Tyche's Deceit

by Richard Parry

  “Huh,” he said. The noise of it was lost in the crowd, but she took the meaning plain enough. I get that. It’s cool. “Want me to go up front?”

  “You don’t know the way,” said Grace.

  “I’ll chart by the stars,” said Nate, “and you can tell me if I get it wrong.”

  “Okay,” she said. She pointed ahead, a corner lit brightly by holos advertising prismatic hair replacement. “He went that way.”

  “Kohl,” said Nate.

  “What up?” said Kohl.

  “See all those people?” said Nate.

  “Hard to miss,” said Kohl.

  “Make a path,” said Nate. He stood by Grace’s side as Kohl shrugged, then bulldozed ahead. A person dressed in a street leather yelled at Kohl, and the big man brought his fist down on the other’s head, dropping him like a stone. “It’s kind of marvelous,” said Nate. “Like watching a hurricane.”

  “I thought you were going to make the path?” said Grace.

  “Delegation,” said Nate. “Important skill for a captain.”

  Grace gave him a grin. Not that her head wasn’t hurting anymore; it was that Nate made it seem like it didn’t matter. She set off after Kohl, the man’s wake an easy path to tread. He might trigger warnings from observing drones, but time was becoming a bigger issue. Harlow’s … signal? … was getting weaker. Almost impossible to see through everything around them.

  Another air car buzzed overhead, this one stopping not far from them in the direction they were going. Uh oh. Kohl saw it, watched the troops ready to pour out the side of it, and raised his carbine in one smooth motion. There was a brief whine, a stab of red light, and one thruster on the air car exploded in a boiling cloud of flame. The air car’s remaining thrusters took on an urgent whine as the machine tried to right itself, and it started a slow spiral towards the street. More people screamed, ran, shouted, turned on each other. The air car hit the ground around the corner, and there was a whumf as something coughed into flame.

  “Kohl!” said Nate. “You trying to get us killed? That’s Republic troops there!”

  “They know we’re here,” said Kohl. “Now instead of ten fuckers with guns, we’ve got a little more time.”

  Hard to argue with that. Grace nudged Kohl. “We need to hurry.”

  “Got it,” he said, shouldering ahead once more. Faster this time, almost at a run, the crowd not slowing him down quite as much. Grace tried to keep up, Nate at her side, but it was hard, so many people now pushing at them, shoving against them. Grace could feel their fear/fear/fear/run battering against her, and it made her feel like she was drowning in their distress.

  She slowed to a stop. She couldn’t help it. “We’ve got to … get off the street.” She wasn’t sure if anyone heard her. Grace wasn’t sure if she’d said it out loud.

  Nate had kept going for a bit, but when he realized she wasn’t at his side, he turned back to her. “Grace!”

  “I…” she said, sagging a little.

  She watched as he fought his way back to her. He made it to her side. “We’ve got to move!” he said. Kohl’s path in the crowd was distant now, the top of his head sometimes visible. He may as well have been on Mars.

  “I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

  “Kohl!” said Nate. But the big man was gone now, lost in the crowd ahead of them. Another air car blasted overhead, but it didn’t stop. It was heading in the same direction they were going. Probably after Harlow.

  It’d get to Harlow, and they’d snatch him away. Take him to somewhere blacker than space, colder, and they’d extract from the man everything he knew about Nate, about the Tyche, and about the esper that crewed on the ship. Then they’d kill him, if not during, then after. And he’d have died without ever knowing her, still fearing espers, not knowing who he was dying for.

  Grace gripped her sword tighter. Fuck that. Fuck these assholes. Fuck the Republic. She gritted her teeth. “We’ve … got to get off the street.”

  Nate nodded, and they pushed — together — towards an underground shopping entrance, bright lights highlighting the stairs leading down. The people around them were pouring down the stairs like water down a drain; after entering they let themselves be carried with the flow. As they broke away from the street, the noise of panic faded into the noise of people moving with a purpose. Grace grabbed onto Nate’s arm so they wouldn’t get separated. They passed holo lit entrances to stores selling everything from body-mapped clothes through to baby needs — Everything your new family will love!

  But it was okay. People weren’t so afraid down here.

  Grace pulled Nate to the side in the shallows of the flow, a natural eddy of people created by a stall selling noodles. They smelled good, and that touch of normal helped her feel less desperate. She leaned close to Nate’s ear. “I’ve lost him.”

  “Kohl?”

  “Harlow,” said Grace. “I can’t see him anymore.”

  “Well, shit,” said Nate. “That’s not ideal. But it’s probably okay.”

  “How so?” said Grace.

  “That last Republic air car,” said Nate, “was heading in the general direction of a, let’s call it a general place of unstructured business.”

  “A black market,” said Grace.

  Nate winced. “Let’s agree to call it a free market.”

  “Would there be people with guns there?” said Grace.

  Nate thought about that. “You’re concerned that someone’ll start some shit.”

  “It had crossed my mind,” said Grace. “The Republic want something, Nate, and they won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Yeah,” said Nate. “Maybe we could wait it out?”

  “Would other people there know you?” said Grace. “Would they hold grudges?”

  “I don’t think I like where this is going,” said Nate. “Whose side are you on?”

  “I don’t have a horse in this race,” said Grace. “All I’m saying is, well. You know.”

  “You think I’m a smuggler who cheats at cards,” said Nate.

  “I know you’re a smuggler who cheats at cards,” said Grace. “The question is whether anyone you’ve swindled will be at this free market of yours.” She watched the people around them for signs of interest in anything other than the noodle cart, but people were just doing people things. Buying stuff they didn’t need and eating things when they weren’t hungry. She turned back to Nate. “Well?”

  “Hey,” said Nate. “It’s not my free market.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Grace.

  “That’s fair,” said Nate with a sigh. “Let’s go get Harlow.”

  “Where is this place?” said Grace, following Nate back out into the stream of humanity.

  “It’s underneath an all-day club,” said Nate. “The kind of place you’d call a nightclub if it was only open at night.”

  “I get it,” said Grace. Talking to Nate helped keep her calm. To buffer against the adrenaline still going through her body from other peoples’ fear/fear. “Nightclub, but in the daytime.”

  “Underneath, though,” said Nate. “You got to know the way in. Republic’s unlikely to shoot their way in because they don’t know where to go.”

  “But you do,” said Grace.

  “I do,” said Nate. He gave her a smile. “I know people.”

  • • •

  Nate banged on the closed door in front of them again. “Hey!” he said. “I know people!”

  “Fuck off,” said the voice from behind the door. Despite the thud thud thud of the bass above them, the voice was clear, angry, and not going to let them in. Grace wasn’t getting a warm, rosy glow of calm. They’d entered what looked like a dark, dismal janitorial access bay under the club. The club itself was loud, full of lust/want/hunger/want/want/want, bodies moving together, the air misted with sweat and drugs and people in heat. At another time, it might have been a release. Now, it was a source of friction. Nate had led them down here, a winning smile and the
right words getting them past the expected back-room guards, gruff men hell-bent on stopping those under the influence from stumbling where they weren’t wanted. Here was at the bottom of ceramicrete steps, chipped and pitted with time. Lights were infrequent, the comm signal blocked. The door they were in front of was metal and ceramicrete, the kind of thing that would take a lot of time and dedication to get through without the right passphrase. A passphrase that Nate seemed to no longer have.

  Grace touched Nate’s arm. “Want me to try?”

  Nate sighed. “Help yourself.”

  Grace knocked on the door. “Hey,” she said. She focused for a second, feeling for the person on the other side. Grace felt their fear/fear. “I know you’re scared,” she said.

  “You know you can fuck off,” said the voice, louder this time, but Grace still felt the fear/fear. Louder, if that was even the right term for something you felt inside you, that came through a sense no one else had.

  “I know you’ve got a man in there,” said Grace. She leaned her head closer to the door, lips almost brushing it. “I know his name is Harlow. I know that he has a story about Republic soldiers and being sold out.”

  There was a pause. “How you know that?” Still anger in the voice, like it was demanding to see the waiter for a bungled restaurant order.

  “We’re the ones who sold him out,” said Grace.

  This time there was a long pause. “What?”

  “Of course, we didn’t,” said Grace. “But it looked like it. Would we be here — just two of us — if we were with the Republic? They do not knock.”

  “Let’s say I buy your story,” said the voice. “What do you want?”

  “I want to come in,” said Grace, “because I don’t want to die. I’d also like it if we could talk to Harlow. Get him out of here, so a power of hurt and pain doesn’t descend on this location.”

  Nate touched her sleeve. “It won’t work,” he said. “They don’t—”

  The door clanked, bolts pulling back, and there was a small hiss of air as it opened. The face that stood by the door wasn’t what Grace had expected. She’d thought about a huge man, imagined tattoos, a big gun held in a threatening manner. The gun she got right, and the man she got right, and that was it. The rest was … different. This guy? Short. Like, real short, up to her shoulder short. No ink of any kind, just a pale face over a fearful expression. “He’s gone,” said the man.

  “Harlow?” said Grace.

  “Yeah,” said the man. “But you’d best come in anyway. We sent Harlow out the back.”

  “There’s a back?” said Nate. “I’ve been here fifty times, and I never saw a back way.”

  “Ah,” said the pale man. “Not a VIP, then.”

  “I … don’t know what to say to that,” said Nate.

  “Get in,” said Grace. “We’re burning daylight.”

  They slipped inside, a tunnel dug into the rock under the city. Lighting strips lined the walls, banishing what could have been an oppressive air with something more clinical, like a hospital waiting room. If hospitals sold illegal firearms, mods, and ship parts.

  Nate was checking his comm. “Still down,” he said. “I can’t raise the Tyche.”

  “They’ll be fine,” said Grace. But she knew it wasn’t true. The Republic would work out where the Tyche was, and they’d close their iron fist around the crew’s only way off Earth. But that was a fear for another time. Right now? They needed to get Harlow, find Kohl, and unpick who was setting them up to die.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE PROBLEM WITH people was that they were people.

  Kohl had always thought this, back when his mom’s pimp used to beat him, through to his first gang when the team he was running with tried to shaft him. Then a bigger gang found him, seemed to appreciate his talents, then fucked him over for a percentage on a drop. Set him up against Old Empire, the big bad coming down the line for him, and there was no one at his back and an empty weapon at his side. He’d almost gone down on that one, but he’d been saved by the bell. Timing was more important than people: the Republic coup had seen the Old Empire crumble, Kohl left in a jail where no one cared. A couple of hard hits against a warden or two and he was free on the wind again, running small-time enforcement for a local dealer until Nate found him.

  Found might not be the right word. The Republic assholes in front of him right now had found him. Nate had just bought him off, sold him some line about nobody ever appreciating his talents. The man had a ship and a crew and promised Kohl that people wouldn’t be trying to kill him quite as often. It’d been true, too, right until that fucking esper Grace Gushiken had slipped aboard, the justice of the Republic on her heels. The very Man himself was after her, all resources of the Republic bent trying to scrape her out of the crack she’d crawled into, and the only thing that stopped her being taken to a dungeon so dark even space looked bright and cheery was that they’d come up against aliens.

  Fucking aliens.

  Not aliens like migrants from Europa, trying to get back to a crust with proper daylight, but actual aliens, ones that looked like giant insects. Giant angry insects, and they’d stabbed Kohl through the shoulder, planting some fucking thing in him that used his body like a sock puppet. It would have eaten his brain like a snack, just calories for the hive, except that fucking esper Grace Gushiken had stabbed him in the back, killed the bug, and here they were. Under a bright and sunny sky, boots on dirt. Except the sky wasn’t sunny, and there was nothing under his boots except ceramicrete, pavement bubblegum, and trash.

  Speaking of trash: back to the Republic. These guys had had their sense of humor beaten out of them, all black armor underneath black visors. They came looking for trouble with large plasma weapons. No problem. They wanted trouble? October Kohl knew all about trouble. Trouble was his stock-in-trade.

  An air car blasted overhead, the fifth one he’d seen in about fifteen seconds, which didn’t promise good things for anyone. Not good things for Kohl, not good things for the cap, and not good things for Gracie. Despite stabbing him in the back, that girl had fire in her belly, and she went up against Kohl with nothing but a sword. That encounter should have ended with her bleeding out against the metal decking of the Tyche, but instead here Kohl was, feeling like he owed her one. He hated owing people anything. That’s how people turned into problems.

  Kohl turned his head around. “Cap.” And then blinked, because the street, while far from empty, wasn’t full of captains or espers. Nate had turned into mist, blown away on a breeze, and taken Gracie with him. Not that Kohl blamed them: when things turned to shit, you needed to look after yourself. Find a hole to crawl into if you weren’t able to tough it out. If you could muscle through, you needed a big gun in your hands. If Kohl hadn’t been so intent on barging through all these fucking people, he might have noticed them drifting off to safer places. Truth be told, he was just angry that he hadn’t thought of it first. Here he was, sticking his neck out for a captain who wanted to throw him out an airlock and a … a goddamn esper who’d stabbed him in the back. October Kohl didn’t stick his neck out for anyone, unless there was a good percentage in it.

  “DROP THE RIFLE,” said a woman’s voice, amplified to be far louder than it needed to be. It certainly drew Kohl’s attention. There in the street, in the direction he’d been headed, was one of those Republic soldiers. She wore the standard black-on-black, with a black blaster pointed at Kohl.

  Kohl looked down at his carbine, still slung from its sling. “I’m not holding a rifle,” he said.

  The Republic soldier turned her head to the side, as if looking for support, but she was alone. Which might have been a mistake, but Kohl could see how it would look from her perspective: a lone gunman in the street, no weapon in his hands, and she had the drop on him. Easy bag, and some sort of completion bonus. Hell, she bagged the great October Kohl, and she’d be drinking for free on stories of this for a month at least. It was an approach to life Kohl himself had used on oc
casion.

  “THE LASER,” she said. “DROP IT.”

  “Oh,” said Kohl. “I see what you mean. It’s a carbine, not a rifle. Shorter barrel. Makes it easier to swing around, you know?”

  “I DON’T GIVE A FUCK IF IT’S AN UMBRELLA. DROP IT, ASSHOLE.” She hefted her blaster, a short ugly thing, for emphasis.

  Kohl sighed. Thing here was to make a show of it, like he would comply. And then not comply. At that point, the shooting would start, and her having the drop on him was an important factor in any future actions he would take. There were still about a thousand people around, and any of those would probably do for a distraction. With one hand held high, Kohl reached around and down for the carbine. He could see her helmet move incrementally as she followed his hand, which was what he was waiting for. A man dashed between them, trying for the safety of the other side of the street — like any side of the street is safer than any other, asshole — and Kohl whipped his hand out, faster than a snake, collaring the man. He took in an expensive suit and a startled expression as he hauled the man in front of him.

  What was supposed to happen next was that he would say something like now I’m just going to back away and she’d keep the blaster trained on him, but eventually he’d get to some cover, and at that point he could run, or shoot, but probably run, because the numbers wouldn’t be on his side in about thirty seconds. Kohl figured in an unfair fight he’d be good for five or more of these Republic clowns, because soldiers learned to fight for money, but Kohl had learned to fight for two reasons. First, because it was necessary. Second, because it was fun.

  What happened was a surprise to Kohl, and more of a surprise — briefly — to the man he held. The soldier opened fire with her blaster, plasma impacting the man’s body with bright actinic splashes of fire. The man Kohl held turned into pieces of burning flesh quickly, reducing Kohl’s makeshift cover to zero. Kohl didn’t pause: his hand that had been reaching for his carbine just kept on going, raised the weapon, and fired. The soldier was painted head to toe in red light for a heartbeat before her body erupted into a steaming cloud of meat. Kohl’s armor took the blaster residue from her shot like it wasn’t anything to be worried about.