REHO: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Hegemon Wars) (3 page)

Reho took a seat across from him. “Is that what I think it is?”

“No, but it’s one just like it.” Drenfi handed him the toy gun, identical to the one they’d played with as kids. It was modeled after a pulse rifle, a weapon introduced to their world by the Hegemon. It was light in his hands, but there was no mistaking it; it was identical.

Reho handed it back. “Does someone make these? It's the same as the one I got from the traveling merchant down by the docks when I was a kid.”

“I don’t know. I just saw it on a peddler’s cart and bought it. Not sure why. Maybe because it reminded me of you.” Drenfi’s voice cracked.

Reho looked back at the ’57 Chevy. “I had to leave.”

“Yeah,” Drenfi said, “but six years?” He grabbed the full glass from Reho and finished the hard shine. “I talked to Wilks a while back. He mentioned your uncle works down at the shipyard now. Not sure what happened at the tannery, but he’s there. Mostly staying in town by the docks, too. I think he has an apartment.”

“Thanks,” Reho said. He hadn’t wanted to stay long, but now he was afraid to tell him he had to go.

Reho stood. Drenfi didn’t ask why he wouldn’t stay. Perhaps he knew Reho had no desire to revisit old memories. After all, they all lead back to that last fatal race.

Drenfi stood. “Wilks also mentioned that his brother sees him almost nightly down at the RT.” Drenfi
lifted a greased finger toward Reho’s weapon. “That’s a good rifle. You might want to stash it somewhere before going to the RT. The community laws are the same, but bringing in something more than a pistol might give people the wrong frakin’ idea.”

Reho nodded. He’d planned to keep his rifle and pack in their old hiding place at the docks.

Drenfi had always been a good friend. He was still a good friend. Reho doubted he could ever get close to anyone in 4E like he had before he left. A mechanics life was so
normal,
meant for those who were content with life and accepted the way things were in the world. Reho could never be like Drenfi. Sometimes it seemed that finding contentment took away what little happiness existed. He could race and missed it. He could fight and hated it. There were other communities, other places that might provide a new life, places where he might even recover what he’d left behind in Red Denver. If it had been love, then he missed being in love. Whatever it was, it was something that no longer existed in Virginia Bloc.

***

Reho glanced at his Casio: 10:13. There were few people out on the streets. He heard music playing from somewhere farther up the bay. He knew it would be the RT.

Reho missed it, 4E’s music club, the place where his mother had worked, a time and place that meant something to her. He felt connected to her there. Although he’d never been there with her, he went weekly as a teenager. The RT was owned by Rodman, the community’s version of
The Godfather
. Everyone knew the stereotype. The film was one of the few that played at the 4E Center for the Arts. Every community had its underground crime bosses and black-market dealers. Red Denver was still too real, Soapy and his henchmen. But he had also seen it in Chicago and in communities farther out west. The RT, besides attracting criminals and dealers, also attracted musicians from both sides of the ocean. Its name was taken from a sign that had hung on the building in the early years after the alien war. The letters stuck, the original sign still hanging from a beam above its main door.

Reho heard the RT before he saw its sign. The bass rippled far into the harbor. As Reho approached, he noticed the marquee flashing the name of the band playing tonight:
Hyper Phaze.

Inside, hundreds crowded the stage. An excited roar drowned the vocals as Reho pushed through to the back. His mother had worked the same tables that another waitress moved between; her hair was black with the colors of the sky and fire braided in. Another woman moved behind the bar, its green toxic-colored lights aglow. A thick smoke hung in the air as most patrons smoked from glass tubes that rose out of the table, complete with long hoses and metal tips. Reho hadn’t seen these before.

Reho spotted his uncle at a table, but he wasn’t connected to one of the smoker hoses. Instead, he sat with a glass in his hand. It was quieter in the back, a half wall separated the room from the band, cutting the volume enough to hear someone if they were within three feet.

Reho crossed his arms and looked down. “Ron.” He stood close enough to hear his uncle’s labored breathing. His eyes were glazed, his reaction slow. Maybe too far gone to notice him. The glass vase rising out of the table was filled with something like tobacco. A striker was built into its base.

Reho never liked calling his uncle by name, because he shared his father’s name. There had been ten years between his uncle and his father. Their mother had given birth to Reho’s father while his Uncle Ron, the eldest son, struggled to survive a deadly strain of influenza that had plagued their community that summer. Not expecting the eldest to live, they named the newest child Ron to carry on their father’s name. The papers had already been filed with the community when his uncle’s health improved. Thus, both boys grew up sharing the name.

His uncle looked as though he had aged twenty years instead of six.

Reho sat, removed the note from his jacket pocket, and slid it across the table.

His uncle looked at the note. His shaky hand reached out and clasped it, hiding it from view.

There was a long pause before his uncle spoke. Reho listened as the band’s words crashed over the half wall and into their table.

The day’s glow burns our impression

Carved into a life unsupported

Taking down the reminder of yesterdays

Looking forward to a newer age

“It’s really you,” his uncle said, his words clawing their way to the surface, desperate to be heard. He sounded convincingly sober.

Reho leaned forward, his hands on the table. “How long has she been dead?”

There was a long pause. “She died . . .”
He fidgeted with something in his jacket pocket.

Reho leaned closer. “How long?”

“Three years now,” his uncle replied, his hands still toying with whatever was in his pocket.

This was not the uncle Reho remembered. There was no smile, no witty sarcasm or life in his speech.

His uncle’s hands shook. “Listen, Reho,” he said, “I have some business to take care of. I’ve been working up my nerve all day. Why don’t we meet later tonight? The house is in your name. I transferred it a year before your aunt died. She wanted it that way in case you ever came home.”

What kind of business required him to be drunk?

Reho watched his uncle’s free hand clasp the empty glass; it rattled against the table at his touch. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

His uncle looked at the note. He crumbled it into a ball and rolled it across the table.

Reho stopped the paper. “Ron! What kind of trouble?”

His uncle signaled the waitress. “The kind that requires another shot of this rancid shine.” She brought him another glass and took his empty one way. “You need to get out. I don’t want you seen with me tonight.”

Reho stood and moved to the half wall. His uncle was broken and tired, his face worn and soured from years of shine and depression. There was nothing left of him. Just a corpse waiting to be told it was dead.

The band stopped playing and addressed the energetic crowd. Hundreds of screams filled the room, and the crowd reacted with horrific, deafening applause as the musicians played the opening notes of their next song. Reho thought of his mother.
She would have loved this
—
the live music, its energy.

Three men entered the room from the back and stopped at his uncle’s table.
They’re coming from Rodman’s office.

Each wore dark green OldWorld fatigues and looked out of place, almost absurd. Reho returned to the table. One of the fatigued goons lifted a hand, signaling for him to stop. He now knew what kind of trouble.

A bullnecked man with a wide chin quickly established himself as the leader of the three. “You owe twenty thousand. And Rodman doesn’t give a damn if you lost it betting on the gasolines.”

“You know I don’t have it,” Ron replied, shooting back the last of his shine while his other hand remained in his jacket. “What radiated fool would have twenty thousand points anyway?”

The head goon laughed hysterically. “That’s not our concern.” He leaned across the table, his face an inch away from Ron’s nose. “Taking care of those with unpaid debts is my job, though. Rodman says it’s my
specialization
.”

“I guess it’s the little fish that bite you when you’re at the bottom,” Ron said and lifted his arm to signal the waitress. “Let me get us one last drink before we go outside.” The leader grabbed his arm and slammed it onto the table. The other two men stepped back, taking position to keep others from interfering. If anything went down, it would go down right here.

Instinctively, Reho dashed through the two men standing guard and grabbed the leader’s wrist, squeezing until he felt the bones bend and shift, forcing him to release his uncle. The man fired a kick backward into Reho’s chest, flinging him into a table full of startled patrons six feet away. The other men stepped closer, ready and waiting. Reho had two choices. But it always just came down to one.

Reho sprang toward the closer of the two goons. His fist landed where he intended, sending chills down his spin
e as a
snap
caught the attention of everyone near them. The goon grabbed his face and flailed on the ground. The other sidekick attempted to restrain Reho.

Reho avoided his grasp, then landed his foot behind the goon and crushed his palm into his chest, sending the thug backward. Recovering quickly, he leapt from the ground. Reho prepared for the second assault.

The ringleader approached them, cradling his broken hand. “Stop!”

Most of the RT patrons who were not out in the crowd had abandoned their tables and pushed through a side door across from the bar. He noticed a group in a back corner booth had stayed and were now watching. From the stage, the music continued.

Reho motioned to his uncle. “Get out!” Ron stumbled as he rose from the table.

“You think you can protect him?” the ringleader asked. “Who’s the real criminal here? He owes a debt, which makes him the bad guy. It’s amazing how easily people confuse the good guys with the bad guys.” His two sidekicks joined him across from Reho.

Reho took out a smartcard. “Whatever he owes, it’s here.” He tossed it in their direction, and the sidekicks flinched. The one with the broken jaw caught it, the sudden motion sending a wave of pain through his body.

“Scan it!” Reho said.

The broken-jawed goon did as he was told.

“Holy hell! There’s thirty-seven thousand on here, boss!”

“Take it. My uncle owes you nothing.”

The head goon stepped closer and smiled. “Your uncle? I didn’t see it at first. But yes . . . Now I do.”

Reho stared.
This man, charged with either collecting my uncle’s debt or making an example of him, knows me?

His smile soured. “Your uncle is no longer an interest, but what you did to my men is. You might want to crawl out as quietly as you crawled in.”

Crawled in?

“You come back and expect no one to remember what you did?” he asked. “You killed Dink. No one forgets something like that. No one forgets a coward, especially one who runs away before the community has a chance to question him. Everyone knows you let him die to win that race. I mean . . .” His words had become like boulders in his mouth as he tried to spit out each one without exploding in anger. “You plowed through him!
”
He took several steps closer. “
You...left…him…to…burn
.”

Reho saw it now, the large forehead and wide chin.

“Dink was family?” Reho asked.

“He was my brother!”

“Then I’m sure you know your brother played dirty,” Reho replied. “And that he would have just as easily killed me to win that race.” His body tensed, he knew what was coming next.

Dink’s brother’s body twitched. “But he didn’t.” He clenched his fists. “It’s you who killed him.”

All three moved in unison. Reho pushed away a kick meant for his head and successfully grabbed the arm of one of the sidekicks. He twisted and heard that familiar crunch. Then the goons overwhelmed him. Several punches found a home on his face. Reho pushed, knocking them back. The larger thug grabbed a nearby chair and swung. Reho blocked it, sending broken pieces of wood across the room. The other sidekick revealed an OldWorld pistol. The shot tore through Reho’s leg, blasting pain throughout his body.

Reho positioned his hand under the shooter’s arm and brought the gun up, breaking his arm as he had the other
.
Reho grabbed the gun and shot the other sidekick before he could draw his OldWorld weapon. The goon’s chest exploded, speckling the crushed furniture crimson.

The music continued.
Had anyone even heard the gunshots?