by Mick Fraser
Carved into the side of what might once have been a small moon, Haze was a choking mass of blinking lights and swirling traffic that orbited a gigantic planet of pale blue and green. This close, she could make out maybe fifty individual platforms, several miles across, at which ships of all sizes and shapes docked and departed in a seemingly endless cycle of comers and goers. The body of the moon itself was predominantly brown, but at some point in history something had smashed the lower third of it to smithereens, and chunks of debris still hung suspended around it as though it had been frozen the moment it exploded. Smaller space stations were situated near it, each one servicing several huge ships far larger than the Shadowstar, and ferrying lines of shuttles back and forth into Haze’s shattered interior.
As the Jackdaw drew closer, the sheer scale became more apparent, until they were finally so near that Angela could no longer see anything but Haze’s multi-levelled docks. There were people – workers, she guessed – tiny at this distance, scuttling here and there like ants, and enormous machines, either walking on two legs or driving around on great caterpillar tracks, transferring cargo containers, crates and stacks of boxes around each docking platform. Lights of all colours flashed or spun to signify God-knows-what to workers and pilots alike.
“How are they walking around?” Angela asked. She didn’t know much about astrophysics, but she liked to think she had the basics down pat.
Rathe pointed from the porthole. “There’s an aegis around Haze,” he said. “An artificial atmosphere bubble that maintains gravity and temperature. Oxygen is recycled, hence the breathers.”
As Dizzy banked the Jackdaw for a landing, Drenno spun his chair around to address Angela from the cockpit. “Okay, kid, this is ‘Criminal Networks for Beginners’. There are three major powers in the Reach and they all stay as far away from the Hub as they can, the Hub being the Founder’s former home system of Anno.” He started counting on his fingers. “One, the Panoran Cabal; two, the Gu’uld of Nath; and three, the Seven Rings Fleet. For the purposes of today, only two matter: the Cabal and the Gu’uld. The Cabal is a primarily To’ecc organisation, which means they’ve got rules. Mostly those rules comprise several different ways to remove a man’s head for breaking a promise, but ultimately, they’re back-scratchers. The Cabal runs Haze, and we don’t want to upset the Cabal. You see a tattoo or a wall-sign that looks like four arms holding a Banaari cross, Cabal owns it. Clear?”
She nodded, assuming she’d recognise a Banaari cross if she saw a picture of one gripped by four arms. “I think so, yeah. Cabal bad, but not that bad.”
“No. Cabal real bad, but only if you cross them. Now the Gu’uld… The Gu’uld on the other hand, they look all prim and proper, uniforms, nice clean fronts – but they’re fucking savages. They don’t have a symbol they paint everywhere, because they conjure they own everything they can see.”
Angela frowned. “Got it. Cabal bad, Guild badder.”
“Gu’uld. Like, Goo-uld. And yeah: they’re badder. Luckily, the guy we’re going to see, Paryx, he’s Cabal. You got it?”
“More or less.”
“Right.” He snatched his hat off the console beside him and jammed it on just as the Jackdaw shook violently, touching down on the docking platform. The lights flickered for a few seconds. Rathe tapped his breather and placed it over his nose and mouth like an airline oxygen mask. Angela followed suit, then Rathe reached over and pressed something on the side. There was a buzzing, and cool, clear air flooded her nostrils. She coughed lightly, shaking her head.
“Keep her warm, Dizzy,” Drenno said, standing and clapping the pilot on the shoulder. “We’re not hanging around.”
“Understood. Have one on me.”
“I always do.”
Drenno pulled on his breather as he wandered through from the cockpit and slapped a large flat button beside the door. There was a hiss of steam and a grinding of gears, and the door unfolded to form a set of steps down onto the gangway.
From within, Haze’s docks seemed even more ridiculously gargantuan, and Angela had to be nudged by Rathe before she remembered to disembark. She went down the steps in a daze, her head tilted upwards, mouth agape. “I’ve never seen anything like this…” she said through her breather, to which Rathe replied with a chuckle.
“Just wait,” he said. “Haze isn’t even a big place.”
Gage and Six-Tails stepped down behind her. Neither wore a breather. The air smelled odd, almost sweet, through Angela’s mask. She jumped a little as a huge grey machine clunked by on two legs, carrying a stack of metal crates. A yellow warning light spun around atop the machine, emitting a high-pitched beep with each step. The creature piloting it was humanoid, but blue-skinned and hairless. It glared down at Angela as it passed, taking a long pull on a black cigar and blowing out a plume of brown smoke.
“Stay close now, Angela,” Drenno warned, pulling her attention back. “The Quartz isn’t far.”
They made their way across the dock to a large square walkway that led through an arch, like an airport security terminal. Angela hesitated when she saw the two guards; they were the same long-limbed, vacant-eyed creatures that had attacked her in her house.
“It’s alright,” Rathe told her, sensing her apprehension. “Not all Exethan work for the Sceptery.”
She took a deep breath, and waited as Drenno allowed one of them to scan his wrist-reader. He said something to them in an alien language and the guard looked past him, apparently counting the rest of them. Satisfied, the Exethan nodded and waved them through, and they headed down a series of dark corridors that seemed to be carved right through the rock, eventually passing a second checkpoint to emerge onto a bustling mid-town street.
Buildings towered on either side of the black-paved road, the bizarre architecture a mix of Victorian Gothicism and space-age angles, dark and weather-beaten but inexplicably modern in their design. The sky above was midnight black, but streaked with bursts of coloured dust and salted with twinkling stars.
Vehicles appeared to hover in three lanes above the wide road. None of the conveyances had wheels; instead, a strip of neon ran under each one, somehow holding them suspended above a similar strip on the ground. Whenever the vehicles moved, the ground-strip turned green; when they became stationary, the strips turned red. It was like a mag-lev train track Angela had seen concepts for on the news. The vehicles themselves resembled cars well enough, displaying a variety of colours and designs. They even had what passed for number plates depicting alpha-numeric combinations in at least a dozen different languages.
The streets were busy but not heaving, and Angela saw a diverse collection of races and genders around her: towering, feline Endrani; pale-skinned Silsir; four-armed, reptilian To’ecc; Exethan in pairs, always in pairs. She also saw several species she hadn’t yet come across: a creature went by her that looked like a yellow-skinned rhinoceros on two legs, while something hairy and wolf-like skulked in a doorway nearby, and a woman with skin as black as onyx and spindly, three-fingered hands chatted to a hulking green-haired brute with bestial features that leaned forward on its knuckles. The more she saw, the more she wanted to see, and she realised that the reason she was taking it so well, as Rathe had put it, was that she was hungry for everything the Reach might offer. All she had seen so far were wonders, curios, miracles even. She wanted to see more.
“You doing okay, kid?” Drenno asked her suddenly, misreading her expression.
She grimaced, trying not to look like an excited schoolgirl. “I grew up in London. This is kind of comforting.”
“London’s a city?”
“One of Earth’s oldest and greatest,” she said, speaking loud enough to be heard above the crowd. “Great big river running through it, called the Thames. I lived there my whole life, on and off the streets. I thought I’d miss it more than I do.”
Drenno grunted. “Well maybe that’s telling you something right there, kid,” he said as they pushed on through the crowds.
/> CHAPTER 15
~DAMNED NANESTOCIANS~
“HERE IT IS,” Rathe said. They came abreast of a large, squat building hewn from brown rock, from within which came the sounds of music and merriment. A hologram of a scantily-clad Silsir woman stood on one side of the door, beckoning in passers-by with a seductive wave of her flickering hand. On the opposite side, a humanoid Adonis did the same, flexing his holographic pectorals to entice people inside. After several seconds, the woman changed to a female To’ecc and the man buzzed, becoming a huge Endrani with a braided mane.
Drenno hammered on the door, and it was opened by a one-horned pachyderm with burnt-orange skin.
“Mestadon,” Rathe told Angela without needing to be asked. “Very strong, not usually all that smart. They are destined to be the galaxy’s doormen.”
The brute stood to one side, and Angela followed Rathe into the establishment known as the Quartz. Smells hit her in succession, bleeding through the breather: spices, tobacco, something herbal, something sweet like burnt caramel, sweat, body heat. The main bar was cavernous, tri-levelled, with railed galleries ringing the upper floors. Every table was occupied, the bar was lined with drinkers. Angela saw squat creatures, like blue-skinned pugs, skittering around the floor, hoovering up spills and discarded food. Her eyes were drawn to two huge aliens at the bar. One was a Mestodon, like the doorman, but its thick hide was cream-coloured and its tusks curled back in on themselves like a walrus. The other was odder in appearance, flat-faced but with dull red eyes, curled rams' horns and a little button nose that might have been cute were the rest of the countenance not so terrifyingly ugly. Both wore similar long black coats, and stood silently, together but not, surveying the crowd. Angela knew bouncers when she saw them.
Behind the main bar, another colossal creature stood polishing a tankard. It was human-shaped, but the trunked head was like that of a woolly elephant, complete with flapping ears and small, broken tusks. As Drenno pushed his way through to the bar, the creature looked up with what appeared to be a smile.
“Drenno!” it said in a thick voice. “What are you doing back here so soon?”
“Oh, you know me, Bu,” Drenno replied with a grin. “I missed you.”
“Jek. You only visit when you want something.”
“Well right now, I want a drink. Three cups of swake. And tell Paryx I’m here, would you?”
Drenno led Angela and Rathe to a small booth on the far side of the bar-room. Six-Tails lingered at the bar, chatting with BuBu; of Gage, there was currently no sign. Angela wasn’t sure when the Auton had slinked off, but she wasn’t here now. While the two men chatted quietly, Angela watched the room. It was about as far from the Ferrier as you could possibly get. It was more like a menagerie than a bar, a multi-racial, multi-species smorgasbord that made the petty squabbles over skin colour and religion she’d left behind seem ridiculously minuscule. She saw creatures – people – of all races, sitting side by side, laughing, bickering, playing games with glowing dice that hovered above the table top, arm-wrestling, singing. There was music playing through a loud speaker, barely audible in the din, that sounded for all the world like Bowie. Her eye was caught by a flash of yellow and green light on the opposite side of the room; there was a device of some kind behind the bar that kept flashing, and every time it did, a steel barrel appeared in it, only to be quickly moved by the staff. Angela nudged Rathe. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
Rathe gave Drenno a look and smiled. “Ironic that you should ask. That ring is called a ‘phase-pad’ – a portable arc-point. It lets us do what you can.”
“It’s a teleporter?”
“More or less. Anything organic can only be arced once every seventy-two hours to avoid complications, and items with working parts can be rendered useless in the event of a malfunction, so they’re mostly used to transfer supply cargo. You need one of these—” from within his jacket he produced a small metallic ring, “—called a halo, and one of those. You attune them, and you can transfer anything you like. Within reason, of course.” He put the halo away and smiled. “That’s enough with the lessons for now. It's time for a drink.”
BuBu appeared with a tray of mugs and set it down. Drenno thanked him before passing one of the metal cups to Angela. She looked down into the red liquid, sniffing a little; it smelled of cinnamon and whiskey.
Drenno leaned forward to be heard over the hubbub. “It’s not going to bite, kid. It’s just a little happy juice.”
“It smells pretty good,” she admitted, and he laughed. Gingerly she lifted the cup to her lips, taking a tiny sip. It tasted bitter, but not unpleasant. She caught the look Drenno gave her and squared her jaw, taking a second, much larger mouthful. That one had some kick to it, and she grimaced. Drenno chuffed, smiling wryly. Angela was about to lift her glass when a bizarre creature appeared behind the Captain. A slender hand made of corded tree roots clapped Drenno on the shoulder and he froze mid-sip, as though physically disturbed by the creature’s touch. He swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, and said, without turning, “Paryx.”
“Ellys Drenno. How are you?” the creature said, its narrow face contorting into an overly warm smile. When it spoke and moved it did so in short, sharp bursts, as though it moved from position to position too quickly for Angela’s eyes to register. It had an almost stop-motion effect. “Obviously, you got my wave?
“Obviously.”
Paryx slid into the seat opposite Drenno. He was short and slim, his wiry green frame almost elfish. His hair wasn’t hair at all, but a rough tangle of dark, thorny branches, and his log nails looked to be made of pale wood. The face was too perfectly formed to be called ugly, but was wholly inhuman at the same time. His eyes were almost circular, as though he was wearing spectacles, and his mouth was a thin, lip-less line. The shiny black jacket he wore that seemed at odds with his physical appearance. He grinned at Angela, and said in a camp accent she might have sworn was Edinburgh-bred, “And who’s this? Is this her?”
Drenno clapped Angela on the shoulder roughly. “This? This is my new sharpshooter: Rusty. Rusty, meet Paryx, biggest swindler this side of Dulgaar.”
The plant-like thing turned a disbelieving eye on Angela, but the wry smile never left his thin face. “Are you a good shot, my love?” he asked conspiratorially, leaning over the table. “You must be terribly lethal. The infamous Firebrand, Ellys Drenno, only recruits the best of the worst.”
“Don't let Gage hear you say that,” Rathe joked.
The creature looked hurt. “Pah! Gage likes me.”
“Then that's one,” said Drenno testily. “You called us, Paryx. We here just so you can appraise my crew?”
Paryx waved a wiry hand. “We’ll get to that, we’ll get to that. So, come on. Truth time: is this her? What my broadwave sent you to find?”
“Not just us,” Drenno replied coldly. “Scepterists were there, too.”
“Well, it was an AEGIS wave, Ellys. I intercepted it. I doubt her Ladyship will be impressed that you beat her there.”
“Barely. You said you had something else, something related. ‘The next part’, you said. What does that mean?”
“Means what it says. I have data regarding the next part of… well, her, I suppose.”
“Leave Rusty out of it.”
Paryx smiled again, his eyes widening. “Right. Rusty. How adorable.”
“Does this mean Evayne is privy to this information, too?” Rathe cut in.
“Nope. This part wasn’t in a Scepterist transmission. I did a lot of digging around in the HubNet and found something buried, and I do mean buried. We’re talking black-band stuff.” His eyes, and Drenno’s, flickered briefly towards Rathe, but the older man didn’t seem to notice as he signalled the waitress for another round of drinks.
“An op?” Drenno asked.
Paryx shook his head. “Nah. No op. Just information. Heavily encrypted, very old. It was tagged as Monolith property.”
“The Founders?”
Drenno sipped his drink, catching Angela’s eye as she sipped hers and coughed. “Take it easy, kid. Swake has a kick to it.”
“So,” Rathe interjected, “this information that you had to dig through HubNet for, what is it? More coordinates on the other side of Gaia Vahl?”
“Actually, no. This is more... local.”
Drenno sat back. “And you’re not going after it yourself?”
Paryx spread his knotted hands. “What would I want with it? I’d only sell whatever it is. You paying me for it beforehand is just good business sense.” He leaned forward, making a show of squinting at Angela. “So, Rusty… You’re not from around here, then, are you? This must all be very new to you. What do they call your world?”
Unsure, she glanced at Rathe, who gave a slight nod. “Earth,” she said. “It’s called Earth.”
“Earth-born...” he whispered. He pointed at Drenno, then himself, saying, "Orren-born, Nahnen-born. Makes you Earth-born. And human to boot. Leastways, on the outside. Odd. But then the Founders had the strangest notions… I warn you now, Drenno, Her Ladyship wants for this one with a powerful bent. She’s unlikely to let you wander up and down the Reach with her in tow, that’s a surety.”
Drenno gritted his teeth. “I’m aware, Paryx. Now where’s what I want?”
Paryx sat back, and Rathe smiled at Angela. “Don’t mind our friendly fence here, Rusty – he, ah, grows on you.”
Paryx burst out laughing, slamming his spindly hand down on the tabletop, causing their drinks to slosh in their mugs. “The old ones are the best, Rathe. You would know.”