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  Jurak straightened even more than usual, cleared his throat and waded in, "Your Majesty always starts out with beer and good intentions, then after a few beers . . . Well, Your Majesty seems to forget that there are matters which need Your concern, and You . . ."

  "My Majesty gets shit faced drunk and starts screwing everything that moves." She looked painfully thoughtful for a second, "and some things that don't. Why is it that you can do everything right most of the time, but you screw up, get drunk even once, and everyone has to throw it in your face forever? Answer me that question, Jurak."

  "Drewcila," he temporarily slung away all formality and tried to reason with her on her level."You're always drunk," he reminded her gently.

  Drewcila laughed and flopped into her chair, spinning around to face him."Well, that would be once, wouldn't it?"

  "I hardly think that now is the time to . . . well, tie one on as you say."

  "Chill out, Jurak. Have a brew. I know when it's time to work, and when it's time to play. I'm not going to get drunk." She looked at the monitor as if she expected at any minute it might tell her the answers to the very meaning of life itself, then said in an almost detached voice."There are two things that piss me off more than anything else in the universe. You know what those are, Jurak?" Without giving him a chance to answer, she held up one finger."Losing a butt load of money." She held up two fingers."Men who openly defy me, start wars, or go off, give away one of my ships, and join fucking religious communes. So, needless to say, I'm royally pissed off and hardly in a party mood. So smile—unless you're afraid your face will crack—kick back, and relax for a minute. How does my tongue look?" She stuck it out.

  "Still blue and yellow spotted," Jurak said making a face.

  "Damn! I was afraid of that." Drew sighed and took a long drink of her beer. It calmed her stomach and her nerves. She wondered if she could get in touch with Van Gar. Try to talk some sense into his head. Or maybe, and this was extreme and must mean something, she should tell him some bullshit story about how she was wrong, and she'd change, and quit doing all the things that pissed him off so badly. Just as soon as she figured out what they were . . .

  She missed him. Missed him to the point of distraction. It sucked, too, because it meant she must actually harbor some real feelings for him. In which case it was a good thing he was gone. Life was good. Hell, it was great! She did what she wanted, when she wanted, with who she wanted. She sure as hell didn't want anything screwing up her party. And there was always Arcadia, loyal and trustworthy. While her feelings might be similar to Van Gar's regarding Drew's behavior, she at least had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

  Well, most of the time anyway.

  Drew'd worked damn hard, and she'd gotten everything she'd ever wanted. A huge salvaging empire, a fleet of ships rivaled by none in three galaxies, giant recycling centers, and whole satellites bore the Qwah-Co logo. She had the admiration of her people, power, and more money than she could ever possibly spend.

  Now the men in her life were flushing her dreams down the toilet. Van Gar was gone, she still wasn't sure just why, and that idiot husband of hers had started a war which threatened her empire.

  Some days, being queen just sucked.

  Chapter 4

  There was dirt and rocks as far as the eye could see. The nights were cold, and the days were hot. Van Gar spent his days picking up the rocks, putting them into buckets, and carrying them to one of two places. The first was the loading bay: apparently some planet was actually paying the Pride Leader for their rock. The second was the "building site," one of the few large flat places on this otherwise knobby planet. There, a crew of Chitzskies was mixing mud and laying up rock walls to build a large meeting hall which would double as a home for the "Pride Leader." When that structure was complete, they would work as a community to build single family living structures for the population. Currently the "population" was living in prefab, plastic coated, cardboard geodesic domes made entirely from recycled material which were, ironically, a product of Qwah-Co.

  Each blue or red piece of every dome was stamped with the Qwah name in the alternating color. Her name glared mockingly down on him as he tried to sleep on the cardboard floor of one of the tiny domes which were meant to house six human-sized beings, and in which sixteen Chitzskies were living.

  It was hard to believe that this was the most habitable part of the planet. No doubt this was why the planet had remained in such an "unspoiled" state. It rained very rarely—about twice a year—and the few wells that had been drilled recovered very slowly. Because of this, and the fact that they didn't want to overtax the recycling system, they were only allowed to have a real shower once a week. Showers were scheduled so that the same number showered every day. This meant the entire place always smelled like dirty Chitzsky, a smell which he found more repulsive every day.

  So he'd lay there at the end of a hard day's work with his poly-fiber blanket on the cold floor with no pillow for his head. He'd breathe the putrefying stench of himself and his Chitzsky brothers and sisters, that burned the hair from his nostrils. He'd squeeze his eyes shut, trying desperately to go to sleep so that he could at least momentarily be released from the hell he had thrown himself into. And the whole time Drewcila would be mercilessly taunting him. She was so completely and totally egotistical that she'd insisted on anything the company created being stamped with her name. There he would lie, billions of miles from her, and all he could see when he looked up was Qwah, Qwah, Qwah! It should be a constant reminder of just why he was well rid of her. Instead, it only served to remind him of all that he had lost.

  To make matters worse, he realized only a few days after landing that he found women of his own race to be entirely repulsive, smelly and hairy, and unpleasant to look at. One of the women, Shreta, seemed intent on bedding him. Naturally, she was the ugliest one of the bunch. She had a nice personality, but try as he might, he not only couldn't get aroused at the thought of sex with her, he'd thrown up the green slop they fed them twice a day just thinking about it. He was quite sure that the poor homely thing's underwear riding up into her crack was as close to sex as she had ever gotten.

  A week after landing he had insisted they put him on the very next ship off this hole of a planet. They refused, so he decided not to work. They revoked his eating and bathing privileges. He figured he could out last them. Bathing was no big deal, because in truth he could put up with his own stench before he could put up with everyone else's. When you knew you stank, you could always assume it was you that you were smelling, which actually made the stench more bearable. Sort of the difference between smelling your own fart and someone else's. As for food, Shreta secretly sneaked it to him.

  He was sitting on his ass one day, watching the others work, when he saw five "foremen" come together. They were talking and looking at him, and Van Gar was sure he'd finally won. That they were going to send him home. But when they started walking towards him . . . Well, he'd been in enough fights to know when someone was in an ass-kicking mood. Since he was in one himself, he stood up and got ready. He'd taken more than five people on before, and he'd always walked away victorious.

  "Will you go to work now?" the one called Remo asked as they approached.

  "No. I will not. We are all being used, we have all been duped by a con man. I want to be taken off this planet and brought to the nearest spaceport as soon as possible."

  Apparently they weren't in a talking mood.

  He put up a good fight, but they still beat him damn near to death. See, Van Gar had never faced even one other Chitzsky male in battle. They didn't crumple under his punches the way humans, Barions, and most other aliens did.

  When they had beaten him bloody, they dragged him back into the field and put a bucket in his hand.

  So now, all day, every day, he filled his bucket with rocks, dumped them into a wheel barrow, or carried it over to the building site just like a good little slave to the Pride Leader. All the while plottin
g ways off the planet and out of the mess he'd gotten himself into.

  Shreta had once again worked her way over to pick up rock alongside him.

  "How are you feeling, Van Gar?" she asked, even though it had been days since the beating. Truth was she asked him five or six times a day just because her conversational skills were that limited, and she wanted to talk to him.

  "I'm fine. Healed. Stupid, but well."

  She giggled, "You shouldn't have defied the foremen like that."

  "That's not why I feel stupid," Van Gar growled back. She jumped a little at seeing his obvious anger, and he didn't feel in the least bit guilty."All my life I have felt that we were a highly superior race. I looked down at the other races I encountered, thinking them inferior in every way. But look at us, at all of us, and especially me. We are total morons. We gave up everything of worth to come here. For what? To haul rock and eat green glop 'til we eventually die on this godsforsaken planet of dust and rock."

  Shreta looked at him and frowned. She was even uglier when she wasn't smiling."We came here to make a homeland. To have a better life."

  "And does this," he stood up, held his arms out, and turned around, "look like a good homeland to you?" He let his arms fall to his side and looked into her eyes."Is sleeping on a cold, hard, cardboard floor in a room full of smelly Chitzskies, eating green slimy shit made out of gods only know what . . . Is this really better than the life you had before?"

  She looked really confused now."We . . . we are working towards something. We are building a place for us, and our children and their children. It will take a lot of hard work, a long time . . ."

  "How long? Look around you, Shreta. Rocks and dirt. A few struggling, scraggly shrubs. It will take generations to make this unfertile piece of crap yield crops or sustain herds. We surely won't live to see it, and as for children . . . would you condemn a child to live the life we live here? How horrible was your life before, that this seems better to you?"

  A small crowd had now gathered around them, listening intently.

  "I . . . I was a checker in a clothing store," Shreta said, obviously trying to remember the experience. Suddenly anger marked her features, making her yet uglier."I always had great clothes because I got them at discount. I was never too hot or too cold. I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted." She looked at Van Gar."We were tricked. That's what you were saying, isn't it?"

  Mumbling started throughout the group as everyone recalled all that they'd left behind, all that they'd signed over to the "Pride Leader."

  "You there, back to work," a foreman ordered approaching them.

  Van Gar walked through the crowd and up to the foreman."Why?"

  "Because there is work to do . . ."

  "So?" Van Gar said with a shrug.

  "So, the Pride Leader has set tasks for us to complete, and . . ."

  "When did you stop even pretending not to be ordering us around?" Van Gar asked.

  "Yeah," the others said as a group.

  "If we're here because it's a better place for us, why do we have to answer to you? Why should we have to answer to anyone? Are we your brothers and sisters, or are we your slaves? And if we aren't your prisoners, why can't we leave if we like?"

  "You again!" the foreman said, suddenly recognizing Van Gar."Brothers and sisters, this man is nothing but a lazy trouble maker. Such negativity will accomplish nothing. The Pride Leader has taught us . . ."

  "His words have the ring of truth to them," an angry young Chitzsky said."Why should we have to listen to you? Why should we have to take orders from anyone? We were promised freedom from the abuse of the aliens we lived encased by, but what about the abuse that is shelled out by you in the name of the Pride Leader?"

  "Better than that, if this is paradise, then why doesn't the Pride Leader come live here with us?" Van Gar added.

  "He's . . . he's suffering out there, so that we can all be brought together here." But now even the foreman stammered.

  "For what purpose? So that we can all starve together on this floating turd in space?" Van Gar asked. He'd run more than a few scams himself in the time he'd spent with Drewcila and he could now hear in this man's voice the faltering that always comes before the sell.

  "The plantings we've made so far are starting to grow . . ."

  "They are stunted and barely existing. Take in a deep breath. You know what that horrid stench is, my people? It's us. Why? Because there isn't enough water to bathe, much less water crops properly. The more of us there are, the more water we're going to need, and you can't squeeze water from a dry sponge. We can recycle the water just so many times, and then it isn't good for anything but plants, and there won't be enough of it to make them thrive. This guy who calls himself the Pride Leader has robbed us all, and he did it by promising us something that we all felt like we were missing. I know this because I also felt like I wanted a home planet. Someplace that belonged to Chitzskies, that we could call our own. But what were we really missing out on before? We had everything but a rock on which to hang claim and be responsible for."

  "The Pride Leader used that small wish in each of us—the wish for a home planet—to take everything we had of value, and force us into a life of slavery so that he could get power and money. He is the greatest traitor to our race that has ever lived. And that's saying a lot considering that our ancestors managed to fight a war so brutal that they wound up blowing up our home planet."

  A much larger group had formed by the time he ended his speech.

  "What should we do?" the former foreman asked.

  "We've already started," Van Gar said."We tell all the others and win them over. Then we get off this rock, go find this great imposter and take back what's ours."

  Drew sucked on her cigar and paced the command deck, going through different options in her head. They were now in orbit around Barious, and every attempt made at communication with the surface had met with the same failure as earlier attempts. She had her best geeks working on it, but it was obvious that whatever the problem was, it wasn't one that they could solve—at least not from up here.

  Their hard work had in fact done nothing but confirm what she'd already been sure of: someone had detonated a communications disruptor from one of the orbiting satellites.

  The question was who? Without the answer to that question, she couldn't be sure just what sort of reception she'd be getting at the palace.

  The Lockhedes were the likely suspects. After all, this whole war had been started because of Zarco's unwillingness to allow them to salvage with Barious. Cut off communications, and you basically shut down the biggest salvaging port in the galaxy, crippling the superior economy of the Barions, and bringing all commerce to a standstill until communications systems could be brought back on line. A few hours would cost them millions—a few days, trillions.

  It definitely leveled the playing field.

  However, her gut was telling her that it was probably Zarco and whatever idiots were pulling his strings at the moment who caused this disruption. The real problem was that Zarco was a moron, and it would be just like him to start a war that Drew didn't want, and then ruin her business by destroying communications. Yes, it would definitely be like him to shut the planet off from the rest of the galaxy, not to mention making planet-wide communication impossible, all just to piss her off.

  Well, if all he'd really wanted to do was piss her off, he had succeeded beyond his very wildest dreams.

  If she went in now, she'd be flying in by the seat of her pants. No ground support. No way of knowing whether the spaceport, or the palace for that matter, was over-run by the Lockhedes. She'd have to trust her own instruments to tell her that she wasn't running into things—like other ships. If she went down there and the country had been nuked, it was all just a great waste of time, and she'd need all her time to try and save her corporation.

  "Orders?" Jurak asked carefully.

  "I'm still thinking!" Drewcila stopped in mid stride and turned to face him
."Can't you see I'm still thinking?"

  "Sorry, my Queen." Jurak bowed submissively.

  "All this sobriety, and thinking, and having to be responsible . . ." Drew stuck her cigar in her mouth and held it with her teeth as she ran her hands through her hair."I had hoped for so much more from life." She took a long drag from the cigar, and puffed the smoke slowly into Jurak's face until he gratified her by coughing. At which point she walked over, flopped into her command chair, and put her seatbelt on. She'd made her decision.

  "Strap in, gang. We're going planetside," Drewcila ordered, and gave them exactly five seconds to comply before she started the descent towards the planet's surface. She puffed on her cigar, making clouds of smoke as she concentrated on the actual flying of the ship, while trying to watch all the monitors for any signs of enemy craft. There were three other people whose job it was to monitor such things, but she didn't actually trust any of them to do it.

  This was a salvaging barge, but it was a royal salvaging barge, manned with an all-Barion crew. They were hopelessly loyal to her, but they hadn't traveled the space lanes as long as she had. They'd never had to deal with pirates or smugglers, and they didn't know all the tricks that an enemy could use to get around detection devices.