by Logan Jacobs
“Best one I know,” I called back with a grin.
“Hey, if you do see Leon, tell him Baj is looking for him,” she said when I reached the exit. I turned back around.
“You mean, you’re looking for him,” I clarified.
“Just tell him.” She shrugged. “He owes us, and he knows what for.”
“Will do,” I answered. “Until next time.”
I gave her a little bow and left the locker room. I tapped my skull as I walked back to the front.
“You alright up there, Honey Bee?”
“We are now,” she scolded. “It took you long enough to get the information we needed.”
“My eternal apologies.” I grinned. “But I got it, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” she chimed, but she still seemed less than happy.
The passenger shuttle was still parked outside the steam rooms, so now it was just a matter of getting to the Petty Talon. I powered on the shuttle again and entered in the low-rent saloon’s coordinates from the directory.
The blue-haired woman, who I was pretty sure was actually the crime boss who just had a front man, had been right about one thing: From the outside, the Petty Talon looked like the shittiest saloon in the shittiest story about the old Wild West. It even had the swinging doors. Honey Bee informed me they were reinforced by a solar-powered force field, but still.
I powered down the shuttle and strode my way up to the doors. There was only one guard posted outside, but I imagined the force field was the real security. Still, it would be easier to talk my way in instead of fight, so I put on my most charming smile.
“I hear this is the place to be,” I started.
“They are watching the sports inside,” Honey Bee chimed softly.
“To see the big game, I mean,” I added.
“Might be.” The guard chewed on the end of a cigarette. “What game you here for?”
“The one I can bet the most money on.” I opened my vest just enough to show the tops of the bills in my pocket.
The guard’s eyebrows jumped up, but he kept right on chewing his cigarette butt.
“I tell you what.” I leaned forward confidentially. “You let me in and tell me what game to put my money on, and I’ll put you down for fifty.”
The man glanced through the saloon doors and then back at me.
“My hand to whatever god you want,” I swore.
“There’s a footrace about to start on monitor four,” the guard told me. “Put your money on Kashiid. He was second last year but the defender’s knee ain’t looking good.”
I nodded and pretended to pay close attention.
“Alright, go on in,” the guard said. “But no trouble, alright? We can’t afford to get shut down again this month.”
The guard lowered the force field, and I made sure my weapons were concealed under my vest. I wanted to bang open the doors in style, but I kept my impulse under control. There was no reason to make that big of a splash. Not yet, anyway.
I still walked inside like I owned the place.
The Petty Talon was as grungy on the inside as it was from the outside, but I had to admit that the place had style. It was fashioned after the Wild West, or at least after somebody’s idea of it. An honest-to-god piano stood in one corner, and it had been automated to play upbeat tunes on its own. Women in full skirts and barely there corsets served drinks all around the bar, but there were plenty of others dealing cards at tables around the room.
I headed for the fourth monitor in case the guard was watching me through the doors. There were a solid dozen screens scattered throughout the room around the card tables, and each of them projected a hologram image of whatever game it was broadcasting. I reached for my sidearm when I heard a gun go off, but I relaxed when Honey Bee whispered it was only the gun to start the footrace.
I pulled up a cracked leather chair beside the footrace monitor. The runners ran around the track projected in front of us, and the hologram was so lifelike I thought their sweat might drip onto the monitor beneath them. The runner in first place cried out, dropped to the ground, and clutched his knee. I watched as Kashiid pulled ahead and wondered if the guard just made a lucky guess or if he had some insider information.
As I looked around the room, I guessed it was insider information. People were placing bets on anything that moved. Races, team sports, card games, darts, drinking, anything where the odds were a little uncertain. I sat back with a smile as Kashiid crossed the finish line, hands raised in triumph.
The only thing as certain as the amount of betting going on in this room was the amount of cheating.
I doubted anybody else could see it. There was an occasional huff or mild accusation, but for the most part, everybody was happy to believe that they were all basically playing by the rules. Me and Honey Bee knew different. Our brains worked too fast not to notice the stacked decks, the cards floated into position, or the bookies skimming from the bets they took.
I ordered a drink to blend in but shook my head when the bookie at my table asked if I wanted to place any bets. I needed to blend in, sure, but I wasn’t about to piss away my money. I just had to stay put long enough to get some more intel on Leon Cotranis, and then I could be on my merry way.
I waited a few minutes, but no one around me said anything about Leon or the Skyhawk. When the next footrace started on the hologram, I realized I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, so I leaned back into the split leather of my chair and sighed.
“Looks like Baj was right about this place after all,” I said loudly.
Several of the gamblers in the room bristled, and some even acted like they would turn around and make me say it to their face. But I noticed every corseted waitress in the room reach into their skirts at the same time, and I guessed that they were all armed. I thought about what the guard had said about not getting shut down again this month. The waitresses must be taking that pretty seriously.
But none of that was the most important thing I noticed when I mentioned the big man’s name. The most important thing was the man sitting straight up at a card game in the corner. He was lean, but it didn’t look like lean muscle. He looked like a man who sometimes got to gambling so much that he just forgot to eat. When I said Baj’s name, he turned around, but another man at his game banged the table to refocus his attention.
“Looks like we might have our man,” I muttered.
I slipped away from the footrace monitor toward another table, but a dark-haired waitress caught my arm as I moved toward another table.
“I wouldn’t say things about Baj here if I were you.” She squeezed my arm. “For your own safety.”
“I’m touched that you care about my safety,” I said with a rakish smile. “Honestly, I was just saying that Baj said this place has the best gambling in the city. In spite of the questionable element.”
“All the same, I’d be careful,” she said and returned my smile. “Baj isn’t exactly known for being above board himself, but he falls on the opposite side of things from most everybody in here.”
“And what side is that?” I asked.
“The winning side.” She dropped her hand from my arm, but her laughter sounded harsh.
“Sorry?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Gods, where are you from?” Her laugh was genuine this time. “Baj runs supplies for the Dominion. They outsource things to him that they can’t or won’t go through official channels for.”
“And everybody here feels more… unified?” I stopped short of calling them the Unified Liberation Army just in case I was wrong.
“Something like that,” she replied with a quick glance around. “Just don’t tell anybody I said anything. There’re too many fools in here running guns for the losing side, and I’d just as soon keep my job.”
“No, ma’am.” I grinned. “I’m glad you decided to save me from getting myself into any trouble. You just let me know if I can ever return the favor.”
She blushed to t
he roots of her dark hair.
“So, just about everybody in here, hm?” I asked quickly. “Anybody in particular I should stay away from? Big gun runners and all that?”
“Pretty much everybody.” She shrugged. “Good luck placing your bets tonight.”
Her fingers trailed across my arm as she made her way to another table.
“She was helpful and not helpful,” Honey Bee chimed in my ear.
“I’m aware,” I muttered. “But she wasn’t as gorgeous as the blue babe I left in the showers. I’m on a mission, Honey Bee, and I’ve got ten big ones that that asshole over there is our man.”
“Only one way to find out,” my chip said helpfully.
I headed to the corner and slid into an empty seat beside the lean-faced man. I nodded at the cards.
“Deal me in, would you?” I asked with a smile.
“You weren’t over there saying anything about Baj, were you?” the lean-faced man asked. I noticed the vest he wore was dark red. I wondered if he had a red cap hidden somewhere too.
“Nah, not me.” I shook my head. “That was some dumb fucker over there.”
The man narrowed his eyes but accepted my answer. From the stubble on his face, he looked like he’d been gambling for two days without sleep. And that meant whatever he was about to do was bound to be sloppy.
“Should I deal?” I offered.
Again, the lean-faced man shook his head and snatched up the deck from the table.
“Not much of a talker there, are you?” I was irritated by his clumsy attempt to rig the deck. I only hoped it wasn’t as obvious to everyone else at the table as it was to me.
“Only when I’m winning,” the lean man said with a smile.
“And are you? Winning?” I pressed.
“Leon here ain’t won shit since breakfast,” another man at the table laughed.
I grinned. Leon was about to lose a whole lot more.
The man rubbed the back of his right hand against the stubble on his face. It was an awkward distraction from his left hand, but these card players were all drunk enough that they might not notice the rearranging he did under the table. Besides, I’d already seen two of the other players fidgeting with extra cards of their own in their laps. It wasn’t really cheating if everybody was doing it.
Leon dealt the cards slowly and deliberately. He lost two hands in a row, and they were the same hands I won. I didn’t even have to cheat. It was just a game of numbers, and if there was one thing Honey Bee and I were good at, it was a little old-fashioned math.
I let myself lose the next hand so I wouldn’t seem suspicious. On the fourth hand, I gave Leon a subtle nod when I picked up three new cards and left one more just off-center of the deck on the table. He gave an over-obvious glance in my direction, but he picked it up anyway. He was just tipsy enough that he damn near burst into a grin.
I rolled my eyes behind my shielding glasses, and Honey Bee echoed my feelings. I had set up the hand for him to win, but I didn’t want him to advertise that fact to the rest of these fuckers. There were four other men at the table with us, and the table behind them had five more fuckers who were without a doubt watching our game. I wasn’t sure if Leon had noticed them, but I sure as shit had.
With my help, Leon won the next three hands too. I gave a little wag of my finger before the next round started, but the lean-faced smuggler just shook his head. He didn’t want to end his losing streak just because it might make him look like a cheat. I didn’t help him this time, but Leon reached into his lap to pull out a pair of aces.
There was no way for me to warn him that I had just seen the grizzled man across the table also pull a pair of aces from his own lap. There was also no way to tell him that the rest of these assholes were in cahoots with the grizzled man, and so were all the men at the next table. Leon waited until his turn came and then slung the aces on top of the chips all piled in the middle of the table.
The man with the hidden two aces growled.
“You grimy cheating piece of shit!” the grizzled man growled. Then he jumped to his feet, picked up the whole table, and launched it at us in a clatter of spilled cards and broken drinks.
Chapter 7
The flipped table knocked Leon on his ass, but I had seen it coming and ducked out of the way. Leon halfway scrambled to his feet beside me as the grizzled man’s friends filed in a line around us.
I swore as both Leon and the other man reached for their guns. The rest of the cheated assholes put their hands on their guns too, but they didn’t draw them just yet. There were nine of them altogether from both tables, but I saw a few more men making their way toward us from around the room. The waitresses reached for their guns, but there were just too many of Leon’s accusers, so they shrugged and went back to serving the rest of the customers.
I sighed. I hoped the Skyhawk was worth this much trouble, but from what I heard, it wasn’t even worth the metal it docked on.
Then again, a payday was a payday, so long as I lived to see it.
“You’ve cheated for the last time here, Cotranis,” the grizzled man growled again.
“Now, I don’t want any trouble,” the lean-faced smuggler said. Leon’s gun was in his hand, but he still pointed the barrel at the ground.
“You ain’t been asking for anything but trouble since you walked in here,” the cheated man muttered.
“I just came to play a little cards, fellas,” Leon defended. I was pretty sure he actually thought he was being charming.
“Yeah, and what gave you the right to think you could even come back here after what you did?”
I kept seeing openings for Leon to shoot the man and be done with it before the rest of these fuckers had time to react, but this asshole just kept talking instead.
“I didn’t hear any complaints when you were taking my money,” Leon fired back.
“Money you stole in the first place,” the grizzled man accused, and I saw his finger itching for the trigger of his gun.
“Hey, now look--”
The cheated man fired off a shot at Leon before the smuggler could finish his plea. It just missed the smuggler who then whipped his own gun upright and fired it straight between the other man’s eyes. Brains and blood exploded out the back of the grizzled man’s skull, and he sank to the floor.
Immediately, the rest of the men pulled their guns out of their holsters.
“Get down!” I shoved Leon behind the flipped table as they opened fire, and the wood caught the worst of the rounds. When they paused to reload, I popped up just long enough to fire off three rounds at three different ugly fucks. Because of Honey Bee’s augmentation, I was able to witness the bullets take each of them between the eyes in slow motion, and they dropped down dead, but then more men hurried across the room to replace them, and I ducked back behind the table.
What an idiot. If Leon had just shot first, he could have sidestepped all the rest of this before the whole room had time to react. Instead, he had stalled and let everybody in the bar know a shootout was about to go down. It was probably for some bullshit reason about honor and all that. But waiting to shoot until somebody shot at you didn’t make you righteous. It just made you a dead idiot.
But that was why I was gonna be floating on my very own primo space station one day, and these fucks were still all gonna be ground-bound.
The waitresses all seemed bored, but they ushered the rest of the customers behind the bar and then dropped a force field to keep out the inevitable stray bullets. I realized then exactly how many people in this saloon hated Leon Cotranis. A few gamblers ran to the bar with the armed waitresses, but damn near every person in the room came running toward us instead.
Leon may have run guns and supplies to the Unified Liberation Army, maybe even had sympathies that way himself, but that had clearly not been enough to endear himself to the other red caps in the bar.
“Sounds like one real asshole,” Honey Bee echoed my feelings.
The dark-haired wai
tress caught my eye, but she just gave a little shrug as if to say she had warned me. There went my plan to retreat behind the bar, but I caught two more gamblers in the chest with my next two rounds, and then I ducked back behind the table.
I let Leon fire off the next few rounds to keep the men from charging us. I wanted to save my bullets for when they really counted, and besides, somebody had to think of a plan to get us out of here. And if Leon’s planning skills were anything like his card-playing skills, we would be deader than dirt unless I took charge.
“Any other exits out of here?” I yelled over the hail of gunfire.
“Not unless you count the roof.” Leon shook his head. He was crouched beside me and breathing heavily, and the alcohol on his breath made me wince. No wonder he’d been losing so badly.
I glanced up at the ceiling and saw what the smuggler meant. Other than the saloon doors, the only way out of the Petty Talon was through the skylight in the corner by the piano. There was just the small matter of the fact that it was on the ceiling, and we were pinned down on the floor.
“Alright,” I exhaled. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
“Why are you helping me?” Leon interrupted.
“I hate to see a man down on his luck.” I lied, but only because “I want to steal your spaceship and deliver it to a crime lord who you’ve obviously pissed off” wouldn’t be very helpful.
“I’m fine,” the smuggler protested as he wiped the back of his hand across his scruffy stubble. He was almost smiling, and it made him look a few bulbs short of a chandelier.
“Well, old pal, why don’t you go ahead and tell that to the roomful of assholes shooting at us?”
Leon didn’t have a ready comeback to that one.
“Listen, here’s how it’s gonna go down,” I told him. “You’re gonna give me some cover fire, and I’m gonna get us out through that skylight. When I say jump, you run up after me. Got it?”
“Hey, I appreciate you helping me out and whatever, but I’m goddamn Leon Cotranis,” he declared. “I’m the best smuggler this side of the galaxy, and--”
“You’re also about to be the deadest smuggler this side of the galaxy,” I cut him off. “Just cover me, okay?”