Critical Press Media

On the seamy side of the galaxy, sandwiched between the authoritarian Star Alliance and the free-wheeling Pax Galaxias, a crescent-shaped corridor of stars marks disputed space between the two stellar giants. Justice belongs to the highest bidder, the law to the fastest draw. Criminals and malcontents from both sides of the Arc filter into the forgotten planets that line the dark strip of stars. The sentient detritus of a thousand-thousand worlds.

Smoke If Ya Got ‘Em

an Infinite Stars story by Winston Crutchfield

a Karion Detah memcrys

“Why are we here?” Docking bay doors seal tightly overhead, and Rel waits for the external atmosphere to read positive pressure before popping the canopy. I’m reaching for my sigrets before we even leave the cockpit.

Rel gives me a reproachful look as I tap one to life. I suck caustic, yellow smoke gratefully into my lungs and hold it until a colored filter creeps over my vision. “I promised my employer I’d check up on someone.”

Rel waves ineffectually at the streamer of sigret smoke that escapes me. “This anything like the deal you tried to cut with your contact on Hattius? That’s the second time I’ve been shot watching your back.”

That brings a smile to my face, “Hazards of the job. Could’ve happened to anyone.”

“You’re the one that shot me!”

I shrug and breathe in toxins and stimulants, “Pol didn’t trust you. Anyway, I don’t figure I’ll need you this time around.”

“I think you just couldn’t wait to get out of the ship so you could light up again.” He snatches a beat-up bush hat from his head to get more fan surface. “You’re addicted to those things.”

Chemical burn creeps around the wrapper and filler. My taste buds sear and the fumes coat my throat. I blow another streamer of smoke at him, “I can quit anytime I want.”

He smirks and that irritates me, “So why don’t you? I’ll bet you don’t have the willpower.”

I take the bait, if for no other reason than to wipe that smile off his face. “What’re the stakes?”

Rel leans casually against his ship, like he hasn’t been practicing this speech since we blasted out of the last starport. “You stay clean until we get to Ross Station, and you get control of the in-flight entertainment for the duration of the trip. Kick the habit entirely, and I’ll make sure we get premium seats in Aateari for the flare skipping race this year.”

We stopped at the simulcast track in Hattius before skipping the planet. Turns out we share a love for suicidal racing machines and those crazy enough to fly them. “And in the unlikely event I lose?”

“You stop complaining about my ship, or start riding on the hull.”

“You’re on.” I flick the remainder of the sigret at him and sneer, “Just fuel up and get ready to break orbit, this won’t take long. And get those retching stabilizers adjusted or that flying deathtrap’s going to shake itself apart next time you try to land it.” I stalk towards the dock landing.

“You footing the bill?” He calls after me.

I ignore him and duck into the tunnels leading away from the docks on this nowhere ball of dust. This asteroid is so small and unimportant, the owners never even bothered to give it a name; they just pump in the atmosphere and take a piece of whatever action passes through, from whoever can’t get out of paying. The rest of the inhabitants feed off the scraps, a population of drifters, losers, and indentured crewmen; no one lives here by choice.

Fusion-bored tunnels run glass-smooth arteries from the docks to the population center. Prefab structures crowd around hastily converted freight containers, squeezing the shanty town like a boil. Sentients too stupid or unlucky to leave squirm against each other, wasted away by the refineries on the other side of this fueling station. Most of them are scrawny reptilians with mottled scale patterns, lids curved sleepily over bulging eyes. None of them stand taller than my knee, and they move with quick hops that makes the street roll in multicolored breakers. Aren’t many other humans here, or even sentients my size. I figure the shrimpy saurians to be the owner’s choice of indentured labor.

The street market doesn’t interest me. Uncovered wagons sell mystery meats, cheap fabrics, and junk tech to desperate spacers and broke locals; I’m looking for something with chairs and concealment. I push through the door underneath the first garish holo I spot; rocketowns offer little other than intoxicants, flesh, and an overpriced black market. I’m looking for the last.

It’s dark and quiet inside, patrons and drunks clustered around tables or packed into booths. Most of the tables are low, ringed by benches, and surrounded by assorted small sentients dressed in drab refinery jumpsuits. There’s a reptilian gathering empties from the customers and depositing them in a scrubber behind the tiered bar; I have to flash a few creds before I get his attention. He covers the distance in two quick leaps, standing on the bar near the high end to match my height; golden-red eyes blink lazily at me, “You like solids, gases or liquids? You want sweet meat? The real thing here, cooked or not.” A too pink tongue slips testily from between rows of pointed teeth.

I don’t think my immune system’s up to consuming stuff from this place. “Gas, mild stimulant.” I drop some Galaxian creds on the bar. “I also need bios, someone who can match anything I give them. Heard a guy named Bristow was moving the rare stuff through this rock.” I also heard he never left. It’s not like he had a reason to stay; there’s no more money to be squeezed out of this rocketown.

The reptile blinks once as he drops behind the bar to shuffle through a locker full of misty pouches. He bounces up the stepped counter and drops a clear pouch of pastel pink smoke in front of me. One foot scrapes the money out of sight. “Durian Concern owns the facility. You see only hard workers here.” His head bobs at the pouch, “Twist top to imbibe.”

Cagey . . . and rehearsed. A stylized animal with three legs and wings grins stupidly at me from the label. I scoop up the drug, and drop another handful of creds on the table, “Right.” I don’t have the patience to play the game while the local underground assures themselves I’m not a company-owned investigator, or worse, new muscle looking to move in. This place is sluggish and gray. I have a headache and my lungs ache. My lip curls, and I reach automatically for a sigret until I remember Rel’s wager. The gas nodule goes in a pocket, and I head for the door.

On the walk, I buy junk from vendors to loosen their jaws. The variety of foods and stomach remedies for sale astounds me; most of them sell to the non-reptilians. The company-supplied foodstuff’s the slop that no one else will touch. They dump it on the refinery workers because the reptilians that make up the bulk of the population will eat anything. The reptilians . . . and a local named Buboe, who won a bet by eating a slab of fuzzy, blue-green meat. Rimtown, I’m told. He runs a watering hole out of a tanker towards the rock’s crust.

Heading back up tunnels and off to the side, the prefab facade near the docks stutters into poorly converted freight container squalor. Junked cargo skids, ruptured pressure drums, and hulled starships lay scattered like debris, picked over and left to the interstellar scavengers. I pick a decrepit tanker that’s been overturned and carved up to fit against the side of the habitat tunnel. The trickle of sentients drifting in and out tells me it’s not someone’s squatting hole.

Bare lights swinging from their power cords cast more shadows than illumination. There aren’t as many smaller species in this place; most of them are my dimensions, though few are quite as tall. A beefy human-type with stained brown skin leans folds of muscle and fat against a barstool that knows better than to complain. He’s sitting in the corner next to the only counter entrance, arguing with a group of reptilians clustered on top of the bar and a nearby table. I watch the place for a minute before heading over there.

When I approach, the fat man glowers at the reptilians and picks up a handful of writhing soil from a bowl on the counter. The scaled heads watch intently as he shoves it in his mouth and chews. He empties the bowl in seconds and slams it down next to a pile of credit chits. The reptilians look like they’re going to argue, but the human covers the credits with a hand and belches aggressively in the face of the pack leader. They scatter.

My fingers twitch for a sigret; I grit my teeth instead and sneer, “That’s disgusting.”

He grunts at me, “You want something?”

I make a show of looking around, “You actually serve stuff here? What a retchhole.”

“Scratch off.”

I jerk my head in the direction of the departed reptilians, “Guess they were afraid you’d eat them next.”

“Go shog yourself.”

“Do it for me.”

He shifts his bulk from the stool to loom over me by a head. He’s four times my girth, and his breath smells like rotting fungus. “You want a fight?”

I turn on my friendly smile, the one Jess says I shouldn’t try to use, “I want to know who sold you that gut.”

He settles down a bit uneasily and takes a step back, “Mind your own business.”

“Your benefactor works for my employer; we don’t think he ever left this asteroid.”

He grunts again, “Rock’s a dangerous place. I lost a piece of my knee working the refinery, and drank a hole in my stomach because of it. Your buddy fixed both of them.”

“Did he.” I stuff my hands in my trouser pockets to keep from grabbing a smoke.

The other man slumps against his stool, which protests once but holds, “I’m Buboe,” like I hadn’t guessed, “you want a drink? Chow?”

I shake my head. Buboe empties a random mug from an unwashed pile behind the bar, and fills it with a frothy, dark liquid on tap. “I’m guessing your friend scratched off the wrong people, and they pushed him in front of a fusion digger. Retching shame, friendly guy he was – patched up a whole bunch of folk, them that could afford it. Refinery’s full of chemicals you don’t want to touch, and byproducts you can’t breathe. And if the machinery or someone’s temper don’t kill you, the food will.” He drains the mug and drops it back onto the pile. “Though that’s gotten better recently. I think some of the reptilians cut a deal with a meat packer next system over, cause a pack of them started selling fresh meat to the bars and such. Choice cuts too, tender and sweet.”

“That a fact.” Bristow was hauling a complete surgery and lab, everything he’d need for his own private practice – everything except raw material. Sounds like the local trade would have exhausted any start-up supplies by now, and Bristow’s gone far too long with no contact. “Any other chirurgeon in town, anybody else set up shop recently?”

Buboe braces an arm on his knee, “Naw. No one round here could afford it anymore; your buddy done mined us out.” His dark eyes glitter, “You got a name, fella?”

“Karion,” I answer absently, “you know where his surgery was?”

“Other side of the docks,” Buboe heaves himself from his stool and lumbers around back of the bar, “Save you a trip, though. I got what you’re looking for here.” I hear crockery shift and fall as he digs into the cabinets. “Asked me to look out for this, he did. Gave me a couple of names – Ajon Watts, and Karion Ot.” He comes out with a reflective silver case, and I start to feel sick. Sticky, reddish bar drippings stain the side of Bristow’s memcrys unit like blood. I swallow a dry cough, tasting a phantom sigret at the back of my throat. If Bristow’s dead, my priority becomes recovering the equipment. His braintapes could tell me exactly what I want to know, if I had any way to read them.

I rest a hand lightly on the handle of the case, “Where, near the docks?”

Buboe’s hand wraps completely around the side of the unit, “That boy did me a good turn. How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

“Cause I know where the money’s hid.” I rest my hand on the side the case just so; coded locks part for my touch and a small compartment slides into the body of the case. A soft, blue-white glow washes away the sickly burn of the bare lighting. I hear Buboe wheeze. “Bet you’ve never even seen a skyphire before,” I whisper, “This one would buy out your contract, get you out of this retchhole, and still get a claim on a decent world.”

Buboe’s hand drops from the side of the case, and his fist closes around the gem, pinching off the glow. The bar is stark and flat in the few minutes it takes my eyes to adjust to the flicker that passes for light. “There’s a grounded safari ship on the edge of Junktown, just past the last of the pressure bays,” he says, “Your buddy put some slugs in the reactor and did his cutting in the medical bay.” I pull the case off the bar, and turn around. Buboe’s eyes never leave his fist. “Don’t know who would’ve done him, but I’m sure he didn’t deserve it.”

“Of course he didn’t.”

Back in the rocketown arteries, the memcrys unit gives me something to handle while I think about something other than sigrets. The street is thick with reptilians jostling me about the knees. I shove my way between them and hope Bristow had the good sense to secure his surgery when he backed up his memories.

Wading between the lizards is like fighting the current, and I try to go with the flow of traffic. Rolling waves of saurians bounce as high as my chest. I ignore the ones who go around me, and shrug off the ones who can’t dodge me. One of them gets his claws stuck in my shirt, and I have to stop to untangle him. Scaled skin slides easily over smooth bones that have got to be hollow.

He lets out a noise between a hiss and a cry and I let go before I break something. His hind claws latch onto my jeans for leverage, and then another one grabs my side and sinks his teeth into my belt. I smack him on the side of the head with Bristow’s memcrys unit. “Get the scratch off me.” Sharp claws scrabble against my back, and I lurch forward. One of them bounces onto my chest, wrapping spindly arms around my neck. He hisses, and I can count the taste tracts along his forked tongue. Something checks the back of my knees, and they bear me down. I feel clawed fingers in my pockets, and one of them shoves the pink gas nodule in my face before popping it with a claw.

Mottled scales flow together; bulging eyes drown me in color, and I’m floating up into the darkness outside the rock’s crust.

-==\\||//==-

I sink back into my skull’s pounding pulse and cough harshly through the scratchy throat you get from a cheap euphoric. My eyelids are pasted together. My stomach heaves, and I hack up phlegm and old smoke from my raw throat. I roll to the side, turn my head away from the needles crawling up my legs, and spit. “This is just retching perfect.”

I hear the soft sigh of an active life-supporter somewhere to my left, but my eyes still refuse to open on their own. I scrub at them with the backs of my hands; I can feel every hair on my arms.

“Hello, Karion.”

The voice is harsh, rough from misuse. His bitter, disappointed tone reminds me why we never got along. “Hello, Bristow.” I reach for my boot, but the slender knife that rides there is gone. “You sound like scratch.”

His voice is thin and weak, the words a breath too short. “Are you bound?”

I shift my legs experimentally, “No.” I scrabble back against the wall, brace myself there, and lurch mostly upright. I try my eyes again; green and yellow readouts outline medical equipment in the faintest glow. “What’s going on?”

“We’re locked in my surgery. The light switch is by the door if you want it.”

I don’t care about lights; what I want is a sigret. The full pack in my shirt pocket crinkles, taunting me. I stumble toward an indistinct patch of dark, hoping it’s the door. I keep my hands away from the sigrets by feeling for the room controls.

I find the door panel, and push buttons until a wash of white light spikes my skull where the eyes meet the bone. I blink away the pain until blurred outlines swim into the consoles and instruments of a sparsely equipped medical bay. Bristow occupies the room’s sole cutting table.

“Sweet shogging Shaper, Todalun . . .” I sink against the wall and pull a sigret from the pack. I tap it to life and pull the chemical burn desperately into my lungs. “You’ve really gone and scratched it up this time.”

“Is it that bad?”

“You can’t tell?

“They took an eye when I wouldn’t show them how to work the equipment.” Jess doesn’t share his tech. And there’s no price that could buy any of us away from her. “They didn’t take the other one until they discovered they liked the taste. Sometime after that, I just . . . lost feeling.”

I drag half the sigret and hold it until starved arteries squeeze the light from my vision. Bristow’s internals glisten with slimy regen, laid open to the bone and pinned for easy biopsy. “They’ve been exploring.” I blow a streamer of yellow smoke away from the cutting table and move in for a closer look. The regen gel smells faintly sweet, struggling to mend muscle, skin, and organs from biopsy samples cut too deep. Crusty edges and a curdled sheen tell me it’s been fighting infection too hard, too long.

Bristow wheezes what might be a laugh, “I can guess why.”

I push away from the table. The room’s fast-grow tanks filter eerie amber light through a plasma solution; indistinct lumps of flesh bob and float within. “What are they growing?”

“Whatever tastes best, I suppose.”

My lip curls in contempt or revulsion and I drag on my sigret so I don’t have to reply. Bristow breaks the silence for me.

“When you swore to kill me next time you saw me, I promised to make you work for it.” Too many words tire him out. “Guess I lied.”

I let the smoke go, “I don’t remember that.” I turn back to face him, “Let’s get you sewn up and back on your feet.”

He waits for the life supporter to breathe for him, “You’re a rotten liar, Karion.”

I spot check the readouts to confirm what I already suspect. The internal damage is too extensive, the supply of regen far too shallow. I drag an empty nutrient keg over to the table to use as a stool. “I . . . I’m . . .”

“Just . . . pray for me first.”

I hold yellow smoke in my lungs. “Scratch it, Todalun, I’m no shogging missionary.” The last of the sigret crinkles into fumes and I let the filter drop. “I’ve got your memcrys unit. In a week or so you’ll wake up in Jess’ arms, and not remember any of this.”

“That person,” it hurts him to talk now, “that person won’t be me.” The machine pumps life through his blood. “Just my memories.”

“It’s not like that . . it’s . . .” A hot wind blows through my mind’s eye, snuffing lives like candles. “I don’t know any prayers.”

“Our Shaper, infinite lord of Starre’s burning glory . . .”

Todalun grew up in the Corporate Commonwealth, inundated with a lifetime of a vanished deity’s lingering presence. It’s been at least a lifetime since I spoke with a missionary from the Perfect Church. I mumble the catechism as he leads me.

“. . . share your grace that I may reflect your works . . .”

I fish for another sigret, tapping it to life around the muttered phrase. The toxins stir memories I don’t think I’ve ever used before. Scratch it, I know this one.

“. . . let my life your purpose fulfill . . .”

I lay a hand on the side of the cutting table, playing it over the controls. The life supporter goes into dual-bio mode, drawing atmosphere from the room instead of the supply tanks. I lay the sigret over the intake; yellow fumes vanish into Bristow’s bloodstream.

“. . . as your purpose . . .”

I rest my palm on his forehead, the only place the regen hasn’t numbed, and pick up the prayer for him, “. . . as your purpose my life completes. Rest, Todalun.” He falls gratefully silent; the regen keeping him alive turns swiftly black as it fights the toxins and stimulants from the sigret. “Consign me not to Coma’s icy realm, but draw me up through Starre’s window, that I may serve creation anew. Let all that is and was and ever shall be express your perfect will.” He shudders a bit as the readouts flare red. “May your Paragon receive you at your journey’s end, Todalun.” I pass my hand over the scarred ruin of his eyes. “Shaper knows what’s waiting for me.”

I sag back down on the nutrient keg and debate the merits of another sigret. I spot Bristow’s memcrys unit in the far corner of the room, but make no move for it. I don’t feel like moving right now.

A scratching noise beyond the only door shakes me back to myself, and I look up as it slides open. The room fills in an instant with a knee-high wave of mottled scales as the reptilians shove over each other. I stand up and lean against the cutting table, waiting. One of them bounces off the nutrient keg and lands on the table, straddling the remnants of Bristow’s legs. He cocks his head to the side in what he thinks is a menacing gesture. “You see? You see what happens when you do not help us?” He stares at me as I fish for a sigret and tap it to life. “We want sweet meat. You do not need to suffer as did your friend.”

I breathe smoke and hold it for a while. The crowd shuffles a bit and hisses between themselves. I lean over and blow a yellow streamer in the face of the speaker, “Eat me.”

He hisses and nips at my nose with two rows of pointed teeth. I jerk back in surprise, dropping my sigret. His head bobs and his bulging eyes narrow to slits of color, “Is your meat sweet, too?” The whole room is bobbing, pink tongues flashing from lipless mouths as if they can taste me already.

The speaker’s head darts at me, sharp teeth sink into my forearm and stay there. Hind legs anchor him to the cutting table, claws sunk into Bristow’s dead flesh. My blood wells around his mouth; spindly hands scratch me for purchase.

I yell and curse, punching my attacker on the head and trying to wrap my free hand around his scrawny neck. He sinks his teeth deeper into muscle and bone; hind legs snap forward and claw my chest. He tears a strip of meat from my arm and takes another bite. The room surges at me, claws and teeth all over my legs, arms, back.

I stop thinking and start thrashing; an incoherent roar escapes my throat. Animal instinct fights for survival. Dry scales slide easily over hollow bones; hisses turn to screeching pain. I throw myself back, hoping to crush as many as I can against the machinery or the wall. Claws and teeth like dull knives lance me everywhere.

One of them makes a coughing, retching noise, and I notice the speaker is no longer attached to my arm. One by one, the reptilians drop away, spitting, gagging, some of them vomiting on the floor. I shove away from the cutting table and sag against the corner of the life supporter where it meets the ship wall. Blood streams down my arm where the leader took his chunk of meat, and I tear a scrap out of what’s left of my shirt so I can bind it.

My pack of sigrets is shredded, a single stick intact in the ruined mess. I tap it to life and toss the crumpled remains to the floor. A dry chuckle escapes me. “Don’t like the taste?”

The speaker is standing on the nutrient keg. “Not sweet meat.”

“Yeah, I got all kinds of pollutants in my blood.”

He hisses back to the crowd and scratches the top of the keg a bit, “You will show us how to make sweet meat.” He points a claw at Bristow’s corpse. “His meat.”

I let out a streamer of yellow fumes. “Let’s talk percentages.”

-==\\||//==-

When I finally limp back to the docking bay, Rel’s been up and down the vendor strip at least twice. He’s leaning against the side of his ship, snacking on a skewer of overcooked meat. I drop Bristow’s memcrys unit to the dirt floor and sag against the landing gear by Centaur’s rear storage area. After a minute, I work the lock and extract my own memcrys case, along with my knapsack.

Rel watches me the entire time. “What are you doing?”

“Changing my shirt.” I toss the scraps of my old shirt in the dirt, and pull a clean one from my pack.

“Uh-huh.” He eyes my lacerated chest and blood-soaked impromptu bandages. “I take it you found your friend. Reunion didn’t go well?”

“I had to kill him.” I shrug gingerly into the fresh shirt and fasten it down the front.

“You don’t get alone with anyone do you?”

“I haven’t killed you yet,” I growl.

“You shot me . . .”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“. . . in the back.”

I find my emergency sigret cache in a pocket of my pack and tap one gratefully to life. “You’re just not going to let that go, are you?”

“You ready to leave?” He finished the last of his skewer, “This place has good food for a rocketown, but there’s nothing else here.”

“You go, I’m not getting back in that deathtrap.”

He grins that grin I hate and makes no move to leave. “Somebody’s a sore loser.”

I sneer and sling my pack gingerly across my back, “I’ve got arrangements to finish here; I don’t want to hold you up. I’ll meet you at Ross Station.”

He shrugs, “Those sigrets are gonna kill you someday.”

I’m still laughing when he shakes his head and climbs back into the cockpit. I secure his hold, scoop up both memcrys units and make for the bay locks. I need to call Jess – assuming this rock has a transcomm – and I’m going to need help packing up Bristow’s surgery. But first I’m going to see Buboe; I need a drink. And another sigret. Ω

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