Hotbloods 5: Traitors

“Hey, let’s not bring religion into this!”

“How about all you junkyard waggleflappers focus on the auction, instead of mouthing off like stupid-ass geggers!” a third voice chimed in. “If you don’t have the dough, get out of the bakery, dudes!”

I looked at Navan as he moved away from the object. “What’s a waggleflapper?” I asked, smirking.

A startled gasp made me whirl around, and I found Kaido standing on the staircase. He’d evidently come down to pick up the last of his vials and the rest of his canister. The look of horror on his face was so comical I almost lost it.

“Riley, never speak that word aloud again!” he cried. “Navan, you should not permit a lady to hear such terrible things. What if she got confused and decided to repeat a word like that to someone like the queen, thinking it was some sort of compliment?”

“Sorry, Kaido. You weren’t supposed to hear that.” Navan chuckled.

“Yes, well, I did, and now I shall have to struggle to forget it!” Tutting loudly, he picked up the last of his things and returned upstairs, leaving us to the perils of the darkstar market and its vulgar language.

“So, what does waggleflapper mean?”

Navan grinned. “You don’t want to know. Just don’t repeat it to anyone you like.”

“Noted!”

“Ooh, this looks promising,” he said, pausing on an object that looked like an enormous Gatling gun.

“What is it?”

He peered closer. “It seems to be a cellular ray. It makes things bigger and smaller.”

I raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Do we really want to make the Titans any bigger than they already are?”

“Good point,” he agreed. “How about this?” He pointed to a panel that contained several pieces of armor, painted in bold colors and made from a leathery material. It didn’t seem too offensive, but I was starting to understand that most things on the darkstar market had slightly unusual origins.

“Is it some kind of special armor?”

“Yup. Looks like it’s made from the patchworked skin of a thousand enemies. Each color is a different species. It was stolen from the exhumed corpse of Arko the Twelfth, otherwise known as the Conqueror of Worlds.”

I made a face. “Not hard to guess what he was famous for. Would they like that kind of thing?”

“I think they’d love this kind of thing. They have a museum of war trophies, and I’m sure they’d be eager to add this to their collection.”

“Is it expensive?”

He nodded. “It’s pretty pricey, but we’ve got all that money on the pay device you and Ronad found. There’s more than enough on there.”

A particular auction panel caught my attention. It contained a chained-up mermaid on a video clip running on a loop, showing her thrashing around in a tiny tank, trying to get out. There was another image next to it of three cuffed creatures—they were small and fluffy looking, with cream-colored fur and cute black eyes peering out.

“They sell people on here?” I gasped.

“You can get anything on the darkstar market.” Navan grimaced. “Slaves, organs, weapons, pets, drugs… There’s a seller for everything, no matter how dark and debauched it might be.”

“What are they?” I asked, pointing to the furry creatures.

“They’re Sonorans—a peaceful race of forest-dwellers with a knack for sending people off to sleep,” he explained. “They’re the most trafficked species in the universe because their blood makes people feel relaxed and goofy. It’s used as a drug all over the place. The Feds have tried to protect them, but the traffickers always find a way around it. They’ve set up lunar farms to breed Sonorans in secret, and all sorts of crazy stuff like that.”

“And that’s really a mermaid?”

He nodded. “She must come from one of the water planets.”

“Do you think this is where Orion is getting his weapons from?” I wondered, looking at a row of nasty-looking guns and swords.

“Most likely. He’ll probably have a pickup location somewhere in your galaxy, where he’s arranged to collect his weapons. He won’t want any of the sellers discovering Earth, so he probably has another planet as his black-market depot.”

A prickle of anger rose in my chest. People bought and sold such awful things and thought nothing of it. If this was what joining the rest of the universe meant, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted Earth to catch up. Humans were bad enough to one another within the confines of a single planet—they didn’t need a universal playground to do even worse things.

As Navan typed something into a dialogue box connected to the patchwork armor, a torrent of abuse flooded the speakers. The other bidders were not happy that someone was moving in on their turf, though it didn’t sound like they had the money to win. Navan kept silent, refusing to join in with the trash talk. A timer counted down on the right-hand side of the auction panel. Five minutes, and a whole load of new expletives later, a star popped up on the screen, announcing him as the winner of the auction.

“You undercutting scumnugget!” one voice bellowed.

“You gonna prance around in it, wearing nothing but the nethers you were born with?” another taunted.

“I bet this dude’s a Rexombra—uppity waggleflapper! I hope it gives you the same virus that ended old Arko!” a third chimed in. “I hope it eats away at your—”

An audio call cut through the noise. Navan pressed the answer button, and a voice echoed out into the kitchen, though there was no video stream to show us what the seller looked like.

“You MorticiaAddams01?” a gruff voice asked. I stifled a giggle at hearing Mort’s choice of username said so seriously.

“I am,” Navan replied, glancing at me and lifting a finger to his lips.

“Where d’you want the item dropped off? Planet and location?”

“I’m in Southern Vysanthe. If you could drop it off by the small boathouse on the far side of Trossach Pond, that would be great.”

The seller grunted. “Yer item’s gonna take some time. I’d say three days, and I can get it to ya.”

That clashed with the day of the wedding. Navan glanced at me, a worried look on his face. Evidently, he didn’t think he could get away from Gianne and the threat of her alchemy lab so soon after the wedding itself. She’d be watching him like a hawk.

“That’s no good. I need the item sooner than that,” Navan insisted.

“Three days, or I’ll sell it to someone with less backchat,” he said. “Next bidder down’ll get your suit o’ armor. I don’t care, so long as there’re credits in me pocket.”

Navan grimaced. “Fine, then change the location to the groundskeeper’s hut beside the Decorum Churchyard, in Vysanthe.”

“Right y’are, mate. Glad you could see sense,” the seller replied, sounding pleased with himself. “Yer goods’ll be with you in three days, or I get nothin’. That’s the darkstar guarantee.” He chuckled, and the audio abruptly ended.

Navan looked solemn again as he logged out of the darkstar market and pushed the black box back into the middle of the table.

“As if that day isn’t going to be stressful enough,” he muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “If worst comes to worst, Ronad and I can go pick it up.”

He shook his head. “You never know what kind of sellers these guys will be. It’s too dangerous. He might try and run off with the pay device and take the armor with him. I don’t want to be worrying about you any more than I already am.”

I smiled, looping my arms around his neck. “Ronad and I will be fine. We’ll take whatever weapons Sarrask has, make the exchange, and be back in time for the throwing of the bouquet.”

“We don’t do that here,” he said, a small smile on his lips.

“Well then, you don’t know what you’re missing out on,” I joked. “Honestly, I can handle myself, and I’ll make sure to protect Ronad from any baddies that might come along.”