The man behind the reception desk glanced at me, “Do you have a reservation?” he asked, in what was probably the most bored, patronizing tone I’d heard come from a human in all my years, worse than the most egotistical university prof I’d ever had.
We’d set the Elegance of Light down at our assigned berth. Jophixa then surprised me by revealing that the ship came with its own short range shuttle, which we’d used to travel the remaining distance to the resort. It was just the two of us going in, as she wanted Toftri ready at the helm, and Tratsa in Medbay, just in case things went sideways in a spectacular way.
I opened my mouth to reply to the man, but before I could, Jophixa cleared her throat loudly, drawing his attention over the reception desk to where she couldn’t have been noticed unless he’d watched us walk in - which he either hadn’t, or he’d assumed she was a child.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “The public restroom is right over there young miss.”
She drew back her lips, showing off her mouth full of very sharp teeth, and barked out, “Thomas, would you mind informing the ignorant bastard of our ‘identities’? Include the warning that such an insult might have ended in my skinning his sorry ass alive if I wasn’t a diplomatic sort.”
I turned to the man, who was looking just a bit nervous at the sight of her teeth. “Sir, This is Commander Jophixa Throhx of the Giobhioni Republic.” I explained, “An accomplished warrior, and currently on a mission of exploration and diplomacy from their home region that is dozens of light years away. We have a reservation, yes.
“A bit of advice sir.” I continued, “While she cannot speak Commonwealth Standard, she can understand it thanks to a translator implant in her ear. Your insinuation that she was a child just now, could have been taken as a rather unfortunate insult sir. If she wasn’t also a diplomat, well, you could be missing some valuable body parts.”
The man glanced back and forth between us a couple times and then swallowed hard. “Ah, pardon my manners Commander.” He said, putting on a much more polite demeanor, “It has been a trying day. There was an incident last night with some bounty hunters, you see, they did quite a bit of damage to one of the suites on the 6th floor. I’ve had to spend most of my morning soothing the frazzled nerves of a number of guests.”
“Bounty Hunters? What would they be doing in such a highly regarded resort as yours sir?” I asked, “When the Commander asked for a nice quiet place for some R and R, I told her about this place cause I’d heard you go out of your way to prevent that sort of thing. That’s the rumor anyway! Even Fleetsec is rumored to think twice about causing a ruckus in your resort.”
“I assure you sir,” he explained, anxious to put me at ease and get out of my companion’s presence as quickly as possible, “It was not endorsed, and the owners of the resort will be taking pains to see that the offenders are made an example of. We pride ourselves on this being a haven of peace.”
So much so that it costs a small fortune. I thought to myself. I’d had to use up a great deal of my emergency funds, squirreled away in numbered accounts, to pay for this. It was worth it, but I hoped I could parlay some of my discoveries along the way into building it back up.
A moment later, he gave Jophixa a polite smile, “your suite is ready Madam Commander. All you need to do is give us your retinal scan for access, and I can have you escorted.”
Jophixa looked at the scanner the man indicated, then looked at me. When I didn’t move, she slapped my ass, hard. Hard enough the sound echoed through the lobby and made the reception agent jump.
Part of the plan had been that she was going to treat me as some sort of lowly servant, but I hadn’t been expecting the smack on the ass. My jump was much higher than the old man’s, and I turned to look at Jophixa with wide eyes. For her part, just pointed at the ground in front of her and raised an eyebrow. Stacy started to explain in my head.
I felt myself blushing, but stayed as still as I could, feeling Jophixa’s boot heels digging into my back and hoping she wasn’t going to be much longer. Thankfully she wasn’t, stepping down carefully and patting me gently on the head as if I were a good dog. “Sorry Thomas,” she said, smiling slightly, “just part of the role here. I’ll make it up to you later. Promise.”
When I stood up and dusted off my knees, a glance at her revealed that her ears had dropped slightly from their usual neutral position; a sure sign of embarrassment. Seeing that drained some of my irritation, though it didn’t stop my ass from hurting any less. Damn the Void but that woman has some strength on her. I was pretty certain I was going to have a bruise.
It turned out our suite was on the fifth floor, with the two floors above having been closed off due to the “incident” the night before, according to our bellhop. “Old Gruddy, he’s the guy at the front desk,” she explained as we rode the elevator, “wasn’t pleased with the number of guests that demanded a refund after the trauma of all the gun-fire. I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. But when S&E showed up and demanded the upper floors be sealed bending investigation, it made his life easier.” The elevator doors opened onto the quiet, teak appointed hallway of the fifth floor and she guided us toward our suite, “Don’t worry about anything more happening though. With Security and Enforcement here, only the king of idiots would try something.”
Or someone with enough money to pay off the right people to make the trouble go away. I thought to myself, thinking of how much money Enigma Osiris Corp. had at its disposal. They needed to find Boudya and Jesse fast, and get the hell out of there.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“This is you” The young bellhop said, leaning in to scan her retina at the lock. “You just have to do the same to open the door yourself. My code will be invalidated from this point on unless you request assistance at the front desk.”
Once she’d help us get our bags inside, accepted her tip, which I transferred to her, since we’d been unable to insert an account for Jophixa into any Commonwealth system on such short notice, I locked the door behind her. Then I turned to glare at Jophixa.
“What?” she said, holding her hands up and backing away slightly, “I apologized! I told you…”
“Yeah, yeah, make it look good.” I interrupted, “but did you have to smack me that hard? You do understand I’m not some hardened soldier right? I’m a damned engineer! It took a lot of self control not to be limping on the way up here!”
“I didn’t smack you that hard…”
“Pretty sure if I dropped my pants there’d be a welt in the shape of your hand Jo.” I turned around and unbuckled my pants to show her, only to hear her start to sputter.
“I don’t need to see it!” She cried out, and I looked back to see her covering her eyes, ears drooped and quivering, even though her tone was angry, “and don’t call me Jo!”
“You owe me something for that!” I insisted, “And I’m claiming a nickname, unless you got a counteroffer, I get to call you Jo from now on! Next time, don’t smack me so hard.”
There was a long silence as we both realized what I just said. Next time…Oh boy Thomas, what the hell did you just…
“Fine!” she snapped. “Can we drop this and get to business now?”
“Fine.” I replied.
----------------------------------------
A couple hours later, I was sitting at the small dining table wearing a pair of augmented reality glasses so that I could work with Stacy. She was still trying to slip around the encryption that had been placed on the resort's security servers so we could confirm what had happened the night before.
she growled at one point,
“If they do, they are keeping it pretty damned hush hush!” I explained, “but human governments have a history of being like that. If they have something like that, they don’t want anyone else to know cause then everyone would be in that much more of a hurry to develop their own. And I really don’t want to think about an AI enslaved to government agendas.”
“I’m up for helping with that.” I told her, “I don’t like the idea of any sophant being locked into government service with no choice in the matter. One thing at a time though. I have a feeling we’ll be fighting people in the government enough as it is.”
I was about to point out another avenue for Stacy to try in order to get around the security encryption, when he heard the bedroom door open. It’d been half an hour or so since Jophixa had gone in there to check for surveillance devices, “always best to make sure.” and he’d started to wonder if she’d maybe decided to take a nap. Turning around to look at her, he started to ask “I take it the bedroom is clear…” but stopped dead when he saw her.
Reserved, professional, razor-creased uniform Jophixa was walking across the suite’s sitting room completely nude. There was nothing seductive about her body language, just her normal purposeful walk and bearing, though she was attempting to appear relaxed. Regardless of that, I was still locked in shock, jaw slack and eyes wide.
She was rummaging around in her bag and pulled out something that looked suspiciously like one of those totes women use when going to the beach and sling it across her shoulders, the strap nestling itself between her breasts in such a casual, non-sexy way it served to short circuit my brain even more for some reason.
What on earth was she doing walking around like that for, and why the hell couldn’t I seem to think straight? We’re just colleagues, and I’m not some kind of perverted…
The scream in my brain snapped me out of it just soon enough for me to drop to the floor as the door to our sweet exploded inwards and a loud voice yelled “Thomas Aacen, you are under arrest under suspicion of aiding a wanted criminal!”
“Fuck.” I muttered, reaching for the stun blaster Jophixa smuggled past security for me to have as personal protection.
I’d just peeked out from behind the sofa to see what the situation was, when a green ball of naked fury flew across the room and collided with the cop that was just inside the doorway. I heard a stunner round go off and the cop went down in a heap.
There was no way I was going to get a shot off at any of 4 other cops in the hallway pressing to get in, not with Jophixa in the way. Instead I looked over at the windows, grabbed a heavy bit of statuary from an end table, and heaved it as hard as I could at the nearest pane of glass.
The glass shattered, thankfully. I was half certain it was going to be security glass, all but unbreakable. “Yo! Jo! Let's go!”
I ducked over to the broken window, and checked for our route down. Not for the first time, I wished I still had my suit and all the modifications I’d made on it over the years. In this case, the integrated grav-harness. Getting down from here wasn’t going to be easy. We were going to have to climb down the japanese style ornamentation on the facade, and you might have guessed by the way this whole adventure started, I am not the most agile person in stressful situations.
I glanced over to see Jophixa stun a third cop into insensibility before mashing the forth one’s face in with her fist, then launching herself towards me. For a moment all I saw was flying naked space goblin, and then my reflexes kicked in. For probably the first time in the last six months, my coordination did not fail me, and I caught her mid-air. I still fell backwards onto my ass with said naked space goblin on top of me, however, which was more like my track record.
Jophixa wasted no time on awkwardness, climbed out the shattered window, holding on to a bit of decorative trim, and kept her stun blaster pointed back into the room. “What are you waiting for Thomas! MOVE!” she barked at me, letting off a shot or two to keep the remaining cop occupied.
Gritting my teeth, I slid out the window and started working my way towards the ground. Did I mention I’m not the most agile person under stressful circumstances? And I’m not talking about work quotas and deadlines! But when things get more personal, like you know, someone shooting at me, I tend to turn into a bit of a bumbling fool. Being such a fool when five stories up didn’t seem like a good idea, so I did my best to be as careful as I could going down, while also hurrying and keeping an eye out above us.
My green skinned companion, however, was an acrobat. She made her way down that ornamented facade like a chimpanzee swinging in a tree, making it to the ground before I was even to the second story. The whole time she was occasionally stopping to fire off a shot or two up towards the way we’d come. And shortly after hitting the ground, she started firing off towards where our shuttle was parked.
Fuck, I thought, as I got to the top of the first floor, they’ve got people between us and the shuttle…
And of course, that was the moment - with my concentration no longer centered on not falling - that I fell. The surprising thing was that she caught me, and unlike when I caught her, she didn’t fall backwards.
“If you’re done dawdling around,” she snapped, firing another shot off towards the parked shuttles, “We should probably get our asses under some cover!”
I rolled out of her arms, and started running as soon as I hit the ground, taking off towards the woods. I could hear the stunner rounds going off behind me, but waited until I had the cover of a garden statue to turn to help with some covering fire.
It seemed the last of the cops that had broken into our suite had finally gone down to Jophixa’s stun blaster, but I could see more coming around the corner of the building. Jophixa herself was tear-assing towards me as fast as her legs could carry her - which was quite fast it seemed - so I popped off a couple shots to distract the new lot of cops, getting them to dive behind cover.
Even once we were under the cover of the forest, I had no idea how we were going to lose them. Jophixa was naked, I wasn’t any kind of trained commando, and they were bound to call in air support with full sensor suites to allow them to spot us even under the canopy.
At precisely that moment, as Jophixa ran by me like a green streak, a thunderous explosion shook the air, and a fireball rose from behind the cops’ position.
She didn’t have to tell me twice.