Recycled (18 page)

Arcadia moved to wrap herself around Drewcila, and Stasha sighed."I don't have a single friend who would do for me what that alien has done for Drew today."

"I wish you wouldn't say alien like it was some dirty word. After all, I'm just as alien to your world as Arcadia is."

"I'm sorry, Dylan, I don't mean it to sound like a slur. Just that she's so different. Must have different ways and different customs, different loyalties. And yet she's obviously so devoted to Drew. I mean . . . what's in it for her?"

Dylan sighed wistfully."I imagine some really great sex."

"What!" Stasha exclaimed. She looked at her feet as the other three turned to stare at her, and didn't speak again till they had all turned away again."Are you saying . . . ?"

Dylan chuckled, "I thought it was pretty obvious. Arcadia and Drew, well, they've been lovers for a long time."

"But, but it's a lizard, and . . . well I thought . . . isn't it female?"

"Oh, yeah! Arcadia's all girl. It's not like she's a cold blooded reptile, and she's bipedal. Some people . . . they get into the exotics. Why do you think Drew was with Van Gar, and he with her for that matter?"

"But they're both women! What on earth could Drewcila get from her that she couldn't get from a man?"

"Hey, Arcadia!" Dylan screamed. Stasha cringed as the lizard woman turned to face them."Show Stasha your tongue."

Ten inches of forked tongue rolled out of the alien's mouth and just as quickly back in before she turned away again.

"So?" Stasha asked in confusion.

"You're fucking kidding me, right?" Dylan laughed.

Stasha shook her head no.

"What a backwards planet. No wonder I'm such a big hit with the local girls."

Atario had been named provisional regent, the "provisional" being a formality until the queen could be captured and brought to trial. As such, his new chancellor, Doctor Sortas, and he were desperately going over maps trying to figure out just where the queen might be.

"Figuring on her love affair with the press, I would have thought she'd have made a bee-line for one of the television stations. But we set up blockades, and no one's seen anything," Atario said.

"She's not a moron, Atario," Sortas said with a sigh."Would you walk up to a building surrounded by huge military road blocks if you were her? No. No doubt by now she knows that you have framed her for the king's death, and since you've blocked her from going to the news media with her own story . . ."

"What would you suggest I do, Sortas? Just let her walk into a television station and take over? The people, the vast majority, love her. If they are asked to choose her word over mine, they will choose hers every time. That's why she must not be allowed to live to go to trial. That's why we must capture her quickly, and she must meet with a quick and unfortunate accident."

"I just think it would have been more expedient to have a less noticeable presence at the stations, that's all. You know, something a little more covert than concrete barriers and armored tanks, which by the way, are needed for security. We cannot afford to keep pulling our forces away from strategic areas that must be secured to go after the queen. The Lockhedes have quit pushing our forces at the borders, which means they are planning something. Probably something big in retaliation for . . ." he couldn't remember the name of the ship, "that . . . that really big ship that we blew up."

"The Artvail. It was their largest star class battle cruiser, and we didn't blow it up. Drewcila Qwah did," Atario hissed.

"Its name and who actually did it, is immaterial. We now have the war you wanted, but we're not prepared to actually fight it. Add to that the fact that you keep removing necessary forces from sensitive areas to go in search of Drewcila . . . we're just asking for a catastrophe. We know her ship the Garbage Scow has been called to Hepron Station, and that her crew is there. Perhaps we had best concentrate our efforts on catching her there, and return everyone else to their positions. We must be prepared to counter the Lockhedes attack when they make it."

Sortas was starting to really annoy Atario. As if it weren't bad enough that he had insinuated himself into Atario's reign, he seemed to be constantly saying things that were really distressing. Mostly because they made a great deal of sense and therefore couldn't be easily dismissed.

"What do you suggest I do about it, Sortas?" Atario made it sound flippant, but actually hoped the smart-assed bastard had an answer, because he sure as hell didn't.

"Make a strike against another major target while they're trying to do whatever it is that they're planning to do. Something that will force them to pull troops or whatever away from their planned objective in order to clean up the mess we've made. Hit a main population center. An air strike at a heavily populated city, perhaps even their capital, ought to do the trick. Crank it up a notch, as the salvagers are fond of saying. They want a war, give them a war. We already took out their battle cruiser. Hit them again before they have a chance to retaliate, and we keep the upper hand," Sortas said smugly.

Atario glared across the table loaded with maps and snarled out."As if I hadn't already thought of it and wasn't just waiting to ask you what you thought of my plan. In fact, I have already implemented the action."

Sortas gave him an arrogant, all knowing look, and Atario decided to see if Sortas' lawyer couldn't be bribed into giving over the information so that Sortas could be done away with, and the sooner the better. Maybe just take the easy way out and kill the lawyer first.

Margot and Jurak had made it to the television station way before the military did, and they'd told their story.

The most celebrated reporter in Barious was assigned to the story, and they flew him back to the station from where he'd been reporting from a craft hovering over the Galdart desert. He hadn't been told why he'd been summoned for security reasons, and for this reason he entered the producer's office screaming.

"This had better be good, damn good! We damn near got our asses shot off up there to try and get those shots of the Artvail sinking into the sand, and . . ."

"Dartan, I'd like you to meet Jurak and Margot. Jurak is first mate of our queen's ship, Margot is the queen's personal servant, and is married to Chancellor Facto. I think you want to hear what they have to say."

They told their story, and Jurak ended with, '. . . the queen has ordered you to meet with her at Hepron Station and be her personal liaison with the media and the people through this crisis."

It took Dartan a minute to comprehend what he was being told, and then a couple more minutes to quiet the urge to jump up and start dancing and squealing like a giddy school girl. For all practical purposes, he had just been assigned the job of queen's press secretary. When he had managed to quell his uncharacteristically spontaneous reaction, he started barking out orders. He wanted this camera man and that sound man. He wanted this kind of equipment and that kind of gear. He wanted this, that, and all at once. He also wanted to use the network's hovercraft.

In fifteen minutes, equipment and staff were loaded into the waiting hovercraft, and they were lifting off just as the military arrived in force.

"What the hell!" Dartan quickly donned communicator head gear."What the hell's going on?"

"We've been scooped by BOB network, the new Chancellor Atario Biggin has just made a broadcast accusing the queen of killing the king."

Dartan relayed the message to Jurak and Margot.

Jurak shook his head violently."That is not possible. I was the last one out of the castle, and the king was very much alive when I left him. He was wounded, too badly wounded to follow us out the window, and he begged us to go on without him. But his injury wasn't even close to life threatening. If the king is dead, then it is the nobles who have killed him."

"You hear that?" Dartan asked his boss.

"Yeah, I heard it . . ."

"Give us about ten minutes to get out of sight of the military below, and then I want to go live . . ."

"Dartan . . . if the queen did kill the king, and we help her . . ."

"Jesop . . . listen to me, man. Who watches the news?"

"The general public?"

"And if the general public has to make a decision between believing some noble who they have just now learned is the new Chancellor, or the Queen who brought them into the Golden Age of Salvaging and gave their lives meaning, who do you think they are going to believe?"

"We go live in ten minutes."

Sortas rushed into the room without so much as the courtesy of a knock, and flipped on the TV.

"Who do you think you are?" Atario snapped.

"Shut up and watch," Sortas ordered.

"I'm in the air, flying away from the capitol on my way to a secret destination where I will meet with the queen. With me are two of the queen's emissaries, who have quite a different take on recent events than the one that you have just been told by Chancellor Atario. Who is this man any way? Isn't your husband, Facto, in fact chancellor, Lady Margot?" The camera moved to show the woman.

"He was until the castle was taken over . . ."

"They slowly removed the normal guards and replaced them with members of the nobility." The camera moved to the man called Jurak."Neither the king nor the queen wanted a war with Lockhedes. They wanted to sign trade agreements, because they knew that such agreements would lead to a lasting peace and a better economy. So the nobles imprisoned the king and Chancellor Facto, and lay in wait for the queen . . ."

"They poisoned her," Margot reminded.

"Yes, they tried to kill her . . ."

"Fortunately two of Drewcila's people had evaded capture, and they came and rescued us . . ."

"Unfortunately, in the fire fight the king was hit . . ."

They were giving the poor camera man whiplash going back and forth between the two.

"We were lucky to escape with our lives."

Atario had seen enough. A long, throaty growl echoed from his lips."Get a battalion in the air. I want this reporter and Drewcila's lackeys shot out of the sky."

"That's going to be very hard to do," Sortas spat back."Most of our air force is currently pounding the Lockhede capital even as we speak, and the others . . . when they hear this . . . their hearts weren't in capturing her before. They want to believe her, and so they will. We'll be lucky if we can escape with our lives. I don't think we're in any position to order anyone to do anything. By morning it will be a whole new world."

General Tryte looked at the incoming data. Just after nightfall the Barions had started pounding their capital. Their own plans to bomb Hepron Station were thwarted as they pulled their planes and ships back in an effort to save their homeland. But even as their planes got into a position to defend against the attacks, the Barion planes turned and ran away like the cowards they were. They hadn't chased them for fear of leaving the air space over the city unprotected, fully expecting and waiting for a second wave of attacks which never came.

After they had intercepted several newscasts from Barious, Tryte began to wonder whether this was just brilliant war tactics on the part of the Barions, or if Barious was as completely politically crippled as the reports would have them believe. Their king was supposedly dead. Either killed by his treacherous, salvager wife, or the greedy self-serving nobility, depending completely on which channel you chose to watch.

Whatever the case, he as General of the Air Force couldn't afford to drop his guard.

His aide walked into the room, "General Tryte."

"Yes?"

"President Ralling wants to see you in his office."

"I figured he would." He rose from his chair and followed the aide out of his office and down the hall.

They had made all military decisions together—he, the president, the president's advisors, the General of the Army, and Admiral of the Navy. However the "elected"—a term used lightly since everyone was well aware that the social elite chose a candidate and then bought him into office—official had a habit of assigning blame to someone other than himself. Since it had been Tryte's idea to bomb Hepron Station, he was sure it was going to be his fault that they'd had no way of defending their own capitol against that first wave of attacks when they'd come.

Tryte didn't really care. He could roll with the punches. He had no respect at all for this president, whose election seemed even more suspect than elections of the past. The social elite had for generations bought the candidates they wanted, but in the last election the common man had come out in force and refused to vote with the upper classes. The people's candidate had won by a popular landside. That was when the rich started to bring out antiquated laws and dust them off. Before the common folks could say "screwed," their candidate had been thrown out on a technicality, and this joker Ralling had been placed at the head of their country.