by Reiter
“The Outer Rim?!” Virgil identified as he too looked at the screen. “But that’s the Shaded Sector! No one knows what’s there! Or are you about to make further argument that we should change your name to ‘no one’?”
“I was still a divine gopher when I waded into that part of space,” Austin said as he folded his arms. “Or should I say… the original version of me was a gopher back then.”
“That long ago?!”
“Yes, and not nearly long enough!” Austin quickly added. “Some things are better off unknown. And somehow, our little goddess is wrapped up in their endeavors. We will need to accelerate our plans with Imani and Cobalt. Now is not the time to be without allies!”
“I did not know we were without any,” Virgil commented.
“In this case, my friend, one can never have too many!”
Not the quarry, but the chase. Not the trophy, but the race.
Proverb
(Rims Time: XII-4112.11)
Everything had its time, place, feel, flavor, scent, sight and sound; she had come to know that much. Though she had arrived at the taproom by way of her own two feet, she did not need the memory of the experience to know where she was. The lights were low… by choice, not that too much was going to cut through the thick cigaro smoke in the area. The tune that kept the place from falling silent was somewhat lively but not necessarily memorable. The sudden sharp and dragged notes revealed it was either a bad recording of the original piece, or a substandard connection with the Grid. Either way to cut it, the same result came to mind: a cheap proprietor just far enough from anything IA that they did not have regulators hassling them over keeping their place within specifications.
Smoke was blown in her face but she did not blink, finishing the adjustment of her cards before she sighed and glanced at the heaping of credits at the center of the table. Her crystal blue eyes came up from her Kings and she spied the bar-back carrying his oversized tray to the bar where more drinks waited for him to ferry out to the customers. She frowned at how thin he appeared, suffering from what appeared to be malnutrition. The young boy did not hold her gaze long and he quickly set himself to the task of working for his pay. She sighed again and shook her head.
“You got problems, Blondie?” the Ardrian inquired, not really at all interested in the answer so much as he was fixed on the game. “We all hear you breathing over there, but you’re not doing much in the way of bettin’!”
“It just seems criminal, that’s all,” she replied, looking at her stacking of credits. “I mean what; it’s been five hands in a row since male hands have taken a pot? I feel like I should call those Maggots.” Two of the players quickly turned their heads for the door, looking for any sign of the Magistrates for the Interplanetary Amalgamation; affectionately referred to as Mags or Maggots.
“Kinda jumpy, those two,” she noted. “And since one of them’s my goose for this run, I think it’s time to place the last bet!
“Did I say those Maggots?” she asked, smiling at the other players. “I meant the Maggots.” A very bright smile flashed as she gestured toward the table. “And what are we betting anyway? Squids?” She looked hard at her cards and tilted her head to the side. “Are these asterisks?!” she asked, looking across the table at a Terran male who could not understand how he was cheating and still losing so badly.
“Hearts!” the Ardrian snapped, getting more annoyed at the way the woman played cards. Like most Ardrians, however, he had little to say, as there was simply no arguing with results. “The bet is hearts!”
“Are you sure?” she asked, looking more intently at her cards. “Sure as hell doesn’t look like a heart! I’ve had to cut out a couple, and neither one of them looked like that. I’d even go so far as to say these cards were racist for making the heart red. Everybody knows when you cut into a Bralkian, the last thing you see is red blood… even if they just ate a Terran!”
“Their blood is blue, sometimes purple!” the Ardrian yelled. “But here the hearts are red and they’re the suit of wager, and it’s your freakin’ bet!”
“Oooohh,” she cooed. “Aren’t you all big and bad?! All swarthy and sweaty, playing with Valentines! Easy boys, the man-ness around here is choking me!” she said, waving her free hand in front of her face. The Ardrian had heard enough, but the slender man to his left had taken a hold of the large man’s shoulder. Without looking at who had touched him, the Ardrian took in a deep breath, lowered his eyes to the table and breathed out slowly.
“Bet, or forfeit your hand,” the dark-haired man said calmly. “Please.”
Her eyebrows shot up for a moment as she sat up in her chair. She moved a couple of her cards and cleared her throat. “Well, since you added the majik word, I think I will bet.”
“Thank you,” the Ardrian said softly.
“I bet thirty track-scan units,” the young woman said with a big smile, slapping the table.
“Thirty what?” the slender man, who seemed to be the Ardrian’s keeper, asked, looking just as puzzled as most of the players. Two players in particular had heard what she had said and were more than a little curious.
“Thirty credits,” she replied matter-of-factly as she smiled at her cards.
“That’s not what you said,” the slender man said, and she wondered if he was a Truebreed. Ardrians were seldom kept in line by anything other than their own kind. The difference in the name was used to designate what field of service the party in question had taken to. An Ardrian was, in some capacity, a soldier. A Truebreed was of the same race, but they had made their living outside of the militia, and usually outside the Ardrian System. “You said track-scan units.”
She shuddered, but only slightly as the gaze on her cards went from soft to stern. “I did?” Her peripheral vision was sharp, and it was easy for her to see her goose moving his right hand to his side. The other player who had been baited by her Maggot comment swallowed hard as his eyes darted across the table.
“If those two are together, ‘bright eyes’ over there is not ready for prime time. The five at the bar, on the other hand,” she thought as she could see the largest of the five in the reflection of the napkin dispenser. If she were being honest with herself, the young woman knew she would eventually have to thank her Malgovi stick-in-the-mud for the advice of faking sneezes in order to shift one’s eyes. She had done so at the very beginning of the game, locating several means of looking around the room without turning her head. But dishonesty was much like diplomacy – it too began at home. There was little chance a ‘thank you‘ would come from her lips to his ears... though it had been a considerable amount of time since she had been in contact with her Engineer, trusted gun/blade, and overall muscle. Given his ability, the woman concluded that she needed to be more worried about herself than him. All she had to do is learn how to worry!
“All of them just stopped drinking,” she thought. “… and four of the five are eyeing my goose. He must be the trigger-man. That means the others are just thugs. We’re about to see if they’re well-paid, too… and if he got fair-market value!”
“Yes you did,” the Ardrian stated as he turned to look at the dark-haired man that was the woman’s goose. “So just who are we buying these things off of? You or her?!”
“Did not see that coming!” the woman said, lifting her foot up to the edge of the table and pushing with all of her strength.
The table came up as she fell back. As soon as her back met with the ground, her other leg swung over her body to pull her into a backward-rolling somersault. The Truebreed, the only true card player, the bright-eyed scared man, and the goose were either blinded by the sudden explosion of cards and credits, or the quickly-moving table. The Ardrian had already dropped his cards and reached to his side, using his left forearm as a shield against the cards and credits. He was up and out of his chair as the woman rolled to her feet.
The young woman’s head started to come up as the Ardrian cleared his holster and fired his weapon. A patron screamed in fright
and pain as the round tore through his shoulder. The woman’s face held a smirk as she was already in a hurdler’s split and rolling back into the screaming crowd. The Ardrian leveled his weapon, but he did not fire. The woman was fast, and there was too great a chance his next shot would find another witless target.
“Cut off the exits!” the dark-haired man yelled as he stood up. He stared into the screaming crowd, looking for any sign of the woman. He estimated that her blonde hair would be the easiest characteristic to spot.
“Don’t bother, Kallbren!” the woman shouted, giving name to her goose, as she stood up and charged for the wall furthest away from the overturned table. She had a chair in her hands; her head and shoulders jerked unexpectedly as she ran. She had been under fire before this day and it showed; she was not an easy target to line up. “I do my own exits!” She jumped up and over three patrons as she sharply thrust the chair in front of her body and through the glass of the window. The frame of the window caught the Ardrian’s second shot, just missing over the fast-moving form. “Woo hoo!” the woman cried as she fell out into the alley.
“After her!” Kallbren commanded.
“That’s my mating call,” she whispered, feeling a small cut on her left cheek. She brushed the bits of glass from her clothes. “Yeah, it’s a real cheap bastard who owns this tub. Can’t even spring for the clean-break glass. Glad I’m wearing my jacket!” Picking up the chair with one hand, the woman tapped her brace-com with her free hand. “Satithe. Going to need tactical on this one.”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” a soft, synthesized voice responded to her command. A three-dimensional map of the inside of the taproom was projected over her forearm. The woman looked at the moving red dots and smiled.
“These boys are quick,” she whispered, taking a tighter grip of the chair. She bent at the knees and prepared herself to move, licking her lips in anticipation. She could hear the clumsy clamoring inside and the angry voices of bystanders that had been thrown into the mix. “Hey there, Satithe, what’s Z’s exact location?”
“Captain!” she replied, and the woman could hear the tone of disgust and frustration in the self-aware computer’s tone.
“Dammit!” she grunted, stomping her foot in realization. She had given the computer one of her tells, but that paled to the surprise that the Malgovi had programmed the ship’s computer to be judgmental. “I know, I know… I said ‘exact’, got it. I tell you, I’m starting to get the hang of this brain stuff! Hold on a sec, doll.” The Ardrian came nimbly through the window and landed in the alley as the woman swung the chair into his face. The first swing stunned him and he staggered back to the building, dropping his gun. The second swing hammered his head into the wall; the third swing crashed down on his head and he fell to the ground. The woman dropped the chair and picked up his gun, charging for the mouth of the alley. She had timed her run perfectly and jumped up, bashing her forehead into the face of the man who came tearing around the corner. She could hear his nose break just before he screamed and fell.
“Ducking haymaker,” she thought as she squatted. The second man coming into the alley led with a wild hook that struck the wall. He grabbed his broken hand just before the woman grabbed his head, shoving it into the wall. He was stunned, but she would not let him fall. “Next guy’s playing it too tight!” she thought, pushing the man out of the alley and into a gunshot. The man spun after he was hit and fell to the ground.
“Furman!” the shooter cried. The woman nodded once as she moved out of the alley, kicking the horrified man in the stomach. He bent over from the pain of the metal in the toe of her boots. She fired over his back into the shoulder of the next man.
“Oh my God,” the woman cried out in a nervous voice, jumping off the back of the bent over man. “He shot Furman! Somebody get a Med-Tech before he dies!”
With one hand grabbing the slender ledge, the woman threw the gun into the collecting mass of chasers, scoring a face. “Idiot better be glad that wasn’t my blade,” she grunted as she pulled herself up the wall to the roof. Three shots tore into the terrastone just after she rolled over the lip of the roof.
“Okay, Sati,” she said as she started running for the rear wall of the building. “Where were we?!”
“You were making startling advancements in spotting your own tells,” Satithe replied.
“Oh! Right!” The woman huffed as she jumped from the rear of the building, over a very wide alley, and onto the roof of the next building. She rolled upon her landing and quickly came up to her feet, maintaining her speed. She ran for a few strides and jumped again, landing on a support beam for the monorail and then she jumped again, landing on the roof of the rail station.
The Tovask Sky Mining Station was not a megaplex by any stretch of the imagination. There were five stops on the monorail circuit and the main purpose of the tram was to ferry workers to and from their homes and workstations. The young woman got to her feet after yet another roll and looked around. “Looks like I’m coming in hot!”
“According to my instrumentation, your body temperature is well within acceptable–”
“Satithe!” the woman shouted as she looked back and could see the men still giving chase.
“Understood, Captain,” she replied in a lighter tone. “I will try to reach– Duck!” The woman squatted just before she heard the boom of the Ardrian pistol fire. She looked back to see a bloody-faced soldier aiming for another shot. The three-car train entering the station spoiled his opportunity.
“Hey, Sati, how did you manage that miracle?”
“Look seventeen degrees directly off your left shoulder,” the voice directed. The woman looked to see a familiar looking hover-drone and she smiled.
“Awww,” she smiled, applauding the device. “I have my own little floating friend-bot!”
“Your pursuer will soon be coming through the train,” the voice warned. “Might I suggest the cable with gravity piton?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. You can suggest it,” the woman replied as she started running again.
“But?” Satithe pressed, knowing there was something behind the Captain’s syntax and tone.
“I’m not wearing the harness,” she explained.
“Captain!”
“Look, you’ve got to tell Z to make that thing friendlier to lady-parts!”
“You mean… tell him again?!” Satithe strained.
“Oh, that’s right. Crapstacks! He already did that,” she admitted dropping down over the side, landing on an awning that provided enough bounce for her to jump and clear the slender street, landing on the far sidewalk where she spilled into a man, knocking him down as she too fell.
“Hey!” the man cried out as he got up to his feet. He grabbed the woman and lifted her up from the tiling. He looked into her blue eyes, comely face, and lost his belligerence. “Are you okay?”
“I am now, handsome,” she said softly, smiling up into eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to have a mode of transportation nearby, would you?”
“Say no more,” the man said as he turned to activate a taxi. The woman frowned as she took to running. She made the first three steps without making a sound. Reaching another alley, she ran for speed, not sound. She could hear the man call after her twice, but the only thing said after the gunshots were expletives and screams.
The alley was long and she had no trouble in getting over the high wall at the end of it. Several hurried gunshots escorted her over the false wood and the woman smiled as she hit the ground of the far side, running for the street that was not too far away. With that much of a gain, she decided she would appropriate transportation and to her surprise, a hover-bike happened by. Her clotheslining kick removed the rider and with no one on the vehicle, it quickly came to a stop. The woman swung onto the bike and unhitched the small trailer. It must have been some sort of delivery run. The fastest of Kallbren’s men came over the wall and fired three times, but the closest round struck a wall ten feet behind her as she activated forward th
rust.
“Satithe, where the hell is Z?!”
** b *** t *** o *** r **
The restraints on his wrists were going to be the last of the seven sets to be unlocked, but they were the only ones causing him any discomfort. The deputies were only on the third set. Each item required a different code key, so it was not a quick process, but Dungias was not in any rush. It had proven to be a very long night, and he was eager to put the matter behind him.
“But it will not be that simple, will it?” he thought.
“Just what the hell is a Mal-Gov-Vee anyway?” the deputy asked as he came in from the access hallway. Dungias looked into the young man’s eyes and could see what he had sensed in the voice: unsubstantiated hatred.
“I would not know,” Dungias replied, “the name of my people is Mal-GO-Vi. You know, as in the opposite of Mal-STOP-Vi. And when I say ‘stop’, I speak of course of what the Mistress of Fate had to have screamed when your parents first laid drunken eye upon one another. Not that they heeded her plea!” The secretary processing Dungias’ release could not keep from laughing and neither could the two guards who had escorted Dungias from his cell. “I assume there was drink involved... or perhaps a mating ritual. I fear I am left with only blind drink or blind faith as my means of suitable explanation.”
“Why you blue-skinned–” the deputy reached for his weapons belt when one of the guards stepped between Dungias and the enraged young Terran.
“Deputy!” the guard called out. “The High Judge said this man can go free!”
“He ain’t a man,” the deputy argued.
“Not if you are the measure for the word,” Dungias replied.
“Both of you just shut up!” the guard yelled before looking at one of his seated cohorts. “Would you mind walking the deputy outside so he can get some clean air? I’ll handle this thing.” Everything was quiet as two of the men left the area and the guard signaled the secretary to complete her duties.