by Jake Bible
“I’ll watch the old tech, you watch our friends,” Hail said.
Roak growled and found a Blorta stuck up under his chin.
“What are you doing?” Roak sighed. “Wrong play, lady.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Hail replied and slowly pulled the Blorta away. “But we as a group have a better chance of survival if Pasha has our backs. That’s what I’m in service to.”
Roak didn’t argue. He nodded at Pasha and the sad-eyed girl hurried to catch up with the rest of the party, leaving Hail and Roak alone. With barely a blink, Roak grabbed Hail by the throat and marched her to the wall, slamming her back against the cold, metal alloy. Hail only grinned.
“I know you’ve been through all the Hells on this station,” Roak said. “Trust me, I get that—”
“I don’t trust you,” Hail spat.
“But we have a very narrow shot at surviving this shit,” Roak continued. “I’m including myself in that narrow shot. If you want any of your friends to live to whore another day, then you listen closely to me. When I tell you to do something or pass on a message to the group, do it. Do not hesitate. You want to get your friends killed? It won’t be me doing it, it’ll be you when you second guess me. Got it?”
“Oh, I got it,” Hail said and took Roak by the wrist. She pried his hand away from her throat then gave him a quick, wet kiss on the lips. “Loud and clear, killer.”
Roak let his hand fall to his side.
“You won’t hear this again, okay?” Roak took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry. You got a bum rap in life from the start. Ending up on Razer Station didn’t help. But none of that is my fault. I am making the best of a seriously bad situation.”
Roak hissed air through his teeth.
“I don’t want any of you to die. I don’t. But it is going to happen. You need to get right with that or we all die. Some or all, your decision.”
“Go now,” Sath said again as he ducked his head back through the doorway.
“Get back in formation,” Roak snapped. “We’re coming.”
Sath was lost from sight before Roak stopped speaking.
“We gonna be good or do I need to take care of you here and now?” Roak asked Hail.
She laughed bitterly.
“We’re gonna be good,” Hail said, patting Roak on the chest. She applied more pressure and shoved him gently out of her way. “We better get going then.”
Hail left the cabin and Roak followed directly behind her.
Once out in the passageway, the group gave each other a last look, fear the dominant feature on all but Roak’s face. Then the fear turned to smiles. Smiles honed from years as professionals that faked happiness for a living.
The group began chatting and joking as if it was any other day on Razer Station.
“Time to get to work,” Roak muttered to himself as they turned the corner and headed for the closest lift.
19.
The sector of the station they were in was a cargo transport in its original incarnation. A four kilometer long, half a kilometer high, quarter kilometer wide, cargo transport. The ship had never been anywhere except for space. Built in space, worked in space, retired in space, retrofitted in space.
When it became a part of Razer Station, the cargo bays were remodeled into levels and decks of residential, or what passed as residential on Razer, cabins. Except for the center of the sector which had been turned into a vast, end-to-end thoroughfare. No metal grating, the thoroughfare was plasticrete and resembled a thousand different avenues and boulevards on a thousand different planets and colonies.
Lined with shops and stalls, the thoroughfare should have been filled with residents of the station going about their daily lives. Those were mostly criminal daily lives, but criminals needed food and supplies too. Razer Station was surprisingly, or not, mundane when it came to everyday commerce.
Except it was not every day. It was far from every day.
Edgers stomped about, their plasma rifles pointed at anyone that even came close to giving them a cross-eyed look or side glance. Men and women of various races shouted at the residents of Razer Station to “Shut up and keep moving!” to “Look somewhere else if you know what’s good for ya!” to “Not make a move or you lose your Eight Million Godsdamn head!”
Roak had been around more than his share of coups and government overthrows. He could tell the thugs from the zealots. The thugs yelled and acted tough; the zealots stayed quiet and exuded toughness. It was the quiet Edgers that he watched.
“See the halfer with the scar running down her left cheek and neck?” Roak whispered to Hail without moving his head. Hail kept walking, but she nodded almost imperceptibly. “Have one of the guys give her a wink.”
Hail nodded again and whispered the message up the line to the others that were busy chatting lightly to show they were aware of the danger, but ready to be of service when needed. Lipians were the masters and mistresses of cautious nonchalance in the face of mortal danger.
The halfer that Roak had indicated looked to be a mix of human and Spilfleck, a frilled lizard-like race with skin on their necks that extended when they were upset or alarmed. The woman stood by a storefront that was missing its plastiglass window. The halfer’s eyes took in everything going on along the thoroughfare, a RX31 Plasma assault rifle held at the ready across her chest.
One of the men, Coult Roak thought, giggled and gasped then went quiet as the halfer turned her gaze on the group. Roak couldn’t see him, but he could see the halfer’s face and he knew the instant Coult had given the Edger woman the ordered wink.
With a scaly eyebrow raised, the halfer pushed away from the shop and stepped out in front of the group. Coult kept giggling as their group slowed then stopped.
“Hiya,” Coult said to the Edger. “My. That’s a big gun.”
“What are you people doing?” the Edger woman asked, her eyes taking in the group with a glance then returning to Coult. “You know what’s going on, yes?”
“Of course,” Coult said. “But people have to make a living. We’re on our way to work.”
“Work? What do you do that is so important you’d risk walking about out here?” the Edger woman asked, indicating the thoroughfare with her rifle and the few Razer residents that were carefully, fearfully navigating the small squads of Edgers. “You know who we are, yes?”
“Oh, sweetheart, we know who you are,” Coult said. “Which is why we better get to work.”
The Edger made a slight hissing noise as Coult’s hand stroked up her thigh, her armored belly and chest, and continued until it reached the side of her face. A fingertip stroked her cheek and Roak almost laughed at the look on the Edger’s face as she struggled not to shiver.
“Maybe you’ll come with and I can show you what it is we do?” Coult asked. “Bring some friends?”
“Uh…yes, sure,” the Edger said, her voice shaky.
Roak almost felt sorry for the halfer. It must have been a long time since she’d gotten some that didn’t involve a device that ran on power cells.
“You promise?” Coult asked as he leaned close and kissed her ear. “We can’t wait forever, you know. Bring your friends soon before we’re booked up. I’m sure there are plenty of others that will pay for—”
“I got friends,” the Edger snapped. “We’ll be there with credits.”
“Chits, love. Chits,” Coult said. He waved a hand about. “Credits aren’t in fashion right now. Maybe when things calm down a little we can talk about an ongoing account. But for now, it’s chits all the way.” He kissed her ear again. “All the way.”
“Where?” the Edger whispered. “Where do you work?”
Roak tensed. It was all a bluff and they didn’t work anywhere on the thoroughfare. He hoped Coult was smart enough to suggest a space that wouldn’t get them all killed.
“You see that club about half a click up?” Coult asked.
The Edger turned, leaving herself open for attack. Roak t
ried not to snicker in contempt. Coult pointed and bobbed his hand up and down.
“See the club with the sign hanging from two cables? You bring your friends there and we’ll show you the best time you’ve had in forever,” Coult continued. Then he grabbed the Edger by the back of the head and gave her such a deep kiss that anyone within sight could have seen the outline of his tongue in the woman’s mouth. He let go and licked her nose. “See you soon, baby.”
Then he pushed off and the indicated for the group to keep moving. Roak kept his head down and didn’t glance at the woman as he passed by her, but he was pretty sure he knew the look on her face.
The tension left Roak’s shoulders once they were a block away and almost to the club Coult had pointed out. It wasn’t that he was relaxing; it was that he needed to ease his muscles a bit so he didn’t strain anything when the time came to make a move.
Without pausing, the group entered the club and made their way around the mess it had been turned into. At some point, it looked like it was a classy joint, but after the Edgers had gotten through with it, it was nothing but shattered glasses and broken tables.
“This way,” Coult said as he and Bouln led them to the back of the club and a row of six doors. “We can tuck in here and wait.”
Before they reached the doors, the one on the far right opened and a battered and bruised Cervile came walking out. Her clothes were a bloody mess and one of her eyes was swollen shut. She froze as she was about to close the door behind her.
“Coult? Bouln? What are you thinking…?”
The Cervile’s eyes found the rest of the group. They were all wearing appropriate attire for their ruse, but the ruse was meant to fool the Edgers, not someone in the same profession. Roak watched the Cervile’s tail twitch a few times with anxiety and fear.
“Who else is here?” Hail asked, taking over. “Lika? Who else is here?”
“Uh…Mobos and Salamano,” the Cervile, Lika, answered. “Hail. You should go. The Edgers will be back and they are not…nice.”
“We brought our own not nice,” Hail said, but didn’t indicate what that meant. Roak appreciated that. “Take Mobos and Salamano out of here. Go out the back way and don’t look back.”
Lika laughed and moved to the mostly destroyed bar. She rummaged in the mess and found an intact bottle of liquor.
“Don’t look back. Good one,” Lika said then took a long drink from the bottle. “Where have you been hiding? There’s no looking back.”
She turned and showed them all a red mark on her neck at the base of her skull.
“I’ve been tagged. Mobos and Salamano too. Couple of Edgers have claimed us as their rightful division of the spoils of war. We go too far and poof. Head mist.”
“Spoils of war?” Roak asked, breaking from the group. He marched up to the Cervile. “This station is their spoils. Why are they divvying you up?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” Lika replied. “Hail? Who is this guy? He sure ain’t one of us. Neither are the short ones.”
“Hi,” Spickle said and waved.
“Don’t do that,” Pol whispered.
“What did the Edgers say exactly?” Roak asked. “When they chipped you? What did they say?”
“Hail?” Lika asked, doing her best to ignore Roak and look to Hail for answers.
“Tell him what he wants to know,” Hail responded.
“Tell who what?” a voice called from the front of the club. “Who’s asking questions?”
Roak took two steps back from Lika and lowered his head, his masked chin almost touching his chest.
“Handle this,” he whispered to Hail.
Before Hail could do anything, Lika moved forward and held her arms wide.
“Baby! You’re back,” Lika said as she wiggled everything that could wiggle and shook everything that could shake. Her body was nothing but an invitation to stare, stare, stare. “Some friends swung by when they heard that Edgers were offering protection.”
“Protection? That what you calling it?” The man snorted. A human with more scars than Roak, he was easily the ugliest being in the room. “And what do I need with your friends when I got your sweet ass?”
“This is the place,” the halfer said as she and three other Edgers arrived at the front of the club. She paused and looked the situation over. “Red? There a problem?”
“No,” Red, the human Edger, replied. “Just getting things straight with my new lady. You can keep moving.”
“Nah, we were invited,” the halfer woman said. “That one, the cute one, he invited us.”
“Yeah, I did!” Coult cried out with a whoop for emphasis. “Let’s get this party started! Who wants to drink whiskey from my navel?”
Roak’s hand slid under his kimono and gripped his knife, ready for whatever came next.
20.
What came next was a club full of Edgers and Razer Station whores starting to undress.
But in vastly different ways.
The Edgers, blinded by their own lust, started stripping off armor and dropping weapons like they were hot as suns. The Lipians and the rest of Roak’s group made quite the show of taking off their garments without actually taking anything off. Roak was dazzled by the flinging of arms and gyrating of hips that gave the illusion of clothes coming off without anyone actually getting naked.
Not one of the Edgers noticed the disparity as they got down to their skin and rushed at the whores, ready for the party to begin. At least they didn’t notice until they were almost on the whores and were still presented with garments and clothing on bodies when the garments and clothing should have been on the floor.
It was Pasha that struck first.
Like a dancer, she moved around the room, the blades in her hands slicing and cutting the Edgers so fast that none had a chance to defend themselves. Bodies started to drop and Roak instantly saw the danger.
“Keep them quiet!” he hissed.
He jumped at the closest Edger and shoved a hand over the man’s mouth as he also shoved his blade deep into the guy’s rib cage. The life left the Edger’s eyes in a split second and Roak moved on to the next one, letting the corpse drop.
Hail, with Bouln and Coult right behind, threw herself onto the Edger halfer they’d originally met in the thoroughfare. The Edger was squirting blood from a slash on her neck and the inside of her left thigh, but her mouth was wide open and ready to sound the alarm.
Hail snapped her neck with a hard twist of both hands to either side of the woman’s head. The sounds of more necks snapping echoed in the club and Hail glanced over her shoulder to see Bouln and Coult taking down two more.
“IN HERE!” Red screamed before his throat was torn open by Lika’s feline teeth.
Everyone froze and looked towards the front of the club.
“What are you doing?” Roak snarled as he raced to the closest weapon he could find. He picked up the plasma rifle and tucked it under his kimono. “Get the guns, hide the guns, and come on!”
“Come with us,” Hail said to Lika. “We have a plan to get—”
Lika’s head exploded, coating Hail’s face in brains, blood, and bits of bone. There were two more muffled pops from behind the doors in the back of the club and the distinct sounds of bodies hitting the floor.
“Oh, dear,” Pol said. He turned and threw up. “Oh…my.”
“We move now,” Roak snarled at the group. “Get your faces calm and your heads straight. We have maybe thirty seconds. Maybe.”
He pointed at the Maglors who were standing there, monkey mouths agape, eyes huge in their heads.
“Grab Pol and keep him walking,” Roak ordered. “Everyone else, no talking. We keep quiet and don’t stop walking until we get to the end of the level and on a lift. That’s the new plan.”
“New plan? What was the old plan?” Hail asked as she struggled to wipe Lika from her face.
“It was quieter than this,” Roak said then found Pasha staring at him. “Good work, but wait for
my signal next time. We could have talked them into the back rooms. Maybe learned more from this Lika about the tags in their heads. That was important intel.”
“I don’t see how that is so—” Hail began, but shut up as Roak whirled on her.
“Because that means a signal can get through the jamming tech,” Roak said. He pointed at Red’s corpse. “He died, they died. Cause and effect. But something had to tell the effect to happen.”
“A signal?” Pol gasped as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “A signal. Yes, yes, a signal. Bring the body.”
Roak stared at the old man. “I’m sorry, what? We’re not bringing a body with us. We need to move, fast. Corpses do neither of those things, Pol.”
“But somewhere on that corpse is an end of life trigger,” Pol said. “That will have the code in it that allows the signal to blow the charges. We need that code, Roak.”
“Time ticking,” Spickle said.
“Ten seconds,” Sath said.
“Back way,” Roak said. All eyes on him. “Hail? You said back way before. What back way?”
“The access tunnels,” Hail said. “They don’t connect to everywhere, but the owner of this club knew he needed a space with a back exit. For VIPs and those that didn’t want to be seen. You’d be surprised how many celebrities risk their lives to slum it on Razer for a few days.”
“No, I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” Roak said. He pointed at Red’s corpse then at Bouln and Coult. “Boys? Bring the dead guy. Hail? Take the Maglors and scout the back exit.” Roak pointed at the front of the club. “Pasha? Watch the entrance. Kill anyone that tries to come inside.”
Pasha moved slowly to the front. Roak would have barked at her to hurry, but he didn’t want to spook the girl. He needed her trust.
Hail and the Maglors rushed to the rear doors. Hail chose the second from the right and kicked it open. She ran inside and the Maglors followed. Roak heard a couple of startled squeaks, but nothing else. One of the headless bodies must have been behind that door.
In seconds, Sath reappeared. “Safe.”
“Move,” Roak ordered. “Now.”