Craze wasn’t sure what surly enough
meant, but he figured not behaving the coward was part of it. He thrust his
chin up and hooked his thumbs on the holster strapped to his hips, mimicking
the Quatten. The hatch slid open. Despite the show of bravado, his knees
knocked threatening to give out.
Dactyl took the lead leaving the
Sequi. The aviarmen flanked his sides, and Craze brought up the rear.
One scrawny kid stood there with a
scowl on his face that could crack a hull. “This way, assholes.” He strode off
through a tunnel in the rock lit by safe lanterns sunk into the floor.
Maintaining the same formation,
Craze and his companions followed. The air was cool, threatening to be damp,
but not quite making it. It smelled sour and sharp. The sharpness probably came
from the ventilation system. Craze could hear the fans rumbling below the din
in the near distance. Folks roared and barked, slapping things and laughing.
The laughter was cold and unsettling, the tones mocking, seeking to cause pain
and humiliation.
Craze hitched up the holster, his
fingertips grazing over the revolver’s handle. Then he stopped, wheezing, heart
hammering. He braced himself against the nearest rock wall, laboring to catch
his breath. His hand rasped over jagged chiseled edges biting into his palm,
raising welts.
The aviars and lawman huffed too,
but hadn’t run into the difficulty Craze had. His coveralls pumped against his
chest in a maniacal rhythm. The thin air might as well have been absent as far
as his body was concerned. It wanted to shut down and hibernate. He yawned.
“No time for sleeping.” Dactyl held
Craze up, pushing him toward the gold light and flickering shadows seeping
around the bend. “You can rest in the bar with a beer in
yous
hand. Not much farther to go.”
Craze’s legs buckled. He swayed,
chest constricting, inhales useless. He’d not make it, not without sitting
still for awhile. The kid leading them, glowered at him, sizing him up,
determining him weak. The smile his young, reedy face offered came off as smug
and stupid. Craze met the glare, narrowing his eyes. He gripped the revolver
handle and spat. The kid ran.
“What did I tell
yous
on the ship?” Dactyl stomped a foot. “Now he’s
gonna
tell our contact we Flatsies to be pushed around.
That doesn’t help us none at all.”
Leaning against the wall, Craze
panted, doing his best to rally. He winced when Dactyl mentioned
Flatsies—tab-thin Backworlders feeble as newborns. “You go on then, you ‘n the
aviarmen. I’ll go back to the ship.”
Talos shook his head, whipping out
his prized pin. Orange words with wings on blue. “Carry on. We need your
skills. C’mon, Lepsi, help me out.”
On either side of him, the aviars
shored Craze up and walked him toward the light and the noise.
Lepsi hummed, a few words escaping
here and there. “Lean on
yo
mates ... heavy brother
... carrying on ...
wha
wha
la.”
The corridor opened a little wider
into a hellhole. Broken tables and chairs splintered into spears as drunk folks
sparred with one another. Ale sloshed out of the tankards in their hands, and
everyone wore black as Craze had predicted. A good number of the crowd even had
black teeth.
Craze estimated about fifty
Backworlders were crammed into a tavern sized to comfortably serve
thirty. He hoped this wasn’t considered a large establishment out here on the
Edge. He’d never get his revenge on Bast if that were so. Shit.
Talos and Lepsi set him on a stool
at the counter. His breathing came a little easier and his pounding heart
slowed. He calmed himself further by concentrating on the bottles of booze on
the shelf behind the bar. Organized completely wrong, he reordered them in his
mind. Blue with blue. Short to tall.
Dactyl requested ales from the
bartender and paid for them. The four of them turned, their backs solidly
against the bar, surveying the other patrons, sipping the brew.
Craze had been wrong earlier. The
sharp smell came from the shit in his cup and not the ventilation machinery. It
tasted like mildewed ship hull. Worse. He wrinkled his nose and discreetly spat
the beer back into his mug.
A wall of a man sauntered over to
them. He wasn’t tall, but burly and muscular, like he did nothing but lift
chunks of rock. His head was shaven and painted with disturbing images of
blood, knives, and shattered bones. The art spread down onto his cheeks, a
permanent mask. He wore a sleeveless shirt and black pants ripped at the knees.
His feet were bare and black, painted like the
aviarmen’s
hair. His fingers sported rings with spikes and razors, making the threat of
his punches more painful.
“I want to see what you came to
trade. Now.” The tone of his voice matched the rock the room was carved from.
Maybe he had eaten through it to
create the city on Wism, Craze mused. “What you got to trade for it?” He
couldn’t help taking the lead on negotiating. The art of the deal ran strong in
his blood. The coveralls were finally able to manage his equilibrium, and he
stood.
“Down. Don’t
yous
listen.” Dactyl shoved Craze back in order to stand nose-to-chest with the dude
big as a boulder. “We’ll tell
yous
our terms when we
decide ‘
em
.” His glare didn’t waver from Rock Man’s.
A timeless stare down. The Quatten pushed up the sleeves of his coat, his hand
lingering longer on the left bicep, the shoulder lurching, before he settled
himself with a determined, grim expression.
Rock Man shifted his weight first,
a hint at respect, putting a little space between himself and Dactyl.
The lawman bared his teeth, inching
forward. “Here’s a sample.” He handed the big man the bar of chocolate the
aviars had unwrapped. “We’ll be back with our terms in two hours. In the
meantime, we want to walk around Wism without bothers from anyone.”
Rock Man sniffed the chocolate bar
and arched his brows, satisfied the goods were as promised. “Consider it done,
little man.”
Dactyl didn’t even hint at a
flinch. The condescending name didn’t bother him. He thrust his chin at the far
corridor. “Keep that as a token of our intentions to make a good deal. Clear us
a path. Now.”
Rock Man’s fist closed over the
chocolate and he hollered above the noise in the bar. “These special guests of
mine. Keep your mitts off ‘n make sure everybody else knows it.”
Space opened up around Craze and
his friends. When they stepped toward the intended tunnel opposite from where
they had come in, the gap between them and the Wism derelicts stayed constant,
like they were encased in a bubble.
Dactyl led the way to other docking
berths, searching for the Fo’wo’ vessel and the Fo’wo’s. Craze couldn’t keep
up. His body couldn’t match his will. The lawman and the aviars left him
wheezing on a crate in a storage bay.
They walked away, Lepsi singing one
of his made up songs. “Don’t asphyxiate for me, Verkinn guppy. We need our
fortunes ... ’n not by dying.”
Craze would have rolled his eyes if
he could see straight. Hand over his chest, he fought the urge to hibernate,
gasping to get more air and remain conscious. A clang made him whirl about. The
sudden action made things worse, bringing on a wave of dizziness. He fell to
the ground, mouth working, sucking in need of what it couldn’t find, as if he
had been thrust into a cosmic void.
Craze found himself staring into
the face of a gal with chrome-hued skin. Tears and blood streamed down her
cheeks. Her lips opened wide as a Lepper portal. She screamed and screamed and
screamed. Craze had to close his ear holes, choking, trying to speak. He
couldn’t get enough air. He could only lay there blinking at her, hoping his
expression conveyed he meant her no harm.
“Please,” he huffed. “Please ... I
... no ... hurt ... you.”
She stopped shrieking to listen to
his choppy plea, sniffling. “You look familiar. Have we met? I think we met
before. Not here though. I hate this place. I haven’t been here long, but I
know I hate it.”
Her pink irises raked down Craze,
making him feel naked. There was a glow behind them not entirely natural. He
noticed cybernetic plugs at her elbows. The mechanical halves of her arms were missing
though. The same was true of her knees and legs. She had no hands or feet,
helpless on the floor like he was.
He recovered enough to speak
better. “We haven’t met. I’d remember you. I don’t like this place either. You
OK? You look hurt.”
“I suppose I’ll live if my next
master lets me. I don’t know why I still need a master. I can think for myself
now, decide things for myself. This obedience thing sucks. They make me do
things I don’t want to do.” She sniffed, crinkling the bruises on her otherwise
lovely chrome cheeks.
Her partial arm hit against his
coveralls. “That’s how I know you. I made those. Don’t you remember? My master
kept me on Siegna several weeks so I could make those for you. They not working
well enough here, huh? That’s not because I did bad work. Wism is just hard for
anybody to breathe on let alone someone like you. There’s a canteen in the
corner with the rest o’ my stuff, a tea I brewed. It should help you. Drink
it.”
Wow, she could talk. He’d never met
a cybernetic Backworlder before and couldn’t judge whether this was normal. “It
wasn’t me you met on Siegna,” he said, “but I’ve been told my pa ‘n I resemble
each other a lot.” He looked around, trying to figure out which corner she
meant.
“Your pa? What a small arm of the
galaxy. What’s the chances of us running into each other like this?”
“Freaky.” Craze pushed himself up
to sitting, slumping against the nearest crate. The effort made his head swim.
He noticed her arms and legs thrown into the farthest corner across the bay. Of
course, way over there. He crawled toward them. “Who did this to you?”
“My master is unhappy with me. Says
he’s going to sell me.” Her weeping filled the storage room, until she wailed
like an alarm. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Craze pushed the cybernetic arms
and legs at the gal. They slid easily across the floor, bumping up against her
floundering form. He followed after them, rolling and slithering. He figured
out how to plug in an arm for her. After that, she was able to put on the other
arm and her legs herself.
She leaned over and kissed his
cheek. “Thank you. Now drink the tea.” She held the canteen to his lips.
He panted on the floor, hand
pressed over his aching chest, taking a tentative sip. Her concoction tasted
like over-ripe socks in piss. He pushed the flask away. “That tastes terrible.”
She sobbed. “Oh. I mean nothing
bad. Honest I don’t.” Her shoulders shook with her sorrow. “You won’t buy me
now, will you? I had hopes. You seem like a good man.”
Craze ripped a cuff off of his
shirt, wiping her face of blood and tears. “Don’t be so sad. I know you mean
good.” He took back the canteen, swallowing down half of the contents, swiping
away stray dribbles with the back of his hand. “See.”
Her words heaved out in sputters.
“I work so hard to please, but my masters is always angry ‘n mean. I don’t know
how to be better. Why do I have to have a master?”
Craze didn’t know, didn’t
understand her kind. He could empathize with not feeling good enough for
others, and he was pissed someone would stoop to beating her and leaving her
like this.
He put an arm around her shoulders,
pressing his side against hers, offering comfort. “You deserve better than
this, Sweetheart. I’ll help you. OK? Does that make you feel better?”
Her dripping pink eyes raised up to
meet his gaze, her lower lip trembling. “You will?”
Shit, he was such a sap. That was
exactly how Yerness had manipulated him, acting all needy and sad, proclaiming
him hero. What would this gal do to him in the end? Leave him here naked and
dead, all his chips in her pockets? Well, OK, she didn’t have pockets or
clothes or much of anything and she didn’t have that I’m-going-to-devour-you
spark in her eye. Besides her tea worked. Already his lungs ached less. This
gal wasn’t out to use anybody for anything but to end her misery. Craze could
relate.
“Yes ‘n I can feel your tea
rallyin
’ me.” He drank more from the canteen.
“It’s great I can aid you in
payment for helping me. I have to confess, I was afraid you was an awful
criminal when I first saw you ‘n again when I saw the coveralls. Your pa said
they was for a no-good lowlife he didn’t need hanging around. A man who caused
trouble ‘n would do his family harm. You don’t seem like that.”
Damned Bast. Bastard-ass waste of
gene manipulation. “Let’s not talk about him. He’s a dastard as bad as these
folks here.”
“He did you wrong, huh? I’m sorry I
had a hand in all that,” she said between sniffs.
Craze handed her the piece of his
shirt. “You didn’t know. I’m Craze, by the way.”
She wiped her face, then held out
her see-through mechanical hand. The circuits glowed pink when her fingers
moved. “I’m Rainly.”
They shook. Despite the unnatural
origins of the limb, her palm felt soft and warm, like anybody else’s. Craze
could detect a pulse thrumming through her wrist. She was more than a
compilation of cybernetic parts.
“Nice to meet you.,” he said.
She picked at the edges of a crate,
peeling off splinters of compressed fibers. “How you going to help me?”
He had no great plan and didn’t
fully understand what he’d be up against. Keeping it simple was best. “We have
a ship. You can just leave with us.”