grin I felt
earlier against my collar. Full of
mischievous delight. “You said I was
demanding.”
“Don’t feel like you gotta live up to that.”
“I won’t ask you for anything else.
Promise.”
“Mmm.” I’ll be interested to see how
long she can keep that promise. I’m betting
it’s not very long. “Let’s get your brother.”
She nods and begins fiddling with the
assortment of mirrors, beads and straps
around her wrist. A couple of soft clicks and
they’re aligned into a viewie. I lift an
eyebrow. Portable personal communicators
are unusual on Kuseros. The E.M
. wash off
the binary star means that tech has to be
heavily shielded. Not a problem inside a
building or a ship like the Marie. But
wrapping an eskey or vcom in six
centimeters of metal foam? Might as well lug
a terminal around on your back. Most people
don’t bother. Nothing seems to interfere with
this little piece of tech, though. Kez taps it
on, runs her finger across the screen to the
image of a young man with a blond crew cut.
The blond’s face fills the screen and begins
speaking.
“You’re late.”
“Hello to you, too. Did you get
everything?”
“Yeah.”
She looks up at me. “Could you open the
ramp?”
I nod and tap a panel to open the ship.
“Come on, Ape.”
“Coming,” the blond says sourly. The
screen goes dark, but the ship’s front viewer
lights up. ‘Human entrance,’ the ship tells
me. I reach around Kez and tap in an
acknowledgement so the ship’s security
systems don’t fire up. I flick the control for
the ramp and close the Marie back up, then
go to meet Kez’s brother.
He’s broader than I am, which takes
some doing. Shorter, though, almost exactly
the same height as his sister. He takes up the
Marie’s entire central corridor, he’s so
wide. And I can see where he got his
nickname. Where Kez is pale, Ape is ruddy.
With the muscles, blond crew cut and red
skin, he looks like an old Earth orangutan.
He’s even got the monobrow.
He’s dropped several bags in the
corridor. He picks one up and tosses it to his
sister. “Next time, hire yourself a Mule.”
“Thanks,” she says, ignoring his hostility.
She kneels to unfasten one bag, checks
inside, then stands and looks at me. “Do you
have a place I could change?”
“Sure.” I cock a thumb at the door
marked ‘Passenger Lounge.’ “’Fresher’s in
there.”
“Thanks.” She slings the bag over her
shoulder and pushes past her brother to the
door I’ve indicated, leaving me to return her
brother’s glower.
“Snow,” I say. I don’t offer him my hand.
“I know who you are. She’s been talking
about you for-fucking-ever.”
Has she now? Interesting. For-fucking-
ever sounds like longer than four days, even
in monkey-time. She might need another
spanking before we get to the truth of how
long she’s been stalking me.
For-fucking-ever is also strangely
gratifying. I’m not really sure what I want
from Kez other than my two and a half grand
and another go-round in a bed, but I like that
she wants me for more than my ship and lack
of hair. “These need to be stowed.” I reach
for one of the bags he’s tossed on the
corridor floor.
He snatches it out of my grasp. Hostile
little chimp. “Just show me where.”
I gesture him into the passenger lounge.
The Marie’s a cargo ship, so the passenger
amenities are basic. Just one room with the
passenger flight-cradles and the adjoining
‘fresher. If Kez has decided to change in the
lounge instead of the toilet, we’re going to
walk in on her. But presumably her brother’s
seen her naked before, and I’d like to see
more than I have.
Disappointingly, she’s picked the
‘fresher. I show Ape the lockers for
passenger baggage and leave him to stow the
bags, since the little fucker won’t let me
touch them.
Kez joins me on the flight deck a few
minutes later. She’s changed. No artfully
ripped fishnets and tight shorts now. She’s
wearing loose black fatigues studded with
pockets, a black tank with detached black
knit sleeves that will keep her arms warm in
the cool spring night but won’t inhibit her
movement, and boots with metal showing at
the worn toes. She’s got her game face on.
Most of the rings are gone, just a couple
through each ear and a cobalt one through her
nose remain. Her expression is cool and
distant. She’s still wearing the kohl around
her eyes, though. With the fatigues, it looks
like war paint.
“Ready?” I ask her.
The detached mask immediately drops
and she climbs into the co-pilot’s chair
eagerly. The fatigues aren’t as form fitting as
the shorts, but her ass still does interesting
things to them. I could get addicted to that
ass. “Yes,” she says.
“Strap in.” While she does, I flick on the
ship’s intercom. “Baggage may shift during
flight,” I say. “Strap in unless you want to
wind up on the ceiling.”
I don’t check the monitor to see if Ape’s
secured. Serves the little fucker right if he
ends up plastered to the deck when I take off.
The flight to Kuus should take an hour. I
open up the Marie’s big engines once we’re
clear of the docks. The flight computer
rapidly recalculates our landing for thirty-
nine minutes. That’s more like it.
The flight’s an easy one. A straight shot
up the valley. I won’t need to do anything
until we reach the mountains. I flip on the
automatics so I can watch Kez.
She’s looking out the viewer with the
same wide-eyed wonder. I smile and she
She turns to look at me. “You must think I’m
a noob.”
I shrug. “It’s a good view.”
“It’s amazing.” She returns to it. I watch
her for a few minutes, enjoying the delight
that plays across her expressive face. It’s not
a beautiful face in the classic sense. She
doesn’t have Marin’s fine-boned features. Or
even the sultry appeal of the hooker who
finally broke Marin’s spell over the little
monster. That woman had the fullest lips I’d
ever seen, and her mouth was absolutely
magical. Too bad she was so expensive. But
I like Kez’s expressive face. Her eyes would
be large even without the black goo. They
hold all the wonder in the universe at the
moment and light up her otherwise
unremarkable features: longish nose
accentuated by the dark blue ring through her
septum, pale bow of a mouth, high
cheekbones and narrow chin.
I couldn’t see her expression when she
came. I make a mental note to turn her over
next time. See if any of that delighted wonder
lights up her face. I’m betting it does.
“Kez,” I say softly after letting her
admire the view for a long while. “Want to
tell me what we’re picking up?”
“Glands,” s
he says, without tearing her
eyes away from the viewer.
“What kinda glands?”
“Adrenal, I think.”
“Fifty kilos is a lotta glands.”
“Huh?” She glances at me. “Oh, they’re
in some special kind of container. It’s
keeping them viable or something. It’s
heavy.”
“What’re they for?” I can think of a
couple of uses for adrenal glands: straight,
gray and black-market.
She shrugs. “None of my business. I’m
paid to get them from Kuus to New Brunny
by five.”
I nod. I’m familiar with that sort of
consignment. A to B with no questions asked.
“Who’s paying?”
Her eyes narrow. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t.” I give her a lazy grin as I echo
her words. “I just like to know who I’m
dealing with.”
She looks back out the viewer. “No one
stupid enough to hire me directly.”
“Boney Zed or the Chiangles?” I ask,
naming two of the better-known fronts in
Nock. Snow’s been hired by each of them at
various times. I was curious enough after the
first hire to trace it back to one of the
Vespers’ drug lords, Kison Tyng. King of the
Hex-trade on Kuseros. But I never did figure
out why he had Boney hire the Spinning
Marie for a fairly straight transport of
industrial waste. Unless he was testing me.
In which case, by poking around, I failed.
Which is fine by me. I got no interest in
becoming part of someone’s fiefdom. Too
much potential for recognition.
“Neither. A Jello Boy.”
One of the Western Colony’s many gangs
of toughs. They usually stick to Hemos.
Which means either they left the res to hire
Kez, or she left it to hire me. “They trade in
organics?” They don’t that I’ve ever heard,
but maybe they’re branching out.
She snorts. “They’re not that organized.”
No, I didn’t think so. “You’re not
curious?”
She turns to look at me. Big eyes
narrowed. “Of course I am, but not
terminally. Look, runs like this come along
four or five times a year. The big fish hire
me because I’m such a little fish that no one
gives a shit what I do, and no one would give
a shit if I disappeared. So I keep my
questions to myself, do what I’m told and
collect my credits. And I don’t get eaten, get
it?”
Yeah, I get it. She’s a smart girl: a
pragmatist and an opportunist. Like me.
“What I don’t get is why you came to me.”