The Amazing Tales of Wildcat Arrows (4 page)

In five short years, he had used his talents to become the owner and Captain of his own interstellar spaceship. The
Sugarbabe
.

Rumor had it he won it in a poker game.

She believed it.

No one could see through
bs
like the Cat.

But he was gone now and they couldn't go on like this forever; they would need supplies soon. Clugot ate. A lot. Where would they get the money to pay for all of it?

She squared her shoulders. She was twenty-one. It was time to take responsibility and face facts. Wildcat might not be coining back.

There had been no message from him at their prearranged emergency location.

No! He
would
come back… as soon as he could. Until then she would do what needed to be done to protect the
Sugarbabe
and its crew!

Heiner interrupted her thoughts.

"The only lead we have at present is that a trader in Port City recalled a suspicious enshrouded traveller asking about exchange rates for miadne and a transport to Slide. A corporation guard remembered seeing this same traveller lurking about the vault buildings earlier in the week. One of our security cameras captured an image of the jewel just before it vanished. That same cloaked traveller is also in several of the background shots at the Corporate Museum where the jewel is permanently housed."

"Where you able to identify anything about this mysterious traveller?"

"No, and we haven't been able to trace the traveller back to our adversary Crisyn either. Big Gun is naturally suspicious of our main competitor."

"Of course."

"Although he cannot accuse them without proof."

"Bad idea, I agree." With some Corporations, even hard evidence wasn't enough. Their lawyers acted like Bizzarro World alchemists, turning gold facts into straw suppositions.

"Arrows, it would probably be best to start your search on Slide."

SpinDrift lifted his mangy head from the floor to whistle a high pitched
tweet
. "Slide, the fabulous pleasure planet?!" He trilled. "I am getting verklempt."

Forget the jewel—the quackhead was thinking of accommodating sex androids for her!

"Oh, no, you don—"

"We'll take the job!" His voice warbled with excitement.

Heiner heard him. "Excellent! Keep me informed as to your progress, Arrows. Time is of the essence. We must have the jewel back before the Day of Ascension."

Lucky did a quick calculation on Minmei. The computer duly responded with its sickeningly upbeat voice.

"THAT WOULD BE THREE EARTH WEEKS FROM TODAY. DON'T BE SAD, MISS LUCKY. LIFE IS JUST A HAILSTORM OF FALLING ROSE PETALS."

What in the hell did that mean
? Damn animes and their nonsensical dialogue! Lucky stuck her tongue out at Minmei.

It was not a lot of time to get the job accomplished.

"We'll do our best," Lucky murmured doubtfully to Heiner.

"Wonderful! We'll speak again later. Heiner out."

SpinDrift grabbed Lucky's knees and pulled himself up off the floor. "We're going to the pleasure planet! We're going to the pleeeeassssure planet!"

"Whup-di-do."

SpinDrift put his claws on his… well, what passed for his hips. "Oh, show a little spark."

"And just how do we find this peachy planet? Hmm?"

"Hum. Ask Clugot. He'll probably know."

Lucky quirked her brow but stabbed the purple button anyway.

"Urrr?"

"Clugot, do you know the coordinates to Slide?"

"Urrr."

Before she could tell the engineer to lay in a course, Clugot had already turned the ship in the direction of the pleasure planet.

Some things just didn't need to be reinforced. Like Spin, Clugot heard the word Slide and lost all reason.

Off they went to find who knew what.

She was sure
Wildcat would approve
.

After all, this was nothing like the experience on Pittipat.

Nothing like it at all.

Cretion, mining and prison outpost

Wildcat Arrows coolly surveyed the dimly lit interior of the tavern.

The murky windows revealed a disreputable bar full of night crawlers. It was exactly what he was looking for.

He immediately slipped inside, into the shadows.

A black satin curtain of waist-length hair slid forward to shield his features from view. Even after months in the dank Cretion mines each strand still glowed like polished ebony. The jet color was rumored to be a gift from an ancient Crow ancestor; chief of his tribe and something of a legend.

As for the sheen… well, that was another story.

Several shimmering locks dangled rakishly over his forehead and left eye. And that eye—indeed both eyes—were the most unusual, palest whisper of iced blue. Beguilingly tipped at the corners, they were as clear as the waters of a Loch in spring.

It had often been whispered that the renowned tracker had the sharp focus of an unrelenting warrior.

With good reason.

His remarkable eyes were a gift from two fearless predecessors. The first part of the ancestral hand-me-down originally hailed from a cunning Norse ancestor who was celebrated for having gone a-viking in Caledonia. He finished up his happy journey ensconced in the highlands, blissfully married to a Laird's daughter.

The least said about
that
rogue, the better.

The other part of the genetic boon came from a rather infamous Samurai turned ronin.
He
became Shogun with the grateful help of the Emperor.

It is so fated that such eyes miss nothing.

Arms crossed over his chest, Wildcat leaned back against a stone wall and scanned the room. One leather-clad foot hooked over the other.

Idly, he glanced down at the well-worn moccasins that were laced to just under his knees, halfway up his calves.

'As
you explore the path of your life you will find them the finest covering to grace a warrior's foot
…'

That advice had been given to him long ago and was unquestionably true. In fact, the moccasins had proven themselves this very day for the path he had recently traversed had included a prison break.

He smiled slightly—just a hint of lifting at the corners of lips in a face that had been called utterly sensual, insouciant, and merciless.

His focus was on the room and its inhabitants.

The dank, stale air of the barroom hit his nostrils.

Every Cretion hellhole he had ever been in smelled and looked exactly the same. Musky. Shadowy. Dark. Dangerous.

He did not belong here. Yet, somehow, he felt right at home.

Now what denizens have crawled out from under the Cretion sewers this dark eve
? The illicit outpost was a corrupt gathering place for those with special 'creativity'. Usually for obtaining anything that was not—at least at present—corporate controlled. Cretion was welcoming host to thieves, cutthroats, rash entrepreneurs, and erstwhile adventurers.

Wildcat noted that 'welcoming host' applied to anything Cretion was akin to, say, a Venus flytrap lovingly hosting a nice afternoon tea for its parched, winged neighbor.

In a subtle twist of a kind so beloved by the Practitioners of Irony, it just so happened that Cretion was also welcoming host to, '
THE WORST PRISON EVER
!'

Hence the titillating headline in twelve digi-mags this year.

Such a delightful circumstance afforded Cretion management the opportunity for one stop shopping. It was not unheard of for your drinking partner of the evening to roll you over to the authorities for a reward in order to pay for the bar tab on the drinks he had been kindly buying you all night.

Good ol' Cretion cause and effect.

Of course exception to this practice was always taken—which was why at least five knockdown, drag-out fights occurred every night in these happy dens.

Wildcat had never been turned in by "professional courtesy".

He was too good at what he did for that.

And since he was a free agent, no one could be sure what deal they might be stepping on should they happen to cross him at any given time.

Furthermore, he usually made sure his dealings were
fairly
law-abiding. Like Einstein's theory, this viewpoint was relative to whatever laws he happened to be abiding at the time.

Of course, he also tended to favor laws that were most favorable to him.

Hence,
me judice
. I being judge.

Some folks considered that behavior criminal. Others said it was just plain savvy.

Either way, Wildcat had a rep for being on the sharp side of the law. Only he hadn't been too clever this go-around. He was ashamed to admit that he had been bagged in the time-honored manner of all rogues.

He had been caught in bed with the
wrong
woman.

The prison warden's pretty young wife to be exact.

Unfortunately, the warden of Cretion was also the governor of the colony. Not a particularly beneficial coincidence. If Wildcat recalled correctly… at the time of discovery the bed frame had been slamming the facts home like an accountant in a budget crunch.

Honestly, he had no idea she was the warden's wife.

He hadn't known she was anybody's
wife
… She sure didn't act like anyone's wife!

Of course none of that mattered to the warden, a man whose nickname was
Meanest-Nastiest-Bastard-in-the-Whole-Galaxy
Joe.

Ergo, there had been no trial. No formal sentencing either.

He was sent directly to jail. Do not pass go.

Hard time
. Strenuous labor in the dank orzon mines.

Prison is generally a vast warehouse of peculiar oddities, but the strangest curiosity—so far as Wildcat was concerned—was the marvel that the entire cell block had been incarcerated for sleeping with
Meanest-Nastiest-Bastard-in-the-Whole-Galaxy
Joe's pretty lil' wife.

Except… no one had actually ridden the "A" train home. So to speak.

No
one except him, that is
.

Wildcat wasn't altogether sure that entitled him to bragging rights. Considering his current situation and all. And he hadn't had the heart to tell all those other poor schmucks that he had won the "E" ticket. Ride or no, they had still all ended up at the same place—the mines. Her memory was not enough to keep him warm through those cold nights, either.

The warden and his wife had a nice little sideline going for themselves. Orzon was used for ship parts and it was expensive. Consequently, there was a healthy demand for black market orzon.

This made Cretion a real popular watering hole. He had come here on a lead that hadn't panned out. It had turned into quite a trip.

It hadn't taken Wildcat long to figure out that all of the
'special' prisoners had been given dummy idents. Orzon dug up by unregistered prisoners would not have to be turned over to the mining company because there would be no record of the orzon the unregistered prisoners had mined.

Looking on the bright side, Wildcat reasoned that the sour grapes of his labor could be turned into 'wrathade'—if he could escape this hellhole of a planet and refrain from mixing his metaphors.