by Tim Lebbon
It wasn’t the most salubrious of places, but the Council supported its existence because it provided a service. A selection of services, in fact, some of which made Tann uncomfortable. He and Yvette had only been there a couple of times—once while drunk, the second out of sheer curiosity. Based on those experiences, it didn’t rank high on their list of favorite places.
As he walked through the Bottom Bar and exchanged nods with a couple of Hell’s familiar residents, he scanned for the crew of the Satan’s Saviour. Two women, two men, he’d seen the uniform they wore, and hoped the white stripes on dark material would stand out beneath the bar’s neon glare.
He soon found them at an Acid bar. Acid was one of the wines produced in Hell’s ancient engine room, a notoriously toxic brew. Hell’s engines hadn’t been started for over a century, and their pipes and ignition chambers, pistons and vents made for an excellent still. Perfected over decades, brewed from extraterrestrial fruit that resembled grapes, the wine was a surprisingly palatable creation, but its effects were legendary. He’d heard it suggested that some crews bought Acid to clean their ship’s hulls.
Nevertheless, the four crew members were probably the least inebriated of all the bar’s patrons—though that wasn’t saying very much.
“Drink, old man?” one of the women said when she spotted him watching them. They were seated at a round table in the bar’s far corner, hidden away from the displays of greased flesh that gyrated on a nearby dance floor, and protected from the thrumming music by a sound screen. Tann took her offer as an invite, and the second he walked through the sound screen the cacophony from the rest of the bar lessened dramatically.
That and their relative soberness indicated to him that they weren’t just here for a night of debauchery. They maintained a constant air of seriousness. Perhaps even discipline.
Tann brought his own glass with him, primed with one of the Bottom Bar’s weaker beers. He found that his aging frame didn’t deal well with alcohol, and he no longer enjoyed the loss of control. Besides which, alcohol made him maudlin.
The pirates watched him approach.
The woman who’d raised her glass tapped the upholstered bench beside her and shuffled around, the four crew bunching up to give him room.
They seemed very open to company. That openness belied the looks in their eyes, expectant and suspicious.
“Nice place you have here,” one of the men said. He was one of the tallest people Tann had ever seen, his deep black skin streaked on his left cheek with four parallel pink scars that ran from jaw to temple. He wore a constant smile, and his voice was almost a chuckle. Exuding good nature, Tann guessed the man could probably break his back with one arm and no qualms.
“Bailey’s?”
“Hell,” the man said. “Odd name, but I like the feel of the place. It’s… undemanding.”
“That’s why I’ve been here so long,” Tann said, raising a glass. All four pirates returned his toast and they drank.
“Music sucks, though,” the other man said. Short, heavily built, bald, he must have been the oldest of the group.
“It does in here, but there are some music dens you really should visit,” Tann said. “O’Malley’s Bar on the east arm is a great place for jazz, and Metros plays plenty of older stuff.”
“You suggesting I’d like older stuff?” the man asked, and the two women laughed.
The one who’d called him over leaned on the table, hands clasped, and stared at him. She had stunning green eyes and long auburn hair, tied in braids with a dozen metallic clasps. Tann noticed that each clasp glowed with a soft red light, and he thought perhaps they were weapons of some kind. Homing bombs, perhaps.
He looked the others over, trying to assess how ready they were for combat. The tall guy wore an ammo vest beneath his loose shirt. The other woman had her withered left arm in a mechanical brace, a robot prosthetic that would link into her nervous system. The brace was heavier than it needed to be, contoured in several places with pods that might have been plasma charges.
“I hear you’re after a ship?” the woman said.
“Who did you hear that from?” Tann asked.
She shrugged. “We have ears.”
“I’ll bet.” He took a swig of ale, and tried not to look as unsettled as he was. These weren’t pirates, he knew. They were indies disguised as pirates, a curious camouflage that put them on a level with some sort of Special Forces. Indies were usually very open about their origins and purpose.
“Hey, don’t worry,” the woman said. “We’re harmless.”
“Actually, I hope not,” Tann said, and the tall man laughed again, a hearty sound that somehow put him at ease. “I’m in the market for some indies, and a fast ship.”
“Satan’s Saviour is the fastest and safest ship you’ll find anywhere,” the woman said, “but we’re on an assignment right now, and I’d feel bad letting our employer down.”
Tann sighed. He’d hoped this would be easy.
Since fleeing to Hell after Weyland-Yutani’s alleged attempt on their lives, he and Yvette had sought and found a relatively simple life. Sitting here with this crew of indies reminded him again of that troubled time, when the death of his son was raw and ideas of revenge—or even an admission of guilt from the Company—had kept him on fire. As the years passed, he had been happy to let the blaze of his fury die down into a gentle simmer.
He didn’t want it reignited. He was too old, and there was nothing to be gained.
Not against the Company, and not now that he was undertaking to seek out the very people he had once fled.
“Maybe I have the wrong crew,” he said. “I’m offering a simple commission—”
“Simple?” the woman said, sitting upright. “From what I hear, whoever you hire might be carrying the most dangerous cargo in the Sphere.”
“And what do you hear?” he asked, curious.
“A Yautja,” the woman said. “An android woman being sought by the Rage.”
Tann blinked in surprise. Hell wasn’t a clandestine place, and the Council rarely tried to keep such secrets, but still this crew’s knowledge came as a shock.
“I told you,” the woman said, “we have ears. Now, let’s introduce ourselves properly. I’ll tell you about who we are, and what we can do, and if you want a resume I can provide you with that, too. Then it’s all up to you.”
Tann nodded and raised his glass in another toast. He glanced around, and found it strange, sitting behind the sound screen and still seeing the raucous insides of the Acid bar. A man and woman were on the stage, dancing to an exotic rhythm he could feel pulsing up through the chair and dimly hear on the air. Over by the entrance two men were fighting, so drunk that their fists flailed and a small crowd of onlookers cheered and jeered. Booze was bought from the bar, the wine itself bubbling down several thin pipes that came from the ceiling. People laughed and cried, shouted and whispered in each other’s ears, and he and the indie crew might as well have been light years away.
“First, I’m Jiango Tann,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” the woman said. “My name’s Ware. I’m the captain. This delightful lady next to me is Robo. Short-ass there is Hoot, and the tall bastard with the inane grin is Millard.”
“Right,” Tann said. “Real names, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ware said. “We’ve been a crew for seven years. There were six of us to begin with, but that didn’t last long. Now, we find that four is an ideal number. We’re private hire, independent security contractors.”
“Not salvagers, as your title on ship’s manifest suggests?”
“We’ve done salvage,” Robo said. She lifted her glass with her augmented arm, the motors running smoothly and soundlessly.
“We don’t like the term indie, but if that’s what you want to call us, that’s fine. As you can see, though, there’s only four of us, so we’re not intended for the sort of grunt work that most indies get drawn into. Bodyguards, facility defense, bounty hun
ting, seek and destroy—we leave that sort of shit to others.”
“So what’s your sort of shit?” Tann asked.
“Millard says it best,” Ware said.
“We’re Special Forces when Special Forces don’t want to go there,” he said.
“So you do nasty stuff.”
“Not necessarily nasty,” Hoot said. “Not all the time. But usually illegal, and always something that our employers would never want linked to them.”
“Plausible deniability, eh?”
“That’s what I wanted to call our ship,” Millard said.
“Yeah, but that’d be a bit of a giveaway,” Tann said. Despite everything he found himself liking these people. They might have been indies, but there was no posturing, and their seriousness sat well with what they claimed to do. They looked like professionals, and that was refreshing. He’d met a lot of indies, and heard of many more, for whom employment was just an excuse to fight and get paid for it.
These people had certainly seen action—Robo’s arm and Millard’s mutilated face bore testament to that—but they didn’t seem to wear their injuries as an achievement, or a badge.
“You’re currently on a mission,” he said. “The fact your mission’s brought you to Hell doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“Just stopping by,” Ware said.
“No one just stops by,” Tann said. “We’re out of the way. That’s why people like me live here.”
The crew glanced at each other. Ware shrugged.
“We’re looking for someone,” Ware said. She circled the top of her glass with her finger, making it sing. Millard was staring right at him. For the first time, the tall man wasn’t smiling.
“Me?” Tann asked.
“And your wife,” Ware said.
“For who?” The shock was so profound that the question fell out, when in truth it should have been obvious.
“The Company, of course,” Hoot said.
“What? Weyland-Yutani? They sent a bunch of mercenaries to find me?”
“We don’t like the term—” Ware began, but Tann cut in.
“I don’t give a shit what you like. You’re guns for hire. What’s your order, kill me?” He glanced nervously at Robo’s arm. She could probably shoot him while hardly moving, and he’d slump down dead, just another drunk in the Acid bar, unseen and unnoticed. Then they’d be away before anyone knew they were gone, leaving Yvette with a cooling corpse for a husband and no answers.
But it was ridiculous. Why would the Company bother with him? He was hardly on the “Most-Wanted” list, and he and Yvette had disappeared years ago.
“Look, we’ve got no love for the Company,” Ware said, “but they pay well.”
“Meaning what?”
“We’re not a hit squad,” Millard said.
“You’re meant to take me back?”
“Just find out where you are. Put a trace on you. Make sure you weren’t making a noise, doing anything… anti-Company.”
“The biggest organization in the history of the Sphere wanted to track me down because I kicked off ten years ago. Unbelievable.”
“Nothing about the Company is unbelievable,” Hoot said, “and no concern is too small for them. Frankly, that’s why the fuckers are still in charge.”
“Hoot should know,” Ware said. “He was Section Seven.”
“Oh, great, thanks for that,” Hoot said. “Now I have to kill you all.”
The whole conversation had taken a turn for the surreal. Tann had come here seeking out this crew, only to discover that they were on Hell seeking him out. He was sitting at a table with four people who were very probably killers, and the Company had sent them to find him.
“Section Seven?” Tann asked. He’d heard mention of that name once or twice, but he didn’t know what it referred to.
“Special Forces, reporting directly to the Thirteen,” Hoot said. He’d been relatively quiet up to now, contributing only a couple of words here and there, but now he held Tann’s gaze. He was a small man, innocuous, with little to set him apart from anyone else in Bailey’s. Maybe that was why he’d been Section Seven.
“So what happened?” Tann asked.
“I left,” Hoot replied, in a way that said the topic was done.
“Look, we’ve been here a couple of days, and we know you’re no threat,” Ware said. “We’ve done what we were commissioned to do. Tagged you, put a trace on you.”
“How?” Tann asked.
“Don’t feel bad,” Ware said, ignoring his question. “Fact is, though, things have changed. Shit’s happening out there, some of which I’m sure you know about.”
“Shit that has nothing to do with Hell,” Tann said. “Or at least it didn’t.”
“We’re the ship you want,” Ware said. “I assume the Council sent you with permission to offer certain payments.”
“A million credits,” Tann said.
Millard whistled softly. “That’s five times what they paid us to tag you.”
“That’s all I’m worth to them?” Tann asked, smiling. Millard grinned in return. Jiango thought he’d probably grin if he’d been hired to slip a knife into Tann’s gut, too.
“The past’s done,” Ware said. “We didn’t have to tell you a word of this, but like I said, I’ve got no love for the Company. Truth be told, I support what you did. Hoot’s told us a lot of stuff…” She trailed off.
“I don’t want to know,” Tann said. “Not anymore.”
“We’re the ship you want,” Ware said again, “and we’ll do it for free. Deliver the Yautja and the android safely, and we’ll bill the Company. Sound fair?”
“Suspiciously fair.”
Ware smiled and held out her hand. “Trust me.”
Tann shook, but he had no idea who to trust.
“When do you want to leave?” Robo asked.
“As soon as possible,” Tann said. “Today.”
“What’s the rush?” Millard asked, and Tann felt a pang of delight. They didn’t know everything, after all.
“The rush is, an army you’ve never even dreamed of might be about to drop into the system, and none of us wants to be here when it does.”
* * *
“And you trust them?” Yvette asked.
“As much as I’d trust any indies.” He hadn’t told her the real reason they were here. He would eventually, when they were away and time allowed, and it hardly mattered anymore. He saw no need right now.
In her skin, he thought. In my hair. Swallowed with food, marked with a nano trace. He’d heard about a skin application of nano bugs that could work their way deeper and establish a signal trace in a person’s bones.
Somehow Ware and her crew had come here and marked him and Yvette for the Company.
My clothing, my eyeballs. Maybe it’s even just a saying, and they haven’t physically marked us at all. Perhaps they’ve just found us, so that if the Company reassesses, and still wants us dead…
But none of that really mattered anymore.
“Yes,” he said a few minutes later, when their packed bags were ready beside their cabin door. “I trust them.”
16
ISA PALANT
Deep Space, Gamma Quadrant
November 2692 AD
They prowled the skies for the next nineteen days.
The Pixie had sustained some damage in the nuclear blast on LV-1657, as had a number of its crew. Some of the exterior layers of the ship’s hull had partially melted, but the ship’s computer Billy suggested a method of effecting a quick and rapid repair before leaving the planet. It was impromptu, but it would last at least until they could get the ship into a proper repair dock.
Some of its auto-guidance systems had been knocked out, but Huyck was a confident and keen pilot. Worse, however, its weapons array had been damaged. They still had access to mini-nukes and the laser, but the ship’s particle modulator was out of action. Although unpredictable and sometimes inaccurate in use, it was also the mos
t powerful weapon the Arrow-class ships possessed, and to fly without it in these dangerous times did not please Major Halley.
Everyone on board the ship had been bumped and bruised when the android Rommel detonated. The explosion turned much of the cliff into shrapnel, rubble, and dust, then rolled the ship across the sky and into the nearby forest. It was a blessing they’d all had the chance to strap into their seats, otherwise it was likely they’d have all been dead. As it was, Palant and McIlveen sustained cuts and bruises, Halley broke her arm, Sprenkel and Bestwick each had cracked ribs, and Huyck shattered both wrists as he tried to wrestle control of the Pixie through its manual steering sticks.
Such injuries could be repaired, and before leaving LV-1657 the ship’s medical pod had been used day and night to fuse and reset the broken bones. Bruising was still heavy, and they all were absorbing differing doses of painkillers.
Then the message from Gerard Marshall had come through, and the new mission could not wait for them to heal.
* * *
They used drophole Gamma 116 to jump across the quadrant. Halley’s reckoning was that other dropholes would now be the target of any attacking ships. Her intention was to drop, assess the situation, travel to another drophole, drop again.
This time around the injuries Palant sustained weren’t enough to set her back, so drops wouldn’t be too demanding on her.
Complication arose as they approached Gamma 116.
There were two Yautja ships shadowing them.
Halley was well aware of their presence, and she assumed that was intentional on their part. She didn’t pretend to like it, but she accepted that the Yautja elder Kalakta had taken it upon himself to protect Palant and McIlveen. One of the ships had stepped in at the last minute to help repel the attack on the BloodManiacs’ base, and although she claimed not to trust them, Halley was at least willing to remain open-minded.
It was Palant who envisaged a future where the Yautja and humanity fought together side by side. Perhaps Kalakta had seen that, too, when the two of them were face to face making peace. Either way, he had sent the two ships to shadow theirs, and at the drophole they had to make an important decision.