_ _ _ Hiiro Volshebso
Normally, getting off Intatenrup would have been a nightmare of red tape, triplicate forms and security screenings. It was almost like the planetary bureaucracy went out of its way to make the process as painfully drawn out as possible to deter the average citizen from leaving. For a former pioneering conscript like me, it would have been near impossible if I'd went through the official channels. Through the unofficial channels however, skipping off world was as easy as packing a bag and asking a few well-aimed questions. If my eyes hadn't already been opened by a couple years on the renegade side of the law, that would have done it for me.
My ticket off Intatenrup was the Thread of Heaven. A space elevator tying a low-hanging asteroid to the planet like a naughty kid on a lease. My stomach was fluttering while I waited. Supposedly the lift was for materials only—things that wouldn't die under a few dozen Gees—but my old fox assured me that unless I was already one foot in the grave, I'd make it to Heaven. Between my stitched shoulder, stapled calf and the metal plates keeping my finger bones in place, I was a far cry from mint condition. The old fox who'd smuggled me in said I shouldn't die… probably.
I dug out a pack of smokes and lit up another coffin nail to soothe my nerves. If I died, I might as well enjoy one last smoke. I took a long drag, the smooth burn on the way down scratching the itch I'd been dancing with for years. If I didn't make it to Heaven… well, one last smoke wasn't going to hurt anything. I'd have to quit again. I'd stopped keeping track of how many times I'd kicked the habit only to go crawling back to it like an abused lover. I might just run out the clock instead of quitting this time. If it killed me it killed me; at least it'd take its sweet ass time about it. My eyes drifted down the the cherry glow of my smoke.
"In my light, you will burn eternally." I muttered, taking another pull. The ember flared into ruddy light as I sucked down that lungful of sweet poison, then faded into dull ash. "Not much of an eternity." I growled wordlessly, spiking the embers of my smoke-butt across the cargo can. A dozen sparks trailed from my stub embers, carving a handful of tiny shooting stars into my eyes. The lingering negatives accompanied me in the solitary, stygian darkness.
My old boss had been able to arrange every aspect of my vacation, he almost seemed as relieved to see me gone as I was to get out. There was a catch though, it was a working vacation. One last job to end things right. Funny how someone, somewhere always seemed to be doing 'one last job' that never ended.
The spongy, gel-lined casket I was sitting on trilled a little reminder that its lid was still open, as if I'd somehow failed to notice. I had a good thing going with the local underworld. Throwing that away to chase after… whatever this heat and those words were, that didn't seem like a smart move no matter how I cut it.
But ever since that impossible house… What the hell was wrong with me? I was burning up all the time, jumping at shadows and I couldn't stop listening for something that wasn't there. Restless, that was the word. Nothing scratched the itch inside my brain. I had to get away from this place and somehow I knew that there was nowhere on the planet far enough away to put that house behind me.
The casket trilled at me again, more urgently this time and I relented to its wishes. A couple seconds later, I was being crushed under the weight of my own skin and I blacked out. I woke up, everything hurt, my finger had probably broke again and I was warm. As luck would have it, this was pretty much my default state this past week so I recovered quickly. A quick, trepidatious inspection of my person revealed that everything was still attached and based on the fact that my balls (along with every other soft part of me) felt like they'd been used for day-long batting practice, they probably still worked.
When I tried to push myself up to my feet, I hopped a half-meter into the air, my rubbery knees filled with more strength than I'd thought I had. A few more hops clued me into what my body had figured out already, the gravity was all cockeyed and too light. Not anything ridiculous but enough that I felt twenty kilos lighter than I was back on Intatenrup. I was still bouncing on my toes when the dock workers final cleared me a way out.
I crawled out of the shipping can and took my first look at Heaven. It was pretty underwhelming; nothing but practical metal infrastructure.
The two dock workers who'd dug me out were anything but. They were both women, or at least one of them was and the other had a cute girl's face on a lanky, stick-thin body almost a meter taller than me. Her proportions were repulsively fascinating, this stick-thin girl. She had a normal head with soft features and mid-length brown hair which looked short on her, but her body looked like she'd been stretched out and hadn't sprung back. If she didn't tower over me, I'd have thought she was a malnourished child from her knobbly limbs and protruding ribcage.
"Like what you see?" The stick-thin girl asked, striking a pose that might have been flattering except that it highlighted every aspect of her deathly skeletal form.
Both women were wearing the umber-colored skimpy offspring of coveralls and rompers, very low cut at the neck and fully slit at the sides save for the ankles and hips. The other worker (a weathered, petite woman with a black bob-cut, playful eyes like jade and an hourglass figure most women would kill for) stepped forward to cut the unnerving show short.
"You is painter?" The normal woman asked in the clipped, close-enough tone of a non-native language.
"Yes. Where's my contact?" I drawled, focusing on the human woman instead of her skeletal companion. "I'm supposed to meet someone-"
"At port-side bar soon as you arrive." The older woman finished. "This no us first free-fall, Cherry Boy. Stow tough guy act. You pull close to 12 Terran Gee. Sit for now, we make sure you no topple over dead when you take crap."
The list was shorter than I'd expected but longer than I'd hoped. Despite the plates, my finger was in for another round of medical bone cracking to ensure that everything was still aligned properly. My cuts had opened up some, but nothing a quick snip, staple and stitch wouldn't set to right. When they'd touched my skin words like 'fevered,' 'pallid' and 'scorching' were bandied about; I let the misunderstanding slide rather than explain my unusual condition. Heedless of either womans' insistent objections (and their suspect motives), I refused to let them check for anything more serious around my nethers.
"You ladies are lovely, but I can take care of that myself."
"I bet you can." The bony giant smirked. My gaze flicked to her for a moment before I averted my eyes once more. Under her breath, but still plainly heard, she uttered. "Cunt tease."
"If you get lightheaded when you pop boner, it because you about to die from internal bleeding. We test that right now if you like?" The normal woman said provocatively, batting her jade eyes and making an obscene gesture with her mouth and hand that left no illusion as to what she meant.
"I'll do my best to avoid temptation." I mumbled, averting my gaze and keeping my imagination from wandering into potentially fatal territory.
The two of them tittered something behind my back as I left to meet my contact— half walking, half bouncing with every juddering, lurching step. Finding the port-side bar turned out to be as simple as it sounded. What I thought were the lower levels were actually the upper ones and they only had one bar up here, Goodnight Moon. The name was tacky, so was the cosmos-themed decor.
The view was anything but.
The huge room's stepped layers were more akin to a luxury cinema than a seedy bar; every booth and table was facing outwards towards the massive window of space beyond and Intatenrup above. The sight sent a dizzying burst of vertigo fluttering through my stomach; a disconnect between my eyes and ears made the room's gravity flicker in my mind. My ears won out, the lighter than normal pull on my body might not have been real gravity but it felt real enough. That said quasi-gravity was actually trying to throw me into the infinite expanse of space to die a horrible death was an afterthought I tried to ignore.
The room looked cold to my painter's eye: black, grey and blue filled the room as surely as the thin wisps of chill vapor pouring throughout the cavernous space. The accent colors of purple and green, meant to add to the space-faring cosmic theme, were a muted undertone compared to the massive window showing the stars beyond. Plateaued to the entry's right, the bar sported more color from the bottles alone than the rest of the room combined; to the left, private booths buried in the walls and a mesa-styled dance floor; the room's center was all cinematic restaurant. The compartment was bigger than the dock I'd arrived in, crisp bracing air spilled through the entryway like the bitter winds of Intatenrup's southern tundras. Once, I would have found the icy room unpleasant but since the arctic, cold couldn't touch me. At least, not until that impossible house…
The bouncer who'd seen me in gave me a polite shove to get me clear of the doorway. A second, more insistent shove got me pointed towards a central booth seating five sharply dressed men finishing a meal worth more than the average wageslave made in a month back on Intatenrup. Two serving girls dressed in subtly different skimpy coveralls (cover-somes?) than the dock workers arrived to clean the plates. Their uniforms were the bluish-grey of a moonscape but I thought I saw a flash of color in them too. I shadowed in to take the servers place and await the attention of my next boss.
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The head of the table sighted on me without acknowledging me— sizing me up as one might a street dog of questionable motive. The rest of the table deliberately failed to notice me, which didn't stop their hands from dipping under the table or into their jackets. The table was quiet enough for me to hear the muffled click of more than one pistol's hammer being cocked. As a conscript, I would have hated this kind of scrutiny. The slightest infraction (real or more often imagined) was grounds for corporal punishment. Since making the switch to the shadows, I'd learned of a new meaning behind the action. It was a show of power. Not the childish tantrums of ineffective superiors who needed to bully their juniors into place, but the very real show of strength and a willingness to use it. My life was in the hands of this stranger, a single word could end me. If I fell short of his assessment then he would never notice me as a man and at some unseen sign to his bodyguards I would be dealt with, whatever that entailed. It was a common tactic among the more cutthroat of underworld employers. A tactic I was familiar with.
I showed no weakness, standing my ground, watching him as he examined my character from the subtlest tells. The way I stood a respectful distance from the table. The slightest bend to my knees for stability and mobility. The tidied, off-the-rack clothes of hired muscle, smart but not so smart as to undercut any charges in my care. My remarkably unremarkable face, unimpressive yet functional trim hair style and clean-shaven cheeks were all absorbed impassively. His eyes lingered on my injured shoulder, then lower down to my mangled, purple finger.
Having seen enough to reach a decision, the table's head finally acknowledged me with a tilt of the head. All eyes turned on me at once, just begging me to make a mistake. I bowed low, squaring my flattened back to the table's lip, ensuring all present would see my bared neck. I knew that'd please these violent animals.
"You must be the painter." The table's head said. He spoke with a gruff, commanding voice; the tone that of a man destined and expected to lead from birth. His words were so neutrally inflected as to border on maliciously calculated, not that I thought for a moment every utterance from this man wouldn't be planned, rehearsed and choreographed to exacting standards. "You come highly recommended by our friends up above."
"Thank you, boss." I said tersely, raising my head slowly and keeping my eyes on the table.
"Mister Satou will suffice for our dealings." Mister Satou jutted a chin to the outermost of his guards. The slimy lizard of a man bowed lightly, then left. "I was just about to order dessert, you should join me."
"Thank you for the generous offer, Mister Satou."
I slid into the booth, Satou's bodyguards staring me down with unmasked hostility while the man himself held an air of professional amicability. The guards could glare all they liked, without a signal from their boss they wouldn't act out of turn in front of an outsider like me. After a full minute of death glares without a single spoken word, the serving girl returned. Again, there was a tantalizing flash of bright color poking from beneath her umber jumpsuit, her swaying hips teasing the eye with tantalizing colors every step she took.
"The usual for me and my associates. My new friend may order as he likes."
There was something in the way he said it, the slightest inflection of interest to his words. Was he judging me on something as mundane as the dessert I chose? It was a childish test, a blind guess at what I thought Mister Satou would eat. I hated this pointless posturing but it came with the territory. Men in power had an annoying habit of wielding it like a spiked club, bullying others for the sheer fun of it. What fun there was in it was lost on me, but I had a job to do and a part to play.
I had nothing to go off. I hadn't seen any other diners on my way in, not a single menu either. Except that wasn't true, I did have something to go off. The room. Whatever the usual was, it would be something cold.
"Vanilla sundae, please."
The two 'associates' across the table from me shared a look, as if I'd failed the test. The waitress flashed a sheepish smile to me, then a nervous look to the table's head before bowing and scampering off. With as much discretion as I could manage, I watched her go. I couldn't keep my eyes from the waitress's side slit as she turned, the flash of color I'd seen earlier taunted my imagination too much to leave the question unanswered. My imagination wasn't disappointed. Her vibrant sea-green lingerie paired with her body in profile were the stuff of dreams.
"Do you like her?" Mister Satou inquired.
"She certainly is cute." I answered.
"If I'm pleased with your work, I'll give her to you as a short-notice bonus."
I blinked twice before the crass implication clicked home. It made sense in hindsight that all of the angelic women were sex workers moonlighting as laborers rather than the other way around. I was familiar with bosses hiring eye candy even if I wasn't inured to it yet, but the flagrance of his offer was still surprising. Back on Intatenrup, most of my old clients didn't mind looking for free, but touching was a separate matter entirely.
"That's very generous, Mister Satou. Perhaps we could discuss what I'll be painting for you?" I asked, steering the conversation to the business at hand without stepping out of line.
"An apartment, level 3 down by the docks, tunnel 2043, hab C-025. Single occupant, man by the name of Ivan Balakin. He's a data consultant who happened to find something of mine that he shouldn't have." Satou paused, knowing I'd have questions and humoring me.
"Is this data a priority?" I asked.
"No, but I would prefer it be turned over to my protectorate, should you locate it. This data is sensitive, it won't just be made public or sent off to my enemies. If not stored on his personal devices, it is likely on a physical backup near his person. You will be suitably compensated for fruitful efforts, naturally. A lesser sum is available if you cannot retrieve the data but veritably locate or destroy it."
"Will I need to handle my own clean-up?"
"If you can handle the matter quietly, then yes. Should events force your hands, a robbery gone bad will prove easy enough to sweep out the airlock, not to mention personally lucrative to the burglar. I understand that he has done quite well for himself on Tengoku, despite being an offworlder."
"Resources? Mine and his."
"I've arranged a temporary safehouse for you on level 7, buried in with the workers. You'll be given the comm-code for one of my men, any further dealings will be conducted through him. So far as I know, the target is acting alone and has no connections worth mentioning." Satou's tone was aggressively neutral for a moment. A verbal tick, or something else? "Of course, you know how quickly that can change." He finished cordially.
"Of course." I agreed politely.
"Which means the only matter left to discuss is your compensation. I understand you wish for a new identity and passage out of system." I nodded. "With my connections, this can be easily arranged."
"Thank you, Mister Satou-" He waved a hand to cut me off.
"Let it never be said that I am a man who does not repay his debts or share his prosperity with others. I've already arranged several bonuses if I am suitably impressed with your work. Should you desire to join my family instead of moving on, I always have work for a man of your particular, artistic vision. Work that would make you extremely wealthy and my family even more so."
The table laughed at their boss's joke. I joined in after a beat, faking with the rest of them. Playing the part.
"I shall consider your many generous offers and aim to impress, Mister Satou." I said.
Sensing that the conversation was over, I moved to bow but a twitch of his fingers stilled me. I followed his gaze beyond the table, spotting the serving girl returning with a platter of five parfait glasses; four identical cups of butter-white ice cream with a fifth coated in dark drizzle and crushed nut, a single red cherry crowning the outcast. As the cups were doled out, the aroma of sake filled the air— heady with a sweet, fruity note I couldn't place.
"Very close, Painter." Mister Satou said, his tone somewhere between wry and complimentary. "Perhaps you would like to enjoy your dessert elsewhere as you take in the orbital's scenery."
"I believe you are correct." I said, reading between the lines. "With your permission?"
I was dismissed with a brief nod.
I stood, bowed respectfully (but not so deeply as I had initially) and made for the exit, untouched sundae in hand. The chilled dew forming on the glass helped to relieve the worse of the pain in my mangled finger even if the cold couldn't penetrate past my feverish skin. The image of the two bodyguards sharing a look across from me flashed to mind. If my choice of dessert was a test, I don't think I failed it outright but I was unsure if I had passed or not. The clandestinely armed bodyguard conversing with the club's bouncers turning on me like a snake, a hand reaching into the folds of his jacket.
"You will call me Mister Matsumoto or sir. I'll be your liaison from this point on." The bodyguard's hand leveled itself to my chest; instead of the weapon that would end my life it held a plastek card and a personal comm. "You may consider these an advance on services rendered."
I quickly pocketed the comm, focusing my attention on the station Ident card. It looked to be proper— not that I knew what an improper one might have looked like. The main details that caught my eye were my new name and my new job.
"It would seem you can call me Hero Sato, station janitorial and maintenance services."
As far as names went it left a bitter taste on my tongue. Not that they'd commonized my given name from the old words to standard, but rather that they'd ripped the only clue I had about my lineage from me. Anyone who studied the thicker features of my plain face or dense build could tell I wasn't from a homogenized asiatic bloodline. I could pass for a Nova-Kyoton at a glance, but it was only a matter of time until some slip up betrayed my Canzuk-Kassack peasant roots. Much like my sundae, I was an acceptable imitation of those around me but I wasn't one of them. My limited state education was another damning hole in my new persona; there weren't any orphans with the Sato family name, it simply didn't happen. Just one more mighty crack in flawed foundation of my new life.
"Very well, Sato-kun." Matsumoto stated, snapping me out of my bitter reflection. "I'll be taking a walk across the station for my duties. You will accompany me."
"Of course, Mister Matsumoto." I replied, stressing his position of superiority much like he had my juniority.