Decker's War Omnibus 1

by Eric Thomson

  They left the island later that afternoon, headed for Hadley Spaceport, the planet's main terminal. Nihao Kiani, as usual, was the last on board and seemed disinclined to give an account of her activities.

  The trip was short and uneventful, and they berthed near the massive Hadley terminal building. Strachan gave the crew liberty until they loaded the cargo for their next trip.

  Zack was changing into his favorite civilian clothes when Kiani walked into the cabin. She had spent the time since landing at Hadley closeted with the captain.

  “Going out, Zack?”

  “Yeah. I thought Raisa and I would take a breather in town. It'll be good to step off the old tub.”

  “Be careful. I mean it.” Their eyes met, and Zack thought he read genuine concern in hers. Her warning, well-meaning as it seemed, irritated him.

  “I will. Nothing on Pacifica's going to get me. I don't intend to visit the wrong spots.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Decker shrugged and closed the door to his locker.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  *

  He met Raisa at the head of the gangway. She looked ravishing in her long black skirt, high, sleeveless red blouse, and carefully done crimson hair. Darhad smiled at him, bloodless lips parting to show her white, pointy teeth.

  “It has been a long time, and we have much to discuss.”

  She took him by the hand and led him out of the freighter. The late afternoon sun bathed Hadley with indecently lurid shades of red and orange. An acrid tang seared the back of Zack’s throat as he took his first breath of city air.

  Around the spaceport, buildings crowded out the horizon. Towers of glass, steel and concrete reared up high, higher than on any other human world except Earth itself.

  But the man-made beauty of the skyline hid another reality, as Decker well knew. Slums, tenements and welfare islands clustered around the prosperous business center of the city, ghettos where many Pacificans lived a dull, mind-numbing existence of entertainment, drugs, and destitution.

  Pacifica and the other worlds controlled by men and women like the Amalis were the rotting core of the Commonwealth. Zack hated this place with a passion. He only stepped ashore to be with Raisa and to find answers to his questions.

  When they had left the spaceport behind and walked down a street teeming with cars and people, a street that nestled among the tall buildings like a river at the bottom of a canyon, Zack thought it safe enough to speak.

  “We have to find ourselves a public terminal that’ll give us info on Ventos Prime. I have to know what the hell we brought back to Amali. The bastard’s up to no fucking good. Not with that setup of his on the island.”

  “Old Marine instincts resurfacing?” She asked, an eyebrow raised in question. He glanced at her for a few moments, but she wasn’t mocking him.

  “And what if they are?” He finally replied, remembering Nihao’s accusations.

  “Nothing wrong with that, darling,” she murmured. “As I have said before, we are bonded, and I will fight your battles at your side.”

  Her eyes searched his expressionless face.

  “You are confused.” She sounded hurt. “You have been confused since we left that accursed planet.”

  “You can sense it?”

  “Yes.” The admission held no regret or anger.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were an empath?” Zack’s tone was sharper than he wanted it to be.

  “I did not wish to frighten you. Very few people know about my abilities, which incidentally are natural among Arkanna females of mating age. I have never tried to influence you. Read your emotions, yes. Mated Arkanna females are sensitive to their mates’ moods. It’s instinctive.” Her face and voice expressed sincerity, and Zack desperately wanted to believe her. Especially now.

  “Nihao Kiani knows.”

  Raisa’s eyes flashed with anger.

  “Our dear purser seems to know too much. She should be careful.”

  Zack’s heartbeats thudded in his ears. He felt helpless to prevent his next words.

  “She also told me you killed Lokis.”

  “What?” Raisa stopped and grabbed his right forearm with her strong left hand.

  “Nihao told me you had an affair with Lokis and killed him when he tried to break it off.”

  Instead of laughing off the accusation, she looked Zack in the eyes and frowned.

  “Why would she say such a thing?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Zack. I never touched Lokis. He was a secretive man who seemed to be interested only in Kiani. Nor was he my type, to be frank. There was something about his manner that I did not like. In any case, I was on board the ship the night he disappeared.”

  “Nihao showed me pictures taken of his body by the Pradyni Guard. He looked slashed to bits by someone with fangs and talons.”

  “Do you really believe I would kill someone in a manner that could be traced back to me? Am I that stupid in your eyes?”

  “People do stranger things when they believe themselves wronged or are enraged.”

  “True,” she nodded. “But you must believe me. I had nothing to do with Lokis’ death. Whatever Nihao Kiani told you were lies. If anyone wishes you harm on the ship, it is she. You and I are mated, and I could no more harm you than harm myself. Understand, Zack, that when I say Arkanna females mate for life, it is an absolute.”

  The Command School axiom came back to Zack: wrong or right, make a bloody decision. He went with your gut instinct.

  “I trust you, Raisa. I have to because I love you.”

  He pulled her into the shade of a litter-strewn alley and quickly told her everything Nihao had said. When he confessed to letting himself be used by the purser, she stroked his cheek and kissed him.

  Then she gave him a sad smile.

  “I forgive you, Zack. Kiani is a redoubtable adversary, and you are an innocent in her hands. I know you’re mine, not hers. Now let us find what we both want. An answer to the mystery of Shokoten.”

  *

  With her unerring sense of direction, she led him into the seedier part of Hadley. The less fortunate citizens of Pacifica gave them only a passing glance. Decker, leather clad and stone-faced looked too much like one of the toughs who owned the slums. Though Hadley had no open sewers like Tanira, the stench of the streets was just as powerful, if less barbaric.

  They entered an unmarked doorway set in a grimy, concrete high-rise that looked abandoned in the waning light of the day. Raisa took a flight of stairs down towards a dim red light and the odor of rotting cabbage. By now, Zack knew what to expect. The Arkanna seemed to know all the hidden clubs in this arm of the galaxy. Why she did so, he preferred not to speculate.

  A huge bouncer passed them through a sensor gate before letting them enter the underground club. The opulence of the place did not surprise the gunner. Patrons were ensconced in the many cubicles lining the walls. He didn’t see a bar, but human waiters of both sexes, soberly dressed, seemed to serve a steady stream of food and drink.

  The quiet buzz of conversation meshed pleasingly with the subdued music. Two other doors pierced the far end of the room, light glimmering between the velvet curtains that covered the openings. A woman in her late thirties, hair cut fashionably short, led them to an unoccupied booth. After taking their order, she disappeared.

  “Nice club,” Zack commented, eyes taking in the layout of the place, “but I don't see a computer terminal.”

  “This is Pacifica. The ruling families wish to keep their control over the planet, and that means control of information. If we walk to the nearest public terminal and ask for a download on Ventos Prime, we would not return to the ship alive.”

  “Damn!” He swore. “Good point. And to think I figured you were dumb enough to slash Lokis.” But Zack smiled to turn his words into a self-deprecating joke. An apology of sorts. “It seems I'm the dummy.”

  She smiled back and took his hand in hers, kissing his fin
gertips.

  “And I love you too, Zack. To answer your unspoken question, this is, as you may have surmised, not quite a licensed establishment. It serves those who hold power and wealth through other means than the ones approved by the upper classes.”

  “Criminals,” Zack said in a flat tone, disapproval written all over his face.

  “A relative term,” she replied, eyes twinkling at his almost naïve sense of propriety. “On this planet, the ruling families aren't much different from organized criminals, other than they either legalize what they want or pay others to do it for them. You would be hard pressed to find a place of amusement that was not controlled by someone with dirty claws. For our purposes, this place is suitable.”

  A throaty chuckle escaped her lips. “One could argue that this club is probably cleaner than many licensed ones.”

  “And how is it you know about a club run by the local mob?”

  “I have not always been a merchant officer, Zack. There was a time in my life, soon after I fled Arkanna when I had to do less than palatable things to survive. Since then, I have kept my contacts, as a safeguard, in case I ran into trouble I could not handle. Please do me a favor and ask no further questions. I'm not very proud of those days.”

  Decker realized it was a matter affecting her personal honor, and he tactfully changed the subject of conversation. Trust had to be absolute, or it wasn't trust.

  “So how are we going to obtain what we want?”

  “Wait.”

  When the waitress came back, Raisa whispered a few words in her ear. The woman nodded and vanished through one of the doorways. She returned a few minutes later and beckoned Raisa. Zack made to follow her, but the Arkanna shook her head.

  She was gone for almost half an hour. When she returned, she slipped into the booth and smiled.

  “A friend will make inquiries and put us in touch with someone who can access the information. In the meantime, I have arranged for us to enjoy some privacy.”

  Taking his hand as she rose, Darhad led him through the other doorway into warren of carpeted hallways paneled in dark wood. A short flight of stairs took them to a luxurious private room with a large, round bed, a deep roman bath and a mirrored bar containing every form of liquor known to humankind.

  There, they made love as if the universe didn't matter.

  It was over all too soon when a discreet knock at the door and a whispered message brought a sad smile to Raisa's face.

  For a moment, Zack had the awful premonition that this had been their last time together, but he shook off the sensation and grinned.

  “We have a bite?”

  “Yes. Get dressed.” She sounded almost as wistful as he felt as if unwilling to leave the warmth and safety of their private world. “I have the address of a hacker who my contact sometimes uses. It will cost us a few creds, but I have been assured he is worth the money.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, Raisa.”

  Thirteen

  Decker and Darhad left the underground club by a dingy back corridor that opened on a garbage-strewn alley. Full night had fallen over Hadley, and the moonless sky held nothing to ease the gloom, save for a smattering of stars bright enough to pierce the polluted atmosphere.

  Raisa's sensitive Arkanna eyes found the way without hesitation and, holding Zack's hand, led them to a street lit only by grimy light globes long due for an overhaul. The teeming city never truly slept, and a low buzz filled the air, a mixture of distant hovercar fans, snatches of music from late night bars, police or ambulance sirens. Drunken shouts rang out now and then as human beings beyond hope quarreled simply to feel alive. Distant coughs sometimes ended a dispute when one of the participants used the ultimate argument.

  They changed direction several times, passing through small side streets that stank of urine, hopelessness, and despair. Zack was preternaturally alert to danger. Hadley's slums were not a healthy place: dark shapes, hidden in the shadows, watched them with hungry eyes as they passed by. The gunner didn't have his blaster in its usual place under his left arm. Pacifica frowned on private weapon ownership, for reasons that had nothing to do with the sky-high crime rate. That didn't mean no one had guns. Only that honest citizens didn't. Then again, honesty was a relative term on Pacifica.

  More than once, the small hairs on the back of his neck rose in alarm, as a sixth sense told him they were being followed. He also thought he heard footsteps behind them the few times they stopped while Raisa took her bearings.

  For some reason, Hadley's concrete canyons unnerved him more than any guerrilla-infested jungle ever had. Marines didn’t like cities. The tall office and apartment blocks could swallow an entire division and spit it out piecemeal. Far better an open battlefield on a sparsely populated world.

  A beggar wearing a dirty, tattered suit stumbled across their path, drugged to the gills. His dilated pupils saw reality through a meth fog, and he ignored the two spacers. Zack shook his head in a mixture of pity and disgust. By morning, he would have been mugged and beaten, perhaps several times, as the lowest scum tried to feed on what was left of him.

  They turned onto a street lined with abandoned apartments. The pavement was crazed and split from a continued lack of maintenance and hardy native grasses grew through the cracks. A partially disassembled hovercar sat on the curb, its fans and fuel cells long since stripped off and sold, leaving gaping holes in the dented, discolored chassis.

  Zack sensed a human body inside the wreck, watching them. On the opposite street corner, a trio of hunched junkies warmed their hands over a fire burning in an empty fuel drum. They gave Zack and Raisa a passing glance and returned to their whispered conversation.

  Decker had seen war zones with more personality than Hadley's slums, and he wondered how the poor could live like this without revolting. He asked Raisa as she scanned a row of decrepit, windowless tenements.

  “Secret police, Zack,” she replied distractedly. “Any hint of rebellion is crushed without mercy, and in complete secrecy.”

  Decker shook his head in disgust.

  “I thought we were supposed to be the good guys, with sentient rights for all.”

  “Welcome to Pacifica. It and the other Coalition members are the modern wave of industrial feudalism. Come, I have found our destination.”

  When they reached the scarred steel door, she pushed the call button and waited.

  “Yeah,” a raspy, hostile voice asked from a wire-covered speaker.

  “Friends of Harrah, coming to see Korden.”

  “You the she-wolf?” The voice asked.

  “Yes.” Raisa spat out a single word in Arkanna to confirm her claim.

  “All right. Take the stairs down and turn left at the bottom.”

  The door clicked once, and Zack pushed it inwards. It closed behind them with a snap that sounded final, as if it were the door to a prison cell, or to Hades.

  A low murmur of voices rose from the darkness, like demons of the deep crying out in torment. Raisa took the lead once more, her eyes glowing eerily as they saw the way.

  A strong stench of urine and cheap soy grub assaulted Zack's nostrils, and he grimaced with distaste. His right hand reached instinctively for the absent blaster under his left armpit, and he swore, both at his own ingrained reflexes and the stupid laws that ensured only criminals had guns on this cesspool of a planet.

  The stairs proved to be much longer than Decker expected. But by the time they reached the bottom, several meters below ground, he had other things to wonder about. They passed a sound baffle on the final landing, and a wave of noise washed over them.

  Where they expected a basement, or a hidden setup like the club, the gunner and his mate found an underground casbah, alive with activity.

  Wide corridors went off in all directions while small stores and stalls spilled into the walkways, selling wares of all description, most of which, Zack figured, were stolen. A mouth-watering mix of food smells hovered over the crowd, making Decker's stomach ru
mble.

  Bars, brothels, and amusement places for all tastes filled the spaces between the stalls, painting the walls with pulsating lights and throbbing music. A few seemed tame, but others made him turn his face in disgust.

  Peddlers tugged at their sleeves for attention, offering everything from discount stims to vibrablades to forbidden sex.

  “Do you think the government knows about this place?” Zack asked Raisa, as they passed another intersection teeming with sellers, buyers and their often compliant victims.

  “Probably and making a healthy profit in taxes. A lot of money changes hands down here every night.”

  “This sort of place will give you political trouble one of these days. All it takes is a flaming revolutionary to turn the casbah into a fucking guerrilla hidey-hole.”

  “It's not our problem, Zack.”

  “It will be, one day. People will not stand for this sort of life forever, and when they’re fed-up, watch out.”

  “Then we shall try to be far away when the day comes.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stopped in front of a narrow storefront advertising custom electronics and, pushing aside a bead curtain, walked in. An acne-scarred, sallow-faced man in his late thirties sat behind a counter littered with appliances. Most of the gizmos were in various stages of disassembly and had seen hard use. Decker recognized several items that were illegal on most planets.

  The man looked up at them with washed-out, tired eyes, brushing his shoulder length hair out of the way. When he saw Raisa, his eyes widened almost comically, and he dropped the small palm pad he'd been examining.

  “You the she-wolf?”

  Raisa nodded.

  The man glanced at Decker and turned his attention back to Raisa. Clearly, he was fascinated by her dangerous, alien beauty. He ran a trembling hand through his greasy hair while a tic tugged at his right cheek, giving him a manic cast.

  “I'm Korden. What can I do for you?”

  “We need information about a certain planet outside the Commonwealth, a place that is probably not in any general access database. And we need that information with nobody knowing we're interested.”