REBOOTS

by Mercedes Lackey

  The Boggart was carefully situated right at the division between Para and Norm customers. The Norm barkeep had served him first, but as his beer emptied, it was the Para that approached him, recognizing him for being, at least, not Norm. “What’ll it be? And I’ll be serving you from now on, pal; don’t want my tips going to the Normie.” Close up, the remains of horn buds and the goat eyes betrayed the barkeep as a satyr. Figured. There wasn’t anything that satyrs didn’t know about booze, and the beings that imbibed it. He’d probably had his horns freeze-burned off so he’d fit in a standard space helmet; custom jobs were expensive. The goat legs wouldn’t matter; most satyrs just padded out the toes of human boots and shoved their hooves inside. They had to wear pants and shoes pretty much everywhere, local laws being what they were, though they generally groused about it whenever anyone would listen.

  “Shot of rye and another beer.” He waited while his drinks were fetched, scanning the other patrons; nothing but disinterested stares terminating at the walls. “Thanks. Wondering if you could point me in the direction of a friend of mine. Just hired on here. I owe him some creds, and I wanted to settle the debt before it got any bigger.”

  “Depends on who y’friend is, now doesn’t it?” The ’tender leaned forward on the bar, putting his blunt face close to the Boggart’s. His breath smelled like hay. Must have cost a small fortune to import out here, unless he grew his own.

  “Leroy McCandless. A Were, hard to miss. Know of him?” The Boggart had done some research in between his ethereal jaunts in the cargo hold, mostly from the collected files he’d received from Ian. The Fur’s “cousin” seemed to be the North American redneck variety of Were. While there were other Pack variants, the majority of North American packs, for some reason, seemed to be rednecks. Punks and skinheads in Europe, familial clans with more blood ties in part of Asia. All of it got mixed together in the great melting pot of space, though some kept to type. Seldom did a Pack member go out alone; there were generally at least three of any one Pack in any single place, even if they might not work the same shifts. They denned together and generally socialized together, and made basic Pack alliances with other Furs.

  “Ha! That’s a first, Leroy being owed money. Usually the other way around.” The satyr sized him up for a moment, then nodded. “He’s over in the corner there. He’s on the shit-list with the local Den, so I’d be careful ’bout asso-see-atin’ with him too much. Don’t wanna become puppy chow.” The satyr gave a gap-toothed grin, and then moved on down the bar to higher-paying customers.

  Sounded like Leroy and his Pack-cousin were two of a kind. The Boggart slowly turned his back to the bar, putting his elbows up. He made sure to try to keep his face disinterested, his expression as beaten down as the deck below the miners’ feet. Slowly, he let his gaze pass over the area the bartender had indicated. Bingo. The scruffy miner matched Leroy’s picture; strangely, he looked cleaner than his picture did. He had his back to the wall, and was hunched over his drink. He sure didn’t look like a Loner; Loners generally looked like Alphas on drugs, big, dangerous, and a bit crazy. Don’t want anyone sneaking up on you, huh? I wouldn’t either, not in this hole. The Boggart finished his shot, but held on to his beer to sip; it looked more natural for a man to be holding a drink in a bar than not. Handy weapon in a pinch, if it came to that. He shuffled off from the bar lazily, weaving his way indirectly through the crowd towards Leroy. The Boggart was doing his best to be casual, diffident. Nothing to set off any aggression signals. There was at least one other lupin Fur in here, and two big cats; hard to tell for sure since they were in human form, but he reckoned from the fact that one was black and the other Asian that they were a leopard and a tiger, respectively. Probably both low-level supervisors, still low enough to not be welcome in the management club, wherever it was. Crew bosses, more than likely. Half a dozen TommyKnockers, which you’d figure for a mine. A couple Goblins, a couple Kobolds, ditto. No Dwarves. They specialized in precious stuff, and this was plain old materials mining. And two dozen Norms.

  The Boggart must’ve made a misstep, however; probably the eye contact at the last moment as the crowd parted. Leroy looked up from his drink, and his eyes instantly locked onto the Boggart. He sniffed once, his eyes got big, and even though he was fully human so far as the Boggart could tell, the hair on the back of his neck moved on its own, hackles rising.

  Oh hell. Without a word, Leroy flipped the table at the Boggart; it went sailing through the air, narrowly missing his head and crashing into the patrons behind him as he ducked under it. Leroy was already up and out the door before the splinters had hit the ground.

  Time to hoof it.

  As the Boggart had expected, Leroy headed for the elevators. Likeliest would be for him to make a break for the levels below this, engineering and the mine itself. But Leroy surprised him. Instead of grabbing one of the constantly-moving chains and hopping on a platform, he bypassed the elevators altogether and plunged down an access-tube beside them. By the time the Boggart reached it, the hatch had been jammed closed from the inside, a wrench wedged into the access bar.

  He turned his attention to the slow-moving elevators. They were the crudest possible interpretation of the concept: a continuously moving loop of one-man platforms: you reached in, grabbed the “chain” that connected platform to platform, hopped on and rode to your destination. Cheap, certainly. Dangerous, absolutely. But the Companies didn’t waste money on amenities for grunts. And compared to the dangers of the mines, this was trivial. Probably killed a couple miners a year, and with all such fatalities, the Company would pay the next of kin—if there were any to begin with—a truly generous “survivor benefit” and move on. A couple of those a year was nothing beside the cost of “real” elevators and maintenance. The savings were enormous. Same went for accidents in the mines themselves. It was cheaper to pay off the relatives than install safety equipment.

  The elevators moved at a glacial rate; the Boggart now had two options. Use the elevator, or try and figure out where Leroy was going and find another way down and cut him off. But this wasn’t his first time on a mining colony; he checked for a service panel.

  There was one, unsealed, right next to the access tube. And the password and ID of “guest” worked just fine. Morons never do learn to change those. A little poking at the screen got him a set of cams in the tube Leroy had just thrown himself into. The Companies might be laissez-faire when it came to safety, but never when it came to security. Come on, come to Papa…there! He saw the exit for the access shaft that Leroy had taken; since most of these mines were all based off of the same modular units, he knew exactly what to do.

  Another couple of pokes showed him the layout of the next floor, and there was only one way that Leroy could go from that tube exit. So where to cut him off before he got to some place branching off in more than one direction?

  There. Not another tube, but a mail-chute, an easy way to chuck deliverables from this floor to Engineering. Advantage: it was a straight line down. Disadvantage: nothing human-size would fit in it.

  Ha.

  The Boggart ran, putting on a burst of supernatural speed. Speed Leroy would probably not try to match; he’d figure the Boggart was going to take the first ’vator down, and he’d have plenty of time to hide, since the exit for that tube was on the other side of the hollowed-out rock. He made a baseball pitch with his watch, sending it clanking down the chute; as soon as it went out of sight, he went to the nowhere space, the Between, and manifested himself where the watch was. Little tricks like that could save your life, and the Boggart had a six-demon bag full of them.

  Something went squish when he rematerialized; too small to be anything but an imp or a gnome. Lucky break; it wasn’t anything alive; he’d only landed on someone’s lunch, probably pitched down the tube by a spouse. But it wasn’t damp, so he didn’t worry about it; he just grabbed the watch, shoved it back in the pocket it belonged in, and pelted to intercept Leroy. They met at an intersection jus
t before a bulkhead; the Boggart was expecting it, so he lowered his shoulder and threw his weight into Leroy. The Were crumpled and followed the Boggart’s momentum into a wall towards the bulkhead; he was cornered, now. The Boggart felt what was coming before he even knew what was happening; he leaped back a pace, giving Leroy some room.

  “You done pissed off the wrong set of teeth and claws this time, asshole!” Leroy had gone partway Changed; wicked claws had burst from his nails, and his teeth and hair had elongated to cast his features in a feral light. Leroy roared mightily—until the Boggart busted him right in the mug, hard. Letting the Fur posture and build up steam would only work against his purpose, after all. He kept it up, smacking him hard in the face with an open palm and alternating it with slugs to the gut. Leroy was forced to back up, drawing his arms—and thus those too-dangerous claws—in close to protect his body and face. Leroy was definitely not a Loner Alpha; too much ground given, too fast. But, he still had the wolf buried under his skin. Once his back hit the bulkhead, he got some more fight in him. Slashing both arms down and outward with a roar, he forced the Boggart to retreat a step.

  “Don’t force this any further than it is, Leroy. It’ll only end hard for you.” Leroy didn’t seem very inclined to listen. He howled loud enough to shake the dust off of the overhead pipes, and then lowered his head to charge. In one smooth motion, the Boggart drew the Webley-Fosbery and fired the large-caliber round at a pipe several feet in front and above Leroy. It burst spectacularly with the impact, spraying coolant directly into the Were’s face. Leroy yelped and jumped back, temporarily blinded and definitely startled. That was all the Boggart needed; just enough time to slip his hand into the coveralls’ hip pocket and get out the silver-plated brass knuckles.

  Time to get to work.

  He started with Leroy’s face, and didn’t stop; he just kept working his jaw, over and over. Leroy would try to push himself up, but the Boggart would just kick his legs out and do it all over again. That was one thing about beating the monkey-shit out of a Para; it took a lot of goddamned work, sometimes. The Boggart kept going until Leroy’s face looked like a tenderized steak; one of his eyes was closed up and he was spitting out blood and more than a couple of teeth. He’s had it, the Boggart thought as he raised his fist a final time.

  “Hold it, hold it! I’ll talk, I’ll go wit’cha! Whatever! Just don’t hit me anymore, man!” There was a canine whine under his words, the sort of pitiful whimper a dog made after getting whipped for shitting on the carpet; a good sign. Now the Boggart could get some goddamn cooperation.

  “Talkative, now? Hell, I thought we were both going to get our workout out, first. Another time, maybe.” The Boggart grabbed Leroy by the lapel of his jumpsuit, lifting him up. “Got some questions about a cousin of yours, and a certain ship he was on. Name of Fred, went out on one of the early voyages. Ring any bells?”

  Leroy whined, and cringed. “I don’—lemme think! Cousin? Pack-cousin, ya mean?”

  “Yeah, Pack-cousin. About a cen-and-a-half ago. Engineer.” The Boggart kept a tight grip on the lapel, and shook it a little.

  “Ya mean Fred the Squint?” Leroy shook like a cocker spaniel about to pee in submission. I’ve got him beat, now. Used the stick on him, time to use the carrot. The Boggart backed down a little, the last thing he wanted to do was get whizzed on.

  “Listen, I just need some information. You help me, I help you. It’s not like I’m doing this for free, after all. No reason for you not to see some of the creds, right?”

  The mention of creds turned off the last of the Fur’s reluctance. Just like that, the sap’s entire life story came pouring out in one great torrent of uninteresting crap. He was so sorry for this, terribly ashamed of that, and so on. What little pertained to Fred only amounted to a hill of beans that the Boggart could’ve figured out for himself. Fred was a Loner, that was the first thing that the Boggart had gotten right, driven out because of his technical aptitude in a demographic that was big on muscle and short on brains. He got tough because of it, but decided to try his hand at spacefaring to escape the bullshit anyways. And that’s all that the file—or good ol’ Leroy here—knew or could infer. Once Fred hit space, that was the last his former Pack had heard from him. He hadn’t even arranged to bank his pay with the Pack credit union, which was a bit of a grievance, often repeated over the years, it seemed.

  The Boggart knew that he wouldn’t get anything else useful out of Leroy; the Were had been cowed, and had already spilled his guts. The Boggart dropped him to the deck, dropped a small packet of folded credits on his chest, then turned to walk away.

  And was stopped.

  What he met was a wall of meat and anger; the local Pack had decided to show up, maybe attracted by Leroy’s howls, and led by the Asian Were.

  The Boggart took his real form; sort of like a giant-sized lawn gnome from hell. Pointed ears, dark grey skin, black beard, and a lot of pointed teeth. “Something I can do for you, gents?” he asked, in a warning tone.

  The Fur snarled, just a little. Lifted lip, showing dominance. “Step aside; we’ve got business with this whelp, now that you’re done with it. Yeah?”

  He moved to one side and made a sweeping gesture towards the beaten Leroy. “Be my guest.”

  The Boggart didn’t look back as he walked away, despite Leroy’s insistent whines turning to yelps of pain. Owed money? Insulted a pack leader? Stole someone’s bitch?

  Not this Boggart’s problem.

  As he trudged back to the hostel, he made a lightning decision. So, he’d found out that the Fur was a Loner. That made it all the more likely he’d colluded with the Fangs. So before he went and chased any more wild hares, it made sense to check out the Fang angle first.

  And he wouldn’t find any of the movers and shakers in the Fang world here.

  He smirked to himself. The Púca wasn’t going to like this.

  The Púca could bite him.

  There was an old saying in the Norm military; “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than get permission,” and the Boggart wasn’t planning even on asking for forgiveness. No matter what happened, he’d get better results than the Púca; he knew it, the Púca knew it, and besides, the Púca didn’t want to be bothered, so the Púca could justify the next expenses to the higher-ups himself.

  But he did check very carefully to make sure that the Púca was going to be out of the office before placing his call and leaving his message.

  “Dead end, except that the Were is alleged to be a Loner, so that makes collusion with the Vampires likely. Pursuing that with my sources. Will report when I arrive.”

  Once again, the Boggart booked freight out—this time the only ship leaving was faster than the one he’d come in on, a fast courier in fact, mostly carrying data storage. His crate would take up very little space, and a fast courier likes to fill every bit of space it has. There was room. He booked it, booked into another hostel on the other side, checked his supplies, checked out of the hostel, and parked the watch inside the crate. Once he saw the ’bots come fetch the crate, he joined the watch. This time the wait would be much shorter, and no need to check progress.

  Besides, only the crate would be occupying that bunk in the hostel when he got there. He was going where the Elite met, and at least for a little while he’d have to pass as one of them.

  Fangs and Furs both loved deep-space stations. For the Fangs, well, eternal night and complete control over who and what came and went, what was there not to like? And for the Furs, while they’d have preferred a sunny no-moon planet, well, one out of three wasn’t bad, and the control aspect fed right into Pack mentality. Norms needed the stations as waypoints to greener pastures. Everybody won. They were expensive to build and maintain, but Norms hated staffing them. Everybody won. And the Fangs, at least, knew everything there was to know about luxury, and were happy to turn their stations into tourist traps overflowing with people who wanted to toy with the danger of a Fang-bite—one that they were guaranteed i
n the contract wasn’t going to be fatal. Everybody won.

  With the chance that the Norms were going to hit the place with theoretical torches and stakes approaching zero, the Fangs turned the stations they ran into pleasure palaces. Once FTL was finally working, they were exactly the sorts of places that Norms with a lot of money liked to visit. They were also the sorts of places that groupies liked to live in. That attracted a sprinkling of other sorts of Paras as well.

  The stations had real names, but the Fangs always renamed them, and those were the names that stuck. This one was The Tenderloin.

  Not a pun on steak/stake as most assumed, it was named after the notoriously lawless pleasure district in the city of San Francisco in Old Earth’s late 1800s. The Boggart recalled the place very well, with mingled pleasure and revulsion. He regarded its namesake with the same mixed feelings.

  Once again, the hostel was ’bot-tended, with a sprinkling of Reboots. No one to pay attention when he sprung the crate, checked himself in, got what he needed and shoved the crate into the bunk and sealed it—and stepped out into the lights-and-shadow-play that was The Tenderloin.

  First thing he needed was a real hotel room. Those were not hard to come by. The station itself had private housing for the Nests and Dens, and their hangers-on, storage for the Reboots, and lots and lots of hotels, which ranged from the luxurious to—well, he’d never had the money for anything past the lower end, but if rumors were true, genuine fur bedspreads and hot-and-cold-running vices were just the start. The only people who ever used the hostels were crews from the ships and transients. The Boggart reckoned he’d find himself a place just a hair below midrange. He didn’t want to make the Black Dog turn white-haired overnight.

  Wardrobe would be important too. Fortunately around here, unless you lived here, you could get by, in fact, you were encouraged to get by, with temporary clothing that just washed down the drain when you showered. So once he got himself situated, he got himself a couple appropriate outfits.