Heavenly Docks 4

He was ten meters down the tunnel before Coleman realized the girl had followed him out of the Underbelly. Not bothering to slow, he glanced at her and jerked a thumb back the way they’d come.

“I don’t remember inviting you along, sister.”

Anna just flashed a smile at him. “I’ve been watching you ever since you since you sat down.”

She tapped her ear with one slim finger and Coleman rolled his eyes—oh great. The parasapien had some kind of snooper implants in her ears. Smothering he frustration behind an easy grin, he picked up his pace and shot back, “Well then you already know that I’ve got a full crew and no need for a waitress.”

For a split second Anna’s cool demeanor slipped, just like it had in the bar, but the cool façade was back in a nanosecond. “Yeah, I know you’ve got a crew. I also know your back’s up against a wall and your running out of time.”

Coleman’s gut knotted at the girl’s words, and he jerked around to stare at her almost without realizing it—which only made her smile grow even wider. “What do you know about me and my time?” he hissed, knowing just how crazed he must look but not caring. He didn’t really even care how she knew. All he wanted to know is why she was interested. Her slim figure and striking looks didn’t seem suited to life as one of M’shtinyb’s thugs, but you never could tell. “I’m ain’t up against any wall.”

Anna rolled her bright eyes at him and—lifting a hand to tick points off on her fingers—said, “First, you were recruiting a crew in the Underbelly. That by itself is all the tip-off I needed. Second, you sat around in your booth for—what, three hours?—and turned down half a dozen beings who stopped to join up. Then suddenly you got all desperate and signed up the next four beings that stopped by with no questions asked.” Her full lips curved in a mocking smirk, “Face it, Coleman, you’re—how do you folks from Old Earth put it? ‘Up a creek with no paddle.’”

Coleman must have looked even more flummoxed than he felt, because Anna patted him on the cheek and cooed, “But don’t you worry. Anna’s here now and she’s gonna make everything all better. Now come on.” She shouldered past him and continued down the hall. “Where is it we’re heading?”

Head spinning, Coleman darted after her.

“Hey. Hey! Wait up! And I still never said I wanted you in my crew!”

She laughed—a deliciously female sound that Coleman hadn’t even realized he’d missed the past three years—and just kept on walking.

The tunnel they were moving down hit an intersection and Coleman swung right—planetward—and Anna curved with him. Ignoring the parasapien for the moment, he activated his wetware computing implants and communications interface and—using a top-of-the-line encryption bug he’d purchased two years ago—began transmitting the meeting time and location to his new crewmembers.

Meanwhile, Anna just kept right on talking, badgering him with questions and suggestions to which he responded with as few grunts as could be spared.

“Seriously though, sailor, what possessed you to hire on patrons from the Underbelly?”

Grunt.

“You taking me to some secret hideout of yours?”

Mumble.

“Are we going to be smuggling goods, or running drugs, or both?”

Slight pause, then grunt.

“Are all Earthmen as ugly as you?”

That brought him up short. “I am not ugly.”

“Just testing for reception, sailor.” Anna murmured as she eyed him up and down slowly, a grin forming on her lips about as fast as Coleman’s face was flushing red. “And for the record, I agree with you.”

“That’s not what I . . . that is, I don’t care if you think—look, just shut up, will you?”

The parasapien did stop talking after that, but her throaty chuckles chased Coleman down the long tunnel.

Two endless—to Coleman at least—tram rides and twenty minutes later Coleman ducked down a narrow maintenance tunnel, Anna still hot on his heels. The rusting, humid tunnel was barely wide enough of Coleman to pass through without having to turn sideways, and was draped in shadow for long stretches, lit only be a few flickering glowbulbs. Water dripped mournfully somewhere ahead, the sound amplified and echoed in the cramped confines. Small portals passed them by on the left and right as they continued down the tunnel, and Coleman counted as they went, grateful for an excuse to focus on something besides Anna—she smelled like flowers in early summer back on Old Earth.

Four portals on the right, then three on the left.

Coleman tripped over something cold and squishy once, and only Anna’s quick reflexes kept him from a bruised chin. Her grip was firm, but her hand was soft and warm on his wrist, and he could feel her gentle pulse through her brilliant skin.

Five more portals on the left.

“Do you have like night-vision, or anything?” Coleman asked quietly, eyes scanning the tunnel ahead.

Anna was so close behind him that he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. She chuckled. “No. I’m afraid the being who had me . . . manufactured was more interested in appearances than any practical alterations.”

“Oh.” His reply hung in the air, so awkward that Coleman actually cringed. Risking a glance back, he flashed her a hesitant smile, “Well, um . . . he got the appearance part right, at least.”

“Why, sailor, that was almost nice.”

“You’re still not part of the crew.”

And he meant it. While they walked, a plan had been forming in his mind. The location where he was meeting the crew was a small utility room midway down the tunnel they were in. He’d discovered it a year back and managed, after several days of trying, to hack through the portal’s locking mechanism. When he’d first broken in, it had been evident that nobeing had been in the room for years, and in the twelve months since then no one had ever used it. It wasn’t his normal place of residence, but he always kept it in mind—a safe place to crash in these parts of the Docks, should he ever need it.

If he was lucky, Coleman thought he should be able to duck through the portal and get it shut and locked before Anna could get through. A lame plan—especially since he had no idea what he’d do once the crew started arriving—but really his only option at the moment. Hopefully she’d get bored and wander off before the others got there.

Behind him, Anna was laughing softly, like she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Seven more portals on the right, and one final one on the left, and they were there.

Heavenly Docks 3

The continuous swirl of beings that edged past Coleman’s booth was as diverse a lot as the he’d ever seen, but no one of the creatures gave his sign more than a passing glance, which usually turned into a smirk—or what Coleman guessed passed for a smirk—aimed in his general direction. Folding his arms and leaning further into the shadows, Coleman glared at the passing crowd and tried not to think about the time he was losing.

Two hours passed. The slug-grub things that were undulating in the middle of the room cranked their pseudo-music up until the Unberbelly’s neosteel walls vibrated beneath Coleman’s back and his head throbbed worse than if he had chugged the drink he’d been given. And still no one had given him more than a passing glance and a rude gesture or two.

He was staring at the pitted wall opposite him and on the verge of scrapping phase one of his one phase plan when a high pitched screech shattered his thoughts like a brick tumbling through a glass window. Jerking reflexively, he twisted around and—catching sight of the being shifting nervously at the booth entrance—groaned.

“What do you want, Hrian?” he said, slouching back down and glaring at the insectoid. “And why are you alone?” Hrian were hive creatures, and seeing one alone usually meant trouble.

The Hrian bobbed once—its short stature causing it to duck completely beneath the level of the table—then bobbed again, one of its six appendages lifting a hand to stroke its left antennae while three more of its hands were busy dry-washing. It had a long slit of a mouth that opened outwards instead of downwards, and no distinguishable head. Instead, its six eyes—four compound and two complex—were nestled between its uppermost shoulders and just above its strange mouth. It blinked slowly, tugged at its antennae once more, and then blinked again.

Rolling his eyes, Coleman repeated, “What do you want?”

“Oh. Ah-aaah . . . ha-ha-ha . . .”

The Hrian language was little more than a series of lightning fast chirps, clicks and scratches that ranged from high-pitched to spine-tingling to beyond anything the human ear could hear. Coleman’s suit computer did its best to keep up though.

“I said, what do you want, Hrian?”

“I-yah, I, um . . . couldn’t help but notice your advertisement, good human, and I wish to”—

“Sorry,” Coleman said, cutting the bug off. “I don’t hire lone Hrian. Company policy.”

“Oh. But, um . . . I assure you I am quite skilled in”—

“I said shoo, fly.” Coleman said, waving a hand.

Of course, the dumb bug just rattled on, not even looking at Coleman any more: “ . . . any number of useful skills, such as computer repair, hand-to-hand combat, swimming, horticulture, abstract painting, um, let me see . . .”

The Hrian was so busy ticking skills off on his stubby fingers that he didn’t even notice when the crowd parted and two towering creatures moved up behind him. Coleman, however did notice. Gulping, he made shushing motions at the babbling Hrian and squeezed further into the recesses of the booth.

“Is this Lone One”—

“—bothering you, human?”

The two aliens—Coleman thought they were Talorn, but wouldn’t have bet money on it—would have towered over him even if he’d been standing. Like the still talking Hrian they were insectoid, but where the Hrian was short, oddly proportioned, and clearly anything but a fighter, the two beings seemed to sweat danger, from their balefully glowing crimson eyes, to their glistening black, spike-covered exoskeletons, to the short, lightning-fast movements of their half-dozen limbs and the rapid flickers of their translucent wings.

One of the Talorn grabbed the Hrian by its lack-of-head, lifted the suddenly gibbering bug bodily off the floor and casually flung it back into the milling crowd. Then the black creatures turned back to Coleman.

“You are in need”—

“—of our services, human?”

Coleman swallowed and—suddenly grateful for the Underbelly’s no-weapons policy—shrugged carefully. “Possibly.” He flicked his eyes back and forth between the two Talorn, trying to decide which was in charge. “Like the sign says, the work’ll be dangerous, but the pay is good. What kind of work do you two do?”

The Talorn on the left moved so fast all Coleman saw was a blur of motion as the alien brought one of its armored fists down on the edge of the table, sheering the meta-rimmed corner completely off. Each of the bugs focused their eight red eyes on him.

“Whatever we”—

“—are paid to do, human.”

“Y-yes.” Coleman said, eyeing the jagged edge of the table. “I think we could possibly use the two of you.” The Talorn bowed low to him, their mandibles clicking, and Coleman had to force himself to look away. Those mandibles looked like they could sheer right through his arm, suit and everything. “There’ll be a crew meeting tonight. Give me your contact data and I’ll send you time and location.”

“We will”—

“—be there.”

The Talorn on the right produced a datapad and used its smallest, lowest set of arms to type in the requested data, then passed the pad to Coleman, who copied the data with two quick blinks of his eyes.

When he looked up, the Talorn were already gone.

Settling uneasily back against the wall, Coleman resumed watching the crowd. Inside, he was trying to decide whether to be nervous or overjoyed about the first acquisitions to his team. The two Talorn were obviously professionals—a fact that Coleman was beyond grateful for—but at the same time, he was not a professional. Not by a long shot. Would the two bugs take orders from him, or would they decide that the job was simple enough for them to do by themselves, and eliminate him to increase their share of the reward? He frowned, tapping a quick beat on the table top and wishing the slugs would get tired of dancing and leave. Now he had to keep an eye out for M’shtinyb’s goons and any dirty tricks the Talorn might try and pull.

The night—or what passed for night on the Heavenly Docks—grew older and older, Coleman shrank further and further into the shadows, the slugs kept dancing . . . but his crew wasn’t getting any bigger. Plenty of beings were stopping at his booth to offer their services, but most of them were crazy-types looking for anyway to make some money. The crazy Hrian that had first approached him came back to the table no fewer than six times in one hour, dry-washing its appendages and wheedling him to let it join up—Coleman finally aimed a kick at its thorax that sent scrabbling off into the crowd for good. Besides the Hrian there was a two-centuries old AI who couldn’t remember its own name but swore up and down that it had access to two million credits that Coleman could use at his own discretion; a drunk Ophmir that collapsed halfway through its introduction and had to be dragged away by the waiter AI; and a schizophrenic Dopatrine who’s head hadn’t grown back properly after it had been partially severed in an industrial accident up on MT-58C.

He turned each of the crazies away without a second glance, and over a dozen more like them. The problem was, it was only the crazies that would talk to him. Anybeing that looked like it had half an ounce or more of any kind of skill just walked right past him . . . or worse, stopped to laugh at him for a moment before moving on.

Two hours had passed since the Talorn had left, and with only an hour left before he was supposed to meet them and work out a plan, Coleman realized that he couldn’t afford to be picky. He needed bodies to do this job, as many as possible, and if he couldn’t get raw talent, then he’d have to settle for . . . well, raw meat.

He only had forty-five minutes left when things started to get a little better.

First, a group of waist-high Dral scampered up to his table and began chattering at him while they bobbed up and down like caffeine-hyped school children.

“I am Pug,” one squeeked, its huge black eyes twitching back and forth between Coleman and the passing throng.

“I am skilled ship’s mechanic and sometime pilot,” another chirped as it climbed up onto its neighbor’s shoulders so it could look Coleman in the eyes.

A third Dral bounced up onto the table and said, “And I am willing to work for you, human-guy.”

“Okay,” Coleman said, trying to look at all of the Dral at once, “But I’m gonna have to have all of your names.”

“What all?” Pug demanded, “I am Pug and I will be working for you.”

“Yeah, but what about the rest of you?”

“What rest?” the third Dral said, scuttling closer to Coleman, “I am Pug and I am wanting to work.”

“You’re Pug too?” Coleman asked, leaning back from the furless, rabbit-faced alien that was practically panting in his face. “You’re all Pug?”

It took another ten minutes for Coleman to realize the five Dral were actually one single sapient being named Pug. Something like a cross between a naked mole rat and a rabbit, the aliens had large, melon shaped organs that protruded from behind their bat-like ears. These twin bulges were constantly humming and vibrating, swinging between ultrasonic frequencies that Coleman couldn’t hear, to deep bass beats that shook his chest. He guessed that the organs were how the communal mind kept its members connected.

It took another five minutes for him to get used to talking to anyone of the five Dral without forgetting that he was still just talking to Pug. The first Dral that had spoken to him rattled off Pug’s contact information while the other four waited silently, hunched over and chittering to each other, both with their mouths and the strange lobes behind their ears.

Pug’s members had only just scampered off when two more beings planted themselves in front of Coleman. The being on the right was another insectoid, a Ragadine whom Coleman had seen skulking around the Underbelly before. He introduced himself as Chim the Thief, but it was his partner that Coleman was more interested in—at least, at first.

“This is Tane,” Chim hissed loudly, gesturing to his massive, lobster-ish companion, “A Ttarian from Unterpol who I rescued from Security two weeks back.”

“You rescued him?” Coleman said doubtfully, eyeing the Ttarian. Tane was huge . . . at least three meters tall, nearly as wide, and covered from what looked like its head to the end of its six clawed legs in a thick blue-green carapace armor that looked as tough as ships plating. Addressing the big lobster, Coleman asked, “Do you talk, friend?”

The Ttarian responded with a symphony of whistles and breathy squeals from a set of fluted holes that ran down either side of its thorax. Coleman’s suit remained silent, and the Ragadine’s mandibles crossed in a grim smile, “Ttarians are rare, friend Coleman. But rest assured, Tane goes where I go, and at the moment, I am interested in a share of your 500,000.”

Coleman shrugged and asked for their data.

The pompous Ragadine and its lurking lobster had only just left when an Oderan slunk up to the booth. A short demonstration of the amphiboid alien’s ability to generate electric charges across its wet, gray skin was enough for Coleman.

“Give me your contact data, and I’ll send you the place and time for our first get-together.”

The Oderan, Hispos by name, bowed its long neck and passed Coleman a datacard. “I look forward to working with you. Keep the card.”

The Oderan vanished into the crowd, and Coleman finally let himself relax—a little. With Hispos signed on, he now had a crew of seven beings, plus himself—enough to pilot a respectable ship or do pretty much anything else that might need doing. True, they were short on talent, but since Coleman was only putting low odds on his survival anyways, it didn’t matter too much. He had a crew and that was all that mattered, at the moment.

He took down his pad and erased the message, passed the datapad back to the waiting AI server, and had just paused to decide whether or not he even wanted to try his drink, when somebeing tapped him on the shoulder.

Stifling a curse he jerked around, knocking his antifreeze-colored drink over in the process—and stopped short.

“You packing up for the night, soldier?”

Coleman could count on one hand the number of humans he’d seen on the Heavenly Docks—hell, he could count them on one finger—and a female human in the Underbelly was the last thing he had ever expected to see. Especially a very . . . womanly, female.

“I—um, yeah . . . one too many drinks for me,” Coleman mumbled, gazing at her.

She was beautiful, no doubt there, but she was . . . exotic, was the best word Coleman could come up with. Standing maybe half a hand shorter than he, she was wrapped in a black, skin-tight vacsuit that accentuated her—Coleman swallowed long and hard as fifty emotions he had’t felt in a long time suddenly kicked into overdrive—accentuated her wares nicely. She had bright red skin that reminded Coleman of ripe apples on Old Earth, dotted with complex patterns that might have been tattoos or natural skin coloration. The patterns glowed with a soft blue-white light like starlight, swirling around her graceful neck in delicate curls like vines and lightly speckling her soft cheeks and delicate nose like diamond dust. Her short-cut hair shined with the same gentle color, a halo of light that bathed her face in a soft glow. Even the whites of her eyes glowed. Coleman was trapped by her eyes as soon as he saw them . . . they tugged at something just behind his lungs—his heart, maybe.

“You . . . glow.” He winced as soon as the words were out. Stupid. He was just plain stupid.

The woman—girl, really now that he looked closer . . . she couldn’t be any older than he was—laughed, a deep throaty laugh that tugged at his heart even more than her pools-of-light eyes. It was a real laugh. A human laugh. “Yes I do.” She grinned mischievously, “The being who ordered my inception had developed a liking for . . . shiny human beings.”

Coleman blinked, reality slapping him across the face. “You’re an exohuman?”

That gorgeous smile dimmed momentarily. “I prefer parasapien, but yes.” Then the smile was back. “My name is Anna, soldier. What’s yours?”

Scuffing his foot against the metal floor and hoping the dim light would keep Anna from seeing him blush, he answered, “Coleman. Coleman Ainsworth.” Inside, he was screaming at himself: Get a hold of yourself! Sure, you haven’t seen a fem since you jumped ship, but that’s no excuse! You’ve got a job to do!

Anna was still smiling at him, her eyes shining—literally—like starlight, but Coleman’s self-imposed haranguing had been enough to shake him awake. Forcing a casual smile, he extended a hand to her—Anna stared at it, clearly having no idea what to do with it—and said, “Well, Anna, its been a pleasure, but I have some, uh, business negotiations to attend to, so I’ll be seeing you.”

He tried to brush passed her, but a single small hand on his shoulder brought him up short. Reluctantly, he turned to look at her.

The parasapien smiled at him. “You may be the first Homo sapiens sapiens I’ve run into, Coleman Ainsworth, but you’re still a terrible liar. I’ve been watching you,” she pointed across to room to an empty booth, “all night. You’re organizing a job, and doing a terrible job of it. But, you’re in luck.”

Anna’s slim fingers tangled into Coleman’s own, and she pulled him closer, leaning in to whisper in his ear while Coleman’s knees melted out from under him, “I’m a pilot, Ainsworth. And the best one on the Docks. I’m gonna save your neck.”

For some reason, right at that moment, Coleman knew he was in trouble.

Heavenly Docks 2

Sea-urchin boy and horse-face dropped Coleman in a heap at a narrow intersection of two curving corridors, each pausing just long enough to mewl and—well, horse-face shook like he was making a sound but Coleman didn’t hear anything—before vanishing back into the shadows. Not even his suit’s short list of eighteen million different alien species could hope to include every lifeform that wandered the galaxy’s crap farms like the Heavenly Docks, and apparently the two thugs that had just dropped him off were missing from that list. Not that it really mattered. Their meaning had been more than clear enough: got the job done, or get done.

Coleman watched the shadows where the two thugs had disappeared warily and let a count of ten pass before exhaling and chinning his helmet out. The Smarthelm rippled briefly and then decomposed, disappearing into his suit’s collar, and Coleman took a deep, relieved breath of air. As luck would have it, the Hrian who’d built the Heavenly Docks had evolved in an atmosphere fairly similar to that of Old Earth: 65% N₂, 20% O₂, 14% CO₂, and a smattering of other gases. At any rate, it was good enough for Coleman to breath, even if it had taking some adjusting to, three years back. Now, cramped as he was in some God-forsaken corner of the Docks, it merely smelled slightly fetid.

Fetid like his corpse was gonna be if he didn’t find a way to kill Cly M’shtinyb.

And I don’t even own a gun.

A quick twitch of his eyelid initiated his SegVision, bathing the dank corridors in brighter light as his ocular implants painted his surroundings with a variety of info-enhancements and semi-translucent icons. Another twitch of his eye swept away most of the flashing icons leaving his vision clear save for a bright, pulsing bar of blue light that began at his feet and ran off down the corridor to his left, disappearing far, far in the distance around the scarcely perceptible curve of the Docks. The floating piss-pile was a warren no human could have hoped to navigate, and Coleman whispered quick thank-you very much to God for AutoNav systems as he lurched into a jog, following the blue line that led back to the Dock’s inhabited sectors and his current “home”.

How was he going to knock off M’shtinyb? Briefly, while he paused for breath at the next intersection, he considered screwing the job and bolting from the Docks completely—but he discarded that idea almost as soon as it came to him. He doubted there was any ship that would take a human onboard, and even if he found a captain willing to take on a passenger, where could he go? Avantaer was too close. Jendathu would hunt him down, drag him kicking and—literally—screaming back to the Docks and then smear his guts from one end of the Docks to the other.

No, he exactly three options: he could jump through an open airlock and let cold hard vacuum do the rest, or he could trot back to Jendathu, spit in the crab’s eyes and then let the Nagathian do him in, or he could track down M’shtinyb, get in a pot shot or two at the bugger, and then die. Three options—none of them particularly pleasant—and all leading to the same conclusion.

The shining blue Home Bar led him to a long bank of mold-covered elevators that looked like they hadn’t been used in ages, and he palmed the pad of the nearest, bouncing anxiously on his heels and glancing over his shoulder occasionally. He had this irrational fear that M’shtinyb already knew what Jendathu had forced him into—already knew, and was sending his goons to make sure it never happened. When the lift door finally hissed open, he nearly jumped in.

So, three options, and he wasn’t in the mood for suicide, or giving Jendathu the pleasure of ripping him open. That left only one choice: killing the second most dangerous being on the Heavenly Docks and—if possible—surviving the job.

By the time lift doors opened again, he’d moved on to planning his first—and hopefully last—murder. The elevator opened onto the wide, curving expanse of MT-100D, the local parlance for Main Tunnel 100D. As usual, the twenty meter wide passageway was jammed to the rafters with beings from every corner of the galaxy. Literally crammed to the rafters—a crowd of Hrian scuttled past on the tunnel all above his head, chirping to one another like a chorus of gigantic crickets.

Coleman’s SegVision bloomed to life again, Personal Identification Icons, or PIIs, bobbing over everybeing’s head, flashy advertisements painting the tunnel walls and ceiling, and bright public announcement messages and news flashes scrolling by in the empty air near the upper center of the thoroughfare. Coleman’s own PII, a stylized Skull and Crossbones that he doubted anybeing would know the meaning of, was a fake he’d bought three months back.

He angled through the tight crowd, shouldering past two Bo’oramai and working his way to the far wall of the tunnel, where a bank of observation blisters looked out into space. He ducked inside one, sinking gratefully into the cushioned seat that ringed the circular room.

The observation blister protruded from the planet-ward edge of the Heavenly Docks, giving Colemon an uninterrupted view in all directions. To either side, the massive Docks extended, a leviathan ring more than two kilometers thick that shrank to a silver-white, pencil thin line as it dwindled into the distance, curving down and then behind the bright, gray-brown bulk of the Hrian homeworld, Q’charu’ztxzyl—or, as it was better known and more easily pronounced, Glorious Hive. The terminator had crossed nearly half the planet’s face fourty-three thousand klicks beneath Coleman, the black of the night side revealing the honey-comb pattern of the massive Hrian worldhive. Thousands of ships of every type and make imaginable drifted between the docks and the darkening world below, shining like jewels in the blackness of space.

The view was impressive, even breathtaking. Coleman saw none of it.

How do you kill a crimelord?

Coleman would need help, that much was for sure. Professional help, if possible. Luckily, help of that kind was all too available on the Docks, and Jendathu’s promised cash compensation should prove tempting enough for Coleman to use as incentive.

He pulled up a data screen on his SegVision and ran a search for M’shtinyb. Nothing came up. For a half-second he stared at the blank screen, fear knotting his stomach. Then he cursed and slammed his head against the neoglass window. Of course the crime boss wouldn’t show up any public search. What was he thinking? He was going need professional help just to figure out how much professional help he needed!

Calm. He needed to be calm. Squeezing his eyes shut and taking deep, calming breaths, he forced himself to relax. So he needed help, big deal. He’d known that from the beginning. Obviously, that was where he needed to start.

And, as luck would have it, the place for getting the kind of help he needed was right around the corner.

Sliding out of the observation blister, Coleman turned left and pushed back into the crowd. The main tunnels up in the higher levels had sliding walkways and trams and auto-piloted taxis. But they also had higher security, and Coleman had learned long ago that picking a dozen poor beings’ pockets and packs was more profitable—and more healthy—than riding the walkways and dodging private security. So he spent most of his time down below, where beings walked and pockets were looser.

Two hundred meters up the tunnel he turned left through a permanently broken portal and a pair of seedy looking Ch’ogan bouncers into The Underbelly—a hole in the wall tavern/cantina/fiazzen/whatever-a-being-happened-to-call-the-dive-where-he went-to-get-drunk-and-forget-that-he-was-stuck-on-the-Docks.

Coleman had frequented the Underbelly enough to know that there never was a ‘slow-time’ in the cramped tavern; ships were constantly arriving and departing from the docks, and the crews of those ships were always ready to down a cup full of the local moonshine. As usual, the place was crowded cheek to cheek with beings. Pausing just beyond the entryway, Coleman lifted his arms and let the small Feieen waiting there give him a once over with a handheld scanner. As the waist-high creature did his routine, Coleman eyed the crowd.

The Underbelly had been built into the outer wall of the Docks, conveniently utilizing the abandoned nest of some metal-digesting parasites that had somehow snuck onto a grain transport made it from the planet surface up to the docks ages ago. Thus, carved out by non-sentient bugs as it was, the Underbelly had a strange organic feel that followed no particular plan that the Coleman could see. The serving center—on Old Earth Coleman would have called it a bar—dominated the far left of the curving, pitted ‘floor’, and even extended partway up the left wall, where a crowd of Hrian were clustered, standing parallel to the floor and chittering loudly. A group of grub-like creatures that Coleman had never seen before occupied the rest of the tavern floor—he couldn’t tell if the rhythmically contorting slugs were dancing or communicating via body language. Frankly, he didn’t care.

The rest of the walls were pockmarked low and high with deep holes that had once been nesting sites for the parasites, but were now private booths crammed with tables and benches. Some of the booths were sealed with transparent airlocks for the convenience of the Underbelly’s non-oxygen respirating clientele.

The Feieen nudged him forward, its search complete, and Coleman angled through the undulating crowd of sluggish grubs, carefully avoiding touching any of them. The Underbelly’s lights rippled through a wide spectrum of colors—half of which Coleman was sure his eyes couldn’t even see—and a low pulsing beat filled the air and thumped against his chest. The slug things were definitely dancing, he decided.

A small potato-shaped booth bored into the far wall behind the bar was vacant, and Coleman slid into it as quickly as he could, putting his back to the empty, far end of the booth and watching the Underbelly’s entrance nervously, unable to shake the feeling that M’shtinyb was already having him tailed.

He was so intent on watching the entrance that the AI waiter had to speak twice before Coleman even noticed it.

“Sir,” the AI said again, in good old-fashioned English—a sound as sweet as any Coleman had heard in a long while. “Sir, what may I serve you?”

“I’ll take whatever’s being served to my type,” Coleman said, knowing the AI had already scanned him to be sure that no potentially toxic drinks were mistakenly passed his way. The short, rusting robot turned to go, and Coleman quickly added, “Bring me back a writing pad with the drink.”

“Of course sir. Enjoy your afternoon at the Underbelly.”

So it was afternoon, Dock standard time. Coleman hadn’t even thought to check since being dumped by Jendathu’s beings. He brought up a clock on his SegVision, and gulped audibly. It had been roughly half an hour since Jendathu had ‘dismissed’ him, which still left him exactly seventy-one and a half hours to kill M’shtinyb; but, on the other hand, that only left him seventy-one and a half hours to kill M’shtinyb.

He had to get moving quickly.

The AI returned with a tall neoplast glass filled to the brim with a drink so brilliantly green that even Coleman—who’d hardened his gut with many an alien concoction—raised an eyebrow before passing his credcard to the robot. Accepting the payment, the AI swung its second set of arms around and handed Coleman a blank datapad.

“Will that be all, sir?”

Coleman nodded absently, already typing furiously on the data pad. He stopped writing twice to erase everything he’d written and start over. He wanted to attract a very specific type of being—something crooked enough to be of help in planning and carrying out a hit job, but at the same time something dumb enough to not try and simply knock him off and take the job over. After another minute of writing, he paused and studied his short advertisement. Then, satisfied, he ordered the datapad to translate the message into a half dozen of the major trade languages common on the Docks, and then propped the datapad up at the end of his table using his untouched drink as a stand.

The short message read:

Crew needed.

Likelihood of physical harm high.

Reward: Equal shares of 500,000 credit payment.

Amateurs need not apply.

Then, scooting as far back into the shadows as possible, Coleman waited.

The Heavenly Docks 1

As soon as Coleman Ainsworth came to, he realized he was in trouble.

For starters, he was hanging upside down and he was pretty sure that was a bad thing. On top of that, someone had activated his vacsuit’s Smarthelm. He could see his own bedraggled reflection on his faceplate, and hear his rattled breathing fighting with the air cycler. His pulse pounding in his ears was startling loud in the confines of his helmet.

He could feel the synthmesh suit flexing rhythmically against his body, fighting against gravity to keep his blood pressure equalized in his arms and legs—which, apparently, he couldn’t move.

“Okay buddy, keep it together.” His grimaced at the loudness of his own voice, then added in a whisper, “You’ve been in worse spots than this.” And he really had. Nothing came to mind at the moment, but he definitely had.

Someone had opaqued his helmet—he couldn’t see a thing beyond his own reflection—and he practically sobbed with relief when a gentle thrust of his chin brought up the holocontrols before his eyes. Chinning quickly through the suit’s myriad systems, he deactivated the blast-tint.

A pale red glow surrounded him beyond his suit, leaving most of wherever he was shrouded in shadow. He was in a tensor field, suspended upside down in the g-wave trap. For a half-second he struggled uselessly against the red energy waves, cursing and panting and praying that the sweat pouring down his face wouldn’t fog up his helmet; then, still trapped, he let his body sag uselessly into the field’s grasp. He was trapped.

His movements, restricted as they were, had still told him something about his surroundings: the pressure outside of his suit was incredibly high; it felt like he was dragging his limbs through water. So either he was under water, or—

The grating hiss of an opening portal filtered through his suit’s audio system and a sickly green light bloomed around him. Jerking about in the tensor field, he could just barely make out the bright circle of an open airlock, and silhouettes of three beings forcing their way through. One of the shadows paused momentarily, and Coleman winced when a bright white light blinked on above his feet, practically slapping him across the corneas.

A slurping, wet sound broke the silence, and when Coleman opened his eyes again he was staring into the face—or what passed for the face—of the last being he had wanted to see.

The alien opened its wet sphincter of a mouth and slurped again, a long sound that reminded Coleman of the sound oil makes as it drains through a clogged pipe, and this time the dry voice of Coleman’s suit translator chimed in.

“A most pleasurable greeting to you, Ainsworth.” The alien made a burping sound and the suit continued, “Nice of you to pay me a visit.”

Grimacing and wishing he could spit at the creature, Coleman said, “How could I resist the invitation, Jendathu?”

Another belching/squelching reply. “Yes. You should be more careful, you miserable [untranslatable—probably insulting]. On the Heavenly Docks, dark tunnels don’t make good places to hide from Security. Lucky for you my [untranslatable—probably similar to ‘posse’] ran into you.”

Coleman suppressed a groan. So that was how he’d ended up here. He’d been wandering along the main branch of Dock 198, looking for easy targets for a quick pickpocket job when he’d spied a quad of Hrian Security drones angling through the crowded tunnel towards him. There hadn’t been time for a clever escape, and he’d ducked down the first side tunnel he could find—and the alien before him now was right: on the Heavenly Docks, leaping before you looked was a almost as dangerous as playing Russian Roulette.

Jendathu Seep was still sniggering at him—a sound like wet towels slapping rotting meat. The most active black market boss on Heavenly Docks was a big alien, something like a cross between an Old Earth squid and crab that would have towered a good half meter over Coleman. No head, just a long torso ringed with black-marble sized eyes that was supported by four thick legs that ended in grasping claws. The snorking laughter was coming from Jendathu’s mouth—basically a single thick, mucous-ringed lip that was situated beneath the creature’s torso and half-hidden by a thick fan of tentacles that writhed in a hundred directions at once. One his slug-colored back—like all the males of his species—Jendathu carried a clutch of thousands of pea sized eggs, and judging from their green color and the copious amounts of liquid draining from them, they were about to hatch.

In short, the Nagathian crime lord was about as disgusting as they come, even for a place like Heavenly Docks.

Coleman was getting tired of Jendathu’s chuckling, so he cut in. “Thanks for the rescue, Seep. Can I go?”

“Go?” A dozen tentacles lifted up to stroke the blunt end of the alien’s torso in an eerie imitation of a contemplating human. “Believe me [untranslatable—probably insulting], I’d like nothing more than to jettison you. You’re dirt to me, human. But my friend here”—six of Jendathu’s tentacles twinned together into a single limb and gestured to one of the two hulking aliens that were lurking in the shadows—“is one of my [untranslatable—probably similar to ‘posse’] that rescued you from the Security forces.”

A dangerous glint rippled through Jendathu’s eyes, and the Nagathian leaned closer, “He seems to think you owe me.”

The hulking alien that from Coleman’s inverted perspective seemed to be a multi-armed starfish/sea urchin shrouded in a vacsuit made a startlingly cat-like meow that his suit didn’t even try to translate and Jendathu slurped, “And I never disappoint my employees.”

The situation was deteriorating rapidly, and Coleman knew it. Desperately he twisted inside the tensor field and shouted, “I don’t have any money, Seep. You know that!”

“Who said anything about money, you filthy [untranslatable—probably a colloquial reference to excrement]? I need a job done, and you happen to be here in a position to help me with it.”

Coleman shrank back as far as he could from Seep. Anything the crime boss wanted him to do would land him in deep trouble with Security—way beyond anything he had coming his way for pick-pocketing.

“Look, Seep . . . you don’t want me. Security already has an eye on me. I’m branded. You want Geslib down on Dock 123, or Fu over in Orbit Town. They”—

Jendathu snapped two of his tentacles together, and the two aliens lurched forward into the light—star fish boy and a hulking horsey thing with four arms and no apparent eyes that wasn’t wearing a vacsuit. They were both carrying wicked looking knives as long as Coleman’s arm.

“My [untranslatable—probably similar to ‘posse’] here, they are good at getting people to do what I say.” Jendathu continued, gesturing at the knives. He shouldn’t have bothered. Coleman was having enough trouble looking away from them. “Normally, we would do a little cutting and slicing, but with you, I don’t think we’ll bother.” The alien gestured at Coleman’s suit. “These rooms are designed for my comfort, you see. Too much pressure for you, I think, and I have heard that humans like yourself don’t breathe so well in methane. Just give his suit a little cut, boys, and then we’ll throw out the body.”

The two big aliens started forward, brandishing their knives, and Coleman knew that he had lost. “All right,” he shouted, “All right! I’ll do the job.”

Seep spat something and the two aliens reversed course, shambling back to the shadows. “You are a smart man, Ainsworth. As far as you humans go.”

“My mother told me the same thing.”

Apparently the sarcasm didn’t translate, because Jendathu just went on talking. “And to show you I have no hard feelings, I’ll even throw in 500,000 in cash once the job is done. But it will have to be done quick. I need you to kill a being.”

Coleman closed his eyes and muttered a silent prayer. He’d known this was going to be bad.

“You have heard of Cly M’shtinyb, perhaps?” Coleman nodded, his stomach dropping like a rock. If Jendathu Seep was the number one thug on Heavenly Docks, Cly M’shtinyb was close runner up. The two thugs’ organizations had been at each other’s throats on and off ever since Coleman had landed on Heavenly Docks three years back.

“That piss-brained [untranslatable—possible reference to legitimacy of birth] has been cutting into my business for years. I want him dead.”

“You want me to kill M’shtinyb?” Coleman gasped, jerking in his bonds. “Are you crazy? My guts’ll end up splattered from here to planetside!”

“Perhaps you wish for me to—how do you put it?—splatter your guts right here?”

“No. No. I’ll do it,” Coleman shook his head wearily. “But it’ll take a few months.”

The Nagathian wriggled with displeasure. “Not months. Three days.”

“Three days?! I”—

“You are in luck human, for M’shtinyb is here on the Heavenly Docks as we speak. But he is leaving for Avantaer in three days. He must be dead before his ship leaves the system.”

“And what kind of resources are you giving me to work with? I don’t own any weapons and don’t have a gang of thugs like you do.”

“Resources?” the alien spat back at him. “What kind of a fool do you think I am, Ainsworth? There will be no help from me, only the guarantee that I will not kill you. I don’t want Security tracing anything back to me. Now, get going. The time it is—how do your kind say it?—ticking.”

Seep gestured, and suddenly the tensor field around Coleman vanished. Reflexively he curled into a ball, landing flat on his back but protecting his head and neck. The air rushed out of his lungs with a great whoosh, and not one second later the two thugs were unceremoniously dragging him past Jendathu.

The Nagathian slurped evily at him, eyes glinting. “Good luck, human. If you fail me, you’ll be [untranslatable—probably a colloquial reference to excrement].”

Still being dragged across the rough floor, Coleman hung his head in defeat.

He was indeed in deep, deep trouble.