by Ian Whates
"Yeah, course I'm sure," the voice on the other end of the comm said, "or I wouldn't be talking to you. The top two on that sheet you gave me, no question."
The top two? That meant Kyle and Drevers. Excellent. Leyton's spirits rose to the point where he almost smiled. "Keep an eye on them and let me know if they move at all. Now, where are you again?"
With so much time on his hands, Leyton had been able to make a few provisional plans in anticipation of this moment, so now that it had actually arrived he didn't hesitate. After ensuring he knew how to find the place the kid was speaking from, he went in search of the gym's owner.
"Joe, remember that favour you said I could call on? Well..."
After a hasty conversation with Joe, he headed straight across to the bar which Emilio had specified. The place wasn't far and lay in the direction of the spaceport, which came as no surprise. He made it there in a little over fifteen minutes. There had been no further messages from Emilio, which presumably meant that the two targets were still at the same place. Sure enough, the kid was waiting for him outside.
"Hey, you got my money?" the kid had the gall to say as greeting.
Leyton simply stared.
"They're inside, at the bar."
The eyegee brushed past him and entered a hot, dimly lit room. . The place was busy, with a mix of spacers and local workers in evidence, though few tourists if any. Strikingly pretty native girls moved between the tables bearing trays of drinks, their smiles stretching as wide as their g-strings. At the far end of the room stood a long bar, behind which stood shelves bearing an impressive array of variously shaped bottles in a tradition which stretched back down the centuries.
Several of the high stools in front of the bar were occupied. His gaze fell instantly on one pair of spacers in particular.
No question; Emilio had earned his money. These were definitely Kyle and Drevers, the first two to defect to The Noise Within. Satisfied, Leyton slipped back outside to where Emilio waited anxiously.
"Well?"
"You've done well, kid. Here are your Standards as agreed. Now make yourself scarce. Things are likely to get a little rough in here."
Emilio snatched the proffered credit chit, staring at it suspiciously. "What's this? I expected folding; you know, real money."
The eyegee didn't have any time to waste on this nonsense and let his impatience show. "You don't seriously expect me to carry 1,000 Standards around everywhere I go on the off chance you'll call, do you? Take this to any credit wall on the planet. It'll pay out as promised. Now scram!" He leaned towards the lad, who pocketed the chip, backed away a few steps and then turned and ran.
Leyton took out his pocket com as the kid vanished, and spoke into it. "Joe, everything's looking good here. It's game on."
Life aboard The Noise Within had improved dramatically, Kyle reflected; helped no doubt by the fact that at that precise moment they were not actually aboard the ship at all.
If further proof were needed that their conversations were being listened to and even heeded, here it was. Following his and Drevers' campaign to emphasise the importance of some 'shore leave', they had been granted exactly that, and how!
They were let loose not just anywhere but on Frysworld - a place Kyle had always intended to visit one day but never quite accumulated enough Standards to make the trip worthwhile. The AI guiding the ship was obviously catching on to human motivation as well. Before he and Drevers boarded the shuttle, they were shown how many Standards they had accumulated to date. The allowance they were given for the trip was decent enough, but what awaited them when they came back was enough to buy a small ship of their own if they chose to; well, a second-hand shuttle at the very least.
There were only the two of them. Zombie Number One announced they were to be allowed down in shifts, and that, as the longest serving, he and Drevers got to go first, which pissed Hammond and Blaine off no end. Shame.
After so much time cooped up on The Noise Within, two things were foremost in Kyle's mind: booze and girls; not necessarily in that order. Both of these most immediate requirements were well catered for in the place he and Drevers had stumbled upon. He could hardly take his eyes away from one particular beauty behind the counter. Bewitching eyes, a pretty oval of a face and long, straight hair, several shades lighter than most of the local girls, which helped her to stand out, giving her an exotic edge among the already exotic. None of the girls here were ugly, but this one was something else, with her wasp-thin waist, the way she swayed those hips and a cute, full-lipped mouth that just begged to be kissed. There were also two boys serving, and they were nearly as pretty as the girls - for those whose tastes ran in that direction. Kyle's never had.
He looked at his favourite girl again, wondering how old she was and determining to ask her name the next time he bought a round. He might even ask what time she finished work and whether she was available even before she had - Frysworld had that sort of a reputation - though perhaps he'd leave it until a little later in the evening.
God, it was good to be off the ship.
"How would you like to cuddle up to her tonight, then?" Drevers asked from beside him, evidently noticing where Kyle's attention was focused. "Nice arse, hey?"
Kyle smiled, imagining the girl's slender body undressed and in his arms. "To be honest, cuddling her wasn't exactly what I had in mind."
Drevers laughed, a little drunkenly - this wasn't the first bar they had stopped at since landing, though it was certainly the one offering the best scenery. "Well, you know what they say about Frysworld. Any girl can be yours... at a price."
Kyle laughed with him. "I'll drink to that!"
As he lifted his glass from the bar, intent on matching actions to words, his elbow bumped against something beside him, or rather someone: a fellow drinker who, he could have sworn, had not been there a minute ago.
It didn't seem much of a bump, but by this point Kyle had to admit that his judgement probably wasn't to be fully trusted. The contact must have been harder than he realised, because it was enough to send the glass tumbling from the other's grasp, to land on its side on the bar, where its amber contents spread in a growing pool on the frosted plastiglass surface. For a surreal instant, Kyle was more fascinated by the fact that the glass hadn't shattered than he was by any other consequence.
Then the indignant shout of, "Hey!" permeated his awareness; as did the fact that the offended drinker had swivelled round to face him, and this was one large son of a so-and-so. For a second, all Kyle could do was gape, but then a sense of self-preservation kicked in.
"S... sorry," he stammered.
"That was my drink!"
"I know, it was an accident..."
"You heard him, just an accident," Drevers added, leaning across.
Kyle wished he would butt out; knowing Drevers he was only likely to make things worse. The offended man climbed to his feet and seemed to be growing larger, more imposing and more menacing by the second. In fairness, Kyle reckoned he and Drevers could probably have taken him, so long as somebody tied his feet together first and handcuffed his wrists behind his back. Actually, on reflection, maybe they would still have been in for a struggle even then.
"Look, I'll buy you another," he said quickly. "Whatever it was you were drinking - a double."
He signalled to the barman, who had come over to clear the spilt drink and lingered anxiously on seeing the developing situation. The white-shirted youth hurried to comply. The offended stranger glared suspiciously, first at Kyle and then at the busy barman, as if suspecting some trickery or complicity. However, a fresh glass of amber liquid placed on the freshly wiped counter in front of him seemed to go a long way towards mollifying the man.
"Thank you; that's very decent," he said, only a little grudgingly.
On impulse, Kyle thrust a hand towards him. "Name's Kyle, and it really was an accident."
The big man stared at the proffered hand for a second, as if he had never encountered the gestur
e before. Perhaps he hadn't; customs varied so much on different worlds. But eventually he took his hand and squeezed it firmly in one of his own... very firmly.
"Jim."
Kyle resisted the temptation to grimace and wring his crushed fingers, instead managing to smile as he withdrew his hand and moved it out of sight beneath the counter, where he could flex it in private.
"Are you two here as tourists, or crew off a ship?" Jim asked.
Kyle and Drevers exchanged a quick, wary glance. "A bit of both," the latter said.
"We've been saving up, knowing the ship was due here," Kyle improvised quickly, seizing on Drevers' explanation.
Jim grunted and swirled his glass. "Sensible thinking."
"And you? Crew or tourist?"
The big man sat back. "The latter, I suppose. I'm a soldier by trade."
"You mean a mercenary," Drevers interjected, in a slightly disparaging tone, or so it seemed to Kyle, but their new friend didn't seem to notice.
"If you like. Made a great deal of money recently and wanted to go somewhere and let off steam. I'd heard a lot about this place, so..." He shrugged. "Now I'm actually here I wonder whether it was such a good idea. Reckon I might light out and find some mean and dirty honest-to-goodness action somewhere. Everything in this place is... I don't know, so unreal."
Strange; for Kyle that was one of the great charms of being here.
Drevers let loose a guffaw made overloud by his drunkenness. "Of course it's unreal," he said, throwing his shoulders back and gesturing expansively with one arm. "Frysworld is the biggest whorehouse and drugs den in the universe. How could that ever be real?"
"Hey, loud mouth," said a voice from Drevers' far side, "that's my home you're talking about. Some of us wouldn't want to be anywhere else. So perhaps you'd like to shut your mouth, after you've apologised of course."
A stocky but muscular man stood there, his eyes glaring fixedly at Drevers, who seemed completely unfazed.
Kyle looked on in horror and his shipmate smiled and then said, "No, actually I don't think I would. And you have my sympathies if you have to live on this gaudy pantomime of a world built on top of a steaming shit heap."
There followed a frozen instant, enough for Kyle to want to claw those words back, to persuade Drevers to somehow unsay them, before the newcomer simply lashed out - a punch which flew straight and hard, landing a blow squarely on Drevers' jaw and sending him sprawling from his seat and into Kyle, who instinctively caught his stricken crewmate.
The whole room went deathly still for a split second, as if many there needed that instant to draw breath in preparation for what was to come, because immediately afterwards the place erupted.
Kyle lost track of the precise sequence of events for the next few minutes, as one thing piled upon another with no respite. He was aware of Drevers struggling to his feet and letting out a yell of rage before flinging himself at the man who had punched him, of their new friend Jim surging from his seat and grappling with somebody - an anonymous figure at least as large as he was. Further removed there was shouting and a woman's scream, while all around seemed to be one writhing, wrestling mass of arms and bodies. In the corner of his eye he caught sight of a raised chair and then he ducked as a glass sailed past, spinning as it flew. He had already lost track of Drevers by this point.
The whole thing had a slightly surreal quality, since the fighting seemed to be taking place all around without actually involving him. It was as if he were in a protected bubble, somehow separate from the violence while able to observe it, though he knew that couldn't last. He started to get up, not entirely sure what he intended to do once actually on his feet, but that became irrelevant as he was instantly felled by a swinging blow which was probably not even intended for him. If it had been then it was poorly aimed - a broad forearm slamming into him rather than a fist, which still proved enough to sweep him from his feet. His head connected with the bar as he went down, an impact more painful than the blow itself, and he took the barstool he'd been sitting on with him, the legs bruising his ribs as he fell on top of it, only to half bounce and half slide off and come to a stop with his back against the bar.
Somebody trod on his foot - not deliberately, just in the general mêlée. He quickly pulled the leg in beneath him and scrambled to get back to his feet, levering himself up against the toppled stool and clawing at the bar top.
This was just what he needed. He hadn't been involved in a fist fight since his youth and didn't recall actually winning any even then.
No sooner was he upright than Kyle found himself confronted by a man intent on knocking him back down again - a face he didn't recognise, but it was a target. He invested his punch with every ounce of the anger and indignation that the current situation had generated, and was rewarded with the satisfying sting of a solid connection. The face vanished and he was able to draw breath again.
Not for long. Another figure loomed above him and he got ready to throw another punch. Then he realised it was the mercenary soldier, Jim.
"Hey, steady on!" The man was grinning, as if he was actually enjoying himself. "I'm on your side."
"Have you seen Drevers, my friend, the one I was drinking with?"
Somebody charged them. Jim shot out a piston-like arm, not even pausing as the blow felled the attacker and he drew his fist back. "Over there."
Kyle looked in the indicated direction and saw his shipmate wrestling with a slightly larger man and getting the worst of it.
Before Kyle could think to react, Jim was across to them, dragging the large man off Drevers and flinging him into another knot of fighters. He came back, bringing an unsteady looking Drevers with him. Blood seeped from an angry cut above the smaller man's eye and his lip was split and had already begun to swell.
"Let's get out of here," Jim said, which was the best suggestion Kyle had heard since the fight began.
The three of them made their way towards the nearest of the bar's two doors, with Jim leading the way and acting as a shield for the pair of them, trying to pick a path between the clumps of still-fighting forms but perfectly willing to force a passage through when necessary. Kyle kept as close to this new friend as he could, while having to half support his groggy crewmate.
This was not how he had envisaged their first day on Frysworld panning out, not by a long shot.
They made it to the door and out into the street beyond without any major upsets. The noise of the brawl dampened abruptly as the door swung shut behind them. Music was blaring from a nearby club, mesmeric Latin rhythms featuring flailing percussive runs underpinned by thumping bass. A knot of local youths clustered outside the place, smoking and drinking from bottles of the local beer. They eyed the three of them with obvious amusement.
Kyle couldn't even be bothered to glare back in response, as he stopped to draw a deep lungful of the warm night air and gingerly massage his aching temple. The lump that was developing there already felt the size of a small egg to his questing fingers, while his foot throbbed with pain now that he took time to notice it. As for Drevers, his left eye was swelling impressively, looking as though it might close over. Jim seemed entirely unhurt and was the only one of the three with the energy to be jovial.
"Good fight; just what I needed. Where are you lads staying?"
An excellent question. "We only arrived here today, haven't sorted anywhere out as yet," Kyle explained.
"I'm at the Harcourt. Not a bad hotel, we'll see if they've got any vacant rooms there." He went as if to head off, but then paused. "It's not the cheapest, mind."
Kyle shook his head dismissively. "Not a problem; we can afford it."
"I need a drink," Drevers interjected. Thankfully, he seemed to have recovered a little now that they were in the marginally cooler open air and was at least able to stand unaided.
Jim snorted. "Let's get the two of you cleaned up a bit first, and then we'll see about another drink. Come on," and he led them away.
They had gone no mo
re than twenty paces down the street when a voice called out from behind them. "Hey, you three, come back here; we haven't finished with you yet!"
Kyle looked over his shoulder to see the stocky figure of a man standing outside the bar. He recognised him as the local whose punch on Drevers had triggered the brawl in the first place. Nor was he alone, but rather stood flanked by four or five hulking cronies. None of whom looked especially happy.
"Shit!" Jim exclaimed. "You two really know how to pick your enemies, don't you?"
"You know this bastard?" Drevers asked.
"Sadly, yes. Everyone here knows Joey 'The King' Marlowe. He's something of a local celebrity - the meanest, nastiest and most powerful crime lord on all of Frysworld. If he's really as pissed with you as he seems to be, there's nowhere on this planet you can hide where he won't find you."
"Oh great," Kyle muttered. "Is there any good news?"
"Some. He can't run very fast."
The stranger clearly didn't know Emilio at all, otherwise he would have realised that telling him to 'make yourself scarce' was a sure-fire way of guaranteeing that he would do exactly the opposite. Not that Emilio failed to take the warning seriously, far from it, and he certainly wasn't stupid, but he had no intention of missing out on whatever was about to go down
He slipped back into the bar, hugging the wall and watching the two forastcerdos, whose presence had just opened his way to another world, while always keeping half an eye on the stranger.
At the same time, he was scanning the room in search of a better vantage point; this current position was too exposed. If a fight broke out it would more than likely swell to encompass the whole room and he'd be swept up in things. Then he saw the stairs. They were off to his left and had a chain draped across the first step at waist height, as if to indicate they were out of bounds. Perfect; and surely no one would object to his sitting there, always assuming they noticed him at all. He sidled across towards the stairway, still hugging the walls.
There was only one awkward moment, when a hand snaked out to grab his wrist. Fortunately he was able to free himself without too much of a fuss by insisting that he really was not working. Thankfully, neither the stranger nor the forastcerdos appeared to notice the incident. It was unlike him to pass up the opportunity of a few extra Standards, but for once in his life he was loaded and whatever was about to kick off here promised to be more fun than a quick screw could ever be.