by M. Pax
“Where we at?” Craze asked.
“Pote. You ‘n Rainly needed tending for your injuries. Yours was really bad. Cost us the remaining three bars, mate.”
Shit. That explained Talos’s glum face, but not the glimmer of optimism. “I’m sorry, dammitall, more sorry than I can say.” Craze ran a hand over his sore hair. It hurt too much to do anything but lay flat. Since he hadn’t ever cut it to avoid the extreme pain, the strands, without the usual waves and curls, tumbled down to his hips.
“No panicking. We’ll find another fortune,” Talos said. He seemed to mean it, too. He quit fidgeting with the button, pinning it on his coat. “Carry on. That’s what we’ll do. Don’t argue with Mom. She knew her stuff. She used to tell me sometimes things come along more important than trade routes ‘n riches. Here we be at one of those sometimes things.”
Were they? What had become more important? The creak in his side when Craze moved brought a few of them to mind: he’d lived, he’d get a tomorrow to seek his vengeance on Bast, and he’d rescued a sad gal. Maybe even given her a chance at some happiness. Dammitall, Talos was right. And it mattered a lot that the aviarman was here, standing by Craze, watching over him. It was a connection stronger than Craze ever had with his Verkinn family. A partnership worth as much as the sheeny chips they had let go.
“You think?” Craze asked.
“Life. Freedom. Good friends. A working ship ‘n the best of folks to sail it with. We’ll be all right. There’s places we can go ‘n start over.” He held out Craze’s tab with one hand, pinging it from the tab in his other. “We still have the money the Elstwhere patrollers gave us, which means something on some worlds. I made a list.”
Taking the proffered tab, Craze glanced at Talos’s data. Six planets offered homesteads and businesses at prices within their means. Six. A galaxy of possibility had narrowed down to those few options.
“We need another propellant cell for the Sequi though.” Talos fingered the pin on his lapel. “So you can scratch the first place off.”
Five options. “Can we get more chips if we keep chasing after the Fo’wo’s?”
Talos shook his head. “Dactyl got fired.”
“How come?”
“Because I made the choice to give up any chance at getting a reliable lead on the Fo’wo’s to help yous sorry asses ‘n I lost the shits. Then there’s the issue of bartering with stolen goods,” the lawman said, leaning into the room, nodding at Talos. “We about ready to go? Rainly’s anxious to start the home search. She’s never had one before. Ain’t that a shame?”
“You seem OK with how things turned out,” Craze said to the Quatten.
“It’s only a job ‘n money.” Dactyl’s long brown coat was gone, but he had sewn the sleeve back on his shirt, covering up the symbols that had scared the piss out of Rock Man.
Who exactly was Dactyl? Craze swallowed wrong, choking on his own spit. He held up a hand as he fought to get enough control back to speak. “Only? ‘N who’s Quasser? What’s that tattoo you got mean?”
“We all have a past. I won’t ask about yous dastardly pa unless yous want to say. Yous don’t ask about before I was a lawman unless I want to say.”
“OK. What will you say?”
“I joined up with the law to make up for things I’d done. Saving yous ‘n Rainly was the right thing to do no matter the consequences. Yous make up for things ...”
Craze could tell he’d learn nothing more. Not at this point. Maybe some day in the future when they’d all had many more adventures together. “Well, thank you. I appreciate it ‘n I’m pretty sure Rainly does, too. Where is she by the way? She OK?”
“She’s fine, thrilled to hear yous well enough to leave today.” Dactyl saluted Talos, fist to chest. “The Sequi’s ready to go, Captain. Except for the fuel cell.”
“I’m about to go buy it.” Talos stood with a sigh.
Craze knew he owed the aviarman for helping with the failed heist, for getting him out of custody, for giving him a place when he had none, and for not running off when things got rough. Nice things. Craze would keep his vow to return the kindnesses to Talos and Lepsi. “I have some really nice bottles of booze in my pack,” he said. “One or two should get what we need. Save your chips. Put option six back on the list.”
“Really?” Talos’s face brightened. “Running into you on that transport from Siegna turned out to be great fortune, mate. Life isn’t dull with you around. ‘N to think I didn’t want to be anywhere near you at first.” Laughing, he buzzed Lepsi on his tab, telling him to get Craze’s pack and meet them at the trader’s bay.
With Dactyl’s assistance, Talos helped Craze to the shop. Craze aided in negotiating the hooch for the propellant cell. His friends then guided him back to the Sequi, strapping him into his usual seat.
Rainly beamed at him. She wore a halter and shorts made from Dactyl’s coat with a patch over her heart that was Craze’s cuff. Over that bit of material she wore the lawman’s old badge, literally advertising her heart to the world. “You starting to look better. I’m so glad.” Her bruises were black as a cosmic void, but no darkness could tarnish her radiant disposition.
It made Craze smile, despite wishing most of his body parts would find new homes and leave him in peace. He squeezed her hand. “Good to see you, too.”
Sitting up so long made him moan, which led to thoughts of misery and the lost chocolates. They had left so much wealth behind on Wism. Maybe. Or maybe they didn’t. If they didn’t, that was a problem. One as big as the Rock Man and his brother. “What if most of those bars was mealworms? Those dudes will come for us. Won’t they?”
“As long as Quasser lives, we’ve nothing to worry about,” Dactyl said, settling into the chair beside Rainly’s.
“You ever goin’ to tell us who he is?” Craze would risk a slug or two to sate his curiosity.
“Yous may hear whispers of Quasser from time to time, but not from decent folks. He’s somebody yous don’t want to know. Not even by somebody else telling yous about him. Drop it, or we gonna talk for the next few hours about yous pa ‘n Yerness.”
Craze pressed his lips together, biting back his myriad questions. He didn’t want to pollute today or tomorrow with Bast and Yerness. Dactyl was right. The past was the past. “New beginnin’ right here. For all of us. Where we goin’, Captain?”
“Carry on!” Talos slapped the console. “We’ve been cleared for Danysovia. First stop on the list of possibilities.”
Craze peered at the planets Talos had pinged onto his tab. Little to no information besides the names and locations graced the InfoCy data files. After Danysovia was Lleteboor, Foradil, then a place called Pardeep Station. Exsix and Awjiscar were the last ports of opportunity.
Worries coated Craze’s palms in a cold, slick sheen. If Mortua and Wism lay outside their monetary means, what kind of holes in the galactic arm would these planets be? Shit. He wiped his hands off on his coveralls.
“Ready?” Talos clicked the course into the ship systems, taking the Sequi up toward the Lepper.
The streams of cobalt blue reached for the vessel to whisk Craze away from all the tragedies and failures, inspiring a resurgence of hope. Not every stop could end in disaster and disappointment. Could it? Nah.
And maybe there was nothing wrong with those six places besides being far out on the Edge. Just remote and unsettled, the new frontier, nothing worse. As the Backworlds healed from the war, they’d expand once again, and the Edge wouldn’t remain the boondocks forever. No. Untapped potential waited out there, and Craze would grab it along with his new-found brothers and sister.
“Danysovia here we come,” Lepsi sang out, waving Federoy’s image at the view out the spacecraft. “Give us chips. Give us chips.”
Dactyl held Rainly’s hand. They shared a smile, intimate and warm. Seemed they’d found something as precious as chocolate on Wism.
It made Craze miss Yerness for a split second. Then he realized it was the intimacy
he longed for and not her. Someday he’d find the right gal. He knew that and knew he’d be OK. The aches for lost love, Siegna, and home eased. He’d lucked into a cozy new life with a new family. One that actually looked out for him and shared this same journey. On a quest for better and for healing, together they would find it. One of those worlds on Talos’s list would become home.
Craze felt a tinge of excitement, wondering which one. “Let’s go.”
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M. Pax-- Inspiring the words I write, I spend my summers as a star guide at Pine Mountain Observatory in stunning Central Oregon where I live with the husband unit and two loving cats. I write science fiction and fantasy mostly. You can find out more by visiting my website: www.mpaxauthor.com
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Thanks to: Mom, the Husband Unit, William Pax, Kimberly Nicole, Dennis Strachota, Cleopatra Welsh, Ella Zane, Mike Rettig, Trudy Schoenborn, Tony Benson, Misha Gericke, Lindsay Buroker, Loretta Stephenson, and all my wonderful fans, the best there are on this planet and all others. Couldn’t do it without you.
©2012 M. Pax, All rights reserved
SNEAK PEEK
Stopover at the Backworlds’ Edge
The Backworlds Book 2
by M. Pax
CHAPTER 1
Incoming! The message vibrated through the floor, a low coo penetrating deep into Craze’s subhearing. The drone of an engine grew louder until the floor shook, reducing him to a speck in the galaxy’s workings. A reminder that liked to crop up twice daily when he wasn’t hibernating.
He rolled onto his back. Orange lights joined the alert, blinking at a frenetic rate. They fringed the mishmash tavern and quit flickering when his foot kicked up at the switch on the wall. Through the plexiglass skylight he saw the telltale flash, a cough of cobalt disturbing the anemic blue sky. The brightness stung until moisture built up in his eyes and he sneezed. Ship!
He inhaled deep, canvassing the scents in the ventilation system, seeking something different. Something revealing today would be the day the portal finally brought fortune, the means of revenge, the goal he’d clung to since his pa kicked him off the Verkinn homeworld three years ago. Had it really been that long?
“Damned Bast.” He spat. “Someday I’ll know wealth big enough to make you choke.”
Craze’s shoulders shrugged, shaking off the dregs of a nine-day hibernation, and he cursed not being woken sooner. “Fo’wo’s be damned.” Nine days of not pouring a single drink wasn’t anybody’s definition of success and certainly not his. At this rate, Bast would die before Craze made the man woefully sorry. He groaned, wondering how destiny had landed him here ... for the three thousandth time.
Pardeep Station had been fourth on Captain Talos’s list of possible homes. Hole of dust as it was, it hadn’t been as bad as Danysovia, Lleteboor, and Foradil. Six months of hopping around dung heaps and worse, searching, Craze had agreed with his shipmates —Talos, Lepsi, Rainly, and Dactyl — that they’d find no better. Especially once a Foradillan showed him images of the two worlds left on the list of possibilities. Indisputable proof there was much worse out there.
Yup, this dust ball was the best Craze and his friends could afford, once they got past the crusty, old caretaker — a war veteran still fighting the enemy in imaginary battles. When the old coot finally became convinced they weren’t Fo’wo spies, Craze negotiated homesteading fees for the lot of them.
Purchased with what they’d been paid by the Backworld Assembled Authorities to chase after some smugglers, Craze acquired space for his tavern, a permanent docking berth for their ship, the Sequi, a trading post for Talos, the position of dock facilitator and assistant for Rainly and Dactyl, and mining permits and a land transport for Lepsi to take up prospecting. Lepsi had hoped to find some pocket of value on Pardeep Station, something to set up an export business for himself and Talos. It never came about.
Craze built his bar at the base of the docking facility from scraps and unwanted materials, his friends helping him to get it together and make it presentable. In exchange, he assisted in setting up their new homes, although Craze couldn’t bring himself to call Pardeep and his tavern that. It settled more like a stepping stone in his heart. Someplace until something better came along. He’d been here two and a half years, and the moon hadn’t grown on him at all. In fact, he despised it more by the day.
To make it all worse, Lepsi disappeared a year ago. Never came back from one of his explorations. No trace of him had been found anywhere, not even his transport, coloring each day since with a sorrowful ache.
Mouth dryer than a dust pit, Craze ran his tongue around his gums, then stretched. He slipped on his boots and pushed himself off the mat laid out in the plexiglass foyer in front of his tavern door to prevent anyone from sneaking in without his knowing.
Tugging his suspenders up and his sleeves down, he readied for customers and the influx of chips, bright sheeny chips, which could transport him off this backworld’s Backworld to a better port with greater opportunity. Someplace with trees and potential, someplace that wasn’t the last stop for one hundred fifteen light years.
Rolling up the thickly woven filaments he used as a bed, he tucked it under the salvaged bar spliced together from discarded walls, doors, and the bodies of land vehicles topped by a counter poured from a resin he’d formed and sanded until it gleamed without blemish. Despite the discordance of the materials, a rich and mellow style had distilled and the tavern sparkled clean with everything in its place.
Behind the bar, he poked between the tapped kegs of mead and malt to find the means to contact the other residents of Pardeep Station, to make sure they’d seen the ship coming through the Lepper. Not many Backworlders – those bioengineered to take advantage of the scraggly planets the galaxy offered as less than ideal habitats – scrimped by here. Pardeep Station was rough and not fully formed, uninspiring and lacking in imagination, impersonating a stain.
Craze hit the summons to his neighbors, an icon on his tab – a thin flexible data device the size of a card. “Lepper opened. Ship headin’ in,” he yelled out to those who earned a living off travelers as much as he did.
His courtesy to his friends done, he shut off the connection and sauntered past five tables of different shapes coated in thick beige polymer. Returning to the plexiglass door in the vestibule, he waited on the approaching ship, wondering what kind of business to anticipate. What class of vessel would come out of the portal ripped into space by the Lepper System? How many people would be on board? A massive transport filled with the very rich kind of folks was what he dreamed of, knowing full well that was unlikely, as those kind rarely came to a place like Pardeep Station.
He shouldered into the door’s heavily scratched surface, which jerked open with a scraping noise after a shove and a kick. The air bit on the inside of Craze’s outspread nostrils, the sharp twang making him rub at the side of his nose.
The roar of approaching engines jostled the loose, gravelly soil, the granules jumping and skittering, sending up a dust s
torm of supergene proportion. His black eyes squinted through the commotion, making out a more densely packed column of dirt mingling with the ship’s wake, adding to the coming tempest.
The intensifying frenzy of dust sent a tremor of trepidation through him. Logic told him the darkening cloud was one of his fellow Pardeepans coming in to make a few sheeny chips off the tourists, yet his emotions ran rampant, sensing portent, perhaps for no other reason than it was more interesting to think so than not.
Craze filled the doorframe he leaned against with muscle and height. The splayed placement of his cheeks, eyes, flat nose, and prominent mouth allowed him to live comfortably on hot worlds rife with organics choking the air. His ability to hibernate let him survive in places with extreme seasons, seasonal being the key. The yearly changes on Pardeep went from cold to bitter. Craze made do though, like the other hardy souls who worked on this orbiting lump of arid rock.
His charcoal waves neatly rebraided themselves into a single plait, then lay still. The living hair gave him some popularity with females and saved him time grooming. Beyond that he’d never figured out what purpose that particular modification to his genes served. Catching insects maybe?
Pardeep’s dust-laden air tasted of chalk and tin, coating his tongue and thick lips. The incoming vessel swooped lower, gliding toward the docks rising twenty stories above his tavern. The bronze hued edifice glinted in the sunlight, otherwise the facility blended in with the soil. It was the only noticeable blip of civilization on Pardeep, and Craze would hardly call it that. Maybe if the incoming spacecraft brought more settlers he might.
