by David Ryker
I straightened my jacket. “You’re damn right it is.”
I pushed through out of the cold forever-dusk air and into the musty, stale interior of the bar. The heavy door swung closed behind us and the wind died on our cheeks. Mine stung in the warmth, throbbing gently as the blood rushed back into them.
I narrowed my eyes and swept the room from right to left, visualizing where I’d dive to and draw if things went sour, which I was very much expecting them to.
The mercs were just where they’d been before, in their booth. The three of them were sitting across the table from another human. He was in his fifties, grizzled, with a scar across his forehead, shining red against his white hair. He was a merc if I’d ever seen one and was wearing that hard-cut expression that Alice and I had sported when we’d headed over there the first time. It seemed that Telmareen was becoming a hotspot for them — the promise of credits in the air just too good to pass up.
The trio — Kera and her cronies— were just trying to carve off a slice of the pie, whether they were involved or not. Maybe they thought that jacking some Iskcara would impress someone, or get them noticed, or maybe they just thought that if someone was skimming, then everyone should get a cut — or maybe they just thought the Federation had gone a little soft on Telmareen.
What I did know, though, was that they didn’t have the stones to pull off a job themselves, so they were roping other naïve mercs in under the pretense of getting in good with whoever was running the show — that fabled promise of steady work, a golden ticket — and sending them to their deaths.
We’d not seen anything really, on the airwaves, about the attack on the transport, which meant that the Guard and the Federation were suppressing it, probably to keep everything looking normal from the outside — keeping investors or stockholders from getting spooked probably, and to stop rumours of unrest circulating — which likely meant that we weren’t the first to try to hit the shipments, and we wouldn’t be the last.
It also explained why there was so much protection — why there was an electrified hull, an automated cannon, and why and how the Telmareen Guard scrambled all those Fixed-wings so quickly. It wasn’t their first go-round. I just wondered what the hell they were doing to Alice right now.
I shook that thought off and headed for the table, set to interrupt their little interview. The droid caught me first and tapped on Kera’s shoulder. She stopped mid-spiel and looked up. The Polgarian turned and looked over his shoulder, then rotated in the chair, trying to stop his eyes going wide. I was, after all, a ghost — someone they’d watched die. Or at least thought they had. I guess none of us were as smart as we thought we were.
I reached the table, watching to make sure their hands weren’t twitching. Mac’s was already around his pistol grip, ready to draw in case. There was no mistaking his try it and see, assholes expression.
“Move,” I growled, hooking my thumb over my shoulder at the merc in front of me. He wrinkled his brow and glared up at the kid telling him to get out of the booth. If he was standing, he probably would have taken a swing at me, but he wasn’t, and I was wearing an even more pissed-off look than Mac.
He looked from me to Mac to the mercs and back, before sighing and sliding to his feet. He was waiting for them to come to his aid, but they were staring at Mac and me, a little dumbfounded.
The guy with the scar pulled himself to a stance, stood facing me for a second, measuring up whether he was going to try some shit, and then decided against it. He sidled off, muttering to himself, and pulled up a stool at the bar, glowering at us over his shoulder every few seconds.
I ignored him and turned my attention to Kera. “Don’t get up.”
“I wa’nt tinking to,” she said darkly. “Never seen a dead man come back t’life,” she said with only the slightest shade of surprise coloring her voice.
“There’s a lot you haven’t seen,” I growled, sliding in behind the table. Mac stayed standing, hovering at the edge of the booth. He casually pulled his pistol off his belt, and, hanging his wrist over the back of the booth, hid it from the room with his body. From their perspective, though, it was clear as day. He could lift his hand and put a bullet in any one of them before they could even move for their weapons. “Hands on the table,” I ordered.
Mac jiggled the gun and they obliged, looking at him, and wondering which one of them he’d plug first if they didn’t comply.
“Now,” I said, taking a breath and sitting back, resting my hand on my lap in case I needed to go for my Arcram. “We’re going to ask once, and you’re going to tell me who you’ve got inside the Guard, or the Federation, or whoever the fuck it is that’s giving you the intel on the Iskcara shipments.”
They all looked at each other. I curled my free fist and slammed it on the table. “We know you’re not working with the Free — we know they’re running this skim — and we know you don’t have anything to do with them. You’re just a couple of mercs trying to muscle in on someone else’s racket, and you fucked us once, but now we’re here for the real intel, which you’re going to hand over, or my friend here is going to start getting real jittery.”
Kera started to smirk, and then even dared to laugh. “Oh, child, you theenk you got it all figured out?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I growled. “You know someone on the inside, they’re giving you the shipping intel, you’re scooping up mercs who’re going off the same clues that we did, sending them to do your dirty work because you don’t have the stones to do it yourself.”
She laughed a little louder and pulled her hands to the edge of the table. Mac stiffened and I straightened instinctively. She stopped and pulled her mouth into an ‘o’ shape. “You two is jumpy, eh?”
She was testing us, and I wasn’t sure if we’d passed or failed.
“Sorry to disappoint you, child, but you’re not as clever as you theenk.” She relaxed a little and sat back in the booth, keeping her eyes locked on mine.
“Then why don’t you tell me what I’m missing,” I said with as much menace as I could muster.
“Oh, I don’t know if we got dat kinda time. See, I theenk if you back in here, acting all tough and demanded shit of me, den you don’t know much about anyting — but you got some kinda pressure on you, time-wise, eh? How dat for a guess?” She narrowed one eye at me.
My jaw flexed. If they didn’t cough up their intel then we only had one option, and that was to attack the Guard head-on without any idea of what we were going into.
She laughed a little more and shook her head. “Look, we been doing dis a laang time, ‘kay? We know who is who, and when two childs come walking in a place like this, sporting fresh steel big-boys, we know who they be — really. Got the Federation steenk all over yah,” she said, waving her wrist limply at me. “You here, doing Federation business, tryna feegure out what de hell’s going on — aye?” She put her hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “See, but you not de first one, are ya?”
I sucked in a breath through my nose but said nothing.
“Another one came t’rough ‘ere, looking for information. He one of yours?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at each of us in turn. Barva. She meant Barva. I wasn’t having a good run of this. If she wasn’t bullshitting, then I’d missed the beat twice now.
I had to know. I nodded almost minutely, and she casually curled her knuckles under her hand on the table and knocked on it. “T’ought so. And you here to try an’ find ‘im?”
I nodded again.
“But he not here no more, huh?” She lifted her chin as she asked, keeping her eyes on mine. I could feel Mac’s too. No doubt he wasn’t too happy about me giving the game away.
I shook my head.
“Yah, he be rustling too many bushes, banging on too many trash cans. Dat sorta activity in such a precarious time make people a little nervous, ya know? Now he been snapped up,” she said, snapping her fingers. “An’ gone who knows where. If he a friend o’ yours you best
make peace wit’ de fact you probably ain’t never seeing him again.”
I swallowed. “Why are you telling us all this?” It was the question on my mind, and Mac’s. This was building to something. It had to be, otherwise they would have tried to kill us the moment we walked in, knowing what they did.
“Because we know t’ings getting to a special time now.”
“Special time?” My head was spinning. “What’s your role in all this?” I softened all of a sudden. I didn’t have the energy to keep it up, especially considering I was swinging in the dark and missing. “Are you working with them? Why are you trying to steal Iskcara shipments? What are they doing with it all?” The questions were spilling out. Mac cleared his throat and touched the grip of the pistol against my shoulder to let me know that I should shut the fuck up.
She laughed a little. “Look, we both got t’ings we tryna do, eh? Both got shit to look after. So we make a deal—”
“The last deal we made with you didn’t come off too well,” I said, my voice barbed.
“D’as ‘cause dat weren’t no deal,” she replied, just as harshly. Her hand rose and she pointed at me. “Dat just be you and de girl theenking you know how de world works, and getting turned over. You theenk you be playing us, but you just puppets in all dis.”
I gritted my teeth and spoke through them, my patience strained. “So what’s the deal?”
“You tell us what we want to know, and den we tell you what you want to know. Fair?”
I swallowed. “If your word is worth anything.”
She held her hand to her chest like she’d been stabbed in the heart. “Dat wound, child. Not my fault you theenk you clever when you actually gettin’ tricked.”
I exhaled and blinked hard, trying to force down the headache poking me in the back of the eyes. “Just get on with it.”
She didn’t waste any time. “You are Federation, right — some investigatory group, aye? Just to confirm dat we are who we all are.”
I looked at her for a while, and then nodded. Mac cleared his throat again but said nothing. I paid it no mind.
“And sheet about to get real tough for everyone on Telmareen, right?”
I nodded again and heard Mac swear under his breath. I don’t know what it was, but I could sense humanity in her all of a sudden, like she wasn’t playing an angle anymore.
“And when that do, everyone who associated with dis shit going to be found and killed, right?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Probably.”
“Den it about time we got out of de fire, yeah? Get off Telmareen before dat shit ‘appens.”
“We would if we could.”
“But dat girl shot you not wit’ch you no more, is she?”
I shook. “No, she’s not.”
“She in de Guard towah, yeah? Arrested after your little stunt. We keep tabs on dat sort of thing. Need to know our work paying off.”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“And de way you lookin’ at ‘er last time, me think you not too pleased to be leavin’ her to de same fate as your other man?”
I was sick of being read. I had no idea what the hell was going on, only that I didn’t know anything I thought I did. “Where’s this going?” I asked, my patience all but expended.
“Well, if you going in dere to get her, den maybe you do us a little favor, and you get our man out at de same time.” Kera cocked her head a little.
“What, he get arrested trying to pull the same stupid shit?” I scoffed.
“Nah,” she smiled sadly. “Not quite. He what dey call insurance. Make sure we keep doing what we s’pose to be doing. We can’t leave ‘til we got our man back. And if all dis sheet start kicking off before dat happen, den we get pulled into it. Free vers’ de Federation, right here on de streets of Telmareen. And you know how dat end. We don’t want to be here when dat happens, ya see?”
“So why not break him out yourself?” I raised my shoulders. “Smart as you are, of course.”
“They see us coming, they know who we are, they put a gun to our man head and den they know that we not loyal — we not wit’ dem. So what good any of us when dat happen? Maybe dey not see you coming. Maybe you get in, rescue de girl, and get our man same time, and bring him back.”
I sucked on my cheek. “And what assurances would you have that we’d even follow through with that?”
She shrugged herself. “Well, we could always make an anonymous call to de Federation and tell dem how you try to rob one of their shipments, shot down one of deir planes in de middle of deir city, eh? Got it all on film, afta all — you and dat girl agreeing to do it and all that.”
I took a breath. We’d have to include that in our report anyway, but at least we’d be able to spin it our way. If it got out before then, we’d be court martialed and ejected before we could even plead our case. And Volchec would be shitcanned for allowing the whole thing. Hell, they’d probably just eject all six of us and be done with it. The last thing we wanted was for that to get out before we could make an attempt to rescue Alice. They’d never allow it otherwise, and if we went outside them, we’d be disobeying direct orders — also an ejectable offense. I didn’t know what she was going to say, but Kera’s words felt like a pretty cold fucking barrel against my temple. I nodded after an age. “Okay.”
Mac finally broke the silence. “Red, what the fuck are you doing?” he hissed.
“We don’t have a choice,” I mumbled.
“Well, we could just fucking shoot them, be done with it. Dead people don’t tell stories, I know that much.”
“And Alice?” I turned away from Kera and looked at him. We were all human around the table just then — the Polgarian, the Droid, Mac, me, and whatever the hell Kera was. They might have been cold mercs working an angle before, but they had someone they cared about being held at gunpoint, same as we did. They needed us, and whether Mac could see it or not, we needed them.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, trying to sound confident. But he didn’t, and I didn’t care. I’d already made my mind up.
“No, we won’t. They know something we don’t, and they need our help. We’re going in there to get Alice, and we’re going to have a much better chance of succeeding if we have their help. If we kill them now, hell, maybe word gets back before we can make an attempt, and then they kill Alice before we get there. And then what?”
Mac opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“We’ve fucked this mission,” I said. “I’ve fucked this mission. I’ve fucked up every call I’ve made and it’s been a total shitting of the bed from the moment we touched down on this fucking planet. We can’t count this a successful mission — so the least we can do is go home with everyone we came with. And if that means letting a couple of Free-helping mercs go free — well,” I said, sighing, “Alice is worth that much.”
Mac stared at me, knuckles white around his pistol grip. “Fine. But if they rat us out and tell the Free we’re coming, and they pop Alice before we get there…”
“Then trust me when I say, we’ll hunt them to the ends of the fucking universe if need be.” My voice found its rhythm all of a sudden and sounded hard again. “This is the only play we’ve got right now, and I don’t like it any more than you do, alright?”
He bared his teeth and drew a slow breath. “Okay.”
I turned back to Kera. “You’ve got a deal. Now spill your fucking guts. Who are you and what the fuck is happening on this stupid fucking planet?”
21
“Coming up on Service Entrance 3 now,” I said, pacing steadily down the asphalt ramp toward the huge steel roller door that led into the bowels of the Telmareen Guard Tower.
The Guard themselves were a mixture of races. Being a Federation Sanctioned Force, they were mostly comprised of humans and humanoids, but that wasn’t to say that the entirety of the Guard was. As such, the sight that awaited us was a strange one.
“Alright.” Volchec’s voice echoed in my head
. “Stay cool, don’t let them know anything’s up until you hit them.”
I nodded to myself, looking at the two figures ahead. Snow had started falling and it was resting gently on the pair — the one on the left a humanoid inside a modified F-Series painted in green and white striping with a siren on its head to denote its place in the Telmareen Guard. And on the right, a Wint, the same hairy species that had served us in the bar, though this one looked about twice as mean.
It was standing practically as tall as the F-Series, nearly six meters, wearing a long green winter coat that would drown any human, adorned with reflective panels. It was holding a rifle in its grasp — what I first assumed to be a Samson, the same as what was slung over my back — but as I drew closer I saw it to be something else. A shotgun. A big one, that looked like it would punch a massive fucking hole in whatever it was aimed at.
The F-Series on the left wasn’t too different from my own, except it was armed with a ‘Deterrent Foam Cannon,’ which Volchec had relayed to us on the way down. Canisters on its back fed expandable foam into the gun which then sprayed it at high velocity onto whatever was giving it grief. It expanded and hardened into a gummy semi-liquid, and made it impossible to retaliate. I had to deal with it before it got that far.
There was something in blind trust. It was an oddly unnerving and exhilarating experience. I sidled down the asphalt ramp in my F-Series, breathing deeply. “Greg, target the camera dome on the F-Series ahead.”
“Targeting,” he said softly, putting a reticle over it.
“What are the odds we can blow a hole in it before he moves?”
“It’s likely.”
“Put a figure on it.”
“Ninety-two percent.”
I let out a low whistle. “That is likely.”
The F-Series clocked me finally as I stepped into the glow of the floodlight over the door, looming out of the gloom, imposing with icicles hanging off my body like fangs.
“Halt,” came a deep voice. The heavy hand of the F-Series lifted and ordered me to stop. I did.