Revolution, page 9
“Personally, no. Commander Wolcott, would you?” Rodrigo turned to the Churquen.
Wolcott’s hesitation was probably too small for others to identify, but Rodrigo had spent a lot of time in the man’s presence over the last few weeks, planning everything out. Aileen Enjehn had been exceptional at what she did, but Addison wasn’t a slouch at planning. It had gone faster than even Rodrigo had expected.
“Certainly,” Addison said after a beat.
“Shipwide, Lieutenant,” Carlos called, and one of the men nearby nodded.
“My name is Addison Wolcott,” he said in a rich voice. “Currently attached to the Rio Alliance Navy as a Commander, but I am not one of you. I am a Churquen, born on the planet Gowook far from here in what is currently referred to as Innruld Space.”
Rodrigo watched him take a breath and flex all the scales around his eyes and jaw, which was a measure of emotional intensity.
“We’re going to Innruld Space, you and I, to help overthrow those same Innruld, who call themselves the masters of the galaxy in much the same way that Westphalia would,” Addison continued. “In doing so, we will free the forty species currently ruled by those specist bastards. We are sailing in harms’ way in a Patrol Cruiser, because the journey is long, but the Innruld ships we encounter will not even be as powerful as Dutra, so you will be one of the mightiest battleships on the line, when it comes time to fight.”
Even Rodrigo felt the emotions well up as Addison spoke. Hopefully, the man would be willing to remain in the fleet when this was done, because Rodrigo da Silva could see Addison raising his own admiral’s flag one of these days.
“Your Captain is Gnashiiley,” Addison said. “I am Churquen. Remahle who accompanied me and is working in logistics is Kr’mari. The Admiral is Human, like many of you. My friends back home include Yithadreph, Vaadwig, Ilount, Necherle, Tarni, Qooph, and even Atomarsk like Lt. Commander H’Brige Slani, recently of your sister ship Recife. We are doing this because no one species should control all the others, Innruld or Human. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go save the galaxy.”
Addison more or less collapsed like a weak spring at that, nodding to the inner group. The lieutenant cut the line and Rodrigo felt the emotional tide turn and surge back out of the harbor.
Wow.
Now, he just had to go live up to that sort of legend.
Twenty-Two
Oluchi
Oluchi wondered if he should start taking correspondence courses in whatever spare time he could scrape out of his day, to finish a degree and maybe take some law school or accounting classes. Sure as hell, he was way beyond anything he’d ever trained for, back when he was just a gigolo.
Or maybe not. That job also involved reading people and finding a way to get everyone what they wanted out of an economic exchange, on the way to a recurring or ongoing relationship.
You just had to squint and turn your head a little, and he had turned himself into a pimp. His prostitutes, however, tended to be captains of industry these days. Merchant princes.
Money and power on system scales.
But everyone really just wanted a happy ending when it was done.
The evening suffered a monsoon, so the balcony door was closed and he was seated in a chair just inside, watching the waves of squall lines pass the quad below every few minutes. The glass of wine in his hand was getting perilously close to making him get up to finish the bottle, but he wasn’t there yet.
Knocks at the door intruded.
At least they had taken to knocking. One weekend he was supposed to be off duty, Oluchi had pointedly spent two days wearing absolutely nothing. The third time someone stomped in without knocking, they had taken a hint and started behaving again.
“Come!” he yelled over his shoulder.
He heard the door open and then close a moment later.
The silence was compelling enough that Oluchi turned to look.
Middle-aged bureaucratic male. Well dressed in that fussy but plain suit they had turned into a uniform and token of their station, a sedate blue that would look like a rock in the darkness. And have about as much emotional impact.
Bureaucrats.
“I am instructed to inform you that your lawyer has arrived, Mister Pryce,” the man said in a slightly disbelieving voice.
Lawyer? What in Hades name had Eha or Anya done now? Maybe Erlyn had planted a time bomb somewhere in the bureaucracy when she left?
Oluchi was unaware of any lawyer, on retainer or otherwise. A pitifully few people even knew where he was.
The man waited a long beat for an answer. Receiving none, he spoke now.
“Would you care to be conveyed to a conference room, or shall I bring her here?” he asked helpfully.
Her?
Oluchi finally managed to arrange his thoughts into something at least as organized as a pack of ducks on the good hallucinogenics.
“Here would be fine,” Oluchi stammered.
“Very good, sir,” the bureaucrat smiled enigmatically and withdrew, leaving Oluchi utterly gobsmacked.
This did call for more wine. He rose and surveyed the bottle, noting that it wouldn’t serve two people, so he left it and pulled out one of the better red blends they had taken to delivering regularly.
Oluchi just had it uncorked when the door opened.
And he felt the rest of his world turn upside down.
Fortunately, Oluchi Pryce was an expert at keeping his opinions to himself when necessary.
Poker face, and all that.
He studied her, not asking a raft of stupid questions in a room that was no doubt being monitored in spite of promises otherwise.
How in Hades had Fernanda Flores found him? She should be on Yisan with the others. And pretending to be his Solicitor?
If he had to describe Fernanda to a stranger, he would have suggested her as on the lighter side of zaftig, carrying a few extra pounds but putting them to curvy use in a most distracting way. She could portray the matronly, grandmother type that she was at sixty-two, but she was more fun and athletic in bed than women half her age.
But then, this was a woman who had largely kept him around as an activity partner: going hiking, camping, surfing, and skiing; and not just someone to warm her bed and tell her she looked sexy naked.
Not just.
At least she was dressed for the part today.
Calf-length skirt in gray wool with pinstripes. Sensible black leather shoes with a man’s heel rather than a woman’s. Starched white shirt that buttoned up the front with a few frills. Double-breasted half-jacket cut wide to focus the eyes on her chest and her waist. Brown leather briefcase she must have borrowed from one of her own lawyers, to get that particular scuffed-with-age look to it.
Like most of the Humans on Yisan, she had that darker, red-brown skin tone of America del Sur, with straight gray-white hair shoulder length and curled under at the ends. Crows’ feet around the eyes and mouth when she smiled, which was most of the time. Not a woman to dye her hair back to black. You got her as she was and liked it or you could piss off. Not quite in Eduardo’s class for wealth, or Leena Hernández, who was commonly her social competition, Fernanda was still fabulously wealthy.
Oluchi just pulled out a second glass and poured one for her to go with his.
She approached with a smile like an eight-year-old pulling one over on the grownups and took the glass.
“So I’m in need of legal assistance?” Oluchi began ambiguously.
Technically, they supposedly weren’t monitoring his private suite, but most of what they might have heard would be him in the shower, or him and Anya when she had free time, which wasn’t all that common for reasons she had not been at liberty to discuss.
Something to do with Erlyn going off with Addison, and Anya’s needing to help Erlyn’s staff.
Oluchi didn’t particularly appreciate the twinkle that came into Fernanda’s eyes.
“Unless you’ve radically changed course from the man you have been for the last five years?” she chuckled and took a sip. “Probably.”
Oluchi recorked the bottle and grabbed his now-full glass. He gestured her to the couch and took a moment to spin his own chair around to face back into the salon area.
Fernanda kicked off her shoes and curled her legs sideways as she leaned on the arm of the sofa, somehow still managing to look like a lawyer, a dressed pinup girl, and maybe a reporter interviewing him, all at once.
“Technically, I’m currently indigent,” Oluchi pointed out, watching her as he drank some of the red.
Fernanda grinned in a knowing, devious way.
“I’m sure we could come up with a payment plan of some sort,” she offered in an innocent voice.
Oluchi hesitated. That surprised him even more than her arrival.
“That might present something of a problem,” he countered.
“So I’ve heard,” Fernanda grinned at him and licked her lips. “She must be one hell of an interesting woman, Oluchi Pryce. I look forward to meeting her sometime soon.”
Okay, good. Whatever else Fernanda Flores had heard, she knew about Anya Persaud and didn’t begrudge him growing up.
He just hoped Fernanda wasn’t about to try seducing Anya. She might succeed. He could barely keep up with either of them. Both at once would probably just kill him.
“So what brings you to Brasilia, Fernanda?” he asked. “Besides my ongoing and possibly compounding legal and political issues?”
“You’ve been telling everyone that you were a representative of Eduardo Martìnez and the merchants of Yisan,” she pointed out, letting her face and voice both go stubbornly innocent. “Eduardo might have been willing to take that on faith, but some of the others expressed…concern on the topic. I volunteered to investigate. After all, I’m still licensed to practice law in the Rio Alliance.”
“I had not known that,” Oluchi replied.
“It was rather a long time ago, but worth paying the fee every three years,” she laughed. “Especially now, since they couldn’t argue with letting me in here.”
“Have I been charged with anything?” he asked, just barely not including the key word on the end.
Yet.
“Not as of this morning,” Fernanda laughed. “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, knowing you.”
“Pardon me?” he said. “The only thing I’ve done recently is blow up a yacht, rescue an alien diplomat, seduce a spy, and negotiate trade deals to make everyone on Yisan even wealthier than they already were.”
“That’s what freaked Leena and the others out, Oluchi,” Fernanda said, sipping her wine. “They don’t understand why you were going to all that effort. But then, they didn’t ever bother looking past the pretty façade. Not like some of us.”
Oluchi blushed at the lascivious grin on her face. When had he turned into someone who blushed?
Anya. No. Eha.
Yes. Eha slithering into that restaurant and sitting there, next to Aileen and Lazarus, just daring any one person to walk up and introduce themselves because they had only left one empty chair.
You had to want it bad enough to walk in there alone. And fly out into the teeth of a storm to attack a yacht filled with armed kidnappers. And jump into a raging sea and let a Churquen woman wrap her panicked tail around you and squeeze because she was facing the scariest thing her kind could imagine.
Oluchi Pryce, suddenly acting like an adult.
Probably the scariest thing he had ever faced.
“All of you have been good to me,” he managed. “Eduardo made it a point of putting me there with Lazarus and Grace, when Eha needed rescuing. But even before that, I made a lot of money and had inordinate fun with money from the rest of you, whether taking it at the poker table or living off your lifestyles.”
“Your way of paying us all back?” she asked.
“Making it up to you,” he corrected her.
“So now what?” Fernanda asked in an open-ended kind of way.
Oluchi could see the open door to his bedroom from where he sat. The implications of her words were obvious, for all the woman’s subtlety. They’d been intimate any number of times over the last few years, right up until the day he left Yisan with Eha and Lazarus.
Now, he had Anya in his life. No promises, maybe, but suggestions of promises.
Possibilities.
Whatever an ex-spy and a retired gigolo might make of the second half of their lives.
Weird.
He didn’t think Fernanda was the jealous type. She never had been, when some of the wealthy women of Yisan had more or less passed him around like a new recipe back on Yisan.
And Anya had apparently won a bet with Erlyn Teixeira over him, when he didn’t attempt to seduce the Councilor who reminded him so much of the woman seated across the room.
Oluchi smiled at Fernanda. It was an evil, compelling smile.
He noted the hint of concern creep into her eyes.
“Licensed to practice law in a Rio Alliance court?” he asked innocently.
She hesitated before answering, as though she could see the trap door opening at her feet.
“I am,” she said carefully.
“Willing to put some sweat equity into things?” he followed up even more ambiguously.
It was cute watching her suddenly take a mental step back as she tried to guess what he was about to suggest. From the look in her eyes, it would be the wrong guess. Not that he was opposed to enjoying a night of wild sex with the woman, but not if it was going to cost him Anya.
Even weirder.
But Fernanda and Leena and the others had just been rich, bored women looking for something to keep them entertained. Someone to see them as beautiful women, rather than expense accounts with tits.
A person who might just sit on the couch and listen to her bitch, because that was all a woman really needed some nights.
“What are you up to, Oluchi Pryce?” Fernanda asked in a hard, serious voice.
“Negotiating the future of Human relations with a whole host of aliens, Fernanda,” he replied simply. “Who wins. Who loses. Who gets rich. I could use a little help here.”
Twenty-Three
Aileen
She wasn’t too sure about all this, but Aileen would do her part. Today, that involved impersonating a Director sailing a heavily-armed yacht into Gowook orbit.
Her, in charge. For real and everything, because Lazarus and the rest of the Humans were staying out of the bridge, working mostly in engineering to clean and fix things. Even Ereshkiki Nisab had been impressed with how much better the existing generators were running than they had been when the ship was captured. And life support.
And the transponders had been adjusted. And. And. And.
Aileen had made them rip out the command throne for that stupid stork of an Innruld and replace it with something her size. There had been a Yithadreph in the prior crew. Male, but not that much bigger than her.
This one actually suited her. Nothing on Ajax had until Thadrakho had built her a few that they had left behind.
“Coming up on the station’s horizon,” Kuei announced, just like she would have if Addison were coiled up here.
Eha’s cone had been offset to one side with a good view, as one did when one owned a luxury yacht more dangerous than about anything out there in this tonnage category. Human Star Spear and everything.
“Hail them and let them know we don’t have any cargo to declare,” Aileen said distinctly.
Cargo would require an inspection. Private yachts weren’t supposed to be hauling anything important enough for the authorities to care.
“Astral Jewel, this is Gowook Control,” a voice came over the line anyway. “We show no record of your registration.”
Aileen turned to Eha and shrugged.
“I’ll take this one,” the Ambassador smiled. “Open the video line, please.”
“Done,” Cormac said.
“Gowook Control, we’ve never landed here,” Eha said simply. “The vessel is out of Batta most recently, on an extended pleasure cruise, and now I need to return and handle some family business before departing again.”
The ship didn’t have a big screen, but smaller ones at each station. Aileen watched a middle-aged Innruld with pretty features appear. He was dressed as a fairly high ranking civilian.
On Zhoonarrim, he might have been the governor of the station. But that was Zhoonarrim. Gowook was several dozen times richer and more populated than that dead-end system.
“Family business?” the Innruld asked impertinently. “What manner of business?”
“Tountoun family affairs,” Eha replied dryly, impersonating a scion of one of the wealthiest Churquen clans with her haughty demeanor. “Inheritance and control of one of the family corporations, since you feel the need to pry, Inspector. What was your name again? No, better, I just need your badge number.”
Innruld were the masters, but anybody on Gowook knew the Tountoun family of Churquens. Even Aileen had heard of them, and she’d never been to this system.
The Innruld paled. It was like watching paint fade to perfect whiteness as he assumed that she was about to call the Planetary Governor to complain.
Aileen kept her snicker internal and her face perfectly calm. Her ears didn’t even come forward, although that was her forcing them to stay upright.
“That will be unnecessary, Madam Tountoun,” the Inspector replied hastily. “You’ll be cleared for landing. My most profuse apologies for the misunderstanding on my part.”
And the line went dead.
“Signal is terminated,” Cormac announced unnecessarily.
Eha blew out a heavy breath as Kuei and Aileen giggled.
“Wow,” Aileen finally managed. “How did you know that would work?”
“I didn’t,” Eha admitted. “But it works on everyone else. You just have to convince them that you will go complain to their supervisor, or better, someone at the very top of the food chain. Most of the time, they’re just being bullies, unprepared to run into someone willing to challenge their supposed authority.”
