Luca smirked as the incorrigible — and surprisingly strong — space pirate fingered the trigger her ship's railgun. The hiss and whine of charging capacitor banks was eerily similar to the sounds a certain pair of sisters from the Elevation Space Station resort made the last time he visited the place.
And he was very familiar with women threatening him, though usually it was a derivative of 'rock your world'.
The vampire's displeasure was significantly more troubling. Alcuard looked ready to pummel Luca's skull into paste with a rock, which was a dramatic change from the nearly feral, lustful hunger that had been on his face a few minutes ago.
"Izzy," Luca said. "Do you remember seeing a theoretical meteorologist on television recently? A woman in her thirties talking about the salt content in children's tears being perfect for the climate seeding project?"
"I, uh. Yeah," Isabella admitted. "Yeah, I do. A lot of people thought she was full of crap."
"She was. I had a bet going with a group of hedge fund managers that scientists can be bribed. As it turns out, they're actually pretty cheap," Luca admitted.
"They were in my time, as well," Alcuard agreed.
"Basically, I offered to pay for her PHD program for saying that the terraforming project required a list of absurd ingredients," Luca explained, and he laughed to himself. "Nonsense stuff. The blood of virgin women, the tears of small children, ground-up childhood toys, nose hairs from old men, the beard trimmings of a hipster, the spit of a nun, some soot from Pompei, the ash of the Mona Lisa, seven blocks from the pyramids, and water from the last glacier."
"She said you needed all of that?" Isabella asked, her mouth open in shock. A common sight for Luca whenever he took off his shirt.
"Yep," Luca said with a smirk. "It was so much fun."
"But the Mona Lisa is still in the Louvre!" Isabella exclaimed.
"Is it?" Luca asked with a wink. "Or is it fixed to a wall in my yacht?"
"So you're not injecting the blood?" Alcuard asked. "Or drinking it?"
Luca found it fairly surprising that the vampire sounded as serious as he did. "No, why would I do that?"
"I am relieved to hear it," Alcuard said. "Then in turn, let me tell you about the A Lien account."
"I had lain in my cryo stasis pod for over six thousand years. Try to imagine it. Six thousand years unable to do any more than think. Unable to move your eyes, your fingers, any part of your body, but being cognizant of every second as the centuries crawl their way into becoming millennia," Alcuard began to complain.
"You must have nearly gone mad," Isabella breathed vapidly.
"Oh, I went mad a few days in. Unfortunately, insanity is only so entertaining. Unless you have a writer's imagination the novelty of madness can only sustain you a few weeks, and you're left with nothing but your thoughts and your ebook collection. Mostly it's just boredom, unless something starts to itch. But in 1880, my COFFIN's transmitters began to detect that their signals were being received by a device. After a great deal of work, I managed to communicate with a gentleman named Nikola Tesla."
Alcuard chuckled and raised an imaginary glass to the sky. "Ah, what a mind that fool boy had. I gave him some pointers in design based on some electrical engineering books I had saved, and in thanks, he offered to pay me. But when I explained our predicament, we estimated together that it would take hundreds of years for me to be found and freed. And so, he generously took five thousand dollars, not an inconsiderable sum, but he said he stole it from a vile scoundrel of a man named Edison. He then deposited it in an account, and instructed the bank that interest accrued should be reinvested."
"Wow. So I guess you're, like, pretty rich," Isabella said, and she unselfconsciously pulled at her bra.
"I might very well be," Alcuard agreed. "I am hoping to return to the status and comfort I once enjoyed. I would like to claim my account soon. You will both be handsomely rewarded, of course, and will live in comfort you likely have never enjoyed before."
Isabella laughed, slapping her knees. "I'll take it, but I'm pretty sure there isn't enough money in the verse to lift him into a higher status," she said, pointing to Luca.
"Izzy here will want to get paid, but you can have the ride pro-bono," Luca said. "I just like a good mystery. Do you know which bank you're supposed to go to?"
"I do. But please do not open a portal right now," Alcuard insisted. "It's morning there."
"So we have a bit of time to kill. Anyone like to spend the day on my yacht?"
"I'm not much for sailing," Alcuard admitted. "Or even being underwater. Dead bodies take on an unpleasant composition when they're waterlogged."
"Well, you don't have to go in the pool. It's docked at Luna's space elevator."
"You have a space yacht?" Isabella asked.
"Is there another kind of yacht?"
"They're usually boats, not spaceships."
"That's idiotic. Who would pay fifty-seven billion dollars for a yacht that's stuck on the ocean?"
"You might be the only person alive who casually pays fifty-seven billion dollars for anything," Isabella said. "I'm pretty sure each saleswoman you met retired off the sales commission."
"That would explain why they were always so happy to see me," Luca admitted. "And why I never saw the same one twice."
Luca reached into his pocket and pulled the small remote out. He pointed it at the ground nearby and pressed the screen. With a small pop and a hiss of displaced air, a sphere of shimmering light and twisting darkness appeared in the air.
"By the light that brings oblivion," Alcuard cursed, his eyes wide in wonder. "You really have it. You can fold space, create wormholes."
"Yep. The crown jewel of the Cardego Corporation," Luca said.
"I am in awe," Alcuard said, staring at it in wonder.
"It's the reason I'm the world's only trillionaire," Luca said, enjoying still being able to say that.
"How did you swing that? I mean, every inventor alive must be trying to recreate the technology," Isabella noted, crossing her arms and pushing her chest up. Luca was gratified to see the motion didn't settle as quickly as it would have on earth.
Low gravity was a beautiful thing and often brought up the bust in people.
"They'll never pull it off," Luca said.
"How can you be so sure of that?" Isabella's robotic sidekick, BIRD, asked.
"Trade secret," Luca replied. He then turned away and started walking towards the wormhole. "Anyway, the portal leads to the main hall of my yacht. Food, drink and rest await."
Luca then stepped through the wormhole.
There was a flash of light, and a swirl of distorted reality as the universe washed past Luca in a blazing sea of light. Galaxies stretching across the billions of years of wandering light passed him in instants, quasars nearly as old as the Big Bang blazed into life and winked out of existence, as the universe was shown from its brilliant origin to dark emptiness as the last star burned out at the end of the hundred trillion year life of everything.
Luca covered his eyes with his hand, unable to watch as this disorientating immensity swirled by. "Computer!" he bellowed. "Turn off the goddam screen saver!"
The swirling mass of light stopped, winked out as quickly as turning a switch on a lamp. What was left was the observation screen on the walls fading to a fairly benign display of the nearby moonscape, and the ceiling lights following a moment later.
"Sorry, sir," a sultry voice echoed over the speakers.
Luca scowled and closed his eyes as his eyes adjusted. Wormhole travel was so benign that any sufficiently advanced AI seemed to reflexively feel the need to overcompensate by displaying something dramatic.
"Computer, set the displays to a screen saver, and inform the crew we will have two guests for the day. No plans to depart."
"Happy to oblige, sir," the computer practically purred at him, and Luca smiled.
In part because finding just the right voice for his computer had been a long and thoroughly enjoyable series of affairs.
He turned back to see Isabella step through the portal, her attempt at the long-legged confidence of a catwalk undermined by her shock as she looked around the room. "Holy shit!" She exclaimed. "This is a room in a spaceship?"
Luca glanced around, recalling the dimensions of the room, and realized he could probably fit her entire ship inside. "Being poor must be depressing," he muttered to himself.
"No, like seriously? This is a room in a spaceship?" Isabella asked.
"If you think this is big, you should see the arena in the sixteenth floor," Luca replied. "I'm going to be the first private citizen to host a World Cup game next year. Also the first time it will ever be hosted in space."
"Wow..." Isabella murmured.
Luca stepped up to her and flashed her a wolfish smile. "Think you could get used to the way I live?"
She sighed, panted, and rested a hand on his abs. "I'd love to try."
They were interrupted, of course, by a blood-curdling scream of unrestrained terror.