"And then you pull your finger out?" Ana said uncertainly. "And your boyfriend enjoys it?"
"Fuck yeah, he does." The sales girl, Lauren, downed her cocktail.
"I do not think my man would enjoy such a thing." The Princess wrote it down anyway, even though she wasn't going to bring it up with Nate. Isabelle had shown her Nate's porn browsing history and that certainly hadn't come up.
Certainly, her surroundings showed that she had a lot to learn when it came to sexuality, making the hair on her arm rise a little with excitement. After she'd had her fill buying normal sexy clothes, she rose up the floors of Sapenza's main spire until she found a shop selling
sexy
sexy clothes. And, she discovered, a lot more.
Collars and chains, whips and clamps, cuffs and latex. Ana had gone a little bit overboard in buying things — she'd had to ship things to a storage unit she'd purchased with her armguard, since there was no way she was getting it all on their ship.
But Nate was going to be thrilled. Ana shivered at thought of it. She was being such a good girl, he'd love her so hard. Maybe he'd even
say it.
The thought made her thighs squirm together.
After her shopping, she'd found the salesgirl Lauren to be somewhat uncouth company, but at least the girl was a mine of information.
"Lauren," Ana prompted, pouring the girl another glass from the jug before glancing down at her notebook. Embarrassingly, the pages were margined by little love heart doodles she'd drawn absentmindedly. "Tell me again how you do the uh,
ride and
grind.
"
***
Nate emerged from the Council's black box of terrors and waved off the shuttle that waited for him. He needed the walk to clear his mind. He didn't expect the Council to immediately disbar and hunt down Jarek, but he'd at least thought they'd— well, he didn't know what he thought they'd do.
But not that.
The anger and humiliation simmered inside of him. Nate swallowed it down, angry with himself for even feeling that way.
He didn't have any evidence —
of course
they'd dismiss him.
But he was a veteran, a respected Captain. Didn't that count for anything? Why had The Lady even bothered asking him to speak to the Council? It had achieved nothing.
He ambled down the steps of the hill, feeling the eyes of the Council Honor Guard on him. Hundreds of stone steps and he was the only one walking them.
The view over Capus Mundi was incredible, but it was lost on him, each step down jarring his spine, so when he reached the bottom he was a tired, pained mess, regretting not taking the shuttle.
He wandered through the streets.
Clean. Everything was too clean. No litter, no fast food debris or soda cans, no shards of glass or graffiti.
The wind breezed through him, deliciously cool. Something rattled. A soda can, purple and orange. Some awful energy drink that tasted like piss, no doubt. But he smiled to see it, took longer strides and then kicked it as hard as he could.
In the quiet city streets, it sounded like a riot.
"Having a bad day, handsome?" A voice struck him from his reverie.
The Lady, leaning against a wall in a dark alleyway, lighting up her cigar, leg cocked against the wall. She'd switched out her catsuit for a long red dress, except it wasn't a dress because it had a hood that she swore over her red hair, the cloth thick and soft like a robe.
"You!" Nate remarked, a little stunned, eyes roaming over her. He had the idle thought that she'd make the worst spy in history, so eye-catching was she.
"Me," she teased.
"What are you doing here? Come to see me humiliate myself in front of the most powerful people in the galaxy?"
She frowned at him and puffed a long breath of smoke at him. It smelled like dark chocolate and burning wood. "You didn't humiliate yourself, darling. A bit testy maybe, but a girl can't really blame you for that, considering."
"But it was pointless!"
She shook her head. "Not pointless, no. It put a seed of doubt in their heads, one so small it can't be seen. But it will grow nonetheless. No, not pointless at all, especially when we saw how they reacted."
Nate breathed her in, the cigar smoke and all. "How they reacted?"
"They reacted perfectly — they contacted Jarek. The Council doesn't believe you at all, but Jarek doesn't know that. All Jarek knows is he got contacted and asked to explain himself. And he panicked so badly that he falsified evidence of him breaking you out. Can you imagine?"
Nate did imagine for a moment — imagined Jarek heading back, tail between his legs, to Acropolis, imagined him castigating Madam Mayko, imagined him taking pictures of explosives to prove his point.
"That
is
funny." He admitted reluctantly.
The Lady blew her smoke straight into the air, watching it dissipate slowly, and if she noticed Nate's eyes slowly coursing down her tight body, she didn't say anything. "And now the cat is amongst the pigeons. What the fuck are pigeons, anyway?"
"Birds."
She rolled her eyes, lips pursing in amusement. "I knew that much, Captain. Jarek's going to have to push his timetable up — he'll make a mistake now he thinks he's being watched. We just need to make sure we catch him."
On the side of a building somewhere above them, a screen projected a holo of a news channel, casting blue hues over the alley as it shouted about some politician's latest scandal.
"How are you going to do that?" Nate asked, following her as she strolled away and settled gracefully on a bench in a square, pinching her dress up to sit down. It was almost odd to see her in daylight, a little surreal, to realize she existed outside of Dead Space missions and shadowy alleyways.
Her smile was predatory. "I'll need
your
help, handsome."
Nate winced. "My plate's kinda full already, mystery woman."
"You're still a Fed captain, aren't you? Even if you are on babysitting detail."
"Sure, but I'm an army boy. Point and shoot, try not to eat any crayons."
She laughed, warm and inviting, her hand stretching out to touch his arm. He tried not to get a big head.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"All natural, no surgery, no mods."
"That wasn't what I was going—" He caught her smile spread. "Yeah, okay, I'm an easy mark.
"You're a fun mark." She corrected. "What do you want to know?"
"Bugs — they can talk. Some of them. I never knew that. I've been killing bugs all my life." He shook his head in wonder.
The Lady snorted a little and then giggled when she saw the look on his face. "I'm sorry, handsome. It's just easy to forget how little the rank-and-file know, sometimes. Bug intelligence is an open secret—"
"I mean, I know they're intelligent." Nate defended. "I've fought against enough of the smart ones, I just didn't know they could talk the same language as you and I."
"Most can't." She nodded. "But their higher-ups, their leadership? They all do. We hide it because we don't want civilians thinking they're anything more than the rapist cannibal scum that they are. If people knew bugs could talk, all of a sudden, they'll find it easier to pay off our people, easier to turn them onto their side."
Nate shook his head. "It doesn't feel right."
"You really would have stopped to chat before killing all the bugs over the years?"
"No — I mean, I knew they were sentient. Intelligent. Just...doesn't feel right, knowing we have something in common."
Her face turned dark. "You and I both know that's the only thing we have in common."
"Why do they even speak it, their higher-ups?"
She shrugged. "They're a lot smarter than most think. They try to make contact all the time; they try and pay off our best merchants, they threaten our weak links, they let us interrogate a speaking bug who knows just the right amount of nothing. Last year, we estimated that they made eight thousand contact attempts alone, and that's just the ones we know about. Imagine if every one knew they could talk?"
Nate shuddered. "It'll come out one day."
"It will." She agreed. "Just make sure it doesn't come out through you — that's a career killer, even for me."
"For you?" He frowned. "I don't even know what you are? Are you a Judge or Jury or Fed spec ops or?"
"Well," She pulled out some classic red lipstick and dabbed it to her lips, twisting the tube to raise up a pop-up mirror that she used to check her reflection. "I'm a Fed girl, but not your average Fed girl, thank you very much. Not to worry, Captain Square, I'll get you your official orders." She smirked at him.
"It's not square to get a paper trail, you—"
"I need you to talk to someone for me. A broker, a merchant. The Cipher. He won't meet but I've set up a meeting with one of his underlings."
"The Cipher. That name sounds familiar."
"It should. He's the biggest dealer of arms, info, people in the Galaxy — if it wasn't for the fact that he has dirt on every Fed major and their mistress, we'd have shut him down by now. He's the guy that released the sex tape last year, the one with the Colonel and the—"
"Girls dressed up as bugs?"
"Yes."
"That was awful. I can still hear the crunch."
She sniffed, lips twisted. "Yes, well, that's what happens when one gets on his bad side."
"Why can't you talk to him?"
"I've had dealings with him in the past and I can't be seen inquiring about Jarek, not unless I want a lot of questions asked of the wrong people. When you attract the Cipher's eye, a lot of rocks start getting turned over, secrets get out. I can handle the heat, but the people I work for, not so much."
"Whereas I—" Nate frowned.
"Whereas you, golden boy, have got no secrets, just a long history of shooting straight and falling out of every bar and strip club in Fed space."
Nate winced. It wasn't like the Fed had any other way to let off steam and, really, he was just keeping an eye on his boys.
"I'm still hanging around with the Princess, you know. She could do without attracting eyes."
