Spaceways - King Of The Slavers Part 10

Good is "that which we certainly know is useful to us."

-Spinoza Bad is what the other guy does.

-Trafalgar Cuw "Good job with Manjanungo, Janje. And pos, those corseted weirdos are cleared and confirmed: into the care of Lady Seerava."

"How much time off do I get for bad behavior?"

"Bed behavior? Anyhow, I'll tell you this and then you tell me how much time you want off: You're ready to go undercover, and after the big one."

"Monster!-you do know me. I'm ready. Skip the time off. What do I do when?-and where?"

"As I've told you before, you'll command your own s.h.i.+p-as a slaver, this time-and go after him by encroaching in territory he thinks of as his."

"Why?"

"Because he has to come to you. We can't go after him. You just have to be there, Janja. Be available. Don't bother asking-this is the way we do it."

Her hand twitched as if to flip its fingers; instead she nodded beside him, and shoulder-shrugged. Her hand continued its idle fondling of him."And what if this 132.

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nice warrior gentleman decides to blast my s.h.i.+p out of s.p.a.ce?"

"He might."

She clutched his s.c.r.o.t.u.m and he grunted, then reached over to pinch her nipple, hard. She jerked, grunted, and let go.

"Oh I do hate you, despicable gray Rat!"

"Sure. I hate you too, darling Janja." He kissed the unnaturally dark nipple he had pinched.

"Where do I do my preparing? Become a slaver, I mean."

"Rahman. That's where we're headed, remember? You leave this s.h.i.+p and go down onplanet in disguise, clinging lovingly to me like a real nothing. You-"

"Want to hear some genuine Daura slanguage?"

"Listening is easier when you aren't making comments. Ouch! We don't stay in Ramadan, but go cross-planet to Alisse. We check into a caravansery-not an overly nice one, you understand. There you get rid of the disguise and into the clothing that'll be awaiting you there. You leave. A while later I do, with the woman who'll be waiting there."

"I'm going to resemble her when we go down onto Rahman, right?"

He saw no need to answer the obvious ones. "Your s.h.i.+p is already on Rahman. One temporary crewmem-ber will be onboard. You will then make an illegal liftoff and you'll be pursued with alarms and attendant publicity."

"Infamous right from the start, hmm? All right. I'm about to have a new name, I'll bet."

"Good bet. You're about to become the piratical slaver Jansanerima Dee. You're not as accustomed to answering to other names as I am, so I made it easy. Do, 134.

however, start thinking 'Jansa' and 'Jansa Dee'."

"Poor Outreach is about to sp.a.w.n a slaver, hmmm?" she said, since the name was obviously an Outie one, just as her a.s.sumed "Janjaglaya Wye" was. Somehow Trafalgar Cuw had even got that one into the TGO memory banks.

She reflected on the names she knew this man had used (this man whose name she was not even certain was Ratran Yao): Sinchung Sin and Sin Yans.h.i.+n, Humayun RE4435d and Tabash-and-some-numbers, Hacema and Cougar, the name by which she had first known him. No no, second; he had come on as Sinchung Sin, policer from Resh. She wondered how many other names he had used, and she saw his point. Far easier to remember "Jansa" something and answer to it than to try to be Popocatapetl Tee or somesuch.

She said, "Where will I recruit my crew?"

"Up to you, Jansanerima."

"All right. My, uh, old friends on Sunmother would volunteer if I could find-"

"That's out."

His interruption in that flat voice was one she knew better than to argue with. She had expected it, anyhow. And the three Jarps off Lewuvul knew she was with TGO. She sighed. All right. She'd recruit her own crew. That shouldn't be difficult.

"All right. Where will I do my encroaching on Warrior's territory?"

"Aglaya."

That brought her up in the bed, naked and with rage in her eyes. "Aglaya! You s.h.i.+rash-slicing sistersucker, you really expect me to-"

"I do. To save thousands of Aglayans, Jansanerima, I expect you to go to Aglaya as a slaver. To save other lovers, meeting apart from their villages to plan their 135.

Lifemating as you and Tarkij did. To save other Tar-kijes, other little Janjabarians, once-sliced and anxious for more, only to be s.n.a.t.c.hed and hauled through s.p.a.ce and sold, sold."

b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Nice sentence, she thought, hardly knowing that he had written it out onscreen, shaped and polished it, and memorized it for just this occasion. - She sank back. "What more do I need to know?"

"How to conduct yourself as a slaver-captain."

"Piece of cake," Janja said, twisting her mouth. "I've known several." That gave her another thought. So long, Vettering. You were almost one of the good guys. She remembered something else: "Oh. Think I know how to conduct myself in bed with-him?"

"I do, and so do you. Remember that he likes to be called . . . you know," he said, for they had not said "Ramesh Jageshwar" or "Kshatriya" even on this surely-secure s.p.a.cer. "I think you've conquered that one, Jansa."

"-nerima Dee. Really? Perfect? Me in bed?" Her voice carried the sound of her pleasure, and was also teasing.

"Perfect, you say. Oh, well now. How could a barbarian from Aglaya ever be perfect at slicing in civilized surroundings with civilized men?"

She bent and bit his nipple. He grasped a very firm b.u.t.tock in one powerful hand and a breast in the other, and dragged-flung her off the bed. He followed, fast, and they hurtled into violent lovemaking, fast. HReenee would love it, Janja thought, gnawing nipple while hers was gnawed and three fingers moved within her. Then he was sliding onto her, into her, pinning her arms with his weight on her, acting as her rapist in violent hard surges that drove both of them swiftly past arousal into an aching panting need to flash; need for release. There 136.

was an additional excitement, for it was as if a new woman had come alive under him: Daurajanja, jerking as he drove in and in, listening to her cries and curses and thinking, insofar as he was capable of thinking, that what she had said was wrong: it wasn't ridiculous at all, all her noise. And then she was keening out formless cries, and he smiled with male pride, knowing that the two of them had slammed and thrust her right into o.r.g.a.s.m.

Only then, grinning and gasping, did he release the wrists he had held pinned to the smallish s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p bed. Only then did he take his weight off her, supporting himself not on his elbows or forearms but on his hands, so that their bodies touched only at crotch and, when he came down in that series of s.e.xual push-ups, belly.

A heavy shudder hit him. She enwrapped him with both arms as he began to stiffen and quiver, dragging him back down onto her and thrusting up her knees to deepen his penetration of her, to feel the violent spurts that accompanied his grunting groans and spasmodic shudders.

"Oh Rat, you rat, my Rat," she breathed, when they had soared and flashed and glided down.

"I hate you too, s.e.xpot," he muttered weakly, and went to sleep.

12.

We call "just" those acts that tend to produce, and preserve happiness and its components for the political society.

-Aristotle G.o.d d.a.m.n it, slavery in the s.p.a.cefaring age is simply good economics!

-the economist Sarcon (born free, died free) She had shoulder-length hair the color of suns.h.i.+ne in July on Resh and eyes blue-gray as new steel, the captain of the already infamous s.p.a.cer Hornet. She was en-sheathed in an insulated body-stocking that would turn any form of electrigun or stopper yet devised, over a slender body with a stout chest and conical b.r.e.a.s.t.s and an almost non-existent belly and shortish, muscular legs; almost heavy legs. The skinnt.i.te was white. The laced vest and bucket boots and gauntlets and belt supporting the holster of her stopper were gleaming black leather. Real leather, yes.

She had left the caravansery or hotel in Alisse in baggies and dark temporary skindye and a hooded brown cloak that was dull as an economics lecture. With her was this outfit she and Rat had decided on, together. It was feminine, and it was dangerous-looking, befitting the captain of a s.h.i.+p named Hornet. He had not needed 137.

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to explain why when dealing with a man as brilliant as Ramesh Jageshwar the little s.p.a.cer should not be called Tarkij, or even Revenge.

Rat had also decided to help her put together the crew. They were five, a woman and four men. The woman was a gutter-rat from Ramadan; the men, all save one, from the crew of a Shankari privateer whose captain and mate had been personally Diplomatic Missioned by Ratran Yao. The other man was wanted on Resh, for murder.

That was fine with his new captain. She had been wanted for murder on Resh for a long time now.

The woman had been enslaved once, as Janja had. Unlike Janja, she was perfectly willing to enslave others to keep herself living. She had accepted employment and her "captain happily; there had been no incident. With one of the men there had. His questioning the captain's authority and his sneers were unwise; how was he to know that she was TGO-trained? She beat the very arrogance out of him, along with a bit of blood.

They didn't understand why or how they had become so infamous so swiftly, but it didn't bother them much. On the contrary, all but one of the men off the privateer were proud of it. It was the first renown of their lives, the negative publicity Ratran Yao had carefully orchestrated.

Above the seventh planet of the star Thales they practiced at this and that, including gunnery. The two off privateer Jumper proved good DS men. Captain Jan-sanerima and SIPAc.u.m took Hornet on in toward another planet of Thales, well in toward the sun. The planet was called Aglaya. By then the crew were strutting, doing s.e.xual things with each other (but never never with the captain) and looking upon Cap'm Jansa much as a far earlier crew might have looked upon 139.

Cap'm Harry Morgan, later Sir Henry.

They swooped down from s.p.a.ce and into the cloud-pearled skies of Aglaya, and the captain bit her lip as they scudded above rain-forests and came to the misty mountains that, long ago, she had seen in the distance.

A lifetime ago, when I was only a little girl, really, walking hand in hand with Tarkij my love, discussing a tomorrow that never came. Back then I wondered about the mountains that were sometimes purple and sometimes an ugly gray; wondered how anything as ugly as ash-gray could exist in such a beauiful world . . . the only world I knew, then.

A lifetime ago, that innocence and naivete, and yet not quite a year and a half, Galactic standard measurement. And how long had it been on Aglaya, she wondered. She programmed the manual computer at her side. The s.h.i.+p's main 'puter-a really superb new SIPAc.u.m, for The Gray Organization did not scrimp when it came to things-was busy, bringing them in. The lighted screen gave her the answer, and she stared at the outer viewscreen that showed Aglaya.

What would I have been like, if I had spent these nineteen Aglayan months on Aglaya?

No screen gave her the answer: her mind did. I'd be a loving mother, and perfectly happy. And I'd be able to choncel.

//, she thought with a growing feeling of sadness, or resignation to the inevitability of her alienation from her own world and her own people, if I were still alive. In that case I'd probably be pregnant again, by now. And looking three years older than I do, or maybe five . . . now, in the cabin of a small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p easing down into the Purple Mountains in search of a hiding-place that would not hide it too well from the air.

A barbarian, she reminded herself. That's what I was 140.

and still would be. A know-nothing. How is it possible? All there is out there, planets and suns and more planets and billions of people, and all the technology-all the Things the Galactics have made. And here is Aglaya, living ages in the past. I'd have been like some half-civilized-no, not even half-woman from Ratran Yao's distant past. From the distant past of his people . . . his race, since it's different from mine.

And I'd have been happy, she thought, and her face was grim and yet a bit whimsical; a bit wistful.

Living, she mused without satire, on love.

My belt and boots should be gray, gray, and the skinnt.i.te too. Gray. All gray. And me, too. Janja-graya.

But I am happy!

Are you? Is it possible to be happy, living on love rather than hate, making ecstatic, animal, shrieking love with a man because of a bond of burn-out and hate?

"Black is black, and white is white," she murmured, but the Purple Mountains are really gray when one comes down into them, rather than standing off looking at them from the ignorance of distance. And the end justifies the means.

"All right, let's get this thing on the ground."

The crew did not know her problems and did not know that they had not really come here to take slaves. They thought she was a bit fobby, their pale captain in her dark garb. Trouble reared again, and she tried to handle it. That proved not possible with the man from Samanna, and she had to duck and then to shoot him. She reduced him to ash and molecules just as a similar weapon had reduced to nothing a man called Tarkij here, over a year ago one day when he was out walking with his Promised, Janjaheriohir.

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After that the others were sullen, but they obeyed. They did at least see that their captain was no happy woman. As sullen as they, perhaps.

They waited, on Aglaya.

They saw Aglayans. Once Janja-now-Jansa sat for hours, watching a young couple. She watched them laugh at the pa.s.sage of a Leapfoot that had startled them and perhaps momentarily frightened them. She watched them cavort and touch and pick flowers to decorate each other, and lie on their backs in the tall gra.s.s to gaze at the pearl-hued sky and at the mountain they thought was purple. And they fondled, happy in the warmth and tall gra.s.s of Aglaya.

Janja sighed and was not happy. She a.s.sumed that something similar though more athletic was taking place among her crew, or between two members at least. Nothing had interfered with the few duties she required of them while they were grounded here, and Captain Jansa chose to say nothing about their s.e.xual doings. It was hardly unnatural. She was not available to them and the woman from Ramadan on Rahman, Kimry, was.

Janja had not noticed any specific pair-bonding that could lead to tension and worse. As a matter of fact she noticed the opposite. Their furtive s.e.xual doings...o...b..ard and in the Aglayan bushes were definitely relievers of tension, among slave-taking s.p.a.cefarers who were not happy with their just being here, doing nothing.

At last Janja's hand moved angrily to slash off the long-viewer. It was that or start weeping; she couldn't bear to stare at the happy couple any more and she couldn't turn off her moping thoughts. In her black and white garb she went to tell her crew that no, they were not going to s.n.a.t.c.h that couple.

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They were waiting for a larger group of what they called "Glyans," she told them. (She knew they were making an effort to say "Aglayans," now, since their captain was a native of this planet.) The Aglayans always came out en ma.s.se at this time of year, she told them, and added that it was part of the local religion. Sunmother forgive me these lies! Her four crewmem-bers nodded in silence, looking sullen, when she turned and strode so s.e.xily away on tight-sheathed legs with their typical Aglayan calves.

Then they began muttering. This Captain Ice was the coldest and worst monster in the Galaxy, surely! Coming back here to prey on the people of her own lovely world (even if they were all just barbarians) and actually using her knowledge as a native against them; actually waiting patiently for a larger group.

Barbarians?

Of course Glyans were barbarians-look at her, at Captain Ice and what she's planning!

"She may be waitin' patiently," Chan said, "but I be grat-gnawed if I'm patient with all this waitin'!"

They were not, any of them. Yet they made it, Janja made them make it, for five days. They needed badly to do something by then, or for something to happen. Something did. They detected the other s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and were seasoned enough to know that it had detected them.

"Who the purple blazing h.e.l.l are you?" the voice demanded from s.p.a.ce.

"We're here-who are you?" Hornet asked coyly, and the other s.h.i.+p came down, and at last dispatched a s.p.a.ceboat to investigate.

The crew of the newcomer had no reason to be apprehensive. Hornet was small, and grounded. Hornet was a child compared to the size and experience of the 143.

other s.h.i.+p and its complement. Each naturally suspected the other, since both avoided identifying themselves.