Deku Tahn swaggered from the Port Master's office triumphantly. He had been compelled to pay the man a visit after receiving the latest invoice for docking fees and service charges. It had taken very little persuasion, a reminder that he couldn't leave without being destroyed by Evolution, a thinly veiled threat, and a small gift, and the Port Master had agreed that it was unreasonable, unjust and immoral to charge Deku to dock his ship in the Good Enough space port. The fact that he had always intended to stay didn't come up at any point, and Deku walked away from the office several thousand credits richer than he might have been.
He felt altogether pleased, not just because of the Port Master, but because of who had followed him to Ar Suft: Sinsin Cu. The sneaky cockroach! He played the altruist, but he scrabbled in the dirt for Ancient treasure the same as everyone, and he was always on the money. Deku's nose really was always right in the end. There was something here: something valuable. Sinsin wouldn't be here otherwise.
Deku was so pleased with himself, and so complacent, that he lingered for a while in the docking bay to savor his good fortune. He stared up at his ship, cradled on her gossamer bed of light, rent-free, and admired her, almost as much as he admired himself.
Mission Adventure was a small ship, so small that pedantic, miserly authorities of definitions might be inclined to quibble over the justness of the term. She had once been a corvette: a military vessel, heavy on speed and firepower (for her size), but lacking in every other regard. Though capable of independent operations for months at a time, she was so small that she couldn't accommodate a shuttle, or even a lifeboat. She was beautiful though. She was stripped of most of her military hardware, but she still had the predatory good looks inherent in so many fighting ships.
She had never offered much in the way of comfort, amenities, or even space for her crew however. Even as a private vessel, renovated to feel more homey, Adventure remained spartan. As he lingered, Deku pondered ways to improve her. He first thought of changing her name, as always. Mission Adventure had been the choice of some previous owner, whom Deku imagined to have been stupid, vapid, effete, and probably fat: maybe even a child -probably rich. The cost of updating the Combine registration was prohibitive however. Deku would have to strike it very rich indeed, to submit to a fee so absurdly excessive for something that shouldn't matter to him as much as it did.
His mind briefly turned to weapons. Adventure had once mounted a heavy mass accelerator that had run most of the length of her hull. The housing for it remained, and Deku sometimes used the empty space to smuggle small, high value cargoes. If the weapon itself could be restored, he would have a much bigger stick with which to back up threats; it would make his vocation so much easier. Even the big syndicate ships would rather submit than patch up holes from a two hundred millimeter mass accelerator. Then again, if his ship was flagged for piracy, she'd never be allowed a berth on a gate ship again. Maybe renovating the galley would be the right place to start. She could do with a new coffee pot if nothing else.
Deku's smile faded as he stood there. His satisfaction gradually subsided as he daydreamed, and was replaced with a sense of unease. His nose was off the scent of good fortune. It was telling him trouble was now on the way. He looked up at the sky. No slavers were dropping down in fast-burn rocket pods this time. That had only happened the once, but besides teaching him to trust his nose, it had made an impression, and now he always looked up when his sniffer got to tingling that way.
Deku's hand was already on the handle of his pistol: a massive Karpov of cinema fame. Sometimes called the 12 by 12, the slugs it threw were 12 millimeters in diameter and weighed 12 grams. Just one was enough to disable a personal aegis (unless it was one of Ancient manufacture) and a second was enough to take all the starch out of anyone's spine. His thumb nudged over the arming switch, and the gyroscopic stabilizer vibrated in silent acknowledgment on its way to spinning up. His other hand hovered over the slap switch of his shield belt, but he didn't activate it yet. Instead, he repressed the fear that urged him to caution. His hands removed themselves from his protections and he strode confidently to the brow that led up to his ship's airlock.
Mission Adventure seemed even smaller from the inside. Even with much of her military hardware stripped, she couldn't be called roomy. Every junction of her five compartments was an airlock bottleneck that could only accommodate a single body at a time, and there were many other chokepoints like this as well. She had no cargo hold, so everything her crew needed had to be stored in bins or netting: cluttering up the environs wonderfully. It was hard to believe her military compliment had been over forty sailors. Deku's crew of eighteen complained ceaselessly, and they didn't even have to sleep in shifts, for want of their own bunk. She was tidy at least: surprisingly so, given the nature of her crew and their trade. Deku's love and doting fastidiousness didn't extend to patching holes in the upholstery of seats, fresh paint, or the replacement of worn and battered furnishings, but she wasn't greasy or dirty like other ships, and she didn't smell. Adventure had nevertheless had a long life of hard use, and she had the stains and scars to show it.
Voices drew him forward, towards his ship's bow. He passed by the narrow ladders leading up to the bridge half-deck, into what had once been the officers compartment. Some previous owner had combined the five cabins (closets really) into three, but the general layout remained the same. The cabins, a toilet and kitchenette lined the exterior, and were arranged around a central dining, leisure and office area. This was the single greatest concession to comfort Adventure boasted, and this was Deku's personal, exclusive domain, shared with his only real partner: Ri Onte, Adventure's pilot. The rest of the crew was not welcome in this compartment, and yet, here they were: almost all of them, crowded around the dining table. Even Ogden Bloom, the alcoholic Deku employed for want of a proper engineer, was there, and he rarely ever left the engine compartment.
Ri was a slender young woman. The word pointy came to mind whenever Deku looked at her. She had a pointy little face, a pointy little nose, a pointy little chin and even a pointy little bosom. She might have been considered pretty if she wasn't so sinister. Her dark eyes smoldered with scorn and latent ferocity. When she spoke, which wasn't often, she did so only in her native tongue. Deku had never heard her speak a full sentence in Combine Standard, though she was known to sneak a few of its cuss words and insults into her discourse.
“Deku'n patdashtom shpanut du,” she said.
“Who am I going to kill?” Deku asked. He spoke lightly, but his voice boomed in the confines of the compartment. The men and women gathered around Ri jumped and started, and they looked at their captain in shock and terror. As the silence dragged on, Ogden discretely slipped out of his chair next to Ri, and edged out of the compartment. Deku smelled more on him than just fear, but he let him go. He needed him.
“We'm jus gabbin hefeman,” said a man in pidgin Standard. He was a simpleton, who went by the name of Egg. There were no innocents on Deku's ship, but Egg came relatively close, having never murdered anyone from any desire of his own. His only interest was in pleasing his friends, and he did this by doing most anything they told him to.
“Oh? What are you gabbing about?” Deku asked the room lightly.
“Who the nex hefeman gonna be,” Egg said with an innocent smile, and the whole compartment groaned.
“Light damn it Egg,” said Watkins, a brutish, middle-aged woman, and the ringleader of the mutineers -Deku had no doubt. She was smarter than most others, and like most mid-wits, she thought this made her some kind of a genius.
Egg was crestfallen by the shame and disappointment heaped on him. He didn't understand, and nobody explained to him what he had done.
“Nevermind Egg,” Deku told him. “You're a good'un.” He squeezed the simpleton's scrawny neck with a big hand, gave him a little shake, and then patted him on the back. Egg wasn't comforted, but Deku didn't care. He sat down opposite Watkin. “So,” he said, looking around the compartment. He deliberately overlooked his would-be usurper. “Who's the next captain going to be?”
Nobody spoke. Watkin glared around the room. Her sour looks succeeded in drawing two of her staunchest supporters to her side. Flanked by these men, she found the courage to speak. “We never should have come here Deku,” she said.
“We're on the money,” he replied disdainfully. “And none of you have the sense to see it.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Watkin replied. “We ain't gonna fight Evolution for it, and we ain't gonna sit around here waiting for the cyborgs to stamp us out.”
“Oh,” Deku grunted, as if in admiration. “You sound like a woman with a plan. What are you going to do? Make a run for the gate ship? Just take off and hope you can get past the cruiser in orbit?”
“Better than sitting around here,” one of Watkin's supporters said defiantly.
The others weren't so certain. Deku grinned, pleased by how easily they were faltering: the idiots. He was going to kill each and every one of them for their complicity in this abortive little mutiny, but not right now. There were too many of them all together. So he went on talking: dividing them, so that he could deal with them piecemeal later.
“Who's going to pay the Combine their transit fees?” Deku asked. “You've all been complaining you don't have any money left. How are you going to afford a berth on the gate ship?
“What? You didn't think of that?” he asked, seeing that they hadn't. Deku scoffed. "Do you even know what they charge for a ship this size?"
Watkin's thin lips twisted with disgust as she looked around the compartment again. The cowards. Their discontent had compelled them to listen to her, and to follow her lead for as long as she appeared to have the answers, but that was over and done. It was one thing to talk about overthrowing Deku, but something else entirely to do it: to actually fight the man, especially after they had lost the element of surprise. And now he was making her look like a fool.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You've got the money,” Watkin pointed out threateningly.
“Oh, so you're going to steal my ship and my money. You think you can get me to give up my accounts before the gate ship leaves? You think I'm some kind of a plop?”
“I think after I start cutting pieces off of you, you'll do pretty much anything I want,” Watkin said. She looked down pointedly, at Deku's crotch.
If Deku had any weakness, that was it. He'd be the first to admit it. “Damn. You're colder than Ri girl. She's colder than you,” he said, turning to Ri. At the same time, he pulled his Karpov under the table and shot Watkin in the belly.
The room exploded into motion. Men and women dove for cover as Deku started blasting. The man on Watkin's left went down right after her, but the man on her right got the drop on him. He had a ripper strapped to the small of his back, and he surprised Deku with just how quickly he was able to snap it up and bring it bear. In an instant, he had fired a dozen projectiles or more. Deku had his shield up, but it wasn't a particularly good one, so he acted like he had no protection at all. He dove for cover the same as everyone else, joining the general crush taking place in the unused port side cabin. Egg, who had been standing thoughtlessly beside him, was caught flat-footed by the burst of fire that chased Deku. A line of little projectiles ran up and across his chest, and he went down with a whimper.
Egg's killer stared in shock at what he had done. He saw his friends dying on the floor, and then Ri's light caster whiz-banged in the compartment, and a chunk of his arm went up in smoke. He turned and ran.
Deku rose up and pursued the mutineer at a sedate pace. There was no need to rush. He stepped over Watkin and her compatriot, and shot them both in the head without stopping.
The last mutineer was trapped: Deku had locked the airlock on him. He was still mindlessly slamming his hand against the door control when his vengeful captain appeared in the compartment. He saw him coming, stopped his useless, frantic attempts at getting the door open, and raised his ripper instead.
Deku shrank against the bulkhead, just as a long burst from the ripper gun filled the air with ferrous slugs. Sparks burst into being around him as his aegis deflected would-be hits and near misses. Before he could even be concerned that his shield might fail, the burst of gunfire was over, and the man was out of ammunition. He was still trying to reload its magazine when Deku stepped in front of him.
Sinsin arrived just as this final mutineer was ejected from the ship. He heard the man scream “Wait! Wait!” But Deku didn't wait. He shot him three times in the chest in rapid succession, and then kicked him down the brow. He watched him tumble down to the docking bay floor with a glare.
“Well well well,” Deku said when he saw the geel. He grinned and holstered his pistol. He turned to Ri, as she came up beside him. “I told you he'd change his mind.”
“Du opoz yish,” she said, crossed her arms, and leaned her narrow figure against the airlock frame.
Deku strode down the brow, stepped over the dying man at the bottom, and hardly felt the tug of his hand on his pant leg. “I knew you'd change your mind!” Deku called across the bay. His grin widened with every step he took, and it turned to gloating when Sinsin accepted his offered hand and shook it.
Dallas stood awkwardly, glancing nervously between Deku and the man he had shot. He finally decided to extend his own hand. Deku glanced at it, but otherwise ignored it, and disdained the face of the young man who owned it.
“Your timing is perfect,” Deku told Sinsin. “I was just about to have coffee.”
“Coffee-” Sinsin's reply was interrupted by the whiz-bang of Ri's light caster. She had just put the dying man out of his misery. “Coffee would be good.”
Deku drank his coffee with a sigh of supreme contentment. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw how Dallas fidgeted nervously. The bodies being carried out of the compartment unsettled him hilariously. Sinsin was a much cooler customer. He sat where Watkin had sat, and probed the jagged hole in the table before him, where one of Deku's bullets had passed through on its way to kill his usurper.
“What did you say?” Teku demanded of one of the corpse bearers, who had muttered unhappily.
“I didn't say nuthin'!” the man whined.
Deku glared dangerously, alert for any more threats to his supremacy.
“Balls boss, we're just sorry about Egg is all,” the other man said more amiably. “Poor little blighter. He was so confused.”
“And scared,” the muttering man said.
“Don't forget to come back and clean up the blood,” Deku said flatly. Their sympathy for the simpleton irked him. None of them had ever truly liked Egg. He had been a dog to them: someone to kick when they were in a bad mood, to trick, and to laugh at. Where had their sympathy been when Watkin had cut off half of his ear, over a lucky break at cards? They had all laughed, and Egg, after overcoming the pain and shock of betrayal, had tried to laugh with them.
“Come on Kip, before he starts to stink any worse than he does already. Should smell sweeter aboard without 'ol Harry here and his feet. So proud of his dog leather shoes, and no socks. In this heat-”
The man's soliloquy faded. Silence befell the cabin. There was only the sound of Ri's meditation stones, swirling and twirling in her small hand.
Dallas grimaced when he finally sipped his coffee.
“No kadshesh goppa e kedel,” Ri observed.
“What does that mean?” Dallas asked.
“Du ezhan turd, yedbyish patdashtom nod sudch katsha gell,” she said to Deku, without taking her eyes from Dallas.
“She said you've got a pretty mouth,” Deku replied. “Is that why you brought him Professor? You looking to rent him to my crew? The boys could do with some tight fresh meat.”
“Ah no,” Sinsin said lightly. “Dallas is my research assistant and a friend.
“She just asked Deku here when he was going to get a new coffee maker,” he explained to the chagrined young man.
Dallas didn't believe it. The small woman was incredibly sinister. She kept looking at him like he was some kind of worm: revolting, but maybe edible if she got hungry enough.
“You're no fun,” Deku protested with a small laugh. “Here, give me your cup kid. I'll get you some sweet.
“So what's your offer Professor? A seventy-thirty split on anything we find seems fair, considering all the manpower I'm bringing to the table.”
“Unfortunately I can't make any such deal. I'm here as an agent.”
“Agent?” Deku echoed. Then: “You sneaky cockroach! You're working for the Andorrans!”
“I was. Unfortunately, Evolution knows about it. I fear the only reason I'm alive is because they want me to work for them instead.”
The spoonful of gelatinous sweetener paused, and hovered over Dallas's cup for a moment. “So what do you want from me?”
Deku returned Dallas's cup to him, and gruffly patted and squeezed his shoulders. Once the pain of this had faded, the young man turned to his drink: cheap, burned coffee, now syrup-sweet and somehow no less bitter than before. If anything, it was even more disgusting.
“First,” Sinsin said. “I want your help making contact with the Andorrans. I'll be under surveillance so they won't be able to reach me directly. I want you to be an intermediary.”
Deku thought about that for a while. It would be risky, but his crew had just become even more expendable than they had been, so that didn't bother him. “Go on.”
“After that, I'll want the use of your ship and crew for survey, and possibly excavation as well. I'm not at all confident that there's anything to find here, mind you.”
Deku smirked at that. His nose was practically buzzing with the promise of money. “In exchange for what?”
“I'll negotiate with Evolution on your behalf for whatever fee you like.”
Ri's meditation stones stopped their crystalline singing.
“Evolution?” Deku exclaimed.
“I'm given to understand that if I don't accept Evolution's employment offer, they'll kill me. And if they can't find me to kill me, they'll destroy the city,” Sinsin explained. “It's my intention to get the Andorrans to surrender to the Prefect, and so deescalate the situation.”
“So what do you need me to dig for? If you're working with Evolution, you don't need-” Deku cut himself off. He chuckled at first, but it soon grew into a deep belly laugh. “You are one sneaky little bug! And you've got some balls on you. I'll give you that.”
“If you agree to work with me, the Prefect will be in a way to feel grateful as well. This will all be to his benefit as much as anyone.”
Deku's thoughts raced right over this statement. Petty government authorities aren't known to be grateful or generous as a rule. Evolution was much the same; it was infamous for reneging on deals: almost as if it couldn't calculate the cost of having a terrible reputation. The Congress of Andor was a different story however. It was only a few centuries old, and an up and coming faction in the game of Combine politics. Its oligarchs operated under the guise of a republic: spouting doublespeak about personal freedoms and unrestricted trade, but their explosive expansion and growing influence in recent decades was the result of a free and open hand. The most reliable way to secure a good reputation is to buy it.
“Evolution has to pay me up front.”
“Of course,” Sinsin said. That was obvious. “But you're aware they'll want some kind of security: a centurion or observer on your ship?”
That was also obvious, but only in hindsight. Deku shrugged off his alarm and aversion. He could handle a few unwelcome guests. And if he lost a few crew to the cyborgs when it came time to deal with them, so much the better. It would save him the hassle of killing them himself.
“I want two hundred thousand from Evolution,” Deku said, and expected to be negotiated down to half that in the end. “And the use of any of their equipment I want. I expect them to cover all expenses, and to pay a year's docking fees in advance too,” he added with sudden inspiration. The Port Master would be happy to see him again. At least half of the credits he managed to fleece from Evolution should find their way into Deku's pockets. That was only fair. “And I want you to hit up the Prefect for some local credit for my crew,” he added reluctantly. Though doomed, his crew remained essential; they had to be kept sweet for the time being. Some reveling in the local sin den would put everyone at their ease: deescalate the situation, as Sinsin put it. “See Ri? I keep telling everyone. My nose is always right.”