When Places Call Page 3
“Lead the way.”
They walked up the long staircase and through graceful halls painted in pastel colors. There were no decorations, no hints of personalization. The doors all looked the same, sturdy and wooden with a glossy sheen, all closed and most likely locked.
The butler let him into a room that was more lavish than Iguru was normally comfortable with. The bed was grand and the mirror was a large oval opulence set on the wall, but the palette was pastel and the decorations were lacking. It was almost as if the room had been left alone after construction, like the owner had picked the room out of some catalog and forgot about it after that.
“The balcony, sir,” the butler gestured to the end of the room.
The glass doors opened for him and the curtains fluttered aside to reveal a small balcony. Steam rose from piping hot pastries which sat on a low table. There were two chairs and enough pastries to share but he was quite alone.
Iguru cast a long shadow over the balcony, which was illuminated with soft bulbous lights that floated all on their own. The world outside was dark, dark in a way only space usually was. Iguru visited space ports and populated planets, never tiny little uninhabited rocks. To experience darkness on a planet was a thing of the past, a notion thousands of years old. Space was where one found darkness and quiet.
Except for here.
He took a seat and as if that was a cue, the lights from the room and from the balcony began to dim and he was soon isolated in darkness. It would have put him on edge, except that he could still hear the wind and feel it on his face, smell it as it swept by. For a second, he could almost understand why Kira would maroon himself out here.
He stayed out on the balcony as the sun began to rise. He hadn’t watched a sunrise from a planet since he was a child, and he had forgotten about the colors. It took him by surprise, how the entire sky changed. It was especially noticeable here, without pollution, air crafts and tall buildings dotting the horizon. It was so quiet Iguru could have been fooled that he was the only one on this planet, even when he knew that the capitol rested barely a mile away. It was unnatural.
The chair next to his remained empty throughout the entire sunrise and Iguru wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. When the sun was fully above the horizon he chanced a bite of a pastry. It tasted like real food, the good kind of food that he hadn’t indulged in for a while. Like most sweet breads, it was far too sugary for his liking. He put the pastry down and went back into the room.
Kira stood by the bed, arms folded, with his tiny ever present smile.
“Do you like the room?”
“If you were going to watch me, you might as well have just joined me,” Iguru said, more defensive than he had intended.
“I wasn’t watching you. I just arrived.”
Iguru glared at him and didn’t take a step further. Kira ran his hand down the bedspread.
“The room is yours, if you want it.”
“Pastel doesn’t agree with me.”
“It’s a standard guest bedroom, I didn’t realize the colors had to agree with you.”
Iguru folded his arms and wished he was back inside his ship, safely ensconced in his ratty blanket and lumpy pillow.
“It’s comfort that truly matters, right?” Kira continued.
Kira’s smile widened and he sat on the mattress. It dipped silently beneath his weight.
“I want my guests to be comfortable.”
His tone was polite, but the smile he sent Iguru’s way was tinged with suggestion. Iguru hadn’t had good food, good sleep or good comfort in a while. He could feel his heartbeat, stronger and more desperate, and Iguru wondered what it would be like to let go of caution and simply take. But he wasn’t that kind of pirate. What he wanted couldn’t be provided by stealing relics or stealing love.
He looked down at Kira, sneer on his face. Kira stood up slowly, gliding into place so that their chests almost touched. With a single finger, Kira traced the lapel of his jacket and curled one strand of Iguru’s long, dark hair around his finger.
“You’re a space pirate, yet you want nothing for yourself.”
Iguru grasped his hand and pulled it away from his hair. He squeezed, as if meaning to crush, but his chest was full of a warm, boiling sensation and he wanted. It didn’t help that Kira looked good bathed in sunrise, in colors that couldn’t be found in space.
“I just want to be left alive and get back out there,” he said.
“You’re a lucky man Iguru Halk, I’m not in the habit of killing people.”
Kira raised his other hand to gently brush Iguru’s cheek.
“If you need to shave you can use the attached bathroom,” his tone was back to business, “the butler will guide you to Ananke’s hangar if you want to see her.”
Kira turned to leave and Iguru let his hand go without putting up a fight. Kira was out the door in seconds and Iguru was left standing alone still dealing with the last swells of arousal.
“Infuriating,” he grunted.
His cheek still burnt with the memory of Kira’s touch.
The house had changed yet again. The hallway outside his room was paneled with dark wood and the wallpaper was pale cream, the color of Kira’s skin. He wondered if the entire bedroom and bathroom had been redecorated now as well, but he didn’t care enough about color patterns to check.
Iguru had taken the time to groom himself in the bathroom, had re-braided his long dark hair and washed his face. His skin was dark and shiny like the paneled wood, but was marked in ways the wood was not. Tiny cuts and burns littered his face, which made him unpretty despite his slender nose and thick eyelashes.
“Would you like to be taken to Ananke’s hangar?”
Iguru jumped and curtailed the desire to lash out; the voice was that of the butler and he wasn’t a threat. Not yet. Iguru nodded and followed the butler through a house that had completely been redone.
Even the hangar looked different with Ananke inside, swarmed by a small contingent of robotic help. Kira surveyed the ship with casual pride, head cocked to the side just a little. His hands were clasped behind his back, fingers drumming into the air.
“Diagnostics confirm that Ananke is safe to enter and dismantle. I am pleased you left no surprises for me.”
“It was in my job description to get rid of any such surprises.”
“Yes, I’m aware, I wrote the job description myself. I have hired other pirates who liked to leave a little parting gift for me, however.”
“I don’t like presents.”
Kira laughed and Iguru ignored that he said that just to make him to.
Kira gestured him towards the ship, “Guests first.”
Iguru snorted and approached the shuttle doors. Kira’s hacking bots had already disengaged the lock. Iguru tugged the circular handle left, right, then left again before finally pressing down. The shuttle door acquiesced and Iguru immediately went to the onboarding console and engaged the work lights.
Kira stood just outside the door and peered in, “You know these types of ships very well.”
“If you’ve seen one EIF ship, you’ve seen them all.”
“Well this one, I assure you, is very different.”
Kira stepped inside. He looked around, prim and proper as if he was in a museum.
“We shall start here.”
Kira ran his fingers lightly over a console. The ship was small and tubular and the quarters were cramped and designed to be efficient. Relays and screens were located on both long ends of the ship and crawled up the walls and overhead, as if the occupants were going to be working without a gravity simulator.
“Very heavy shielding and reinforcement,” Kira muttered to himself.
His hands lightly dusted over everything in small reverent touches.
“She must have been a dream to fly, look at that efficient core!”
Iguru said nothing. Her true powers rested not in her core, but in her data
banks.
Kira’s hands paused, “What a strange fate.”
Iguru shuffled closer, curious despite himself. Kira smoothed a thumb over an engraving: when places call you from a distant tide, an explorer's restless call cannot be denied.
“Turobeck,” Iguru said, surprised, “‘When Places Call’.”
He wondered who had authorized that inscription. Iguru had been the one to deem Ananke plausible, had etched his life into her equations and blueprints. But he had…left…before construction could actually begin.
“You know poetry?”
Iguru grunted indistinctly.
“I have a library if you wish to use it. Turbeck features in my collection.”
“I steal the files of books I want.”
“I’m sure you do, but I don’t keep files, I keep books. The originals. On paper.”
“I thought paper only existed on Boes.”
Kira laughed, “You’re very funny.”
He closed his eye when he laughed, but the red one remained open, fixed upon Iguru. Iguru had stared down fiercer opponents, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted to look away. Kira, meanwhile, moved on from the curious etching and began to explore the databases. All Iguru saw was routine data taken during most scientific explorations – planet stats, nebula observations, categorization of foreign moons. It seemed to be a scouting ship, nothing more.
Kira looked vaguely pleased, scouring through the information as if enjoying a science lesson. He was painted in the colors of space: the grey darkness of the cabin, the bluish light from the screens, and the greenish tint from the work lights. He looked good in those colors. Perhaps he looked