Original Flavor (anime influenced)
Rated: R 

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (Part II:  Always Have an Ulterior Motive)


	II.
	ALWAYS HAVE AN ULTERIOR MOTIVE

	The hotel that I'd selected for this little adventure was reputed to be 
one of the best on the whole planet; considering the service I got there, 
I could see why.  In an age where technology has torn down barriers that 
might have been there for a reason, true privacy is extraordinarily hard 
to obtain--which is why this place specialized in it.  Not only were no 
questions asked, but the rooms themselves were individually isolated, 
equipped with electronics designed specifically to jam any attempts at 
outside scanning, and came with an internal comm-array that allowed you 
to do everything you needed to do from a terminal at bedside, all 
communications lines secured and jammed at the source.  My paranoia found 
that very comforting.  I personally found the bed (a real bed with an 
actual mattress and not a suspensor field) very comfortable and for the 
first time since this whole mess started I found myself moderately able 
to relax.
	I woke up sometime before true dawn, jarred rather rudely out what had 
been a pleasant night's rest by a nightmare.  I'm still not entirely used 
to that.  Before I met Hunter and had all my behavior modification 
hardware yanked, I never had nightmares.  Sure, I might have been 
slightly neurotic, but then everyone is to some extent.  I never had 
nightmares because nothing ever really bothered me enough for it to lodge 
in my subconscious mind and fester there.  A conscience is a design flaw 
in an assassin--if I had been constructed to have one, the faces of the 
two hundred and eighty-nine people I've killed would have haunted me 
forever, distracted me when I needed to have my mind on the job, driven 
me insane with the guilt, and, most importantly, destroyed my ability to 
kill in cold blood.  I was never intended to understand the value of 
human life, just be able to end it with a minimum of effort and 
absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.  And you know what?  I still can't 
bring myself to hesitate--and I've been having nightmares about faceless 
corpses ever since I left the Network.  You figure it out.
	After that I decided further sleep was not in the cards and dragged 
myself out of bed.  Elyena hadn't called in the night so there were no 
messages in my buffer; the hotel staff didn't believe in leaving smarmy 
little activities notices on the computer, so there was nothing there.  I 
went into the bathroom, took a long look at myself in the holographic 
replication field and decided that Elyena was right--I did look better as 
a blonde.  The sunken bath was just approaching the right temperature 
(scalding) and the right depth (up to my neck) when the room's 
entrance-request tone sounded.
	No one but Elyena was supposed to know I was here, and she was going to 
call.  I picked up the twenty-millimeter sidearm I kept in the bathroom 
for just such occasions, slipped into something adequately opaque, and 
went to answer the door.
	I tapped my private activation code into the comm-panel inset next to 
the door, rotating the camera angle to take a peek at my visitor.  For an 
instant, all I could do was stand there and wonder how this guy had 
managed to get past all the security in the lobby.  He was possibly the 
single most grungy individual I had ever laid eyes on to date--and that 
includes some of my own former colleagues who had spent too much time in 
the field.  From bare appearances he looked to be somewhere in his 
mid-seventies, stooped over so that he was nearly hunchbacked, and moving 
so stiffly that I had to wonder if all his joints weren't calcified.  He 
was wearing thick, old-fashioned glasses rather than optic implants, had 
a package of what looked like synthetic tobacco cigarettes in the breast 
pocket of his filthy gray uniform, and was busily engaged in grinding a 
butt into an unrecognizable yellow-brown paste on the mirror-polished 
floor.  I noted that he was holding an actual paper envelope in his 
hand--still sealed from the looks of it.  A faint gleam of tarnished gold 
under his sagging chin caught my eye; pinned to the collar of his 
work-shirt was an insignia I had come to know entirely too well during 
the course of my rather iniquitous career.
	Darkworld Internal Affairs, CovertOperations Division--the bladelike 
interlocking IA with the tiny CO engraved in it.
	No.  Way.  Was my first thought, followed immediately by, Why not?  If 
Internal Affairs couldn't find me, my life would have been too perfect.
	I punched the audio/visual circuit in the comm-board and asked, "Yes?"
	The (presumed) Internal Affairs agent squinted at the screen, coming so 
close he actually bumped his beaklike nose on it.  "Alexander McKieran?"
	"Yes," Thinking, Why do I even bother?
	"I got a message for you, from Darkworld," he informed me, "Priority 
from Internal Affairs.  You want it?"
	I ejected the external hardcopy pick-up.  If this IA agent was as grungy 
in smell as appearance, I didn't want to have to deal with it or to have 
a long conversation.  "Put it in the drawer."
	He did.  Without waiting for any commentary I pulled it inside, shut off 
the comm-unit, and tore open the envelope, wondering if the message was 
from whom I suspected.  It read like this:
	
Manslaughter,
	My agents tell me that you made it to Luxura without losing any major 
body parts or suffering any attempts to end your life.  Believe it or 
not, I'm almost glad to hear it.
	In case you need any help that your own contacts can't provide, find the 
man I had deliver this message.  Appearances are deceiving (as we both 
know) and James Sullivan is one of Internal Affairs' most gifted 
CovertOps agents.  This is naturally strictly illegal, so if you tell 
anyone I'll deny everything.
	You know where you can shove this,
	Jordan
	
	Thinking about how well he knew me, I shoved the communique into the 
matter recycler and went back to my neglected bath.  I had, in my 
attempts to maintain some degree of stealth, totally forgotten that I had 
told Jordan Odessa where I was going.  And Jordan was just the type to 
check up on me whether I needed it or not.
	I told you before that the Network genetically engineered me and 
force-grew me to adulthood, cybernetically and psychologically modifying 
me along the way.  This is not quite the truth.  Among Network GenTechs, 
the term "genetic engineering" means a great many things.  In my case 
specifically it means taking a genetic sample from a template organism, 
tinkering with the actual gene structure to bring certain latent traits 
to the fore, and then cloning the altered material to produce an (almost) 
entirely new organism.  That, in technical terms, is the relationship 
between myself and Jordan Odessa.  He is my template; I am his clone.
	It took me a long time to come to terms with that.  When I was first 
brought out of the electrolyte tanks in which I'd been gestated and 
force-grown, my conscious mind was in a tabula rasa state; I had a fully 
adult body with absolutely no self-awareness to control it.  At least, 
that's what the GenTechs and PsychTechs thought.  What they didn't 
realize is that I retained part of who Jordan Odessa really was--the 
seminal memories that can be coded into chains of transferrable proteins 
and passed from one generation to the next, genetic memory of people and 
places and a life that I had never known.  And no one knew it but me, and 
I didn't yet possess the ability to articulate what was going on under 
the surface of my active mind.  So rather than do anything fancy, like 
work up a plausible past history for me, they simply plugged the 
knowledge and experience of someone else into my skull and turned me over 
to Khasamar Seyt-Enkidu.  He was supposed to take my eminently moldable 
mind--reinforced with internal prohibitions generated by my behavior 
modification hardware--and turn me into a cold-blooded, conscienceless, 
remorseless killer.  Well, he didn't--the behavior modification did.  
What Khasamar did was turn me from a cyborg killing machine with an 
essentially human form to a human being that just happened to have metal 
parts grafted on.  An original article, with a personality, a life, and 
an existence of my own.
	So imagine how stunned I was when I discovered I was not an original 
article--when I found myself staring down the crosshairs at a face and 
body identical in every way to my own, when I heard my own voice in my 
ears, and when I watched, totally paralyzed by the shock, as he saw me 
for the first time, too.  I don't know how you would have handled it, but 
I didn't take it very well.  Khasamar had led me to believe that I was an 
actual person and not a copy of someone else; I couldn't even hate him 
for it, because I knew that he had believed it.  But looking at Jordan 
Odessa, looking into his eyes and mind and soul and knowing to the depths 
of my own that I was nothing compared to him--that my whole life was a 
lie, that my existence was something that had been stolen from him....It 
hurt.  It hurt because it meant that all the memories I retained belonged 
to him and not to me; it hurt because it meant I had never experienced 
those things, I just had the palest echo of what it was to be truly 
alive.  It hurt because it was the absolute, unadulterated truth, and I 
couldn't even find it in myself to deny it.
	My behavior modification programs didn't like the stress levels this 
produced in me.  I didn't like the stress levels this produced in me.  
The mechanical response was to equate one thing (Jordan Odessa) with 
another (acute mental distress) and execute a response--in this case, to 
adjust my reactions so that, whenever I saw Jordan, I would immediately 
work myself into a full-scale psychotic rampage and try to kill him.  
Remove the source of the stress lethally, as it were.  Luckily (for both 
of us), I didn't see Jordan in the flesh all that often and, when I did, 
he proved himself perfectly capable of kicking my butt, cybernetically 
augmented or not.
	After all my behavior modifiers were yanked, I think we avoided each 
other just to be safe.  Even then I wasn't sure how much of my reaction 
was the product of technology and how much resulted from my own (not 
quite) repressed hostility.  I can't speak for him, but I strongly 
suspect there was more than a little aggravation on his side of the 
matter, too.  But, all seething rage and despair to the side, I still 
wanted to talk to him.  He was, after all, the closest thing I had to 
"family"--he was my better half, if you will, and existing in a vacuum 
with no past, no real memories of my own, no connection to a larger 
continuity, is a lonely thing.  I guess you could say I wanted to know 
where I came from.
	I just never had the nerve to come right out and say it to Jordan's 
face.  I couldn't make myself take any of the opportunities for a real 
heart-to-heart that came my way; neither did he, but then, he didn't have 
to.  I was the one that owed all the accounting, and I was the one that 
had to justify my own existence.  But I couldn't do it, I just couldn't 
stand there and tell him I had the same right to be alive that he did, 
when we both knew I didn't, when we both knew my mere existence was a 
violation of him, of his life and his being.  So I stayed away and 
wrapped a hey-like-I-care attitude around the raw, aching, anguished part 
of me that wanted to love Jordan Odessa like a brother.
	Surprisingly enough, he was the one that made the first move.  The night 
I was getting ready to leave as a matter of fact.  I was slipping out 
Hunter's bedroom window onto the interlocking layer cross-building 
bridges that make Bandazar look like a black steel web from above and 
make transit from one place to the next as acrobatic as it is 
nerve-wracking.  He was waiting for me, standing in the webwork shadows 
of the building and the bridges, almost invisible, even to my augmented 
vision.  Jordan always was like that--his cryptonym is Wraith, partly for 
his ability to alter his molecular density at will but mostly because of 
his talent for melting into the shadows, becoming one with the darkness.  
In other words, because he's intimidating.
	I freely admit I was expecting to die right then and there.  I couldn't 
have blamed him if he pulled out that thirty-millimeter cannon he calls a 
sidearm and blew my head off--my life was his to take if he wanted it.  I 
was pleasantly shocked when he had something else in mind--i.e., our 
long-delayed discussion.  We did it mostly en route to the West 
Side--after I told him that I was leaving and he agreed to aid and 
abet--and it was definitely an eye-opener to me.  That he didn't despise 
me to the very core of his being was the first thing he made remarkably 
clear.  The second was that I had superior taste in men.  The rest of our 
conversation you can imagine from there, but suffice it to say I left 
Darkworld with a heart slightly lighter than it had been when I arrived.
	I had a brother.  My mind was thoroughly blown.
	I was toying with the idea of taping a message to send back to 
Darkworld--complete with instructions on what he was supposed to say and 
do to Hunter in my absence--when the comm-tone sounded.  I acknowledged 
and within seconds, Elyena's holographically projected image appeared 
across from me in the bathroom.  She took a moment to look me all over, 
her expression somewhere between calculated lust and impish amusement.  
"I'm revising my opinion--you look good as a dry blonde but better as a 
damp brunette."
	"I'll take that as a compliment." I sat up as best I could, hooking my 
arms over the lip of the tub and propping myself half out of the water.  
"You've found something for me?"
	"Possibilities." Her translucent, finely resolved form settled down next 
to mine, doing an excellent imitation of actual physical mass.  "A few of 
the more clandestine elements have been sending out feelers for just your 
sort of operative--expediters, wetwork specialists, the 
intelligence/covert operations end of things.  The only problem is that 
the actual specifics of the arrangement seem a little...questionable."
	"How so?" I propped my chin up with my fist and did my best totally 
unconcerned act.
	"Like I said, actual details are somewhat sketchy.  The sort of thing 
that looks good during negotiations and might even look good on paper, 
but turns into a real hell-on-wheels nightmare during the execution phase 
of the mission."  Her voice took on the ice-and-steel undertone I 
sometimes hear in myself when I'm being completely, no-kidding serious.  
"The sort of thing where your employer reserves the right to tie any 
loose ends around your throat and leave you hanging on them."
	"Terrific."  I pulled myself completely out of the tub and started 
toweling off, pacing around like I needed the action to kick-start my 
brain.  "Anything else?"
	"Only if you've changed your mind about a corporate commission--or a 
permanent spot on my staff."
	I snorted.  "No, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOOOO!  To the first one, at least.  
As to the second...I'm thinking about it."
	She grinned at that, the wheels in her head visibly turning.  "Well, you 
know I've got the best benefits package on Luxura, and quite possibly the 
best working conditions.  You and Mi'iko would make 
an...interesting...team."
	"Only if our clients are irredeemably sadomasochistic."
	"It takes all kinds, sweet thing.  You'd get a better deal out of me 
than you would from that bastard Stiegel--"
	"Don't know him."
	"Be glad.  He's my major competition in this sector--mostly because he 
caters to things I'd never make my people do but which some of our sicker 
tourists enjoy.  Word has it he just cut a deal with our friends in the 
Network--they'll supply him with custom-engineered Corellians in exchange 
for a hefty chunk of the final sale price.  My sources tell me he's 
auctioning off an alleged virgin Corellian later today as a publicity 
gimmick."
	"For a publicity gimmick?  Spreading his new-found fortune around, isn't 
he?"
	"You could say that."  She replied dryly.  "Listen, I'll do a little 
more digging and get back to you later.  You never know--I might just be 
getting paranoid in my old age and the whole business could be totally 
legitimate."
	"Do that--and keep a bed warmed up for me, just in case."
	"Smartass."  With that her holograph derezzed and I was left standing 
there, pacing out my rather severe aggravation and wondering what to do 
next.
	I wasn't precisely upset over what Elyena had turned up--I had expected 
something almost exactly like it.  Mercenaries are a commodity like 
everything else in the galaxy--and, like everything else, we have those 
who exist solely to exploit us.  The vast majority of potential 
employers, I assure you, are the more upstanding type--the ones who will 
hire you to perform a specific task, with a certain amount of danger, but 
also with a reasonable chance of success.  Otherwise the market for 
people willing to fight and die for cold, hard credit would dry up rather 
quickly as the old soldiers died from their inability to keep up with the 
changing face of the profession and young soldiers died from stupidity 
and lack of experience.  There are, however, those puss-ridden scumballs 
of the galaxy who see only an opportunity to make a killing, sometimes 
literally.  These are the individuals who hire mercenaries or assassins 
or others of our general stripe for suicide missions and then sit back to 
reap the rewards of who knows how many pointless deaths.  Believe me, 
it's possible, depending on the specifics of the deal.
	But, having known all this since the day I first attained 
self-awareness, it didn't surprise or trouble me.  I was entirely 
accustomed to being regarded as nothing but a weapon on legs, an 
instrument to be used for another's purpose--I just had a hard time 
relating it to others.  After all, I did this more or less by my own free 
will, and I could walk away from it at any time.  I had no clue as to 
what I'd do afterwards, but the main idea was that I had quite a lot of 
self-determination and the wherewithal to use it.  Others, however, 
weren't so lucky and the entire Corellian race was an object example of 
this.  They were also an object example of exactly how powerful the 
Network really is.  
	Back in the good old days, before Darkworld started imposing trade 
sanctions on the Network and their agents became persona non grata 
virtually everywhere, a Network scoutship found a world called Corellia 
by the natives.  Corellia was, by all estimations, a regular paradise, 
possessing a congenial climate over most of its landmass, a biosphere 
teeming with life, and mineral resources that would make a geologist 
weep.  The natives were rather remarkable as well, being extremely 
empathic, borderline metamorphic, and capable of manipulating their 
naturally occurring pheromone output for a variety of purposes.  
Barret-Simonson, et. cie., the Network's largest entertainment 
consortium, was so taken by the place they moved in and--well, bought it. 
 Convinced the native government that they only wanted to establish 
friendly diplomatic and trade relations, earned their trust with a few 
decades of governmental elbow-rubbing, and quietly took the place over.  
The Corellians woke up one bright morning to discover themselves totally 
under the Network's thumb, economically dependent for their very 
survival, addicted to the psychoreactive drugs being pumped into their 
food supply, being selectively chosen to form a baseline genetic pool for 
a new form of "interactive entertainment."  Eventually they ceased to 
exist as an actual people and culture, being completely overwhelmed and 
subsumed by the Network, becoming the Corellians as they are known today: 
 genetically engineered sex-toys for the rich and decadent of the galaxy, 
their race's natural attributes--empathy and pheromone 
manipulation--being carefully selected and improved upon through the 
generations to produce creatures capable of the ultimate in sexual 
gratification.
	Corellians are renowned for being the very best when it comes to all 
things prurient (after all, they're instructed since inception for it), 
and also for being the most--shall we say, malleable?--when it comes to 
attitude.  They are deliberately designed to have absolutely no sense of 
self, no awareness of themselves as anything but sexual objects whose 
sole desire is to please, to have no individuality, no outside interests, 
and no aptitude for anything else.  That is, until they are purchased and 
imprinted with the personal...idiosyncrasies...of their master, who then 
becomes the center of their reality.  Until then, Corellians are 
considered "virgins"--whether or not they've been physically touched--and 
command astronomical rates of sale on the slaver's block.  Previously 
imprinted Corellians hardly go for less, but it is considered the 
ultimate status-symbol in some places to have been the one to "break in" 
a virgin Corellian.
	Personally, I find the whole thing way beyond disgusting.  The fact 
that, if it hadn't been for the design parameters under which I was 
created, I might very well have ended up like a Corellian--totally 
mindless and devoid of both will and identity--only makes matters worse.  
You might have noticed that I'm highly neurotic about that whole 
"identity" concept--well, you're right, and the idea that I was standing 
on a planet containing  people willing to violate another's right to 
exist as a free entity really ticked me off.  I knew about the slave 
market, don't get me wrong, but before it never really bothered me to 
this extent; amorality and lack of conscience are great insulators 
against thorny moral dilemmas.
	Such as the one I was facing now.  I don't know whether you've realized 
it or not, but I am an exceedingly wealthy individual.  Not on the same 
plateau as a megacorp, of course, or even a planetary government, but my 
net annual income has so many zeroes in it that I've kept more than one 
accounting firm in the black just trying to invest it all.  What I'm 
trying to convey here is that the average going price of a virgin 
Corellian was well within my means--and, while I can't make any claims on 
sainthood, at least I wasn't total slime.  I had no particular desire to 
"own" anyone else, and I had even less desire to stand by and let someone 
else be "bought"; there are some seriously depraved people that ooze out 
of the woodwork when a virgin Corellian is mentioned, and, unfortunately, 
most of them seemed to gravitate to Luxura.  If nothing else, I wanted to 
make sure at least one person managed to do what I did, but with a 
minimum of bloodshed:  to get away from the Network and live a 
semi-normal life.  I had no idea if a Corellian's psychological 
conditioning could be reversed, but it would be a worthwhile endeavor to 
find out.
	The only problem being, if this "Stiegel" chump really did work for my 
former employers, poking my head up at a slave auction would most likely 
get it blown off.  My entirely too developed self-preservation instincts 
warred with a quiet but dangerously determined part of me that wanted to 
first, free the Corellian, and second, thumb my nose at the Network (from 
a safe distance, of course).  I bestowed a few enthusiastic curses on 
Elyena's head for telling me about the auction--she knew how much I had 
always hated the way Corellians were treated, even when my behavior was 
being modified so that I couldn't care too much--paced around the suite 
some more, growled at the matter replicator until it gave me exactly what 
I wanted, queried the info-net for the time when the auction started, and 
dressed myself in something suitably corporate.  Something that said, 
"Here I am, smell my money."
	The main slave market was, as always, crowded with people and things, 
most of which were attempting to buy each other.  There was at least one 
of every major intergalactic race represented, and usually more:  both 
reptiloid and saurian Dy'killians, bumping into each other and being as 
generally rude as their religious differences would allow; all the 
Eridane races--avian Epsilonis, felinid Gammans, insectoid Deltans, 
arachnoid Betans, making transactions strictly illegal on their 
respective homeworlds but not illegal to import as private property; 
Terrans of all sorts, from most of their colony worlds and from the 
homeworld as well; Tyraxians with their contingents of retainers and 
servants, pale and angular and arrogant even when they were trying to be 
friendly; even Darkworlders, who formally forbid the slave trade and 
won't have it in their space, but who sometimes go elsewhere for it.  The 
singular exception to all this were the Vamphyr, who consider slaving a 
capital crime to be punished by something considerably worse than death.  
I personally find that highly endearing.
	The noise of at least six thousand sentient beings with some 
exceptionally odd voices negotiating with each other was absolutely 
deafening; I turned down my auditory gain until everything sounded like a 
low whisper and continued picking my way through the crowd.  At the same 
time I found reason to be glad that the Network built me the way they 
did--not only could I dampen my hearing, but also my psionic abilities.  
Otherwise, the cumulative weight of all those alien thoughts would have 
shattered my psionic shields by now, reducing me to a state known in 
psi-talent parlance as "telepathic omelette."  As in, the thing you can't 
get without breaking a few eggs, throwing in some ham, bacon, cheese, 
tomatoes, onions, and cooking until well done.  That's about what happens 
to a telepath's mind when you're  unable to maintain your  shields:  bits 
and pieces of others' psyches start intruding in your own, you become 
hopelessly mentally jumbled together with dozens of other people, and, in 
a worst-case scenario, you become so overwhelmed by everything you're 
perceiving that you never attain true selfhood again.  You're constantly 
manifesting those little bits and pieces you telepathically absorbed, you 
become a gestalt of every other personality you ever touched, and 
completely lose your own.
	In case you were wondering, this is the real reason that I exist today.  
Jordan Odessa was born with one active psionic ability (his talent for 
manipulating his molecular density) and several latent.  Among those 
latent psionic abilities was a vanishingly rare talent known as 
teleportation--the ability to shift himself  through space and/or time by 
the power of his  mind alone.  This power is so exceptionally rare--and 
so useful for a number of things--that the Network expended an 
astonishing amount of resources to abduct Jordan, take a genetic sample 
from him, reengineer it to bring out this latent talent, and then clone 
it into...me.  I can't do a damn thing with my molecular density, but I 
can read minds, sense emotions, move objects without laying a hand on 
them, sometimes see the future, and, most importantly, teleport.  I won't 
go into the uses I've made of this ability, but suffice it to say that 
the Network never regretted their decision to create a galaxy-hopping 
hitman...until I left, that is.
	The area surrounding the central auction block was already crowded by 
the time I arrived; the news that a Corellian virgin was going up for 
sale had made the rounds at the speed of light and anyone who had the 
money to spend (or was curious at all) had turned out for the event.  As 
I attempted to unobtrusively elbow my way through the throng I began to 
wish that the Network had left me with Jordan's ability to decrease my 
density to one-three thousandth of normal and literally phase my way 
through any obstacle.  After twenty minutes, I finally managed to find an 
unoccupied section of seating and after thirty more, people stopped 
glaring at me for getting there first; by that time, the auction was 
ready to start anyway.
	Now, I don't know about you, but I always pictured a slaver as looking 
something like your average street thug but carrying different equipment. 
 That's why I was surprised with David Stiegel--for a scum-sucking, 
flesh-peddling, slime-waffle from hell, he looked oddly like a normal 
guy.  In fact he looked almost grandfatherly, with graying brown hair 
that was thinning slightly on top, a small belly from what must have been 
primarily a desk job these days, and the sort of face that inspires 
people to say, "He was such a nice man before he went insane and chopped 
up his neighbors with a chainsaw!"  It almost threw me before my scaneye 
picked up the telltale outline of a pain-center trigger in the breast 
pocket of his suit and my other talents picked up a noticeable lack of 
emotion going on behind his gentle, blue eyes.  I had to forcibly resist 
the urge to pull the two automags I was carrying under my coat and 
introduce him to the damage that a total of thirty-six armor-piercing 
twist-and-blow shells could do.  If he cared even marginally, it might 
have been enough to earn him a little saving grace; since he didn't, I 
might just come back for him later.  	I didn't pay any attention to 
Stiegel's opening patter; I knew all that I wanted to about the man and 
was now concentrating on sizing up the competition.  Of all the people 
there I could only identify four who might be able to out-bid me; 
everyone else was there simply for the show.  And, since the slave market 
didn't allow anonymous bidding in general, and on Corellians in specific, 
those four were it.  There was an Epsiloni Eridane female, and three 
males, a Gamman Eridane, a Terran, and a Darkworlder.  Of them all, the 
Eridane woman looked like she'd be the most trouble.  She was a true 
albino, her skin and hair and eyes completely devoid of pigmentation.  
The black clan pattern she wore tattooed across her high-cheekboned, 
sharp-featured face was both delicate and complex, standing sharply 
against her bloodless skin and accentuating the coral pink of her eyes 
and lips.  She was wearing her white hair cut short to emphasize its 
feathery quality and a semi-translucent blood-red dress that was half 
sari and half sarong to emphasize her other qualities.  Her vestigial 
wing-spikes were sharpened to a dagger-like point and glistened in the 
diffuse light of Luxura's red-gold sun--I was fairly sure they were 
poisoned, as were her steel-colored, talon-like fingernails.  She might 
as well have had the word PREDATOR written all over her in flashing, 
day-glow letters.  If the expressions on the faces of the other three men 
were any indication, they were thinking precisely the same thing and 
wondering if they didn't still have time to back out.
	The expression on the Eridane female's face changed from studied 
distaste of those around her to avid interest just then, and I turned to 
face the block in time to see the Corellian's entrance.  The sight of her 
hit me square between the eyes like a twenty-millimeter explosive 
round--but then, that's the general effect Corellians have on others.  
She was putting out some serious empathetic power and might not have 
realized it; I felt my perceptions twist for an instant, melding my own 
with hers, and suddenly I was looking through her eyes at the crowd as 
she came up the stairs to the actual block platform, the thick, metal 
collar chafing my throat as I walked, feeling the unspoken threat of 
having all my pain-receptors suddenly fired if I misbehaved, the rage and 
hatred boiling in my veins as I looked out at all those sick, twisted, 
loathsome people who couldn't even think of me as a human being, only an 
object to be used and abused and discarded--
	I was abruptly reacquainted with my own body as the growing fury and 
turmoil in the Corellian's mind forced me out, psychically reeling and so 
physically unbalanced that I nearly fell out of my seat.  I replayed that 
brief instant of contact over and over again, completely stunned by the 
intensity of what I'd just experienced.  Corellians were not supposed to 
feel that way--they weren't supposed to feel at all.  They were meant to 
be nothing but toys, playthings, a physical echo of their masters' 
desires, no matter how perverse they happened to be.  With this one, that 
was clearly not the case.  She had an identity, she had true emotion, she 
had a personality!  A fiery, fierce, borderline violent personality at 
that!  How it had happened, I didn't pretend to know--all I realized was 
that I absolutely could not allow that mind, that soul, that person to be 
extinguished.
	"As you can see," I turned up my auditory gain and Stiegel's obnoxiously 
unwelcome voice boomed into my ears, "this young woman is an exquisite 
example of the perfection the galaxy has come to expect in Corellians."
	The pig had that right, at least--she was exquisite.  She couldn't have 
been more than fifteen years old, on the tallish side, slender and 
delicately built.  Her face was almost triangular in shape, with sharply 
sculpted cheekbones, a small nose, perfectly formed mouth, and a 
chiselled jawline that gave her a nearly feline appearance.  Her eyes 
were slightly elongated ovals, deep emerald green and filled with a 
banked, smoldering fire--but it was still fire, and I was delighted for 
it.  Her hair was a thick, dark red with coppery-gold highlights that 
fell all the way to her waist in loose waves, the only garment she had on 
that covered anything, her "robe" being completely transparent and 
leaving her utterly stripped of anything that vaguely resembled dignity.  
My better nature managed to keep my eyes fixed firmly on her impossibly 
beautiful face, even as the pheromonal perfume she was releasing began 
working its way up nose, completely circumnavigating my bloodstream and 
heading directly for my brain.  Desire for her suddenly poured through 
every inch of my body, desire totally unchecked by any other impulses, 
hitting me so hard I felt myself start to shake.  The pheromones that 
Corellians put out stimulate endorphin production in the average person's 
brain, triggering your pleasure centers in a rush of sensation so savage 
it's absolutely breathtaking.  That, combined with their ability to 
empathically stimulate your emotions to go along with it, gives a 
cathartic psychic/physical release so intense it makes multiple orgasms 
seem tame in comparison.  The fact that she was doing this to everyone 
else in the audience didn't make me feel any better; I called up a 
photograph of Hunter that my scaneye had snapped and held it on my 
internal head-up display until the urge to pounce on her right then and 
there faded.  I chanced a glance around at the others:  the three males 
were still, to greater or lesser degree, wallowing in a blissed-out 
stupor; the Eridane female had her teeth bared in a predatory smile and 
was gazing possessively at the Corellian through slitted crimson eyes.  I 
felt my own hackles rise in response and sat up a little straighter, the 
hostility I felt helping to shake off the hormonally-induced trance I had 
fallen into.
	"We'll start the bidding," Stiegel announced, once everyone had more or 
less recovered from the demonstration, "at one hundred million credits."
	"One fifty," from the Darkworlder male, followed immediately by, "Two," 
from the Terran.  The Gamman male remained silent for the time being, as 
did I, waiting for the Eridane female to say something.
	"Four," her voice came from somewhere in the depths of her chest, dark 
and husky and filled with the promise of a serious sex education for that 
young Corellian.
	"Five-fifty," I realized that my own voice was only a half-octave deeper 
than hers--female baritones are common among the Eridanes.
	"Six," the Gamman finally spoke up, gazing smugly at both the female 
Eridane and myself, to our mutual annoyance.
	"Eight," which was how the female showed her lack of amusement.
	"One billion," which was how I showed mine.
	That got a reaction, not only out of the crowd but from the Eridane 
woman, Stiegel, and the Corellian herself--she shot me a look that 
plainly stated her doubts about my sanity.  That was the same response I 
got from the Darkworlder and the Terran.  The Gamman stayed doggedly with 
it for another three rounds and until the bidding hit the five and a half 
billion mark, at which point he bowed to the inevitable.
	The Eridane woman turned slowly and deliberately to face me, folding out 
her wing-spikes so that they surrounded her like a fan constructed of 
knives, rubbing her palms together so that her talons flashed in the 
muted light.  The expression on her face said, "Fool.  You have no idea 
who it is that you're dealing with."
	I returned the gesture, easing back in my seat so that the twin grips of 
my guns were visible to her but no one else.  My own expression said, 
"Think you can spike me before I shoot you?  I don't."
	"Seven," her voice was slightly harsher than it had been, as though she 
had to think about it before saying anything.
	"Nine," I, on the other hand, kept mine completely neutral, as though 
the thought of spending nine billion credits was like handing out chump 
change.
	"Ten and a half," her eyes were slowly transmuting from pink to blood 
red--as in, she wanted to spill mine.
	"Twenty-five."
	"Thirty."
	"Forty."
	I can't say it for sure, but I think she realized just then that the 
cost of winning this one wasn't worth personal or professional 
bankruptcy.  She whispered, "Forty-five."
	I decided to put an end to it right then and there--I'd been out in 
public for longer than I had wanted to and I had successfully managed to 
drive the price for a virgin Corellian higher than it had ever gone 
before.  If I wasn't remembered for anything else, I'd be remembered for 
that--which was enough, as I far as I was concerned.  "One hundred."
	The look on the Eridane's face was a sight to behold, I assure 
you--shock, disbelief, and the somewhat stunned realization that I'd been 
playing the whole time.  Stiegel was in a transport of gratified avarice 
as he rasped out, "One hundred billion credits.  Going once."
	I turned to face the Corellian.  She was looking at me with the same 
expression on her face as the Eridane--shock, disbelief, and the somewhat 
stunned realization that she'd just been bought...and it wasn't because 
of the sheer amount of credit involved, either.  I didn't need to be an 
empath to sense her despair, her anguish, and I felt the burning in my 
organic eye that signals the fact that I should be crying, but can't.
	"Going twice!"  I resisted the urge to reach out telepathically to 
comfort her--her current state of mental unrest combined with my own 
empathy for her situation were a recipe for disaster.  All we both needed 
at that point was to initiate a telepathic crosslink that would explode 
from the exponential increase in emotion.
	"Sold!"  There was a roar of approval from the crowd as I rose from my 
place and approached the block, to take possession of my property.