“All good, Dad…you’re a success. You’ve earned ten times the yols I have…you provided for mom and me.”
Rande stared at Yul, with that old quizzical, dry look, the one that sent shivers up Yul’s spine. “What’re you seeing?”
“You’re going to go places, Yul. You’re going to do things in this universe I can’t even imagine. Things that will help a lot of folk! I never saw it before, but I see it now. Sure as rain. Millions of people. As sure I can work the dowsing rods and find water up to hundred feet down solid rock.”
Yul shook his head. “You’re thinking about someone else, Dad.”
“No, I see it differently now.” Rande held up a hand. “I take back my words from the past. My earlier doubts. There’s a purpose to it all. Damndest thing. I didn’t see it. Just seeing it now.”
“Banzari’s all set up and happier than a lark to have his old life and his ranch back,” Yul said. “He been feeding you some flowery philosophy?”
“Banzari put in a good word for you, Yul, and there’s a man I trust. I underestimated you. Haven’t seen nothing of you the last seven years—haven’t had an inkling what you’ve been up to, who you’ve become, who you’ve taken up with, but all the time in my gut was a sour feeling, as if there was nothing good there.”
Yul shrugged. He looked away with a trace of guilt, knowing there were things that he could never ever tell his father, of the uncounted times he’d had to buck the law. How to explain to him that in a lawless universe, the rule of law meant little, that laws that could be broken, bought, sold and traded as cheaply as a bottle of wine by the power elite. “Yeah, life gets in the way.”
Rande sighed. “Well, I don’t raise no weaklings and it seems you’re the man for the tough, dangerous jobs that no one wants to do. There are forces out there that make me shudder and wilt inside. Deeds that’ll make that episode out on the ranch the other day probably look like a kindergarten party. I’m glad I have my small engines to work on and not some peril on my ass every day. We live in dark times, Yul. I’m under no illusion of that.”
“You’re a wise man, Dad. I’m glad you can see it. Let’s enjoy the sun on our faces today, at least.”
Rande gave an animated chuckle. “Good one. I reckon that’s as good a plan as any. Let’s round us up some steaks and take a stroll around the grounds. Still haven’t showed you much. Expanded it a lot since you’ve been gone. Added Haigar’s back fifty a few years back.”
“You didn’t?”
“Yep. You ever see a green-backed hummingbird dive-bomb your head during nesting season?”
“No, don’t think I have. Should I have?”
“Well, never too late for a first time.” He placed a hand on Yul’s shoulder as a flicker of a smile edged across Yul’s face. “You’re in for a treat.”
Chapter 7
Regers sucked on a nicotine pill while he gazed at the other apathetic passengers in the hot, crowded air terminal, waiting to check baggage for flight RA546. Time to get off this rock and on to some better skull-bashing pastures. A blazing 100 degrees smote this primitive depot. Humid, stuffy, despite the giant fans that twirled above, sending even hotter air down his way.
He needed something to take the edge off his nerves. That last unofficial job had set his teeth on edge. A most distasteful episode, involving multiple deaths of the most evil players. A few innocents too.
The memory of the skirmishes was still fresh that had led him through the bowels of Pandor—or what was fast becoming the last of its free territories—up into the Triangle Drug Hills then down through the jungly, bug-infested lowlands of Farth, rifle in hand, pegging off insurgents with two other operatives. Blowing up rebel encampments. Sabotaging gang vehicles. Balden ‘agents’, they were called, hired by the big brass from Balden, instructed to secure the trade route to the plant substance which made Devirol, the medicinal drug, ironically foundational to all street forms of the narcotic, Myscol. Regers had no illusion he and his cohorts were anything more than rogue mercs, low men on the ladder—bag men sent out to carve out a new, safe route for chartered shipments to the Balden border. Three other operatives before them had failed. Almost didn’t take on that scuzzy job, but the big brass from Balden’d upped the ante and the price had been right. Either way, those insurgents had learned a hard lesson. Not that he was unsympathetic to their plight, but business was business. Yols were yols.
His dark eyes flicked to the bar at the side. Damn nicotine pill had made his mouth dry. He’d been off the hard liquor for a month now. Rot gut whiskey too—all just poison messing up his liver. He spat out a gummy black wad in the trash bin, lips puckering in distaste. That move likely flagged him as a suspicious character by airport security standards. But what did he care? Take him away, throw him in jail. Surveillance everywhere…even in these backwater, dickey little places.
Axus terminal was in need of an upgrade, but that might not happen too soon on this impoverished continent on a planet
