This is a shorter piece, so I’ll post it in full here. You can find my past stories on my fiction site.
Bret had been waiting for far too long. If the buyer didn’t show up in another few minutes, he would leave and damn the consequences. His people would not be happy, but they weren’t the ones getting sick off the turpentine-diluted whiskey for which the bartender charged a premium.
“You keep buying, or you get the fuck out. I got people lined up for tables,” the bartender growled. It was a lie. Hell, it was beyond a lie. If anything, the bartender’s assertion was more of a bold-faced affront to reality. About half the tables were empty, and the other half averaged a ten-minute turn over.
“Got anything other than this shit?” Bret asked after his third shot. If he wanted to stick around, he had to play the bartender’s game.
“What about a beer?”
“Alright, bring me one of those.”
“I’ll get right on that chief. Just got to go to piss in a glass. Had this batch brewing half the day.”
“I’ll take a whiskey.”
The bartender refilled the shot glass with zero fanfare. Bret nudged the glass away with a careless flick of his forefinger and swore as the glass started to tip over. A calloused hand caught it between thumb and forefinger from the other side of the table. Bret had been too preoccupied with the bartender to notice anyone approach.
“You might have been doing us both a favor if you’d let it fall,” Bret said, catching the eye of the stranger. He leaned back and crossed his arms. “You the one the Dragons sent?”
The stranger wore a furled brow and barely parted lips behind a thick goatee of coarse, sandy hair. It was a look of mild surprise. With a grunt and a dismissive toss of the head, he pulled out a chair from across the table and sat. Bret noticed a straight scar across his forehead running from one temple to the other, at which point it disappeared beneath a laurel of hair that indicated a losing skirmish with male pattern baldness. Bret had seen a scar like that before on a guy who had surgery to remove a bullet from the brain. They called him meathead. He never talked again, but he could still shoot.
“Name’s Amos,” the stranger said, pulling out a cigar, which he lit using a glow torch. Bret recognized the flavor of that smoke.
“New Havana,” he mumbled. “I knew someone that smoked those.” Amos paid him a furtive glance before pulling an over-sized ashtray from a pocket of his worn, gray cargo pants. He tapped a lazy spray of embers and ash into the ashtray before tossing it onto the table.
“Rude son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you?” added Bret.
“I just want this done.”
“Then let’s get it done.” Bret unzipped the old Earth military backpack next to his chair and pulled out a handgun, which he passed to Amos beneath the table. Amos guffawed at Bret’s attempt at secrecy and set the weapon on the table, where he preceded to pop the clip and check the chamber before taking the weapon apart piece by piece. He had the deft fingers of someone intimate with firearms. The last person Bret had seen disassemble a pistol with that kind of efficiency was Short-Haired Charlie, and she was about as beautiful as this guy was ugly (though judging by the asshole quotient, they could have been brother and sister).
“Projectiles,” Amos mumbled as he completed the reconstruction and dropped the pistol on the metal table. It landed with a clang. Last century Earth weapons were widely sought after by pirate and mercenary organizations operating within Xevilious space. Without an energy signature, detectors wouldn’t pick them up, meaning they were easy to smuggle on and off ships, though they could kill just as well as their advanced cousins with a skilled hand at the trigger. The only tough part was getting them past Earth security and customs, Earth being one of only a few worlds to inspect for both projectile and energy weapons on all incoming and outgoing vessels. Bret’s employers had the monopoly on buying off Earth’s politicians and security forces and would go to war to maintain that monopoly. Their buyers hated them for it but would rather pay the money than risk a war between the syndicates.
“Want whiskey?” asked the bartender. He noticed the pistol and took a step back.
“Fuck off,” said Amos.
“We’ll be gone in a minute. Don’t go calling station security,” Bret implored. They had picked this location for the deal because of apathetic security and a station administrator who could be bribed with a hooker and a bag of peanuts, but Bret was on a budget and didn’t have many peanuts to spare. The bartender busied himself at other tables at the other end of the room, paying them little more than a periodical a glance.
“So what’s the story?” asked Amos.
“Story is I’ve got 100 crates of these burning a hole in my shuttle, and you were supposed to be here an hour ago to take them off me.”
Amos flipped him off. “Anything else?” Bret had another unexpected flashback to Short-Haired Charlie and her fondness for the casual use of obscene gestures in the face of any sort of criticism. He hadn’t seen that girl for three years, and their parting hadn’t been pleasant. She had tried to break with the Dragons and run off with him, but her people found out. Bret heard later that they broke both her legs and tied her to a desk to take care of menial work. She knew too much to let go, but she also knew too much to kill.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Amos growled. Bret realized he’d been staring. “If we’re going to deal, let’s deal.”
“Fine. It’s 100k a crate.”
“We’re offering 85.”
Bret glowered. “The price has been 100k. The price will always be 100k. The Dragons don’t get to change the rules half way through the game.”
“Rules have changed, and your people’d better start playing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Dragons aren’t alone anymore. We’ve got six syndicates under one roof right now and eight more in talks.”
Bret said nothing.
“I don’t know about you, but I smell a bit of war on the horizon, and it stinks. Only way out of it I see is if you drop prices and try and get in with the rest of us, because I can tell you right now, you won’t be invited.”
“I can’t go back with 85 and expect to make it out with my balls intact.” Realistically, they would kill him. It was better to just return with the cargo. His bosses wouldn’t be happy, but they would back up his decision.
Amos leaned back and rolled the empty clip around his forefinger like a miniature baton. “I can do 92,” he said.
Bret couldn’t take his eyes off the clip. When Amos noticed, he wrapped it into his fist and set it aside, but by then, Bret already knew. He glanced up at the scar. “You’re Short-Haired Charlie,” he said. Their eyes met, and Amos scowled. “She’s the only person I ever knew who could flip around a clip like that.”
Amos snapped the clip back into the pistol. “Fuck you. Is it a deal or not?” he said, his face burning red with anger.
“It’s a deal.”
With a sigh, Amos pulled his chair closer to the table. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yeah, it’s me.” He traced a finger along the scar on his forehead. “Sorta.”
“I heard stories,” Bret said.
“Yeah, well this wasn’t about anything that happened with you. Trust me, you’re about as important to the Dragons as the guy who cleans my toilet. It was a job. Few months back we jumped some luxury cruise ship off Yara 7, and I ended up with a cap in my spine. Friendly fire, would you believe it? They couldn’t let me die… too many people in high places need what I’ve got up here.” He tapped his left temple. “So they grabbed the asshole who shot me and slapped my brain inside.” Amos shrugged. “His brain, they flushed.”
Bret lowered his head and stared at the table. He peered up at Amos. “I….”
“If you get sentimental on me, I’ll throw you out the first airlock I find. I’m big enough to do that now.” That much was certain. While Short-Haired Charlie barely came up to his neck, Amos was a half-a-head taller than Bret.
“I was going to say that you were only ever a man with tits anyway.”
“Right.” Amos dropped the pistol into the open backpack and sucked down Bret’s untouched whiskey. “So are we done here?”
Bret crossed his arms. He leaned his chair back and rocked on the back two legs. “I’ll have the crates transferred to your shuttle as soon as the money shows up.” Amos stood and squished out the last of his cigar. He dumped the contents of the ashtray onto the floor before sealing it up in his pocket. “I’ll pay you back for the whiskey,” he said, turning away.
“You know, we could try it again,” Bret said. Amos glanced at him over his shoulder. “It was never about the tits.”
“It was about a lot of things,” added Amos. “But we both know they’ll never cut me loose.”
Bret watched him go. The smell of Short-Haired Charlie’s smoke lingered in the air.
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