Galaxy Run: Ibilia, page 4
Nixon is one of two humans in the place. The other one is sitting on another of three stools that face the counter.
Nixon pulls his reader from his pocket. He taps and swipes the screen until his credit balance is up in front of him. It’s still too small, but he doesn’t have a choice on spending a few of them here. He orders a drink from the long and tall Snapsit woman working behind the bar.
She reaches below the bartop and pulls out a small can. She opens the top with a tool she pulls from her pocket and sets it in front of Nixon.
She slides another glass of something frothy and slightly yellow in front of the man sitting two stools away.
Nixon makes eye contact. The man nods a hello then says: “You’re new here. To Ibilia, I mean.”
“Is it that obvious?”
The man lifts his arm and quickly shakes the sleeve of his jacket. A shower of dust falls into a little pile on the bartop. Then he points Nixon up and down. “You’re too clean.”
Nixon smiles and nods and takes a drink from his can. “Just got here.”
“And this was your first stop?” He looks up at the bartender, and she looks back. He shrugs to ask for forgiveness. She turns and busies herself with work behind the bar.
Nixon lifts his can. “Was a long trip.”
“And that’s all you bought?”
“Was an expensive trip too.”
The man chuckles. “Hey,” he calls to the Snapsit woman. “Get my friend here a real drink.”
He turns back to Nixon and points to his glass full of light yellow froth. “One of these?”
Nixon shrugs.
The man turns back to the Snapsit woman. “Two more of these. One for each of us.”
She gets to work preparing the drinks and Nixon thanks the man.
“Did it more for myself than anything. I just finished five days in the hole surrounded by a bunch of creatures I couldn’t communicate with. I’m dying to talk to someone, and with that little can you were going to finish up and be gone too fast.”
The Snapsit woman slides the drinks in front of them. The froth from Nixon’s sloshes over the edge of the glass and wets the bartop in front of him. He wipes it up with the sleeve of his cloak.
“With that,” the man points to the drink that’s still rocking back and forth in Nixon’s glass, “I at least buy myself a bit of conversation.”
“Whatever your motives, thank you.”
Nixon knocks the can back and finishes what little was left inside then tastes the yellow froth. It starts sweet then turns sour on the back of his tongue. His mouth puckers, and his body shivers. Both the man and the Snapsit woman chuckle.
“Wow,” Nixon says. “That’s …”
“You’ll get used to it,” the man says and takes a drink of his own. It doesn’t affect him. “Then you’ll say it’s delicious.”
“You said you were in the mines. Always do that for five days at a time?”
“Yow. You are new here. Yeah. We always do big blocks like that. Wears you out, but the credits. Those make it worth it.”
“I’m no stranger to hard work, but I don’t know, man. Five days?”
The man rubs his hands together, and Nixon can see the calluses on his palms. “It is what it is.”
“Ever think about doing something else? Something that won’t leave you looking like that?” Nixon points to his palms.
“Those aren’t from the mines. Most of that down there is automated.” He holds his hands up, palms out. That’s when Nixon sees that what he saw aren’t calluses. They are scars, worn down and smooth.
“Caught in a fire a few years back. Better now.” He puts his hands back down, one wrapped around his glass and the other in his lap.
Nixon doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. The men sit there quiet for a moment. Nixon needs to ask about finding a new ship, and he doesn’t have time to do this chit-chat dance.
“Where does someone find a ship around here?”
The man was about to take another drink but puts the glass down. “A ship?”
Nixon nods and waits for an answer.
“Not a good bite to eat. Not a place to crash for the night. But a ship?”
He stops and pulls his shoulders up to his ears, scrunches his face, and does his best to copy Nixon’s voice. “Do you know where I can find a ship?”
The man turns and tucks his knees under the bartop.
“You know, you guys come in here and you try to be nice. Sometimes we fall for it, like tonight. We’re lonely, grab onto a bit of conversation. Then you go and do something like ask about a ship. Do you think I’m dumb?”
Nixon stays quiet. It was an odd question, sure. And he did ask it out of the blue. That much he’d grant the guy. But it wasn’t a question that should make someone angry.
“So, do you?” He pauses again. “You think I’m dumb?”
Nixon shakes a vigorous no.
“You guys from Tychon, kings of subtly. How many guys you got waiting outside to bring me in when I say yes? A couple in the front and a couple in the back, I’m guessing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
"Oh, of course not. 'How dare you, sir, besmirch my reputation like that!' Give me a break. You're on this side of the arch. You're spotless. Those clothes look like they came out of the factory packaging this morning."
He grabs Nixon's hands and turns them over. He rubs the palms with his thumb. "I'm not sure these things have ever swung a pick, used a shovel, carried a box."
The man drops Nixon's hands and stands. He downs what's left of his drink then sets the empty glass on the bartop and pushes it away from him. He points to the half full glass of yellow froth sitting in front of Nixon.
"Enjoy that.”
Nixon watches him leave and doesn’t turn back to face the bar until the last trailing bits of sunlight disappear behind the closing front door.
The Snapsit woman doesn’t turn away from her task, so Nixon continues to nurse the frothy yellow drink he’s hoped would start to grow on him. It hasn’t.
Tychon? Nixon rolls it over and over in his head. How would anyone think he was with Tychon?
He knew that most of the lines he said he’d never cross had been blurred by the hard choices you have to make in life. Things you say you’ll never say, you wind up saying them. Those people you’ll never work with? You make exceptions if there’s enough mutual benefit. But Tychon? There is still one company on Nixon’s list of “I would never…”, and that is it.
He looks at his clothes. He holds a sleeve out and gives it a shake. A few motes of dust fall free and grab a bit of light coming through the windows that flank the front door.
He sits at the counter a bit longer. He finishes the frothy yellow thing the other gentleman ordered him. He pulls out his reader and checks his credit balance before ordering something else for himself, another of the low-credit brews in the can.
He begins nursing it when another Snapsit comes in and takes the stool that was abandoned. He orders something from the Snapsit woman behind the bar. They begin speaking. She’s smiling. He says something and they both laugh. A few more minutes go by like that before the woman walks away.
It’s quiet for a moment before Nixon says something. The Snapsit man responds in broken words that Nixon mostly understands. They struggle through a couple of minutes of a conversation that ends almost identically to the first one.
The Snapsit man stands up and says something that gets the woman’s attention, and she rushes over from the opposite side of the counter where she’d been cleaning glasses. She begins hurriedly speaking, trying to stop this train before it starts running out of control and ends with Nixon in a mess on the floor or worse.
She slams a blue hand into the man’s chest. He strains against it then calms. It’s worked. He looks at Nixon, says one last thing then spits on the ground at Nixon’s feet.
He leaves, and Nixon looks up at the woman. He tells her thank you.
“That’s going to keep happening.”
“Him?”
“Both of them.”
Nixon takes a drink of the brew in the can. He sets it on the bartop before speaking. “But why?”
“Because you do look like one of them. We see them from time to time. They cross under the arch and come over here asking questions. Wanting to know information that will get people in trouble.”
She clears the Snapsit man’s glass and runs a wet rag around the lip of it.
“But …” Nixon begins to protest.
She places the glass into a plastic bin somewhere below her. It lands with a hollow thud. She shakes her head to get Nixon to stop. “You don’t get to protest this. It’s how they see you. You can say all day that you aren’t some Tychon plant sent over here to sniff out people running things in the grey market. But just looking at you …”
“Is that what you think I am?”
The woman shakes her head. “I know you aren’t. You keep checking that reader before you order anything. You’re worried about something. Credits, I’m guessing. Someone with Tychon wouldn’t do that.”
“So what do I do? I need a ship.”
“You aren’t going to get anywhere asking these guys who come in here anything. You’ll get some conversation, but that’s all.”
Nixon finishes what’s in his can then sits it on the bartop. “So I’m stuck? That's what you’re saying?”
The woman grabs the can and drops it behind the bar. She wipes his spot with the damp rag.
“That’s not what I said.”
She looks out at who’s sitting out at the tables then leans in close. “My cousin knows a guy. You need a ship, he can help. He has a friend who has a yard. Salvage stuff that he can sell for parts. But he usually has a few that can fly. You want, I can arrange something.”
Nixon sinks lower in his seat, like the only thing keeping him upright was the worry of finding another ship.
“Thank you,” he says.
08
Nixon flips the card over and over in his hands. It's made of heavy stock, and it pops against his fingers as he spins it around.
Written in a black ink is a name and an address.
Keet
78 Bryan
He has no idea where he's headed, and none of the streets are laid out in any logical pattern. They intersect at odd angles, like someone dropped a handful of sticks and used the resulting pile as the basis for a whole city's street grid.
It is beginning to get dark, and that doesn't help his situation. Addresses, where they are painted at all, are done in a dark paint that barely contrasts with the walls.
Still, he searches. The Snapsit woman behind the counter had described the place he was looking for, so that’s how he’s searching.
A dead-end block, halfway down on the left. There should be lights on. And a crowd. There’s always a crowd. He’ll smell it before he sees it. And he’ll hear it before that. She was right.
Nixon walks down a quiet block, but he can tell it won’t be quiet for long. He can hear laughter, conversation, a crowd enjoying itself.
Then he smells it. There is some kind of meat grilling, and from the aroma it is being cooked by someone who knows what they are doing. Ahead is a cross street, and that’s when he sees the glow. It is coming up over the tops of the buildings on his left, giving them all a halo that only gets brighter as he walks up the block. Then he comes to the intersection and that’s when it all overwhelms his senses. The laughter. The noise. The music. He’s missed music more than he’s realized. And the meat. The place is still half a block away and he can see smoke rising in a tall column from a pit that is being worked by a tall, green-skinned something in a shirt without sleeves.
It is a two-story building with a large balcony that rings the second floor. The bottom is covered in bay doors. They are all open. People pass in and out. They fill the balcony on the second floor, but Nixon knows he’s only seeing a portion of the crowd.
How is he ever going to find one man in that bunch?
Start by asking.
But these clothes. If they gave him away in the bar then they are sure to seal some lips here. He ducks in between a pair of buildings and pulls off his cloak. He holds it in front of him and still doesn’t get it. All he can see is where he had to sloppily stitch a tear that came from getting snagged on a fence while he was running away from the security team of an executive he and Shaine had just taken for a few thousand credits.
He sees the series of holes down the side where a blaster shot from a different security team had passed so close it caught his cloak as it flapped behind him on a dead run. He puts a hand to his side and covers the spot where the shot had singed his skin.
This cloak isn’t pristine. It’s a document, telling the story of a man who’s spent his life fighting for everyday, fighting to make it to tomorrow. It tells the story of a man who is tired, who’s seen too much, and has never been able to catch a winning hand.
Nixon tosses the cloak to the ground then stands on top of it and twists his feet, working the fabric into the dirt. He steps off the cloak then bends down and grabs handfuls of the dirt and works it into his pant legs with his hands.
He picks the cloak back up and looks at his work. No one can claim that it looks too clean now. He pulls it over his head and steps back out into the street and starts walking toward the crowd.
He meets the first of it milling about at the edges. Some are looking for a place to have a private conversation. Others are skeptical of the larger crowd. Out here feels safer.
He looks this group over and thinks back to his conversation with the Snapsit woman behind the bar. No one out here is Keet. She didn’t say it, but Keet is a player. Keet is connected. Keet can get things done. Keet is in with the people. He’s reveling in his status.
Nixon looks at the building from this angle. There are rooms on the second level that he didn’t notice before. It’s still dominated by the ringed balcony, but there’s more to it. There’s an interior he hasn’t noticed until now, and that’s where he’s going to find Keet. He knows it.
He dips and ducks his way through a crowd that grows thicker with every step. Smoke from the pit where they are grilling meats stings his eyes. Murmurs of conversations surround him.
Not many here look like him. As a human, he’s very much outnumbered. But there are also just as few Uzeks, and that gives him some level of comfort. He pushes deeper into the crowd until he comes to the first set of bay doors. They are each made of one solid sheet of some kind of brown-green wood, and when open like this they stick straight out from the side of the building, like some kind of extended shelf.
Nixon reaches up and runs his finger tips along the underside of one of the doors as he passes beneath. It’s smooth and cool. He pauses once through the door and scans the room. He looks through the moving crowd and tries to get an idea of the space. There’s a hallway off to his right, and a wall separates half of this room from the one to his left. And on the wall opposite the door, there’s a set of stairs that lead to the landing.
People sit on nearly every step. It makes climbing to the second floor difficult, but the crowd is a bit thinner once he gets to the top. He pauses again and quickly takes everything in. Behind him is the balcony, and the night breeze coming in flutters the bottom of his cloak. He gathers it up in one hand and holds it tight. In front of him are only a few others. They all glance at him, the new guy coming off the steps and then coming to a stop.
Standing along the wall, leaning against it, is a Snapsit man. Tall and broad. His arms crossed at his waist in front of him. Every experience in Nixon’s life tells him that this man isn’t here for fun. This man is working.
Nixon makes eye contact and approaches.
“I’m looking for Keet.”
The man looks Nixon over, up from the floor. Slow. Then says in broken words: “Lots look for him.”
“I was told he was here.”
“He is.” The man gestures toward the door with his head. Nixon hears laughter coming from the other side, a high pitched giggle from a woman and laughter from a voice that he assumes belongs to Keet. It’s low and bouncy. Nixon makes a note: The man sounds happy.
