Dark Run
Mike Brooks
To Spike the cat, my dedicated writing buddy. Thanks for the cuddles, the purring, and for not trying to eat the laptop’s power cable
that
often.
DROWNING BEND
Randall’s Bar was at least a mile beneath the rocky surface of Carmella II and had all the inviting ambience of an open sewer. The sign over the door was simple neon tubes rather than a holo projection, the lightpool table inside was glitching and the air had the thin, sour quality which suggested it had already passed through too many lungs. It was populated by a dozen men and half as many women sharing little but the lean, dangerous look of overworked and underfed Undersiders, in various stages of inebriation but all seemingly determined to get deeper into their cups. He’d known better than to even think of asking Randall for a beer, and so was instead nursing a smeared glass tumbler containing a clear liquid which could have passed for paint stripper had its taste been a little more refined.
He had been in less inviting premises of his own volition, but right now he was struggling to recall more than one or two.
‘Hey!’
The thin, reedy voice was that of a kid.
‘Hey, mister!’
There was no indication he was being addressed.
He didn’t turn around, just kept his head low and his concentration on the glass of spirits in his hand. Then, inevitably, there was a tugging on the back of his armavest.
‘Hey, mister! Are you Ichabod Drift?’
Drift sighed and looked up at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar: sharp-boned features, shoulderlength hair dyed a shocking violet and kept out of his eyes with a black bandana, skin a golden brown which had everything to do with parentage and nothing to do with the minimal amount of time it had ever been exposed to a star’s ultraviolet radiation. He rotated on his stool and absent-mindedly reached up a hand to scratch at the skin around his mechanical right eye as it focused on the kid with a whirring of lenses.
Overlarge mining goggles stared blankly back at him over a dirty face topped by blondish stubble which, combined with the pitch of the voice and a near-shapeless one-piece overall – probably a cast-off from an older sibling – meant Drift wasn’t entirely sure whether it was male or female. He essayed a grin, the same winning smile which had worked him into beds and out of trouble more times than he could count (and when money was as large a part of your life as it was for Ichabod Drift, you had to be able to count pretty damn high).
‘
Sí, soy yo,’
he said agreeably, ‘but who might you be? Kind of young for a Justice, aren’t you?’ Not that the Justices would be looking for him right now; apart from anything else, Ichabod Drift wasn’t an outlaw . . . exactly. He was, as old Kelsier used to say, ‘of interest’. Exactly how much interest, and to whom, rather depended on what had happened recently and if he had a suitable alibi for where he’d been at the time.
‘You the guy what killed Gideon Xanth?’ the kid asked. Drift felt the gloom of the bar take on a sudden watchful flavour. Xanth’s Wild Spiders gang had been a menace for the last eighteen standard months over three sectors of the semi-lawless honeycomb of underground passages, caverns and former mineshafts which made up the so-called Underside of the moon named Carmella II by the United States of North America. Drift had personally heard three different variants of the tale of how he and his partner had taken the Spiders down, then dragged Gideon’s corpse back to the Justices’ office in High Under to collect the handsome bounty posted on his scarred (and partially missing) head.
‘That was a way from here,’ he said, casually adjusting his weight so he was facing not only his youthful interrogator but the door as well, and letting his right hand idly drop into the general region of the holstered pistol at his hip. ‘I’m amazed word has spread so far, so soon. Where’d you hear that piece of news from?’
‘There’s a gang o’ men just come into town,’ the kid piped, ‘and they was asking about if anyone had seen Ichabod Drift, the Mexican what killed Gideon Xanth. Said they’d give ten bucks for whoever told
’
em where he was.’
‘I see,’ Drift said, a grim sense of unease stirring in his gut. Not that he hadn’t been expecting this, but nonetheless . . . Something must have shown on his face, because the kid suddenly darted back out of arm’s length and scuttled for the door, as though worried that he (or possibly she) was about to be forcibly restrained from collecting the promised reward.
‘Hey!’ Drift shouted after the retreating shape. ‘Did you get a name from any of
’
em?’
‘Only from the big guy,’ came the reply, nothing but a begoggled head now visible poking back around the door jamb. Drift raised his eyebrows and motioned with his hand to suggest that maybe the kid should quit stalling.
‘He said his name was Gideon Xanth.’
Then the head disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the swinging saloon door and a sudden atmosphere of expectation so tense Drift could practically taste it. Unless that was the bile.
‘Well, shit,’ he remarked to no one in particular, and slid off his stool to land his booted feet on the dusty floor. With the entire bar’s eyes on him he ostentatiously straightened his armavest, adjusted his bandana, checked his pistols and then strode towards the door. Bruiser, the ageing but still massive bouncer, nodded to him on his way past.
‘You sure you wanna go out there, Drifty?’
‘Just a simple misunderstanding, I’m sure,’ Drift replied with a confidence he didn’t feel. Bruiser’s forehead added some wrinkles to the lines already weathered into it as he regarded the scene outside. ‘Don’t look too simple from where I’m standing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the Weasel piped up from next to him. Weasel was short and scrawny, and his job at Randall’s Bar was to look after anything Bruiser confiscated from customers – which basically boiled down to any firearm larger than a pistol, as only a fool would enter a Carmellan drinking den completely unarmed – and then return it to them as they left, guided by his perfect memory. ‘I’d say Gideon not actually being dead is pretty simple, really.’
‘Depends on your point of view,’ Drift replied, and sauntered out into what passed for Drowning Bend’s town square. The chemical tang of the leak in the nearby industrial outflow lingered in the air, burrowing into his nasal passages again now he was what passed for outside once more, while far above in the solid rock of the curved habdome roof the lights were churning out steady, reliable illumination. Which was a little unfortunate in some respects; a few shadows to hide in would be rather convenient right about now.
The Wild Spiders were in the square. And sitting in his personal, custom-made, six-legged mechanical walker, the padded seat upholstered in what was rumoured to be genuine cowhide, was the imposing shape of Gideon Xanth.
Ichabod Drift had a momentary thought that maybe he’d just turn and head the other way, but then a shout went up. He’d been seen.
‘
Drift!
’ Xanth bellowed, his voice a basso roar. He flicked something large and shiny off his thumb, and Drift caught sight of the juvie diving to catch the promised ten-buck piece before fleeing into a side alley.
‘
Hola
, Gideon!’ Drift called back, settling his hands just over his guns. Two of them, at least; his backup was tucked in the small of his back under his belt. ‘You’re looking well!’
‘Looking well for a dead man, you mean?’ the gang leader snarled.‘Boys, cover Mister Drift for me, would you?’
At least a dozen weapons of varying calibre and roughly equal deadliness snapped up to point straight at Drift, which did nothing positive for his levels of either calmness or perspiration.
‘That’s better,’ Xanth said, doing something with the controls in front of him and sending his walker clanking forwards while the Wild Spiders advanced on either side, their guns still trained and disappointingly steady. ‘Boys, we all know that Mister Drift is a fast draw and a fine shot, so if he starts looking twitchy then feel free to ventilate him for me before he gets any ideas into his head.
‘Now, Drift.’ The big gang leader’s scarred visage frowned as he looked down from his elevated seat. ‘I’m sitting there in a bar in Low Under, minding my own business, when I hear me some surprising news. Seems that I’m dead, and that you’re to blame.’
‘Opinions vary on whether it was me who pulled the trigger on you,’ Drift replied, trying not to let his eyes stray around too much.
‘Ah yes,’ Xanth nodded. ‘Your partner. It must have taken some balls to front up to the lawmen in High and claim you’d killed me, knowing that if your lie were found out then they’d string you up. Even
bigger
balls actually, given that you surely knew I’d hear and would want to disabuse people of the notion o’ my demise. And given I know that deep down you’re a cowardly lickspittle, Drift, it must’ve been your partner what came up with the plan.’
The theatrically conversational tone in his voice, pitched to carry to the observers behind door jambs and peeking out through curtains all around, abruptly disappeared. What was left was the verbal equivalent of a knife, bare and sharp and about as friendly. ‘Where’s the bitch, Drift?’
‘That’s no way to talk about a lady,’ Drift shrugged.
He didn’t even see the blow coming. He was simply aware of Xanth doing something with his hand, and then one of the spider-walker’s metal legs lashed up and knocked him backwards some six feet, leaving him sprawling in the dirt.
‘Not talking about a lady, Drift,’ Xanth growled. ‘I know ladies. I’ve met
’
em, dined
’
em and bedded
’
em. Even loved one, once upon a time. I’m talking about that bitch you run with, who ain’t no more of a lady than I am. Where’s Tamara Rourke?’
There were a few seconds of uneasy silence, while Drift tried to get his breath back and disguise the fact that by propping himself up on one elbow his right hand was once more straying close to the butt of a pistol. However, he was saved having to answer by the appearance of a small red dot on Xanth’s left temple.
‘Here.’
Drift risked a look to his right. There, Crusader 920 rifle raised to her shoulder and trained on Gideon Xanth as she walked steadily forwards, was Rourke. She was short and slight, dressed in a dark green bodysuit which would have merely emphasised the boyish nature of her figure had it not been drowned in the billowing depths of a long coat. Her hat was pulled low, and her eyes glinted in her dark-skinned face as she flicked her gaze along the length of the Wild Spiders’ line. Half of them switched their aim to cover her, but they weren’t fool enough to start firing when she had a bead on their boss. Tamara Rourke’s reputation as a deadshot was well-earned.
