Dark Space (16 page)

   Melissa stretched the
nearby headset over her ears and began speaking. “Port of Salias. This is
transport Gamma-3-7 now in orbit above the planet. We’re requesting permission
to land.”

   “We’ve got to think of a
better name than Gamma-3-7,” Shawn said sideways.

   Melissa smiled softly.
“You’re the captain, remember? That’s your department.”

   A moment later a guttural
voice crackled over the ship’s intercom. “This is the port master at Salias,
Gamma-3-7. Welcome to our little slice of desert paradise. You’re cleared to
land on platform two.”

   “Roger,” Melissa confirmed.

   “Just follow the guide
beam, Gamma-3-7,” the port master returned a moment later. “You’ll be down in a
jiffy, darlin’.”

   “Darlin’?” Melissa asked to
Shawn.

   Shawn shrugged. “Give the
guy a break. He probably doesn’t get many callers, let alone female ones.”

   Dubiously, Melissa turned
back to her controls. “Understood, Port Master.”

   Twenty minutes later, the
sleek transport was secured on the shelf-like landing pad projecting from the
side of the towering administrative building—one of the only structures in the
city that appeared to be routinely maintained. As Shawn exited the ship behind
Melissa, he caught sight of the raging sandstorm far off to the west.

   “That doesn’t look very
inviting,” he said.

   “The SS team is equipped to
handle these kinds of contingencies,” Melissa replied, suddenly feeling a cool
draft, and wrapping her arms around herself tightly.

   Seeing her discomfort,
Shawn removed his well-worn flight jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Her
appreciative glance instantly warmed any lingering chill he might have felt.
Looking back to the west, he saw that the twin suns were beginning to rapidly
descend, and their glow from behind the sandstorm was decisively stunning. A
line from a poem Shawn had once read popped into his mind, but before he could
quote it, a panel in the side of the administrative building opened.

   At first, Shawn thought it
was their escape from the cold, but soon noticed a flotilla of maintenance
droids exit the bay. They immediately went to work, hooking up heavy power and
other such umbilical lines to the ship. A multi-jointed robot—looking eerily
like a three-foot long metallic spider—attached thick metal chains to the
transport’s five landing pads.

   “Seems that we’ll be
staying put for a while,” Melissa said, resigned.

   “This isn’t all that
uncommon. It just shows that the power to the landing platforms isn’t as
dependable as we’d like. Because the ship’s magnetic landing system is now
dependent on that power, those chains will help keep the ship down in high
winds.”

   Another burst of cool air,
twice as pronounced as the last, whipped Melissa’s auburn hair into her face.
“Let’s get inside. It’s getting too uncomfortable out here.”

   Placing her arm inside his,
Shawn walked her to a nearby control panel. Opening the adjacent door, the two
strode quickly inside.

   After checking in with the
dock master, Shawn and Melissa quickly made their way down to the city streets
below. Exiting the building, they were nearly run down by a taxi that
fortunately swerved at the last moment, honked its horn several times in
succession, and then sped down a distant dark thoroughfare.

   “Friendly place,” Shawn
muttered to himself.

   “So it would seem.”

   “Well,” he sighed, “with
the mining station currently out of reach, where do we go from here?”

   Melissa smiled, and
mirroring his earlier gesture, put her arm around his. “The only other place
where we can get any valuable information, my dear commander.”

   “And that would be where?”
he asked, looking at their surroundings suspiciously, then finally back to her.

   “Come on. I’ll lead the
way.”

   Unconvinced, Shawn
reluctantly acquiesced, but not before checking the charge on his pistol.

   Walking down the neon-lit
streets, Shawn had the distinct impression that the two of them were being
followed. He’d turned to look over his shoulder so many times in the last ten
minutes Melissa had taken notice, telling him he was beginning to act paranoid.
As they continued on another two blocks, he had to force himself to keep his
head forward. His eyes, on the other hand, continued to scan every dark alley,
person, and alien they passed.

   There seemed to be a motley
assortment of citizens in the city. Some of the cultures he recognized, a few
he didn’t. Those unknowns were the ones to receive the brunt of his scrutiny.
When they rounded a final corner, the two were immediately bathed in a soft
pink neon glow from an overhead sign. The text was alien—but Shawn understood
the single word.

   “A bar?”

   Melissa clutched his arm
tighter. “Like I said, the best place in town to get information.”

   “And here I thought you
were taking me to the library … or the local news agency.”

   She tugged him toward the
door. “The facts we’re looking for are going to be off the books.”

   He looked at the frosted
doors, trying to decipher what they’d find inside.

   “Don’t tell me you’re
afraid of going in there?” she asked jokingly.

   Shawn gave her a stern
look. “I’m just cautious. I like to know two ways of getting in and out of
every place.”

   Shaking her head, Melissa
opened the door. “You’ll just have to live with the unknown,” she said over her
shoulder, then stepped inside, the door swinging closed behind her.

   Letting out a held breath,
Shawn opened the door and walked in behind her.

   The inside of the
establishment was a brightly lit place, with triangular tables scattered across
a large clearing that was capped by an expansive bar at the far side of the
room. The bar was lit with bands of alternating lights, purple on the top,
blending into a pink near the floor. There were decanters of all shapes and
sizes, holding liquids in every color of the visible spectrum.  Behind the bar,
a four-armed, two-headed Thesian was serving drinks to a handful of patrons.
Melissa was there, seated on a barstool, talking to one of the two heads.

  
That was fast.
Stepping up beside her, Shawn took the only remaining stool.

   “What’ll you have,
stranger?” the left head asked.

   “Bourbon. Neat.”

   The leathery brown lips
peeled back in a sneer, showing a mouth full of fang teeth. “None of that here,
unless you know anybody willing to part with a case or two.”

   Shawn tried to hide his
repulsion of the face. “Sorry. No. Have anything close?”

   “Got just the thing,” the
alien said. Without turning his eyes from Shawn, two of the arms reached behind
the creature, grabbed a bottle and glass, and poured the drink. A third arm
dropped in a scoop of ice, while the fourth put in a straw, then placed it on
the bar top. “Give that a go.”

   Sipping, Shawn was
pleasantly surprised by the sweetness. It was almost like liquid brown sugar,
but with a cinnamon aftertaste. “That’ll do, barkeep. What is it?”

   “The name’s Grib,” the
Thesian said. “You’re human, right?”

   Shawn nodded, then looked
to Melissa. “Both of us.”

   “Well, if that’s so, then
you don’t want to know what you’re drinking.”

   Shawn cocked an eyebrow.
“Oh? Why’s that?”

   The fang-lined smile
reappeared. “Just trust me, Earthling.”

   Shawn nodded, then looked
back to Melissa. He held up his glass, which she clinked against her own. “To
living with the unknown?”

   She smiled in return.
“That’s the spirit.” She sipped at her glowing blue drink, then turned to face
the Thesian. “Maybe you can help us out.”

   “Oh?” the left head asked.
“How’s that?”

   “We’re looking for some
information.”

   This seemed to get the
attention of the right head as well. A mirror image of the left head, it
swiveled to face her while the left head and arms dried and stacked glasses.
“Information seems to be a growing commodity around here.”

   “Then business has been
good?” Melissa asked slyly.

   The right head wavered. “As
long as there’s profit in it.”

   She turned to Shawn, who
slipped a small stack of unified credits onto the top of the bar. Neither the
left or right heads paid it any mind, but in a flurry of movement from all four
arms, the stack seemed to vanish from sight. “It seems business is going to be
good today,” the left head said to the right one.

   “What can you tell us about
the mine complex to the west?”

   The face on the left head
looked worried, but the scowl from the right head caused it to focus back on
drying dishes. “The one out in the wastelands?”

   “Yeah,” she replied and
took another sip.

   “Krador’s mine,” the right
head said with an expression of disgust. “A collapsing heap of ruins. It’s a
wonder no one has gone out there and razed it.” The left head then piped in
without missing a beat. “Then again, there’s plenty of desert to go around.”

   “So,” Shawn asked, “nobody
goes out there?”

   The two heads snorted in
unison. “Who would want to?” the left asked. “All that sand and wind, and for
what? There’s nothing left there.” The right head nodded in agreement to the
left’s words. “Just a pile of rusting machines and worthless rocks, not to
mention a pretty deep hole in the ground.”

   “I take it then,” Melissa
said, “that you haven’t heard of anyone going out there recently? Maybe an
offworlder, perhaps?”

   The two heads looked to one
another, each one shaking. “No,” they both said. “We haven’t heard of anything
like that. Just that old coot and that babbling, blundering robot of his.”

   “The who?” Shawn asked.

   The right head turned to
him. “Just some crazy old alien who came in here about two months ago.”

   Melissa gave the bartender’s
heads a quizzical look. “I thought you said nobody goes out there.”

   As if cued by some unseen
force, the attention of right head of the Thesian was drawn to the other side
of the room. The left, however, smiled at the two travelers. “Sorry. As you
humans say, the meter has run out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start
the music. We have a dancer about to come on stage.” 

   “Stage?” Melissa asked,
then pivoted to face the back of the room. As she did, a six-foot-wide hatch
opened in the wall, and a narrow twenty-foot-long stage hovered out from within
it. When it stopped, a pair of double doors opened and smoke began billowing
out as synthesized orchestral music began to play. It could have been
Beethoven, or perhaps Mozart. Either way, it was a strange ensemble to say the
least.

   A moment later, a tall,
green-skinned Antosian woman appeared. She was wearing what looked like a
stylized military uniform, but the material looked more like glossy leather
than the typical synthetic fibers. The jacket was black, flaring out over her hips,
with chrome buttons down the center and over the pockets. Her slacks, or lack
thereof, were more like shorts, and she wore knee-high boots made of the same
high-gloss material. On her head, she wore a black wide-brimmed hat, and had a
dark orange armband around her right arm. She paraded out to the end of the
stage with measured, high steps. It reminded Melissa of historical videos of
parade formations of European dictatorships from Old Earth’s twentieth century,
although she was quite sure the cut of this woman’s jib was far from proper
military etiquette of the period. As soon as she reached the end of the stage,
the music abruptly changed to something more fitting the Antosian’s attire, and
the woman began to gyrate her hips.  

   Turning her head away from
the hedonistic display before her, Melissa noticed Shawn seemed to be
captivated by it. She coughed loudly, but it didn’t seem to alter the commander’s
gaze. “See anything you like?” she scowled, watching as Shawn’s head began to
bob in time with the beat of the music.

   He turned to her in
surprise. “What? Did you say something?”

   Her scowl intensified. “I
should punch you in the mouth.”

   “What?” 

   “If you’ll kindly keep your
focus on things of more importance than your libido.”

   “I’ll have you know that I
happen to like this song,” he said.

   Something flew onto the bar
between Shawn and Melissa. Curiously, Shawn picked it up, only to discover that
it was the dancer’s shiny shorts. Slowly, his body began to turn in the
direction of the stage while his eyes remained fixed on Melissa.

   “You do, and you die.”

   This stopped the pivoting
of the barstool, but didn’t return Shawn to his original position.

   Melissa leaned in closer,
grasping his upper leg tightly. “Slowly.” This got the desired reaction, and
Shawn turned his back to the stage. Before either of them could say anything
further on the subject, Grib the bartender returned, both of his heads swaying
to the music.