Chapter 9: Ecstasy - 3750 C.E.

The lights that illuminated the bar shimmered and flashed to the thunderous rhythm of the electronic music that accompanied the nude dancing on the podium. A serving android with a voluptuous bosom and a prominent arse was collecting the empty glasses left behind on the counter. There weren't very many customers and these consisted mostly of prostitutes, which was the occupation most often adopted by female refugees from the war-torn Asteroid Belt or the more impoverished colonies in Jupiter's orbit. Scattered about the bar was a small number of tourists. And sitting on a bar stool and nursing a glass of locally produced wine that he'd ordered well over an hour before was a tall man with persistent stubble and a jacket made from real leather.

Lofty brusquely ignored the attention of the prostitutes and they returned his indifference in kind. Perhaps he was more interested in men than women, although if that was so why should he pay a visit to Manu's bar in this twilight corner of Ecstasy? The homosexual district, mostly swarming with Saturnians, wasn't very far away. His pale blue eyes scanned the premises with intent interest. These were chilling eyes that betrayed no softness and matched well his chiselled features.

The bar door opened and Manu swept in with two male companions and three of his regular prostitutes. Judging from their thinness and pale brown skin, these were refugees from Vesta, the most ravaged of the Asteroids. Lofty lowered his head to regard the trace of red wine he'd left untouched for so long and sipped it slowly while his eyes carefully followed Manu and his comrades walk across the bar to the room at the back which was where the proprietor could most often be found. Only when the door slid shut did Lofty at last put down his empty glass and step down from the bar stool.

No one cared to watch as Lofty strode across the bar towards the same door through which Manu had entered. And no one noticed him aim a laser gun at the door's controls whose silent blast caused the door to slide open. It was only a few moments later that Lofty re-emerged from the room carrying a small bag with a barely noticeable rent in the sleeve of his leather jacket. He left the bar without comment while the women on the podium continued to dance and the prostitutes chatted with those male punters who were rather more susceptible than Lofty to their relatively inexpensive charms.

Nobody bothered to enter Manu's private room at the back of the bar for many more minutes. The first person to do so was Miharu who'd been biding her time all day for the opportunity to bargain with the delights of her body for a well-earned break from her duties and the opportunity to visit her children and husband in the crumbling slums on the sixteenth level.

The first unusual thing she noticed was that the door to Manu's room had been vandalised and could be slid open manually. Although that was strange enough, even more peculiar was the sight of Manu and his five companions. Their bloodied bodies were slumped in the exact spots where they'd been dispatched. The only evidence of anything resembling a struggle was around Manu whose face was coated in blood and whose nose was a crumpled ruin. Worse still was that his hand and most of his lower arm had been severed by a single slash from what could only have been a laser gun.

Miharu took in the scene rather slowly. She was, after all, still very high on the drugs that made her working day bearable and she wasn't at all sure whether what she saw was real or a drug-fuelled fantasy. When she'd established that what she was witnessing was indeed the aftermath of an appallingly efficient slaughter, she decided not to attract anyone's attention to what she'd found. Instead, she rifled through the men's pockets. There was no point in doing the same for the women's. It was only when she was sure she'd taken everything of value that she left the room by a back entrance. She was quite content to leave someone else to the risky business—for a bar full of illegal immigrants—of notifying the space colony's overworked police force.

Lofty disposed of his laser gun in a recycling unit not far from the bar. He hardly cared at all that it was one designed specifically for paper and organic waste. He then continued to walk with no sign of anxiety, remorse or haste across the city streets towards the luxury apartments on Ecstasy's upper levels where Adrian Xerxes lived.

Xerxes much preferred to be known by the exotic surname by which he may or may not have been christened. And who would know? Like most of the prostitutes and criminal underworld living in Ecstasy his origins were far from the Kuiper Belt.

His penthouse was one of the most luxurious in Ecstasy. The garden extended for several hectares at the very top of a monstrous tower block, almost within a hundred metres of the ceiling of the first, and therefore most exclusive, level of the city.

Unlike Manu's residence, it wasn't easy for Lofty to gain admittance to Xerxes' penthouse. Even entering his exclusive escalator, which travelled uninterrupted from the ground floor to the top, wasn't straightforward. Robots couldn't be trusted to check that Lofty wasn't carrying lethal weaponry or, indeed, anything else which could be used as an assassination weapon. The women who guarded the escalator and as good as lived in it not only scanned Lofty with sophisticated equipment but stripped him of his clothes so that he was totally naked when he exited the escalator on the top floor. He carried only the bag which not long before had been squeezed in Manu's tight grip when Lofty relieved its previous owner not only of his bag but of the hand and much of the arm that had tried desperately to keep it in his possession. The worst thing about the whole encounter had been the sharp blade Manu's other hand managed to sneak out from his sleeve and with which he slashed Lofty's expensive real leather jacket. Chamois leather wasn't that easy to find in this part of the Solar System.

The only person in Xerxes' huge living room wearing any clothes was Xerxes himself. He was surrounded by several naked women and a pair of stern, exceptionally burly, male escorts who were entrusted with laser guns that were strapped to their wrists and forearms. Xerxes was also built well and showed no evidence that he was now living well into his second century. Even the unhealthy consequences of a life such as his that was dedicated to every conceivable species of debauchery and perversion—to which the bruised and battered body of a prostitute lying on the patio with her entrails sprawled about her bore uncomfortable witness—had been well remedied by hugely expensive life-extending surgery.

"You have the bag?" Xerxes asked.

Lofty raised the hand in which he held the valuable object.

"Put it down on the floor and stand back," his boss ordered.

Lofty did as he was told, while one of the women, somehow more favoured than the others, stepped forward and opened the bag with a sophisticated tool that easily cracked the encrypted code that secured the bag's lock. She put in a hand and withdrew a small hexagonal box which she studied with a small pen-shaped monitor.

"It's seventy-five percent pure," she announced.

"Fuck!" said Xerxes angrily. "Seventy-five fucking percent! Hardly worth the effort of getting it."

"It's still likely to attract bids of at least a million credits," said the woman in a measured but cautious tone.

Despite her diplomacy, this reassurance earned her a sharp slap across the face which drew blood from her nose and upper lip. Xerxes rubbed his knuckles with grim satisfaction and studied the item inside the hexagonal box.

"I was fucking hoping for at least ten million," he said angrily. "That Manu boasted it was ninety-five percent pure. He should have kept his fucking mouth shut. Then he'd still be alive and his whores could even now be serving him coke and fanny. What a cunt!"

Everyone in the room was quiet and even Lofty was anxious. Xerxes was a man who often took out his anger and disappointment on his immediate company. Even Lofty, after all these decades, had reason to fear Xerxes' temper. He'd seen the extent to which the man's sadistic urges could go to be satisfied, even if his cock hardened only very occasionally. One penalty that resulted from Xerxes' appetite for depravity was that even the most violent and murderous sexual acts were no longer guaranteed to bring him the sexual satisfaction he so avidly sought.

Xerxes sat down on the divan with a clink and a jangle from the thick gold and platinum jewellery that he wore not only on his body but in many places threaded into his flesh. He placed the hexagonal box carefully on the table in front of him and shook his head.

"Still," he said uncharacteristically reflectively. "A million credits are better than nothing at all. Thank you, Lofty. You did a good job."

Lofty could at last venture a smile, which on a face like his was still tinged with a hint of malice.

"I aim only to do my best, boss," he said modestly.

"I have another job for you," said Xerxes. "Shall we go outside into the garden?"

"Yes, boss," said Lofty obediently.

Although it was something he rarely admitted even to himself, Lofty was as much tied to Xerxes' service as were his courtesans or prostitutes. If he were ever to attempt to leave Ecstasy or even just retire, it would only be a matter of time until he would be dead. It mightn't happen, however, for several years. His death would be prolonged, extremely painful and most certainly humiliating. He knew this for sure as he had several times been the emissary of such justice. Although he wasn't a man easily aroused by the punishment he meted out, especially when it was another man who was the victim, there was always a sexual element to it that very rarely accorded with what the victim might ever desire. It was a bizarre reward for service to the wealthiest gang leader on Ecstasy that the longer and more faithful the service given the more terrible the inevitable death would be. Xerxes was unlikely to be content with serving abrupt and relatively painless justice. Lofty had nailed men and women to ceilings. He had impaled them with garden implements. He had forced men to eat their genitals. Women to murder their own children. And roasted others on slowly burning spits.

"It's a small job," said Xerxes when he and Lofty were sitting on a bench in his extensive garden under the shade of a sycamore tree.

Several parrots were resting on the branches. Deer were strolling about the lawn mindful as ever of the leopard that Xerxes chose to keep in their midst. The body of the recently murdered woman on the patio would keep the leopard and the huge domestic dogs well-fed when they were sure that she was properly dead, but the deer had every reason to fear that they would also soon be prey. Above their heads a small cloud passed by, but this would do nothing more than obscure the sight of the first level's ceiling. The rain that fell regularly on the garden came from the colony's internal sprinkler system and not from the clouds that resulted from its evaporation.

"How small?" wondered Lofty.

"It's just one guy," said Xerxes. "He's called Paul Morris. Weird name, but he comes from Godwin where they've all got weird names."

"Godwin?" said Lofty. "Never heard of it."

"Most people haven't," said Xerxes. "It's a kind of anarchist colony. No money. No government. Fuck all."

"No pickings there then," Lofty remarked.

"Load of fucking utopian idealists," said Xerxes dismissively. "Only a fucking idiot would try and do business with them. So, not surprisingly, not me nor anyone else in the family has a presence there. But this cunt's on his way here to Ecstasy. Short visit, mind. Then he's on his way to Saturn and even, I've heard, Earth. That's one place in the Solar System I've always wanted to go."