Bad Bargain: A Space Rules Adventure Part 1 Read online

  “The Janus affair?”

  “That wasn’t Sympto’s fault.”

  “Aligon?”

  “That didn’t go as planned, but it doesn’t mean it went wrong.”

  “And now,” she said, “with Rogan showing up on one of our jobs?”

  Ben capitulated to her. Sympto had given them plenty of reason to be skeptical. He said, “Okay, you win. Let’s surprise him, get the truth.” He looked back at the kiosk and said, “Nope. That’ll be all.”

  “Okay. Enjoy your stay here at Station Oficium.”

  They moved away from the kiosk, blending into the crowd.

  “What do you think he’ll say about Rogan?” Tawny asked.

  “I think he’ll lie,” Ben said. “But I think we’ll see it.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  “Then he’s probably not lying.”

  “And you think Sympto would ever tell the truth?”

  Ben shrugged weaving through oncoming traffic. “Well, he’s not afraid of me, but he probably has nightmares about you. If we press the right buttons, we’ll get the truth out of him. So just be ready.”

  “Oh, I’m ready,” she said. Ben started to chuckle, but stopped abruptly. Tawny flinched, curious. “Babe?”

  Ben spun around. The crowd was thick, but there was one that stuck out like a sore thumb. An Orbin male. He was several paces behind moving toward them. He stood above the others, easily a seven-footer. They made eye contact. The Orbin stutter stepped, but it was subtle, controlled. Ben nodded. He knew it. They were being followed. He could feel the eyes on him.

  The Orbin approached as if carrying on with his own business and strolled uneventfully on by, carrying on down the walkway. They followed him with their eyes. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but they were tight to the skin, and he carried a holster and pistol, utility vest, boots. This was no tourist. This was an Orbin pistoleer.

  Tawny and Ben looked at each other, concerned, exchanging an entire conversation silently. The bottom line: They’d have to stay low-key, operate in the shadows.

  They approached the entry point to hub one-oh-four. Over the archway in plasma-neon letters were the words: GUILDER’S MIX.

  This was Station Oficium’s entertainment hub, a real red-light district for drinkers and gamblers. This was where the station’s mongrels came to find downtime. That usually meant corruption, violence and heathenry. Security personnel were sparse. Its supervision was unofficial. Hired thugs kept the peace, but more than not, they also stirred the chaos. And overseeing it all were the invisible eyes of the Guild, a solar twin system-wide fraternity of pirates, smugglers, independents and goons. The Guild’s presence was no secret here, but no one talked about it. Station Oficium rented the hub to them, collected their fees and turned a blind eye. Beyond that, it was Guild business.

  The place was a massive labyrinth of gaming floors, cantinas and private spaces for VIPs, all overlooking the large social courtyard below. It was business-ready solar time or lunar, always with the mirror planet below ever-present, as if waiting for its fortune to be whispered over the frenzy of a thousand haranguing voices.

  Along the large periphery were entrances into the establishment. Tawny and Ben made their way to an entranceway. To the right a group of ruffians were being escorted out gruffly by large goon types. To the left, some opportunistic prostitutes watched, waiting for their chance to take advantage of a few frustrated egos. One of the females had the smooth blue skin of an Orbinii and stood a head taller than the others. She caught Ben’s eye. He watched her closely. She winked at him with the oversized, golden eye of an Orbinii beauty queen. Very lusty. He ignored and punched in a request for Sympto, Guild admin and contract allocator, into the kiosk. His request came back. Non-data.

  “Figures,” he said. “Looks like we’ll have to ask.”

  They stepped into the establishment and were immediately greeted with the whiff of multi-worldly scents and exotic wines. Some strangely non-syncopated music from the Pendulosi ring colonies played. Runner lights zipped and blinked across the architecture giving the place a kinetic atmosphere. Revelers stood around gaming tables clapping their hands, slapping each other on the back, sloshing their ales about. A thousand different sounds swirled together in a confusing mix. Alien cigarillos left a thin haze in the air. Drinks glowed.

  Toward the center was a service bar in-the-round. A dozen tenders hustled about pouring drinks. Service bots supported them. People congregated.

  Tawny smiled up at Ben. She was first, plunging into the bar goers. She was particularly small, good at slipping through crowds. Ben followed with less luck. Eyes diverted angrily toward him as he bumped and plodded through—sorry, excuse me, my bad…

  He met her at the bar. Immediately next to them was a figure dressed in some sort of vacuum suit. It was difficult to immediately discern the man’s species under his helmet and full visor. But whatever he was, he drank from a closed growler mug that breathed steam—a boiling hot drink, maybe a sulfuric-based liquid—through a helm tube. Ben had never seen one of these people before. He acknowledged his presence. The guy returned the gesture with a slow, stoic nod, then turned back to his drink.

  The tender approached. She had the dual vertical forehead ridges of a Stathosian female. “Watcha want?” she said.

  “We’re here to talk to Sympto,” Ben said with a serious edge in his voice. Everyone knew Sympto. This was where he operated. It was as much his home as anywhere else.

  The tender grinned chomping on bubble gum and leaned onto the bar with an elbow. “Who’s asking?”

  “Old friends,” Ben said with a sideways grin.

  “Yeah, right. I don’t know where Sympto is.”

  “Hey—” Tawny started.

  Ben interrupted, “We’re not here to kill him. We just have some questions.”

  She gave him an untrusting look.

  “He’ll be happy to see us,” Ben said, easing her doubt. He looked up toward the top of the bar a hundred feet above, where the VIP windows overlooked the space below. “Which one is he in?”

  “Wait here,” she said and left before they could rebut.

  They looked at each other a bit deflated. “There goes our surprise,” Tawny said.

  “Maybe,” Ben agreed before noticing the helmeted character at the bar was gone. He’d disappeared back into the crowd. He wondered if Tawny had also noticed. Ben tended to be the one that picked up on ambient details. Maybe he was just paranoid.

  “Benjar Dash!” came a voice that sounded like it had come from a gullet twice the depth of the average humanoid. Tub’Num approached, following the female tender. He was one of the dwarfish Tremusians hailing from the life-giving moon Tremus. Caught between the dueling gravity wells of two planets constantly shifting the moon’s orbit back and forth between them, the planetoid had been crushed into an oval, just as its people had been crushed into squarish creatures. Tub’Num was no exception, save the fact he was particularly large and wide, even for a Tremusian. At five feet tall he weighed a small ton, too—thick and dense and stronger than a Molosian mule. Ben was glad to be friendly with him.

  “What’s up, Tubs?”

  They shook hands, Ben wincing in pain. Tubs turned, gave Tawny a hug. She winced also, squeezing the Tremusian incredibly hard, her affection hardly being felt at all.

  “You know them?” the tender asked.

  “Yeah, they friends,” Tub’Num said dismissing her politely. She went back to her position. “How was heiress job, make fat?” He rubbed thumb and fingers the size of beer bottles together indicating money. Cash.

  Ben avoided the topic, patted himself on the belly. “Not hardly, Tubs.”

  “Ha!” the Tremusian barked. “Not what I hear.”

  “You weren’t supposed to hear anything.”

  “You know Sympto. Boy is secretive as busted comm buoy.”

  “Speaking of which, he’s why we’re here.”

  “That what I hear, too.” He r
ubbed his broad chin with an equally broad hand. “So why you not notify ahead of time?” Tub’Num was chief security for Guilder’s Mix. That included the contractor admins. That, in turn, included Sympto. It was a question he was obligated to ask.

  Tawny leaned forward cutting into the conversation. “Thought we’d surprise him, Tubs. He likes surprises.”

  He squinted an eye at her, smelling the lie, and then laughed at the remark.

  “Just friendly business,” Ben said.

  Tawny added, “If we were here to kill him, he’d be dead already.” That was the truth. But it made Tub’Num grin at her. He appreciated her sense of humor. They weren’t here to kill the man. If they were, they wouldn’t have come to Guilder’s Mix.

  “Well, if he do something to piss you off, I guess he need good tongue lashing. Follow to me.”

  Tubs led them away from the bar and toward a lift tube at the end of the courtyard. It took them up to the top level and whisked open into a balcony area with holotables and sports broadcasts on stream consoles from the interplanetary media system. It was darker up here, quieter. The people here were high-profile privateers, either top dog contraband smugglers who’d gained favor with the Guild’s top management, or owners of large yield contractor groups. Whatever their professions were, these were the high rollers and big ballers. This was the hub’s upper echelon.

  As if in punctuation to the room’s status, a secondary lift sat in the corner that only went up to the uppermost room. No one went up there without formal invitation from the Guild leadership. No one. Not ever. Most people even wondered if there was a room up there at all, or if it was a ruse to create some mythical presence over everyone in the hub.

  Tub’Num took them past a pair of Triggan poker tables to a stairway at the back and up to the VIP rooms, down a rear, plushy carpeted hallway and to a smoked glass door. The music and commotion of the lower social deck was all but muted up here. He swiped his security badge and the door opened into a dim room where a courtesan greeted them wearing long, sweeping robes leaving her rock solid midriff bare. She noticed Tub’Num with familiarity, then gave the two guests an up/down once-over. Tawny and Ben were clearly not VIP material, yet the courtesan made an intrigued little grin at Ben—tall, lean, very handsome. Tawny rolled her eyes. “Welcome,” she said, “to the Opulence room.”

  “Leequa, one of the VIPs got guests,” Tubs grumbled.

  Leequa waved them in with a graceful notion and they entered. The far wall was an observation deck overseeing the entire establishment. A private bar was off to the left, lights glowing dim and blue with bubble tubes gurgling softly. The music was tamer here, and lower, creating a gentler, more seductive atmosphere. In the room’s center was a trio of lunar belly dancers shimmying and undulating, each curve a well-chiseled display. To the barely lit back of the room there was a lounge area. A couch with a dozen figures relaxed, sipping on yellow and blue glowing drinks, a few of them making out with hired pros, others chuckling amongst themselves.

  There he was. Sympto. He sat in the shadowy corner with a hookah pipe plugged into his mouth, its long glowy tube curling into a central fluid jar. Smoke curled up from his head as he exhaled, grinning.

  Ben nudged a chin toward him. Tawny noticed, eyes going into slits. She started off with a head full of steam, but Ben halted her. “Sweetheart, let me do this. You hang back by the bar.”

  She gave him a severe look. “You said I should—”

  “Just be my backup. If I need you to beat him up or break his legs or whatever, I’ll let you know.” He gave her one of his wily grins and said, “Trust me on this.”

  She pouted, “Alright, husband,” she said nonplussed. “I’ll follow your lead, but don’t give me half a chance. I’ll clear every buckethead in this room with a smile on my face.”

  “I know you will,” he said. She meant every word. He’d seen her do it before. She moved off toward the bar.

  Ben cleared his throat and made his approach.

  Sympto sat on the couch with his legs crossed at the knees, one hand propped up on the armrest with a lazy grin on his gaunt face, his eyes half open as he watched the dancers. He was an interplanetary mutt from the sister planets Iot and Zet—an Iotian father, a Ziotian mother. Or vice versa. No one really knew. But he had the broad facial features of one with the scrawny, bulb-jointed frame of the other. His ears protruded from the sides of his head like donkey ears, drooped into a lax position. It gave him a strangely unique look, kind of like a Molosian muskrat. Ben’s shadow fell over him. At first, he didn’t even notice, then he looked up. Surprise crossed his face. It was congenial, happy to see him, not panicked as Ben had expected.

  With a broad smile showing gapped teeth, he said, “Well, well, Benjar—alive you are!”

  Ben opened his mouth, but Tawny’s voice beat him to the punch. “No thanks to you, hookah nuts!” she yelled out from the bar. Ben closed his eyes forcing patience. That was not the kind of thing one would want to yell across the Opulence room at Guilder’s Mix.

  Sympto looked over showing sheer and sudden fear. “Why she is here, Benjar?”

  Ben muttered to himself, “I don’t know,” then louder, “Because she’s my wife, Sympto.”

  “What she means by this?”

  Tawny strutted across the room hips swinging, with one hand resting on her blaster. Even Tub’Num seemed nervous watching her move. She stopped at the couch and said, “We bumped into Rogan.”

  “What means this?”

  “We were on the job.”

  Sympto shot a panicked gaze at Ben, then back, said, “You save the heiress, yes?”

  “That’s beside the point,” she snarled. “He was on the job, too.”

  “Who?”

  She scoffed meanly, leaned down and yelled, “Rogan, you double-crosser!”

  Ben reached for her arm, placed his hand there gently.

  Sympto shrugged, innocently. “What you do mean this?”

  Ben said, calmer, “He was on the job too, Sympto. The same job as us.”

  Tawny said, “One job, one contractor. That’s the rules.”

  “Send him for the heiress, I did not,” Sympto said.

  “Then who did?” Ben said.

  “How I should know? The contract came from the Orbin royal family, it did. It must have gone out to every black marketer and contract operator this side of Haptus. Control this I cannot.”

  Ben eyed him, reading. “You didn’t send Rogan after the heiress job?”

  Sympto said, “No, I give to you.”

  “What job did you give Rogan?”

  “See Rogan I have not.”

  “You haven’t even seen him?”

  “No.”

  “In how long?”

  Sympto shrugged, said, “A Speculus cycle.”

  Speculus didn’t have cycles. It meant a long time.

  Ben inhaled and took a step back. His mind raced. Rogan had been at Hominus IV. He’d had Ben dead to rites. Someone had sent him. But who?

  Ben eyed Sympto closely, looking for the lie. There was none. He was telling the truth. The Guild hadn’t sent Rogan. But that answered exactly zero questions. He shared a glance with Tawny. Her thoughts were the same. Sympto hadn’t double-crossed them. Tawny looked downtrodden. She wanted to pick a fight. She wouldn’t get the chance today. The mystery would remain a mystery… for now.

  Ben said to his wife, “Wait for me.”

  She threw her hands up and moved back to the bar. It was time for a drink anyway.

  Ben sat down across from Sympto. “So I guess you heard.”

  “Heard what about?” Sympto said.

  “The heiress.”

  Sympto gave him a grin that was halfway between sneaky and proud, and said, “Oh yes, I heard I did. Rich you two are, yes?”

  “You got your twenty percent.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “We’re just saving up for retirement, Sympto.” He admitted, “It was a good take.” He leaned forw
ard, said, “Thanks for the job.”

  Sympto laughed at him. “Retirement suit you does not. I know better of you. Everyone know it now—hero save princess. All over the interplanetary comms it is.” He gave him a curious look. “But no names?”

  Ben reached into a bowl of nuts and threw a handful into his mouth. “That was the agreement, my friend. No names.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “That’s right. We made a deal with the Orbinii. We wanted pure anonymity.”

  “Don’t want hero status, eh?”

  “You know how it is. Our line of work? Please. We’d prefer not to have any status at all.”

  Sympto settled back starting to relax now that Tawny was across the room ordering at the bar. “Fair enough it is,” he said. “And what is next for you, then?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  Sympto’s eyebrows went up, shocked. “Already for next contract? No time off for you, then.”

  Ben gave him a ridiculous look. “And do what?”

  “I have idea or two.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you do.”

  Sympto leaned forward. “Take no more contracts, at least for a while.”

  Ben rolled his eyes, grabbed another handful of nuts. “That’s what we do, Sympto.”

  “Have baby!” he blurted.

  Ben’s eyes bugged. He nearly choked. “Ha!”

  Tawny looked over, curious, saw nothing was amiss and went back to her drink.

  “No have baby?” Sympto said.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, Sympto, but we’re here on business. What do you have?”

  Sympto inhaled big, said, “Okay, I try I did. I have something. Very simple, it is. Easy pay off. I save especial for you.”

  Ben looked at him from the side of his face, wearily. “Should I be worried?”

  Sympto exploded with laughter—“No, hahaha!”—making Ben cringe at him. It wasn’t that funny.

  “So what is it?”

  Sympto settled. “Aqua run.”

  “Simple,” Ben said. “You mean boring.”

  “That is what you said you want, no?”

  “Boring’s perfect,” Ben said.

  Sympto gave him a knowing grin. “If excitement you want, you should have baby.”