A Backworlder clad in splatters of
paint and nothing else greeted them. He was fleshy, of average height, and had
six arms. “Welcome to
Mortua
. Currently, I’m
refurbishing an intersystem hauler that’s not designed to go through the
Lepper. Have an old transport that is meant for Lepper travel to refit next if
you want to wait around for it. Living costs are two hundred chips per person
per day. That includes oxygen, but not water.”
Steep price for rotten air. Craze
thought the Backworlder should pay them to breathe the wretched stuff.
“We’ll be keeping the ship we
have,” Talos said. He smiled tightly, standing straight and not showing any
uncertainty, taking on the role of captain with aplomb. He plucked the prized
pin off of his lapel and pocketed it.
Dactyl pushed Captain Talos aside,
stepping in front of the aviarman. “We’ve come to buy something else.
Information on
yous
last customer.”
“I keep that
confiden
—”
Dactyl whipped out his badge, the
one claiming he was a member of the Backworld Authorities, which was made up of
representatives from almost every planet. It was the Assembled Authorities who had
fought the war, then negotiated the truce with the Fo’wo’s and enforced it. Now
they kept the peace between the divergent Backworlds mostly by tracking down
serious lawbreakers escaping planetary boundaries.
“They traded in their battle
cruiser for a very nice mercenary vessel. I’m keeping the battle cruiser.” The
Mortuan
gestured at an occupied docking slip opposite of
the Sequi.
Across the hangar, Craze could make
out the dark Fo’wo’ spacecraft. Its shape reminded him of rocks jammed
together. He couldn’t figure out which were the aft panels, so couldn’t find
the painted over logo. Shifting his weight, he crossed his arms over his barrel
of a chest, appearing intimidating until somebody needed him to do otherwise.
“We don’t want the ship.” Dactyl’s
fingers brushed over his left bicep. “We want to know where they went.”
There was no sign of any other
inhabitants other than the strange man in paint. The Backworlder’s six arms
sanded rings and gears, and what appeared to be parts to an engine. “They had
me clear the Lepper to Wism.”
Dactyl pointed at the code
scrolling on every billboard in the docking facility. “That
yous
code?”
Four of the arms reassembled the
sanded parts while the other two picked up more rusty pieces. “Yup.”
“I’m pinging
yous
a thanks. Clear us for Wism, please.” Dactyl punched icons on his tab then
pocketed the device inside his long brown coat.
The
Mortuan
smiled friendlier. “In need of any supplies? Spare parts?”
Talos reasserted himself, putting a
hand on the lawman’s shoulder and sending Dactyl to the background. “Yes. We
could use an extra propellant cell—”
Dactyl yelled over the aviarman.
“We need nothing. Clear the Lepper for us. Now.”
Talos glowered at the Quatten, but
Dactyl didn’t care. He returned the foul expression. Inside the Sequi they
argued over who had ultimate say on this mission. They bickered about it
constantly most of the way to Wism.
Craze and Lepsi kept out of it,
playing a lot of cards. That way they didn’t appear to be listening as closely
as they were. Anywhere else, Craze would have found the on-going squabble
annoying. In the corridor of blue, it became entertainment.
Before they left the Lepper for
their next destination, Talos and Dactyl came to an agreement. The Quatten
would have authority over anything to do with apprehending the Fo’wo’s, the
aviarman would have ultimate say on anything to do with the Sequi and its crew.
“What kind of place is Wism?” Craze
asked as they exited the portal of cobalt light. He hoped the planet would have
a medical facility in order to find that laser they needed to assess the stash
of chocolate-mealworm bars.
Talos stared out the view panel,
following route beacons set out from the Lepper, punching in course
corrections. Terms of the truce with Dactyl stated the captain would answer
first. “Never been here before.” His right eye and lips twitched rapidly.
Craze knew the tics were purely
genetic manifestations and didn’t rely on those to figure out Talos’s real
feelings on the matter. He checked the
aviar’s
hands,
which remained steady and out of his hair, the captain’s true tell-all. If
Talos wasn’t hyped-up nervous, Craze saw no need to get wound up either. He
leaned back in his chair, letting his legs stretch out long. “
Nothin
’ to worry about, huh?”
His concentration on steering the
ship, Talos was slow to answer. “It’s just a place.”
Dactyl clucked in disgust. “
Yous
can’t wander about the Edge so ignorant ‘n keep
breathing. Wism is a horrible place loved by cut-throats, traitors, ‘n
dastards. There’s plenty to worry about.”
That wasn’t at all reassuring.
Craze gathered his legs back under him, sitting straighter. His hair stood up.
He had to pet it for three whole minutes to get it to settle down. “Shit.”
Dactyl crossed his short arms over
his wide chest. “Unlike
Mortua
, it has a breathable
atmosphere without a dome, but barely. We’ll all be wheezing ‘n needing
frequent rest. It’s a dark place, almost always in the shadow of its planet.
That ringed orb over there.”
The planet loomed lifeless and
colorless with a ring that looked as if the globe had weakly expelled its last
breath, a wimpy effort at generating interest. The moons around it didn’t
inspire anything greater than a sneer of contempt.
Craze didn’t want to visit any of
those worlds. “Wism is a moon?”
“Yup. Covered in black sand.
Nothing but black sand that seeps into places
yous
don’t want it,” Dactyl said.
Craze shifted his weight tugging on
the legs of his coveralls. “You have some sort of plan? I mean we just not
goin
’ to march in there like we did on
Mortua
.
Right?”
“We
gonna
swagger this time.” Dactyl seemed no taller standing, putting on his long brown
coat, pulling at the lapels to settle the fabric around his wide body. He
straightened his holsters.
Maybe the Quatten wasn’t serious.
For several minutes Craze waited to see if the lawman would crack. Dactyl’s
expression never wavered though. Not once. Dammitall, he meant what he said.
“We got
nothin
’
to act haughty over,” Craze said.
Dactyl rubbed absently at his left
arm, something he did often enough that it made Craze wonder. Old injury?
Something else?
“There’s them bars
yous
took from Mr. Slade’s Emporium on Elstwhere,” Dactyl
said. “Possession of chocolate gives any Backworlder the right to boast.”
Shit. How’d he know about that?
Dactyl might make them give the stash away or turn it into the Backworld
Assembled Authorities. Craze sucked in his lips, organizing imaginary bottles
on a dream shelf that seemed like it would never be realized. Rum with rum.
Short to tall. Spiced to dark.
Talos ran a hand through his shock
of blue, mouth pursing. He chanced a glance at Craze. Craze shrugged.
Dactyl chuckled. “I wasn’t sure
until now that
yous
took some.
Yous
all just ate a meal of guilt. It seeps out of
yous
every pore.”
“The stuff concealing the frizzers
was mealworms,” Craze finally dared to say. “Isn’t
anythin
’
to swagger over.”
“Not every bar was. When
yous
have docked ‘n secured the ship, meet me down at the
hatch.” The lawman climbed down the ladder, leaving them to wonder.
Great news and misfortune all
grotesquely entwined to hear that not every bar was a mealworm cake. Even just
a few genuine chocolates represented a major fortune. The rub was whether
they’d be allowed to keep any. But, hey, the patroller didn’t know how many
bars they’d taken. No reason they had to fess up to the whole lot, and way out
here, Craze imagined Dactyl’s disappearance could be easily arranged,
especially if Wism was as rotten as he claimed.
Craze could tell the aviarmen
thought the same thing. The three of them smirked at each other. Craze bit his
lower lip to keep from cheering. He figured Dactyl hovered down there
listening, but he couldn’t help pumping his fist in the air a couple of times.
Lepsi whipped out his tab and sang
in a bare whisper. “Eat that
Federoy
. You a stupid
boy. Eat that
Federoy
. Face full of hemorrhoids.”
Craze laughed at the inane rhyme,
which encouraged Lepsi to get more outrageous. The aviarman stood, repeating
the lines, swishing his hips, smashing the image of his brother against his
backside.
Talos joined in the high jinks,
beating the stale, smelly air inside their vessel with a raised fist, grinning.
“Fortune keeps twisting our knickers. Huh?”
A shrill signal blasted over the
Sequi’s
speakers, stopping their revelry. It was a warning
from Wism that coming any closer without contact would be considered a hostile
act. Talos opened a communications channel to the docking facilitator.
Music blared over the speaker with
the greeting. “Identify.”
“Sequi, small passenger transport,
coming from ... Elstwhere.” Talos raised his voice to be heard over the clamor
on the other end. “Request docking.”
“For what purpose?” The reply
sounded gruff and rancorous, wary and suspicious.
Talos took his prized “Carry On”
pin out of his pocket, and placed it prominently on the console where its
comforts could be easily seen. It kept the quiver shaking his hair out of his
words. “Trade ‘n shelter.” He almost barked it, matching crusty with crusty.
A dry cough cut through the din of
bad singing and out-of-tune instruments. “Shelter from what?”
Talos didn’t blink when blurting,
“The Assembled Authorities. Bastards tailed us to Elstwhere. Heard we can lose
them here.”
Snort. “Must have something good to
trade?” An iota of interest leaked into the last couple of syllables.
Talos let out a long, slow exhale.
“Better than good. Bars wrapped in stamped gold foil.”
“Shut it!” the dock facilitator
yelled at the merrymakers on his end. An abrupt hush fell. His next sentences
echoed clear as fresh-scrubbed air. “If you lying, we reserve the right to
shoot you. Take Slot 12-24.”
The threat was unmistakable. Craze
gulped, hoping the rest of the bars weren’t mealworms. Wism wouldn’t be
forgiving.
Talos didn’t break, sounding as
confident as a sunburst. “Aye. Meet you at the bar.”
When the connection cut, Craze
asked. “How’d you know there’s a tavern? Thought you’ve never been here.”
“It’s a constant out on the Edge.”
Talos steered the spacecraft toward the cluster of shadowy moons. Craze
couldn’t see a difference between one and another. “There’s always a bar.”
Good to know that when folks came
out of the Lepper they expected a drink. Craze nodded. “Soon I’ll have the best
one the Edge has ever seen, a true destination.”
“With folks coming from all over to
trade their wares,” Lepsi said, assisting Talos in guiding the vessel.
The aviars brought the Sequi in
low, skirting over the ebony sands swirling into a dusty wake beneath their passage.
Craze watched as particles glistened when caught in the ship’s lights, dancing
and winking like flirtatious gals. The landscape stretched in soft undulations
of fine grit, gentle wave after gentle wave of black without variation until
the Sequi began the approach to the docking facility. There the sands ended
abruptly in an oasis of bedrock, dipping into a steep canyon. Along the ravine
walls glowed spots of orange and yellow, the lights of an austere city. A
rickety bridge linked the two sides, but Craze didn’t see any movement. It was
as if they headed to a ghost town. The Sequi braked and turned for a ledge
protruding from the rock face.
“They live in caves?” Craze said.
“Doesn’t history say the Fo’wo’s once lived in caves? Before they became civilized?
Hrrmph
. Depends on one’s definition of the word I
guess.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Talos
answered. “Barbaric horde of inferior genes is all they is.”
“True as the Lepper’s blue.” Lepsi
nudged the ship closer to the walls, openings gaping like hungry mouths and
flaming eyes. “Looks like a huge skull about to swallow us.”
A very unhelpful observation, Craze
thought.
Lepsi rubbed at a tic under his
eye. “You did a great job getting us a landing, Talos. However, I’m worried we
won’t live up to their expectations. What if the first bar they open is
mealworms?”
“We give them the opened one we
know is chocolate,” Craze said. He remembered the rough crowd in the bar on
Elstwhere, friends of the Jix who probably called Wism home. “Put on your
darkest clothes before
goin
’ to the hatch. Black if
you’ve got it.”
Craze went down to his bunk,
switching out his cheery red suspenders for forest green ones, and his white
shirt for a caramel-colored one. It was the darkest shirt he had. Lastly, he
put on the gray duster, wishing he’d selected a black one instead.
At the hatch, the aviars smeared
cleansing gel mixed with dirt into their hair and onto their shirts. It
darkened them, but they were a far cry from black. Dactyl had on a black hat
with all his brown. The effect was lacking, but Craze couldn’t fault them for
it. It was the best any of them could do
The lawman handed them each a
holster complete with a revolver. “Strap ‘
em
on,”
Dactyl said. “This is one of them Backworlds where bullets rule. These folks
won’t hesitate to use theirs. Try to avoid such a situation. ’N whatever
yous
do, don’t smile or get too surly. Surly enough will
do.” He rubbed at that left bicep again, facing the hatch with a steely mien,
as if he could wrestle the rocks and win.