Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Seven

“Hey there, Umaren,” Chalmers said with a wave.

Umaren turned on his heel and stalked away, grumbling.

“Wait,” Chalmers said, striding after the seaplane captain. He and Jackson quickly caught up with the shorter indig. “What did I say?”

“Maybe show some respect,” Jackson offered, sotto voce. He continued more loudly, and with better, more polite R’Bakuun than Chalmers could summon, “Umaren, please wait. I apologize for my partner’s flippant greeting. It was not proper, but I assure you we have nothing but respect for you, your crew, and your fine seaplane.”

The man slowed, stopped. Not wishing to crowd him, Jackson and Chalmers stopped a few paces behind him as well.

“El wanted to thank you for getting him home,” Jackson added.

Umaren turned, squinted at Jackson, then up at the taller Chalmers. His brown eyes softened. “He is well?”

“Not entirely. Yet he is far better than he would be had you not brought him into our care.” You couldn’t lie to an asset you were going to have to rely on for your own skin. Not if you wanted to create the necessary bonds of trust. You could avoid, downplay, even mislead, but outright and easily refutable lies were best avoided. “He told me to tell you that you and Vizzel were free of any debt to him.”

Chalmers cast a worried glance at Jackson. There was telling the truth and then there was being unnecessarily open about the state of play.

Umaren looked down and scuffed the rocky beach with his boot. “The debt is not paid in full. Vizzel is fully recovered and both our lives were saved by El’s quick action. I owe him service.”

Chalmers had always admired his partner’s ability to get a target talking, but this was entirely next level.

We owe him service,” another man said, emerging from behind a stretch of rocky shore not five paces from them with a compact and lethal-looking pump shotgun in hand. It wasn’t aimed at either Jackson or Chalmers, but it was in hand, and the implicit threat wasn’t lost on either Lost Soldier.

Chalmers flinched, showing his shitty startle response once again. He kept his hand from going for his pistol, but only barely.

“Greetings. Vizzel, I take it?” Jackson said, shifting gears without dropping a beat. Chalmers noted his hands hadn’t even twitched.

Umaren looked at Vizzel and sighed. “You were to remain hidden.”

“And you were to listen to their offer, not walk away like a sullen boy at the first opportunity,” the younger man said.

Umaren’s hands balled into fists, but he gritted his teeth and returned his attention to the Lost Soldiers.

Jackson smiled at both men. “Why don’t we have a drink or two and discuss what might be?”

“What might be?” Umaren and Vizzel chorused with equally puzzled expressions.

“Indeed, what might be a very bright future for you and yours,” Jackson said.

“There is only us, the crew of Loklis. No house, family, or clan; only us and the contract we have with our investors,” Umaren said. “El might not have told you this.”

Jackson’s smile was broad and very, very white in the bright sunshine. “And if I were to tell you that’s exactly what I meant?”

Both men looked puzzled.

“For one, we do not hold your relationship as other than normal. With us you could live openly, freely, richly.”

“I just want to fly,” Umaren said. At least partially true, too. Chalmers didn’t miss the desperate glance the older man cast at his lover, though.

Vizzel was less cautious than the older man, however. “What do you want from us?”

Jackson cocked his head. “First, let’s get off the beach and have a few drinks. Get to know one another a little, then we can try and figure out what we can do for one another.”

Chalmers sent yet another grateful prayer to the long-dead and nameless Army personnel clerk who’d condemned Jackson to working with him all those years ago.

Jackson shot a look at his partner that said, I sold it, you close it.


“He’ll kill us rather than release us from our contract,” Umaren said, brown eyes wide.

Chalmers followed the pilot’s gaze. Umaren’s primary investor was easily recognizable, if not by the haughty expression on his face, then by the stylized bird painted on his forehead as well as the bodyguard of, at a quick count, six thugs that surrounded him. He and his entourage had crossed the square, those few patrons of the cafés and bars not too intoxicated to know better quickly getting out of the way.

They’d set up the meet in public in hopes that Umaren’s investor, Maktim, would be less inclined to violence with witnesses at hand. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake. From the look on Maktim’s face, a public airing of this dispute might just drive him to greater violence.

“Hasn’t killed anyone, yet,” Chalmers said, hand unconsciously checking the holstered sidearm riding his hip under his light night robes.

“And won’t if we have anything to say about it,” Jackson added. Chalmers saw his partner already had his gun out under the table. Chalmers swallowed. Jackson ready for trouble was both good and bad: that he always knew when shit was about to pop off was good. That didn’t mean Chalmers liked it when shit was popping off.

Maktim, owner-proprietor of Whikmari Global Transport—an appropriate name for a two-seaplane-and-a-couple-dozen-trucks operation—strode forward with a sneer on his painted lips. To be fair, he was a very big deal in these parts. For a private, non-Kulsian enterprise to keep and maintain so much technology on R’Bak when the overlords were not present was exceedingly rare. Chalmers had been worried about displacing him, but Umaren had told them that hostile takeover attempts were not uncommon and would raise few alarms.

Chalmers stood, offered a half bow. “Wel—”

The man ignored him, slammed a hand down on their table. Fruit-and-drink-laden crockery shivered and bounced. “Get your ass to my office, Umaren.”

“I-I—” Umaren stammered.

“Umaren is no longer in your employ, Maktim,” Chalmers said, surprised at how reasonable his own voice sounded.

The man’s eyes slid to Chalmers. “And who are you to speak to me?”

“One of his new partners,” Chalmers said, gesturing with his off hand at Umaren. He added a friendly smile. The smile died as he realized the man’s pupils were pinpricks despite the dim lantern light of the square.

Shit. Maktim was high as fuck.

“We have a contract.” A finger jabbed at Umaren and the thumb of the same hand cocked back at his own chest. “You are not party to that contract.”

“A fact we recognize. You will be compensated for his departure from your service.”

“I am not selling my interest.” Maktim sneered at Chalmers. “So you can crawl back to whatever whore spawned you and beg forgiveness for your failings.”

Chalmers glanced past the would-be shipping magnate. His thugs were tense: white knuckles on belts, sweat streaking paint, dry lips licked by dry tongues.

Shit. This is just like the old days in the Mog, with the local militia chewing khat until they were wound tight as a drum and had to let go. He glanced at Jackson. His partner’s face wore that almost-bored expression that told Chalmers he was ready for anything.

“Be reasonable, Maktim,” Chalmers said, keeping his voice level and cool to avoid triggering anyone. “Things don’t have to be this w—” Chalmers yelped as Jackson kicked him, hard, in the thigh. He lurched sideways just as a forearm-length blade whispered through the space where he’d been.

Chalmers felt his nuts draw up even as Jackson’s hand appeared with his gun leveled. The local-made pistol barked twice, pushing needles into Chalmers’s ears. The swordsman—Chalmers refused to call any weapon that long a knife—fell on that side of the table, the back of his skull made a mess by a ten-millimeter bullet. His weight half-flipped the table, as well. Crockery shattered on the pavers.

Umaren helped the table along, heaving their end up and over to provide some cover.

Chalmers stood gaping beside it, catching events in flashes: screams and shouts of alarm from bystanders, a general scramble as they fled or dove for cover, Maktim’s angry painted face disappearing beyond the table.

One of the thugs standing to the side raised a big revolver and started to cock the hammer. Jackson turned and, without really seeming to aim, cracked off another pair of shots. The thug grunted, wheezed, and collapsed on his ass, pistol clattering on the pavers.

Finally diving behind the table, Chalmers struggled to pull his own pistol. He skidded on some fallen fruit but sat up behind the dubious cover of the café table. His hands were clumsy, refusing to pull the pistol free.

Jackson shot several more times.

Chalmers still couldn’t get his pistol free.

“Red!” Jackson shouted. A faint clatter heard as his spent mag clattered on the pavement. A part of Chalmers was amazed he could hear anything after the gunfire.

An axe bit into the wood next to Chalmers’s head.

A fucking axe!

A man’s head appeared behind the weapon and pulled it free in a shower of splinters. The thug started to step over the table.

“Up!” Jackson shouted.

Hoping his partner could drill the man, Chalmers glanced that way but Jackson was already shooting at someone opposite his side of the impromptu barrier.

Chalmers threw himself backward, pistol finally coming free of the holster inside his robes. He fired from the hip. Bullets tore through light fabric, air, fabric once more, and found flesh and finally, bone, at the far end.

The axe-man stumbled but kept coming across the table at him.

Umaren appeared and threw himself against the thug, his arm traveling from his belt line up under his opponent’s rib cage. His knife hand came away red. He repeated the motion three, four, five times in quick succession.

Shot at least once, stabbed multiple times, the dying man still dragged the pilot to the ground. Not wanting to hit Umaren, Chalmers got in close, pushing his muzzle, robes and all, against the man’s skull. He pulled the trigger. The man stilled, the deformed bullet that killed him ricocheting off wet pavers and away with an evil whine.

Scrambling upright, Chalmers risked a look over the table.

Maktim was crawling away, a thick trail of blood glistening in the torchlight from the table to his belly. Another of the thugs was wailing while clutching a hand that appeared to be short a few fingers. The last two thugs had thought better of the fight and were hastily fleeing for the far end of the square.

A furious Chalmers finally extricated his pistol from his tattered, bloody robes.

“Decide to join the fight, did you?” Jackson said, eyes flicking to the gun in Chalmers’s hand.

Chalmers shivered. “Couldn’t let you have all the glory, could I?”

Jackson’s smile was just the slightest bit crazy as he waved at the dead and wounded. “I don’t think Maktim will have any more objections to Umaren breaking his contract, do you?”

“Probably not,” Chalmers said, feeling a twinge of concern for his friend. Jacks was better than Chalmers at mayhem. Didn’t make the sergeant easy with it. Not normally. “You all right?”

“Right enough. Street rules rule here, just like the South Side.”

Chalmers let that ride and said: “You hurt?”

“No, you?”

“Nope. Umaren?”

The pilot spread his arms wide. “None of this is mine.”

“Good. Looks like you’re a free agent now.”

Umaren walked over and spat on the now-still form of his former boss. “Good.”


Back | Next
Framed