Rechs pulled the scattergun from off his back once more and stepped into the maze of gigantic and silent manufacturing tools, looming like the ruins of some forgotten city. The compass within his HUD gave him the direction he needed to go in order to get to the city.
He was sure Giles and his crew had some way into the city. He just had to hope that their route actually did go this way. That the whole trip down here hadn’t been entirely a detour to get to their sad little trap.
How much of what Giles had told him was true? The wild, feral moktaar? Whatever the Watcher in the Water was?
As he passed the towering machines, the thud of his boots within the vast cathedral of work was the only noise. Soon the armor’s ambient detection picked up something ahead. Chemical readouts appeared within the HUD. Fire. Smoke.
Rechs dialed down to stealth mode, stopping to make sure his gear and tactical bag were secure. The crackle of burning wood, augmented by the armor’s sound-detection capabilities, seemed clear and close. And as he circumvented a large crane that had once hauled the ceramic-molded hull plates up to their finishing stations, where they’d be cut by high-intensity lasers and finished off by the nanopoxy and circuitry integration crews, he spotted the small fire.
A hunched figure sat before it.
A moktaar.
The moktaar were fierce simianoids who gave one of the galaxy’s uber-predators, the wobanki, a run for their money in hard times. They also made pretty good engineers. Combat engineers especially. They liked traps and explosives and monkeying around with things.
“Monkey business,” the Legion called it whenever a combat support team of moktaar sappers came in to do some job.
So be careful, Rechs told himself. They can be tricky.
The figure before the fire had his back to Rechs, but it was obvious the moktaar was old. It was hunched over, and long gray sideburns drooped down from its bald monkey pate.
Rechs approached the fire, letting his boots hit the floor to announce his presence. Chances were if this one could build a fire then it wasn’t completely feral. Even finding wood in a place like Detron was a feat. And… it might know the way out of here.
Still, time was of the essence.
Because it was running out.
At the sound of Rechs’s boots the old monkey turned, sharp fangs bared, giant dark eyes searching the blackness beyond the fire and finding the armored bounty hunter approaching, weapon in hand.
One paw, crooked and gnarled, went up.
“Friend?” rumbled the moktaar.
“Friend,” replied Rechs through the electronically modulated speaker in his bucket. It made his voice sound like a ghost being drowned underwater.
For a long moment the old simianoid just stared at Rechs, its watery brown eyes questing and darting to find some truth, or lie, in the confession of friendship. Then it waved a paw tiredly and bade the bounty hunter come forward to the fire. It was holding a small stick which performed the gesture along with the gnarled monkey paw.
“Come,” it rumbled in typical moktaar growl-mutter. “Come close… friend.”
All moktaar had that speech pattern. Deep and sinister. Low and growling. Except when they went into battle. Then they screeched their war cries and swarmed like a hive of mummy-bees regardless of their losses as they entered some kind of primal rage. Maybe that had been their only defense against the killer wobanki who uttered little as they slaughtered with impunity.
“Sit by fire,” grunted the old one.
Rechs approached and scanned the darkness. It wasn’t a trap. Sensors and imaging showed they were the only ones in this section of the foundry. High above them towered an old crane in which the moktaar appeared to have made its home, turning the cyclopean gantry into a junkyard treehouse. And several old chunks of hull spars had been cut into seats and benches around the base of the crane. All oriented toward the fire.
The moktaar resumed staring into the small fire as though Rechs’s presence were nothing that needed to be considered. Nothing urgent in the least.
Rechs had no time for this.
“I need to get through to the center of the city. The Heights.” Rechs looked up. “Above.”
The moktaar grunted.
“Know the way?” asked Rechs when the old monkey seemed little inclined to do more than continue to stare into his fire.
“Can show,” grunted the moktaar. “Joba can show. Very dangerous. Children won’t like it. Sleeper in the Deep… won’t like it either.”
Rechs pulled out some fixed credits he always kept on him. He set some down on the floor between them. The moktaar picked them up, turning them over and then biting them with what few teeth remained in his old gummy mouth.
Then he stood.
“Children won’t like,” he warned.
He sounded serious.
23
“What business are you, hooman?” intoned the elder monkey.
As a bounty hunter, Rechs had learned to share as little as possible. And though this wasn’t a bounty—more of a rescue mission—it felt the same. He was tracking a target. You really never knew which side everyone was playing for. Double and triple crosses abounded. Especially the closer you got to your target. There were no allies to be had on Detron. So best not to look for any.
He said nothing. He’d paid his fare. Let’s see how far that gets me, he thought and watched the old monkey and the shadows. The oldster’s use of the word “children” had bothered him. Perhaps there were feral moktaar down here.
“Fine,” rumbled the moktaar after a minute of silence passed between them. The old monkey ambled up through the vast control platforms that had once governed the pouring operations. It had been maybe decades since this place had seen any work being done. And while everything looked long disused and covered with the ancient dust of inaction… there was a sense
