JO-JO RASTEROVICH

 

To say that Jo-Jo Rasterovich was the kind to bear a grudge was an understatement and, as such, a marked contrast to his own appetite for exaggeration.

So when the Hera Guild of Lawmon and Bondsmen released him from the contract that he’d signed on Belle-Monde he vac’d the shell. He then spent several hours concocting and uttering a wealth of profanities that would best describe his feelings for Tekton.

As that wore thin, and his throat got dry, he got down to the serious business of planning his revenge.

He returned to the vicinity of Belle-Monde and hired a surveillance module (disguised as a catering multiworld) in which to lurk about while he stalked Tekton’s movements and traced his research (something he was able to do with relative ease, knowing the infrastructure and inbuilt protocols of the ex-bordello pseudo-world in remarkable detail), building a picture of the smart’s hopes, dreams, and his allies.

It was during that time when he became aware of another shadow in Tekton’s life. A stalker of detail, rather like himself. He weighed the probability of it being friend or foe and fell heavily on the side of the latter.

It seemed that Tekton had not just one enemy—he had two.

But he’s mine!

When Tekton boarded an OLOSS transport with Dieter Thighs, Jo-Jo hightailed it back to Salacious II (with some excellent new heat, shake and gobble recipes) and tracked him there.

The OLOSS transport puttered off to the re-shift point near Mintaka and Jo-Jo eased Salacious II out after it with the skill of a plain-clothes detective on his preferred beat. He could have got closer but knowing that Dieter Thighs was Tekton’s travelling companion Jo-Jo decided that surveillance was the smarter part of valour.

As they approached the J. Rast shift point (yes, named after him!) Jo-Jo snuggled up close to it in the busy queue and deployed a rather snazzy poaching programme, which informed him that Tekton was off to the philosophers’ planet Scolar.

Jo-Jo res-shifted through a different route and still beat Tekton there. He then hung out in Scolar space until he was forced to enrol in an external philosophy course to keep the Scolar marshals off his back.

So while Tekton and Dieter Thighs went about their business, Jo-Jo inhaled Aesthetics and learned whole new meanings for the words ‘sublime’ and ‘disgust’.

The agony and ecstasy of it all went on for several weeks until at short notice, Tekton hired a re-shift cruiser. Jo-Jo dumped Vatsyayan, Confucius and Mi as the cruiser’s stolen coordinates tumbled into Salacious II’s nav system and brought up a distant system on his holowad.

Jo-Jo’s high-heeled-legs pointer danced about before settling on one of the system’s three inhabited planets.

A set of pouting scarlet lips formed to rattle off a short briefing.

 

Araldis World has been settled for two hundred and three years. Its major export is mineral. Haulers operating on the mag-beam network cart ore to the Dowl res-shift station for sale and distribution through the wings of Orion.

Owned and settled by Cipriano Clan (aristocratic families from Latino Minor with ideologically Machiavellian roots) originally from Latino Crux.

Racial breakdown: Latino humanesque 72%, other humanesque 26%, alien 2%.

 

The pointer legs and lips vanished while the system diagram continued its elegant rotation in front of him.

Jo-Jo propped his elbows on his knees, sank his chin into his hands and gave a gargantuan sigh. ‘The only things I hate more than tax collectors and Hera contracts,’ he said aloud, ‘are frigging aristos.’