Galaxy Run: Ibilia, page 7
Keet turns and punches a dent into the side panel he is standing nearest. He kicks a second dent into the panel with his heel.
“I don’t know if, with a ship in this condition, I can do an even-up trade. I think I’m getting the short end of that one.”
“Oh, yeah? Now that you’ve gotten a better look?”
Marko steps away from the ship and toward Nixon. Keet follows.
“You don’t think I know who you are?” Nixon asks as they approach. “You’re me, I’m you. We are the same people. Always trying to find an angle. Finding a way to get one credit more. I’m older than both of you, and it’s how I’ve lived my whole life. What’s available for the taking, and how can I get it?”
Marko smiles and nods. “And you think I don’t know who you are?”
Nixon’s heart beats double. What does he know? Who does he think I am?
“You’re some low-level hustler. That’s all you are. You come here trying to scam me. Telling me you’re out of credits. You’re not out of credits. Not a guy like you. You have resources. If nothing else, guys like you always have resources.”
Nixon rocks on both feet. Left, then right. The blaster brushes across his stomach.
“You know what? You’re right. I do have resources. Always something up my sleeve. I like to think about them as options. But not this time. This time I’m desperate. This time I’m playing this thing straight up.”
“Nah,” Marko says. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. This ship. This is all I’ve got, and I don’t need it anymore. I need something else.”
Keet looks to Marko. Marko nods. “Of course you do. Because that one’s too recognizable now, isn’t it?”
Keet pulls his datapad from his pocket and holds it face out so Nixon can see it. There on the screen are pictures of EHL from different angles. One is up close. One from far away. One from overhead.
“I got this yesterday morning,” Keet says, turning the datapad back toward himself. He smiles. “I get a lot of them. Every time a ship with an untagged registration comes into our atmosphere it trips our alert system. Some days I get a dozen of these things. It’s like I’m going to shake a hole in my leg with the alerts.”
He holds the pad out for Marko to see it and then back to Nixon. “Yesterday, though, I just got the one. Just this one.”
Keet laughs a little.
“Now,” he continues, “the ship that tripped our atmospheric alarms is sitting here in front of us. I mean, what are the odds, right?”
Nixon begins to walk to the ramp leading up to EHL. “Look,” he says. “Clearly, we aren’t going to be making any kind of deal today…”
Marko whistles, and coming down the ramp the other direction out of the ship are the two guys who Nixon saw earlier. Both men have forced smiles that contort their faces and each are carrying Bastic fuel rods. Nixon looks down to see them pull their fingers tight around the rods, and their knuckles go white. Nixon looks close. Those knuckles are scarred, their blue Snapsit skin healing nearly black.
These are the mechanics.
14
"Look at that," Marko says, a smile in his voice if not on his face. "I wonder what other treasures we'll find on that ship."
Nixon turns from the mechanics and answers. "Nothing else. That's it. No secrets."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Keet says. He starts sliding his finger across the screen of his datapad. Everyone waits.
He finishes and shows the screen to the crowd. "It's not just that ship that has people's attention."
The image is of Nixon. He’s back on Exte. He’s standing in a crouch, his face twisted up in concentration. He’s holding a blaster out in front of him, and everything around him is lit up by the bolt that’s just left the barrel.
"Well, now," Marko says. "Now this is interesting. Seems that you've built a long list of enemies. Some of whom are willing to pay buckets of credits to see you again."
Nixon puts his hands out in front of him to say “Wait a minute” but it doesn’t work. Marko reaches behind his own back and pulls a blaster. Keet reaches and grabs his own.
“Safe to say the deal’s off,” Marko says. “I think we are going to go...a different direction.”
He looks to Keet and gestures toward Nixon with a toss of his head.
Everything slows down. Keet takes one slow step toward Nixon, his blaster pointed at Nixon’s middle. The mechanics continue coming down the ramp from EHL, but it’s like they’re walking through mud.
Nixon feels his arm reach for the blaster tucked into his belt. He feels his fingers find the grip and slowly close around it. And he feels his arm draw the blaster out from under his cloak. He jab-points it at Keet.
He hears Marko laugh a deep laugh that seems to bounce off the dirt in between them. Then everything snaps to again. It’s all running in normal time. “Well, now we’ve got ourselves a gun fight,” Marko says.
“Doesn’t have to be a gunfight,” Nixon says. “It can end right here. We all go our own ways and forget we ever met each other. You can even keep the rods.”
Marko keeps his blaster trained on Nixon. “That’s not how this ends,” he says. “Not anymore. All drawn like this, it has to end pretty badly for someone.”
He looks aways from Nixon for a moment and toward the mechanics. “Over here, guys.”
They both finish their walks down the ramp and off of EHL.
“Well, if you are telling me there’s no other way that this ends …”
He swings his blaster from Keet and shoots the first mechanic in the shin then goes right back to Keet. A large chunk of meat and bone scatter across the ground in front of Nixon. The Snapsit cries out, something that sounds like a pained animal calling for death.
The man tries to limp another step or two before falling to the ground. Instinct tells him to grab his wound, and when he does he drops the Bastic fuel rod. Nixon’s instincts kick in next.
He grabs for the fuel rod as it falls, not wanting it to hit the ground. When he does, he makes himself vulnerable. His head is down. His focus is gone. His blaster is pointed at the ground.
“Grab him!” Keet shouts to the second mechanic. The mechanic lay-drops the rods he’s carrying to the ground and reaches for Nixon. Nixon tries to spin away and raise his blaster, but the mechanic snags him by the crook of the elbow.
He pulls Nixon to him. Nixon’s blaster catches on something and is ripped from his hand. The mechanic gathers Nixon up in one quick motion. He’s a tall and lean Snapsit. He has one wiry blue arm wrapped across Nixon’s front. Nixon squirms and tries to wiggle free, but he can’t. The Snapsit mechanic only grabs him tighter.
The other mechanic is still rolling on the ground, one blue hand grabbing at his lower leg. He’s moaning.
Marko looks at Nixon and smiles. “Can I tell you something?”
Nixon doesn’t respond, just tries harder to pull himself free.
“This is always how this was going to end. Keet came to me after you left last night. We worked all of this out.”
Nixon struggles against the Snapsit’s grip one more time then says “Why?”
Marko shrugs. “We don’t get to have a lot of fun around here.”
“So, I was entertainment for you?”
“You were, but I think the fun’s over. Don’t you?”
Keet shouts something that Nixon doesn’t understand and three more Snapsit men step from behind the piles of parts.
That’s five men and five blasters in front of Nixon. He’s outnumbered. He’s outgunned. And that’s not counting the Snapsit mechanic who’s got him wrapped up, that arm creeping higher. It’s wrapped across his chin and neck now.
The Snapsit cranks his arm tighter, and Nixon struggles to breathe. He starts doing the calculations, figuring his odds. No matter how he does the math, it’s not good. Too many of them with too many guns. And just one of him with his blaster on the ground out of reach.
He reaches up and grabs the Snapsit’s arm and tries to pull himself free. The Snapsit leans back and lifts Nixon from the ground, his toes kicking the dust into clouds. He’s lost his leverage, so all of this pulling is only tiring him out.
Marko and Keet laugh while he struggles. Something inside of him catches fire.
I was just entertainment? And now you laugh? Laugh at this.
Nixon reverses his grip. He puts his hands underneath the Snapsit’s arm and pushes it up to his mouth. He opens wide and then bites hard into the man’s forearm, sinking his teeth deep into the flesh. His mouth fills, warm and wet, with Snapsit blood. He grinds his jaw and feels the muscles tear between his teeth. He shakes his head, like some kind of animal trying to rip flesh from bone. He can hear the muscle rip apart, and the Snapsit’s grip on him goes soft.
One last pull and Nixon’s through. He spits his mouth clean and lets go of the Snapsit’s arm. The Snapsit falls to the ground and reaches for the blaster that Nixon had dropped earlier.
Nixon kicks it away from the Snapsit’s grip then takes off, scooping up the blaster as he sprints in a wide circle.
Marko and Keet and the others are still for a moment. An animalistic display like that always stuns, and it’s what Nixon had been counting on. He needed the time. He’s firing wild shots as he runs. They hit nothing but buy him time.
Marko and Keet both drop to the ground and return fire. Their shots aren’t any more accurate, and Nixon dives behind a pile of parts.
“You’re insane!” Marko shouts.”
“Not insane!” Nixon shouts back. “Just desperate.”
Everything is quiet for a moment. Nixon counts an internal three then pops up, firing. He spreads three blasts—left, right, and center—in front of him. He drops back down without seeing if he hit anything, but there’s a scream then moaning from the other side of the pile. He assumes he got lucky.
He counts another three and pops up again, but this time everyone is waiting for him. A volley of blaster shots come his way. He goes to drop back to the ground, but he’s too late. One of the shots catches his blaster square and blows it from his hand.
He hits the ground, his hand stinging and hot from the heat of the blaster bolt passing so close. He tries to slow his breathing. He needs to think and if all he can focus on is sucking in another breath then he won’t be able to come up with a plan.
His brain runs smoking hot trying to figure out what’s next, and he can’t come up with anything. Every scenario, no matter how far out he runs it, comes to the same end: Marko is turning him over to someone, either the Uzeks or whoever else is chasing him. Whoever it is, he doesn’t see where it goes from there. Nowhere good, he assumes.
But it’s his only option. He has to stand up. He has to place his hands above his head, palms out, and allow himself to be gathered up and hauled away. As much as it’s going to go against every instinct he has, as much as he’ll have to fight all of nature to stand still while Marko gestures one of his back up men to tie Nixon’s arms behind his back and walk him through these piles of parts, he has to do it. Because something might happen. If this life of his has taught him anything it’s that you always have the next day, the next hour, the next minute. Until those things are gone for good—you’re dead or locked away—there’s always a chance of something happening that flips everything to the unexpected.
So he stands up, arms above his head and palms out. Marko smiles.
“Go get him, Keet.”
But before Keet can take a step, the air roars with the sound of big guns firing and the three Snapsits behind Marko—the two still standing and the one on the ground—disappear in a cloud of dust and blood and fire.
Everyone turns to see EHL slipping closer to their little circle. As it moves it fires two more shots and both of the mechanics become nothing more than a memory.
Nixon stays planted behind his pile of parts. Marko and Keet aren’t moving either. The three watch EHL rotate, putting Marko and Keet in its sights. EHL fires two more shots, and both men disappear. Dust and grit and bone and blood all hang in the air.
Nixon watches everything begin to settle then begins to move toward his ship. He walks slowly, waiting. Watching. Expecting for someone to get up. Waiting for someone to come around from behind one of these piles of parts that’s still standing. They’re beaten and bloody but ready to continue the fight. But no one does because no one can. Marko. Keet. The other Snapsits. They don’t exist anymore, their bodies nothing more than a fine mist that’s now part of the atmosphere.
He finds the blaster that was shot from his hand. It’s damaged, but he thinks he can fix it. The Bastic fuel rods are singed, but they’ve also survived. Nixon picks them up as he passes and starts wiping them clean.
He climbs the ramp into the ship, and the inside of EHL has never felt more comfortable. It’s never felt more like home.
The mechanics have ransacked the inside. All of the storage cabinets are open. Some of the doors are bent and dented. Some have been ripped from their hinges and tossed to the ground, the cabinet contents scattered across the floor.
Nixon stores the fuel rods in one of the open cabinets and begins putting things back where they belong.
He works in silence, letting himself get lost in the monotony of the tasks, but eventually: “I suppose I should say thank you.”
“Sir?”
“For saving me. Out there.”
“Of course, sir. It’s what we do.”
Nixon continues to clear the floor.
“But, sir …”
Nixon stops. “Yes?”
“Never try to replace me again.”
END
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Sam Renner, Galaxy Run: Ibilia
