"Here?" My voice trailed off into silence.
Mahara beckoned me through the open door of the corner room of the second level.
The combined foul, sour smell of sweat and natural lubrication and the stale fishy stench of cooked seafood lingered around the room. The pungency assaulted my nostrils.
Most of the odors emanated from the sofa and carpeting in the room.
I rather sit on a dusty floor than that filthy sofa.
God knows how many bacteria and viruses lurked in those visible dark stains on that velvet sofa.
I shuddered at the thought.
One would call this a mirror room.
The Durgians lined the walls and the ceiling with mirrors, like some primitive porn set in a scavenged Iktomin ship on sale in a ship garage store, within the Narakan system a few hundred galactic cycles ago.
The door behind me slid shut. A glow of the sound barrier surrounded the room.
"Entrance is through the mirror," Mahara pointed towards a mirror which looked like the others.
My optical implants couldn't detect anything other than the mirrors. Nothing suspicious about the large velvet sofa against an adjacent wall.
"Don't tell me you expected the other door outside the room?" Mahara folded her arms with a smug look on her wrinkled face.
Any dumb rookie would fall for the ruse of choosing the mentioned door to investigate any nefarious activities.
Who will ever suspect a sleazy-looking room full of mirrors, which resembled a porn film set?
And smelled like one.
Well, maybe anti-vice squads would.
Mahara must have noticed my facial expression when I glanced at the sofa. "I wonder… have you ever tried… you know… kink—"
"You need a Velesian sterilising cleaner for those… ack… spots," I interrupted her and pointed at the part of the sofa where the most were.
"I guess not…," Mahara trailed off in her reply.
I don't even know why she even tried to drag personal details out of me.
Not that it matters.
What they called kink is of no use to me, unless it was a part of a mission.
Last thing the Kamuy military wanted is a defective officer faltering on emotions to carry out orders. They punished the few caught with a civilian Kamuy in an unauthorised affair by demoting them to cannon fodder in dangerous missions.
Seduction was a weapon, not a result of emotional attachment at a whim. The Kamuy military permitted affairs as a necessity in missions involving assassinations or espionage.
I killed my fair share of males using the art of seduction like a hunting trap, to reel them in to make the attempt. Swift and fast, with no need to even shed my clothes or any kinks.
I never knew why my victims liked my face, nor did I care to 'connect' with them. Some species have poor taste.
"Huh? The cleaner will destroy any pathogen with those strong ultraviolet radiation," I replied.
She beckoned to me with her hand and stepped through the mirror. It wobbled like a puddle as I walked through and entered a plain lit hallway with LED lighting.
The metal clad walls made me recall the old military training barracks on old Amatsubune.
Noises from the club disappeared, replaced by high frequency positronic buzzing sounds coming from the icy cold end of the hallway.
The buzzing reminded me of Arabaki.
Droids communicated at similar frequencies to maintain their swarm form. The larger a droid swarm, the louder the noise.
That unless the droids packed themselves tightly. The tighter they packed, the quieter they are.
Mahara walked ahead towards the end where a large vault-like door with gears which the Durgians inscribed the Durgian alphabet.
On the side of the hallway beside the door was a small black pad.
She placed her thumb on the black pad and the mechanism turned the gears with a loud click.
Mahara leaned on the door, which increased the volume of the loud buzzing noises to reveal a large office.
In the office, a group of Durgians stood around several large holographic screens discussing some matters, and some sitting at the neatly arranged desks.
A few turned their heads to look at the both of us.
"Aperva, did you prepare the desk?" Mahara called out.
A tall tanned Durgian stood up with his traditional garment minus the shirt, revealing his native tattoos across his chest, and pointed to the empty desk with a holographic screen behind him.
Aperva looked bothered by my presence, judging by the sneer he gave me.
Not a choice location when I noticed two surveillance cameras directly facing the desk.
"Desk is there," he said gruffly, clearly carrying an irate expression on his face.
"There," Mahara pushed me towards the desk and pushed me down onto the chair while another Durgian approached her.
"Mahara, the earlier intrusion scrambled to Narakan again. We can't trace back."
She ushered him away from my side to another corner to speak.
Heh. I hope it isn't about my earlier intrusion into their satellite systems.
My cochlear implants in the ear couldn't amplify their conversation due to the crackling caused by multitudes of occupied frequencies in the room.
I glanced at the holographic screen, which displayed the common Haolean tongue of the Great Swirl Council member species, and stole a look at the others, which displayed the Durgian language.
On the desk was the keyboard commands system.
My hand fiddled with the droid 'earrings' firmly clamped to my ear lobe.
Damn. I cussed my luck.
If only I wore the two droids as a ring on my finger, I wouldn't face the problem of releasing the droids discreetly into their information system.
I tapped slowly at the keyboard, not wanting to rouse suspicions. The Durgians may look busy, but they would understand the search terms. My only other option is to drop the 'earring' droid, but how would it get out?
The mirror would be a special entry forcefield, given how it wobbled. Mahara kept it open for me to walk through. Then I noticed the option of languages on the keyboard.
Deridian language can be hard for the surrounding Durgians to grasp at a glance from afar since it is hieroglyphic language with similar shapes, like the Kamuy language.
However, the Durgians would record everything I typed, even if I used Deridian language. Without the two droids in their system, I couldn't throw them off my scent.
With hesitation, I tapped on the language option and selected Deridian.
Maybe I can ask for a second day in this area.
A spherical keyboard for Deridian input appeared in front of me and I started typing the search terms for the news on the destruction of the Inti system.
Today will be just a boring day of reading news and theories about the Great Swirl Council's territories.
My usage of their system to read news will bore any Durgian monitoring my usage.
I knew I would be.