Deadland Drifter: A Scifi Thriller

by J. N. Chaney

  So whatever Dr. Suffolk had gotten tangled up in, he hadn’t mentioned it to his wife. Burner would have to be careful here. He wanted to get more information on the dentist from Mrs. Suffolk, but he had to do it in a way that didn’t put her in danger. Say the wrong thing, give her just a little too much information, and the kidnappers might decide to take her too.

  He took a casual glance over her shoulder to scan the front rooms of the house while he spoke. “How is Alan these days, anyway? I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but in our last messages he sounded worried about something. Is he alright?”

  Establish yourself as an old friend privy to private knowledge. Mention a nonspecific concern, such as the friend sounding worried. One of the easiest paths to learn the kind of trouble someone was in.

  It worked just as well on Mrs. Suffolk. “Oh, he had some trouble a little while back.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Gambling debts. I told him, those transport pilots are no better than renegades. They’d swindle him for every last credit. But my husband’s always had a big head. He wouldn’t tell me just how much he owed.”

  She stepped back suddenly, as if realizing she may have said too much. “Oh, but that’s all in the past now, though. He’s been much more positive lately. Said that those debts weren’t a problem anymore.”

  Burner gave a polite smile. “Well, that’s good to hear. He had me a bit worried for him. Well, I’ll let you get back to your evening. When you see Alan again, tell him I stopped by.”

  Poor woman would probably never see her husband again, but there was no way to warn her about that without putting her in danger, so Burner kept his smile plastered until he was safely down the front steps and on the sidewalk.

  Dr. Suffolk had gambling debts, substantial ones from the sound of things. That was probably what flagged him to the kidnappers in the first place. The two easiest sources of leverage are money and sex. Burner had seen it a million times: an otherwise law abiding citizen with a problem debt is approached by someone who promises that for a small favor they will make that debt go away, with the implied threat that if they refused, the debt would be called in and they stood to lose everything. Any rational person would take that deal. There was no holding it against Dr. Suffolk.

  But how would they have communicated? Dr. Suffolk had met at least one in person, the man he had been arguing with at the office. But they wouldn’t have wanted to be identifiable by either his receptionist or his wife, so the first approach would not have been made at either his home or the office. Somewhere close to home, though, to make him feel more vulnerable, a reminder of what he stood to lose if he refused.

  There were a number of cameras on the street. Maybe one of them had picked up something? But that would mean getting in touch with Security and putting in a request to review their footage. His kidnappers might be watching the Security stations, waiting to see if he went for help, and have a contingency in place if he did. Also, if he told Security he needed the footage because Dr. Suffolk was missing, they were bound to make him the first suspect. That was just how they operated.

  He stood on the sidewalk contemplating his next move when out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement on the otherwise still street. When he turned his attention to it, he noticed it was the twitching of a curtain. A nosy neighbor keeping an eye on him.

  Normally, those kinds of people frustrated him, getting into other people’s business and generally making it tougher for him to blend in. But sometimes they had their uses. Perhaps this one had seen something happen to Dr. Suffolk.

  He crossed the road and approached the peeper’s house. The lights in the house all went off as he reached the front steps. Undeterred, he climbed the two steps and knocked solidly on the door.

  No answer. He knocked again.

  The curtain twitched. He sighed. “Look, I know you’re in there. I can see you watching me. So why don’t you save us both a little time and come answer the door. I just have a couple of questions.”

  A few moments passed, and Burner was beginning to wonder if he was going to need to try a more aggressive approach, when he heard the sounds of locks being undone. Quite a few locks. The door cracked open just a hair.

  Burner peered inside and saw an old woman, hunched and shrunken with age, with the kind of gnarled snarl that only a properly wrinkled face could have. “What’dya want?”

  He tried on his disarming smile. “Sorry to bother you, but I saw you watching me from the road, and—“

  “What of it?” the old woman barked. “I’m free to look out my own window, ain’t I? What’dya doin’ out on my street that ya don’t want anyone to see, eh? Ya up to no good? Do ya even live about here?”

  His attempt at charm failing, Burner opted to meet her glare with his own. “Look, I don’t care if you were watching me, but I was wondering what else you might have seen. Particularly concerning one of your neighbors, Dr. Suffolk.”

  The old woman growled. “Don’t you be gettin’ me started on Alan Suffolk. He always takes his trash out to the curb at six, when the community rules state, clear’s day, no earlier than eight. And that wife o’ his, always—”

  He cut off her tirade. “Have you seen anything unusual involving him in the past few days?”

  Her face scrunched, her mind racing to find something relevant to complain about. “No, nothin’ too strange. Well, there was one thing. This mornin’, I saw one fella get into that vehicle o’ his, that loud monster that wakes the rest o’ us up from our beauty sleep? Anyway, I see this fella get in, not anyone I’ve ever seen drive around with him. Few minutes later, Suffolk got into the vehicle as well and took off. Thought it was odd, this fella getting in without Suffolk even openin’ the door for ’em. But they took off together, so I figured he musta been givin’ a key or somethin’.”

  “This man, did he get into the front or back seat?”

  She thought for a moment. “Back, I think. Mighty odd.”

  Burner thanked the woman for her time and said goodbye, to which he got a slammed door in reply. He then strode down the road while his mind put everything together.

  So one of the kidnappers was waiting for Dr. Suffolk in his vehicle this morning, he thought to himself. Hiding in his backseat until, when? He could have revealed himself right away, but then Dr. Suffolk might have caused a scene right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. No, it was better to wait until they were at the end of the journey, less time for Dr. Suffolk to freak out and do something stupid. A gun would suddenly have been pointed at his head and he would have been told it was time for him to pay off his debts.

  The doctor wouldn’t have had any choice. Even if he tried to slip away when he reached the office, now that he realized what kind of favor they wanted from him, they still held his gambling debts over him. They could have taken his house. And it’s also hard to argue with a man with a gun. He would have been more worried about his own life than Burner’s.

  It also meant the good doctor was likely already dead in a ditch. Burner hadn’t seen a trace of him during his day’s investigation, and these kidnappers were clearly dangerous, and cautious enough to want to cover up all their tracks. Dr. Suffolk was dead the moment he tried to clear his gambling debts by making deals with a shady organization. It just took him a while to realize it.

  So, where did that leave Burner? His day’s investigation had told him a little about how the organization that kidnapped him operated, but it had yielded nothing to help him identify them. They were careful enough not to leave any witnesses or any clues as to their whereabouts. Burner couldn’t even figure out where the room he had been held was, though he knew it was within a few hours’ drive of the Dentist’s office.

  As far as he could figure, he had only two real options from here: leave it alone, disappear, and start with a new identity somewhere else, or head toward the kidnapper’s first objective for him and see what he could learn along the way. And since the first option wasn’t really an option at all, that onl
y left one course of action. He needed to head to Dobulla UX8.

  First, he needed to book passage. He got back into the late dentist’s vehicle and plotted a course for Halliburn City Center.

  6

  Halliburn City Center, Zanpus C145, the Deadlands

  His mission, as far as the instructions he had been given thus far went, was to go to Dobbulla UX8 and retrieve a weapon. While he knew what that weapon was for, those details were still forthcoming.

  Similarly, while tracking down the assholes who had drugged him and dragged his unconscious body around the city was decent enough motivation, Burner really didn’t want to go there. He’d chosen a life on the frontier for a reason: the threat of the Union kept the lawlessness at levels well below that of the rest of the Deadlands, but at the same time he could keep out of the Union’s way. That was the only guaranteed way to avoid catching the Union’s ire: staying far away from them.

  Even when he had been in Union Intelligence, Burner had doubts about the way the Union did things. They considered themselves to be absolute when it came to authority and justice. They had strict codes for how people in Union careers could behave, could perform tasks, and could educate themselves for advancement. They probably even had codes on how they took a shit, though Burner had never read that one specifically. It was a strict, no compromise code that didn’t allow any flexibility.

  And when things don’t bend, they just break. Corruption was commonplace among those with rank and power, as evidenced by Burner making his career-ending expose back in the day. Burner himself operated under his own personal code for his own missions. Even back then he was often instructed to ignore the rules that others were held to in order to complete his tasks, as otherwise they were impossible to complete. He didn’t know which was worse: the oppressiveness of Union authority on worlds controlled by them or their hypocrisy.

  He would have to keep his head down while in Union space. He had set that life behind, turned his back on that world, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  A tone on the navigation panel told him that he had arrived in Halliburn City Center. He found a free parking pad to set down in and promptly abandoned the late Dr. Suffolk’s vehicle. Sometime tomorrow, when the dentist doesn’t return home, his wife would report him missing and Security would eventually find it in this lot. They would do a scan to see how it had ended up there, but Burner had already carefully removed all traces of his person from the vehicle.

  Burner travelled on foot from there to the heart of the City Center, the most populated and busy part of the planet. Even now, in the early hours of the morning before the sun came up, the streets were crammed with locals, tourists, merchants, pilots, workers, mercenaries, and every kind of oddball you could imagine. The spaceport was here, and people would arrive on the planet adjusted to all manner of day and night cycles. So the city accommodated them, with a wide selection of stores, restaurants, and hotels that never closed. Even with no sun the city was lit up like it was daytime, with an array of lights positioned on every street and over every storefront to bathe it all in a clear glow.

  The frontier was the closest thing to a Neutral Zone that existed these days, the kind of places where, in the old days, people would surrender their weapons to trade. That made places like C145 popular for business people on both sides of Union law. It was one of the few places merchants could meet with criminals, renegades could trade credits with Union officials, and pilots on opposite sides of a conflict could sit down and grab a drink together. It created a very odd and diverse mix of peoples and product. If there was anything rare and valuable you wanted, you were likely to either find it here, or find someone willing to acquire it for you. For a price. There were several such places like it, planet and space stations, along this stretch of space, but C145 was one of the liveliest.

  As Burner made his way through the crowd, he felt sorry to be leaving such a diverse and energetic planet for one crushed by the rules of Union authority. He never really felt at home anywhere, and had chosen to spend time on C145 mostly because it would be easy for him to find some low-key work for him to top up his Union pension. And so far, in the one full day he’d been on the planet, he had managed to be moderately content here.

  Right up until the kidnapping, that was.

  He had one more stop he had to make before finding passage off the planet. The gal-net had told him that Zell’s Hardware was an always open hardware superstore located a few blocks from the spaceport. Racks of parts, at least three stories high, contained just about anything you needed from home repair to spaceship maintenance. Burner sometimes just liked to come to places like this and browse the shelves. One of the things that saved his life more than once in the past was his powers of improvisation, knowing how to use the tools available to make mechanical systems work, if only temporarily and in a janky way. It had given him an appreciation of a good tool.

  On the third floor, there was a section for computer hardware. Here Burner stocked up on an essential mission kit, picking up a few lightweight tools for scanning, communicating, and disabling, that were more effective at their specific tasks than his handheld device was. He paid for it all using the credit account of a Martin Pyres: an alias who happened to also be an artist that received a particular art grant once a month, despite never having produced a single work. It was a slick system he had running. His pension went into his official account on the Union banking system and was then fed by a clever algorithm via dark accounts to his alias accounts. Judy, one of his team, had insisted on setting it up for him just before he left. He was immediately grateful, because as it turned out, there was nothing more he had wanted to do than get off the grid.

  Now with everything he needed to operate, Burner made his way down to the spaceport. There were passenger transport ships departing from here to all the major planets in this little corner of Union space. This included Dobbulla UX8, though the next ship heading that way did not depart for a few more hours. Burner booked a ticket under the name Thomas Hacken, a professor of archeology. Similar to Pyres, Howards had never taught a single class but still received a modest number of credits into his account every month.

  Neither alias was fit for field work. They existed entirely to have credit accounts in their name so Burner could make purchases without being tracked. They all had a story of where the money was coming from (art grant, professor salary) in order to dissuade Union tax collectors from digging any deeper.

  With his tickets purchased, Burner had some time to kill. He visited one of the tourist-bait shops built into the spaceport and picked up a fresh set of clothes, a hat, and a pair of dark sunglasses. After finding the nearest restroom, Burner changed out of the clothes he had been captured in and that were still somewhat crinkled from sleeping on a park bench, into a fresh set of touristy clothes. He tucked his entire head of hair into the hat and donned the sunglasses. Not much as far as disguises go, but it would keep him from being identified on a broad glance.

  He then decided to grab a bite to eat, realizing he hadn’t eaten at all since his ill-fated dentist appointment. There was a diner right at the entrance to the port, a moderately quiet place given the busyness of the thoroughfare it was on. Burner sat at the counter and ordered a sandwich and a coffee. While he waited, he glanced around at the diner’s other patrons.

  In the corner booth, a couple of greasy pilot types were in a bragging contest over who had taken the most dangerous job in the name of credits lately. Renegades. Basically, glorified mercenaries. As their name implied, they were outlaws, working for the highest bidder, even if it meant breaking the law. As an Intelligence officer, Burner had been responsible for putting down more than his share.

  As a drifter, he mostly just tried to keep a distance.

  At the counter a few seats away from him, a harried man muttered to himself while he ran through numbers on his pad. He was getting grease from his fatty burger all over it. Some form of transporter, from what Burner could overhear, calculating
the value of his latest shipment versus the damage done to his ship when Ravagers attacked it. Funny thing about C145, those Ravagers could come into the diner right now and pull up a seat right beside the transporter, and no one would say anything about what happened out in the void, because out there was a different life. In here everyone was just trying to grab a meal.

  Well, if a Ravager did show their face in here, it wouldn’t have been pretty, but the point was it didn’t have to be that way.

  Burner’s eyes found a woman eating alone in a booth just behind his seat. She was a pretty thing, with a face that didn’t need make-up to accentuate her looks. She also had a pleasing figure. Her eyes met his and she smiled at him before looking away shyly. On another day, Burner might have slid into her booth across from her, hit her with the full force of his charm, made her laugh and smile, and, if he played his cards right, taken her back to a hotel for them to spend a day together. But he had more pressing concerns right now, so instead he turned his attention to his plate of food, which had just arrived.

  He polished off the sandwich in under two minutes. Then he ordered a slice of pie and devoured that, too, and drank three cups of coffee in the process. The meal was paid for by yet another of his accounts, including a generous tip, before he made his way to wait for his flight.

  Burner found a seat in the spaceport that had a good view of the rest of the waiting area. His eyes darted about for a sign of anyone following him or watching him. Again, he found no sign of his captor’s pursuit, but they had to know when he was leaving the planet. Their entire plan revolved around his arrival on UX8, so it wouldn’t make sense for them not to be monitoring the spaceport. However they were keeping tabs on him, Burner couldn’t figure out. Yet.

  His deductive mind did catch a lot as he was scanning the crowd. He saw a young man and woman sitting together, looking around themselves nervously as if they were afraid of being spotted. Elopers, fleeing the planet to start a new life together. He noticed the glances they gave each other and the cheap rings they each wore. They were probably on the lookout for their parents or other relatives who would try and talk sense into them and make them stay.