StarCraft II: Devil's Due

by Christie Golden

  It had been a good evening for Jim Raynor.

  He had been enjoying himself, as he always did here, even before Daisy had sidled up to Tychus and stolen him away for the rest of the evening. With Tychus out of the game, Jim’s luck had continued to improve, and he’d won three out of the last five hands. The alcohol had been doing its happy job, and he had grinned cheerfully at the glowering men whose chips he had gathered to himself lovingly. When in his unsteadiness a few had fallen to the floor, he had yelled, “Hey! Misty! Those are for you!”

  “Jim, honey, you’re a doll,” she’d shouted back across the noisy room.

  Jim went to the cashier’s table, dribbling chips along the way and not caring because it was a drop in the bucket. He exchanged the colorful chips for credits and, feeling generous, bought the table of losers he’d left a round of drinks.

  He made his way, carefully, to the dance stage and gazed up raptly at Evangelina. She gave him a big smile and a wink, and licked her lips.

  Oh, yes, Jim thought as he settled in with a beer and a goofy smile. This night was shaping up to be among the best he’d spent here.

  And that was when he heard the bellowing.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy, goddamn it, where the fekk are you?”

  There was only one person who could yell so loudly. Jim turned, surprised, to the stairwell and blinked at what he saw there.

  Tychus Findlay, in all his unclothed glory, filled the door frame. Even in the dim, smoky lighting, Jim could see the fury on his face. The faint illumination glinted off something metallic around his wrists.

  The band fell silent and the crowd alternately gasped and laughed. The girls, pausing in their dancing routine, made approving whooping noises and applauded. Tychus ignored them all, marching through the room as the crowd hastened to part for him. He grabbed Jim by his shirtfront.

  “Let’s go! Now! Butler’s on his way.”

  “Whoa, Butler? What happened? Where’s Daisy? And how come you’re na—”

  Tychus shoved his face to within a half a centimeter of Jim’s. “NOW!” He did not give Raynor an option. He slipped his hand around to the back of Jim’s dark head, tangled his fingers in his friend’s hair, and began to pull as he ran to the door.

  “Ow! Hey!” Jim tugged free and cast an apologetic glance over his shoulder at Evangelina, who was laughing as hard as the rest of the girls and who blew him a kiss.

  “What about your clothes?” Jim asked as he followed Tychus, deliberately not looking at anything but the other man’s face.

  “Ain’t got time!” Tychus shouted. “Daisy turned me in, the bitch. They’re gonna be here any minute now.”

  Tychus’s lack of apparel continued to cause a bit of a stir as the two bulled their way through the gambling hall area to mingled exclamations of irritation, offense, amusement, and, from some of the female patrons, appreciation. Tychus almost didn’t bother opening the back door as he kept going.

  “Damn,” Tychus said. “Left my keys in my pocket.”

  “Come on, then,” Jim said. “I probably shouldn’t be driving, but this is an emergency. Sit behind me. But not too close, okay?”

  Tychus laughed. They headed for the new vulture Raynor had purchased and jumped on. Tychus grunted a little; the seat was no doubt cold and uncomfortable. Jim couldn’t help it. He started to laugh, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. As he gunned the engines and the responsive bike surged forward despite the extra weight, he could see several lights approaching Wicked Wayne’s.

  “Damn,” Tychus muttered.

  “What?”

  “Left my smokes in my pocket too.”

  Jim laughed, then pointed. “See those lights over there? That’s Butler and his buddies. They are going to be so pissed off.”

  “Makes me wanna stay just so I can see their faces.”

  They were already several hundred yards away, fleeing to—

  “Uh, Tychus? Where the hell are we going?”

  “Away from Butler, capture, and deceitful women, Jimmy. And that’s really all we need to know, ain’t it?”

  “You know,” Jim said as he turned toward nature’s stone sculptures that were the badlands, “I reckon it is.”

  Dawn was spectacular as it spread languidly and in startling shades of color over the badlands. It looked to Jim, as he stood in the mouth of the cave, sipping a cup of powdered coffee heated with water boiled over a campfire, as if someone had poured pink and gold and lavender over the red stone.

  “That’s mighty pretty,” he said.

  From the depths of the cave, Tychus gave a grunt. “Sure is.”

  Jim turned from the painting coming to life before his eyes to glance at his friend. He could see Tychus only by the light of the glowing ember of a cigar he’d bummed off Jim.

  They had managed to swipe some clothes after giving Butler the slip, but they fitted Tychus poorly. The shirt didn’t button across the chest—hell, it was a good three inches shy of even closing—and already one of the thighs of the trousers had split. Findlay was lying on the stone floor, chewing his stogie, eyes catching its orange gleam. On one side of him was a sack containing various items they’d stashed here for just such an emergency: extra smokes, coffee, and a few credits. On Tychus’s other side was the jukebox they had stolen from the maglev train. Jim sighed inwardly as he looked at “her.” One of these days, they’d need to get her someplace where they could juice her up. She’d look like a stained-glass window and sound like a church choir.

  Silence. Jim lit a cigar of his own and swirled the muddy coffee around in the canteen. He took another swig and grimaced. The fire crackled, burning cheerfully and adding some warmth to the cold stone cave.

  “This is bucolic, ain’t it, Jimmy?”

  “Yep.”

  Another silence. Tychus sat up, ripping another seam, strode to the campfire, and tossed the cigar butt in.

  “I hate bucolic.”

  Jim sighed. “We gotta give things a little time to cool down,” he said.

  “We need to get away from this whole damn planet,” Tychus said. “Let things really cool down. I gotta tell you, after Miss Daisy’s deception, I ain’t very partial to Wicked Wayne’s no more.”

  Jim said nothing. He, too, had been shocked by Daisy’s betrayal. He thought of Evangelina, whom he never did get to take to bed, and Misty, who had been his bed partner frequently, and whom he found his thoughts lingering on. But Tychus was right. The whole thing had left a bad taste in their mouths. New Sydney didn’t feel like their world anymore. Time to leave it to Butler and let the marshal think he’d won.

  “Yeah,” Jim said finally. He tossed his butt into the fire as well. “We do the Skulls’ mission and then find a new planet.”

  “Someplace a little less … sandy. And rocky,” said Tychus. He cast a sidelong look at his friend. “You know,” he said casually, “I hear that O’Banon gives his top people pretty nice apartments, sometimes right on Tarsonis. Nice beds, baths—one of them copper jobs. Beds even come with women.”

  Jim shot him a look. “No,” he said sharply. “I ain’t hanging with O’Banon and his type. We work for ourselves.”

  Tychus snorted. “We’re working for the Screaming Skulls right now, Jimmy boy.”

  “That’s different and you know it. The Skulls are like us. They got their jobs and they do them, and when they can’t, they get people they like and trust and cut ’em in for a piece of the action. That’s decent business. But O’Banon …” His eyes hardened. “Ain’t nothing decent about him and what he does.”

  Tychus blew out a thoughtful breath. “All right, Jim. We’ll stick with the Skulls and our own judgment for now.” He held out his hand, and Jim handed him another cigar. Tychus bent to the fire, popping another seam, and shoved his face within a few inches of it without flinching. The cigar sputtered to life. He puffed on it and then joined Jim at the mouth of the cave, staring into the new morning.

  “Crap coffee, too-small clothes, no real direct
ion, and a gorgeous sunrise,” he said, blowing out a stream of smoke. He grinned fiercely. “Man, this life is fun!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  OUTSIDE CONFEDERATE–CONTROLLED SPACE,

  KOPRULU SECTOR

  Jim was not a little worried that the ancient freighter the Skulls had delivered to them might not survive the journey.

  “At least it’s a model that’s got two seats,” Tychus said, lounging in the copilot’s chair, which had more than a few rivets missing. “Besides, our cover is we’re junk dealers, Jimmy. And this boat is certainly junk.”

  “Yeah, but we’re supposed to be carrying junk, not flying it,” Jim said. “I’m all for a convincing story, but missions are risky enough without factoring in our own cover as a hazard.”

  “Hell, Jimmy, what’s life without a little risk?”

  “Safer.”

  The unusual reply caused Tychus to shoot his friend a searching look. Jim let himself grin. “And more boring,” he was forced to admit.

  “Damn straight.”

  The ship’s metal groaned as if in protest of the assessment. Jim found himself unconsciously patting the armrest of the chair, as if the freighter Linda Lou were an agitated pet. They’d both flown freighters before. If the ships were nothing to write home about, at least they were uncomplicated to maneuver.

  Fortunately, the ship did not have to make a long space flight. The orbital scrap yard the Skulls had directed them to was the proverbial hop, skip, and jump away; in actual terms, it was a mere half an orbit.

  He and Tychus were no strangers to scrap yards. They had found them ideal spots for several things: ditching hot ships and acquiring new ones (temporarily—usually the “new” vessels were on their last legs and good only for quickly getting to where they could find superior ones); scavenging parts for hasty repairs; and sometimes simply hiding for a while. Some had better security than others. This one was classified as “moderate” by the Screaming Skulls, but that was irrelevant. Their cover would allow them to approach openly, as they were doing now.

  Jim magnified the image on the screen. “Yep,” he said, looking over the slowly turning debris that littered space for several hundred kilometers. “It’s a scrap yard.”

  The console beeped harshly, and a bright light flashed. “Refurbish and Recovery Station 5034 to approaching vessel. State your name and business.”

  Jim pressed a button. “Refurbish and Recovery Station 5034, this is Captain Jeffrey Ulysses Nathanial Kincaid of the Linda Lou.”

  Tychus snorted at the acronym. Jim gave him a huge grin and continued: “We’ve got some cargo to drop off.”

  “You bet, Linda Lou. Your admittance code is 3857-J. Give it to everyone you deal with: It’s good for the next six hours.”

  “Thanks, roger that.”

  “Piece of cake,” Tychus said. “We could do this with our eyes closed.”

  “We haven’t done anything yet.” The mission was not to dock, have a chat with a purchasing agent at the control center, and sell the items they were carrying. The mission was just a bit more complicated than that. They needed to get on board, get access to the private offices, and steal the junker logs. The logs dated back years and were scrupulous records of every piece of junk that had been delivered and sold during that time. Including the names of those who had dropped off debris and those who had purchased it from the scrap yard.

  Apparently, according to Declan, there were people out there—people overburdened with creds—who would be thrilled to pieces to get their hands on this sort of information. And the Skulls had been contacted by a wealthy buyer who was one of those tragically overburdened people.

  Took all kinds, Jim supposed.

  He was maneuvering the ship in past the first field of debris when his fone beeped. He scowled. “Take her in, Tychus. I need a minute here.”

  “Sure,” Tychus drawled, putting out his cigar on the metal flooring. He glanced over at Jim, but Raynor was entirely focused on his fone.

  It displayed another set of coordinates back on New Sydney. Jim swore softly, then put the fone away. What the hell was going on? Why was Myles bugging him? Would his mom still not take the money?

  “Your mama calling to ask why you were late coming home from school?”

  “Shut up,” said Jim. The joke hit uncomfortably close to home, and he was in no mood to discuss it.

  Tychus peered at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine by me. Here, you take the controls. I need to use the head.” He transferred control of navigation back to Jim, rose, stretched, and left the bridge. Jim was so distracted, he narrowly missed a large piece of debris and had to swerve sharply. He heard Tychus cursing from the head, and his spirits lifted a little.

  When Tychus came back and plopped down in his chair, he asked, “What? You ain’t broken in, beat the security sensors, found the logs, and hightailed it out of here in the time it takes me to take a leak? You’re slipping, Jimmy.”

  Jim snorted and grinned.

  A short distance in, there was a platform that was quite obviously not debris. This would be the check-in station, but not their eventual goal. Jim maneuvered into position. Someone in an exo-suit came out to meet them, a data log in hand. Even in the vacuum of space, Jim mused, there was red tape. Jim gave the man the code; he nodded disinterestedly and gave them a thumbs-up.

  Tychus and Jim threw on out-of-date hardskins and stepped out to unload the fake cargo. It was, quite literally, junk. Jim thought that the Skulls had probably had a grand time assembling all this as props for the mission. Of course, it seemed to him that the Skulls probably had a grand time doing anything.

  Fifteen minutes later, after all the various gears, drives, metal plates, sexbot heads—Tychus paused and had to consider a moment before throwing those in—and other detritus had been cataloged, numbered, sorted, and placed in various areas of the platform, the bored-looking scrap yard employee handed them a data log.

  “There’s your case number, itemized list, and estimated payment amount,” said the man, who called himself Fitzgerald, his voice sounding even more flat and metallic than it should have coming out of a hardskin. “Also enclosed are the coordinates of your docking bay at the station proper. Show them this data log, tell them your code, and they’ll give you your credits. And don’t worry if you can’t raise them right away. Comm’s been on the fritz for the last half hour.”

  Jim frowned slightly. In his line of work, it paid to be suspicious. “Really? That unusual?”

  Fitz-something—Jim had already forgotten his name—blinked at him for a moment. “This is a scrap yard. What do you think?”

  The man had a point, and Jim relaxed, amused. “Thanks,” said Jim. “So we should just head on in, and we’ll find someone there who can give us authorization to collect scrap materials?”

  “Of course. You’ll want to speak with the Office of Material Acquisitions. They’ll give you a registration number that you can use any time you return to make future purchases. Thank you for bringing your business to Refurbish and Recovery Station 5034. We know you have a choice of scrap yards to—”

  “Yeah, save it,” said Tychus bluntly. He turned and jumped lightly from the platform, pulling himself along the tether to the Linda Lou.

  Jim turned and smiled. “Thanks again,” he said to Fitzgerald, then followed Tychus.

  He was beginning to think his friend was right: this was a piece of cake. As he and Tychus entered the ship, closed the door, and removed their hardskins, Jim remarked, “We might have to take more jobs from the Screaming Skulls. This is easy.”

  “Not too many,” Tychus said. “Easy ain’t fun.”

  “Forty-eight hours ago you were running out of Wicked Wayne’s, naked as the day you were born, in an effort to escape the due process of law. This is a definite change.”

  “And so you make my point for me.”

  They maneuvered through the junk field to what was vaguely its center. The station itself was surprisingly well kept up
. It was a slowly turning sphere. There were several oval viewing stations interspersed with cranes. All the cranes were folded up tightly against the station, giving it the appearance of a particularly fat metallic spider. There were no other ships docked, and they went to their appointed bay with no challenges from the station. Apparently the communications were still, as Fitz had put it, “on the fritz.” They brought the rickety freighter into the bay. The door to space irised shut behind them.

  They’d visited plenty of scrap yards. Usually there was someone who had been alerted to their arrival who would come to officially check them in. However, there was no one waiting in the bay, and the door to the corridor that connected them to the station slid open as soon as the space door was closed.

  Jim frowned and glanced at Tychus. “That’s strange,” he said.

  “Could be SOP with this place. Automatically programmed. You saw how interested in personal contact the last fellow was,” Tychus said.

  Jim nodded. “Yeah. Still, Fitz-whatshisname said someone was supposed to check us in.”

  “If the comm is still down, then whoever it was probably doesn’t know he’s supposed to meet us yet. Or he could just be using the head.”

  Jim chuckled. Sometimes, the simplest explanation was the best. “Probably. Come on, let’s go see if we can find him—or at least somebody.”

  They stepped out of the frigate and headed through the door. They hadn’t gone two steps before it slammed shut behind them and the lights went out.

  This is a scrap yard. What do you think?

  Jim swore and drew his slugthrower, immediately backing up against a wall. Tychus did likewise. There was only the faintest blue emergency lighting here and there, and their eyes weren’t adjusting fast enough.

  “Any way we can open that door?” Tychus asked, his voice soft.

  Jim shook his head. He’d spent some time examining the station just in case something went wrong. Something, oh, like maybe doors slamming shut behind them and lights going out.