“I was quite interested in your coming. I trade in more and more alien objects all of the time these days. Some of them wonderful to behold, others sinister contraptions.”
“Sinister contraptions?” I asked.
“Some of them have to do with ever more inventive ways of extracting bone marrow from living humans without killing them – immediately.” That made me ill.
“My Gosh,” said Diamond.
“I'm familiar with the taste some of them have for human bone marrow. I wonder that they do not graduate to eating human flesh.”
“They might,” I said. I was thinking that if the Black Fleet arrived they may very well be extremely hungry from all that traveling and decide to process us as food. Which was why this was so important.
“So, enough small talk,” Yusef smiled. It seemed manners were important in order to do business with this gentleman and he would have his way before we would get ours. The mech brought in a small tray with a tall silver teapot with small porcelain cups. Zaz poured all three of us some sweet mint tea. I took up a cup and sipped it. I could taste cardamom as well as fresh mint and lots of sugar. The steam was a heavenly feeling under my nose. The perfumed incense and the perfume of the tea were relaxing. It seemed to me that paying attention to such niceties, even though it seemed silly to me at first, added a kind of soothing effect on me. It helped me to escape the vise-like hold of fear and to think clearly. And now that I was thinking like a calm man and not like a manic mental patient, a few things to our plan to stop the gate would need to be changed. It was like plucking black spots or imperfections out of a delicate web.
“So, the key,” he said and he got up after taking another sip of tea. He went to a room in the back. After a few minutes, he came out with a rectangular box. He sat down in front of us and placed it in front of him and then opened it carefully with a little gold key. The lid slid open and he lifted out of a small pile of objects a thin card about as long as a thumb and as thin as a wafer chip. He handed it to me.
“Here is your key,” he handed the key to me. I took it up nearly reverently. It looked delicate, like thinly shaved ice. And it was just as cold to the touch. I slipped it inside the thin slot in the cube and the cube burst with green and yellow light. Now that this was activated all I had to do was take this activated cube and put it in the small slot I saw in the schematics in the gate. I was overjoyed. It should work just so.
“How do you take the key out?” Asked Diamond. I pushed at a small finger impression near the slot and the key slipped out again and the cube settled down and went quiet. I glanced at Yusef and Diamond.
“How much?” I asked. Yusef settled his hands on his knees, sitting cross-legged on the carpet before us.
“Nothing,” he said smiling. I nearly fell back. Diamond went still but remained silent and drank his tea. He looked dismayed.
“What do you mean, nothing?” I asked in disbelief.
“You owe me nothing. My fee has already been paid, right before you arrived.”
“Perhaps someone thought they owed us a favor?” asked Diamond, looking uneasy. I looked at him.
“A favor?” I was alarmed. “What favor? For what?” Both were silent.
“I would like an answer. Who on Earth would pay for this for me?” Diamond sighed heavily and put his cup down.
“Look, Bob, I was on a mission doing some work with a friend and we ran into a really nasty scrape and we needed help. Badly!”
“I thought you weren't doing that anymore?”
“I'm not.”
“You could have called me!” Now we sounded like a bickering old married couple.
“Uh, no, actually I couldn't. Anyway, I had to call up a favor from someone. . .and they want in on any future action I'm involved in.”
“Who?” I demanded. I looked from him to Yusef.
“That, I cannot say. I don't disclose the secrets of those I work with. Of course, if this offends you, you could give back the key. Look at it as a gift of luck. Why look a gift-horse in the mouth?” said Yusef.
Perhaps I was being ridiculous but no one did something like that without wanting something really unreasonable in return later. Or maybe it really was a benefactor.
But no, I doubted it.
“I did have the funds to pay for this,” I said. I didn't have the cold hard cash but I was sure I could have gotten it somehow.
“Well, you wouldn't be here asking for it if you didn't,” Yusef said. He seemed slightly amused at my consternation.
“Think of it as a favor. Everyone trades in favors in space. It's one of the most important currencies we use out here. Perhaps you really did something for someone that warranted such. . .generosity. If you want the key, take it. Or I can take it back and then I give the money back to them and then you come back and retrieve the key after you have paid for it.” Okay, I get it. I'm being ridiculous!
He had the corner tip of a smile on his face. I wanted to punch him.
“Let's take the key. We'll work the situation out later,” said Diamond. I glared at Diamond. He shrugged. “What? You got what you came for!”
I was not happy at all. That last I thing I needed was to become beholden to some scumbag over this. But Diamond was right. We'd work it out later. In the ship.
With the key firmly inside my suit we thanked Yusef and entered back out into the dirty air of the station. Curious, I peeked into one of the small shop fronts in this hidden hallway. It looked like a wine shop. And I needed a drink.
“Let's get a some whisky before we go,” said Diamond. “You can find rare whiskys here.” I made a face. “Aww, come on! It won't take long.”
We went inside the shop to look around. It was a tiny but bright and clean establishment. There were rows and rows of bottles of arrack, grappa, amaro and arak. A smiling man came from behind a back room.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” He asked.
"We're looking for a good quality whisky. Something like a Royal Bracla," I said. The man gave me a knowing look.
“A man who recognizes true quality. Unfortunately, I don't have Royal Bracla but I do have some rare Japanese whiskys.”
“I've never had that before. You, Diamond?”
“No. Why don't we try it?” The man went in the back and brought out a couple of dusty wooden boxes. He opened the lid of one. The bottle he brought out was caked with dust. As he wiped away the dust I could see that the liquid inside was a deep amber color. This bottle had no label.
“They tend to be crafted in the Scottish style, if you love Scottish whisky. This is Yamazaki, fifty-year-old whisky. Intense and spicy. Single malt. I only have two bottles of this. There are no more as of now. And this,” he brought out the other bottle from its box. This second one was a longer, more elegant looking bottle wrapped in gold leaf. "This is Hibiki. Thirty-year-old whisky. It's hard to get. Flies off the shelves easily.”
“I'll take both of them,” I said. After I paid for them he wrapped them up and I handed Diamond the thirty-year old one. I took the other for myself.
“Thanks, man,” said Diamond.
"We can celebrate later," I said. “After you explain some things to me.” We stepped out of the shop thirty-thousand credits lighter. I'm sure they were still a lot cheaper than that key would have been.
After that, we left the market stalls, making our way to the docking bays. I hunkered down, pulling the cloak closer about me. Now that we were out of the narrow, private section of the bazaar I still couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched. I looked around quickly as we hurried down a corridor. I turned the corner behind Diamond just in time to avoid a laser blast. The corridors near us were suspiciously empty of people. We ran and took cover inside an empty stall.
“We need to find a lift!” I said.” Diamond shook his head vigorously, peeking out of the stall to watch who was coming after us.
“There's no one around. There's a reason for that. The lift tube in this area will probably be disabled to
trap us. You were right. We are being followed!”
Laser fire burned a nasty hole in the wall a foot from where we were crouched. Diamond felt and knocked around at the wall on the other side of the stall and then he turned to me.
“Cover me! I won't have much laser fire power left after this! We'll have to go for it!” And he let loose a mighty volley of laser fire, burning a huge hole in the wall behind. To my surprise, the wall was partially made of wood. Beyond was a narrow corridor that looked like a street full of crowded houses, buildings and hanging, poorly-built balconies and porches slapped together.
“What is that?” I asked.
“No Man's Land! Come on!” he urged. I peeked around the other end of the stall to see two figures coming toward us. Fire power came down again at me. I turned and followed Diamond down the narrow alley but not before heaving the stall from the wall and half-sliding, half-hurtling it towards our attackers. They blasted it to pieces but the distraction was just enough for us to escape.
Diamond grabbed something from his suit, pulled a latch on it and threw it to me. I caught it.
“Throw that through the hole!” I threw it just as one of them appeared at the hole, his laser rifle trained on me. A second later a smoke bomb blasted the outer corridor and I heard screams of agony. We then disappeared down No Man's Land.
As I followed behind Diamond, sea pistol in hand we ran through impossibly narrow alleys and corridor lanes, past abandoned living quarters, unnamed shops and flesh pots of the worst kind. He stopped for a few moments and I tried to catch my breath.
“I think I see a way to the outside station up there,” he pointed at a door up a steel staircase, that couldn't be reached from the ground, at a balcony painted with a white “X”.
“What was that I threw at them?”
“Sour gas bomb.” If the smell outside in the regular corridors of the station was bad this place was by orders of magnitude worse! And I wasn't referring to the sour gas bomb, either.
I was afraid to even look down at what we were stepping in. All I knew was that it was squishy and disgusting! Loads of corroded pipes were running through here, like a den of pythons crisscrossing everywhere and some of them were leaking. I heard a toilet flush somewhere up above and nearby it emptied its contents not ten feet away, nearly on our heads. Brown logs and sludge came raining down and piling down on the ground. I nearly vomited.
“Diamond! Come on, man!”
“I know! I'm trying to figure out a way to get up to that door!”
“Well hurry up before we end up drowning in this crap!” No pun intended.
A few people peered out at us from behind drapes or doors. I heard a door open and then slam shut and a chain rattled behind me. I turned to see where the noise was coming from and caught a brand new, foul smell mingling in with the sewage. A wolf-like beast was stalking us, ferocious looking teeth glistening with fresh blood and saliva. His growl was a low rumble. Someone above us shouted a command and the wolf lept and all I saw was a massive ball of fur, teeth and saliva barreling straight for us!
8
I was about to become wolf kibble! I fired my pistol but I was a second too late. The sheer force of the creature's bulk had me flying against the side of a wall. My arm flew up like a wet rag as it went tearing for my throat, my pistol firing uselessly into the air. Diamond fired several shots to the beast's head before it yelped in pain but this didn't stop it. I grabbed my bottle of whisky from a deep pocket and smashed it over the beast's face. It howled as the liquid burned into its skin and eyes, like an acid, to my horror. It ate into the flesh, peeling and curling the skin. Blood and puss and acid ran down its face.
I lowered my pistol and fired at it, this time hitting it squarely between the eyes. It's wailing died suddenly as it dropped and rolled over, dead. Its fur was mangy and wormy. The fetid stench was almost too much to bear. Diamond had dragged wooden crates and boxes under the stair and began climbing up the boxes, then the stair and onto the window ledge, reaching for the door. I jumped up the boxes and up the steps. A few people gawked but most kept to their business as if they hadn't seen anything. Diamond gave me a world-weary look as he helped me up.
“The only justice is that we're still alive. Don't look for anything else,” he said.
“I wonder, where is the owner of that thing? I wonder if it was a message?”
“No, I think it was simple spite. You still got the key?” He said looking around us. I felt for it.
“Yeah, I still got it.”
“Let's get the hell out of here!” Even Diamond wasn't interested in lingering here too long anymore.
In certain parts of the station the air was positively toxic; “Inadequate sewage treatment and untreated industrial waste and fumes,” Diamond told me. And no one came through to clean up too often either. It mingled with the overpowering scents of many unwashed bodies of grim and hardened pilots, smugglers, traffickers and other types who traveled outside of the inner planets for long extended periods. I was now appreciating Diamond's request for the private docking space.
I stretched my senses out to feel for the phantom threat. It was here somewhere, malevolent, but further away. And now that I had time to really think on it, it felt different. Working with this kind of sensory information was new to me but I could tell the difference. It wasn't the same threat as the one I'd experienced on Earth. Here, it felt personal and vicious. It was puzzling.
What I wouldn't give for an eavesdropper now.
Slipping our hoods back on we moved swiftly through the station now, grabbing a rusted hover carrier to shorten our travel time. It started in starts and fits and shuddered for a few minutes before it would run, finally settling into a loud, tinny sounding hum.
I was really nervous and worried now, every face, every glance suspicious to me. As we approached the private dock he scanned his ship and the dock for intruders, bombs or anything suspicious as I covered for him, pistol ready to blaze, watching for any movement in the shadows. Satisfied, Diamond unlocked the hatch and we climbed inside. He immediately went to the cockpit, started up the ship and then started up the flight sequence. I locked the hatch manually to keep anyone from slipping inside right behind us.
“That could have been someone who's out for your blood, or someone out for mine,” he said.
“So what's new? You'd think they'd keep the place up better.” I muttered, watching outside for any signs of attack. There was a short bark of laughter from Diamond.
“It holds up just fine for the syndicate that runs this place. They keep things going just enough to stay out of trouble and they pay well enough to keep prying eyes away. Standards out here, as you might have guessed, don't have to be as high as they do on Earth. Rather tragic, considering how much more dangerous life is out in space. But it is what it is. That's how these cats roll out here.” The doors to our dock were lifting up.
“Diamond! Someone's coming!” Diamond had already begun activating his ghosting shield. It had just barely closed over the ship in a thin stream of blue light before disappearing when three figures had turned their fire power on the Ghost, which then disappeared from view as we lifted out of the dock but not before Diamond turned the Ghost around on the attackers and incinerated them, burning a few holes in the walls behind them.
“Bastards,” he sneered.
“Cooked bastards, whoever they were. So, who do you think paid for the key? How did they even know I was in the market to buy one?” Diamond sighed heavily.
“Before you called I was doing a job for Vartan. There's this special weapon The Boss wants to build. It requires rare materials. I have some smuggling friends who can get me access to what she was looking for. Yeah, yeah, I know I'm not really smuggling anymore but this was for a good cause! Don't judge me. Anyway, we had a run-in with The Collector. The last person I wanted to see.”
“No kidding. What happened?”
“The materials had been ordered and were scheduled to be picked up at one of
the outposts near the belt. He sent his goons to kill the guy I was supposed to meet there and they took the materials and waited for us to arrive to finish us off. I smelled a rat once I got near the pick-up location and called on a friend for some help. Warrick, a guy I used to do jobs with owed me a huge favor. More than one, in fact. It's not like I was keeping score but we did a lot of dangerous work together in the past and always had each others' backs. He came to my rescue and prevented me from becoming another shrunken head in his ghoulish collection. The battle was ugly and Warrick got us out just in the nick of time. We eliminated some of The Collector's goons but he's still out there. So it could have been Warrick.”
“Well, I'm glad you got out of that mess alive! Tell the guy I thank him. What kind of materials did Vartan want you guys to get?”
“Something called a multi-ferroic material or some kind of metal to be used in testing for the new weapon.” This piqued my interest. In the past, the company had played around with ferro-electric properties and magnetism for more mundane uses.
“That sort of thing was usually engineered. They tend to be mutually exclusive properties.”
“Look, I'm no scientist but this was supposed to be different, a step far ahead of materials of that kind that might be engineered. It was told to me that this material she wanted was a natural material that contained both magnetism and uh, whatever the other one was called.”
“Ferro-electricity?”
“Right.”
“Very interesting.” I sat back in thought, watching black space and a few ships coming or going. I wasn't the only one going on dangerous missions and adventures. I wondered what types of weapon Ellen was building. Was it the same one that would be built using alien genetic material? Either way, it was time that all of us disparate agents of U-net met together. If we were going to defeat this coming juggernaut, we needed to be unified.
Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy Page 11