The Forgotten Planet
Chapter 22 – Payback’s a Bitch

In four days of ship-time, we’d traveled over fifty lightyears coreward of Palance. Most of that distance was via three separate wormholes, but since wormhole travel is practically instantaneous, most of the time was actually spent flying from one wormhole to another at four times the speed of light. The A-Drive could have theoretically done 6C, but none of us trusted the engines enough to take them up to ninety percent of their rated maximum.

We’d passed Salarian Naval ships guarding the Casimir Stabilizers at each end of every wormhole, but only one bothered hailing us, and when we claimed to be a trading vessel carrying compressed hydrogen fuel cells, they didn’t even ask to see the manifest I’d dummied-up. There was a slight chance of being boarded, but honestly, boarding a heap like this ship-to-ship is just asking for trouble, especially if we actually were carrying potentially explosive cargo.

Finding the wormhole to the Pantagus System turned out to be a little tricky, and apparently a scapegoat was required. After flying passed the coordinates Oppenheimer had given me, Maxine turned around and chose me. “Where the hell’s my ’hole, slick.” She quickly turned to Adan and added, “Don’t.” The likely crude joke died on his lips, and he frowned and closed his mouth.

“This is why wormholes are capped,” I answered. “It’ll open... eventually.”

“I was given the same coordinates Max,” Russell said. “We’ll just have to wait it out.”

“There’s three ships within a parsec of our position,” Vee added, “and they’re all just parked.”

Max grumbled right before throwing the ship into a barrel roll followed by a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reversal. I heard Adan whoop halfway through, and Vee make a sound that was a combination of a squeal and a growl. The ship’s inertial dampers held us in place more-or-less, but my stomach and inner ear weren’t as fortunate. I was sweating and swallowing hard as the ships navigational jets finally brought us to a halt.

“Was that really necessary?” Russell asked warily. He looked as pale as I felt. Maxine just shrugged. She didn’t turn around, but I knew she was smiling.

We just waited in place almost an hour before a bubble of warped spacetime appeared, floating weightlessly in a sea of speckled black.

Maxine powered up the engines and said, “Speak now or forever hold your piece.”

“Take is in,” Russell said, “nice and slow,” he added quickly.

We hit the event horizon and appeared instantly on the fringes of a red giant solar system. There were a couple of gas giants in the system, as well as a rocky Kuiper belt between us and the planets.

“There’s a station broadcasting from the orbit of the inner planet,” Vee said from her perch at the sensor panel.

“Taking us to A-Drive,” Max called out. “ETA forty-five minutes.”

...

According to local time it was close to noon, and Adan and I were walking to the police station to kill a peace officer in broad daylight.

“You nervous bro?” Adan asked.

I turned down my music before I answered. That and the full suite of biochemical systems under the control of my ’Seven were barely keeping my blood pressure below heart attack range. Plus, I’d already gone through a bar of milk chocolate and another of white.

“Yeah, a little,” I lied. It was way more than a little. “You?”

He shrugged. “When people say they’re nervous, I’m not exactly sure what they mean.”

I looked at him, trying to judge if he was serious or not. Finally, I decided he was. “Butterflies in your stomach?” He shook his head. “Cold sweats?”

“Nope,” he answered.

“Of course you don’t,” I answered under my breath. Louder I said, “You seem pretty scared when I work on Betty.”

“Oh, well that’s more about self-preservation,” he answered. “I’m reasonably expect Betty will explode every time you fire her up.”

I wanted to argue that statement, but I knew I’d be on the losing end of that one. The early versions of Betty had their… quirks.

Adan continued, “So the smart thing to do when you’re fooling around with her is hide behind a solid object. It’s like if someone points a gun at me, I’m going to run, but the thought of being in a situation like that doesn’t scare me. It’s more like a competition or a test of my skills.”

“You do tend to put yourself in situations like that more often than is necessary,” I said.

“Defying death is the spice of life,” he answered.

“If you say so,” I added.

We walked at a leisurely pace down the narrow boulevard through the middle of the town’s crowded business district, which was just a short stroll from the starport. The day was warm, and I had to admit I was enjoying the feel of sunshine on my arms and face after multiple days on the ship. Adan was overdressed in full cowboy garb. He wasn’t sweating though, which made me think he’d had his magnesium efficiency boosted when he had his nerves juiced. Or he was a just a human replicant.

The whole space cowboy look was surprisingly popular among the disreputable local demographic. I’d seen more cowboy hats and snakeskin boots in the last five minutes than I’d seen anywhere except the crowd of a Gladiator Challenge match. Adan fit right in if you didn’t get too closely. Generally, the people we were passing weren’t well groomed or in any way clean, and they certainly didn’t smell like Adan’s lilac aftershave.

A variety of saloon’s, restaurants and shops lined main boulevard. Palm trees sprouted from planter boxes along both sides of the grey plascrete road, but most were dead husks. Many of the shops had flower boxes in front, but no flowers were present in any of them – at best, they were empty. In one box I saw a dead rat and in another the remains of someone’s meal that didn’t stay down.

The town was just the right size for a burgeoning colony and was likely beautiful in its day – though that day appeared to have been quite some time ago. And what did the original architects have against right angles? Rounded archways and circular floor plans must have been a thing before the war. Regardless, the steady clientele of pirates, asteroid miners and mercs had worn down the buildings’ cleanliness and kitsch into uniform grime and disrepair.

Trash was strewn everywhere, and the buildings along the main thoroughfare were pockmarked from weapon discharges, and generally looked like they needed a good scrubbing with an industrial degreaser. There were a few ancient holographic signs for book shops, groceries and the like that still partially worked, but even those didn’t seem to correspond with the current businesses. Aftermarket neon and even hand-painted signs for skin, weapons or drugs hung from windows and roofing shingles. Judging by the clientele moving about, I was apt to believe the new signs were the correct ones.

“So,” Adan asked, “how’s that hot, interspecies action been going?” He gave me a playful nudge to the ribs.

“I’m not talking with you about this now,” I answered. I had no intention of talking about my love life with him later either, if I’m being honest.

“Come on little brother. You look like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. You need a distraction. Besides, I always tell you about my exploits. Remember the time I drew you those pictures.”

“How could I forget? I was nine at the time and I still thought girls had cooties.” I didn’t mean that statement as a compliment, but he took it that way and ran with it.

“See, you were lucky to have me as a big brother. Whoa,” he said, blocking my path with his arm. Two burly Cindars in flannel and denim stumbled past us, arms flailing in the midst of a drunken brawl. Cindars were mostly muscle and body hair, and were known to have short fuses.

“Fine,” I said, as we started walking again. He was probably right that it would take my mind off the task at hand, and I also knew he’d just keep badgering me until I relented. There were different things I could have told him about Vee, like how the hair on her body was lighter and shorter than the hair on her head, or that her knees were like ours and not backwards like an Earth cat. Instead, I chose something that I thought he would find interesting. “Well, she purrs.”

“Purrs?” he asked uncertainly.

“Yeah. When she’s...” I searched for a word, and settled on, “happy.”

“Okay, that’s… okay. What else?” Adan turned and looked at a Terran woman in a window wearing little more than a pout. She beckoned with her hand, but he just smiled and shook his head.

“Um, well, the puzzle pieces are set up the same way in both species.”

“Ok, you know what? Let’s talk about something else. You’re terrible at this.”

I didn’t disagree. I don’t get locker-room talk. We all know the mechanics of the operation of sex and the parts involved. Plus, as Adan and Vee have both noted, I’m shy about the topic – and until a few days ago, entirely inexperienced. “Want to talk about music?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Hell no,” he answered. “That electronic noise you listen to isn’t music.”

“Vee likes it.”

“Fine, great, then you two can listen to it when she’s purring or whatever.”

That almost made me laugh out loud. “Tell me the truth, big brother-”

“I reserve the right not to-”

“You’re kind of smitten with Max.”

“Smitten?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It means strongly attracted or-”

“Yeah, I know what it means,” he answered gruffly. “I may not be as smart as you, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

“Those two statements aren’t mutually exclusive,” I answered.

That made him smirk, if only for a moment. He took in a deep breath and sighed before answering. “I mean, she’s alright. We’re just having some fun, you know?” He cleared his throat and said, “So this place,” he motioned around vaguely with his hands and said, “I mean, this is some next level tech, right.”

We came to a fork in the road, and I motioned to the right. He was changing the subject, but even still, he wasn’t wrong. According to the Depository, stations like Richi were put into service right before the Great War. Instead of flat stations stuck to the end of space elevators, Earth’s military brain trust built massive, free-floating O’Neill Cylinders and placed them in systems rich in resources but poor in habitable worlds.

An O’Neill Cylinder is a tube-shaped space station roughly thirty kilometers long and eight kilometers in diameter and comprised of six equally-sized strips that run the length of the cylinder. Three of the strips are transparent windows and the other three are habitable surfaces. Hinged at the back of each window strip are long mirrors, with their exposed edge pointing towards the local star. The mirrors reflect sunlight onto the living surfaces, creating a lightened sky during the day. Automated systems simulated night by opening the mirrors, giving a view the stars through the transparent stripes. The station’s rotation created the artificial gravity, and the entire tube was filled with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.

A shadow passed over us, and I looked up to see a dark cloud drifting slowly over head. Past that were the other two strips of land in between the three strips of blue skies and sunshine. Wide tracts of trees and gently rolling hills covered the other strips of land, with only a few structures dotting the pristine landscape. If I let my eyes relax a little, the colony looked like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

“Yeah, it’s pretty lit,” I answered. I pointed up and to the left and said, “That doesn’t look like fun though.”

I pointed at a small shuttle navigating from one of the land masses above down to this one, and just the thought of down being in multiple directions at once made my empty stomach roll.

“It’s probably running on autopilot,” Adan answered. “Either that, or the pilots log a bunch of hours in VR first.”

Up ahead, I saw our destination, and my heart rate spiked again. I’d planned on hacking the station’s systems and finding the list of citizens. Oppenheimer said Paul moved here, and the hope was that he’d stayed. Adan and I hadn’t discussed what we would do if Paul was gone. If he had moved on, and we found the trail, would we continue to track him? Russell and Maxine had agreed to this pit stop, but I doubted they would be okay with a protracted search. Luckily, I found Paul’s alias – Riker Dillon – and bio on the station’s public web page. He was the station’s constable, which I found ironic.

“You still good?” I asked. Adan being the trigger man had been the plan since there was a plan. He was a teenager, and I was still a child when we came up with the idea, so it made perfect sense at the time. Even now, it felt right – the elder son getting justice for his family.

He nodded and we walked on in silence. The foot traffic was picking up, with a steady stream of folks passing in and out of the various bars and such. Most of the individuals on this station were on the scarier side of the human-appearance bell curve – with a mix of physically intimidating and heavily armed bodies. And it’s worth noting that outside of the occasional green-skinned Cindar miner, everyone out on the streets was human. There was storefront with a sign in Kaldanian advertising electronic equipment, but the window was dark, and the place looked abandoned.

The constable’s office and jail were one in the same, and as far as I could tell was the only building that appeared to function as the designers originally intended. The structure was a dark shade of beige like every other building we’d passed, and the holographic sign above the porch overhang read “Constable” and underneath in smaller letters, “Detention Center.” A digital sign was built into the wall next to the entrance showing visiting hours and listing the names of the incarcerated in glowing red font. There was one window on the left and through it I could see a few chairs and a water cooler in an empty waiting area.

As we approached, the glass door slid open, and a warbling bell sound announced our entrance. Cool air hit us as we walked in, and I shuddered involuntary from the temperature change. Directly in front of us was an empty hallway and to the right was an open area with a desk and a chair. And sitting in the chair was Paul Martel. The hair on top was a bit thinner and he had a double chin to go along with a few extra kilos of paunch, but it was definitely the same man. Paul had his feet up on his desk and was scanning something on a data pad. He smiled sheepishly and put his feet on the ground, then stood up and placed the pad on the table.

He wore a tan, pocketed shirt and matching pants, and when he stood, I could see that he had a plasma pistol holstered in a black gun belt on his right hip. There were also a few rifles on a rack on the wall directly behind him, but they were too far away for him to easily reach.

He smiled and began to greet us, then noted the looks on our faces and the fact that Adan’s hand was on his cowboy gun. I’d spent six hours the previous night learning the ins and outs of this particular building’s security features. When I locked the front door with a thought and the mechanisms ground shut with an audible click, I saw realization dawn on the man’s face.

He sighed and asked, “You’re the two boys from that vineyard, aren’t you?”

“At least you remember us,” Adan said. “I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.” Adan’s gun still wasn’t in his hand, which definitely wasn’t part of the plan. “I hope your affairs are in order, because we’re here for justice.”

Paul stiffened but didn’t reach for his weapon.

“You can draw Paul. I’ll give you a fair chance,” Adan said calmly.

This definitely wasn’t part of the plan. I tried to tell Adan to fire, but my voice caught in my throat.

“No,” Paul said softly. He reached down very slowly and in a flash Adan’s gun was in his hand and pointed at Paul’s face. The older man paid no mind to the heater pointed at his head as he carefully unhooked his gun belt. It clattered to the ground and Adan’s trigger-finger twitched – but he still didn’t pull the trigger.

“Shoot him,” I said. It came out barely a whisper.

“I deserve whatever revenge you’re here to get,” Paul said. “I won’t fight back.”

Adan jerked back like he had been slapped. Confusion played across his face and probably across mine as well. “What? Why?” my brother asked.

“I decided years ago that I was done running and that if you ever found me here, I wouldn’t compound my sins by killing either of you.”

He was calm and appeared contrite, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to believe him.

“Adan, do it,” I said, but my brother just shook his head.

“I’ve tried to become a better man, if that makes a difference,” Paul said. “I’m the law now-” He saw the look of disdain I gave him, “No, not like the corrupt bunch back on Oasis. I’m not perfect, but I do my best to be honest and fair. I’ve made this town a better place.”

Adan’s hand was starting to shake, but don’t think Paul even noticed. He was looking me in the eye. “I’m sorry for what I did,” he said, and his voice cracked a little. He looked again to Adan and said, “I’m very sorry. Your family didn’t deserve the pain I caused.” A few quiet moments passed, and then Adan’s arm slowly dropped to his side, and he holstered the gun.

I knew the man meant it. I could see it in his face and read it in his body language. I knew... but I just didn’t care.

I could feel my face glowing hot, and suddenly Frank Black was loud in my ears.

’TAME!

TAME! TAME!

TAME!’

I drew the gun from Adan’s holster and pointed it at Paul. It was heavier than I expected, and I had to hold it in both hands to keep the steal monstrosity somewhat steady. Paul’s eyes went wide at first, then he seemed to recover, and he nodded slowly at me. He understood, just as I did, that being sorry wasn’t going to be enough. I saw Adan staring at me out of the corner of my eye, but made no move to stop me.

“You can be sorry in hell you son of a bitch,” I said. Then I pulled the trigger.

The gun roared, and Paul stumbled back a few paces until his back collided with the wall. He reached down and touched his stomach, and his hand came away crimson. A sob escaped my body, and I pulled the trigger again, and I kept pulling long after Paul was slumped on the floor and the cylinders clicked empty. By the time Adan slipped the gun from my trembling hands, I was standing over him and screaming incoherently. I wiped tears from my eyes as I stared down at my father’s killer. The six bloody bullet holes in Paul’s tan shirt looked like little red roses in full bloom, and his face was pale and lifeless.

And then we were moving. Adan half dragged, half carried me down the hall and out the front door of the constabulary. The rush of adrenaline left my legs feeling like my bones had been removed. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears. Adan pulled me to a stop and said something, but I couldn’t make it out.

“What? I can’t hear you,” I said. All I could hear was a dull ringing in my ears. A Cindar miner in a grungy grey jumpsuit looked sideways at me and quickly looked away. I must have been yelling. I focused on Adan’s lips.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you?” I replied hotly. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

He looked away without answering, and I glared at the back of his head. I actually thought about punching him. Adan was the one built for all that action hero nonsense, and anyway, we had made a damn good plan, and he didn’t follow it. I stepped up and did what needed doing. Why the hell was he mad at me?

It was a short walk back to the starport, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. As my adrenaline-fueled tunnel vision began to clear, it dawned on me that we were casually walking away from a murder scene without one bit of resistance. No shouts, no pointing, no pursuit. Maybe that was because I had just gunned down the only officer of the law that the town had. Maybe it was just that no one cared.

I didn’t know if I should be happy or proud or ashamed. I’d avenged my father’s murder, but Paul was plainly sorry for what he’d done and was trying to live a better life. At that moment I was just plain numb. And tired. As we walked up the ship’s landing ramp I stumbled and Adan’s grip on my arm was the only thing that kept me from going down.

“You’re doing fine Galen,” my brother said in a voice that was way more soothing than I expected. “Just a little bit farther.”

Vee met us in the cargo hold and when she saw me, she ran to my side.

“Galen, what wrong?” She looked up at Adan. “Is he hurt?” She began to look me over, probably searching for wounds.

“He’s fine,” Adan answered. “He’s just in shock.”

“I’m fine Vee,” I said, “I’m just tired.” I realized my ’Seven was blocking about a pot of coffee’s worth of adenosine, and still my eyelids felt heavy. I was crashing, bad. “Actually, I think I’m about to pass out.” I sort of remember them leading me to our bed. Then I was horizontal, and the scene faded to black.

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