Tessi

TESSI

My blood rushed through my veins, brain soaking in Alkard's presence at my side. The intoxicating rush remained even when he took me through a door on the Promenade I had never noticed before, and I looked out onto the metro for the first time.

My mouth gaped open, and if he had not held my arm, I might very well have collapsed. I always had heard that Thodos III was mind bogglingly large, but I had always figured that had to be an exaggeration. There had to be a limit to how big the station could get…couldn't there?

I thought the Promenade was the highest end of the station, in terms of class and status. Now, I realized I was wrong.

A vast canyon lay before me, the walls lined with dwellings and shops. It looked like something out of an old Earth photo of New York before it sank under the water.

As far as I could tell, the metro was limited to only one avenue, four times as long as it was wide. But the clever denizens of the station had built upward on the towering walls, hundreds of feet right up to the canopy of the hull.

Alkard glanced down at me, an almost gentle smile curling the corners of his lips.

"Impressive, is it not? I do believe the first time I saw it, I had the same reaction as you."

I shook my head, mouth still wide open.

"No way," I said. "I see it, but I don't believe it, you know? It's just so vast."

"Come. The Nebula is near the uppermost levels."

He led me to the circular, open-air hover car and the raised ring slid downward, allowing us in. As we stepped inside, he carefully kept hold of my hand, then sat beside a small control panel.

With a gentle bump, we disengaged from the charging port, drifting up to join the line of slow moving traffic above.

"Where did these cars come from? I can't imagine the Uune needing them."

"Why do the Uune do anything they do?" He shrugged. "From what I understand, when station dwellers first built the metro, they relied on a series of ramps and bridges to connect themselves to the heights."

"Why did they stop using that? Too lazy to walk?"

He laughed softly, his eyes dancing with merriment.

"The system was not infallible. People fell from the ramps often, both accidentally and with a bit of help, let's say."

He gestured to another car floating below us, with a Nazok pilot and a lot of cargo.

"One day, these hover cars came floating in out of the aft deck section, where few other than Uune tread. They floated all the way here, resting on a charging port that no one remembers seeing the Uune build. Shortly after, the Uune dismantled the ramps and bridges."

My mind spun. I didn't like thinking about the Uune, because I hated things I didn't understand. And speaking of things I couldn't understand…why did I find Alkard so damn irresistible?

I planned to mess with him by not dressing for dinner, and then he'd have to go and take me to The Nebula.

And despite his passionate touches earlier, tonight he'd been nothing but the perfect gentleman.

What was going on?

We rose past the structures, some of them opulent and lit up bright, others dark and so shoddy, I was surprised they could still cling to the hull without falling. In general, the higher we rose, the fancier the dwellings grew.

When we reached the top, with only thirty feet separating them from the curved roof of the station itself, I spied a row of restaurants and fancy shops. It must be here that the most powerful, wealthy, and influential of station denizens came to dine and shop.

I had never felt more out of place in all of my life.

Looking around, certainty sank into my bones. It was beautiful here. Amazing.

And not for me.

The hover car docked and we disembarked. A short distance away, the Nebula's entrance glowed a soft yellow.

He led me through the archway, and a hostess with tentacles instead of hair smiled at our entrance.

Then her eyes fell on me and her jet black eyes narrowed.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with restrained candor. "But your human servant will have to wait outside. The sight of them upsets some of our guests."

I died a little bit on the inside, wishing there was a way for me to disappear. Maybe if those ramps were still around, I could have gotten myself out of this.

But Alkard simply snorted. "I will bring her with me."

His tone brooked no argument. The woman bowed her head and gestured with a touch of fearful anxiety.

"Your pardon, Mr. Alkard. I did not recognize…of course you should do as you please."

"Of course it is," he said flatly. "This is the part where you lead us to a table."

The woman led us into the restaurant lobby, past a cascading display of ever changing colored fogs behind glass, the ‘nebula' for which the restaurant got its name.

Word of mouth had it that the display wasn't a decoration the restaurant had put in, but rather some arcane device of the Uune which the restaurant had been built around.

But with all dealings of the Uune, who could say?

We walked through a circular lobby then down a wide path between the two groupings of tables on the lowest level. Every gaze that fell on me made me feel worse. They all looked at me as if I were something they'd scraped off their shoe.

My excitement turned to nausea. I slumped my shoulders and lowered my gaze, so I wouldn't have to look at them looking at me with such utter contempt.

It didn't do much good. I felt their disdain even if I could no longer see it.

A Mondian with black scales and an impeccably trimmed silver suit appeared out of the kitchen. His eyes widened when he saw the two of us.

Oh great, here he comes to tell me I'm not allowed to be here. Dogs eat outside.

A big smile spread over the Mondian's face when he drew near, a touch of warmth dispelling some of my fears. He looked between me and Alkard, and then at the tentacle-headed woman.

"Yelish, what are you thinking? Don't seat Mr. Alkard on the floor—seat him at the VIP booth upstairs."

"But the booth has been booked by—" she began.

"Bump them," the Mondian said without hesitation.

The woman bowed her head.

"I'll lead them to the booth myself," he said. "If you'll please come this way?"

He led us up a flight of curving, elegant stairs to a lounge overlooking the dining room floor. A table for two sat near a huge translucent porthole. My eyes widened, because such portholes were a rarity on the station, being a structural weakness from an Uune point of view.

As we were seated, I peered out the porthole and gaped at the spectacle. Thodos remained in a distant orbit around Kannatos, the sixth gas giant planet of the Draguyle System. This was, however, the first time I had gotten a good look at Kannatos.

"It's…beautiful," I said with a sigh as I beheld the swirling ball of pinks, blues, and whites. "Seeing this almost makes me NOT want to run back and hide in the car."

Alkard was taken aback.

"What's wrong? You've been oddly quiet since we walked in the door."

"You know what, it's nothing," I said, resting my hands on the table and leaning forward. "Never mind. I think I will just go ahead and wait for you outside. You can have your fancy dinner, but clearly I don't belong here."

His hand closed around my wrist, firmly but not painfully. I lifted my gaze to meet his. His red eyes smoldered like twin suns, seeming to burn right through my pretenses and scorch my soul.

"Tessi, I want you to feel comfortable here. I have two possible solutions to your dilemma. One, I could have everyone else leave the restaurant, so they would not bother you…or I could kill a couple of them, maybe three, just to make a point."

My mouth flew open, and he rose from his seat, tossing his napkin onto the table.

"Come on."

"Where are we going?"

He did not answer, just stalked over to the balcony purposefully, leaning on the polished metal rail to gaze down at the diners below.

"Come, my dear. Tell me which of them offended you the most, and I will tear their throat out for their folly."

I burst into laughter, leaning on the rail and shaking my head.

"Oh my god, Alkard, that's pretty good. Maybe I just needed a laugh…"

My voice trailed off, because his stony expression had not changed.

Holy shit, he's not kidding. It wasn't a joke at all. He totally would. He would commit murder just to make me feel better.

I had always considered myself a moral person. Not a prudish person, to be sure, but a moral person.

And yet, at that moment, some dark part of me was thrilled at the idea of my big, scary alien Daddy killing someone because they'd been mean to me.

Suddenly, I became keenly aware of his warm, spicy scent. Like cinnamon and chili, almost burning my nostrils but in a pleasant way. His hand rested on the small of my back, the scooped design of the back meaning his flesh touching mine directly, with nothing in between.

"I take your silence that you would prefer it if I did not kill anyone," he said with a small tug at the corner of his lips that may have been a smile. "I suppose, you don't want to ruin the ambiance, and I can't blame you. Perhaps another time?"

Right.

Another time.

My standard diet consisted of canned and dehydrated food, like most of the people who dwelt in the Under, and even a lot who were in the less affluent areas of the Thodos III station.

Fresh food wasn't really an option.

But here… it was a whole new world.

The crustaceans dipped in red sauce and the succulent steaks sauteed in rich brown butter sauce should have been wonderful, and they were.

Yet, I found that my hunger could not be sated by just the cuisine. I still felt a void, a part of myself that had been empty for a long, long time.

As each dish came out, Alkard explained it.

"Ah," he said as some open faced mollusks arrived as our fourth course. "Here we have the Agnorian freshwater fireclams. They can survive at temperatures of up to three hundred degrees, but the meat is ruined at three hundred and one degrees. So the chef must perfectly balance the meal at three hundred and one half degrees."

He picked up one of the half shells, filled with a sliver of silver-purple covered in herbs. Alkard lifted the shell toward me and I leaned forward to slurp the succulent meat.

The spicy flavor surprised me, a bit gamey at first but then changing on my palate as I chewed.

"The delicate flavor becomes apparent only after a moment," he said, his eyes shining. "It really puts the tongue to work, don't you think?"

He reached out and wiped away a bit of sauce from the corner of my mouth, then brought the finger to his lips and suckled the dollop away while his burning gaze held me captive as surely as iron shackles.

He's being so nice, so…sweet, even. God, it's so hard to think with him staring at me like that.

Finally the dessert course came, a frothy whipped mousse of some sort but pink and yellow in color, dusted with dark red powder. But before we started, a Nazok runner approached the table.

The unobtrusive humanoids stood around four and a half feet tall, their mildly aquatic appearance and soft features making them seem quite non-threatening. It was said there was no job too small or too large for a Nazok, and they labored at many different tasks on the station.

According to my old boss, Banek, the Nazoks had another side. Some of them were in the same ‘business' as Alkard. Which seemed to me to be the business of hurting people.

The Nazok handed Alkard a translucent red, flat rectangle no more than two inches long. A data chip. Silently, Alkard took the chip and plugged it into his percomm, nodding at the Nazok messenger to let him know he could leave.

Alkard read his screen and the warmth drained from his face as surely as space was cold. I saw the murder in his eyes, but more, I felt it. He had gone from being warm and sweet to a cold blooded killer in the blink of an eye.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said, putting the device away. "How is your dessert?"

"It's delicious," I said.

He returned to being more or less genial, though on occasion I noticed his eyes grow hard, and I was certain he was thinking about the message.

We finished our meal and went to a garden on the uppermost level of the restaurant.

The garden itself had been arranged with more than just oxygen producing plants. Many of them were there for aesthetic reasons only. I gaped at the sight of exotic flowers in colors I hadn't known existed. One of them even changed color, pulsing slowly through a cascade of hues.

"If you think the garden is lovely," Alkard said, taking my chin delicately in his hand and lifting it up. "Take a look at this."

My breath caught in my throat. The ceiling consisted of one huge translucent dome. The Blood Nebula, a red and black kaleidoscopic natural wonder, loomed large in the void.

"Wow," I breathed, caught up in the night, his nearness, his scent… I forced myself to focus. None of this was real.

"Have you found out anything about Mera yet?"

"Not yet. Tell me of your friend, the time leading up to her disappearance."

"Well, she told me she was going to take a contract at The Pulsar, but I told her not to go, because…"

"Because?"

"I heard it was dangerous."

"Why did you think it was dangerous?"

I faced him with a hard stare.

"Because there were a lot of Vinduthi who were said to frequent that place."

He stared for a moment in silence, then burst into laughter.

"Ah, you are delightfully wise. Though my people had nothing to do with her disappearance."

"I know." I sighed, my mind drifting back to years before. "I grew up with Mera in the Under, you know. We lived in the tunnels for a while, too, when the purge came through."

"Where were your parents?"

"Oh, they indentured themselves to a mining colony when we were ten. In the tunnels, and the Under, that's old enough to take care of yourself." I shrugged, wondering why he was making such a big deal out of it. "I mean, they were probably trying to protect us."

My mouth twisted, remembering the shock and betrayal I'd felt as my parents had boarded the hopper, heading off to new contracts, new lives.

"If that's true, then that's the last time that ever happened to me."

Dammit. That was years ago. So why did my voice sound so strange now?

"What? The last time that what ever happened?" Alkard asked softly, his as much a caress as the hand on my bare shoulder.

"The last time anyone tried to protect me."