by Sam Renner
She waits for it to finish and smiles. “There’s plenty of work loading boats or moving crates of the stuff around the warehouses.”
“Pay’s good?”
She picks up and wiggles her empty glass. “Keeps me in this stuff. Keeps me fed.”
“How can I find the people looking for this work?”
Laana pulls out her datapad and says: “If you’re serious I can send you an address.”
Nixon pulls out his own pad. “Dead serious,” he says.
Laana begins tapping her screen. Nixon fills the silence. “I’m doing a courier job and am only here because my ship is busted up. I need money for supplies and repairs.”
Laana grabs Nixon’s pad and places it end to end with hers and flicks her finger across the screen, like she’s tossing data from her pad to his. His screen blinks a moment later, and the address pops up. It means nothing to Nixon.
“You said this was near the docks?”
“Yeah, short walk from here. I can show you.”
Nixon stands and calls for the man who’s been serving them drinks. He quickly checks his credit balance and then pays for both his drinks and Laana’s.
They step out into the night, and the air feels heavy. It wants to rain. Distant thunder rumbles a hello. He hears activity coming from the docks. The general murmur of activity is punctuated with shouting voices and laughter. The ships never stop, Laana says.
“I stay up at night and watch it all. I’ve never been a great sleeper, so I got myself a spot up there.” She points to the top floor of an unfinished tower that sits in roughly the center of the city’s main district. Keep an eye on what’s going on. Look through my scope if I see anything at all that seems interesting.”
“Interesting?”
They quickly cross the street, the pavers slick under their feet. The driver of a small truck loaded with crates blasts his horn and they pick up their pace. The driver shouts something Nixon doesn’t understand and shakes a fleshy fist at them.
Nixon stops once they’ve crossed and looks back at Laana’s tower. “How high up?” he asks.
She points to a spot near the very top. It’s open to the air, some kind of industrial cave.
“Without the wall?”
“I like it that way. I get all messed up if I’m inside too long.”
She turns and keeps walking. “Plus, put up a wall there and I miss this.” She pauses and lets the music of the city wash over them.
“I like it. I like the noise. I spent too much time in a place where quiet was demanded.”
Nixon follows her down the street and they make a turn toward the water and into a warehouse area.
“You said you looked down your scope earlier. Scope for what?”
Laana spreads her blue arms as wide as she can. The cloth from her vest snaps and pops in the breeze. “I’ve got me a rifle that’s…” she stretches her arms even farther, as wide as they’ll go. “Well, it’s bigger than that. Got a really nice scope on the top that… helps.”
“Long guns?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Nixon lifts his cloak and shows off the handle of the blaster tucked into his pants. “Not one of these?”
“Naaah,” she says. “I mean, a blaster is fine. It gets the job done, but where’s the fun in one of those? Where’s the challenge. You’ve got to be close to fire one. A long gun, though, you can be a ways away. There’s margin for error there. Then if the target’s moving, that’s some real skill.”
Nixon follows Laana around another corner, and she points down the block. It’s all opened bay doors. Light pours out of most of them and illuminates the spaces out front like both suns are up.
“Come back in the morning. Just about anyone here could use some help.”
She grabs his upper arm and squeezes. “You’re a big, strong guy. They’ll be happy to put you to work.”
Nixon thanks her.
“Now, I’m going to go home and play spy. Find someone worth putting into my sites.”
05
Nixon wouldn't go as far as calling Laana a liar, but after days of still earning next to nothing for work that was twice as hard, he was close.
He was tired down to his core. He'd been offered ten credits for a day's effort reorganizing a warehouse.
"Can I get 20?" He'd asked the human offering the job.
"I know guys who'll do it for five."
"Fifteen?"
The man looked past Nixon to the other men roaming the street looking to find a job for the day then says "Nevermind."
Nixon stepped back into the man's view. "Fine, fine. For ten."
The man turned and stepped back into the warehouse.
Nixon followed and spent the next 14 hours moving boxes on and off a hand truck that the man who hired him would push. He'd pass the time waiting for Nixon to finish a load by looking at his datapad.
Two hours into the day, Nixon wanted to crush the datapad to dust and drop a full load of boxes on the guy's head. Instead, he worked in silence then made a note of the place's name when he left. He wouldn't work for him again.
His feet kick up sand as he nears his ship. The night is dark, and the field is totally black except for a light out front of the piecemeal ship parked near Nixon's.
The woman who owns it is out front sitting in a chair with her feet up on a box and looking at her datapad.
Her ship looks even more unique in this light. He can see what it used to be, the shape it left the factory floor with. In this light, the contrast between the old and the new, between what she bought and what she’d added, is even more striking.
The original ship looks to be a small economy thing, not a lot bigger than one of those little hauler ships that the Uzeks let Nixon fly back on Exte. But it is more than twice that size now. She’s added two large cargo holds on the sides. She’s expanded the cockpit to seat more than one. And that engine is definitely larger than anything Nixon has ever seen on the back of these ships on Exte.
He turns back to his ship, his busted wreck. He opens the ramp that’s still crushed in from the escape off Exte, and the light from inside the ship is just enough to show him all the work that still needs to be done. He’d been spending so much time trying to earn credits that he’d not had any time to try and close up the wide seams, to fill the holes, or patch the cracks.
He runs a hand along the side of the ship. It’s cool and damp. It leaves his palm slick. He wipes it dry on his cloak. He’s lost most of the light from inside but keeps circling the ship anyway. He puts a finger inside one of the holes in the engine. Shoves it in as far as it’ll go, down to the last knuckle. He wiggles it around and feels the loose ends of the engine wiring dance across his fingertip.
These holes are a reminder that there is someone after him. Someone who wants that case. Someone who will eventually find him here.
He goes back inside the ship and starts searching through bins and compartments until he finds a tool kit. It’s small, just a few tools good for beating and screwing and prying and pulling, but it’ll have to do.
Then he goes to work. He starts yanking and pulling at the metal that makes up the ship’s exterior and closing up the open seams and healing the cracks. Yes, he is bone tired. And yes, he still doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. But he needs to do this. To make progress. He works until the first of Umel’s suns pokes its head over the horizon and casts bright spots of light across Nixon’s open field.
He puts the tools down and steps back to look at his progress. It isn’t much, but it’s something. Enough to return the focus that had slipped. He’s been so concentrated on figuring out how to earn credits that he’s let why he needs them become secondary. Not again. Not anymore. He’ll get this ship fixed and he’ll get off this planet. Soon.
++xxx++
Another night after another long day of too little pay. Not as bad as he’d been finding. Twenty-five credits today. Back on Exte that would have been a good day. He’d spend the rest of h
is night praying to find another job like that. But here, there is no amount of money that’s good enough. Every job could pay five credits more. Should pay five credits more considering the kind of work that he is being asked to do.
But don’t sniff at twenty-five credits, the angel on his right shoulder reminds him, staring at the devil on his left.
The night is dark, and he listens to its sounds. There is still activity on the docks. There is always activity there. Men talk; they laugh. Machinery is in motion. All of that fades as the blocks between him and the water continue to add up. But that doesn’t mean things are quiet, the noise just changes. The men on the docks are replaced by the men working deep into the night at the warehouses. The big machines out on the docks are replaced by the smaller more maneuverable machines scooting across the warehouse floor.
Nixon looks ahead of him. In front of him is the unfinished tower that rises up like a needle from the center of Umel. He looks up the length of the tower to its unfinished top and the open hole. He can’t see her, but he assumes Laana is there. Using her scope to scan the city and look for some entertainment.
Is she watching me? Has she been watching?
He waves to her, just in case.
Past the tower and out of Umel’s central district, the night is nearly silent. That’s where it becomes easier for Nixon to notice the footsteps behind him. The footsteps that speed up when he speeds up. That slow when he slows.
He walks another block then stops at a corner. The footsteps behind him stop. It’s dark, and he wants to look behind him. Whoever this is, though, has probably already ducked into a shadow. It’s what Nixon would have done.
He crosses the street and doesn’t hear the steps. Then there’s the blast of a horn and he looks back just in time to see whoever this is disappear behind a turning people mover.
Nixon picks up his pace, and a moment later there are the steps again. They aren’t matching his pace. They are quicker—catching up. He turns a corner and heads down a street he doesn’t recognize. There are lights coming from a building at the end of the block. There’s laughter too. A crowd. He heads toward it.
A man emerges from the far-off door and pulls on a cloak. He shrugs it up tight around his shoulders and dons the hood. He turns Nixon’s direction and walks with his head down.
Nixon watches him approach and keeps listening to the footsteps. They’ve slowed. Whoever this is is keeping his distance again.
The man in the cloak approaches and steals a glance at Nixon as he passes.
Perfect.
Nixon turns to watch him pass then shouts once he’s a couple of steps by: “What did you say, friend? Did you threaten me?”
The man turns and looks up at Nixon confused. Nixon looks past him to the figure stopped on the sidewalk.
He’s human, and he’s huge. Nixon takes off. He sprints for the light at the end of the block. The footsteps follow.
He feels at his waistband for the blaster he knows isn’t there. He runs through the light coming from what he can now tell is a data shack and turns the corner. He hears the feet of the man following him slapping the ground. He also hears the man fighting to catch his breath.
This new block is almost pitch black. Nixon runs a few hundred feet then turns into an alley and moves to the back where it’s darker than dark, and he waits. He hears the man who’s been chasing him slow to a walk.
“Hey!” the man shouts. It’s breathy, and Nixon can tell it wasn’t as loud or menacing as the man intended. He’s struggling to catch his breath. Nixon understands; he is too.
He sits as quiet as possible and listens to the man slowly inspect the alleys all around him. It was just a matter of time before the man’s faded silhouette would appear at the end of Nixon’s alley, and there it is. He’s as wide as the opening.
“Hey!” That’s a proper shout.
Nixon stands and approaches. It’s either fight him here at the back of the alley where it’s dark and the only way out is through this guy. Or he can fight him at the end of the alley where he has at least a chance to slip by him and away.
Nixon walks back toward the street, his hands held high above his head.
“What were you going to do?” he asks.
He watches the man slowly ball his fist. “What was I going to do?”
“If you caught me.” Nixon continues to walk forward, one slow step after another. His arms are raised above his head, like he’s being talked out of an alley by a security team that’s discovered a bunch of people casting lots in an underground Garrate game.
“When I caught you.”
Nixon is halfway down the alley and the man rocks in anticipation. His fists are tight knots now. He’s coiling up his energy, becoming a spring that’s primed to be sprung. Nixon sees it and recognizes that it isn’t good. A man like that fighting in a space like this, the guy is going to pinball off the walls and be unpredictable. There’s no way to win if Nixon keeps the fight fair.
He’s close enough to see a gappy grin creep across the big man’s face. To see his eyes narrow as the grin turns into a smile. Then to see his eyes widen and his mouth open into a wide O when Nixon kicks a foot hard in between the man’s legs.
Kicks him so hard that he feels the man’s pelvic bone with his foot. Kicks him so hard that he swears he feels things inside the other man pop.
The man doubles at the waist, and Nixon grabs two handfuls of hair on the back of the guy’s head. He pulls down hard as he brings his knee up quickly. The man’s face and Nixon’s knee come together in a sickening crunch. Nixon feels the bones in the man’s face crumble.
The man finally screams out, and Nixon lets him fall to the ground. Nixon stands over him, and the man rolls to his back. His legs are still curled up tight to his waist, and blood covers his mouth and chin.
“Was that what you’d hoped would happen? You wanted to get bloodied up like this? Unable to talk? Why? Because you wanted something I had? Well…” Nixon pulls his datapad from his pocket and pulls up his credit balance. “... joke would have been on you.”
He turns the screen toward the man and the man tries to put on a broken smile. Blood crackles through what sounds to Nixon like a laugh.
Nixon stands and puts his datapad back into his pocket. He stares down into the man’s face then spits. It lands just an inch from the man’s cheek, and he laughs again.
06
Most nights Nixon collapses on the thin mattress in the crew quarters, too tired to care or notice that he’s uncomfortable. A full day of working some back-breaking job then coming back to his ship and spending most of his night hours trying to get her back into flying shape.
She was close. Or he thought she was. The seams that had been wide weren’t anymore. The cracks were now patched over with new metal that shines bright in the suns’ light. It wasn’t pretty—ugly, actually—but he wasn’t trying to win any kind of awards for his work.
Tonight, though, he didn’t work, and he didn’t sleep. Instead, he dropped himself into the captain’s seat and let his mind race. The fight, such as it was, had him amped. He felt like he could get out there and work his fingers under the ship, pick it up and press it over his head and throw it out of the Umellian atmosphere. Just watch it disappear into the dark of the night.
He grabbed the case off the dash and started pushing the buttons on the front, working combinations that he’d already tried hundreds of times. Tonight, it wasn’t about getting this thing open. It was just something to keep his fidgety hands busy. They’d been shot so full of adrenaline that there wasn’t a chance they’d be calm for hours yet.
Push one button. Push the next. Push a third. Try the top. Nothing.
Push a button. Then another. Then another. Try the top. Nothing.
Button. Button. Button. Nothing.
A new combination. Nothing.
Wait. Not nothing. Something. It budged.
But what was the combination? What did he push?
Nixon looks down
at the case. Stares hard at the buttons, like looking at them more intently will somehow highlight the order in which he pushed them.
He starts pushing buttons again and checking the top. But none of them work. The top feels more solid than it ever has.
Nixon shouts, frustrated. He throws the case to the wall across from him. It hits corner first with a loud, metal clang. It leaves a small divot in the wall above the button that releases the ramp. It skitters across the floor and winds up under the navigator’s chair.
“Sir?” The ship is responding to Nixon’s outburst.
