Wings of Retribution (17 page)

The man’s mustache twitched.  “You’re speaking to him.”

“One of Athenais’s crewmembers gave her up to the Utopis,” Stuart began.

“Her and all three of the shifters with her,” Rabbit agreed.  He looked Stuart up and down.  “But how do you fit into the picture?”

Stuart glanced out of the corner of his eye at the tables of onlookers scattered around the bar.  “Can we talk about this somewhere safe?”

“I’m safe enough, so we can talk here.”  Rabbit sat back against a table and lit a smoke, though Stuart had no questions in his mind that the gun in his lap would send a bolt through his brain the moment he twitched.

Stuart lowered his voice, glancing at the other patrons.  “I’m the fourth person that they took from
Beetle.”

Rabbit snorted.  “You don’t look anything like him.”  Then he paused, his eyes narrowing.  “Prove it.”

Stuart froze.  “What?”

“Prove it.  Shift.”

“I’m not a shifter.”

“Then you gotta be something like it, if you’re gonna claim you’re that twiggy gorilla of a man who came in here the other day.”  The intelligence in Rabbit’s brown eyes, however, told Stuart he knew exactly what he was.  Or at least had his suspicions.

“I’ll show you, but not here,” Stuart whispered.

Stuart’s anxiety must have been clear in his face, because Rabbit shrugged and leaped off the table.  “Follow me, then.”  Rabbit led him to the room behind Giggle’s glass box and waited for him to close the door, his gun still pointed at Stuart’s face.

Stuart took a deep breath.  He was going to have to expose himself to a human.  He had to lay his life utterly in the hands of a human, just because the shifters said he was a good friend to Athenais.  This was stupidity.  Logic said he should just leave and forget about the shifters and their problems.

“I’m going to lie down so I don’t fall down,” Stuart said, carefully getting to his knees.

Rabbit’s eyebrows went up.  “Wait.  You gotta lay
down
to show me this?”

“Yes.” 

Stuart heard Rabbit curse under his breath, and the wiry little man stepped back a few feet.  “All right,” he growled.  “Show me.”

Gods…
  That gut-deep terror rising again, Stuart put his head against the floor and began disentangling himself from his host’s brain.  The instinctive panic of not being in complete control once again thrumming at his core, Stuart prepared himself for a brief appearance.  He didn’t intend to fully remove himself.  He just wanted to extract himself enough so that Rabbit could see him. 

Seeker, let me live through this,
Stuart prayed.  Hopefully Rabbit, in all of his vast experience, was less trigger-happy than the rest of humanity.  Steeling himself, Stuart slid out through the channel he had created into his host’s brain and crawled into the ear canal.

The dull blur across the room moved suddenly, suggesting that Rabbit had seen him.  Stuart retreated.  Once he had all of his tentacles back in place, he opened his host’s eyes.

Rabbit looked pale and the hand holding the gun was shaking.  Stuart had seen this reaction many times before in humans, usually by those who had been chosen to act as hosts.  For a horrible moment, Stuart wondered if Rabbit would shoot him.

“Well, that explains a lot,” Rabbit said, lowering the gun.  He swallowed several times, looking away.  “And here I thought you were a droid or something.  Gods.”  He wiped a hand across his mouth, breathing deep.  When he glanced back, Stuart saw fear in Rabbit’s eyes.

Stuart got back to his feet slowly and backed up a few paces, giving Rabbit as much room as he could. 

Rabbit relaxed a bit.  Seeing the man’s obvious gratitude, Stuart felt a pang of guilt.  If Rabbit had been used as a host before, he was doing Stuart a great service by not simply blowing him away.  Stuart found himself admiring the wiry little man’s courage, once again reminded of how little of that particular attribute he really had. 

“What happened to Attie?” Rabbit asked, still not looking at him.

“They took
Beetle’s
energy core,” Stuart said.  “Smallfoot sold us out.”

Rabbit grimaced, but turned to look at him.  “They took the core?  How long ago?”

“A day, maybe two.”

“You know where?” Rabbit demanded.

Stuart shook his head.  “We were headed to Penoi.  That’s all I know.”

“Fat lot of good that does me,” Rabbit muttered.  He glanced up at the ceiling, but still watched Stuart out of the corner of his eye.  “Means I’m gonna have to get someone to access their ship’s log.”

“Won’t that take too much time?” Stuart demanded.  “They took the
core
.”

Rabbit grunted.  “Athenais has got all the time in the world.  She’s…a lot like me.”  He sighed, once again looking at Stuart directly.  “But she’s gonna be a might peeved if the rest of ‘em die, and I’d say they got maybe a day, two days at the most.  I doubt we’ll find ‘em that soon.”

Stuart considered this.  “What about the shifters?  Can you free them?”

Rabbit laughed.  “They’re gonna have those three guarded better than the Millennium Potion.  That’s Athenais’s problem, not mine.”  Rabbit went to the door and yanked it open.  Raising his voice to someone on the other side, he shouted, “Giggles, close down the bar and get me a set of clothes, five-seven, a little chubby.”  At that, he slammed the door shut and turned on Stuart.  “What do the Utopis know about you?”

“If they don’t know everything already, they’re gonna figure it out.  There were S.O. officers on that ship.”

Rabbit cursed.  “You can’t stay here.  I’ve got a place deeper in the Forgotten District I can send you, at least for a few days.”

Stuart hesitated.  Tentatively, he said, “If you could provide me with a new host, I can help you.”

Rabbit went pale again.  “No.”

The reflexive way Rabbit had said it once again made Stuart wonder what kind of experience the Utopi had had with his kind in the past.  “I prefer criminals, if that changes things,” Stuart said softly.   

Rabbit’s eyes narrowed minutely.  For a moment, he just watched him, then, turning to look at the closed door back into the outer room, he frowned.  Standing, he growled, “Stay there.”  Pausing to make sure Stuart was staying put, Rabbit threw open the door, scanning the tables from the doorway.  When he shut it again, his lean face was grim.  “Man on the far left.  Wearing a blue bandanna and a spacer’s suit.  Killed a couple men in my friend’s bar last week, left my friend with a hand he can’t use.  Got a reputation ‘round the District as a rapist and a murderer.  He’d turn over The Shop to the Utopis in an instant.  You’d be doing us a favor.”

“You don’t look too happy about it.”

Rabbit’s lips pressed tighter.  He opened his mouth to say something, then paused.  “Were you planning on taking Athenais?”

Stuart flinched.  The thought had crossed his mind.  To have the same body for the rest of his life, to never have to worry about a botched transfer or a host rejecting him…

“No.”

Rabbit’s gaze narrowed.  “But you thought about it.”  Stuart watched his life cross behind the little man’s brown eyes.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Rabbit’s lip raised in disgust.  “Does she know what you are?”

“No.  She assumed I was a shifter, like the others.”

Rabbit snorted.  “Better not tell her, then.  She’s got a…history…with your kind.”  He gave Stuart a long look.  “Kind of like me.”

“Thanks,” Stuart said.  “For not shooting me.”

Rabbit was watching him carefully.  “Was it you?”

“No,” Stuart said immediately, horrified.

“Would you tell me if it was?”

Stuart winced.  “Uh.  Probably not, no.”

“Well, at least you’re honest.”  Rabbit hopped up, then, giving Stuart one last appraising look, turned toward the door.  “I’m going to go see what I can do about getting Athenais’s location.  Wait here until Giggles brings in your clothes before you…do your thing.”  At that, he wrenched the door open and left Stuart alone in the room.

Giggles came in with a wad of smelly rags, gave Stuart a suspicious glance, and went back to the bar.  Stuart dressed in the rags, wrinkling his nose at the smell of urine.  He wadded up the remnants of the Utopian uniform and tossed it in the recycler.  When he was done, he took a steadying breath, then pulled open the door to the back room and stepped into the bar.

The man Rabbit had pointed out was hunched by himself in a corner, glowering at the tabletop, nursing a beer.  He didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon.

Stuart was wondering how he was going to get the bandana-wearing man alone when someone suddenly jumped up from the table in front of him and socked him, the heavy blow reaching Stuart even through his host’s skull. 

Rabbit had set him up.  In despair, Stuart stumbled backwards across a chair, trying to catch himself on the tabletop, but failing.  As he hit the chair, Stuart heard a loud popping sound as something broke in his side, and a blast of pain surged up his tendrils before he could retract them.  He cried out, despite himself.

The man who had punched Stuart spat on him and laughed.  “Utopian scum, is what you are.  Well, Rabbit ain’t here to protect you no more.  Ain’t you gonna get up, Utopi?  Ain’t you gonna call in your troops, have us all arrested?”

Stuart groaned and rolled over onto his side.  He was pretty sure several of his host’s ribs were broken.  He could feel them piercing into Koff’s side as he breathed.

Someone grabbed him by the collar of his filthy coat.

“Hey, now!” Giggles shouted.  “Leave him alone, Darley.”  His voice was muffled by the wall of glass.

“You just mind your own business, Giggles,” Darley said.  Yanking Stuart back onto his feet by his collar, he twisted him around and slammed him down, face-first on the tabletop.  The motion raked Stuart’s innards against his broken ribs and he screamed.

“Fine, but you’re gonna hear it from Rabbit,” Giggles shouted.

“Rabbit ain’t gonna do nothin’ to us for gettin’ rid of Utopi trash.  You saw him.  He was gonna shoot the bastard.”

“You’re a damn hothead, Darley,” Giggles shouted.  “Rabbit had me get ‘im some clothes.  He wouldn’t do that for no Utopi.”

“Yeah, well, maybe this one’s got a silver tongue.”  Darley grinned at Stuart.  “That it, boy?  You got a silver tongue?”  Suddenly a dirty finger was prying his mouth open, to the very edges of its capacity.  Stuart gagged, and Darley released him, laughing.  “Guess not.”  He rammed Stuart’s face into the chair he had just vacated.  Stuart felt bones break in his host’s nose.

Stuart was finding it hard to breathe.  His phobia of having his host die while still implanted began to tear at his mind, ravaging his good sense.  Sheer animal panic was beginning to set in.  He had to stop himself from reaching out and shocking Darley right there in front of everyone.

“Don’t feel like talking, boy?”  Darley grabbed Stuart and shoved him over another table, spilling drinks with his face, making Stuart’s host’s shattered side scream in agony.  The entire room roared with laughter.

“I knew some Utopis once,” Darley continued, kicking Stuart toward the front door.  “Back when I lived on Roth.  Starved me wife of the Potion once they found out she had colonist blood.  Put me in jail when I tried to buy it for her on the black market.  Had me workin’ the mines on Erriat for two centuries ‘fore they let me go.  By then, she was dead.”  He kicked Stuart again, sending him stumbling out into the cold night.