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  She tried to remember why she had decided to sober up. Of course she was having trouble even remembering her name. She got up slowly, stumbled through the garbage to the bathroom, and landed on the toilet with a thump. It took awhile for her to actually start pissing since her body had no doubt forgotten how in the who-knew-how-many-hours she'd been passed out. But once she started, she began to wonder if she was ever going to stop. She started to wonder how pissing constantly might affect her life. It wasn't a very pretty picture. Maybe she'd just piss until all her bones had turned to dust.

  Fortunately she did eventually stop pissing. She rose, walked over and looked in the mirror and jumped at the sight of her own reflection. Damn! She looked as bad as she felt. She stuck out her tongue and found that it was covered in large blue and yellow spots. First she thought with alarm that she had some terrible disease, but then she vaguely remembered that they had painted her tongue and her privates with somebody dye made from some plant she couldn't remember the name of now. The person who had done it had sworn that the dye was harmless, but her tongue was swollen, and her crotch itched, so she started to wonder just how harmless it was. Of course chances were that her tongue was swollen from too much drinking, and her crotch was itching from too much sex, so who knew for sure? She couldn't remember how long the treatment was supposed to last. They promised her it would enhance her sexual pleasure, but she'd been too drunk to know if it actually did anything besides look weird. She'd have to ask one of the people she'd had sex with, if she could remember who they were.

  "Where the fuck is my toothbrush?" She found it floating in the toilet and frowned."See, there's the shit. Cause when you're drunk, ya just fish it out, wash it off, and no one's the wiser." She groaned and leaned against the wall holding her head with one hand as she flushed the toilet with the other."Good bye ol' friend," she said as the tooth brush spiraled downward."I should have stayed drunk. What made me decide to sober up? Is it a religious holiday or something? Hey! I know one of you assholes can hear me. Bring me a tooth brush, and it had by God better still be in the wrapper."

  In seconds Jurak was there with a toothbrush—still in the wrapper."Thanks." She took it from him, stacked about two inches of toothpaste on it from the wall dispenser, and then started brushing her teeth, making the foam erupt from her mouth on all sides as she did so. She brushed her tongue, then spit, getting foam all down the front of her body and the shirt she was almost wearing. Unfortunately it didn't seem to be dislodging any of the dye from her tongue."Fuck . . . this day just gets better and better. Why the hell did I sober up, Jurak? And perhaps we had better work on remedying this problem . . ."

  "My Queen, your sister . . ."

  Drewcila turned to face him and shoved him so hard that he almost fell down."Now I remember! I'm losing money! I'm losing a butt load of money. Crap! Where are we?"

  "We're still docked . . ."

  "Are you fucking nuts! Kick anyone who isn't crew off the ship, close the hatch, and get this tin piece of shit in the air, man. Chart a course to Barious ASAP. I'm getting in the shower. When I get out I want us to be untethered and on our way to Barious. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes, my Queen." he started to leave as she began to strip the shirt off.

  "And get the crew to clean this pit up. It looks like the war is being held in here."

  "Yes, my Queen." He started to leave again as she was stepping into the shower.

  "Oh . . . and Jurak . . . ?"

  "Yes, my Queen," he said with an exasperated sigh.

  "Send someone in here. No sense in me showering alone."

  "Yes, my Queen." He left.

  Zarco listened to the incoming information with a sense of dread. Drewcila was on her way, hung over but sober, and as angry as he had ever seen her.

  "Tell the queen I have the matter well in hand here. Her presence is completely unnecessary," Zarco had assured the man on the screen. His reward was the sound of his once beloved wife screaming at the top of her lungs.

  "Tell that pencil-dicked pud that I can hear him . . . Crap! My fucking head! You listen to me, Zarmoron, and you listen good . . ." The monitor swiveled to capture the vision of her swollen, all-but-green face, as she glared at him with blood shot eyes, and Zarco cringed."You're like a turd that won't flush down, you just roll around the bowl wasting valuable resources and stinking up the place. Your hard-headed stupidity is costing me money. More importantly to you as the concerned King you pretend to be, you are putting your people's lives in jeopardy for no better reason than to continue your pissing contest with the Lockhedes. My ambassadors will be there within the hour. You will sit down with them, and by the time I arrive, I expect to see a peace agreement and salvaging contracts written up. If you don't settle this, and settle it quickly, there will be hell to pay."

  Zarco had heard her, and his anger boiled inside him, but, there was something so distracting that concentrating on anything else was impossible."What happened to your tongue?"

  Drew mumbled something completely inaudible that he was sure were horrible curses meant only for him before she answered."It's dye. It will wear off in a few days," she explained, slinging her hand around dismissively. Then she added in a hardly audible whisper, "I hope."

  His question answered, Zarco's anger reared its ugly head again."You will not give me orders. I'm not that trained dog of a hair-covered beast you keep in your bed. I am the king, and I will make policy concerning the country and the war. We will not make peace. We will not make trade agreements or sign contracts with the Lockhedes our sworn enemies . . ."

  Drew waved her hand at him dismissively, in that moment looking every bit like the queen she had once been, instead of the salvaging whore she had become."My people will be there in an hour. You will sit down with them and try to sort this thing out so that all I have to do when I get there is finish cleaning up the mess that you have made. Close transmission."

  Zarco leapt from his chair at the console, slamming his hand down upon it. She'd openly defied him! She looked like death warmed up and she had just closed out on him, yet in that one instant he had seen back to what she once was and he couldn't deny that he still had strong feelings for her.

  However, all of this had the opposite of Drewcila's desired effect, for Zarco rose from his chair more determined than ever to carry out his war effort against the Lockhedes. And this time there would be genocide. This time he would rid the planet of their blight forever.

  Zarco looked up at the clock on the wall. Drewcila's "people" would be on their way by now. Alien scum, every one of them, and why did she assume that he'd cave in to them anymore than he'd cave in to her?

  He'd had just about enough of Drewcila, and more than enough of her little salvager friends. He smiled.

  "Come on, salvaging swine," he mumbled, "I've got quite a surprise for you, and for your boss. Quite a surprise indeed."

  * * *

  Dylan Allen looked with distaste at his two friends."Why?" he whined.

  "Because that's what the bitch said," Arcadia hissed. She wasn't angry. Valtarian lizard people always spoke with a hiss, which made them sound mad to everyone who'd never actually seen one of them mad. Once you had seen an angry Valtarian, you didn't forget how they looked or sounded. That was if they let you live.

  "If she can't talk him into a treaty and trade agreement, what makes her think that we can?" Dylan seemed permanently fixed to his bed, making no indication that he was going to move."We're just going to be wasting our time. Let's concern ourselves with trying to keep the operation running as smoothly as possible under the circumstances, and let Drewcila handle the pompous ass herself when she gets here."

  "Get your worthless, lazy ass up!" Pristin ordered authoritatively.

  Pristin, an Ontorian, was only three feet tall and almost as wide and looked for the most part like a deranged, turquoise hand puppet. However his twelve inch mouth held two rows of razor sharp teeth and the little bastard was amazingly fast. So when Pristin tal
ked, his subordinates listened. This, as much as the fact that he was a brilliant businessman, was no doubt why Drewcila Qwah, the queen bitch of the salvaging empire, had put him in charge of running her operation on Barious.

  Dylan sighed and got up, straightening his clothes. They were all wearing basically the same thing—the sleeveless blue jump suit with the Qwah-Co logo. Of course, since they were big shots, their suits were better cut and they had really cool black leather jackets with the Qwah-Co logo emblazoned over the pocket to go with them. Dylan had never really been fond of dressing like everybody else, so of course he'd spent most of his life that way. The real difference between himself and his compadres was that he looked really good in this outfit, which seemed to spotlight his package. He was a good looking man for a human, not that the rabble he hung with were likely to notice. Still it was important to him that he didn't go out in public till every hair was in place. He couldn't really remember the last time he'd actually seen an earth woman. Of course Barion women were nothing to sneeze at, and they seemed to find him "exotic."

  He looked into the mirror and combed his hair, pretending not to notice his companion's impatience.

  Dylan spent his days on Barious surrounded by alien salvaging scum, and most days that suited him just fine.

  In fact, the only thing he hated about his job here was that he occasionally had to go with Arcadia and Pristin to talk with the royal idiot. Zarco was a man who epitomized all the things that Dylan hated most about mindlessly ambitious men. A rich idiot who'd never gotten his hands dirty, literally sitting on his throne, giving orders and making decrees that affected everyone but him. Pristin called Dylan lazy, but that was only because Pristin was an obsessive-compulsive little overachiever. Dylan knew hard work; hell, he still did it almost every day. More importantly, Dylan was the veteran of a dozen battles.

  As a young man he'd played college ruckus ball, and everyone had said he'd go pro, but Dylan had bigger plans. He wanted to go to distant galaxies, and the military promised to take him all the places he wanted to go and make him into all that he could be.

  He didn't get to go to any of the really cool places he wanted to go, and he soon realized that all they really wanted to make him was dead. It didn't take him long to learn more than he'd wanted to know about war. He knew what it really cost, not in money, but in life. Which was why he'd jumped ship one day and how he'd wound up in the salvaging trade. Salvagers didn't ask many questions, and they didn't care how obviously fake your information was. Especially not when you worked for Qwah-Co.

  Zarco didn't know anything about battle. He'd sit in his castle, safe and sound, and let people run to their deaths in a war which was fashioned from Zarco's very personal need for revenge. He'd punish the planet and his people because Drewcila didn't love him anymore.

  He had no noble reason.

  This was the real reason Dylan was dragging his feet. It was going to be very hard to sit there and listen to the red-faced tyrant spit out a long stream of bullshit about why it was so important that they fight this war, and not tell the dundering asshole just exactly what he thought of him.

  "Quit farting around with your hair, and let's go," Pristin ordered, finally having reached the end of his tether.

  Dylan put his comb in his back pocket with a sigh, grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair, and threw it on.

  Arcadia took his hand in her claw and gave it a gentle squeeze as she started leading him after Pristin, who never did anything but run. Even on his tiny little legs, when your one stride was worth ten of his, he was almost impossible to keep up with.

  "Time is money, and money is time," Pristin said, his way of telling them to hurry up, which they didn't. They weren't that afraid of him.

  "What's wrong?" Arcadia asked Dylan.

  He smiled down at her."I hate talking to Zarco, and you know as well as I do that we're wasting our breath anyway." He shrugged. It was a real shame that Arcadia found him as physically unattractive as he found her. She understood him, and he her. He had never had a really good relationship with any humanoid woman, and he found her voice very sexy, so if he didn't totally repulse her, he would have shut off all the lights and fucked her in a heartbeat. Of course that was what he did to most females, which was possibly why he'd never had a real relationship with any of them.

  "Business runs so much smoother when Drewcila is here . . ."

  Pristin was standing in front of them in seconds, interrupting Arcadia and making them stop short or trip over him."It's supposed to be our job to make sure that the operation runs just as well without Drew as it does with her. We have failed . . ."

  Dylan didn't like to be told that he had failed at anything."Wait just one damn minute, Pris. We did what we were supposed to do. We tried to talk sense into the royal dildo's head. It didn't work then, and I don't think it's going to work now. We're just wasting our time . . ."

  "If Drew gets here and the planet is still at war, and no trade agreements have been signed, heads are going to roll. I don't want one of them to be mine."

  "I don't think Drew's going to blame us," Dylan said. He smiled."And you know she isn't going to blame Arcadia."

  "You don't think at all. That's your big problem . . ."

  "Why you pile-of-crap-shaped toad, I ought to . . ." Dylan let go of Arcadia's claw, and pulled his arm back, making a fist.

  Pristin bared his teeth and started growling. Arcadia jumped between them, swishing her five foot spike-tipped tail."Gentlemen, how can we hope to convince Zarco to end the war when we can't even stop fighting amongst ourselves?"

  Both males mumbled their agreement, and they started back on their way. Dylan smiled as he and Arcadia continued to walk along behind Pristin.

  "What?" she asked with a matching smile, once again taking his hand.

  "It just occurred to me that the three of us make the perfect team. But don't tell ol' toad face I told you so."

  "His head is bloated enough as it is," she smiled, and then suddenly froze.

  "What's wrong?"

  Her head started pivoting around. She was obviously looking and listening. Something wasn't right. Dylan let go of Arcadia's claw and pulled his blaster."Pristin, stop! Arcadia hears something . . ."

  "Don't be ridicu . . ."

  The hall in front of them exploded, and they were covered in what remained of their friend as a contingent of palace guards filled the hall before them. It didn't take a genius to figure out that someone had ordered them shot on sight.

  Dylan fired on them, then grabbed Arcadia's claw and started pulling her back down the hall the way they had come. It wasn't easy. Arcadia had been very fond of Pristin, and coming from a warrior race, her answer to any combat situation was to stand and fight until you died. She was firing behind them as Dylan pulled her along. A contingent of guards rounded the hallway in front of them. He thought they were screwed, but then Arcadia started hauling him back the way they had just come, and he realized that she had killed everyone who had initially come after them. So apparently there had been a method to her madness. Now Dylan found that he was the one firing behind them as he was pulled along.

  "What the fuck's going on?" he screamed.

  She didn't answer, just kept pulling him. The hallway led to the palace grounds. No doubt Arcadia, whose people lived in the wilds, planned to use her knowledge of the great outdoors to lose the palace guards. Dylan, who had been born and raised in the city, and who purposely steered clear of the palace grounds because all that open sky and living stuff gave him the creeps, wasn't so thrilled about her apparent plan, but he followed anyway. He was the veteran of many space battles, but they weren't in space now. They weren't even close to the spaceport. So for now he'd trust the Valtarian's instincts.

  Stasha heard the blaster fire within the castle. At her command, her escort led her to Zarco's office, only to find him watching the monitor and laughing in a maniacal manner. Facto was already there, and he turned to face her as she walked in and frowne
d.

  "Zarco . . . what on Barious is going on?" she demanded.

  He turned to look at her."I have ordered Drewcila's 'ambassadors' executed."

  "Is it not enough to make war with the Lockhedes? Must you now make war with Drewcila as well? You know she will not take this lying down. She will retaliate, and the gods alone know how," Stasha said in disbelief."Have you gone quite mad?"

  "On the contrary. I have just come to my senses. This is my kingdom, Stasha. Mine! Not Drewcila Qwah's. I'm about to tear her salvaging empire to the ground and return the glory of Barious," Zarco said."Step one is to eradicate Drewcila's little spies so that she has to fly in here with no knowledge of what's going on. When she arrives I will deal with her as I should have dealt with her long ago. She will either submit her will to me and go back to being a real and proper wife and queen, or I shall have her executed and put you on the throne in her stead."