Moro's Price Read online

  A NineStar Press Publication

  www.ninestarpress.com

  Moro’s Price

  ISBN: 978-1-947139-29-9

  Copyright © 2017 M. Crane Hana

  Cover Art by Natasha Snow ©Copyright 2017

  Edited by: Raevyn

  Published in 2017 by NineStar Press, New Mexico, USA.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, NineStar Press, LLC.

  Warning

  This book contains sexually explicit content, which is only suitable for mature readers, and scenes of violence, gore, and rape.

  Moro’s Price

  M. Crane Hana

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Other Books by M. Crane Hana

  Dedication

  This new version has a big village behind it: NineStar said “Yes.” Many editors worked on it (but all the mistakes are mine!) A badger financed it. Eve, Aggy, and Sleeps-With-Coyotes were immoral support when I bogged down in the Dreaded Swampy Middle. Babylon 5, Killjoys, The Expanse, Firefly, Tangerine Dream, and Daft Punk all inspired some of it. So did neoconservatives and fake news/fringe talk radio, just not in the way they might like.

  One

  A THOUSAND SPECTATORS watched Jason Kee-DaSilva, the Leopard of Saba, ruin his career two minutes after his comeback victory.

  The Golden Cage Arena spanned the top floor of a gaudy casino skyscraper in south Cedar-Saba. At the center of the domed auditorium, a thirty-foot circular steel floor slowly revolved to the right. An airy dome of gold-plated steel filigree mesh arched thirty feet over it. The mesh was stronger than a spaceship’s skin. Two gates led into the Cage. Once a fight began, they’d stay locked until one man lost and yielded to the other.

  DaSilva had broken two men already tonight: two in credits, the last in flesh.

  The deceptively delicate dome had just lifted from the bloodstained circular steel floor to let a cadre of medics through. Huge holo screens in the dome played highlights from the first rounds of battle or lingered over shots of the Leopard swiftly claiming his last victim. He hadn’t been brutal, merely thorough. The orgasm he’d wrung from the other man had been as much a symbol of victory as the final punch-down.

  In better days, DaSilva had been a glorious bronze godling of the Cage, always dressed to show off his sleek muscles, dapple-bleached short hair, and the leopard-spot tattoos covering his shoulders and spine. Out of the ring for a year, he’d now regained most of the muscle previously lost from illness. Smoky cosmetics hid the dark shadows around his eyes. His hair had grown out to plebian brown curls. His knee-length kilt was simple grayish-brown poly-silk, without Garibey Shemua colors or concentric teardrop pattern.

  Now DaSilva looked up angrily, shrugging off the lackluster attentions of his own single hired attendant and the man’s low-budget medical kit. In place of DaSilva’s legendary anthem, a rights-free generic martial score rumbled in the background from expensive speaker systems.

  In the first tier of seats behind the three red-clad referees, a bald man in Garibey Shemua’s purple and silver robes tapped studiously at the keyboard manifesting across his left sleeve. He glanced at DaSilva, as if just now noticing the fighter’s thunderous expression.

  DaSilva glared at the Shemua official and then pointed toward the nearest speaker. “I paid, damn you. I wrote my anthem years ago!” he shouted, stepping aside to let the medics work on the other fighter.

  “While you were under contract, Sero DaSilva. We’re happy to lease the rights back to you for single-use or month-to-month,” the bald man said with a mild tone, pitched to carry perfectly past the low music. The hovering audio drones made certain his words were broadcast over the whole arena.

  “I paid yesterday.”

  The Shemua official’s polite, calm expression never wavered. “Which was applied to last month’s fees. Which were in arrears, I’m afraid. It’s a new month. Your employment liaison should have told you to pay today, too.”

  “My liaison went on a convenient fishing trip to Lariden Lake last night and couldn’t be reached. What the hell do you people even want?”

  The Shemua official lifted a red metal collar from his right sleeve and waggled it in the air. The collar clasp glittered with purple enamel and white diamonds in Shemua’s concentric teardrop emblem. A concerted gasp came from the spectators who knew what it was: the Leopard’s Red-Band bonder’s collar he’d worn while being owned by Garibey Shemua.

  “This can all work out for the best, Sero DaSilva, if you’d just see reason and come back.” Until the previous year, the Leopard of Saba had been one of Shemua’s feted, pampered bondslave fighters. Their star.

  DaSilva stepped a pace backward.

  The crown moaned as one. Another onlooker began slowly, derisively clapping: a huge old man clad in a brilliant white suit, sprawled a dozen seats down from the referees. The camera drones focused on him, then longer on the silent, nearly naked man kneeling in front of him.

  A buzz ran through the crowd.

  “The Diamond.” A whisper from a few hundred hushed voices, as everyone was reminded of who else had watched every moment of DaSilva’s three comeback fights. The silent man’s black collar indicated a murderer or traitor under arena sentence. His odd black-and-white coloring marked him as a legend equal to the Leopard. Heavy cosmetics rimmed the man’s eyes, exaggerated his refined cheekbones, and shaped his lips into a courtesan’s scarlet smile.

  Flinching at the sight of himself on the giant screens, the painted man lowered his head in a spill of long black curls and huddled against his master’s legs.

  Everyone in the vast room saw how long the Leopard looked at the Diamond.

  The Shemua official cleared his throat. “Sero DaSilva, I’m cleared to hold this offer open as long as you remain a valuable investment. That window could be closing sooner than anyone expects.” He nodded toward the Diamond, tucked the red collar away again, and went back to writing.

  “Take it while you can, DaSilva,” snickered the man in white, still clapping.

  DaSilva allowed the strained look on his face to remain for a moment longer. The crowd loved these dramas and paid to follow them. Then he yelled at the man in white, “Stop bringing your sixth-rank trash for me to fight and fuck, Bondmaster Kott! Send out your best!”

  DaSilva stalked within six feet of the bulky Kott, before taking heed of the two burly, squat bodyguards sitting on either side of their employer.

  Kott waved down their brandished pulserifles with one meaty, ruddy-brown hand. Long ago, he’d been an arena legend himself. Now he was Shemua’s main off-world rival. “I’ll be a sport, since you asked so nicely, and send out one of my second-ranks, eh?”

  “Not them,” said DaSilva and then pointed at the painted man at Kott’s feet. “Him.”

  Michol Kott leaned back and petted his slave’s wavy blue-black hair. “Got a taste for rare game now, Leopard?”

  Sensing new mayhem, the audience jeered. The arena audio technicians had already oriented on the drama. Drone cameras hovered around the tableau, feeding images into the ceiling screens. Every sound was beautifully, brutally clear.

  “Give me…the Diamond,” said DaSilva, stumbling over the other man’s stage name.

  Kott gave an ugly laugh. “Sorry, my treasure is meant for the best opponents with the best sponsors. More credits to me tha
t way. You, Freeborn DaSilva? You’re a washed-up solo act taking the hard way down. And you know what’s really funny? The Diamond did this to you. Made you weak. Made you fall in love. I warned you, and you let it happen anyway.”

  “He deserves better!” DaSilva snapped. “Set him free! He should have earned more than enough already…”

  “This pretty monster?” Kott gripped the black collar around his slave’s throat and pulled back, forcing the man to show his face. The painted operatic mask accented the man’s large, dark irises. Maybe the shimmer in them was tears, or rage…or maybe just the witnesses’ fantasies. He wore only a short black kilt. Over the rest of his exposed pale skin, elusive green, purple, pink, and blue highlights shone out bright enough for the cameras to detect.

  “Starlight,” DaSilva whispered as if the sound techs wouldn’t broadcast that, too.

  Kott snorted. “Don’t be fooled by his looks. The Diamond is a mutant freak, and a Black-Band murderer sent to the arena for justice. This is his rehabilitation…and my considerable investment. Don’t tell yourself lies about freedom. If you owned him, Leopard, you’d keep him chained, too.”

  DaSilva shuddered, looking down at the now-impassive fighter. He reached out abortively with his right hand.

  Kott jerked the collar back, bending his fighting-slave backward over his thigh. Kott stared warningly down into the silent man’s eyes and then looked up at DaSilva with a trace of sympathy. “I know what he’s like. He’s addictive. It’s why we put him in the Cage in the first place, to snare fools like you. You want him that badly, to share another tender stolen night?” the older man mocked.

  “Lady Mara save my soul, yes,” DaSilva groaned.

  The Diamond made a tiny wordless noise of protest and shut his dazzling black eyes.

  “Sero Freeborn DaSilva, I’ll let you fight him for credits, since you need all the money you can get. If you win, I’ll even cut you a limited sponsorship deal. You keep your freedom. Fight for me, and I’ll bring you back from whatever east Saba back alley you’ve been detoxing in. You’ll get to see my Diamond every single day. Maybe even fight him during training.”

  A wince from DaSilva. Another round of knowing laughter from the audience.

  “But you won’t get to fuck him again. Ever. He doesn’t get to fuck you. Not even in the arena. I think you’ve had enough of that drug. And first you have to win.”

  Kott stood, rising like a craggy glacier in his sleek white suit. He dragged the Diamond upright with him. When the bondmaster doffed his wide-brimmed white hat at DaSilva, it revealed his gray, buzz-cut hair. The Diamond looked slender and fragile beside him. He leaned against the old giant and tried to hide his painted face against Kott’s jacket lapels.

  “None of that now, sweetling,” Kott murmured, pulling the young fighter away from him. He forced the Diamond to look at DaSilva. “This idiot thinks he’s in love with you. Let’s give him some harsh medicine. I’ll pay the death fines out of my own pocket. Kill him.”

  The Diamond glared back at his owner. “Nn…nn…no,” he forced out in a harsh stammer.

  “No, you’ll pay? No, you don’t think you can take him now? Or no, you don’t want to?” Kott growled.

  “W-wo-won’t.”

  Kott gave him an oddly approving glare made of narrowed eyes and too many exposed teeth. “And here I thought this evening would be boring. Kill him, don’t kill him, I don’t care. If he lives, he crawls away sixty thousand credits poorer tonight. Break him. Or I’ll break you.”

  The camera techs worked their magic and isolated the moment the Diamond gave Kott the most defiant look anyone had ever seen from him in a career of bloody insurrection and harnessed rage.

  Kott shook his head. “You stupid puppy, I’ve been protecting you all these years. Buying you time. Maybe tonight you get a life lesson along with the Leopard, eh?”

  The Diamond spat in Kott’s face.

  Kott laughed.

  DaSilva muttered a furious curse that fizzled out when the cameras focused on the Diamond’s face, as the silent man turned to stare at his newest challenger. The whole arena saw it. No malice. No regret. A flicker of pity, shunted into resolve that straightened the slave’s spine. Certainly not a lover’s look.

  On the screens, the betting went wild.

  Two

  VALIER ANTONIN NE’CAMA had already spent half his Saturday afternoon flying through the continent-wide city of Cedar-Saba in a luxurious hover taxi with Mateo DaSilva. Mateo’s gorgeous cousin Jason was slightly favored over the challengers in today’s arena prizefight.

  Mateo had tickets. That he had them at all was the subject of a debate lasting three hundred miles and fifty-seven minutes.

  “He’s your cousin,” Val said finally. “Isn’t it, well, weird?”

  “Distant cousin,” said Mateo, waving away the argument with the mild smoke of his second fume stick. “Third, fifth, something. It’s a big family. I’m not saying I want to fuck him. I just like to watch him.”

  “Displacement activity? Wish fulfillment?” Val needled, not least because he very much wanted to fuck Mateo’s cousin. And that was never going to happen.

  “Jace is beautiful, and I get off thinking about his fights,” said Mateo, looking away over the urban sprawl dimming into blue distance near the horizon. “Doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

  Val had known his friend long enough to be certain Jason DaSilva was never far from Mateo’s thoughts, for good or ill.

  Val had money and a steadily eroding resolve to avoid watching Jason Kee-DaSilva fight in person. All eight hundred miles from the university into the tawdry districts of south Cedar-Saba, Val traded friendly insults with Mateo and debated silently with himself. Should he watch or not? Watch in person or discreetly in a nearby hotel via an expensive pay channel?

  Did the moth tell itself I don’t have to do this! even as it circled the flame?

  Val’s normally chatty symbiont remained silent in his thoughts. Was she sharing his adventure or ashamed of him?

  BEFORE THE MATCH, Mateo found them a handy a street-side cantina in the Vaclav Sector.

  He and Val sat together at the steel and frosted-glass bar, lit by vivid colors slowly pulsing through milky panels in walls, floors, and ceiling.

  “Even with medics and fast-heal tech, there’s going to be a lot of blood,” Mateo said after a considering silence. “You’ve watched the holos I sent you, right? You’re ready?”

  Val thought fast for a moment, settling on resolve mixed with frosty embarrassment and guilty glee. “I know what goes on in the cages.”

  Mateo looked down his magnificent nose, flaring his nostrils in a steadying breath. “Knowing is different than seeing in person.”

  “Are you warning me off after dragging me down here?”

  “No, I’m giving you an honorable way out, Val. Are you doing this as some sort of research project on us defective morally bankrupt humans? Or because you want to see it for real?”

  Val let some truth flavor his blurted “I want to see! Even if I have to run out before I heave, knowing you’ll laugh at me, and that I’ll probably get arrested for being, well, who I am.”

  “You’ll be fine. I know you’re not as squeamish as most Camalians.”

  “You know many of us, do you?”

  Mateo mimed an exaggerated bow. “Since I started being the sole voice of reason in your immediate orbit, yes. There’s your Aunt Alys and all her political cronies, and that sweet girl in the embassy cafeteria…”

  “‘Sole voice’?” Val sputtered, laughing. “Alys thinks you’re a terrible influence on me. She’d ban me from seeing you, if she wasn’t afraid of what I’d do without a human minder.”

  “Sole voice,” Mateo said amiably, settling back on his bar stool. “And expendable, which I’m sure she values on a diplomatic level.”

  A recent and unwelcome heartache wrenched deep in Val’s chest. “Mati, don’t. You’re not expendable, you’re my best fr
iend!”

  The look Mateo gave him was equal parts exasperation, grief, and humor. “I’m human, I’m from a poor family, and no one outside the DaSilva Taverna is going to raise much fuss if you accidentally burn me to ash with a kiss someday.”

  “If I could kiss a human…” Val whispered, looking away. He didn’t know whether to snarl or cry. He’d known about Mateo’s other infatuation for years. Val adored him, but not that way. Not when the Leopard stalked across Val’s memory.

  Val avoided blood sports in general, though not for the reason most of his university cronies assumed.

  “Oh, yes.” Mateo whacked Val on the shoulder. “I know you. You’d fuck your way through the whole school. You’re no chaste little sweetheart, Val. You’re a wicked evil drunk and you start fights other people have to finish. We’ve only your symbiont to thank for any vestige of self-control you have. It’s terrifying being your friend but too much fun to give up. At least you don’t faint at the sight of violence, like the rest of your folk. Why else would I drag you along tonight?”

  Val swigged the last of his beer before the next friendly whack spilled it on his gray coat.

  “Because you love me? Because I have money? Who paid for the taxi? And the beer?”

  “Oh, the money. Pffft on the money.” Mateo flipped his ultramarine-dyed hair out of his eyes. He’d tinted it to match the blue damask greatcoat, black trousers, and ruffled cream poet’s shirt he’d borrowed from his older brother. Neither the dye, nor the hand-me-down clothes, nor his indigo eyeliner made him any less gawky or beak-nosed. Mateo, despite his efforts, wasn’t even the most garish creature in the crowded cantina.

  “And because I’m very decorative without my safety mask,” Val said in a lower tone, guessing he and the Leopard probably starred in a few of Mateo’s private fantasies. For all his pride in his lineage, Val often regretted his family’s eye-catching dark-amber-and-electrum coloring.

  Mateo blew a regretful kiss. “Alas, hermano, you are lovely. Of the ‘look but don’t touch’ variety. Jace sent me two tickets for the second round of fights. They should be starting soon, up on the hundredth floor. Will you join me or hide?”