My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (7 page)

“Stick to the booze,” Angel said. “It won’t do anything to you that it usually doesn’t. But leave off anything else. There’s enough difference among Srihani that some of these drugs add new meaning to the phrase ‘blow your mind’. I’m not real sure which ones are safe.”

“Not to worry. I just do booze anyway.”

Angel hesitated, though, in the entryway, which was odd in view of his hustle to find the place.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s full of kvenningari,” he said.

“What? Angel, I remember that word from the Teacher, but it doesn’t seem to mean anything.”

“Means plenty,” he said. “Kvenningari are like gangs, but they’re gangs that are the government in a lot of places. Some are small; some are like mini-empires. They all say they’re loyal to the Emperor, it’s just that their first loyalty is to the kvenningar, but, trust me, anything past first loyalty is horseshit. They wear a gray-and-black uniform, like the Fleet, but each kvenningar has a shoulder patch, like colors back home. Just remember, the only thing they hate more than each other is us.”

“So, maybe, we should skip the drink?”

That was the wrong thing to say. He shot me a venomous look, shook off my arm and marched in.

The place was a bar only in the generic sense. Small circular tables were distributed through the compartment. They could be expanded or shrunk to accommodate any number of patrons. Orders were keyed into the table and the drinks ascended to the tabletop through the central support. That eliminated the need for waitresses. There was no bar, either. Instead, one Srihani sat at a strategically placed table where the tab was paid. From watching the transactions, it was clear that the drugs were dispensed there, rather than through the tables with the drinks. I gave the kvenningari uniforms a wide berth on the way to a vacant table.

When we each had in front of us a glass of the purplish liquor Angel had been touting, I decided to try my question again.

“Okay, Angel. You’re sitting down. You’ve got your drink. Now, what’s the story about this valuable cargo that’s not going to take any time to unload?”

“Try the drink.”

I hesitated a moment. “Angel, are you going to tell me that what we’re carrying is drugs?” I honestly had not thought about what cargo a pirate might carry until just then. Maybe I’d been trying to avoid it. The concept made me uneasy.

Angel brushed it off with a laugh. “Danny, I think the assholes that run this empire are just as happy to have as many people as they can high. That way they don’t make trouble. Shit, I haven’t seen any place that doesn’t make their own and sell it cheap. No profit in shipping it, so we never wind up with it.”

“Then what do you have?”

“Try the drink.”

I did. It was smooth and fruity, with the promise of a kick under the flavor.

Angel grinned at me over the rim of his glass and drained half of his drink before he answered. “The reason is, Danny-boy, because the only cargo we took that run was the Little Mistress. Damn bitch of a fight we had for her, too. That’s why I was able to sweet-talk Gerangi into letting me try recruiting on Earth.”

I’d heard a comment or two about the “Little Mistress” onboard, but had never paid attention. Angel’s suggestion of a bloody battle, however, conjured visions of a galactic Venus de Milo in my head. Or worse.

“Are you telling me we’ve got somebody’s sacred statue stashed in the hold?”

“Statue? Whaddya mean, statue?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Danny, sometimes I think you’re a little soft. The Little Mistress ain’t no statue. She’s the youngest child of some major Imperial planetary pooh-bah. Carvalho got a tip that she’d be en route to some holding the guy has out here. Got to figure that she’s worth one hell of a ransom. At least, I’m sure that’s what Carvalho’s source said. Anyway, we intercepted and took ’em out. Definitely, one badass fight. We dumped the survivors in a boat and made sure they had Carvalho’s demands and how to get in contact. This station’s the first message point and all Carvalho’s gonna to do is check for that message ’cause they won’t beam it, take on a few necessaries and then blast. Which is why we ain’t got no time.”

While Angel was explaining this, a queasy feeling began to build in my stomach. I’d gotten reconciled to the idea of being an interstellar pirate. The title has a certain ring to it, once you got used to it. However, kidnapper sounded just as lousy in space as it did in Texas.

“You mean, all we’re doing is holding some guy’s poor kid for ransom?” I was hoping that Angel would, somehow, reverse what he had just said.

Instead, he exploded. “Poor kid! Little rich-bitch mistress is more like it. And some guy! He’s one of those damned planetary lords. Do you have any idea what the empire is really like? You got a bunch of rich assholes who spend their time playing power games, and never mind who they stab in the back or kill, and another bunch of rich assholes who’re just into getting high and screwing around, and everybody else, who just gets fucked. Wait ’til you see what a fuckin’ mess the Outer Empire really is. Do you think any of them give a shit? Hell, no! They got this huge mother Fleet, which ain’t what it used to be but even so, do they go after the kvenningari? Shit no! Let ’em catch a freebooter though, without blowing it up, and they’ll have a little contest to see who they can keep alive the longest. Do you think I care if we stick it to them?”

Angel’s reasoning had a peculiar warp to it. After all, if the empire had been run properly, there would be precious little room for pirates. I guess it made him comfortable, but even if it was the plain truth, I wasn’t sure it justified snatching a kid. I was going to point that out, when I was interrupted.

“Hey, freebooter, if you’re going to shout, at least do it so we can understand you.”

The source of the comment was the taller of two Srihani in kvenningari uniform at a table near the inner wall of the compartment. Since we’d been speaking English, it was easy to see why they couldn’t follow the conversation.

“Shit!” Angel said in low tones, but with force, “Carrillacki. We’ve got grief now.”

“What’s a Carrillacki?” I asked.

“Later,” he said. Turning to the others, he spoke in galactic. “My apologies if we disturbed you. It was just a private matter between two otherwise friends.”

Ducking a fight wasn’t Angel’s style. That he was doing so made me worry.

The one who had interrupted us was not about to let it pass. He was standing now, holstered blaster in plain view, and his reply to Angel was anything but conciliatory. “If it was private, it should have been kept private. But, I don’t suppose scum know anything about manners. I don’t need your apology, but I think you should apologize to everyone else in here. Individually.”

Angel’s face began to darken and I knew trouble was only seconds away. Part of me wanted it to happen. Backing down in the face of obvious bullying was never my style either, and I’d been doing enough of it on the ship. It wasn’t even the weapons that swayed me the other way; we were all armed. It was Angel’s initial response. If it had been important, ten seconds before, to avoid a fight, then it was still important.

“Come on Angel. Leave it alone.” I tugged at his arm to start him moving and to keep him from going for his blaster. “You said we had to get back soon anyway.”

I had him moving, but the Carrillacki stopped us both.

“You
pay
here, freebooter,” the second one said, and then they were both standing.

We were nearly to the doorway and the Srihani manning the desk was all the way back across the room at the inner wall. Why not seat the cashier at the door? Because this way, he had his back to a wall, a clear field of view and no one could get close to him from the corridor. Trusting souls, these were.

“Angel,” I said urgently, “give me enough to cover us.”

I could see him getting ready to fight again and my feeling that we should not was only reinforced by the Carrillacki’s apparent eagerness to goad us into a confrontation.

Angel pressed the wafers into my hand and muttered, “Walk slow, Danny. I’ll watch the Carrillacki. Keep your hand away from your blaster. I’m sure the guy at the desk has his hand on a weapon we can’t see.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was too late to change my mind. I could feel the pressure of every pair of eyes in the room on me. I’ve had seventy thousand people in a stadium watching me, but the intensity in that room was far greater. I made it to the desk, put the money in front of the cashier, turned my back on him and walked back to Angel. I have no idea how much change I left behind. At the time, I didn’t care a bit. Once reunited, we backed out the door and turned away down the corridor.

“Thanks for stopping that, Danny,” Angel said. “I could tell I was going to lose it and that wouldn’t have been good. Carrillacki has to be the most powerful kvenningar going and one of the nastiest. Carvalho won’t cross them unless he absolutely has to and if we make trouble for him in public with Carrillacki he’d probably make space burgers out of us.”

“I appreciate the warning,” I said, “because they just followed us out.”

“Oh shit!”

“Maybe they’re just going to tail us back to the ship and make sure we leave,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” Angel said. “Does the pope shit in the woods?”

Angel took turns at each corridor that presented itself, ultimately bringing us into a large crowded one that was totally unfamiliar to me. The Carrillacki stayed behind us.

“Angel, they can’t just blow us away in public and get away with it, can they?”

“Who knows?” he answered. “New emperor, new rules.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“They’ve been going through a lot of emperors recently,” he said. “Whoever controls the emperor gets to make the rules. I don’t know about the new one, but Carrillacki have gotten pretty used to having it their way.”

“Great.” Then something caught my eye. “This way!” I grabbed Angel’s arm and pulled him through a side door in the passageway. I had just seen someone come through it and the way behind it looked deserted. The door closed behind us and we stationed ourselves on either side of it. Then we waited. Most of me was hoping the Carrillacki had missed our exit and would disappear.

It was a futile hope. Scant seconds later, the door slid open. I clotheslined the first Carrillacki through. Back in Dallas, that would have been fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. Here, however, we were playing without a referee. The Srihani’s eyes bugged out as he grabbed for his throat. He didn’t yell though. I had caught him just right; he didn’t even squeak.

The second one froze. That was all the opening Angel needed. He leaped in, grabbed the Srihani and rammed the Carrillacki’s head into the nearest wall. The Carrillacki slumped to the floor, leaving behind a smear of blood. Angel looked at the two of them with satisfaction.

“Perfect,” he said. “Both of them out and neither one dead. I do like the way you fight, Danny. I do indeed. Come on, we want to be off station before they wake up. I’m afraid getting laid will have to wait to the next stop.”

That was the end of my liberty at Orgumuni. I’d had a total of one drink, had done no sightseeing or shopping and hadn’t been laid. I must confess that in spite of Angel’s enthusiasm for Imperial hookers, I really hadn’t had the urge just then, so it was only three of four categories I felt gypped on. There was some good to it though. Angel made quite a story out of our tiff with the Carrillacki when we were back on the ship and that seemed to improve my standing with the crew. As you may have guessed, in Angel’s version, we got laid.

I
t didn’t take long, just a day out of Orgumuni, before my command of the language got me into trouble. In spite of the way it sounds, it wasn’t my mouth that did it. The Teacher was very good at what it was constructed to do, and I was quite fluent. It was not a colloquialism or improperly stressed syllable that almost killed me. It was body language.

Just consider how much we communicate without words. A phrase may have two or more different meanings depending on the facial expression, hand gestures and so forth that accompany it. Unlike sounds, which can be arranged in an endless number of ways, there is a finite number of gestures and expressions. The obvious result is that individuals from different cultures can have different spoken languages while using the same body language. The problem is that the meaning of the gestures varies from culture to culture. There are real differences, for instance, in the hand signals for hitchhiking between the United States and Europe, and those are areas with a lot more in common than the Earth and the empire. You can easily see the potential for disaster.