by Jody Wallace
He had some cats to convince that they should run a con job his way, and time was short. He might be overly fond of Mighty Mighty in particular, but he was under no illusions about how difficult it was to herd cats.
Lincoln eased himself back onto the slanted seat, rubbing a hand over his eyes. The hail had stopped, making it safe to exit the train. The moonlight glinted off the frozen precipitation, brightening the whole area. It would have been a pleasant view, but the cold had overtaken the cabin car and stolen the only comfortable thing about it. The icy air was hard on Lincoln’s aching head, and his knit cap hurt the bruises.
Because of the derailments, the Express tracks wouldn’t be cleared for another eight hours. All passengers were being ferried to functional Express trains several kilometers down the road in Green Port. Segments behind them paused at the giant Mire waystation or reversed course to the old route around the Mire.
Briar had clambered over to Isadore’s berth to help the elderly women into heavy coats since it was their turn. She had refused to let Lincoln help, citing doctor’s orders with a saucy little grin.
The three of them passed Lincoln’s berth slowly and carefully, chatting, as the occupants of the cabin car disembarked in stages. The old gals went first. Briar seemed to be in no hurry, comming the factory to warn them about the derailment, hiding in the cramped cabin with Lincoln until everyone else got loaded up. Su promised to have ground transpo waiting at the Bristleback Range station.
When most of the car was clear and everyone’s belongings transferred to the crawler, including Briar’s luggage, the Express attendant announced that it was full and everyone left would have to wait for the next one. Everyone left meaning Lincoln, Briar, the agile guy who’d become an unofficial Express crewmember, and the Express attendant himself as their corporate escort. The other passengers and crew had gone ahead.
“They’ll leave your luggage at Green Station.” The attendant handed Briar a receipt for it. “It will be in the lock room.”
“I expect the Express employees to handle my luggage, not the Greep Garage crew.” Briar’s firm tone belied her small size as she slipped into professional mode. Until you heard her talk, she could be any young, well-dressed woman, not that young, well-dressed women were common on Trash Planet. “And if anything is damaged or missing, I expect full reimbursement and not some runaround blaming it on the garage.”
“Of…of course,” stammered the attendant. “I’m sure it won’t be much longer.”
“I don’t know about that,” Briar said darkly. “It’s Greep Garage.”
“What do you mean?” asked the agile guy. “Because it’s connected to Tank? You hear things about those fuckers.”
Briar’s lips tightened, but she didn’t confirm. It occurred to Lincoln that the crawler garages had recently been under her watch, or at least on her periphery, as an employee of the Tank Union head office. So “hearing things” about Tank Union might also mean hearing things about Briar, so he couldn’t be sure what was silencing her.
“This isn’t the best place to derail, but is there a good place to derail?” the attendant admitted, averting his gaze as they leaned against the walls in the cabin car’s foyer, near the access doors. Two constricted hallways led to the now empty cabins. They’d have to climb up, out, and back down, so disembarking wasn’t a simple process. The car lay on a solidified mound of hail on the low side, which was what had stopped them from toppling completely over. Escaping that direction, through the ice, wasn’t a possibility.
“I’m Edge,” the agile guy said as they listened to the grumble of machinery. He bumped fists with everyone. “Might as well get to know each other.”
“Briar. This is Lincoln,” Briar said. Lincoln had missed most of the action while resting in their berth and hoped the others didn’t hold it against him that he’d been useless.
“Walter.” The attendant checked his chrono nervously. “Senior cabin attendant. Been with Express nearly fifty years.”
“Treat you good?” Edge asked. “I work in the Mire, harvesting mota. And other things.”
Lincoln didn’t completely understand all the zones and politics on Trash Planet yet, but harvesting mota in the Mire was a dirty and dangerous job. It didn’t pay well, either, even though mota was an in-demand crop.
The four of them chatted, with Briar being unusually reticent. Tension tightened her jaw and she kept her arms crossed, as if closing everyone out. Including him. She didn’t pat his arm to make points or bump his shoulder or any of the things he’d come to associate with her. The mannerisms he’d come to enjoy. Had she learned something bad she hadn’t had a chance to tell him? Or was she simply tired and worried about Steven Wat?
A thunk on the outside of the cabin car caused them all to look up. The doors slid open, and a man popped into view.
“Oh, fuck,” Briar exclaimed and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Gullim Vex’s leering face peered down at them, a set of Greep Garage coveralls sealed up tight around his neck to ward off the cold after the storm. The coveralls were hoodless, revealing scraggly, unkempt hair.
“Now that wasn’t such a long wait, was it?” Walter asked, straightening away from the wall. “If you’ll assist our passengers, I’ll shut off the power to the car and join you.” He saluted Vex and headed for the bottom corridor, disappearing into the cabins.
Vex stared at Briar and Lincoln, and a grin smeared across his face. “This is my lucky day.”
“I guess,” Edge murmured, glancing from Vex to Lincoln. “It sure ain’t ours. Linc, buddy, let me give you a hand. That bump on your head looks terrible.”
“I can take two and that’s it,” Vex told them. “The man and the woman.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Briar raised her chin. Her blue eyes flashed with anger when Lincoln would have expected fear. Then again, she’d never seemed afraid of the obvious threat posed by Vex and Tim the first time, either, so perhaps fear wasn’t in her disposition. “We’re not going without our friends. I know a little about Tank Union garages myself, and those crawlers hold up to a hundred people.”
Vex sneered. “I ain’t got no crawler.”
Lincoln glanced around the foyer, but there was nothing he could use as a weapon. He had no doubt Vex was armed.
If they went with Vex, he and Briar wouldn’t reach the city. Ever. Vex would make good on Steven’s order to kill them; Lincoln would, ironically, bet his life on it.
Was Tim here, too? Vex and Tim had been the types to kill first and laugh about it later. He hadn’t known many people like that in Oka—but he’d remedied his lack of education at Gizem Station. In fact, that was how he and Frank had met. He’d saved Frank’s butt when a couple of lowlifes had been harassing him over some debts.
Debts for baby food and diapers, no less. What kind of assholes begrudged a man food and clothing for a baby?
Assholes like Gullim Vex.
“You’re holdin’ up traffic and shit,” Vex said. “Get your butts out here and let’s go. Are you trying to spoil Tank Union response times, lady?”
“Rude,” Briar said, crossing her arms again. She slid one hand into the opposite sleeve and something besides her fingers distorted the fabric. What had she stashed up there? “And your response time for this incident is already below corporate standard.”
Vex’s gloating expression switched to a glare. “Nobody died. Yet. Ain’t that good enough?”
Lincoln could still hear motors, distant ones. How many people were outside? Anyone Vex would hesitate to kill them in front of? How were they going to get out of this alive?
“Look, if you can catch a ride now, take it,” Edge said to them. Walter had not returned from his errand. “Don’t feel guilty. Me and Walter will be fine waiting for the next. It’s not that cold.”
While the temperature dropped during a hailer, it bounced back to normal afterward. Not that normal was pleasant, to Lincoln, anyway.
“My boss asked me to be p
articular with the next two, since one of ‘em is injured and all,” Vex said. “My boss Steven Wat, a director on the Tank Union Board. Maybe you heard of him? Sent a medic-vac to fetch ‘em special.”
“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” Edge said. “You know, you look familiar. You travel through the Mire a lot?”
“I work for Greep, and we’re right next to this stinking mess,” Vex said. Edge’s expression turned thoughtful. “Can we get a move on here?”
“A medic-vac has more than two spots,” Briar pointed out. “You can take us all.”
The presence of Walter and Edge wouldn’t insure their safety. Either Briar didn’t understand that or had something else in mind.
Vex grinned. “Oops, it only holds two. Today.”
Lincoln weighed what he knew of Gullim Vex, which wasn’t much, and the possibility he might kill them all in order to collect the reward Steven Wat had promised. Could Vex get away with it? The Express’s records presumably indicated what passengers and staff had been accounted for and what ones hadn’t, based on ticket purchases. Four dead bodies in one of the cars would raise a lot of fears.
But what about four people just going missing?
“You know, if you refused a ride and were to try to walk your dumb butts to town, you’d probably end up poisoned by chefo bushes or sinking into the Mire, never to be seen again,” Vex said. A rope ladder rolled into the foyer. “So you need to come along now.”
Lincoln wasn’t super happy that he could think like a criminal, but he supposed it was coming in handy. He and Briar could protect Edge and Walter by going with Vex—a death sentence for them, though. How ethical was it to put innocent people at risk to try to save yourself?
But he was trying to save Briar, too, and after that, a whole ship full of people and cats.
“I know the Mire better than that,” Edge argued. “I know where people can walk…and where they disappear. Why you being so pushy?”
“Yeah, why do you care if we wait for the next crawler so all of us can go at once?” Briar challenged. Vex hadn’t come right out and threatened them, but Edge was getting suspicious anyway.
“I have my orders,” Vex said. “And a bonus if I do it up real good.”
“How about just me?” Lincoln suggested. Edge looked more concerned the longer Briar and Lincoln balked, and if he kept asking questions, Gullim might get tired of being polite-ish. “I’m the one hurt.”
“You and the bitch both,” Vex said. “Get up here. Now.”
“What the hells?” Edge exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be helping us, buddy.”
Lincoln shifted toward the hallway Walter had taken. It led to the large passenger compartments. If he could reach it, he could create a disruption. Somehow. Put a stop to this.
“Ah ah ah.” Vex whipped out an EE-pistol and aimed at Lincoln. “Stay where you are, you hear me?”
“What the hells?” Edge said again, and Vex swung the barrel toward him.
“Shut up and maybe you get to live. No money in it if I kill you, so it would just be cuz I…”
A sizzle of bright light spat through the foyer, striking Vex in the head. He let out a croak and toppled backward, out of sight.
Briar stood there with a mutinous expression and a tiny EE-pistol in her grip. Her perfect stance highlighted the dried blood stains on her blue sleeve from Lincoln’s head wound. “Jackhole.”
“You kill him?” Lincoln asked, heading for the ladder. They needed to know who was outside—who might come running to support Gullim Vex. Tim? Steven? Or people who wouldn’t murder them?
“No, it’s not like it was Steven,” Briar said with a vicious hiss. She kept the gun in her grasp, handling it with obvious skill.
“You know that big guy,” Edge guessed. “I’m assuming…he planned to kill you? What’s his name, anyway?”
“Gullim Vex.”
“Ah,” Edge said, as if that answered more than one question and he wanted to commit everything to memory. “And he worked with Steven Wat. The new director for Tank Union.”
“You follow politics,” Briar observed.
Edge shrugged. “I pay attention to things that could kill me.”
Lincoln pulled himself up the rope ladder, the metal rungs cold in his palms. His head throbbed, but he reached the top without issue.
First he listened.
Nothing. Maybe breathing? The cabin car’s power had been deactivated, and the only sound from inside was the random tick of a machine shutting down. The noise from the Greep Garage crew restoring the derailed trains wasn’t loud enough to indicate they’d be able to see what was going on here.
Then he nudged himself above the level of the door’s threshold.
A small roundabout with Greep Garage signage had landed in the hail a short distance from the tracks. The landing lights revealed that it wasn’t a medic-vac, but no surprise there. The rest of the crew was far enough away that Lincoln couldn’t pick out any actual people around the crawlers. Vex had probably been sent to fetch the stragglers and improvised when he saw who it was.
The man in question lay face up in bank of hail, which had cratered on impact. Probably had broken his fall. Since he didn’t curse or shoot at Lincoln, Lincoln assumed he was unconscious. No blood spread across the pollution-smeared hail beneath him, either, so the guy wouldn’t be bleeding out anytime soon.
Unless…
But no, no call for violence when it could be avoided. Once they were gone, Vex could do nothing beyond report an assault. Since the planet had no police, no army, no courts, no government, the only person he could report it to—his boss Steven Wat—wouldn’t have another move. He’d already gotten Briar fired…and authorized an assassin.
A significant concern, but right now he, Briar, Edge, and Walter needed to get to Green Port and safety.
“I don’t think anyone saw,” Lincoln called down to the others.
Walter toddled into the foyer wearing a hail parka, a bulky, protective coat that hung to the wearer’s knees. “Saw what?”
“The Greep Garage guy fell. It’s real sad. We should check on him.” Briar must have slipped her gun back into her light blue sleeve because her hands were empty. Edge watched her without commenting. “Come on.”
Lincoln eased himself down the ladder on the other side, this one a retractable—sturdier and more expensive than a rope ladder. Hail crunched under his feet as he plucked up Vex’s big EE-pistol and stashed it in a pocket. Briar followed down the ladder and then Walter and last Edge.
Briar slid through the hail to kneel at Vex’s side and check his pulse. “He’s definitely still alive.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Edge asked, his free hand in his pocket. He could have been asking the same thing about a sack of odds and ends—curious but not really interested. Walter baby-stepped toward the body, the ground slippery and hazardous.
Briar glanced up at Lincoln, her eyebrows arched. “I confess I didn’t really think this through.”
Sometimes, thinking was overrated. And slow. Luckily she’d been the one with the gun, not him. “You did the right thing, Briar.”
“That looks like an EE-blast on his face,” Walter remarked, hovering over the body. The faint charcoal of a stun shot pegged the center of Vex’s brutish forehead. Briar had great aim. “He’s a big ‘un. You say he fell?”
Briar pursed her lips and propped an elbow on her knee. “After I shot him.”
“He was about to rob us,” Edge said. Was he defending Briar or was that just what he believed? “I don’t think he actually works for these people.”
Briar reached forward and tilted Vex’s head to the side, checking the back of his skull. “Nothing busted. Just knocked out. His headache when he wakes up won’t even be as bad as Lincoln’s.”
Walter horked and spat onto the ground. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he did work for Greep. Remember how I said this is one of the worst places to derail? In my fifty years with Express, we’ve been ambush
ed, menaced, robbed, hijacked, you name it, and bedanged if it’s not near Green Port at least half the time. Shame on Trash Planet people, trying to prey on the rest of us, when hardly any of us got a pot to shit in.”
“Walter, you seem to feel strongly about this,” Briar noted. “But this does put us in an awkward spot, doesn’t it? He’ll tell the others I shot him, and he’ll hardly admit he threatened to shoot us first.”
Apparently there hadn’t been much need to conceal anything from Edge or Walter. It shouldn’t surprise Lincoln that the folks on Trash Planet rolled with the punches, no matter where they came from. In Oka everyone would be freaking out and calling the police.
In Gizem he and Briar would already be dead.
“Where you headed, Edge?” Lincoln asked. “Green Port?”
“Nah, Bunk Port.”
“Tell you what.” Lincoln eyeballed the distance between the man on the ground and the roundabout. Out past the gleam of the Express lights, the Mire was black, cold and mysterious. “We’ll load up, fly the roundabout to Bunk Port, drop Walter off at an Express station with the ship, and go our separate ways.”
“It’ll get us there a lot faster than the Express.” Edge fingered one of the metal pieces on his jacket thoughtfully. “What do you think, Walt? Will it get you in trouble? Far as this wastoid knows, you had nothing to do with him getting shot.”
Walter lifted the hood of the patched, black hail parka and secured it around his thinning hair as the wind picked up. The moon proceeded to disappear behind clouds. “They might ask why I didn’t stop in Green Port, but I could say I figured they’d be in Bunk Port by now.”
“We could toss the body into the Mire,” Edge suggested.
“That’s what he was going to do to us.” Briar didn’t reach for her gun, but she did stand up and square off against Edge. The man was taller than her but not that hefty as human males went. “You want to be that person?”
Edge shrugged again. “Maybe I already am. I could do it and you could owe me.”
“Not comfortable just killing a man,” Lincoln said, unsure if he should take Edge at his word. The important thing right now was that Vex was no threat. They had no right to take his life. They were not all-knowing deities, to place judgments on a person’s fate.
