My eyes widened at this last bit of information. Diamond slapped me on the back, presumably to let me know that I needed to keep my mouth shut. Who in the hell only accepts cash these days?
Even underworld folks accepted credits now. They had ways of making sure the systems they built and used couldn't track their transactions clearly.
I guess this Yusef guy was old fashioned.
Vartan had given me a boatload of cash in a special small case but was it going to be enough? Vince drained his beer and nodded to us both.
“What's your ship?”
“The Ghost. It's in the seventh fueling station in this ring,” said Diamond.
“Good. I'll make sure to talk to the right people so you guys can go and come back with no hassle. Once you get to Ning, go to the Turkish bazaar, to a red market stall with a guy outside smoking a gold cigar. The codename to use nowadays is Anatole.” Diamond arched his brows high.
“Yeah, he's changed it,” said Vince. Diamond nodded. “I'll take my credits up front and by hand, if you fellas don't mind,” he said, extending his arm. “It’ll be three thousand credits.” I took out and counted the cash equivalent and handed the bills to him. He counted them quickly and then nodded to me.
“Cash is always king. Glad I could be of service. You fellas have a nice day and a safe trip.” As Vince left I thought I detected a note of sarcasm in his farewell.
“Who doesn't take credits anymore?” I muttered irritably. As if I needed added complexity to an already complex situation.
“Don't sweat it. If the Boss is backing the mission you'll have the money. Cash or credit. If not, we'll find another way to get it, by hook or by crook.” He grinned. It was the “by crook” part that I was afraid was gong to make this possible. I was getting in deep into something I couldn't see the end of. But it was too late to worry about it now. And was that really anything new?
“How do we know if this Yusef guy intends us harm or won't cheat us?” I asked.
“We don't. But I've worked for him before and he never gave me cause to distrust him. We'll know if he's cheating us if the key doesn't work. Test the key while you're on the station before we leave.” I looked around.
“What?” asked Diamond, taking a bite of pizza that was entirely too big for his mouth.
“I hope we don't meet that one guy who ran you out of the business.” He stopped eating and stared at me. The grin was gone.
“Like you said earlier, that's what blasters are for.”
We finished our meal in silence and eventually made our way back to the Ghost. In about forty hours we'd reach our destination. I wondered if we would come out of the infamous place alive.
. . .
Gan Ning was in a sort of dead/neutral zone. It wasn't far from Earth's Moon. The nearest station to it was Atticus. But it was the proverbial white elephant in everyone's space. Or, more accurately, The Eyesore That Must Not Be Named. Whichever.
Normal people, like me, didn't come in the area unless they had specific business to conduct. Decent folk didn't come here at all.
It was often a station not mentioned. It was the mystery station I'd heard about while on mission in Langrenus.
Diamond maneuvered the Ghost around the station, an elongated, near black metal structure with rotating spiked rings on each end. It was an older model station; one that had long since been discontinued. We were told to halt by Station Control until a docking pad or a bay was made available by a computerized voice, none too friendly sounding either. Diamond demanded a private docking bay. That would be an extra wait. And a considerable amount of credits of which Diamond paid for rather easily. I had no issue with privacy. I trusted no one here.
While we waited Diamond took out a couple of cracked looking nose plugs, cleaned them with an alcohol solution and attached them each to small oxygen mask tube apparatuses. After two hours, Station Control contacted us again.
The voice was rough and deadly sounding as if the voice box had been programmed with two different voices pieced together by found objects in a junkyard.
“A private bay has just opened up. Follow the guiding lights of the mech crew. Don't follow them exactly and you lose your bay. No refunds.” Communication was shut off abruptly. Diamond sucked his teeth in irritation.
“As if I were a noob or something.”
Once we approached the dock the mechs hovered in space for a few minutes, then disappeared. Diamond piloted the Ghost in, settled into the bay and we secured the ship before leaving. The bay was small and dark except for a few dim lights overhead and the ship's own running lights when we opened the hatch. The dim overhead lights cast shadows on the edges of the bay just beyond our line of sight.
“It's very cold on Gan Ning. The air conditioning and filters don't work too well either. And not many people want to be seen walking around here in plain sight.” I felt the chill. He handed me a black cloak and one of the air masks. I put them on. The nose plug made my nostrils itch. As we left the bay and entered the air compression chamber and then into the main corridor we looked pretty much like everyone else.
“Where's the Gray District?” I whispered as we entered a lift tube.
“On the other side. It's basically the inner district. We've got a bit of a hike. But first, I need to take care of some business.”
“How long will it take?”
“Not long. About an hour. Probably less.” Frowning, I followed him. A few paces from the tube we reached a clumsy misshapen satellite module attached to the nearest wall. Just above the door was a neon sign of a dancing girl wearing pasties.
The air inside was little better than the air outside and choked with tobacco smoke, citrus, and other vapors to mask the stench. All to no avail. What I smelled most strongly were rank body odors. It was dark in most of the joint and I was barely able to see the faces of the patrons. The good thing about this was that people couldn't really see us that well either.
The main floor was a wide, circular space with a sunken floor. Electric blue stage lights lit up the dancers and some of them wore lights on their bodies. In fact, that was all they wore. And one of them was an anatomically correct female-looking mech. Diamond came to a desk in the back. A man was sitting there, a wolf hybrid sitting by his chair, counting hard cash with several armed men sitting or standing around him. He looked up.
“Diamond. So good of you to come, son. To the back, room number 5.” He smiled with all the friendliness of a hungry wolf. His teeth were heavily stained with tobacco. His eyes looked like tiny black pebbles in a narrow, pinched face. Diamond nodded and moved behind the man's desk. The bodyguards having looked us over, parted and let us through.
We moved past the sunken main floor towards a narrow, low hall and past a row of doors on each side.
“Diamond, What's this about?”
“I owe someone a big favor.”
“You're not smuggling again are you?” He looked around warily.
“No. I'm just here to take care of business. Stay here. I'll be out soon.” The doors slid open after he rang the chime. He stepped inside and they slid closed. I stood just out in the doorway. I peered to my right and then my left. The hall was empty. I listened, trying to look nonchalant and keeping my hand near my blaster. I coughed, my eyes and nose burning from the bad air and the irritation of the nose plug. I heard something like a soft swoosh or whisper and turned to see a woman coming down the hall from one of the rooms. I watched her closely from deep within my hood. She was of average height and lithe. She wore a form-fitting black suit and she was carrying a black cloak across her arm. Her hair was cut very short in a spiky 'do and she had blasters holstered at both hips. She had a slight swagger as her long black boots clicked against the floor. Her eyes looked flat and shined oddly like steel balls. She flicked an imperious look at me as she passed and moved down the hall. Ten minutes later, Diamond came out.
“Alright. Let's get down to the real business.”
“Thank you,” I said, co
ughing.
We left the joint and entered among the crowds outside. The station wasn't as crowded as I had expected it might be. Or at least not in this particular section. We entered the wide vast corridors of the Gray section, wading in with the rest of humanity. Most people wore breathing masks. Diamond was right. The air quality was suspect and it smelled like a sewer. The cheap masks we had on weren't much help. My nose itched badly and the nostrils felt inflamed. I was ready to tear it off my face but the suffocating smell on the station made me rethink that action. I glanced up. The air close to the ground was clear enough but further up towards the towering, cathedral-like ceiling the air could be seen as a grayish smog. The ceiling was so high it was not quite visible and stars would twinkle and peek through the smog.
Large amounts of black space opened up to an entire stadium length corridor, a faux open air section netted with a vast plexi-glass ceiling. On closer inspection some of those twinkling stars were revealed to be labor mechs hovering or flying above the station. Making basic, minimal sorts of repairs to keep the place from collapsing.
It was a dismal place compared to Gunner's Run. That station was Las Vegas compared to this ghetto. What I had also noticed upon closer examination was that some of the walls towards the inner part of the district seemed more like cheap particle board and aluminum sheets thrown up haphazardly for miles on end. Thank goodness they didn't patch the outside of the station with that stuff.
At times we rode upon a mini speeder when we could finally get one that was empty or if we couldn't find a working walkway to shorten our journey. I was careful not to look anyone in the eye. I didn't see much in the way of security mechs either, which made me very uncomfortable. The floors were dusty and full of footprints as if they hadn't been cleaned in months. The crowds also grew as we made our way deeper into the station; prostitutes were hawking themselves openly in the corridors or hanging out of brightly colored kiosks, pirates, thieves, and smugglers; all kinds of people. There were even some stray animals wandering the station. I also felt the presence of aliens, but they were hidden from my eye.
I kept pace with Diamond as he quickly wound through the crowds toward an electronic banner on the far end of the corridor that was colored deep gray. The Gray District.
Suddenly, I got a strange feeling. It crept up on me rather gradually until a sudden internal alarm went off in my mind. I quickly looked back. But I didn't see anyone paying us any special attention. Following Diamond some distance I looked again and caught sight of a heavily hooded and cloaked man with shining eyes like pinpoints of light. His pallor was grayish pale and I thought his lips were black, as if frost-bitten. He had to be following us. As soon as I caught sight of him he turned away and melted into the crowds. I did my best to study him but his non-descriptive, ragged black cloak told me nothing else other than he looked like everyone else. And perhaps that he was in dire straights. His complexion and look said that he was ill or had not seen the sun in some time. But this was merely a fleeting glimpse. It could have been a disguise. My alien sense helped me retain something of what I saw as well as alerting me to his presence.
“Who was that?” Diamond asked. He, too, had whip sharp senses, though not like mine. But he knew enough to beware of dangers lurking. He'd seen me tense up. I breathed slowly, thinking calmly.
“Someone is following us.”
“Who do you think is following us?”
“Could be someone I'd pissed off on Mars.” I thought of Furat. But he was dead, his body by now a dried out husk. Maybe one of the guys who tried to get away with stealing Will? And got a good beat down in that Martian cantina? Would they come out this far over an android? I didn't know. Diamond was now all business.
“I guess we better make sure our blasters are at the ready, then.”
“Always.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Could be a loyalist. I'm not sure yet.” And I needed to concentrate on the task at hand anyway. I pressed on my nose plug to ease the itching and rubbed my eyes which were starting to water.
“Let's just stay alert and get this key and get out of here,” I said.
We approached a small, red-painted textile stall in a marketplace around the corner. A man with a long gray beard stood smoking a golden cigar, watching us both.
“Anatole,” said Diamond quietly. The man's eyes flickered over us both again and then he motioned for us to follow him. He took us behind the stalls of the market to a secret, dim, narrow corridor.
“At the doors, all the way down with the engraved Kufic script,” he said gruffly. There were a couple of shops down this way. We walked down and approached the doors.
It was an unassuming doorway with double doors of dull steel. There were square, thick Arabic calligraphy signage engraved in them. Diamond raised a gloved hand, took off his glove and pressed his hand firmly against the right side of the right door. The outline impression of his hand and fingers were lit in red underneath and then this security signature turned green. There was a chime at the door and a voice came through an unseen speaker.
“Who are you?” Asked the voice.
“Bob and Diamond Dog. We're here about the purchase of a key.” The doors opened.
Inside was a rather small room but far cleaner and rather elegantly appointed, nearing the exotic.
“Please step inside quickly to keep the bad air out. And remove your shoes. Thank you,” said a voice from an interior room. The doors closed and locked behind us as I stepped through after Diamond and removed my boots. The air in here was heavy with incense. An incense log smoldered inside a large elephant-shaped holder sitting on the carpet near a ventilator. The walls were covered in tapestries spread with Arabic calligraphy. Some traditional Arabic music played softly in the background, piped in from elsewhere in the quarters. These quarters seemed a world away from the drab station outside. I noticed discreet laser guns slowly receding inside each of the walls. I smiled ruefully.
A man emerged from one of the rooms, wearing a pristine white thawb and golden slippers. He had jet black hair and a short beard. He was copper-skinned with black, sharp eyes that drank in everything. He bowed slightly to us.
“May I take your cloaks? Zaz!” We took off our cloaks and he ordered a labor mech waiting in the corner to retrieve them. The mech, Zaz, made a soft warbling sound as an affirmative.
“Tea? I am sure you've come a long way.” I was ready to say that we didn't have much time to fool around but Diamond interrupted me. I was on unfamiliar ground here.
“Your friend is in a hurry?”
“No, no hurry. Tea would be fine,” said Diamond pleasantly. The mech hurried off to a room behind a red drape. Diamond settled himself down on a beautiful Persian rug near a desk and the man himself did the same. I did so as well. After a series of introductions and pleasantries between Diamond and Yusef things finally got down to the point.
“So, I hear that you are looking for a key to an alien cipher?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see this cipher you have.” I took it out and handed it to him. He turned it around and around in his hands.
“Ah. So they are still in rotation, then.”
“I found this on Mars,” I said.
“On Mars?” he exclaimed. I nodded.
“Who did you get this from?” I felt uneasy giving him names. I didn't know this guy at all.
“I have a few friends who stay there. They collect metal objects of all kinds. They're scavengers. They use any material they find as resources. It's a hard life out there. They found this on a derelict ship. I got it from them.”
“You've actually been that far?” The man seemed very surprised.
“More than once.”
“Really? I have a brother who has been there. Very dangerous business, Mars. Do you know The Chemist?”
“I've met her before.”
“She deals in some very interesting things that one could transform into powerful, lethal weapons.”
“From time to time. He's created a company called Mimicry. A weapons manufacturer.”
“I haven't heard of this company,” I said. He smiled.
“They aren't the sort of company to work with the public. Or any government. But some of the substances and objects he's attained from her he's found extremely useful for building defensive weapons.”
“Weapons to use against loyalist aliens?” Yusef nodded. So he knew about them. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. People out here weren't coddled from reality like Earth-siders were.
“The human race faces extinction by loyalist aliens. The only things that stand between them and our destruction are the sentinels and rebels, human and alien. If it weren't for the ignorance of the world governments-”
'”I would not call it ignorance,” Yusef's accent was pronounced but his English was rather proper, more so than mine which told me he might have been British Arabic. “At least not complete ignorance. Some are aware, those that have not been compromised. They know more than they let on.”
“I used to be in the military,” said Diamond. “And I saw some things that I'm sure others couldn't have or shouldn't have missed.”
“It's time to expose them.”
“I agree. Well,” he carefully examined it in his hands, “this is very old. Of Kazad make. Older Suwudi society era object.”
“Kazad?”
“It's a word used for the era of the past society that made them. Although they are no longer made there are still a few keys that can unlock them. They don't work like human-made ciphers, no. Why do you want to unlock it?”
“It has a lot to do with the Sci-Tech convention this month.”
“The stargate?” Asked Yusef.
“Yes.” I was desperately hoping he wasn't an alien in a human mask. I used my senses, searching him. He'd shared an interesting bit of information about his brother. If it was the truth. I found no such sense at all that he was non-human. So I wasn't dealing with that, at least.
Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy Page 10
