“Probably through an attachable fartbox.”

“No: puncture the suit!”

Corcey looked at him blankly.

“Methane...” Drake explained, weakly.

“This is going to be a long flight,” predicted Corcey.

“Well, this is a long joke.  A Bug and a Borg walk into a bar...”

“...”

“...”

“...but I’m a bit rusty at it!”

Corcey groaned just as the long range scanners picked up the island, and the qommunicator picked up a transmission.  Drake turned on the monitor, and a uniformed human official appeared.  His face was a study of practiced emotionlessness and protocol.

“Shuttle,” he said in a dry voice, “You are approaching a restricted zone.  Please identify yourself at once.”

The pilot looked over at his passenger.  This was his jaunt, so it was up to him to make introductions.

“Hi,” Corcey said in a voice permeated with false friendliness.  “I doubt that any of you know me, but I have a message for Mr. Popplar and I will only talk to him personally.  I would prefer to do so in the flesh, but I will talk vidi-wise if necessary.”

There was a lengthy pause, during which the official on screen seemed only to stare blankly at them.  When he finally did speak, he only repeated himself.

“Could you please identify yourself?”  Through the shuttle windshield, the island was faintly visible on the horizon.

“M’name’s Corcey,” he replied.  He was reaching into his jacket for the paper that had both Eden and Popplar’s pictures on it.  For a brief, horrifying second he could not locate it, and suddenly wondered if he’d left it back up at the orbiter with Gray.  Then the tips of his fingers brushed up against the folded edges of the paper, giving himself a paper cut that he would not discover until he pulled it out and saw the smeared drop of blood.  Breathing a slight sigh of relief, he unfolded it and displayed it to the screen.  “I thing this would have more meaning to him, though.”

Another lengthy pause.  Corcey assumed that the man was receiving instructions from others out of view.  Others were doubtlessly monitoring this; he hoped that Popplar himself was among his audience.  In the intermission between banter, Drake looked at the paper, and reached over to the radio mute.

“That one of Popplar’s bend-over friends?”

Frozen silence of a faux pas moment.  “That’s my wife, man” Corcey said coldly, then cracked a clown smile to let him know the gaff was forgiven.

Drake winced melodramatically and began chuckling.  “Mea culpa,” he admitted, and reached over Placatingly to Corcey’s shoulder.  On the screen, the Popplar creep was clearly displeased at the silent laughing he was seeing, and assumed he was the focus of it.

“Naw, reason I asked,” Drake explained, “was I remember her walking by, what, a week ago?”  He pointed at the paper and grinned.  “She stood out.”

Corcey’s surprised look of silence compelled Drake to explain, “I remember her walkin’ by.  She had a bug porter with her, carrying her bags and a big crate.  It couldn’t keep up, and by my booth she got fed up with it, turned around and snapped ‘Come on!  Chop chop!’  I was like, ‘yeah!’”  Drake laughed, both then and now, and confessed to Corcey, “I dunno; she stood out.  Spunky and cute.  How long you two been married?”

“We’re not together any more,” he said with odd serenity.

“Okay,” the on-screen Popplar creep said, “you have been granted an audience with Mr. Popplar.”  This mildly surprised Corcey and greatly surprised Drake.  “Reduce your speed and follow the coastline.  You will proceed west until you reach a large bay, where you will land your craft.”

Drake complied, cutting his speed in half as he began to swerve to the right.  Corcey looked out on the island, studying it.  It was huge, and mostly undeveloped—forests still reigned supreme  They came across the bay quickly, and landed on a sandy clearing right on the shore.

Several air and ground cars awaited them, as did about a dozen troops.  All were well armed, and a few covered the incoming shuttle with heavy weaponry.  However, they allowed the shuttle to land unhindered.

As Corcey unbuckled himself, Drake looked over at him.

“Want me to wait?”  His tone indicated he didn’t know if Corcey’s stay would be long, and that he didn’t think Corcey knew either.

“Be nice as a way back-up, but it’s up to you,” he replied, opening the hatch.  As he jumped down onto the beach, he heard the engines shutting down to stand-by mode.  Apparently his new friend intended to stick around for a while.

He walked across the beach toward the entourage, the sand a bleached granular crust that gave way under his boots.  The tide was rapidly coming in; several times, waves rolled in far enough to lick his heels clean of the powder.  One of Popplar’s lackeys stepped forward to meet him, the shimmer of an albedo screen around him.  Behind him, lazer rifles trained on the new arrival.

Corcey recognized the man from the Popplar’s call to Eden on New Ra’Math.

“Hey, Lucas,” he said with false camaraderie.

Just as they got face to face, a large wave came crashing up the beach, swallowing them up to their shins.  As it hit the two men, it splashed considerably on them.  The water receded, Corcey stopped in his tracks, staring at the man.  Beads of salt water were falling from him.

     ...drip...  ...drip...  ...drip...

As each droplet of liquid hit the crimson surface, a tiny ripple extended out into infinity.  The headless body seemed to have an infinite supply to feed the lake of life beneath.  Every six seconds, a scarlet paratrooper defected from the ranks and plummeted down to the sea beneath.  The tiny bead would collide violently, causing a depression with a raised rim.  The rim became a shock wave that waked out and away from the epicentre in an ever-widening circle.  From the depression, a thin spire of liquid rose, then split in the middle.  The top droplet would remain suspended in the air for a fraction of a half-blink, then collapse down into the flattening depression.  Just as a horizontal stability of sorts had been achieved, the next drop from above sunk home in exactly the same spot, and the process repeated itself.  Infinitely.

And then there was an uprising directly under the body.  Bubbles began to percolate up from beneath and burst as the thumping grew noticeably louder.  It seemed to slow slightly as the volume progressively increased.  Without warning, something arose from beneath the inverted body in a slow motion.  It was completely covered in blood, and the liquid was splattering everywhere in an obscene thunderstorm.

The only word to describe the rising abomination was muscle.  Two muscular, toned arms unfolded from a muscular chest that was offset by two firm, swaying breasts.  From its strong back sprouted two folded, membranous wings, the thin veining acting as a crude strainer for the maroon wetness around.  The head was elongated, the mouth open to reveal fine, needlelike teeth that gleamed silver.  A long, thick mane of hair sprouted from its crown, all slick, matted, and partially clotted.

With an odd gracefulness, it extended its right hand above it.  The taloned fingers were wrapped in a grip of the hair of something—the suspended body’s head.  The eyes were turned upward, the pupils black half-moons.  The expression was blank.

The left hand gripped something as well, though in the showerstorm it was impossible to tell what.

It grinned ever so slightly to itself, pulled the arm back, then thrust the head up in victory.

The thumping was deafening.

Then the eyes on the skull began to move, blinking in attempts to clear its vision of the blood that coated it.  The red juice was still flying and falling about.  The eyes looked above, studying the form from which it’d been divorced.

“Last chance,” Lucas told him coldly.

Corcey snapped out of his trance, orientation returning.  A thin film of perspiration coated his upper lip.

The images of the fugue receded, and he saw Lucas standing before him with one hand outstretched with a portascan.  Behind him, a dozen or so men had him in the exacting purview of their weapon sights.

“I’m clean, man: everything’s on the station.”

Unimpressed, Lucas ordered, “Raise your arms over your head.”

Corcey complied, and the man meticulously searched him with a scanner.  It showed him being free of any teqnical threats.  The scan was mostly for meqanical menaces, but Corcey was currently all-natural except for an everflame, a qompassextant, and an odd piece of metal that neither Lucas or the scanner recognized.  It was two pieces of white, non-reflective metal that had been seemingly welded together.  At one end was a hinge, the other a cap to keep it closed.

“What is that?” Lucas asked in ignorance.

It was, in fact, an archaic weapon whose traditional name was a butterfly knife, but of course similar names based on similar creatures existed.  Most traditional hand weapons were considered obsolete, and had been spurned in favour of the more advanced electro/soniq, lazer, or mazer weapons.  These days, usually only archaeologists, anthropologists, and old girlfriends who specialized in them had a working familiarity with these non-meqanical swords and knives.  Corcey actually preferred them over the more advanced counterparts.  While a soniq sword or lazer blade easily did more damage than the “obsolete” counterparts, they still got the job done effectively.  They also required no power supply—the others inevitably ate through their power disqs and became useless.  Corcey saw it happen quite frequently at the Fredric’s Star Perimeter.  The best reason, though, was because few knew what they looked like, especially the surprise pieces like the butterfly knife.

Although Lucas had never seen one, his boss had several in a private collection, including one once owned by Bruce Lee.

“Hamaddi Bottle opener,” Corcey replied smugly to the question.

Lucas’s look said Don’t wise off to me, asshole, but he let the matter pass.  The equipment he had indicated that whatever it was, it wasn’t eleqtroniq or highly meqanical, and everybody knows that only things that fit into those categories were to be wary of.

Lucas would’ve been stunned to see what Corcey could do with his “harmless” little gadget, or what an old friend of his named Luther Pommern could do with another archaic weapon, the composite long bow.  Some people either never learned or forgot too quickly, and Corcey enjoyed teaching these New-Liners with personal demonstrations.

Lucas’s morale would have been crippled had he known that Corcey had four other lethal items still on him that were too unsophisticated for his state-of-the-art scanner.

Satisfied that the newcomer was disarmed, he escorted the captive to one of the air cars.  They climbed on board, followed by a half dozen of the armed contingent.  The aircar levitated upward, rotated, and headed inland.  Two of the other vehicles lifted off to follow.

It was a fifteen minute flight to Popplar’s estate, during which no one spoke.  The air car was not enclosed; wind whipped hair around and made looking forward difficult.  Lush vegetation flew by beneath.

He observed, with some amusement, the guards watching him.  One of them, a Hamaddi he instinctively knew was the squad’s commander, had the looks of a professional mercenary who’d seen his share of shit.  He watched Corcey carefully, experience warning him that there was more to this one than met the eye.  At least, he tried to watch Corcey carefully.  The Thune seemed to blend in with the blur of the fast-passing background, and it strained the eyes sore to stare at him.

Corcey’s evaluation of the rest of the goon platoon was less than satisfactory.  They were primarily occupied with trying to look tough and experienced, obviously being neither.  Observing them from behind his sunshades, Corcey’s eyes had a lean hungry look in them as they sized up the Fresh Meat.  He was secure in his belief that half a squad of Rathgeans would’ve eaten these guys for breakfast, working up an appetite but not a sweat.  He doubted if half of them had even seen real combat, yet here they were acting like seasoned professionals.  A good friend of his, who’d survived both Gahmtu and Fredric’s Star only to drink himself to death some years later, had a term for such pretension.  Macho Without Portfolio.

The ship skimmed over the last of some treetops and entered a huge, groomed clearing that served as a landing field.  There were several other large craft already there, including three luxury space yachts and what suspiciously resembled an assault scout—a craft that wasn’t supposed to be in non-military hands.

As the craft was setting down, Corcey dipped over the edge and landed next to a ground car.  There was another entourage of armed men waiting by it; Corcey silently got into the back seat of the car and looked expectantly at them.

Lucas climbed in with several of the new troops.  Corcey noted that these men looked much more competent that the first string of losers.  The car lurched forward and began driving toward the main mansion, another five minutes away.  En route, they passed gardens and pools and other luxuries that denoted wealth and status.  Corcey suspected that it must employ an entire qorporation merely for upkeep and maintenance.

He had to admit that he was impressed with the grounds, but the mansion blew him away.  It was not so much the overwhelming size as the beauty of the architecture that awed him.  He had never seen anything like it before; it seemed to defy description.  The structure sat on a hill, yet also seemed to be part of the hill.  Pillars rose out of the ground to support sections of the framework; the main body was full of curves, domes, connecting walkways—all of which seemed to go with the grain of the stonework in a positive, aesthetically pleasing way.  The hill on which it was constructed was part of a series at the base of a small mountain range that nature had beautifully eroded in ways that man could never hope to duplicate.  On the other side of the house, primordial forests staked their claim.

He quickly remembered his quest for Sophia, however, so he stopped sight-seeing and went back to business.  He disembarked with the troops and entered the imposing structure.

The interior was also stunning, but had a completely different feel than the outside.  He was unable to identify the style, though someone with classical training could have: Medieval.  Yet there was a tactfully harmonious blend of past and present.  The electric double door was flanked by two airtight glass cases, each containing a well-oiled suit of plate mail standing erect with a halberd.  A holograf and vidio terminal were next to an oil painting of peasant farmers working the land by hand.  The baleful green light from another vidio display shone palely on an original woodcut by Albrecht Dürer.

Corcey was led through a minor maze of rooms full of strange, and assuredly priceless, works of art to an elevator.  A eunuch-sized guard stood aside, allowing Corcey and company inside.

Lucas slid a red card inside a slot above the controls and spoke aloud.

“Game room.”

The elevator’s doors closed, and they began a soft decent. Corcey noted the walls of the elevator were of some dark, deeply grained wood.  There was an ornate table in the back with two cushioned chairs on either side.  A chess board was carved into the table, replete with pieces he strongly suspected were ivory and onyx.  They were spread out, apparently in the middle of a game.  Pieces were lined up along the side, casualties of war.  Most of the pawns were eliminated, the heavy pieces were slugging it out.

He studied the set up as they descended.  Black was in better offensive position, White was setting traps.  He looked at the guard who was stationed in the elevator.  He was standing on the White side.

“That your game?”  Wouldn’t surprise Corcey: it’d give the guards and the passengers something to do in transit.

The guard looked coldly at him, but then shrugged.  “Don’t know how to play.”

Corcey himself shrugged.  Probably was too archaic for him.  Most people didn’t even know the three-dimensional version, let alone the traditional, ancient monoplane version in question.  Corcey himself knew six types of chess, and was outstanding at four of them.  He enjoyed strategy games, the demand to think they required.  Stand on your skill, not on chance.  A lot like real life.  He occasionally joked that the toughest game he’d ever played was the expedition to Gahmtu.

He suddenly realized how much time he had spent distracted by the game.  The elevator was still descending; Corcey wondered just how far below the surface were they going.  Just then the lift floated to a stop.  A slight hiss of compressed air, and then the doors parted.

Beyond was a twelve-by-twelve vestibule which seemed to have been hewn directly from the ground.  The craftsmen who did it, though, had done a superior job of it.  Two guards were inside, alert at the arrival.  One was a human, holding a lazer rifle directly at Corcey, the other a Saladrin, whose weapons were built into its armoured atmosphere suit.

It reached a clawed appendage to the wall, and opened a well-concealed panel built into the rock.  There was a small control board inside; it hit three buttons, and a red beam came out.  It penetrated the faceplate, probed through the misty green air inside the suit until it found the Saladrin’s face, and scanned its equivalent of a retina.  A light on the panel flashed forest green, and then a door opposite the elevator slid open.

Lucas motioned Corcey in through the new opening.

The room was dimly lit; no walls were visible, but it felt small.  The single source of illumination was a large lamp surrounded by a stained glass dish hanging from the ceiling.  A seedy haze of smoke loomed around it, and extended throughout the room.  Directly beneath the lamp was a large circular table, green felt tightly wrapped across its surface.  Six people sat around it: two Humans, three Saladrin, and a Hamaddi, all engaged in a card game.

Lucas spoke in a low voice.  “Sir.”

One of the two humans at the far side of the table looked up from his cards and over to the door.  The sharp-featured silhouette nodded curtly at Lucas, who silently stepped back to the lift.  The door closed behind him, sealing Corcey in with the game players.

He took off his sunshades.

A small castle of chips lay on the table in front of the sharp shadow, each stacked fastidiously into uniform columns by their colour.  Only an arm poked out of the darkness, an expensive eggshell white dress shirt with the sleeve rolled back to just below the elbow.  Five playing cards were firmly gripped with well manicured fingers; a ring sporting a very large topaz hugged the pinkie.  His other hand, murky yet discernable in the penumbra, held a crystal container quarter full of melting ice and amber liquid.  Most of the other players had similar glasses or pressurized canisters, and there was an antique tray service dimly visible just beyond the shallow radius of the warm light.

One of the ice cubes inside cracked during the stonily cold silence of the two sizing each other.

It had been observed of Corcey that he had an aura of barely-restrained rage and violence.  Popplar, conversely, radiated strength and domination.  The two clashed immediately.

The man sized Corcey up from his seat.  He sipped his drink, put the glass down amid his fortress of chips, and spoke coolly to him.

“You’re Sophie’s ex.”

Corcey nodded and replied in his characteristically soft speech, “Yeah, but I’m not here in that capacity.”

“Hmmm, then what capacity would you be?  You had a piq of her on New Ra’Math; you’d best tread on eggshells if broaching that matter.”

“Nope,” admitted Corcey, “I don’t give a wombat’s ass about modified Stensor Merchandizing garbage...”

“War,” the man sitting to Popplar’s right muttered, his code word to stop this topic immediately.

Popplar took the hint; he understood and agreed.  Tactical prudence rather than politeness motivated him to make introductions.  “If you have any questions or wombat parts concerning that, you should speak with our legal team.  Which means I must make introductions.”

“Make an appointment,” the war-monger to his right mewled.  “We doan’ mix business with pleasure at the Table.”   The man was short, slightly portly, and had black hair slicked back.  Beady eyes and the sweat of one who was about fifteen minutes away from needing his next morphine fix.  Although he himself did not know this, the man was a direct descendant of an old Earthling named Peter Lorre, and long dormant genes had reemerged in his physical characteristics.

“Horace Greeley,” Popplar proudly introduced, “my attourney, and the man who helped forge the qorporation which bears our names.”  Greeley nodded slightly, politely, but the gesture was transparent.

To Greely’s right was a Saladrin.  Fitted around the top of the environment suit, roughly where it’s head would be, was a large green visor—the traditional garment of the card dealer.  It was a comical sight, but apparently the visor was helping it win, because by far the largest pile of chips lay before it.  Maybe it was its lucky hat, or maybe it had several aces tucked into its suit.

“My first Saladrin friend is Jekk'Té.  If you’re familiar with Galaqtiq QomTeq, he runs their metal extraction and refinement industries in the Chaldean asteroid belts.”

Sitting directly opposite Popplar was another Saladrin.  It would seem that most of its chips had defected and joined the pile to its left, a problem that all the other players except Popplar were experiencing.

“That’s Skk'Traskk, president of SDE.”  The initials were an acronym for Skk'Desh'El, an up-and-coming electronix qorporation making acclaimed progress in the bio-engineering field.

A third Saladrin sat next to the other two.

“Next we have Pa'Gil.  It’s the CEO of Gad'Ax and a consultant to The Law.”  Neither of the last two names needed introduction.  Gad'Ax was a Saladrin weapons manufacturer of outstanding reputation and quality (peace was of their manufacture, a customized replica of a 21^st Century Colt automatic rechambered for contemporary eight millimeter ammo.)  The Law, of course, was the inner-Frontier police force (ie: the Confederacy Militia when there wasn’t a war.)  Pa'Gil nodded slightly to Corcey.

Completing the circle was a Hamaddi.  He was an imposing figure physically, and he too had an aura that seemed to combine the most dangerous aspects of both Popplar’s and Corcey’s.  His brawny composition pulsed strength, and his face was scarred with what Corcey recognized as hand-to-hand battle wounds.  Yet there was an air of dignity, nobility, and even diplomacy about him, too.  Several ornately carved pieces of jewelry hung about his neck, including a gold-laced Human molar.

It was the fur, or technically the fine feathers, that they rested on that gained his full attention.  Dark tan on the extremities and sides, but down the middle of the chest it was dark yellow.  That was characteristic of Hamaddi from Arpaq Shad.

“And lastly, we have General Sikiriie...”

{Sikiriie: thump}

“...or perhaps I should address him as Minister Sikiriie.  He is, after all, a member of the Arpach Shad Parliament.”

          “And this, my fellow friends, is Corcey.  Mercenary.  Assassin—pardon me, alleged assassin.  Hero of Gahmtu, the Fredric’s Star Perimeter, and I’m sure countless other last stands against Imperialist Rathgeans,,,” his condescending sarcasm was mounting with each syllable until it climaxed with the end of the introduction: “and Harbinger of Ill.”

Corcey chuckled at this, but Sikiriie laughed long and hard.  He remembered Ahmphorta^[14] and recalled his rival’s ambition.  Ahmphorta was being groomed for Minister, but the Ramahn bloodbath by definition ended that.

With Sikiriie momentarily distracted by images of a rutting chauffeur, Corcey turned his attention back to Popplar.

Popplar had been impatiently waiting for this.

“I’m looking for Sophia,” said Corcey simply.  “Know where she is?”

“No,” the disembodied voice floated out coldly.

“Why are you looking for her?” Greeley intruded with a suspicious voice.

“Personal matter, unrelated to your Stensor holdings,” Corcey replied, unsuccessfully attempting to allay the atourney’s fears.  Greeley looked to his left and blinked the code for ‘kill the fool, he knows too much!’

“She know you’re looking for her?” Popplar pop quizzed Corcey.

Shrug.  “Doubt it.” 

“More to the point, if she knew you were looking for her, would she want you to find her?”

Another shrug.  “Dunno; qal her up and ask her.  I got no problem with that.”

Popplar took a long sip from his drink.  The pause afterward was even longer.

“She talks about you,” Popplar told him at last, “and you know, half the time never even knows it.  ‘Corceyisms,’ I’ve come to call them.  And she still does them, and after how long?”  Popplar gazed at Corcey, leaning forward enough that parts of his face became illuminated.  “Her... Corceyisms not only...” he retreated into shadows, searched for the word, “unnerved me, after this long they just plain bug the shit out of me.”  In the penumbra, a grin appeared cheshire-like in remembrance, then faded with the grim subject.  “You marked her, and it’s a brand she’s ashamed of, consciously or not.”

“Wow,” Corcey retorted, hanging his head low.  “Damn; that’s a heavy yoke to lay on my shoulders, just or not.”

Corcey took a controlled breath, and from his slanted angle stared down Warren.  A depraved glaze came over his coal eyes.  It was a look Popplar had never seen before, and he wasn’t sure what it meant.  Before he could interpret it, Corcey slid his shades back on.  Popplar was actually grateful: Corcey’s eyes had a bizarre burning heat-shimmer to them, and he was uncomfortable engaging it.

A muscle twitched in Corcey’s face, and after a moment it almost resembled half a smile.  One of the bloodstains on his cheek cracked, and a flake of dried blood tumbled off.

“I don’t care what you two did or do; that’s ’tween y’all.  I just need to find her.”

“Sophia,” Sikiriie interjected, looking from Corcey to Popplar.  “She was the lady who sat in last week?”

Popplar looked to his playing partner, and his hateful gaze answered affirmative.

To Corcey, Sikiriie said, “She was Zeffannyz, wasn’t she.”

“Was,” Corcey confirmed.

The Hamaddi nodded, mouthplate exposed in grin.  “I knew I smelled bud on her.  You never forget that smell.”  He sniffed the air; “you reek of it; she was faint.  But I thought so about her...”

Corcey would have valued from a pursued conversation on that subject, but Popplar wanted to regain command of the conversation.

“Anyway, that was a week ago, and on the advice of my attourney I am not fielding inquiries concerning her, which was also part of the oral agreement between her and myself anyway.”

Popplar could feel Corcey’s burning gaze, even from behind the reinstated specs.  He looked, probed for the eyes of his opponent.  He always looked into the eyes of his adversary, especially when he intended to defeat them.  Thirty years ago, he’d looked an accountant who was greenmailing him in the eyes just before disintigrating his face with a lazer.  Two days ago, he looked into the eyestalks of Stkk'Gdaskk as he signed the papers that put the Saladrin competitor out of business.  In about a month, he would stand in the elevator and look Sikiriie in the eyes as he checkmated his white king.

Popplar could not penetrate the black of Corcey’s sunshades to find his eyes.

Corcey recharged his persistence.

“I really need to find her.  I haven’t got time to get into why, especially with you in the middle of a game, but it’s important.  She’s involved, and she’d understand.”  Pause, then “Please?”

The word please echoed through his head on the strain of a bud chorus tuning up for a wave of awareness.  The cactile toxins took the please and mutated it into a new, more appropriate echo Mantra.  It helped brace him for the response that would either save or kill his quest.

     ...DIE...

That response was several seconds in coming.  Popplar stared at him in disbelief, the look on his face that of a judge.  He couldn’t believe the testimony he was hearing, and it took him a moment to find suitable words to express his feelings about the guilt of the defendant.  He finally replied in a controlled outrage.

“If she wanted you to find her, I’m sure you would have by now.  Corcey, I don’t know you except second hand, but that second hand paints an ugly picture.  You’re bad news; she don’t want you around, and neither do I.    So, I’m going back to my game.  When I finish this hand, I will issue orders to have you shot if you are still on my island.”

Popplar reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a gold case holding several thin brown cigarettes.  He placed one in his mouth, then pulled out an old fashioned flint lighter, also gold.

Suddenly directly beside him, Corcey snapped his fingers, producing the pale blue flame at the end of his finger.  He held it out to light the smoke.  The rest of the table was impressed, but Popplar clearly wasn’t.  He had no idea how Corcey had blinked through the room, but didn’t let the suddenly close proximity crack his composure.

“Seen it,” he said disdainfully of the Corceyism cantrip.  “In fact, Sophia does it after sex, but only when she’s drunk.”  He smiled, not realizing he had told Corcey something very important.

She can only do it when she’s drunk now?  He thought about this, reevaluating his quarry.

Ignoring Corcey’s fire, Popplar lit from his own lighter.  Just before the flame touched the end of the cigarette, he probed the sunshades a final time and spoke “Good bye, Corcey.”

In a very fast move, Corcey’s hand darted out and grasped Popplar’s, lightly but firmly holding it still.  From behind his glasses, obsidian pupils locked with Popplar’s.

A monotonous murmur: “Last chance.”

Popplar looked at the hand restraining his; argent Death grinned back at him.  He bobbed his head forward, stuck the tip of his cigarette in the flame, and sucked deeply.  Leaning back, he held the spiced smoke a second before discharging it at Corcey.  He studied him, a look of non-comprehension on his face.

After a few moments, “Who the phuq are you, Corcey?”

Corcey just looked at him, and a question entered his mind as well: what the gehenna had she been telling everyone?  After a moment, he became aware of a sensation in his index finger that he slowly recognized as pain—callused skin was becoming inflamed touching the exposed metal of the still-lit lighter.  His eyes drifted down to it for a second, and he could see the blister already forming.  He moved his thumb into the flame, capping and extinguishing it.  He relinquished Popplar’s hand, then looked at him again.  

Popplar pocketed the lighter without granting eye contact.

The stony stalemate of silence was cracked by an unexpected insert from Sikiriie.

“I know where she went.”

All eyes and eyestalks turned to the Hamaddi, who was gathering up all the cards on the table.  His grin told Corcey volumes, and the Thune began nodding.  In Hamaddi, Sikiriie asked, “Care to spin the Wheel of Fortune?”

The Hamaddi had collected everybody’s cards but Popplar’s.  He continued, “why are you looking for her?  Bringing her back into the fold?”

“Right idea, wrong reflection,” was all Corcey would say.  “It’s a long story.”

“Well, if you lose, you can tell me on the way to Arpaq Shad.  If you win, you tell me after you find her.”

Corcey said, “Sure.”

The planets in Arpaq Shad still had a bounty out for the heads of all the QuickDeath Commandos during the war, enough to set up a Hamaddi for life.  Or give added clout to a politician who was running for Prime Minister in a cycle.  The bounty was still in effect.  Corcey knew the true stakes.

Popplar knew almost none of that, but the look of both players made him pause.  Both had a burning ambition in their eyes.  He actually thought it over a second, and for one of the few times in his life, he swallowed his pride and relinquished control.

He tossed his cards onto the table.

Sikirrie collected them, and snuck a peek. Two pair: aces and eights.  The Hamaddi took the deck and shuffled it thoroughly, spinning the wheel of fortune into randomness.  He performed a few simple croupier tricks, fannings and one-handed cuttings, then set it before Corcey to cut.

The back of the plaques were blue; he noted the word “BICYCLE” printed on the container.  He’d already glanced briefly through the deck, and was surprised to see what the suits were.  The more he saw of Popplar’s abode, the more he wondered: was this a mansion or a museum?

Corcey cut them evenly with his left hand, and Sikiriie reclaimed the deck.

“Right,” Corcey said in his traditional guttural mumble, “Traditional five card draw, nothing’s wild?”

“There is one Joker in the deck,” Sikiriie said.

Corcey smiled, and another maroon flake fluttered down.  “Okay, Joker’s wild.”

“Good.  I always like a bit of the random.  You can even deal, if you want.”

Still standing, never being offered a chair, Corcey one-handedly tossed out ten cards.

Placing the deck on the table, he retrieved his cards and fanned them out.  Popplar was polite enough not to look.

          The first card was the Ace of Clubs.  Though he betrayed no expressions outwardly, he smiled inside.  The Ace of Clubs was his card, both in Caandelenian Tarot and the context of this game.  If he remembered his history, an Ace was someone with five or more kills, and Clubs was the suit to represent the Military Estate of some place called France.  Perhaps the card was an omen.

          The second card was the Queen of Clubs.  Oh, but this was interesting, if not ironic indeed.  The card made him think immediately of Sophia.

The next card was the Six of Spades.  No meaning there, or at least none that he could think of off the top of his head.  He was also hard pressed to find symbolism for the Five of Hearts.  His final card, the Jack of Spades, may have had some meaning, but he couldn’t decipher it immediately.

Sikiriie studied his cards silently.

Blink.

“Take three,” the Hamaddi called, and discarded as many plaques from his hand.  Corcey slowly gave him the appropriate number of replacements.

He had an uncharacteristically optimistic feeling about what he held.  He tossed two.

He drew from the top and calmly looked at his new cards.  As it stood, he had an Ace, a Queen, a Jack, a Four, and another Six.

Sikiriie had a poker face only an android could match.

“Well?”

“I’ll raise you,” Corcey announced.

Sikiriie’s brow arched.

“Oh?”

“I can tell you where you can find four more of the Commando Elite.”

Sikiriie showed two reactions.  The first was desire, for Corcey’s offer piqued his ambition, as he knew it would.  The second was suspicious bewilderment.

“You’d sell out your own people?”

Corcey smiled confidently at him.  Smugly, almost.  “In this context, it’s actually acceptable.  Anyway, I’ve made my offer; what’s yours?”

Sikiriie thought about this.  He knew the Thunian attitude on lying, and so he knew—or at least strongly suspected—the offer was valid.  Bringing in five QDC from the war would assure him Prime Ministership for life.  He looked at his cards again, brooding.

“Did you happen to see that assault scout a the landing field?”

Corcey nodded.

“Want it?”

Corcey went through the motions of thinking about it.  “That ship is worth maybe one person.  I’m offering you four.  So what else?”

Sikiriie mentally acknowledged the point: what could equal that.

“You’d really give them to me?”

“If you won,” the reply came with the faintest of coyness.

The Hamaddi sat amid the silence that held the table.  His eyes migrated from his cards up to Corcey’s unreadable face.

“Would you mind removing your glasses, Ko’re Asaph?”

Corcey looked at Sikiriie stonily from behind them.  After a moment, he reached up, secured the frame between thumb and forefinger, and pulled them off.

Sikiriie stared at Corcey’s blurred eyes.  It was actually a strain to discern them clearly.  The whites were a diseased gray with complex lightningbolt veins streaking through.  The dark pupils were harrowingly fried from a combination of pharmaceuticals and witnessed atrocities.  Peering into their blackness, Sikiriie glimpsed the shadow of Corcey’s soul.  He was too good of a poker player to shudder at what he saw.

He instantly recognized that Corcey was bluffing.

He also saw something deeper.  He knew nothing about the history behind Corcey’s personal quest, but after a moment he understood his motives and desires for it.

After a long moment, he tossed his cards on the table.

They landed face down.

Popplar’s eyes narrowed to two little slits.

The force behind Corcey’s eyes sent Sikiriie a message: “Pol’aush.”

Returning his glasses to their perch, he also placed his cards on the table, face down so his hand still remained a mystery.

“She’s a better bluffer than you, but I didn’t play with her long.  She said she had an early flight to Phillipeon.  Horace asked her what she’d be doing there, and she winked “nasty things.” She excused herself early and left with Warren to make time for the rumpus room.  That’s about all I can tell you.”

Corcey nodded, “Works for me.”  He then looked around the table, and  turned to address the three Saladrin and Popplar’s human business partner.

“Gentlemen, I apologize for my rude interruption of your game.”

He turned to General Sikiriie and extended his hand.  The Hamaddi shook it firmly, almost warmly.

“General, I thank you for a most interesting and enlightening game of cards.”  Then he switched to Hamaddi.  “And if it’s any consolation, I can still tell you where the Elite Guard is.  All are buried on Aridia.  Of those that served in our war, I am the last.”  He smiled sardonically.  “Have no fear, your enemies are dead.  Feel free to do the victory dance.”

As he turned to face Popplar, the Hamaddi started to laugh.

Despite the fact that they were once mortal enemies, Corcey had to admit that he rather liked the Hamaddi.  And he didn’t know why, but he somehow knew the feelings were reciprocated.  He didn’t know if he had a friend, but he no longer had an enemy.

He turned to his host.  “Bye, Warren,” Corcey said, then as an afterthought, added “J.T.A.” and puckered his lips in a kiss.

He let himself out.

“That was fast,” observed Drake as Corcey climbed back into the craft’s cockpit.  

Corcey made a poor attempt at a smile as he took the copilot seat.  He scratched his scraggly mop of hair, and slowly took off his sunshades.  He vigorously rubbed his eyes, then squinted at the glare.  Because of the harsh desert conditions, native Aridians were extremely photosensitive.  Indeed, anyone who spent more than a year on the planet ended up with permanent eye damage in regard to their tolerance for light.  Corcey’s sunshades were just pretension; they were a bona fide symptom of this.

“I can tell you met Warren.  You look like shit,” Drake prompted.  It had the desired effect—Corcey glanced over at him and chuckled weakly.

“So where to, Boss?”  He was chewing a chunk of some substance Corcey couldn’t identify: it was red, frothy, and probably illegal.

“Back up to the orbiter,” he replied in a tired, distant voice. The pilot had had the engines on Stand-By; he throttled them and suddenly the metal craft rose.  Drake had had them on stand-by, in case Popplar-Greeley Financial chose to enforce his payment delinquency.  He checked the onboard qomputer to find the exact location of the satellite, and adjusted his flight plan accordingly.

The island sank beneath them.  As they made distance, it felt as if a weight were being lifted from Corcey.  As they reached the upper atmosphere and touches of black crept into the azure sky, he opened his eyes and, looking blankly ahead, spoke.

“What do you know about flight scheduling out of here?”

The pilot swallowed, clearing his mouth of the liquid portion of what he was chewing.  “Depends.  If it’s local, I can probably tell you.”  He swallowed again—the juice acquired rapidly—and then offered Corcey a long bar of the substance.