Dallas turned around. In the dim light of the streetlamp were a half-dozen young males, his own age or a shade younger. Their dark clothes were worn and staple-threaded in a half-dozen places, supplemented in spots with a single shoe, sleeve or hat that was more expensive than the rest. The outfits shouted louder than any vidpone announcer that they were urban poor and willing to thieve, hurt or worse to get what they wanted.
When Dallas and his friends would encounter people like this, it was inevitably during a night of slumming. They might get glares from such a little mob, but nothing else.
Unfortunately, tonight he was alone.
“Guys,” he said, “I don’t have time for this. I’m looking for Pipe.”
The leader, only slightly better dressed than his ragged crew, smiled underneath the streetlight. “Maybe you can give us a little flash,” he said, exposing a mouth of shiny teeth that had one, noticeable gap, “and we take you to him.”
Dallas smiled back. This was negotiation, something he’d been trained to do for a significant part of his life. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get flash. And maybe I’ll get you flash in the form of paper, not creds, if you take me to him first.”
The leader looked at his toadies. They all chuckled on cue. He turned back to Morgan, both his hands in the pockets of his dark, slightly ragged longcoat. “Paper’s good, ‘cause it’s hard to trace. If you got paper, Maybe we take your flash, and leave you with a couple’a things broken for fun?”
He took a step, small but unmistakable, towards Dallas.
His five toadies, each with at least one hand in their own pockets, all did the same.
Dallas took a step back and had the sword out in two seconds, his hand flicking out the hilt in a fairly fluid motion while backing up a second step. “Maybe you take me to him, and you keep all your limbs,” he said, with what he hoped was a menacing voice, the streetlight glinting off the hilt’s dark chrome.
The toadies fell back, the leader was unfazed.
“You know who I am, rich boy?”
“No. You know who I am, poor boy?”
“All I gotta know is you rich. Means you gots to fight fair. An’ you can’t power up that fancy meatcutter ‘o yours an’ start choppin’ away. Wouldn’t be fair, now, would it? You don’ even know if’n we’re armed, rich boy.”
Dallas pushed the button on the sword hilt with his thumb. Despite that it hadn’t been pressed for over two decades, It sounded with a well-oiled click, and white beam of light about four feet long sprang from the hilt’s seven tiny projectors, each shooting its own beam that met in the deadly photonic blade that now waved in front of the now spooked little mob in front of Dallas.
“You outnumber me six to one. The first rule of honorable combat: meet force with equal force whenever possible. I don’t know what you have in your pocket, and I don’t think both of us have time or smart-score to do riddles.”
“The flup I care about that?”
“It means I can use my little toy here and turn you into a Thanksgiving turkey without breaking any rules of honorable combat at all. In fact, I’ve never killed anyone, but this’d be a good first time, doncha think?”
The leader blinked and balked, just a little, and pulled out a small pistol. His toadies pulled out similar ones, though one or two looked homemade.
“Whaddya say now, rich boy?” he said quietly.
“I say you’ve got a small caliber weapon typically bought in low-rent districts from dealers without licenses. Everyone calls them slugthrowers, because the proj they shoot are so small and slow that they’re very rarely lethal on the first shot. Your buddies back there have even more primitive ones, cobbled together with rusty parts, welding torches and bailing wire. I’ve been trained how to handle myself in just this kind of situation since I was six years old. You might take a piece out’ve me, you might even kill me. But I’d chop at least one of you into steaming, bloody pieces on the ground first. Maybe half of you. Maybe most or all of you. And if you killed me and survived, I guarantee chief inspector Kai would make it his top priority to nab every one of you who was still alive and make you spend a night outside. You want that?”
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The leader didn’t answer. Now was a crucial time. Dallas could either get them to walk away, or anger them so much one of them might do something stupid. Years ago his tutor had made him read The Iliad, and Dallas had never forgotten the character of Pandarus. Right when the Trojan war was about to end in peace, Pandarus shot an arrow at a king just when a treaty was about to be signed. Stupid and self-serving, but the war raged on and many more lives were lost, all over one, stupid, impulsive action.
Dallas had to make sure another stupid action didn’t happen today.
“You and your crew back off now,” Dallas said quickly, “you all can say you scared a rich boy out of your territory. You’d be right, and you keep all your limbs for another day.”
The leader kept his hands steady, his cheap but possibly deadly weapon pointed at Dallas’ glowing weapon arm, trying to look at Dallas with a steady gaze.
“You come to our place,” he said, ignoring the toady who was trying to pluck at his coat, “no invites, no parlay, and then, when we say hi, you turn on some lame-arse little toothpick an’ try to scare us? That’s what you think this is?”
Dallas breathed, unsure what the proper response would be.
Then, something clicked in his head.
“Yep,” Dallas said, “that was me. I flupped up. Can I go now?”
“The flup yeah, you go now!” the leader said, waving the muzzle of his tiny pistol to the side before pointing it back at Dallas. “I want ya outta here faster’n a nano-rumor at a little girl party! Bogs! Take this idiot to Pipe’s place, so’s he’ll get outta here an’ I won’t hafta look at him again!”
“Surethat, Colt,” said the toady, presumably Bogs, who stopped tugging Colt’s coat and approached Dallas with a wary eye, keeping a good few feet of distance between himself and the white blade that hovered with absolute silence in the air between Dallas and his crew.
Somehow, Dallas knew he’d passed some kind of test. The air was heavy, and he knew to keep quiet or the very fragile peace he’d just somehow secured could get very, very broken very quickly.
----
“Hello, Pater,” Huston said while he tinkered with yet another gadget in front of him. “Nice to hear your voice. How’s life in the spire these days?”
“Huston, could you turn on the vid, please? I’ve something important to discuss with you.”
“I’m sorry, Pater, but it’s been on the mal all day. Can you tell me on the aud?”
Pater gave the deep sigh Huston had seen so often when they were growing up; the sigh that said Pater knew you were lying, but didn’t have the time or energy to press the issue. “It’s your brother, Huston. He’s made a number of poor choices.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again. Have you seen him this evening?”
“He stopped by, asking for money. Did you cut off his allowance?”
“That’s between him and myself. Did he tell you about any of his plans?”
“He was talking about some girl. As always. I think this one lives in the lower levels, if that helps?”
Pater paused. “Did he say anything else?”
“He was upset, made his usual rants. Wanted to go offworld, head for the core worlds, the rimworlds, anywhere but here. I’ve learned to tune out everything he says by now, so I can’t recall any specifics.”
“Huston, this is very, very important, did he give any specifics regarding his plans?”
“Pater, he’s been like this since we were children. If he can’t get his way, he goes into a rage, sometimes breaks or takes something that’s not his, or upsets you and Mater. I just tune him out and pretend I’m listening sympathetically while I’m figuring out my latest project. If you want to see him behave differently, it’s long past time to let him face the consequences of his actions.”
Texas Morgan paused. “And…if you were me, Huston, what specific course of action would you suggest?”
“Pater, please don’t take this the wrong way, but when Corporates tried to threaten you I’ve seen you tell them to go spit on a bonfire and punch tar. Yet you don’t know how to handle a tantrum from one of your own children?”
“With the Corporates, I know what scares them, and I don’t care if they burn their whole population alive. With you and your brothers, unfortunately… my objectivity sometimes suffers.”
“It never suffered with me when I was growing up.”
“You were a much more stable child growing up.”
“Indeed…” Huston took off the oculars and put down the delicate tools he’d been using. “Were I you, I would talk to Austin, look for the girl Dallas is currently enamored with, and check the lower levels. And I’d do it in that order.”
“Why talk to Austin?”
“Because Austin has always been more successful with the ladies than either of me or Dallas, and knows how to talk a girl into just about anything.”
“Why is that significant?”
“Because if I know Dallas, he’s going to try and talk his girl into going offworld with him.”
TBC….