The Damsel

by David Dixon

  He hopped off his stool and I did the same, although whether because the stuff I was drinking was better than I was used to or because of the lingering effects of coolant-poisoning, I felt like I moved in slow motion. I shook my head to clear it and caught up with the boss at the foot of the staircase.

  Carla stopped mid-sentence when she saw us, surprise obvious on her face.

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “We’ve still got questions that need answering,” the boss said.

  “I told you where to find me,” Carla said flatly. “And it wasn’t here.”

  “Yeah—867-5309? That was real funny. Real fucking funny,” the boss said. “But it doesn’t matter, ‘cause we’re right here, right now.”

  The first genuine smile I’d seen yet flashed across Carla’s face, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

  “These two a problem, Carla?” the bounty hunter asked in a tone of voice that suggested if she gave the word, we wouldn’t be a problem much longer.

  “Don’t worry about it, Rick. I can handle ‘em. Believe it or not, they really are here just to ask questions.”

  “Fair enough,” Rick said as he stepped between the boss and I to take a seat at the bar.

  “Well? Find a table so we can get this over with,” Carla said.

  Carla and I followed the boss to a booth. I sat down first, glad to be off my tingling, unsteady legs. Carla slid into the booth across from me. For a second, it looked as if the boss was going to try to sit beside her, but an icy look from Carla sent him scurrying around to my side of the table.

  I snorted and the boss shot me a dirty look.

  “All right,” Carla sighed. “So, what’s up?”

  “Tell us what the job was—the real job,” the boss demanded.

  “Wow. Right down to business huh?” she asked with a smirk. “Not much for foreplay, I see.”

  “From him? Oh, God, no,” I said. “That’s my department.” If a look could kill, the boss’s glare would have dropped me dead on the spot.

  “Just answer the damn question, Carla,” he said.

  “Fine. There was a bounty on Patrick Anders, the so-called ‘Tyrant of Tellerson.’ His crew isn’t the only bunch in the system, but they are the biggest and the toughest. For a few years now, Mr. Tanaka has had a deal with Anders, where he paid to have his ships get through without getting ripped.”

  “I’m guessing something went sideways,” the boss observed.

  “Yeah. About six months ago, Anders expanded his operation into Bascia. He knocked off two Tanaka Corporation shipments from Paulus to Kagawa-ken in the first week. Mr. Tanaka saw that as a breach of the agreement and sent word to Anders demanding he cover the cost of the shipments. Anders said the existing agreement only covered ships in Tellison and if Tanaka didn’t want his ships getting hit in Bascia, the price was going to go up.”

  “Ah. And Mr. Tanaka had a problem with that,” I said.

  “You could say that,” Carla said.

  “Did you forget you only talk to captains?” I asked with a grin.

  She laughed—a real, charming laugh, the kind we’d heard over the radio aboard the Recovery Star. “Shit. Actually, yeah, I did. You got me. But that’s the last time. Besides, the mission’s over anyway.” Carla waved a hand at me with a smile.

  I felt the heat of the boss’s glare, but didn’t

  acknowledge it as I pressed on. “I get it: Mr. Tanaka doesn’t want to pay Anders, so he puts a bounty on his head. But what the hell does that have to do with you hiring us to go out there and get killed?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Carla said. “Because after Anders refused to honor the deal, that’s where me, Maria, and Rick come in. Mr. Tanaka hired us to clean Anders out of Bascia, which we did. I got one of his crew at nav point twelve and Maria took out a pair of ‘em coming out of the T53. Rick worked planetside down here and took out Anders’s group that were watching the spaceport and passing him info on ships’ flight plans and destinations. After that, Anders sent word that he would honor the agreement again and we thought everything was cool.”

  “Still doesn’t explain why you hired us,” the boss pointed out.

  “I’m getting there. After things looked quiet, Mr. Tanaka disbanded us and we went on our way. Thing is, Anders wasn’t really done. He sent his son Roscoe after Maria. He got her in Pinewood, just like they said out there on the radio. Mr. Tanaka was furious.”

  “Part of the job, though,” the boss said. “What does a big businessman care if one of his hired guns gets killed?”

  “The Bascia contract was my first job with Mr. Tanaka, but Rick and Maria had done work off and on for Mr. Tanaka for years. He considered them part of the family and felt like Anders knew, and that’s why he’d gone after Maria—so Mr. Tanaka decided to pay Anders back in kind.”

  “He killed Roscoe,” I said.

  “Yep. Rick smoked him—and two of his bodyguards—on Del Rio Station. Mr. Tanaka knew that would be war, so he brought me back on, told me to round up a cargo boat as bait, and sent me to make the Tellison-Markins run and bring him back proof Anders was dead.”

  “Jesus, so we really were just bait,” the boss huffed. “Why not just fly to Tellison and get him yourself instead of dragging us into it? You didn’t need us out there.”

  “If I would have flown out there alone I never would’a found ‘em. They weren’t gonna come out and jump a single Razor. That would mark me as an obvious bounty hunter, and they get nothing out of tangling with a hunter just for kicks. I needed you two to sell the idea it was a legit shipment. Besides, while I probably didn’t need you out there, you were more helpful than I thought, actually. Snake there isn’t a half-bad gunner.”

  I reclined back in the booth and folded my hands behind my head. “Yep. I’m good with my hands,” I said with a wink. I couldn’t help it. Even though Carla had nearly gotten us killed, I couldn’t resist the opening.

  She chuckled. “Oh really?”

  “Oh, yeah. I hear it all the time. I’ll schedule you a personal demo sometime.”

  She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.

  Despite everything bad I’d previously said about her and that she’d come this close to getting us killed, I had a newfound liking for the pretty bounty hunter.

  Judging by the look on the boss’s face, he did not approve of my recently developed verdict on Carla.

  “He’s not good. He’s lucky, that’s all,” the boss said with a scowl.

  Carla shrugged. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Once they came out of the nebula for you, I just pretended to be Maria—which was easy ‘cause even though she was supposed to be dead, they’d never met her in person, and all they knew was she flew a Razor, too—and sent them Rick’s picture of Roscoe’s corpse, hoping to get a response from Anders so I could confirm he was on their mothership I was about to waste. I got the confirmation I needed, kicked his ass, and that was that. Contract fulfilled.”

  “About that,” the boss said, eyes narrowed. “Just how much did you make on this contract?”

  Carla gave the boss a mischievous smile and shook her head. “You should’a thought of all these questions back there in the bar instead of trying to imagine what I look like without my flight suit on.”

  The boss went red, but to his credit, he kept on with his line of questioning. “Never mind that. How much did you make?”

  She turned and yelled to the bounty hunter at the bar. “Hey, Rick, what’s the standard finder’s fee?”

  “Ten percent,” he called back.

  Carla turned back to us.

  “Ten percent?” the boss hissed. “You got paid a hundred-and-fifty grand and we get a lousy fifteen k? What the hell kind of deal is that?”

  “Industry standard, ace. You want something different, you gotta negotiate ahead of time. Consider that free life advice.”

  “I probably took forty thou worth
of damage helping you find your man,” the boss fumed.

  “Boo-fucking-hoo,” Carla said. “You want charity, go stand on a street corner. You need a loan? Swing by and we’ll talk terms. But bottom line is, I offered you the job and you took it. Now, I’m going to get a drink.”

  She slid out of the booth. As I watched her go, I found myself doing what she’d accused the boss of doing—wondering what she looked like without her flight suit on.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” the boss said with an elbow in my ribs. “I’ve seen that look before. Forget it. What was it you said? ‘You think she’s sex on legs but she’s nothing but trouble in a flight suit’ or something? You were absolutely one-hundred-ten-fucking-percent right, okay? So now that I’ve said it, forget about Carla and let’s get back to the ship and get to work.”

  I had to admit, he was probably right, if only because he was quoting me and I’m almost always right.

  He exited the booth and I did the same, wincing when I put weight on my legs. They felt like they’d fallen asleep, except the pins-and-needles feeling wasn’t going away.

  “Shit, boss, I wasn’t kidding about that coolant exposure, man. I can’t feel my legs.”

  “Oh, come on, Snake. You can take a shower when you get back.”

  “No, seriously,” I said. “You close the tab at the bar and I’m going to the bathroom. I gotta try to wash some of this shit off before I get any worse than I am already.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But don’t take forever, all right? We got a lot to do.”

  Inside the immaculate bathroom, I stripped off my boots and pants. My skin was red and splotchy and cool to the touch. Slapping my leg didn’t hurt at all, but it also didn’t remove the tingling numbness. I used paper towels and warm water to try to clean my skin, and with each pass, the towels came away the faint blue color of Quaralene, our engine coolant of choice.

  I frowned in the mirror, knowing that in a few hours I’d likely be puking and shitting my brains out as my body tried to purge itself of the toxins. I’d been through this before, years ago when I was on the Braxton, so while I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill me, I knew it sure was gonna feel like it. I wet another paper towel and wiped my legs again.

  Shouts from the club caught my attention and I froze. I couldn’t tell what was going on exactly, but it didn’t sound good. I put my pants back on and crept back out into the club in my bare feet. As I did, I reached reflexively for my knife before I realized it was still in the drawer where I’d left it with security.

  Shit.

  My eyes hadn’t fully readjusted from the bathroom light to the club’s darkness, but far across the club floor, I could make out Rick sitting at the bar perfectly still, and the boss standing with his hands at chest level, raised and open. Carla sat at the same table we’d just left, hands atop the table. One figure I didn’t recognize stood in the gloom pointing what I guessed was a pistol at Rick and the boss while another towered over Carla at the table. Neither one of them seemed to have noticed me, so I made my way closer from table to table, crouched low to stay in the dim murk of Joey Machete’s.

  “That’s right, Rick,” the one closest to the bar said. “You keep both hands where I can see ‘em, and you just might live through this. Our beef ain’t with you.”

  “Do you know where you are?” Rick asked before he took a long slow sip of beer. “Because you have just made a very big mistake.”

  “We didn’t ask you for your opinion, because we don’t care,” the one at the table said. “What we care about is who it was that got Anders and the rest. First, we heard it was Maria, but that can’t be right, ‘cause she’s dead. Then I heard a rumor going around it was some other bitch in a Razor, flyin’ with a merchie on her wing. And this got me thinking: where did the cute chick who worked for Tanaka go? And here she is. What a surprise.”

  “If you leave now, Mr. Tanaka may let this slide,” Rick warned. “But the longer you stick around, the less chance there is of that.”

  “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, Rick,” the one at the bar said. “Else I’ll shut it permanently.”

  “And who are you, flyboy?” the man at the table called out, gesturing with a silver pistol to my boss. “You ain’t a regular, seeing your pistol’s checked. Maybe you own that shot-up Black Sun the tug boys told me they towed in from Tellison? Now wouldn’t that be something?”

  “What do you want?” Carla asked. “Anders is dead. You shooting us won’t change that, and I know nobody liked the shithead enough to put a bounty on me for killing him.”

  The man at Carla’s table laughed. “Yeah, we know, but now that Anders is dead, we’re out of a paycheck, so we figured you could help. What we want is the money you got for killing him, and maybe a little something else besides. So, hand over the cashcard and come without a fuss and things’ll go fine, or else I’ll find it when I take it off your corpse.”

  While he talked, I sized him up. He was tall and lanky, with a pistol in his right hand and an assault knife—the kind with a stiletto blade and a stun gun in the handle—in his left. I’d have felt better about the whole situation if I had my own trusty E-14 knife, but this business rarely gives you good odds.

  I stole another table nearer, close enough to the table for Carla to notice me. Her eyes widened. She gave me a barely perceptible nod.

  “So? You coming, or should I just shoot you now?” the man at the table asked.

  “Fine,” Carla said. “I’ll go with you, but leave Rick and the merchie out of it.”

  “Fuck that,” said the one at the bar. “Flyboy here got paid, same as you did. We’re taking his share too. Hand over your cashcard.”

  “Whoa, now,” the boss said. “I don’t even have all of it—”

  “What the fuck did you say?” the assailant closest to Carla’s table screamed. “The fuck did you say? You don’t have it? Well too fuckin’ bad, dumbass, ‘cause we’re gonna get it one way or another. Lucas, fuck him right up, and make sure he remembers—”

  I leapt out of the dark, grabbing the man’s gun hand with my left hand and his knife hand with my right. At the same time, I kneed him in the groin and drove him to the floor.

  His pistol fired once as we fell, then skittered off into the darkness when we landed.

  His left hand slipped free and I rolled off him to avoid getting stabbed, giving him an elbow to the face as I did so.

  He rolled with me, and in the dark I saw he no longer had the knife. I dodged a punch and grabbed his face, pressing my right thumb into his left eye as far as I could.

  He screamed and jerked back.

  I heard an incoherent shout from the bar followed by a pair of gunshots. The man I’d attacked struggled off me and tried to stand, but I grabbed his belt and yanked him down again. As he fell, he threw a wild haymaker that caught me in the jaw. I saw stars and let go of his belt.

  There was a deafening gun blast from Carla’s position at the table, then more commotion at the bar.

  The man I fought stumbled to his feet, gave me a swift kick to the ribs, and turned to run.

  Pop. The entire room flashed red. Pop. The room went red again, and everything was quiet.

  I looked toward the bar to see Rick standing next to his stool, beer in his left hand and laz pistol in his right, barrel glowing cherry red. The charred corpse of the attacker at the bar lay sprawled out between him and Carla’s table, and the incinerated body of the man I’d tussled with was a cinder-black shadow on the floor.

  “You all right over there?” he called.

  My legs felt even more numb than they had before and my heart pounded a thousand beats a minute from the adrenaline, but I found my way to my feet. I stepped into the light of the bar, a triumphant smile on my face.

  “I’m alive, how about you guys?”

  Rick nodded, but the boss looked like he was going to be sick.

  “Well, I’ll give you credit,” Carla said from her table. “You’r
e a lot sneakier than I figured. And a tough motherfucker too.” She pointed at my right leg.

  I looked down to see the combat knife buried hilt-deep in my thigh, pulsing with each heartbeat. Blood soaked my pants and little rivers of it ran down my leg and over my bare foot.

  “Shit.”

  I passed out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke up on the train, sitting in a wheelchair.

  “Welcome back,” the boss said.

  “Shit. What happened?”

  “You passed out.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” I said. “I meant after that.”

  The boss leaned back in his seat. “Well, Mr. Tanaka came downstairs with his bodyguards and several other heavies came out from side rooms and whatnot and pronounced an all-out motherfuckin’ war on anybody who’d ever even thought about helping Anders, going all the way back to his grade school teachers I think.”

  “Where the fuck was club security the whole time?” I asked, cautiously running my hand down my leg, checking to see if the wound still hurt.

  “Outside man was dead. The other two’d been zapped and cuffed. Tanaka worked ‘em over pretty good, but they’ll live.”

  “Jesus. I’ll take my chances at the shitty little bars we hang out in any day of the week,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d Carla go?”

  The boss shot me an annoyed look. “She split. Haven’t seen her in the two days since. Haven’t been looking for her either.”

  “Two days? I’ve been out for two whole days?”

  “In and out, but, yeah, pretty much.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep. Only good thing that came out of all this was that one of those two assholes had a bounty.”

  I smiled. “Oh really? How much?”

  “Seven grand.”

  “Sweet. That’ll help us out—”

  “Split three ways,” the boss interrupted.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, and your hospital bill was over three and a half.”

  “Damn it! Just to patch up my leg? They charged that much?”