Blair thought a moment, then nodded. "All, right. I'll hear you out." He paused. "This had better not be a game."
The holo faded in a burst of static, leaving Blair in the darkened, slightly musty room. He sat long into the morning, thinking. He eventually stood and walked out onto the porch where he looked out onto his crops a long moment. He turned his back on them and went inside to pack.
Blair stepped down the shuttles ramp, pleased that he had been able to book a last-minute hop on the intercontinental. A gust of brutally hot air seeped around the mating collar that connected the walkway to the atmospheric shuttles side. He walked down the walkway and into an icy blast of air conditioning. He shivered in the sudden heat change, gratified that while Two's starport lacked for virtually every amenity, it did have a landing dock and collar for smaller ships. He was certain that otherwise he would have melted crossing the starport's concrete ramp. He decided that he was going to have to get a cold drink inside him before he suffered heatstroke.
The starport was located on Two's equator, where ships could take advantage of the planets rotational velocity to boost into space. Blairs home was in the much more reasonable southern latitudes, where asphalt didn't slag and run. He made it a point of going to the port as little as possible, to avoid the heat.
He rapidly concluded that the starport hadn't improved much since the last time he had been there. He walked up the grime-covered access ramp from the shuttle and passed a small, dust-caked window that faced the small field. He paused a moment to look out the thick plexiglass.
Small freighters lined one side of the field, their structures wavering in the rising thermals. Three landing circles, their concrete basins lashed and battered by the drive streams of dozens of ships, marked the area where the outbound ships staged for departure. A pair of closed lift-trucks loaded cargo onto a dirty and smoke-streaked short-haul atmospheric transport that squatted near the port's sole runway. The hulks of a half-dozen abandoned spacecraft lay cluttered on the far side of the field.
The shuttle lifted up to ground level behind him, raised by the small elevator that served the passenger area. It rolled slowly towards the departure area. He gave some thought as to how he planned to get back home, once he'd heard Maniac's pitch, then realized he didn't really care. He was here, and that was enough. He turned away from the window, threw his flight bag over his shoulder, and walked towards the concourse.
The inside of Two's starport had been built around a commercial area, with several offices for local freight lines, a broker, a few tired-looking shops, and several restaurants and bars. The whole place was done in lively pastels that both lightened the gloomy surroundings and showed every speck of dirt. The floor was carpeted in some kind of tough, age-spotted commercial fiber that had worn through in spots.
He angled for the canteen, certain it hadn't been moved. Pilots hung out in spacer bars, usually located within spitting distance of the starport's front gate, if not on the premises. Two made it easier by packing most of its facilities in close together, to reduce the amount of air they would have to chill.
The canteen was a dive located along the far wall of a tiny plaza built off the main drag. It appeared to share space with a pawnshop and what he guessed was either a brothel or a hotel, if not both. He slung his bag more tightly over his shoulder, crossed to the canteen, and entered.
He entered the outer alcove and was immediately struck by the din of the noisy crowd within. He glanced up and saw a clock displaying the local time. Eleven-thirty, and the place was already packed. He checked his bag in a rented locker and pocketed the key before he entered the main bar. His rough plan was to do a quick recon and find a good table before Maniac entered. A sign saying no weapons allowed flashed on and off over the door.
He stepped though the inner batwing doors and glanced around. The place had been a pilots' hangout during the war, catering to the long-haul patrols and transit jockeys ferrying fighters out to the frontier. The walls were decorated with two-dee renderings of warcraft throughout the ages, from primitive prop-driven aircraft to state-of-the-art fighters and bombers. Bric-a-brac and pilot memorabilia were scattered about on shelves. Models hung from the low ceiling, scattered between the ceiling fans, dancing lights and holos of yet more machines.
The place had always seemed contrived to Blair. Two had never had enough of a military presence to support a pilots' bar on its own, so it had to depend on transients.
Blair glanced around the main bar, looking for Maniac. The bar was filled to overflowing with the flotsam of a half-dozen races and a hundred planets. Pimps and whores of every possible color and gender plied their trades next to homeless vets begging for a handout or a drink. Several spacers in the shiny boots and creased flight suits of one of the inter-system liners swapped lies and swilled drinks with a pair of Confed pilots in rumpled flight suits. The next table had a woman with a tattooed face and green hair who fed cherries from the bar to a spider monkey perched on her shoulder. Blair watched the animal a moment, uncertain if its bright blue hair was a mutation or a dye job.
Men and women, many in remnants of Confederation uniforms—mostly identifiable as Kilrathi War veterans by their decorations and badges—littered the small round tables that surrounded the central area. Many drank or were drunk, while others played cards or dominoes. They shared the bored, listless expressions that Blair had come to associate with people who had no place to be and nothing much to do. Drug dealers worked the corners of the bar, plying the drunk or stoned with their wares, and occasionally discreetly rolling the comatose. Money changers and card-sharps sized up the rubes and each other.
Terrans stood cheek by jowl with aliens, Border Worlders, and mixed races, all talking at once—jabbering, negotiating, arguing, fighting, and drinking. The noise, the activity, and the odors—sweat, and oil, and vomit— clogged Blair's senses.
He recovered some of his poise and worked his way a little deeper into the closely-packed mass, enough that he could pick up snippets of the conversations around him. Everyone was looking to score, whether it was money, stolen property, sex, power, or off-planet. They all had some need they wanted met, and were willing, often frantic, to trade.
He moved into the center of the room, shifting his ID plate and credit chips into his front pockets. He looked around the room, searching for Maniac.
He shook his head, tiring of the game. Too much had changed since he'd retired to his farm for him to be comfortable with the situation. He made for the bar, seeking a safe haven while he pondered his next move. The bartender, seeing him place his elbows on the cheap, wood-grained plastic bar top, placed a glass in front of him and poured him a stiff drink.
Blair looked up, puzzled. "I didn't ask for this."
The bartender shrugged. "I only serve one kind here. I figured that's what you came in for."
Blair looked at the amber-colored liquid. He took a careful sniff, then wrinkled his nose at the smell of raw alcohol. He lifted the glass and took a sip, his first whiskey since Rachel had left. He coughed slightly as it burned a track down his throat. The stuff may have been rotgut, but it was better than the hooch produced by many ships' stills and far superior to the stuff he'd brought with him.
He cleared his throat. "How much?" he asked, indicating the glass.
"One point two," the bartender replied. "Standard credits only. None of that Border Worlds trash." He looked at Blair examining the glass. "It's cheap at the price."
"It'd be cheap at any price," Blair replied sourly. He handed his credit chip to the bartender. The bartender ran the charge, then looked up at Blair hopefully. "A tip?"
Blair thought a moment. "Don't go outside without a coat."
The bartender returned his credit chip and walked away, a sour expression on his face.
Blair was just turning around to scan the bar again, when someone bumped into him, spilling part of his drink on his hand. He quickly held the glass away from his clothing while he turned his head to curse at
his jostler. The profanity died on his lips. A grizzled veteran, wearing the scraps of what had once been Confederation crew coveralls, looked up at him with rheumy eyes. He reeked of cheap whiskey and other, less savory odors.
The veteran wiped the back of one dirty hand across his mouth and tried to focus on Blair. "Hey, kid," the man said, "can you spare a vet a drink?"
Blair glanced over the old man's coveralls. The man's patches had been removed at some point, leaving dark shapes where they had protected the material beneath from fading. Blair thought he recognized some of the shapes. "Were you a flyer?"
The veteran drew himself up in pride and met Blair's eye. "Yep," he said, "started out as a turret gunner on a Broadsword. Got m'self a field commission as a pilot and flew em'."
"What happened?" Blair asked.
The man sighed, exhaling a stench into Blairs face, "I din't have no college, so I lost m' commission in the 'reduction in forces' when the war ended." He shrugged, his face a mix of pain and humiliation. "I flew off the ole Liberty for nineteen years. I was a plank-owner, been on her since her commissionin'. That shoulda' counted for sometin', ya know?" He glanced away and his shoulders slumped. "Poor girl—the Liberty, I mean. She fought hard an' did her part, ya' know, then got broken up for scrap. It was like she was nothing."
Blair nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, it's hell." The vet gave Blair a hard look. "I was on the Concordia," Blair supplied, "so I know all about losing a ship."
The vet dipped his head in agreement, accepting Blair as a member of the club. "Say, you don't know of any spacers takin' on crew, do ya?"
Blair shook his head. "Sorry. Why don't you go down to the hiring hall?"
The vet shrugged. 'There's nothing there. The Cats got awful good at going after our transport in the tail end of the war, and with the loss of the shipyards on Earth and the scale-down after, there ain't been a whole lot of constructing. What slots there are got captains and majors scrambling for third mate's jobs." He looked morose. "It's bad, especially for a RIF'ed lieutenant like me."
"Yeah," Blair agreed.
"Ya know," the vet continued, "we fought awful hard and awful long to win the war, an' for what? There's still Cats out there, making trouble, an' pirates, an' whatnot. Nothings going like it should. It's like we lost the war, too." He looked down meaningfully at Blair's drink. "You can't get a decent glass of whiskey." He pointed at the amber liquid. "Just bilge waste."
Blair opened his mouth to speak, only to have the vet run over him. "Prices of everything been going up. It's like everthing's fallin' apart."
That's because it is, Blair thought. The war had gone on so long it had achieved a life of its own. He hadn't realized until after he had retired and had to live on the civilian economy just how much of it had become geared to support the war effort. That, coupled with the devastation of the Kilrathi attack on the home worlds, the sheer expense of the war, and the loss of the cream of human generations, had drained off what few resources were available to maintain the economic infrastructure.
The vet was looking at Blair intently. "Look, buddy, if I'm bothering you…
"No," Blair replied, "sorry. I was thinking of… old friends. Comrades, you know?" It was the safest answer that came to mind.
The vet nodded, drawing his sleeve across his mouth again. "I didn't mean to ramble on," he said, "it's just— you spend your whole life workin' for something, working for victory, you know. Then we got it—an' then what? They throw us all out, tell us we gotta find jobs—like there was any to be found. An' they tells that now we gotta contribute, ya know." His face turned bitter. "Like we haven't been."
"Well," Blair replied, shrugging his shoulders, "I don't think anyone ever planned on what would happen if we won. I think we were so focused on just surviving that we never stopped to think about what would happen the day after peace broke out." He ground his teeth. Maybe we should have realized, he thought, we got a little taste of this during the truce before the Kilrathi surprise attack on Earth. But then we had Earth's industry and the Inner Colonies to carry some of the weight… and they were now ashes.
The vet cleared his throat. "Urn," he said, "about that drink… ?"
"Sure," Blair said. He reached into his pocket for some folding money and saw Maniac through the crowd. The major looked as he always did, intense, and never more so than when he was putting the moves on a woman.
Blair thought a moment, then peeled off a five-credit note. It was little enough, but would get the vet a decent meal and a shower, if not a room. He pressed the money into the startled man's hands.
The veteran tried to refuse it. "No," Blair said, "take it. As one survivor to another."
The veteran frowned and reluctantly accepted the largesse. "Thanks, buddy," he said. He looked at Blair a long moment. "Sorry, I din't catch your name."
Blair smiled grimly. "Smith," he said, lying. His own name carried too much fame for him to use it casually. He stepped quickly away from the bar, looking for where Maniac had disappeared through the crowd with the girl. It took only a few steps to see where Maniac had drawn her. He could tell from her expression that she didn't seem overly impressed with his line of approach. He laughed to himself. If I get there in time, he thought as he walked towards the pilot, I may be able to do my civic duty and keep him from crashing and burning.
Blair was just about to tap Marshall on the shoulder when the pilot leaned forward towards the woman. "So, baby, whaddya say? I got us a room."
The woman pursed her lips as though she'd bitten a lemon. Blair whistled in sympathetic pain as she slapped him hard across the face ana stormed away. Blair stood there, a knowing smile on his face, as Maniac turned towards him. Todd Marshall rubbed his cheek ruefully.
"It's amazing how unpatriotic women get as soon as a war stops," Manic said cheerfully. "All I did was offer to let her keep my morale up for me."
"As I recall," Blair replied dryly, "that line didn't work any better during the war."
Maniac gave Blair his trademark smug grin. "You never know till you try." He shrugged and tipped his chin towards the bar. "Who was the bum?"
Blair made a sour face. "Bomber pilot. Got caught in the RIF. No real prospects, so he hangs out here, cadging drinks."
Maniac nodded. "The RIF took out more good folks than the Cats did." He shrugged. "Things're tough, especially for the bastards who put it all on the line and now have nothing."
Blair looked back at the bar, his mood introspective. "You know, Maniac, when I was a kid, space was the place to be. It meant opportunity. The colonies were growing exponentially, the economy was good, and even the war was an exciting thing—fighting aliens for humanity. Now, it's like we've lost something. Space is like everyplace else, just another junkyard."
Maniac stared at him, as startled as if Blair had begun spouting Kilrathi mating poetry. "Colonel," he said, placing enough stress on Blairs rank to be borderline insubordinate, "are you sure you ain't been on that farm too long?"
Blair wasn't in the mood to banter. 'The farm's a peaceful life, Major. Quiet. Serene. Stable. Zen Buddhists next door. You wouldn't like it."
Maniac laughed, harsh and mean. "I've always said you'd go soft. I just didn't expect your head to go first."
A loud crash spared Blair the need to answer. He turned in his seat to see the source of the commotion. He saw a man in a dark flight suit with sandy hair standing, his chair knocked over behind him. He grabbed the veteran Blair had spoken with by the collar. Blair didn't hear the exchange between the two men, but he did see the dark man give the vet a deliberate backhand across the face. The vet tumbled backward, spilling across the table. The younger man stepped up to the groaning vet and kicked him first in the hip with the point of his boot, then again in the gut as he collapsed.
Blair looked quickly around for a bouncer. No one seemed particularly interested in helping the older man. He had stood up and was rushing over to help before he considered the implications of what he was doing. The dark ma
n cocked his foot back and kicked the man in the kidney as Blair approached. Blair grabbed the man by the shoulder and whirled him around.
"Enough," Blair started to say. He froze as the man whipped his flight jacket open. He caught a quick glimpse of the man's name tag as he whipped a short black handle from its pouch on his belt. The man flicked a switch. A red, disembodied point appeared about four inches above the tip of the weapon.
"Laser knife!" someone yelled to Blair's right.
Blair felt his guts tense. He had little experience with blades of any sort, much less any as nasty as this. All he knew was that laser knives were plunging weapons that could also inflict severe surface burns depending on whether the attack was a pierce or a slash. He glanced up, meeting the dark man's cold blue eyes.
His opponent held the knife low, with the point towards Blairs gut. He played the blade back and forth, whirling the tip in precise figure eights. Blair had no doubt the man knew exactly how to use the weapon.
He tried to remember his own hand-to-hand training. The only piece that came to mind was to watch his opponent's waist, the center of gravity. The man chuckled, causing Blair to look up again. The sandy-haired man smiled, a wintery splitting of his lips.
"Bad move, friend," he said, "I don't like being touched." He whipped the laser knife up, stabbing for Blair's midsection. Blair went to block, crossing his wrists, palms down, in front of his stomach. He realized too late that the dark man's slash was merely a feint. He had just begun to dodge back when the man hit him with a roundhouse punch to the temple. Blair staggered back, his vision exploding into a mass of stars. He staggered to the right, trying to dodge a second punch.
His attacker feinted again, this time snap-kicking him in the head. Blair managed to interpose his arm in time to keep the kick from connecting, but the shock numbed his arm. The blow staggered him, knocking him off balance and slamming him face first into a plastic laminated concrete wall. He saw, through crossed eyes, a smear of blood.
The Price of Freedom Page 4