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“What should I do with him?”
The Dragon’s Tooth’s plump, gray-haired waitress nodded towards the far corner, grimacing at the proprietor, a paunchy ex-Marine with tattoos on his arms.
They, and the customer snoring with gusto, his head on his folded arms, were the last living beings left in the bar. It was a little after three in the morning. Late. Only the whorehouses in the spaceport precinct stayed open later. Most never closed.
Tren, the innkeeper, shrugged. “Leave him be for now, Mara. By the time we finish down here, he’ll wake and wander out on his own. Poor fucker has enough problems without getting tossed out of a joint like this.”
“Your place Tren. But don’t take on no pity cases now,” Mara replied, shaking her head. “I know you too well.” She pointed a red-tipped fingernail at him. “Can’t resist an old Marine in trouble, can you? Give him a free beer and a free meal, sure, but don’t take him home with you as if he’s a stray cub. Hell, the sad sack’s large enough to frighten the living shit out of the cub’s mother.”
“You know, Mara, you sound just like we’re married.” Tren snorted in mock disgust as he wiped a stain off the scarred counter.
“Near enough, Tren. Near enough.” Mara hoisted another battered chair on an equally battered table, grunting at the effort.
“You wanna fuck Mara before going to sleep every night, you have to listen to her speak.” She leered at him. “Anyway, on some planets, the law would say we are married.”
“Which is why I retired here, you foul-mouthed old hen. I don’t aim to repeat my mistakes, and I’ve been through that sort of hell once already. What a mistake to make.” Tren spat into the imitation brass spittoon, making it ring like a bell at the impact.
“Who the hell is that drunk, anyway?”
“Old Marine, Mara.”
“I know, you old fool. He even looks like you – ugly puss, drools when he tries to speak like a human, and drunk from sunrise to sunset.”
“Fuck you, Mara.”
“Later.” She wiggled her fat bottom at Tren, chortling. “Hey, your old buddy seems better looking than you. Maybe I should trade. Maybe he’s better than you in the equipment department too.”
“You wouldn’t want Zack, trust me.” Tren suddenly turned dead serious, and that brought Mara to a halt. She looked at him and frowned as if trying to read the answer on the ex-Marine’s broad, prize fighter’s face.
“Apart from being drunk, which seems to be normal for everything that wears a uniform, what’s the boy done?”
“Dunno. Zack doesn’t want to talk about it. But that’s not what I meant.”
“You want to tell me, or is this one of those off-limits things?” Mara knew by now not to press Tren when he didn’t want to speak. Though he never laid a hand on her like her first husband had, he was scary as hell when he was pissed off.
Tren shrugged. “Zack’s a mean fighter. Lived for the Corps, didn’t have time for nothing else. He has a kid somewhere he’s never seen. Wife fucked off when Zack refused to leave the Fleet for a civvie job. Hurt him bad too. Never wanted to get close to another woman since then. Became a super trooper: Pathfinders, special ops, every fucking war the Corps fought in the last twenty years. There are people think the man isn’t quite human anymore.”
He shook his head, eyes far away, in that place where Mara never went.
“Now Zack’s on early retirement, which can only mean they’ve kicked him out. And that’ll kill him for sure. Zack Decker was one hell of a Marine, but he’ll never make a civilian. Either drink himself to death, pull out a gun, and blow a hole in his head. Or else, bust up someone or some place and get gunned down by the Militia in a blaze of glory.”
“That’s why you’re kinda soft on him?” Mara asked in a gentle tone.
“Yeah. I figure old Zack don’t have too much time left in this universe unless a miracle happens and he finds a job that’ll keep him alive.”
“Like what kind of job?”
Tren tossed his soaked, grimy rag into the stainless steel sink beneath the counter and rubbed his chin with a calloused hand.
“Well, Colonial Army’s out. Don’t hire no noncoms forced to retire. Too many of ‘em are bad news a court-martial couldn’t convict. Merc outfits aren’t so choosy, but there’s none in the area. It’s too quiet on Aramis.” Mara nodded. Tren had already given it thought. “Rent-a-cop? But that’ll drive Zack nuts so fast he won’t have time to collect his first pay. Hire on a fast trader? Some of ‘em need good gunners where they go for business. But none are hiring these days either. Anyway, a lot of ‘em are half-pirate, and that’s no place to send a man who spent twenty years fighting the scum.”
Mara patted Tren’s still muscular forearm.
“You really seem to care about this guy.”
“Yeah, I do. Zack Decker saved my life a long time ago. We were both buck sergeants in the same platoon, on Hispaniola before the war became a war. Old Zack pulled me out of a crowd of angry pesans who were looking for someone to rip apart. Zack Decker, all alone with a fucking carbine and no damn ammo. The guy has more balls than brains sometimes. But if he hadn’t stared the fuckers down, I’d be dead, so I owe Zack.”
“Listen, Angel, if he means that much to you, we can put him up for a while. No trouble.”
“Thanks, Mara.” He kissed her with a tenderness surprising in such a hard man. “Appreciate the offer. But Zack, he doesn’t live on no charity. Take free beer and food from a pal, sure. We’ve been paying each other a treat since he was a PFC with no more sense than a puppy. But Zack’s getting his pension, little as it is, and he won’t take anything. Proud bugger.” There was admiration in Tren’s voice as he looked at his sleeping friend. “Command Sergeant Zachary T. Decker was one hell of a Marine.”
Tren pulled a chipped shot glass out from under the counter and poured himself a measure of whiskey.
“I’ll stay a while, ‘till he wakes. You go on up, Mara, and get some sleep.”
For what seemed like a long time, Tren Kinnear stared at his friend’s resting shape, sipping contraband hooch and thinking hard. Pathfinders take care of their own, even when they weren’t Pathfinders anymore.
*
Zack Decker shuffled through the deserted streets of Heaven’s Gate, kicking at empty booze bottles, cig packs and flyers advertising cathouses with his scuffed work boots. Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, and head pulled down into his jacket’s raised collar, the big man only superficially seemed like any other drifter in any other spaceport on any of the Commonwealth’s planets.
At one-ninety centimeters height, one hundred and ten kilos weight, all of it muscle, and with a face chiseled in granite, Decker looked like a mean drunk, a mean ex-Fleet drunk. An even meaner hangdog now that his head started pounding with the inevitable hangover, his efficient metabolism already recovering from the ethanol binge at the Dragon’s Tooth. Who knew what he’d been tossing back near the end. Could have been hyperdrive coolant for all he cared.
He had a twice-broken nose, sharp as a hawk’s beak now, sandy hair still cut in a short brush, a jagged white scar running from his left ear down into his collar and dark blue eyes, almost purple, bright and old beyond his years.
To the rats lurking in the slum’s dark alleys, his appearance, and athletic stride, honed by years of wearing heavy armor battle suits, marked him as a veteran, someone to avoid. Vets knew one hundred and one ways to kill a body with their bare hands, and few of them ever went anywhere unarmed. The cutthroats and footpads had good survival instincts. They left him alone, even though there wasn’t another soul in sight, at three-thirty in the morning, in the seediest part of Heaven’s Gate.
They wouldn’t have found much for their troubles. Zack Decker was just about broke, his meager pension barely holding out from one month to the next, especially since he’d crawled into a bottle and stayed there, day and night. With nothing else to do and no money for the better places in the city, he visited seedy bar after seedy bar in the spaceport precinct, each worse than the next, his itinerary without rhyme or reason, searching for something without knowing what.
The Heaven’s Gate slums had plenty of flyblown bars. Zack had been at it for three weeks straight, ever since a tramp freighter had dumped him here when his money ran out. Not that Decker minded. He didn’t know where he was headed, anyway. One planet was just as good, or bad, as the other. He’d lost the only home he knew when they handed him his pension papers.
Tonight, he’d stumbled on an old pal, Tren Kinnear, once sergeant first class in the 9th. Gone to fat in his old age, but they’d been through plenty of tough times together and become tight buddies. Tren had always wanted to own a tavern somewhere, near enough to a spaceport so he could hear the transports land and bring more thirsty spacers to his place, and he made that dream come true, for what it was worth. Had himself a woman too.
The night air in Heaven’s Gate was chilly, and a thin mist was spreading from the open sewer the Heavenites called their river. Zack shivered and tried to burrow deeper into his jacket, in vain. A uniform had been good enough for twenty years, and Decker never had much of a civilian wardrobe. Now, when he needed the rags, he didn’t have the money. Couldn’t even remember where the dough had all gone. Cheap booze, it had to be. Couldn’t have been cheap hookers. Even dead drunk he had more sense than that.
Muffled thunder broke through the still night air and resonated in Zack’s skull. He glanced back at the port and saw a sleek trader ship heading off for parts unknown. At least her captain had a purpose in life.
Laughter and music poured out of an open doorway across the street, and a splash of multicolor light fell on the cracked, grimy pavement. Two men in spacer coveralls, much worse for wear, stumbled out of the whorehouse and stood on the sidewalk, swaying as they fought to get their bearings. The music and illumination vanished, leaving them stranded in the night.
Zack gave them a glance and decided the footpads would take whatever the whores had left in their pockets before they had walked one block. They should have stayed with the hookers until daybreak. It was safer that way. But some guys were too dumb to survive. Decker shrugged and kept walking. Not his business. Survival of the fittest in his universe and that meant not only the healthiest body but also the sharpest wits.
A few minutes later, he heard a strangled yell behind him, but he didn’t even break his pace. Survival of the smartest.
*
When Decker reached his rooming house, he was cold stone sober, with a headache to beat all headaches, and no hangover pill to be had for love or money. The ship’s sawbones used to hand them out like candy whenever the crew of Musashi took shore leave. But there were no naval surgeons in the seedy areas around the spaceport. They all had enough money to sleep in fancy hotels, drinking good hooch, instead of Tren Kinnear’s rotgut.
The rooming house was an old tenement a few blocks from the spaceport and had been built so long ago that its original owners were long forgotten. It had seen no maintenance since before Zack’s birth, but it was cheap enough, and it came furnished if you could call the crap he had furnishing.
The plascrete stairs squeaked under Zack’s weight when he walked up to the third-floor landing. The building’s lift had broken down so long ago that they didn’t make spare parts anymore.
It was a big place with a clientele that included every variety of loser imaginable: hookers, thieves, welfare bums, goons and more, everyone jammed together on five floors of warehouse-grade concrete. At four in the morning, most of them were coming home from work or play, and Zack did his level best to ignore the young prostitute next door as she struggled to open her lock. It wasn’t easy, the way she was dressed.
She wore indigo leather tonight, a bustier that left her midriff and nipples free to the admiring eyes of potential customers. The nipples, painted a screaming shade of green for the occasion, to match her hair and eyelids, were of admirable proportions, especially under the assault of the cold night air. A matching mini-skirt attempted to cover her nether regions, but as designed by its makers, it failed.
Zack was sober enough to notice Rosette’s obvious intoxication on whatever drug she had bought with her nightly earnings. He didn’t know her age but would have sworn she wasn’t a day over twenty, even though her eyes could easily have given her ten, fifteen years more. Part of it was thanks to her choice of career. But most of it was thanks to the hard drugs she used.
Decker might have crawled into a bottle, but he hated hard drugs with all his being. He had spent enough years chasing the scum who smuggled the crap into the Commonwealth so it didn’t end up in the bloodstream of mixed-up kids like Rosette. Zack felt sorry for her, but he refused to get involved. Or in her bed.
The girl suddenly realized she wasn’t alone and looked up.
“Hi, Zack.” Her white grin seemed unnatural in a dusky face darkened even further by the uneven lighting. “Wanna come in and spend time with me?”
“No thanks,” Zack shook his head, immediately regretting the motion and unlocked his door before she could grab his arm and try to pull him into her room. Decker didn’t believe in taking advantage of a zoned-out girl who should be in school and falling in love instead of turning tricks and snorting junk. Then, there was Zack’s fear that the whore had scary bugs lurking in her privates, diseases just waiting for a stupid prick.
With a loud snick, the door closed behind him, cutting off the sound of Rosette’s voice. Decker looked around the room, feeling a deeper depression than the one usually brought on by too much alcohol. To call the place dingy didn’t do it justice. Though it was larger than his cabin aboard Musashi, it wasn’t as comfortable or as clean. It didn’t even come close to being as clean. Nor did his old cabin have resident scavenger insects, a few of them larger than his thumb, which seemed to thrive in the rooming house.
No hangover pills meant only one solution since Zack didn’t want to try sleeping with an artillery barrage rolling through his skull. He pulled a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey from under his bed and pulled the cork. Not even bothering with a glass, he took a swig and swirled it in his mouth, trying to kill the sour taste of Tren’s rotgut. The whiskey burned a trail of fire down his gullet and added to the lethal stew in his stomach. Perhaps the booze hadn’t such a good idea. Still, the headache faded, replaced by heartburn. But that was something Zack could live with.
Unfortunately, this time, it didn’t take many king-sized swigs to put Decker back into the swim again. And the more he drank, staring out of the grimy window at the first pearly gray of dawn, the worse he felt.
His eyes wandered over to the closet door. Like everything else in this building, it was broken, jammed wide open. There, hanging as if in his shipboard locker, was his black Marine uniform with the stripes and crossed-swords of a command sergeant on the sleeves, Pathfinder jump wings on the breast and all the other ribbons and devices that came with twenty years of memories, good and bad.
Staring at the uniform gave Decker painful pangs of homesickness
He took another swig of whiskey and leaned back in his chair to open the drawer of a scarred white dresser, from which pulled a battered but serviceable blaster. Meeting Tren tonight had reminded Decker of too many things.
The blaster came from a Shrehari marauder he and Tren had fought years ago. Like most Pathfinders, Decker had kept his trophy and carried it with him in battle, after getting it chambered for Fleet-issue ammunition. When he retired, he had held on to the gun. It was his private, if unlicensed, property.
With practiced movements, he stripped the weapon, checked each piece, and reassembled it, satisfied that it was in perfect working order. He rammed in a full magazine of Fleet-issue ammo, unaccounted for when he left Musashi and armed it.
On some worlds, suicidal gamblers still played Russian roulette with old six-shot revolvers. Zack had seen them at it once. But you couldn’t play Russian roulette with an automatic blaster: each pull of the trigger was a sure winner.
He looked at the pistol in his hand and took another swig of whiskey. Then he raised the gun, eyes staring at the pink line of clouds on the horizon, and stuck the barrel into his open mouth, muzzle pointing up at his brain.
