One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire

by Carlos Carrasco

  "Not at one of these tourist traps," I said and handed Puma three silver coins out of my vest pocket. "I'll take it from here, Puma."

  The boy's eyes widen at the sight of the coins. It was a week's worth of hustling tourists. "Cheery good-good, Don Fritz. Thank you! Thank you!" he said with sharp bows of his head before running off.

  "Don Fritz?" Drake asked.

  "I'll explain," I said, taking his arm in mine and leading him to the nearest taxi. "We'll just have to make a quick stop before the restaurant."

  I gave the driver his instructions and then began catching Drake up on my life since last we saw each other. I left out only the details of my illness and the haunting guilt of Bannon Orman's abandonment. He listened attentively as the ground car wound its way down the hillside and across the expanse of New Koppolo.

  Having just been uncomfortably confronted with my true identity at D'Llorros' manor, I found myself oddly eager to share the story of my life with Drake, my old comrade and brother. It was a heady feeling sitting in the cab with a flesh and blood ghost of my past life, a head-reeling mix of both joy and sadness.

  I was sixteen when I left Aurelius and when I returned at the end of my seven year tour I found myself even less fit for commune life than when I left. I returned a hero of sorts to many of my remaining brothers and sisters. Sadly, I abused their esteem, introducing them to the thrills of bio-enhancement and later, leading them through an escalating series of crimes committed to pay for our growing addictions.

  Drake was part of my gang. He was six years younger than I was and, not unlike Bannon Orman, he idolized me to his own detriment. The last time that I saw Drake, he was being arrested when one of our hits on a hospital pharmacy went sideways and he fell behind during our escape. I rallied some of our crew to help me rescue Drake from the three guards that had wrestled him to the ground but he would not have it.

  He yelled at us over the wailing of approaching sirens. "Run! Get out of here! I'll be alright."

  And so we did. We scattered, losing ourselves like shadows in the night. We escaped capture.

  Drake, for his part, took his punishment like a man, accepting the full five year sentence for breaking and entering rather than the six months of probation offered him in exchange for ratting out the crew. I admired his loyalty and had every intention of rewarding him for it when he got out but, two years into his term, my endless party came to an abrupt close when I was captured by Federation Forces Military Police during another botched robbery attempt, this one on a FF supply depot. Arrested and tried by the FF and not the more lenient civil court, my refusal to rat out my partners in crime landed me on the Psion prison planet. The news of my prison break a decade later would not have been broadcast, the details sealed in the Psion DataCore. Drake had every reason to believe me long dead.

  Twenty minutes later we stopped in one of New Koppolo's strip malls, pulling in front of a glass-fronted shop emblazoned with a neon blue signage that read, Jeffro's Feel Good Emporium. A smaller, printed sign pasted to the glass door announced the store hours and warned, ‘Shoplifters Will Be Eaten.’

  “I see Jeffro has a sense of humor,” Drake remarked.

  “Oh, he does,” I said, opening the door for Drake with my best enigmatic smile. “Just not about shoplifting.”

  The air inside was clouded and sweetly scented with a mix of hash, tobacco and the intoxicating incense rising in serpentine columns from brass, dragon’s head censers sitting atop tripods at every corner of the store. From recessed nooks and crannies scattered at random about the shop, colored lights pulsed softly to a background soundtrack of throbbing and groaning synthesized music. Above us, hookahs hung from the ceiling like robot octopi floating through the haze. A half a dozen widespread aisles ran down the center of the shop. The shelves were stocked with pills, gums, creams, oils, flavored tobaccos and other smoking products in their many forms. Sexual toys were shelved along the left-hand wall while the right offered pornographic videos, holos, games, and other virtual entertainment. A half-dozen customers browsed among the aisles, two of them aided by the sandaled and bikini-clad sales girls.

  Drake followed me to the far end of the store where, within a glass case, the more exotic and expensive cyberneuronetic products were kept. Cortical jacks, electromagnetic skull caps, ocular implants, aural plugs and other hardware were displayed between rows of brightly labeled boxes of wetware brain washes, neural chips and vials of nano bio-enhancers.

  Behind the glass case, the emporium's owner Jeffro, a human-reptile hybrid, was boxing up an ornate glass pipe for an orange-haired young woman in a floral sari. The sight of Jeffro stopped Drake in his tracks.

  "That's a Savroon!" Drake whispered incredulously.

  "Yes," I said. "That's Jeffro, the store's owner. Come, I'll introduce you."

  Jeffro was five feet tall. His flesh was scaled, dark green in color and mottled with an iridescent blue. An ivory horn curved out of the Savroon's narrow skull, just above the eyes which were large and yellow with green, vertical irises. His nostrils were two small, beveled holes at the top end of a thorny-toothed snout. A smoldering cigar hung from its side. Jeffro's limbs were thick and ended in four fingered hands and feet, one of each quartet of digits was an opposable thumb. A large tapered tail was curled up behind him. It protruded out of a tailored hole in the pleated, gold and green plaid kilt that he wore. The kilt was secured to his waist by a belt from which hung his netpad and his preferred weapon, the laser tube.

  As we approached, Jeffro drew his netpad and tapped it to the customer's own pad. After a quick glance to make certain the necessary funds were transferred, he turned back to the young woman.

  "Thank you, sweetie. See you soon, I hope," Jeffro said, his voice a sibilant tenor.

  The Savroon then turned his attention on us. "Don Fritz, my good man, cheery good to see you again," he said, re-holstering his netpad.

  I shook Jeffro's hand. "Thanks. It's good to see you too, Don Jeffro. Allow me to introduce you to a childhood friend of mine, Drake of Arkum."

  Drake stepped forward and offered the Savroon his hand. Jeffro took it in his. The Savroon's long, green and tapered tongue slid out from behind his teeth and flicked in the air between them. Drake tensed at the sight.

  "Forgive me, Don Drake of Arkum," Jeffro said, still holding Drake’s hand. "I didn't mean to startle you. We Savroon have sensitive tongues, you see. We taste rather than smell a person's scent. It can tell us much about the people we meet." Jeffro's tongue slithered out again, made a few quick flicks in the air and then darted back behind the teeth. "For instance, I can tell you came to Ramage aboard the Olympus."

  "Well, you might have guessed as much just by noting a new face during the starliner's regularly scheduled visit," Drake said.

  "I might have," Jeffro conceded. "But I did not need to guess. The synthetic floral fragrance of the starliner's liquid soap is as unmistakable as it is unpleasant.”

  “I...I’m sorry about that,” Drake stammered.

  “No need to apologize, Drake of Arkum; it’s not your fault that we Savroon have sensitive palates.” Jeffro sucked hard on his cigar and blew a few gray puffs of smoke out of his nostrils.

  After an awkward moment of silence, Drake asked, “Did you taste anything else?”

  Jeffro nodded. “Your breakfast consisted of a buttered roll and of a rather potent Bloody Mary."

  Drake grinned. "That's right!"

  "And like myself," Jeffro continued. "You enjoy a good stogie. You had one last night, did you not?"

  Drake laughed. "Well, I'll be… I did indeed. I'm impressed Don Jeffro."

  "If you wish to be truly impressed, allow me to suggest that you purchase a box of our local stogies," Jeffro said, drawing Drake closer.

  "Um, sure," Drake said, growing uneasy with Jeffro's prolonged hold of his hand and yellow-eyed scrutiny. "I'll take a box."

  “Just one?” Jeffro asked and puffed on his cigar some more.

  “And one
for ol’ Fritz, here,” Drake added with a pleading glance my way. I smiled sweetly back at him.

  "Good," Jeffro said and then waved over one of his sales girls. "Simja, please fetch Don Drake of Arkum two boxes of Popo's Torpedoes."

  "You will not be disappointed," Jeffro said when the girl disappeared down the aisle.

  "I'm sure I won't, Don Jeffro. I must say, it's not every day that one gets to do business with a Savroon. Heck, I understood your people were extinct."

  "Not quite," Jeffro said. "Many in the galaxy would prefer that we were. And some have tried to make it so. It would seem that you purebreds, having created us, felt at liberty to exterminate us. No?”

  “What happened was most unfortunate,” Drake said. “Tragic really…”

  “Yes… tragic,” Jeffro said. “Fortunately, some kind souls saved a few of our tribe from the genocidal campaign. We found safe haven in the jungles of Ramage. We’ve been here for nearly two centuries now."

  "Is that where you live, the jungle?"

  "I prefer life in the city."

  "I see."

  Jeffro's tongue darted out briefly. "I taste a little apprehension, Don Drake of Arkum. You are no doubt wondering about the Savroon's reputation for eating people. It is, after all, the purported cause of the efforts to exterminate us."

  "I'm afraid I couldn't keep the thought from arising," Drake confessed.

  Jeffro barked several grunt-like chuckles and gave Drake's hand one last hearty pump before releasing it. "An honest man! I like you, Don Drake of Arkum, friend of Fritz Landsenson. Allow me then to alleviate your concern. While it is true that we Savroon have been known to eat people, purebreds have never been what you would call a staple of our diet. Too many toxins in the average human render them rather unsavory. Though some of you purebreds were occasionally devoured as, shall we say, meals of opportunity; ritual eating of personal enemies accounted for most of the reported cases of the so called Savroon atrocities.”

  “I see,” said Drake. “I did not know that.”

  “And you have no need to fear me, Drake of Arkum, for I, Jeffro of the Savroon, have given the good people of Koppolo City my word that I will never prey upon purebreds."

  "Well, that's good."

  "I do however, reserve the right to eat shoplifters, their thieving hearts at any rate," Jeffro added, with a grin much akin to a grimace.

  "And the people of Koppolo are okay with that?"

  "Sure," I answered for Jeffro. "We're all live and let live here on Ramage."

  "When we're not kill or be killed," Jeffro added and barked his peculiar laughter again.

  I laughed with Jeffro. Drake smiled awkwardly which only made the Savroon and I laugh the harder.

  When the laughter died down, Jeffro gave Drake a pat on the shoulder. "We take some getting used to, here on Ramage, Don Drake, but we're generally worth it."

  "I've no doubt that is true, Don Jeffro."

  The girl Simja returned with the box of cigars.

  "Now Don Fritz, I'll get you your nanites." Jeffro said and disappeared through an ogee arch in the rear of the store.

  "You still using?" Drake asked, his face pinched with concern. He was looking at my pale, aged, emaciated form in a new light. I couldn’t rightly blame him.

  "It's not what you think." I told him.

  "I was just asking, I wasn't judging," Drake said.

  "Like hell you weren't," I said with a laugh.

  "I'm sorry Gaelic," Drake said. "I certainly didn't mean to offend you or…"

  "Forget it brother," I said and patted the side of his face playfully. "I'm so thrilled to see you again that you couldn't offend me with anything less than a sucker punch!"

  Drake smiled ear-to-ear and his eyes seemed to well up. "And I'm delighted to see you again, Gael."

  Jeffro returned with a small, metal briefcase. The Savroon placed it on the top of the glass case and opened it up to show me the three racks of vials contained within. We then paid our tabs, said goodbye to Jeffro and got back into the waiting taxi.

  Despite my assurances to Drake, the air between us chilled. He sat in silence beside me, casting the occasional glance at the briefcase. I chalked it up to his temperament which was always the most sensitive of the old gang. And I of course wasn’t helping him any by my refusal to explain why I just spent a small fortune on the enhancers. Not knowing what to say in lieu of the truth, I left him to his brooding and hoped our next stop would snap him out of his funk.

  6

  Several minutes later, the taxi came to a stop at the bazaar, a long stretch of stands and booths that served as the border between New Koppolo and the slum. I paid the driver and we disembarked. I guided Drake through the loose crowd, exchanging greetings with old friends and past neighbors. Drake watched my interactions with the bazaar hawkers and customers closely, seemingly bemused by it all until he came upon an old woman, charcoal-black and wrinkled as a prune, whose thickly scarred sockets eerily fixed their eyeless gaze upon us as we drew near.

  I was used to the effect but it gave Drake pause. She hummed an atonal tune through a toothless smile while she used a rusty nail to carve detailed lines onto the raised trunk of a fist-sized wooden elephant. She sat crossed-legged on a patch of grass between a stall and a booth. She wore a large burlap sack cinched at the waist by a frayed rope. It hung over a three-quarter length pair of cargo pants whose color was long lost under layers of grime and mud. She was surrounded by a menagerie of cypress sculptures, monkeys, baboons, parrots, tigers, a cow and a chicken, as well as wooden spoons, forks, crosses and little figurines carved into various dance poses. They were all cut in a crude but oddly appealing style.

  "Hello," Drake said, bending towards her.

  "She can't hear you," I told him. "She's blind, deaf and dumb."

  "Really? She seems to sense me."

  "Yeah, I know," I said. "It's weird. According to the old timers, she was dumped, left to die on this road some forty years ago. On this very spot, by some accounts. She was little more than a child when they found her. Her eyes were burnt out of her skull, her tongue was cut out and, she was badly beaten, especially about the head. They cleaned her up, the slum dwellers, took her in and comforted her as best they could. They didn't expect her to survive but Aggie pulled through somehow."

  "Aggie?"

  "That's about all she was able to pronounce when she finally came to. So we call her Aggie Whittler. Here, I'll introduce you." I knelt before the old woman and gave her hand a gentle tap. Aggie stopped carving and took my hand in hers. Aggie's fingers explored its every contour for a few moments and then she sent her hands up my arms to my face. She stopped humming and let out a series of clicks, lip-smacks, grunts and hisses as she explored my face.

  "We call it Aggie-speak," I said. "The kids here claim to understand it. They use it when they don't want the adults listening in to their conversations. Give me your hand, my brother."

  Drake knelt beside me and gave me his hand. I pulled one of Aggie's off my face, kissed it and brought it to his. She cooed pleasantly and then was silent while her fingers went to work on my brother from Commune Arkum. She let out another small burst of Aggie-speak when she had familiarized herself with Drake's face. Holding on to one of Drake's hands, Aggie then picked up one of three roughly carved crucifixes at her side, placed it in Drake's palm and wrapped his fingers about the six inch cypress sculpture. Drake's eyes welled up and he seemed to swallow a sob. He took her hand and kissed it.

  "How did she know?" Drake asked when he looked back up at me.

  "How did she know what?"

  "How did Aggie know that I'm a Christian?"

  I barked out an incredulous laugh. "Christian? You? Since when?"

  "I converted a little over eight years ago," Drake answered, meeting my gaze squarely, looking at me with that same bemused light in his dark eyes. He then looked from the crucifix to Aggie. She had picked up her small elephant again and began smoothing its contours with a scr
ap of sandpaper.

  "Don't make too much of it," I advised him. "Aggie gives one of those to everyone she meets. I've got one stowed away somewhere on my ship."

  Drake fished a gold coin out of his pocket and placed it in Aggie's hand. She sandwiched it between her palms and bowed her head three times in gratitude. She then dropped the coin into a pants pocket and returned to working on the wooden elephant.

  I tugged on Drake's sleeve. "Come on, you promised me lunch." I led him further down the bazaar and through an opening between two booths.

  Drake took a moment to take in the sight of the slum that lay behind the bazaar.

  "Good thing one of us is armed, my brother," he said after a while.

  "You got it all wrong, Drake," I said. "These are good people. I lived with them my first three years on Ramage. They are the only people I really trust on the planet."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. In a way, life in the slum is kind of like what the commune was after, you know; everybody pulling together, looking out for one another in a shared struggle for survival."

  "And there's a restaurant in there?"

  "My favorite," I said.

  Drake sniffed the air.

  "You get used to the smell after awhile," I assured him. "And if the wind is right, you can't smell either the latrines or the marsh at The Circle."

  "Well then, lead on McGrub."

  In contrast to the clean, prefab uniformity of New Koppolo's buildings or the sculpted sublimity of the old city, the slum was a riotous feat of ad hoc construction, the various structures of which it was comprised were assembled from a wild medley of materials. Plasteel siding, thatch, corrugated tin, twined vines, plastic tarps, bamboo, concrete slabs, mud bricks; whatever could be scavenged from jungle and city, the slum residents cobbled together by necessity and with no small amount of prayer. Instead of Old Koppolo's wide, winding road or New Koppolo's grid of straight-lined streets and broad boulevards, I led Drake through a tangle of narrow, dirt footpaths, making many short stops on our way to the restaurant, pausing just long enough to introduce Drake to several of my old neighbors.