by Lindsay Peet
CHAPTER ONE
I’d picked out a table by the stage, not because I’m a music lover but because it was harder to sneak up on me that way. Who was I going to meet? Didn’t really know, just that it sounded like work, and I could surely use some of that the way things had been lately, so I waited for the music to start or my contact to show.
What a glamorous life I was leading! What’s not to love about hanging around in places like this bar/club, overflowing with the smells of cheap colognes and spilled booze, the shadows where schemes are hatched and promises betrayed, the whispered discords of furtive lies and flat harmonies– lots of nasty stuff going on, from hearts breaking to spaz-dancing to contracts on soon-to-be-dead men?
The Imperial Secret Service had cut me loose – or, as they explained, they didn’t ‘have the right opportunity available for you right now, Jaf’ – so I’d been on my own for some time, and a long, thin five years it had been. I still had the translator in my mastoid and the benefits of the treatments and training they’d given me, and they’d be beneficial no matter what job I ended up doing, but I was getting too near being healthy, well-trained and broke to suit my self-image. For me, a job didn’t mean working in an office or crewing a merchantman, at least not a legitimate one – you see, because I didn’t have a legitimate curriculum vitae my jobs had to come from the fringes and dregs of society, if not beyond the fringes and below the dregs. So, I nursed my rye, swiveled my head slowly, and listened for odd changes in the tenor or pitch of the babble, because that’s how trouble announces itself in these joints.
I’d parked myself in a corner by the stage, where I was hidden in darkness, and anybody approaching would have to wade through the splash of the stage lights. This was my attempt to play this cautiously. It had been too long since I’d had a paying gig, and in the meantime I’d been playing cards, playing hooky, playing with women, and drinking too much. It might be a measure of how self-deluded I was that I still felt sharp and on my game, watching and waiting, but in truth my nerves were detuned and flat.
Onstage a band was tuning up, clicking, popping, muttering, feeding back, and then the lights got brighter, the song started and I found myself penumbra’d, so I shifted my chair a bit out of the glare and settled back down. While doing that I happened to give a listen to the song.
‘Auto-tautological
Could be we’re even mythical
Babe, don’t be so cynical
C’mon and let’s get physical!
It wasn’t the nonsense words that got my attention, it was the voice. Gravelly, raspy, and unique. Bewildered and amazed I looked up over my shoulder and saw my old partner in crime Wanliet stalking the stage.
Escha-scatalogical
You know th’ end is imminent
The gist of what the genie meant --
It’s all some weird experiment!
All the while his hands were moving through the air, sparks seeming to fly from his fingers as they tickled virtual keys, weaving sound and light together.
Wanliet! I hadn’t seen him since Mobahey, all those years ago! Man, I couldn’t wait for the break to catch up! What were the odds of bumping into him like this?
Wait! What were the odds?!At first I’d been delighted, and then a growing sense of dread started boiling up my bowels, as it hit me that Wanliet and I had a very powerful and ruthless man by the name of Basoolah who wanted us both dead, and whom I’d met in just such a club, where he and I had settled on terms for the job where I and Wanliet ended up cheating him – or so he thought, and what he thought was very important.
Like a sucker-punch it rocked me, this was no happy coincidence, this was a setup! Something very bad was going to happen very soon, and Wanliet and I were going to be at the wrong end of it!
The stage was about waist-high, so without thinking I back-sat on it then pivoted to the side and up to my knee and then let my momentum carry me up. Wanliet watched me, first puzzled as he saw me, then joyous as he recognized me, then comprehending and apprehensive as he made the connection I’d made, then terrified, and then mystified as I grabbed his collar and yanked him off the stage, pausing in the wings to pop a floodlight with my pistol, dropping slivers of chaos and panic from the scaffold.
We both knew there was no time for pleasantries and catching up. He was quick on the uptake, I’ll give him that. “Follow me, Jaf!” he growled, and off we fled through a backstage maze of passages and obstacles, finally halting at a dark window. If there’d been any question about whether our meeting was because of happy coincidence or a sinister arrangement it ended here when we heard stumbling footsteps and curses closing on our heels.
Wanliet opened the window and got halfway; without hesitation or decorum I shoved him tumbling out and then clambered out behind into the darkness of an alley. After quickly checking the situation and seeing some suspicious characters waiting at the back door of the club, we crouched down and skulked away, around a corner, and then down the street.
Obviously, we couldn’t go to his dump or my hovel, they’d both be covered, so we made our way to a good hotel, where our last cash could buy discretion from the staff while we worked to puzzle out how by escaping from the Valkyries of Andromeda we’d ended up as prey for the Banshees of Basoolah.
About the Author
A space-age brat, Lindsay watched the Mercury capsules go up and splash down and decided he wanted to be an astronaut. Being on the small side, and wearing glasses, that didn’t look likely so he fantasized a lot, about a lot of things, space travel being among the top twenty.
Later, when he had to decide what to do with his life, he considered math and science, but realized making up stories was easier and more fun, and apparently paid well.
And that’s how he ended up a plumbing contractor.
When he sold his business in late 2006 he found that some kind of cosmic financial crunch made him unemployable. Finding himself with lots of free time, he decided to follow the J K Rowling Course of Easy Riches and wrote himself some books.
A life-long Angeleno (so far), he lives with his new bride, two dogs, two cats and a bunny, and a houseful of hopes. Please buy more books so they don’t have to eat the bunny.
You love bunnies, right?
Want to know more? Check out www.lindsaypeet.com
