The Winter War (26 page)

‘Oh, easy. She’s not too tall,
pretty, average breasts, really good body though, uh… kind of a
narrow face with a flat nose, black hair… Oh, and she’s got blue
skin and a tail.’

Ella giggled. ‘You probably
could have just led with that last part.’

‘Uh, yeah, maybe. She’s a Felix,
some people call them cat-girls. She’s in season for about five
days every three months, and it just so happens to be now. She gets
bad tempered if she isn’t getting sex, and horny as anything you’ve
ever seen. That tends to stick around for a week or so after and
she’ll jump anything with a pulse. You should be safe for now; when
she’s in oestrus she only wants men.’

‘Shame.’ Anne flashed her a
grin. ‘Eddie said all the girls here had some special talent or
other?’

‘Yeah, most of them,’ Anne
replied. ‘Uh… I’m not actually one of them. I’m a maid, one of
Alice’s assistants. I mean, I have, if someone asked for me
specifically, but Eddie’s really specific about it, no one under
thirty on the permanent staff.’

‘Okay.’

‘I mean I wouldn’t want you
thinking he makes anyone do anything against their will, or even
persuades them to…’

‘We got it, Anne,’ Aneka said.
‘He’s a good guy. Winter trusts him, that’s all that matters at the
moment.’

‘Okay. Well anyway, aside from
Kitty we’ve got Magda, who’s an empathy, Beth, who can make you see
and feel whatever she wants you to, and the twins, who are
mindlinked. Then there’s the more normal folks. Brandon’s just a
really big guy, Lisa is amazingly flexible, you should see her
dance, and Saint is a normal guy, but he makes his clients feel
like they’re the most important woman in the universe.’

‘Do you think you could get him
to talk to Aneka?’ Ella asked. ‘She’s the most important woman in
the universe and she refuses to believe it.’

Anne laughed. ‘I warn you, he’s
expensive. Here we are.’ She opened a door on their left and
stepped into what Aneka would have definitely described as a
‘boudoir.’ The walls were a deep red colour and there was thick,
russet carpet on the floor. Crimson drapes hung from the ceiling to
partition the cabin up into sections, but the one at the forefront,
and immediately visible, contained a big, circular bed with a
curtain around it. ‘We’re not at full occupancy at the moment, so
this one’s free. The one we passed is free too, and then you’ve got
Lisa on the other side. Brandon’s normally across from you, but
he’s the only one that can keep Kitty quiet at the moment so he’s
in her room.’

‘Oh wow,’ Ella breathed. ‘I
think I could really get to like this.’

Aneka sighed. ‘I can see us
having to redecorate at home.’

~~~

The habitation area of the Serai was
laid out kind of like a traditional brothel. Down the corridor from
their room, Aneka and Ella found an open area with access to a
second hangar bay which was used for customer docking. The room was
laid out with couches and a chaise longue, there was a large window
on one side looking out into space, and it was clearly a room where
the staff could make themselves available for selection by visiting
clients. With no clients, and no chance any would turn up, it
became a communal lounge.

Someone Aneka took to be Lisa, a
petite, pretty blonde, was doing what appeared to be yoga exercises
in the middle of the floor wearing nothing but a smile, but the
other occupants of the room were in casual clothes. The twins
really did seem to be twins, identical blondes who sat on a couch
reading. Which left Magda and Beth as the other two women, one with
black hair, the other a lustrous chocolate brown, but which was
which was not clear. There was also a lean, handsome, young-looking
man playing chess with the black-haired woman. He had to be
Saint.

The brunette looked up as the
couple entered the room, giving them a broad smile and putting down
the tablet she was reading from. ‘You must be Aneka and Ella. I’m
Beth,’ she grinned, ‘the empathic one. You’re a bright one, Ella.
I’m just getting good vibes from you. You can stay as long as you
like.’

Saint chuckled. ‘Beth always
likes the happy ones. Good evening, ladies, I am Philip Jacobs, but
everyone calls me “Saint.” My companion here is Magda.’

‘The illusionist,’ Magda
added.

‘Evening,’ Aneka said.

‘Uh, hi,’ Ella put in; she was
watching Lisa with rapt fascination.

‘That’s Lisa,’ Beth said. ‘She
doesn’t talk much when she’s concentrating.’

‘She’s good,’ Ella replied. ‘My
mother can manage stuff like that; I never practised enough.’ Lisa
gave her a grin and a wink.

Beth was looking at Aneka. ‘You
I can’t get anything from. It’s like you’re not there.’

‘Telepaths can’t read her
either,’ Ella said quickly. ‘She was in nanostasis for a long time.
They think it did something weird to her brainwaves.’

‘Twenty credits, Saint,’ one of
the twins said.

‘Yes, Farah, I’ll have it
transferred to your account.’ Aneka looked at him, raising her
eyebrows. ‘Farah said you were
that
Aneka Jansen, and I
didn’t believe you could be.’

‘Afraid so,’ Aneka said. ‘The
woman from Old Earth and all that.’

‘It’s a shame Kitty’s locked in
her cabin with Brandon,’ Beth said. ‘She’s from out that way,
originally.’

‘Oh?’

The empathy nodded. ‘Sad story.
She’s a transgenic. There were various modifications made out
there, some of them more successful than others. The Felix was one
of the successes, but she was more or less a slave. Escaped and ran
this way, hopping freighters and the like until she ran into Eddie
and he took her in.’

‘We’re all a little like that,’
Saint supplied. ‘We’re all waifs and strays Eddie’s collected, both
the staff and the crew.’

‘I guess we fit the mould at the
moment,’ Aneka said. ‘We’re on the run, anyway.’

‘Everyone’s running from
something, hun,’ Beth said. ‘Come and sit down. When you’re
running, taking a minute to sit down is the best thing you can
do.’

~~~

Something about the evening gave Aneka
the impression that the residents of the Serai were putting on a
bit of a show for their guests. Eddie, dressed in a crisp, white
suit and a stylishly cut shirt, but no tie, had invited the couple
to his room for dinner, escorting them from their room to his, one
on each arm. Aneka had half-expected this to be a seduction
attempt, but they were eating with Alice and also Pat the pilot.
The latter was a moderately short Jenlay, fit, very lithe, with a
long blonde ponytail, and a small-breasted, narrow-hipped body on
display thanks to a tube-gown of white Bi-weave, which covered her,
barely, from chest to ankles. Alice was also in a gown, a floating
affair, which seemed to be made from loosely bound scarves. Even if
the women’s dresses were not exactly covering, Aneka and Ella felt
a little underdressed without evening dresses to wear.

Anne and Trudy, the other maid
on the ship, were still dressed in their black cut-out dresses as
they served a fairly light, beautifully crafted meal. There was
wine which did not really taste like it had ever seen a grape but
was described as a ‘fruit wine’ so Aneka could make allowances.
Their waitresses were perfectly trained, it seemed, the company
congenial. The food, however, drew Aneka’s attention.

‘This… Is this wild duck?’ she
asked, frowning at the dark, succulent meat on the end of her
fork.

‘Alphonse has his sources,’
Alice said. ‘There’s a world on the Old Earth side of the Rim which
was once a nature reserve of some sort. Someone seeded ducks there.
Mallards, I think.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Haven’t had
roast duck in… Mmmmm.’ She chewed for a few seconds, letting the
meat slide down her throat before saying, ‘But seriously,
Alphonse?’

Pat giggled. ‘He’s actually
Albert, but he thinks Alphonse makes him sound more authentic.’

‘I don’t think,’ Ella said,
‘that he needs anything other than his food to be authentic.’

‘We’re all misfits here,’ Alice
replied. ‘If Albert wants to pretend to be some Old Earth
Chef
de cuisine,
complete with something of a fake accent, then as
long as he doesn’t attack us with knives we’re fine with it.’

‘This whole place reminds me a
little of an old French brothel,’ Aneka commented. ‘Not that I’m
that old, but it’s got the same feel as things I’ve seen in
films.’

‘I notice,’ Alice replied, ‘that
you qualified your age, but not your attendance in a brothel?’

‘Never been in a French one.
German, yes. Once for pleasure, once to drag a friend out by his
hair. Thailand, yes. Never a French one.’

‘Brothels weren’t like they are
now back then,’ Ella said. ‘They’d have been illegal…’

‘Not the German ones,’ Aneka
interrupted. ‘They legalised brothels like the Dutch did.’

‘They were more taboo though,’
Ella countered.

‘I’ll grant you that. More so
for a woman. I wasn’t exactly going in for sex any of the times. I
wasn’t into women at the time, not really anyway, and our brothels
were not places to find male prostitutes. Not that I ever used
one.’

‘I can’t see you having to spend
money to get a partner, no,’ Eddie said, ‘but it can be worth it
for the skill.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I’m sure that’s
true of Saint and Brandon, but in my time you’d be paying for looks
at best. Maybe staying power. No genetic enhancement, no genital
modifications, and most men didn’t know much about what they were
doing anyway.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘That may be a little unfair.
Depended on the guy, I think.’

Alice chuckled. ‘Ella is an
improvement over your previous lovers?’

Aneka looked at Ella. ‘First one
I’ve ever had who actually loves me,’ she replied. She turned her
gaze on Eddie as Ella blushed. ‘How long’ve you known Winter?’

‘A long time,’ he replied. ‘A
very long time.’

‘I know she’s older than she
looks. So are you.’

‘Yes… You remember I said I was
making up for past misdeeds? Winter showed me the errors of my
ways. Saved my butt at the same time, but that was kind of
incidental to her handing me my ass. But I never looked back, and I
help her now and again, when she needs something special
doing.’

‘Like this?’ Ella asked.

‘Oh, my dear, no, nothing like
this. We were in the area anyway and this is more like a
treat.’

Which begged the question, what
could Winter do with a floating brothel? Aneka did not think she
was going to get the question answered though, so she did not
ask.

7.8.527 FSC.

Daniel Waters was the ship’s
electronics technician, and he looked like he came from the Rim, or
even beyond it. He was thin, almost scrawny, with a mess of
ash-blonde hair, and blue eyes hidden behind spectacles. He lacked
the body-confidence of people from the core worlds, but he knew
electronic systems, and he was in Aneka and Ella’s cabin because
Ella’s eyes needed to be checked over.

‘It’s overdue,’ Ella said as he
prepped his equipment. ‘We went out of the system and when we got
back everything went to gopi so I didn’t have time to get it
done.’

Waters checked one of his
displays. ‘These Clarion May models are pretty resilient. And
they’re pretty new…’

‘I had them fitted last
year.’

‘Yeah… There shouldn’t be any
problems, but we’ll run through the tests anyway.’ He tapped a
screen and the display on it was replaced with some sort of test
grid. ‘Just stare at that and the computer will do its stuff.’

Aneka grinned as Waters’ eyes
returned to their examination of Ella’s chest. ‘Where did Eddie
find you, Daniel?’ she asked.

‘Call me Dan, everyone does. Uh,
I was working in the spaceport on a planet called Gillina Four.
Dead-end job on a dead-end planet, but I’ve always been good with
electronics. I fixed the Serai’s tachyon comms and Eddie asked if
I’d like to join the crew.’

‘I don’t know that world,’ Ella
commented.

‘No, it’s not part of the
Federation. We come from all over. The Minskys are from outside the
Rim too, and there’s Kitty. She’s from… wow, it’s like the other
side of the galaxy or something.’

The grid pattern shifted to
various colour gradients as the software cycled through tests. It
all seemed to be pretty automated. Delta had said that Aneka could
learn to do them; maybe she should.

‘Beth said Kitty was running
from some sort of slavery,’ Aneka said.

‘Yeah. She told me some of it
once. Some bunch called the Pinnacle. Not what you’d think. I mean,
she’s a really sexy girl and you’d think it was some sexual thing,
but she said they don’t do that. They won’t even
rape
other
races. They think it’s like bestiality or something. They used to
use her for hunting. Hunting other people.’

Ella winced. ‘Wasn’t Pinnacle
the name of that group that attacked Old Earth, Aneka?’

‘Uh-huh. I guess they didn’t get
wiped out.’

‘Not the way Kitty tells it,’
Dan said. ‘They’ve got some sort of empire out way beyond the Rim.’
There was a bleep from the equipment and he turned to check the
results. ‘Like I said, no problems. You’re good to go.’

Ella grinned at him. ‘If you
want, I can just sit here and you can stare at my breasts a while
longer. I don’t mind.’

Dan blushed and started closing
down his computers. ‘Uh, no, it’s okay. You’d think I’d see enough
breasts on this ship, but new ones are always fascinating.’

Ella giggled. ‘Aneka, get your
shirt off.’

Odanari.

The shuttle dropped them off on one of
the many islands dotted over the surface of Odanari, and they waved
as it lifted off again, heading back into orbit. Eddie had told
them they had a number of clients on the planet, and it was going
to be a busy couple of weeks for the Serai’s staff and crew. Aneka
wondered whether Stephen Teldarian was one of those clients. His
island was a couple of thousand kilometres west of the one they
were on.