Music plays, a bouncy, jittery pop song I’ve never heard. I pause beside the bar to listen as the song ends and the announcer takes over.
… another icy hit from the steel-eyed sirens. I’m Lester Sixofus and we’re coming at you from – where are we? – somewhere near Ithmid XBI and rollin’ on. News from the cruise: cow-quarantines on Brovos, tech warehouse strikes on Jericho and nickel tycoon Lutho Xoon has been appointed First Premier of oh-so-glamorous Delos. Well done, sir. Now…
‘Taplicker!’
I’m shoved back as two leathernecks square up to each other. Their fight lasts all of three seconds before one of Falco’s G’hals stands up, hand on the weapon at her hip. The men, belligerent as they are, immediately take their quarrel outside.
My neck prickles with the knowledge of someone watching. Falco sits at her usual table in the corner, one brown eye narrowed, the other a mass of scar tissue. Pulling off my hat, I make my way towards her. There’s a G’hal at her side, tall and lean with shaggy, grey-blonde hair and skin tanned the same fawn colour of the Barrens. Their gun-belt and holster is graffitied, studded with bright bits of metal. They stare at me with a steely expression, evidently wondering why the boss would waste time with an outcast like me. But Falco smiles.
‘Pegeen,’ she says, kicking out a chair for me to sit down. ‘This is Doc Low. She’s the one who pulled that bullet outta my head.’
The G’hal looks at me with renewed interest, though still a little distaste at my ragged state. Falco reaches out and pats their hand.
‘Bring us a bottle, Peg, and couple of airtights. Looks like the Doc needs it.’
I slide the medkit from my shoulder. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Call it intuition. It was you seen not long ago getting off the Air Line with a child?’
Her informers work fast. ‘Long story, Mala. And I don’t think you will believe the half of it.’
‘Oh, I’ve got some notion. You know you’re wanted by some snakers, named Kwalkavich?’
I roll my eyes. Pegeen returns with a bottle of benzene, and two tin cans, already open. ‘Cherries?’ I ask, my mouth already watering. ‘And peaches? Where do you get these things? Business must be good.’
‘It is,’ Falco says, pouring the liquor. ‘And I don’t need any trouble.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Well,’ she pushes a cup across the table, ‘let’s drink to that.’
The benzene is actually whiskey, cut with Falco’s secret cocktail of chemicals. It gives you an almighty headache the next day, but before that it makes your heart sing. I down the first cup like water.
Falco smiles. She looks well, far better than when I saw her last, after a bullet from a shoot-out with a rival gang went straight through her eye to brush her brain. I pulled it out, no choice but to take the ruined eye with it. When she finally came around, I was worried she would blame me for not having the skill to save her eye. But she’d only grimaced, her face racked with pain, and told me that she’d get on with one.
She dismissed the idea of wearing a patch from the start, and now I see that she has toughened the pinkish-brown mass of scar tissue with alcohol. Her other eye is bright, her ochre-brown skin clear, the dull undertone gone. Her scalp is shaved clean, and she wears her usual mockingly customised military jacket, dyed bright blue and yellow, and iridescent paint on her lips.
‘So,’ she asks, spooning a cherry into her glass. ‘Are you going to talk?’
I help myself to the fruit first. When the sweetness bursts on my tongue, it’s all I can do not to close my eyes with pleasure. I chase the berry down with a drink. So much has happened that I can’t easily explain. The General, their presence, the fact the Seekers let us go… I drink again. Simple words, I tell myself, simple thoughts. Best to forget.
‘I was out in the Barrens, north of Redcrop,’ I say, my head turning warm and sparkly from the benzene and the extra oxygen. ‘Minding my own business when—’
‘You discovered a wreck.’
‘I saw it,’ I admit. ‘Or what was left.’
Falco spins her glass. ‘Word is it was an Accord State ship, carrying a General, who died in the wreck like everyone else. You can bet the brass aren’t pleased about it.’
I stop, the cup halfway to my mouth. ‘What do you mean, died?’
Falco raises an eyebrow. ‘It was in the bulletin. A scouting party found her body before the Seekers got to it. It’s being shipped back as we speak for a state funeral.’
I stare at her. The benzene is no longer welcome in my head, it is too hot, curdling with the ice that chases down my spine. Forget it, I tell myself viciously, forget it and drink.
‘Where’s the wire bulletin?’ I ask instead.
Falco signals one of the other G’hals to bring it over, before staring at me, intent. ‘What’s wrong? You’ve gone the colour of dry cheese.’
‘Just… let me read it.’
She says no more, just places a much-handled bulletin board in front of me. I jab at the surface until it wakes up, the ink flashing into life. I flick through the latest issue, past news of trials and factory openings and settlement elections, until I see it:
General of the western forces killed in wreck
Captain-General Gabriella Ortiz, Former Commander of the Western Air Fleet of the Accorded Nations was today officially declared dead after her body was recovered from the wreckage of her ship, the FAS Tramontana, which was destroyed upon impact on Brovos’s outer moon of Factus. The General was on her way to oversee training and further peace measures on the moon of Prodor. While investigations are ongoing as to the cause of the crash, experts believe
