What was in the briefcase would make him rich for many years to come. And only the people who had that kind of money… money to make an average ex-naval officer rich enough to live out his life on some off-the-main-lanes edge world so they could snort it all in one afternoon… could afford the contents of the briefcase. But it wasn’t easy. You needed access to sell next-level drugs.
You couldn’t just chop it up and sell it as you went. Though some would like it that way, and almost everyone inside the Prosperity Zone would casually kill him for a bit of it. What was in the briefcase gave you access because you needed access to sell it.
Even a few grams cost far beyond most people’s yearly income. Those who sold Ice told you it was always that way. Sell it all in one go and make enough to buy a very nice starliner—the four hundred passenger, luxe accommodations, full crew type—or don’t sell any portion of it because most likely you’ll end up dead.
Why?
Because everybody will try to kill you to get it. Except the people who can buy it. They’ve got bigger people than you to kill.
He pulled his blaster from under the pillow he’d slept next to. It was a compact, yet very powerful, Python Model 45 Automatic. Python was Bowie’s favorite purveyor. He shoved that in the carry at his lower back.
There was a knock at the door. Unusual for this early at the Suns and Fun motel along the edge of Marina Beach deep in the K’keeb that lay west of the glittering bureaucracy at the center of Soob City. It was far away from the action down here, where before the zhee showed up, the locals used to land freighters on death’s door—the type that would never take off again after entering atmo—and break them up for salvage.
This was the side of town where the drunks came to drink themselves to death. Where the local H8 Cartel, overseen by the zhee gangs for a cut, ran their illegal activities all night long. And where there was no such thing as maid service, especially at eight a.m. local.
His comm device rang.
The burner.
He answered.
“Hey, it’s me, Waria. I send one of my guys down to escort you to street,” said the alien in alien-ish. “I’m waiting and I got set up meet. Big party today, I’m hearing back. Cash buyer for the whole case. We’re gonna be rich, hooman.”
Two thoughts occurred to Jack Bowie at that point as he made his way toward the motel room door.
One. Waria was lying. There were two guys outside his door because he could hear them whispering. And two… he knew about the party. That’s what he’d been aiming for all along. Access. He’d only let the alien connect the dots because it was more organic that way. Waria had been holding out saying there wasn’t any kind of buyer that could handle that kind of action lately. Not since the zhee mullahs had started agitating for a morality crackdown to support their bizarre system of laws on this world. Agitating for the laws to be enforced everywhere except Marina Beach where zhee gangs ran the trade.
“Coming,” said Bowie to the empty room and the strangers at the door. Everyone called him Bowie. Ex-navy officer, intel, drummed out for messing up an op, or running around with an admiral’s daughter, depending on who you asked. Last names stuck when you’d been reduced in rank and no one wanted to remember what you’d once been before you’d fallen from grace.
He left the briefcase exactly where they could see it when he opened the door. Sitting right on the bed. Visible from the narrow hall that connected to the door the two hired blasters were most likely hiding at on either side. They needed to see the briefcase full of Ice because that’s what they’d come to kill him for. Wouldn’t want to disappoint them. They’d act all nonchalant in the first moment because they’d seen actors do that in the entertainments, or, because they had some kind of real-world training… who knew. He’d use that against them since they were giving him a freebie.
They knew there was a briefcase. One hundred percent. Waria had to have told them that’s what they were coming in for. Leave the ex-navy intel officer who’d gotten drummed out for shenanigans with a senior admiral’s young daughter, dead. Get the briefcase and get back to the pickup. Waria was probably going to have them killed there too because there were so many credits on the line. Buy your own small luxury starliner credits. Disappear out along the edge money.
That would have been their marching orders. Get case. Kill hooman chump. In either order.
A Lahursian snake man, Waria was the kind of guy who’d make that kind of play. And with enough Ice to buy a small planet out on the edge, something no one really ever went to, or wanted, it was worth it. Dumb people thought that way. Low investment, big return. What was in the briefcase was life changing money.
Waria knew that. Because Bowie had wanted him to.
Bowie had shown him the contents to get the deal to get access to the party that he knew was happening today. The party that was the only place one could sell such dangerously expensive and high-quality drugs.
Rich people drugs.
He opened the door. An actual door that needed to be swung inward. Not a pneumatically driven portal that whooshed silently open like in nice hotels, or every other building in the Republic. Or what had once been the Republic.
Why are you thinking about that? thought Bowie as he stood aside for the two hired thugs to get a real good look at the briefcase. These people are here to kill
