Tyche's Fury

by Richard Parry

  He was also sore, tired, and thirsty. Those were minor concerns next to the rest of it. “Hey,” he croaked.

  No one answered, at least not immediately. But after a couple minutes — Kohl had made it to one-hundred and thirty Mississippi since he’d said hey — the door opened. A man entered, wearing a frown and clear plastic over his clothes. The clothes looked like standard Republic officer material. The plastic made Kohl pay attention, because nothing said a man expected to get blood everywhere like dressing inside a human-sized condom. “Hi,” said Kohl. “Look—”

  “October Kohl?” The plastic crinkled like cheap sandwich wrap.

  “Sure,” said Kohl. “Look—”

  “No,” said Plastic Wrap. “It’s not that kind of day for you.”

  “That’s fair,” said Kohl. “Which one are you with?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Bulldogs? Or the Demon Crocodile Company? Or, wossit, the Gold Whore Syndicate. Nah, Boar. The Gold Boar Syndicate.” Kohl sniffed, one of his nostrils clogged. Possibly blood? He might have hit his face on the way down. “One of them?”

  “No,” said Plastic Wrap. “I’m with the Republic. You might have heard of us.”

  “Sure,” said Kohl. “I pay taxes. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

  The officer snorted. “I doubt that last a great deal, Citizen Kohl.” The emphasis on citizen was unmistakable. “Do you like being a member of our glorious Republic?”

  “Sure,” said Kohl. “You keep assholes in line.” He shifted in his chains. There was a line of thought there that didn’t bear too much consideration. “Why am I here?”

  Plastic Wrap snorted, then moved to one table of equipment. He picked up a long, thin blade, the kind of thing you might stab into a man to find out how much blood was on the inside. “You’re a traitor to the Republic,” he said.

  “What?” said Kohl. “No. Hell no. No sir. I am not a traitor to the Republic. I saw what you assholes — no offense — did to the last idiots who stood against you. We had an Emperor, and then we had a vacancy. Gone, like yesterday’s news. That kind of thing makes a man like me pay attention. Great powers. Mighty forces. A small-time operator like me? I just pay my taxes.” That last was true. Kohl was paid up, because nothing said throw me in jail like avoiding government taxation. They’d let drug use and murder slide as long as the coins flowed.

  “You seem well appraised of how the system works,” said Plastic Wrap, putting his blade down. Kohl might have sighed relief except that the officer then picked up a saw, tapping a gloved finger against the teeth. “Which makes me wonder why you’re aiding an escaped felon.”

  “Fuck I am,” said Kohl. “That’s a lie. Someone is slandering me. That other asshole? Dale? Bevan? Look, I don’t care. Guy’s rotten. Probably doesn’t pay his taxes.”

  “Probably not,” agreed Plastic Wrap, leaning forward. He set the teeth of the saw against Kohl’s bicep. “Let’s get started, shall we? Where’s the Engineer?”

  • • •

  Kohl screamed. He screamed a lot. He’d been in a great many situations involving violence in his life, but in none of them had he been chained and helpless. It was a unique turn of events, and not one that sat well with him.

  About the second hour in, Plastic Wrap took a break. Got himself a glass of water from somewhere outside, and then drank it in front of Kohl, making the odd slurping noise to drive home the situation. That water looked divine. Kohl even imagined he could smell it on the air, above the stench of his own sweat, urine, and blood. He blinked, trying to clear blood out of his eye, and repeated — for what felt like and probably was — the hundredth time, “Which Engineer?”

  Plastic Wrap sat the glass down on a table, then picked up the cables of the electroshock machine. “You know which one.”

  “I don’t,” wheezed Kohl. “If I did, I’d help you out.” His arm wasn’t working where Plastic Wrap had sawed through his bicep. Other parts of him were leaking all over the floor. He spat a gobbet of something that wasn’t all blood and wasn’t all saliva either onto the floor. Denial doesn’t seem to stick. Maybe it’s time for another tact? “But, you know. Let’s say I knew the Engineer. What’s it worth?”

  That made Plastic Wrap pause connecting jumper cables to Kohl’s skin. The cables had clamps with teeth at the end, but it almost didn’t hurt. Not after what Kohl had been through. This part felt like a fucking vacation. “Are you saying you could give us the Engineer for a price? That pain isn’t a sufficient enough motivator, but—”

  “I’ll have to cut you off there, champ,” said Kohl. He coughed. “I’m sure you’re on a roll. Got a speech in your head and everything. But the real deal is that you want the Engineer. And I’m good at finding people. I’ve found all kinds of people in my time. I can find ‘em dead, or I can find ‘em alive.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Plastic Wrap. “It doesn’t matter if she’s dead or alive. That’s not what we want.”

  “Okay,” said Kohl. “What do you want found?”

  “The money,” said Plastic Wrap. “Once we have the ten million coins, we’ll consider what to do with her. There needs to be a trial, but I can see a situation where it might be expedient if she died before reaching a court of law.” He tapped one of the jumper leads against his lips.

  “That’s it?” said Kohl. “Hell, you should have opened with that.” He shifted on the seat. “We good?”

  “No,” said Plastic Wrap, leaning forward to attach the cable to Kohl’s skin. Two for two, one clamp on his left shoulder, the other at his right hip.

  “Hey,” said Kohl. “I said I’d find her!”

  “Of course you did,” said Plastic Wrap. “I need to find out if you meant it.”

  • • •

  Another hour passed. It might have been two. When Plastic Wrap left to get another glass of water, Kohl threw up on the ground. Nothing much came out, just a thin drivel of bile. But once it was out, he felt cleaner. Like he’d needed to do that before they got on with the rest of it.

  Plastic Wrap returned with a couple small bags. One held red fluid with a big O- on the outside. There was a barcode and a bunch of text Kohl couldn’t read on account of his busted eye and blurred vision. The other bag held a clear fluid, no label. Kohl looked between the two bags. “What are those for?”

  “Got to keep you alive,” said Plastic Wrap. “We’ve got so much more to get through before you die.”

  • • •

  The blackness was a relief. It didn’t last long. Kohl was yanked from it by water thrown on his face. His arms jerked against the chains, pain in his joints waking him all the way up. He tried to lick some of the precious wetness from his lips, but it was like trying to catch rain with a soap bubble.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Plastic Wrap. “I thought you were dead and gone.”

  “Me too,” croaked Kohl. “Kind of hoping for it, to be honest.”

  “Hmm,” said Plastic Wrap. “You almost died, October Kohl. Almost! But not quite. What was it like?”

  Kohl thought about that, his good eye roaming the room. Same tools. By the door, a big tub sat, the kind you might have done your laundry in a couple thousand years ago. Kohl got his head around enough to see the bags suspended above him, now empty. So, he’d been out for some time. He swiveled his head back towards Plastic Wrap. “I couldn’t recommend it,” he said.

  “Hmm,” said Plastic Wrap again. “I think it’s time we switched to the acid.” He pulled the big tub closer, the metal bottom scraping over the dirty ceramicrete floor. It ended up beside Kohl’s feet. “How this works is simple. We put an acid block in the water. The longer it takes for you to tell us what we want to know, the less of your feet are left at the end of it.”

  “I don’t know anything!” said Kohl. He pulled against his chains, but nothing gave. Just like the three thousand previous times he’d tried that.

  “You know what?” said Plastic Wrap.

  “No.”

 
“I don’t believe you,” said the officer. He picked up a green block of some porous material. He dropped it into the tub, where nothing happened. Then he attached the jumper cables to the sides of the tub, the scratching of metal on metal audible over Kohl’s breathing. Breathing that was, he’d be the first to admit, more ragged than it should be for a man sitting on his ass.

  “What does it take to convince you people?” said Kohl.

  “When you don’t have any feet left, we’ll talk,” said Plastic Wrap. “Toes in the tub, please.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” said Kohl.

  Plastic Wrap’s lips pulled into a small moue of disappointment. “Delaying the inevitable doesn’t help.”

  “It helps me plenty,” said Kohl. “You’re a fucking psycho.”

  “That’s not a good way for one professional to talk to another,” said Plastic Wrap, then paused, head tilted. Kohl heard it too. The unmistakable sound of blaster fire. And something else, a noise that was more of a rumble felt through his naked butt cheeks on the metal and plastic of the chair than something that came in through the ear canals. “Huh,” said the officer.

  “Someone coming to rain on your parade?” said Kohl. The hope in his chest felt traitorous. Blaster fire could be anything. It was unlikely, in the middle of a Republic black ops facility, it would be for him. More like, it was accidental carnage going on outside. But the hope wouldn’t go away as another faint fzzzt-crack sounded. And behind that, a klaxon started, an angry wail universal on any planet.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Plastic Wrap. He paused at the door. “If your feet are in the tub when I return, things will go easier for you.” With that, he was gone, door clanking closed behind him.

  Kohl looked at the tub at his feet, then kicked it over. Water cascaded over the floor, the green porous block tumbling aside. What was he supposed to do, just sit here and wait? Feet in the tub, my ass.

  The next four shots of blaster fire came from nearby. They sounded right outside the door, fzzzt-crack-crack-crack, and Kohl fancied he could see flashes of blue-white around the doorframe. After a moment, the door opened, Plastic Wrap staggering inside. One of his arms was gone, a burning ruin where his shoulder used to be. Eyes wide, he looked at the turned over tub. “This will go badly for you,” he said, then fell face forward in the water and filth on the floor.

  Through the door stepped Nathan Chevell, blaster in his hand. A sword — a goddamn sword — was slung on his back, hilt poking over his shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

  “Get me the fuck out of this chair,” said Kohl. Then, because this whole day was surreal and the time for answers to small problems felt due, he asked, “Why do you have a sword?”

  “In case I need it,” said Nate, stepping forward. He used the blaster with efficient ease, glowing metal shards spraying against the ground as he shot Kohl’s restraints free.

  Kohl stood, his back, knees, and everything else feeling like they’d been injected with industrial solvent. Sitting still for hours at a time wasn’t great, and being tortured at the same time had nothing to recommend it. Kohl looked down at himself, taking in the grime, sweat, blood, shit, and piss. “I need … something.”

  “A shower?”

  “A blaster,” said Kohl. He turned as Plastic Wrap groaned, his remaining arm clawing at the ceramicrete floor. “I need a blaster now.” Plastic Wrap was dragging himself towards Kohl, which didn’t strike Kohl as peak survival thinking, but as neither of them were armed and both of them were damaged, it might be even odds. Kohl swayed on his feet a little, grabbing the chair for support. It creaked under his hand, a sure sign he needed a lot of support.

  “One second,” said Nate, ducking out of the room after checking left and right for enemies. When he returned, he had a plasma carbine, a short weapon that looked like it was designed for the battlefield rather than the hunting ground. “This do?”

  “Perfect,” said Kohl, trying to reach for it with his right arm, and then realizing that arm wasn’t working on account of the damage to his bicep. He grunted with the pain, gritted his teeth, and took the carbine from Nate with his left hand. Kohl checked the weapon’s charge — barely used, it’s like this Chevell guy caught ‘em napping — then held it at his hip. He stood over Plastic Wrap, rolling the man over with his foot. “Hey. Asshole.”

  Plastic Wrap looked up, in Kohl’s estimation not processing much of what he was seeing. Which was a kindness, as a naked, filthy man standing over you with a plasma weapon wasn’t the best memory to take with you to the afterlife. “This will … go badly.”

  “Yep,” said Kohl, and squeezed the trigger. Blue-white fire turned Plastic Wrap into human barbecue, pieces of the man scattering across the floor. The plastic he’d been wearing caught alight just like children’s pajamas, sticking to the dead man’s flesh as it burned.

  “Feel better?” said Nate.

  “What, you got something to say?” said Kohl.

  “No,” said Nate. He considered Kohl. “I figure I might have done the same, in your shoes. Hell, I have done the same.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve. “Could use a man like you, on the Tyche.”

  “One job at a time,” said Kohl.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE RUMBLE KOHL had felt through his ass cheeks turned out to be Nate’s starship, the Tyche. She was floating above the ground in the bright light outside, an Endless field keeping her aloft. Kohl squinted, taking in the Helm through the windscreen. She gave him a wave. He tried to wave back, but his arm still hurt, and while a little pain wasn’t a thing to slow him down, his arm also didn’t work well. It ended up flopping around like it was caught in a breeze.

  Outside was the exterior of an abandoned warehouse, all crumbling ceramicrete and peeling paint. The low ceiling was pitted, holed in places, but the telltale of a shiny new radio mast suggested that reinforcements couldn’t be too far away.

  They’d grabbed clothes from the fallen, enough Republic black going spare to get him a functioning set. He was free-balling as he didn’t feel like wearing a dead man’s underwear, but other than that he was shipshape and good to go. He let the carbine dangle by its sling as he adjusted his pants — maybe a little tight — and looked up at the starship. “As rescues go, this isn’t bad,” he said. “It’s not great, but it’s not bad.”

  “Not great?” said Nate, walking past him towards the ship. There was a yell from behind them, a soldier bursting through the egress door. He almost made a full step before the Tyche’s PDCs opened fire, mulching his body and most of the ceramicrete wall behind him into red, wet dust. The noise was outstanding, Kohl pushing a finger into his ear to check his brain was still in there and all.

  “No,” said Kohl. “Getting here earlier would have been better. How’d you find me?”

  “Our Engineer,” said Nate, as if that explained everything.

  “You what?”

  “She’s good,” said Nate. He jerked a thumb at the radio mast, which took that moment to topple inside the ruined warehouse, taking a section of roof with it. “Turns out, advertising you’ve got a prisoner is not a good way to keep your super secret black ops facility off the radar.”

  “But,” said Kohl. “But. Crypto.”

  Nate flashed a smile. “I said she was good.” The smile went away. “I also told her it was important. I said we had crew down.”

  “I ain’t your crew.”

  “You are while you’re on my ship,” said Nate. “And you’re on my ship while I’ve got a job to do. Deliver a package. Kiagawa system, right?”

  Kohl thought that through for a couple cycles. “That’s right.” He sniffed. “Crew, huh?”

  “Don’t just stand there,” said Nate. “We got to get on. Deliveries to make.” He clapped his hands. “Chop chop.”

  For a man that wasn’t the boss of Kohl, he was doing a good job of bossing him around. Still, he had just pulled Kohl’s ass out of a significant fire. A fire born of, near as Kohl could make out,
smoke, hallucinations, and misunderstandings, but still a fire. And it didn’t look like this captain was the kind to lean his boot on your neck. Just, chop chop, like they were on the clock. Which, Kohl would agree, they were.

  His recycled boots found their way to the Tyche’s rear cargo ramp like they knew the way. He paused at the entrance to the ship, taking in the warehouse, the empty street, and the ruins of the doorway where one soldier had tried to gun him down. This starship didn’t seem to fancy her crew being taken. A guardian, strong and tall, just like Kohl. Maybe being crew here wouldn’t be so bad, for a jump or two. He stepped inside, Nate ahead of him, a hand on a rail leading to an upper deck. “Cap,” he said.

  Nate paused, turned. “Yeah?”

  “We can’t jump yet,” said Kohl. “Some assholes need killing.”

  “Also, we need the case,” said Nate. “Can’t deliver the hole of a donut, can we?”

  “There is that,” said Kohl. “But first, the assholes.”

  “Two birds, one stone,” said Nate. “Here’s the plan.”

  • • •

  Kohl liked the plan. It was a good plan.

  Step one, drop Kohl back to the Sugar Bloom where Dale/Bevan was, presumably with the case. Use the Tyche to open that walnut of a building.

  Step two, drop Kohl and Nate inside. Clear a path through whatever resistance there was. Find the case.

  Step two-point-five, the Tyche flies out of the city, creating a diversion. Flight alone would be diversion enough after the starship had fired on a Republic black ops facility.

  Step three, Kohl and Nate procure transportation to the city outskirts, get on the Tyche, and punch the hard black.

  “I think the basic shape of the plan is good,” said Kohl. He was feeling about a million percent better, the pain meds Nate had given him taking all the hard edges off. They sat in acceleration couches in a ready room, just behind the flight deck with the Helm — El, like the letter, she’d said. “But it needs work.” He hadn’t laid eyes on the mysterious Engineer who’d saved his ass, but he’d stopped by the medbay and checked in on Shig and Joni while they flew. Shig looked like shit but in better trim than Kohl, on account of no one torturing him for four hours. Joni looked fine, nursing a cup of something that smelled like coffee with additives. Kohl wanted to get some of those additives, but first, the job.