by Rick Partlow
He’d fixed me with a harsh glare. “This is a last resort only. The people I work for want what’s down there intact.” Then he’d shot me a wave as he headed back to the berth where his own ship was docked. “Five hundred hours,” he’d reminded me. “Good luck.”
I felt the apparent gravity of centrifugal force begin to increase the farther towards the outer shell the lift descended. I didn’t have a problem with microgravity, but I saw some of the others in the lift car let out relieved breaths as their weight increased to closer to what was normal for them back home.
They were a mixed lot, from business travelers in vat-grown suits to cargo crews in stained coveralls. Belial was a gathering place for all types: Belters from here in the Alpha Centauri belt and the one back in the Solar System congregated on this station for recreation, along with Corporate and private freighter crews and some off-duty military on leave from the small base on Hermes out at Proxima. Not to mention the lower-tier Corporate Council people who came here to live out their own private sexual kinks in a place where it couldn’t come back to haunt them as they climbed the ladder.
And then there were the ones who were here for business instead of pleasure. Belial was legendary as a hotbed of corporate espionage, shady black market deals and fugitive criminals. Security here didn’t put up with people killing each other indiscriminately, but they pretty much turned a blind eye to anything else, and were insistent that since they were a private entity not affiliated with the Commonwealth government that its rules didn’t apply. Most legal scholars had doubts as to how that argument would stand up in court, but it had never been tested, thanks to money greasing the right palms.
The establishment I was heading for couldn’t have existed anywhere that operated under Commonwealth laws; and even on Belial, it was stuck pretty far back in the ass-end of the shadier parts of the station. I got off the lift car about three levels from the outermost ring, emerging into a district of the station that was dimly lit by design, a world where it was always night and the businesses and storefronts were mostly labelled with simple, uninformative names like “Klondike” or “Dunkel Nach Hause,” whatever the hell that meant. You weren’t in this section of Belial unless you knew what you were looking for and where it was.
I tried not to pay attention to what went on in the places I passed on those streets, but I couldn’t help but register the glimpses through curtain doors as they parted for people who seemed to look over their shoulders instinctively, even in a place like this where no one cared. It was in places like these that you could practice the habits that broke you, either physically or mentally. Fantasies that weren’t tolerated anywhere else, that would land you in involuntary psych counseling and a law enforcement watch list, could be indulged with Virtual Reality, or for a bit more, with pleasure dolls nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Or, for enough money, with real people just as desperate as their customers.
Once in a while, when a soundproof door was opened at just the right time, you could hear screams. I wondered if they were from a pleasure doll or a human. Either way, a human was causing them and it would have made me think some very dark thoughts about what we were capable of as a species…if I hadn’t already known.
This whole area seemed to be devoted to those who derived pleasure from pain, and my destination was different only in execution, and in size. This establishment dwarfed the smaller shops around it, taking up three times the number of lots and stretching from the ceiling ten meters above down to the rough, stone floor. “Lucha” was the name above the large double-doors and, unlike anywhere else I’d seen on this street, those doors were manned by private bouncers and a sign on the wall proclaimed “No Weapons Allowed.”
The station didn’t allow guns or projectile weapons of any kind, but you could bring in knives, shock gloves, mono-wire whips and basically any other sort of deadly device you wanted that had to be used one-on-one. But not in this place. There was a line of people in front of me, varied from the stylish Corporate Council types to the ragged ship crewmembers or towering Belters struggling against the .8 gravities; and every once in a while, one of them would produce a weapon from a concealed sheath or pocket and deposit it in a locker for which they’d get a code so they could retrieve it when they left.
Everyone also had to deposit a rather hefty entrance fee, usually in actual, physical Tradenotes. Luckily, Cowboy had foreseen the need for a good supply of untraceable funds on this mission and I had a few hundred in my jacket pocket, plus more on the Wanderer. It’s always nice spending someone else’s money, particularly when it was some Corporate Council asshole. I tipped the bouncers.
Through those doors was a bar, with dozens of stools and tables, but it was only lightly populated; the real business was beyond it, through a curtain entrance that stretched all the way to the ceiling. I stopped to pick up a shot of tequila from the real, human bartender---always a sign of a class establishment, in my experience---then moved through to the main event.
Either the curtain was made of some soundproofing material or they were engaging in some very elaborate and expensive acoustic dampening; the second I stepped through it, I was assaulted by the roar of the excited crowd, the slap of flesh on flesh and the unmistakable grunts of someone being hit very, very hard. I could see it immediately; the floor was sloped gently downward, to let you view the show from every level. There were no seats, but the place was so packed, it would have been standing room only even if there had been.
The match was being held in a square, mesh cage about five meters on a side, with a floor of flexible polymer, once white but long since stained with dried blood, among other things. There were four men inside it, all dressed in tight-fitting singlets, one pair colored white and the other two black. The ones in white were older, weathered and scarred, one of them shaved bald and both with amber skin darkened under alien suns not that long ago. They were traveling champions, pursuing this illegal sport in the undergrounds of a dozen colonies.
The other two were newer to the game, from their youth, and had been here in Belial for a while from their pallor. They were brothers, obvious from the likeness of their squared-off features and the common blond color of their long, braided hair and beards. Yet new or not, they were solid, corded muscle and there was a cold, deadly frost in their shared blue eyes that seemed totally bereft of fear. Besides their singlets, each man had tight gloves of hard leather and the brothers’ were already stained with the blood running from their opponents’ faces. Even as I watched, leather hammered into flesh and each of the brothers scored a punishing body blow almost simultaneously.
I made my way downward, closer to the ring, through throngs of screaming fans, their hands in the air, chanting “lucha!” Their faces seemed transfixed, transported with an almost sexual excitement. Inside the cage, the older fighters attempted a gambit that I was sure was well practiced by its smoothness of execution, probably one that had served them well in a dozen other fights on a dozen other worlds. Each ducked aside, under the guard of the man they were fighting, and slipped around to take the other’s opponent unaware from the rear.
I tensed, expecting disaster for the brothers; they were vulnerable to any number of attacks, from a rear naked choke to a debilitating strike that could break a bone. Instead, both of the brothers spun into matching back kicks and their opponents walked straight into them. There was a crunch of cracking ribs that I could hear above the chanting and yelling, and both the older fighters were down, the bald one on a knee, struggling to breath, and the other man flat on his back and unmoving. One of the brothers moved behind the bald man and put him into a choke hold, and I wondered for a moment just how far they were going to take it. Was this to the death? Would they go that far, even here on Belial?
But he stopped once the bald man was unconscious and let him fall limp to the canvas. Then the brothers raised arms spattered with blood and absorbed the cheers and screams of the crowd, their faces twisted into grimaces that seemed le
ss satisfied and more enraged. Medical technicians dressed in white opened the gate into the cage and rushed over to the unconscious men, while the blond, hulking brothers stepped out behind them and headed up a walkway back up to the dressing rooms.
“Victor!” I yelled after them, rushing up towards the cage. “Kurt!”
A very tall, very unpleasant looking bouncer took a step to block my way, one hand raised palm out and the other poised in a fist by his chest.
“Sir, you need to stay away from the ring.” His voice was calm and professional, but his demeanor was more along the lines of a barely-restrained psycho killer.
“Sure,” I acquiesced, raising my hands in surrender. “But you need to tell Kurt and Victor that Munroe is here to see them.”
“The fighters do not socialize with guests,” the man said flatly. He was so tall and broad-shouldered, I couldn’t see past him, and I cursed under my breath, sure they were already through the door into the dressing room by now.
I debated briefly and internally whether I’d be better off bribing him or hitting him; I wasn’t sure either would be effective, but I was leaning towards bribery.
“Holy shit, I don’t fucking believe it!”
The voice was familiar, deep and booming, maybe a little harsher and harder-edged than the last time I’d heard it. Victor Simak stepped around the bouncer, putting a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Is that really you, Munroe?” Kurt asked, wonder in his eyes as he came around the other side of the guard. Kurt had a cut on his cheek oozing blood, but he didn’t seem to notice it.
Back before I’d been able to remember their names, I used to call them the Viking Brothers, and that name suited them now more than ever. They’d been college kids when they’d joined the Resistance on Demeter, and they’d looked older and more hardened than they had any right to be when it was over. Now, though, they were beyond hardened into…feral.
“It’s really me,” I said, and tried not to grimace when they both swept me into a group hug that smelled of blood and sweat. One or both of them pounded me on the back hard enough to drive the wind out of my lungs and I heard them laughing wildly.
“Good God, we haven’t seen you since the night of the assault on the fusion plant!” Victor whooped. “What the hell are you doing here?”
There was still the roaring of the crowd around us, and I was beginning to see people moving forward out of their seats, maybe emboldened by my presence outside the normally acceptable areas for spectators. The bouncer was frowning and I saw him touch an earpiece and mutter something inaudible as he began to get visibly agitated.
“Is there someplace we can talk in private?” I asked them, having to yell to be heard over the din.
“Yeah, follow us,” Kurt said immediately, waving towards the door to the dressing room.
Glancing back at the cage as we jogged towards the exit, I could see that the two older fighters were both sitting up and conscious now. The fight had been brutal and brief and I was impressed how good the Simak brothers had become at this game just two years after leaving Demeter.
The bouncer opened the door for us with his palm on the ID plate, then stayed on the other side of it when it closed, guarding it against any incursion by insistent fans. The hallway back into the dressing room was almost obscenely bright after the insistently dim lighting everywhere else in this district, and it felt like we were going backstage at one of the old-time theaters favored by the rich tourists on Demeter. Kurt and Victor bypassed the first few open locker rooms and led me to a private door keyed to their palmprints. The dressing room inside was spacious and well appointed, with a massage table, a couch, two reclining chairs and a shower stall.
“It’s nice as all hell to see you again, Munroe,” Victor said, leading the conversation as always; Kurt was the more shy and reticent one, always willing to let his older brother spearhead conversations. “But I can’t think you tracked us down to this God-forsaken pit just to grab a drink.”
He was changing as he spoke, peeling off the sweat-soaked one-piece and pulling on a robe that had been hanging from a hook on the wall. Kurt just sat down as he was on one of the chairs, grabbing a bottle of water out of a holder in the arm and taking a long drink.
“No, honestly I didn’t,” I admitted. “But I did want to ask you something first. After the war, I went back to Demeter. I live there now with Sophia.”
“Congratulations!” Kurt said, his hard mask of a face cracking into a smile. “I’m glad you guys made that work.”
“Thanks,” I said, nodding to him. “But when I came back, I looked for you two, and no one could tell me why you’d left or where you’d gone, not even your parents. How the hell did you wind up here,” I waved a hand around us demonstratively, “doing this?”
The brothers shared a look, like this was a conversation---or maybe an argument---they’d had with each other many times before.
“We tried to fit back in after the Fleet took Demeter back from the Tahni,” Victor began.
“We got jobs with the reconstruction,” Kurt cut in. “They were hiring any warm body that would work, and going back to college classes wasn’t an option in the short run. There wasn’t any college, there weren’t any courses, there weren’t any professors alive even.”
“But after a while,” Victor went on, “it seemed kind of…”
“Empty,” Kurt supplied. “Meaningless.”
“Yeah,” Victor agreed.
He walked over to a refrigerator set in the wall and pulled out a beer. He held one out to me, but I shook my head. I’d never liked beer, which made me the odd man out as an enlisted Marine. Kurt nodded and Victor tossed him a bottle, then grabbed one for himself and sat down, popping it open.
“After what had happened during the occupation,” Victor said, swallowing a sip, “after what we’d done and seen, running buildfoam dispensers and pouring concrete felt like the most boring thing in the galaxy. So, we both went and tried to join up with the Marines.” He looked over at me and shrugged. “We figured we could do some good that way, maybe help end the war.”
“But it ended before we got the chance,” Kurt said bitterly, taking a long gulp of the dark beer. “We were waiting for our flight to Inferno when the local Fleet office got the word that there wouldn’t be any more recruiting classes accepted for the next six months because they were throwing everything they had at the Tahni homeworld and there weren’t resources left for training.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, nodding. Inferno had been one giant buzzing hive of activity, as everyone with a trigger finger got shipped out for the last, big push.
“So we just watched while guys like you won the war and killed the Emperor,” Victor took his turn. I was glad I hadn’t accepted a drink, because I would have spit it up right then. I actually had killed the Tahni Emperor, almost by accident, because he’d been behind cover I’d wanted to use when we hit the Imperial Palace. I’d made sure no one had found out about that, though, with Cowboy’s help. “And we finally couldn’t take it anymore, so we begged for work on an independent freighter heading anywhere else. They dropped us here, and we’d just about ran out of money when a fight agent found us.”
“It wasn’t too hard at first,” Kurt put in. “The war was just over and not that much tourist travel was happening, so we were mostly fighting locals who wanted the purse. By the time competition got tougher, well,” he shrugged, “so had we.”
“And have you found this more satisfying?” I wondered.
They shared that same look as before.
“No,” Victor admitted. “Not anymore. At first, maybe. It was…” He shrugged. “What’s the word? Something you feel in your gut?”
“Visceral,” I suggested.
“Yeah, that. But lately, I feel like we’re just going through the motions.”
“What are we gonna’ do if we leave here, though?” Kurt demanded, his reaction seeming like something he’d repeated before. “We do
n’t have enough money to get anywhere except Hermes, or maybe somewhere in the Solar System. It’s not like we’re qualified to do anything other than kill people or beat them up.”
“I have a job, if you two want it,” I said. They looked at me, with a mix of curiosity and hope and for an instant, I felt like a total shit. These people had been my friends, once upon a time. “I’ve got to tell you right up front: it could get you both killed, and we’ll be so far up the ass end of nowhere, no one will ever know.”
“Doing what?” Victor asked me.
“I can’t give you the details here,” I said. “But you’re going to be out in the Pirate Worlds, killing people who probably have it coming. And you’ll get paid enough that you can buy a ticket anywhere you like when it’s over.”
“Who are we working for?” Kurt wanted to know. His squared-off face was worked into a thoughtful frown.
“Someone high up in the Corporate Council, that’s all I can tell you.” Hell, it was all I knew. “But the go-between who’s been dealing with me is Cowboy.”
“Cowboy?” Kurt repeated in disbelief. “That Fleet Intelligence guy who was on Demeter with us?”
“Yeah. He’s working for the Corporates now and he looked me up because he needed help and thought I could do the job.” I felt bad misleading them, but I didn’t especially want to expand the pool of people who knew about my past.
“Do you believe this is on the up-and-up, Munroe?” Victor asked me, and in his eyes, I saw a trust that I knew I didn’t deserve.