‘That was a wonderful drink,’ I said, and met the bartender’s eyes. ‘May I have another one?’
‘No, you may not,’ said the Andron man. ‘You should—’
I interrupted his sentence by smashing a surprise upper cut at his goateed jaw. As he fell unconscious, the Dresnean guy behind him tried to ready his pistol, but I delivered a roundhouse kick on his hand, and he dropped it. The lean human lunged at me with something shiny and stingy; I dodged to the left, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him down on top of the unconscious Andron man.
The Dresnean reached for his gun on the floor, but I body-checked him down, and grabbed the gun, and took a step back, keeping them all in my sights.
The Andron man came to, and as the human rolled over him, he touched the side of his head.
I gestured at them with the gun. ‘Get out of here, all of you.’
Muttering curses, they got up and made their way to the door. The other patrons had already slipped out before the fight started, and once the thugs left, only I remained standing with the bartender.
Something about the physical danger heightened my senses and made me feel more alive than I had been in ages. One advantage from my time with the Sweeps was keeping cool and calculated in a conflict.
‘So how about that drink?’ I said. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll pay for both of them.’
‘It’s on the house, Mr…?’
‘Tait. Daler Tait.’
As I told him my name, his face became animated. ‘I thought it was you! You’re a Sweeps legend. Sawamar Suwala, I used to work with the Sweeps for some time.’
We shook hands.
‘Why do you let those goons harass you?’ I said.
‘It’s difficult; they’re right when they said that FIST doesn’t care about the lower levels. I’m not much for fighting alone; besides, they’ve more than those three guys.’
‘Those guys won’t be back any time soon.’
Turns out I was right. We never heard from them. I bought into the bar as Sawamar’s partner and together we made it a popular spot. A few years passed quickly, and, after the initial struggles, they were better ones. Perhaps that’s why my memory of them is soft at best. With Naido, we set up a used shuttle and craft trading shop, and to support that business I set up a trading company that specialised in seals used on propulsion engines. Got them from a fringe Andron planet and sold them as spares that were an improvement above the OEM parts, and naturally used them in our business.
I wanted to keep everything legal this time; even though some of our craft had a hazy background, we stayed on good terms with the local law.
As a niche player we drew little attention, but I made good money. At last, I could use my knack for business, and thought if for nothing else, my father would’ve been proud of how I built a thriving business from scratch.
In Spit City I had built myself a fresh life, and I pushed my past worries away, and for a few moments, my pain disappeared. But it never went away, and even though it was veiled in mist, it was always there, even during the best times.
And as we grew bigger, the shadow grew, too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My apartment levelled up a few times. In Spit City, the level of floor you lived on and frequented indicated your social class. Starting from single digits, I gradually worked up and left the magnarail-connected bottom in favour of swooshing shuttles above. I had just moved into a rare find, in the area formerly controlled by the Sweeps, which weirdly felt like coming back home, back to the old hoods. It was in the Twilight building, one of the landmark buildings of the area, on the 251st floor.
I had a private shuttle, which took me a few blocks up to the Stinger building, where we had a used shuttles outlet. I was meeting with the shop manager, Kim Zuul, to go through the numbers. The sales were flourishing, and our capital position was good; only the supply side held us back: there weren’t enough second-hand premium vehicles coming in. Naido did exceptional work finding good ones, but he did it only as a side gig and the demand had grown faster than our ability to supply.
Also, just the day before I had received news that one of our transporters full of prime luxury shuttles—from Eura to Spit City—had blown to pieces in space. While accidents happened, this one smelled foul: everything pointed to the fact that our transport had either been shot with a missile or a bomb had detonated inside. We lost dozens of millions of teradollars, but there was no way to know the cause.
We sat in the office, which had a view to the showroom where the sales rep greeted a customer. I rubbed my eyes, because the woman looked exactly like Tiana. But it couldn’t have been her; she wouldn’t come here, and besides, the hem of the woman’s yellow skirt revealed what seemed like actual brown skin.
‘You there?’ Kim said, waving his hand before my face. ‘Oh, is that her?’
‘No,’ I said, and turned back to the numbers on the pad between us. ‘Until we get the supply sorted out, we need to cut the specials—’
The sales rep knocked on the door to the office. Kim Zuul let him in. ‘Yes?’
‘She’s looking for a Petals Aether.’
‘It can’t be,’ I said, and stood up. A woman looking like Tiana in my dealership in search of a Petals Aether couldn’t have been a coincidence. I pushed past the sales rep and through to the showroom.
I didn’t see her immediately, so I searched behind the craft.
‘Hey, you’re looking for the Petals?’ I said, but got no reply.
I ran to the door, but couldn’t find her; she had disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared.
‘You saw her as well?’ I said to Kim and the rep, to confirm I wasn’t going insane.
‘Of course,’ the rep said, and looked around for a while in the showroom. ‘Yep, she’s gone.’
I went back to looking at the numbers with Zuul. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of the encounter: I had seen visions of her all across the town, but this was different: it was as if my past had arrived on my doorstep, and that would herald trouble.
Less than a week had passed when again I sat at the Gun, nurturing a drink by the bar as Sawamar served the patrons. We had now a chain of bars, and while the Gun was the smallest one, both Sawamar and I enjoyed it the most.
Someone entered. A slender dark-skinned woman in a golden dress.
I coughed and put the drink down.
‘You all right?’ said Sawamar, as I stood up.
As I looked back at the door, the woman had disappeared, like she always did. I sought her among the crowd, but she wasn’t there anymore. Instead, a woman in a black leather jacket approached me.
It took me a moment to recognise her, but her red hair, freckled nose and tough stare were unmistakable.
‘Jude. What are you doing in Spit City?’
‘Pereen’s dead,’ she said.
‘Take a seat; what happened?’
She sat on a barstool beside me. ‘There was an explosion at the Runcor base, many died… It was already some time ago—’
‘Who did it?’ I asked.
‘Who knows? The remaining leadership tried to find out, and retaliate, but failed to lead the troops, and ended up selling any remaining assets on the cheap to a Runcor-based company.’
‘To whom?’
‘When they came to take over the Karu-124 base, they said they were part of the Puissance corporation.’
Even though Pereen had crossed me, the news worried me. The explosion reminded me of my father’s death; I doubted it was an accident. It showed me that Puissance was alive and gaining power.
‘…so, here I am,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’
‘You came to the right place, we’ll help you get set up on the city. Right, Sawamar?’
He nodded, as Jude and I raised our glasses.
The next morning, I sat on the sofa in my lounge, an informal setting between my home and my office with shaggy grey carpets that caressed my bare feet. The vast windows offe
red a gaping view across the Spit City skyline and the hypnotic swirls of the red gas giant Heeg.
In the swirls I saw Tiana’s face, but when I blinked it disappeared. Her appearances had become more frequent, and I couldn’t be sure about what was real and what was fantasy inside my head. In the shuttle dealership, others had seen her too. I wondered if she had come over to the city.
It had been years since we had last spoken, but I still had her contact details. I wanted to make sure; I needed to make sure. I pulled up my terminal and found her name, and, shutting off any hesitation, pressed the call button.
Immediately a female voice replied, ‘The person you’re trying to reach is outside the real-time communications range. Please leave a message.’
I cut the connection. Her terminal wasn’t in Spit City, and neither was she. She was in Runcor, and I was just making stuff up.
But Marc Puissance… what was he up to?
My terminal beeped. For some reason, I expected Tiana, but it was Sawamar.
‘You should get over here,’ he said. ‘the Gun’s gone.’
My heart skipped a beat. ‘What happened?’
‘An explosive fire; destroyed everything.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
They said the fire had started with a faulty cooler in the bar’s kitchen—and while the insurance would cover the damages, the bar was no more, and Sawamar sorrowed over the loss of his pride. But just like the incident with our shuttle transport, to me the burned bar smelled of a planned hit. And there was only one person in my mind who could have done such a thing. I became obsessed with security. I poured massive amounts of money into the security systems of my apartment besides what the building provided. I even got the latest S11 force field to separate the foyer from the lounge, complete with dual plasma cannons mounted inside the walls.
But money couldn’t buy me peace of mind.
And, as fate often has it, I was driven towards my tormentor even before I knew it. The final storm was on its way, and it was hailed by my love.
One day, I was heading down to the other side of the moon to meet my lawyer about a looming class action against our direct marketing business. Sitting alone in the back of a small shuttle taxi streaming between the buildings in Spit City, every message I received made the anxiety squeeze my windpipe harder.
One incident I could have dealt with—things happened. But two was already bad luck, and three wasn’t to do with luck at all. It was a setup, and I had a nasty feeling about who might be behind it.
As I thought about Marc Puissance, staring out at the thousands of points of light in the dark, a foreboding feeling came over me.
Suddenly, a woman in a yellow dress appeared sitting next to me.
I gasped and instinctively inched back. ‘How did you—?’
If she hadn’t appeared as if from nowhere, I would have said she was Tiana. She was slender like she was in her twenties and smiled like the sun. She said, ‘I’m sorry if I startled you.’
I reeled, but something about her made me calm down. ‘Where did you come from?’
She laughed and threw back her curly black hair. ‘It doesn’t matter. The key is that I’m here and you’re here.’
‘Are you a hologram?’
She winced and edged closer. I couldn’t help but notice the glow on her skin. Subtle, but evident, it made her seem unreal. She said, ‘Don’t you worry about that. I know you have bigger worries.’
‘What do you know about that?’
Smiling, she lay her palm on my thigh—I recoiled; she was no hologram—and said, ‘I know everything about your worries. You’re in a cursed spiral, going around and around until you reach the bottom. But before you do, you will lose every bit of joy and love you still have.’
Her description was a little too accurate and made me shiver. ‘Did Puissance send you?’
‘Puissance?’ Her palm moved on my thigh, and she leaned closer. As she did, the deep cut on her dress revealed a lot of skin. ‘No, but I need a small favour, and in return, I might remove some of your worries.’
Now she was so close I could feel her breath on my face, her hair on my neck, and her hand on my chest. I pushed back. ‘Why should I believe you?’
‘You believe me because you want to, that’s all.’
She was right. I wanted so much to believe, but my reasoning mind said no.
‘What are you?’
She leaned close and whispered in my ear, ‘I’m a goddess, but you may call me Tiana.’
Her voice left me shivering. ‘You said you wanted a favour?’
‘Yes, come with me to Eura; I’ve a thing for you there.’
‘What thing?’
She flicked a beautiful smile and said, ‘You must prove yourself to me by coming to Eura first.’
‘Tiana, if it’s really you, please know that I’ve missed you; but now my life is in Spit City. I can’t just leave.’
‘Forget about your life and your businesses in Spit City, and join me in Eura, for a life of fortune in the sun. You may consider this a down payment.’
She leaned close, placed a hand on the back of my head, and kissed me on the lips. Her touch exuded warmth, and her lips pulsated with heat. I closed my eyes in a bliss unlike I had ever experienced before.
I tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out.
She became the air, and I floated weightlessly inside her, at one with her and at one with the universe. Her lips caressed my body, her soft skin against my chest, tingling sensations on my neck. One step at a time, she led me down the path to euphoria that continued on and on, until I reached the bottom—
‘You don’t fool me with these tricks,’ I said, blinking my eyes open. This time I would find out how she did this.
She adjusted her hem. ‘You know, I can give you everything.’
‘I know you’re listening, Marc,’ I said, and stared deep into her eyes. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’
‘Shame. This could’ve been something,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Your choice. Lucky this city’s got puppets aplenty.’ She tittered and burst into howling laughter as her form began dissolving.
I tried to grab her but was just grasping air. The laughing apparition beside me became transparent and vanished as I drifted into the sweet mist.
I woke up as my handheld terminal beeped with a notification.
I was alone. There was no sign of the woman. I had just fallen asleep, and she had been nothing but a dream of a lonely man. The dream had been vivid, and I still recalled every detail, including her offer. Never had I fallen into such intense dreams; perhaps the long hours had made my imagination run wild.
While it had been but a dream, it did make me think.
Marc Puissance had caused all of my suffering, and I had to put an end to it.
I used to run Runore, and I used to run the Sweeps. A son of some back-sand politician would not mess with me. I was the bigger and the stronger one. I would pursue him relentlessly until the end of the world. I would make him perish.
I couldn’t do it alone, but I knew just the person who could help: Naido. When he wasn’t procuring crafts, he ran shady gigs with a small group of bandits on a Sumar 10-LPB that he called Liquid Prayer Baby. He was perhaps the only person who understood me. We grew up in the Sweeps together.
‘Driver,’ I said, to activate the robot shuttle’s computer. ‘Change of plans, get me to the Spit City Space Port, terminal four.’
‘New destination,’ the shuttle’s computer responded, ‘Spit City Space Port, terminal four. Please confirm.’
‘Confirmed.’
‘Thank you. The updated fare will be—
The driver’s voice crackled and dwindled out. The taxis were old, and I didn’t mind not knowing the exact fare. We were just about to join one of the primary flight routes between the buildings when the taxi took a quick turn and dived.
Tiana’s voice sounded from the speakers, ‘The fare is… everything.’
I grabbed
the handle, and shouted, ‘Driver, stop!’
There was no answer, and smoke began seeping through the speakers. I clutched the handle white-knuckled as the craft gained speed, turning and descending.
‘Driver!’
The cabin was full of smoke, and there was no response, but the craft levelled off and straightened.
I sighed in relief. But I was still far from the legal flight routes and was heading straight towards a massive building, its wall solid flat obsidian.
‘Change course!’ I said as the red lights blinked.
The craft continued. I hit the control panel and broke it, but it changed nothing. I cursed Marc—and myself—for allowing things to get to this point.
The massive black wall filled the view in front of me, and in seconds blasted up in a booming crash.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I woke up to someone’s hand on my chin. A bright light and a big blue Baar woman’s face filled my view.
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ she said, and stood up. ‘How did you manage that in a taxi?’
I glanced around. She was referring to the hole in the wall. Around me was a lot of room; under me, a lacquered wooden floor. One wall held a large mirror. About a dozen young Baar women in tight outfits stared at me. ‘Is this a dance studio?’
‘You should check up with the doc, that cut looks nasty.’
Instinctively, I raised my hand to my temple. It stung, and when I looked at my palm, it was all bloodied. Someone offered me a towel. I’d hit my head but didn’t hurt otherwise. It was a miracle, because the impact and subsequent rolls on the floor had wrecked the taxi pod. I wiped the blood from my face. The wound wasn’t too bad, but as I stood up, I sensed a headache coming on.
‘Thanks.’ I handed the towel back to the woman and stepped through the studio towards the exit. All the more reason to get Naido. Marc was wrong if he thought he could get me like this.
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