Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “The New Juno initiative seems to be favoring you, Mayor,” Nigel said as Kendall sat back down. Kendall looked around the office with a pleased glance.

  “It certainly hasn’t hurt.”

  Silence settled between them for several seconds. A leap of faith was not required here. Kendall was misbehaving himself into a fortune.

  “What are you doing here, Swaren?” Kendall asked. His voice was even, almost indifferent. “And I’m not referring to your presence in my office. I want to know what you’re doing on my station.”

  “I’m performing an audit, of course,” Nigel said.

  “There is no reason for this audit. Crescent’s performance is with little flaw.” Kendall took a sip from the tumbler cradled in his hand. “This station has not been audited in some fifteen years.”

  “Isn’t that reason enough for an audit?”

  Kendall did not respond.

  “At the risk of sounding disrespectful, Mayor Kendall, you don’t have the privilege to know my reasons for auditing this station. Your only role here is to comply with my needs,” Nigel said.

  “Mr. Swaren. I’m going to remind you of somethin’. You are on my station. I run the show on Crescent and I run the show in a way that keeps things moving smoothly. You had best be careful where you stick your dirty little nose. It just might get bitten off. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ here, son?” Kendall asked.

  “I’m not quite sure I follow, Mayor. If I had to guess, I’d say you were threatening me.” Nigel folded his hands in his lap and maintained eye contact with Kendall. For the first time during their meeting, Kendall’s lips curved into a wide, Cheshire grin.

  “What I’m sayin’ is, you’re a long way from any Core Sec hub. You don’t have any friends here. I don’t see that changin’. It’d be unadvisable to make enemies. Do your job and leave.”

  “I am doing my job, Mayor,” Nigel said.

  Kendall’s grin turned into a smirk.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Swaren?”

  “I don’t believe so, Mayor.”

  “Very well, then,” Kendall replied and pressed a finger behind his ear. He muttered something and seconds later the door swung open. Nigel felt a large hand on his shoulder but did not bother looking up to see who it belonged to. He could smell the cologne just fine. “Thank you for your visit, Mr. Swaren. I trust if you need anything from me, you won’t hesitate to ask. Taylor will show you the door.”

  (•••)

  The man strode across the bar toward Nigel, rubbing his dirty face with a weary hand. Despite the slender and athletic build beneath his flight suit, his shoulders were slumped and his movements deliberate with exhaustion. His dark hair was in a mad tousle atop his head. Gerald Evans looked just as Lieutenant Griffin had described him: a mess. Nigel waved to him. Evans nodded and changed course. Once he was within range, Nigel stood and extended his hand.

  “Nigel Swaren,” Nigel said, and Gerald took his hand.

  “I figured as much. I gotta sit down here, buddy. I’m dead on my legs.”

  “By all means.” Nigel gestured to the open seat across from his own. Gerald seated himself with a long sigh of relief, and Nigel sat back down.

  “Drink?” Nigel asked.

  “Heavily and momentarily.” Gerald managed a weak smile and waved to the girl tending the bar. She nodded back to him. Satisfied, Gerald returned his attention to Nigel. The salvage pilot’s eyes were bloodshot. His lips were chapped and his cheeks looked either sun or wind burned. Strange. Not really the type of wear and tear you’d expect to see on a salvage pilot.

  “You’re the auditor,” Gerald stated with casual indifference. It wasn’t a question.

  “I am.”

  “Funny. I expected someone older. Stauncher.” Gerald paused and then added, “With less hair.”

  Nigel laughed. At face value, Gerald Evans did not seem to be a bad man—Evans and Kendall were a study in contrast.

  “Mr. Evans, you’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” Nigel said.

  “Wondering, yeah.” He nodded to the serving girl as she set a bottle in front of him. “I’ve got all kinds of ideas. But, it’d probably be easier for the both of us if you got down to it.”

  “Very well, then. What is your employer up to? By employer, I mean Kendall.” Gerald’s drink halted mid-flight on its way to his lips. He set the bottle back down on the table and lit a cigarette. Smoke drifted past his dirty face in elongating wisps toward the sensors for the air handling system. The whirr of the fans kicked up a notch.

  “Ah,” was all that Evans said.

  “I had the chance to meet with Mayor Kendall this morning,” Nigel said.

  “And he made you feel all creepy crawly, huh?”

  “In a manner of speaking. He’s up to no good, Gerald.” As the words crossed Nigel’s lips he realized how ridiculously obvious they sounded. “Certain members of his security team have alluded as much. I have seen enough to be convinced.”

  “What variety of no good?” Gerald asked.

  “I was hoping you could help me with that. I always figure these things out eventually, Gerald, but I have no interest in prolonging my stay on your fine station,” Nigel responded.

  “Crescent isn’t my home, buddy. Business keeps me here—that’s all.”

  “Business with Kendall.”

  “Yes. Business with Kendall,” Gerald said.

  “Anything to do with heavy-duty shipping crates from the Farm?” Nigel asked. Gerald blinked, and shrugged. The look of recognition that Nigel had hoped for was not there.

  “The Farm? No. Christ. I’m so tired.” Gerald took a drink from the longnecked bottle of ale and then stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. The ashtray’s top sealed with a click and when it opened again, the cigarette butt was gone. “I have to go,” Gerald said.

  “Gerald, you’re at no risk, telling me about any of this. You have my word.”

  “There could be listener mites all over this place, Nigel. And it’s like I said. I don’t know jack about the Farm, okay?”

  “The bar is clean, Gerald. No mites. You don’t have to worry about Core Sec listening in on this conversation.” From the look on Gerald’s face, he did not appear to buy it.

  “Nigel, I’m not worried about Core Sec listening in. I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about Kendall. If it’s not mites, it’ll be Catlier and Raney coming in at the wrong moment. The last place I want to end up is floating in deep space without a ship or suit,” Gerald glanced around the bar.

  “I see,” Nigel said. Catlier and Raney—the goons have names, he thought.

  “This is the part where you offer me protection, Swaren.”

  “Protection?” Nigel laughed again. He helped himself to one of Gerald’s cigarettes and lit it with a lighter that was attached to their table by a plastic cord. “Gerald. I’m one man. One outsider. I can’t protect you. I doubt I could protect myself.”

  “Nigel, you’re not making me feel all warm and fuzzy about helping you,” Gerald said.

  “In the long run, I’ll wager you’ll be better off by helping me. Men like Kendall eat their slaves alive—it’s just a matter of time.”

  Gerald shifted in his chair and lit another cigarette. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Believe me. I have regretted signing that contract with Crescent’s benevolent mayor since day one. I regret a lot of shit. Top of the list: ever setting foot here.” He took an exaggerated drag and exhaled the smoke in a sidelong plume. “Kendall’s got me running salvage missions in Tireca. And let me say that there is something all wrong about these runs. Some of these so-called salvages are still hot. Sometimes, the raiders are only just leaving the scene. It’s like Kendall—or his crony, Walter Vegan—have a sixth sense. They know where these ships are gonna to be. Which is fuckin’ crazy, because, hell, I don’t know how these miners could even know where they are. I keep being sent to the same field in Tireca. The fucker is dense.”

&nb
sp; “This wouldn’t be in the vicinity of the fourth planet in the system, would it?” Nigel asked.

  “It would be,” Gerald confirmed.

  “So, someone is informing the raiders where and when to attack, then?”

  “You said it, pal. Not me,” Gerald replied with a smirk.

  “What kind of ships?”

  “Mining. A few supply transports. There was one colony ship, way off course. I get this sinking feeling it was that same ship that showed up on the news feeds the other week. You know, now that I think of it, I was running a job right here in Anrar and saw a Crescent light cargo ship and an unmarked cargo ship—I thought it had been a raider—exchanging a heavy duty container.”

  Nigel sat back in his seat and examined his own cigarette. The end was smoldering and looked like a living thing. “Do know anything about Galatea?” Nigel asked.

  “Galatea? Greek to me,” Gerald said. Nigel laughed, not sure if the pun was intentional or not.

  “Thank you, Gerald. You look tired. I think that’ll be all. Go get some rest—you look like you’re about to fall out of your chair. You’ve been extremely helpful,” Nigel said.

  “Can I ask why you came to Crescent in the first place? Was there a reason for this audit?” Gerald asked. He didn’t get up.

  “Crescent is being decommissioned. I’m here to make sure things go smoothly. And looking at the place, I’m just speeding up a preexisting necrosis.”

  “Wow,” Gerald said. Nigel got to his feet and dropped the cigarette butt into the ashtray.

  “Thanks again, Gerald. I trust you won’t share the details of our talk with anyone. Being that your ass stands in to be in a precarious position for even talking to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Good,” Nigel said.

  “Nigel, you can help me with one thing,” Gerald said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You can help me up. I don’t think I can stand on my own.”

  (•••)

  “So, Kendall,” Nigel said aloud as he made his way down the empty corridor.” You’re working with the local cutthroats to take out targets of opportunity.” His voice and the sound of his boots hitting the deck were the only competition for the whispering air handlers and the occasional clicking of dying light panels. Nigel was well aware that ships went missing on the fringe of populated space all the time. There were ion storms, careless piloting, and of course raider attacks. But as far as Nigel was concerned, the ships that Gerald was hauling were the result of coordinated strikes—Kendall was in bed with Darros Stronghold, so to speak.

  There was only one dense asteroid cluster in Tireca and that cluster orbited the fourth planet. That cluster hid Galatea. Security had been beefed up in Tireca to prevent attacks from Stronghold’s clan so that the Galatea project could move ahead on schedule. Kendall might not know about Galatea but he would know about the new security patrol patterns and mining ops between Anrar, Tireca, and the New Juno gate. That was standard procedure. Ezra Kendall would know, along with his ATC controller—Vegan. Kendall was telling the raiders exactly where to hit and Evans was unknowingly helping Kendall hide the evidence.

  He halted in front of the Core Sec HQ.

  And there was the matter of the influx of guns to the colony on Habeos—the suspicious crates from the Farm could have easily been loaded with firearms. This was another dangerous lead to pursue for a Core Sec auditor working solo.

  Nigel was close. He could feel the fact like heat on his face, but for now he was only playing the assumption game. He needed more evidence. Something concrete. He took a deep breath and let his head clear. He waited outside the door to HQ until his thoughts stopped racing.

  (•••)

  As far as Ina was concerned, her return trip to Crescent had been uneventful. She had slept for the duration of the flight, though she still awoke to a deep weariness when they landed. Gerald had been so exhausted as the pair climbed out of Bean that he hardly seemed to notice her milling about the flight deck. He was ignoring her. Eventually, she just left without saying goodbye. No more than a meter away from her apartment door, she was struck with the compulsion to go elsewhere.

  She moved like a wraith down a cable-lined passageway that could only be described as forgotten. The few water-stained overhead light panels that still functioned flickered with a dull mustard-colored glow. There were cobwebs on the ventilation grates and the dust on the floor was thick. She left small footprints in her wake.

  The musty air reminded her of the basement stacks in the library at the university on Caen. The smell was of spiders and old books; of things long untouched. There was something nostalgic about the odor, but it was so potent and cloying that it made her stomach feel queasy. She cursed her belly—it had been sensitive of late. Ina stopped and looked back the way she had come. The hallway extended well into the distance, in alternating plots of shadow and flickering yellow light. She turned back the way she was headed. The same indefinite distance extended before her.

  She closed her eyes.

  She had been there before, hadn’t she? Ina took her next breath slowly and then held it. Her pulse drummed softly in her ears and her memories marched by as still frame images. It had been her idea to look for the area called the Vault; that was a long time ago, when she and her father had first arrived. She hadn’t told him. She had crawled through the dust and spiderwebs, through the standing water, through the darkness. She remembered the fear. And when she had found the big door marked with the red X, her heart had hammered in her chest. There had been a moment of exhilaration. And then what? Darkness?

  No. Not darkness.

  I have to remember, she thought. This is important.

  Her lungs burned, but she still held her breath.

  The still frames quickened until the scenes she saw moved with life-like motion.

  The door opens its eyes.

  No, Ina thought, I’m seeing this wrong.

  Something behind the door opens its eyes. Fissures appear—tears in space and time, behind which lies nothingness. The slits, they yawn wide and grow into a devilish darkness so thick she starts to drown in it. And then the other woman shows up and the Black stretches out and touches her as well. And when it pulls back—Ina thinks “this is just like the tide”—and the Black becomes a part of her and the dark-haired girl.

  None of her actions since she had come to the station, she suddenly realized, had been of her own will.

  There was a flash of red. Ina’s eyes snapped open. She let out the breath with a gasp.

  Another flash. She blinked.

  Ina closed her eyes and all she could see was Red—a breathing wall of liquid garnet. It overwhelmed her with emotion. Hot tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  Keep the stone safe and hidden. Keep yourself safe and hidden. Keep the vessel safe and hidden. Your business is not here. Keep the vessel safe.

  Vessel?

  (•••)

  Marisa punched in the entry code for her apartment. The door buzzed; the LED above the key pad cycled from red, to green, to yellow, and back to green again. The door was unlocked already. She hadn’t remembered leaving it unlocked. But these days, she didn’t really count on her memory as a reliable source of information. The door hissed open and she drew her stun rod.

  “Come in, Lieutenant. No one is going to hurt you. Not in your home, of all places.”

  Kendall.

  She stepped over the threshold. The door whined shut and she was promptly slammed against the wall by someone much larger, stronger, and less pleasant smelling than herself. The force of the impact knocked the stun rod from her hand.

  “Christ!” she wailed. “Is this really necessary?”

  “It might be. I heard that your friend Nigel Swaren was shooting the shit with Gerald Evans. Does any of this ring a bell?” Kendall asked. “This news came to me as quite the disappointment. We had a deal, Marisa… Nigel Swaren showed up in my office today. Un-ex-
pected. Remember our little discussion about you being my eyes, ears, and hands. No? Perhaps I can refresh your memory.”

  Taylor slammed her against the wall again. Marisa studied his arms. The enhanced muscle moved beneath his hairless flesh like vipers.

  “I’m neither Swaren’s keeper nor Gerald’s. Whatever Swaren wanted with him, I have no idea. And you know what, Mayor? I can’t be on Swaren twenty-four seven. There’s no fucking way.” Marisa felt her cheeks getting hot.

  “Taylor,” Kendall said, and looked down at his well-groomed fingernails. Taylor slammed Marisa into the wall yet again, hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

  Kill him, a voice whispered. She looked at Kendall and then up to Taylor’s stupid, gleaming eyes. The walls moved behind the man—the shadows shifted and swirled, slowly at first and then with increasing speed.

  “Swaren sends me off when he’s about to get into something important. Has me check light fixtures.” Marisa’s tongue felt thick, but it wasn’t the carthine.

  “Taylor,” Kendall said, and Taylor kneed her in the stomach before throttling her into the terminal. Something hard dug into her back. Was it the terminal’s handset? She had no idea. She wondered, most absently, why the terminal even had a handset. Taylor held her firmly in place. Kendall got to his feet and began to remove his suit jacket.

  Kill them both, the voice cooed in a honey tone. Be rid of them.

  Before Marisa knew what was happening she had Taylor by the face. She pressed her fingers into his eyes. He screamed a high pitched wail—so high Marisa could hardly believe it—and batted at her hands like they were a swarm of angry bees. She pressed harder and felt one of his eyes burst.