by Sam Renner
Nixon’s head immediately spins up the cabin he’s been dreaming of. Simple. Small. Remote. Tucked into a bed at night that’s safe, sleeping soundly. Not with one eye open. Not wondering what the next day will bring. Not wondering where your next credits or your next meal are coming from. It sounds … perfect.
Aldius: “You took that from me.”
“You agreed to help.”
“I saw an opportunity.”
“To get your old life back.”
“You burned me. I burned you. Besides, they pay more.”
Nixon turns back to the Tychon woman. She has a blaster drawn.
“Now, Mr. Shaine, let’s see those hands. Bring them out. Slowly.”
Nixon wraps his hand around the blaster and runs the next few moments through in his head. Once he draws the blaster, he can get one shot off for sure. Right now, that’s the Tychon woman since she has the blaster already on him. Maybe he can get two shots off if all that time laying low has slowed Aldius’ instincts.
He turns to Aldius, and now he’s drawn too, a blaster stretched in front of him, holding stock still and trained on Nixon’s chest.
New information, new scenarios. Nixon runs them double time, and no matter how they start, they all end the same way. One shot is all he gets off before a blaster bolt—from either Aldius or the woman—is burning its way through his middle.
He lets the blaster go and grabs something else instead—the orbs for the real case.
He pulls his hands from his cloak slow and easy like he’d been instructed. His right hand is open, fingers extended. His left is closed tight.
The woman from Tychon points to it with her blaster. “Open that one up,” she says, “or I blast it off.”
Nixon hesitates then flicks his wrist. The orbs fly out a few feet then form a rectangle that hangs in the air. It shimmers black in the middle. Nixon turns to dive through.
“Stop!” It’s Aldius. “Make another move toward that portal and I’ll shoot you dead right here.”
Nixon freezes in a half stoop. He stands back up straight.
“Now the real case, please, Mr. Shaine.”
“I don’t have it.”
The woman gestures to the portal. “Then go get it.”
“Are you sure?” Aldius asks. “He goes through there and he can get away.”
“Nah, he wouldn’t do that. He wants these credits too bad.”
She’s right. He does. Nixon hasn’t yet considered just walking away from this. There’s too much on the line. And with Aldius out of the picture now, he’s not splitting this take three ways. If he can save this deal, he will.
“Let me go through, and I’ll come back. Trust me.”
“Says the guy who tried to pass off a fake as the real thing.” She tosses Aldius’ case over her shoulder and it bounces off the steps behind her.
“You’re right,” Nixon says. “I want the credits. I’ll give you the case.”
“Leave the portal open,” she says. “You have until I count to fifteen to be back. If you’re not then I send Aldius through after you.”
“You won’t have to.”
She starts counting and gets to three before Nixon gets through the portal.
“What’s going on?” Laana asks as he emerges from the inky black hole floating in the middle of EHL’s main deck.
Nixon hears the woman counting from the other side of the portal, but it’s a muffled garble of words, like she has a mouth full of rocks.
Nixon grabs the Tychon case off the dash and holds it tight in his clenched fist. He starts running through ways to get out of this, but his mind is slow to spin up any idea that feels feasible. This may just come down to who’s the best shot.
“Under my bunk in the crew quarters. Go get your gun.”
“What?”
“I may need help.”
14
Nixon emerges back through the portal just as the woman counts fifteen.
“Just in time,” she says. Her blaster is still drawn. It’s still pointed at him, and it follows him as he walks back to where he’d been standing before.
Aldius has dropped his blaster, and Nixon looks at it. It’s old. It’s dinged and scuffed. The metal’s clearly aged. Nixon doesn’t know that it will fire, at least not reliably. He’s also not convinced that Aldius has the instincts and timing to beat him on the draw. Too out of practice. So that’s an advantage. It’s not much, admittedly, but he’ll take anything he can get.
“Where’s my case?” she asks.
“Where are my credits?”
“You think we’re still doing that?”
“We are if you want the case.”
“I think you’re mistaken. I’m not giving you any credits at this point. I’m giving you something that’s a lot more valuable. I’m giving you the ability to walk away from here still breathing.”
“Aww. We are?” Aldius asks, a smile on his face that shows off his jagged yellow teeth.
“Well, I was. But what do you think?”
“I don’t think you’re getting that case from him voluntarily if you aren’t giving him credits.”
“Good point. Maybe we just shoot him now.”
Nixon looks to Aldius and then to the woman then over to the portal.
“Don’t give me another reason to shoot you, Nixon,” Aldius says. His blaster is up and aimed at Nixon again.
“Sorry, I’m late to the party, boss.” They all turn to the portal and see Laana stepping through. Her gun is up and shouldered, ready to fire.
“You too?” Aldius asks.
“I don’t want to hear a word from you. I thought we were friends. I had to convince him to trust you.”
“We were acquaintances. At the very best.”
Nixon stares at the Tychon woman. She keeps her blaster trained, but runs her other hand down her face. She’s either tired or she’s frustrated. Either one can work to Nixon’s advantage.
“Come on,” she says. “Make this easy. Give me the case.” She puts a hand up and gestures with her fingers for Nixon to pass the case over. Her fingernails are intricately decorated and her hands are smooth.
“Walk away,” she says. “Leave with your life.”
Nixon shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything. He just stares at her. Without the ability to draw his own blaster, intimidation is all he has at this point. He’s relying on irrational confidence to raise enough questions that it creates some kind of hesitation.
He looks at her blaster, the one that could leave him split open if all of this tips the wrong way. Hers isn’t like Aldius’. Hers is new. It’s thick through the middle. The barrel still looks shiny and bright. It’s only been fired a few times, if at all. And that barrel is wide. Nixon thinks he might be able to squeeze his fist inside if he pushed hard enough. That thing fires a heavy shot.
All of this tells him that it’s not her gun. It’s too big for her. Not that she couldn’t fire it. Anything can pull a trigger if it has fingers or something that’s a close approximation. But she’s a tall woman. And thin. She won’t be able to control the blast once she does try to fire it. She’d use something just as deadly but smaller to preserve her accuracy.
This blaster. Those nails. This isn’t the kind of work this woman does regularly. At least she doesn’t anymore. Her talk about the credits and letting Nixon walk away alive, that was no joke. She’s delivered those kinds of lines before. But Nixon doubts it’s been recently. She was sent out here by someone. A favor maybe. And she grabbed a blaster as she came outside. Not thinking. Just something from a table. She never planned to fire it. She was counting on Nixon walking away. Now he hasn’t, and she’s had to draw that blaster. That heavy blaster that she’s had trained on Nixon for a while now.
She has to be feeling the stress of keeping something that size out in front of her. It’s starting to hurt, pain that Nixon figures is beginning to spiral up her arm. Starting near her wrist, slow walking across her forearm, resting for a moment
in her elbow then settling for good in her shoulder. He’s been there. He’s felt it. He knows that his ability to fire a shot after this kind of stand off would have been non-existent. And that was with a blaster that he was familiar with.
That confidence is feeling a little less irrational now.
Laana to Alduis: “Acquaintances? How many jobs did we pull off together in the Urrutikoa Section?”
Aldius to Laana: “That was business. We were both hired hands. I wasn’t looking to make friends.”
Nixon looks to Laana. Aldius isn’t firing shots from his blaster, but these verbal blows are stinging. She really did think of him as a friend, and Nixon could have sworn back on Otanzia that the feelings were mutual. So this little performance—big orange and angry man—is for Aldius as much as it is for Laana. If he can convince himself that he never liked her, that they were just partners on a few jobs, then it’s going to make what’s beginning to feel like an inevitable gun fight a lot easier.
Nixon turns back to the blaster that’s still pointing at his chest. The woman behind it is tiring. That barrel is dipping and swaying slightly. She’s watching Aldius and Laana argue about their relationship, and Nixon sneaks his arm back inside his cloak. He puts a hand on his own blaster. He slips it from his waistband. His heart that had started to race begins to slow. This fight feels fair again.
“My reader is still in my pocket,” Nixon tells the woman. She turns her attention back to him. “Send the credits. I’ll feel it vibrate. When I do, I’ll put the case on the ground, and we’ll walk away.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “We’re past that now. You don’t get the credits and you don’t walk away. Tychon will get its case, and we’ll get you and your friend too. I’ve already made sure of it.”
Nixon asks the woman “What do you mean?”
She reaches into a pocket on her jacket and pulls out her own reader. She holds it up so Nixon and Laana can see it. “I’m tired of this. I’ve other things to do. This wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. I’ve already signalled for help. It should be coming through those doors any second now.”
Nixon: “OK, Laana. Now.”
Laana pulls the trigger on her gun, and a thick bolt screams from the barrel. Nixon fires his own, and the bolt burns a hole in his cloak.
Laana’s bolt hits Aldius in the waist. Doubles him over and leaves him without most of his critical insides.
The Tychon woman squeezes off a shot just before her chest blooms red because of Nixon’s blast. Her shot splits Nixon and Laana and tears a chunk from the building across the street, turning a section of the wall into dust.
“Well, that was easier than I expec …”
Nixon is interrupted by shouts from Tychon’s doors.
One voice: “Stop!”
Another: “Don’t move.”
Nixon doesn’t shout back. He answers with blaster fire. Armored Tychon security agents charge down the steps. A shot catches one of them in the ankle, and he tumbles to the side. The others stop and return fire.
“Go!” Nixon shouts to Laana. “Back through the portal.”
Blaster fire sizzles past Nixon’s ear. He drops to the ground, getting low and shouts to Laana again as more agents exit the building and take up positions next to those already firing.
“If you don’t get back to the ship now, then I’m going through and leaving you here to fend for yourself.”
She fires one more shot at the gathering gang in front of them then lowers her gun and throws it through the portal then follows.
Nixon stands and starts firing indiscriminately as he runs toward the portal. He dives through backward and keeps firing as everything in front of him goes black then becomes the inside of EHL.
It’s disorienting, changing locations like this, and it takes Nixon a moment to make sense of everything. The portal still shimmers in front of him, and voices getting louder from the other side snap him out of his confusion. He gathers the orbs with the swipe of his hand, and everything goes quiet. It’s just Nixon and Laana and EHL.
Nixon stands and walks to the ramp. Once it opens he steps down. They are in the starport where they landed a few days ago. It worked. The case and the portal actually worked.
He walks back onto the ship, and Laana asks, “What now?”
“EHL?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get us off this damned planet.”
15
EHL flies without direction.
It’s been two days since Nixon and Laana left Azken. The case is closed and back in its spot on the dash. Nixon has finally stopped watching the ship’s monitors, looking for Tychon security forces giving them chase. He’s still not sure they aren’t out there—in fact, he knows they must be—but he does know there wasn’t a large fleet of them that blasted off of Azken to track them down and recover their case.
Nixon sits in the captain’s seat, his cloak draped across his lap. He’s using a needle and suture thread from the medkit to close the hole he’s shot into it.
“Sorry about your cloak,” Laana says. She’s sitting in the navigator’s seat looking at her reader, scrolling through job listings on a message board.
“It wasn’t going to last forever.”
“Still …”
Nixon concentrates on the final few stitches. He pulls the thread through one last time and pulls the fabric tight together. It puckers like a scar, but he’s happy with it. It should hold. He snaps the thread and ties it off.
“Yeah,” he says, “still …”
Laana turns her reader so the screen faces Nixon. “I think I found something.”
Nixon stands and folds his cloak in half and then half again. He lays it across the back of his chair then sits back down.
“It’s a job from a captain needing a small temporary crew. Not hauling anything, just some extra hands. Pays five thousand credits.”
“Five thousand to be extra hands? Seem suspicious to you?”
Laana shrugs. “Maybe. But sometimes these captains don’t know how to write these things. It’s enough credits to make it worth checking out.”
“Yeah, OK,” Nixon says. “Where’s it at?”
Laana scans the post for the coordinates. She enters them into the keyboard in front of her, and a spinning planet appears on the screen a second later.
“Planet called Ezola.” Laana pushes a few keys on the keyboard in front of her and a galactic map appears on a larger screen between their seats.
Nixon studies the image then says “No. Too close to Azken.”
“It’s five thousand credits,” Laana says again.
“But it’s too close to Azken. Tychon likely has agents there.”
“Tychon likely has agents everywhere. What’s going to be far enough away?”
Nixon rests his heels on the bank of equipment in front of him. “What did you say the other day? Where you and Aldius pulled jobs?”
“The Urrutikoa Section?”
“How far is that?”
“Far enough that you aren’t going to find a whole lot of Tychon.”
“Good, then there.”
“Really? That far?”
“Honestly, yes. Tychon. The Uzeks. Whoever the humans are who want this case. We’ve made too many enemies here. Nowhere is going to feel safe.”
“Urrutikoa is tough. There’s not many Tychon agents there, but there’s not much of anything in the way of civilization. You go there, and it’s all illegal mining operations, outlaws trying to hide, wildcatters looking to make a fortune.”
“It sounds perfect.,” Nixon says. “Let’s go make some friends and earn some credits.”
Laana enters new coordinates into EHL’s systems, and the ship banks hard. It puts a big fire into its engines, and the force pushes Nixon and Laana deep into their seats.
Nixon looks at the screens in front of Laana. Urrutikoa isn’t a short flight. He grabs his reader and starts looking at the message boards. He has plenty of time to find them
work.
END
++xxx++
WHAT DID YOU THINK?