Have a care, dear boy.
And…
You never know, do you.
Except in this case he was pretty sure he did know. Goon One was a swolly from a Reach world that bred those ample-sized and powerful pig men. The brute, rippling with muscles and fat, and shoved into a cheap suit, practically snorted as its beady eyes spotted the briefcase on the bed…
What thing, boss?
The thing I sent you in there to get.
Or at least that’s how Bowie had run this little playlet in his head. The night before and the three days since he’d been trying to make this deal. Everyone would be playing for themselves. And that was how he’d play them.
Get that thing! He could almost hear the pig man screaming inside his bulbously round skull.
The Pig Man thought he’d played it cool. And the access hall from the motel room door was tight, what with the stupid ex-navy hooman officer who was about to get killed standing aside, behind the door no less, to let the swolly pass.
The second blaster was a shaven-headed human. Mean face. Bad scar. Tight suit. Two blasters concealed. A real hard case. And not just because he thought so.
He was just walking past the navy officer he’d been sent in to kill when he heard the snik of the tanto. That very specific snik of a flipped jackknife.
The one the ex-navy officer who was about to get killed kept in the sleeve of his jacket and had palmed as the swolly walked past.
Mean Face had done time, fought for his life in alleys, and stabbed other people to death to always get out alive. He knew exactly what that snik was. He’d heard it before. Maybe even been the motivating force of such a snik.
But as has been stated, tight quarters, and for the two predators, Mean Face and Bowie, all the two “hoomans” had time for was to look each other in the eye and telegraph something to the equivalent of “So… that’s how it’s gonna be.” All the while the greedy swolly, thinking how easy this was going to be, trotted forward to grab the briefcase all for his piggy self. Typical swolly. Somehow trusting that Mean Face would handle the killing while swolly got away squealing with delight into some hidden back alley where Waria would never find him.
Except Mean Face now had a blade sticking out of his eye. Hands that should have been throttling the ex-naval officer who was supposed to be about to die, or protecting himself, were now trying to pull the knife sticking out of his eye… out of his eye.
But that’s not an easy thing.
Think about it.
It’s in your eye.
And you’re asking, no matter how hardcore you are, you’re asking yourself, “Is it bad?” And the voice inside you sounds panicked.
And…
“Will I make it worse by pulling it out?”
That’s what you’re doing.
In fact… That’s all you’re doing.
Which allows ex-navy intel chump to give you a good shove into the bathroom across the hall where you crash into the cheap glass shower and cut your throat, slash your chest, shred your hands, and shove the knife farther into your orbital socket. Maybe even into your brain.
But it’s really the cut throat that settles matters for Mean Face. You can do a lot of things, but not many with a cut throat. Options are limited.
All someone in one of the other rooms heard in the moments after the zhee call to prayer outside was some drunken scream, and then a loud crash through the dangerous glass shower.
Serves him right, think the other drunks, hookers, and pimps, waiting to crawl out into the night once more. Then they go back to sleep. No one wants trouble. Which is the best way to avoid trouble in the K’keeb District.
And then the Python is out and pointed at the swolly who’d turned, rather innocently like a greedy child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and realized how badly all this had gone.
“Stupid hoomans.”
06
Waria Sskindaru came to Kublar in the early days of the Prosperity Zone and found work as a hired blaster for Toogu Campa, a Gomarii pimp with connections to the slavers. High-end stuff for the new bureaucrats courting the winning tribe of koobs that had finally managed to assert dominance over the rest of the tribes.
Big money in those days, a couple years after that destroyer blew up over the planet. As the koobs finished their war and the Republic came back in, they acquired more and more of a taste for all the Republic had to offer. Toogu Campa had risen through the ranks of the local crime syndicate to earn a place at the table in the back room of Zentreet’s Ruckus Room over in Sundance where all the big commercial shipping was done.
Then Toogu got killed when the zhee showed up and while Waria wasn’t necessarily offered a place at the table, he was tasked with running mutual trade between the Cartel and the zhee.
Finding out that there was an ex-naval officer hawking some unobtainable Ice was too good to share with the Cartel. Even if it got him a place at the table. So here Waria was on this morning in Marina Beach, trying to get a jump on the deal before the Ice went where it was supposed to go.
And now he was seeing Murch, his swolly right-hand assistant, and a “hooman” but not his “hooman,” coming out from a sleazy motel into the bright sunlight of the rundown main drag of Marina Beach.
The place was a visual representation of a cheap H8 hangover.
“Where my hooman?” he wondered absently as he put the high-end sled car in drive. Clearly it looked like the ex-navy chump had Murch at blasterpoint and was ushering him across the empty street. One hand holding all the Ice in a briefcase for sure. The other tucked into the nice gray suit coat “hooman” wore.
“Obviously none of Waria business is this…” decided Waria with a
