by Joe Vasicek
“What are you wanting?” the bartender asked. He was a fat, ugly man, with a cybernetic implant in his eye that reminded Isaac of Master Korha back home at Megiddo Station.
“One bottle beer,” said Aaron in his halting Gaian. “Local brew.”
“Local?” said the bartender. “Is only vodka spirits brewing local. Beer we are importing from Atalia and Merope Nova—”
“We’ll take that, then,” said Isaac. “Two pints.”
The bartender nodded and poured their drinks, much to Aaron’s chagrin. He turned around on his stool and leaned back with his elbows propped up on the counter.
“You didn’t have to order for me,” he said.
Isaac shrugged and glanced to his left. They’d attracted the attention of a couple of women, both of whom were bald except for a single braided lock that stretched past their waists. It was a style peculiar to an esoteric New Humanist whose followers hailed from fringes of the Coreward Stars. The girls were probably looking for a starfarer to give them passage somewhere. Isaac glanced over his shoulder, but no one else in the place seemed to pay them any mind.
“There’s a guy who might be able to help us,” said Aaron. He motioned with his chin at a middle-aged man in a smart-looking business uniform, with a silver wrist console and a headset terminal interface that covered his left ear. He was smoking a hookah and reading something on the table’s holoscreen display.
“What makes you say that?”
“All the girls are hanging out around the bar, which probably means that’s where the pilots are. Pilots carry wrist consoles, but that guy’s got a headset—only suppliers have enough local contacts to need equipment like that.”
Isaac glanced around the cantina. He had to admit, his brother’s reasoning made sense. But if the man was sitting at a table, that meant he was waiting for people to come to him. He’d have a lot more power in a bargaining situation if they went over to him immediately.
“Let’s give it a couple of minutes,” he said. “We don’t want to look too eager.” He nursed his drink, sipping from it occasionally as he watched the various patrons go about their business.
A tap at his shoulder snapped him to attention. He glanced at his side and saw a man in a black silk shirt with a synthleather vest and gold wrist console, with studded earrings up the sides of both ears.
“Excusing,” the man said, taking the seat at Isaac’s left. “New you are coming here, no?”
Aaron perked up, turning around to get a better look at the man. Isaac leaned back so that they could talk with him together, even if Aaron could only nod and pretend that he was following the conversation.
“Yes,” he said. “We have come many parsecs from the Oriana Cluster, by way of Esperanzia. Are you looking to trade?”
The man bobbed his head from side to side, indicating an ambivalent interest. He was olive-skinned and bald, with some sort of eye enhancement that made his pupils flicker. Was that a common implant in these parts? It made it difficult for Isaac to look at him while they were talking.
“Perhaps, perhaps. Where you are going after stay is finishing? Maybe deal am having, giving you good price.”
“We don’t know yet,” said Isaac. “This is a new place for us. We haven’t planned our next trade run.”
The man grinned. “Is good, is very good. Many suggestions I can offering, help you much I can. You are with starship, no?”
“What’s he saying?” Aaron whispered.
“He’s about to give us information on trade routes,” said Isaac. The man waited patiently for them to confer.
“Why don’t you ask him where we can find that cryothaw machine?”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there!”
He turned back to the man. “There are many colonies in the New Pleiades, is this true?”
“Is true. Very many.”
“How many were settled from cryo?” The man gave him a puzzled look, so he leaned forward and tried to talk slower. “You know, from cryotanks, frozen for the journey and thawed on arrival? We want to find a place that’s still fairly new, with most of their cryo equipment still intact.”
“You are looking for freeze someone?”
“Not freeze, thaw. Do you know of a place that does cryothaw?”
It made Isaac uneasy to come straight out with the question, but he didn’t see any other way to make the man understand. It worked—his eyes lit up almost immediately.
“Ah, is cryotank you are having. Where you find?”
“Does he have one?” Aaron interjected. “Can he help us do it?”
Isaac raised his hand in exasperation. “Just give me a second. We’re still talking about it.” Then, to the man, “It’s a girl. We found her in the Far Outworlds, a survivor of … of an accident.” Something told him it was a bad idea to get any more specific than that.
The man nodded vigorously. “Is good, is good. How much you want?”
“How much? You mean—”
“I pay good price, very good price. Say, two thousand credits.”
Isaac frowned. “Look, she’s not for sale. We just want—”
“What’s he saying?” asked Aaron. “Was that a number he just mentioned?”
I never should have asked about the cryothaw device, Isaac realized. I’ve got to get us out of here.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he said, rising to his feet. “We’d better be going.”
“Is no good? Okay, three thousand.”
“She’s not for sale,” he said as firmly as he could manage. “Come on, Aaron, let’s—”
“Is that creep trying to buy her?” Aaron asked, his cheeks reddening. Isaac’s stomach sank as he saw the rage grow in his brother’s face.
“Look, it’s not a big deal, we’ll just—”
“You dirty bastard!” he shouted in Gaian, jabbing the man with his finger. “You bastard dirty son of bitch!”
All around the cantina, heads began to turn. Isaac’s knees went weak, and his legs turned to water.
“Okay, okay,” said the man, raising his hands to calm Aaron down. “Is no problem, no problem. You man, I man. We discuss, no problem.”
Without warning, Aaron lashed out with a fist to the man’s face. It made a sharp crack and sent him spinning into the countertop. The people at the bar all rose to their feet, and three bottles fell with a crash to the floor. The bartender began shouting.
“What is this? What is this?” He turned his fury onto Isaac. “You! You paying for this!”
“Sorry,” said Isaac, grabbing his brother. “Aaron, let’s get the hell out of here!”
The man looked up and wiped a hand across his bloodied mouth. His eyes fixed on them and narrowed, but before Isaac could react, rough hands grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him back around.
“Hey, what are you—ow!” Aaron squealed as the bouncer grabbed him, too. Together, they were dragged to the door and thrown back out into the corridor, falling flat on their faces.
“You stay out of this place,” said the bouncer. His voice was deep and artificial, modulated by a voicebox implant. Isaac rubbed his shoulder and noticed that the man’s hands were cyborg prosthetics. Indeed, half his face was made of metal.
“No problem,” he said quickly. With a guy like you at the door, we won’t even walk past this place.
“Ow,” Aaron groaned as the bouncer returned to the dim recesses of the cantina. He rose unsteadily to his feet. “What just happened?”
“You got us in a shipful of trouble, that’s what. I had everything under control, until you jumped in.”
“He was trying to buy her off of us, wasn’t he?” Aaron rubbed his knuckles and stared into the cantina with a grim look on his face. “That dirty son of a bitch was trying to buy her.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t, so you can calm down now. Come on, let’s get out of here before we make any more trouble.”
Isaac took his brother by the arm and pulled him away. Aaron resisted at first, but s
oon followed with some reluctance. Even he had the good sense to know that they’d screwed up. If they managed to make any trades here at all, it wouldn’t be for any goodwill they’d earned.
* * * * *
The tram for the docking arm was small, with only enough seating for twenty people. Still, by the time the tram arrived at the docking node for the Medea, Isaac and Aaron were alone.
The tram came to a halting stop, and the doors slid open with a chime. A flashing sign warned of low gravity, but even at the end of the docking arm, the artificial gravity field was strong enough that Isaac could stand and walk with little trouble. He still gripped the handholds as he climbed out, though, keeping his momentum in careful control. His brother followed.
“Sorry about the cantina,” said Aaron a bit sheepishly. Neither of them had spoken since the fight that had gotten them thrown out.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry too,” said Isaac. Even though they were alone, he didn’t want to talk about it.
The docking arm was long and narrow, with walkways and docking nodes on either side of the track for the tram. The upper level was windowless, but the lower level had control stations to oversee the supplying and refueling of each ship remotely. Isaac eased himself through the hatch and down the ladder to the lower level, glancing out the window at the Medea as he did so.
He didn’t see the two men waiting for him until it was too late.
Rough hands grabbed him by his legs and pulled him down before he reached the bottom. He yelped and grabbed the ladder rung above him. A fist smashed into the side of his head, knocking him back and making him lose his grip. He fell back onto the floor.
“Isaac? Isaac!”
A savage kick hit him squarely in the side. His head spun, and his ears rang as if alarms were going off in them. He curled up in pain as another blow hit him in the chest.
What’s going on?
Before he could catch sight of his attackers, one of them cried out in pain. The floor shuddered as Aaron landed on his feet beside him, slashing out with his knife. An arc of blood sprayed up in the air, and the attackers fell back against the far wall.
“Isaac, up the ladder! Come on, hurry!”
The two men had been pushed back temporarily, but the hatch was the only way out. There was nowhere to run. Realizing this, they raised their fists and made ready to lunge forward. One of them brandished a half-meter length of pipe, his arm bleeding where Aaron had slashed him. The other had solid metal hands and a scarred prosthetic eye that glowed red.
Isaac didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled up the ladder as quickly as he could manage. His side hurt something fierce. If it weren’t for the lower gravity, he probably wouldn’t have made it. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, he staggered to the top and reached back to help his brother.
Aaron climbed out not a moment after him. The two men grabbed at his feet, but he kicked them away and pulled himself free.
“Isaac, are you all right?”
“We’ve got to call the authorities,” said Isaac. He half expected the men to climb after them, but apparently, they were too afraid of Aaron and his knife. With the blade smeared with fresh red blood, he didn’t blame them.
Aaron nodded, but as he looked past him his eyes suddenly widened.
“Uh-oh.”
Isaac turned around and saw four men approaching along the walkway, three of them with weapons in their hands. One carried a knife that was at least as long as Aaron’s, while two others carried long metal whips, each with a pronged end.
The fourth man was the slaver from the cantina.
“You are both very bad manners,” he said, his lips curling up in a deadly grin. “Now I teach you some.”
Isaac backed up, his stomach sinking. He glanced desperately behind him, but there was nothing that way except two empty docking nodes and a dead end. He tried palming the airlock door open, but it wouldn’t respond—the thugs on the level below them had locked it down. Only the tram could get them out of here, and it was already past the thugs on the other side of the docking arm.
“Get behind me,” said Aaron. He held out his hand and brandished his knife, the blade shaking in spite of his attempt to look menacing.
The slaver chuckled and motioned to his men. The men with the whips stepped forward, ready to strike. One of them cracked his, sending sparks from the pronged end. Isaac swallowed—this was not going to end well.
“I was offering bargain,” said the slaver. “You were not taking. Now, am offering new bargain: your lives.”
“What’s he saying?” Aaron whispered.
“He says he’ll let us live if we give him the girl.”
“What?”
“He says—I don’t know. But I think he’s ready to kill us. Or worse.”
Aaron clenched his teeth and gripped his knife a little tighter. It wasn’t shaking nearly as much anymore.
“Come on, you bastards,” he said softly. “Come on, and I’ll—”
The roar of the approaching tram filled the narrow space on the docking arm, making the slaver frown. He and his thugs stepped aside, and the tram sped past them, squealing on its brakes. It came to a stop in front of the Medea’s docking node just as the other two men climbed up from the hatchway. They glanced nervously at their boss as the doors slid open and a young man stepped out, holding a pistol.
Isaac didn’t recognize him, though something about his face seemed familiar. He was tall and thin, with long, jet-black hair and a prominent nose. His skin was somewhere between brown and olive, and his dark eyes were as piercing as they were fearless. He held his pistol as if it were a natural extension of his own body, a fact that did not escape the thugs. They backed away slowly, and the man edged over to Isaac and Aaron in a smooth, flowing motion.
“Stay calm,” he said, shocking them both as he spoke in perfect Deltan. “I’ll get you out of this.”
He smiled at the slaver and spoke calmly in a language that neither of the brothers understood. From the way the slaver’s eyes widened, it shocked him as well, but he soon got over it and offered a retort. The five thugs formed a protective circle around him, brandishing their weapons, but the man with the pistol paid that no mind. He made conversation with them as calmly as if they were still at the bar in the cantina. His pistol, however, remained steadily pointed at the slaver, as firm and unyielding as his gaze.
We’re going to need a way out before this escalates, Isaac thought. He considered making a dash for the tram, but that would put the thugs between him and his ship. Instead, he flipped open his wrist console and started typing madly on the keypad, trying to unlock the airlock and give them a way to escape.
“What’s going on?” Aaron whispered. “Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know. Just get ready to come with me.”
“Stay calm,” the man said again. With his attention still focused on the slaver, he continued their conversation, this time in a more earnest tone. The slaver’s face turned red, and he started to shout.
At that moment, the airlock hissed open.
“Now!” Isaac shouted. He grabbed his brother and made a mad dash for the door. The moment they were in, he palmed it shut and collapsed, gasping in pain on the floor.
A Patriot’s Plea
“Isaac? Isaac, are you all right?”
Isaac felt like throwing up. His side hurt something awful, and his ears still rang from the blow he’d taken only a minute or two before. On board the Medea, where the artificial gravity was much closer to normal, he felt all his injuries acutely. He coughed, and Aaron helped him up to his feet.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “You didn’t leave anything on the station, did you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Then let’s get to the cockpit.”
“What about that guy who saved us?” Aaron asked. “What are we going to do—just leave him there?”
Isaac palmed the inner airlock door open and limped through. “You s
aw how well-armed those thugs were—we can’t fight them. The best we can do is call the authorities and hope for the best.”
That didn’t seem to sit well with Aaron. He bit his lip and glanced at the outer airlock door, as if he felt the urge to run out and help the man outside. Isaac wanted to do something too, but he knew they wouldn’t last five seconds against the slaver and his goons.
As he started to limp toward the cabin of the ship, a muffled knock sounded through the airlock. He froze, his veins turning to ice. The sound was distant, coming through more than ten centimeters of hardened durasteel, but it was definitely a knock. Someone from the outside wanted in.
“Is that …” Aaron asked, leaving the question unfinished. He raised his knife, still smeared with blood.
“Hold on a second,” said Isaac. He punched a few keys on the access panel just inside the airlock, and the miniature screen displayed the video feed from the docking node. The wide-angle view stretched from floor to ceiling, with a distorted image of the black-haired man standing just outside the door. There was no sign of the slaver or any of his men—they must have left on the tram.
“Who is it?” Aaron asked.
“It’s the man who saved us. From what I can tell, it looks like the slavers are gone.”
“Should I let him in?”
Isaac hesitated. Was it possible this was some sort of trap? Whether it was or not, taking that sort of risk didn’t make sense. Then again, the man had just saved their lives. For honor’s sake, the least they owed him was a proper thank you.
“It’s okay,” said Isaac. “Let him in.”
Aaron lowered his knife and palmed the outer airlock door open. It opened slowly with a loud hiss, revealing the man who had rescued them. His pistol was holstered on his hip, his demeanor as calm and collected as if the standoff had never happened. He nodded politely at Aaron as he stepped inside.
