CHAPTER ONE
CUSTOMS AND TAXES
I had fallen behind with my repayments so the bank dispatched bounty hunters to every corner of the galaxy to hunt me down and harvest my internal organs. But this was nothing new to me; this was just the way life was for those of us with a crippling student debt.
Bounty hunters weren’t as pitiless as you might assume. Even when they did find you most of them could be persuaded to look the other way for a few months in exchange for a modest bribe. They made more money this way than they did on the bounties from the banks. Sadly I was stony broke. So if I was going to have any more quality time with my pancreas, I needed a job immediately.
Once again my desperation compelled me back to Tellerone. It was curious how I kept finding my way back to this planet with its reputation as a place that was so hard to find, and which most entities with a scrap of common sense went out of their way to avoid. For novice and seasoned voyagers alike, the journey to Tellerone could and frequently did prove calamitous. Old spacers were fond of observing that there were enough dead bodies circling or crashed into the black planet to make a whole new moon if you smushed all the bones together.
Locating Tellerone was a particular challenge because it did not orbit a star – at least not anymore. Long ago a gravitation mishap banished it from the solar system of its birth to interstellar space. Aeons later this orphan world was discovered by freelance terraformers who began the process of transforming it into the semi-habitable armpit it is today. Over five-hundred years it had changed hands dozens of times, usually in a game of chance, nearly always ending in bloody murder.
The only reason I had braved the expedition this time was because of this job. They were looking for a translator. I prided myself on being one of the few creatures in the galaxy able to communicate most of the time without having to resort to one of those frightful Speeki-fones®. The woeful software on those things was responsible for more than its share of wars, genocides and takeaway orders ending up at the wrong address.
My star hopper was almost out of fuel when I glimpsed a dim flash in my peripheral vision. If my eyes had been directed fractionally to the right of where they had been and if I had not known precisely what to look for, I might have missed this transitory glimmer entirely and drifted on to become yet another addition to Tellerone’s boneyard. It was one of the navigation beacons that orbited the planet. Tellerone itself was next to impossible to see. The lack of light out here along with the black, radiation scorched rock that comprised the whole surface of the planet made it indistinguishable from the inky space around it.
The beacons were such a poor aid to navigation especially for a meagrely equipped vessel such as mine that they might as well not have been there. They were very old and their power plants were failing. Out of the thousand or so that had been deployed originally less than a quarter were still functional. ‘Functional’ in this context meant that you could just about see the beacons if you turned off all your own lights and squinted really hard.
I anchored my navigation beams onto the beacon’s feeble blip and pulled in to park. Then I powered down and waited in the gloom for the arrival of the customs men.
This was going to be a tricky. I had no money for bribes. But I would not have risked coming here in the first place if hadn’t possessed one key advantage. I had a sponsor, someone local of significant influence for whom I had worked on an itinerant basis during my previous trips to Tellerone. You will have heard of him. His name is Faldon Tickbee.
You will have invoked his name to terrify your offspring into best behaviour while assuring yourself that he can’t possibly be real. I’m sorry, but he is; and the stories you tell your children if anything, are tame compared to the truth. I could tell you some true stories – but I won’t; the screaming night terrors that haunt me are not things I would wish on anyone else.
He was not someone to whom it was wise to become beholden. However, my fortunes were at such an ebb and I was willing to risk being in his debt. I had an interview to get to.
There was no guarantee that my gamble would even pay off. My loaded dice could just as easily roll off the table. It might simply not be believed that the likes of me could be an associate of Mr Tickbee. I’ve never had any notoriety; I’m not a gangster, a killer or a criminal. I do have bounty hunters after me as I’ve already mentioned, but they work for the bank, not the law. Physically I’m quite unprepossessing, callow and a bit on the chubby side. Although I have started doing daily planks and I can already feel the difference in my core strength.
“Power down and prepare to be boarded,” a gruff voice crackled over the coms, rather redundantly as I had already switched off everything except for life support and emergency lighting. I was as prepared as I could be.
My tiny craft shuddered when the larger vessel clamped onto it and docked. The grind of metal reverberated through the bulkheads as the hatches opened and closed one by one, signalling the approach of the customs men. I heard the clunk of their heavy boots outside the flight deck. I stood with my hands in plain sight to show that I was unarmed, and clasped together to hide the fact that they were shaking.
“Good evening,” I said, taking care not to smile. Customs officers were not psychologically equipped to deal with anything that even hinted at good humour.
“It’s morning,” growled the first one to waddle through the hatch, “can’t you tell the difference?”
“I’m sorry,” I said without really knowing what I was apologising for. The officer scowled.
“What are you hauling?” the second officer demanded to know.
“Just me,” I said.
“What you after?” the first one glared with his purple eyes.
“A job,” I told them.
“As what?” the second officer sniffed.
I took a deep breath without being too obvious about it: “As a specialist in xeno-linguistics.”
Their faces soured with contempt and curdled the air. Uttering words of more than two syllables would flip their brute switches; I had known that. I saw the first one drop his claw to his belt, ready to draw his peace hammer while the second one stood poised with a pair of rubber gloves. I spoke quickly.
“Would you like to see my documents?”
“Yeah,” said the first officer after a worrying pause. “Might as well.”
He shambled over to the console towards which I had just gestured, where my Burgensteen Gimmel was sitting ready. I had already snoozed the passcodes to permit access to all my private documents.
The officer flipped past my travel permits and work visas which were all up to date. He looked unimpressed.
“So, it’s Mr Francis N Darren, is it?” he said without looking up.
“Yes,” I replied.
“What’s the ‘N’ stand for?” he squinted.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Francis Nothing Darren?” he snorted.
He sneered through my work history and medical records. Then his sneer disappeared.
His species was not known for its colour shifting abilities. Yet I watched the colour literally drain from his obsidian fish scales as he turned ash white.
The second officer baffled to observe his colleague so perturbed, took the Gimmel to see for himself the document on the screen. Then he too became rooted to the spot as if poleaxed. They had found my letter of reference from Mr Tickbee.
“Is everything all right officers?” I asked.
Medusa herself could not have been prouder of the looks of stone terror on their faces. The first officer was struck dumb and just stared at me wide-eyed, clammy and pale. His colleague cleared his throat and only just squeaked out the words, “mind how you go…” remembering to add the word “sir,” before handing my Gimmel back to me and dragging his semi-catatonic associate away with him back to their vessel.
Such was the power of Mr Tickbee’s name. It could open doors and call down ruin with equal ease. Word would reach him that I had used this lifeline, and I knew he would be placing a mark against my name. There was a slim chance I might hear no more about this. Mr Tickbee collected favours the way magpies were meant to collect shiny things in the myths of old Earth. But then again Mr Tickbee was a man of whims and you could never be sure what to expect or when to expect it. I had mortgaged my soul for the hope of a crumb of bread. This was a powerful motivation for me to nail this interview.
‘Alien’ is a term that is frowned upon in polite conversation these days. Personally I feel it is entirely subjective. As someone with no home, no job and no money, I am alien no matter where I land.
I don’t think there has been a polite conversation in the whole history of Tellerone, and certainly there were much worse words than ‘alien’ being thrown at me over the chatter from the flight tower as I sputtered in for my final approach. Even the fumes in my fuel cells were exhausted by now, and the final ten metres of my descent into the docking chamber was less of a touchdown and more of a plummet. I survived, but my poor star hopper would never fly again.
Tellerone had no atmosphere and no magnetic field to speak of. Its surface was blasted by every kind of cosmic radiation that ripped through the interstellar void. Therefore all life that had settled on Tellerone was by necessity subterranean.
The cheapest mode of transport from the dead surface down to the centres of settlement a hundred kilometres deep into the rock was via a network of vertical track high speed elevator trains. This technology was installed by the original terraformers and then later expanded upon by their successors. Linked together in trains of half a dozen or so, each car was as big as an office building, and yet there was never enough leg room. I don’t know how tall those original terrformers were, but I am about 1.7 metres and I ended up with my knees crunched up under my chin – and that was even before the passenger in the couch in front had pushed his recliner switch.
On the way down to save power we were mostly at the mercy of gravity, albeit with a rudimentary flywheel system engaged to control the stomach churning acceleration at the top and the spine jarring braking at the bottom. These brakes like everything else on the train and much of the technology throughout Tellerone were very old and maintained to a minimal standard of safety. Disasters were commonplace. But those wretched souls who had made it this far rarely had anything left to lose. Being pancaked into the terminal on board a freefalling train was regarded as an acceptable risk – and for some as a merciful release.
The terminals at the bottom had copious supplies of buckets for the use of disembarking passengers. I had no need of them for once as it turned out. I had hardly eaten for the best part of a week so there was nothing in my stomach to be heaved up.
I had arrived in Tellerstad, regarded by many as the capital city of the Tellerone settlements. It was the first and largest of the caves excavated by the original terraformers, the primary hub from which all the other cave settlements branched out. Tellerstad was not a typical metropolis: it had no points of historic interest and no civic amenities or centres of government. It had the same junk you would find anywhere else on Tellerone except more of it: despair, decay, predators and prey.
My next obstacle confronted me within minutes of leaving the terminal. The Taxmen of Tellerone were gangsters who doubled as law enforcement. They were the only groups strong enough and organised enough to take on such a job in this grim and lawless place. But their services came at a price. ‘Protection’ was a euphemism that had not changed in meaning in all the centuries since it was coined.
The Taxmen of Tellerstad were under the patronage of Mr Tickbee. But I was reluctant to resort to my letter again if I could avoid it. Each time I used it would mean another favour I would owe him.
Sometimes if you didn’t make eye contact, you could slip right past the Taxmen. I bowed my head low, but it wasn’t long before I felt the chill of a vast shadow fall across my back. I shuddered but kept moving until a heavy hand pressed down on my shoulder and made my stomach clench.
I craned my neck to behold a vaguely humanoid hulk. He looked me up and down with eyes glowing red with the reflected light from the flashing sign of a nearby strip club.
Then without a word, this giant removed his hand from my shoulder, took a step back and redirected his glare to another victim. I remained still, unsure of what to do, thinking that perhaps this man meant to return to me shortly. But he just moved farther and farther away, continuing to shake down new arrivals for money and beating those who could not pay. He appeared to have forgotten me entirely. I shuffled on my way, cautiously at first until I realised that the brute was making no effort to follow me.
I could scarcely believe my luck and tried my best not to question it for fear of jinxing it. I would say that perhaps my reputation had preceded me – except I didn’t have one. Perhaps Mr Tickbee who undoubtedly knew by now that I was here, had decreed that I was not to be interfered with. Whatever the truth of it, I quickened my pace and hoped that the hammering in my chest was not galloping its way to a cardiac seizure… at least not until after my interview.
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