The Backworlds (14 page)
She separated out the strands of
fiber from the severed splinter in her hand. “I don’t think my master will take
that well. He’d have everybody here hunt you down. The big guy with the painted
face is his brother.”
Shit. “They awful busy
makin
’ asses of themselves in the bar. Probably nobody will
notice you gone.” Craze sure hoped so.
Her face brightened. “You think?”
He shrugged. “Why not? Besides, there’s
got to be a way around that sleazy saloon. We’ll find it. C’mon, I’ll see you
back to the ship. You’ll be safe there.”
She threw her arms around his neck,
kissing his wide cheeks. “For this, you’ll forever be my
bestest
friend. Forever.”
The tea, the rest, and his
coveralls made him strong enough to stand. A few test strides didn’t wind him.
Shrugging out of his coat, he handed it to Rainly to put on, in hopes it would
make her less recognizable.
Craze picked up her hand, tugging
her down the corridor. “Let’s try this way.”
Craze struggled to hurry, wanting
to remain unseen. The threat of hibernation kept slowing him down, and they
kept smacking into dead ends.
“Looks like we have to cut through
the bar,” Rainly said.
Chances were slim they’d get
through the tavern unnoticed and unscathed, no matter how drunk the patrons
were. Most thugs had a sixth sense when it came to someone trying to pull
something over on them. So Bast had taught him, and he had seen it for himself
on Siegna, where the crowd resembled credentialed nannies compared to the gang
here on Wism.
Craze leaned against the rough-hewn
wall, huffing. “We didn’t try that way yet.” He pulled himself along, his hands
gripping on the rock, dragging him to the left.
Rainly put an arm around him,
assisting. “That leads to the boss man’s place. The big dude with the colorful
face.”
“Oh.” Craze stopped. Shit.
“You said they was mighty busy
being drunks in the bar. Maybe no one will notice. Like you said.” She winced
when she tried to smile in an encouraging way, the beating she took earlier
swelling her cheeks.
She would have to remember the
stupidest thing he said and bring it up. Dammitall. Craze thought over their
situation some more, coming up with nothing new or brilliant. Maybe with his
coat on, she’d pass through as just another drunk. Probably not. The skin,
hair, and eyes gave her away. He stuck out just as much in tan clothing head to
ankle. Tan was better than chrome and white though.
He took off his shirt, arranging it
over her hair as if a scarf. The cold of Wism pricked at his skin, shooting
like pikes into his joints. “Act like you belong. Do what they do. Don’t
cower.”
“You clever.” She giggled, patting
at the makeshift hood.
They stumbled back toward the bar,
resting just outside. Craze peeked around the corner. Four bodies slumped over
the entryway, too drunk to stand. A clump of folks in the center gyrated like
insane snakes, singing at the top of their lungs. “Die. Die. Die. Let’s die tomorrow.”
Cheery lyrics. Blending in with
that crowd would be his and Rainly’s best shot at getting through the tavern
with minimal notice. He swished his hips side to side, loosening up, tightening
his grip on her hand, pushing himself off of the wall.
“What you doing?” whispered next to
his ear.
Craze jumped, reeling about on his
heels, heart hammering, pulse racing, breath escaping him in a gasp. “Talos!”
Rainly squealed, high and shrill,
like when Craze first bumped into her. She didn’t stop. Craze squeezed her
hand, petting her cheeks, telling her she had to shut up.
Too late. The dancing folks quit
singing and dancing, pivoting as one toward Rainly’s screams, licking their
lips, smelling prey. Shit.
A man as formidable as Rock Man moved
Craze’s way, fists clenched, his lower jaw tightening until rigid. “That’s my
property. What you doing with her?”
Rainly whimpered, trembling like
the sands outside in a breeze. Craze pushed her behind him. “Found her
discarded in a trash heap.”
“She wasn’t tossed out. She was
stored, dumbass.”
Craze spoke out the side of his
mouth. “We could use some help here, Talos. Find Lepsi ‘n Dactyl. Hurry.”
He could see he and Rock Brother
were evenly matched in size. If he had proper lung capacity, he’d not worry
about squaring off with the guy, but he didn’t. Apologizing was out. He’d try
that surly-enough thing the lawman had preached, hoping he’d hit it right.
“Didn’t see no sign
sayin
’ so. She’s mine now.” He
dodged to duck around the guy.
Rock Brother’s meaty hand stopped
Craze. A punch followed, connecting square on Craze’s jaw, sending him reeling
backwards, exposing Rainly.
She was yanked back to her master’s
side. He cracked her one across those already badly beaten cheeks. “What shit
you pulling on me, Toots? You forget to tell him who you belong to?”
She shook, her lip quaking,
blubbering an insensible, “Me, me, me, me
me
.”
He twisted her wrist until she
stopped her sniveling to scream. Loud as a siren her distress had to be heard
all over Wism.
The folks in the bar laughed,
closing in, wanting a piece of the blood about to spill. Craze scrambled to get
onto his feet, huffing and panting, closing his fists.
Egged on by the crowd, Rock Brother
punched Rainly three times, knocking her onto her ass, stomping on her until
she quit resisting and fell silent. “Tell me you sorry. Tell me!” he kept
saying.
Craze charged at him, using all his
lung capacity to haul him off of her, clawing, pulling, hitting. Rock Brother
whirled, pummeling Craze with fists and boots. Craze did his best to ward off
the blows, but the fight quickly winded him. His body threatening to stop, he
fell to his knees.
Whomp
,
whomp
,
whomp
. Pain crashed into his temples, his jaw, his
nose and lips splintered, agony exploded in his ribs, then in a knee. In a last
desperate attempt, he pulled his revolver. Eighty pointed back at him, hammers
clicking.
Shit.
Rock Brother grabbed Craze by the
hair, which hurt more than the punches. The living hair’s abuse made Craze wail
like a girl, a vulnerability as glaring as the need for enriched oxygen. He
yowled, in more torment than any steel-toed boot could deliver, blinded to any
other need. Rock Brother took the advantage offered, wrenching the gun out of
Craze’s hand, pressing the barrel against Craze’s temple. Shit fifty times
over.
“Hold on there,” Dactyl strode into
the fray. “We can make a deal.”
The original Rock Man joined his
brother, placing a boot on Rainly’s head. “Chocolate won’t save you from your
asshole friend stealing ‘n causing trouble. Just ain’t a good idea to go around
taking from others on a world like this.”
“We ain’t friends. Just doing
business together. Nothing more. It’s his first time out here on the Edge ‘n
he’s woefully uneducated as to our ways. Certainly, we can find a way to
forgiveness.” Dactyl held his hands up, inching closer. The aviars flanked him,
copying the lawman’s every move.
“Stupid to team up with
Flatsy-assed babies.” Rock Man nodded and his brother clutched more severely at
Craze’s sensitive hair, taking another swing at Craze’s brutalized nose. The
sting welled in Craze’s eyes, fueling cackles and guffaws from the crowd.
“A chip per punch.” Rock Man held
up his tab for the pings. “Five to take out some aggression on robot girl.”
Dactyl ground his jaw, spitting. “I
got the better deal ‘n
yous
know it. Chips don’t come
close to what I got to offer.”
“Mercy comes with a heavy price,”
Rock Man said, calling one lady forward to kick at Craze and allowing one of
the drunken men to paw at Rainly.
Craze tasted blood in his throat,
gasping for a full breath, his fingers clawing against the floor to get to
Rainly. He’d get that man off of her. Damn his body for failing him. He put all
his effort into moving closer, reaching for her foot. A boot shattered his
hand, but Craze barely noticed, his determination on the chrome gal. Her cries
were so quiet and she didn’t twitch. It worried him. His hand useless, he
employed his elbows to inch across the floor. The asshole’s boots assaulted him
as he did.
Whomp
.
Whomp
.
Whomp
.
“Ten bars of chocolate,” Dactyl
said, “for merely letting him return to our ship. He’ll bother
yous
no more this visit.”
Rock Man nodded another man forward
to punch Craze. “He’ll bother us never again.”
Craze didn’t feel the slug to his
gut. All the spots of anguish cancelled each other out in a numbing agony. Only
Rock Brother’s grasp on his hair made any impact. Craze groaned, his mangled
hands desperately trying to pry his tormenter’s fingers loose.
The lawman’s gaze flickered to the
sniffling Rainly and the two women using her as a smack sack. “Thirty for the
both of ‘
em
. That’ll bring
yous
more chips than this moon is worth.”
Rock Man called the next man
forward, pulling the two women off Rainly. “She’s not so easily bought. I can
make a lot of money off of her. We get lots of lonely visitors here on Wism.”
Craze’s sight narrowed to one tiny
slit. He watched the next punch from the ceiling, as if he were no longer
inside himself. Everyone’s words hummed, and became indistinguishable, a
language beyond his understanding. The next blow caused black to edge his
vision. He’d welcome losing consciousness. He longed for it.
Dactyl’s jaw twitched.
“We offer forty,” Talos said. “No
one in this section of the Edge has that many chips. The kind of wealth that’s hard
to come by out here.”
The aviarman was bold. Craze
appreciated it, but he groaned. That was almost all of their stash— the means
to their trade routes and taverns, and Dactyl’s desire to catch the Fo’wo’s and
make them pay. There’d not be enough left for the lawman to buy a lead.
Rock Man laughed. “I ain’t much
into mercy today ‘n seems my customers like the entertainment.” He called the
next two customers forward. One for Craze. One for Rainly.
Dactyl tugged his coat off,
throwing it on the ground, ripping off the left sleeve of his shirt. Images in
ink stained his left bicep. He thrust the shoulder toward the leader of Wism,
making sure the man saw the tattoo and understood what it meant. “You’ll stop
this now, or suffer the consequences.
Yous
saw my arm
‘n really get what I mean. Yes?”
Rock Man’s voice quivered. “Yup. I
see.”
“You’ll take our deal for these two
‘n you’ll take another ten to forget we exist.”
On the lawman’s arm was a depiction
of death. Dark portrayals of suffering people—writhing, sliced open, impaled,
their guts spilling, and a river of blood. Skulls decorated the banks and a
symbol involving entwined snakes repeated around the whole scene. It had
meaning to the thugs here on Wism. It had none to Craze other than he might
live through this.
Rock Man stopped the next bar
patron from walloping Craze, and sent the rest of the crowd backwards with a
snarl. “I accept. Send Quasser my regards.”
Fifty bars of chocolate. That left
only three. Maybe enough to buy a permanent docking berth on some forsaken
world, someplace where all their dreams would wither. Shit.
Back on the Sequi, no one spoke a
word. They slipped back into the Lepper, cleared for
Pote
.
It was a planet the aviars had been to before that had a good medical facility
and few bothers.
All the injuries had Craze slipping
in and out of hibernation along the way. The memories of being carried to and
from the ship and to the hospital were pure fuzz. He could recall ceiling
passing by overhead and a gal sniffling. Rainly.
“Rainly?”
“You need to rest,” a lady all in
orange said, placing an oxygen mask over his face.
The influx of air made his lungs
ache less. When he felt strong enough to sit up, Talos stared at him from a
chair across the room, rolling that prized pin between his fingers. His
expression was crest-fallen, but not devoid of all hope.
“Where we at?” Craze asked.
“
Pote
.
You ‘n Rainly needed tending for your injuries. Yours was really bad. Cost us
the remaining three bars, mate.”
Shit. That explained Talos’s glum
face, but not the glimmer of optimism. “I’m sorry, dammitall, more sorry than I
can say.” Craze ran a hand over his sore hair. It hurt too much to do anything
but lay flat. Since he had avoided cutting it to escape unnecessary pain, the
strands without the usual waves and curls tumbled down to his hips.
“No panicking. We’ll find another
fortune,” Talos said. He seemed to mean it, too. He quit fidgeting with the
button, pinning it on his coat. “Carry on. That’s what we’ll do. Don’t argue
with Mom. She knew her stuff. She used to tell me sometimes things come along
more important than trade routes ‘n riches. Here we be at one of those
sometimes things.”
Were they? What had become more
important? The creak in his side when Craze moved brought a few of them to
mind: he’d lived, he’d get a tomorrow to seek his vengeance on Bast, and he’d
rescued a sad gal. Maybe even given her a chance at some happiness. Dammitall,
Talos was right. And it mattered a lot that the aviarman was here, standing by
Craze, watching over him. It was a connection stronger than Craze ever had with
his Verkinn family. A partnership worth as much as the sheeny chips they had
let go.
