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  "Ah, you guys are the best," Drewcila said with a smile."I knew you'd come through for me."

  "My queen, if I may . . . What has happened?"

  "The nobility . . . isn't it always those assholes?" Drew took a long swig of the beer. While she was trying to keep her stomach from slinging the offering out at a high rate of speed, the patrons of the bar and the bartender all mumbled their agreement that the nobility were indeed a lot of assholes. As soon as she was sure she wasn't going to hurl, she continued."They tried to kill me with poison. They shot the king. We barely escaped with our lives."

  Stasha opened her mouth to knock holes in her sister's story, and Drew shot her a look which was backed up by Dylan's hand on her elbow.

  Drew set her beer down without finishing it, and got shakily to her feet. Arcadia moved quickly to steady her, and Drew looked at her with a smile."You just want to touch me, don't you?"

  "That was never a question," Arcadia answered.

  "I'd love to sit and chat with you, but we're awful busy. You know, saving the country, and little shit like that. Thanks for all your help, you will be adequately repaid for your service to the crown. Drinks are on me, I believe we have a fund for such things."

  They started to leave, Margot and Jurak going with their ride and their instructions, as the bartender showed the queen and her entourage to his car. Behind them the bar yelled out choruses of "Long live the queen!"

  Drew looked up and saw Jurak and Margot walking the other way. Jurak still had his silly hat—a rainbow colored beret—on his head.

  "Wait!" Drew screamed, stopping short."Jurak, come here."

  Jurak trotted over happily, thinking that perhaps he was after all important to her mission. He was feeling a little left out, and wasn't enjoying at all being treated as a common errand boy. Surely the woman could do this job without his help. His rightful place was at the queen's side.

  "My queen?" he said.

  "Give me that hat. I think I need it more than you do," Drew said.

  Jurak looked dejected, and reluctantly pulled the hat from his head and handed it to Drew, who put it in her pocket.

  "What's with the hat?" Facto asked as he watched the young man walk away with his shoulders slumped.

  "I'm afraid it's over your head."

  They had tied Pard Jar to a chair with self bonding duct tape.

  Van Gar had let him stew there and think about what they were going to do to him for several hours. Now he paced back and forth in front of Pard Jar, a look of concentration on his face, the neck of a beer bottle in one hand and a cigar in the other. Except for Shreta, who he still didn't seem to be able to shake, the other Chitzskies were making up for lost time spending the large amount of cash they'd found in the good Reverend's hotel room on the space station to buy food and booze and anything else money could buy.

  Pard Jar looked at him, tears running down his face and matting his fur."I swear to you, brother, I did none of this for my own personal gain. There is no other money! All of the money has gone to buy things for the colony and to pay for the use of the ships, for food and . . ."

  "Before you go on lying out your ass, I think it's only fair I tell you that I've spent the last few hours thinking of different ways of torturing the information out of you . . ."

  "Brother, what was in my room . . . That was all the money that there is, and . . ."

  Van Gar stopped in front of him and stuck his cigar to the fur of Pard Jar's face, holding it there in spite of the man's thrashing until it had burned through his fur and into his flesh.

  "You crazy son of a bitch!" Pard Jar screamed in pain.

  Van Gar removed the cigar and took an experimental puff off it. He smiled appreciatively and took a longer drag before he spoke."Let me explain something to you. I am Van Gar, and before a moment of insanity in which I actually bought the line of crap you were selling, I was a salvager. Not just any salvager, I worked with Drewcila Qwah, I was her right hand man. In fact, I gave you one of the bitch queen's ships, and here's the thing, see? I can't go back to Drew without that ship, and if I don't get to go back to Drew soon, I'm going to get very, very cranky. I have seen the shipping manifests. You've made a small fortune off the damn rock. More than enough to buy a gazillion recycled domes. You haven't used even one ninetieth of what you've taken in on that one project alone. So you can quit wasting my time, and your breath, lying to me. I want all the money—every last cent of it. And I want my ship back, and I want it now."

  "I'm telling you . . ."

  Van Gar bent over, putting his face right in Pard Jar's and growled, "You better tell me what I want to hear, or I'm going to wrap my rather large fist in barbed wire and shove it up your ass!" he straightened."And that's just for starters."

  Pard Jar wet his pants, giving Van Gar a whole new smell to hate."Your ship's at the end of the docks," he sobbed.

  "Do I look like an idiot? I know you must have sold the ship by now and pocketed the money."

  "No, I swear. It was so much better than my ship. Besides . . . have you ever tried to sell a Qwah ship? Why is everyone so afraid of your boss, anyway?"

  "Because she's very rich, very powerful, and completely crazy. And she's not my boss, she's my . . . girlfriend," Van Gar growled angrily.

  "Oh."

  "And the money?"

  "That's another reason I kept the ship." He sobbed louder."It had room for the big safe I wanted."

  "You mean . . . the money's on the ship?"

  Pard Jar nodded.

  "All of it?" Van Gar asked in disbelief.

  "Hey!" Pard Jar defended."When you're scamming your own people out of all their money, and sticking them on a stinking hole of a planet, you know there's a good chance someone's going to get pissed off and come after you. And when they do . . . Well, you want the iggys with you, don't you? Besides, if I had put the money in a bank, even several banks, someone would have figured out what I was really doing long before now. Damn! I can't believe this shit. I should have quit long ago, but no! I had to get greedy. I kept thinking, just one more space station, what could it hurt? I mean, I've been doing this shit for two fucking years! I kept deciding it was time to stop, and I'd almost do it, and then I'd remember just how God damn dumb our people are. Then when the bastards just kept mining the rock, trying to actually terraform that piss hole, and I found out that some other idiots would pay a small fortune for worthless rock . . . Well, it was just so damn easy, wasn't it?"

  "And being every bit as stupid as the rest of us, you just didn't know how to quit when you were ahead," Van Gar snarled. He would have liked to argue with the bastard on behalf of their race, except that it was something he had just recently learned himself.

  "What now?" Shreta asked.

  "We take the Pride Leader down the dock and see if he's telling the truth. If he isn't, we buy a roll of barbed wire."

  As they rattled down the road in the bartender's kindly offered, if slightly dilapidated, vehicle, Drew suddenly lurched over Dylan, slinging the top part of her body out the window. Dylan quickly grabbed onto and held the belt of her pants. Drew heaved violently, threw up the beer, and then threw up things that she was pretty sure she hadn't finished using yet.

  She crawled back in the window looking pale, and wiped the puke and spittle from her face on the sleeve of Dylan's shirt.

  "God damn it Drew!" Dylan yelled, and Arcadia jetted her head across Drew to bare her teeth at him and hiss, making him jump."I should have sat up front with the really stiff guy and the hot chick," he mumbled.

  "She shouldn't still be sick," Arcadia said in a worried voice.

  "Maybe it's guilt," Stasha twisted in her seat to give Drewcila a heated look.

  "Oh, I doubt that," Arcadia said simply.

  "It's that rich fuck doctor," Drew said sickly."He didn't give me the antidote. He probably gave me some damn placebo."

  "Or more poison," Dylan said.

  Facto suddenly turned the vehicle around.

  "Wha
t are you doing, Facto?" Drew ordered.

  "Taking you to the hospital."

  "He wouldn't have poisoned me," Drew said."Go on to Hepron, I can get medical aid there."

  "NO!" Facto yelled firmly."As much as it pains me to say this, you are our country's only hope now, and we can't afford to take chances with your health . . ."

  "Damn it, Fatroad . . ." she jumped back over Dylan and threw up again.

  "Take us to the hospital." Arcadia said.

  It was decided that Facto and Drew would enter the hospital alone, hoping to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, while the others waited in the vehicle.

  The emergency room crew recognized Drew at once, and when she fed them her bull shit story, they immediately started to treat her. A tox screen determined that there was no way the doctor had given Drew the antidote.

  "See, my people, how none of the nobles are to be trusted? How even a doctor trained in the ways of healing will take a hand at killing the queen to stop equality? Why, you're a doctor, can you believe that one of your own profession could do such a thing?"

  "No, my queen," he said stiffly.

  "Tell you what, doc. You look like a busy guy. Lots of sick people in here and shit. It's a simple shot, one of the nurses can do it . . ."

  "My queen, it's not a problem, but an honor . . ."

  "To see my butt? You bet it is, but seriously, one of the nurses can do this. I'm sure you have lots more important things to do than to stick me in the ass."

  "As you wish, my queen." He bowed and left, obviously in a huff.

  The nurse smiled a knowing smile and went off to get the antidote. Nurses had done very well under the laws of the new queen, and their loyalty had therefore been bought and paid for. Drewcila Qwah was no one's fool.

  They were almost out of the hospital when the screen in the emergency room waiting area lit up with a news flash. It was that weasel Atario, and he was shedding big crocodile tears.

  "The queen has assassinated the king . . ."

  Drew didn't wait to hear more."Let's get the hell out of here," she whispered. Facto was more or less carrying her, and he doubled his pace. Outside the hospital he asked in an angry whisper.

  "Did you kill Zarco?"

  "I most certainly did not," Drew said with righteous indignation."I shot him, but I didn't kill him. No doubt that snake Atario did it. Damn! I should have seen that one coming."

  "Drewcila Qwah, I know you, and if I have learned nothing else I have learned that most of the time when your lips are moving you're lying. Now you and your two alien cohorts . . ."

  "I have co-whores?" Drew asked with a smile.

  "I said cohorts . . ."

  "Whatever the hell those are."

  "The lizard woman and Jurak . . ."

  "He's Barion . . ."

  "But he works for you . . . Damn it, Drewcila." He stopped short, grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him."Did you wait till Stasha couldn't see and then kill Zarco . . ."

  "Damn! Now why didn't I think of that?"

  "Did you, Drew?"

  She looked him in his eyes without blinking."No, I did not. Am I sad he's dead? No. Would I have killed him to avenge the death of my friend and make my life easier? You bet your sweet ass. But my sister begged me not to, so I didn't."

  Arcadia was suddenly running up the sidewalk towards them, Dylan not far behind her. Their lasers were pulled, and when Drew turned around to see why, she saw two large security guards coming down the sidewalk after them. However they quickly dropped their weapons and threw up their hands when they saw the two armed aliens, proving—at least in Drew's mind—that their hearts weren't really in it. Arcadia took hold of one of Drew's arms, Facto had the other, and Dylan watched their backs as they made a run for the vehicle. Arcadia pulled Drew in the back seat with her. Dylan gently but quickly shoved Facto towards the back seat as he took the driver's seat. He started the beast and took off at a high rate of speed as two police cars came roaring up the driveway towards them. He expertly maneuvered the vehicle around them and through the parking lot filled with miscellaneous vehicles, barely making it out the main entrance before two more police vehicles rolled in. He punched it, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was so much life left in the old girl. As he drove like a mad man, avoiding the police cars that seemed to materialize from nowhere, he leaned towards Stasha, "So, babe, you have got to be getting tired, because you've been running through my mind all day."

  Atario looked with total disdain at the report that filled his screen, then back at the doctor.

  "She has managed to slip through our hands. It's as if she simply vanished . . . You say you didn't give her the antidote?" Atario asked with a hint of disbelief.

  "No, sir," Dr Sortas reported.

  "It doesn't appear to have slowed her down any."

  "With all due respect, Chancellor, she had thrown virtually all the poison up, so it wouldn't have done any real damage anyway," The doctor smiled a wicked smile then."I didn't want to actually kill the trollop, just teach her a lesson. I am a physician after all . . ."

  "If you had a doctor's ethics, you would have treated your patient. As long as you didn't, you should have given her a lethal dose of something and saved us all the headache of having to deal with Drewcila Qwah . . ."

  The doctor feigned being shocked."She is our queen!"

  "She killed the king!"

  The doctor glared at Atario."Now, I doubt that seriously. Remember that I was in the hallway just outside the door waiting to tend any wounds the king might have. I heard the confrontation between the king and the queen just as you did, and I know that she did indeed shoot him, but that the blast was not fatal. I saw the injuries. I did an autopsy on the body. Blasters leave a signature mark, and there are two very different signatures on his wounds. Now the blaster that Drewcila was carrying was rather large. That would match the wound I found on his leg, but not the other one. So as you can see, I have no reason to believe that she shot him in the head." He looked right at Atario then."After all, an execution style killing? Well, that hardly seems our good queen's style, does it?"

  "One of her thugs, then . . ."

  The doctor smiled and shook his head."No, that doesn't make sense, either. They had apparently been on the castle grounds all this time. If their intention was to kill Zarco, they could have done it at any time . . ."

  "Just why did you request this meeting?" Atario asked raising his eyebrows.

  "I think we both know. And we also both know that I can easily prove when I have finished the autopsy who actually fired the blast that killed our good king . . ."

  Atario smiled widely then."You must have a price, or you would have gone to the press instead of coming to me."

  "Before you decide it would be easier to kill me as well, I think it's only fair I tell you that I have sent my findings and conclusions off as a closed attachment to my attorney with the instructions to forward it to the nearest news agency upon my death. Further, you should know that I do not condone what you have done."

  The smile faded from Atario's face."Just tell me what it is you want."

  "Since there is no bringing Zarco back, what I desire is a piece of the action. With the nobility firmly behind you, and without Drewcila Qwah to stop you, I have no doubt you will be our new king. As such, you will have the power to make me your chancellor. I want power and position. I want to get back everything I had before that dubious whore stole it away from me . . . and then some."

  Atario smiled again."Ambitious and ruthless, a man after my own heart. I can use someone like you working for me . . . Chancellor."

  Even with Dylan's skill as a driver, they had barely made it out of Capital without being captured, and the vehicle had taken considerable damage when one of Dylan's maneuvers forced it into a fight with the side of a building. The vehicle lost rather badly, and it was now losing power and making an unhealthy wheezing noise. Dylan knew pursuit couldn't be far behind them, so he
pulled off the road and into some bushes where the car sputtered and died.

  "Beautiful, fucking beautiful!" Drewcila groaned, then leaned out the window and threw up again.

  "I can't believe that Zarco would call the entire army down upon our heads," Stasha said, and then turned to glare at what to her dismay turned out to be Drew's ass. She continued anyway."But, oh wait . . . YOU TRIED TO KILL HIM!"

  Dylan noticed that Facto was very quiet, and catalogued the fact somewhere in the back of his mind. Drew crawled back in the window and glared back at her sister while wiping vomit off her mouth onto her sleeve, which made Dylan have to swallow hard to keep from hurling himself. There was something about seeing a beautiful woman puke that almost, but not quite, had him thinking about something other than his perpetual stiffy. It had been entirely too long since he'd had sex—at least a week!—and he was more than certain that he could bed Drew's sister. Now what was her name again?