Anlek woke with a groan as the alarm clock blared in his ears. Apparently he'd fallen asleep in the floor, though he had no recollection of even entering the hotel. I hope I wasn't an asshole to the front help, he thought to himself. But then, this was Isis, they were probably plenty used to assholes. To his surprise, he saw the pale, pantsless form of Reynard sprawled across his bed, sheets wrapped around him in such a way that it looked like he'd lost a fight with them.
The Eckoli rose stiffly and shuffled across the hotel room, poking Reynard in the back with his least pointy hand. The boy woke, emitting a string of nonsense words, his glasses wrenched sideways across his face. Finally he sat up, blinked a few times, and rose, finding his clothing.
Anlek laughed. “Well good morning, sunshine. Do you really think you should wear yesterday's clothes to our meeting with the Don?”
Reynard blinked again, regaining a further measure of consciousness. “Oh yeah, that,” he said, and headed for his suitcase, propped open next to the bathroom door. “You don't look like you slept too great, Anlek.”
Anlek grunted. “Neither did you. So, did you find Frankie last night?”
Reynard answered with a sheepish grin. “Yeah. I did. I found her at her apartment, we went out for a few drinks and talked for a while.”
Anlek met Reynard's gaze, a gesture that always unnerved the human. “So, ah, did you . . . “
Reynard shook his head a little too vehemently, his glasses threatening to fly away. “No, we didn't.” Reynard was donning a collared shirt at this point, and seemed to be making extra effort to keep the collar smoothed against the left side of his neck. Underneath the pallor of sleep deprivation, he was turning a rosy shade of pink.
Anlek nodded—a gesture he'd learned purely from being around humans for so many years. “I'm glad to hear it, Reynard.”
The boy cocked his head at Anlek. “Really? I was kind of counting on you making fun of me for being so timid.” Anlek shook his head at this.
“No. Frankie's actually worth your time, which means she's worth taking time over. I don't really understand your disgusting mating rituals or anything, but I know when a human being is worth a damn. You get ONE point of respect from me, Reynard. Don't squander it.”
Reynard smiled. “Yeah. Okay. For the record though, I don't understand your peoples' disgusting mating rituals either--”
“Hey! That is not disgusting, we have a symbiotic relationship with the varin beasts. They were made for incubation.”
Reynard turned green. “That . . . I didn't want to know that at all.”
Anlek passed the now fully dressed Reynard on his way to the door. “Nah, I'm just messin' with you. We pretty much fuck just like you guys.”
“I'm not sure that makes me any happier,” Reynard muttered under his breath, shouldering his bag of equipment and shutting the hotel door.
A short cab drive later, the two arrived at the Sunside Airport, a pyramidal structure with a number of airships docked onto terminals all over its surface. The smaller airships of the Mafia's fleet huddled beside commercial ships on the bottom tiers of the shining black ziggurat, more easily able to lift off from a lower position. The farther one went up the structure, the larger the the airships were—from yacht-sized pleasure cruisers to flying shopping malls to airborne casinos and bordellos—until one finally reached the top tier. Moored on a small pedestal was the Firenza, a marvel of engineering and carefully polished titanium. The airship itself was a good quarter larger than the next ship in the fleet, and contained a shopping mall, casino, luxury hotel, botanical gardens, even a menagerie of rare Terran animals that the CA reclamation projects had actually managed to breed. Anlek and Reynard spent what seemed like a half an hour traversing the inside of the Sunside Airport before finally reaching the glass-sided elevator that sped its way up through the center of the building.
Had the two been paying closer attention, rather than bickering about whether or not they were late to a meeting with the most powerful man on the planet, they might have noticed a few interesting things. As they made their way past the South point news kiosk, they might have noticed a man in a brown suit dropping his Com3 device, only to thank one of the custodial staff for picking the device up and pocketing it. They might have noticed the same janitor retreating into a side corridor to make a call, or even thought it odd that a man only a few hundred feet away shut off his Com3 at the exact moment that the janitor did. Though his movements were subtle, they might have been vaguely suspicious when a fourth man, this one dressed for business and seemingly in an incredible hurry, thumbed his watch and quickly swiped a scanner across Reynard's briefcase. They would definitely have remarked to one another on why someone in such a great rush should have such a pleased expression on his face.
“I keep telling you it's fine, Anlek,” Reynard said as the elevator began to rise. “The place was bigger than we expected and we can apologize to this Ennis lady when we get there. Calm down.”
Reynard didn't have to tell Anlek twice. He had been ignoring the boy since the elevator started moving. From up here it was easy to see the intended layout of the Sunside Airport's main atrium. Fountains, mosaic tiles, greenery, and strategically-placed kiosks and cafes had all been expertly arranged to form a pefect picture of the nation of Italy, the Mafia's home island Sicily nearly touching the tip of its southern peninsula. Anlek made the Eckoli approximation of a whistle, then nudged Reynard. “Hey, shut up for three seconds and look at that.”
Reynard squinted, adjusting his glasses. “Why the hell does the floor plan look like a boot?”
Anlek sighed. “I'm pretty damn sure I taught you better than that, boy. That's ITALY. You know, like, from Earth? It's where the mafia was born.”
Reynard smiled impishly. “Yeah, I really couldn't stand Terran history. I overlaid the teaching program you gave me with pictures of naked ladies I swiped off that guy Rennish's hard drive.”
“Reynard, you got perfect grades in history. It was your best subject.”
“Yeah, I hacked your computer and stole your test answers.”
“Fuck you, Reynard. Fuck you.”
A few minutes later, after taking on passengers at separate levels, the elevator sped up to astronomical speeds, and the two found themselves looking out onto the grand chamber of the Firenza. If the airport had been amazing, the airship was breathtaking. The stern of the ship was filled with attractions and businesses, but the bow was one large chamber crisscrossed with clear walkways. Below that, a crystal-clear glass bottom stretched nearly from port to starboard. Reynard found himself inhaling sharply at the sight of it as the two disembarked from the elevator and, checking holographic maps hanging every hundred feet or so, made their way around the outside of the ship on a moving walkway toward the conference facilities located just aft of the control complex. Anlek adjusted his ubiquitous gun and polished a smudge off of his carapace as the heavy doors to the board room loomed closer. Reynard chose that moment to look down, nearly missing the last step off of the walkway. Currently the view from the airship faced directly down onto the Sunside Airport. From what he'd heard, the Firenza took shorter flights most days, but once a week did a full circuit of the moon, traversing Arcadia City and on across the uninhabited mountains of the dark side, then back across the golf course- and amusement park-strewn countryside of the light side. It would be the perfect time to work on his new masterpiece, and he quietly hoped that the ship was disembarking for its worldwide trip during the next couple of days.
“Good morning, chumps.” Reynard jumped at least three inches into the air at the sound of the familiar voice, and turned with what must have been a less than polite expression on his face, only to see Elise standing behind him. The woman was without her sunglasses, and Reynard noted with a detached, ill feeling that her eyes were green today when they had been blue the day before.
Anlek recovered with greater speed than his partner. “Good morning, Elise. Here to see my friend impress the Don?”
Elise smirked. “Not really, no. I'm here to be your concierge for the remainder of your trip.”
“What--” Reynard started, then forced himself to begin again. “What happened to the Ennis woman they told us to meet?”
Luciano chose this moment to emerge from the polished wood door of the conference room, shrugging apologetically. “Good morning, boys. Sorry, Miss Ennis had some urgent matters to attend to on the nightside, and had to join her partners for a time. Elise here will be happy to assist you. As a matter of fact, she volunteered for the job.”
Elise laughed. “What Luci means is that Ennis's partners blew more shit up and he had to send her to rein them in. I'll be happy to see to it that you remain productive and at least marginally comfortable during your trip.” She waved toward the conference room. “Shall we?”
Luciano clapped Anlek and Reynard on their respective shoulders and beckoned them forward, a look of contrition on his face. “I'm sorry about that,” he muttered. “I think you'll see why she has me at her disposal in a moment.” He opened the door to the conference room, and waved them in. “I'd say it's about time the two of you meet Don Carlo.”
No comments:
Post a Comment