by Jamie Sawyer
“This was how Colonel Harris managed his people,” I said, staring down at the half-emptied cocktail glass. “A good drink and a good talk.”
It was probably the alcohol, but I was feeling more than a little misty-eyed. Missions into the Maelstrom, discoveries like the Pariah Project: this was exactly what the Lazarus Legion had been all about. The table grew quiet for a moment, and the background noise of the bar seemed very distant. Even surrounded by my squad, by the detritus of the North Star bar, I felt an incredible press of loneliness on my shoulders. The idea of grabbing Riggs and taking him to one of the station’s charge-by-the-hour rooms suddenly seemed more than appealing.
“What was Lazarus like?” Riggs asked. “I mean, we’ve all heard about what he did. But you knew the man, right? What was he really like?”
I snorted a laugh. “Conrad? He was an alcoholic, and he was an asshole. But he was the best damned officer I’ve ever known, and he was my friend.”
“Captain Carmine knew him too, didn’t she?” Lopez asked. “Lieutenant Yukio told us about it.”
“Yeah. We had a mission together, years back now. That was how she got her metal leg. But you people don’t really want to hear about Lazarus. All that happened a long time ago.”
Everyone knew about Conrad Harris—callsign “Lazarus”—and what he had done for the Alliance. I didn’t need to rehearse the stories that made up his legend: of how he had destroyed a Shard Artefact on Helios, fended off an Asiatic Directorate attack at Damascus, then defeated a Shard machine-mind at Devonia … Through their retelling, those tales had become more real to the Alliance than my genuine memories. The Shard Gate sat beyond the bar’s battered view-port, reminding me of the things that Lazarus had done.
“Do you miss him?” Lopez asked.
“All the fucking time,” I said, sighing. “But it barely matters now. The universe has changed. When I was Lazarus Legion, we were fighting a different enemy. The Asiatic Directorate went down a year after we got back.”
“Not all of them,” Lopez said. “And I’m not talking about Feng.”
“The Directorate would pay good price to get hands on you, yes?” Novak said. At first, I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about me or Lopez, but then his eyes flitted in my direction. “Directorate never forget what Legion did. You are enemy of state.”
“Daddy used to say that they were just sleeping,” Lopez said. “The Sleeping Dragon, that’s what Proximans call the Asiatic Directorate.”
All of which was very true. Could an empire that large, that powerful, ever really die? I doubted it. I was quite sure that, if what was left of the Directorate got the chance, they’d make an example of me.
“Good thing that the only Directorate I know around here is Feng,” Riggs said.
“It’s funny,” Feng said, “because people keep telling me that I’m Directorate. But I don’t remember that time. The Executive made me, but I didn’t even know them.”
The Directorate Executive had been the war council responsible for implementing the cloning programme. They’d once maintained facilities on Old Earth, and had eventually expanded the operation across their share of the galaxy. All of that had gone down with the purported fall of the Directorate.
“I doubt Lazarus would’ve liked you much,” I said to Feng, “but you’re okay by me.”
“Thanks, boss,” he said, with a mild grin.
“When did they, ah, ‘liberate’ you?” Lopez asked.
“I was vat-born,” Feng explained. “Genetically engineered to be bigger, badder, smarter.”
“So I guess that the process doesn’t always work out then?” Riggs said, playfully.
“Fuck you, Riggs,” Feng said. “I was born in Crèche Three, Delta Crema Facility.” He taped the back of his neck, where his serial code and birthing data were tattooed. “When the Directorate fell, things went to shit. One day we were being trained to become the latest generation of Directorate Special Forces…” He shrugged, searching the table with his eyes as though looking for answers. “The next, everyone who wasn’t a clone just vanished. No trainers, no station staff, no nothing.”
“Shit,” Lopez said. “Must’ve been rough. Did you escape?”
“No way,” Feng said. “Delta Crema is a hellworld. You can’t set foot on the surface during sun-up, unless you want to be burnt to a crisp, and by night all air-traffic is prohibited. There’s limited atmosphere. That’s why they grew us there, on-station, so that we were safe from the Alliance.” He looked at me, sideways. “The staff sometimes told us stories about the ‘Bloody Demon,’ about Lazarus. I didn’t believe them, but it’s hard to know what’s true when your world is a single facility and a dozen other troopers-in-training…”
“They got you out though, eventually?” Lopez asked.
“Eventually is the word,” Feng said. “The station was in lockdown. Turns out, everyone else had evacuated when the Directorate imploded. Most of the other crèches had been terminated by their handlers. Ours was either more humane, or he was a coward. Alliance troops stormed the base six days after we’d been deserted.” Feng stopped abruptly, swigged from a bottle of beer. “Rest is history.”
Riggs sucked his teeth. “Look at it this way,” he said. “Things could’ve been a damned lot worse.” Nodded across the table. “You could’ve been Novak.”
“You want real horror,” Novak said, “you come to prison. Delta Crema is nothing compared to gulag.”
The Russian rubbed a huge hand over his forehead. Several words were tattooed in old-style ink onto his knuckles, all in Cyrillic script, and I wondered what they meant. I’d assumed that most of Novak’s markings were gang tattoos: he would be a good fit for the criminal networks of many planets and space stations, as an enforcer or mob boss.
“What exactly did you do to get put in there, Novak?” Riggs enquired. “We’re all very eager to hear.”
Novak’s drone began a steady chirp of warning signals, and the big Russian creaked in his chair. Although it had been Novak who had brought up the subject of his detention, his mood seemed to have taken a sudden nosedive. The aura of intimidation that followed him suddenly became more tangible, and everyone around the table could sense it.
“Fuck off,” he said to Riggs. “Is not your business.”
“Okay, I get it.” Riggs waved his hands, open palm, in a defensive gesture. “The man doesn’t want to talk about it. Chill out, Private.”
“That’s a real nice story…”
A gruff, cold voice intruded on our conversation. As one, the Jackals turned towards the speaker.
A huge man in a stained and worn-out aviator-suit—covered in patches from successful operations into the Drift—but otherwise far too large-framed to be a proper a pilot. The guy had an unshaven chin, with scars running the length of both weathered cheeks that told of a harsh life out in the belt. His considerable bulk was arranged across a barstool. The prostitute who had been shadowing Novak had draped herself over the pilot’s shoulder, fiddling with a dirty-bladed knife, absently cleaning her nails.
“We’re good, thanks,” Riggs said.
The pilot’s presentation screamed Alpha Dog. His eyes were beads in his fat face, which wobbled as he let out a belly laugh.
“I don’t think that you are,” he said. “I don’t think that you’re good at all.”
“No problem here,” I said. “We’re just finishing up, then we’ll be on our way.”
Negotiation first. That was my attempt at diffusing this standoff.
“Little late for that, ain’t it?” Alpha Dog asked. “We got ourselves a situation here.”
And that was what it had become: a situation. In an instant, it had developed from nothing to something. The tender slowly edged behind the bar. Eyes not on Alpha Dog or the prospectors, but on us. For the second time that day North Star’s no-weapons policy hit home.
“So?” Alpha said. “What you got to say for yourselves?”
There were guffawed laughs
across the bar. My skin prickled. I could feel the alcohol draining from my system.
Alpha Dog stood from his stool. “My friend here,” he nodded at the hooker, “tells me that you haven’t paid your entrance tax. That you have a nice shiny ship in dock.”
“Yeah, nice shiny,” someone else spoke up. Another figure was standing now.
“Thing is,” Alpha said, his hooker friend hanging back, the knife still in her hand, “we don’t got a lot of time for military types out here. The guard house keeps to itself.”
The bartender nodded. “It does. It does.”
“And I really do not like Directorate,” Alpha said. “They pay double taxes.”
“He’s Directorate?” someone else yelled. “That fixes it then…”
Feng set his jaw. “Anyone want to make a thing of it?”
“Oh, we’ve already made a thing of it,” the bartender said, grinning with his jewelled teeth. “We don’t like the Directorate round here. Not after what they did.”
“We’re just passing through,” Lopez offered. I doubted that she had ever been in a bar fight before. “We weren’t aware of any tax, but we can pay…”
She fumbled with something in her fatigue harness, but I shot her a cold glare.
“No,” I said, firmly. This had gone too far. “We can’t.”
“You’re paying taxes,” said Alpha Dog. “And if not, the Directorate’s gonna pay in blood.”
The big man cracked knuckles. He wore heavy armoured gloves, of a type often lined with powered filaments. Those were illegal on most Alliance stations and worlds, and would certainly be in breach of station policy, but I doubted Alpha Dog cared about that. Special rules seemed to apply to locals.
Novak’s drone broke the silence with a loud chirping, detecting the increase in the Russian’s anger level. I caught his face in snapshot: the veins across his broad neck were tight, dancing like crazy.
“No taxes, asshole,” he said.
I scanned the room. Ten men now, all standing between us and the door. The rest of the bar just waiting to wade in, if necessary. This was going to get real nasty, real fast.
“If you did bring a weapon,” I said to Novak, under my breath, “now would be a very good time to reveal it.”
Novak kept his eyes on Alpha. “You say no weapons.”
I sighed in exasperation. “The one time you actually follow an order—”
But the locals started the show before I could finish my sentence.
The room erupted.
Glasses, chairs, and even—courtesy of Novak—a table.
I slammed a fist into Alpha’s face. Felt something break in his nose, and sharp feedback through my hand. This would’ve been a whole lot easier in a simulant.
Alpha yelped, went backwards. Crashed into the bar.
The hooker was up, waving the knife in a deft arc. This clearly wasn’t the first time she’d been involved in this sort of thing. Lunged past me.
“Lopez!” I shouted.
Lopez rolled sideways, still fumbling with something in her uniform harness. A pitcher of alcohol toppled over beside her, showering us both with glass splinters.
Two men were on Novak. Powered gauntlets sparked as punches connected with his chest and shoulders. He worked on through it, roaring like a bear and spinning bodies in every direction. A woman in space armour had Riggs, and was dragging him across an upturned table. He flailed as though he was unsure whether he should actually fight back. Feng was somewhere among the mess, but I couldn’t quite be sure where—
A blow caught my jaw. Sharp feedback erupted across my skull, a lance of pain spreading across my jawline.
“Damn it!” I roared.
The force sent me sideways, crashing into a table. Something speared my ribs, immediately followed by the warm flush of blood being spilled.
“Jenk!” Riggs wailed, renewing his efforts to get free.
I shook my head, steadied the dizzying sensation that suggested I might pass out. It had been a while since I’d had any action—of the violent sort—in my real skin. I decided that I didn’t like it so much.
“Fucking military assholes, coming out here and getting the best takings!” Alpha Dog remonstrated.
He grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me to my feet. As well as being significantly fatter, Alpha Dog was a good deal taller than me. He hoisted me upwards and I twisted—a fish on a hook. I thrashed my legs, managed to raise a foot. Slammed a boot into his groin. Hard.
Alpha screamed. Dropped me.
I felt my ribs. More glass had cut through my uniform, and bright, sticky blood seeped from inside, but the injury wasn’t major. I’d live through it. I got to my feet, whirled about to avoid another punch. The attacker put too much force into the blow and sailed past.
Alpha Dog loomed over me. Flexing his fists, the filaments of his gloves spitting fat white sparks. His grin was gone: now he just looked angry. I imagined what a blow from one of those powered gloves would feel like. Not good.
“Things’ve changed out here,” he rumbled. “Your Army doesn’t mean shit to us any more—”
There was a muted bang, and his head exploded.
The bar froze.
Silence. Whatever rules the brawlers had set, killing Alpha Dog had obviously broken them.
All eyes trailed to the shooter.
I ranked the possibilities in my head. An Alliance Military Police patrol attracted by the noise. Captain Carmine or one of the Santa Fe’s crew, investigating the downed comms. Major Sergkov and Zero here to keep us on track.
Instead, Private Lopez stood there, a pistol in her hands.
The overweight gang leader slumped to the floor, hooker confidante poised over his body. Blood began to pool around him in a dark arc.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” Lopez was saying.
Her hand was shaking, which made the pistol’s targeting sight jump. The weapon trailed limply in her grasp, clasped inexpertly.
The Jackals took that momentary pause in activity to get to their feet. It was like someone had slammed the breaker, hit the reset, and allowed the squad to throw off their injuries.
“I … I… It was…” Lopez started.
“It’ll have to wait,” I said. My own voice was wet, and I realised that I had bled into my mouth. I thrust out a hand: “Gun. Now.”
Lopez was more than willing to palm off the murder weapon, muzzle-first. I’d have to talk to her about that: it was bad gun discipline.
“Revtech-911K,” I said. “It’s a nice gun.”
“I wouldn’t really know,” Lopez said, swallowing. She already looked green about the gills.
“No guns!” another patron blurted. “No guns allowed on-station!”
“Yeah,” I said, retreating towards the bar’s exit hatch, waving the pistol in as indiscriminate a manner as I could. “I heard that already. But aren’t there also rules about robbing and killing visitors?”
The other occupants were recalibrating as well. Brawlers were getting back on their feet, shaking glass shards from their suits, readying for the next attack. Even with a gun, there were still far too many of them to contemplate taking down. We had to retreat, and fast.
The bartender saw what we were doing. I heard the snap of a shotgun being loaded from behind the bar.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said.
I pointed the Revtech in his direction. His was bigger: a badly maintained sawn-off shotgun which he held in both hands, aimed low. The grim expression on his face suggested that he wasn’t going to fire immediately, but that he could change his mind at any time.
“That no-guns thing doesn’t apply to you then?” I said. Backed slowly towards the door. “Just let me get my people and go.”
The tender tossed his head at one of the locals. “Get that body out of here.”
The bartender watched, shotgun trained on us all the way, as we made it into the corridor outside. I aimed the gun on him throughout, but my eyes were on the whole bar
.
“Get the door control, Feng,” I ordered.
“Affirmative,” Feng said.
The door panels closed with a strangled groan. Relief was an understatement.
“Jesus, that was close…” Riggs said. “What the hell just happened in there?”
“It was a shakedown,” I said. “Happens, sometimes. Stations like this are a long way from any real money.”
“The Customs guy was probably in on it,” Feng said. “He told us about this place. We should go find Zero and Major Sergkov.”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I said. My mind was already in overdrive planning the next step. “This way.”
The Jackals scrambled through the empty corridors, putting distance between us and the bar. Although no one immediately gave chase, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. The rest of the sector was about as downtrodden and disaffected as the bar itself, reduced to a virtual shanty of warren-like passageways and empty hab-modules. Completely deserted. Far quieter, come to think of it, than when I had last travelled this stretch of the station…
“Novak’s hit,” Riggs said.
The Russian staggered alongside me. The handle of a nasty-looking blade was plunged into the fat of his left thigh, pretty much to the hilt.
“Am fine,” he said. “Can walk.”
Dark blood stained the fabric of his fatigues, weeping all the way to the ankle of his boot. I guessed that it hadn’t caught an artery, because that would’ve felled even Novak, but the wound was bad enough to demand medical attention.
“You sure about that?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, can walk,” Novak repeated.
Before I could order him not to, Novak pulled the blade from his leg. Lopez gasped and groaned “eugh” but the Russian wasn’t bothered. As he held it, his expression became almost euphoric.
“Have weapon now,” he said.
The drone watched on, recording the incident, chirping and chiming as it went. I knew that it wouldn’t like what had just happened in the bar, and I predicted a penalty on Novak’s service contract.