by Sean Allen
Dezmara switched back and forth between her impersonation of the strong-arm man struggling to free the cable collar and her electronic voice a couple times. She even let the sounds of her own efforts as she hauled the thug’s body to the back corner of the elevator shaft float down the passageway, in order to sell the scene a little more. When she had caught her breath, Dezmara stuck her head into the hallway again. “Say, your friend here doesn’t seem to be able to get this thing done on his own. You mind lending us a hand?” If the goon was suspicious at all, it didn’t show as he walked toward the elevator without hesitation.
Dezmara prepared to let loose another crippling blow as heavy footsteps thudded down the corridor toward her. Just one more watchdog to go and Fellini would be hers, caught completely off guard. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his ugly Turillian face when she burst through the door, put the edge of one of her blades to his throat, and demanded to know where Simon and Diodojo were. “I wonder if they’re up here somewhere?” she thought as she adjusted her attack stance. The time had come.
Energy and power surged through her muscles and Dezmara’s mind screamed, “Attack!” But instead of the full figure of the sentry presenting itself as an easy target in the framework of the elevator, two bulging eyes on the ends of strange, pinkish appendages snaked around the corner. “Oh, SHI” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing. The thug rushed through the opening with his hand groping for his gun and his mouth ready to let out a howling call of attack. Dezmara needed to silence him fast, but stopping the sound of gunshots was a higher priority.
He yanked at the auto strapped to his side, and as it cleared his holster, Dezmara snapped a front-kick at his hand. The bones in his big meat hook popped and crackled under the blow. She was simultaneously relieved and mortified that the goon didn’t make so much as a peep. Instead of crying out, he quickly reached into his belt and slashed at her with a hellish-looking blade. Dezmara dodged backward as the knife missed spilling her guts onto the roof of the elevator by microns, and her feet tangled with the outstretched legs of the other enforcer lying slumped in the corner. She stumbled, and her attacker wasted no time. His arm arched over his head and crashed down with the point of the blade aimed at the top of the kranos.
Dezmara dropped to one knee and quickly reached up with crossed forearms to block the onslaught. She absorbed the blow by rolling onto her side, and as he followed through, Dezmara cocked her leg up by her chest and launched her heel at his knee. The goon’s leg crunched, and he toppled over, Dezmara still holding onto his arm. As he hit the ground, she spun to the side and snaked her left leg over his head. She squeezed her thighs, lifted her butt off the ground, and jerked back hard on his forearm. It was at least the third broken bone Dezmara had dealt the ruffian in the last ten seconds, and this time, he screeched as his elbow snapped. She quickly put her boot heel on the side of his jaw and pulled back on his arm as she kicked out. He would never cry out from this or any other broken bone again.
Dezmara slid herself up into a sitting position and leaned her back against the elevator shaft. She quickly removed the hammer from her holster and filled both empty spaces with their rightful implements of death before peering cautiously around the door-frame. She studied the portal at the end of the hall and listened for any sounds of commotion coming from inside. There was nothing. The first thug had gone down without a sound, and the second guy’s minimal noises were muffled by the echoing chamber. All signs told her she hadn’t lost the element of surprise. She fished around the bug-eyed goon’s clothes for his security box, and once she found it she stood up, dusted herself off, and walked out into the hall.
Dezmara’s heart beat hard in her chest as her animal mind kicked up a notch. Everything became razor sharp, her moves precise and infallible. She stopped at the entry to Fellini’s penthouse and occupied one hand with plugging in the retired sentinel’s clearance mechanism while the other pulled an auto from its resting place. The small light to the right of the entrance above the prong ports turned from gray to purple. What she thought was one door was actually two, and they swept slowly inward with a pretentious flourish. She left the thug’s authorization tablet sticking out of the console—she would get Fellini’s to access the private elevator to the Gamoratta’s dockyard or, at worst, use Mac’s to get back into the elevator and escape through the casino. Dezmara touched the outside of her jacket, feeling for the outline of Mac’s device just to be sure. It was still in her left inside pocket—right where she left it.
Fellini’s suite was dark, and as she quietly stepped over the threshold, the doors swung back in on themselves and sealed out any remnants of light from the hallway with a soft but foreboding click. Dezmara tapped the kranos to engage the dark-vision, but her display fuzzed and danced with squiggly lines. She punched the controls again to return her sight to normal, but the helmet responded with more angry interference and then erupted with an unbearable screech. “What the hell’s going on?!” her mind screamed. She was starting to panic. The flashing bombardment on her eyes and the agonizing squeal in her ears was unraveling her nerves.
Her hands flew up to rip the kranos from her head, but before she could reach the slick, hardened surface, she lost control of her muscles. Her auto clunked to the ground. Dezmara’s body convulsed wildly as streaks of yellow split and crackled inside her clenched eyes like forked lightning. Her teeth ached: buzzing, rattling, and ready to explode inside her mouth at any moment. Then she fell to the floor in a twitching, crumpled wreck. In her last remaining moments of quasi-consciousness, Dezmara felt the weight of her other gun leave her side. Someone rolled her over onto her stomach and—like in a dream—she heard the faraway sound of her blades leaving their custom sheaths before she was returned to her back. The last things she remembered were her head being lifted into the air and then slamming back onto the floor with a distant thud, the cool air of Fellini’s penthouse suite on her face, and an awful laugh laced with a heavy Turillian accent.
Chapter 44: The Deceiver
Dezmara’s body was still tingling when her eyes fluttered open. She was in a dark room, and a rich, pungent odor irritated her nose and chest. She was slouched in what felt like a chair, and she pushed up on the seat to sit upright. To her surprise, she wasn’t restrained. Dezmara pulled her head back on her shoulders and blinked several times to focus her eyes, her mind still shaking off the lethargy of being knocked out. Some ways off she spotted a glowing, orange circle. The dot lingered, hovering in the distance for a time, and then grew brighter with the sound of sucking air before fading back to its original smolder.
Just as she realized what she was staring at, a beep sounded in front of her and the lights came on.
She was sitting at the end of a long, oval table made of a light wood and surrounded by high-backed chairs. The walls were paneled to match the table and decorated with obscure, but colorful paintings. There were no windows, only the outline of two doors behind her and a matching pair at the opposite end of the room, offset to the right. The ceiling was lined with four rows of round lights that burned softly, revealing her adversary.
Leonardo Fellini sat at the other end of the wooden expanse, in a chair that was markedly different than all the rest and reminded Dezmara of a throne. The back of the seat was significantly higher and wider than the others—almost to a ridiculous degree—and, of course, it looked like it was forged from tolocnium.
Turillians were distinctive-looking creatures with three prominent nodules of bone crowning their heads beneath the skin. The two outermost protrusions were several inches high and slanted outward. Their squared-off tops had folds of skin that expanded into large spiracles for breathing or smelling and which could be clamped shut when not in use. The center ridge of bone was low and flat and swept down from the middle of the skull, narrowing as it divided the cranium in half and ending at the top of the eyes. Two more bumps of bone floated below the ridge like knuckles, the lower hovering above thick, wide, purple lips th
at stretched out onto puffy, round cheeks. Turillian eyes were impossibly large, taking up half of their peculiar heads and shaped like giant cathedral windows with the interior lamps long flickered out. Fellini’s eyelids flitted in from the sides as he stared at Dezmara.
He lifted his cigar to his lips with thick-knuckled fingers, and the end glowed brighter as he sucked in through his mouth. His brimmed hat was cocked to the side over one spiracle, and a ring of smoke puffed from the other blowhole on his head. Fellini’s skin was dark gray with a perpetual wet sheen that made the flesh-red interior of his mouth all the more vivid and horrid in contrast.
“So,” he said in his Turillian accent, “we finally meet in the flesh, Ghost—or should I call you Dezmara? You don’t mind if I call you Dezmara, do you? Ghost seems so melodramatic now that I know who you are.”
“What’ve you done with Simon and Diodojo?” she said as anger chased away the fog clouding her senses.
“Hahaha! Always to business, eh? Even when you’re helpless. I love your style, Dezmara!” Fellini took another long pull on his cigar as he shook his head in amusement.
“Who says I’m helpless?” Dezmara said in a threatening tone. “Pretty ballsy of you to sit in the same room as me without tying me up, Leo. Tell me, are you taking bets on how long it’ll take me to cross this table and kill you with my bare hands?”
“Oh, my dear,” Fellini said with cruel cynicism, pulling the hand that wasn’t occupied with the ritual of smoking from under the table and setting a pistol down in front of him. The barrel was aimed at her chest and his finger was on the trigger. “As usual, you overestimate your own abilities while underestimating everyone else. You walked right into this little trap as expected, but not too long ago you were betting your entire fortune on your skills as a runner without the slightest clue you’d end up on the other side of my gun!”
The left side of her chest felt like it was on fire. Dezmara looked down to find two symmetrical holes in the front of her flight suit, the skin underneath burned and tender.
“Ah, yes, Mac’s access box was a nice touch, don’t you think? More like a shock box, eh? And of course, you are in the habit of trusting anyone with a sad story about losing his home and family, aren’t you?” Dezmara looked down at the circular edges of singed fabric where the prongs from the security device had made contact with her skin and electrocuted her. Fellini’s fat face was stretched wide in a grin that showed his rounded, triangular teeth, and he looked like he was about to fall out of his chair with glee at any moment. “My dear, you were just getting—what’s the expression?—too big for your britches. Runners have always been the biggest draw in Trillis, but your winning streak had wrecked the odds for far too long. So I set in motion the gears to topple your little monopoly, and you played along exactly as I planned!”
“Can’t imagine it all went exactly as planned,” Dezmara said sarcastically. “I’m sure you thought you’d make a mint betting it all on Rilek and the Lodestar.” Dezmara gave him a ‘screw you’ smile that was made all the more satisfying as the grin on Fellini’s face sagged back into his baggy cheeks.
“A mere pittance compared to what I stand to make once this deal is done.” He stubbed out his stogie in an ashtray on his left and then leaned back in his chair, confidently removing his hand from the gun so he could press his fingertips together.
“So what the shit is so valuable you gotta dupe me into stealing for you and then kidnap my friends? The job’s not done, is it, Fellini? You need me to fly whatever’s in those four cargo containers somewhere, and I’m the only pilot in the universe that can do it, right? And you—you sonofabitch—you’re using my friends as leverage. What is it? What’s in those containers, you bastard?”
“Your ignorance is amusing!” Fellini laughed. “I suppose it’s time to introduce my business partner; although, I’ll warn you now, it’s going to…sting a little.” The shit-eating grin was back on Fellini’s face as the cover to a hidden rectangular compartment on the table slid open in front of him. He jabbed a finger into the recess, and the console responded with a beep. The doors at the back of the room slowly drifted open, and an all-too-familiar form swaggered through from the other side.
Dezmara felt like her heart had been ripped from its fleshy cradle in her chest and dropped into her stomach just so she could vomit its cracking form onto the glossy, wooden table in time for the entire universe to see it shatter into a million and one pieces. He was dressed in strange clothes she had never seen him wear before. A large hat made of regal purple with golden trim perched on top of his head. His shirt was cut like a sailor’s, but instead of the usual plain white, the little she could see above his purple-and-gold trimmed vest had the iridescent shine of pearls. His jacket was made of the heavy material used to stave off the salty spray of the sea and it hung down to his knees. Of all the people to be standing in front of her now, of all the people responsible for the absolute hell she’d been through, Felix Grinnik was the last one she expected to walk through those doors; after all, he was supposed to be dead.
Felix was tall, though he walked with a slight hunch. His build was slender except for unnaturally broad shoulders that were no doubt built by years of laboring aboard ships. His skin was a brilliant green and covered in scales as rough and hard as the surface of any desolate, rock-laden planet ever charted. The scaly armor even surrounded his enormous, bulging eyes, which now rolled forward and held Dezmara in their yellow gaze. A huge horn extended from the tip of his snout and ended in a sharp point. His mouth was set in a knavish grin that curled around the sides of his head, and he half walked, half hopped awkwardly past the back of Fellini’s seat. When he finally cleared the table and chairs to her right, Dezmara saw the reason for his unusual gait. His left leg was missing below the knee, and the nub of his stump, concealed behind purple trousers stitched closed at the wound site, hovered over a metallic ring that floated above the ground. The device had thick, cylindrical spines encircling it and moved in lockstep, with a mechanical clicking sound, as Felix limped into the open and then stopped.
“Dezmara,” Felix said, “it’s so good to see you again after all these years!” Dezmara used to think his voice was mesmerizing, all soft consonants and long, rolling R’s, but now his words were like a thousand slivers of sharp metal in her ears.
“Felix,” Dezmara’s voice quivered, “what the fuck is going on?”
“Come, now, there’s no need for such vulgarities!” Felix said in a paternal tone.
“The holy shit there isn’t!” Dezmara shouted. “TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON! How are you here?! Where’s Simon and Diodojo?! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!” Dezmara’s vocal chords strained and rattled in her throat as she screamed with uncontrollable anger and a sea of hurt rolling dark and empty inside her. Fellini lit another cigar with a pleased look on his face and turned his head from Dezmara to Felix in excited anticipation.
“Ah, Dezmara. You were always such a smart girl, I thought that it would’ve been obvious by now, but I suppose you have been through quite a bit, so I’ll be blunt. You’re here because you’re Human.” The word slammed into Dezmara like a cargo container dropped from the stratosphere, and her eyes blazed through tears so hot with rage she wouldn’t have been surprised if they melted the legs on her flight suit where they fell in big plops. Her mind was racing with questions and theories, and she tried to sort out the most likely scenario. She decided to follow the one closest to her heart and see if she could get Felix to divulge any useful information about Simon and Diodojo.
“Bullshit!” she spat. “You tortured Simon and he told you I was Human, and now you have a little bonus on top of whatever the hell’s really going on. Something to do with secret cargo in the four containers you had me hijack for you?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly and waited for either of the men to give away their bluff. Instead, she got a much different reaction.
“HAHAHAHA! I did not torture your friend!” Felix bent at the waist as he
laughed, adding to his usual hunch, which brought his entire torso almost parallel to the floor, before standing straight again and placing his hands on his hips. He arched backward and sucked in a big gulp of air.
“Then you and that dirty sonofabitch in Luxon were in it together for what—a lousy one hundred thousand?!”
“The portmaster?” Felix said. “He was just a common thief. Another nobody in the universe trying to gain fame and fortune by toppling the mighty Ghost! I’m afraid all he wanted was your ship and its cargo—oh, and to kill you, of course. But I wouldn’t worry about him; he chose the wrong time to make his play, and it cost him his life, I’m afraid.” Felix’s eyes flashed murder for a moment and then returned to their usual, jovial brightness.
“You killed the portmaster?”
“And opened the gate to release you,” Felix said as if she owed him a favor.
“The poster at Buego’s in Luxon and the men at the bar talking about a Human—it was you all along! How did you”
“I’m a duster, my dear, an’ I’ve been around for a very long time. I knew you were Human the moment they brought you on board from that prize near Iljin.”
“Prize?” Dezmara said. “You’re a filthy, goddam pirate!” Everything clicked in her mind, and she rolled her head back on her shoulders with a look of disappointed epiphany. “You’re the captain of the Triton!” Felix removed his hat and swept forward in an arrogant bow.
“And all that shit about being a runner, getting me my own ship, an’ pretending you were my friend—what the hell was that all about?!”