Ahead Full

by Michael Anderle

Christina pointed at R’yhek while turning to her right to talk to her Mom. “He was going on and on about ‘it was his time’ and shit.”

  “Well, it is his time.” Nathan smiled when Christina turned toward him, shock on her face. “Time for him to open his first bar in decades.”

  “What?” Christina looked over at him again. “You had me worried, you bistok ass!”

  Kraaz turned his head toward Shi-tan and leaned over to whisper, “Do bistoks have asses?”

  “She’s using a human term again,” Shi-tan told him. “It’s for the bistok cehruck.”

  Kraaz leaned back in his chair. “Learn something new every week around here.”

  Shi-tan shook his head. “Kraaz, you are horrible with English. She uses it all the time.”

  Kraaz looked at Shi-tan. “I know, like ‘motherfucker’.”

  Shi-tan sighed. “She can’t finish a paragraph without using it as an adjective or a verb,” Shi-tan told him. “Even you can remember an English word you hear a couple hundred times a day.”

  “What about the sass?”

  “Kraaz, she barely says that ten times a day.”

  “Ten?” Kraaz looked at him in surprise.

  “And it is ‘ass’,” Shi-tan replied, ignoring his question.

  Christina just shook her head at their banter.

  R’yhek smiled at Christina. “It is time for me to ply my old trade again.”

  “Do you need me to pop your back, old Yollin?” she asked him, an eyebrow raised.

  The Yollin’s mandibles clicked in humor as he put up a hand. “I can do without that, youngling.”

  “What kind of bar?” Bastek asked, her eyes narrowing in thought.

  “I thought I might open one of the All Guns Blazing franchises,” R’yhek told her. “I know the owners.”

  Bastek continued to stare at him, but didn’t say anything more.

  Planet Leath, Prime Intelligence One’s Residence

  Jerrleck looked at the time, and then back down at his tablet. He only had one night to kill himself successfully so he could make his way off-planet with his life intact.

  Then he needed to make it across multiple gates to find the dreaded empress of his enemies and convince her to help him save his people.

  From themselves.

  He frowned, his large brow coming together as he studied his notes from before, tapping his lower tusks in thought. He put the old tablet back in its drawer and locked the safe, hoping that what he was about to do wouldn’t destroy the information inside it.

  But if it was destroyed? Well, then it was just one more casualty in a multi-generational war in which an advanced group had used his people for their own games. Now another race of people was fighting those who had convinced the Leath they were gods, not just another alien species.

  And his people were suffering for the belief they had bought into.

  He went upstairs and entered his laundry room. Unlike others in his society, he had no help in his house. There was no way he could confirm the trustworthiness of servants, so he did his own laundry, cleaning, and other household tasks. He often used these interludes of menial labor for contemplation. Across the room from the machines that cleaned his clothing was a large set of shelves with cans of cleaning agents on them. He stretched his arms out to each wall of the small laundry room and found the little indentations. He pushed and the latch unlocked, allowing him to rotate the shelf, which was attached to a panel. Half went into a fake wall area, the other half coming out into the laundry room. He stepped into the hidden room, closed the panel again, and pulled the string which turned on a lamp.

  He looked around at the weapons, explosives, money, and multiple identification documents on display in here. Even better, he owned businesses on other worlds in the names on these identification cards. Four he had created on his own. Three he had set up in conjunction with his group. He learned how to do it during those three operations.

  Now he had seven in total.

  He went to the left wall, selected a case and a larger bag, and started grabbing equipment, clothes, IDs, and guns.

  When he picked up the rocket tube, he turned it on end and made sure the safety was set. He sure as hell didn’t want this accidentally firing when he wasn’t ready. This little tube would make all his worries immediately vanish, along with his life.

  He grabbed a longer case that looked like it might house a musical instrument and packed the tube.

  It was time to go.

  He sighed and opened the rotating shelf again, stepping back into his laundry room. He left the laundry room and went into the living room, where he left his work on the table. His bedroom was an easy fifteen steps from the living room table, and that would be far enough.

  After checking the time, he used an untraceable phone and made two calls, both to captains of ships who never asked questions and never remembered anything. His type of operatives.

  He called a local restaurant that offered his favorite meal, telling them to deliver it in an hour and to leave it at the door if he didn’t come out right away. He would pay them next week. They told him they couldn’t do that anymore because of new management, so he paid them with his credit chit.

  He looked around, allowing himself a moment to appreciate his life to this point and all this home had meant to him. After slinging the long case over his shoulder, he grabbed his pack and headed out the back door, leaving the lights off.

  Once through his hedge, he slipped into an alley that ran behind the houses. At the first house on the right, he opened a gate that allowed him to get into its yard.

  They had no pets, which suited him perfectly.

  The couple who owned the house was old, and actually he was surprised neither of them had passed away yet. He went up the fire escape ladder and stepped gently onto their roof. They went to bed early, and frankly neither would hear the explosion, much less his soft steps on their roof.

  He tried to be quiet, though, because he didn’t want to have to kill them. They were going to have enough trouble once someone traced the rocket that was about to annihilate his atoms back to their house.

  Jerrleck smiled. He really was being an ass, getting Bruterq and G’leera involved in this, but unfortunately he truly didn’t have a better solution.

  It took him just three minutes to set up the tripod, aim the rocket tube, and slip the goggles onto his head. Through the goggles’ sight he could see the little orange aiming dot on the wall to the right of his bedroom window.

  It hadn’t been a bad guess. He moved the tail of the rocket very slightly to the right, and was satisfied when the dot hit the middle of his window. He slid the goggles off again and stowed them in the almost-empty case. After closing it, he pocketed the device he had removed and stepped back to the ladder. Keeping low, swung his leg out to catch the rung and climbed down.

  Two minutes later and two blocks away, Jerrleck reached into his pocket and found the device, flipping it open and pushing the button inside. He was rewarded with a satisfying muffled whump and explosion, so he walked one more block and caught a transport heading toward the manufacturing district. It just so happened that area was a major location for loading products going to other systems.

  Like a system that was only two jumps from the Etheric Empire.

  —

  Three streets behind the transport stop G’leera woke up, turned toward her snoring husband, and hit him on the arm.

  “What?” he grumped, halfway awake now. “Why did you hit me, you old brollick?”

  “I’ll give you ‘brollick!’” she harrumphed. “I told you to stop gassing me at night in bed.” She fixed her pillow and laid her head back down, then reached over and punched him again. “And don’t tell me it wasn’t you. I know your explosions when I hear them.”

  He turned toward her. “It was probably you!” he said aloud, then lifted his leg to cut one loose. “THAT’S what mine sound like!” he finished, and put his head back down. “Teach you to wake me
up.”

  A moment later G’leera was coughing horribly, trying to get the stench out of her nose as her eyes watered.

  CHAPTER NINE

  QBS Shinigami, En Route to Devon

  “Well…” Stephen slipped a pistol behind his back, allowing his coat to hide the slight bulge. He slipped three knives into various sheaths arrayed around his body.

  The whole time he was suiting up, Bethany Anne, in her guise as Baba Yaga, watched him.

  “I feel your eyes burning into my back.”

  “That’s because you take longer to get ready than a girl,” Bethany Anne said from behind him.

  “I’ll have you know…” His eyes lit up when he saw the new box in the trunk at his feet. “Ooohh!” He glanced back at Bethany Anne, then started taking off his jacket again. “Why didn’t you tell me you brought shoulder holsters?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bethany Anne huffed, her ink-black face highlighting her rolling red eyes. She turned around and sat down. “I’m going to grow old before your ass is ready to leave the ship.”

  “You’re already old,” Stephen pointed out. “What’s in this locked box?” he asked, reaching into the bottom of the large footlocker. “Heavy,” he muttered as he pulled it out and set it on the small shelf next to where he was suiting up. He pressed his finger on the lock.

  It didn’t unlock.

  He turned and raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Bethany Anne asked. “Baba Yaga is impatient in her old age.”

  “Baba Yaga better move her geriatric ass and unlock this,” Stephen quipped, then chuckled at the shock on Bethany Anne’s face.

  “Geriatric?” she sputtered. “Stephen… I …” She stood. “Move your older-than-dirt-ass out of the way.” She elbowed him aside. “Geriatric, my ass.”

  “That’s what I said!” he replied.

  “Watch it, dinosaur.” She pressed the security sensor and it unlocked to her print. “I shouldn’t have unlocked this. You might not know how to use them.”

  “Come to me, my little pretties,” Stephen said, right before he opened the box. A moment later his mouth was open, shock evident on his face.

  Bethany Anne’s hideous smile widened, all her sharpened teeth gleaming. “Lost for words, old man?”

  “Actually.” Stephen reached in and pulled out the Jean Dukes specials. Unlike his normal pistols, these looked like American Civil War-era cap-and-ball Remington model 1858’s. “Yes.”

  “Good.” She patted him on the back. “If you look in the dark wooden box you just uncovered, you will find the holsters for those.” She bent over to reach into the footlocker, her voice just a bit muffled as it reverberated around the inside of the trunk. “Never mind, I’ll get this. Wouldn’t want your back to lock up.”

  She pulled the wooden box out and set it beside the secured box. “Now that I’ve opened it, you can lock and unlock the box.” Stephen was distracted from admiring the well-crafted pistols for a moment and raised an eyebrow. Bethany Anne shrugged. “I didn’t want to miss out on the surprise, so I had to open it the first time,” she admitted.

  He looked at his pistols again, turning them from side to side to watch the light reflect off them. Jean had done them up with rosewood grips, intricate scroll work on the frame, and gold-plated trigger guards. “They are beautiful,” he whispered.

  “It’s, uh…” She pointed to the guns. “The pair are a present from all of us. Me, the Bitches, the Rangers, and of course Jean.”

  “What’s this?” he asked, taking out a small white plastic box and flipping the lid open.

  “That’s the upgrade to your iHUDs.” She stopped to think about that a moment. “You know,” she pointed to her face, “’eyes.’ Not like the ‘i' everything from Apple back on Earth.”

  “I slept through most of that,” he reminded her. “I was old.”

  “No, you were depressed.”

  “And old.”

  She pointed a finger at him. “You still are, you old goat!” She wagged the finger back and forth. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten the ‘geriatric ass’ comment.”

  “I’ll just give that time,” he replied, smiling.

  “Give what time?”

  “Another five minutes.” He chuckled. “That should be long enough for senility to set in.”

  Bethany Anne just stared at him, dumbfounded, her mouth opening and closing like a fish trying to breathe air. Finally she sputtered, “Jennifer lets you get away with this shit?”

  He paused in his task of stashing the replica cylinders on his belt and took a moment to reflect on how the guns functioned: hammer to half-cock, loading lever moves out of the way of the cylinder pin, slide that forward to drop the empty cylinder. Set a preloaded cylinder in place and pin it, and you were ready to go. It had been an amazing innovation when the pistols were first introduced. But the replicas on his belt weren’t filled with powder and ball—they just looked that way. They were magazines, each holding one hundred rounds. “Who do you think has been telling me to loosen up?”

  She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “That woman needs a stern talking-to,” Bethany Anne grumped, “before she has to undo what she has created.”

  “Interestingly enough,” he replied, “she already figured that out.” Stephen started pulling his jacket back on, his new pistols now in place. “That’s why she didn’t mind me coming on this trip so much. She hoped you would break me of the problem so she wouldn’t have to.”

  Bethany Anne smirked, a twinkle in her eye. “Oh, no…” She shook her head. “No fucking way. I think pain is the best way to learn, so I’m not going to fix anything for her.” Bethany Anne waved a finger from his head to his feet and back again. “She created this mess, so she gets to fix it.” She turned around. “C’mon, you! Get your cane so we can go see who is bugging Ch’ehtoe.”

  He considered her as she walked away, then leaned over and looked into the footlocker. “Sonofabitch!” He bent down. “A cane.” There was a sheek as metal slid against metal. His muffled voice floated down the passageway. “With a sword in it!”

  “Happy Birthday!” Bethany Anne called as she set the airlock to cycle once the ship’s EI confirmed there were no problems on the other side. She grabbed a black robe, slid it on over her black armor and weapons, and lifted the large hood over her head. She tied the small ribbons that would keep the robe closed, leaving only her booted feet showing, and pulled on some black fingerless gloves as Stephen walked up.

  “Very Jedi.”

  “Dark Jedi,” she replied, allowing her eyes to become two pinpricks of red light in the darkness of the hood.

  “Sith Jedi, then,” Stephen agreed, and her eyes stopped glowing. “Nice touch.”

  “When was the last time you watched any of those movies?” she asked him, rolling her shoulders to get the robe to fall right.

  “About a decade ago,” Stephen admitted. “Tabitha and the Tontos had a Star Wars weekend.” The final locks disengaged and Stephen stepped in ahead of Bethany Anne, using his senses to confirm it was safe before allowing Bethany Anne out of the ship.

  “Move your Ewok ass,” she whispered. “Baba Yaga doesn’t need a babysitter!”

  “Baba Yaga isn’t here right now,” Stephen whispered back. The two allowed the locks on the ship to seal before walking down the thirty-step-long passageway that ended at another door. That door allowed them entrance to the main docks.

  Devon was like many of the smaller planets. At some time in the distant past, there had been terraforming done by who-knew-who. Eventually, a few different races started trading on the planet, and helped it evolve an atmosphere. Someone had dragged a mass of ice to it, providing more water than was present naturally. The ambient temperature dropped before some group added enough heat to change the ice to steam to up the oxygen in the atmosphere a little more.

  At this point oxygen-breathing visitors required a typical atmospheric suit for a longer exposure, but if they were caught out in it th
ey could easily last ten to fifteen minutes before kissing their ass goodbye. Perhaps an hour, if their race didn’t need a highly oxygenated atmosphere to survive. Both Bethany Anne and Stephen would be fine for longer, but it wouldn’t be pleasant by any stretch of the imagination.

  The original mining or trading outposts had grown.

  First by hewing out the surrounding rock and spraying it with non-porous materials as the most efficient way to create smaller areas where atmosphere could be contained. Once the small micro-organism atmosphere farms were operating efficiently, the outposts grew. Eventually the atmospheric farms created more oxygen than they needed, so they traded with ships for materials.

  That created the next expansion on the small planet. About four hundred years earlier, a massive deposit of gold had been found. Gold wasn’t a normal part of the planet’s core, so the theory was that the planet had met up with an asteroid in the past.

  Efforts to locate additional gold had failed, and about a hundred and twenty years ago the gold had petered out. But by then the massive upgrades to the infrastructure had raised Devon to a Class B-level planet for technology, terraforming, foodstuffs, and metals.

  It desperately needed help at this point. The families that had done well three generations ago were not moving ahead. Over multiple generations they had failed to produce any leaders, so the ineffective had led the inefficient to produce the insufficient.

  Insufficient for anyone still on the planet, unless you knew how to milk the existing policies and politics. Others were happy the planet preferred gathering tax revenue to making sure the laws that were in place were actually followed.

  Most of them had no pesky morals.

  “Shinigami,” Bethany Anne called through the secure connection between her, Stephen, and the EI. “How are we doing with security?”

  The voice which came back sounded annoyed. “I experienced seventy-two distinct attempts to break in through the primary interface with the star port in the first ten minutes. Now I barely get an effort every minute or so.”

  Stephen joined the conversation. “Probably scanning the results so far and figuring out their best options,” he surmised. “I’ll be surprised if you don’t get an external effort while we are away.”