Junebug sniffed with derision as the trio headed down a long marble hallway. Mythotlogical scenes adorned the walls in bas relief. A particularly intricate carving showed a half man half spider threatening a naked woman. A nearby armored figure raised a shield in symbolic protection.

“Your father is a powerful man Taya,’ Junebug observed as they turned a corner into a more familiar passageway. She supposed she could call up a map on her PDU if she really needed one, but they weren’t in any particular hurry.

“Do you think he would happily fall into line if he had a chance to be on top?” The question was somewhat rhetorical as Lord Cho-Lan had been more than happy to plunge his planet into fire and blood in order to claw his way up the social ladder.

“Well, maybe if he had someone like Aiden to follow,” Taya responded sounding more than  a little unsure of herself.

“Sure and maybe that RIP will be calm,” Junebug retorted. It was the nature of humans to fight for a bigger share, even if their share as already vast. Mercenary soldiers got plenty of opportunity to see that. Sure they always dressed it up as some sort of injustice but at the end of the day it was always ‘that bastard has more than I want him to, go kill him’. They reached their room and opened the door with a thumbprint to the identification pad. The room had been restored to pristine condition, empty bottles and food wrappers whisked away by the staff while they had been gone. Junebug would have liked to have found something to eat out in the city but that didn’t seem like a good idea with the crowds and media swarms. She unhooked her weapons belt and tossed it the floor beside one of the embossed leather chairs. The familiar feeling of well being was stealing over her. There was nothing in the galaxy to match the feeling of surviving a firefight. For a moment she tried to imagine a different Sayeeda Cykali, one who had gone on to some pedestrian civilian occupation rather than shipping to the military academy. It was like trying to imagine a fish that as also an elephant. 

Taya made a bee line for her corner of the room where an unlikely series of computer terminals hummed. She immediately began paging through the various news channels, giggling at the more salacious or ridiculous stories. Junebug was happy to discover that the bar had been restocked. Reaching into the artfully arranged ice chest she pulled out an amber bottle twisted in a series of interconnected loops which vaguely suggested a tree. She pulled the stopper free with a sharp twist of her left hand and took a drink from the neck. The dark brown liquor had a cinnamon burn to it that she wasn’t expecting but it beat the industrial alcohol which techs used to bleed from hydraulic lines and cut with water by several orders of magnitude. 

“This place is getting weirder and weirder,” Junebug observed. She wanted to order food from the palace kitchens but the lack of anything as simple as a menu momentarily defeated her. A momentary childish impulse rose up and she considered calling the kitchen and ordering some ridiculously elaborate dish. Maybe Neil as rubbing off on her. Unconsciously her eyes strayed to Neil. The pilot was looking at the hot tub. He saw her looking. For a moment the room fell silent. With an explosion of motion they both dashed for the marble tub inset in the floor. Neil was closer but his path was obstructed by a large leather couch. He cleared it like a hurdler, leaping the back of it, landing on the cushioned seat and bounding towards the tub. Junebug threw herself forward in a dive the tangled the pilots legs and he face planted into the hot water sending a shower of liquid into the air. Sayeeda’s roll carried her over the lip and she plunged into the hot tub a moment after Neil, slouching a further wave of water onto the expensively paneled floor.

A moment later they both broke the surface, soaked, laughing and fully clothed. Sayeeda, ever the pragmatist, had demonstrated the presence of mind to cover the opening of her bottle with a tumb before taking the plunge. The hot water felt good, even though she probably should have taken the time to strip before diving in. She propped herself up on her elbows on the edge of the tub and took another drink.

“I could probably sell the secrutiy footage of that for a bundle,” Taya observed dryly as Junebug thrust a lock of wet hair out of her eyes. 

“Probably,” Junebug agreed, the comment dragging her back into the situation at hand.

“The award ceremony is tomorrow night, I think we shoud probably lift ship right after. Things are starting to get murky here.”

“We uh don’t have a cargo,” Neil interjected, leaning back on his side of the hot tub in a relaxed pose. Junebug made a gesture of negation with the amber bottle.

“We can find something tomorrow, even if we can’t there is a repatriation bond we can claim if we ferry Kagan and his men back to their own people.” It was standard for a merc company to pay a premium for the return of its people and its equipment. It was a good economic incentive for troops that might be trapped systems away from their homebase. Kagan had said that he and his men were part of a trading cadre on Rhizon. Junebug had never heard of the world but it was unlikely to be too far from here if they were making such small deployments. Taya began to laugh and Junebug looked at her sharply. With a few quick keystrokes she lit the main viewscreen.

“God damn,” Junebug breathed. On the screen were two figures, naked and writhing together. There faces were undeniably those of Neil and Sayeeda. It was some sort of synthesis Sayeeda realised after a moment. The woman's body was an approximation of hers but they were not an exact match. Some effort had been made to conterfeight both her and Neil's tattoos but there were minor mistakes. Some of her more intimate tattoos and scars were missing all together. Neil’s doppelganger too lacked some of the scars she had seen.

“I wish my ass looked like that,” she said judiciously. It was bad luck that at exactly that moment the door slid open to admit Prince Aiden to the chamber.
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