“Marek. Some guys are here to kill you, I think.”
“Mm?”
Marek had sobered up just enough to immediately get to his feet. It was a graceless procedure that ended in an unsteady wobble, but he did stay up and put a hand on his sheathed blade.
“Mm… what?” he mumbled, and blinked furiously as he tried to focus. The voice was familiar, but Marek’s mind was lagging behind his body.
“Downstairs,” the man repeated. “Four of them. I think it’s the Rock Snakes. Led by Hannoer.”
“Hannoer,” Marek repeated, and shook his head. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, they probably are here to kill me.”
“I just thought I’d tell you,” Marius said. “Just that.”
“Sure.”
Marek patted his arm.
“Thanks.”
“Buy me a drink the next time I see you,” Marius said. “If you live.”
With that, the man turned and strode out of the little sleeping room, and Marek saw no reason to delay him. They were friendly enough for a warning, but not enough to shed blood together.
“Right. Right.”
He’d dozed off fully clothed, save for the jacket and boots. His balance almost failed again as he slammed one foot into the appropriate boot, but the other foot made it in a bit more smoothly. He snatched the jacket up and put it on, followed by his basebag, then drew his blade. He held it at the ready as he risked peeking out the room, but the miniscule lighting revealed only empty doorways and a couple of sleeping bodies. Or unmoving bodies, at least.
Marek walked out in a crouch, doing his best to be ready for a fight. His left hand found his hip canteen and brought it up to his lips. He drank greedily as he made his way along the hallway. Hydration was an hour-to-hour concern on this doomed planet.
He passed the main stairs leading down into the common area. There was a general murmur of voices. He heard no sign of catastrophic tensions, but enough noise to potentially drown out more muted ones. Marek continued on until he reached the bend in the hallway and walked all the way to the end. The lighting was even more scarce here. Most of it came up from down below, via a tiny balcony that seemed to exist mostly by architectural accident.
The dull side of the blade went in between his teeth, and Marek swung one leg over the balustrade and then the other. The plastic creaked, but the building was full of all sorts of creaks and he didn’t let it put him on edge. One glance down and a steeling of his balance later, Marek let himself drop. It wasn’t his best landing, but hardly his worst one either. The old break in his ankle grumbled once, then was silent.
He was in the tavern’s charity area, where the owners occasionally allowed people too intoxicated or too poor to make use of the upstairs room to collapse for a few hours at a time. Marek took the blade out of his mouth. With no immediate signs of danger, he allowed himself another generous draught from the canteen.
That’s enough waiting, he told himself as he clipped it back into place. Act.
Marek moved the blade to behind his buttcheek, just enough that a casual glance wouldn’t reveal it in his hand, then exited the charity area.
The Best of the Rest was, at best, an average establishment by local standards. But it did have quite a lot of floor space, so it was popular. Fortunately, one of the things that brought it down was the inadequate lighting, so it was entirely possible to make it from one wall to the other without being recognised.
Marek moved as stealthily as he could with that pleasant alcohol haze over his wits, sticking to the darkness as much as possible without zigzagging too much. The tables varied greatly in size, most having started out serving some other purpose. Spread out among them were the patrons that sought out places like this: Types clad in clothes as rough as their faces, much of it scavenged and asymmetrical, and wary enough to take note of strangers that got close
Hannoer typically wasn’t the type to sit and passively wait for prey to come his way, so Marek kept his attention primed for people moving about. He saw them here and there, and heard a few more somewhere in the gloom. Most were heading towards or returning from the bar, but there were a few gatherings that simply stood in place, conversing in tense tones. Circling around a particular group required him to go a bit further into the light than he was comfortable with, but he maintained his reasonably quick pace and was soon passing along the divide between the entry area and the rest of the tavern.
He was at the gap by the western wall, very nearly through, when he heard the voice.
“There you are.”
Marek turned and brought the blade up into full view. Hannoer was a bit on the lean side, but it rarely took more than a good look at his face for people to take him seriously. He had the Desert Kiss, that combination of sand-weathering and sun-baking that marked regular desert-crossers. Moreover, he simply was a fighter, and knew how to advertise the fact with minimal effort.
“Yes, here I am,” Marek replied, and did his best to watch his own flanks without giving the man, or the fellow who joined him, an easy opening.
“Been keeping my eyes and ears open for you, crack-worm,” Hannoer went on, speaking through his teeth and glaring harshly.
“Is this about Genner?”
“Of course it’s about Genner,” the man replied. “He hasn’t stopped being dead.”
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“Wasn’t me,” Marek said. “Had no reason.”
“Salvage is plenty reason.”
The man with Hannoer turned his head and let out two sharp whistles. The sound of hurrying feet approached. Marek almost ran for it, but attempting to flee from Quickfoot Hannoer just amounted to turning your back on him.
“Don’t make me stick you,” Marek told him plainly. He didn’t wave the blade around. Displays like that were for people who could be intimidated by them. He just stood at the ready, as he had so many times before.
“With that?” Hannoer replied, and indicated the stained, rusty-looking weapon. “Not all that worried.”
“I didn’t kill your friend, and I’m not paying you a damn blood price so you can say the matter is settled,” Marek said. “So back off, and stop treading in my tracks.”
“Oh, I’m settling it, Marek,” Hannoer said. “I’m going to settle it for everyone to see.”
Two more harsh-looking men joined them.
“And you can-”
“AY!”
Marek didn’t turn at the sound of the new voice, but after a couple of seconds a familiar bulky silhouette entered his side-vision. It held a long-gun.
“None of that!” Bello shouted. “Not in here!”
Hannoer didn’t let the interruption faze him. He just pointed at Marek.
“I have a blood debt to tend to.”
“No concern of mine, that,” Bello said. “Marek, are you bringing trouble in here?”
“No trouble on my end,” Marek assured him. “I just came for a bit of a celebration. You know me.”
“And do you know me?” Hannoer asked Bello meaningfully. “Careful which tail you step on.”
Bello pulled the trigger of his weapon. It shared the cobbled-together nature of the man’s establishment, and instead of a hiss of plasma it let out a nasty bang of powder and metal. The shot hit the ceiling, and the silence that followed let Marek hear the sound of debris raining from the new hole.
“I think you…” Bello started, then stopped and turned to an employee. “Was anyone using that room?”
“Not that I know,” she told him.
“Fine.” He turned back to the confrontation. “I think that is quite enough. Marek: Leave. You fellows…”
He waved the gun at Hannoer and his men.
“Leave ten minutes later.”
“I need to get my things from storage,” Marek said, and pointed.
“Ten minutes. That’s all I’m wasting on this.”
“You heard the man, Marek,” Hannoer said. “Better get going.”
Marek did get going. He went around the divide and hurried over to the eastern side of the entry area. The wall was covered top-to-bottom in small safe boxes and Marek dug out his key. He worked it into the crescent-shaped slot and was rewarded by a click, followed by a series of smaller clicks.
Most bigger taverns had a rule about no guns or combustible materials beyond the entry, and it was one most people were happy enough with. But Bello, being something of a tinkerer, took things a step further than many other owners. He wanted a bit of a buffer period between someone angrily stomping back here and getting their hands on a gun. So Marek had to wait a precious thirty seconds before the damn safe opened with a rusty creak.
He snatched the sturdy belt within and then immediately ran for the door. Daylight was creeping down the surrounding hills, and he passed out of the tavern’s conditioned air and into a hint of the brutal heat that was coming. He chose to go left for no particular reason and continued running. He fastened the belt around his waist, and chose an equally random moment to cut left again. One person’s logical reasoning could be guessed at by another.
He threw himself at the wall of an ugly, brown residential, and kicked himself upwards before gravity could interject. He caught the roof’s edge and climbed up, then hurried across the plain solar panels that it was made of and hopped down on the other side.
A couple of fellow early-risers spotted him from the other side of the cramped backstreet, but they gave him no more than a cursory glance. Satisfied for the moment, Marek checked his weapons. Forever etched in his mind was that moment he’d seen a man stroll up to JimJim inside a waystation, point a gun at his head with a smug comment, then pull the trigger to no effect. JimJim, sly beast that he was, had broken into the waystation’s locker and disabled the weapon. And vicious beast that he was, he and two of his cohorts had stabbed the man over and over again, then dragged his still-screaming remains outside and fed them to a pair of lazaks.
But the cylinder on the boltgun spun just fine, and all five bolts were in place, and not replaced by carb-sticks or something. The Thunderer still had the little red marks he’d drawn on it in all the places it could be messed with, and both barrels were unobstructed.
The weapons returned to their respective hips and Marek jogged on. Backstreets were a prime ambush location, but that happened mostly in the late evenings. Desperate thugs were the same as everyone else: They had to sleep at some point. The only other contact he made was a man lying in an open doorway, reeking of cheap substances and mumbling about demons.
He didn’t know these alleys terribly well, and the houses were just tall enough, uniform enough, and tightly clustered enough to block all surrounding view. But there was still the sky, and in the sky shone the lights of the tower. That was all the guidance Marek needed to make it through the low-living mess and over to the next proper street. There he again chose his direction with no plan in mind and kept on going.
The whine of small thrusters warned him. Marek spun around and put a hand on the boltgun as the drone approached. It was a smooth, elegant oval; spotless and expensive-looking, and carried no visible weapons. That was still no reason to relax, and he stayed on alert until a voice came through the thing’s speaker.
“Hello, Marek,” the woman said coldly. “There you are.”
“I’m popular today,” he replied.
“No, you’re not. I have a job for you. A time-sensitive one.”
“I just finished a job yesterday.”
“Well, now you have another one. Yes or no, are you in?”
“I’m in far enough to hear you out,” he told her, then he started jogging again. The drone followed and he crossed the street for more cover. “But I’m dealing with a bit of an issue right now.”
“So you’re getting out of town anyway, then?”
“Maybe.”
“Time. Sensitive. Marek,” she said, biting each word out. “Come meet me beneath the Grey Bridge.”
“When?”
“Now.”
He thought it over for a few moments, as his inner clock kept track of Bello’s ten minute reprieve. Money was money. And she would have armed guards with her. That settled it.
“Fine.”