The Backworlds (16 page)

Mouth dryer than a dust pit, Craze
ran his tongue around his gums, then stretched. He slipped on his boots and
pushed himself off the mat laid out in the plexiglass foyer in front of his
tavern door to prevent anyone from sneaking in without his knowing.

Tugging his suspenders up and his
sleeves down, he readied for customers and the influx of chips, bright sheeny
chips, which could transport him off this backworld’s Backworld to a better
port with greater opportunity. Someplace with trees and potential, someplace
that wasn’t the last stop for one hundred fifteen light years.

Rolling up the thickly woven
filaments he used as a bed, he tucked it under the salvaged bar spliced
together from discarded walls, doors, and the bodies of land vehicles topped by
a counter poured from a resin he’d formed and sanded until it gleamed without
blemish. Despite the discordance of the materials, a rich and mellow style had distilled
and the tavern sparkled clean with everything in its place.

Behind the bar, he poked between
the tapped kegs of mead and malt to find the means to contact the other
residents of Pardeep Station, to make sure they’d seen the ship coming through
the Lepper. Not many Backworlders – those bioengineered to take advantage of
the scraggly planets the galaxy offered as less than ideal habitats – scrimped
by here. Pardeep Station was rough and not fully formed, uninspiring and
lacking in imagination, impersonating a stain.

Craze hit the summons to his
neighbors, an icon on his tab – a thin flexible data device the size of a card.
“Lepper opened. Ship
headin
’ in,” he yelled out to
those who earned a living off travelers as much as he did.

His courtesy to his friends done,
he shut off the connection and sauntered past five tables of different shapes
coated in thick beige polymer. Returning to the plexiglass door in the
vestibule, he waited on the approaching ship, wondering what kind of business
to anticipate. What class of vessel would come out of the portal ripped into
space by the Lepper System? How many people would be on board? A massive
transport filled with the very rich kind of folks was what he dreamed of,
knowing full well that was unlikely, as those kind rarely came to a place like
Pardeep Station.

He shouldered into the door’s
heavily scratched surface, which jerked open with a scraping noise after a
shove and a kick. The air bit on the inside of Craze’s outspread nostrils, the
sharp twang making him rub at the side of his nose.

The roar of approaching engines
jostled the loose, gravelly soil, the granules jumping and skittering, sending
up a dust storm of supergene proportion. His black eyes squinted through the
commotion, making out a more densely packed column of dirt mingling with the
ship’s wake, adding to the coming tempest.

The intensifying frenzy of dust
sent a tremor of trepidation through him. Logic told him the darkening cloud
was one of his fellow Pardeepans coming in to make a few sheeny chips off the
tourists, yet his emotions ran rampant, sensing portent, perhaps for no other
reason than it was more interesting to think so than not.

Craze filled the doorframe he
leaned against with muscle and height. The splayed placement of his cheeks, eyes,
flat nose, and prominent mouth allowed him to live comfortably on hot worlds
rife with organics choking the air. His ability to hibernate let him survive in
places with extreme seasons, seasonal being the key. The yearly changes on
Pardeep went from cold to bitter. Craze made do though, like the other hardy
souls who worked on this orbiting lump of arid rock.

His charcoal waves neatly
rebraided
themselves into a single plait, then lay still.
The living hair gave him some popularity with females and saved him time
grooming. Beyond that he’d never figured out what purpose that particular
modification to his genes served. Catching insects maybe?

Pardeep’s dust-laden air tasted of
chalk and tin, coating his tongue and thick lips. The incoming vessel swooped
lower, gliding toward the docks rising twenty stories above his tavern. The
bronze hued edifice glinted in the sunlight, otherwise the facility blended in
with the soil. It was the only noticeable blip of civilization on Pardeep, and
Craze would hardly call it that. Maybe if the incoming spacecraft brought more
settlers he might.

The ship, as large as an
interstellar-class freighter, cast a great shadow which darkened the landscape
and his view of the world. Shaped like a dumbbell and colored in rust patches,
the hull of the spacecraft clung to a brittle and aged patina, showing little
promise of fulfilling his ambitions for prosperity, but there at the tail
blazoned a crisp logo. Freshly repainted, a circle half blue and half green
dominated the aft panels, rekindling a little hope for something more than the
arrival of destitute derelicts. A vessel like that could hold up to a half
thousand folks.

Craze’s pulse quickened. That was a
lot of chips. Chips he desperately wanted to add to his coffers. “C’mon!” He
pumped his fist at the sky, then forced himself to settle down. The incoming
ship could easily hold a half thousand cobwebs and crumbs instead.

As the spacecraft approached, the squall
of dust sped closer, rising ever higher, somersaulting and churning, turning
darker and blacker, reaching up to devour the docks, the bar, and Craze whole.
He backed inside the plexiglass vestibule and slammed the door, unable to peel
his sight away from the storm roaring at him like a wall.

He gulped, cursing the Pardeepan
twit creating the monsoon. “
Nobody’ll
be able to take
more than three steps from the docks, dumbass.”

When his words consciously sank in,
Craze’s lips parted with a smack. “Oh!” He didn’t want people wandering about,
perhaps tempted into taking one of Pauder’s idiotic tours. Nope, he wanted them
in his bar and staying put.

The entryway had the only windows
in the tavern. As the swarm of dust raced toward him, he was glad of it. He braced
himself for the onslaught and ground his teeth. Pebbles scoured the exterior of
his place and sliced fresh scratches into the door. Then came a series of
explosions, close and thunderous.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Shit.

Craze closed his ears and ducked.

*****

CHAPTER 2

On his knees, Craze retreated
farther into his tavern, heading past the jumble of beige-coated tables and
chairs toward cover behind the counter. “Damn you, you Backworld reject.”

Now he knew who added to the uproar
out there. The old fool Pauder, who believed the war hadn’t ended. Craze needed
to get Pauder to stop before the tourists veered away, opting for the next stop
along the Lepper System.

He chanced leaving his cover,
inching his way back over to the door, cracking it open to shout through the
slit. “If you scare off business, old man, I’ll come
huntin
’
you.”

Another volley of gunfire boomed,
followed by twangs of ordnance bouncing off the hull of the docking ship. Craze
glanced up, because only a well-armored spacecraft could ward off what Pauder
threw at it, and they were rare.

Craze could make out the faint
illumination of a protective shield and heavy-duty rivets securing armored
plates. Weapons bays ran down the ship’s belly. Not a freighter or transport,
it was made for war. He’d never seen a battleship before, and rubbed at the
back of his neck. The trickle of uneasiness from earlier intensified.

“Get them. Get the Fo’wo’s.”
Pauder’s tones rattled with fury, punctuated by four more shots.

Craze rolled his eyes. “The war’s
over! You damned coot.” He sure hoped so, hoped those weapons bays didn’t
become something to worry about.

In a skull-hugging helmet of thick
fabric, goggles, and a gas mask, Pauder jumped down from his all-
terrainer
jacked up high on treads which churned up more
dust than the incoming ship. The old man’s dark skin shone, the moisture
produced by a hide comprised of bony shields and rings. His sharp fingers,
engineered for hunting, gripped the trigger and leveled the bazooka at Craze.
“I see
yar
piss-ass ship,
vermit
.
Die like a Fo’wo ‘n scream for me.” He cackled in an unforgiving manner, then
lowered the barrel as big as Craze’s head. “Oh, it’s
ya
.”

Craze crossed his arms over his
keg-shaped chest. “Yup, me, not a
natu
-bred Fo’wo.
Not that it matters. The war’s been over sixty years now.”

Those old injuries didn’t do Pauder
any favors, he’d been blown apart and put back together too many times to have
all his sanity. Another problem, his kind lived too long. What passed three
generations ago for most, played like yesterday in his recollection. And he’d
struggle through another century or more before letting Pardeep put the tired
issue to rest.

A
taloned
finger shook under Craze’s nose. “’N the good guys lost, Son. Look at this
hellhole.”

Craze couldn’t argue.

“That decoration on the hull ain’t
no decoration, Mr. Barkeep. It’s trouble. Plague-inciting, warmongering
trouble. The symbol’s covert ops of the Foreworlds. Fo’wo’s is here, come
ta
erase
ya
from existence. I’ll
be waiting back there.” Pauder pointed at a storage closet against the back
wall smack in the center of the shelves of booze. “When they come in ‘n is
about
ta
let
yar
brain
matter loose
onta
the floor, I’ll jump out right then
ta
spring
ya
from their
clutches. Bam. Bam.
Baaam
!”

“You ain’t
shootin
’
a bazooka in my bar,” Craze said. “I don’t care if the ship is Fo’wo’s. But it
isn’t. Maybe a new passenger line from somebody who got a great deal on that
ship, or some hotshot mercenaries. Maybe even Fo’wo pirate scum, but not an
enemy army. No way.”

Medals hung around Pauder’s neck –
three bronze and two silver – casting light on the underside of his prominent
chin. He thrust the bronze award he most prized at Craze, shouting his years of
heroism without words. “
Yar
so damned ignorant, it
hurts my teeth. Oh, the enemy is wily, Craze. Wilier than
ya
can ever imagine. There’s no truce. Not in their minds. Not until we all dead.”
He crammed himself into the storage closet and slammed the door. Muffled words
flitted past Craze’s flat, indistinct ears. “We should have some sort of
signal.”

“Like, come out of the closet?”

The door flew open, rattling the
bottles shelved on either side in a precise pattern of size, shape, and color.
Blue with blue. Short to tall. The coot jumped out waving the bazooka at the tavern’s
corners, teetering off balance until he compensated for the head injury he
refused to acknowledge, claiming it had never happened. Perhaps the root of his
problems. “Where they at, Son? Where they at?”

Craze rubbed his meaty palms over
his face, his eyes itching from the kicked-up dust. “Get back in the damned
closet, you rejected pile of gene
splicin
’.”

Just in time. The tavern shook and
a siren blared. Pardeep’s docks joined with the incoming ship, snagging it fast
to a berth above, announced by loud grates jarring Craze’s hair, then his lips.
He stood with his legs wide, and knees loose. The crocks and bottles rattled,
but nothing fell or cracked.

When the quaking ended, Craze took
his place behind the counter and powered on all the lights. “Time for
business.”

Lit up as if for a celebration, the
horseshoe of a bar glowed. The top glittered, reflecting the shine. The bottles
lined up on the mirrored shelves gleamed, glistening with promises of exotic
tastes and altered moods. Above the bar a rack hung, holding rows of crocks and
bowls, canisters of ingredients, and blue bulbs reclaimed from scrapped ships.
The bulbs dangled from the edges, a cascade of ambient radiance, casting blue
dots on the counter. A sign topped the rack, protruding up toward the ceiling
in a bold proclamation. Illuminated in yellow and orange, it read, “Craze’s
Tavern.”

To draw in the folks disembarking,
Craze unlatched an enclosure under the bar and fished around inside for a
handful of ricklits. The plump insects screamed, “
Rrrrickl’t
,
rrrickl’t
.” Bright yellow with iridescent blue spots,
the bugs thrashed their squat bodies around in his wide palms, antennae kicking
in the air. Craze threw all but one into a roaster.

The roaster sat in a cubby
surrounded by an elaborate air flow system. Craze switched on the cooker and
the fans. Within thirty seconds the delicious odor of baking ricklits kicked
out all other smells in his place. Irresistible. His mouth watered. When his
stomach bucked in a loud plea, he popped the one ricklit he’d left out between
his lips, biting down on the tasty head, eating it raw, enjoying the crunch and
burst of cream. Flavored much like perfectly deep-fried chicken, a customer had
once said.

Chewing on the bit of protein,
Craze tied on his apron. His rugged hands, which had put many wayward patrons
out the door, washed the covers and sip spouts. Soon after, the jar parts got a
rudimentary rinse in the basin of disinfecting gel. The yellow wasn’t the right
shade of yellow, long past its prime, dingy and faded,
glopping
like gravel because of all the grit stuck in it. Gently, he set each cleaned
crock on a rack on the bar top, lining them up for the incoming customers.

The door scraped open. In walked
one person. She stretched like the first rays of a moonrise, not looking
anything like a Fo’wo or a covert agent. On her heels followed an entourage of
breezy shadows, which closed in on her, dimming her and her silver light.