by James McEwan
“Good, you will be my guest tonight and tomorrow you will head out and find my daughter.” Gordon said as he punched buttons on his control panel.
Thad was not happy about this and felt that this man was not to be trusted, but what could he do. “And how will I find this convoy?”
Gordon pointed to the dwarf. “Vergil, he will know a way to find them.”
Thad flashed a quick look at Vergil then back to Gordon. “Just one more question.”
Gordon looked annoyed. “Yes!”
“Why did they take your daughter in the first place?” Thad asked.
Gordon’s good mood seemed to be fading fast as he bellowed at Thad. “Fuck if I know! Just get her back, and then you and your friends can leave.”
“Consider it done.” Thad said as he bowed and waved his arm in an overly exaggerated manner.
“Good, now get off my bridge. I have work to do!”
Thad stepped off the platform and followed Vergil to the door, when Gordon spoke again. “Not you, Vergil. Mr. Hammer, if you would be so kind to wait outside for a few minutes while I have a little chat with Vergil.”
Thad did as he was asked and waited outside the bridge. Vergil, on the other hand, shuffled up to the fat commander’s platform. Gordon looked down at him. “Alright you little worm, you will help him with whatever he needs to get Julianne back.”
“Yes Sir.” Vergil said with all the enthusiasm of a lump of cheese.
“I wasn’t finished.” Gordon snapped. “You will also go with him and make sure he gets her back, got it?”
The dwarf was shocked ... he had no desire to get killed “Me! Why me? Why not someone else, anyone else, why not Gunther? He is big and strong and as head of security, he can handle himself.”
“Yes, he can and I need Gunther right where he is. Besides who knows ... maybe they will kill you and then I wouldn’t have to worry about my promise to your mother, now, will I brother?” Gordon said.
“Don’t you mean our mother?” Vergil shot back at his younger half-brother.
“You know what I mean, now it will be you that will go with him and if by some miracle you come back in one piece maybe I might just forgive you for what you did to me.” Gordon said.
“But you know that if Cranky Mickey gets his hands on me I’m good as dead!” Vergil said as he jumped up onto the platform and got in his brother's face.
“That is the point you little imp.” Gordon spat back at him. Vergil’s little face flushed beet red with anger and he was about to say something when Gordon’s massive hand connected with Vergil’s face. The backhand caught Vergil by surprise as well as sending him flying backward and onto his back. “Now, get off my bridge and get my daughter back! Oh, and Vergil, don’t come back here empty handed or promise or no promise I will throw you under the wheels.”
Vergil sat up, his lip cut and warm blood running down his little chin. He wiped the blood from his face. “Yes, brother!” He said controlling his anger.
Outside the bridge Thad stood. He had used his comm implant and some software that Eve had written for him, and hacked the vehicles rather archaic security systems. He watched and heard everything. The door opened and Vergil stormed off the bridge. His lip was swelling and he didn’t look like he was in a good mood.
Thad felt bad for the little guy. “Your brother is a bit of a dick, huh?”
That stopped Vergil dead in his tracks. “That is a colossal understatement.”
“Your brother is an ass if you ask me. I mean it is one thing to boss people around, but smacking a little guy around, especially when that guy is your brother.”
“Half-brother.” Vergil said with disdain in his voice. “same mother, and different fathers. My father was killed in an accident. His father was the commander, and he had taken care of my mother after the accident that killed my father.”
“Ah, I see.” Thad said, as he stepped next to the dwarf who started walking down the hallway again.
“Wait, how did you know that he was my brother?” Vergil asked puzzled.
“I saw and heard everything.” Thad answered.
“Yeah, but how?” Vergil pressed him.
Thad smiled and placed his hand on the little half man’s shoulder. “I have my ways and maybe someday I will share them with you, but for now why don’t you take me to your nearest drinking area and I will buy you a drink while you tell me everything.”
The dwarf pointed down the hallway. “It’s this way, I think I could use a good drink about now.”
Chapter 12
Getting past the security at the trash depot was not too terribly difficult. At first St. Claire looked around for a hole in the security system, but after a few minutes, it was apparent that this place had holes in their security system one could have driven a truck through. There was one lonely security bot on duty and St. Claire found him heavily engaged in a game of cards with the facility’s systems monitor bot.
After a quick silent chuckle, St. Claire slipped past the bots. He made his way into the loading area where there were massive barges lining up to be filled with trash, while a long line of barges was departing for New Huston. All of the barges were completely automated, no pilot or crew. However, each barge had a systems and control area, a small cabin in the back that a human tech could enter and run tests and make software updates.
There was no door code or lock of any kind, just a large metal handle that pivoted and swung two large steel bars that held the door closed. St. Claire ran to the barge that was just about finished filling with trash and was the next to leave the loading area for the launching area. He wrapped his hands around the worn and rusty handle. He put his foot against the bulkhead and braced himself for a struggle, but much to his surprise the handle rotated easily. “That will work.” St. Claire said as he swung the door open.
Once inside the barge control cabin, he could see all kinds of information being processed on multiple screens. It was like watching a digital ballet, as bits of information danced back and forth. Mesmerized by the soft glow of the screens and their dance of data, St. Claire just stood there and watched. Never once had he ever looked at flowing data as something that could be perceived as something beautiful.
Lost in his thoughts, St. Claire nearly fell over when the barge lurched forward, as it started its journey to New Houston. He steadied himself and then he walked over to the swivel chair that was bolted to the floor in front of a small desk and interface.
He sat down in the chair. “Well, at least the chair is comfy.” The flight to New Huston was a couple of hours on a fast shuttle. The trash barges were not in a hurry so they were not what one would call fast. He had hours to do nothing so he did what anyone would have done that was on the run, he fell fast asleep.
The banging and rumbling of the barge coming to a stop at the dump facility shook St. Claire from his sleep and from his chair. He rolled on the hard floor before bouncing up onto his feet, pistol in hand. He wheeled around. Seeing that he was in no danger, he holstered his weapon. “That was embarrassing. I’m glad no one saw that.” he said out loud.
Thinking that he had arrived, he went to the outer door and opened it. He almost stepped out, but the lack of anything to step on was a problem that his self-preservation instinct felt was a big enough problem to take control of his brain and put the brakes on. Standing in the open doorway one leg dangling in the air, his heart pounding, he remarked to himself, as there was no one else to hear him. “Damn that was close.” He looked out over the massive pile of trash below him.
St. Claire had not considered this part of the plan when he chose the trash barge as his preferred method of transportation. He wrongly assumed that both ends of the trip would be the same, that there would be an unloading area similar to the one at the loading dock in New Dallas. The problem was that there was no such area here. Here, the barges just slowed down over huge piles of trash, opened their bottom doors and let gravity do the rest. He guessed he was about forty feet above th
e piles of muck. He had to decide what he was going to do next and he would have to be quick about it because his barge was next in line to dumb and when it did, it would return to New Dallas for yet another run in an endless cycle of load and unload.
He looked for a soft place to land, but nothing looked good to him. There were far too many sharp and pointy things down there to skewer himself on. “Damn it! All this for nothing.” St. Claire was not happy. Then he noticed that the barges dumb twice. They had two chambers, one for non-organic trash and on for organic.
He waited as the barge dumped its non-organic waste first, before moving over a pile of steaming organic goo. “Well, here goes nothing.” St. Claire said, then took a big breath and jumped.
He crossed his arms and legs and waited to land in the foul steaming liquid waste. He expected it to be a much harder landing than it was. He splashed down with a mighty thump, the clean air, and the light disappeared over his head as he went deep under the nasty goo of decomposing food and waste. He kept his eyes shut tight and his mouth clamped as tightly as he could. As soon as he stopped, moving down he kicked with his feet and pulled with his arms as hard. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity he broke through the surface and found the air.
It was foul and contained smells that no human had ever coined words for, nevertheless it was air. He swallowed it down into his thankful lungs that just wanted the oxygen and didn’t care how bad it smelled. Too bad the rest of his body disagreed. He swam over to the side of the pond and pulled himself out and onto the dirt. He could take it no longer and he rolled onto his side and vomited. He retched so hard that for a second he thought he might actually vomit up his stomach.
After emptying his stomach, St. Claire picked himself up and with what little dignity he had left brushed the large chunks from his soaked clothing. “Note to self, never do that again.”
Even though his arrival was not, quite as he planned he had made it to New Huston. Next, he needed to get cleaned up. Then he needed to find an old friend. The old friend he was looking for was more of an old informant than a friend. St. Claire had no idea where to find Tommy Ten-toes. However, Tommy was an Ascarian, a race of humanoids that in most cases would be easily mistaken for human. The differences were small such as they were completely hairless and had markings on their bodies that humans would call birthmarks, but unlike humans, they are not born with them. Their marks are added after birth by their parents, it was to delineate the family lines. It was like being branded with the family crest.
Tommy was called Ten-toes because Ascarians only had three large toes on each foot, but Tommy was a genetic anomaly and was born with five toes on each foot hence the nickname Ten-toes. Many people believed that he had ten toes because they think that his father was human. However, those who believe that knew nothing of Ascarian breeding habits. Ascarians have two types of females, donors, and hosts. It takes three Ascarians to make a child and therefore completely incompatible with humans.
If the mating practices of the Ascarian were not hard enough, their genetics are so complicated that breeding outside their race is almost impossible. So Tommy Ten-toes was just a freak of nature and right now the guy that St. Claire needed more than anyone in the verse.
The other thing about Ascarian that made them stand out from other humanoid races in the verse was the fact that they all are walking computers. No one, not even the Ascarian know why, but all Ascarian can do complex calculations in their heads usually many times faster than a computer. So finding Tommy was not going to be too hard, most Ascarian work in banks or computer companies. However, Tommy was a criminal and that meant number running. Tommy would be working as a bookie.
Unlike New Dallas, where every street and every building was kept in prime condition (hence the city’s nickname the Gleaming City), New Houston was not gleaming; it was in fact in most areas a dump. New Houston was much like old Las Vegas with the center of the city awash in bright colorful lights of the many Casinos that is the beating heart of the city. Beyond the Casinos were the shopping, convention centers and other entertainment areas. Continue towards the edge of the city and you find the nicest apartments and living areas then it all goes downhill from there. Keep moving outwards and you will find the worker storage units, which were nothing more than square buildings that house as many small apartments as they could. The last band of the city before the edge was mostly the slums. The places where the lost, the losers, the penniless, and city’s riff-raff abide. Then there was the edge. A two to three block area that encompassed the whole of New Dallas. It was kept clean and crime free mainly because the richest citizens lived and liked to dine there. There were a number of cafes and restaurants that overlooked the edge. The view was grand and belonged to those who could afford it.
New Houston was the headquarters of The Organization, a planet-wide organized crime syndicate ... and they cared for little outside of the main strip. As long as it didn’t affect business they could care less what happened in the rest of the city.
The slum is where the trash processing facility was located and this was St. Claire would start his search. Tommy was not that smart, but he was smart enough to know to stay out of the big boy's playground. He would most likely be running numbers for a low to a mid-level outfit. St. Claire knew Tommy had a vice and all he had to do was find someone who would be dealing in his kind of vice and he was sure to find Tommy not far away.
The first order of business, however, was to get a shower and some new clothing. He reached into his pocket and felt around for his emergency credit card, but it was not there. He searched all of his pockets and the only thing he had was that strange coin-like disk the bow-tie wearing man had given him, and his pistol. “Shit, I must have lost it somewhere when I jumped.” He looked back at the steaming pond of foulness that he had just crawled out of. “Forget that, I will figure out something else.”
St. Claire walked for blocks, and luckily for him it was late at night and the streets were mostly empty, and like New Dallas, the city’s night shield created the illusion of darkness. St. Claire was happy about the timing because it meant he could move around the city without having to explain his current condition to anyone.
He made his way from shadow to shadow, easily avoiding anyone who might be out on the street. It was nearly daybreak when he found what he had been searching for all night. The small corner shop consisted of the ground floor corner of what looked like a rundown apartment building. This was the kind of place that local cops would refer to as the shop and rob.
It had everything that you would expect in a local convenience shop, but it was not the product line that he was interested in, it was the lady at the video counter that St. Claire that interested him. He entered the shop and made straight for her. One look at her light brown skin, black hair, and eyes told him that she was Indian as in Earth the subcontinent of India. Her Sari was a deep red, banded in gold and covered in multi-colored crystals. She was sitting behind a counter flipping through a holographic catalog of shoes.
The front of the counter was covered in vid chip cases that also went up the walls and across the top of the counter. They were all Bollywood productions and this is why he came here and why he wanted to speak to the girl behind the counter. As it turns out for some unknown reason not only had Bollywood survived for this long, it was like crack to Ascarians. Why, no one knows, but whenever a new video is released the Ascarians come out of the woodwork to get it. If anyone would know where to find Tommy Ten Toes, it would be her.
He stepped up to the counter. “Excuse me, Miss.”
She looked up from her array of holographic shoes. “Welcome to the…” her face contorted. “Oh, I am so sorry for the smell.” She turned to the back and screamed. “Aadarsh… Aadarsh, where are you, come on you fat, lazy, cheap, bastard, the plumbing is backing up again!”
A bit embarrassed, St. Claire’s face flushed. “Ah, no, Miss ... that would be me.” She gave him a disgusted look. He pressed on. “Look,
I am looking for an Ascarian goes by the name Tommy Ten Toes, and I was hoping you could tell me where I might find him.”
She covered her nose in a vain attempt to block the stench. “What makes you think I know this Ascarian?”
He cocked his head towards her, lifted an eyebrow, and gave her his best ‘do you think I am a stupid cop look’. “Look, you can play it that way, or I can camp out in front of your door and tell people that your toilet exploded and that there is raw shit dripping down the walls and all over the floor.” He paused long enough to let it sink in. “Or you could tell me where I can find Tommy and I will be on my way.”
Terrified of the loss of business she caved. “All right, he comes in here every now and then, so what of it?”
He leaned in closer to her. “So I would really, and I mean really like to find him as well as shower and get some clean clothes.”
Her eyes were watering. “Try the café on 45th and Lexington, now get out my shop.”
St. Claire smiled. “Thank you. Now was that so painful after all?”
She pointed to the door. “Get out!”
“Okay, I’m going.” he spun around and headed for the door.
As he was walking out a short pudgy Indian male stepped out of the back room with a rather nasty looking device that one could only guess was a homemade plunger of some sort. The woman with hands on hips watched as St. Claire left the shop. “Fat lot of help you are.”
“What?” He said as he raised his shoulders.
“Oh, go put that thing away before you hurt yourself again.”
Chapter 13
Vergil led Thad down several decks and over to the starboard side where there was a bar used by the engineers. It was not much of a bar, but it would do. Scattered around the few tables were a few grease-covered men drinking and playing games of dice or cards.
They sauntered up to the bar and Thad slapped down his prepaid credit card. “Two of whatever the little guy wants.”