Thrill-Kinky Read Online Free Page A

“We’re in this mess together. Your Blemondians, or at least the man and his San’balese hired muscle and a few nasty friends, are the same ones who nearly killed me last night. They intend to use your crew and the slag as a cover for moving stolen goods. Stolen goods that are the property of the government of Banjal. And they probably dumped me where they did in the hopes that your crew would be implicated in my death as well.”
    Now it was Rita’s turn to curse, which she did in several languages, including Universal Sign so she could layer her obscenities. She loved Mik dearly, but if she ended up dead in a back alley on San’bal Prime because he was too busy admiring some Blemondian’s impressive shoulders to ask the right questions, she’d come back from the dead to kill him.
    Then again, even if he’d asked the right questions, it wasn’t like he’d have gotten useful answers from a bunch of crooks.
    They were still out of range of the laserpistols, but the shots were getting closer.
    “At least the Fiero shouldn’t have built-in guns… They’re illegal for personal flyers here,” Rita said, determined to look on the bright side.
    A gun port opened on the Fiero.
    “Perfectly legal on Blemond, though, and they probably brought the flyer with them,” Drax said dryly. “Although I don’t think these clowns care much about legal. Kidnapping, assault, battery and attempted murder are illegal on most planets. Except Lysander, but Lysander’s unique. Luckily.”
    The gun port pushed her over the edge. No point in keeping the slag if it cost them their lives.
    And then she had an idea. “You know how to drive one of these beasts? Good!”
    She didn’t wait for him to answer, just tossed him the steering control, then grabbed the lift and antigrav controls in the other. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him boggle as he figured out unfamiliar controls. It didn’t take him more than a second, thankfully.
    She tipped the rear bin of slag, then immediately lowered the gravity around it, creating a mini asteroid field. One with a little momentum, even. Not as much as she’d like, but even the floater’s poky speed gave the slag a push.
    She pushed another couple of bins off behind them, using them to block the narrow alley, tossed the antigrav onto the tow unit so the effect would keep going after they left, then hit the button to uncouple it from the flyer.
    It would hold the Fiero off only briefly. Unless it got caught in the antigrav field itself and had its own gravity controls short out, or got damaged from flying slag, the agile little flyer would manage to evade the obstacles before long. But that might be long enough to get away.
    She didn’t try to get far, just into an alley in the nebulous zone where the industrial district and the seedier fringes of the entertainment district met. Parked in the kind of place she made a habit of looking for, the kind that wasn’t really a legal spot, but where parking-bots wouldn’t check until the workweek resumed. “Let’s go!” she said, grabbing a few things from the floater, taking Drax by the hand and all but dragging him along behind her.
    A few twists and turns into an alleyway too narrow for a Fiero to follow, and she stopped. “Put the trench coat on properly. Arms in the sleeves and everything.”
    “You expect me to go around naked except for a purple metallic trench coat with suspicious stains on it? I’ll look like a boy-whore from Lysander.” He sounded less horrified than entertained by the prospect, and definitely like he’d done crazier things in his time.
    Rita laughed. “It may have belonged to a boy-whore from Lysander.” At the Banjali’s look of disgust, she added quickly, “A boy-whore who’s now free and getting an education on a planet where slavery’s illegal. My captain and pilot have a little sideline in heroics. But it’ll hide your wings.”
    “And then what?”
    She grinned and pointed out toward the city.