Under Dark Sky Law

by Tamara Boyens

  Xero swung her feet off the couch and faced straight forward again. “Milo. Hey,” she said.

  His head snapped up to meet her gaze, but his eyes were still unfocused and faraway. “Yeah?” he said.

  “I’m just fucking around, you know that? First priority is getting the Ketocillin. Don’t worry. One way or another we’ll make this happen. We’re almost there. Voodoo is desperate. She had to put on that little show back there just to make herself feel good, but she wouldn’t have ever let us in here in the first place if she didn’t really need our shit,” she said. “Now that she’s done grandstanding, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill her with that little stab wound to the leg, we can actually get down to business,” she said.

  Neptune was leaning against a column by the front door, waiting for trouble to come knocking. “I don’t like that they wouldn’t let us have any weapons,” she said.

  “That’s pretty standard dome policy for outsiders unless we’re being directly monitored by or working with the government,” Xero said.

  Neptune started pacing back and forth across the room, her eyes searching the area for possible weapons. “Yeah but the other domes aren’t secretly run by a psychotic bayou priestess,” she said.

  “At least, in some ways that gives us a little more leeway. Things here don’t seem to be as controlled or monitored as they are in other domes, especially judging from your friggin showdown in the middle of the day. You couldn’t get away with that anywhere else, even if you had the big cheese running the show. You’d be picked up for assault within minutes,” Radar said. “Dealing anything directly in the domes is still risky business, and this should help make sure we don’t get caught until we get a little bit better at this process.”

  Xero turned to him again. “It sounds like you have some experience in this arena,” she said.

  “I’ve been a merc for a long time. There’s not much I haven’t tried,” he said.

  Xero made a cat noise and faked a scratching motion in his direction. “Meow, sexy,” she said.

  Radar rolled his eyes. “Do you ever stop?” he said.

  “No,” Milo and Neptune said in unison.

  Xero just laughed. “You guys know me too well,” she said.

  Someone knocked and within seconds Neptune was at the door, demanding to know who it was.

  “Voodoo. Open up,” she said through the thin door.

  The sun had finally set and Voodoo was illuminated by the hazy porch light. Her eyes were blank and tired, and she was wearing another clean white dress identical to the one she had been wearing when Xero stabbed her. Neptune looked from side to side, craning her neck to look for additional personnel.

  “You alone?” Neptune said.

  “No. I have others waiting, surrounding the house if you should choose to disobey my orders, but I prefer to do business one on one. Rest assured though, if you make one wrong move, this whole place will go up in flames,” Voodoo said.

  Xero slowly nodded her approval, but didn’t get up from the loveseat. “Pyrotechnics, I like it,” she said. It also meant that Voodoo had enough power in the city that she could blow up a house and make the issue disappear under the rug.

  Neptune shut the door behind Voodoo and the woman walked to stand in the center of the room, trying to hide her pronounced limp and failing. Radar and Milo started to stand.

  Xero looked at her leg. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital or something like that,” she said.

  “Stay seated,” she said and the two men settled back into their seats. Neptune remained rooted in place, standing by the column with her arms folded.

  “I’ll stay right here, thanks,” Neptune said.

  “Your dogs are disobedient,” Voodoo said, casting a glare at Neptune.

  Neptune showed her teeth and barked. “I bite too, but usually you have to pay extra for that,” she said and licked her lips.

  “Disgusting,” Voodoo said. “I can’t believe I agreed to let scum like you into my territory.”

  Xero adjusted herself on the couch. “Okay, yeah I got that part just fine. You don’t like us being here. The quicker you stop playing these games and just get down to brass tacks the quicker we’ll be on our way. Not that we wouldn’t mind staying here and enjoying your lovely city, but there’s been a lot of shit going down, and we don’t exactly like being away from home any longer than necessary,” she said.

  Voodoo took a step closer and faltered, catching herself just before taking a nosedive into wood floors. Xero couldn’t decide if she was just that arrogant or just that foolish for coming into a house full of potential enemies while she had a significant injury to contend with.

  “You wanna take a seat?” Xero said and motioned to one of the empty chairs near Milo.

  Voodoo’s mouth stiffened into a hard line. “No. That will not be necessary,” she said.

  “Very well then. You already know what we want, and you already know what we have. What more do you need?” Xero said.

  Voodoo put her hands on her hips and Xero noticed her subtly shift the weight off her injured leg. She had been patient so far, but a big part of her wished that she’d just straight up offed the bitch back at the Café du Monde. It would have been so easy, but the mess wouldn’t have been worth the cleanup.

  “I don’t trust you and your dirty drugs. I need proof that they’re not contaminated and we’re not going to have another incident like we did before, “ Voodoo said.

  “Ask around, we only sell product that is totally pure. Something like Swamp Rat or whatever you guys called it out here would never be mass produced by one of our labs. I’ve told you this so many times—I don't know how else to explain it to you,” Xero said.

  “I don’t care what you or anyone else says. I want you to prove to me that your product is pure,” she said.

  “Do you have a lab that we can have access to without it looking suspicious?” Milo said, his voice calm, but backed with sadness that perhaps only Xero could pick up. “You could see a chemical readout that would tell you that it’s pure. Surely you have chemists that can do that for you.”

  Voodoo shook her head. “I don’t trust none of that sketchy science—we‘ve trusted scientists out here before, and look what happens? Our whole damned city nearly washes away. No, I don’t give a shit what no lab says. I want a live demonstration. I want you to take it and prove that it’s safe,” she said.

  “No,” Xero said. “We don’t do drugs. It’s bad for business.”

  Voodoo gave a snort. “Oh, I see how it is. You won’t taste your own poison. Fine then. Deal’s off,” she said.

  “No!” Milo yelled and stood up. “We’ll do it.”

  Xero stood up too, the lace of her dress sticking to the velvet couch and pulling it backwards. “Milo. This isn’t something you can decide,” she said.

  “I don’t care. I’ll take it. I’ll take as much of it as she wants to prove that it’s safe,” he said. His fingers were digging into the fabric of his pants.

  Voodoo turned to Milo, a satisfied grin on her face. “I see you at least have some sense,” she said.

  “I’m a doctor. I promise you it’s safe. It’s addictive, and you can overdose on it, like any other narcotic, but if used correctly there’s very little risk of death,” he said, facing Voodoo but locking eyes with Xero, his body language pleading with her to agree.

  Xero grabbed her dress and freed it from the static cling of the couch. Radar joined her in standing. “Alright. Here’s the deal. We will do a dose of Alphamine, but one of us stays sober. For all I know you want to get us all high so you can kill us off and take the Alphamine for free,” she said.

  “I’ll stay sober,” Neptune said. “I’m not letting one of your thugs take out our crew.”

  “No. The doctor can stay sober. I want reports on your vital signs, and it’s too risky to bring in one of my outside medics. Plus, if you’re lying, I don’t really feel like disposing of your bodies. It’s not worth the trouble,�
�� Voodoo said.

  Xero set her jaw and wrinkled her forehead. “Okay. That’s reasonable,” she said. She would have preferred to keep Neptune sober, as she was the better fighter between the two, but having Milo straight edge just in case one of them had a reaction wasn’t a bad idea either.

  Xero turned to Radar. “Have you ever done Alphamine?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Same as you guys, I typically stay away from any of the things I traffic. Like you said, bad business,” he said. “Plus, I’ve never needed any of the lung enhancing benefits, so it’s not something I would try out of necessity.”

  “I knew I liked you,” she said. “Crap. Milo, you said he had a bad reaction to the A+?”

  Milo frowned. “Er, yeah, he did,” he said.

  Xero took a step towards him. “Does that mean he’s going to react to the Alphamine?” she said.

  Milo opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Not necessarily, but it’s not a good sign,” he said, his eyes darting between Xero, Radar, and Voodoo.

  “New deal. Radar stays sober, the rest of us get high,” she said to Voodoo.

  “No deal. I say who gets high,” she said.

  “What the fuck, that doesn’t make any sense. Look, he’s allergic to a similar compound. That has nothing to do with the safety of the drug by itself,” Xero said.

  Radar put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine, I’ll do it. I trust Milo to keep me alive if it comes to that,” he said. “I’m pretty hard to kill.”

  Xero walked forward until she was just a foot from Voodoo. “Business cards on the table now. We’re not going to be in any shape to negotiate later. Whatever money you worked out with Xed is fine, but you know what we really want,” she said.

  Voodoo stared hard into her eyes and sneered. “Yeah. You want the Ketocillin. I trust Xed told you the deal with that?” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Xero said.

  “Shouldn’t come as any surprise, but your business partner doesn’t seem to be very good at communicating. I don’t like dealing with him either, but at least he’s a little more palatable than you slime balls,” Voodoo said.

  “We’re not very close. What are you talking about?” Xero said.

  “I don’t have the Ketocillin,” she said.

  Milo shot forward and stopped just a few inches from Voodoo’s face. “What do you mean?!” he said. Xero put a hand on his chest and physically moved him back.

  “Just like I said. That stuff’s nearly impossible to get your hands on nowadays—I don't have any of the real stuff, but I do have one of the reagents. You’re chemists, or at least some of you are. You should be able to cook up something pretty close to the real deal, right?” she said.

  Point of fact, Trina and Argon were their lead chemists and they were both out of commission. Xero and Milo both had some skills in the lab, but Xero was more a part of the neuropharmacology side of stuff, not the actual lab synthesis parts, and Milo was more about the theoretical physiological aspects of the design process. They’d all been doing their best to ignore the fact that Argon was still missing or dead, as there was nothing they could do about it for the time being.

  Xero should have seen it coming, but Neptune must have gone through the same thought process as Xero just had. Thinking about Argon pushed her over the edge. All Xero saw was the bob of Neptune’s spiky hair and a flash of pale flesh as she made a quick leg sweep that left Voodoo crumpled in a pile of tangled limbs on the ground. It was too late to stop the initial leg strike, but Xero leaned over and caught Neptune’s arm as she tried to sink her body into a ground and pound position. Neptune snarled in frustration.

  She was so focused on keeping Neptune in check that she missed Milo sneaking around her left side. He completed the move that Neptune had started, and before Xero could process how to effectively restrain Neptune, Milo was landing solid punches in Voodoo’s face. Her skull meat made dull thwacks against his hard knuckles as her head thumped against the hollow floors. Xero could feel the blows rumble up through her boots. Radar came to her aid by pulling Milo up and off Voodoo. At least someone had someone in the group had some restraint. She was simultaneously annoyed and also grinning from ear to ear on the inside. Her associates did exactly what she had wanted to do, and the thought of just killing her right then and there crossed her mind again. No. Voodoo still had something they wanted.

  With the two attackers temporarily restrained, Voodoo tried to leap to her feet, but failed due to her fucked up leg, and she stumbled backwards until she toppled again, her upper body was partially landing in the adjacent dining room.

  Xero swiveled, snagging Neptune and Milo by the collars with quick grabs like they were naughty children. Using her significant strength, extra height, and excellent feel for leverage, she tossed both of them onto the loveseat that had previously been occupied by her and Radar. Dropping to one knee she got very close to both of their faces.

  “We’re probably two seconds from literally going up in flames. Sit down. Shut up. And don’t move,” she said almost too quietly to hear, but with enough force that they both tried to pull back out of range. Looking up at Radar she added, her voice flat and serious. “Don’t let them move. You know what to do if either of them tries. I don’t care if you have to shock them unconscious.”

  In that moment she could see all of Radar’s mercenary experience reflected in his face, in his sure, relaxed body movements. He was the perfect partner for a crisis. He would take care of business, regardless of the cost. They shared a moment of complete understanding and she broke it off with a nod.

  With Neptune and Milo occupied for the moment, she stalked into the dining room where a groggy Voodoo was fishing in her dress for something. Her face was already swelling, one of her eyes puffing up and turning black like a mushrooming thunderhead. Lines of blood ran down from her left nostril and the left corner of her lip.

  “You just couldn’t leave it well enough alone, could you? You had to fuck with us,” Xero said and kept walking until she was straddling Voodoo’s prostrate body. Leaning down, she snatched Voodoo’s wrists to keep her from reaching whatever signaling device was hidden within the folds of her now dirty white dress.

  Voodoo said nothing, but her jaw was set in stubborn clench, her nostrils flaring with each puff of air forced through her nose. For the tenth time that day she was glad for her unusual height—Voodoo wasn’t a small woman, and Xero used her extra size to haul her another foot across the room and plant her ass in one of the flimsy dining room chairs. The chair creaked and rocked under Voodoo’s weight and her head accidentally flopped against the adjoining table. A lacy white table cloth was draped over the dark, solid wood of the dining room table and drops of blood pooled on its slightly waxed surface before sinking into the fabric. That was one reason why Xero never wore white.

  Voodoo was still reeling from the multiple blows, which gave Xero the chance to take control of the situation. She was able to hold both of the woman’s small wrists together just by curling one of her large fists around the delicate mocha-colored skin. With her other free hand she dug through the white dress until she found the communicator and tossed it across the room. After frisking her for more weapons or transmission devices, she released her wrists and waited for her to shake off the vertigo.

  “Now. Let’s all just calm down now, shall we,” Xero said and continued when Voodoo remained silent. “Good. I’m glad we can finally talk like adults. So here’s the deal. You don’t actually have what we want, but as you may have guessed we’re desperate enough to take a subpar substitution. As much as you may think we’re monsters, someone we care about is dying, and we need that medication very badly. Honestly, money is great, but we’re not in short supply of it just this minute. The only thing I really want from you is the Ketocillin reagent and information about where I can get the other component. I assume you know where the other reagents are if you were able to obtain at least part of it, is that tr
ue?”

  Very slowly, Voodoo gave a single nod, her eyeballs still swirling in her head. She had to give it to Milo. It hadn’t looked like he’d hit Voodoo very hard, but he had done the job for sure. Of course the woman had already sustained some fairly major blood loss earlier in the day, so she had to give Voodoo some credit for trying to hold her shit together.

  “Excellent. That’s just what I want to hear. So I’ll make you a deal, which I think you will find to be more than fair. I won’t kill you right now—your arrogance has made sure that you don’t have backup coming to look for you automatically after hearing this kind of struggle, or adequate weapons to defend yourself. Arrogance I can certainly understand, but you’ve fucked yourself more than once today. Might do you well to think about that, yeah?” she said.

  She saw Voodoo getting ready to spit in her face, and she covered her mouth with a piece of her own white dress.

  Xero laughed. “And you call me crass? You going to behave or do I need to gag you while we finish our little conversation?” she said.

  Voodoo averted her gaze but after a few seconds of Xero staring at her she shook her head.

  “Good. Now. We’ve already established that I won’t gut you, as much fun as that would be. My associates in the other room would certainly enjoy it, I’m sure. However, I think we can still come to an understanding. I’m willing to give you a full load of our product for free. Or almost for free, that is. I know my associate Xed asked for a rather large sum of money for the shipment, and to be honest the price he asked you for is fair, but I don’t give a shit. All I want right now is that reagent. You give me that reagent, you can have the whole cargo load, and you can spend as much time as you want testing the batch for purity and safety in any way you like, but my crew is not acting as a guinea pig just to satisfy your sick curiosity, or whatever twisted kick you’re on. If you find that the batch isn’t up to your standards or expectations or whatever it is, I’ll compensate you for the price of the Ketocillin itself or whatever comparable repayment you want. Or, you can come to Tucson and try to take out your debt in blood. Frankly, at this point I don’t care. That’s my final offer. You game?” she said.