Killer Be Killed

by Travis E. Hughes

  “So what’s your story?” she asked not wanting to endure the silence any longer. “What brought you to Danaus?”

  “Jules and I were among the first ones here, after they found the color,” he said. “We cleared the valley. Set up lots. Jules is a visionary. He knows we don’t need to prospect for gold to get rich, we just need to provide services for those who do.”

  “Smart,” she said, nodding.

  “Jules is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known. He has a keen eye for business,” Drago said.

  “Where’d you hook up with him?” she asked.

  “On Athena,” he explained. “He owned a gambling hall in Shanglo. But those damn Amazons proved to be bad for business. Ever hear of Lahky Reems? She’s the Queen of the Grey Eyes, but also she united all the tribes during the war. Who the fuck gave them our technology? Is my question?”

  “I know, right?” said Roslyn, shaking her head. “You ran into them?”

  “They hit us a couple of times. I killed a couple of them, which if you know Amazons, that really pisses them off. There’re only about ten thousand of them as it stands.”

  The Amazon Queen, “Lucky” Lahky Reems was a constant thorn in the IPKDA’s side. She was the one who ultimately ran them off of Athena. Lucky Lahky was one of the most allusive and dangerous creatures anywhere on Orion’s Arm.

  “When did you leave Earth?” asked Roslyn to avoid mentioning her knowledge of Lucky Lahky any further.

  “After the war,” he said. “Once I heard that the planets were free and open, I knew I had to come and see them. Taxes are for asses, you know.”

  The rest of the conversation turned into a blur of memory. She did recall him taking her glass and putting it on the end table. That’s when he kissed her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The walk home was a haze. What had she done? Why him? She continued to shame herself with every step toward her hotel. She was pretty pissed at herself by the time she climbed the stairs to their hotel room.

  She fumbled with unlocking the door. In the room, she heard shuffling and low mumbles. As she opened it, Talbert was in the process of going from sitting to lying on his blankets on the floor.

  Roslyn stood dumbfounded and suspicious. Was she not the only one doing naughty things in the wee hours of the night?

  As she approached the bed, she noted that the covers were turned down and crumpled on her side. Those two little perverts! And now I’m expected to sleep in their mess?

  Sneaking around behind her back opened the door to direct mutiny. She was still in charge here. This was where it started. If she let it go, then they’d take it one more step next time. She definitely needed to address it, on some level. This couldn’t be allowed to turn into a two against one situation, that was for damn sure.

  In the morning, she would compose a clear message to address certain policies. For now, all she wanted to do was pass out. She did so on top of the covers.

  Puff crawling across her back woke her up sometime near midday. Her head throbbed, especially behind her hot, dry eyes. Her cheeks stuck to her teeth. She’d out slept the other two. She rolled over and threw her arm across her forehead. Puff rapped on the window.

  Resembling an old woman, she slowly crawled out of bed. She shuffled across the Da’akwood floor and opened the window. There weren’t any people below, so she didn’t yell her warning. This relieved her greatly. Puff urinated out the window, splashing onto the muddy boardwalk below.

  His wing looked slightly scarred but other than that it had healed. He could probably fly again. She wondered if he would just one day up and fly away. The thought broke her heart.

  As not to dwell on it, her next thought brought her back to Hattie and Talbert. The two love birds. She had avowed to address the issue today. The prospect washed over her. Dammit! How frigging awkward is this going to be?

  She had been so tough last night, when she was drunk. Sober, or even worse, hungover, and all motivation seemed to have waned to nothing.

  Needless to say, she decided to wait to see if things worsened, at least for the moment. Everybody has to have a life, too, you know. But I found him first, all those year ago. But he’s not the same boy he was. He’s rotten now. I don’t want that in my life, anyway. Let Hattie clean him up if she thinks she can. He’s not my problem.

  Confused as to why it bothered her so much if the two of them were a couple, she tried to think about the case. The stipulations put forth by the Avians put tremendous pressure on their business. The method of reasonable doubt and proving guilt made things far too tedious. She crunched the numbers again and tried to calculate how long they had left. For the first time, she understood why Devil Bill just shot them and brought them in for what they were worth. It was a matter of quantity versus quality, type of situation. Going through the trouble of bringing them in for justice was not cost effective.

  But living on Shiva was living in paradise. Even though Chindown was a human shit-show, the rest of the planet was heaven personified. There lingered a prevailing sense of tranquility that originated from beyond the steel walls. It drifted over them with the rain clouds. Only instead of water, it rained harmony and peace. Roslyn tried to come to terms with emotions being external entities. It didn’t quite make sense to her.

  Walls lead to doors?

  Roslyn found Hattie and Talbert eating breakfast at the newest restaurant at the end of the main thoroughfare. Hattie laughed at something Talbert said, under his breath, and then she put her hand on his forearm. Roslyn tried to hide her annoyance. Despite, it, her annoyance did spur her courage to have that talk with them.

  “Mind if I join you, or is this a private thing now?” she asked after she’d filled her plate from the buffet. Breakfast food would sit well on her hangover.

  “Of course,” Hattie said, pretending to be confused. “Why couldn’t you?”

  Roslyn sat down across from Talbert without answering. Hattie waited for the answer, but when it didn’t come, she shrugged and shook her head.

  “So…” Talbert said, chewing on a biscuit. “You were out late. Get lucky?”

  “Well, now, don’t we all have our little secrets,” Roslyn said, digging into her scrambled eggs, that she, for some reason, assumed were chicken eggs until she tasted them. “What the hells kind of eggs are these?”

  “Whatever kind of local bird they have around here,” Hattie said with a shrug.

  “They don’t have birds here, they have flying repti—“ Roslyn pushed her plate away, realizing she was eating dragon eggs.

  “Did you hook up with someone last night? You little slut,” Hattie asked.

  “You’re calling me the slut? Seriously?” Roslyn’s voice nearly cracked. “You’re one to ask.”

  “Easy, ladies,” Talbert said, trying not to smile.

  “What are you talking about? Me?” Hattie said, acting offended.

  “You think this is funny?” Roslyn snapped at Talbert for his shit eater mug. In defense he held up his hands, but the grin spread. “Looks like it’s about time we had the professionalism talk.”

  Roslyn pushed back her chair and crossed a long leg. But before she could begin, Dogg Holly hurried into the restaurant. He wasn’t his usual cool and collected self. Talbert nodded and waved him over.

  “Have you seen Grace?” asked Dogg. “She wasn’t in our room this morning. Looks like the bed’s still made.”

  Roslyn felt sick for him. Had she not made it home last night? She should have walked her. But she was on a streak. In marched the mole. Had that streak been a distraction? Was that just paranoia? Or did Graceless run into someone, drunk and stupid enough to hook up? Could it be a coincidence that Talbert and Hattie hooked up, then she and Scruffy and then Grace and some faceless dick out there?

  Roslyn immediately thought there must have been some alien, aphrodisiac mist floating in the air last night. If there had been, she would feel more victim than perpetrator. And who knew at that point the full realm of sec
rets these planets still held onto, science had long given way to pure greed as these planets were being discovered.

  “When did you get back to town, Dogg?” Talbert asked.

  “Just before dawn. I went first to wake up Wyatt and report back on Juice,” Dogg explained, followed by a slight cough and throat clearing.

  “Did you find him?” asked Roslyn.

  “Of course,” Dogg snapped, annoyed and rolled a cigarette. He was one of the few people Roslyn knew who smoked. She wondered why that particular habit seemed to paint Dogg in an even more dangerous light. It was rumored he was dying of radiation poisoning and that walking around with a preordained death sentence meant he was not afraid to die. They said he’d prefer to die in a fight. Smoking only confirmed he gave no shits in terms of health and longevity.

  “But then I returned to our room and found it empty as a tomb,” he said in his thick Annabellian accent, smoke drifted out of his nostrils appearing like two white tusks.

  “I was out pretty late last night, over at the Golden Jewel,” confessed Roslyn. “She was with us, until she cashed out and went back to your hotel room.”

  “She’s left no correspondence what-so-ever as to where she was off to. I do hope she wasn’t fucked with,” he said scanning the room for her face. “There’d be no end to my rage.”

  “She seems like the kind of lady that can take care of herself, though,” Roslyn said, getting her girl’s back, but maybe watching her own ass.

  “Oh, I agree,” Dogg said, releasing a deep breath. This caused him to cough. He presented his kerchief and covered his mouth as he hacked a wet lung.

  “Dogg, you look like you need to get some sleep,” Roslyn said.

  “Not until I can unravel this mystery, darling. I worry about my Grace. She’s not fully human, you understand,” Dogg said taking one last, long puff and putting the roach out on his boot heel.

  “Is it rude to ask what she is?” Roslyn pushed.

  “I’m afraid it is, yes. If you’ll excuse me?” Dogg tipped his hat to the ladies and hurried out of the restaurant.

  “Sorry,” Roslyn said. “But, do we not see an opportunity here, guys?” Roslyn asked, looking wide eyed at her teammates.

  “Time to find Graceless,” Talbert said and stood. He fetched his hat from the chair’s corner and straightened his gun belt.

  Hattie stood, ready to do what ever Devil Bill told her to do. That kid loved authority. It’s why they’d gotten along so well.

  They split up outside; each starting with a club on the far ends of the town. They were to work their ways into the town’s center. Which happened to be the Golden Jewel.

  Roslyn started with the tent club that was days away from turning into a proper building. The owner was well aware of who Graceless was and that she had not been through there the previous few nights.

  The next one on the journey repeated the same tale as the previous and so on, all the way into town. Roslyn started to suspect something stunk here. With each passing tavern, more chills. A sickness brewed in her. She tried to calculate the amount of time it had been since they’d last seen her.

  The name Jules Divine kept whispering to her from the back of her brain. Grace shouldn’t have said that part about Dogg liking it there too much to leave. They had her. It was some form of leverage he could use against the otherwise unstoppable force.

  Why did the idea of Jules Divine kidnapping Grace prove a better prospect for her to handle? It gave her hope. Plain and simple. That and it meant it was orchestrated and she too was part victim. That actually angered her once she’d thought it through.

  Confronting Mr. Divine would mean encountering Mr. Drago. Fuck his bullshit, right now, this is serious shit!

  But why now? Why strike at that exact moment? He saw an opening and he took it? Was it ever that simple? Well, if he’d sent his muscle to do it, it wasn’t done last night. That much she could confirm.

  At that exact thought, she found herself standing across the street from the Golden Jewel Casino. Could her day shine any brighter? How awkward will this be? As awkward goes?

  *

  Talbert

  When he reached the town’s center, Talbert retraced the steps between the Golden Jewel and the hotel Dogg and Grace were staying in. He searched alleys and dumpsters. He picked up a scarf covered in mud. Did it belong to Grace? He couldn’t recall. She had worn a scarf before but was this it and what did finding it in the muck have to tell him. Pocketing the scarf, he searched the ground for tracks, but there were too many to discern any patterns. Examining the hotel lobby, Talbert grew increasingly frustrated. He decided to return to the Golden Jewel and go from there.

  As he left the hotel, he felt something that made the back of his head itch. He turned and glanced up at the second floor of the hotel. A figure stood in the window. It appeared to be looking down, watching him, but then it moved back and vanished.

  Talbert wondered if it was possible to get through life without ever feeling like you’re being manipulated and that you don’t really have total free will. It was a troubling thought and he shook it off, to focus on searching for clues.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Drago sat at a back table dealing poker when she entered. He immediately looked up as she crossed the room. She was the first of her party to arrive. She wondered if the others had had any luck. Something made her doubt it. They had Grace someplace. It had been a desperate move.

  Drago finished a hand and then waved over another dealer to replace him. Shit.

  Roslyn looked the other way and approached the bar. Jules Divine sat reading his news article via fuzzy hologram. Glancing up, a slight grin expanded his bottom lip.

  “Suppose I should buy you a drink, my dear,” Jules said approaching her. “Hear you’re practically part of the family now.”

  “Excuse me?” Roslyn’s back stiffened. Did that son-of-a-bitch, dragon killer brag to all his buddies about last night?

  “I saw you two leave together last night,” Jules said as if answering her mind. “Don’t worry, Drago’s a perfect gentleman when it comes to the ladies. I can assure you, your more intimate secrets are safe with him.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she said, shooting daggers at him.

  “Relax, Mrs. Epps, I am only trying to be funny,” said Jules in his deep baritone. “I apologize. My sense of humor can get a little crude sometimes. Forgive me. Hit a nerve there, I see.”

  Drago approached her and she could feel him standing behind her. She turned on him.

  “Hey,” Drago said, with a warm smile.

  “Hey yourself,” Roslyn said scowling.

  “What’s up? What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I may have gotten you in a little trouble there, Drago,” said Jules, walking away. “Another poor attempt at humor.”

  “I didn’t tell anybody,” Drago said. “They all razzed me about it this morning. Because we left together last night is all.”

  “Whatever,” she said, trying to cool off and remain professional. “What do you know about Grace Seems?”

  “Who?” Drago asked, confused by the sudden shift of gears.

  “The woman who accompanies Dogg Holly. He’s looking for her. She wasn’t in their room,” she explained. “Played poker with us last night?”

  “Well, it was a double full moon last night,” Drago said, winking at her.

  “Is that a thing here?” she asked, confirming her suspicions that it was more than booze and good luck that had spurred her more nefarious nature last night. She’d neglected to look up into the sky. Wasn’t it overcast?

  “All I’m saying is that woman parties harder than anyone around,” he said, leaning against the bar. “She could have gotten horny like everybody else last night and hooked up with the first nice guy she came across. Or maybe not so nice of a guy. Who knows?”

  “But if she was abducted for some reason,” Roslyn said. “Wouldn’t you or your boss be able to find out who did it? Not much goes on in
this town without Jules having a say. I’m not blind. I know how it goes around here.”

  Drago sniffed a long inhalation and nodded his head. He looked around at the early crowd. It was slow in the afternoon. Things didn’t tend to pick up until after the dinner hour.

  “What would it be worth for him?” asked Drago, rubbing the corner of his lip with his thumb.

  “What?” asked Roslyn.

  “It’s got to be worth our while, if you want us finding out who she shacked up with last night,” Drago said. She wanted to slap him. Did last night mean nothing to him?

  “I’m trying to find out if she was abducted,” Roslyn said, tending her patience.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said, touching her arm softly.

  “Thank you,” she said, pulling away.

  Talbert entered the club and Drago straightened.

  Drago took an unconscious step away from her.

  “I take you got as lucky as me?” Talbert asked. He motioned for Charlie the android bartender to pour him a shot of bug juice.

  “Excuse me?” asked Roslyn.

  “Finding information on Grace?” Talbert clarified. “What’d you think I meant?”

  “Nothing,” she said and glanced at Drago.

  Talbert took the shot and then turned to face Drago.

  “You have something to say?” Talbert asked him curtly.

  “No,” Drago said.

  “Then why are you eyeballing me?” Talbert asked.

  “I’m not. You just walked up here,” Drago explained. “You don’t want to start in on me, bud. Especially not in here.”

  “Is that so?” Talbert said, rubbing the top of his pearl handled pistol with his finger. His frustration had created an itch. It was time to scratch it.

  Talbert’s guns momentarily distracted Roslyn. She had to get herself a pair of those. Dogg’s were nickel-plated, that was cool too.