“I’m not going unless Miss Plastes goes,” Ruby said.
“The hell you aren’t. We’ve talked about this. It’s the only way for you to take over the family business,” Cornelius said.
Thad moved closer. “Shaunte goes.”
Cornelius threw up his hands and stalked away.
“You’re too old to throw tantrums, Grandfather,” Ruby called after him.
“Put on some real shoes, Shaunte. This won’t be an easy hike,” Thad said.
“These shoes cost four thousand credits, thank you very much.” Shaunte displayed them, and the rest of her outfit. “I really don’t have time for one of your adventures.”
“You don’t have time not to go on this one. The future of Ungwilook depends on what we do next,” Thad said.
“I’m ready!” Cornelius shouted from the cave entrance. “This train’s already ten minutes late. I’m running out of patience.”
Mast stood from where he had been listening attentively. “Then it is muchly decided, is what they say.”
CHAPTER SIX
Drunk Bouncer
Sledge swayed on his feet near the front door. A stream of miners moved around him. He was a giant rock in the middle of a river of humanity. “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… Fifteen? Sixteen?”
He shook his head. “One, two, three…” He touched patrons on the arm as they passed.
Leaning against the inside of the door frame, Penelope cleaned her fingernails with a boot knife. “Why don’t you forget about the headcount?”
“Gotta be convincing.”
“I’d rather you be sober. A man of your tonnage with a clear head would scare off the troublemakers,” she said.
“Are you saying I’m not intimidating?” He slammed his right fist into his left palm, staggered sideways, and thrust both hands out, palms toward the floor for balance. “Okay, maybe you’re right. But I thought we were trying to lure the worst of them here so you could stab them.”
“Sledge, that was a joke.”
“Then why the knife?”
“If you’re going to keep getting this drunk and acting like bait for a fake plan, then I better be ready to act on it if it happens,” Penelope said, sheathing the knife and crossing her arms. She put one boot heel against the wall and balanced on the other leg as she stared at him.
“You’re giving me a headache. I better sit down,” he said.
Penelope moved to his side, seized him by the arm with her left hand and gently chopped him on the side of his head with her right.
His eyes flew open.
“Listen to me, you big oaf. This town is coming apart at the seams. I’ve never seen you like this. You’ve given up. I didn’t even know you drank,” she said.
“You’ve seen me drink.”
“Sure, but I’ve never seen you be a drunk. Are you really that broken up about that whore mistress?” Penelope asked.
Sledge took a step backward, dragging her with him. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“What is really the problem?”
He sat down at a table full of dockworkers, waving them away with a casual flick of his fingers. They scurried back from the table, leaving their drinks. Sledge took one and sloshed it down.
“It was my exit interview,” he said.
Penelope looked down and tapped one foot rapidly.
Sledge looked at her, nearly sober for once, expecting a response.
She looked up and held his gaze. “My exit interview was no picnic. But I’ve always been stronger than you, mentally at least.”
“You think so? Because I’m three times your size, you assume I’m an idiot.”
She smiled mischievously and shrugged. “Maybe just a bit slow.”
He leaned close, resting his huge forearms on his knees. “So why did you get out of SagCon?”
She took one of the half-empty and completely-abandoned liquor glasses from the table and turned it several times. Staring at it, she answered him. “I’m not trying to get back together with Thaddeus.”
“That wasn’t what I was asking.”
She nodded. “But you’re right. I saw something here in Darklanding. My first prediction is coming true right now. The place is a boomtown, more so than I expected if you want to be perfectly honest.”
“What else?”
“Cornelius Vandersun doesn’t come to a place like this without a very good reason. He rarely goes to any world twice unless there are ruins of an ancient civilization. Some people speculate he steals his technological breakthroughs from such places. I went through all the records I could find looking for connections and correlations. I found three worlds that eventually became major transportation hubs.”
“I put that together before I started drinking,” Sledge said.
“Did you also notice that two of his children disappeared after those planetary explorations, one son and one daughter, both of them as wild and reckless as he is?” Penelope asked.
Sledge glared around them to make sure no one was close enough to eavesdrop. He faced her and spoke in a harsh whisper. “You think he found ancient technology here?”
Penelope nodded.
* * *
Andronik ran as fast as he could. The big one, the mean one with too many muscles, charged after him. A dozen other thugs spread out to block alleys and streets in every direction that Andronik might run.
“Come back here, you little shit!” Dregg said. His chest heaved as he struggled for breath. He slowed to a walk, but that didn’t make Andronik feel better. He wondered why the man had big muscles and so many tattoos. All of the humans feared him, so Andronik thought he should too.
He climbed a fire escape. “I just wanted to see inside. Why is everyone going to your muchly crappy place when the Mother Lode has nice people and better food?”
“Nobody cares about the food. Come down. I was mad, but now I’ve calmed down. We can be friends. I might be able to pay you to spy for me,” Dregg said.
“I don’t know anything about spying,” Andronik said.
“The hell you don’t! I catch you spying every damn day,” Dregg yelled.
Andronik heard a noise above him. He looked across the alleyway, and his stomach fell. It was too far to jump and the noise above him was definitely a person trying to sneak down to his position. He hopped to his feet, not sure where he would go, when two men rushed down the metal stairs and tackled him. He fought, but it was no use. They were too big and he was too thin.
“Should we bring him down?” one of the men asked.
“I’ll come up,” Dregg said. “We can hang him off the side until he talks.”
“What do you want? I’m not afraid of you!”
Dregg took his time. When he was on the landing, he punched Andronik in the stomach. “You’re gonna be afraid or dead.”
Andronik spat. He ululated an octave below what the human ear could detect. The primal Unglok sound did nothing to the humans. They pointed at him and laughed.
Dregg wiped Adnronik’s phlegm off his face with the back of his thick forearm. He slapped Andronik hard, nearly knocking him unconscious. “Shake him until he’s out of spit.”
It felt to Andronik like the night sky and the town around him were being shaken. Voices yelled at him, but he didn’t understand what they were saying. “Stop, stop! Sheriff Fry is out in the desert seeing his girlfriend,” he said.
The men hesitated, then started laughing.
Dregg stood up straighter. “That’s about what I thought. We’ll own this town by the time he comes back. “
“What do we do with the kid?”
Dregg shrugged and nodded toward the street. “Throw him off. See if he bounces.”
The men lifted Andronik above their heads and hurled him toward the pavement. He saw it coming up at him and closed his eyes. The impact was worse than he had feared. The laughing voices of the men faded away before he tried to stand.
“Maybe I will be muchly crawling,” he mu
rmured. The night was made for new experiences, apparently. Ungloks rarely vomited. After the third or fourth time, he decided it was not something he ever wished to do again. He looked at his leg once he reached the darkness of the next alleyway and decided it wasn’t broken. The blood trickling from his nose and ears was more worrisome.
***
Shaunte processed the information and feigned a look of nonchalance. It was easier with her stylish outfit. She tilted her head slightly so that her wide-brimmed hat concealed her eyes. Her sunglasses helped as well. Thaddeus and the others were prepared to go into the caves. Her problem was her injuries from Dregg’s goons.
There was no way she was hiking to the bottom of some dark and dangerous cavern. “Tell me again about the alien spider creatures.”
“They aren’t dangerous,” Thaddeus said. “Every time we explore a cavern, they back away from Maximus.”
Cornelius didn’t look happy. “I’m not sure you should leave.”
“She’s not leaving,” Thaddeus said.
“Pay attention, Sheriff. Get a clue. Even an old man like me can see she’s not going into this cave,” Cornelius said. “Which is exactly why we shouldn’t have told her anything. Now she has dangerous information but no context. If she’s like the rest of SagCon, she’ll send a crew of experts to muck everything up.”
“She’s going down to see the ship,” Thaddeus said.
Shaunte stepped back, annoyed that Cornelius saw through her so easily and that Thad was so bullheaded. She addressed Thaddeus. “I’m not going anyplace with spiders.”
Ruby eyed her skeptically. “Or perhaps you don’t want to limp for a day and a half to get there.”
Shaunte quickly changed the subject. She wanted Thaddeus back in Darklanding. She wanted revenge on her attackers, but she also didn’t want him doing anything stupid—which he would if he went into protective mode. “One moment, I have to deal with this message.”
She put a hand to her ear to answer the incoming call.
“You’re still taking calls?” Thaddeus asked.
She put the caller on hold. “I appreciate the importance of this discovery. And I have no intention of sharing your little secret. To be honest, I don’t have time for this. Not even if it means opening a new space lane to another galaxy. I’m trying to run a planet-wide mining operation without a sheriff to keep law and order,” she said.
“All the same problems will be there when I get back,” Thaddeus said.
“Oh, I think you will be surprised how much bigger the problems are now,” Shaunte said.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Dramatic!”
“Now you’ve done it,” Cornelius said. “If you’re set on ignoring this opportunity, Miss Plastes, all I require is your silence. Time is of the essence, Sheriff. We need to get started.” Cornelius hefted his pack onto his shoulder and headed for the entrance.
Shaunte muted the message alert in her ear. She needed to answer it. There were certain priority codes in SagCon that could not be ignored. Hostile takeover attempt. Corporate war declared. Sex scandal. Product launch. And others that involved immediate and specific actions to be taken.
She wasn’t sure where an AWOL Sheriff and an alien artifact came into the standard operating procedure. She could stall, but not for long.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dedra Plans a Food Fight
Dregg tied back his long, dark hair as he loitered near the end of the street watching three people in the vacant lot behind the Mother Lode. Sledge was not somebody he wanted to mess with, sober or drunk. Powerlifter thick, he was as big as Dregg, if not as cut. People Dregg trusted told him the woman SagCon agent was far more dangerous, but he didn’t believe it. He also didn’t believe they were retired. There weren’t many reasons to leave the organization unless you were running for your life.
The madam of the Mother Lode yelled at Sledge. She wore short-shorts and a half-shirt that was at least a size too small. Dregg wasn’t impressed with the woman. Didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Sure she was blonde and had serious tracts of land, and maybe the way she moved and talked excited men, but Dregg didn’t think she compared to his sister. Dedra was long and lean and had earned all her ink—one red square for each successful blackmail, one black square for each extortion ring she took over. The roses and scrollwork meant something else, but she wouldn’t tell anyone what it was, not even her brother.
He thought the motley collection of exercise equipment in the vacant lot was interesting, but just as underwhelming as everything on this planet. Ike Vandersun had talked the place up. The man was a chronic liar, starting with his last name. It wasn’t that unusual, but he claimed to be actually one of the Vandersuns. Black sheep of the family, was what he said. Whatever. People lied in prison. I was framed. I don’t have any cigarettes hidden in my cell. I’m heir to the largest fortune in human history.
Ike hadn’t been much in the prison yard and had needed a lot of protection. The man started fights but didn’t seem to have the fire in him. After a couple months, he explained to Dregg what had happened. He admitted the Sheriff of Darklanding had broken his spirit like a horse. It was a shame. The man had been full of ambition once. Dregg told his sister about the man’s stories as soon as he got out of the slammer.
Dedra had known what to do.
Getting to Darklanding hadn’t been easy. Finding the right financial backer had been nearly impossible. But here they were, and luck would not stop shining on them. The fearsome sheriff was nowhere to be seen and his friend, the former—allegedly—SagCon investigator was a drunk has-been.
“Are we gonna stand here all day?” Dedra asked.
Dregg smiled. “No way, sister. Let’s go see how many of Dixie’s girls are worth two credits.”
Dedra had her hair piled up in a classy style. He wasn’t sure how she did it without help. She had dyed it black today, with only a few veins of red twisting to the top. Her eyes shined with some type of stimulant she’d never admit to ingesting. Or maybe that’s just the way she was, intense as a nightmare and ten times as smart. Ruthless as anyone on this planet.
He followed her up the stairs, watching her walk, feeling bad for staring. Not guilty. Never that. He’d been down too many dark alleys to worry about morality or what people thought of him.
He flexed his shoulders and arms several times before they went inside, wanting to get a good pump to show off for Dixie’s girls.
This time of day, there wasn’t a lot of business. Darklanding was a boomtown like few people ever saw. A single day of profit was more than a normal corporation could expect in a hundred years of doing business. That meant people worked a lot, double overtime. No weekends. No vacations. And only a few hours to unwind and get wild. That was the secret to the entertainment industry in this place. No one had time for quality relationships. It was all slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am and back to work.
He stood in the center of the saloon while Dedra casually toured the place, inspecting Dixie’s girls like they were her own. She ran her finger along the hem of a skirt, then moved to another young woman and traced her brassiere.
No one resisted. No one said a word. The two troublemakers, Leslie and Chelsie, were upstairs asleep, most likely. Dregg had sent the kid named Bobby in to have a look around and make sure the time was right to steal some talent from the Mother Lode.
“You’re wasting your time. Ain’t none of us leaving Dixie or the Mother Lode,” a middle-aged woman said.
“Speak for yourself, you washed up old bag,” a young woman said. She stepped forward and flirted with Dedra, pushing her chest forward and staring into Dedra’s eyes from only inches away.
Dedra grabbed the woman by the back of her hair, yanking her head back, then leaning so close to examine the curve of her throat that Dregg thought she would kiss the Mother Lode girl. Dregg’s excitement rose.
Dedra shoved her away and laughed. “I like you. What’s your name?”
“They ca
ll me BJ,” she said, making her second approach with her hands folded innocently at her waist.
“Stay away from her, BJ. Miss Dixie’s on her way back. I think it’s time for our visitors to go back where they came from,” Pierre the younger said, one hand behind the bar.
Dregg glared at him and tried to decide if there was a weapon behind there.
Dedra laughed beautifully. Dregg wanted to cry with joy when he heard the sound. He wanted to be her warrior and destroy anything or anyone who dared deny her. She held up a hand to stop him from charging the kid behind the bar.
“I heard a lot of things about the Mother Lode. Good place to work if you don’t mind a bunch of unnecessary rules. I couldn’t do it if I wasn’t allowed to drink and get high,” Dedra said. “Just wanted to extend the invitation. Any of you girls here are welcome at the Cheap and Easy.”
“Real classy name for a brothel,” the middle-aged prostitute sneered.
Dedra smiled at the woman and touched her gently on the side of her face. “They call it that because the drugs and alcohol are cheap and easy to get for the employees. The patrons pay top price. Just thought you should all know. Come on, Dregg. Let’s get out of here before you kill someone.”
Dregg pointed one finger at the kid behind the bar. He flexed his huge bicep as he held the pose for BJ and the other girls he thought would be abandoning this place in favor of the Cheap and Easy very soon. “She’s talking about you, Pierre. You better get a shotgun to put behind that bar if you want to act tough next time I come back.”
Dregg walked past the vacant lot where Sledge and Penelope were flipping tractor tires. He knew the woman saw Dedra. She pretended she didn’t, but it was obvious her panties were in a bunch. Dregg flipped them all the finger.
For some reason, it didn’t feel right to walk beside his sister. He always followed her slightly. Since they were kids, she had always known where to go and how to get there. He thought he might actually be a little afraid of her. Definitely in awe. He felt things he shouldn’t feel. That was why he didn’t drink or do drugs, except for the performance-enhancing variety. Losing control would turn him into an animal. He didn’t want to hurt his sister like they had hurt their parents.
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