Nighthawks at the Mission: Move Off-World. Make A Killing.

by Forbes West

  She’s up on the fifth floor with a halfway decent view of the countryside and the nearby village of the Funeral Breaks. You can almost see the Benbow Inn, you think.

  Back to wearing your flight suit, you wait on a soft leather couch until Saki comes out in a light kimono robe with a bong that’s as big as she is. She’s gone back to her normal self without a word.

  “Sweet Jesus,” you say.

  Saki starts it up, ready to take the first hit. “Yoshi yaruzo!” she says.

  You lean forward, smelling the herb burning, and take a hit. You immediately cough.

  “Drugs. Drugs to forget.” Saki nods. “Drugs to forget.”

  “I don’t think I ever want to get out there again,” you say, off-handedly.

  Saki looks at you in confusion. “What do you mean?” She takes a hit so long and hard that her eyes turn red. “Whatcha mean, oh jelly bean?”

  “There’s a lot of death out there. You know? Past…out of…past the Mission. Death, death, and death. I want to get past all that.”

  “But out there, that’s where the money is. So they say.”

  “You ever think that there should be a better way of living than this? Than just scrounging around to try to get a few bucks?” You hit the bong again, making yourself a bit cross-eyed. “What did you do? Lace this? Oh god...”

  “No. This is it and we just have to deal with it,” Saki says. “Death shouldn’t be a bother so much. Everyone has to do it. That shouldn’t hold you back.”

  “Why’d you come out here, Saki?”

  Saki looks off to the side. “Money. In Japan there’s no really poor people, but there’s not a chance to really get rich either. You?”

  You nod. “Trying to get money, too. In America there’s a few rich and a lot of people who used to be middle class now becoming poorer. I want to get money.”

  Saki sits next to you on the couch. “Want to listen to the radio?”

  You say yes, feeling absolutely swept away by the pot and by the nice swim in the Mission pool. Saki gets up again and flips on her old radio set. It’s getting late, and she manages to find the Old Man at Midnight, who is playing a selection of newer stuff Radio Oberon won’t play. Something smooth and mellow lifts itself out of the radio, filtering through the air and bouncing across the four walls of Saki’s small apartment home. Her robe hikes up a little bit, showing one of her firm thighs. You even get a glimpse of one her breasts accidentally as she turns to the side.

  “I’m really, really tired,” you whisper. “I’m so tired of all of this. I would really like to go home.”

  “You don’t have to go back downstairs right away.” Saki misinterprets and gives you a hug. “You my new smoke out buddy!”

  You stare into her deep brown eyes, getting lost for a moment, not feeling aware of your surroundings, feeling lost in that micro-sea of brown... Something stirs inside you. You want to be comforted, to be next to her and for some sort of desperate release. Your clothes feel over-warm and itchy. An instinct takes over as if you were with Tyler again.

  You kiss her, deeply.

  Saki looks shocked, frightened a little. “Nani?” You blink and draw away from her.

  You walk out to her balcony, frightened yourself. Saki doesn’t follow you or say anything for a good while. Breathing in the fresh air wakes you up a little bit.

  Saki stands up, smoothing out her robe. “I think you better go.”

  * * *

  You leave, thunderstruck at what just occurred.

  Back in your basement apartment, you sit down on the couch, still trying to wrap your head around what happened upstairs with Saki. The guilt you feel for kissing her.

  You don’t think you have been more embarrassed and ashamed of yourself in your life, but kissing another woman makes you realize that anyone who would really have disapproved of it, or maybe would have mocked you for it, are all gone. Anyone who would ask any questions about your behavior is long gone. The void welcomes you.

  Your father is dead. Your mother is dead to you. Your old neighbors and those people in school, they are long gone. Fact of the matter is, they are actually, in all seriousness, millions of miles away.

  You lie down on the couch and pass out for at least an hour before you hear your phone ring. You pick it up, expecting Saki’s voice. You even ask if it is Saki.

  “No, this isn’t Saki. This is Guy Farson. I’m here. At the Benbow.”

  You hang up, unsure.

  You take your gun and your baton with you. On the elevator ride up, you fidget. Your palms sweat terribly. Your stomach tightens itself into knots. You tell yourself that this isn’t something you’ve just hallucinated, this isn’t just the residue of all the pills, the pot, and the booze you’ve plowed through. No, his voice was real. Guy Farson appears to be alive.

  You exit the elevator and walk to the Benbow, opening its doors slowly, scanning every corner with your gun out. You walk through the Nemo Gate and appear inside a warm Benbow Inn. Guy Farson stands behind the counter and Treena Page sits on the other side.

  “Well, here we are,” Guy says, putting a toothpick into his mouth. “You want to take a seat for a second?” Both of them are drinking Tokyo Sex Whale. Both are alive and healthy looking.

  “Where’s Winniefreddie?” Guy asks. “Did she get out?”

  “She didn’t make it,” you respond. “She...” You shrug your shoulders. You can’t continue.

  Treena blows out her breath. A tear rolls down her cheek and she walks away from the bar without another word and sits down at an empty table behind you.

  “Did you get out with the stuff?” Guy asks.

  “Halfway. Mathias and Petty stole the money,” you answer back. You scan both of their features. They have on the same jumpsuits as that fateful night—bloody, muddy, and torn in places. “How?” you ask. You look at both of them. “How are you still alive?”

  “A Ni-Perchta hunting party. They were, uh, hunting a Gug in the area,” Treena turns back to you and says with a sniffle.

  “Kept us alive. Healed Treena in ten minutes, took me three days with the damn arrow piece. They just kept doing different things—over three days and three nights.” Guy rubs his nose. “Those Ni-Perchta...I don’t get it, some are real barbarians, some are gentlemen. They need to put signs around their necks so we can determine that a bit easier.”

  Guy drinks some more. “Goddamn Tek. Talk about needing a sign.”

  “Goddamn natives,” Treena says. “Can’t trust ‘em at all. Well, most of ‘em, not like the hunting party ones...”

  Saki enters through the Nemo Gate behind you, dressed in a Network-issued flight suit.

  “Saki-san,” Guy says with a wry grin.

  “She’s, she’s my…” you start to say. Saki looks at you in mute surprise.

  “Co-worker, I know. Biggest stoner this side of Jamaica, that I know of. And my long time girl...”

  Saki looks at him for a long time, checking to see if he is all right. They kiss deeply, almost making out in front of you. Guy looks at you for a moment, as if feeling guilty. He tells her he is okay.

  “You both smell like weed. Did she see that bong that’s the size of my dick?” Guy asks crudely.

  “Hai. You guys need anything?”

  “Just money, and all the pain pills you got. You know we spent our last dollar just getting the airship fueled?” Treena says with a harsh laugh. “New sister, too. I’ll kill whoever killed…Whichever one did it, I’ll nail their ass to the wall. I’ll obliterate them and their effing families, and I won’t stop until the bastard drowns in their own blood. I won’t stop and I’ll just keep coming and coming until they are dead.” Treena throws a bottle against the wall, shattering it into a million pieces.

  “You’re goddamn right! We should hunt whoever it is and just execute them then and there! Kill ‘em all!” you scream. “Kill ‘em all!”

  A long silence follows your outburst.

  “Okay, okay,” Guy says, putting h
is hand on your elbow. “All quiet now.”

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Showdown at Mission Friendship

  (The New Normal, Part Two)

  Guy and Treena keep to themselves at the Benbow, the doors open, the place up and running. The next day you help them put a cover over the airship. What happened at the temple is too much for any one of you, and it’ll take a while for you to get back out there and nighthawk.

  For the next two weeks, Saki and you go to work as always, trying to make the settlers happy and Mission Friendship operating. Ernesto, the maintenance supervisor, invites the two of you for drinks over at the maintenance shop—ice-cold Coronas—during lunch, which you share with the other Mexican workers and the Ni-Perchta helpers on the rooftop of the Mission. You realize at this point that you have sunk into a sort of daily and understandable routine. No one talks about the temple and Sargasso-3.

  At night you meet with Saki at her apartment with what’s left of the Tokyo Sex Whale co-op, and jointly smoke out of that monster bong. She seems to be ignoring what happened that one night when you kissed her. You enjoy the relaxation the green brings you; it’s a bit different from the Adderall shit you pop. Guy sleeps at Saki’s apartment all the time.

  One night you listen to the album Nighthawks at the Diner at high volume until you fall asleep on a balcony chair. Guy brought the vinyl over. With the pot, the cool night air, and Tom Waits rambling over a jazzy set, you are relaxed.

  Papers are drawn making you an official member of the co-op, which you present to Jake Alexandros, the Bureau agent. He accepts them without a word, though you sense an odd hostility. Dee takes you into the office and speaks on behalf of The Network by stating that she hopes that you signing on with a co-op does not distract in any way from your duties at the Mission and that you do not work directly in “that place,” meaning the Benbow.

  Tim, the lonely ex-pilot and independent miner who now constantly talks your ear off, says that Mathias and Petty are still heard to be lurking out there. Supposedly they killed a co-op of five near the boat quays four nights before. He says he feels better with the security forces surrounding the Mission at night. “They’re a bunch of kooks, that Mathias and Petty. You don’t know where they are or where they can hit you. I don’t know why the Network just doesn’t stomp them out.” He lights his second cigarette after putting the first one out in a Styrofoam cup.

  You nod and say nothing. Then, much to your disbelief, in walks Charles Mathias. Someone you never wanted-or expected-to see again. You hit a small red button on your desk, setting off a blaring fire alarm that pierces your ears. Saki stands up and looks at you in desperation. Security rushes into the lobby, their inexperience and confusion showing. These are not professional soldiers.

  Mathias waves to you as he snaps out his ori-baton. “I’m sorry, Miss Orange, would there be an Ephor by the name of Dwelka Storma here?” he says through his evil half-mask. This time the mask is black instead of red, though still with those off-putting yellow jaws.

  Botha walks out of a side office with his gun drawn, only to have it telekinetically ripped out of his hands and thrown onto the floor in a crunch. Alexandros and Dee watch from their offices, seemingly petrified.

  “Dwelka Storma, step on down! I challenge you!” Mathias yells over the sirens. He points his baton at your desk, telekinetically picks it up and slams it against a siren light, knocking out the alarm system.

  Storma walks out, a walking tank of a Ni-Perchta man in his ridged and black armor. He snaps out his staff.

  “I challenge you to a duel! You and your best men!” Mathias shouts again.

  Storma nods. Three Ni-Perchta, including his apprentice in similar black and ridged body armor, step out into the large lobby. The few residents caught in the lobby rush to the elevator.

  Tim, your talkative friend, doesn’t make it in time and just stands there, caught up in the middle of everything and punching the elevator button over and over again.

  “You have wronged me by simply existing! I invoke the custom of the duel right here, right now, and I challenge the four of you!” Mathias repeats it in Perchta, in case anyone cannot understand.

  Storma tilts his head and takes out his sword. “Challenge accepted.”

  Mathias draws his pistol just a second afterwards, emptying a clip into one of the four Ni- Perchta who stand in front of him, making him fly backwards and down the hall. The first to die is the Ephor’s apprentice. He still has his sword in one hand. He dies leaving a bloody trail, eyes still open.

  One of the other Ni-Perchta, a short one in a blue Army surplus uniform, instead of the usual armor and cloak look, fires his submachine gun, pouring out gunfire in a quick mean burst that thumps the air. The shots bounce off some sort of energy shield Mathias has around him and he retaliates by shooting a burst of red flames into the gun, making it explode in a series of pops as if a group of firecrackers have been set off inside the magazine. The explosion kills the Ni-Perchta.

  Without even focusing on them, Mathias forces the other two Ni-Perchta to slam into each other so hard that you are sure you can hear their ribs and skulls break from the impact.

  Suddenly, Storma transforms into this eight foot tall, whiter-than-white version of the creature that attacked you down by the temple, complete with the two forearms on each arm and the zipper-like mouth. You can hear his bones pop as he changes, his skin stretching to make this new thing. The Storma creature jumps at Mathias with a frightening slash of one of his arms, a slash that crackles with static electricity. Mathias is knocked to the floor once, twice, three times, his personal energy shield flashing orange. He desperately draws his other gun, and fanning the hammer back, shoots into the creature multiple times with some oddly powerful rounds that explode like cannon fire, dropping Dwelka to the floor. The creature stands up again quickly, bleeding white blood but not slowing for a moment. Then, all at once, the wounds explode with powerful detonations that continue to pop for a good minute, reducing the creature to ragged ruin.

  Dwelka slowly transforms to his original shape and lies dying on the floor, his chest and arms shredded.

  The smell of gunfire fills the entire lobby as well as that awful burnt pork-like smell of charred bodies.

  Mathias’s half-mask is cracked and hangs off his face. He adjusts it slowly, as if in pain.

  The other Ni-Perchta stand there in groups, not moving, not saying anything.

  “Hello again, Sarah.” Mathias’s eyes shift from a deep green to blue.

  Tim, who is standing there in absolute silence and shock, watches as Mathias takes a single cigarette out from the pack sticking out of Tim’s jumpsuit pocket, and then lights it by snapping his fingers together to produce a flame—no lighter is needed since he is holding his ori-baton in his other hand.

  “Cheers. I won’t see you, or you, or you around, right?” He points to several Ni-Perchta. “Sarah, I should really...” Mathias claps once. “I should really smack you down, but you know why that’s not happening.”

  He heads for the front doors, then turns. “I see any of you pigs still scurrying about, I’ll burn the whole Mission down around your ears.”

  The elevator door finally opens, and Tim rushes inside.

  * * *

  “Somebody…somebody call the medics and get out the equipment! Now!” Jake Alexandros yells, stepping out of his office in a panic. Wellington, the doctor you met earlier, rushes out from his office with a couple of ori-batons covered in several blue-orange orichalcum stones. He starts the healing process on the nearest dead Ni-Perchta—Storma. With green flecks coming out of the end of the baton, life returns to the Ephor.

  Saki grabs the other baton from him without a word and starts to revive Storma’s apprentices. With white flashes of light coming from both sets of their eyes, they come slowly back to life, coughing and jerking.

  Without warning, Mathias returns, holding a small device that spins in his hand like a top. “No healing today, folks, sorr
y!”

  He tosses the spinning top into the high vaulted ceiling of the lobby. The thing blows and creates an incredibly thick cloud of choking purple gas and ash. Your lungs burn and your eyes water something terrible. The apprentice who was being healed drops back dead to the floor. Storma, however, makes it out of there with Wellington’s help. You rush over too, and all three of you enter the Nemo Gate back into the Benbow.

  * * *

  Minutes later, after the gas has cleared, you return to the lobby to see the exodus. Jake Alexandros looks too stunned to try to pull back the crowds of people who are getting into their vehicles. By nightfall, you and Saki count that half of the residential apartments are now empty.

  “The damn security forces just stood there!” one of the residents yells as he walks through the lobby.

  “What the hell is the Network doing?” cries another. “The Winkies don’t care if you live or die. It’s time to go! The portal is only open for another week.”

  “You know that the Ni-Perchta security cops could’ve swarmed him,” the usually naked Bern, clothed now, complains. “But they didn’t.”

  “Not their way of doing things. It was a duel,” Saki says.

  “Well, you know, sometimes cultures need to grow the hell up,” Bern says. “I’ll be in the pool.”

  Hastily stuffed suitcases and crying children are being led out in constant droves. More Ni-Perchta security forces arrive by dusk but it seems useless. Bern, and surprisingly Tim, state that they are in for the long haul. “No cheap ass cockney son of a bitch is going to make me move, no sir,” Tim says strongly, though his hand shakes every time he takes a puff on his cigarette.

  At five o’clock, you stand with Saki in Dee’s office and realize that her desk is cleared out and the framed picture of her kid is gone.

  “She took off,” you say.

  Saki rolls her eyes. “Wow.”

  There is a note on Dee’s desk. It reads: “This place is done. You should leave too. Dee.”

  Jake arrives and snatches the note. “Ignore that. There will be no evacuation.” You and Saki shout questions after him but he leaves you to shout orders at the Ni-Perchta scattered around the lobby.