Chaos Quarter Read Online Free Page B

from him. For a thug the guy sure did know how to make conversation. Rex knew of all the best bars in town by the time they reached their destination.
    The vehicle stopped. They got out, and Rex found himself inside a fenced estate. Two guards looked at him from the end of the driveway. In front of him, a simple fountain sent water skyward. Behind that a mansion rose four stories. It had straightforward furnishings and a quartet of columns across a front portico. Another pair of guards paced across the flat roof above.
    The muscle escorted him up the tall stoop and into the building. They moved through a hallway that opened into a large great room: the governor’s court. The governor sat on a basic throne, raised four feet above the rest of the room. Beside him, on a smaller throne, sat his wife. Her stomach swelled outward, enormously pregnant, and enormously topless . Rex quirked his head at this.
    “Curious or nervous?” Governor Odemegwu proclaimed boisterously, rising from his throne. “To look at my wife that way you must be one or the other.”
    “Respectfully curious,” Rex replied.
    Odemegwu smiled at this. The guy had a huge smile. He was a tall man, nearly seven feet. His own stomach swelled outward with twenty pounds of body fat he could stand to lose. Hair tinged with grey clung to the sides of his head, but had abandoned the top.
    “It is our custom here, for royal women. A throwback, I’m afraid,” he said, motioning him in. “But an amusing one. The looks you off-worlders have when you see…ah, it is priceless.”
    The wife rolled her eyes.
    “Now, come. The man who brings such fine weapons to our world is welcome at my tables. Please, sit!” Odemegwu boomed.
    Rex moved into the room. Before the throne sat two long tables and around them sat men who ate with their fingers. Large plates of meat, loaves of brown bread, and a selection of fruits covered the table. Wine poured out of wooden carafes into plain mugs, to be gulped by the laughing, masculine faces of the governor’s entourage.
    He was led to a table and shown his seat. Two of the muscle men from earlier flanked him. Half-drunk already, they slung their arms around his shoulders as if they were life-long friends, jostling him. A plate of food appeared before him, real food. It had been six days since his last stop. Six days of canned beef and vacuum-packed vegetables made a man eager for anything fresh.
    His craving nearly distracted him from the stern looking, pale-skinned man sitting across from him. Rex blinked, not sure if the fellow actually sat there. Since landing the only person he’d seen who wasn’t black-skinned was Chakrika. This guy had close-cropped blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and a patrician face that didn’t seem capable of smiling. He also needed a shave.
    “Hi,” Rex said, wondering if pairing the two odd-balls in the bunch was another of the governor’s “amusements.”
    “My greetings,” the man replied. His accent reeked of formality, sounding distinctly British. That could mean a couple of things.
    “I know that speech,” Rex said. “England?”
    “No.”
    “Coventry?” Rex asked.
    “No.”
    “The planet, not the city,” Rex clarified.
    “Neither.”
    “So you’re Europan then?” Rex asked.
    The conversations around them died down. Eyes bore down on Rex’s back.
    “And you are a Terran,” the man replied.
    Odemegwu laughed quietly, probably not intending for his mirth to be heard.
    “Once,” Rex replied. “So what’s a Europan noble doing way out here? Got tired of harems and gobs of money?”
    The man glowered. Odemegwu laughed.
    “He is far from that,” the governor declared proudly. “Cast adrift far from his home, I have brought him into my service. The finest gunner of my fleet.”
    Rex nodded along. The muscles of the Europan’s face twitched and then tightened. People raised to be lords generally didn’t like to be treated as pets.
    “Well, Europan, do you have a name?” Rex