Sweet dreams of revenge
kept Sam company as he hunched over his spaceship’s steering wheel, gripping it
as if were Eric’s neck.
“I have to ask,” said
Angelo, homing in on Sam’s dark thoughts with the instinct of a police officer.
He could tell when someone was hell bent on committing a felony….and maybe even
worse. This one seemed to him of the latter kind.
“Why are you so keen to
meet Eric again?”
Sam lit a cigar and blew
a ream of smoke into the already stinky cockpit.
“I no keen to meet Eric
again. I keen to kill him.” Cigar smoke rose around him and he sank back into
the flames of an all-consuming memory.
That too had started
with a cigar, lit for him by a topless brunette, dangling her assets over his poker
table. If there had been a queen of breasts in the pack he would have bet on it
for sure, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted, so he scowled at his desire
and turned to the cards in hand. It was a good hand. In fact, it was a fucking
good hand. He looked up with what he thought was well concealed glee at his
opponent opposite him. At this stage of the evening there were only two people
left at the table…and a huge pile of money between them. Sam moved the cigar
from one side of his mouth to the other and threw in another twenty thousand
dollars.
“Ten and raise ya ten,
monkey man.”
A couple of desultory
onlookers hung about with bored expressions, but for the rest they had drifted
off to go and get a drink or fondle a waitress.
“I said, raise ya ten.” His
opponent didn’t look up from his cards. He sat and stirred his little pile of
counters with his forefinger. He could just about afford to raise the bet….but
he needed more. He thought for a while and then reached into his pocket and
pulled out a plum. He placed a blue saphite-coleaun gemstone the size of an elephant’s
testicle on the pile of money between them and looked up to see the reaction on
Sam’s face. The atmosphere round the table started to come alive, the
bystanders paying close attention now. Others in the room, alerted by the
tension, began to drift in, keeping one eye on the gemstone and the other on
Sam.
Sam was a young man, and
tough. He had stepped into his father’s shoes at the tender age of fifteen and
was kicking ass with them by the time he was seventeen. Now he was moving up in
the world. Booze, broads and Byzantine artefacts in the hallway. People were
beginning to fear and respect him. He had just bought his first cruiser
(smugglers called them ‘Lie-Low Lucys’) and his career in the ‘import-export’
business took off like a rocket…literally.
The stone in front of
him made him drool. He could already see it in an ivory-inlaid display-case in
his living room, right next to his authentic Roman machine-gun. It was one of
those defining moments in life which come to some people where they see
something they have to have and will risk anything to get it. He didn’t notice his
opponent’s smirk as he stared at the gem in anticipation. Sam’s eyes shot up
and latched onto the other man’s face, eager to hear the price he would put on
this bauble. The stranger pursed his lips and stretched out the moment like an
elastic band. When it got to the snapping point he said those three magic words.
“Your space ship.”
There was a collective
gasp from the crowd. They all knew what that spaceship was worth. Sam had
bragged about it often enough to them. He had sunk his entire fortune into that
ship. There was very little change left after buying it, even though it would double
its own value in six months. Right now however, it was all he had. Warning
bells went off in his mind but his desire for the gem was too strong. Anyway,
he knew he had the winning hand. What
could go wrong? His life had been one long success story. Surely this was just
the next chapter? Surely this was providence? Surely this was meant to be? His
intuition put up a valiant struggle against his optimism but in the end it
lost. Sure he had his doubts, but all it took were a couple of balls to balance
the scales. A faint heart never won a fair lady…and the ever-fair Lady Luck
needed to be wooed and won over tonight. Without knowing it he had bitten through
his cigar and was chewing the left over stump. Above his masticating jawbone
his brow furrowed with concentration. The topless waitress leant over towards
him and clicked the lighter as he stuck another cigar in his mouth.
“It’s a deal,” he said.
The flame froze on the
lighter and nowhere in the room could be heard a sound as time stood still.
Even the scavenging mouse under the table stilled his whiskers in respect of
this moment. Sam was committed. His body, acting of its own accord, slowly laid
his cards out on the table…face up.
“Straight flush. Jack
high.” Sam beamed now, sure of his victory.
The stranger took a
cursory glance at Sam’s cards and casually flipped his own down beside them. He
leaned back with a smile and watched the colour drain from Sam’s face.
“That’s not possible,” said
Sam. He looked again to make sure.
Some people would have
said he was young enough to start again, and indeed he was. He probably would
have recouped his losses within a few months…if he had been a reasonable man.
Business is business after all. But it wasn’t the loss of his beloved ship (and
all his money) that deranged his already lopsided and volatile mind. It was the
fact that he had been beaten. More than that, it was the fact that he had been
cheated. By a nobody.
He looked again. It
wasn’t possible. The cards he held had been the winning hand…and he knew this
because he had marked the pack with a special Intelli-oil that was undetectable
to the naked eye. The oil could ‘read’ the card and relay the info back to the ‘tak-tile’
imbedded in his flesh.
The snake-tattoo coiling
up his neck writhed in agony as it twisted this way and that, trying to escape
the situation, wanting to strike out but not being able to in case it bit its
owner. He looked up with vicious desperation in his bloodshot eyes.
“What’s yo’ name,
stranger?” He choked on every word as he forced it through his lips.
His opponent smirked casually.
“Eric,” he said.
The heads in the crowd
swivelled from one man to the other as each spoke his piece.
“You jus’ cheated me…and
I’m going to kill you for it,” he said, every word dripping blood.
“Prove it...and good
luck”
But Sam knew the game
was lost. He couldn’t expose Eric as a cheat without exposing himself, and if
he refused to pay in front of all these witnesses, many of them his friends and
business acquaintances, some of whom it must be said were relishing the moment,
he would get blacklisted throughout the galaxy. No one would do business with
him again. No loans, no contracts, no jobs. His career was ruined if he didn’t
pay. But worse than that, he had lost face, and everyone knew his face. Now it
had ‘LOSER’ written all over it.
“I don’t want the ship
per se. Just give me what it’s worth. And I know what it’s worth so don’t try
and cheat me,” Eric smirked again, emphasising the word ‘cheat’.
Sam’s head sank and the
whole room watched as he digitally transferred the money on his ‘watch-com’,
his shaking fingers hardly able to tap the right keys. Underneath the table the
little mouse rubbed its hands together and sniffed the air in trepidation.
Then Eric disappeared.
Just like that. He simply walked off the stage.
By the time Sam looked
up he was nowhere to be seen.
Sam never recovered from
his humiliation. None of his friends or acquaintances ever saw him again. His
reputation in shreds, he fled to the farthest, darkest places of the universe
and slunk around in the back alleys, licking his wounds and nurturing his
dreams of revenge.
After
many months of drunken delirium he came upon a deserted scrap yard in space and
began to build himself the perfect killing machine. Most days, when he could
afford the fuel, he and Tartarus would cruise the space lanes in search of some
sign of Eric, listening in to the chatter on various radio frequencies in the
hope someone would mention his name. He went to every card game he heard about,
never gambling, just watching in case Eric should be there. But he never was.
He grew older and meaner on his meagre diet of unrequited hatred, but in the
end it paid off. Five years later he finally found his man (who, by the way,
was none the richer for stealing all his money) by hacking into a mining
company’s computer manifest. Eric had been doing work for them, transporting
pig-iron from the Belt to Earth. It had to be the same man, his racing heart
told him so. The manifest gave him Eric’s times and routes and dates. The rest
was easy.
He
had lain in wait for him in the Cyrius Gamma quadrant of the belt, but Eric
must’ve sensed something was up because when he was still half a million miles
away he changed course for G.O.D. 5. and began to burn high G’s. Sam caught up
with him just as General Outer Defence Station 5 came into view. Both of them
were going so fast that the Federation Fleet Defence systems had no time to
react before both ships had flown by. Sam let fly another couple of missiles as
they circled the station but Eric was already disappearing down the wormhole.
He didn’t follow him
because he didn’t know if anyone could survive in there. Now apparently it was as
popular as Disney-world and these crazy people were treating it like a roller
coaster ride. He looked around at the strange miss-match of passengers. The
Platinum tart sitting on the big, black, blind Rasta’s lap was something out of
a movie, not to mention the giant lizard.
There had just been room
enough for all of them with Noot squashed into the baggage bay and Belle sitting
on Righteous’ lap. Angelo watched them and it made him long so much for Rose
that he had to look away. It was hard to be happy for them…though God knows
they both deserved a little love in their lives. He liked Belle and he thought
she would be very good for Righteous. And Righteous seemed to be warming to her
as every now and again he would take her hand and hold it for a while.
From sheer habit Sam
tuned into the nearest police frequency to catch up on the news.
“…the two women are
thought to be part of a team who hijacked their prison ship a few weeks ago and
made their escape to the free zone. Their names are Marianne Sweet and Dulcinea
Flurry…Dutch for short. They could not be openly pursued but undercover agents
have been sent in to watch them. Dutch Flurry is wanted for murder and her
friend Marianne Sweet has an illegal zone-implant.”
“We’ve changed history,”
said Angelo.
“No,” answered
Righteous. “It’s just another story. One in which you never meet them and they
escape and live happily ever after.”
“Well that’s nice. But
does that mean they are no longer where we left them. Or maybe they’re dead?”
“That’s what we’ll have
to find out.”
“But if there’s two each
of them in the universe….are there two each of us too?”
“Depends on what you
believe. There could be millions of you.”
“God help us. But what
about Rose?” Angelo had a sudden panic. “That means she’s still here as
well…and we won’t be able to pick her up.”
“You going to give
yourself a headache man. This one is not your story, though I can appreciate
your delight at possibly having two Rose’s. We going back to our story now…once
we are through the Wormhole.”
Thinking about what he
had just said turned Righteous’ insides to mush. He knew what was going to
happen to him once they went through the Wormhole. He was going to lose all his
wits again. That planet had an awful effect on him. It made him something he
wasn’t; it made him angry. Well, maybe he had been angry all along, but he
didn’t know how to guard against it when he was there. It crept into him like a
corruption. And the worst of it was that when he was angry he couldn’t think.
Everything he knew went down the drain; all his wisdom. He didn’t like being
the one who didn’t know. That was his strength. What else did he have? He
couldn’t see. His wisdom was his identity. Without it he was useless. Without
it he didn’t know how to believe in himself.
“Penny for your
thoughts,” said Belle, sensing that he was fixating again. “Ya gotta loosen up
big fella. How scary can a wormhole be? And anyway, don’t you worry, I’m gonna
look after you, see?”
Righteous smiled. How
could one worry in the face of that? He relaxed back into his chair and tried
to enjoy the ride.
