Outlaw World, page 4
“FUN! I WISH TO TRY THIS!”
Jessie huffed. “Uh. Not sure about that, big fella. But we can ask. There’s a good chance that you won’t fit in the seats.”
“I WILL HOLD ON TIGHTLY. I HAVE A VERY GOOD GRIP.”
“Get dressed. In a uniform. Meet me down in the hangar when you’re ready to fly.”
“OH-HO-HO. I WILL BE READY TO FLY!”
Fly in a rolling coaster, that is!
The doors stayed open now, only closing when there was no bartender on duty. Feklek and Monodok kept the place open nearly round the clock these days, but during prime time, Carl Ramsey kept things in the Soundcheck Saloon running smooth as jazz but with a hard-rock beat.
Grosstet vastly outproduced the crew’s beer consumption. There was a whole room above that was slowly filling with barrels of his personal brew. Carl insisted purely on optimism that the haathee keep the supply coming since the crew was bound to continue growing and demand for the hearty lager wasn’t letting up.
While alcohol consumption ebbed during day shift duty hours, lunch was always a popular time for crew to swing by for a meal. Many took advantage of the laaku food processor to indulge in weird culinary whims or just to eat food with lab-ensured health benefits.
The processor was self-serve.
The taps in low demand.
The acoustics a grungy, authentic sort of ideal.
Sitting on the bar, Carl strummed and plucked and bobbed his head, jamming more than attempting to replicate any actual song. While he wasn’t paying strict attention, an attentive music student probably would have cited him with multiple counts of plagiarism between licks. If a new song came out of his experience aboard the Arete, Carl would consider it a win.
One of the kids entered the saloon, and Carl took quiet note. If Rachel Schultz had taken a year off from her marriage and given birth to a secret love child on the side, it could have been Mindy Sedgwick. Cut from the same cloth. Both spoiled rich girls who’d gotten too much exposure to the realities outside their bubbles to remain inside in good conscience. Both speaking with that same snooty, ancient English dialect that took a history degree or a few years as a commanding officer to decipher.
He’d taken an instant liking to her.
Mindy walked past him without looking—a sure sign she was here to see him but wanted to play coy about it. Anyone just casually enjoying the Soundcheck’s amenities gave a nod or a wave to the proprietor as soon as they walked through those open doors.
After a moment of fiddling with the laaku machine and another for it to churn out her selection, Mindy sat down beside him with a rare steak sandwich.
Carl’s aimless tune dropped in complexity, but it didn’t cease. “How’s the day treating you, Lieutenant?”
Mouth already full, Mindy grunted a chuckle before swallowing. “Still ain’t got used to that. Gettin’ by, I s’pose. Just got off a round with Lisa—I mean Lt. Cmdr. Schultz. We was gonna grab a bite together, ’cepting she got called up to the bridge halfway here.”
“Well, I might not sound like home, but I’ll try to make for an acceptable backup lunch companion.”
“Ain’t like that. I was just… Oh, bugger it. Yeah. It’s like that. Soz. It’s just we got to waggin’ a bit over work, bout my future in security and all that.”
“Wearing a uniform and cracking skulls is a time-honored profession.”
Mindy frowned slightly between bites. “You having a go at me?”
“Thin skin doesn’t pair well with mag cuffs and a stun baton.”
“Yeah. Part of what we chatted about. Says if I wanted upward mobility, career-wise, I oughtta hear a couple terras worth of your wisdom.”
Carl stilled the strings of his homemade guitar. Reaching back and leaning, he tapped a console under the bar. House music rose, courtesy of his personal playlist. The nice thing about being a fan of historical music—no royalty worries. The descendants of Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t be coming for him.
“You want my wisdom? Pay attention to the lyrics.” Letting the guitar dangle by the strap, he raised his palms to the overhead speakers.
“Think the boss lady meant a bit more than that, and I think you know it, too.”
“Everyone means more than they say. Hearing subtext is an art form. I’d already been wondering whether Lisa was going to send you my way or just let you be you.”
“What’d be wrong with that?”
Carl smirked. “Who said there was anything wrong? Do you think there’s a problem with you being you?”
“Not falling for that shite. That magic genie stuck in her own bottle pulls that double-talk all the time.”
“She’s not a bad kid, Charlotte. Good for Eric. You two have more in common than you might think.”
Mindy noshed on a fry that came with her sandwich. “Yeah. Sure. Loads in common. Complexion was the first giveaway.”
“You’re both young runaways with shitty, overbearing rich parents, both thrust into roles you were never prepared for. Both putting on a front to keep anyone from noticing.”
Mindy’s scowl told him how hard that parallel had struck her. “Hmph. Low fruit. Half the galaxy’s fakin’. Other half’s lying to themselves.”
A laaku in shader lenses strolled through the doors of the Soundcheck Saloon, and Carl took notice.
“Hold that thought. I’m part of this set.”
Figgy ignored everyone around him. This may as well have been a vacant room as he made his way onto the low stage and adjusted the microphone stand to his liking.
Carl, on cue, tuned his E string down two octaves and played a simple bass riff. Not distracting. Not detracting. Just enough reacting to keep a beat for the performance.
Figgy spoke in quick, halting phrases, overly stylized and melodramatic.
“I hereby convene,
“Because what I’ve seen,
“Is that we bounce from scene to obscene scene,
“Unclean,
“A latrine sheen on the cuisine machine,
“And mean to intervene,
“Take the caffeine vaccine,
“Saline queen,
“Never preen,
“A serene figurine.”
Figgy sank to a cross-legged position on stage, head bowed, ring fingers of all four hands touching gently to their respective thumbs in a meditative pose.
Carl quit his riff and snapped his fingers in applause, alongside a scattering of other listeners. At a glare from him, Mindy joined in.
Without another word, Figgy rose and departed with the same aloof air of solitude as when he’d arrived.
“What was that all about?” Mindy demanded.
“Damned if I know. But he hits me up when he’s got new material. I think one of the perks of pretension is offloading understanding a poem onto the listener.”
“Hah. So’s you don’t understand everything.”
Carl leaned close. “No. But I understand more than you. Hang out here for the afternoon. Stay sober but have at least two beers. Before dinner, I want to hear one piece of intel Lisa wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Bonus points if it’s something I didn’t know.”
Mindy took a bite of her sandwich. As she chewed, her eyes focused nowhere in particular. By the time she swallowed it, she nodded her acceptance of his terms. “All right. But you best not be yanking my chain.”
Carl smiled reassuringly. “Course not.”
He’d been doing so this entire time…
Grosstet’s shuttle had been scrubbed and polished. The hull itself was pristine; all the cleaning efforts had been to remove accumulations of carbon and lesser minerals that had encrusted it over multiple planetary excursions. Inside had been a different story, and the contentious nature of the debate over its proper smell and state of clutter had consumed much of the prep time for the mission.
Now, Jessie and the commodore waited at the back ramp in full dress uniform for their passengers to arrive. Of course, the differences between this and her normal uniform were the addition of a few pinned-on adornments in matching brass, a hat, and boot polish. Everything feeling stiffer and less comfortable was psychosomatic.
“Wish you’d take one or the other of us with you,” Junior griped, keeping his voice down so that the others gathered to see them off wouldn’t overhear. “These backwater dipshit colonies are always trouble.”
“That’s why I need you and Lisa up here, making sure we have a ship to come back to. If I had to rely on some of the others, I wouldn’t be taking Grosstet with me.”
The lift doors opened. Eric and Charlotte came out waving.
“At least take the kid instead of Eric.”
Jessie snickered. “Right. I’ll take that under advisement.” The last thing she needed was a hotheaded young Convocation egg of a wizard with a pedigree he claimed with pride when he should have been ashamed.
“I hear you, but you’re not hearing me,” Junior continued. “If I’m gonna be stuck up here with a single wizard, I’d rather it be the one who knows I’m not above putting him in a headlock if I have to.”
“Take good care of the Arete.”
Junior nodded grimly. He wasn’t fool enough to keep arguing.
Meanwhile, Eric and Charlotte had crossed the hangar to join them. When Jessie had told them to dress for a dinner party, she hadn’t expected… this.
Charlotte wore a high-necked gown in pure black, a color that appeared to be a mental glitch for her as much as a fashion choice. She wore her hair in loose, looping braids that intertwined with slight irregularities consistent with Eric’s sloppy handiwork. And Jessie ought to have known. When Mom refused to let her chop her hair short as a teen, she’d farmed out a lot of braiding work her brother’s way. By the telltale clack, and the fact she’d grown six or eight centimeters, Charlotte plainly wore heels hidden beneath the gown’s long skirt.
He was a different story.
Eric had heretofore refused to wear the uniform Mindy had designed for him. It seemed that formal occasions were enough to get him to relent.
Finding her brother anything but a silly, naive goofball took effort on Jessie’s part, but the wizard version of the Arete uniform took the basic stylings of the crew outfit and embellished. A high-collared trench coat, double-breasted and with ornate buttons, in place of a jacket. Two belts. Shin-high leather boots and matching leather gauntlets that covered his arms nearly to the elbow. His hair, longer than she’d realized it had gotten, was twisted up in an arrangement that wasn’t quite either a bun or a top knot and held in place with skewers.
“You’re staring,” Eric pointed out. “Did… did I mess something up?”
“No,” Jessie blurted hastily, realizing his charge was true. “It’s just… wow. You look… you look like…”
“A military wizard who could perform origami with the hull of this vessel?” Charlotte suggested.
“I was going to say a grown-up.”
“You look nice, too,” he replied.
“WE ARE ALL HERE. I SHALL PILOT. LET US BOARD AND BE OFF.”
Jessie turned to Junior with one final instruction. “While I’m gone… if the ship burns down…”
“Save the beer,” her security chief replied with a wink that still gave Jessie a little shiver. “I know the joke.”
He was still taller than her, but no longer a giant.
He was still older than her, but not by an amount that really mattered.
He was family, but not close family—and definitely not a blood relative.
Jaxon Schultz Jr. was the reason guys like Lorenzo Byron got her engines revved. After all the fumbling and fooling around and dating guys her own age, he was her first crush that looked like he’d actually know what to do if she caught his eye. Despite reserves of nerve and confidence to spare, she’d never mustered enough of either to do more than flirt experimentally. In return, he’d blatantly treated her like a kid, which, in retrospect, was the best thing he could have done for her.
A horrible, awkward, sloppy, one-sided mess of throwing herself at him, and she’d have hated him for life however he’d reacted. But it would have gotten him out of her system one way or the other. And maybe spaced by Dad, considering what she’d learned about his past and the recent incident with John George.
But the whole way down to Appalachia Colony, she couldn’t get that wink out of her head.
And she wouldn’t have put it past the dopey, sappy, old version of Dad that she knew to try playing matchmaker.
Let alone this sly, manipulative new one.
Maybe his mission from Mom was more than simply to make sure she was eating vegetables and not being killed by Earth, Mars, the League of Independent Planets, or her own crew.
Appalachia Colony’s capital city, Morgantown, lay in a time zone shifted several hours ahead of Arete ship time. A journey that had begun in the late afternoon for the passengers aboard Grosstet’s shuttle ended beneath cheerful morning sunlight that shed long shadows across the VIP landing yard.
“AH. GRASS.”
The haathee’s reaction was possibly predictable, but to Jessie, it conveyed an opposite message. Setting them down in an unpaved landing yard wasn’t a great look for the colony as a whole.
Jessie cast her large companion a sidelong glare.
“I KNOW. BOOTS STAY ON. YOUR CULTURAL AVERSION TO FEET I NUMBER AMONG YOUR LESS ODD SPECIES TRAITS.”
Jessie hastily led the group down the ramp before the delegation from the colony overheard. Business suits and stovepipe hats seemed to be the preferred attire, though Governor Nikrat’s more muted outfit stood out.
The latter ventured across the span of lawn with a handshake extended. Jessie felt the firmness in that grip. A rough, leathery texture to the skin told more than the strength in it. This was a man who hadn’t always enjoyed a cushy job behind a desk.
“Welcome to Appalachia Colony. Our little slice of freedom in an increasingly authoritarian galaxy.”
“I see your tourism bureau writes the greeting around here,” Jessie joked, and she was relieved when it elicited a chuckle not just from the governor but his lapdogs as well.
“I AM HONORED AS WELL,” Grosstet proclaimed before engaging in the same handshake ritual, albeit as the firmer and leatherier of his pairing.
Jessie stepped aside and swept out a hand. “This is my brother, Eric, our ship’s wizard, and Charlotte Webber, ship’s counselor.”
Governor Nikrat went down a lineup, teeing up handshake after handshake. “And this is Terry Goodwill, our Minister of Agriculture. General Zack Kent, Appalachia Colonial Militia—”
“Sorry about the scare,” Jessie told the general.
“Not every day we get an alien battleship you can see from the ground,” General Kent replied with good nature, or at least with good acting.
Governor Nikrat kept things moving. “My daughter, Gemma, is our Minister of Technology.”
“Howdy,” Gemma Nikrat replied with a grin and a bow. “Daddy always leaves off the ‘doctor’ bit. I’m a practicing obstetrician when there aren’t bigwigs from offworld come to visit.”
“Aaand, lastly, this is Owen MacGregor, my chief of staff.”
This guy had a dead look in his eyes, and he didn’t take them off Jessie as they shook hands. No hint of a smile touched his features. “A pleasure,” he stated, and Jessie suspected that was a lie.
“Likewise,” Jessie replied.
The receiving line had them all exchanging mild, perfunctory pleasantries as everyone got to meet everyone else. From the way Charlotte carried herself, Jessie wasn’t surprised that the wizard knew how to conduct formal greetings. And Grosstet was both naturally affable and charismatic enough that his alien ways came across as quirky and well-meaning rather than inept.
Eric, she should have forewarned.
“Hi. I’m Eric. I guess Jess covered that. But it’s really nice to be here. I have had a lifelong dream about seeing Screamville Terror Park. Funny story. My family actually came to Appalachia Colony when we were kids. Didn’t get to go to the park. I think I was too small for the good rides anyway, and I didn’t get to go on any of the rides because we didn’t go at all. I think that was the time Jessie had pierced her nose—not that there’s anything wrong with pierced noses (I notice that yours isn’t, which is also fine)—but she was only about ten at the time and Mom had told her not to and it’s hard to hide it when there’s as much blood as there was. Technically I wasn’t being punished, but Ozzy and I were sort of friendly fire when Mom grounded Jessie. But in any event, we’re all here now and I can’t wait to see it.”
“That’s… great to hear,” General Kent replied when Eric finally stopped shaking his hand.
Possibly owing to the fact that no one was eager to upset either an overexcited wizard or the haathee with a warship parked within view overhead in low orbit.
On a navigational level, they weren’t orbiting at all. The Arete possessed a unique technology that allowed them to lock into position relative to a celestial body. Grosstet’s English and their combined understanding of quantum mechanics had been insufficient to explain how it pulled off that blatant violation of conventional physical laws, but it allowed them to look even bigger than they really were, since everyone basically grew up learning that nothing smaller than a megafreighter or orbital habitat was visible with the naked eye from the ground.
“Well,” Governor Nikrat concluded, “if you’ll hop aboard, we do have Screamville Terror Park cleared except for staff and planetary officials today. You’ll be able to enjoy our finest cultural amenities and get to know key players in the government and ministries in a low-stress environment.”
“Excellent,” Jessie declared just before they were herded aboard an open-topped tour hoverbus, possibly the only conveyance they had where Grosstet could sit comfortably.
Give her a starfighter cockpit any day. Jessie could relax with the control stick of a weapon between her knees and enough firepower to level buildings at her fingertips. Enemy bogies firing back were relaxing compared to the prospect of a full day of bureaucrats and politicians monitoring her every facial twitch and shift in posture for clues as to her thoughts. Was she enjoying the park? Was she sizing them up for conquest? What was her romantic affiliation? How much could they get away with trading her for the wonders of H-tech she didn’t understand and the protection of a ship that technically wasn’t hers?
