Overseer Tem was a gross reminder of the place pixens held in society. He was old, fat, with a permanent sneer and beady, hateful eyes. Vanity had required him to dye his hair back to its original purple shade, but he hadn't bothered to do anything about the graying of his body hair, of which he had quite a lot. He wore a solid gold codpiece over his speedo, and he'd paid considerable money to make sure the body glitter covering his sagging flesh would stay in place as he moved. Earrings full of gemstones dangled from pointed ears that drooped from the extra weight. Worst of all, his blue skin was mottled and splotchy, a telltale sign of flox addiction.
Yvian assumed he had been handsome, once. The Pleasure Guilds never employed anyone who wasn't. Tem had followed orders and kissed ass and worked his way up the ranks until he was the highest ranked pixen in Trelg space. That still put him below anyone that wasn't a pixen, but it also gave him license to lord it over his own kind. As long as Overseer Tem obeyed the Guild, he could do whatever he wanted with the pixens under his employ. Yvian didn't have to imagine what a man like him would do with his modicum of power. She'd seen it before. More times than she liked to think about.
Overseer Tem had a modest office on the second level of Fico Station, near the Guild Headquarters. It was garishly furnished, with loud colors and proud depictions of female pixens in the nude. He sat behind a fancy metal desk with a large potted fern sitting next to it. Six heavily muscled pixens stood behind him.
Tem's bodyguards were handsome, perfectly manicured, and clearly not very bright. Roid enhanced muscles bulged under crossed arms. Each of them had a belt strapped over their short shorts. The belts held a blaster pistol on one side, and compliance club on the other. Six sets of eyebrows furrowed slightly as the bullyboys tried to look threatening. There was a time when the men would have terrified Yvian, but now? She was having trouble taking them seriously.
"There is no New Pixa," Tem glowered at Yvian's sister with bushy brows. As the only member of the crew with people skills, Lissa acted as Pixa's Official Representative. She stood before the Overseer in tight fitting black void armor, but she'd removed her helmet to reveal large violet eyes, perfectly pointed ears, and a cascade of silky green hair. Her skin was a lighter shade of blue than the Overseer's, and shone with health under the harsh florescent lighting of Tem's office.
Yvian stood a little behind her and to the right, wearing her helmet. To the left stood Captain Mims. The Captain was tall, lean, and predatory. Even standing still, he gave off an air of quiet menace, like a Vrrl waiting to pounce. He wore the same armor as Lissa and Yvian, and the silver visor of his helmet hid the terrifying visage of a human.
"There is," Lissa countered. "You've seen the scans. You've read the N-mails. There are pixens living there now."
"There are not." Tem was firm. "Scans and N-mails can be faked. There have been no livestreams, no face to face contact, no proof that what you say is true." Despite his ridiculous appearance, the Overseers voice was forceful and confident. "Our Homestar is gone. Has been gone for four hundred years. To claim otherwise is a deceit and a blasphemy."
Yvian grimaced. It had been six months since they'd opened Pixa to habitation. No, she corrected herself. New Pixa. The other pixens had objected to calling the planet by the name of their original homeworld. She'd expected a flood of immigrants, a great wave of her people taking their rightful place on the new world. Instead they'd received a trickle. Only the most desperate of pixens had risked making the move. Barely ten thousand. Enough to start a colony perhaps, but a far cry from the three hundred million living under the yoke of the Confederation.
"There will be," Lissa assured the man. "For now we have to maintain information security. You know what will happen if the Confed gets the nav data to find our planet."
"That's worse than if it was faked," the Overseer sneered. "You're suggesting we open ourselves up to being conquered. It will be The Darkening all over again."
"We've already been conquered," Lissa snapped. "Look around." She gestured at the Overseers small office. He was the most powerful pixen in the country, and he didn't even rate a receptionist. "We're not citizens. We're exploited. The Confed keeps us poor, ignorant, and under the thumb of the Guilds. Every year they take more of us. Make us slaves. If we don't do something, in another century there won't be any of us left."
"And if we move to your fake fucking planet, we'll die out sooner." Overseer Tem leaned forward. "You think you can come here and tell us what's what, but you're not even a fucking pixen. Look at you. You came here with a human. Worse," he pointed at Yvian. "You brought a motherless onto this station. I should kill all three of you right now."
Yvian bristled, but Lissa silenced her with a look. The Captain didn't react at all. The Overseer continued, addressing Yvian directly. "The fucking nerve you have, coming here. You're an outcast. A pariah. Your own mother disowned you." He turned back to Lissa. "That you would even associate yourself with this filth makes you as low as she is. No one trusts you. No one's going to risk everything on the word of a piece of shit. The Bright Lady herself could endorse your fake planet, and we still wouldn't come."
Lissa's eyes narrowed. "The human is hired muscle, and Yvian is more of a pixen than you are."
"If you really believe that," the Overseer snorted, "than you're even stupider than she is." He stood. "But maybe there's a way you could convince me." He moved his ponderous, glitter clad bulk around the desk. "Maybe you could show me you're a true daughter of Pixa." He reached out, tracing the back of his finger down Lissa's face. "Show me you know what pixens are for." He leaned a little closer. An ugly leer formed as he looked her up and down. "What do you say?"
Lissa met the Overseer's eyes for a long, pregnant moment. Then her fist shot out. Tem's nose shattered with a satisfying crunch. The man fell back, crashing against his desk.
The six bullyboys standing by reacted. Three of them reached for their blasters. Two of them stared in shock. The last one, the smartest by far, began to raise his hands in surrender. None of them had time to finish their motions.
Mims moved so quickly it wasn't even a blur. Six shots flared from his pistol in under a second. Yvian had barely put a hand on her own blaster by the time he finished firing. Six white lances of light struck the bullyboys. They crumpled. They'd been lucky. The human had decided to use his stunshot instead of the regular blaster.
The human still held his stunshot at hip height, watching the bodyguards fall. Satisfied, he spun the pistol into its holster and resumed his motionless vigil. Yvian remembered when she and Lissa had made fun of the man for insisting they learn to quickdraw. They'd accused him of watching too many of his human "western" movies. Yvian wasn't laughing, now. It was the scariest thing she'd ever seen him do, and she'd seen a lot. She promised herself she would practice more.
The Overseer stared in shock for a moment. He rose slowly, hands closing into fists. Yvian had expected fear. Instead she saw rage. "If you think-"
Lissa's quickdraw was far less impressive than the human's. It took her over a second to draw and fire two shots. She also missed. One bolt hit Tem's shin three inches below his right knee. The other struck an inch above his left. The Overseer yelled a curseword as he fell. He glared up at the woman.
"You think this fucking scares me?" The old man growled. "I worked my way up through the Guild. You can't imagine the things I've been through." Now that he was closer, Yvian could see his mottled skin was not entirely the result of flox abuse. Old, faded scars crisscrossed their way up and down his body. Cuts. Burns. Some of the lines complete encircled his arms and legs, mute evidence of reattached limbs. Some of the circles were jagged, indicating the med techs had done a poor job. The man probably lived in constant and chronic pain. A few hours in a proper med-pod would fix those issues and remove the scars, but pixens weren't given that level of medical care.
Yvian's assessment of the man grudgingly went up a notch. He was cruel, arrogant, and a traitor to his people, but he wasn't weak. There weren't many pixens that could stay calm near a human, and even fewer that wouldn't cower after being shot. "You stupid prude! This is nothing!"
Lissa holstered her blaster, regarding the Overseer with a detached expression. "I think you've got the wrong idea." She bundled her hair and slid her helmet on over it. "We didn't come here to start a debate with you. We didn't come to negotiate." She put her hands on her hips and bent forward, bringing her visor a third of a meter from the wounded man's face. "We came to issue a threat."
"Your threats don't mean shit," the Overseer spat.
"We're not threatening you," she told him. "You don't matter." Lissa looked up to the small camera in one corner of the Overseer's office. "I know you can hear me."
"You prudish-" Tem started to say. Lissa shot him again. "You fucking bitch!"
Lissa shot him a fourth time. "Shut up." The man glared up at her, but held his peace. Lissa turned back to the camera. "I don't care what you say about New Pixa. If you want to discourage people, that's fine. Lie all you want."
Yvian's comm chirped. She checked her wrist console. It was a message from Kilroy. He'd stayed on the ship, monitoring the situation and watching their back. The message read: STRIKE TEAM IMMINENT. THIRTY UNITS. POWER ARMOR. ETA NINETY SIX SECONDS.
Lissa and Mims received the same message. Lissa glanced at hers, then continued. "What we will not tolerate are threats and violence. You have been attacking our citizens, terrorizing anyone who speaks of New Pixa. Worse, you've taken some of them into slavery."
The various Pleasure Guilds had all reacted to the news that pixens had their own planet in different ways. Most of them were ignoring it, since very few of their pixen employees had actually tried to leave. The Krog Guild had responded by increasing pixen pay and offering benefits, mostly because King Tallest wanted to keep his pixens without antagonizing Mims and company, since they were the Heroes of Krog Prime. The Trelg were conservative and highly religious, disdaining the pixens and publicly shaming those who used their services. It was no surprise their first recourse was a terror campaign.
"This will not be allowed to continue," said Lissa. "The ships taking our people to slave processing stations are already being intercepted." Peacekeeper units, sentient machines like Kilroy, would be hitting the Guild ships within the hour. Yvian was still nervous about making Synthetic Intelligences citizens, but she couldn't deny their effectiveness. The pixens would be rescued. There would be no mistakes, and no survivors among their captors.
"We are not a corporation or a Guild," Lissa continued her speech. "We are a sovereign nation, and every pixen is a citizen." She kicked the Overseer in his flabby belly. "Even this piece of shit. If you mistreat our people again, we will come back, and we will kill you. Not your guards. Not your employees. You." She pointed at the camera.
Yvian wondered what the Guild Executives were thinking. She doubted anyone had ever dared to threaten them before. The Guild was wealthy, and wealth was power in the Confederation. The rich did as they pleased, and consequences were unheard of. Most likely they were a mix of outraged and incredulous.
"We will kill every Guild Executive, and every member of the Board." Lissa lowered her hand. "This is your one and only warning. Continue to cross the Pixen Technocracy, and we will erase you from the verse."
"You've signed your own slave papers, you stupid bitch," Overseer Tem spat. "The Guild is going to-"
Lissa shot him a fifth time. This time she used a stunshot. "I told you to shut up," she reminded him.
Yvian's comm chimed again. STRIKE TEAM ETA THIRTY SECONDS.
Lissa holstered her pistol, and drew the plasma assault rifle that had been attached to her back. "I know you don't believe us. You think you can't be touched. You think pixens are weak. You don't think we've got the balls even if we had the capability." Yvian could hear her smile. "You're stupid and you're wrong, but I'm feeling generous. I'll help you. Here's just a little taste of what a pixen can do."
Overseer Tem was a gross reminder of the place pixens held in society. He was old, fat, with a permanent sneer and beady, hateful eyes. Vanity had required him to dye his hair back to its original purple shade, but he hadn't bothered to do anything about the graying of his body hair, of which he had quite a lot. He wore a solid gold codpiece over his speedo, and he'd paid considerable money to make sure the body glitter covering his sagging flesh would stay in place as he moved. Earrings full of gemstones dangled from pointed ears that drooped from the extra weight. Worst of all, his blue skin was mottled and splotchy, a telltale sign of flox addiction.
Yvian assumed he had been handsome, once. The Pleasure Guilds never employed anyone who wasn't. Tem had followed orders and kissed ass and worked his way up the ranks until he was the highest ranked pixen in Trelg space. That still put him below anyone that wasn't a pixen, but it also gave him license to lord it over his own kind. As long as Overseer Tem obeyed the Guild, he could do whatever he wanted with the pixens under his employ. Yvian didn't have to imagine what a man like him would do with his modicum of power. She'd seen it before. More times than she liked to think about.
Overseer Tem had a modest office on the second level of Fico Station, near the Guild Headquarters. It was garishly furnished, with loud colors and proud depictions of female pixens in the nude. He sat behind a fancy metal desk with a large potted fern sitting next to it. Six heavily muscled pixens stood behind him.
Tem's bodyguards were handsome, perfectly manicured, and clearly not very bright. Roid enhanced muscles bulged under crossed arms. Each of them had a belt strapped over their short shorts. The belts held a blaster pistol on one side, and compliance club on the other. Six sets of eyebrows furrowed slightly as the bullyboys tried to look threatening. There was a time when the men would have terrified Yvian, but now? She was having trouble taking them seriously.
"There is no New Pixa," Tem glowered at Yvian's sister with bushy brows. As the only member of the crew with people skills, Lissa acted as Pixa's Official Representative. She stood before the Overseer in tight fitting black void armor, but she'd removed her helmet to reveal large violet eyes, perfectly pointed ears, and a cascade of silky green hair. Her skin was a lighter shade of blue than the Overseer's, and shone with health under the harsh florescent lighting of Tem's office.
Yvian stood a little behind her and to the right, wearing her helmet. To the left stood Captain Mims. The Captain was tall, lean, and predatory. Even standing still, he gave off an air of quiet menace, like a Vrrl waiting to pounce. He wore the same armor as Lissa and Yvian, and the silver visor of his helmet hid the terrifying visage of a human.
"There is," Lissa countered. "You've seen the scans. You've read the N-mails. There are pixens living there now."
"There are not." Tem was firm. "Scans and N-mails can be faked. There have been no livestreams, no face to face contact, no proof that what you say is true." Despite his ridiculous appearance, the Overseers voice was forceful and confident. "Our Homestar is gone. Has been gone for four hundred years. To claim otherwise is a deceit and a blasphemy."
Yvian grimaced. It had been six months since they'd opened Pixa to habitation. No, she corrected herself. New Pixa. The other pixens had objected to calling the planet by the name of their original homeworld. She'd expected a flood of immigrants, a great wave of her people taking their rightful place on the new world. Instead they'd received a trickle. Only the most desperate of pixens had risked making the move. Barely ten thousand. Enough to start a colony perhaps, but a far cry from the three hundred million living under the yoke of the Confederation.
"There will be," Lissa assured the man. "For now we have to maintain information security. You know what will happen if the Confed gets the nav data to find our planet."
"That's worse than if it was faked," the Overseer sneered. "You're suggesting we open ourselves up to being conquered. It will be The Darkening all over again."
"We've already been conquered," Lissa snapped. "Look around." She gestured at the Overseers small office. He was the most powerful pixen in the country, and he didn't even rate a receptionist. "We're not citizens. We're exploited. The Confed keeps us poor, ignorant, and under the thumb of the Guilds. Every year they take more of us. Make us slaves. If we don't do something, in another century there won't be any of us left."
"And if we move to your fake fucking planet, we'll die out sooner." Overseer Tem leaned forward. "You think you can come here and tell us what's what, but you're not even a fucking pixen. Look at you. You came here with a human. Worse," he pointed at Yvian. "You brought a motherless onto this station. I should kill all three of you right now."
Yvian bristled, but Lissa silenced her with a look. The Captain didn't react at all. The Overseer continued, addressing Yvian directly. "The fucking nerve you have, coming here. You're an outcast. A pariah. Your own mother disowned you." He turned back to Lissa. "That you would even associate yourself with this filth makes you as low as she is. No one trusts you. No one's going to risk everything on the word of a piece of shit. The Bright Lady herself could endorse your fake planet, and we still wouldn't come."
Lissa's eyes narrowed. "The human is hired muscle, and Yvian is more of a pixen than you are."
"If you really believe that," the Overseer snorted, "than you're even stupider than she is." He stood. "But maybe there's a way you could convince me." He moved his ponderous, glitter clad bulk around the desk. "Maybe you could show me you're a true daughter of Pixa." He reached out, tracing the back of his finger down Lissa's face. "Show me you know what pixens are for." He leaned a little closer. An ugly leer formed as he looked her up and down. "What do you say?"
Lissa met the Overseer's eyes for a long, pregnant moment. Then her fist shot out. Tem's nose shattered with a satisfying crunch. The man fell back, crashing against his desk.
The six bullyboys standing by reacted. Three of them reached for their blasters. Two of them stared in shock. The last one, the smartest by far, began to raise his hands in surrender. None of them had time to finish their motions.
Mims moved so quickly it wasn't even a blur. Six shots flared from his pistol in under a second. Yvian had barely put a hand on her own blaster by the time he finished firing. Six white lances of light struck the bullyboys. They crumpled. They'd been lucky. The human had decided to use his stunshot instead of the regular blaster.
The human still held his stunshot at hip height, watching the bodyguards fall. Satisfied, he spun the pistol into its holster and resumed his motionless vigil. Yvian remembered when she and Lissa had made fun of the man for insisting they learn to quickdraw. They'd accused him of watching too many of his human "western" movies. Yvian wasn't laughing, now. It was the scariest thing she'd ever seen him do, and she'd seen a lot. She promised herself she would practice more.
The Overseer stared in shock for a moment. He rose slowly, hands closing into fists. Yvian had expected fear. Instead she saw rage. "If you think-"
Lissa's quickdraw was far less impressive than the human's. It took her over a second to draw and fire two shots. She also missed. One bolt hit Tem's shin three inches below his right knee. The other struck an inch above his left. The Overseer yelled a curseword as he fell. He glared up at the woman.
"You think this fucking scares me?" The old man growled. "I worked my way up through the Guild. You can't imagine the things I've been through." Now that he was closer, Yvian could see his mottled skin was not entirely the result of flox abuse. Old, faded scars crisscrossed their way up and down his body. Cuts. Burns. Some of the lines complete encircled his arms and legs, mute evidence of reattached limbs. Some of the circles were jagged, indicating the med techs had done a poor job. The man probably lived in constant and chronic pain. A few hours in a proper med-pod would fix those issues and remove the scars, but pixens weren't given that level of medical care.
Yvian's assessment of the man grudgingly went up a notch. He was cruel, arrogant, and a traitor to his people, but he wasn't weak. There weren't many pixens that could stay calm near a human, and even fewer that wouldn't cower after being shot. "You stupid prude! This is nothing!"
Lissa holstered her blaster, regarding the Overseer with a detached expression. "I think you've got the wrong idea." She bundled her hair and slid her helmet on over it. "We didn't come here to start a debate with you. We didn't come to negotiate." She put her hands on her hips and bent forward, bringing her visor a third of a meter from the wounded man's face. "We came to issue a threat."
"Your threats don't mean shit," the Overseer spat.
"We're not threatening you," she told him. "You don't matter." Lissa looked up to the small camera in one corner of the Overseer's office. "I know you can hear me."
"You prudish-" Tem started to say. Lissa shot him again. "You fucking bitch!"
Lissa shot him a fourth time. "Shut up." The man glared up at her, but held his peace. Lissa turned back to the camera. "I don't care what you say about New Pixa. If you want to discourage people, that's fine. Lie all you want."
Yvian's comm chirped. She checked her wrist console. It was a message from Kilroy. He'd stayed on the ship, monitoring the situation and watching their back. The message read: STRIKE TEAM IMMINENT. THIRTY UNITS. POWER ARMOR. ETA NINETY SIX SECONDS.
Lissa and Mims received the same message. Lissa glanced at hers, then continued. "What we will not tolerate are threats and violence. You have been attacking our citizens, terrorizing anyone who speaks of New Pixa. Worse, you've taken some of them into slavery."
The various Pleasure Guilds had all reacted to the news that pixens had their own planet in different ways. Most of them were ignoring it, since very few of their pixen employees had actually tried to leave. The Krog Guild had responded by increasing pixen pay and offering benefits, mostly because King Tallest wanted to keep his pixens without antagonizing Mims and company, since they were the Heroes of Krog Prime. The Trelg were conservative and highly religious, disdaining the pixens and publicly shaming those who used their services. It was no surprise their first recourse was a terror campaign.
"This will not be allowed to continue," said Lissa. "The ships taking our people to slave processing stations are already being intercepted." Peacekeeper units, sentient machines like Kilroy, would be hitting the Guild ships within the hour. Yvian was still nervous about making Synthetic Intelligences citizens, but she couldn't deny their effectiveness. The pixens would be rescued. There would be no mistakes, and no survivors among their captors.
"We are not a corporation or a Guild," Lissa continued her speech. "We are a sovereign nation, and every pixen is a citizen." She kicked the Overseer in his flabby belly. "Even this piece of shit. If you mistreat our people again, we will come back, and we will kill you. Not your guards. Not your employees. You." She pointed at the camera.
Yvian wondered what the Guild Executives were thinking. She doubted anyone had ever dared to threaten them before. The Guild was wealthy, and wealth was power in the Confederation. The rich did as they pleased, and consequences were unheard of. Most likely they were a mix of outraged and incredulous.
"We will kill every Guild Executive, and every member of the Board." Lissa lowered her hand. "This is your one and only warning. Continue to cross the Pixen Technocracy, and we will erase you from the verse."
"You've signed your own slave papers, you stupid bitch," Overseer Tem spat. "The Guild is going to-"
Lissa shot him a fifth time. This time she used a stunshot. "I told you to shut up," she reminded him.
Yvian's comm chimed again. STRIKE TEAM ETA THIRTY SECONDS.
Lissa holstered her pistol, and drew the plasma assault rifle that had been attached to her back. "I know you don't believe us. You think you can't be touched. You think pixens are weak. You don't think we've got the balls even if we had the capability." Yvian could hear her smile. "You're stupid and you're wrong, but I'm feeling generous. I'll help you. Here's just a little taste of what a pixen can do."
