The three of them made to leave the establishment—Yide had remained with the yacht for security purposes—but just after Sergeant Gnuko had exited to the street, Strider stopped in his tracks and sighed.
“You be a tight one,” he grumbled as he turned back to face the jeweler. “Tell you what I be doin’,” he said, as though a thought had just occurred to him, “I be havin’ one more piece of sparkly here—belongin’ to my sister, you see—and she be tellin’ me I can’t accept any less than eighty thousand for it, man.”
The jeweler cocked an eyebrow incredulously and drawled, “We would be happy to appraise your sister’s bit of precious.”
“No, you don’t be hearin’ me too well,” Strider said with a wag of his finger. “There be no negotiation on this piece…but, if you be agreein’ to her price, I might persuade my client,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder just as Sergeant Gnuko opened the door and re-entered the premises, “to accept your low-ballin’ offer on the others.”
The jeweler gestured to the countertop, over which was draped a black velvet cloth. “Please,” he said, and Strider reached into his jacket for the most valuable piece in the collection.
He produced it and placed it down on the countertop triumphantly, at which point even the jeweler could not keep his eyes from going wide. To Fei Long’s untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than a man’s ring with a broad, ovular surface like those on ancient signet rings.
“Is this…?” the jeweler asked, his eyes alight as they remained fixed on the ring.
“It be like this, man,” Strider said conspiratorially as he leaned across the countertop, “my sister be meetin’ a man—a right true piece of creeper waste, if you feel me proper—and he gives to her this ring as an engagement gift. But he done passed recently and she be fallin’ on hard times, savvy?”
The jeweler’s eyes dimmed slightly, but he was still clearly excited at the prospect of securing the ring. “May I?” he asked, and Strider gestured in the affirmative.
The jeweler took the ring in his hand and produced a monocle, which he affixed over his right eye, and began to examine it in far greater detail than he had done for the previous pieces.
The jeweler spent nearly five minutes in absolute silence as he appraised the ring, and when he was finished he said, “We would dearly love to help your sister move on from such an unfortunate chapter in her life. Your proposed price of sixty five thousand credits is acceptable to us.”
“Sixty five?!” Strider blurted, deftly snatching the ring from the jeweler’s hand before the other man could even react. “You must be cooked in the brain,” he scoffed as he made to pocket the ring once again. “Sixty five…the blasted monkeys would give me sixty five—you ain’t be seein’ an Imperial Ambassador’s ring in your miserable career, you pikey, you. That’s it; we be jammin’ outta here, man!”
They turned to leave once again, and the jeweler called out, “I apologize, I misheard your price. Seventy thousand will, of course, be acceptable.”
Strider stopped mid-stride and turned to scowl at the other man. “Whatcha got in those ears, man, little birds? ‘Cuz that’s all I be hearin’ in this place: cheap, cheap, cheap!”
“Your sister must understand,” the jeweler said, his visage hardening, “that simply carrying such an article without the proper custodial documents can be…problematic.”
Strider cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You be threatenin’ me, man? Do you know who I am?!” he snapped, prompting Gnuko to place a hand on his shoulder. Strider gave the Sergeant a quick look before grumbling, “We’ve an accord at seventy five.”
The jeweler, whose hand had very nearly clasped with Strider’s, easily withdrew before the deal could be sealed. “In light of your sister’s…unfortunate circumstances, I am authorized to acquiesce to your demand of seventy two thousand credits—but I fear that is my maximum.”
Strider stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So we be lookin’ at two hundred thousand for these,” he jingled the small pouch of jewelry, causing the jeweler to wince at the jewelry’s rough treatment, “and seventy three thousand for my sister?”
The jeweler looked ready to burst with outrage, but before he could speak he moved his hand to his ear. He was clearly receiving a message from a superior, and after a moment he nodded and extended his hand. “We have a deal.”
An hour later, after the articles had been painstakingly appraised, the group left the jeweler’s shop with more money than Fei Long could comprehend. With two hundred seventy three thousand credits, he was fairly convinced that he could construct the Sector’s finest grinder—a colloquial term given to a computer hacker’s central processing system.
“We be makin’ out right spiffy, I’d say,” Strider said, clearly proud of himself. “That was a smooth piece of work, if I do say so myself.”
“No,” Sergeant Gnuko said as he pocketed the credit chits.
“No?” Strider blinked as though in confusion. “What you be meanin’, ‘no’? I just got us near 80% retail—retail, man—and he says ‘no’.”
“No,” Gnuko repeated evenly.
“No?” Strider echoed. “Aww, c’mon now, man,” he said conspiratorially as he moved out front to hail a conveyance-for-hire, “every good negotiator deserves a slice of the pie to show for his good work, feel me?”
“No,” Gnuko said yet again, and Fei Long could not keep from grinning at the seesaw affair playing out before him.
Strider clucked his tongue as a conveyance pulled up before them. “I used to have my own ship, you know?” he muttered as they entered the boxy-looking vehicle. “Horse-traded my way into her, fought tooth and nail to keep her runnin’ and full of crew, and now look at me.” He sighed wistfully as he looked out on the bustling city, which was composed of architecture so wildly varied that Fei Long could only guess at half of the styles on display.
“We’ve got two hours before I meet the Customs agent,” Gnuko said, shifting topics as though Strider’s lamentations had fallen on deaf ears. “How do we reach your contact?”
“Oh, I see how it be,” Strider sniffed, folding his arms across his chest and jutting his chin defiantly. “You be needin’ ol’ Strider’s contacts, but you think he don’t be needin’ no fair compensation, do I get you clear?”
Gnuko rolled his eyes. “We’re not here for pleasure,” he said severely, and Strider snorted derisively.
“Be sure to tell that to your lady friend with the badge,” the former pirate countered.
Gnuko looked like he wanted to argue, but the conveyance’s driver said, “I enjoy a bit of drama as much as the next person, but I thought it fair to warn you that the meter is running.”
“Take us toward the stardock, please,” Fei Long said, drawing looks from his companions. He shrugged, saying, “I doubt any of Mr. Strider’s contacts will be based on the planet’s surface. Am I mistaken?” He had read the local laws regarding the transaction of military weapons technology, and it quite clearly read that such transactions were expressly forbidden on Capital’s surface—but they were conspicuously devoid of any such clauses regarding such activities taking place in orbit.
Strider mumbled something in a language which was unfamiliar to Fei Long, but Gnuko gave the other man a hard look which prompted the former pirate captain to sigh as he gave a longing look to a nearby ‘house of pleasure,’ if the advertising signage out front was accurate. “Aye, that be the way of it.”
“We’ll drop you two off at the yacht,” Gnuko declared, “and I’ll go see if I can work some information out of that Customs agent.”
“I believe the word you were lookin’ for was ‘pump’ some information from her,” Strider quipped, and the three of them quickly broke into laughter.
Chapter XXXVII: A Beast’s Cage
Several hours later, at nearly nine p.m. local time, Sergeant Gnuko returned to the yacht. Fei Long had kept a watchful eye on Strider—who had seemed far more nervous than Fei Long had expected hi
m to be. But the former pirate had spent much of that time attempting to make contact with his connections on the planet—Fei Long had confirmed as much by monitoring every bit of data the shift Navigator had sent or received since they had returned to the ship.
The communications were conducted in a simple enough code that Fei Long had cracked in less than ten minutes, and surprisingly it did not appear that Mr. Strider was making any attempt to subvert their mission—or to gain freedom from his pressed service in the MSP.
“All right, I’ve worked a few things out,” Gnuko said as he set a data slate down on the table. “First things first: have you contacted any of your possible dealers?”
“I be doin’ more than ‘contact’,” Strider quipped. “We be havin’ a meet with an old brother of mine.”
“A brother?” Gnuko repeated warily.
“From another mother,” the former pirate said with a dismissive wave, “and father, for that matter. He be the one who helped get me into my first ship, man. He be good people; a rock-solid jammer right down to the deck, savvy?”
Gnuko gave Fei Long a quick look, and the young man nodded slightly. “Ok,” the Lancer Sergeant said after a momentary pause, “then it looks like I’ve got us a ride.”
“How is it that your documents permit you to travel to Capital?” Fei Long asked Sergeant Gnuko as the tiny, four seat spacecraft made final approach to their destination.
Gnuko looked down at his leg—the same one which had been severely damaged during the battle in the hyper dish junction so many months earlier—and began to rub it absently. “I wasn’t always a Lancer,” he said after a pregnant pause. “I was drafted ten years ago.”
Fei Long quirked an eyebrow in confusion, “I do not understand how conscription into military service would—“
The Lancer Sergeant laughed, cutting Fei Long off mid-sentence. “No,” he said with a grin, “I wasn’t drafted into the military. I was drafted by the Prometheus Peregrines—the smashball team.”
It took only a moment for Fei Long to process the revelation, and when he had done so it explained a great many things. “Why is there no record of this in your service record?” he asked, having already reviewed said record several times. Fei Long liked to know as much about his companions as possible—especially when they were likely to be armed.
“I changed my name just after the draft,” Gnuko replied absently as he looked out the nearby porthole at the station. “Somehow the old records never caught up with me,” he shrugged indifferently.
“So your status as a professional smashball player entitles you to traveling privileges to normally off-limits worlds?” Fei Long pressed, still uncertain if he understood the connection properly.
“No,” Gnuko said distantly, and Fei Long could sense that it was likely best not to push the subject much further, “I signed a sponsorship deal with a corporation headquartered on Capital. It’s pretty standard, actually,” he explained, “most trans-sector corporations base at least part of their holdings here, since Capital is widely considered the last bastion of pure capitalism…hence the name. But in order to qualify for the deal, I had to go through a bunch of hoops. Long story short: they paid to permanently upgrade my travel visa, but that’s all I ever got out of them.”
Fei Long wanted to ask several more questions, but he held his tongue and nodded respectfully instead.
“Here we are,” the pilot said as the craft pulled into position beside the massive space station. Fei Long estimated it was well over three miles across, and was of an old-style, spinning wheel design. The design was larger than a comparable facility equipped with grav-plating would need to be, but would also require substantially less power to operate due to the apparent gravity being generated by centrifugal force rather than artificial gravity plating. “Now, just because I’ve got the ok to fly up here doesn’t mean I’ll be overstaying my visit,” the pilot said sternly, and Fei Long detected yet another disbursement of funds was in the offing.
Gnuko was well ahead of him, and drew out a credit chit which he waved in front of the pilot’s nose. “You’ll get the agreed fifteen hundred, and another two thousand for the return trip. We both know you’ll be dead-heading it back to the surface otherwise so let’s just cut the haggling here, shall we?”
The pilot looked hesitant, but his expression turned sour and he grudgingly nodded just as the airlock seals engaged. A few moments later, the green light went on over the craft’s lone access hatch.
Sergeant Gnuko gestured for Strider to lead the way, and after swallowing an invisible knot in his throat, the former pirate did so. Gnuko gave Fei Long a concerned look, and the young man shrugged indifferently. All of this was unfamiliar to him; his primary task was to ensure that whatever components were acquired matched the Pride’s needs and were compatible with its older systems.
They climbed the ladder inside the boarding tub until arriving at the outer deck of the station. There were no guards stationed nearby. In fact, Fei Long was surprised to find the corridor completely empty. He produced his crane feather fan and began to fan himself, even though the temperature inside the station was by no means hot.
Strider dusted himself off—there had actually been a grime of unknown composition all over the inner surfaces of the tube through which they had just crawled—and pointed to the leftward passage. “It be this way,” he said before setting off.
Sergeant Gnuko gestured for Fei Long to go second, and he obliged. Having the Lancer Sergeant covering the group’s back did seem like the logical choice to him, and after a forty meter walk they came to a closed door with a security camera mounted above it.
“We be havin’ an appointment, man,” Strider explained while looking up at the camera. “Tell the maestro we be lookin’ to do real business.”
For several seconds nothing happened, but then the door slid open to reveal a massive Sundered who was almost certainly larger than Toto. The ape-man looked down at them with clear disapproval before gesturing for them to enter the chamber, which was apparently a lift.
The three men did so, and when the doors slid closed behind them Fei Long noticed Sergeant Gnuko sizing up the Sundered. They had brought weapons—including Fei Long, whose weapon had been cleverly disguised thanks to the efforts of Haldis, the Pride’s master smith.
The ride was surprisingly short, and when the doors opened Fei Long’s ears were greeted by the deep, punishing beat of an insanely powerful subwoofer. It seemed to rattle his teeth with each of its semi-rhythmic pulses, and the effect was so profound that he could barely even make out the words which accompanied the music—music which repulsed Fei Long, who had never cared for its ilk.
“Go,” the Sundered gestured, and the trio made their way into the chamber beyond. It was a club of some kind that was only half full, but the people who had come there were clearly enjoying the experience. The near-naked flesh on display was enough to raise Fei Long’s eyebrows seemingly every time he turned his head.
A heavily-tattooed man wearing little more than a pair of chaps and a dozen pieces of heavy piercings approached and bowed courteously. “My employer bids you join him on the balcony,” he gestured to the far side of the chamber. Somehow the man’s voice was clear amid the chaotic, pulsating music, and Fei Long suspected he had some sort of sound dampener operating when he spoke.
“Thanks, man,” Strider said, and the tattooed usher brought them to a staircase which was roped off with red velvet, and to Fei Long it looked like something from one of his old holo-vids.
They ascended the staircase and a bouncer at the top, who made Sergeant Gnuko look small—and would have possibly been even larger than Kratos, who was easily the biggest Tracto-an Fei Long had ever seen—stopped them for a frisk.
Strider lifted his arms, and after a brief pat down the bouncer let him by. Fei Long did likewise, and aside from a disdainful look at the crane fan, the bouncer allowed him to pass.
Gnuko was next, and surprisingly to Fei Long, he openly pro
duced the vibro-knife which had been tucked into his belt. The bouncer folded his arms and blocked the entry to the balcony, and for a moment Fei Long was convinced that the affair would come to blows.
But the bouncer placed a hand to his ear, apparently having received a message from his superior, and grudgingly stood to the side while giving Gnuko a dark look.
The Lancer Sergeant wordlessly made his way to the nearest table, which had been set in advance of their arrival, and the trio each took a seat. Fei Long noted that there was no entry other than the one they had just used, and to make matters worse there was an additional pair of bodyguards stationed at the base of the stairs which led to the balcony.
Fei Long decided there was no purpose to be served by indulging his anxiety, so he picked up a nearby menu and examined the logo. “The Other Tenth,” he read the establishment’s name out loud. He did not recognize the significance of the phrase, and heard Gnuko chuckle at his side.
“That’s clever,” the Lancer Sergeant said with an approving nod.
“I do not recognize the term,” Fei Long said, annoyance creeping into his voice.
“You know what they say,” Gnuko said with a shrug, “about possession being nine tenths of the law.”
Fei Long had actually never heard that particular expression, but he quickly grasped the meaning and had to agree that it was a reasonably clever choice for an ‘acquisition’s expert’ to name his base of operations.
“Here he comes’,” Strider said, tilting his head across the dance floor toward a thickly-built man wearing what looked to be an opaque-visored combat helmet. His face was completely obscured by the lowered visor, but he had long locks of knotted hair—Fei Long had heard them called ‘dreadlocks’—spilling across his broad shoulders.
The man was flanked by a pair of women dressed—if the term could be applied to them in their current state—in tiny bands of stretchable material which only barely covered the parts of their bodies which Fei Long had grown up believing to be private.
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