Recon: A Wolf in the Fold

by Rick Partlow

  She looked at me sideways and snorted a laugh. “If I’d known this was how you treated a girl, I’d have snagged you up before that student on Demeter grabbed you first.”

  I was trying to think up something clever to say in return, but then we stepped through the doorway and our conversation was swallowed up in light and noise.

  Chapter Eight

  A bass beat thumped somewhere in my chest, and the lights flashed red and blue to match it in a hypnotic combination that seemed to be designed to drawn you further into the Lucky Bastard, like the spasms of an alimentary canal. There was no cover charge, no line of bouncers, no weapons scanners; you just walked in and there was the dance floor, pulsing from below like the building itself was alive and the floor was its beating heart.

  There were maybe a dozen couples out on the floor when we walked in, and no two of them seemed to be dancing in the same style or even to the same beat. They thrashed or weaved or spun in place, often with eyes closed, oblivious to what their partner was doing; I saw more than one drug patch and wondered if that was the explanation or if smugglers just made really bad dancers. And some of them were visibly armed, including the ones with the drug patches, which made getting by them nearly as nerve-wracking as the flight through the storm.

  Yassa and I stepped together through the swirling, leaping, writhing mass of them, almost dancing ourselves as we dodged and zigzagged across the flashing, vibrating floor, her hand holding my bicep loosely, ready to cut loose if we needed to move faster or fight. It felt natural, like we’d practiced it a hundred times, and she actually seemed more relaxed now than she had before, as if the possibility of physical danger was a comfort.

  Then we were through, walking suddenly on a real, hardwood floor that would have cost hundreds of thousands in Corporate scrip or Commonwealth dollars back on Earth or any of the major colonies, where the only wood allowed for furniture or building materials had to be cloned in a lab. I felt a twinge of envy along with a sense of horrified wrongness at the thought of cutting down a decades-old tree just to make flooring or a desk out of it. It seemed…selfish and short-sighted to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the way I’d been raised on Earth. I’d lived on Demeter long enough to know that attitudes were different about things like that in the colonies, and they would sure as hell be different still here in the Pirate Worlds.

  The wood floor began in a short hallway that led off to the right back to the Virtual Reality theaters and then out another exit, and on the left up a narrow stairwell. We stepped straight through it, into the bar. It was anachronistic and old-fashioned, not from a style choice like the pricey bars in Belial or back on Earth, but because here, everything was anachronistic. They didn’t hire human bartenders because it meant they could charge more for the drinks, they hired them because they couldn’t afford the maintenance and repair of the computer systems that would take orders and dispense them automatically. They didn’t use real glass because some corporate executive expected it, they used it because no one could afford to import transplas or build a factory that could make it, or maintain that factory. Glass was cheap and made from readily available silicon.

  The bar was made from local wood as well, polished and gleaming in the low light that glowed from fixtures embedded in the walls, and the stools were padded with what could have been leather---from something, I knew they had cows here, and horses. The crowd here was more sedate than the one on the dance floor, lined and weathered faces staring into their solitary drinks at the bar or groups of two or three sitting or standing at high-top tables, smoking cigars or pipes. The room was filled with a light haze of aromatic smoke that smelled vaguely of the narcotics that were blended with the tobacco.

  “See anyone who looks like muscle?” Yassa asked me as we sat down at the bar, pulling the stools out with a squeaking of the plastic caps on the bottom of the legs on the wood floor.

  “All of them,” I commented wryly, trying to look the other customers over without staring at them. “You and I included.”

  “What can I get you?” The bartender almost startled me when he appeared in front of us. He was an older man and he looked old, with stringy, greying hair and an unhealthy pallor to his mottled and stained skin. He was dressed in plain, white coveralls and wore a net over his hair and a supremely indifferent look in his dark eyes.

  “Shot of tequila,” I said, “if you have it.” In a place like Belial, or on Earth, my ‘link would already have been displaying the menu and drink list on my contact lens, but here I saw nothing.

  “It’s locally made,” the man told me, pulling a bottle from under the bar and tipping it into a shot glass.

  “That’s fine,” I told him. “Cap?” I asked Yassa.

  I saw her eyes flickering behind the bartender, to the shelf below the rows of glass bottles. There he had jars of the cigars and electric pipes, but her eyes were on the small, locked cases beside them. Inside there would be the patches of Spindle and Kick and Zed and whatever else they might have.

  “You want something stronger?” The bartender asked her, catching the tilt of her gaze.

  I didn’t answer for her; instead, I waited, watching the tiny beads of sweat coalescing on her forehead.

  “No,” she told him, finally, though it took her eyes a moment longer to move on from the drugs. “Give me a bottle of whatever lager you serve here.”

  He set the open bottle in front of her and she took a long drink of it, seizing back control of her breathing as it coursed down her throat.

  “That’s ten dollars,” the bartender told me. “We prefer Tradenotes.”

  I pulled out two twenties and passed them over. His eyebrow shot up.

  “Tell me something,” I said to him. “If you had a few people, veterans say…Marine veterans who’d seen combat, and they were looking for work, who would you suggest they talk to around here?”

  The set of his eyes changed and he looked us both over for a second before he nodded slightly to himself.

  “You should talk to Constantine.” He motioned towards the large, open doorway in the far wall. The restaurant part of the club was through there and I could just see the edges of a few of the tables. “He has a table reserved over on the far side of the dining room.”

  I nodded to him, then slammed back the tequila shot. It burned on the way down and I felt a not-unpleasant tingle up and down my spine and a fire in my chest.

  “Thanks.”

  Yassa brought her bottle with her as we stepped away from the bar and made our way through the tables towards the dining room. We were just past the last group of tables when we heard the angry shouting ahead of us. I shared a look with Yassa and we picked up the pace, striding purposefully into the slightly brighter light of the restaurant.

  It wasn’t packed, not nearly as crowded as the dance floor or the bar, but there were a few occupied tables, and all of them seemed to be staring at the confrontation at the far side of the room, just where the bartender had said we could find this guy Constantine.

  I pegged the man yelling for a local, not a spacer. He wore utilitarian clothes, work clothes, not the expensive leathers or bright-colored flash freighter crews or smugglers wore dirtside; and he had the pale and slightly creepy tone to his skin people seemed to get here. He wasn’t armed, not that I could see, but he was a big man with a barrel chest and a grey-shot, bushy beard that fell over it.

  As we got closer, I could make out what he was saying, though his English was distorted by an accent I’d never heard; it sounded vaguely European, maybe.

  “Don’t hand me that bullshit about keeping up the town!” He was bellowing. “Taxes have gone up twice in just the last three months and you people still haven’t fixed the damage from the winter storms! You are pocketing that money, stealing from us!”

  “You need to calm down, Seth.”

  The man who spoke wasn’t particularly imposing. His face was bland and rounded, his brown hair cut medium length with sideburns that grew
down his cheeks to meet his mustache. He was about my height, I estimated roughly since he was still sitting, seemingly relaxed even under the onslaught. He might have had a few kilos on me, but not many; I’m not a small man and I’d been engineered from the genes up to have about as much strength and endurance as you can have and still be an un-augmented human, thanks to Mom. He wasn’t even dressed to intimidate. His clothes were well made, probably by hand but still well-tailored, but they were simple, earth-toned and fashionable, but not flashy. His only affectation was a black, leather glove on his right hand, which seemed an odd fashion statement.

  But he had a gun holstered low on his left hip, strapped to his thigh to keep it secure, and there was something about the way he wore it that made me suspect he had military training. And there was something about the cool, expressionless control on his lean, unlined face that warned me he wasn’t someone you wanted to fuck with.

  “Calm?” Seth blurted, waving his hands expressively. “I’ve been calm for months and all it’s got me is dead broke! I have no extra money to expand my business or repair the damage to our buildings because every dollar goes to you! We barely have enough to buy food!”

  There were two large, dangerous looking people standing next to Constantine’s table, obviously bodyguards, but they weren’t taking part in the argument. The man and woman were dressed in light body armor strapped with chest holsters, and wore enhanced optics glasses probably linked to their weapons. I had the sense, watching them, that Constantine had told them to hold back; they were watching this Seth character, but weren’t in a defensive stance.

  Seth, I figured grimly, hadn’t thought this through.

  I paused maybe ten meters away from them, leaning back against an unoccupied table with Yassa beside me. The bodyguards shot us a glance that was a warning to stay away.

  “Seth, things are difficult for everyone since the war ended.” Constantine’s voice was cool and level. “There’s been more attention from the Fleet, and the Commonwealth has even re-established the Patrol Service. We aren’t getting the income we used to. That’s why taxes are up, temporarily.”

  “Temporarily my ass!” Seth exploded. “I’ve had enough of this two-faced bullshit! I want to talk to Abuelo! Why is he never in town anymore?”

  “Abuelo has important business he’s taking care of,” Constantine’s tone grew even softer, and I had to strain to hear it. I had the sense that was a bad sign.

  “Well you fucking well better tell him to get his ass back to town!” Seth was screaming now, his normally pale face turning beet red. “Or he’ll have to find someone else to repair everyone’s fabricators and food processing units because I’ll fucking burn my place to the ground before I pay you bloodsucking shits another dollar!”

  There was no warning. One moment, Constantine was a still life painting, sitting in his chair relaxed and unmoving, and the next, his gloved right fist was punching straight through Seth’s chest. I jumped at the sudden motion, nearly falling into a crouch as I originally thought he was going for his gun. But then I saw the explosion of blood that stained that tailored jacket and splattered across the table.

  Seth stood with a look of disbelief on his face, swaying like a pine in a storm for just a moment, and then Constantine’s hand ripped back out with something blood red clutched in the fingers and blood sprayed with the motion, some of it hitting the bodyguards. The man stood, expressionless, but the woman wiped a droplet off of her cheek absently. The fabricator repair shop owner fell backwards, hitting the floor with a hollow thump and more blood and I heard a snarl coming from my lips as I reached for the gun holstered under my jacket.

  “Don’t.” Brandy Yassa’s mouth was so close to my ear that I could feel her warm exhalation as she said the word so loudly and forcefully that it hurt. Her hand squeezed vicelike on my shoulder. “Remember the mission.”

  I twisted my head around and nearly pushed her off of me before I saw the bodyguards looking our way again, their hands straying to their weapons. Constantine was still looking down at the heart in his hand…his obviously bionic hand, surely attached to a full cybernetic arm that had to go all the way into his shoulder and be attached to a reinforced spine for him to pull off that punch. He let the bloody lump of muscle drop to the wooden floor with a sickening plop, then shook the blood off of his glove, his expression still neutral.

  Everything was interrupted by a scream, a wail of grief and fury and pain that echoed through the dining room so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure, at first, from which direction it was coming. Then a woman rushed across the room from the entrance to the bar and threw herself down over Seth’s body, convulsed with sobs.

  She was young, younger than me, maybe still in her teens, her dark hair long and gathered into twin braids. She was dressed much like Seth, in work clothes that had seen better days, baggy and ill-fitting on her skinny, gangly form. She buried her face in Seth’s shoulder and sobbed, keened for him, and I could see that their looks were similar enough that she must be his daughter. When she looked up from her father’s body, his blood covered her and she seemed to welcome it, like it was evidence in a trial or perhaps the markings of a ritual sacrifice.

  “You fucking murderer!” She hissed at him, her face screwed up into a mask of rage. She was crouched like a cat getting ready to spring. “Murderer!” She repeated, still loud but not screaming anymore.

  “Shit,” Yassa said, letting the pressure off my arm, her own hand trailing towards her holster. She knew, as I did, that the girl was about to get herself killed.

  I was about to move for my gun when I realized I’d forgotten something: we already had two people in the dining room, the two least likely to be able to avoid getting involved in something like this. Victor and Kurt sailed across the room like they’d been launched from a cannon out of the corner behind Constantine’s table. The bodyguards had been distracted by the girl, and they looked up just in time to have a combined 220 kilos of muscle slam into them with the righteous indignation of two former Resistance fighters and the skill of two cage fighters.

  The guards never had a chance. There was a flurry of punches so fast and brutal that I could barely follow it, then the male bodyguard was flying over the table, clear over the top of Constantine and the girl and the dead body. He landed with a crack of wood and a louder crack of breaking bones, and stirred but didn’t even try to get up. The woman lasted a heartbeat longer, before Kurt caught her between the eyes with a forearm and she collapsed, unconscious before she hit the floor.

  Things had happened so quickly that neither Yassa and I had made it more than a couple steps toward the table yet, and neither of us could get there before the girl reached Constantine. He didn’t bother to draw his gun, didn’t even bother to use his bionics on her, just swatted her away negligently with his left hand, the flesh-and-blood hand. It took her across the chin and she spun away from him, crying out in pain.

  I had my gun out now, and I trained it on Constantine before his left hand could complete the arc from the backhand down to his thigh holster. A red targeting reticle hung in the air over his chest from the pressure of the web of my thumb on the back of the grip.

  “Don’t,” I warned him. “We’re taking the girl and leaving and no one else has to die.”

  I should kill him, though. I knew it, somewhere down deep, that making an enemy of this man but not killing him was a mistake. But he was the only lead we had to Abuelo, and I clung desperately to the thought that maybe there was still some way to salvage all of this.

  “You don’t want to be pointing a gun at me, boy,” Constantine warned me quietly, his hand hovering too near the butt of his holstered pistol for my taste.

  “Victor, Kurt!” I snapped. “Get the girl! Cap, you’re on point. I’ll ride drag. Double-time!”

  I knew with the EM interference, he couldn’t call for help, but the bartender or one of the servers might have a hardwired line, and we needed to be gone before any more guards came, unless we wan
ted to wind up in a shootout. I kept my gun trained on Constantine as I moved over to the bodyguards and relieved them of their pistols; I didn’t need one of them coming to while we weren’t looking and taking a shot at our backs.

  “You were military,” Constantine said appraisingly, his dark eyes unreadable, his voice still dead calm. “Marines, I’d guess.”

  “Force Recon,” I confirmed. I wasn’t trying to hide it. “And you were DSI, I’d imagine.”

  Victor had the girl over his shoulder and he and Kurt were already following Cap back towards the bar. I backed away from Constantine carefully, dragging my feet and keeping a hand feeling behind me. I felt the eyes of other patrons on us, but none cared enough to risk a slug in the head by interfering.

  “Very perceptive,” Constantine allowed. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a job, would you?”

  “Actually, that’s why we came here,” I said, a bit ruefully as I cleared the doorway to the bar. “But even a mercenary has to have some standards.”

  “If you actually believe that,” I heard his voice carry through as I moved to where the wall was between us and he fell from sight, and I turned to run, “I’m afraid you may be in the wrong line of work.”

  Chapter Nine

  The rain had picked up since we’d entered the Lucky Bastard, and it slapped me in the face the second I made it out the door, forcing me to slit my eyes to see. I headed left, following the others, and I was happy that at least Victor was going the right direction towards the rally point. We’d designated it on the ride in, a burned-out shell of a building we’d seen in the industrial district, just after it switched over from the residential neighborhoods.

  That was about the only thing that was going right.

  Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid! I was cursing myself rhythmically in my head as I ran. That prick Constantine had been right; I was in the wrong line of work. What the hell had Cowboy been thinking sending me in here like I was some kind of damned spy? I should have acted, should have either stopped Victor and Kurt or else finished the job and killed that asshole.