Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance Read online

  On the other hand, her jacket was made of a tan hide with a fur lining which kept her warm, and her leggings and skirt were made of a local wool which kept the heat in. Her boots… Her boots were her one concession to egotism, but even they helped with the cool temperatures on Abertine. They were leather and laced up her thighs, and had a slight platform and high heels. The latter was partially to keep her feet dry in the snow, which was something of a standing feature on the planet at this time of year, but there was the added benefit of bumping up her height; Kaya had always considered herself short, though at 178 cm, she was only a little below average. A little extra lift in her boots had helped on Abertine, where the locals were stocky but taller thanks to the marginally low gravity.

  Even with the insulation her clothes provided, she wanted to be off the streets before darkness truly descended: the sky was clear and it would get cold when the light went. The sight of a building with a ‘Rooms: Vacancies’ sign outside it filled her heart with glee, at least until she walked in and discovered the other sign, which gave rates for the rooms by the day and the hour. Kaya marched up to the reception counter anyway: girls trying to run an interdiction blockade around their home world could not be choosers.

  48/1/483.

  The long Abertine night had seemed even longer than usual, and the light covering of snow Kaya found when she walked out of her lodgings did not make her feel better. Thank the Mind for sturdy boots, that was all she could say.

  The traffic in the hotel had not helped with Kaya’s mood. Late into the dark hours, people came and went along the corridor outside her room and there were sounds of various sorts from the adjacent rooms. Prostitution was not something Kaya was unaware of. The majority of colonies set out with a few people who provided paid companionship, either as a career or a side line, because there were proven psychological benefits to a healthy sex life and not everyone could find a permanent partner. Sadrine’s Drift had had two hundred thousand people on it and some of them had been escorts. It was just that Kaya had never met any of them, did not know any of them, and had never spent a night in a room next door to any of them. It had been… distracting, but it had quietened down enough for her to get some sleep.

  Her room had no bathing facilities, just a sink. There was a bathroom on each floor, but there was no way Kaya was going near that, so she had washed as best she could, dressed, and headed out onto the streets, taking everything she had with her. The hotel, if you could call it that, did not allow bookings for longer than a night. It seemed to assume transient status for its guests, some transiting through a lot faster than others, and Kaya was determined that she would try to find another place to stay if she could find no one to help her today. She needed to find someone, preferably as soon as possible.

  ~~~

  There was a general air of tension in the room as Thea entered carrying the large, metal case which was the reason for the meeting. A simple courier operation, that was the job. Collect the case, deliver the case, don’t ask questions. Thea was a professional and she did not care what she was delivering. She did care about the people she was delivering it too, if they looked like they were nervous and, almost automatically, she began to read them as soon as she saw them.

  There were three, all native Abertines. Two were, fairly obviously, there as muscle: a woman with short-cropped hair who had to mass over ninety kilos, and not all of it was insulating fat; a man with a slightly lighter frame, thick black hair, and a nose which had seen more than its share of bar fights. And then there was the leader, taller and slimmer than his companions, but also less muscular, less effective in a fight but more intelligent. He was smiling, a wide smile which failed to reach his eyes. His eyes shifted from Thea, to the case, to Jinny walking in second and closing the door.

  Jinny was smiling. She had been a little sour for the last hour or two as things went smoothly all the way through from arrival at the spaceport to the delivery point in Down City. Now she was smiling and that, as much as anything else, put Thea on guard. Jinny was not the telepath Thea was, but she could read a room and she was expecting things to get ugly.

  ‘You’re the courier?’ the leader of the natives asked. Thea just nodded. ‘You’re supposed to be alone.’

  ‘That was not stipulated in the contract,’ Thea replied evenly, ‘and absolute security of the package was. My companion is here to make sure the delivery is made.’

  The man’s gaze flicked back to Jinny who was standing there with one hand on a cocked hip, grinning. She was a slight girl, skinny. As a concession to the climate, she was dressed in a thermal bodysuit which concealed the fact that she had a toned body, even if it was thin. She looked almost child-like with large violet eyes, a small pert nose, and a heart-shaped mouth. Her general lack of bust or hips tended to add to the image of a teenager playing at being a hard-ass with a pair of huge revolvers strapped to her thighs. She did not look like a bodyguard.

  ‘Right,’ the leader said. ‘Well, hand it over.’ Thea raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. The king of Spanica’s beard is very fine this year.’

  ‘It is,’ Thea replied flatly. ‘It’s amazing she can grow one at all.’

  The leader paused for a second, sighed, and said, ‘That’s Spanican women for you.’

  Thea nodded. ‘Your people came up with the phrases,’ she pointed out. Taking a step forward, she lowered the case onto the floor between them. ‘I’ll take our payment now, thank you.’

  Ignoring her, the leader dropped to one knee, pulled the case toward him, and began checking the seal panel on the top. Thea felt the two guards shift their mental focus: they were getting ready to fight if…

  The leader got to his feet and nodded, and Thea relaxed as the guards did. ‘The seals are good,’ the leader said.

  ‘Of course they are,’ Thea replied. ‘Now…’

  Reaching into a pocket, the man produced five plastic chips. ‘Fifty thousand, as negotiated.’

  Thea reached out a hand and the man dropped the credit chips into it. ‘A pleasure doing business with you.’ Behind her, Thea felt Jinny’s mood shift to grumpy again.

  ‘I haven’t shot anyone in weeks,’ Jinny grumbled when the door was closed behind them.

  ‘That is an exaggeration,’ Thea said, though it probably had been three weeks, maybe more, since Jinny had been required to use her pistols.

  ‘Can we at least stay the night? Maybe I can get into a bar fight.’

  ‘Your idea of a bar fight usually involves something blowing up.’

  ‘Only when I get really lucky. Come on, Thea. We haven’t had any fun in ages.’

  Thea laughed. They had been paid, which was always a good thing, and her own mood was improved. ‘And you think we’ll find it on Abertine?’

  ‘There’s always some fun to be had in Down City. Please.’ Jinny’s rough soprano voice elongated the last word and Thea shook her head.

  ‘All right. We’ll get lodging for the night and we’ll see if we can find some of this fun you claim is out there.’

  Jinny beamed. ‘Great! Trust me, I have a good feeling about this. We’re gonna have fun! With a capital Boom!’

  Thea sighed. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ~~~

  The other hotels and hostels in Down City were either full or worse than the first place Kaya had found. Down City, it seemed, did not cater to the more… conventional business traffic on Abertine. One of the older colonists on Sadrine’s Drift, a grey-haired man with a short white beard and a rather nasal voice, had told Kaya that everywhere off-world was a ‘hive of scum and villainy,’ and Kaya had concluded early on that this was untrue… But in Down City’s case, the old man might have been right.

  Despite, or maybe because of, the villainy, Kaya had not managed to find someone who could help her. She had poked her head into a number of places with clientele who looked back at her with expressions ranging from disinterested to hungry. She had decided that actually entering any of those establishments was pr
obably a bad idea, possibly a very bad idea. She had felt unsafe more or less the entire time she was on the streets and the three times someone had asked her ‘how much?’ had not helped in the least. One of them had been far too persistent about it.

  Back in the hostel, Kaya had made sure the door was locked three times, and then had wedged a chair under the handle. Even then, only exhaustion after the long day had carried her away to sleep fairly early, only to be woken by particularly loud sex noises from the room next door. Now she huddled under her blankets and listened, waiting for it to finally stop. Weirdly, it sounded like the couple were really enjoying themselves and Kaya started wondering what it was actually like…

  Kaya had, of course, done the sex education classes in school back on Sadrine’s Drift. The colonists did not moralise on the subject; the school taught the mechanical aspects and the biology, and the ethics of the act had been discussed, primarily the concept of ‘no means no.’ When you became sexually active was covered by one law designating the age of consent at fifteen, but when you actually decided to do it was something no teacher was going to give advice on. Kaya had, to date, not found anyone she felt she wanted to have sex with. Not anyone who wanted her back anyway. She was not entirely sure what she wanted in a man, or a woman, since she was not ready to call it either way until she figured out what she did want. She had had a couple of crushes in school, but they had been on boys, and one girl, who fell into the popular bracket. Just about everyone had an interest in them.

  Lying back in the bed, Kaya looked up at the ceiling and listened to the moans and groans which, being higher pitched, were probably being made by the woman next door. She sounded… pleased, pleasured. It was not something she had heard much of before. Maybe she was actually the client. Maybe she was paying to have some guy with a huge, um, penis pound into her for what seemed like an enormously long time. What was that like? It sounded like it was–

  ‘Gah!’ Kaya exclaimed and yanked the blankets up over her head, pressing them against her ears and willing herself back to sleep. She had work to do, for the Mind’s sake! It was no good: she could still hear them.

  49/1/483.

  In the morning, the situation seemed just as hopeless as it had the night before, with added snow. The sky had clouded over during the night, the temperature was not rising much with the coming of the sun, and there was snow falling. It had already managed to lay down a couple of centimetres of white powder and that was only thickening as Kaya hurried out onto the streets to restart her search.

  She had to find someone today. There had to be someone on Abertine who could get her home and she had to find them today because… Well, it was probably paranoia, but she kept seeing patrol officers on the streets and they all seemed to be looking her way. It was as though they were watching her and, now she came to think of it, there seemed to be more of them about today than yesterday… And that was just crazy, right? There was no way they would be pouring police onto the streets to find one girl trying to run a blockade. Dumb, dumb, dumb–

  ‘Oof!’ Kaya walked into what felt like a wall, bounced, lost her footing, and ended up falling on her behind in the snow. She blinked and became vaguely aware that the ‘wall’ was actually a person, male, dressed in khaki slacks, leather boots, and a snow-patterned camouflage jacket, and he had some sort of gun strapped to his right thigh.

  He turned, frowning. ‘Damn, idiot Abertines never looking where they’re– Oh.’ The sudden stop came as he located the person who had collided with him, Kaya, and took in what he was seeing. Kaya might have considered the way his eyes scanned up and down her body something of an affront, but he was sort of handsome in a rugged sort of way. His body was somewhat obscured by the jacket, but he looked like he was well built, certainly not a local. He had a moderately long face, or maybe the frame made by his black hair made it longer than it was. His hair was swept into a long fringe over dark-grey eyes, a thin straight nose, high cheekbones, quite full lips, a solid angular jawline…

  He seemed to take in her looking him over and grinned, holding out a hand to help her up. ‘You’re not an Abertine,’ he said, ‘and you’re not the kind of girl I’d expect to see on the streets around here.’

  Kaya took his hand and he yanked her up onto her feet with little apparent effort. Strong, armed, and the jacket looked like something a soldier might wear… ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Kaya said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Someone to help me get home.’ She flicked a gaze around and lowered her voice. ‘I need to get to Sadrine’s Drift past–’

  ‘Buckies locked that place down.’

  Kaya frowned. ‘Buckies?’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You are really out of your depth around here. BCU Security.’ His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed and he rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. ‘So, let me get this straight. You need to get off-world, past a BCU interdiction, to a planet which has, apparently, died for no known reason?’

  Kaya felt her stomach tighten. ‘Yes. It’s where I’m from. I have to find out what happened.’

  ‘You don’t believe they’re dead, do you?’ Kaya shook her head and he nodded back at her. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time the buckies have covered something up. You got money?’

  ‘I’ve got… some.’

  ‘I hope you’ve got enough. I’m Jay Colder. Just so happens that I know of a pretty good smuggler who’s planetside right now. You pay our passage off this rock, I’ll help you find out what happened to your people, for a small fee, obviously.’

  Kaya looked at him. He seemed genuine enough and… Something just felt right about this, like it was meant to happen. She had literally walked into a man who could help her get where she needed to be, or knew someone who could get them there.

  ‘All right, Sor Colder,’ Kaya said, ‘I’m Kaya Trevorny and I’d be happy to take you up on your offer.’

  ‘Good,’ Jay replied. ‘First thing we have to do is find that smuggler and that means we need to go buy a few drinks.’ He turned before Kaya could respond, marching off down the street, and Kaya hurried to catch up, wondering whether she had, in fact, just made a huge mistake.

  ~~~

  The probability that Kaya was being taken for a ride seemed to be getting higher as Jay marched into the seventh bar. On the other hand, this one catered exclusively to off-world patrons and had an interlocked door system which kept the heat in, and the heat was most welcome. The snow was getting heavier outside. A thicker mat of it was building up underfoot, even in the heavily trafficked areas where it should have been being tramped down. Instead, it was compacting into ice and making walking that much harder.

  Kaya unzipped her jacket as soon as she got inside, sighing as the warmth began to seep into various parts of her which were, she suspected, beginning to freeze off. Jay’s jacket was obviously insulated, otherwise he would have been looking a lot less happy. Though maybe the drinks he had put away while ‘searching’ were helping him feel warm. Kaya did not drink, at least not unless there was some special occasion, and this was not such an occasion. This was an annoying waste of time which she was going to call an end to–

  ‘There,’ Jay said, looking across the room, but not pointing. ‘That’s her. Not sure about the one she’s with…’

  Kaya looked in the same direction, but there were several tables with women on them, mostly accompanied by men or in groups, and isolating the one he meant was impossible unless…

  Two women sat alone at a table near the back of the room, apparently bickering about something. There was the smaller, thinner one with a child-like face and a mass of powder-blue hair from which fell a plait which had to reach her ankles when she was standing. Now she was twirling it absently while she argued. And there was the other one, tall, very attractive, with moderately large firm breasts, trim figure, and angular features which managed to seem both hard and feminine at the same time. She had eyes pale enough to be obvious across the room and her blue-black hair was cut into a sharp-ed
ged razor bob which made it look almost like a helmet. And there was something about them, especially the black-haired one. There was something…

  ‘Back table?’ Kaya asked. ‘The two on their own?’

  ‘That’s them,’ Jay replied. ‘Let me do the talking.’

  Kaya followed Jay across the floor and it was quite obvious to her that the black-haired woman had noticed them. She continued speaking to her companion when the need arose, but her eyes followed Jay. Kaya had been noted, or she thought she had, but Jay was the focus of attention. As they got closer, Kaya could hear what the girl with the blue braid was saying. It sounded like something of a ridiculous argument.

  ‘…didn’t know it was going to start snowing. We can still go. I just don’t want to go out in the cold.’

  ‘Maybe, if you hadn’t drunk three times your body weight in alcohol last night,’ the black-haired woman said, ‘you would have been out of bed earlier.’

  ‘You could have got me up.’

  ‘That would have required me to know whose bed you were in.’

  ‘Hey! I was… Oh, actually, I’m not sure who that guy was–’

  ‘Ladies!’ Jay said, interrupting any further comments on the nature of the blue-haired girl’s sleeping companion. ‘We’re looking for some assistance and I’ve heard that you might be in a position to assist us.’

  Icy blue eyes. The black-haired woman had eyes almost the colour of the sea ice Kaya had seen on Abertine natural history programmes. The icy eyes regarded them for a second, seeming to examine Jay more closely, but not leaving Kaya out. ‘And what is it that we can do for you?’ she asked. She had a slightly husky contralto voice, a sharp contrast to the higher pitch of her companion. She seemed at ease, but she also seemed to be aware of everything around her.

  Unasked, Jay pulled out a chair and swung down onto it, leaning his elbows on the table. ‘We’ve need of passage off Abertine.’

  The woman nodded and gestured to Kaya and the chair in front of her. ‘Did you have a destination in mind?’