by M. Pax
A thieving strategy older than the Backworlds. This had to be the street. Someone had prepped the area for covert activity. Who? The smugglers? The Jix? Chocolate was reason enough for precautions, but the tampering with cameras and motion detectors increased Craze’s wariness.
He thought about what Talos had said about the Jixes and Gattar in particular, wondering what the chocolate might conceal. The worst thing he could imagine was a shipment of frizzers, taboo weapons of the Foreworlds outlawed on the Backworlds. If he planned for that kind of bad, he’d be ready for whatever the deal turned out to be. He hoped not frizzers. He didn’t want to be involved with that, didn’t like the idea of anyone on the Backworlds having those awful weapons. Setting one paralyzed the victim in searing agony. Setting two burned flesh in blue flames. Setting three calcified bone, dooming the victim to a slow, excruciating death. Taboo for very good reason.
“It doesn’t have to be anything more than chocolates.” A mantra to calm his worries, he said it again and again.
He ducked toward the most shadowed of the buildings, the one he’d choose for a clandestine operation he didn’t want anyone noticing. Four stories high, a faded sign on its facade announced it as Mr. Slade’s Emporium. Craze didn’t know what that meant, what type of business Mr. Slade advertised. It didn’t matter.
The sealed front door wouldn’t budge. The caked-over windows revealed nothing of the inside. Craze went around to the back. Two doors were barred over and locked up tight. He tried them anyway. Neither had any give. The building next door had a half-broken entry. Craze slipped into it.
He crouched motionless, silent, listening, letting all his senses span out to detect anyone who might be there. The room he hunched in had been a kitchen abandoned in haste. Pots and pans, crates and cans, mud and dirt lay strewn everywhere. Smoke stains marked the walls.
After five minutes passed and nothing stirred, he crept toward the doorframe. He moved deeper into the building, seeking a way into Mr. Slade’s Emporium. Nothing presented itself on the ground floor. Craze found the stairwell up and tiptoed over litter and shoes, old mattresses and discarded tabs. More tables and chairs filled an open expanse on the second floor. It was either more dining space or another restaurant. No doorways led to the emporium, but there was a balcony. A plank lay across its railing and rested on the sill of an open window of Mr. Slade’s.
Craze crawled out on the boards, reaching for the sill, pulling himself over, pushing up the window, and letting himself inside. He huddled in the dim light, pressing himself against the wall while listening for activity within the building. The room he hunched in was stark and small, swept clean of litter unlike the restaurants he’d slunk through to get here. The difference was telling. This would be the place.
He heard nothing move, so he slinked toward the doorway. The next room was larger. Some shelves and racks with empty hangars spanned the space. It was obviously a shop in a former life. The exit yawned wide on the far side. Craze inched toward it. It opened onto a terrace ringing the interior. The expanse wasn’t huge. Craze could touch the railing in front of the shop opposite if he stretched out his arms.
All rubbish and dirt had been cleared and banished to the corners. He glanced down at the empty lobby noting a large X and O marked on the floor in tape. Stairs led up and down. Craze went down, finding the entrances and exits, noting the crevices in which to hide.
He went back up, mapping any possible ways in and out on the upper floors, paying careful attention to anything that was something in all the emptiness. He spotted a pulley system attached to the third floor, set up with a huge hook and chains to handle the burden of heavy weight. A large metal disc topped it off. He touched it, sniffed it, observed an On switch. He flicked it, and the disc hummed. Clips, hangers, and wires flew up to slam against its flat surface.
“A magnet.” Craze nodded, plucking off the clips, hangers, and wires before shutting it off. He circled around the interior again. If this ended up being the place, he wanted to know it very well.
When done, he inched back over the boards to the building next door. From its balcony, he leaped onto the terrace of the shop across from it. He slipped inside the window and down the steps, finding himself in the backroom of a deli. Tiptoeing into the aisles, he was about to sneak out into the street undetected. His tab buzzed and he jumped.
The chime sent him in a hurry to examine the goods in front of him as if looking for just that very thing. He pretended to determine the best one, grabbed a jar of pickled snoink feet and tails, set it down on the counter, and hoped the shopkeeper hadn’t noticed he’d ducked in from the back. It was possible she hadn’t. She was quite engrossed with her tab.
“Fifty chips,” the merchant said, still giving more attention to her tab than Craze.
Shit. Fifty chips for something Craze wouldn’t eat. Chips he couldn’t afford. Not until he got his hands on that chocolate. Craze pinged the money over, glancing at the ID of the incoming call. He gulped. He should let it ring or cut it off, but the tiny face was one he hadn’t learned to say no to yet. He wondered if he ever would.
“Hello, Yerness.”
Chapter 12
Craze left the deli, staring at the miniature depiction of his lost love. He hadn’t changed her avatar, so hearts tumbled from her lips. Part of him didn’t want to know what she had to say, but the part that did want to know won out.
“Baby,” Yerness drawled. “You really miffed with me?” Her long lashes fluttered, each blink like a tumbler full of rancid ale in his gut.
“Shouldn’t you be botherin’ Bast? You punched in the wrong tab code,” he said, gazing into store windows as he strolled down the street, acting as if he wasn’t interested in her call.
“Don’t be like that. It was the only way we could be closer. It was marry Bast or creepy old Confo. The elders wouldn’t pair me with you. You don’t meet my requirements.”
She had known that when they met, ignoring his mid-level status in the end, toying with him all these months. His chest felt as if it sank. He rubbed at it. “How long you been aimin’ at my pa?”
“Don’t pout. It makes your lips all sexy. Wish I could kiss ‘em up ‘n make you feel better.”
The kittenish tones raked over his nerves, rendering them raw and ragged, bringing on a case of tight jaw until he growled. “How long you been anglin’ for Bast, Yerness? The whole time you with me?”
Her brow furrowed and the flirty smile flitted off her lips. “Noise of his rise was rumored in the council fifteen months ago. My uncle, one of the elders, gave me the list of potentials. I couldn’t get stuck with Confo, Craze. Just couldn’t.”
She shuddered, scrunching up her pretty face, but her helpless act wouldn’t work this time. His lips drew taut. “Your uncle ‘n his friends branded me a leecher.”
“Not forever, Baby. My uncle ‘n Bast promise they’ll get it lifted before the year is out, then herald you as hero when you make your fortune.”
Those promises meant nothing. Bast and the council would do what was in their best interests like they always did. Craze didn’t hold out hope for any other result. Unless he let them in on the chocolate. No, none of them deserved the show of respect. They’d only take it as a sign that Craze was a mark to be tromped on and used. Like he’d been under Bast all these years. He didn’t want that. It was time to stand on his own, to rise above them and show them he was someone to take seriously. That included Yerness.
He didn’t get this call. Although he now understood Yerness’s motives in getting close to him, he didn’t get what her current one for contacting him was. “What do you want from me?”
“We about to be family. Let’s not be angry with each other.”
What did she have to be angry with him about? He shook his head, stopping in front of a bright purple shop splattered with sparkles and splashes of cobalt blue, Must Have Gear for the Edge. Coats, bags, and supplies were crammed everywhere inside in no order Craze could discern.
> “It doesn’t matter,” he answered. “We not allowed to be in touch anyway. Bast said. The council said.”
“I know. Just wanted to call this once ‘n say how sorry I am. Tell me you sorry, too.”
She was something. Craze vowed not to let beauty play him like this ever again. “For what?”
“For not finding status ‘n fortune faster, so I could be yours instead.”
Craze sucked in a sharp breath. “I was on the list.”
“Not at the level I need, Baby. Try to understand. You let me down.”
He stepped inside the shop curious about what ‘must haves’ he didn’t have for travelling around the Edge. The prices were reasonable and the workmanship of the goods not as shoddy as Craze expected.
“Look, I’m busy,” he said.
She bit her lower lip in that adorable way, batting her eyelids, the long lashes sweeping over the lovely curve of her cheekbones. “Business already? I knew you’d do great. Just knew it. The sooner you make it, the sooner the council will renounce your leecher status. I can void my pairing with Bast ‘n—”
“No, Yerness. You can take a flyin’ leap off a space dock. I won’t want you when I’m rich. We done.”
He took their connection offline, deleting her avatar, blocking her code, grunting with a modicum of satisfaction. “Bitch.”
The racks of gear beckoned to him. Craze rifled through the coats, searching for a dark gray duster in his size. A display of hourglasses sifting black sand gave him an idea. He splurged his last coins on gum, sacks of rice, and a patrol siren.
Chapter 13
He met the aviarmen and gave them the siren, rice sacks, pickled snoink, and the spool of clear, super-strong filament he’d taken from Bast’s tavern. Together, they went over Craze’s tab files from the surveillance of Mr. Slade’s Emporium and the street.
Lepsi spent a lot of time studying the objects in front of the motion detectors near the abandoned emporium. “These fans will soon unfold so as to block the sensors,” he said. “If we were to go back now, we’d see they’d be slightly bigger than when you were there. If they move slow enough, the detectors can’t see them.”
Craze peered over the aviarman’s shoulder, reaching around Lepsi to scroll onto footage of Mr. Slade’s Emporium. “I’m pretty sure that will be the place. It was neater than the other empty storefronts ‘n it seemed arranged with the marks on the floor ‘n the pulley system.”
Lepsi leafed through more images of the emporium and neighboring buildings, slowing at the preparations Craze mentioned. “Most likely.” The aviarman enlarged stills of the security cameras.
Craze placed a picture of an altered motion detector beside it on the tab’s screen. “Does that look like the Jix’s handy work?”
Lepsi cocked his head, considering. “My knowledge of the Jixes isn’t that intimate yet.”
“Shit.” Craze’s first-hand data about Gattar remained limited. It was an issue, but not a large enough one to prevent him from going forward. “That’s about to change.”
“Oh, yes.” Lepsi chuckled. “We should know her very well by sunrise.” He ran a hand through his shock of red hair, singing his concerns away. “Will we love Jixes tomorrow? Or will they suck like Federoy? Give me chocolates ‘n I won’t give a damn.”
Craze waited for Lepsi to stop, his hair braiding itself into a single, thick plait down his back. He waved his hand over the rice sacks, spool of clear filament, jar of pickled snoink, and patrol siren. “Do you think you’ll be set up in time?”
Lepsi nodded. “The ship is fixed ‘n parked in a berth at the docks. We found the perfect hover scoot to borrow that can handle any crates of chocolate we find. We’ll go work on that setup now.” He gestured at the pile including the spool of filament and rice. “No worries, us ‘n the scoot will be in place.”
Craze rocked on his heels, tugging at his suspenders. “The Eptus? We still of a mind to use them?”
Lepsi grinned, slapping Talos on the back. “We’ll take care of that, too. It’ll be fun to rile them up.”
Craze let out a slow breath. “In a few hours we could all end up very rich.”
Talos held out his prized button, beaming. “Carry on! We’ll be able to go far out on the Edge to places few have ever been. Find unique items ‘n send them in to Elstwhere. A trade route of our own.”
It was a dream as nice as Craze having his own tavern. Working with the aviarmen seemed a good fit, like the soft new boots he wore. He folded his new gray coat and placed it in his duffel. He handed his pack to Talos, giving more trust than he would normally dare.
A little voice warned him, “Remember Bast. Remember Bast.” He told it to shut up. The aviarmen weren’t Verkinns and they showed little sign of being totally despicable, just despicable enough. Like Craze. Like normal Backworlders. So he hoped.
Chapter 14
The time approached when Craze was to meet Gattar. He entered the building with the half-open door. Rotting carpet curled up from the floor, peeling wallpaper in faded pink exposed crumbling gray walls, a sour odor permeated the dim corridors, and the structure groaned with each puff of breeze. Otherwise, the place remained as silent as a tavern at sunup. He labored up two flights of stairs, the treads worn unevenly from use, and knocked on the room number the Jix had given him.
She cracked the door, widening it just enough to yank him inside. “Good, you on time.”
The room was no better than the hallway, harboring a forgotten past, an era before the war with the Foreworlds. Craze figured by the broken, splintering furniture, the building was at least that old. Shades of lackluster pink tinted the walls, floor, ceiling, and fixtures, like someone once had a fetish and no one ever dared to argue.
Craze squirmed out of Gattar’s grasp, straightening his shirt. He handed her back the tab she’d given him in the alley earlier. “You said I have a lot to learn. Let’s get to it.”
He didn’t want to renew their lustful play, no longer feeling brave about discovering what exactly the Jix was under the silver romper. Besides, it was unnecessary. The Jix had gone too far to dissolve their agreement.
“I hope there’ll be time for other things.” Her lips brushed perilously close to his. “Depends on just how naive you is as to how long it’ll take to teach you your part.”
He’d act plenty stupid and make the lessons take every second. “I’ve never done anythin’ like this before ‘n I’m not exactly sure what this is we doin’.”
“We moving goods. That’s all. We pay the sellers, they give us the codes of the crates. We take the crates. I give you your cut ‘n we go our separate ways.”
The scenario worked for Craze, especially the last part. “What’s my cut?”
“Twenty thousand chips. That’s a whole lot of fortune.”
Not enough to buy two bars of chocolate, and less than one percent of the haul. Awful pay. Craze bit his lip not to grumble. Gattar would be suspicious if he proved he knew the value of things. “Wow. So, what do I do?”
“We go to where the folks we met in the bar want to rendezvous. You go in with the chips ‘n set the case on the floor. There’ll be an X ‘n an O. You put the money on the X ‘n go back to the O.”
Mr. Slade’s Emporium was the meeting place then. No doubt remained. He wanted to whoop at the top of his lungs. He swallowed the triumph, so as not to risk this chance. No telling when or if another would come along.
“You wait there,” the Jix continued. “They’ll take the money ‘n put down some crates. A few moments later, they’ll give you the codes. We test them, check the goods, then we move the crates. I pay you. You go away.”
Craze sure hoped Lepsi and Talos would have everything ready in time, and he hoped they wouldn’t double cross him. Nah, they were too grateful for the propellant injector for their ship. They’d made him crew. They’d be true to their word. So Craze kept telling himself. “Doesn’t sound too complicated.”
“But if you do it wrong, they’ll shoo
t you.”
There was the rub. He’d be the one on the firing line. “I see.”
“Still up for this?”
“Twenty thousand is a lot of chips.” Craze grinned as if the amount really excited him. In a way it did. It was more than Bast had given him. “So, yes.”
“Good.”
Gattar sauntered close, running her fingers over his chest, getting too friendly, reaching for his exposed skin. Craze really didn’t want to go there with the Jix. Really, really didn’t want to. He twisted and wiggled to keep her touch on his clothes, checking the hour on a pink clock on a tilting table. Three and a half hours until the rendezvous, an eternity to do what she hinted at, and several times over at a languid pace. Shit.
“Show me again exactly how to walk into the place ‘n hold the case of chips. I don’t want to get shot.” Normally, he hated acting so stupid, but not in this situation.
Chapter 15
At an hour when the city lay motionless, poised in suspension until the sun rose again, Craze stood inside Mr. Slade’s Emporium. The front door was now unsealed, and a case filled with chips was in his hand. The money weighed a lot, threatening to make him walk lopsided. He resisted, striving to regain the dignity Bast and the council had robbed him of on Siegna.
He set the burdened attaché down on the enormous X on the floor. Nothing in the lobby had changed from his earlier visit except for the sacks of rice piled beside some trash on a shelf. Craze noted a piece of vine beside the sacks, a signal from the aviarmen that the clear filament was attached holding the jar of pickled snoink at the fourth floor above the magnet and pulley system the smugglers had installed. He chanced glancing up, relieved not to see the shine of glass from the jar. The aviarmen must have painted it black as they had planned.
Although he was glad to know Talos and Lepsi had everything in place, Craze’s shoulders didn’t unclench and his steps came off stiff as he lumbered to the O taped out a good twenty feet away. He stood mute in its center. A low hum disturbed the heavy quiet. The case shot up. A loud clang thundered through the empty building.
