by Ian Whates
If anything, Leesa seemed even more agitated as they made their way back towards the ship. She relapsed into silence and stalked through the shantytown with all the wariness of a predator that has strayed onto a rival pack’s turf.
This time, their passage wasn’t as untroubled as it might have been.
“Shit!” Leesa said.
Drake had seen them too. The same youths they’d passed on the way in, except that now there were more of them, and they made no attempt to hide their interest in the pair of outsiders. Drake saw the nudge that one gave to another, saw too the nod in their direction.
“Head down, eyes front,” Leesa murmured.
Despite Leesa’s instruction, Drake watched the cluster of youths from the corner of his eye and so saw the pack start towards them. If not for the nudge and the nod it would have been easy to assume this was a random attack – bored street kids spoiling for some action, but those gestures and the purpose with which they advanced told him otherwise. The gang had been waiting for them. Since he was new to the whole planet, they had to be after Leesa.
“Hope you can handle yourself,” she said quietly. “Because I’m gonna have my hands full and won’t be looking out for anyone else.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll cope,” he assured her, adjusting the grip on his cane and taking a few paces sideways so that they both had room to fight. He shifted the precious induction sleeve so that it rested in the crook of his left arm, conscious of its weight but confident he could hold it there in the short term without hampering his movements too much.
The disberos came on. The biggest of them, the one who’d been nudged, led the way, approaching with the sort of swagger that suggested he owned these streets. A shaved head and plenty of metalwork around the face; in fact, facial piercings seemed to be the tribal badge. This one, evidently the leader, sported several earrings, a spiked stud through his right cheek, and a pair of silver hoops which emerged from just below his bottom lip and circled downwards to disappear beneath his chin. Hardly the most practical of embellishments to take into a fight, Drake would have thought, but each to their own. Those advancing behind Hoopface all bore their own variations – studs, spikes, rings, bars, cones, and jewels thrust and displayed through cheeks, brows, lips, ears and even foreheads. Half a dozen in total; no, scratch that; another pair had appeared from the opposite side of the street and were clearly intent on joining the party. That made it eight against two. Doubtless the eight expected this to be easy. They were in for a shock, assuming Leesa hadn’t forgotten everything she used to know about fighting and he wasn’t compromised too much by the inductor sheath.
Without breaking stride, Hoopface reached with both hands to his chin, clasped the two hoops, and jerked them free of his face, before flinging them in a backhanded throw, all in one fluid movement. The nature of the attack was so unexpected it almost caught Drake by surprise, but at the last moment he raised his cane, swatting one of the two curved missiles aside and intercepting the other. For an instant, that second ring clung to his cane, three-quarters of a circle wrapped there and jangling, threatening to slide towards his hand until the missing quarter came into play and it dropped to the ground. Drake had expected sharp points or blades but in the split second that almost-ring had rattled on his cane energy had played across the cane’s smooth surface. He didn’t feel it – the cane was too well insulated for that – but it caused him to upgrade his initial assessment of the gang’s threat; they were evidently more sophisticated than they appeared. Suddenly the prospect of fighting them while holding an awkward object didn’t appeal. Drake crouched, to put the sheath on the ground and push it away behind him, before straightening and preparing to meet Hoopface, his cane held to the fore.
As the far larger man came within grappling range Drake lunged forward and jabbed him quickly with the stick, like a fencer with the tip of a foil. Hoopface laughed and let the blow land, which was a mistake. As the tip of the cane made contact, Drake activated its repellor field, magnifying the force of impact exponentially. What had been a simple prod was converted into a hammer blow; one which flung Hoopface backward, to crash into and then through the crowd of thugs behind him. The big man landed heavily several metres away, where he stayed: on his back unmoving.
Drake didn’t hesitate but waded into the stunned disberos before they had a chance to react. He kicked, punched, elbowed and swatted, knocking down two more of them before the rest could recover and muster a response. He was vaguely aware of Leesa fighting beside him but was too focused on his own battle to note more than that.
To his surprise, Drake found he was actually enjoying himself. It had been years since he was involved in a street brawl like this, and he’d forgotten how much satisfaction could be gained from kicking the life out of someone who was intent on doing the same to you.
He lost track of how many he was fighting, suspecting that others had joined the fray. Four or five lay unconscious on the ground, including Hoopface, but plenty were still on their feet.
He ducked beneath a roundhouse punch, sweeping his cane at ankle level to trip one opponent before standing and cracking another around the ear. Then they were on him, a solid body barrelling into him, arms wrapping around his torso, squeezing. He lost hold of his cane and was carried backward, stumbling to the ground.
Hey, watch it! Mind who you’re falling on, a familiar voice said as he went over.
He’d almost forgotten about Mudball but couldn’t afford to spare the alien a second thought. Impact with the ground had loosened the bear-hug a fraction. He kicked, writhed, bucked, twisted, and landed a solid blow with his elbow, feeling it smash against his opponent’s cheek and nose. Suddenly free, he rolled to his knees.
His ribs were bruised, his left arm was cut, his knee sore, his teeth hurt and he tasted blood in his mouth… And he was loving every ache of it.
He scrabbled to his feet, spotting the cane as he did so and stooping to retrieve it; which was when disaster struck. Mudball must have been dislodged by the recent tumble, and was clearly taken by surprise at Drake’s instinctively bending down to pick up the cane. Even as Drake straightened, he heard a dismayed yelp inside his head, felt Mudball fall free, and caught a glimpse of a brown-green tumble of fur go sailing past his ear.
He tried to grab his falling companion, missed, and the distraction cost him dearly. He looked up to find a club of some sort whistling towards his head, too close to avoid. Even as the realisation sank in and he tried to turn away, pain exploded in his right temple. He was abruptly aware of the ground rushing towards him at alarming speed, and then oblivion claimed him.
TEN
Falyn de Souza’s mood was even darker than the oppressive sky. He stared out of the window at the rain, which had been falling incessantly all morning and showed no sign of relenting any time soon, and wished fervently that he was somewhere else. The weather had been much the same since they landed and he had yet to find anywhere decent to eat in this miserable excuse for a town.
He left the window and moved further into the hotel’s spacious lobby, taking a seat at an empty table that was still in sight of the main door. After brief indecision he placed an order via the table tender; opting for a white wine – both label and grape variety were unfamiliar to him, but the menu promised a wine ‘crisp and dry with light citrus overtones’. The ‘citrus’ gave slight cause for concern – it was so often code for ‘overly acidic’ – but nothing else on offer appealed to him.
De Souza never had been the most patient of men. It was a failing, one that he recognised and had learned to accommodate in the course of his life. In fact, his tolerance of fools and their incompetence seemed to lessen with each passing year. From the moment they first met, De Souza had sensed in Archer a prime candidate for failure. So few individuals ever managed to live up to expectations.
However, he was willing to be proven wrong, so had given the banker the benefit of the doubt and granted him considerable leeway; a privilege that was fast
disappearing. To date, Archer had shown few signs of exceeding that initial damning assessment, despite the man coming highly recommended, which just went to prove how low some people’s standards must be.
It was Archer, for example, who had brought them to Newton Four, where, contrary to his confident predictions, they had found neither hint nor rumour of the Comet and its crew.
The wine arrived. Another disappointment. The very first sip told him that it lacked the promised crispness and, as feared, was too acidic. He took a second taste from the delicate crystal glass – the vessel being of far higher quality than its content – which confirmed the assessment.
He placed the glass down, in no hurry to pick it up again.
On the surface, de Souza was calmness personified, but inwardly he was seething. Evidently this was the finest hotel in town, which said much about the town. He doubted this establishment would have made the top one hundred on New Sparta… or indeed the top thousand.
At that moment Archer arrived, accompanied by a gust of wind and a flurry of rain as he paused to collapse the energy shield of his umbrella. De Souza didn’t acknowledge him, not at once, watching from the corner of his eye as the banker paused to stow the stubby handle of the umbrella in his jacket pocket.
He was wearing a suit, for goodness’ sake; even on a God-forsaken planet like this and in the incessant rain. That said it all, really.
Archer spotted him and headed over. De Souza glanced across to the next table, where his bodyguard, Gant – a solid, shaven-headed powerhouse of a man – waited with two other slabs of hired muscle, and gave him a subtle nod. Gant knew Archer and probably wouldn’t have intervened, but it never hurt to be certain. De Souza didn’t get up as the banker arrived – that would have shown too much respect. Instead he simply raised his eyebrows and said, “Well?”
“They definitely haven’t been here.” Archer said. “I don’t understand it. This is the obvious choice. Newton Four is by far the most industrialised option available to them. Logic says they had to come here.”
De Souza dropped his gaze to avoid craning his neck. The banker’s trousers were darker at the bottom, he noted, presumably soaked through courtesy of water splashed up from puddles by hurrying feet. Shame. “Perhaps they fixed the work of your saboteur themselves and didn’t need to stop off in order to effect repairs,” he said.
“No,” and Archer shook his head. “I studied the crew files. With the mechanic, Palmer, out of the way, they don’t have anyone capable of diagnosing a drive problem let alone fixing it. They’d have to set down or risk being stranded, and Drake would never countenance a gamble of that sort.”
“Then clearly they must have gone somewhere else.” De Souza didn’t care how much irritation showed in his voice.
Archer nodded, apparently oblivious to any hint of criticism. “Babylon,” he said. “That’s where they’ve gone. It’s the only plausible alternative. Still doesn’t make much sense them passing over Newton Four, but it has to be Babylon.”
At last, an excuse to leave this inferior hotel with its pretentions of grandeur. The single night’s stay he’d been forced to endure had been more than enough for one lifetime. It reminded de Souza of how precarious a word ‘hotel’ was: never more than a single letter away from ‘hovel’.
“Babylon…” He nodded, having heard of the place but never been. “Very well, Babylon it is. Let’s hope you’re right this time.”
“I am, don’t worry.”
De Souza made no comment. It wouldn’t be a disaster if they failed to pick up the Comet’s trail, but he’d feel a lot happier once they managed to. If Babylon didn’t pan out, he would have to consider cutting Archer loose. A pity, since the man represented a considerable investment in time and money – cultivating an insider within First Solar Bank didn’t come cheap – but there was little point in pouring good money after bad.
Consciousness returned to Drake in stages. To begin with his head felt so fragile that moving didn’t seem a particularly good idea, but at least he managed to open his eyes and take stock, realising that he was in a room, on a bed. Not the softest of beds perhaps, but it beat the ground any day. To his right, pushed to one side as if to keep it out of the way but on hand if needed, was a bulky, cumbersome unit that might have been a Medidoc, albeit an old and outdated model. Associations tumbled into place one after the other. He was in an infirmary, on a ship, comet class: Pelquin’s Comet, it had to be. He felt remarkably unconcerned about how he came to be here and benefited from a general sense of well-being; nothing as strong as euphoria, but he was definitely a few steps along the road to that joyous state. Drugs, obviously. Evidently the good doctor hadn’t managed to consume all the supplies, retaining enough to use on a patient or two at least.
He started to sit up and his head protested; a detached, almost muffled stab of pain. His questing fingers felt the smooth tightness of a plaskin patch on his right temple, just below the hairline, and he found another on his left arm.
Welcome back, said a familiar presence. Mudball squatted on the pillow beside an indentation that presumably marked where his head had been.
You’re lucky I didn’t squash you.
Trust me, there was no luck involved, the diminutive alien assured him.
The pain was still there, but it remained a dull and distant thing, squatting somewhere towards the front of his head and, on the whole, perfectly manageable.
How did I get back here?
You’ve got Leesa to thank for that. She beat off the rest of the street louts and then called the ship. Doc and Bren came to fetch you.
The doc’s back from the hospital, then?
Obviously.
Drake was a little surprised that Leesa had enough foresight even to know how to contact the ship, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been.
What didn’t surprise him was the speed with which the good doctor appeared at his bedside, Pelquin at his heels. After all, it would have been remiss not to have some sort of monitor or alarm set up to alert them when the patient regained consciousness.
Doc fussed. “You shouldn’t be sitting up.” But the protest was at best half-hearted, spoken from a sense of duty rather than concern. Doc was the one crewmember Drake had yet to get a handle on, perhaps because this was the person he had spent the least amount of time with, but there was something very private about Ahmed Bariha. Here was a man who didn’t court attention or company. That in itself made him a rarity aboard this ship.
“How’s Monkey doing?”
The doc looked surprised at the question, presumably expecting his patient to be focused entirely on his own health. “He’ll live,” he said; good news – it might at least brighten Bren’s mood. “Though he’ll need some time to recuperate,” the doc added.
The Comet’s proprietor appraised the banker thoughtfully. “So, you couldn’t stay out of trouble, huh?”
“I didn’t have much say in the matter.”
“The local pols have sent a PoD over to interview you.”
Drake closed his eyes. “Really?” This was all too tedious. He’d gained the impression that gang violence was hardly a novelty in La Gossa and was surprised that a scuffle like this even warranted the assignment of a drone. Unless the incident had been reported by someone, of course, in which case he supposed they’d have to react. Surely Leesa hadn’t… No, of course not; he dismissed the thought immediately. There was no way she would risk drawing that sort of attention to herself.
“Yeah,” Pelquin said. “I guess they have to be seen to react, what with you being from off world. The thing is, if they insist on going through the motions, so must we.”
Drake could hardly argue. “Doc, can you give me something to help clear my head?” Whatever painkillers and sedatives the doc had dosed him with had left his head stuffed with the mental equivalent of cotton wool – fine for cosseting against pain but not so helpful for alert responses when questioned by the police.
“You ought to rest, give your
body a chance to recover,” Doc said.
“No doubt, but it appears that’s not an option right now.”
Bariha sighed. “Very well.”
The doc produced a white hypo-pen, touched a control on its side and pressed it against Drake’s neck. “That should give you an hour or so,” he said. “After that, the effects will fade rapidly and the sedative will take over once more.”
“An hour should be fine,” Drake assured him, hoping the interview wouldn’t last that long.
“The PoD’s in the galley,” Pelquin said as Drake got up. “It was busy taking the new engineer’s statement when I left. Should be ready for you any time now, I’d reckon.”
PoDs, or Police Drones, came in all shapes and sizes, their level of sophistication equally as varied. Drake was guessing La Gossa’s law enforcers wouldn’t have top of the range models at their disposal. He’d fooled PoDs before, though not lately. Still, it was only a little lie he would have to tell; for the most part he could be as honest as the day was long. Assuming, that is, the PoD didn’t ask him if he had any reason to suspect the attack was anything other than random. He saw again that exchange between the two kids – the nudge and the nod; the very things he now had to forget all about.
Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, Mudball assured him.
You can influence a PoD then?
No idea.
Great, thanks for the reassurance.
Despite sharing so much with the alien, he had never discovered the limits of Mudball’s abilities. Proximity was certainly a factor, but defining parameters was another matter entirely. Still, he was learning all the time. Did he trust Mudball? As much as he trusted anybody; but that was hardly a glowing commendation.
Leesa was just leaving the galley as he arrived. She looked a little flustered, and favoured him with a thin smile as he stood aside to let her past, as if to indicate she was glad to see him back on his feet. It was the closest to a friendly gesture he’d yet received from her. Presumably the fight had brought them closer in her eyes, even if he had spent the closing stages unconscious.