We stepped into the outer office and came face to face with a seven-foot-tall insectoid with a bluish shell and black stripes running down its sides. It stood in the center of the room, just beyond an open set of blast doors that could slam shut at the flick of a switch, splitting the outer office into front and back halves. It hunched on four humungous legs. Six arms protruded from its torso, three on each side. Six bulbous eyeballs bulged out of its triangular head. It was a much larger version of the drones that had nearly killed me not so long before.
Instinct triggered my reflexes before a single coherent thought could exit my brain. I went for my revolver. It was not until my hand slapped against my shoulder that my brain remembered that my gun, and the coat that housed its holster, was gone.
Anton’s instincts were similar to mine. His hand dropped to the pistol holstered on his hip. The similarities ended there, however. I would have drawn my weapon and opened fire before the sagisi had time to even flinch. The sheriff hesitated, his hand gripping the pistol, waiting to see if the sagisi would decide to become a threat.
A rumbling, throat-clearing sound came out of the sagisi’s mouth. The translator implant in my head got to work.
“I’m not here to fight,” it said. “I should be, considering you attacked my home and tried to kill my mother, but I think we might be able to come to an agreement.”
The sagisi had not specifically pointed me out, but it was obvious it was talking to me. Aside from the fact that it had summarized exactly what I had been hired to do, it was common knowledge on-planet that the sheriff was in the business of combatting chaos, not creating it.
“You have me at a disadvantage. You seem to know me but I don’t know who you are,” I said.
“I know you by reputation. Everyone who knows anything about mercenary activity on-planet has heard the name Solomon Jobs,” the sagisi said. “I am called Ok-Mel. I am the eldest daughter of Ok-Lem.”
So this was the little bride-to-be... or the little rapist-and-murderer/cannibal-to-be, depending on your perspective. Suspicion poured into my mind, but it was tempered with a touch of curiosity.
“What kind of arrangement do you have in mind?” I said.
“I want to hire you. I’ll pay you the standard rate for blue work, times twenty, to capture Naak and deliver him to me,” Ok-Mel said. One of her six claw-like hands disappeared into some unseen orifice in her giant insectoid body. I tried not to think about where she was reaching. Sagisi did not wear clothing, which meant they did not have artificial pockets... only organic ones. Whatever she was reaching for was stashed inside her body.
Her hand began to emerge from the hidden crevice. I sensed Anton tense up beside me, his veteran blue worker instincts kicking into high gear, readying himself to draw and open fire if the sagisi was reckless enough to produce a weapon. But there was no weapon. Ok-Mel pulled her hand out of her insides. A huge stack of money was clutched between her talon-like fingers. The cash was covered with droplets of purple goop... icky souvenirs from whatever body cavity the sagisi used as her wallet.
I barely noticed the goop. I did not even truly see the money. I saw what the money could buy. That was the kind of cash that could purchase synthetic opioids in bulk... enough to have me stoned out of my fucking gourd for the better part of a standard-year. I began to salivate at the sight.
“This is definitely more money than Naak’s paying you. Call off the hit and bring me your client. Do we have a deal?” Ok-Mel said.
I really wanted to make the deal. That stack of purple-goop-splattered money was part of the motivation... a big part... but there was also the memory of how the job had gone thus far. My frontal assault had been a catastrophic failure. I had drastically underestimated the hive’s defensive capabilities. That army of venomous insectoid midgets would have been the end of me if Anton had not shown up and pulled my sorry ass out of there. Hitting the hive successfully was going to require a different tactic... and I had no goddamn motherfucking idea what that tactic might have been.
But... I could not make the deal. I could not even consider it. To accept this deal, I would have had to renege on the deal I had made with Naak. If I accepted a job, I had to finish the job. It was possible to work on more than one job at once, but not if one job conflicted with another... and certainly not if one job conflicted with getting paid for another.
I was about to speak, to reject Ok-Mel’s offer, when another voice cut me off, and exponentially complicated the situation in the process.
“What the fuck is this sloppy grindle shit?”
Doctor Watkins stood just inside the front door of the Sheriff’s Office. I could hear the hubbub of the Promenade seeping through the door behind her but it was like that sound was coming from another dimension. The good doctor’s presence made everything else seem unimportant. Her dark eyes stared at me like she was trying to burn a hole through me with her mind. Her face was twisted into a scowl. She was barely four-feet-tall, but that furious mask plastered across her head made her was more imposing than her height should have allowed... that, and the ominous reputation that wafted off her like invisible smoke.
I went for my weapon again, once again remembering that I did not have it an instant before my fingers closed on empty air. Beside me, Anton’s arm moved in a blur, drawing his pistol and leveling it at the diminutive threat standing in his doorway. I anticipated the shot, waited for the sheriff to remove a very big threat from my list of things to keep me up at night, but the shot never came. Movement behind Doctor Watkins caught my eye. I looked above her head and saw what had caused Anton to hold his fire.
Mister Timmy was standing behind Doctor Watkins, partially obscured by the shadows cast by the doorway. His blank silver un-face hovered three feet above the good doctor’s head. His weapon-arm was fully-extended, with his magnetic-projectile attachment pointed straight at Anton.
Doctor Watkins walked forward into the office. Mister Timmy followed two steps behind her. The sheriff kept his weapon aimed at the doctor. The doctor’s enforcer kept his weapon aimed at the sheriff. The sagisi stayed where she was, slightly to the side of the line of fire, her venom glands making her a weapon unto herself. I stood beside the sheriff, with no hat and no coat and especially no gun, feeling more naked than I ever had before.
“You agreed to do a job for the Nemesis Group and now I find you cutting deals with the hive you contracted to neutralize,” Doctor Watkins said. She marched straight across the room. She was obviously talking to me, but her eyes remained locked on the sheriff, at the weapon that was aimed right at her face. She stopped a few feet away from us, parallel to Ok-Mel but out of her striking distance. Mister Timmy stopped two paces behind her, his weapon-arm still pointed at Anton’s head.
“I didn’t cut any deals. I was just about to turn her down,” I said.
“Of course you were,” Doctor Watkins said, her voice oozing with sarcasm. “I knew it was a mistake to deal with you. I told that idiot Naak that we couldn’t trust a scumbag like you.”
“I don’t understand why you work for someone you hate so much,” I said.
“Everybody hates Naak... but I contracted to run blue work for the Nemesis Group and I honor my commitments,” Doctor Watkins said.
The implication was clear... she honors her contracts, unlike some people. I bristled at the thinly-veiled accusation. There were a lot of perfectly valid criticisms that someone could say about me... drug-addict, indiscriminate-killer, military-deserter, responsible for an insane amount of property damage in the spaceport, unpleasant to be around due to poor personal hygiene... but my reputation for completing every job I agreed to do was not one of them. Doctor Watkins had been just another threat on a planet full of them before I got involved in this Nemesis Group bullshit. Now, I actively disliked her.
“Listen, you psychotic miniature fuckhead twat!” I said. “I just woke up from almost being dead. Then I walked out here and saw this giant blue grasshopper. I barely even spoke to it and I ce
rtainly didn’t cut a fucking deal. Take a moment to pull your head out of that fantasy land you call your asshole and you’ll see that the situation isn’t as fucking nefarious as you think it is!”
I knew that yelling at her was a bad idea. I knew that insulting her was even worse. Unfortunately, the bitch had struck a nerve and impulse control had never been my strong suit.
Doctor Watkins did not yell. She did not threaten. She did not say anything. She simply turned her head, locked eyes with me, and smiled. On anyone else, that smile would have been one-hundred-percent sweetness and innocence. On her, that smile was the scariest fucking thing I had ever seen in my entire goddamn life.
Mister Timmy’s head slowly turned toward me, like the gears in his neck were old and rusty and in desperate need of a lube job. His body remained motionless as his head swiveled almost a full ninety-degrees, until his blank sliver un-face was pointed right at me. It was featureless, just a curved sheet of metal, but, at that moment, it seemed like his entire head was a giant lidless eye.
The moment seemed to stretch out. An hour passed between each beat of my heart. The five of us were like blood-thirsty statues, frozen in our deadly intent. Anton stood beside me, his pistol aimed at Doctor Watkins’s head. Doctor Watkins stared at me, that creepy smile plastered across her face. Mister Timmy looked awkward and twisted, his head pointing at me and his body... and his weapon-arm... still pointing toward Anton. Ok-Mel stood off to the side, the last point in our tragic triangle, clear droplets of venom dripping from her mandibles, her six arms thrust to either side, quivering slightly, like she was gearing up to lunge, although, I could not tell what she wanted to lunge at.
The moment broke. Mister Timmy’s body began to follow his head, swiveling toward me, bringing his weapon-arm along with it.
“Don’t do it!” Anton yelled. “Don’t do it! Watkins! Call him off!”
Doctor Watkins did not respond. She just stared and smiled. Mister Timmy kept turning toward me and weapon-arm kept turning with him.
“Is this really how you want to check out, Watkins?” Anton said. “I will take your fucking head off!”
Mister Timmy’s weapon-arm zeroed in on me. I watched the dark bore of the magnetically-propelled projectile gun expand from a sliver to a steadily fattening oval, like a tiny rapidly waxing black moon. I knew that it would be a perfect circle, and ready to fire, soon. My hand crept up toward my shoulder once again, toward where my revolver should have been. I knew it was not there, but the action was strangely comforting nonetheless.
The growl of an engine filled the air in the office. Bright white flooded the room. A motorized cart drove into the office through the main door off of the Promenade. It screeched to a halt just inside the doorway. Two deputies jumped out. One was male, one was female, and both were armed with energy rifles. Our deadly triangle became a deadly diamond. The deputies stood side by side, energy rifles up, one covering Ok-Mel and the other covering Mister Timmy.
“You’ve got two choices, Watkins,” Anton said. “Either your sidekick can lower his weapon or he can kill my friend, I can kill you, and my troops can kill him and the sagisi. Take your pick. It’s all the same to me. I’d prefer to not watch my friend die but, considering his lifestyle, I’m surprised that he’s been ditty-bopping around the galaxy for this long.”
The abrupt shift in the odds had helped Anton regain his sense of humor. I would have shot him an indignant look if I had not been staring down the barrel of a magnetically-propelled projectile gun.
Doctor Watkins did not say anything for a few moments. She continued to smile and stare, as if she was actually weighing the pros and cons of the two options. Then, without a word from the doctor, Mister Timmy lowered his weapon-arm.
“Do your job, Jobs,” Doctor Watkins said.
“I said I would, Watkins,” I said.
She turned and walked out of the office with Mister Timmy following two paces behind. She moved casually, like she was unaware that she was sandwiched between a pistol and a rifle. The deputy covering them moved aside to let them pass, pivoting to keep them in his sights as they passed through the outer door and disappeared into the mob of creatures on the Promenade.
We turned our attention to Ok-Mel. The sagisi was turned away from the outer door. She seemed oblivious to the deputy pointing an energy rifle at her back. She was hunched forward. Her six arms were cupped around her giant head, like she was nursing a throbbing headache.
“It’s time for you to go, bug,” Anton said. “You’re not going to do any business here today.”
“The lights! Turn off the lights!” Ok-Mel said.
The cart was still blasting the office with concentrated white light. I remembered the drones’ reaction to those headlights during my catastrophic assault on the hive. Apparently, Ok-Mel was experiencing something similar. I did not know if they caused her pain or disorientation or if they were simply creating a groovy atmosphere and she was an un-groovy girl... but she was definitely uncomfortable. She was not going anywhere while those headlights were on.
Anton came to the same conclusion. He gestured to one of his deputies, who flicked a switch on the cart’s console. The headlights cut off.
Ok-Mel instantly regained her composure. She dropped her arms to her sides and straightened up. She looked back at the deputy covering her, looked over at Anton with his much smaller, but still deadly, pistol, then finally turned to look at little-ol unarmed me.
“Don’t come after us again. We’ll kill you if you do,” Ok-Mel said.
I shrugged. It communicated my general feelings on the matter: maybe... maybe not.
The sagisi headed across the office, toward the outer doors and the Promenade beyond. She moved in nervous bursts, her four legs skittering forward for short distances, then pausing, then skittering forward again, all while keeping her upper body strangely level, as if her torso was connected to her legs by a gyroscope.
I watched her go, replaying the whole exhausting encounter in my mind. Ok-Mel had been reasonable enough. She had tried to neutralize a threat with a simple business deal. I could respect that. It was not her fault that my personal code prevented me from taking the deal. Doctor Watkins was the one that had really pissed me off... coming at me with accusations and threats and questioning my business ethics. She had accused me of having no code. She had said that I was nothing. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
Ok-Mel passed between the two deputies. She was about to cross the threshold of the outer door when my anger reached a boiling point. An undeniable impulse surged up from my gut.
“Hey Ok-Mel! Hold up a minute!” I said.
The sagisi paused and turned back, pointing those six enormous eyeballs toward me.
“I will finish this job... but maybe you and I can do business afterwards,” I said.
The sagisi’s six arms jerked upward, mimicking my shrug from earlier. The message was clear: maybe... maybe not. She turned away, moved through the outer door, and disappeared into the traffic on the Promenade.
The office was quiet. The four of us stood where we were, breathing deep, letting the adrenal-overload wear off. It took a while, but eventually, my heart rate slowed down to something resembling normal.
I turned toward Anton. “Can I have gun back, please?” I said.
Chapter 5
The Promenade was as busy as ever. The main level of the spaceport never slept. The chaotic swarm of creatures flowed every which way. There were humans and grindles and yandocs and kabebes and sagisi and hammangs and humans and humans and so many more humans than all the other races combined. The Promenade was an unnatural river, made up of commuters instead of water, with thousands of different currents going thousands of different directions at once. The business of the spaceport was business itself. That business was everywhere, in every office and workshop and corner and alleyway. Creatures had to travel to get to business and the Promenade was the primary avenue utilized to get there.
I
moved easily through the surging mob. Standard-years upon standard-years of practice had made navigating the crowd on the Promenade second nature to me. My head was on a swivel, mainly searching for threats but also looking for pathways through the ever-evolving living landscape. I cut a winding, zigzagging path and mostly avoided stopping short or bumping into something that did not appreciate being bumped into.
The sheriff had given my belongings back to me... my gun, my sat-com, my hypo-injector and drugs, my hat and coat... and then sent me on my way. My route took me past the constantly-crowded Big Staircase, along the edge of the loud and stinking industrial center, and through the complex confusion of the shipping container maze. I was on guard the whole time, trying to look every direction at once, searching for signs of faceless weaponized cyborgs or packs of venomous sagisi drones.
I left the shipping container maze and cut through the spaceship service area. I merged with the glut of grease-stained creatures selling mechanical services and the nomads, smugglers, and pirates buying what was being sold. My route took me past workshops, cargo holding areas, fuel storage and dispensing stations, spare parts dealers, and power generation equipment. I stepped over cables and tubing that ran across the floor at random and dodged weight-handling vehicles that drove to and fro, oblivious to the pedestrians that scattered to let them pass. All the while, my head turned side to side, constantly scanning for threats.
I was distracted. It was reckless to walk the Promenade without one-hundred-percent of your brain focused on the here-and-now, but I could not help it. I kept reminding myself to look outward and my mind kept turning inward of its own accord.
My ensemble was part of the problem. Anton had not just taken my hat and coat from me when he pulled me out of the hive... the motherfucker had washed them. Now they felt stiff and smelled weird. The unfamiliarity of my second skin was fucking with my brain, but that was just a minor distraction. The job was my major distraction. I had to complete it. The only other option was to die trying. However, I had no goddamn idea how to get the fucking thing done. Brute force had always been my go-to method of conflict resolution. Go in shooting, drop a lot of bodies, cause a little property damage, and call it a night... that approach had been pretty damn reliable over the years. It had stopped being reliable really fucking fast when I had assaulted the hive, but, for the life of me, I could not think of an alternative method.
Odd Jobs 2: Solomon's Code Page 5