(no subject)
Archer kept a wary eye out as the steel door to the tavern slid open. He could taste something different in the air today, as if there was something out of place that broke the every day peace and quiet he’d come to depend on about Antarctica. He stepped inside and let the door whoosh shut behind him before scanning the place.
When his eyes landed on the table in the far corner, he could feel the color drain from his face. Devlan! Here? It felt impossible, but his eyes wouldn’t let him deny the truth. There sat the old man, surrounded by a cloud of his own smoke. It seemed he’d already ordered Nick’s usual bottle of whiskey, and had an empty glass waiting for him across the table. The whole place seemed to go quiet for a moment, while the two men stared each other down. The outlaw heaved a sigh, and grudgingly approached the table to slump down into his seat.
“Ain’t you gonna say ‘hi’ to me, kid? After eight months, I thought you’d be a little happier to see me,” Devlan grunted at him.
“I ain’t a kid no more, old man,” Archer shot back. “And you know that I know you, and I know you don’t never drop in on me just to catch up over a cup of coffee.” The young man poured himself a glass, and downed it immediately. Devlan was his oldest acquaintance in the world, but that didn’t mean he was his favorite. His thick head of hair was already drowning in grays, and he had it perfectly combed back. His steel-blue eyes felt like they were piercing right through him, and for a moment, he forgot which one of them was made of glass. The old man’s bushy mustache was neatly waxed and upturned at the ends, giving him the appearance of a constant Cheshire cat smile, in spite of the apparent shiner he wore on his left cheek.
“Nicky, buddy, come on! How can you say that after all these years? You know you’re the best man I got; I could spare a hundred of anybody else before I could give up one of you. Don’t forget who’s been taking care of you ever since you left the Marines.”
“Yeah, yeah, alright! Whatever, so I’m your lucky rabbit’s foot. So you trying to tell me you’re here on pleasure instead of business?”
The old man’s smile widened. “My business is my pleasure. But, yeah, I got work for you to do.” He reached down into the briefcase at his side, and brought out a small digital notepad, which he then slid across the table.
Nick slid it right back. “Keep it. I’m retired.”
“Not anymore, you ain’t,” he raised his voice to a growl. “Look,” he said, calming himself and taking another drag of his cigarette, “what I got to say concerns you too, so you may as well hear me out, alright?”
Archer thought, for a moment, of reaching for his gun. Instead, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. Then he picked up the notepad, and turned it on.
“Does that tattoo look familiar?”
He found himself staring at an image of a man lying on the ground, double his weight in lead, with a sleeve rolled up. Wrapped around his forearm, was the image of a snake. “This is the trademark insignia of the Bounty Officers’ Association. What the hell happened?”
“That guy, two other men with the same ink job, and about twenty other clowns tried to kill me in my own home earlier this week.”
Archer looked at him in disbelief. “Twenty three guys from BOA raided your castle in Wales?”
“No, three, I said. And not just grunts either. We identified them - click through the next couple pages on that thing - and these guys are straight from the top. The other twenty, they was there under a different name.”
The next few images were mug shots and information on three of BOA’s seven leading officers. The page after, brought up a corporate logo. “Aurora Incorporated?”
“That’s where we traced them to, after I killed them all.”
“No prisoners, eh, old man?”
“Only one person’s allowed to shoot at me in my own home, Nick.”
Nikolaus scoffed. “So let me guess. You want me to find out who from Aurora wants you taken out, and why? You could’ve gotten Jimmy to do that.”
“No, I’ve actually already gotten that taken care of. But, there’s a lot more to this than that, Nicky-boy.” His tone turned serious. “I checked out this company, and they’re the ones who’ve been buying the majority of our shares for the past several months, under the names of various other corporations they own. Further, Jim Tuna’s three weeks dead.”
“Whoa, what?” James Tunitsky was second in his trade only to Nikolaus.
“You heard me. And he’s not the first, either. I gotta be frank with ya, kid, most of our guys are dead, or MIA,” said Devlan as he put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I ain’t never been so sure of nothin’ as I am that Aurora’s behind it all.”
Archer felt his blood being to boil as he came to realize what that meant. “So why did you come here? You just led them right to me! I was perfectly safe until you showed up!”
“No, you weren’t. Click to the next page, Nick. They were carrying a copy of that picture.”
Nikolaus clicked to the next page…and completely froze over, suddenly too scared to move. “This ain’t right…this is me. Me, here.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You know what Aurora does, Nicky-boy? Weapons development and distribution. Are you seeing the conflict of interest yet? Two-and-two, kid, put em’ together! They start getting government funding, our guys start disappearing and dying in unfortunate accidents. Their business is our business, but they’re better at it, and they don’t want the Exterior Arms Exchange around it no more!”
“But why come after me, Devlan? I ain’t hurting nobody! I been stuck here at the bottom of the world for months!”
“I don’t know, buddy, I don’t know. They think we know something we don’t. We play our cards right, and that could work to our advantage. Listen, I’ve got an insider. An executive high up in Aurora who don’t approve of their methods as of late. He’s agreed to meet with me at a privately disclosed location tomorrow. He sent me a little care package with some inside-information, to let me know I could trust him.”
“And you buy that? How old are you getting?”
“We don’t have any choice. Do you wanna get out of this alive, or not?”
Nick wasn’t sure if he cared one way or another, but he found himself nodding. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Alright. Apparently, there’s some big, top-secret project Aurora’s working on out in the exterior systems. A super weapon not even the Mars Council would like to see around. If we get our hands on it, or even some proof it’s out there, we got em’ by the balls; Trouble is, we don’t know where exactly the damn thing is being built. But there’s a key component they just finished producing right here on Earth. Come Friday, they’ll be loading it up on a passenger cruiser, that’s gonna leave from the Hawaiian Islands, and head for Mars. From Mars, it’s going straight to the work site. While it’s on a public vessel, is going to be your chance to get to it, and plant a transmitter, so we can track where it goes.”
Nick chuckled to himself. “This ain’t the Hawaiian Islands old man, how do I get onboard that cruiser?”
Devlan didn’t seem to find it funny. “You’ll intercept it with your own ship, wise-ass. I guess you don’t so much read the headlines no more, but the Ariella’s missing from the impound. The MCFBI doesn’t know where the hell it is. But I do.”
Nick wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about having his old ship back. “Am I supposed to thank you?” he said.
“Save it for when we get outta this thing in one piece, kid,” he said, standing up and starting to put on his coat. “The transmitter, and everything else you need is waiting for you in the Ariella. Information and junk is all in the ship’s computer. So, go get em’, tiger. Get in before they activate the radar, get out before they make the jump to antispace. I’ll see you in Lunar City.”