Gestapo Mars E-Book

Victor Gischler

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 307

Beschreibung

Carter Sloan is a bioengineered agent in the far future, abandoned in deep freeze until the Nazi government awakened him and gave him a last assignment which will require him to fight and screw his way across the galaxy. Explosive and pulpy science fiction with lots of sex and even more swearing.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

The Final Chapter

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Available Now from Titan Books

Coming Soon from Titan Books

Gestapo MarsPrint edition ISBN: 9781783297351Electronic edition ISBN: 9781783297368

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 20152 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Victor Gischler. All Rights Reserved.Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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This book is for Anthony Neil Smith who taught me how to be awful and own it. We don’t do safe fiction up in here!

ONE

The first thing I did when they opened the chamber was puke on the guy’s shoes.

“Son of a bitch,” the guy said, stepping back.

Then I focused on him, all pencil-neck rage and a clipboard and a lab coat. Cryo-lab nerd. A dime a dozen, so I hadn’t made an enemy worth sweating. I put my hands on either side of the chamber, tried to pry myself out. No dice. I was weak as a kitten. A hung-over kitten after a triathlon.

“You knew it could happen,” another voice said, connected to somebody I couldn’t see. “Most of them vomit.”

“He moved faster than the others,” lab coat said. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Wheel him to the recovery room,” the other voice said. “I’ll brief him when he’s lucid.”

I tried to tell him a steak sandwich and a couple of pilsners would get me lucid in a hurry but the only words to spill out of my mouth were, “sdh glunmg snooj.”

“They’re always floppy and retarded when they first wake up,” lab coat said. “Hard to believe the millions of credit that went into them.”

“Just wheel him into the recovery room,” the other voice said. “On second thought, get him to wash down first, in case he shits himself, and make sure he’s hydrated.”

* * *

I did shit myself—pissed, too, and fell right into it, the room spinning, air going out of my lungs, legs like noodles. That hadn’t happened the other times, and I got worried, even as many soft hands picked me up, hosed me off, and in feminine tones told me it would be okay.

Nurses. I liked nurses way more than I liked lab coats.

Then I was in a set of clean scrubs. Sitting in a chair. My eyes focused a bit at a time.

The recovery room looked just like the interrogation room and the debriefing room. Sometimes it was hard to know if you were coming out or going back in. The guy across from me wore a black suit instead of a lab coat. Ties were back in fashion, thin with a line of red glitter down the middle. He pulled his tie loose, leaned in, and squinted at me.

“You okay?” It was the other voice from before. “Can you keep it together, or you need a little more time?” He reached into his jacket, and my body tried to flinch out of reflex, but it wasn’t happening. Too many of my muscles were still asleep. Anyway, he only came out with a pack of cigarettes, filterless Cosmics, and shook one loose and popped it into his mouth, the tip flaring orange as it self-lit.

“Maybe a hypo,” he suggested. “Want us to juice you?”

I shook my head. “How long?” I croaked. My voice felt rough. My mouth tasted like some creature had laid eggs in there and then the eggs had hatched and all the baby creatures had taken their first craps on my tongue. The first intelligible words out of my face probably should have been to ask for a glass of water.

The tie and the cigarettes threw me. My muscles were only so much sleepy meat, but the mind was starting to process. Fashions come and go. A while back they created a tobacco additive to neutralize the carcinogenic effects, but then two decades later found the additive caused huge, bleeding hemorrhoids. The fact smoking was okay again meant they’d licked the hemorrhoids, and a chunk of time had passed.

How long?

“You’ll need to adjust, naturally,” Glitter Tie said. “We’ll help you through the process.”

I cleared my throat and said very clearly and distinctly, “How? Long?”

“Two hundred and fifty-eight years.”

“Sons of… bitches.”

“Hey, now.” Glitter Tie held up his hands, palms out, placating.

“You fucker.” I spat the word at him again, strength flowing back into my body, into my voice. “Fucker!”

“I can understand why you might be upset.”

“Fuck you straight in your fuck hole,” I shouted. It felt good to shout. I was waking up all over. “Every two or three years, and then once for ten years, and then twelve years last time, and then two hundred and fifty-eight?”

Training and maintaining a bio-engineered operative was expensive as hell, and the agency didn’t want us falling down manholes or choking on chicken bones in between missions. They kept us in stasis, and we were contracted for a certain number of missions. Once we did our tour, they cut us loose.

I reminded Glitter Tie of this.

“But it’s sort of tough to hit your quota when you’re in stasis for two and a half fucking centuries, motherfucker.”

“I know, I know.” He flicked the cigarette butt into the corner, then immediately popped another, puffed it to life. “You need to calm down, and I’ll explain.”

“The fact you’re still wearing your head shows that I’m calmer than you deserve.” This was bullshit. My legs still felt like rubber bands that had been doing shots of tequila all night, but it felt good to make the threat. Seizing opportunities was a key element in my personality profile.

Glitter Tie ignored the bravado.

“Operatives have changed a lot over the years,” he explained. “The game was changing rapidly even as you got shoved back into the deep freeze after your last mission. Intense training and prenatal bio-engineering are only the tip of the iceberg now. Most operatives have extra hardware. Hell, I even have a micro-processor installed in my brain for office functions.”

“What’s 467 times 231?”

“107,877,” he said immediately.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“And I’m just a mid-level, government bureaucrat,” he said. “The operatives have systems like you wouldn’t believe. Built-in weapons. Crazy shit. You know how it is with new tech. Once they get the ball rolling, it’s like an avalanche. The agency blinked, and a whole bunch of you old timers were obsolete before you could say Harvey Bangswipe.”

“I don’t get the reference.”

“The point is, you kept getting moved farther and farther down the rotation until it was obvious you just weren’t going to be needed again. If it makes you feel any better, it’s not personal. A lot of operatives got stuck just like you.”

“It doesn’t make me feel one iota better,” I said, “and as soon as I can make a fist I’m going to beat your face into pudding.”

“Don’t you want to know why, now, all of a sudden, we’ve activated you when, as I’ve just indicated, the agency has a plethora of far superior operatives to choose from?”

“It’s the single most pressing question of my existence.”

“There’s a colony planet out past the rim,” Glitter Tie said. “Home of some naturalist-type cultists. They’d spot one of our modern operatives a parsec away, what with all the gadgets and implants. We need a man of raw meat to get in there and infiltrate the place. The exact nature of your mission will be revealed later, when your field handler briefs you.”

“What makes you think I’m going to do a damn thing for you cocksuckers when you left me to rot in the deep freeze?”

Glitter Tie sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. They teach middle managers that move specifically to deal with dumb shits who can’t see the big picture. But for me the big picture was that I’d been screwed, and I was pissed. Anything beyond that was superfluous in my admittedly narrow view of the universe.

“Listen,” he said. “We predicted your likely dissatisfaction with the current situation, and we’re prepared not only to compensate you in a monetary fashion, but to wave any and all further obligations you have to the agency. You’ll be a free man. All set up with the galaxy at your fingertips. No strings.”

It was a damn fine offer, especially considering that if the chemical protocols were still in effect, they could basically turn me off with the flick of a switch—and yet I was still pissed. Still baffled and appalled that the universe had rotated around me while I lay there like some kind of half-assed popsicle. I opened my mouth to tell him to grab his ankles and fellate himself.

The explosions in the next room rocked us out of our chairs, sent us sprawling across the floor. The lights flickered, and then went out. The emergency reds came on, bathing us in a dim hellish glow. I blinked and looked over at Glitter Tie, who seemed as betrayed as he was stunned.

“Damn,” he said. “I thought we’d have more time.”

He took a pistol out of his jacket and shot himself in the head.

I’ll admit it. That caught me a little off guard.

TWO

And then the jackbooted thugs stormed the briefing room.

Dressed all in black, knee-high boots, heels clacking on the tile floor. Black cloth caps with silver skull insignias, crossed curved daggers below the skull. They clutched little black automatic pistols in black-gloved fists, a half-dozen of them crowding the tiny briefing room, pointing the pistols, looking for something to shoot at.

The lead thug with captain’s insignia on his shoulders put a boot heel on Glitter Tie’s chest and shot the corpse three times in the head.

“Traitorous dog!”

“I think he’s already dead,” I said, struggling back into my chair.

“Now it’s official,” the captain said.

“Me, next?”

“Of course not.” The captain seemed offended by the idea. “We’re here to rescue you, Mr. Sloan.”

Sloan. Yeah, that was my name. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder who I was until the captain said it. Then it was all coming back, faster and faster. The protocols were extremely goal-oriented. Little details like identity always snapped into focus last.

Carter Sloan. Thirty-eight years old (subjective). Six feet tall without shoes, one hundred and seventy-six pounds. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. Caucasian.

“Come with us, Mr. Sloan. Our orders are to evac you to a safe location, where details of your situation will be revealed.”

I stood, legs still wobbly. “I’ll come, but don’t expect me to set any land speed records.”

I followed them through the cryo labs, but my knees gave out in the lobby. A pair of thugs flanked me, hoisting me up under the arms. The toes of my hospital slippers made drag marks in the dust as they dragged me down a long hallway toward the exit.

Dust?

I noticed it now. The outer rooms were a wreck—dust and cobwebs on the light fixtures, tarps thrown over furniture.

“This place was mothballed?”

“The rebels brought this facility back online specifically to resurrect you,” the captain said.

“I’m flattered.”

We took a service elevator up to the surface. When we came out of the dome that covered the entrance to the agency cryo facility, I gasped. The huge industrial complex surrounding the agency bunker had been flattened, and not recently. Rubble piled up all around us, rusted girders like the ancient bones of some gigantic tortured animal rising into the air. In the hazy distance, the capitol building looked like some hulking titan had taken a bite out of it. The sky was smoky and gray, the sun struggling to shine light through the thick haze.

What the hell has happened?

The captain must have read my mind. “DC was nuked. Along with New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Paris, London, Moscow, Cairo—too many to list. Earth was finished fifty years ago. Our capital is Mars now. We hold most of the solar system, although the rebels have bases on a couple of Jupiter’s moons. Their big strongholds are out of the system.”

“Out of the system?” They’d only begun to colonize out-system when I’d last been sent back into deep freeze.

“Translight tech made a huge leap a hundred years ago,” the captain said. “We’ve got a human presence on nearly four hundred worlds. Earth was on its way to being old news even before the nukes fell. There are still a number of functioning cities, and some good natural resources left to be exploited, but the hub of all empire activity is on Mars now.”

The roar of anti-grav generators drowned out my next question as the armored transport touched down forty yards away, kicking up dust and debris. The gangplank slammed down and a dozen armored troopers spilled out and formed a perimeter to cover us as we boarded, but no enemies showed up to laser us into ash.

Once aboard, they strapped me in across from an official-looking guy in a green suit. His tie and shirt were different shades of green, green glitter down the center of the tie. He smiled at me perfunctorily before turning to the captain.

“Captain, make sure the pilot is following the evac plan we discussed,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” The captain left for the cockpit.

I felt the ship shudder as we lifted off.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Sloan,” the man in the green suit said. “I’m Agent Armand with Empire Internal Security.”

“Secret police,” I said.

Armand smiled vaguely, then shrugged. “It’s a paycheck.”

“Is this where I find out what’s going on, or do we do some more cloak and dagger bullshit first?”

“What did the first man tell you?” Armand asked. “I’ll pick it up from there.”

I told him, how I’d been selected to infiltrate a naturalist cult, the whole shooting match. I related the conversation word for word. Operatives have good recall. It’s part of the job.

“What he told you is essentially true,” Armand said.

“Why did he shoot himself?”

“To avoid torture, I’d imagine. As a high-level rebel agent, he likely had valuable information.”

“You would have tortured him?”

“Absolutely,” Armand said. “I mean, not me personally, but, yes, we would have knocked the shit out of him pretty good.”

“What about me?”

“That depends on what the captain tells me,” Armand said. “Ah, here he is now. Captain?”

“It went just as planned,” the captain told Armand. “The pilot reports that he jammed a rebel distress signal before it left orbit. Under intense interrogation, one of the rebel lab techs gave up an identification code. We used it to transmit a message which was accepted by the rebel base on Europa. In short, the rebels believe their attempt to extract Mr. Sloan has been successful.”

“Excellent, Captain.” Armand rubbed his hands together, a smile of genuine satisfaction on his ruddy puss. “Please pass along my compliments to all involved.”

The captain bowed, clicked his heels and excused himself.

Armand beamed at me. “We’re in the perfect position to insert you undercover into the naturalist cult, except now you will act on behalf of the legitimate galactic government, instead of for the rebels.”

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” I said, “for any government.”

“All of that will be revealed in due time,” Armand assured me. “What the rebel agent told you was true. One of our modern operatives would be detected in an instant. That’s why they raided the mothballed facility and brought you out of stasis. Stay patient. We’ll fill you in on the details. We’ll equip you and support you in every possible way to make sure your mission is a success. All we need to know at this moment, Mr. Sloan, is if you are still ready and willing to serve the Third Reich.”

“Of course,” I said.

Sieg heil, baby.

THREE

The ship docked with the imperial frigate Rommel, which was waiting for us in orbit.

I spent most of the nine-hour trip to Mars in the accelerated gym, working the kinks out of my muscles and getting my reflexes back. An hour at the gun range with slug-throwers and laser weapons confirmed that my hand–eye coordination was in order. I injured three troopers in a hand-to-hand refresher. No problems.

I dressed myself in a new gray suit for my briefing with Armand, a small, tasteful swastika pin on the lapel. Reluctantly, I wore a thin black tie with red glitter down the middle.

When in Rome.

Except Rome had been nuked to shit decades ago.

The door to the formal dining parlor spiraled open, and I entered. Armand sat at the far end of a highly polished wooden table, a crystal goblet at his elbow, a plate of something leafy in front of him. Behind him a huge red banner with a swastika in the middle hung floor to ceiling.

“You’re doing well, I take it?” he asked.

“I’m better. The effects of being in deep freeze so long were pretty severe. I don’t plan on going back in that long again. Or ever,” I growled.

“You might change your mind if you do any traveling. They use cryo-sleep for journeys into deep space,” Armand said. “It takes three or four years at maximum translight to reach some of the outer colonies. We’ve been discovering wormholes, and those take us really far really fast, but there are still sectors of space where a long translight flight is the only option.”

I shrugged. Humanity hadn’t made it that far out into the galaxy when I was put into stasis. I’d cross that bridge if I ever came to it.

Armand gestured for me to take a seat next to him, and I did. He held up a packet in a thin, hard plastic container and slid it across the table to me. The flap was sealed with hardened red wax, the imperial seal imprinted in it, a complicated combination of the swastika and an eagle clutching swords with stars in the background. It all looked a little too busy to me.

I put a hand on the packet. “What’s this?”

“Your brief,” Armand said. “Don’t open it here. You’re scheduled to take a commercial shuttle to St. Armstrong on Luna, where you’ll catch a deep-space flight out of the system. The rest comes from higher up the food chain, and is for your eyes only.”

“Why can’t I take a direct flight from Mars?”

“Anything directly from Mars will be suspicious to the rebels,” he explained. “St. Armstrong became an independent city-state just after the big war, and nobody was strong enough to keep it from happening. As it turns out, it’s useful to have some neutral ground in the system. The rebels think their agents have you secure. In order to maintain that illusion, we need to ship you out from the moon.”

“Right.” I stood, tucked the packet under my arm. “Guess I’d better dig into this and orient myself.”

“One last word of caution,” Armand said. “Using an operative of your type and caliber is more than simply a matter of convenience. Once you’re out there, you’re on your own. We’ll be able to support you at the right time, but for the most part you’ll be dependent upon your own cunning and resources. So stay sharp.”

“Sharp is my middle name.”

I flipped Armand a salute and made my way back to my cabin. The ship would dock at the orbiting terminal around Mars soon, and once there I’d only have twenty-eight minutes to make my connection back to Luna. Not time enough to get a solid fix on the packet’s contents, but I opened it anyway to at least get a first impression.

There was a digi-reader loaded with data. Tucked into the inside flap of the packet were three passports. One identified me as Carter Sloan, the other two alternate identities. There was a short, typed note tucked into one of the alternate passports.

You will travel in disguise to Luna. Find your clothing in the closet.

I opened the closet and saw the Catholic priest’s outfit hanging there, new and perfectly pressed. I put it on, and it fit perfectly. Black pants and shirt, black jacket, even the white collar. At least I didn’t have to wear some bullshit glitter tie. Sitting on the floor was a light bag with a change of clothes and various sundries.

There was a slight bump, and the captain announced over the loudspeaker that the Rommel had docked. I slung the bag over my shoulder, grabbed the brief packet, and left my cabin. Nobody wished me well or even looked at me as I disembarked. I was the nowhere man, the human nothing. I never existed. Blink and I’m gone.

Such is the life of an undercover operative.

I caught a glimpse of Mars as I passed an observation lounge. Clusters of city lights blinked in sprawling patches, connected by crisscrossing rail lines. A thriving modern world. It would have been nice to visit, but duty called.

I made the PanGalactic Spaceways flight with three minutes to spare and a stewardess with Heidi etched on her name tag showed me to my seat. She was blonde and big in that athletic way that made me ache a little. I hadn’t been laid in a quarter of a millennium.

I pushed those thoughts away, to be dealt with later.

The digi-reader hummed to life after two thumbprints, a retinal scan, and voice recognition. It was interactive, which meant I could ask it questions, but that necessitated some privacy. Fortunately, the empire had sprung for a first-class seat, which meant I could fold myself into a privacy bubble. I was sure there was elaborate eavesdropping equipment that could penetrate the casual security any commercial spaceliner could offer, but the digi-reader assured me it would shut down automatically if it detected spying.

There was a list of both rebel and imperial contacts on St. Armstrong and elsewhere, which explained the high security. I literally held the lives of a dozen people in the palm of my hand.

Then I sat back and let the briefing wash over me. The players, the stakes, the details that filled in the gaps. I asked pertinent questions and got good answers. This reader was state of the art.

The new information needed to be sorted and absorbed. I told my brain to sleep, so I could let my subconscious step in. You don’t toss and turn when you’re an operative like me. You tell your brain to sleep and it happens. You wake up when you tell your brain that it’s time. This sort of thing is achieved through advanced bio-engineering, tempered with a good dose of strict mental discipline. The logic centers of the brain could perform miracles of analysis if I stepped back and let my subconscious do the heavy lifting.

* * *

Six hours later my eyes popped open with no additional insight that was relevant to the mission. It was apparently as simple and straightforward as it seemed, so there was no good reason to complicate things.

It all boiled down to whether or not I was supposed to kill the girl.

FOUR

She was known as the daughter of the Brass Dragon.

When the Reich originally settled Mars, the planet was divided into three sectors, each ruled by one of the emperor’s marshals. The three marshals tamed the new world, reshaped it according to the desires of the emperor. The marshals brooked no impediment to the building of the new Reich home world. The emperor granted them recognition for this accomplishment and dubbed them the Three Dragons. These became hereditary titles, handed down through generations—the Gold Dragon, the Silver Dragon, and the Diamond Dragon.

There was another man without whom the Reich would never have tamed Mars. The head of Reich Gestapo, Joseph Heintz, ordered the deaths of more than a thousand men in a three-year period.

Since that time, labor problems corrected themselves immediately when his name was mentioned. Opposing political factions vanished mysteriously. Joseph Heintz made problems go away in the fastest, most direct possible way. The machinery which built the Reich home world was oiled with the blood he’d spilled. The emperor dubbed Heintz “the Brass Dragon.”

A century later, Heintz’s descendants would lead a bloody rebellion against the Reich.

“Why am I disguised as a priest?” I asked the digi-reader.

“Most of the major galactic factions respect Vatican Five’s diplomatic credentials,” the reader said. “As a Jesuit Corps operative, you will likely be allowed more extensive security clearances, and more leeway with local law enforcement.”

Jesuit Corps. Vatican secret police. The empire thought of everything, and the Vatican home world was far enough away that nobody would really have time to check me out. As a Jesuit I could claim to be rounding up runaway clergy. Suddenly I knew what was in the packet’s other flap.

I opened it and found the little beamer. It wasn’t much of a gun, but about the only thing that would fit in the packet. I stashed it in my coat pocket.

The spaceliner was docking with the orbital terminal, and they’d be letting us off soon to catch shuttles to St. Armstrong. I moved to fold up the packet but paused, allowed myself one more look at the image of the girl that came with the dossier.

She was beautiful, of course—twenty-five years old, a vaguely Asian appearance, proof of mixed blood which the Reich used to detest, but which I found exotic and attractive. Hair black and glossy, soft green eyes, and a quirky smile that held some secret. The secret to the universe? The secret to my heart? Who could say? The daughter of somebody important.

The daughter of the Brass Dragon.

Find her. Get her. Save her. Kill her. That simple.

Not simple at all.

I boarded the shuttle to the lunar surface.

* * *

The bulky shuttle touched down hard on the starport landing pad at St. Armstrong. The hydraulics kicked in, lowered both the pad and the ship below Luna’s surface, docked, and spilled the passengers into the customs area.

I tripped the alarm walking through the security tunnel, and a squad of heavily armored guards with stun-gloves met me on the other side. Beyond them, six more guards looked on, automatic rifles cocked and ready.

Another man stepped forward, no armor but an officer’s badge pinned to his lapel.

“I’m sorry, Father, but we’ll need to search you.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and I showed the captain the little beamer then dropped it back in my jacket pocket. “I have the appropriate paperwork.”

“I’ll need to see,” the captain said.

I handed over the passport and diplomatic credentials showing that I was a special envoy from Vatican. The captain looked from the papers to my face and back. “These are registered electronically with St. Armstrong Central?”

“Yes.”

The captain eyed my white collar, dark suit, the special silver ring on my right hand.

“Jesuit?”

“Yes.”

The captain nodded. “These credentials give you forty-eight hours, Father Argus. You’ll need to register your weapon again with central if you take longer.”

I nodded, and took my credentials back from the captain. “The gravity seems heavier than I remember.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We went to .9 Earth normal about thirty years ago. The tourists were vomiting too much. How long since you’ve been in system?”

“When I was a kid.” I kept forgetting how long I’d been in stasis. Fumbling tidbits of common knowledge would fuck my cover fast.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to head for the transport bays.

“Father?”

I glanced at the captain over my shoulder.

“Let’s keep it peaceful, okay?” He seemed sincere. “We respect that you want to police your own people, but the tourism board has done a lot to clean up our little moon the last few years. We limit most of the wave junkies and thugs to the basement levels. The prostitution district has been tightly regulated and disease-free since the Social Entertainment Health Act of 2209. Please respect our tranquility.”

I shrugged.

“The Lord willing.”

* * *

I checked into a hotel three levels down.

Once I was in my room, I poured myself a drink from the honor bar and paged through the visitor’s information provided by the Luna Board of Tourism. It revealed that St. Armstrong consisted of a large domed park with moon-natural gravity topside, as well as eighty-five levels that went deep below the moon’s surface. The bottom five levels were restricted. It didn’t say why in the brochures, but I knew it was because the basement levels teemed with St. Armstrong’s criminal element. Not even the police went down to the no-go zones.

I sipped my drink. It was only mildly alcoholic. Citrus. Something new or old news? Settlements this close to Earth were always inundated with the latest trends. Only products with staying power made it out to the far frontiers.

Having finished the drink, I sank deep into the easy chair and opened the digi-reader again. I needed to get all I could from the instrument, because sooner or later I’d have to ditch it.

“Suggestions?” I asked the reader. I already had a game plan, but it never hurt to get a second opinion.

“You’ll need to make contact with one of the rebel agents in order to secure your out-system passage,” it intoned. “You should also make contact with one of the local imperial agents to determine if there is any up-to-date intelligence which might have a bearing on your mission.”

“Probably a good idea not to get those two meetings mixed up.”

“Such an action would likely endanger the mission and cost you your life,” the reader agreed.

“It was a joke, you electronic shit pile.”

“I am not programmed for humor.”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’d already decided on that exact plan anyway. Bring up the list of contacts again. I’ll pick out a couple of likely suspects.”

* * *

In twenty minutes I had my pigeons picked out, but I wouldn’t be able to contact either of them until morning. It was getting past dinnertime, so I went to the lobby, asked where I could get a meal without wandering too far. The hotel had a fancy bistro, but I could eat at the bar if I felt like keeping it casual.

I went into the bar, climbed onto a stool. Only the best places and the lousiest places had human bartenders. It was more economical for the in-between joints to use a bar-bot. This place was high end, and the bartender followed his little bowtie over to my stool. I ordered synthetic potato soup and a processed meat sandwich. I ate it and ordered a scotch rocks, nursed that, wondering how I’d waste the evening when the answer presented itself at the next stool.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello back at you.”

“This seat taken?”

“It’s all yours.”

She smiled, put a cigarette in her mouth, and it self-lit on the first puff.

“Buy me a drink.”

“Sure.”

The bartender seemed to know what she wanted without asking. I had an unlimited imperial expense account, so the whole place could swill champagne for all I cared. I supposed if I started buying luxury yachts somebody might come asking, but I wasn’t planning on it.

The girl must have been pretty gung-ho to approach me in the priest getup. I didn’t mind gung-ho at all.

She had a big pile of red hair flowing down past her shoulders. Blue eyes, skin so white it looked like she’d maybe never been above ground in her life. Not sickly white. Glowing and milky. You couldn’t help but wonder what her red nipples would look like in contrast to all that. She had matching green pastel eye makeup and lipstick. A flimsy dress that went with the color scheme of her makeup, plunging low in the back and showing a lot more skin.

When she shifted on her stool, her impressive breasts moved around freely under the silky material. It was a dizzying effect, and I felt myself getting warm behind the ears.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Argus,” I lied. “You?”

“I’m Cassandra,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“Vatican home world.”

“That’s so interesting.” She leaned forward as she said it, put a soft hand on my arm. “What’s it like?”

“Same as anywhere.”

“Wow, that’s great. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a Jesuit priest.”

“That’s so interesting.”

“Yeah, it’s interesting as hell.” I motioned for the bartender to bring two more drinks.

“So what are you doing at this hotel?” I asked.

“Oh, I come here a lot,” she said.

“I’ll bet you do.”

“What are you drinking?” she asked.

“Scotch.”

“That’s so interesting. Men who drink scotch are interesting.”

“You seem easily impressed.”

“I’m just really enjoying talking to you.” She’d somehow scooted closer without my noticing, her thigh touching mine.

I eyed her suspiciously for a moment then said, “After I murder everyone in this room, I plan to eat them cannibal style and use their bones to build a scale model of a Viking longboat.”

“That’s so interesting.”

“I’ll be damned.” I turned away, shaking my head. “A fucking FuckBot. For crying out loud. Does the hotel own you?”

She said, “I am the property of Luna Sheraton LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of—”

“Okay, I got it. Shut up.”

It bothered me that I had talked to her for that long, and not realized she was a synthetic. What a putz.

“Are you emitting pheromones?”

Her voice and expression went flat. “This entertainment model is in full compliance with all local codes governing—”

“Can the lawyer mode,” I said. “I’m not making a complaint. I just want to know.”

“Yes, I emit pheromones to better enhance—”

“That’s enough.”

She shut up.

The pheromones would explain it. I was still a little upset my judgment could be clouded so easily, but I had to admit to myself I still wasn’t back up to full speed. It would take time.

“Clients charge your service to the room?”

“That is one of several payment options,” she said.

“How is it listed on the bill?”

“In-room services.”

“Let’s go.”

A quick ride up the elevator, and a short walk to my room. She was already letting the silky dress drop to the floor as I closed the door behind me. She pushed against me, enormous soft mammaries pressing into my chest as she tilted her head up for a kiss. So I kissed her. Hard.

My erection grew hard, as well, and insistent, and she began to grind against it. One of her hands drifted down to my zipper. She pulled me out and started working me. I gasped, filled my hands with her tits.

She pulled away from me and went to her knees, gently took me into her mouth without using her hands. She bobbed slowly but felt me twitch, knew it wouldn’t be long and picked up speed.

I blasted in her mouth, and she swallowed, kept taking it for what felt like forever. I think I blacked out a little because I blinked and found myself flat on the bed. She had already tugged off my pants. I stripped off the rest of my clothing, pushed her back into a nest of pillows. I sucked a nipple, kissed a trail down to her red thatch and began to attack her clit with my tongue.

She squirmed, moaned. Was she faking or was she programmed to enjoy it, and if so, did that make it more or less fake? I didn’t care. I was hard again and slammed into her. She threw her legs over my shoulders.

I humped and humped, the two of us groaning and thrashing and grunting and heaving until I came inside her and collapsed.

And then I dozed.

* * *