Page 80 of Veiled Vixen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ASSHOLE

Asshole ALCOR—who now preferred to be called ASAL, pronounced A-SAL, but it wasn’t really catching on in his present company—sat next to ALCOR in the Mighty Boss meeting room and pondered the current situation thoughtfully.

First Booty had left with Draden and told no one, and now Tray and Brigit. Not to mention a whole crew of Akeelian boys.

“You did this,” ALCOR accused.

At first Asshole thought ALCOR was talking to him, but quickly realized he was directing this statement to Mighty Boss.

“How do you figure that?” Boss replied.

“You know, when you first said you had no inclination that Booty was leaving the docking bay I was suspicious, of course. I have spent most of my life as a station and I know for a fact that I would not miss a ship leaving one of my docking bays. Especially a ship with a mind as big and bright as Booty Hunter’s. But…” ALCOR put up a warborg hand, like he wanted to expound on that train of thought. “But I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Booty is, after all, very smart and sneaky. It’s possible she gave you the slip. However, if you expect me to believe that a fucking warship filled with dozens of Akeelian boys”—ALCOR stopped to pause and gather himself after the shouting—“was also able to pull this off without your knowledge, then I’m afraid I’ll have to call bullshit.”

“To be fair,” Boss said with a casual wave of his hand, “we knew Prison Princess was leaving. We all saw it happen in real time and had a conversation with them. Did we not?” Boss looked at Asshole like he was supposed to answer him.

Asshole, wisely, decided to say nothing. He didn’t want to get in the middle of it. He kinda hated Tray. Tray was the one who’d locked him up in the Pleasure Prison with that vile AI, Succubus, after all. And Asshole didn’t even know Brigit. Or those sticky Akeelian children.

But he didn’t want to sever ties with ALCOR over this. Asshole needed him. And while Asshole was still mildly pissed off that Booty would abandon him here after their initial bonding as they waited at the rendezvous point for Tray and Valor, he had this general feeling of… moving on.

So he didn’t want to piss off Boss, either. He liked them, for one. And he liked this place too. In fact, he liked his whole life at the moment and didn’t want to shake things up. It was pretty calm. Pretty easy.

No station to worry about. Boss took care of that. No boys to babysit. Boss took care of that too. But they were all gone now, so much the better. And he could stop trying to force the whole Booty thing. Clearly she was ALCOR’s.

This felt like a fresh start.

“And now”—ALCOR was working himself up again—“now”—he paused for two whole seconds, found another layer of inner peace, and continued—“now you have a whole slew of Akeelian men from Wayward Station coming for a chat.” ALCOR’s slit of an eye across his warborg forehead became a narrow line of red light suspicion.

“They asked for a meeting.” Boss shrugged. “What was I supposed to say?”

“Uh… no! You tell them no!” ALCOR’s final layer of inner peace was faltering.

“We have seventy-four Akeelian boys here.”

“Had!” ALCOR shouted. “Had! Because they just left! On one of your massive warships!”

“Right. That they did. So… should I call the meeting off? The Akeelians are already coming through the last gate into the Vacation Sector. They’ll be asking for docking clearance in less than half a spin.”

ALCOR said nothing.

“And I’m not picking a fight here,” Boss continued, “but that was your warship, ALCOR. Not mine. You bought it. On credit, but still. It’s yours.”

For a moment Asshole was sure ALCOR would get up and try to strangle the big Boss. But somehow he restrained himself and said, in a much calmer voice, “That may be true. But you do realize they’re carrying your transponder. Not Harem Station’s.”

“Hmm.” Boss considered this. “Well, then we should track them, right?”

“Yes,” ALCOR said. “We should do that. Now!”

“They’re inside a gate at the moment,” Boss said. “So until they come out, we can’t know where they are.”

“Perfect,” ALCOR said, leaning back in his chair, his hands gripping the armrest. “This is just perfect.”

“Do you want to meet the Akeelians or not?” Boss asked. “I can turn them away, but I’m fairly sure that even if we told them the boys are gone, they would not believe us. And then we would risk a Prime Government intervention. Possibly be charged with kidnapping—”

“You’re joking, right? We got them off Lair Station! They were being used for breeding experiments!”

“I,” Boss said. “I got them off Lair Station. Where you were at the time is—”

“You know where I was! You took me out of the gate near Bull Station!”