Tall Order: A Science Fiction Adventure (Shadow Host Book 1), page 12
It reminded her of her family. They still had a few of those, back in the main compound. They’d been popular until about two-hundred years ago when holos had just become so much more practical.
“I take it you like ships better than drinking vessels?” Shirano asked.
He had kept behind her for most of the tour. His attention rarely strayed from her body, as if her earlier subtleties had given him full permission to indulge his interest—which had entirely been the point of them. Now, he leaned on the railing, drinking her in with deep blue eyes.
Gods, I want to kill him. And take this ship to the nearest preservation society.
Spacing him would be easy. Getting Andresse out was a trickier proposition—but she’d happily pry Pura Vida open to try.
She smiled at the thought, picturing Pura Vida’s hull peeling like a tin while Shirano’s frozen corpse spun slowly away. “Oh, I like drinking vessels just fine. I did my Master’s thesis on stills, even. But you’re right—nothing quite compares to a ship.”
Especially this ship.
Suns. It even has its original scorch marks.
What would it have been like, piloting a ship like this into Nova’s then-virginal atmosphere? Seeing the clouds and ocean and tundra spread out in an untouched vista, with nothing but the smallest of colonies speckled below, barely a footstep in the snow?
Rock, not snow, she corrected herself silently. It had been summer in that hemisphere when Andresse arrived.
The first terraformer had been mere scaffolding at that point.
“You have quite the ship yourself,” Shirano said. “An old Alliance model, correct?”
‘Old Alliance model.’ As if you don’t know what it is.
Huli Jing’s brethren were on the front of just about every history book that covered the past century.
She kept the smile on her face. “Yes. Dropship. Griffin-class. A participant of the Tala Border Conflict, actually. She celebrated her hundredth birthday about twenty years back. Not nearly as astounding or preserved as this, though.” She passed an awed gesture around her, doing a slow pivot, in utter reverence of the soft, matte-black surfaces of long-dead computer screens and the shiny trim of honest-to-gods metal gauges gleaming back at her from the wall. “Huli Jing is a hybrid model. Gutted most of her old parts and wires and made her mine.” Her smile turned into a grin she beamed his way. “Would you like a tour?”
Her heart made a thumping leap for her throat as she spoke the offer, but she schooled her expression. Ahead, Zan didn’t freeze, precisely. But their attention—suddenly, raptly—riveted on her and Shirano.
Yes, giving Shirano a tour of Huli Jing was a little stupid. But—was it really? If Baik and Kovalenko were in their box as they should be, a tour would simply prove she had nothing to hide.
And it would be weird not to offer, considering their common interest and the current tour Shirano was giving them. Plus, she suspected he would decline. He was clearly much more interested in getting a tour of her pants.
He gave her a small smile. “Perhaps later. As you said, we have…plenty of time.” The smile grew. “Actually, I have something I think you’d like to see. Just arrived a few weeks ago.”
Thank fuck.
She swallowed the bundle of nerves. “Oh? Is it another colony ship?”
He laughed. “No. A Fint Lumiere. I’d thought—” he made a brief gesture to the ship around them. “—that since we’ve now experienced and studied the pinnacle of the old, we could relax in the pinnacle of the modern. Would that be something you’d like?”
She stared at him. She’d missed most of what he’d said. Her brain had stopped working at the word ‘Fint.’
A Fint. A Fint.
Shirano had a Fint.
Her mouth went dry. Slowly, she closed the hinge of her jaws.
Was it possible to be sexually attracted to a vehicle? Because her heart had definitely fluttered.
Gods, she’d been Jonesing for a Fint ever since Lamar had delivered her such a massive case of disappointment a few weeks ago.
Sol’s burned child, this is going to be my favorite human trafficking bust.
And, hopefully, her only human trafficking bust. She had zero plans to repeat this job. Unless the other assholes of the system also had eight-hundred-year-old colony ships hanging out in their lobbies, but she suspected Shirano was a one-off.
Gods, a Fint.
A Fint she would definitely be joining him on.
“Yes,” she said, catching Zan’s eye and giving them a sly cat-that-got-the-cream smile. “That’ll do nicely.”
There was a reason she liked Fints. Many reasons, really. First of all, they were top of the line amongst civilian craft. Like, so on top, they had their own line of standards. Everything about them was absolutely beautifully crafted. Interior, exterior, engines, life support—fuck, even their sanitation systems had a polish on them, as if their owner’s shit proved so special and precious, it needed to be stored in stainless steel cisterns that never dulled their shine.
And, gods, their engineering.
The only things that could beat out Fint engines were a select few Novan racer lines—one of which was a subsidiary of Fint itself—and the most recent military engines the system’s two governments had created.
Fints were, in short, exquisite machines. And the inside of Shirano’s Fint was a breathtaking architecture of beauty inspired by a painting a famous artist had done of the ice in Enlil’s rings.
Coureuse des Étoiles’ living quarters opened up around her like a dream of brown and gray tones and luminous frost. Pale and effervescent, gleaming crystalline pieces contrasted with the prefab flooring like gems in a mine—exquisite and striking, the subtle expense of a Talanese diamond gleaming like a star from a rich woman’s finger.
And everything was kept show-room perfect by a fleet of nano-releasing cleaning bots that entered the room whenever it was vacant, and the construction—gods, the construction.
It was, quite simply, impossible to believe this ship could fly. Coureuse’s hull looked both too delicate to take her anywhere, ready to break apart at the first shudder, but also strong enough to endure a millennium of firestorms in abject luxury.
Beautiful. Strong. Untouchable.
In short, it looked like it had been designed by some advanced civilization of space elves. The mean type, all tall and brutally efficient, while also lapping up the luxury of finely-made beverages from what, in only the loosest terms, she could refer to as a ‘Mess.’
It wasn’t a large vessel, either. Bigger than Huli Jing, but only just.
And now I have to seduce this motherfucker on it.
She’d rather seduce the ship.
“First a Genesis, now a Fint.” Soo-jin’s tone slid into a drawl, her eyes glancing around as she sipped the cold, burning bubbly the Fint’s mixer had made for her—interestingly, selected based on her blood type and star alignment. “Mr. Shirano, are you taking applications for friendship? Because I could definitely get along with you.”
“I should be asking you the same thing, Ms. Dokgo. You are a remarkable woman.”
Oh, yay. The human trafficker thinks I’m ‘remarkable.’
The ghost of a smile returned to her lips. She lowered her glass and slid her gaze back to him.
“All flirting aside, you do have a beautiful home and an astonishing catalog of relics. I won’t ask how you got them—I don’t kiss and tell—but I would love to be…involved. And I do have the credentials.”
Zan, leaning against a counter a few meters away with their own drink and somewhat ignored, snorted. “Suns. They’d strip that degree off you faster than a tightbeam if they found out what you really do.”
Soo-jin chuckled. “They’re not stupid. Archaeology doesn’t pay nearly enough to keep me legitimate.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Shirano murmured, watching her.
Scalding anger burst through her chest. It wasn’t an underpaid archaeology career that had gotten him into the human trafficking business. Trafficking relics, maybe, but not people.
No, it took a real heartless asshole to make that leap.
Pretending to be engrossed in her drink, she wrangled her anger back down.
Focus. He’s left the door wide open and wants you through it. You’re going to get him drunk, literally fuck him up the ass while he’s awake, then metaphorically fuck him up the ass when he’s asleep.
As far as plans went, it was definitely not Alliance-approved, and she was definitely going to have to face a certain Commander about it next time they spoke…
…but she’d already got them this far. And she planned to take this seduction the whole way.
She took a sip and glanced up, meeting Shirano’s gaze over the rim of her glass.
With him watching, she tipped it up further and swallowed the whole thing down.
The alcohol burned her throat and made her fight the urge to cough, but it was worth the look in his eyes, and the heat that shifted into his expression.
All right. Let’s fuck this guy up.
“It really is,” she said, picking up the thread the conversation had dropped. She let her voice pitch lower, licking her lips as she leaned forward, returning Shirano’s interest. Her eyes dropped obviously down, then up when she spoke again, and she injected a husky edge into her tone. “It’ll be hours before those results get back—likely not until morning.” They’d be in late evening. She’d already arranged it with Diradios. “Why don’t we discuss my…friendship?”
Zan made a choking sound into their drink.
They recovered, and shot her an incredulous look that, Soo-jin thought, was only half dramatization.
“Really, Soo-jin?”
An echo of their words from earlier. She didn’t take her eyes off Shirano.
“Really.”
They gave a long-suffering sigh and made a dismissive, fluttery hand motion. “Fine, fine. I’ll take this back to the ship.” They glanced over to Shirano as they lifted the glass of sparkling blue in their hand, wiggling it in salute. “Any security I need to worry about on my way out?”
Shirano answered without taking his eyes off Soo-jin. “No. Everything’s on camera.”
Cameras? That’s all he had for security around here? Surely not.
Guess we’ll find out if I manage to plant those spy-ders in here.
Zan lifted their glass again, then turned. She didn’t look at them as they left, all her attention on Shirano.
Let him believe Zan was ‘just’ an employee to her. Someone to be dismissed. Nothing more.
It’d make it easier for them to plant their own pack of spy-ders on the way back to Huli Jing, with some educated detouring.
Besides, Shirano was wigging her out. He hadn’t stopped looking at her in over two minutes. Something eerie about those eyes… That focus.
She let out a slow breath, careful not to let her uneasiness show.
Relax. It’s fine. He’s just a guy with a kink who knows he’s about to get a really good lay.
Soo-jin cocked a smile toward him. Together, they listened to Zan’s footsteps retreat down the hall. Ten seconds later, Coureuse’s exterior door opened, then closed again.
Good luck. Fuck shit up for me. I’ll keep him distracted.
She wiggled her glass. “Must be nice, living on your own station. No one can steal from you.”
A small smile ticked around his lips. “Not without great effort.”
What a damn moron. I’m definitely stealing something before I leave.
She tilted her head, examining the slip of pale blue left in her empty glass, sent a prayer to Huli Jing’s namesake, the nine-tailed fox—the kings and queens of honey traps—then let her gaze lock with his.
She licked her lips. Slowly. And stepped forward.
“So,” she said, dropping her voice lower. “I hear you’ve got some kinks you like to fill…”
THIRTEEN
Six hours later, Soo-jin groaned and rolled over, wincing as the room spun a little too quickly and a sharp pain drove straight into her right temple.
Hungover and still drunk.
Classy.
In that, however, she was doing better than Shirano. The man had tried to match her, drink for drink, and she’d let him.
Then, she’d just kept on going and watched the alcohol destroy his sobriety.
They’d had sex at some point. She was unfortunate enough to remember it. He would be, too, she assumed. They’d still been sober during it.
Relatively speaking, anyway.
Now, he was blacked out and, in her estimation, down for the count.
Time to do some spy arachnology.
She pulled herself to the edge of the bed. The room spun again when she got to her feet. Clutching her head as it once again threatened to split open, she located her shirt, underwear, and jacket, grabbed them both, gave up on her pants—a dark patch under Shirano’s leg suggested he was sleeping on them—then stumbled from the room to find a sani not attached to the bedroom.
A huli jing may use magic to knock a man out, but all Soo-jin had was alcohol, anger, strength augments, and an average amount of stamina.
As far as walks of shame went, Coureuse made this one her classiest. Something in its lines turned her nakedness into something primal and powerful rather than the shaky shuffle she’d lurched out of the bedroom with. By the time she found the sani on the next floor, she was mostly upright and had morphed her gait into more of a shamble than a stagger.
She closed her eyes, activated the room’s light, and wandered in. When her reaching fingers bumped into the cold surface of the sink and counter, she leaned on it, opened her eyes into tiny slits, and looked at herself in the mirror.
Hoo boy.
Not as bad as she’d thought. The lipstick had smeared from the night’s activities, and her lips were more raw and swollen than normal, but the rest of the makeup had stayed mostly put, which amped up her opinion of the brand—Rose Nightwitch, good for drunken fuckdates. Who knew? A few bruises dotted her right breast and collarbone, along with one on her arm. Not from the sex, but from drunkenly walking into one of Coureuse’s fine doorframes.
They might look delicate, but they felt like fucking steel.
Gods.
Memory tripped. She twisted slightly, leaning more on the counter as she checked out her ass in the mirror.
Sure enough, a few bruises poked up where Shirano’s fingers had gripped, along with a raised red line where one of the harness straps had dug in.
He’d been…zealous at the sight of her with a strap-on. Shockingly so. Which was saying something, coming from her. She had more serial smut on her hard drives than she could ever possibly get through, and a different casual encounter every time she docked in a friendly port.
She was no stranger to the weird and horny.
Whatever. She didn’t kinkshame. Even when it came to human traffickers.
Ew.
Her fingers clutched at the counter’s edge as a wave of nausea rolled through her gut.
I just fucked a human trafficker.
Sol. That was a new low, even for her.
She gave herself a shake and straightened, glancing around until she found a likely cabinet for hangover relief.
What was done was done, and it had been for the greater good. Thirty-eight lives were on the line, and Shirano was good and knocked out.
She’d done her job. Now, she just had to finish it.
Taking stock of the cabinet, she skipped over the painkillers with some regret—she was still drunk, and her liver hadn’t been happy with her for many years now—swallowed some anti-nausea pills, then sat on the toilet and pulled the netlink out of her jacket pocket.
Several messages from Zan waited for her. All business-related mail that decoded into varying forms of, ‘Hey bitch, are you still alive?’
Bless them.
She glanced at the time in the screen’s corner and did a double take.
Four hours. She and Shirano had been knocked down for four hours. Six, if one included the fucking and the drinking.
Score one for her. Though, technically, she already had.
She sent a message back, an emoji to follow a pre-determined code—they had five they’d cycle through, according to the lyrics of a song they both knew—then put on her shirt, jacket, and underwear. Once finished, she glanced down at her bare legs.
She was still missing pants.
Oh, well. Not the first time she’d look like an undercover sex worker.
After doing her best to unsmear the lipstick—her opinion of Rose Nightlife tanking back down when it refused to do so—she slid the spider case out of her pocket, walked out the door, and set her sights on the rest of the ship.
Three seconds later, she came back and stuck a spider under the counter next to the wall.
You never knew—maybe Shirano was normal and accessed business mail while on the toilet like everyone else.
Or was that just her?
She decided not to think too hard about that.
The hallway outside the sani led to Coureuse’s kitchen and living space. Squinting through her headache, she went first to the cupboards, rummaging around them until she found the glassware—a great excuse to snoop—and poured herself a glass of water, sipping it as she turned her sights onto the refrigeration unit. A few seconds later, she was snooping through it, as well, and using the door to hide herself while she planted the next spider.
Sometimes, if they were network-connected, things like fridges were overlooked as security risks—and this Fint was fancy enough to have its refrigeration connected.
If Shirano asked, she was looking for a hangover cure.
Deed done, she turned around and came face to face with Coureuse’s living room.
Fuck, what a beautiful gods-damned place.
The whole thing descended from her in a cascade of beams that resembled ice crystals and a floor that both looked and felt like rough-hewn slate. Two seating areas occupied the area, along with a wet bar on one side. Her bra draped over the back of one couch—she remembered taking it off earlier, having either won or lost some sort of bet with Shirano. Several inactive holopoints pulsed subtly around the room, three of them embedded in the windows to offer overlays.
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