Fortress
by Becca Abbott
Part 2
Riki opened his eyes to deep gloom and a chill that sank into his very bones. He lay on something hard and cold. His head ached and his tongue felt several sizes too big for his mouth. Groaning, he rolled over – and fell to a floor just as cold and hard.
Lifting his head brought waves of nausea, not unlike a very bad stout hangover. He drew breath after breath, praying that his stomach would settle before he tried looking up again. When it did, what he saw offered little enlightenment.
Black stone walls gleamed dully in the light of a single overhead bulb protected by a steel cage. There was one door, metal and streaked with moisture. A stone bench, his recent bed, was built into the wall nearest him. In the corner was a sink and toilet, both filthy and battered. But when he looked up at the ceiling, his blood ran cold. Heavy steel rings were bolted there, chains of various lengths dangling from them, some with manacles attached.
Riki sat up and tried to think, wishing his head didn't pound so evilly. The last thing he remembered was sitting at the computer at home, working through Iason's household accounts. There had been a crashing sound at the front of the condo. Strangers had appeared in the door of the study as he had started to his feet.
In his mind's eye, the uniforms on the strangers suddenly came into focus. Grey – with a tiny sword against a cross. Templars! Jupiter's elite police!
Fuck. What would they want with him? He was a mongrel – dirt – way beneath the notice of those king-killers. It had to be Iason. That thought was even worse.
Leaning heavily on the bench, Riki managed to get to his feet. What kind of drugs had they given him? How long had he been out? On shaky legs, he crossed the cell to the door. A tug on the latch got him nowhere. Knees still uncertain, he sagged against the steel, and pounded on it with a feeble fist. His attempt at shouting ended in a croak.
Damn, but it was cold! He was barefoot and dressed in the lightweight shirt and loose trousers he'd been wearing in the warm condo. Weakly, he dropped to a crouch, arms wrapped tight around himself. It seemed like the chill was coming off the stone in waves.
Getting back to his feet, he laid his ear against the door and tried to hear something, anything. There was only silence.
If he were smart, he would go back and sit down and trust that whatever was going on, Iason would clear it up. But then, he was a mongrel, wasn't he? And mongrels weren't very smart. Angrily, Riki resumed pounding and shouting. This time, when he stopped and listened, he heard voices. Quickly he backed away. The door flew open.
Two men in dark grey uniforms stood outside. One man had his hand on his gun, the other held a force-whip. Templars, all right. Riki's stomach tightened, remembering every horrible story he'd ever heard about them.
"What do you want, scum?" The man with the whip flicked his thumb on the end of the handle and Riki saw a spark jump along the filament lash. He swallowed hard, but held his ground. "What's going on? Where am I? Where's Iason?"
"Iason? Who are you talking about?"
"Iason Mink," Riki replied. "I'm his pet. Why have you brought me here? Does he know where I am?"
The man with the whip sneered and lifted it threateningly. "Mink's pet? Right, scum. Shut your hole or we'll do it for ya!"
"You're Major Brand's prisoner," said the man with the gun. "If he wants you to know anything, he'll tell you."
"Brand?" Riki had never heard of Brand.
The man with the gun frowned, looking closer at Riki. "I have seen him before," he admitted suddenly. "In Midas. He's tellin' the truth."
"You're kidding? A mongrel? The pet of someone like Mink?"
Riki watched the gun lower just a fraction. "Yeah – on the vid, followin' him around to some restaurant or salon or somethin'. Ya know, I think I remember hearin' that Mink had a mongrel pet – and that he even fucks him. It was a big scandal."
"Well, it's easy enough to check, ain't it? You! Drop your pants."
Under the double threat of gun and whip, Riki fumbled at his trousers, but even as he did, he realized with a shock that he no longer felt the familiar constriction around the base of his penis. His hands trembled. Whip-man swore and took a meaningful step toward him. Hastily, Riki pulled his pants down around his hips.
"No ring."
"Hey. I know what I saw! Maybe Brand had it removed. I swear – I saw it on the vid – both of 'em together, him and Mink!"
"You don't say," Whip-man muttered, narrowing his eyes on Riki who hastily did up his pants, more apprehensive by the moment. Where was it? No one was supposed to be able to take off a pet ring but the owner. Or Jupiter.
"Wasn't there somethin' on the duty-sheet about stayin' clear of this cell?" Now Gun-man sounded uneasy.
Whip-man snorted and took a step toward Riki. "Yeah, so what? The orders didn't come from Simms, they came from this Brand guy."
"Brand's a major."
"Big deal. He can just waltz in here and take over? Last I checked, the captain was still in command of this base."
Gun-man scowled, but Whip-man took another step closer. He snapped the whip and sparks danced across the damp, black stone floor.
"A Blondie's pet." Whip-man grinned. "And not just any Blondie, neither. It ain't every day a piece like this lands in our laps."
"Charlie..." Gun-man said uneasily.
"Aw, c'mon, Rake. Ain't ya even curious?"
"He belongs to Iason Mink!"
"Maybe. Ain't no ring, right? Maybe Mink don't want him anymore. Ever think of that?"
Another snap. More sparks. Riki jumped. Gun-man scowled, but he was wavering. His weapon lowered a bit more.
"Can I talk to Major Brand?" Riki didn't like the look of that whip. He swallowed his fury and tried to adopt a more conciliatory expression.
Whip-man looked at his companion again, grinning. Then he turned his gaze back to Riki. "You wanna talk to the major?"
Riki's hair stood on end, recognizing that expression. Anger and dread tied his gut in knots. If Iason was in this situation, Riki thought, the Blondie would use reason. He'd look at the overall situation and see what he could use to his advantage.
Whip-man lashed the air, leaving more bright trails of light. "You wanna see Brand, then pay me," he growled. "Suck my dick."
"Charlie!" There was outrage in the other guard's voice.
"What?" Charlie scowled, shoving the whip at his startled partner.
"He's a mongrel!"
"Big deal. It ain't like he's bad-lookin'. He was good enough for Mink. He must have somethin'." Charlie unzipped his trousers while his companion stared at him, shocked. "C'mon, you! Get over here."
Riki struggled to keep his expression blank. Keep your temper. Look for opportunity. It's just a fucking blow job.
He'd given hundreds of them in his life, some for love, some for money, some – like this – because he had no choice. Head down, he walked over to the guard and dropped to his knees. He heard the rustle of cloth as the man hastily opened his pants.
"Open wide, slut."
Riki took a deep breath, steeling himself, then lifted his head. A thick, fully erect cock bobbed in front of him. From the corner of his eye, he saw the other guard staring at them, gun hand hanging at his side. Riki opened his mouth and took the cock. Charlie, however, was in no mood for finesse. He pushed, hard, one hand on the top of Riki's head, holding the mongrel still.
Riki choked as the organ slid over his palate and jammed against the back of his throat. Somehow, he managed to keep from retching. He closed his lips around it. Charlie's other hand came down on his shoulder as he braced himself against Riki for balance. When Riki began to suck, he groaned aloud.
"Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Damn."
Riki ran his tongue around the guard's rigid shaft the way Iason liked him to do it and felt Charlie lean into him a little harder. The mongrel brought his hands up, freeing the guard's balls from his uniform, caressing them.
"Sheez! Gah! You fuckin' whore! You know how to do it, don't ya! Yeah!"
And then Riki saw his opportunity.
It was near sunset and sleeting when Els and Draco arrived at the Fortress. They had been driving through wilderness since sun-up, miles of scrub and rock with occasional ropes of pipeline snaking across it. The storm caught them when they reached the coast, and now the visibility was down to nothing. All that Els could see through the window were occasional flashes of lightning.
The ride had been a long, rough one, but there had been no choice but to go overland. The atmosphere along this part of the coast was subject to frequent and unpredictable magnetic "ripples," an unwelcome by-product of the ongoing terraforming process. The Ripple Effect, as it was known, wreaked havoc on aircraft controls or electronic transmissions of any sort, making flight a perilous enterprise and satellite communication erratic.
"It's inconvenient," Draco had told Els, "but the ripples usually don't affect things on the planet's surface or we would have to walk."
The truck shook in a gust of wind. At least the interior was warm and dry. Wedged between Draco and the young soldier behind the wheel, Els tried to see something through the water sheeting down the windshield. He had a blurry view of massive black walls looming in their headlights, gleaming with wet, then the truck rolled through an enormous gate.
"It's almost a mile from one end of the Fortress to the other, and a half-mile across," Draco said, raising his voice slightly to be heard above the racket of the storm. "Plus it has it's own source of fresh water. It's not much for luxury, but it's damned defensible. During the rebellion, when things were looking bad for Jupiter, the Templars retreated here and it was here that we were finally able to regroup to launch the counteroffensive that turned the tide. The Ripple Effect prevented the rebels from being able to attack us from the air or intercept our communication transmissions."
"If they didn't use satellite, how did the Templars communicate?"
"Cable."
"Cable?"
Their driver, Ed, laughed. "Yeah. Talk about primitive, huh?"
"All communications went through cable when Amoi was first settled," Draco explained. "Back in those days, the entire atmosphere was afflicted with the magnetic ripples."
"Sometimes I think we should still use ours," said Ed with a snort. "Believe me, sir, nothing is more frustrating than to be watching your favorite program on the vid and to have the signal go out right in the best part!"
Flashes of lightning gave Els brief glimpses of buildings as they drove slowly through the narrow lanes, all of them multiple stories and of the same black stone. In some, lights were on, but mostly they were dark. Els remembered that this was a training academy now and only part of it was in use. According to Draco, there were eighty cadets and a couple dozen regular troops stationed here. In the building where he and Draco were assigned, for instance, there were only two other officers living, the base commander, Captain Simms, and his first lieutenant.
The truck turned, its windshield wipers swinging madly and mostly in vain, then finally stopped for good. "Here you are, sir," announced Ed.
Lightning bathed their surroundings in silver and Els saw a tall building beside them. Behind it was the even taller outer wall of the Fortress.
Thunder crashed and Els tried not to flinch. On a colony, you worried about ruptured hulls or failed ventilation units, not bolts of death coming out of the sky at random to strike you down.
Draco and Ed opened their doors. While the Blondie headed quickly toward the building, his pet and the soldier ran to the back of the truck and began hauling out the bags. Several under each arm, Els raced after Draco, bursting through the front door with a gasp.
His master stood nearby, peeling off his gloves and looking around. Draco's blond hair was plastered to his skull and his coat was wet, but otherwise, he seemed unaffected by the weather's fury. Els, teeth chattering, soaked through, dropped the bags and went outside for more.
By the time all the bags were in, Els was certain he would never be dry again. Dripping water on the polished stone floor, he followed Draco down a narrow hall to the elevators. Everything was well-kept and tidy, but the space was cramped compared to other places he'd seen in Amoi. Draco, being a Blondie and taller than normal men, had to stoop slightly when they passed through doorways. It was gloomy, too. The lights seemed to glare while doing very little to actually illuminate anything.
The elevator, creaking and swaying, took them to the top floor. There was another brief hallway with two doors, one on each side. Draco walked without hesitation to the one on the left and entered a code into the pad beside it. Pushing it open, he stepped inside. A light flickered on.
Els, stumbling under his load of baggage, stopped in his tracks and bit off an exclamation of dismay. On Erba, he'd had dreams of a fine Midas condo like those he saw in popular vids, with soaring ceilings and sweeping views of the city, but the room beyond was small and dingy. A sofa sat along one wall. There was an end-table beside it that leaned noticeably to one side. A long time ago, someone had painted the walls blue, but now they had faded to grey. The flooring – some kind of vinyl – was cracked. He could not resist at glance at Draco, but the Blondie seemed oblivious.
Leaving the bags in a heap, Els wandered into the rest of the apartment. There were a lot of rooms, he soon discovered, at least eight or nine, but every one was as small or smaller than their rooms back on the colony. Many were crammed with furniture, old and mismatched pieces that looked as if they had been brought from dozens of different places and left there.
Els also made the disconcerting discovery that there was no central heating. Instead, each room had a wall-mounted heater. He turned on the hot water in one of the bathrooms and stood for nearly five minutes before the icy stream warmed. Nor were there holo-walls, no way to create even the illusion of space. His eye caught a narrow power conduit running along the base of the wall, painted the same color as the plaster to make it inconspicuous.
"The Fortress is very old," Draco said, coming up behind him, making him jump. "It was standing here when our ancestors first arrived to terraform Amoi. They had to overlay the entire infrastructure – power lines, plumbing, heat, everything. The stone is extremely hard and building into the walls would have been prohibitively expensive and taken years."
Els looked up, astonished. "This place was here before we were? It's alien?"
Draco's lips twitched. "Don't be absurd. Of course not. Most likely it was left by some earlier, failed attempt at colonization, probably a ship from Terra's First Wave. If you look around outside, you'll find the foundations of what appears to have been an atmosphere dome. The Fortress is a fascinating historical artifact, but damned uncomfortable to live in." Draco turned back toward the front room. "With luck, we won't be here more than a few weeks."
Els silently echoed that hope.
"Captain Simms should be here in a few minutes. Bring him to me when he arrives."
"Can we turn on the heaters, sir?"
The Blondie's eye traveled up and down Els' shivering form. "By all means," he said. "And get out of those wet clothes."
"Yes, sir."
Els picked out a bedroom across from Draco's. It was hardly more than a closet, but his room on Erba had been no great size, either. He dug through the crates and boxes they had shipped earlier from the colony. Finding the few that held his things, he hauled them back to his room.
Turning the heater to full power, the pet peeled off his sodden suit and carefully hung it to dry. His hands lingered on the fabric wistfully before he turned to the box that held his more usual attire. Standing close to the warm air pouring from the heater, he fastened on the bit of black satin loincloth, then got to work.
He unpacked his clothes into the heavy, scarred old dresser that stood beside the bed. His art supplies fit perfectly into a battered trunk that had been shoved into the corner. Els remembered seeing a good table sitting in one of the corridors doing nothing but getting in the way. It would be a perfect drawing surface. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad here, and it wasn't like this was a permanent position, after all!
They had brought a bare minimum of belongings from Erba, not knowing what the Committee had planned. Most of the boxes contained things easily moved about, like entertainment disks, small decorative objects, linens and other personal items. If the assignment had been permanent, they would have sent for the rest of Draco's belongings later.
Still, it would be good to have some familiar things around them, even if they were only staying for awhile. Draco might find it easier to relax. A box in his arms, the boy paused by the door of the room Draco had chosen as his study. It stood slightly ajar. The Blondie was bent over something as he sat at the desk, boxes piled around him. The garish overhead light made his pale hair brighter than anything in the room.
How handsome he was, thought Els dreamily. Just staring at that perfect profile gave him pleasure. All Blondies were good looking; that was common knowledge. But Els knew that Draco was exceptional. His features were flawless, perfectly symmetrical and chiseled as if by a master sculptor's fine hand. His body had the power to quicken Els' pulse and to fill the pet's dreams with all kinds of impossible fancies.
He watched, careful to stay unobserved, as Draco set something on a shelf behind him. General Ko's holograph. Els smiled and quietly withdrew.
The apartment wasn't a complete dump, thankfully. The outer rooms had windows, big ones that would let in lots of light. Maybe, with water actually falling out of the sky here, they could keep potted plants just like in the spaceliner lobby. Their quarters were on the leeward side of the building, too, so even with the rain and the wind, when the heaters got going, the place warmed up nicely. He would have to get in flowers as soon as possible. Draco loved flowers and had them delivered regularly on Erba. Here on Amoi there were probably dozens of more kinds to choose from and they probably weren't nearly so expensive.
The door chime announced Captain Simms. A burly man with cropped black hair and a scar on one cheek, he looked Els over frankly when the pet let him in. "Heard the major brought a piece with him," the captain remarked. "Pretty little thing, aren't ya?"
"Thank you, sir. If you'll come this way, the major is expecting you."
Els was acutely aware of Simms' hot gaze on his mostly naked behind as he led the captain back to the study.
"Is there tea or wine or anything?" asked Draco as Simms' settled onto a box-crowded sofa.
"Tea, I think, sir."
Retreating to the kitchen, Els dug through containers until he found a kettle and the tea-box. Only one of the burners on the cooker worked.
The kitchen was cold. Els leaned over the kettle for its warmth and wondered how long would it take this Iason Mink to do what the Templars had ordered. He still found it shocking – and strangely exciting – that a Blondie would fall in love with a mongrel. There were lots of romantic stories about masters who fell in love with their pets and kept them forever, but everyone knew they were just stories. Now, suddenly, it had really happened. A master – a Blondie! – and a man who was not only a pet, but a mongrel!
The kettle whistled, startling Els out of his preoccupation. He found some vacuum-wrapped tea-biscuits among the boxes and carried his laden tray back to the study. The two men broke off talking. Again, Simms' stared openly at Els, eyes lingering on his loincloth. Els handed him the tea cup and retreated hastily to the tray. As he poured Draco's cup, he heard the buzz of a phone. Simms muttered and pulled one from his pocket. An instant later, he was on his feet, the cup tumbling from his knee to the floor, unheeded.
"Mink's already making his move!" said the captain tersely. "They're on the tarmac outside the gates!"
Draco said nothing, but he, too, jumped up and headed for the door, pushing a startled Els from his path.
"Sir!" cried Els, but they were already out of the room. The boy heard the front door slam, then silence. Heart thumping, Els went to clean up the spilled tea.