The final drift into Tsukima’s gravity well was uneventful. Backwards though the place was, its growing importance as a thoroughfare led to a pretty decent effort at patrolling the surrounding space, and so Gaylen didn’t even have Herdis on the gun. She was under orders to be ready to sprint up at a moment’s notice, of course. There was never any excuse for carelessness.

But on the whole, Gaylen was free to just let the green, blue and orange planet slowly fill up his view. And brood. He didn’t like to think he was, but Kiris had dropped by the cockpit long enough to tell him he was doing it, and she was never wrong about these things.

He was brooding, damn it. And it was still a few hours before he’d have anything more interesting to do, and he could not leave the controls during an approach. And Kiris was busy giving her breaker a thorough check.

His salvation came in the form of the floor hatch opening, and Jaquan popping his head out.

“Hello,” the engineer said.

“Hello yourself,” Gaylen replied.

“Do you mind a bit of company?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Jaquan plopped himself into the copilot’s chair and took in the view.

“I’ve always liked this particular sight,” he said. “The green and orange come together quite well.”

“I prefer blue or red, but sure. It’s a nice enough planet.”

“How are you?” Jaquan then asked, as he got to the point.

“I… don’t really know the answer to that,” Gaylen admitted.

“You’ve never really talked much about those very early years of yours. I’ve only pieced them together from little bits and pieces, over a long time.”

“Just like an engine, eh?” Gaylen said, but felt that his own humour fell flat.

“If you like.”

Gaylen shrugged, because he just didn’t know what to say.

“Eh… I… well, they weren’t good years. You know that,” he then blurted out. “They were just on the heels of me detonating the comfortable life I didn’t know to appreciate. I was… I also just had no idea what I was doing. Looking back, it seems like I was constantly almost dying, until I got savvy.”

“Were you and this Mardus friends?”

“I…”

Gaylen shrugged again. Fifteen years of separation had a way of hazing feelings up.

“Maybe,” he settled on. “What does make him stand out is that out of all the outlaws, bandits, gangsters, lowlifes and losers that have made up my world for half my life, he was the only one who came through for me in a meaningful way. Him and you. In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with him, after that crappy little outfit we were attached to fell apart. We could have watched each other’s backs. But again, I was basically a kid. I didn’t realise how rare and valuable that would prove to be.”

He turned the chair fully around, to face the man properly.

“I hope you’re picking up on the praise in there.”

Jaquan gave him a small, reassuring smile.

“I’m not Kiris. But I know you. And I have a brain.”

“Good, because I rely on you to keep this ship flying.”

“You sure do. But about Mardus…”

“I owe him one. And delivering a warning about danger he’s in is the least I can do.”

“And if the whole thing proves to be more involved than that?” Jaquan asked.

“Then I’ll do what I can to help him in a more meaningful way,” Gaylen told him. “I damn well better do that for someone to whom I owe my life, since I’m now apparently in the habit of doing it for strangers. But it’s my debt, and what you want to do-”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I’ll help you,” Jaquan told him firmly. “Your bit about having me at your back? Yeah, that cuts both ways. I’ve told you, repeatedly, that I’m happy with very little. I’m content to get to fly, and work on engines. But it’s not a good way to make new friends. It’s pretty much just limited to you, Kiris, and the rest of this crew to varying degrees. So I’m with you, wherever this goes.”

Gaylen nodded at him. Then he turned back around to focus on the task of steering. The moping felt quite cured, at least for now.

“Thank you.”

# # #

“Alright,” Herdis said, with a somewhat excited air. “Give me the speech.”

It was landing time, and so she was back in the gunner seat. The view was now nothing but planet, and they could make out islands, major rivers and lakes, and clusters of lights on the world’s dark side.

“Believed to have been settled shortly AFTER the Big Flash,” Gaylen told her. “So no ancient First Civilization stuff here. The place is heavily wooded, as you can see. It features strongly in their culture, I’m told. I never interacted much with their mainstream society. Because they never had much of an influx, or major offworld influences. Tsukima still mostly has a tribal structure, as opposed to politics as you and I understand it. As the lanes opened up and developed more, they passed laws about spaceports. They, and all the factors associated with them, are only allowed to exist within a small radius in each place. And so, offworld companies and governments, and a few local entrepreneurs, built up rather than out.”

He pointed towards what they could see of the dark side. The most notable thing about those clusters of lights was how small they were. The majority of the planet wasn’t completely underdeveloped, but it wasn’t urbanised as Gaylen understood the concept.

“They are called city cores. Tightly packed bundles of skyscrapers and docking towers that go up and up and up, rimmed by puny suburbs. Good places if you want a view, but less so if you enjoy sunlight, and nature.”

“And I don’t suppose we can stop to appreciate the local nature?” Herdis asked.

“With the factors in play? No, probably not. We’d better play this one safe and smart.”

“True, true,” the woman replied, but he could see some disappointment.

“Besides, this isn’t the tourist kind of nature,” he pointed out. “The local trees grow fast and aggressively, and they house man-killer predators.”

“Keeping Ayna out of there might be a bit of a fight,” Herdis pointed out.

He grinned.

“Yeah. If I ask you to sedate her, will you do it?”

“Maybe?”

“Anyway, that’s Tsukima,” Gaylen said. “In the basics. I’ve never really stepped out of the city cores when I’ve stopped here. The cores vary a bit in the exact details, but the one we’re setting down in is ruled by a company board and its laws.”

“So, corner-cutting and several layers of corruption?” Herdis asked. “Corporate cops keeping enough peace for business, and no more?”

“That is correct on all points,” he said. “Well done.”

“Certain things are the same wherever they happen.”

“Yup. And that includes underworld shenanigans. Just the kind of place for espionage to thrive.”

“Well, I am excited!” Herdis said, and gave her own thighs a bit of a slap. “I’ve said before that you make a good guide. Maybe you can make it your retirement job.”

“If I live that long. You know, you’ve had two weeks to ask about the planet.”

“It’s more fun this way,” she said. “Your little summations just as we are going down.”

“Fair enough. Glad to be of service.”

Planetfall was a very standard affair. Gaylen followed automated traffic directions, beamed about by both satellites and ground-based towers. He opened for messages offering docking options, and narrowed them down to suit the Addax’s size and budget, made his pick, then followed instructions on a swoop down to the city core of Baider-Bas.

Air traffic was relatively heavy, for how narrow the radius of urbanisation was, but it was all managed efficiently, and at no point did he need to hover or make a sudden course correction.

Their end goal was on the outside of a docking tower. It was one of several that were spread about to handle the smaller ships. Like the residentials and businesses, the towers were all gleaming metal and hard plastic, a sharp contrast against the seemingly unspoiled nature that hemmed it all in. Gaylen tended to visit places that had more wear and grime, which spoke of how relatively recent these developments were.

Of course, no amount of chrome and cleanliness could change the fact that people were involved. And where they gathered, there was room for whatever Mardus had gotten involved with.

Over the past two weeks, Gaylen had repeatedly found himself asking how a freelance lowlife had gotten involved with FedCom-related black ops stuff, only to be reminded, by himself, of the hypocrisy of that question.

He touched the Addax down on a modestly-sized platform, gave the okay for the docking clamps to engage, and then powered the engine down.

“Everyone,” he said into the intercom. “Welcome to City Core Baider-Bas, of Tsukima. I remind you that we’re not supposed to bring guns out of the ship. There’ll be scanners to check. I don’t know how good they are, but let’s not risk angering the local authorities unless we really need to. Let’s try to be quick and quiet about this whole thing: Just find ‘Windflower’ and have a chat with him. And if you see a place selling meatballs wrapped in a sort of red seaweed, then I highly recommend those.”

He ended the call and started undoing the seat harness, before a thought intruded.

“And Bers,” he added. “Stay sober.”

A surly groan could be heard from the living room.