by M. Pax
He nodded and considered the folks chatting with Gattar. Their clothes didn’t have tears or patches. They weren’t worn at all either. Along with the scent of trouble, Craze detected money. A lot of it. He hoped they were of a mind to share, and he would get the idea going by offering them some malt. It was a manipulation that had often worked for him on Siegna—give to get.
“Five cups with the bottle, please.” He pinged tank woman the cost and a tip. Not tipping here would be as poor of a decision as drinking from the bottles in his pack, especially with opportunity so close.
He set the pitcher in front of Gattar and the bottle and cups in the center of the table, greeting the three folks in black with a thrust of his chin. Craze poured himself a hefty serving. It was a far cry from Bast’s magic carpet, but steps above the rubbish the Jix drank. Then he gestured between the three strangers and the bottle. “Thirsty? There’s a cup for you, too,” he said to Gattar.
She shook her head, opening her throat, gulping down more of the house horror ale. That she could drink so much of it, like it, and not get sick baffled Craze. Perhaps it was one of the modifications her race’s DNA had been given when it was spliced and diced up by the Foreworlders back on the fabled Earth.
He pulled at the smoky warmth in his cup, wincing at the sharp, bitter notes, notes that had no business in malt. The Jix and her shady friends had better make this up to him and his taste buds. Otherwise, this was the second worst hour of his life after the most recent one spent with Bast.
One of the gloom-clad things fidgeted, the drape of fabric rustling. “Yo still up for this, Gattar?” The words grated as if sifted through rocks.
So they knew each other and the Jix already knew what opportunity these mystery people offered. Craze wondered when he’d be let in on it.
The gravelly voice had to belong to a male. No telling what race of Backworlder he was though. Gravel Voice set a small bar, about the size of Craze’s thumb, down on the table. It was wrapped in gold foil and a fancy red-gelatin casing that sealed in whatever it was. Such protection hinted at great value.
Gravel voice’s thumb flicked in Craze’s direction. “This yo new partner?”
Gattar arched her brows at Craze, indicating he should answer. Craze understood she had set him up, but he didn’t know for what. Bending over, he sniffed at the wrapped bar on the table. The preservative casing held in any identifying scent, but he recognized the mark on the foil. He had seen it only once before in one of Bast’s blown deals.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, because if that bar was part of a shipment of chocolate, he was about to become the richest Verkinn that ever lived.
Chapter 9
Whispers from the underworld claimed chocolate only came from the Foreworlds, its origins still tied to the fairy-taled Earth. Craze didn’t believe that, but he knew chocolate was rare and held dear, dearer than air and water on many worlds. Channeled through clandestine sources, the one bar on the table cost more than his entire startup fund. No matter what Gattar’s intentions, Craze wanted to be involved in this trade.
“We partners,” he said, moving to rub at the Jix’s back, a show of solidarity.
“Then the deal is on,” Gravel Voice said. “Yo know where we want to meet. Three hours before sunup.”
Gattar nodded. “Agreed. See you then, friend.”
Gravel Voice held out a small rod. The bar of chocolate floated up off of the sticky tabletop, attracted to the rod, clinging to it. The mystery man slid both objects into his pocket and glided toward the exit with his entourage.
The foil had to be magnetized to do that. Interesting. “Who is they?” Craze asked, sinking back down into his seat.
“Opportunity,” Gattar said. “One we have to play perfectly. You need a lot of schooling might quick if we to pull this off.”
Craze wasn’t sure what they would be pulling off, but gave his consent. “OK. Let’s get started.”
“Not here.” She stood up, draining the pitcher, setting it down, and wiping her mouth before she took her first step toward the door. Despite its inferior quality, Craze dumped the bottle of malt in his bag and followed.
His eyelids fluttered against the glare of daylight outside and he stumbled, bumping into Gattar. “Sorry.” He donned a sheepish grin, wanting to grind home he was the rube she thought. He couldn’t miss out on this deal.
The Jix considered him in silence, standing still. Craze didn’t know what other factors she weighed other than she needed someone like him, someone fresh and strong with an intimidating build.
Gattar stepped into Craze’s space, grabbing onto the front of his coveralls, tugging the material away from his skin. She peered down, running a hand down his abdomen. “You know what wealth they offer. I can tell you know.”
It was the potential fortune more than the Jix tempting Craze. He didn’t try to hide it, didn’t pull away. “Chocolate,” he whispered against her cheek. “Did you get to taste it?”
“No,” she admitted.
“I hear it’s silky.” A good thing to bring up while she touched him.
Those neon green irises grew as large as his hand and pierced through his calculations, stirring up pangs of guilt. He didn’t know why, didn’t know what there was to feel guilty about. A trait of her kind? Craze made note of the possibility.
“You can quit trying so hard,” Gattar said, “I already decided to take you on.”
Shit. It was what he wanted, then again he didn’t. He feared what getting involved with her might mean, but he wanted this deal involving chocolate and would risk lying with something not entirely female to get it.
“Good.” He backed her up against a grimy wall, tugging on that single zipper, aiming to find out before he lost all nerve.
Her chest heaved and she gasped. Her mouth was a little perfect O, enjoying his eagerness before she pushed him off, glancing at the busy avenue a block away at the end of the alley.
She wet her lips, but it was more a nervous twitch than sensual. “Fo’wo’s be damned, no. Look we can’t be seen together any longer out here. It’ll ruin things.”
He understood the paranoia with chocolate involved. No unnecessary risks. Craze was glad of the reprieve yet put on his best dejected pout, pocketing his hands. “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
Sauntering between broken bottles and crates, sashaying his hips, he headed for the main street. Gattar stopped him, tugging him back into the shadows, thrusting a tab into his meaty palm.
“Be there in four hours. Plenty of time to get you ready.” She let her hand run down the inside of his shirt again and pulled him in for a kiss, inhaling his tongue and his malt-scented breath. He was stuck with her sour taste from the swill, but the Jix knew how to use that mouth, which made up for it some.
As quick as the passion started, Gattar ended it. She took off, slinking and trotting, disappearing once she hit the end of the alley and maneuvered into the avenue.
Chapter 10
Craze pulled one of the bottles he’d swiped from Bast out of his bag, swigging a good mouthful to get rid of the nasty tastes of inferior malt and rancid beer. No more than that, though. He didn’t want to dull the excitement. Chocolate! More wealth than he could imagine, and he could imagine a lot.
How would he get the luxury goods out of Gattar’s hands and wholly into his own? His first thought was to call Bast and the council, but he quickly discarded that. Their help would guarantee a successful sting, but they didn’t deserve the honor. Instead he pinged the aviarmen he met on the transport.
“How’s the ship buyin’ goin’?” Craze asked when Talos answered.
A tiny head with spiky blue hair glowed in a corner of the tab’s small screen. “We looking at it now,” Talos said. “It needs some work to fly again.”
“Can I come see?” A working spacecraft would go a long way toward getting the chocolate all to himself.
Talos pinged him the location and Craze made his way there. It was an abandon
ed hangar at the edge of the city surrounded by moldering warehouses and factories. Weeds wound their ways up the walls and over the walkways and roads. The pavement and structures crumbled. Craze kicked at the chunks, walking down the nearly deserted street bordered by chain-link fences, searching for the right gate. He pushed at entry 24357C, which screeched unwilling against the buckled tarmac.
Craze stood still, taking in the place, searching for motion and voices. He heard something in the direction of an old hangar, the roof sagging and groaning in the gentle breeze. The lot in front of it was littered with transports of all kinds: land, water, subterranean, air, and space.
A shock of blue hair bobbled above a flattened space transport. Shortly after, a crown of red appeared beside it. Craze waved at the aviarmen, shouting a hearty hello, greeting them as if long lost brothers.
“I can afford the ship,” Talos said, “but not it ‘n the propellant injector it needs to run.”
A lime-green spacecraft, color chipping off the hull, sat on the rotting tarmac. It was a bizarre shape marrying six caterpillars ringing the center where a couple of beetles met back-to-back. Besides peeling, the green hull was pitted and dented. The hatch groaned when summoned open, threatening to stick or disobey altogether.
“How much does a propellant injector cost?” Craze asked. It’d be worth the investment if he could afford it. “How long to get it installed?”
“Lepsi ‘n I could get the injector put in quick enough. It’s only a two-hour job. The cheapest one is ten thousand chips. It’s been hard used. Will get us out to the Edge ‘n landed once. Then we’ll need to find another to go anywhere else.”
Ouch. That would spend most of Craze’s startup fund, maybe leaving him enough for a coat and some basic supplies if he found a frugal shop.
“This one would be better.” Talos pointed at another injector. “It’s almost eleven thousand. Older, but not used as much ‘n would last longer than the other. Probably has a hundred jumps ‘n stops left in it.”
A much wiser buy, but shit, barely enough left for a meal unless Craze bumped into a desperate wholesaler. He’d have to take the risk. Once he got his hands on the chocolate, he wouldn’t have to worry about a budget ever again. “I think we could work somethin’ out.”
“Really?” Talos hopped from foot to foot, rubbing the pin his mother had given him. “Carry On.”
“You about to get it good, Federoy,” Lepsi said to his tab, his bother’s image summoned to the screen. He started to sing. “A ship for chips. Give me your chips. Pretty, sheeny chips.”
“Let’s go talk about it.” Craze shrugged a shoulder at an empty corner of the tarmac. “Away from ears ‘n eyes not ours.”
They climbed over treads and massive tires, ducked under hull frames and ship plates, then trudged over rubble and weeds until out in the open and alone.
“I fell into some business. So, I offer to finance the injector you need, if you can give me what I need,” Craze said.
Talos took a step back, his eyes narrowing. “What is it you need from us, mate?”
“To get that vessel in workin’ order by tonight ‘n to keep tabs on me. When you get my signal, you come in ‘n take up the cargo.” Craze crossed his toes, hoping he’d judged the aviarmen as hungry as he was.
Talos chewed on his lower lip. “What kind of cargo?”
Just as he’d suspected some interest sparked there. Craze fed the aviarman a little more. “One that will afford you an armada. Your own transport line.”
Talos stepped closer. “What?”
Craze whispered in Talos’s ear, then Lepsi’s. “Chocolate.”
The aviarmen’s eyes popped. Talos’s tongue flicked at his lips several times, his fingers clutched over his prized pin.
“How’d you bump into that?” Talos asked
The hook sank in like a docking clamp on the aviarmen, holding tight to the lure of great wealth and a less difficult life. Craze breathed easier. “I met a Jix—”
“A Jix? Oh, shit. You can’t trust a Jix, mate. Did you see the chocolate or did the Jix just say?”
“I saw it.” Craze crossed his arms and squared his jaw, annoyed at the aviarman and afraid he’d made a big mistake teaming up with Gattar.
Talos chewed on his lower lip. “A plus, but still, a Jix is a Jix.”
Craze needed all the information he could get. “You know about that race then?”
“Anyone who does any extensive traveling on the Edge or lives out there knows of the Jixes. They thugs who go about taking what they want from worlds that can’t defend themselves ‘n their assets.”
Users. No better than pirates. Craze had thought so. “How many Jixes is there?” He had to know exactly what he was messing with.
Talos shrugged. “No one ever sees more than a few at a time. They have their own ships though. The implication is a whole population of them. Like in the old days before the war.”
Craze would have to be extra careful then. Being hunted by the Verkinns was more than he could take. He didn’t need other races ostracizing him, too, telling him where else he wasn’t allowed to be.
“Ever hear of one named Gattar? She presented herself as a lass.”
Talos’s brows flew up and he whistled. “Shit. You mixed up with Gatt? A Jix with quite the reputation as a swindler. You won’t get the best end of the bargain from her, mate. In fact, you should be thinking the shipment ain’t chocolate.”
Craze kicked at a vine. “Shit fifty times over. What should I be worried about?”
“Something more illegal.”
Craze crossed his arms and drummed his fingers on his elbow. “Chocolate isn’t illegal.”
“Bet it was stolen. Either way, it’s a great thing to use to cover up something that is very illegal.”
The aviarman had a point. “Then we take the chocolate ‘n leave the rest. Call the authorities in. Will help our getaway while the Jix jaws her way out of that mess. Brilliant.”
Talos chuckled, apparently not opposed to wheeling and dealing. “Could work. Believe me, I want the chocolate as much as you do. We’ll figure something out. Especially if we can find an Eptu or two.”
“The Eptus? I don’t know them.”
“A lot like the Jixes, but they don’t look anything like them. Where the Jixes be graceful, the Eptus be burly. They have big noses that can smell a lie ‘n huge-ass ears than can hear an atom fart. I’ve seen the two bickering in saloons out on the Edge.”
The Eptus could prove a useful diversion. “They don’t like each other, huh?”
“Not at all. Rivals to the bitter end.”
Very useful, indeed. “Finding one or two would be to our benefit.”
“Leave that to Lepsi ‘n me. Deal?” Talos offered his hand, his prized button “Carry On” cradled in the palm.
Craze had one condition. “All before nightfall.”
“Speed is a trait of the aviarmen, mate.”
“Faster than lightning, superior to Federoy,” Lepsi sang. “Soon to be the richest sons of bitches in the Backworlds.”
Craze took Talos’s hand, then Lepsi’s, shaking them. “Deal. Partners.”
Chapter 11
Craze headed back toward the central city, checking on the address Gattar had given him. The building rose eight stories, a ramshackle midrise of rented rooms squiggling left and right like a drunk, not too far from the seedy bar where she’d taken him earlier. The apartments building was faded and dingy from the neglect of years, Elstwhere’s invasive vines threatened to reclaim it, and trash littered the stoop. The door sat half-open, stuck where it was by the buckling doorframe.
Craze circuited slowly around the block, noting the other businesses—pharmacies, bootlegged goods spread over cramped street corner stalls, diners, grungy mini-grocers, gambling parlors, and dancing girls. Other types of gals hung out in the shadows, trying to catch his attention. He brushed them off, branching out his surveillance to the adjacent blocks.
With hi
s tab, he took photos and video, noting the placement of security cameras and motion detectors. Craze wondered if the patrollers really kept track of it all, figuring they only reviewed images when there was call to do so. Would tonight create such a moment? He tugged at his suspenders, worried about exposing his face so much. Although, hiding it would perhaps bring attention sooner than he wanted. So, he kept on, playing tourist, stopping to look at products meant to part visitors from their funds.
“One of a kind Elstwhere plasticine. You’ll be the envy of your friends on the central planets. Everyone will want an invitation to your place, to eat off your plasticine-ware.” Not needing envy, Craze shuffled on, fingering scarves and knickknacks, scanning the side streets.
The Jix would want the meeting tonight to go off as low-key as possible. Those mystery people wouldn’t want any notice either. Therefore, Craze figured the exchange might happen nearby. The Jix had only ventured to the docks for a rube, otherwise she seemed to prefer staying in this general vicinity. Craze could see why. The bustle was enough to hide in, yet not so much as to get in the way. It wasn’t flagged as a notorious crime area. In fact, when Craze looked up the district on his tab, InfoCy said it was a good quarter of Elstwhere for families and shopping. Plus, it was close enough to the docks to make a ship useful and a getaway quick.
He enlarged his circuit by another block, keeping the location where he was to meet the Jix in the center. A row of wholesalers promising the lowest prices on Elstwhere led to an avenue with several abandoned storefronts. The street held promise as the place where the chocolate deal might go down. Craze noted fanned objects partially opened in front of the motion detectors on that road and boxy red modules attached under the security cameras, which hadn’t been on the cameras on the other streets. Craze photographed them, relaying the data to the aviarmen.
Lepsi texted back, “Probably jammers to take the cameras off line or to loop them.”
