He stretched his fingers out until his claws emerged, black on one hand, gunmetal gray on the other. In his real hand, he could feel the tendons stretch and the joints crack. In the artificial hand, he only felt the slight feedback as what passed for flesh wrapping it felt a slight increase in tension.
“So, can I buy you a drink?”
It took a second before he realized the question was addressed to him. He turned his head away from the stars to look down and see Kugara, the Angel, looking up at him.
“You look like you could use a friend,” she told him.
Nickolai turned away. He had fallen out of the habit of looking at people during conversation. “Do I?” he asked. He wasn’t quite sure how else to respond. He owed her respect, not only because she wasn’t human, but because he would be working with her for the foreseeable future.
He snorted and shook his head, because the irony of that thought wasn’t lost on him. Personal feelings were what condemned him in the first place.
“Did I say something funny?” Kugara asked.
“No,” Nickolai told her.
When the single word faded, Nickolai realized how quiet it was out here in the desert.
“You aren’t going to elaborate on that, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind,” Kugara said. “How about that drink?”
Kugara had her own transportation, an old contragrav aircar that had the turquoise-and-black markings of a Proudhon Spaceport Security Vehicle, though the skin was now dominated by the matte gray primer color of flexseal patches. It had an open canopy, so it could handle Nickolai’s height, though when he got in, the craft briefly suffered a hard tilt to the right before the sensors encouraged the underpowered injection unit to compensate for the mass distribution.
To make room for his legs, Nickolai had to push his seat all the way back, and in response the craft tilted rearward for a moment.
“Gad.” Kugara said, watching a few red lights on the dash display in front of her. “Guess no aerobatics with you in the car.”
She waited until the craft found its level, then she punched the vector jets, shooting the protesting vehicle across the desert and back toward the city.
Nickolai looked at Kugara. Her hair trailed back in the wind, and her face was dominated by a clenched grin that Nickolai would normally attribute to a huntress just prior to a kill.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“We’re on the same job,” she said against the wind. “Can’t I buy a comrade a drink?”
“I notice I’m the only one to whom you offered.”
“We both need an ally, scion of House Rajasthan.” She turned that predatory grin toward him and said, “Despite what the maps say, you’re not in the Fifteen Worlds anymore.”
Kugara took him to a bar in a part of Proudhon run-down enough to have been in his old neighborhood in Godwin. It was part of a mall that had taken over an old assembly building. The space was large enough that none of the shops and restaurants inhabiting the space felt the need to build ceilings. The bar was one of the few that felt the need for actual walls.
It took a few moments for Nickolai to realize that Kugara had chosen this place with him in mind. With the ceiling of the original assembly plant a good forty meters above them, he could walk around without ducking. In addition, the bar had circular tables and stools that allowed him to sit without being crammed in a human-sized booth, or wedging his tail into a tall-backed chair.
She let him pick a table. He took one to the rear of the place, putting as much distance between himself and the human crowd as he could. The stares from the patrons were becoming familiar, and he barely noticed the crowd edging away from him. He sat with his back to the wall and wondered what he should think about Kugara’s interest
