The Quarter Quarter couldn’t be described as an urban hell, but it certainly wasn’t the good part of town either. The streets were narrow and rather chaotically laid out, and quite a lot of tall, narrow apartment towers dotted the area, apparently thrown up out of need rather than with any plan in mind. The overall architectural style was purely functional, and quite a lot of the repairs to the buildings and even the infrastructure had a do-it-yourself look to them.

Cram in rather too many people and regular patches of visible poverty, and you had the sort of place where people minded their valuables, and Gaylen kept his eyes keen and his fists ready.

“I did this to myself,” Herdis mused in a slightly sing-song voice, as they, along with about twenty other people, squeezed around a crew carrying out street repairs. Gaylen couldn’t see what they were doing, but could smell sewage. “I got a good, long taste of flying with you guys, and I came right back.”

“Take the rough with the smooth,” Kiris told her.

“Indeed, indeed. And the smells. And whatever this is.”

She drew attention to a slightly sticky spot they were walking over, but Gaylen kept his eyes on the people, and continued with his mental map of the area in case of trouble. The Quarter Quarter was a decent-sized area, and so of course it had businesses and services. Rather than a single district, they were spread out into small clusters. It was in their third one that Gaylen saw someone standing on a bit of a platform, loudly hawking metal cord locks.

“Come on, come on! Windows, doors, appliances, vehicles! Fasten it all down! Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but I KNOW nobody will carry your stuff away with one of these in the way! Come on, come on!”

Gaylen had indeed seen those, on small personal transports and through a couple of windows. He’d also seen sturdy detachable locks on doors, and all three shopping clusters so far had catered in some way to people’s fear of the coming Lawless Black. Gaylen didn’t need Kiris to tell him that people were on edge.

“Jaquan,” he said as a street made up of small storefronts opened into a small, box-shaped square. “Anything?”

“Nothing that I’m picking up,” his friend replied. “But these aren’t ideal circumstances. All these damn towers and walkways.”

“Right.”

Their little drone still hovered up above, sending a feed to the Addax that Jaquan watched as he worked. It was a basic model, but it could still keep an eye out for faces and silhouettes matching their new Scorchspace friends.

“Same as before,” Gaylen said to everyone as they neared a slightly larger business front, topped with a big, swirling hologram of a beer mug.

Finding underworld-connected dives was a simple matter of approaching everyday people, politely stating that one was new here, and asking which places one ought to stay out of. Then one went to those places.

Herdis and Bers stayed outside. Either one of them would be a better choice than Kiris to have at his side if he had to fight his way back out to the street, but she was better at seeing trouble coming so they could just skip straight to running.

The bartender took them in with measuring eyes. The sort where he had reason to be wary of strangers, and servicing them wasn’t the place’s primary source of income.

The man spoke, and Gaylen couldn’t tell if it was some local dialect, or just an impenetrable accent.

“Hello,” Gaylen said back, and stepped up to the table after taking note of the handful of other people in the room. “I want to talk.”

He put his left hand on the table, with several money bills showing out from beneath the fingers. It wasn’t enough to sway a bar owner, but enough to get a bartender to speak coherently.

“And what is it?” he said, as he put his own fingertips on the money. “What do you want to talk about?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“War Clan Birok.”

Whatever the man had been expecting, this wasn’t it. There was a moment of stiff silence, echoed by the other patrons. There was no window behind the bar, but Kiris was keeping an eye out.

Gaylen met the man’s dark look. There was a certain way of carrying oneself that helped a lot in this sort of environment. A cold steadiness, rather than active, belligerent challenge. And fear was even worse.

“And?” the bartender said. He pinched the money between his fingers.

“I’m told you have connections, and I’m told that those connections really don’t like them.”

There was a sound, and a grunting voice. Gaylen looked. The table was a fair distance from the entrance, but he could tell that someone had moved to close the door. Bers had stuck his arm through, blocking it, and was now glaring at the man.

The interior was even more silent, although the din of a busy hour came in from the square. Gaylen turned back to the bartender. The man’s face remained stiff and unhappy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I would bet a wad that this place is hardened against eavesdropping,” Gaylen insisted. “And if you think we’re wearing something admissible in court, go ahead and scan us. We’ll wait. But after that, I want to give you a chance to hurt the enemies of your friends. Maybe they are even your direct, personal enemies, I don’t know. But either way, you can ruin their day with very little effort.”

The bartender held him in another silence. Whether he was probing for signs of nerves or contemplating this unexpected development, Gaylen left him to it, without any nudging or additional comments. He wasn’t going to be the one to crack first. One of the other ‘patrons’ walked into one of the backrooms. Kiris gave him a subtle touch, warning of potential danger.

“Explain,” the tender finally said.

“There’s a crew planetside right now, led by a chief. They are after me and my crew, and I need them to stop.”

“Killing a whole raiding crew isn’t ‘very little effort’,” the tender pointed out, and kept on looking sour. “And drawing blood has consequences. No one here owes you anything, stranger.”

“True,” Gaylen said.

Distances didn’t matter. Connections did. And killings done on a civilised world could turn into pebbles that rolled all the way back into the gory mess that was Scorchspace clan politics, triggering an avalanche. Regardless of rivalries and past conflicts, it certainly wasn’t something to be set off without an okay from the right people.

“And I’m not asking you to fight. I just need information. And a bit of help with a ship.”

“This is a bar. No ship engineer here.”

“No need for degrees,” Gaylen said. “We just need extra hands. And… the right kind of discretion.”

“Oh, we have discretion. And extra hands.”

Gaylen heard people walk in from the backrooms. There were at least four of them, coming out of the direction that one ‘patron’ had vanished into. Gaylen took a look towards the door, factored everyone’s placement and worth in a fight, as well as the likelihood of serious violence this close to a daytime crowd.

But he kept his eyes on the bartender.

“Good. Then you can act without War Clan Birok ever finding out. We can do the hard stuff, because we need to. And the right noses get bloodied, once we’re out in the void. No long-term problems. No fuss.”

The bartender treated him to another long silence. His face never moved, and Gaylen was reminded of someone he’s once known in the Deep Streets, who had regularly injected a paralytic into his own face to maintain an ice cold demeanour.

“Wait here,” the man eventually said, and walked off. He disappeared into a door that opened in the wall behind the bar table, and Gaylen caught a glimpse of stairs before it closed.

He stayed as he was, broadcasting an indifference to the other people in the room. No one moved or spoke. Gaylen did peek at the door away. He found the door still half-closed, and the man on this side of it still face-to-face with Bers, which he put down to the man having no idea what kind of person he was dealing with.

The door opened again, and the bartender strode out. He looked no happier than before.

“What are you thinking?” he asked,

“Was I right?” Gaylen asked back. “Is this place proofed against people listening?”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

The man’s glare was clearly meant to stress the implications of that.

“Then here’s what I’m thinking…”

Gaylen did get a bit more information on his foes, although not much that could actually help him. He also got a number he could call, and a promise of those extra hands, complete with a proven record of… discretion. In turn, he gave them the Addax’s location, as well as that of the pirate ship.

“So everything’s settled?” he eventually asked.

“Looks like it,” the bartender replied. “Now go away. You’re spoiling the atmosphere.”

“Hah.”

They walked back to the door, past the doorman, and joined Bers and Herdis outside. The door was closed behind them.