Although I had known about Delos since I was a young woman, this was my first visit to the planet. Delos was a member of the Allied Worlds of Earth, who steadfastly maintained neutrality in the undeclared war between the Traders and my people, the Skolians. Despite the fact that we were all human—Allieds, Traders, and Skolians alike—we had little in common. So Earth declared Delos a neutral zone, sanctuary, a place where Trader and Skolian soldiers could walk together in harmony.
Right. Harmony was their word, not ours. You'd never catch one of us walking with a Trader soldier, in harmony or otherwise.
However, Delos was the planet easiest to reach in the region of space where my squad had been running drills to integrate our newest member, Taas, into the group. So Delos was where we went for our rest and relaxation.
The evening was warm as the four of us strolled the Arcade. A hodgepodge of stalls and shops stretched along the boardwalk, their eaves hung with wooden chimes that clacked in the wind. At the apex of each turreted roof, a pole reached toward the sky. Metal plates hung from the poles, clanking heartily as the wind tossed them against one another, their chatter melding with the voices of crowds milling below. It was a place of festival and laughter, a haven for the bright women in their flutter-yellow skirts, and for the strapping young men in billowing trousers who pursued them.
The boardwalk, however, bothered me. Its nervoplex surface shifted under our feet constantly, until I was gritting my teeth. Nervoplex supposedly heightened comfort and pleasure. The network of molecular fibers and nanochips woven into it reacted to the distribution of weight it experienced, letting the boardwalk analyze and interact with pedestrian traffic as if it sensed moods. A lot of people liked it, but it drove me nuts.
The four of us—Rex, Helda, Taas, and myself—walked alone. I wished we had civilian clothes. We weren't on duty, after all. But we just had our Jagernaut uniforms: black pants tucked into black boots, black vests, black jackets. In these bright crowds, all that dark leather drew attention like rocks falling into water. The river of pedestrians split around us as if we were big, hulking boulders. They were mostly Earth citizens, who weren't likely to have seen even one Jagernaut before, let alone four.
Rex glanced at me, his wickedly handsome face flashing with a grin. "You should start yelling and foaming at the mouth, Soz. That would clear this place out fast."
I glared at him. The "Jagernaut goes amok" plot was a favorite in the holomovies. We were bioengineered fighter pilots, elite officers in the Imperial Space Command of Skolia, or just ISC. The prospect one of us would go crazy and attack everyone in sight had made a lot of holomovie producers annoyingly rich.
"I'll foam your mouth," I grumbled.
Rex laughed. "That sounds interesting."
Helda spoke in her throaty accent. "You remember Garth Byler?"
Rex said, "He entered the Dieshan Military Academy as a cadet the year I graduated."
Helda nodded. She was as big as Rex, towering over Taas and me. Her thick hair hung around her face like honeycorn straw. "He went to a heartbender."
The nervoplex under my feet stiffened. I slowed down, trying to relax. I had no reason to tense up. None at all. Heartbender was just the slang we used for psychiatrists who treated Jagernauts that broke under the strain. But if one of us did snap, and it happened more often than ISC admitted, we did it quietly. Any violence was almost always directed inward, not at other people.
"What happened to him?" Taas asked.
"Went to the hospital," Helda said. "Then he retired."
I rubbed the back of my hand across my forehead. My breathing and pulse had sped up for some reason, and sweat gathered on my temples, dampening curls of my hair. It was bizarre.
Then I saw it. Across the Arcade, two people were watching us, a young man and woman dressed in imported jeans and glittery hotshirts. They looked like students, maybe lovers out for a stroll. Both stood staring at us, their snack-sticks dangling forgotten in their hands.
Tightness constricted around my chest. I stopped walking and took a breath. Block, I thought.
All I should have seen when I gave the Block command was a psicon, an image similar to the icons on a computer, except that psicons appeared in the mind. For some reason, a menu formed in my mind instead. I closed my eyes and the menu wavered like the afterimage of a bright light on my lids. When I opened my eyes, the menu seemed to hang in front of me like a holographic image:
Transfer
Block
Exit
The letters were in my personal font, which made them look as if they were carved out of amber. An image next to Block showed a neural synapse with a wall between the axon and dendrite. Huh. That was the Block psicon I had expected to flash in my mind. Instead here it floated, distracting me. Rex and Helda stood next to talking, oblivious to the list of words I saw superimposed on them.
For flaming sake. Why was this menu hanging in the air? Well, all right, I knew why. The mesh node implanted in my spine had accessed my optic nerve and produced it when I sent the Block command. Except it shouldn't have happened. I had set my systems to bypass this procedure. It was far too inefficient, not to mention distracting, to go through this process every time I gave a command to my spinal node. I should have just seen the flash of the synapse-and-wall psicon letting me know the node was working.
I formed another thought. Switch to Brief mode. I didn't refer to my spinal node by a name. Although I did for other nodes I worked with, doing it for one inside of me would be too much like calling myself by someone else's name, as if I were doubling or splitting my personality.
My node responded in its usual bone-dry verbiage. Recommend Verification mode. Too much time has passed since you last confirmed blocking operations.
So. It wanted to run a check. I knew the routine; it would show me every step it followed to execute the Block. Usually the process went at close to the speed of light, which was the limit to how fast signals could travel the fiberoptic threads in my body. Now it wanted me to plod through the whole routine to make sure it had no errors.
All right, I thought. Do the check.
The menu faded and a new image appeared, a blue silhouette of the two students staring at us. The node overlaid the image on the students so they seemed to glow with blue light. Input from these two sources exceeds safety tolerances.
I know that. For an empath like myself, the "input" was their fear: I felt it so intensely that sweat had formed on my temples. It's why I want you to block them.
My node thought, I am releasing a drug to inhibit the action of psiamine on the neurons in the para centers of your brain, including attachment to P1 receptors. Inhibition will continue until external input drops below your default safety tolerances.
Can't you just say you're blocking them? I grumbled.
I am blocking them, it obliged.
The onslaught of fear receded. As my shoulders relaxed, I thought, Procedure verified. Switch to Brief mode.
Brief mode entered.
I glanced around. Taas was standing next to me, staring at the students. Their fear radiated off him like heat from a red-hot ingot.
"Shut them out," I said softly.
He didn't move. He seemed mesmerized.
"That's an order, Quaternary," I said. "Initiate blocking."
Taas jerked. Then he closed his eyes. After a moment he looked at me.
"You all right?" I asked.
"Yes." He winced. "They caught me off guard."
"Me too," I admitted.
Rex glanced from me to Taas. Then he glanced at the students, and I felt him block their input. Although I couldn't pick up Helda as easily, her brief glazed look told me she had accessed her node. None of them took more than an instant; apparently their nodes weren't harassing them with verification procedures. Well, maybe harassing wasn't a fair word. I was the one who had told it to warn me when too long went by without a check.
"I don't know why I slipped up like that," Taas said.
"It's this blasted nervoplex." I motioned at the boardwalk. "It's like a mood enhancer." Taas and I were more sensitive to the effect, he as the least experienced member of the squad, and I as the strongest empath.
Helda frowned at the students. "Why are they so upset? What they think we do to them?"
"I get tired of evoking that reaction," Rex said. He pushed his hand through his hair, mussing up the black locks. No, not just black. More white showed at his temples every day.
But what was this? Why did Taas have that odd smile? "What's so funny?" I asked.
He flushed. "Ma'am?"
"Why are you grinning?"
He immediately stopped smiling. "Nothing, ma'am."
I laughed. "Taas, you don't need to say ma'am." In a group as tightly knit as ours, we let the formalities drop. "What's funny?"
"That boy had, uh, a different reaction to you than he did to the rest of us."
"Different?" I blinked. "How?"
"He thinks you're—uh . . ."
I waited. "Yes?"
Taas reddened. "He thinks you're sexy."
For flaming sake. "I'm old enough to be his mother!"
Helda laughed. "But you look like a youngster, Soz."
"I do not." In truth, she wasn't the first to tell me that.
Rex grinned, and I felt Taas relax. Our group tension trickled away. As Rex started to speak, his gaze shifted over my shoulder—and his smile disappeared like a door slamming shut. Puzzled, I turned to look.
Traders.
My good mood vaporized. Of course they didn't call themselves Traders. They were Eubians, members of the euphemistically named Eubian Concord. Five of them had invaded the boardwalk, all in grey military uniforms with blue piping on the trousers and crimson braid on the sleeves. Although it was hard to see their faces from this far away, I didn't think any had the red eyes of an Aristo. One did have an Aristo's finely chiseled features, the black hair, even the arrogant stance. And his hair glinted. But it didn't have that liquid shimmering quality so distinctive of an Aristo. He was probably some Aristo's by-blow—which made him no less dangerous to us.
They stared at us across the Arcade as if they had discovered slime oozing over the nervoplex. The crowds continued about their business, bustling between our group and the Traders, blissfully oblivious to the tension.
An odd fear grabbed me, one with a nurturing intensity, which certainly didn't match the Traders. Looking around, I saw a woman hurrying several children away from us. She glanced at the Eubians, then at us, and then urged her charges to speed up. The smallest boy balked, trying to head for a stall where sugar candles hung on a wire, dripping sugar confections instead of wax. The woman pulled him away, ignoring his loud protests as she sped him through the crowd. I didn't blame her. If I were a civilian who had seen four Jagernauts and five Eubian military officers in the same place, I would have laid fast tracks out of there, too.
Taas scowled at the Traders. "They can't just come here and walk around."
"What, you want them to get a license?" Helda asked. "We're harmonizing, remember?"
"They could be spying," Taas offered.
Rex was watching me. "What's wrong?"
"That tall one," I said. "He looks like Tarque."
Rex stiffened. "Tarque is dead."
Long dead. Ten years dead. I had killed him.
"Who is Tarque?" Helda asked. "It sounds Aristo."
Somehow I kept my voice steady. "It is."
Rex nudged my mind. After years of working together, he and I were close enough that I could catch his thoughts if he directed them at me with enough force.
Are you all right? he asked.
I took a breath, struggling to keep my pulse steady. Yes.
Helda was watching me. "Where you know this Tarque?"
"I went undercover on Tams Station ten years ago," I said.
"Tams?" Taas asked. "You mean the Trader planet?"
I nodded. "I got—caught."
"They broke your cover?" he asked.
"No. I don't mean that way." It was a moment before I could continue. "Ten years ago the Traders installed an Aristo governor on Tams, a man named Kryx Tarque. His people were making sweeps through the cities, selecting taskmakers to serve in his estates." Taskmaker was the generic name Aristos used for most of their slaves, which as far as they were concerned included everyone in the universe who wasn't an Aristo. "I got caught in a sweep."
Taas stared at me. "You've been a Trader server?"
"No." I spoke with a calmness I didn't feel. "A provider."
Taas blanched, and Helda's muscles bunched up along her shoulders. Provider. It was one of the ugliest Aristo euphemisms.
Helda rolled her shoulders like a fighter easing out knotted muscles. "How you escape?"
I shook my head. I couldn't talk about it. Across the Arcade, the Traders were talking among themselves, probably discussing the outrage our being allowed to walk on the same boardwalk as them.
Taas spoke awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Primary Valdoria. About Tams."
I tried to smile. "Call me Soz, all right?" I had told him that so many times I had lost count.
He reddened. "Yes, ma'am."
Helda's thought brushed my mind, far weaker than I had felt from Rex: I also am sorry. Then, more lightly: Give Taas time. You scare the bejeebs out of him.
Hey! Taas thought. I caught that. He glared at her. I have no bejeebs. Whatever they are.
Rex sent them a mental grin. That's because Soz scared them all off.
I tried to smile, knowing they meant to diffuse the tension. And I should be pleased; it was the first time Taas had succeeded in joining our link without help from our ships. But I couldn't stop staring at the Traders. They had started to walk, keeping watch on us as they receded into the crowds.
"Looks like we bore them," Helda said.
Taas shifted his feet back and forth like a ball player waiting for his opponent to make a move. "We can't let them walk away."
"What justification would you give for anything else?" I asked.
"They're Traders," Taas said. "Isn't that enough?"
I tilted my head toward the Allied police officers who had gathered in the area, their blue and silver uniforms easy to spot among the crowds. "I doubt they would agree."
Taas scowled. "If it wasn't for us, the Traders would have long ago taken over their Allied Worlds. They should be grateful we're here."
I smiled slightly. "If it wasn't for the Traders keeping us occupied, we might have long ago taken over their Allied Worlds."
Taas's forehead creased. "Don't you hate the Traders?" He hesitated. "Especially after—"
"Brawling in the street won't serve any purpose," I said. "It also happens to be illegal here."
Helda shrugged at Taas. "We have better ways to occupy our time, Hoiya. I would like a drink, myself."
I had never quite figured out what Hoiya meant in Helda's language, but I thought it was something like "sweet young one." Taas had yet to realize it was more than a nonsense word she threw into her sentences. It was going to be entertaining to see her explain herself when he realized she was calling him a sweet boy.
Rex smirked. "Heya, Helda, Hoiya, you want to get drunk?"
"Hoiya yourself," Helda grumbled. Then she grinned. "Maybe a few drinks, heh?"
"I wouldn't mind," I said. A strong drink, the kind that obliterated memories.
Night had been pressing down on the sunset for over an hour, darkening the reddish-purple streak of sky along the horizon. A full day here lasted sixty-two hours, and the sunset clung to the sky as if it resisted giving up the light. Clouds streaked the horizon, their lower edges rimmed with a brilliant pink that deepened as the sunset withdrew behind the Arcade roofs. The heavens overhead had turned a deep violet. The Delos sun emitted more purple light than most human habitable planets, and the thin atmosphere scattered it less, giving the sky a purple tinge even here at sea level.
The Arcade was even more crowded now, as people took advantage of the respite from the heat. With thirty hours of sunlight, the temperature heated up a great deal during the day. It was more comfortable for humans in the evening, as the day cooled down.
We walked along a line of bars. Their holosigns lit up the dusk: a shocking pink flower glowing over a door, gilded insects flying in ellipses, a cluster of blue-green planets orbiting a blue giant star that could never really support such a solar system. Hologram screens sided most of the bars, spawning holos everywhere: poles of light rotated between buildings, swirling with gaudy purple and red stripes; luminous arches spanned the roofs; scampering animals sparked and popped like firecrackers as they ran up walls or morphed into different species.
Music jangled, raucous tunes mixing with seductive melodies. Sounds jumped out as we approached their sources and receded into the general buzz after we passed. Hawkers called out from doorways in a slew of languages. The ones I understood were trying to entice customers with promises of liquor and smoke-sticks, and seeds of the oilweed plant that set you to dreaming or to making love for hours. The smell of cooking meat and spices saturated the air.
I couldn't read most of the holosigns. Finally I pulled down a translation menu in my mind and overlaid it on an elegant sign that said "Constantinides."
Translate, I thought.
Greek, my node answered. Translation: Constantinides.
"Well, that helps a lot," I said.
"Where you want to go?" Helda asked.
I pointed to a rusty building. One pole topped its roof, with a few desultory circles that clanked in the wind. The holosign above the door was in English, the only language I had seen so far that I could even marginally read without a translator.
"Jack's Place," I said.
Rex peered at the bar. "It sounds vintage Earth."
Helda snorted. "It look vintage wreck."
"Come on, Helda." Rex laughed. "Be brave."
"Why you want to go to this place?" she demanded.
"Because," Rex said. "It looks like it has authentic old Earth atmosphere."
"This is good thing to have?" Helda asked.
I smiled, in a better mood than earlier. "Let's give it a try and see."
So we went inside, pushing open the door under the sign. Tables covered by red and white checked cloths filled the room. A counter stretched along one wall, its black top pitted with age. Stools lined the counter, each upholstered in a red material that shone from use. A man with stains on the white apron tied across his big stomach stood behind the counter, polishing a glass. A band was playing on a small stage in one corner. The instruments were unfamiliar: hourglass shaped boxes with strings pulled tight, gold horns with handles that moved in and out, and fat drums. The music had a compelling rhythm, a sensual blend of sound that made me want to dance with the young man who was singing. Garish cartoon holos flickered in front of panels that lined the stage.
A woman in a short skirt was waiting on the tables. Taas watched her with a boyish grin. "I like this place."
Rex smiled his agreement. "Let's sit at a table."
Helda glanced at Taas and tilted her head at the waitress. "Nice, hmm? But we better not fight. Save that for Traders. I'm too much bigger than you anyway."
Taas blinked at her. "What?"
"She doesn't want to fight you for the waitress," I said.
"Why would Helda and I fight over the waitress?"
"Beats me." I was no judge of beauty in women. Now in men, that was different. But to me the waitress just looked like a too young girl in a too tight skirt. It had to be cutting off her circulation.
Rex laughed. "Maybe the three of us should offer ourselves and let her pick."
"Hah," I said. "What makes you think she'd pick any of you?"
"The three of us?" Taas asked.
Helda leaned toward him. "Me, you, Rex."
Taas turned bright red. "You like women? Not men?"
"Of course," Helda said.
"Oh." Taas scratched his chin. "Well, you may be bigger than me, but I have more style."
The waitress came over and spoke shyly to Rex in English. "Would you like a table?"
He answered in Skolian, giving her his sexiest grin. "I have no idea what you're saying, but it sounds beautiful."
"She wants to know if we like tables," I said. I pulled down my translation menu. It hung over the waitress, who was looking from me to Taas to Helda. I knew I probably had the same glazed expression I saw on their faces.
Waiting, my node prompted.
Rex smiled at the waitress. "They're meditating," he said in Skolian.
She reddened, then looked around for someone who could help her.
Translate 'We would like drinks and food,' into English, I thought.
The waitress gave up looking for help and tried speaking to Rex again. "What can I do for you?" The Skolian translation of her words came into my thoughts, interfering with my attempt to translate what I wanted to say into English.
"Pah," I muttered. My node was optimized for combat, not translation. Maybe I should have added that diplomacy mod after all. It would augment my social skills and upgrade my language capability. But I had loaded the node to capacity with combat mods and libraries, and I had no intention of removing even one. My life might someday depend on it. I didn't want to enlarge the node again, either. My biomech system had reached the limit of what was considered safe even with state-of-the-art technology.
Besides, it wouldn't hurt me to practice English without a node whispering in my ear. Translation program end, I thought. As the menu vanished, I spoke to the waitress in the best English I could muster. "Is okay there we sit?" I motioned at a booth by the far wall.
"Certainly." The red color receded from her face, and my own cheeks cooled. She glanced at Helda and Taas, who both looked normal again, and her shoulders lowered. My own relaxed, too.
After taking some big cards from a nearby table, the waitress headed for the booth. As we walked behind her, she looked back at Rex and blushed. Following her glance, I noticed how tightly rex's pants fit. They clung to his well muscled legs like supple black leather, menacing and sexy at the same time. And those big hands. How did they feel when they—
"Why are you staring at me?" Rex asked.
"What?" I flushed. "I wasn't." Block, I thought. As the psicon flashed in my mind, the waitress's reaction to Rex receded in my thoughts. His pants looked normal again. Almost normal. She was right; it was sexy the way they fit him. I had never noticed it before, at least not consciously.
"Always," Helda muttered as we walked to the booth. "Always they want him."
"You mean Rex?" Taas asked.
"Ya." She tilted her head at me. "The boys always want her."
I laughed. "I seem to remember a few of them wanted Rex too."
At the sound of my laugh, the waitress jumped like a skitter-colt. She stopped at the booth and fumbled with the cards, dropping them onto the scratched table top. Then she turned to us. So we all stood and watched her, waiting to see what she would do. After a moment she turned pink.
"She wants us to sit down," Taas decided.
"So let's sit." Rex squeezed past her, putting his hand on her tiny waist in the process. Her face went from pink to bright red. Then the rest of us sat down.
The waitress spoke to Rex. "Would you like a drink?"
He answered in Skolian, his deep voice rumbling. "That lovely voice of yours could fill my dreams at night."
"If you get bored with him," Helda added, "you can have us." She motioned at Taas, who sat across the table. "Me and him. He's got style, I've got muscles."
"Excuse me?" the waitress asked in English.
"Leave her alone," I said. I picked up one of the cards she had put on the table. At the top, clear tubes filled with fluorescent yellow gas announced Jack's Place. Projection holos floated above speckled patches, each displaying a dish of food. When I turned the card, the holos showed different views of their offerings.
My translation program gave "synthetic meat sandwich" as the meaning of Hamburger. I tried Hot dog and got "synthetic meat sandwich." When Beef Bliss came up as "synthetic meat sandwich," I gave up and looked at the others. "What do you want?"
"Ale is fine," Rex said. Helda and Taas nodded agreement.
I spoke to the waitress in English. "You ale do?"
She peered at me. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"
"Ale," I repeated. "Got any?"
"You mean beer?"
I squinted at her. "I think."
"Dark or light?"
What did that mean? "Any kind. You prick." No that wasn't right. She was turning red again. I made another try. "You pick." I waved my hand at the others. "Four beers."
"All right." And off she went, but not before she gave Rex another one of her shy smiles.
Across the room, the door opened. A group came into the bar—and this time when my shoulders went rigid it was my own reaction, not anyone else's.
Traders. Six of them had showed up this time, the five we had seen earlier plus a man they were guarding. A man with shimmering black hair and red eyes.
Aristo.
As soon as they saw us, the Traders stopped. We all stared at one another. The bartender quit polishing his glass and set it under the counter.
Don't you hate them? Taas had asked. Hate was too mild. I saw the Aristo and my brain felt hot with memories of Tarque, the Aristo governor on Tams. Three weeks of torture. This Aristo stared at me with his ruby eyes, his black hair shimmering, and I wanted to break every perfect bone in his perfect face.
Steady, I told myself. Steady.
One of his bodyguards leaned toward him and spoke. I didn't need telepathy to know he suggested they find a bar with a higher class of clientele. But the Aristo shook his head. Then he settled on a stool at the counter.
"I can't just sit here while they drink." Taas was crumpling his menu in his hands. "I can't."
Rex nodded. "Let's go."
Helda stood up.
"Sit down," I said.
They all stared at me. Then Helda sat, her body stiff.
Rex nudged my mind, but I kept the door closed. My thoughts about Traders were private even from Rex. To say I had no desire to stay at the bar now was a profound understatement. It was also irrelevant. "Aristos don't come to Delos for vacations," I said. "He must be here for a reason. Our job is to find it out."
A muscle in Rex's cheek jerked. He'd had that twitch ever since he had seen what Tarque did to me, seen me so rigid with shock, fear, and pain, I couldn't speak.
Helda fingered her belt where her holster normally hung. None of us were armed with anything more than hidden knives. Even without a diplomacy mod, I knew how threatening it would have looked for us to stroll along the Delos boardwalk with the mammoth Jumbler guns on our hips. We had come here to rest, not to provoke the local authorities. The Traders hadn't been armed when we had seen them before, either, but now they all carried burn-lasers, complete with power packs clipped to their belts. It suggested the man they were protecting was high in status even for an Aristo.
"Watch them," I said. "See if you can pick up anything."
The waitress reappeared and set a glass in front of me filled with amber liquid. I didn't know much about Earth distillation processes, but I knew liquor. That wasn't ale, it was rum. My English must have been even worse than I realized.
I shook my head at her. "We beer have." I motioned at the others. "Beer. For all."
She swallowed. "It's a—" Her voice squeaked. "The man—he ordered it for you."
"What man?"
She nodded toward the Aristo. "Him."
I stared at her. Then I handed her the rum. I had to make a conscious effort not to shove it back in her hands so fast that it spilled.
Rex stood up and slipped his hand under her elbow. He drew her to the back of the room and out a door that probably led to the kitchen. I understood why he wanted her out of sight; if she was having the same effect on the Aristo that she had made on our group, she could be in trouble. But the Aristo hadn't even glanced at her. I was the one he was watching. I felt like bugs crawled on my skin.
Taas twisted his menu, distorting the holos into weird mish-mashes of color. "What do you want us to do?"
"Note everything you can about them," I said. "What they're wearing, how they sit, move, and speak. Store it in your memory. We'll feed it into the mesh later and see what we come up with."
Helda motioned toward some hologames in a corner. "From there I get a different view."
I nodded. "Go."
Across the room, the musicians finished their song. They looked at the Traders and us, then at one another. The drummer spoke to a horn player, and a sudden urge to get out of here made the muscles in my legs contract as if I were preparing to run. I had to force myself to sit still. Then again, maybe sitting wasn't the best choice. The stage had a better view of the Trader group.
"I can keep this side of the room covered," Taas said.
"Good." I smiled slightly. "I think I'll go for some music appreciation."
As I crossed the room, I felt the Aristo watching me. When I reached the stage I spoke to the singer, a man with dark hair. "Can you a song play?"
"What would you like?" he asked.
"You pick."
He nodded, but I had a feeling that what he really wanted was for us to leave, both my squad and the Traders. I didn't blame him.
The band started a slower piece with a sweet melody, and the man sang in a well trained baritone. Had the situation been different, I would have enjoyed it. I watched the Trader group in my side vision. So I saw when the Aristo stood up and came toward me. As he neared, I turned to him.
He stopped at my side and spoke in Skolian. "It's pleasant, isn't it?" His accent was pure Aristo from the elite Highton caste, the aristocracy of the aristocracy, overlords in the Trader hierarchy.
It was all I could do to keep from pulling the knife hidden in my boot. "What do you want?"
"To meet you."
"Why?"
He hesitated. "I meant no offense."
That didn't fit. I had met many Aristos, usually over long range communication but also in person during the sporadic and consistently failed attempts at peace we and the Traders had made. They always spoke to us with arrogance, often outright scorn. This one seemed to have missed his training in how to act superior.
His guards, however, missed nothing. They stood at the bar with their guns drawn, looking ready to detonate. The Aristo must have ordered them to stay put; otherwise they would have never let a Jagernaut talk to him alone.
Block, I thought. Their tension receded, but the psicon kept flashing in my mind, warning that my systems couldn't keep out the full onslaught of their emotions. It would require my brain to release so much of its neural blocker, it would interfere with my ability to think.
Jack's other patrons had either left the place or moved across the bar. Rex had returned, holding a massive knife he must have taken from the kitchen. Taas and Helda had drawn their knives, smaller ones like the blade in my boot. The four of us were facing five Traders armed with lasers, but we had a big advantage; the Aristo was within my reach. His perfect self would make a perfect hostage.
"Why do you want to meet me?" I asked him.
"It's your hair." He expression brightened. "I've never seen anything like it."
I stiffened. Tarque had told me the same thing. My hair was black and curly, a little more than shoulder length. About two thirds of the way down it shaded into a dark wine color and at the ends it turned gold. It had fascinated Tarque. Was this Aristo looking for providers? He was young, not much more than twenty, but that was more than enough. Aristos usually took their first providers when they reached puberty.
Except . . .something about him didn't fit. I couldn't figure what. The chiseled features of his face looked pure Highton. His accent fit, his stance fit, his voice fit. But something was wrong.
"What do you want with my hair?" I asked.
"It's pretty." He shook his head. "You're so beautiful. Why do you want to be a soldier?"
In my mind I saw that memory again, the one that had haunted me for ten years: Tarque raising his long finger to point at me. That one. I want that one. I had to struggle to keep my voice even. "And I suppose you would be happy to show me my other options in life, right?"
He smiled. "Perhaps for this one evening? This is Delos after all. Here we can, at least for one night, meet each other as friends."
Right. Aristos socialized only among their own caste. Period. Their only use for the rest of us was as slaves. Did he really think I was stupid enough to walk off into the night with him? I'd never see my freedom—or sanity—again.
"No thanks," I said. "I'm busy tonight."
He looked disappointed but unsurprised. "Perhaps someday." Then he bowed and returned to his group. As I watched, his guards closed around him and swept him out the door.
It wasn't until they were gone that his bow fully registered on me. Aristos only did that with each other, as a sign of respect. None I knew would be caught dead bowing to one of us.
Rex came over, holding his monster knife. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," I said.
"What did he want?"
I scratched my head. "He was trying to pick me up."
Rex's hand tightened on the handle of his knife, his knuckles whitening. "Did he threaten you?"
"No. Not at all. He sounded normal. Very polite."
Helda and Taas came up on my other side. "You think it was a trick?" Helda asked.
"I don't know." I exhaled. "But if I hadn't had experience with Traders, he might have convinced me to go with him."
"We should warn the Arcade police," Taas said. "Before he does get someone around here to go off with him."
Taas was right, of course. But somehow I didn't think the Aristo would talk to anyone else.
Something about him didn't fit, it just didn't fit at all.