Renegades (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Two)

by Dan Worth

  Katherine continued to wander and shortly realised that she was the only human in sight. Unwittingly she had entered one of the alien quarters. The shops here were smaller, but each seemed to be far better stocked than the drab Commonwealth franchises she had left behind her. She spent a while drinking in the sights and sounds of the place, the curious beings that bustled around her, the tiny shops lined with a plethora of bizarre produce up to their low ceilings.

  After spending so long in near isolation on the Dyson Sphere it felt good to be among the throb of such a cosmopolitan place. She allowed herself to drift among the crowds, drinking in the atmosphere and venturing into a number of the more interesting looking shops.

  Standing outside a shop selling animals, whilst the occupants of the pavement display hooted, warbled and squeaked at her from their wire cages, she saw a long low building across the street with a large sign fixed across its frontage that read: ‘Best Restaurant on Barstow Station, All Species Catered For.’ The message was repeated below in at least a dozen different sets of characters and pictograms. As the smell of food wafted across the street she detected scents she recognised and her stomach started to growl in protest at the strong tang of frying garlic. She realised with a start that she hadn’t eaten anything since the paltry fare they had been served on board the liner almost half a day earlier.

  She crossed the street and looked inside the restaurant. It seemed busy with a largely human clientele and a smattering of other species. She wondered how on earth such a modestly sized place managed to cater for such a wide variety of metabolisms at once. In any case, the smell of the food and the popularity of the place seemed like a good omen so she went inside.

  Three quarters of an hour later Katherine reclined in her seat, the empty bowl that had previously contained a sizeable chicken curry before her as she sipped the last of her iced water, munched on the remains of a naan bread and waited for the bill. The sign outside hadn’t lied, the food was good. She hadn’t had a decent curry for so long that she struggled to remember the last time she’d eaten one. She and Rekkid had been surviving for so long on ration packs and alien foods with the assistance of digestive supplements that she’d begun to forget what real human cooking tasted like. To find something like this so far from home was a surprise, but a comforting one nonetheless. She made a mental note to bring Rekkid here for a future meal. Her cantankerous Arkari friend had developed a taste for spicy food during his years among humans; he’d appreciate this place. She’d called him earlier but he was still engrossed in his studies and had ordered food from the compound’s canteen.

  A bored looking waiter arrived and placed the bill by her right hand with a polite nod. As she reached for the folded slip of paper upon its small china plate her elbow was knocked by the passing casket of a Nahabe as it floated ponderously between tables. A gruff mechanical apology issued from a grill high up on the tall, coffin shaped conveyance as it proceeded towards the door and out into the street. Katherine rubbed the spot on her elbow where the angular carriage had struck her and wondered for a moment how such creatures managed to feed inside their caskets/vehicles/suits or whatever they were.

  The Nahabe were something of an enigma. Although they fully participated in galactic affairs, it was virtually unheard of for landing rights to be granted to other species on the worlds that comprised the handful of systems that they inhabited out here on the fringe. They had never been seen outside of the coffin-like caskets that they resided inside, each of which differed subtly in terms of shape and external decoration. Many were decorated with strange swirling patterns that presumably served as some form of identification. Katherine tried to imagine a whole planet of the creatures, floating silently to and fro like so many sentient obelisks.

  She had seen the mysterious creature earlier as its casket had sat at rest behind a table laden with plates and dishes of food. When she had looked again a few moments later the food had disappeared. Just another in the long line of weird things Katherine had seen on her travels. After the events she had witnessed in the past few years she tended to think she could best anyone in the telling of strange tales.

  As she reached for the bill a second time she noticed that another item had appeared on the plate. A small card was placed upon the bill. Curious, she lifted it up and turned it over in her hand, revealing the printed side. It read:

  You are in considerable danger. All is not as it appears. If you need to talk, contact us.

  Your friends

  Below the writing was an electronic address. Katherine pocketed the card, fumbled for her banking card, gave up and simply left a pile of paper currency on top of the bill before rushing out into the street. She scanned the crowd. Of the Nahabe there was no sign.

  There was an urgent tap on her shoulder.

  ‘Miss, excuse me.’

  Goddamn it, how had the alien slipped away so quickly?

  ‘Miss?’

  She turned and saw the waiter standing in the restaurant doorway. He was clutching the wad of bills she had left. To her mild embarrassment he explained rather sheepishly that in her hurry she had overpaid by over a hundred credits.

  Chapter 5

  The shuttle descended swiftly out of a brilliant blue sky dominated by the marbled orb of the gas giant Tethys, sixth planet of the Achernar system, around which the lush moon Orinoco orbited once every six months. Orinoco was one of twenty catalogued bodies around Tethys, three of which besides Orinoco harboured life. The moons basked in the warmth of the oblate blue star whilst also warmed from within by the gravitational stresses imposed by the close proximity of their gaseous parent planet. As a result, the moons were scarred with chains of active volcanoes that deposited their exotic mineral wealth onto the surrounding landscape.

  There had been some suggestions that the moons around the gas giants of Achernar had been terraformed in the past by some long vanished alien race. Certainly such an abundance of life was rare even in older systems, but for it to occur in such a young system as Achernar was unheard of. Conjecture and scientific study aside, the system now formed a local hub in the Commonwealth trade routes due to the richness of its many verdant moons and the abundance of resources and living space they provided for humans. With a number of more industrially based systems within easy reach, Achernar was a haven for traders and in addition, the number of exotic and often illegal substances produced by the local wildlife made it a positive goldmine for smugglers and other nefarious elements. The harsh justice dealt out by the local police and military forces was well known throughout the Commonwealth. ‘Achernar policing’ had become a byword for shoot first and ask questions later methods of crime prevention, but it was a big system, and a cunning captain with a fast ship who kept a low profile could make a fortune providing that he was never caught.

  The squat shuttle came to rest on the broad landing pad with a whine of AG motors and began to disgorge its cargo of passengers that it had brought from the orbital station that glinted in the sky above like a day-time star. Orinoco Station hung at the Lagrange point between the moon and Tethys, and was a moonlet that had been hollowed out, made airtight and habitable and then spun to create one standard gravity within.

  Isaacs stepped off the boarding ramp and glanced upwards at that tiny man made world where his ship now resided in a maintenance dock under the care of a Navy engineering team. Squinting in the harsh sunlight he followed the line of passengers into the terminal building at the heart of a pattern of landing pads and runways that formed a plain of concrete on the outskirts of Orinoco’s principal settlement, Bolivar City. Having passed through planetary customs he boarded the maglev train into the city centre where he alighted and then made his way on foot through the grid of dusty streets.

  Bolivar City was a busy place. The streets hummed with traffic and the comings and goings of its ten million citizens. Achernar was a popular destination for human settlers and had been for almost a century. Even so, the system’s twenty billion inhabitants were
spread thinly throughout the eighty or so catalogued bodies in the system resulting in few truly large cities by Commonwealth standards. Bolivar had grown up near the first spaceport on Orinoco, forming a hub of trade on the moon with the station locked in the Lagrange point above it. There was a lot of money to be made here, if you were ambitious or lucky enough. Bolivar City had the feel of somewhere on the make. As he walked, Isaacs noted that a few new buildings had sprung up even since his last visit barely a few months ago, glittering new structures in ever more daring forms. Yet more fashionable restaurants and exclusive shopping boutiques had also appeared, no doubt replacing the equally cutting edge establishments that had been there before until they had fallen foul of the fickle whims of the city’s populace. Isaacs chuckled to himself at some of the more outlandish fashions sported by the people milling past him as he walked, and noted a few returned looks of snobbish amusement at his slightly shabby appearance - not that he cared. Besides, where he was heading, fashion wasn’t an issue.

  Isaacs took a right down a narrow alleyway between two recently erected and as yet unoccupied skyscrapers. Behind this modern façade lay an older part of the city belonging to the original settlement. He walked between rows of slightly sagging buildings, cheap modular constructions that had been thrown up in a hurry, decades earlier, to cope with the sudden influx of people eager to escape the overcrowded Solar System and start a new life. One of the larger units bore a flickering holo-sign that depicted a slightly off colour glass of beer revolving slowly over the door with the word ‘Mulligan’s’ hovering just over the lintel. Isaacs could never work out where the name came from, the owner wasn’t even human, never mind of Irish descent. It welcomed Isaacs like an old friend as he stepped inside.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior having come from the bright sunshine outside. It gave everyone in the bar time to look him over as he entered before he could see them, a sensible precaution when many patrons of Mulligan’s preferred to remain out of sight. For now, the bar was fairly quiet. A couple of Hyrdians talked in low voices in one of the booths, a few humans had gathered around the battered pool table at the back of the long low room and a sole drunk hunched over his drink at the large island bar, staring intently at the rising bubbles in the electric blue liquid in his glass. Isaacs was of the opinion that you should never, ever drink anything blue.

  He sat down on one the cracked bar stools a couple of places away from the drunk and waited for the barman, a large Vreeth by the name of Ittuck, to notice him. Isaacs eyed the ponderous being as it polished glasses, gripping them in its dextrous tentacles as it worked but apparently only succeeding in re-arranging the patterns of grease on them a little. One of Ittuck’s compound eyes swivelled his way. The creature replaced the glass he was holding on the bar, inflated his gas bladders and swam over to him.

  ‘Isaacs! Long time since you were in here last!’ The tinny voice came from the cheap translation amulet that Ittuck wore strapped around the base of one his primary tentacles, turning his native language of clicks and chirps into languages intelligible to his varied customers.

  ‘It’s certainly been a few months now. You’ve put on weight I see,’ Isaacs jibed back, pointing a finger towards Ittuck’s ponderous body.

  ‘What? Just a little middle aged spread I assure you. Besides, what’s the point of life if you can’t enjoy it, eh?’ One of Ittuck’s tentacles slapped his flanks as if to emphasise the point.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder how you stay afloat, I really do.’

  ‘Pah! Food is good for one’s float bladders. Plenty of methane! So, what brings you here?’

  ‘Well, a drink would be really welcome. You still getting that really good beer from Arcturus?’

  ‘Of course, my human customers love it! Coming up.’

  ‘And well, I was wondering if you’d heard of any interesting jobs going.’

  ‘I see, I thought as much,’ said Ittuck and placed a cool, foaming glass of beer in front of Isaacs who waved his banking card in the direction of the register and began to drink gratefully. Ittuck eyed his progress down the glass and started to pour another. ‘Last I heard you’d got some crazy contract in Imperial space getting refugees out. Frankly, I thought that’d be the last we’d see of you, my friend.’

  ‘Well, you almost thought right.’

  ‘I hope it was worth it, the money I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, it worked out pretty well actually, better than the original deal. My clients were very generous.’

  ‘Go on, tell me about it,’ said Ittuck as he watched Isaacs begin his second drink with almost as much enthusiasm as the first.

  An hour later and Isaacs was retelling his story for the third time to a group of freighter crewmen who had wandered in and had overheard his second telling of his recent escapades to the group of pool sharks that Isaacs had befriended, having discovered that he knew one of them from an old job in Delta Pavonis. Isaacs was now onto his sixth drink and was rather more animated than when he had strolled into the bar earlier.

  ‘So then by this point I’m convinced that we’re totally fucked. I mean there’s no way these bastards are going to let me go, you know what those lizards are like once they get pissed off, right?’ There were a few nods and murmurs of agreement. ‘Anyway, fuck me if this other, bigger, K’Soth ship doesn’t jump in right on top of us and starts shooting the shit out of the one that’s got me! Fucking plasma cannon missed me by centimetres I’m telling you, took out that War Temple in one go. I only just managed to hit the drives before the fucking thing’s reactor went critical, pretty lucky to get away actually. Back of the ship was melted to shit.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Isaacs,’ said the pool player that Isaacs had recognised, whose name was Willard. ‘You don’t half like to cut it fine. Are you sure it was worth risking getting your balls shot off by Imperial warships? I hope they paid you enough.’

  ‘Yeah, I did pretty well out of it actually. They even paid for my ship repairing.’

  ‘Some of those K’Soth families are pretty flush with cash you know,’ said one of the freighter crewmen. ‘Guy I know got a load out last month. Almost made enough to retire on. Course his ship’s much bigger than yours, one of them new civvy models of the Pelican transports the military use. Nice ship. How much did you make?’

  ‘Three hundred thousand,’ said Isaacs with a hint of smugness. There were a few impressed noises from his audience.

  ‘Not bad for a ship the size of yours,’ said Willard. ‘They must have been desperate alright.’

  ‘Yeah well, I found out why didn’t I? Someone must’ve wanted them pretty badly to send that War Temple after them.’

  A heavy hand landed on Isaacs’ shoulder. He smelt cigarette smoke and stale beer on the breath that issued from the mouth that now spoke in a hoarse, calm manner by his left ear.

  ‘Well if you’ve got three hundred thousand, that should almost cover the money we’re owed won’t it? Or maybe we’ll have your ship instead; I hear it’s a nice model too.’

  Isaacs turned on his stool and looked into the cold grey eyes of a large, well built man with a black tattoo that coiled its way like a creeping vine up his neck, then around the side of his face until it framed his left eye socket. Bulldog, unshaven features topped with a close cropped bullet shaped head glowered at him. The man’s leather jacket bulged ominously under the pits beneath his bear-like arms. Everything about the man’s stature spoke of illegal genetic alterations.

  ‘And who the fuck are you?’ replied Isaacs, overly confident with drink, and instantly regretted it as the man grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him half way across the bar to land against a table with a force that knocked the wind from him. Isaacs struggled to stand as the man mountain bore down on him and hauled him to his feet. Some of the group he had been entertaining with his story were coming to their senses and moving to intervene. The giant produced some sort of hand cannon from his jacket and waved it at them and Ittuck who
was reaching for the emergency police call button under the bar.

  ‘Any of you fuckers feel like being a hero?’ barked the giant. ‘Sit the fuck back down. This is private business between Mr Bennett and this sack of shit here. You all know Mr Bennett right? In fact if I recall some of you owe him money too, including you Ittuck, you fucking fart filled balloon. You ain’t seen nothing unusual, right? Don’t worry I ain’t gonna kill ‘im. Dead blokes don’t pay up.’

  With that he dragged Isaacs outside by his collar.

  Isaacs landed heavily in the pile of rubbish filled bags in the alleyway, his head ringing from the blow that the giant had just landed on his left ear. The giant strode over and aimed a kick at Isaacs’ guts then watched with grim satisfaction as his victim proceeded to vomit up the six pints of beer he had just consumed.

  ‘Now,’ said the giant with exaggerated slowness. ‘Where. Is. Mister. Bennett’s. Fucking. Money?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ replied Isaacs hoarsely, and then spat out a chunk of puke. The giant sighed and pushed his face into the fresh pool of vomit with the sole of his boot.

  ‘You owe Mr Bennett four hundred thousand credits, that’s what I’m fucking talking about. You got the money, I heard you in there, boasting to that fucking shower of arseholes at the bar. You’d better pay up.’ The giant turned him over, produced the hand cannon again and pointed it at Isaac’s groin.