by Chris Turner
Banzari shook his head in wonder, not disguising his exasperation for his neighbor. “As you wish, Yul. But you’re making a mistake. I told you, you need—”
But Yul was already on his feet and walking away to the buggy his father had lent him. One hand was held high in a final salute to Banzari, but Yul’s ears were closed.
* * *
One more loose end to take care of. Then time to quit this planet of his childhood. Yul traipsed dutifully up the service lane to where his father worked with his back bent over a tractor-pulled cutting machine. The blades needed cleaning. Parts were littered over the worktable. The young sun shone down with a pleasant warmth on their backs. A halcyon day, all events considered, as if the horrors of yesterday had never happened.
Rande turned around and could not help but beam through a crinkled smile. “Cat dragged something back, I see.” Yul nodded, but then a pained expression came over his face.
Rande looked away, dropped his gaze. “I—am sorry, Yul. Maybe I misjudged you, and if I did, please forgive me. Guess I’ve always judged you for being what you were, been down on you for many things, which were untrue. Marthe tried to tell me but I didn’t listen. Had other plans for you of my own.”
“Don’t sweat it, Dad.”
“No, hear me out!” Rande pushed out a palm. “Always thought you were going down the wrong path, making a big mistake—but I can see you’re doing exactly what you were meant for, and I’m proud of you. What you did for Banzari. Opened my eyes.”
Yul could sense his dad’s struggle in saying what he did. A heartfelt attempt to reconcile old grudges, regrets and pains from the past. “No need to explain. Water under the bridge. It’s okay.”
“No, it ain’t okay. Too much stabbing in the dark on restless, rainy nights, thinking about where you are, who you are, and making the wrong conclusions. I really thought I was going to buy it back there. That lowlife coming at us with his gun. Banzari came wandering down the road babbling some story of a bomb to me. I decided to help him. Foolish me. Lan’s buggy broke down. We took mine. If you hadn’t come back when you did—”
“That’s what Lan said. Don’t worry about it. I was there and it all worked out.” Yul put an arm around his father’s shoulder, knowing how much it took for his father to say what he’d been holding back for so long. His father draped an arm in answer over Yul’s back.
Feeling a bit uncomfortable under the newness of an intimacy with a long-lost son, Rande broke away and sighed. “Me,” he said in a sterner voice, “I’m just an old man, going through the motions. Old, tired and grey…wanted to be a robo engineer, never made it. Never got to a good school, or a tech institute, or even held a decent apprenticeship, or had the confidence for aspiring higher. Ah, what the hell, too much competition anyways, and then comes life’s demands. I met your mother and we settled for a small engine repair place, added salvage, that’s where I made my money.”
“All good, Dad…you’re a success. You’ve earned ten times the yols I have…you provided for mom and me.”
Rande stared at Yul, with that old quizzical, dry look, the one that sent shivers up Yul’s spine. “What’re you seeing?”
“You’re going to go places, Yul. You’re going to do things in this universe I can’t even imagine. Things that will help a lot of folk! I never saw it before, but I see it now. Sure as rain. Millions of people. As sure I can work the dowsing rods and find water up to hundred feet down solid rock.”
Yul shook his head. “You’re thinking about someone else, Dad.”
“No, I see it differently now.” Rande held up a hand. “I take back my words from the past. My earlier doubts. There’s a purpose to it all. Damndest thing. I didn’t see it. Just seeing it now.”
“Banzari’s all set up and happier than a lark to have his old life and his ranch back,” Yul said. “He been feeding you some flowery philosophy?”
“Banzari put in a good word for you, Yul, and there’s a man I trust. I underestimated you. Haven’t seen nothing of you the last seven years—haven’t had an inkling what you’ve been up to, who you’ve become, who you’ve taken up with, but all the time in my gut was a sour feeling, as if there was nothing good there.”
Yul shrugged. He looked away with a trace of guilt, knowing there were things that he could never ever tell his father, of the uncounted times he’d had to buck the law. How to explain to him that in a lawless universe, the rule of law meant little, that laws that could be broken, bought, sold and traded as cheaply as a bottle of wine by the power elite. “Yeah, life gets in the way.”
Rande sighed. “Well, I don’t raise no weaklings and it seems you’re the man for the tough, dangerous jobs that no one wants to do. There are forces out there that make me shudder and wilt inside. Deeds that’ll make that episode out on the ranch the other day probably look like a kindergarten party. I’m glad I have my small engines to work on and not some peril on my ass every day. We live in dark times, Yul. I’m under no illusion of that.”
“You’re a wise man, Dad. I’m glad you can see it. Let’s enjoy the sun on our faces today, at least.”
Rande gave an animated chuckle. “Good one. I reckon that’s as good a plan as any. Let’s round us up some steaks and take a stroll around the grounds. Still haven’t showed you much. Expanded it a lot since you’ve been gone. Added Haigar’s back fifty a few years back.”
“You didn’t?”
“Yep. You ever see a green-backed hummingbird dive-bomb your head during nesting season?”
“No, don’t think I have. Should I have?”
“Well, never too late for a first time.” He placed a hand on Yul’s shoulder as a flicker of a smile edged across Yul’s face. “You’re in for a treat.”
Chapter 7
Regers sucked on a nicotine pill while he gazed at the other apathetic passengers in the hot, crowded air terminal, waiting to check baggage for flight RA546. Time to get off this rock and on to some better skull-bashing pastures. A blazing 100 degrees smote this primitive depot. Humid, stuffy, despite the giant fans that twirled above, sending even hotter air down his way.
He needed something to take the edge off his nerves. That last unofficial job had set his teeth on edge. A most distasteful episode, involving multiple deaths of the most evil players. A few innocents too.
The memory of the skirmishes was still fresh that had led him through the bowels of Pandor—or what was fast becoming the last of its free territories—up into the Triangle Drug Hills then down through the jungly, bug-infested lowlands of Farth, rifle in hand, pegging off insurgents with two other operatives. Blowing up rebel encampments. Sabotaging gang vehicles. Balden ‘agents’, they were called, hired by the big brass from Balden, instructed to secure the trade route to the plant substance which made Devirol, the medicinal drug, ironically foundational to all street forms of the narcotic, Myscol. Regers had no illusion he and his cohorts were anything more than rogue mercs, low men on the ladder—bag men sent out to carve out a new, safe route for chartered shipments to the Balden border. Three other operatives before them had failed. Almost didn’t take on that scuzzy job, but the big brass from Balden’d upped the ante and the price had been right. Either way, those insurgents had learned a hard lesson. Not that he was unsympathetic to their plight, but business was business. Yols were yols.
His dark eyes flicked to the bar at the side. Damn nicotine pill had made his mouth dry. He’d been off the hard liquor for a month now. Rot gut whiskey too—all just poison messing up his liver. He spat out a gummy black wad in the trash bin, lips puckering in distaste. That move likely flagged him as a suspicious character by airport security standards. But what did he care? Take him away, throw him in jail. Surveillance everywhere…even in these backwater, dickey little places.
Axus terminal was in need of an upgrade, but that might not happen too soon on this impoverished continent on a planet out in the ‘Ring of Five’. Two of the five were terraformed worlds in the star system. Yet three
more potentials sat on the horizon. ETA 15 years, Regers figured, though two of those were moons of the inner planets.
A security guard in grey uniform walked up to him, giving him the evil eye. A taser hung from his belt, a compact E2 at waist level. Regers saluted the man, gave him a cursory inspection, an oily grin, wiped back the lank locks of greasy hair from his sweaty brow. The guard moved on, glowering a cautionary warning.
Yeah, good day to you too, you pudgy, nosy fucker.
On the schedule billboard, the red leader text scrolled below the flight list.
Flight RA546 cancelled? Jesus, what the hell? That wouldn’t do. The Cyber Corp recruitment gig was scheduled in two days. Not a good time to miss a connection this big.
Regers caught the nearest airport attendant by the shoulder. “Hey, what’s the quickest way to Phallanor Hub from here, Chief?”
The figure spun around and he saw it was a woman who stared coldly at him. “Take the hovercraft across the Layling Strait to the Mixed Territories. They’ll have feeder flights to Mantos. From there you can catch a hyperjump to Phallanor. Don’t know what’s got into these government people. Always some war on, or sanctions, prohibition, labor strike or transport freeze. What’s the rush?”
But Regers was already moving out of the terminal toward the public transpo depot that would grant him passage on a hovercraft.
* * *
Waiting in line before the glass doors, Regers caught the buzz of angry talk in the gathering throng. Same old strife—feuds broken out between Balden and the border territories of Pandor. A trade embargo merited extra measures, extending to international flights and now offworld jumps. Regers grinned a knowing leer. That would teach him for booking flights out of Axus City in Pandor. The planet was still finding its feet after being terraformed by Balden in the last decade. The continent’s rich corporate-run management, all Balden Boys, held all the yols and oversaw all land and commercial development while the southern continents, Pandor and South Ganalasia, supplied the labor.
Suffering from masses of bug bites and mild crotch rot, Regers’d gotten a bum deal from that last assignment and wasn’t sure the yols secured in an anonymous holo account had been worth it. Now this embargo was in place and a moratorium on outgoing flights from Axus almost ensured he’d miss the Cyber Corp interview.
A beat-up bus arrived at the terminal. The tail pipes coughed up diesel fumes. It looked as if the vehicle had seen better days, as if it had taken one too many tight corners around trucks and other buses at high speed.
The local freyas pushed to board, sun-browned, sweat-sheened, all smiling teeth with broad cheeks, aquiline noses and oval faces. Freyas—they had an agenda in mind—short, but sharp-tempered, many only coming up neck high. Poor by circumstance, plantation workers and local fruit pickers, of cotton, tobacco, coconuts and bananas. The plains around Axus formed the breadbasket of Pandor in these hot climes. They could pack a lot of them on these buses, and they chattered now in their bright voices, clicking tongues, honking noses while they spoke in rapid bursts. Chickens, goats, pet rabbits, crying babies, sweat, oil, onion and garlic, the whole kit and caboodle. All rose in one sour, overpowering wave. Some folk chose to ride on top of the bus with the baggage. The baggy-eyed driver allowed it. Only way they could all fit. The bus belched out more toxic fumes and clattered off down the chewed-up asphalt, burning rubber, grinding gears and gorging on more fuel, as it navigated the main route toward the Ularean Sea.
Regers picked his way down the aisle with his leather duffel bag. He secured a seat to the left middle. A fat man had appropriated the window seat, wafting sweat and smoking a stinky, dogeared cigar. He chewed on it as if it were candy and laughed words Regers did not understand, babbling on in a rough low voice to his crony beside him across the aisle. Inevitably, he leaned across Regers’ lap. Regers soon tired of the game and stood up, relinquishing his seat. A slim youth quickly snatched it up with a smile, not minding in the least the fat man and his jabber. Regers gripped one of the handholds, a sagging loop of canvas strung from the ceiling. He tilted his gaze out the grime-hazed window where he glimpsed savanna and bush clumps speeding by. Small groves too, leading to larger forests, and plantations where bow-backed workers dotted the fields.
An attractive olive-skinned woman, two seats down, made room and urged Regers to sit next to her. Regers obliged, gave her a brief nod and direct eye contact and slid his bag under his legs, one foot blocking the aisle.
Here was a welcome treat for the eyes after the hell and blood of the last working days. Ordinarily he’d go in for more of a classic woman like this after hours, a few smooth moves here, a few lines leading to a subtle innuendo, casual arm draped around the bronzed shoulder, a hint of the cash he’d made in the last venture and due to collect at any holo bank. This sordid environment, with the smells, noise and bumps of the road seemed not the place for it.
She cast him a sly, interested look with a ripe-lipped smile, her tanned cheeks shining in robust health. Her upraised elbow revealed well-formed breasts, her small movements of hand combing lustrous brown hair with the liquid grace of a cat, a practiced elegance lost on most of the younger maidens her junior by some five or ten years.
“Appreciate you making space for me,” Regers said.
“You heading to Mantos?” she asked.
“Yeah, seen a lot of folk jammed up today.”
“You’re traveling light?” Her eyes flicked down to the scuffed bag at Regers’ feet.
“Just a change of clothes, toothbrush and comb.” Minus the E1 and accessories that blow people’s heads off.
“I’m trying to visit my family. I’ll have to go the long way, it seems. Bother.”
“Guess so.”
She smiled. “I’m Marise.”
“Good to meet you, Marise. Name’s Regers.”
He felt a tremor pass through her side where their shoulders touched. She murmured, “Axus is so dangerous these days. People knifed in the street. Violence, guns everywhere, bombs going off. Terrorist plots. I’m looking forward to getting out.”
Yeah, well, you picked the wrong city and the wrong universe, lady.
Shame a pretty thing like that, going to waste on some other egghead. Marise cast him another look, kohl-blackened eyelashes fluttering.
Hell, he should be living it up. Big cheese Mathias, Cyber Corp CEO paying for his transpo out to Phallanor. Bunch of other fuckballs too, he reckoned. Merc head bashers roving about the galaxy. He wondered how Mathias assembled his roster of toughies. Probably had some department devoted to recruitment, a think tank working computers, dedicated to amassing raw talent, the bully boys having the muscled idiocy to pull off whatever sordid job companies needed done to fulfill their corrupt aims.
A half year ago that wild cockup out in Biyon had earned him some karma points, probably put him on Cyber Corp’s radar. Rotten pricks had earned their death sentence, heads rolling before they were nailed to posts.
And those fucking lowlifes complicit in the murder of his wife a year back. Two had died in buckets of blood, he’d seen to it. Still four more of them to go, but he’d track them down in due time, if it was the last thing he did. When he got more funds together. Now he needed a reprieve away from the death zone in case that bastard Olg, their gang leader, got paranoid and went underground. Needed a wide sweep security net to flush out the last four, including Olg, which would rack him up at least 15k yols, he figured.
The bus creaked to a halt at a dingy terminus, sporting a cracked cement backdrop of pylons and faded pinned-up ads: Chinuanda bananas, Land for Sale, Dial a friend, Out of work, in need? Support your local war! The Quinconedas must band together!
A line of about ten other figures stood waving tickets. The driver honked and slowed down. Through the grimed window, Regers glimpsed the faint turquoise line of the ocean a far way off. Closer now.
“Why’re we stopping here?”
“Haldud Bus Junction,” Marise explained. “Last stop befo
re the harbor.”
Regers’ eyes glazed in weariness. Seemed as if others had got snarled in the transpo problems and were making a rush to the docks. Not that this bus could hold too many more. Those ten new passengers’d find room aboard this rust heap, that’s for sure.
They did. Half of them scrambled up the ladder at the rear to the roof. Five disheveled, rough-looking men clomped up the front steps before the driver, two jealously guarding a hip-high, oblong package wrapped in cardboard and taped with clear plastic.
“You can’t bring that on,” the driver grumbled.
“Says who, Chief? You got a piece of paper says we can’t?”
Regers craned his neck. Rifles? Croquet set for Uncle Barista? He gave a sour hiss. Longer they stayed in this stifling heat, the worse the stench would get…and the easier to miss that damn hovercraft. But nothing he could do, short of pulling the compact E1 from his bag, and wasting these fuckers and force friendly driver on to the port. Three of the men, wearing dusty black leather with crosses and other decorative hatchmarks on the thighs, shuffled to the back, carrying backpacks that rattled with metal parts, oblivious to the driver’s shrill protests. But long hair, the leader of the group, stayed back to argue, said it was valuable merchandise, and the driver backed off when he stared him down.
Long hair and his mate joined their comrades, making a leisurely swagger down the aisle, brushing Regers’ extended leg as he passed. Regers grumbled under his breath. They all took back seats, forcing other intimidated passengers to vacate, hogging the extra space for their package.
“Hey, make room,” a burly man objected with a jerk of thumb. “Put your parcel topside. There’re women and children need to sit. This here’s a public bus, not a private tour coach.”