by C. Vandyke
“What?” Abraxes said, outraged. “But… but we—”
“I got no space for charlatans. If you manage to crawl your way out of the Rebellion, don’t bring your DNA back here. You’re barred.”
There wasn’t time to be shocked. A ring opened up in the wall, sucking air like a breached hull. The choice was to go with dignity, or be hurled. Abraxes chose dignity, Franx was hurled.
The stomach-churning ride through the tube included bubbles of trash, not all of which were properly sealed. They were scalped and slapped; the stench made Abraxes’ eyes water. It was almost a relief when they were finally ejected into the Rebellion. Only a few trash bubbles bounced around the oddly clean deck. As Franx coughed and spluttered on his hands and knees, Abraxes quickly understood why. At the end of the deck was an airlock. It would open, and everything inside the deck would be ejected towards the blue world of Trenchfall orbiting below.
“Franx!” Abraxes shouted, pulling him up. “I don’t know how long we have, but if we don’t find a way out of here, we’re going to get thrown out into space.”
Franx gathered himself together, but remained infinitely more calm.
“Relax, old man. I’m sure there’s a—”
“A what? A what?” Abraxes said as Franx pushed through the trash bubbles bouncing between the snake pit of pipes around the deck. Abraxes was reluctant to follow, but the tales of Parson Thrull stalking this deck made him run quickly after Franx.
“I knew it.” Franx approached a well-marked escape hatch near the airlock door. “Standard procedure, even for dumps like these. Delving Prime is basically one big trash heap for the whole of Restless Home.”
“But it’s going to take us down to Trenchfall,” Abraxes said, glancing longingly behind at the exit pipe, wishing he could climb back up and into the casino, perhaps reverse time and take a different approach. He couldn’t quite believe how close he’d been. He almost wished the gem were lost down here. Even a time-limited chance was better than none.
“Would you prefer to go to Trenchfall in a pod,” Franx said, depressurizing the hatch and climbing into the narrow orb. “Or not in a pod?”
“In a pod.” Abraxes squeezed in beside Franx. Now was probably not the best time to shout blame.
“Don’t worry,” Franx said and kissed him on the cheek. “Once we’re down there, we’ll figure out a way back up.”
“I know where the gem is.”
“Well, that’s a help,” Franx said, sliding the pod closed. They crouched awkwardly, knees locked together as the pristine green continents and sparkling blue oceans of Trenchfall spun slowly below. Franx tapped the rudimentary controls. And just in time. Suddenly a pressurized hiss came from nearby. The airlock had opened, and bubbles of trash were now floating towards the protected world. Their pod detached smoothly. Abraxes wiped away foggy breath and watched the low-tech world grow larger.
“Um, Abraxes. What’s that?”
Franx was looking the other way, towards the Valdian Gateway. With some awkwardness, Abraxes turned around, wondering if Meital was flying the ship to their rescue. The air rushed out of his lungs like a hull puncture. A giant, white rip cut through space, and probably time, too. Barely a few klicks from the hobbled mass of the Valdian Gateway, he could already see ships making a hasty escape. Two such ships collided in their haste, the fiery explosion over in a split second in the zero-atmosphere of space.
As their pod fell towards Trenchfall, one long, flapping tentacle emerged through the great white space, sniffing this dimension. That one tentacle could easily rip the Valdian Gateway in two. Abraxes knew all too well what the Kraken was capable of.
It all came rushing back. His heart crashed in his ears like an exploding moon. Those antimatter tentacles which could slice a space station in two. Its horror-filled body sucking up ships and beacons like a mulligan-rat feasting on peanut shells. The stinging tail which could poison a planet’s atmosphere in minutes. How the beast roared like the end of time itself, screaming in dimensions beyond comprehension, the heads of humans and space-walkers alike exploding in a fiery burst of zero-gravity destruction. When the Kraken came, few remained alive to tell the tale.
“Well,” Franx said, his face as colorless as the rip still stretching open. Their pod rumbled as they penetrated Trenchfall’s upper atmosphere. “I guess you don’t need that map no more.”
Debt Collection
Lisa Kuznak
“You’re about to find out what it’s like to be explosively decompressed, you two-timing scum! Your liver is going to get scraped off the window, an’ I’m gonna eat it and laugh!”
Yuri couldn’t breathe out half his nose, the plastic decor swam in his vision, and the pain in his head was fierce, as if he were still getting punched. His boot heels caught on a seam in the metal floor, loosening them on his feet, and despite his mumbled requests they didn’t stop to let him adjust his awkward footwear. He tried lifting an arm to wipe the blood from his eyes—his hands were held at his back.
A pair of toothy Gorrag goons were dragging him half-conscious down a dingy tube in Uptown—the one on his right was the talkative plum bastard. Hairy, rough, and right ugly. As Yuri’s reality came fast, he struggled and swore, but all that did was get his boots knocked off.
The loss of footwear didn’t matter. The data was already sent. He’d done his part. Now he had to keep his liver where it was.
The Gorrags weren’t too gentle, slamming Yuri’s back up against the airlock door with a solid whack. His head lolled forward. Drooling blood, the world around him wavered to the sound of deep-chested laughter.
“Your liver is going to taste sublime. It’s gonna get nice an’ tenderized. Human pâté.”
If only he could reach—
Footsteps echoed; someone was running. Yuri blinked blood away, forcing his eyes to focus.
“Wait! Not yet.” Dianna D’Argon rounded the corner. A beautiful sight, but not welcome. Yuri cringed—fought harder to reach the watch tucked into the hidden pocket up his sleeve. As if he needed this to get any worse.
His fingers stretched to the point of pain, the teeth he had left in his head ground together—and the purple brutes listened to her, holding him still. “Quick, throw me in the airlock!”
“Shut up!”
Dianna caught up, pistol buzzing and ready to fire. “Yuri, I’m very sorry to interrupt. You owe me for that favour and I’d like to get it before your head explodes.”
“You’ll have to take it up with them, darling.”
His fingers brushed it—he held his cheek in his teeth to keep from showing his excitement. Shot or exploded, neither today, thanks. He pressed it—felt the vibration and the heat, his hair stood on end, and soon his vision started hiccoughing.
Her good eye lit up, eyebrows arched and mouth open in shock. She pulled up her sleeve—her perfect face knotted, giving him great satisfaction. “You stole my watch!”
“I’ll give it baa-a-aa-a-ck—”
“You son of a bii-i-ii-i-tch—”
It was difficult to talk or hear while being phased into a billion fragments and flung through time and space.
Yuri had done a hasty job with the coordinates on the borrowed watch, phasing back into reality in the Scythe's galley—much to the chagrin of their cook, Mr. Kepler. Stout and sour, he didn’t look too pleased to have four severed Gorrag hands, a bowl-shaped scoop of airlock door, and a puddle of Yuri’s fresh vomit in the middle of his floor.
“Got a towel, Mr. Kepler?”
“The fuck have you been up to now, Zayats?” Mr. Kepler threw the towel he had tucked in his apron pocket and hit Yuri’s stooped head, bent as he was to avoid further stomach upset. Teleporting felt terrible normally, never mind with his skull beat in.
Mr. Kepler held up a ladle, three seconds from whacking Yuri across the ass with it like a disgruntled grandfather. Yuri knelt to clean up after himself, whistling for a mop bot to get the floor nice and squeaky clean, and the old cook’s
face lost some of the red.
“Work for the Captain,” Yuri said, tossing the purple hands into the garbage chute.
“What kind of ‘work?’”
“The financially beneficial kind.”
“Uh huh. Looks like you need new teeth.” Mr. Kepler was also their dentist.
“Got any slots free?”
“Half hour.”
Yuri went to the freezer, chipped ice off the door to hold on to his face, and walked off to find his cot and fall into it.
“Yuri.”
A sultry voice woke him from his brief nap with a heart attack—“Fuck!”—forgetting he had programmed Dianna’s likeness and voice into his Violet, he flung himself over the side of his cot. The Cold Harbour “Violet” model of companion bots were extremely believable, except for the spiritually dead eyes and slight flicker of the holograph shell, but he still expected a pistol in his back in his brief derangement. “Don’t scare me like that, Vi.”
“Bad day?”
“You know it.”
“Need help?” That was pure Vi—Dianna would sooner make it worse.
He tongued his new teeth, felt at the de-bruiser mask. It was still working at him, cheeks tingling. “I’ll be fine, babe. Thanks.”
She gave him a peck on his head, tousled his hair. “Captain wants to see you.”
“You didn’t go to her like that, did you?”
“No. I had clothes on.”
“Good girl. Go to the closet and recharge.”
“Yessir.” That wasn’t Dianna, either. Sometimes he would turn “Vi” totally off, but he wasn’t in the mood for that now, nor did he have the time.
Captain Braddock was at her desk. “You look like an idiot with that mask on.” She offered Yuri a cigarette. He took it, lit it from hers, passed hers back, and they got to business.
She had received the data packet, and it made her very pleased—even as she looked miffed over something else. They’d be punching the coordinates in and would make plans to rob the hell out of the Gorrag merchant fleet heading to the Valdian Market (through a particularly stupid chunk of space on their part, begging to get pirates on their case). Yuri was to make sure The Midnight Scythe got there first, and that everything was copacetic while the computers did their thing. (Whatever that was, the Scythe was an odd girl.)
Then he had another job.
“Jaccus Estany owes me money. Which means he owes you money.”
Yuri snorted—Jaccus was a jackass. “And?”
“And, we’ve been watching for him at the wrong place. He’s not at the pawn shop, hasn’t been in years. He’s got a nice, cushy job on thu’Alar, on the Agamemnon, and we can’t go there to fetch him without thu’Alar beam cannons blasting our ass apart, not unless we have ships in tow for the King—so, you’re taking the shuttle. Nevermind the fucking Revenue Service on that shithole of a flying pebble is lusting after me. This is another Yuri job, sorry to say.”
He huffed a small laugh. Of course it was. She ignored him.
“You’re familiar with the place. See if you can get to Jackie-boy for us—and, you’re seeing a man about a favour.”
Yuri had lived on Second Moon for several years, did courier work as a teenager between the fourteen moons—lost his job when he got caught stealing the parcels.
He took a long drag of his cigarette, let the heat fill his lungs. “Aye aye, Cap’n.”
“Fuck outta my cabin with that smarmy shit.”
“Can I take Junior?”
“Yes. Bring it back in one piece. And I fucking mean it, Navigator Zayats.”
Thu’Alar orbited a dying sun, and seeing it always made Yuri uneasy, especially warped as it was through the porthole of the shuttle. On the moons, you’d get used to it—the atmosphere would blunt the view—but seeing it zoom into your vision through clear, uninterrupted void was like seeing death itself sneak up on you. When that thing went, a huge chunk of space would go out with it. Thu’Alar, by contrast, was still vibrant and heady. Purples, pinks, oranges, yellows, blues, all in a hundred bands around its middle and out to the poles, stripes disturbed by a dozen storms. The gas giant and all its moons were certainly a spectacle—it’ll be a sad day when it gets annihilated by the God of natural disasters—supernovas were a bitch.
Out on Last Moon, (called Nuramses Core by the Service—the locals had a much simpler, obvious language,) they thought it was a giant magic kraken waiting to take their universe out—a bunch of superstitious coping. Their sun was right there staring them in the face and they pick a mythical monster to worship? To each their own, he figured, so long as they left Yuri Zayats the hell alone.
The King of thu’Alar had the right idea, getting his people away from their sun by any means necessary. Plus, that letter of marque made the Scythe some good money already, commandeering ships for the rehousing effort. If it took another thousand years for the thing to blink out of existence, that was plenty of time for the Scythe to take advantage of the offer.
Not today, though. They were off marauding. Yuri got “shore leave.”
He broke from the scenery and lit a cigarette, went over to the tarp that covered Junior. He untethered a strap, lifted a corner of the canvas, let the smoke seep from his lips to smile—fucking beaut of a rocket, she was. Shiny, slick, red. He ran a hand along the smooth hull, whispered pleasant nothings at her. He had no idea who named her or why—whoever they stole her from, likely—but the name didn’t matter. All Yuri wanted to do was ride her.
As Second Moon came closer, he had to dress the part, like he was made for the richness of First Moon’s haughty attitude. Pompousness was so thick in the air there, he almost needed a converter mask to breathe. He left Junior, went to his cabin, got dressed.
Hair slicked back in fashionable waves. Waistcoat, double-breasted. Skin-tight breeches on the bottom and billowing sleeves on the top. Stock at his neck. Boots to his knees, blindingly shiny, clicker-spurs at his heels—he didn’t plan on losing this pair. Cabochons anywhere he could get away with. Finally, a thu’Alaran-style helmet, open-faced and shaped to a swooping point tucked under his arm and waiting for a jaunt on the rocket. Looking so fancy had him feeling like a right bastard.
Court sword at his hip, two pistols with it, ammo and charge pouches weighing the belt down. ID ring forged to perfection—no skimping on fake documents. Deflector hidden inside the waistcoat, with Dianna’s displacer watch. Jackie-boy better hope the kraken comes flying in.
“Identification and weapons licence.”
He held out his fist; they scanned the ring.
“Thank you, sir. Anthu bast thu’Alar alnu.”
“Anthu bast dralnu.” Formal greetings done, Yuri bobbed his head to the Second Moon station agent and went to fetch Junior. The shuttle, with a holocloak to cover the Scythe’s insignia, stayed under lock and key, extra credits given to the valet. On the launch pad, Junior’s engine purred. The shielding swooshed up, making a glassy bubble around Yuri as he straddled the seat. Helmet on, chinstrap tight. First Moon coordinates punched in. That big bastard Agamemnon would hover over the port like a clumsy brick—all the grace and style of the Kingdom underneath, and that ugly thing would be the introductory view, polluting the clouds.
He hadn’t done the route in a while, but the nostalgia washed away when traffic control gave the go-ahead for full speed. Yuri punched the throttle—he and Junior became a streak of red to anyone standing nearby.
Beneath the Agamemnon, past the spaceport, the ancient spires of First Moon towered over the landscape. With the planet at the horizon and the sun lighting it full, all the colours of the giant reflected off the architecture in a dazzling display. It awed Yuri, as it always had. He wasn’t the envious boy anymore—he knew better than to want to live in this stuffy, posh place—but it would always be a sight that made him pause.
There were three tiers of traffic in the city: on the ground, folks walked. Leisurely, obnoxiously. Above that, the carriages soared past with their irri
tating, trilling pulse. At the top, the local rich young belligerents made a habit of showing off their rides, going too fast and too hard, and it was the only tier worth travelling in.
Up in a grand apartment overlooking one of the large forested domes, Yuri was to meet a man named Lord Ka’al. As far as Yuri knew, Lord Ka’al didn’t think very highly of the new overseer of the Agamemnon. Poor Jack seemed to make a name for himself wherever he went.
Yuri nodded to a group of young men leaning against their rockets as he made his way to the spire, and they nodded back with leering smiles, watching him walk with their hands less-than-casually at the hilts of their court swords.
Glass elevators never sat well with Yuri, but he kept his attention on his cuffs and on his smoke to keep from looking beneath his feet. If he was heading skyward, a rocket under him was far preferable.
His sleeves fluttered at the gush of fresh air at the top of the elevator, as he stepped out into the long corridor. The grand interior of the spire glowed with the warm colours of the gas giant, refracting in rainbows across lush carpets and high walls.
Lady Ka’al, in the typically thu’Alaran garb of silk strips of cloth holding up her assets (they were fine, but she was no Dianna), a gold-and-pearl tiara perched on long black locks, greeted Yuri with a curt nod and led him inside the vast apartment. Grand arches, shapes so elegant everything looked liquid. Dripping gold, fluid gems. Lord Ka’al dressed a lot like Yuri, only more so, and called for Yuri to join him on the settee with sing-song affectation to his voice. Brandy glasses and cigars waited on a fragile-looking table. At a far window, one of the other moons eclipsed the sun, and a warm flicker shot through the brandy as Yuri held it up to click against Lord Ka’al’s glass.
Very expensive, Yuri was sure. The bottle probably cost more than the Midnight Scythe. He savoured it.
“So, I’ve spoken with Captain Braddock. You need access to the Agamemnon.”
