It’s a hard life in the belt, but out here a man can live free and die easy, just inches of steel between you and the big black, waiting to give you a kiss that’ll take your breath away. It’s also easy to get lost in the belt; I make my living finding those lost things, even those that’d prefer to stay lost.
My name’s Dick Bates, I’m a private eye, a gumshoe for hire. When they’ve got nobody else that’ll take the case, they always come to me; the hopeless, the desperate, the dangerous.
Of all the offices in all the stations in all the belt, she had to slither into mine. She had a body that went all the way up and had a hood that wouldn't quit. She was cold-blooded but hot, in a way that makes a man weak at the knees, trouble from the get go. She was spicy, like a burrito, and she wrapped herself up in my affairs like only a jornissian could. Nine foot long and curves in all the right places. A man could lose himself in those red and yellow coils, dreaming of sunshine and long summer days, cool summer nights. Her eyes, though; I swear they could see right through a man. Never blinking, they were bright blue like the sea, and just as deep and terrifying.
The case was simple, she said, an ex ‘business associate’ was missing on Io, she wanted me to find out what had really happened to him. The local fuzz thought it was just an accident, but Hsssrrshprrr thought otherwise. I didn’t ask what a woman like that wanted with some random low-life in a floating rat-hole at the wrong end of the Sol system; I needed a meal ticket much more than I needed to know about the skeletons in her closet. I didn't think there was much of a story to tell about yet another death in some back alley zero-G slum, but for 300 gal-creds a day I’d find out all there was to know.
Murder, in the solar system that never sleeps. Secrets in the Allen Belt. Alien snakes. This was one big ball of namptha and I was right in the middle of it.
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I booked passage on a non-stop drop slot death trap, an endless train of steel coffins ploughing their way between the rim and the inner solar system; emptied of one cargo, their only job was to be filled immediately with another. It was low on comfort and long on boredom, once you get past things being one stray rock between you and a date with eternity.
I was used to death as a companion, I greeted his new acquaintances on every job. One day he’d come calling for me too, but until then I'd ply my trade as interstellar troublemaker, with enough alcohol to forget my mistakes and remember my triumphs.
Thirty six hours in, I was settled in my bunk to review the case, not much else to do when the living quarters are barely bigger than a coin toss and the only entertainment is counting the rivets in the bulkheads. I had a handful of pictures, a couple of known haunts and a name. Not much to go on, but I’d dealt with less. Io was a rat-hole halfway to nowhere, mostly mining unions and organized crime, as if you could separate the two. It attracted a lot of hopefuls and a lot more hopeless. Then there were the xenos. Anywhere else, access to humans was restricted, controlled, but Io was a place nobody cared about and there were a lot of aliens with cash to burn getting interested in mining and striking it lucky, often in that order.
I idly cracked the knuckles of my two prosthetic fingers — one on each hand, I’d got them courtesy of a bad accident involving a mob boss and a pair of industrial tin snips — as I considered what it could mean, but honestly I had no clue. Why should anyone care about some lowlife bum enough to chase him halfway from Earth to the next star system? He was either a wayward lover or an absconded business partner. Either way he owed her something she wanted back, be it a piece of her heart or a chunk of change. Had to be the oldest of stories, even out here well past the middle of nowhere. Maybe I was old-world, when we only had the one. The new world was this; a million points of light across the tapestry of the night.
I arrived on Io a few days later, ferried in under a low burn. The non-living cargo would disembark first, it was easier to handle, not to mention worth more than I was. Soon enough I was decanted, ripe and dishevelled. There had barely been enough water to drink, none for such luxuries as a washcloth.
The lights were dim and flickering in the way-station, as if signalling SOS in some ancient code. The air smelled of cigarettes and desperation. The locals were much the same. I made my way through customs, relieved of enough currency to ensure few questions and less interest in my trip. You keep your head down out in the belt, or you lose it. Slavers, organ leggers, venereal diseases, every one could kill you; sooner or later one of them would. Life was short out here between civilization, but so were the questions asked if a man wanted to make a living.
First stop, accomodations.
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Sweet-Heart Heights. If I thought I’d thought I’d seen the rattiest of ratholes before, I was forced to re-evaluate. It was like somebody distilled the essence of crack-house and then wrapped it in despair. The cracks in the walls had cracks in them, and between those? Fungus. The only reason there weren’t roaches were they’d all left for better pastures. The only thing holding up the walls was the mould, and even that was looking for an out.
I threw myself onto the musty bed, determinedly ignorant of the state of the covers, as I planned my next move.
Number one, get a piece. I wasn’t so much expecting trouble as checking the state of my in-trouble overdraft. No man worth his salt strode Io without a piece, and neither did I.
Number two, find the local fuzz and interview the stiff. Get a butcher’s at the crime scene if I could, such as it was. I didn’t expect much in the way of keeping it pristine, but maybe I’d find something missed by people who cared less than I did.
Number three, get enough of a picture of the deceased to find out what really killed him. This would take long enough so I could accrue enough dough to buy enough cheap gutrot to forget why I came here in the first place. That was step four.
I planned on getting a head-start on number three straight off, so a few gal-net searches later and I had another destination in mind. I said goodbye to the miasma of poorly washed sheets and ugly hookers and headed to a likely bar.
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I’d like to say the bar had seen better days, but that'd be a lie. It was ugly, even for a literal hole in the wall, stained with the passage of a thousand patrons and as broken down as their hopes and dreams. The bartender gave me the stink-eye, but my money was the right colour.
"Whiskey, on the rocks. Leave the bottle," I told him, pouring myself a finger as he handed it over.
The label was fake, but the contents were wet and mostly ethanol. The burn was comfortable, unlike the seats. I sat in silence drowning my sorrows, sobriety melting like the ice in my dirty glass, until I got a bite from one of the local denizens.
"What're you buying?" one hopeful asks, voice like a second hand cheese grater and a face only a mother could love. In this case, his mother may have been his sister. I didn’t waste time pretending I wanted anything else than information.
"Have you seen this man?" I asked, flipping him a grainy photo of my meal ticket.
"You a cop?" The man narrowed his eyes, gaze flickering to the back way out. He was instantly taut, like a bowstring.
"Do I look like one?" I fire back, taking a swig of liquor. I offer him a drink. With a nod, the bartender slides a shot glass in front of him and I fill it.
"Takes all sorts," he says, knocking it back.
He’s nervous, a caged animal, ready to gnaw his own arm off to escape the steel trap he was sure was even now snapping closed around him. Suspicion runs deep in a place like this, nobody wants to be remembered. If I want information, I’ve got to grease the wheels. I take out a few bills, unfolding them where he can see it. He licks his lips, as if tasting the way they smell, like a snake. Credsticks are the currency in civilised space, but out here, cold hard cash leaves less of a fingerprint.
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"I just wanna eat," I say truthfully. "A Jorny's payin' me to ask questions, not to talk to the fuzz."
"You'll want Squawky then," my informant offers, bills disappearing into a coat so dirty it was more filth than fabric. He jerks his head to one corner of the bar where a karnakian's sitting in a booth, two dorarizin nonchalantly lurking at a small round table between me and their boss. The bird’s wealthy, stinks of money. I can smell it even over the dried vomit and piss.
“Thanks,” I turn to say, but the informer’s out the door already, less than a ghost. I drink another two fingers then pocket the liquor bottle in my trench coat before standing up and sauntering over to mister fur-and-feathers. The ‘dories stand up, slowly unfolding into nine foot tall towers of fur and death. I wasn’t phased though, a beneficial aspect to the liquid courage I’d downed.
"[The boss don't wanna talk to you,]" says the dog I christened Larry.
"[The boss don't like uninvited guests,]" says his friend, Curly.
"Where's Moe," I mutter to myself, gaze swinging like a noose between the two sides of beef. They don’t growl, they don’t need to. Both have degrees in ‘looming with intent’. I bet they majored in ‘hurting people who ticked them off’, and minored in ‘disposing of evidence’. Probably got honors. Summa cum laude, gonna hurt’ya lotta.
"[Relax, we are all friends here,]" says Squawky, all four eyes fixed on me, gaze unwavering. His reproduced voice is soft and cultured but his teeth are sharp. Just like that, the sides of beef part like the red sea.
“Down, Cujo,” I mumble. The dorarizin show teeth, having heard, even if they didn’t understand thanks to the OIH goons and their culture hatchet job. I sit down in the comfortable booth, entirely aware that Larry and Curly and now paying an exquisite amount of attention to me. Probably sizing up which cuts are the best.
"I just have a few questions," I say, taking out the picture of my mark and a few more bills. Squawky pointedly ignores the money, such small denominations are beneath him. I knew he would, but it’s the principle of the thing. He gives them a dirty look, like one would a cockroach in the kitchen, or a shit in the punch-bowl.
"[I may, at some time in the past, have had the chance to see this person, in an entirely inconsequential manner,]" Squawky says, after inspecting the picture briefly. He tosses it back to me across the table. I nod, one professional to another.
"He's dead," I say, taking out my whiskey. Putting my hands in my pockets causes the dorarizins’ teeth to rattle, their claws to flex, but Squawky's as cool as a cucumber. I take a swig of raw fire straight from the teat, everyone relaxes. "Any friends of his would doubtless like to know how his last moments transpired," I add.
Squawky ruffles his feathers. "[As an upstanding member of society,]" he says finally, "[I feel the death of even random passersby should be... investigated.]” He’s silent for a few moments, sizing me up. Whether as a meal or a confidante I’m not sure. “[Are you a connoisseur of fine foods?]" he asks suddenly.
I blink. "I eat."
"[My associates know of a good... supplier. You'll find anything you may want, there.]” Squawky turns to Larry and Curly, waves a talon. “[Give him what he wants.]"
The two stand again, taking station either side of the booth. I realize I'm dismissed, waved off like a vessel setting sail, perhaps more like a plague ship, unwanted in my current harbour. I shuffle out into the artificial night, feet making tracks through the silent streets as I’m flanked by my two shadows. It's an ill wind that blows from the carbon sinks, whispering of foul deeds. I float like pond scum downriver, unnoticed as much as I am unwanted, destination the same traps where all detritus ends up, the docks.
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The heady scent of pig swill fills the air down here. The tunnels are huge, but the miasma is all-pervasive. You wouldn’t think something so mundane, so Terran, as a pig farm would exist out here in the trackless reaches, but meat’s big business. Man’s gotta eat, and there’s only so many times you can eat a plankton burger before you need something that squealed once upon a time.
Larry points, grunts. Curly just watches me, sizing me up again, trying to work out how much trouble he’d get in if I had an unfortunate accident on his watch.
“I’m not worth it,” I mutter. “I’m an unimportant drunk, and I’ll be out of your fur much quicker if you forget you saw me. Tell your boss thanks, for what it’s worth.”
I turn, uninterested in their posturing. I’m pretty sure they continue with it even so, but I’m already walking towards Marv’s Meat Packing Co.
The lettering on the infrastructure is lopsided, ugly, like the installation itself. ‘Marv’s Meat’, says the door to the loading bay. Behind it is the gate to the next world. Nothing on four feet came back through it. It would open up regularly to accept the offering from the pens further in. Hundreds, probably thousands of pigs at a go would be pushed in, wholesale, and then automated systems would neatly euthanize, drain and dissect the passengers ready to be shipped off at the top of the needle on their final journey to the stars as sausages, rashers, gammon steaks and cutlets. They sold everything except the oink.
I’m noticed immediately by heavy set workers paid to be interested in things out of place. They’re adorned with the tools of the trade for when things go wrong, painting a colourful tapestry on the walls, floors and ceilings of this facility in pigs’ blood.
“Hullo, you lost?” The man’s a mountain, like somebody took two fat people, squished them together and then mashed the result into a single pair of overalls. Whatever you do, I told myself, don’t think about how pets look like their owners. His little piggy eyes fixated on me. Not anger, not even curiosity, just an intense knowledge of Things The Boss Won’t Like.
“Hi, uh, yeah, I’d like to talk to... Marv, I guess?”
Thinking was taxing this one to the limit. He’s wielding a small red club with a spike on the end. For a moment I think he might use the finisher on me, but eventually he points to a nondescript door a short way down. I touch my hand to my forehead. I don’t wear a hat, but if I had, I’d have tipped it. I don’t know if he’d have understood even then.
“Much obliged.”
My footsteps should be loud, but they’re drowned out by squealing and power saws. Most of the work is done by robots, but there’s always the type that wants a human hand somewhere in the equation. However, when I open the door on the second floor of the warehouse and close it again, silence descends like the grave. It’s almost palpable when it hits, takes me a few long seconds to realize I’m being spoken to.
“Sir can I help you?”
Her nameplate says Doreen, her makeup says Divorced. Thick-rimmed glasses on a loop of string are perched on the end of her nose and her perm is ferocious. Her hair’s copper, her eyes are green and her skin is sallow. She’s tapping at a computer older than I am. She asks out of function more than anything, not any real sense of duty. I step easily forwards on the industrial grade shag to the faux-neon desk and lean on the latter.
“Hi, what can you tell me about this man?” I ask, flipping her the same picture I’ve shown off twice before now. Doreen studies it shrewdly.
“Name?”
“Bates,” I say, “Dick Bates. You can call me Richard.”
“Your guy,” she says, not a hint of humour, voice dryer than the mojave.
“Silas, Gordon Silas,” I say back. “Don’t know if he used that name with your systems, he… got around.”
“All our migrant workers are properly vetted and documented,” Doreen says automatically. I don’t know if I believe her but I don’t really care. I know she doesn’t.
“Nice to know. So, you seen this guy? Has anybody here seen this guy? See he’s dead, apparently, and somebody wants to hear it from someone who knows the particulars. I got the report from my client. Now I want it from the, uh, piglet’s mouth.”
Doreen blinks at me. The motion’s slow, but I can see the gears spinning. Probably plotting my demise in a thousand horrific scenarios. That or working out what colour nail polish to get next shop run. It could go either way. She leans into an intercom, pushing the single button and talking clearly if disinterestedly into it.
“Marvin, man to see you about a Mister Gordon Silas.”
There’s silence for a few moments, then a voice crackles back. “Really? Fine, send him in.”
“He’ll see you now,” says Doreen, voice flat.
“Doreen you’ve been a treasure,” I say, puckering up my lips and kissing the air in her general direction as I pass her by. Her expression doesn’t change, but the carpet does.
Gone is the hard-wearing industrial-grade carpeting of the common plebeian, I’m now walking on real wool. Or at least upmarket polyester. The room is gargantuan, compared to the waiting room before it. ‘Marvin’ is behind a desk that looks like it’s real wood, slouching in a real leather seat.
“Afternoon, Mister?” Marv’s voice is lively, his eyes wide. I hate him instantly. Pork fat in human form.
“Bates, Richard.”
“You must be new here,” he responds, his head tilting in that slightly offhand way that anyone with one of the new implants does.
“Fresh off the boat,” I reply noncommittally.
“Well, sorry that you came all this way for nothing. You’re a long way from home. Hope you have a good, swift trip back.”
“Oh? But—” I’m stopped, both by his interrupting and by a *ping* on my com-bead.
“Everything I have, that I’m bound to give you, is already in your Gal-Net box. When he didn’t show up for work a ten-day ago, I called the authorities. I don’t know much, but… it’s a cut-throat industry out there.” Marv chuckled as he poured himself a glass of gutrot. He gestured, swirling the liquor idly. “Literally. I pay what I can, but I have to stay in business. Most of my workers are, aheh, well, let’s say very mobile. I assume you can keep your yap shut about that, pal?”
“I don’t bother the fuzz if I don’t need to, not at least unless I’m paid to.”
“And this job of yours?”
“Paid to find out about our dead acquaintance. It’s his death I’m interested in, not his life.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He did so. “Well, if you’re finished prying, I really am a busy man.”
I nodded. “I can see, lots of signatures, lots of meetings.”
Marv chuckled again, steel in his voice. “I started this business with my own two hands, carved it outta the rock itself. The galaxy likes meat, I give it to ‘em. Used to call me Marv the Machine, worked my hands until my fingers bled, worked my way up from the shop floor, trained a crew… I’ve *earned* this desk. And you know what? If I want to take a trip, I can do it on my own dime. Now, I may work sitting down, but I have a lot more hours to fill before I can clock off, thanks to our new investors, so if you don’t mind?”
I put two fingers to my forehead - a tip of my hat - again. “I’ll be in touch if I have any more questions.”
“I look forward to it,” Marv lied. I was dismissed.
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I wandered through the hollowed-out asteroid somewhat aimlessly. My credit wasn’t good enough for the parts that were well-lit, ventilated, and the right temperature for humans, neither social nor monetary. I was a nobody in this rock, just like my meal ticket used to be.
Honestly, if I’d not been paid to find out what really happened, I’d never have come in the first place. But I *was* being paid, and that alone made my gut roil. Why would anybody *care*? The credits were good, but the job was sour, left a bad taste in my mouth.
But I was Dick Bates, Private Eye. I had a meal ticket, enough whiskey to drown a stoat and nowhere else to be. Why *not* investigate the death of a nobody? Maybe I’d get lucky.
If I was really lucky, I might even get out of this rat-hole alive.
I headed out in search of a piece, there and then. I had a feeling that my luck may have run out, and where luck fails, cold hard iron is the only replacement.