In practice this meant that the whole planet ran on favours and bribes. The bribe to the Customs office on the spaceport nearly cleaned me out, but at least they were gracious enough not to comment on the stained nature of the notes involved, and to throw a map of the city of Agrathea into the bargain. As I found, on leaving the main doors of the spaceport, that these maps were freely available almost everywhere anyway that wasn’t much of a bargain. But still.
There was a shuttle service operating between the spaceport and the city, and as it didn’t cost too much of my rapidly diminishing funds, I took it. The shuttle was mostly full of tourists, which pleased me. One of the bad things I have found with being a wanted man, is that if you travel to a place full of locals, everyone looks at you. And quite often then at the poster on a wall nearby headlined: REWARD. It’s actually quite annoying, while being somehow flattering, at the same time. Strange. But when you can blend into a group of tourists or assorted drunken business types, things are a bit easier. So I smiled and pretended to be a tourist, without going so fa as to pull out a camera and take photos of nondescript buildings in the hope that an internet search later would reveal that something interesting and/or notorious had once happened there.
The terminus for the shuttle was fortunately close to my destination, and I began to hope that this time things might just turn out all right. The shuttle stopped and I pushed my way, as politely as I could, into the tourist group. One or two stared at me but as I kept my hands either in clear sight or in my pockets, they finally concluded that I probably wasn’t some sort of petty sneak thief, and ignored me.
“Tickets! All tickets!” shouted the ticket collector standing at the exit barrier, in a bored voice.
He too had a rather faded poster of me. ‘Have you seen this man?’ it asked. Clearly Colonel Starker had a long arm. I pulled my cap down a little further, offered my ticket and walked through the barrier, out into the streets of Agrathea. All I had to do now was collect my cash and package, and make the return journey successfully.
“Can I help you?” asked a uniformed man standing on guard at the entrance to the terminus.
I stopped struggling with the over large map. The actual number of streets was not too large, the map was enormous because of the adverts for just about every imaginable service or commodity that filled the majority of the space. In fact there were so many adverts that the map itself had been crammed into one small corner, presumably to avoid law suits by fulfilling the letter of the contract, if not the intention.
“Christine’s Bar? Do you know it?”
“Sure do, fella.” He pointed down the street. “Do you see the sign there for the Frisky Prawn Bar and Grill?”
“Got it.” The sign was as garish and revolting as the name implied. “I don’t have to go in there, do I? I’m off the sea food diet.”
“Very wise. I took the wife there last week, the prawns were still being a bit frisky two days after we’d eaten them. No, next to that there’s a side street. Christine’s Bar is down there.”
“Much obliged.”
“No problem, fella. Say, don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you famous or something?”
“Not me. But I get that a lot.”
“Sorry. Bet you wish it was someone better looking, though!” He laughed hugely.
I thought it was sensible to join in. “Yeah, right, whatever. Hanks for the directions.” I walked off. After a minute or so I looked back to see if he was still watching me. He was. I waved, he waved back. I carried on. I could almost feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull as he tried to work out of just who I reminded him. I had a horrid suspicion that it might not be too long before he worked it out.
The Frisky Prawn was full of customers, when I glanced in the window. On the probability that I was now being watched, I went in the front door of the eatery and hastily exited from the side door. Luckily this opened onto the small side street and Christine’s Bar was nearby. I hurried inside.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I have seen a lot of interstellar bars, but I’ve seen rather more than most people. Probably. And drunk a lot of drinks that the brewers proudly claimed to be the best drinks in the galaxy. Probably. This seemed to be a very average, nondescript bar. Probably why Rosto had chosen it. I shoved my way through a small but amicable throng, and ordered a small drink. When the barman brought my change, I engaged him in discreet conversation.
“I think there’s a package for me behind the bar?”
“It’s a pub this is, mate. Not a Post Office. Try down there.”
“It was left here for me. Might be in the safe, or the office?”
“It’s a bar. We don’t have an office.”
“Course you do. The package is for Philosopher.”
“Never heard of you, mate.” But the barman’s eyes shifted from side to side, before settling on a chair at the end of the bar. “I’ll ask though.”
I took my drink down to the chair indicated. The barman slipped through a side door, to the disgust of a small group of rugby players who had decided that the local brew was dangerous to others, and that they should save the other drinkers from themselves by nobly filtering the entire stock through their livers. Luckily for the Insurance Company who held the bar’s policy, the barman was back very quickly.
“No package, mate,” he said to me in a loud voice. “As I said, it’s a bar, not a Post Office.” Then in a slightly quieter voice he added: “But you did leave your wallet the last time you were in here.” He passed a battered leather wallet over the counter. I glanced around. Apart from the crowd now banging empty glasses on the bar, no one was paying any attention to us. “Lucky for you, it still has all the ID in and some money!” His expression was entirely blank.
“Thanks!” I said, and took the wallet. The barman strode down to the other end of the bar and started pulling pints of beer as fast as he could. I opened the wallet. It contained a reasonable amount of used notes, a Free Union ID in the name of one Carter Davis. Whoever he was, or more likely wasn’t, he held a suspiciously close likeness to me and was a general trader. Then, to my relief, there was an InterGalactic Bank bank card, in the same name. Rosto had actually kept his promise. I heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was not a moment too soon. The front door of the bar was flung open.
“No One Is To Move!” The policeman shouting actually managed to enunciate the capital letters, no mean feat and one beloved by official bullies everywhere.
The rugby players had drunk quite a lot of the potent local brew and were not in a mood to be bullied. A susurration of low level grumbling, along the lines of “I could take him and his silly gun with one hand tied behind my back!” started up at that end of the bar. I busied myself with my drink.
The muttering grew, then slackened as several other heavily armed policemen followed the chief bully into the bar. The barman shot me a glance, then looked away.
“What is the trouble, officer?” he shouted. The others in the bar went quiet, waiting for the reply.
“I’ve an arrest warrant here. Signed, and paid for, too, for a Frank Russell. Would Mister Russell like to step forwards?”
Strangely, Mister Russell didn’t want to. And stayed in his seat. The chief bully swaggered down the length of the bar, peering aggressively into faces and generally detracting from the ambience. Finally, he reached me. “What have we here?” he sneered, pulling out a set of well-worn handcuffs. He hadn’t even bothered to clean away the bloodstains from his last victim. I gave him a blank look.
“Hands out, Mister Russell. You are under arrest. Bought and paid for.”
“But my name isn’t Russell.”
“Yeah, tell me anything. You can do this the hard way, or (my personal preference) the very hard way.”
“But my name’s Davis. Not Russell.”
The bully peered closely at me. he tugged my cap away from my face, dropping in on the floor. This brought a hiss of anger from the rugby players. I’ve followed t
hat sport all my life, and the cap was in the colours of a well-known team. The policeman had just offended a bar full of very large, quite young(ish) men who were very used to a bit of violence. On the field of play, of course. The policeman kicked the cap away. One of the rugby players picked it up, and almost reverentially brushed it clean of dust. The others turned and glared at the other policemen, who fingered their weapons nervously.
The policeman eyeballed me. I tried to look like a Davis rather than a Russell. “Have you any ID?” he demanded, roughly.
“Here,” I told him. I opened my new wallet and brought out the IG Bank card. “These are forgery proof.”
“He’s right,” agreed a nearby drinker, hardly slurring his words at all. “If the IG say he’s a Davis, then a Davis he is.”
“Right!” agreed one of the rugby players. A policeman waved the muzzle of his gun rather too close to him, and he casually reached out with both hands and gripped the muzzle. The veins on his arms stood out for a moment, then he released the weapon. The barrel was now so twisted that it was unusable.
“That’s deforming Public Property, and an Offence!” squealed the policeman. The rugby player looked bored.
The bully looked at my card. “Seems to be in order,” he muttered.
“Can’t forge those. You can NOT forge those. I said, you can’t forge…”
The policeman didn’t even glance at the drunk. He just pulled out his extending baton, clicked it open and smacked the drunk on the side of the head. “That’s to encourage you to keep your opinions to yourself,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you, Mister Russell.”
“My name’s Davis.”
“Whoever.”
By the door, a second policeman tentatively raised a weapon in defence of his colleague. Before you could have pronounced ‘colleague’, or even ‘idiot’, an almighty brawl had started, complete with rustic shouting noises and the percussive sound of helmets being kicked to an unconscious rhythm.
“I’d slide out of the back, if I were you,” said the barman to me, as the police bully waded into the fight, swinging his baton without fear or favour.
This seemed like very good advice, so I took it. The back of the bar opened into a fetid alley with a distressing pong, so I did not wait around. In fact, I ran down the alley as fast as I could and emerged thankfully onto the main street near a shopping centre. Stopping only to breathe deeply and clear my lungs of the noxious odours from the alley, I crossed the street and joined the queue of people trying to get into the mall. The doors were mostly shut, just one double door was open, and the group of customers were beginning to get annoyed. As I got closer to the doors I saw the reason for the delay. There was a band of black uniformed men checking identities.
It was not a big leap of imagination to assume that these men were from Starker’s Black Ops Unit. I had no idea why Rosto had chosen this particular place for me to pick up this fake ID and my fee for the last job, but it was slowly dawning on me that this planet probably wasn’t safe for me. I turned away from the shopping centre and tried to look nonchalant as I walked off.
“Are you all right, mister?” asked a small boy at the very edge of the crowd. “Only you are walking funny and I thought you might need help.”
“I’m fine thank you,” I replied rather stiffly. I have little successful experience of dealing with children and can never decide whether it is best to give them a swift slap or bribe them with sweets. Maybe both.
“My sister could help you.”
“I bet that she could.”
“Want to meet her?”
“Not right now, thanks.” I’m not averse to female company, but escaping arrest comes before socialising in my book. “I’m a bit busy.”
“She said you would be. Her name’s Christine, and she said I had to tell you not to get into any taxis. Except this one.” The lad pointed at a cab that had pulled up close by. Most of the windows were blanked out.
“Why that one?”
I looked hard at the taxi. The rear door was pushed open for me. When I looked back at the child, he had vanished into the diminishing crowd of people at the doors of the mall. Cautiously I approached the open door of the taxi.
“Get in quick, Captain Russell!” hissed a voice from the driving seat. It was full of that authoritative tone that always made me want to draw myself up to attention, salute, and then run away as fast as I could.
I looked back again. This time the men in black uniforms were filtering out of the doorway of the shopping centre and trying to close in on me in an unobtrusive manner.
“Will you get in!”
One of the Black Ops men waved his arm, presumably a signal to someone else that I hadn’t seen. I jumped into the cab and closed the door. It promptly took off and drove away. I had little or no time for relief, as I felt a sharp elbow slam into my ribs.
“That was to get your attention,” said the other occupant of the rear seat. “My name is Colonel Starker.”
That did get my attention. I shrank back against the door, filled with a sudden terror. I was however mildly proud that I managed not to wet myself. Small victories can count.
“I’m all ears,” I told him.
“Factually inaccurate. At present, you possess two ears. Perhaps you will manage to keep one, or even both? We shall have to see.”
A certain spreading warmth in my trousers suggested that my small victory had just become a humiliating defeat. Colonel Starker leant forward and spoke quietly to the driver, who raised the privacy window separating the front of the cab from the back, leaving me alone with possibly the most feared man in the galaxy. “Captain, or rather ex-Captain, Russell. I don’t think we have met properly before, but you seem to have acquired a certain reputation for audacity. In coming here, I suspect that you have proved that rumour correct. And the theory that you are as thick as two short planks, of course.”
I didn’t reply.
“I do hope that you have got a tongue in your head, Captain.” Colonel Starker gave a short bark of laughter. “Tongue is a particular delicacy you know. A favourite of mine.”
There were several rude retorts that I nearly made, but discretion hauled them back behind my teeth and I kept my mouth firmly shut.
“Piquant, with a pepper sauce and fresh seasonal vegetables. Even yours, I expect.” Colonel Starker seemed to grow bored of terrorising me in this way, and chose another path to the same objective. “So, with a Pan Galactic Arrest Warrant for your person, or any identifiable bits of it, hanging over your head you turn up here. What a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I admitted.
“Nor I, Captain Russell. Nor I. Fate has inexorably delivered you into my hands and the only decision I have to make is: what am I to do with you?”
“You wouldn’t consider letting me go?”
Colonel Starker laughed. It reminded me of the mad laughter of the evil genius in a B Movie of the horror genre. “Do you know, I think that I might?”
This I was reluctant to believe.
“I have a message to be sent, clandestinely of course, to my opposite number in that ragbag of worlds, The Free Union. Colonel Rosto. I think you know him.”
“I know Rosto.” I followed that with a vivid, and I like think, both anatomically, parentally, genetically and psychologically accurate, summation of Rosto.
“Concise and surprisingly close to my own view,” agreed Colonel Starker. “Now, will you agree to be the courier or shall I just send you off to the Imperium’s Inquisitors and save myself some time?”
“I’ll go,” I replied at once. “But you’ll have to tell me where to find him.”
“Why?”
“He usually finds me, not the other way round.”
Colonel Starker actually seemed to be genuinely amused. He laughed again. It was as disturbing as before. “Never mind, I am sure that the good Colonel will seek you out again.”
“What’s the message?” I asked.
&nbs
p; “Perhaps it will just be your good self. Captain Russell.” I looked at Colonel Starker with my mouth open in abject fear. He chose that moment to shoot a spray of some fine mist straight into my face. I passed out.
When I regained my senses, I found to my relief that I was alone in the cab. I flung the door open and fell out onto the pavement. The relief of being in one piece made me throw up: I was violently sick all over the rear wheel and door of the taxi. I even emptied out the carrots that I had eaten by mistake a few days earlier, and forgotten about.
Cursing, I rolled away from the carnage and tried to sit up. My head was swimming. I was disorientated, discombobulated, but fortunately not relieved of any body parts although my right hip was amazingly painful. It had gained a black and blue lump which must be a bruise, although I couldn’t remember how I got it.
There’s a sort of rule, or maybe inevitable sequence, to the actions of waking up in this situation. First you feel, or more usually are, violently sick. Next you frantically check that all your important parts are still attached and you are still (assuming you were before the incident happened!) decently dressed. You check your wallet. This is a sort of floating option according to preference, and sometimes takes precedence over the body parts ordeal. My wallet was still intact, although someone – probably the fearful Colonel Starker – had scrawled glasses and a moustache over my picture on the ID card in the name of Davis. The IG Bank card was still present, and I hoped that the account might still have some cash left in it.
There was also a business card, preprinted with the phrase: careless talk costs lives. Some wag had written underneath this admonishment, in a flowing copperplate hand, the words: Starting with yours’. I took this as a heavy hint, and made my way back to the Spaceport with tightly sealed lips.
The security guard at the entrance was going to intercept me, I could tell. He narrowed his eyes at the state of me, and repositioned his offensive weapon. But as he strode belligerently towards me, a man in a black uniform with no insignia at all intercepted him and had a quiet word in his ear. The guard looked as if he was about to argue, then looked at the man’s face. The guard must have seen something in his eyes, for he backed down. On the other hand, it might have been the small, but deadly, weapon I saw the Black Ops man rest lightly on the guard’s nose that sealed the argument. One learns to notice these little details.
Rogue Pilot Page 5