Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “Great,” Gerald said at last.

  “What’d you do to piss off special K this time, Gerry?” She attempted to sound lighthearted, but she didn’t know for sure that big and ugly wasn’t coming for her. Maybe Kendall had decided he did want to check under her hood.

  Taylor crossed the empty dance floor and stepped up to the small round table. He crossed his massive, painted arms across his equally gigantic chest. His small, black eyes were on Gerald. Taylor’s lips bore a lopsided twist that Marisa assumed was supposed to be a grin. A shit-eating grin? He had plenty of it in his pants.

  “Gerald,” Taylor said.

  “Taylor,” Gerald replied. “You know, I always have a hard time calling you that. I feel like you should be called Killer or Mangler or something.” This made Taylor bark with laughter. The giant actually grabbed his sides like some overstuffed and tickled cartoon character.

  “I like you, Gerald. Mayor Kendall—he’s not so convinced.”

  “That is a shame. He seems like such a nice man.” Gerald looked at Marisa. What did you do? she thought, and took another sip from her beer, pretending not to pay attention or care. He must’ve done something—he looks guilty.

  “He wants to see you,” Taylor said. Gerald drained the contents of his pint glass and got to his feet. “No sense in putting up a fight, right?” He winked at the man-mountain and then looked down to Marisa. “Don’t wait up. I’m going to be late.”

  Marisa’s eyes followed them as they headed across the barroom. Gerald must’ve made some other wisecrack because Taylor started roaring with laughter again. The outburst didn’t do much for his walk. She watched them pass through the batwings, and then Marisa raised a slender hand for another drink. Maerl was quick to fill a fresh glass and ferry it over to her. She smiled up at him gratefully. Maerl looked to the door, scratched his chin, and then looked down at Marisa. He frowned.

  “I wonder what that was all about,” Maerl said, and Marisa shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Gerry just isn’t doing the job the way that Kendall expected he would.” The pint was filled to the brim. She bent her head over the beer and drank without lifting the glass off the table. Then she raised her head and spoke. “I’m sure Gerry’s not doing a bad job. He just has his own way of doing things.”

  Maerl glanced back at the door. “Maybe that’s true. But you know as well as I do, on Kendall’s station, you do things his way.”

  “Or the airlock,” Marisa finished.

  “Off the record and off the station.” Maerl laughed uneasily.

  “Core Sec is coming soon,” Marisa said as she trailed a fingertip down the condensation that had formed on the glass. “Benedict notified them of the incident. He thought it warranted an investigation on their part.”

  “Yeah—I got an email from your captain. The auditor is going to interview me or some such crap.”

  “I didn’t let those guns into the station, Maerl. There is no way I could have missed that. Those were standard weapons—nothing special that would pass through our scanners undetected.”

  “Faulty gear?”

  “I checked it. More than once. Everything at the docks is working fine,” she sighed and took another sip of the malty beverage.

  “Maybe the guns were already here?” Maerl said in the most nonchalant of tones. To Marisa, this seemed like the wrong kind of question to ask—the variety of question that Kendall would want her to prevent Core Sec from asking. Marisa shrugged it off and offered a weak smile.

  “You know,” Maerl added, “I bet when Core Sec comes here with their fancy gear, they’ll find something wrong with the dock scanner system. Nothing will be to blame but old wiring.”

  “You’re right,” Marisa nodded, and smiled.

  “Get you anything else?”

  “I’m good for now, thanks.” She didn’t think her angry stomach could make it through the current pint, let alone another.

  Maerl went back to the bar and left Marisa with her thoughts. Maybe the guns were already here. She heard Maerl’s voice repeat this in her head. Maybe? There was no maybe about it. Those guns had been on the station. They had been handed to the mercenaries. By who? By Kendall? Why would Kendall give them guns in the first place? Did he want that whole thing to go down at Heathen’s? That didn’t make any sense. Easy, Marisa. Keep your nose clean and it won’t get broken. She pushed the beer away and pressed a credit wafer to the clear disc at the center of the table. It chimed. She instructed the computer to place a five credit tip on her tab, and waved to Maerl as she left the bar.

  Marisa stepped out onto Main Street. Several of the station’s large, multi-limbed collector bots trudged by, emptying refuse bins into compartments on their wide backs as they went. A pack of children chased after the robots, throwing stray pieces of garbage at the machines. The bits of trash—aluminum cans, glass bottles, and the like—were caught with ease and placed into the back compartments for recycling.

  The overhead globes flooded the drag with fiery orange light. Sunset. If you didn’t look up to the high, arching ceiling you might believe it was a real sunset. The cool recycled air smelled of spices and cooking meats. Main Street was almost as good as a real planet-side market, but not quite. She was willing to concede its imperfections for the peace of mind brought on by a brief waft of curry and an artificial sunset. And why the hell not?

  A man in a dark sweat shirt and cargo pants stepped up to her so suddenly she almost knocked him over. He held out a stack of black paper leaflets with a hand that was painted with a small beetle tattoo. Marisa growled at him for ruining her moment. She pushed him out of the way and the stack of fliers went skyward. In an instant, the weirdo was on his hands and knees collecting and Marisa was on her way down the street. There was a group of similarly clad youths handing out the same bits of trash just ahead of her. She crossed to the other side of the street and made her way into a bazaar choked with people drifting from one tent-shop to another.

  A bald head, buried deep in a throng of market-goers, caught her eye. Dark tattoos snaked up to the shaved scalp. It’s him, she thought, and stopped short. The vatter. He turned and seemed to see her. Marisa couldn’t make out his face. It hurt her head to look directly at it. In an instant, he was moving, weaving through the crowd. Marisa reacted in the span of a heartbeat and ran after him, weaving in and out of meandering station folk. She followed him out of the bazaar and down a side alley choked with cardboard crates. Marisa burst out the other side, taking a few boxes with her. The bald head disappeared around yet another corner. Marisa leapt over a news stand in quick pursuit. She knocked over a rack of news flimsies and nearly careened into a rack of gaudy sunglasses. The pursuit led her into another narrow alley, but the small dead end street was empty save for a single lit storefront. Ramshackle, decorated with animal bones and gaudy, glowing beads, it bulged from the station wall. It wasn’t a shop at all. It was a residence.

  The vatter was nowhere in sight. Something glittered on the bleak floor-space just in front of the apartment’s split and warped metal frame. Marisa approached the burnished object; her feet were increasingly hesitant with each step. She shuddered. Something was wrong here. Marisa could sense it in her fillings. She looked down at the shiny object. It was a small, metallic stud, like vatters wore in their skin.

  “Come in, Officer Griffin,” Naheela’s unmistakable voice floated from inside the hut. “I would say I was expecting you—but I think you already knew that.”

  (Part VII)

  “I’ve been hearing some distressing things, Gerald.” Kendall stood behind an LCD-filled desk. At his back, the velvet drapes had been drawn shut, obscuring the large viewport. The blue light that came from the multiple displays illuminated the room and cast dark, slanted shadows on Kendall’s face. The mayor’s features seemed more narrow and angular than usual.

  “And what things would those be, Mayor?” Gerald folded his arms. Kendall did not respond. “You have no proof that I shoved my little s
ister off of the bunk bed. Not a shred. She’s always trying to get me in trouble!”

  Kendall remained silent. Gerald admitted to himself, that yes, he was perfectly uncomfortable. He had every right to feel that way. Of course, this was Kendall’s desired effect. And that Gerald was falling prey to it irked him to no end. Crescent’s mayor finally turned. On his face was a mask of impatience and irritation, the corners of Kendall’s thin lips sagged to the ground. He waved a long-fingered hand over one of the viewscreens and a two dimensional projection shimmered out of the display. Kendall twirled his fingers above the wavering image, rotating it to face Gerald, and the pixels coalesced. It showed Gerald helping Ina into Bean. It showed him climb in after her. It showed the ship lift off the flight deck and exit the hangar into space. Kendall snapped his fingers and the image froze on Bean’s flaring exhaust cones.

  “That,” Kendall pointed at the image, “is what is distressing me. I was told you did not return to your hangar. I am an intelligent man, Gerald. Please do not insult that intelligence.”

  “Okay. I took a pretty girl for a joyride. So what?”

  “You’re running salvage for another party on Crescent,” Kendall said, his voice matter-of-fact. “In blatant disregard of our agreement. In violation of our contract. All area salvage claimed by your ship—by contract—belongs to Crescent.”

  “Kendall, you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t land in a different hangar because I was hiding anything from you. I landed in a different hangar because I was hiding from my girlfriend.” Kendall’s brow lifted. “I didn’t want her to know I was… sampling other wares? That can’t be covered under my contract with you, can it?”

  “You have no way of proving that, son,” Kendall said. “By all accounts, you are in quite a pickle.” Kendall depressed a small black button atop his desk. An instant later Taylor was in the room, a meaty hand on Gerald’s shoulder.

  “Wait, goddamnit. I can prove it. Just check the security feed for hangar… ” Gerald blanked, what hangar number was the cover-up location. Think, damn you, think. “Hangar thirteen.”

  “Hangar thirteen, you say?” Kendall sat behind the desk and clucked his tongue. “What do you think, Taylor? Would you like to tear his arms off or would you prefer to watch the security feed from hangar thirteen?”

  The man-mountain guffawed. “What do you think, Mayor?”

  Kendall nodded and Taylor knocked Gerald from his chair, the floor rising up to slap him hard in the face. Taylor’s thick fists rained down blows before Gerald could register he was no longer sitting. Kendall circled the pair and spoke as Taylor delivered his beating.

  “Gerald, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt as we look into your story. Why? It has nothing to do with any sort of fondness for you. I’m actually starting to not like you. But, you happen to be the only salvage man on Crescent,” Taylor’s fist caught Gerald in the side of the head and his ears began to ring. He could barely hear the mayor as he continued. “I’d send Walter Vegan out to do the job, but he’s already destroyed three—no, four ships. He’s more of an, how shall I put it, administrator. In the future, if you decide to leave Crescent on an unscheduled joyride, you had better go through the proper ATC channels.” Kendall held up his hand and Taylor ceased his assault. “This is my only warning, Gerald. I’m beginning to regret my decision to hire you. Why don’t you consider restoring my faith?”

  (•••)

  The stink in Naheela’s hut was unbearable. It was an amalgam of incense, rotting things, and the undeniable smell of old age. Visually, the space was a disaster area. There were boxes and crates piled everywhere. Knick knacks—small statues, dim holo projections, candles—were anywhere there was a flat surface for them to stand upon. Marisa had to fight the compulsion to organize the place.

  Naheela sat at the only trinket-free piece of furniture, a small round table with a heavy, metal base. The table looked like it might at one point have been anchored to the floor of a diner. Naheela beckoned to Marisa with the arthritic claw of a hand. The hag opened her mouth; viscous saliva spanned the dark space like spider silk and caught the candlelight before breaking. Flecks of white spittle remained on her cracked lips. Either oblivious, or just not giving a crap, Naheela did not wipe it away.

  “Are ye jus’ gonna stand there all day, dearest? You’re lettin’ a draft in.” Naheela tossed her head back and cackled as if she had just told the funniest joke in the universe. Marisa remained frozen in the doorway. The laughter ceased so suddenly it was startling. “Come in and sit down,” Naheela barked as an order and Marisa found herself in motion, moving across the cluttered floor in short steps to seat herself across from the crone. The rancor of the old woman’s body odor made Marisa’s eyes water and she wondered when the hag had last bathed. She dropped her eyes to the table. The dark wood grain swirled and writhed beneath the gloss of polyurethane. Marisa placed her hand on the slightly scarred surface. It was real wood.

  “This table is the oldest thing on Crescent Station, ye know,” Naheela said. Her words floated on a cloud of foul breath. Marisa wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

  “Why have you invited me here?” Marisa asked.

  “Why have I?” Naheela pointed to herself with a curved, yellow nail, “Invited you?” Naheela cackled again. The sound was like breaking glass to Marisa’s ears, and she cringed. “Need I remind you, girlie, you are the one who showed up on Naheela’s doorstep. No, no. I didn’t invite you here, but I did expect you sooner or later. Pushed by the need for answers, and by winds you can’t explain but can only feel.”

  “You’re not making any sense.” But that was the rub. Naheela was making sense. Marisa knew she was right where she belonged. And that made her feel all the more batty.

  “You followed him here.”

  “What?”

  “The vatter. But that was just a reflection. He is not here yet, but I’ve seen him more than once and so have you. The glass shudders, Marisa. And from these vibrations come the reflections, like ripples on a pool. They dance to our shore and show things yet distant. Things are changing on Crescent every day. I see them all.” Naheela clapped her hands together. “Strange and terrible things. You can feel it. You stand in it waist deep in the well. The Three, Marisa.”

  Marisa started to speak, but Naheela held up a hand to silence her.

  “The Three are close, and you are just a pawn. You brought the darkness to your boyfriend—and he is a pawn. You opened his eyes to the Black. And his new slut. There is another—your boyfriend’s new slut—she was touched as you were touched. At the Vault,” Naheela intoned the words. “You best be heedful of that girl. I cannot see what is planned for her. Your roles are different in all this and I have already made my decision. I can only help you.”

  “Help me what? Why am I even listening to this?” Marisa pushed away from the table and stood. The old woman was only preying on Marisa’s deranged, sleep deprived state. The hag was probably about to ask for money.

  “Soon, you will go back to the water. There is something there that the Black would have you keep. Something that would open the door for the Three. But you must go there and ruin it. Destroy it. Destroy it good.”

  “I’ve heard enough. Enjoy the rest of your short life.” Marisa turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Naheela cried out. “I have to give you something.” The old woman got up from the table with a speed that was nothing short of amazing. So amazing, in fact, Marisa remained planted where she stood. The crone hobbled behind one of the crates and returned with a small leather sheath. She tossed it onto the table. “Take that.” Marisa leaned over the table and reached out to smack the object away. Naheela grabbed her around the wrist with one hand and shoved the sheath into Marisa’s hand with the other. Her spotted hands were strong and cold. Marisa tried to pull away, but Naheela refused to let go.

  “Destroy the thing you will find,” Naheela said in a voice that sounded like a thousand and echoed inside Marisa’s
skull. The words seared onto her brain like a brand. The sensation passed, and Naheela let go of her. “Take it, Marisa. Take it.”

  “I don’t want it,” Marisa said.

  “Take it, take. Or I’ll be there every second of the day askin’ ye to. Even when that comely man of yours has his prick in you. Take it. Take it.” Marisa frowned, but did as she was instructed. She slid the sheath into her pocket and patted the bulge there. Naheela nodded, satisfied.

  When Marisa was far enough away from the stench of Naheela’s hut, she leaned against a dumpster—the trash bin smelled sweet by comparison. She retrieved the leather sheath from her pocket and removed the object it contained. She held in her hand a hammer not much bigger than her open hand. The head of the mallet was a thick disc of crimson so red, it was almost black. The hammer’s two prongs were metal and covered in flecks of what she thought might be rust. Destroy the thing you will find. Yes, of course. As her fingers curled around the object, she knew what she had to do. She had a purpose. The realization glittered in her mind. Something compelled her to rap the hammer against the dumpster. When she did, the prongs rang with the most beautiful note she had ever heard. It made her head feel clear. She returned the hammer to its sheath and returned the sheath to the pocket of her jacket.

  (•••)

  Albin Catlier sat on the top rail of the metal fence; his boots were hooked under the bottom rung. For an instant, he thought he heard singing and looked up and over to Jacob Raney, who sat beside him. The other man was silent, playing with some multicolored puzzle-trinket he had stolen from Kendall’s office.