by M. G. Herron
She checked her phone. “No word yet, but I’ll keep looking.”
“Just be careful. Don’t make any ripples. If whoever came after me finds out you’re looking, they could come after you the same way.”
“I thought you said I couldn’t handle the danger.”
“At least this way you maintain some distance. Not the same as walking back into the lion’s den.”
A sly smile crept its way onto her heart-shaped face. She laid a hand gently on top of mine. “Don’t worry, Anderson. I’ll be careful. No one will even know who’s looking—this is what Marsha Marshall is good at.”
I sighed, relieved that we’d finally found common ground. “Good. And Marsha? Not a word of this on the blog…”
She stuck her bottom lip out at me, pouting.
“…at least not until after it’s over. Then we’ll see.”
Her smile split into a toothy grin.
“While I’m looking for Spider,” she said, “what are you going to be doing?”
“I am going to be setting a trap.”
14
Anna told me she had bookkeeping work for Alek to catch up on. After taking her back to her car, I returned to my office and snatched a few hours of sorely needed sleep.
When I woke, I found that I’d come to a decision.
I’d love to tell you I had some brilliant metaphorical dream, that my subconscious mind helped me take stock of my situation and make sense of things. I didn’t. I was so tired, I didn’t dream at all.
However, opening up to Anna had forced me to confront the fact that I really couldn’t do this on my own. I was in over my head. I needed allies, people I could trust, if I was going to make it out of that Jel’ka track in one piece.
I had no idea how big this whole Ora infestation was. It could have been nothing, just a neighborhood spat in the larger scheme of the universe.
Or it could have been huge. The tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Either way, it certainly qualified as suspicious. I now had the bruises to prove it, and a verbal admission that it was wrapped up in someone’s “cause.” People who take up causes are not to be trusted, in my opinion. No matter which planet they’re born on.
A fireproof safe lay on its side under my desk, black and heavy. I hauled it out and spun out a combination I knew from muscle memory. Inside was something Dyna, the Peacekeeper, had left with me. A small push-button digital recorder like you could buy at any electronics store.
Dyna had programmed the recorder to transmit messages to a satellite relay she left in orbit around the planet. I don’t have a clue how it worked, only that how much time passed before she listened to it depended on access to her communications systems. For all I knew, she was off on another Peacekeeper mission on the opposite side of the galaxy, righting wrongs and generally doing the noble thing. That was why she’d asked for my help—the galaxy was a big place, and the Peacekeepers were too few to be everywhere at all times.
Too few to bother with our little blue planet.
I held the recorder to my mouth. My thumb hovered over the button and my breath caught in my throat, entangled by a sudden absence of words.
My hand fell to my side.
“What am I supposed to tell her?” I said, talking out loud to myself in the small office. “Vinny was drugged by an unknown suspect, and the Gatekeeper cornered me into helping him find an Ora supplier?”
Will Dyna even care? I thought about Gonzalez—how devoted she was to her duty as a police officer. Dyna was a little bit like that, only her loyalty lay with the Federation of Lodi. The whole reason she’d asked me to be her eyes and ears on Earth was because she was worried about being able to do her duty.
To keep peace in the Federation.
What, exactly, had she said before she left? I recalled the tone of the conversation, but it took me a moment to summon her words.
She’d asked me to be on the lookout for anything weird—this certainly qualified—and then added, “The Tetrad may be evil, but they are not weak. They sent Elekatch to your planet to sow chaos at the fringes of the Federation’s reach. They will do so again.”
The Tetrad was an upstart faction within the Federation. Four planets who had banded together to start a civil war. Although their revolution had been quashed by the Peacekeepers, the movement lived on. Revolutionaries continued their efforts in secret.
All to sow chaos.
If Dyna and Kilos hadn’t followed Elekatch to Earth, and if we hadn’t killed him, he might have succeeded.
The Tetrad was what Dyna cared about. Not some low-level drug dealers and an unconscious Pangozil. But the message the robot attack dogs had delivered worried at my thoughts. The concussion I’d received hadn’t been nearly enough to knock the words of the cold, detached voice out of my mind.
“This is not your war to fight. Unless you’re willing to die for the cause…”
Could that be a coincidence? Was that a reference to the Tetrad war, or some minor territorial scuffle between whoever sent the robot after me and the Gatekeeper?
I put away the fireproof safe, but kept the digital recorder in my pocket as I journeyed down the street to grab my usual at The Poached Pig and mull it over. Barry drew down his eyebrows when I declined his offer of a beer. He poured me a water instead, then ducked into the kitchen to prep my meal. A few other barflies hung around the place, tucked into shadowy booths or corner tables. They kept to themselves, which was perfectly fine with me.
By the end of the last bite of my Reuben on rye, I had reached a decision. My reasoning was mostly logistical. It would take Dyna a few days to receive my message, longer to send a reply. It would be weeks, perhaps, before she could travel to Earth, if she decided that was even warranted.
Logistically, however, I couldn’t rely on her for any kind of backup. I would send Dyna a message once I knew what was really going on. Once my suspicion had hardened into verifiable fact. In the meantime, I had to rely on my allies at home.
Even if those allies were ones I’d rather not be associated with.
My feet carried me out of the bar and down the street. I entered into the central part of downtown by crossing beneath the highway overpass, where homeless bums liked to loiter. It wasn’t a long walk. Soon, I approached the Museum of the Weird, behind which the entrance to Harbor, the Gatekeeper’s underground nightclub, was located.
The last thing I wanted was to be seen at Harbor. The speculation floating around about me working for the Gatekeeper dug at me like a hangnail, painful and insistent and out of my reach. Showing up unannounced like this would only give the rumors more credence.
I clenched my teeth and kept walking.
If Anna hadn’t waylaid me, perhaps I would have found myself heading down this path sooner. It seemed almost inevitable, no matter how much I tried to avoid it. I needed to make sure the Gatekeeper knew Samael had been taken by that robot who’d come after me, and enlist the alien mafiosos’ aid in whatever way I could.
It was distasteful, but I didn’t see another option. I couldn’t ask Anna to help me without endangering her, and she was spot-on about needing someone to watch my back. Neither could I ask for help from Gonzalez. I’d already gotten her in enough trouble.
I could call Alek and ask for help, but he’d already done so much for me. And I needed him to think well of me. He was, after all, my primary source of legitimate income. Once this was behind me, I’d need his business.
At least, in this instance, my interests and the Gatekeeper’s seemed to be aligned. He would probably be furious that Samael had been kidnapped. If I were him, I would be.
As I approached on the shady, tree-lined left side of the street, I noticed from a distance that the Museum of the Weird was closed, the metal gate across the front doorway drawn shut and latched. No lights on inside, and the tourists passing by barely gave the place a second look.
Why was it closed during normal operating hours? Did that mean the Gatekeeper didn’t want
any guests?
I was a block away when I crossed the street, looking both ways for cars.
I glanced up, searching the dusky orange-pink sky for another Daacro circling high in the clouds, keeping an eye on this place and on me. While I wasn’t looking, the windows of the Museum of the Weird shattered and exploded outward in a sudden hail of glass and flame.
I was thrown backward by the force of the explosion. The light momentarily blinded me.
An SUV driving past was knocked onto its side, sliding into a fire hydrant and knocking it off the pipe. Water fountained upward and rained down on my face. I blinked away the water droplets as I struggled onto my side.
Breathing heavy, my heart pounding, I gained my feet and glanced around.
Chaos.
I staggered through the spray, my face burned and bleeding from a gash in my head where I’d struck the pavement. People screamed and ran by me. Traffic slowed to a stop. Flames licked the windows of the secret entrance to the Gatekeeper’s alien night club.
Fishing the digital recorder out of my pocket, I pressed the button and put it to my mouth.
“Dyna,” I said, panting heavily, “It’s Gunn. Something sinister is happening here. Vinny is in an Ora-induced coma, I was beaten to within an inch of my life, and the Museum of the Weird, on top of the Gatekeeper’s nightclub, just exploded before my eyes.
“You said the Tetrad wanted to sow the seeds of chaos? Well, I don’t know what’s going on, but if that’s their goal, this is shaping up to be a damn good start.”
15
With my chances of finding the Gatekeeper wiped out, and honestly fearing for my life, I ran back to my truck and sped out of town in the direction of Rashiki’s, breaking any and all traffic laws to get out of dodge as quickly as possible.
An attack on the Gatekeeper’s place of business and favored hideout made it clear to me that there was something more to the story than what limited information he and his cronies had deigned to tell me about.
Something worth killing for.
I didn’t expect a power broker like the Gatekeeper to have entirely noble intentions for tracking down this Ora supplier in the first place. The Gatekeeper was the kind of alien who didn’t do anything unless it was to his advantage in some fashion. Knowing that was my main reasons for initially turning down the job.
Once again, it seemed like my instincts had been trustworthy.
But I seriously underestimated the lengths to which the Gatekeeper’s enemies were willing to go.
On a two-lane highway, I pulled my Ford into the left lane and accelerated past a slow-moving Buick, my odometer topping eighty, as my mind raced over the last twenty-four hours.
What I did know that was a close brush with death made me worry even more about the people closest to me, each of whom I’d talked to in the last twenty four hours and who may now be in the sights of the Gatekeeper’s enemies.
Gonzalez and the department would find out about the explosion soon, if they hadn’t already.
Anna, with any luck, was safely home or at her office.
Vinny, however, was still at Rashiki’s. Of the three of them, he needed me the most.
I’d held a low-level worry about him in check since I went after Ken Lard. Would someone try to finish him off before he woke from the coma?
Had I left my friend helpless and exposed?
The sun had set, but the sky still glowed with the aftermath of the day when I finally located the unmarked dirt road that led to Rashiki’s Racetrack.
The gate was held closed with a padlock, but fortunately, I kept a small arsenal in the lockbox in back of my pickup. A blast of my shotgun loosened up the lock enough to crack it open the rest of the way using a crowbar. The weapons went back into the lockbox when I was done with them.
“Sorry, Rashiki,” I grunted as I heaved open the gate, leaving the busted lock on the ground as I sped onward, my tires kicking up dust behind me.
I parked near the red barn, then stepped out of the truck and into a tan cloud. The barn door was open. I strode straight through the near-invisible energy barrier, feeling the slight resistance against the gray cloak, bundled in my hand.
Then, finding no weapons on my person, it gave, and I stumbled inside.
One minute I stood in the dust-choked air outside, the next in the clean air on the broad, top level of the boardwalk inside of Rashiki’s. The energy shield I’d passed through made a sharp, buzzing sound. When I reached back and touched it with my hand, it was warm, and hard like tempered glass. That was new.
I swallowed.
It was dim inside the barn, and it took me a few seconds to realize that the neon signs and bright lights of the vendors had provided most of the light the previous night. A few small rays of the setting sun filtered in through the tinted lens of the door’s hardened glass shield, and also through the high barn windows, light beams illuminating tiny motes that twirled under the wide wooden crossbeams of the pole barn’s rafters.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light.
Ten feet in front of me, at the railing of the boardwalk where it began to wind down into the lowest level, Hix and Rashiki stood at the vanguard of an angry-looking, orange-skinned Torlik security guards, all frowning in my direction.
The guards and Hix carried some tools on their belt, but nothing I recognized as a firearm. That was good. I would just have to trust that I was persuasive enough to convince Rashiki and Hix to listen to me. For obvious reasons, however, I felt safer here inside the Rashiki’s Racetrack than I had since getting the pulp pressed out of me in Vinny’s back yard.
I surprised even myself by breathing a soft sigh of relief.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s with the greeting party?”
My focus was on other things.
“Why did you shoot my lock off?” Rashiki demanded. “We would have removed it when we opened at nine.”
Rashiki took a long, deliberate pull off his ever-present hookah hose, then exhaled slowly. The smoke came out in an undulating, worm-like plume, bobbing up and down in rhythm with his levitating pod.
Ignoring Rashiki’s question, I asked another one of my own. “Where’s Vinny? I need to see him.”
Rashiki waved toward the floor. “We moved him to medical unit beneath track.”
“Take me to see him.”
Rashiki folded his hands across his broad stomach and glared at me. “You’ve got some nerve, busting into my house and deigning to give me orders, human.”
“I’m worried about him. ”
“You’re paying for that lock you broke.”
I shrugged.
Rashiki took another puff from the hookah as his eye scanned over me.
“What in the blue blazes happened to you?” Hix drawled.
I glared at him from under my brows. I didn’t need a mirror to see that my skin had started to bruise like an old banana around my eyes and jaw. I felt it every time I blinked or spoke.
“I got jumped.”
“By Ken Lard?”
“No, by freakin’ robot attack dogs. They surprised me at Vinny’s place.”
Hix’s mouth opened in a small O, and the skin of his hairless, orange-tinted brows crinkled into a look of surprise, obvious even on his alien features. “Huh.”
This information seemed to catch Rashiki off guard, too.
I threw the cloak on the ground between us. Hix picked it up and held it so that he and Rashiki could both examine it. Hix’s fingers easily found the face-obscuring tech. He seemed to know exactly what it was, too. No testing needed.
“They left that behind,” I said.
“A message,” Hix responded. “It’s the same cloak from last night.”
“More like a warning,” I said.
Rashiki cocked his head.
I looked into Hix’s eyes, and then into Rashiki’s, before letting my gaze pass over the goons behind them.
Rashiki finally nodded, getting my point. “Let’s go somewhere private
to talk. We’ve discovered something you should know about, too.”
“I want to see Vinny, first.”
Rashiki puffed on his hookah. “Yes, yes. Come with me, Earther, I’ll take you to see him, and then we talk.”
Except for a few vendors stocking inventory and doing prep for the evening, the boardwalk was empty. As we descended, the security guards that had been following us peeled away and disappeared into the nooks and crannies of the hive, presumably resuming their normal posts.
By the time we reached the track, it was just Hix, Rashiki and me, with two guards trailing behind us. I had a feeling that if I tried to turn back now, I wouldn’t be allowed to go.
My whole body tensed as we made our way down the ramp and into the stables beneath. Walking down into the dirt-filled arena after two close brushes with death made me feel like a gladiator walking into the ring for his final battle.
Determined to live, and scared shitless.
The animal smell of the stables, piss and sweat mixed with a slight copper tang of blood, didn’t help. That, plus the squawking of the Jel’ka and the click of their claws on their cages put me on edge. A knot had formed in my neck. I rubbed at it with one hand.
Slim’dar’s body was no longer on a table in the middle of the stable. Neither was Vinny’s. In fact, the place was relatively empty outside of the Jel’ka cages, except for two Torliks in coveralls, one cleaning an empty pen and the other feeding the prized raptors.
It quickly became obvious where the metallic scent was coming from. When a fresh carcass landed in the dirt inside a pen, a handful of Jel’ka rushed over and ripped hunks of flesh from the body, fighting playfully over the pieces, ripping into the meat with sharp claws and sending a bloody mist into the air.
Rashiki and Hix didn’t seem bothered by carnivorous raptors feeding nearby, but they must have seen my expression.
“Dinner time,” Rashiki said by way of explanation. “This way.”
With my stomach heavy and hard like a cannonball, I walked in the direction he pointed.
Instead of going into the security office where we’d reviewed the footage, Rashiki directed me through the opposite doorway, and we entered a huge room dominated by a dirt track. It must have been a training area. This track was smaller than the one above, but built in the same shape and style.