Jaqi
YOU’D BE AMAZED how quick a batch of scabs can clear out a fighting pit. There’s not a lot of places to go on an ecosphere only a few miles around, and there are a lot of people crowded in port at Swiney Niney. But everyone from that fighting pit scatters, leaving me alone.
And it just so happens that this fighting pit is deep in what was originally the parkland of Swiney. Probably a nice place, once upon a time, but since the environmental controls broke, this green is now a thick, stinking jungle.
There’s pathways here, through mud and roots and all sorts of weird-looking plants. Might lead to another fighting pit, and maybe another sleaze who tosses me in a cage with centipedes—aiya!—and there’s plenty of footprints on the paths, but I don’t see anyone as I wander over roots and rocks, through mud, and try to ignore the pain in my face and shoulder where the Necro-Thing threw me to the ground.
I wade through mud, keeping one eyeball on the sticky flowers all around me. Probably some carnivorous crossbreed, illegal as living forever, dropped here. They cluster and sprout and get big and toothy on the remnants of those fighting pits. Yep, that’s what an ecosphere is like on the edge of wild space. Fun, ai?
The path winds around a small hill, or a giant pile of moss, depending on your point of view. From around the side of the hill, I can see down, back to the port. Concrete buildings huddle against the honeycomb of black tunnels in the air that will take you out of the ecosphere. I was being dragged by the big Rorgs before, so I can’t say I paid much attention to the details.
That’s when I see a familiar face, frozen on the path ahead of me. Big head, like a melon, all covered with boils, and an eye patch. “Ai! Palthaz? Palthaz Perron!”
He stares in my direction for a minute—Zu-Path, as a race, aren’t famous for their wits—and then steps off the path, running up that small hill.
“Wait, Palthaz! It’s Jaqi! From Bill’s!” I saw this sleaze come in and out of port a thousand times. He’s even fatter than he used to be, which means I catch up with him.
“Palthaz!”
He hustles onward. “Not now, Jaqi.”
“You remember me! Listen, Palthaz, I’m in an evil way. Between jobs, and I just want something to eat—”
“Run off!” he snarls at me. But of course, I’m still able to keep up with him. He sinks farther into the mud than I do. That’s my benefit of never eating.
“Trade you this,” I say, and hold up Cade’s gun. “Nice piece. Vintage Zarronen A-5. Better than that Keil piece of crap you’re carrying.”
He eyeballs it. There’s no greed like a smuggler’s greed. “I— No! Off, Jaqi.”
“I will not!” I say. I raise the gun, and he freezes, without a blink. “Give me some damn food!” I’m in pain and hungrier than ever and in no mood for this.
He just sighs, looking down the barrel. “You a cross,” he says. “You’re good for food anywhere. Haven’t you heard? You rule the galaxy now.”
“That don’t help me on Swiney Niney,” I say.
“I can get some meat for you, but you swear to get away. I can’t afford trouble with a cross.”
“What kind of meat?”
“Matters, does it?”
“Not really,” I say, and lower the gun. “As long as it was breathing once and it’s salted now.”
He scuttles off.
This is the business of being a smuggler—you’re always going to pretend to be a cold bastard. And something has Palthaz spooked evil, enough that he isn’t acting like a smuggler should act at all.
So I follow him.
What? This scab is obviously protecting one evil catch. The crickets give good work, but if I can go into mid-galaxy without fear of being conscripted, then Palthaz is a better bet.
Palthaz has done a few legitimate jobs carrying Imperial matter. And apparently being a cross is now a ticket to respectable. I still can’t get that through my head. I could go mid-galaxy, if I wanted to.
All the way to Irithessa? Why not? See the capital of the Empire. Will we even call it the Empire anymore? I could wander around them museums, with the remnants of the old galaxy. I could see me a couple of plays, like a lady. I could drink as much as I want and have some real nice times with fancy boys and girls.
Palthaz scuttles into a little tunnel that runs under the hill of green moss. On second look, it en’t really a hill. More like a clump of roots, from some tree that’s long been cut down. I en’t dumb enough to go into the tunnel after him, but if I eyeball the thing right, there’s a gap between roots.
I crawl in, scraping my back, squeezing through a thick layer of soil and between two monstrous roots. I squirm on past a big root, and then another, until I see light coming from below. The roots interlock here; a set of rafters for some kind of hidey-hole. Seems like it would be a great spot for a smuggler, but a few things are off—the place is wet, brown water dripping from above (and soaking me, as if I didn’t have enough sweat doing so already), and it stinks like that Necro-Thing’s armpit. Any smuggler who cared about his goods would have dehumidified the place and cleared it out a bit. This is more of an animal’s burrow. This far underground, Palthaz shouldn’t have to worry about lighting the place up bright, either. But he doesn’t have good light, just a few glowing lamps.
“I need some of the food,” Palthaz says. “Bargaining.”
Another voice—young man, by the sound of it—says, polite as you please, “I’m sorry, but we need as much food as we can take.”
“You’ll do fine on protein packs. Learn your place, boy—you en’t a damn blueblood no more.” That near-panicked note in Palthaz’s voice is now blending into anger.
Another voice. Young girl. I squirm around for a look, get lower in the roots until I can see. There are three humans down there with Palthaz. Tall guy, probably about sixteen, on Imperial reckoning. Girl, younger, maybe ten, and little boy, maybe five. They are dirtier than even I am, and haggard, but the clothes they wear are easily real cotton. Before they crawled into this hole, those clothes were evil expensive. Bluebloods on the run.
“I’ve got a cross on my tail, Quinn!” Palthaz spits the words out.
The teenage boy draws back. “What?”
“If I didn’t owe your papa my freedom . . . this en’t worth those damn crosses!”
Did Palthaz wrong the Resistance or something? He’s muttering now, and I can’t hear it. The Resistance couldn’t afford to make enemies of smugglers, last I checked.
“We’re safe, though,” the young girl says. “Right? The machine is still masking us?”
“Long as it works.”
So, this is the moment my luck for the day decides to keep on going the way it’s been going. I shift around in those roots to get a good look, but the problem with those kind of roots, in swampy ground, is that they shift with you. Like now, when they shift me right out into Palthaz’s secret chamber.
Palthaz does fire this time. Good thing he’s spooked; he missed even at point-blank. I jump up and shove Cade’s gun in his face. “Not a move or you get two eye patches!”
Another barrel rams my back, between my ribs. The teenage boy says, “Don’t move, cross, or I’ll kill you like you deserve.”