The Clarity of Cold Steel

I’M IN THE HOLD of the derelict freighter, the Nostromo, on the outskirts of the Boneyard. Waiting in the darkness. Water dripping off somewhere. Tink. Tink. Tink. I’ve some questions need answering. Figured on a remote location for our next session. Figured that with Draegar knowing my face and game, and with me having a price tag on my head, showing up at the Iphigenia might take more of a toll on my life expectancy than even my fondness for cigs. For the thousandth time, I think maybe I should just walk away from this horrorshow of a case, but then, I ain’t exactly doing this for the steel.

Gortham didn’t topple into the drink, and it wasn’t some surgical error. That’s clear to me now. If he had, why all this fuss? No one’d give a hang about some missing sharecropper with swimming deficiencies. Mac Heath could have just copped to the act were it a surgical accident. Shit like that happens. But no, that ain’t her style. Giving in. But there was something… She seemed out of her element somehow. Like maybe something was stuck in her craw. She could have just told me straight out had it been something illegal. Ain’t like the law’d be on my side, me being Hindu and all, especially with Draegar pulling strings. No. Something untoward happened to the lad, and not only what he was aiming on doing to himself. So, what was it?

Well, whatever it was, Mac Heath keeps the coppers greased for just such occasions, and she doesn’t seem reticent to use them. Or maybe it’s the other way around. That’s more likely, in fact, seeing as the Gremlin’s out of order. And Draegar even saw fit to travel out of his jurisdiction on my behalf, and that ain’t nothing. And so I wait in darkness, only the queue of circular porthole beams lighting my life. Lucky me. Rats and hyraxes chitter and squeak invisible in the dark, their tiny nails clicking across the floor. Stacks of moldering crate lie scattered across the hold, some intact, some busted open shells, all shucked clean of any contents long, long ago.

My visitors should be arriving soon.

I await with bated breath.

Outside the port hole, across the way, waves thunder and a duo of mast-rats clamber down from their perch, quick as monkeys, chittering to one another in some foreign tongue. I’m practicing tying figure eights with an arm span’s bite of rope, “Grab a long loop, hang it, wrap it around…” when a hatch opens somewhere above. I pause, undo the foiled genesis of my work, smooth it out, grip it tight. One end disappears off into the hold. The other end snakes its way up and out a porthole not far.

Boots clomp above on the wooden deck. Across. Taking their damn time. Another door opens. Then a hatch. Feet descend step by step down, down, down, to my level, deep within the bowels of this crusted leviathan. Heavy treads. And more than just two. I grip the rope tight in my sweaty palms. Swallow. Show’s on. Time to make papa proud.

A shadow emerges from around a stairwell, and I see gapped teeth grinning mad from ear to ear, eyes calibrated for murder. Draegar. More shadows join him, blotting out the deeper darkness. Copper stars glint dully, the only collective feature of his goons visible. A steamjack hisses like a burnt serpent.

“You’re on my turf again, boyo,” is all Draegar says as he oozes forward slick as oil. Blue lightning crackles from the end of that truncheon, azure sparks flaring, lighting up his mob as they descend upon me. “Won’t be no coddling this time.”

“I’m unarmed,” I lie, raising my hands, but keeping the rope draped over my shoulder.

“Stupid wog.” Draegar grins, and I imagine I can smell his rotten-cheese breath emanate from across the hold.

I stand. “What happened to the boy?”

Draegar stalks through the maze of shattered crate. Ignores me. His men like wraiths follow silently, spreading out. Steel glints in their hands.

“He was just a boy,” I call out. But they ain’t listening.

Draegar’s teeth are a sickly green in the crackling light.

“What happened to him?” I demand, standing strong. For the moment.

“Hush now, love.” Blue lightning arcs descend.

I can feel the heat of the sparks upon me when I tear on the rope.

Draegar’s eyes squeeze in suspicion then go wide as an explosion rocks the ship. From the bow. Two black-powder hay makers I took the liberty of installing in the forward bilge. Big bombs, but not huge bombs. Just big enough. The two explosions detonate simultaneously and rock the world like a clean right to the jaw. I catch myself on a shifting crate, nearly lose a finger.

Draegar’s men are rocked off their fossils amidst a tumbling scrum and start rolling down toward the bow as the Nostromo lurches toward vertical. Crates crack and slide and cascade, shattering and stampeding in an avalanche of crush and corner. Men cry out in terror. The darkness of the hold morphs to red and orange as fire races up.

What am I doing? Besides pissing my pants? I’m scrambling like a rappeler in reverse up the other end of the rope, toward one of the portholes, knifing left and right, dodging detritus and cargo, latching onto the edge of the porthole and dangling as gravity goes sour.

Draegar’s an arm’s length below, dangling from my lifeline, cursing me every which way but Sunday.

I ignore. I kick. I climb.

So does he.

Below, I can feel him struggling as I pull up, lodge my head through the porthole, shunt my way up, squeezing for freedom through like some rat from its dingy warren, kicking and scraping and pawing and clawing.

In the hold, men scream as fire and black water extinguish their souls.

Halfway out the porthole, what was up suddenly turns sideways as something within the Nostromo gives and she drops. I squirm to adjust, bracing myself for the cyclopean impact, nearly falling free but somehow not as the ship crashes, sending a tidal wave into open ocean

She then begins to sink with authority.

Inside, Draegar barks a litany of racial hatred as he half emerges from the porthole. I pull my knife and slash across his face then cut the rope and stab. The litany, along with the sack of shit spouting it, drops. The rope clutched between my teeth, I watch as fire and brine consume him in boiling terror.

A moment is all, then it’s time to go. Clutching onto the edge of the porthole, as the ship disappears below me piecemeal, white water rushing up, I jump free, reaching out, holding onto the end of my lifeline. I break the surface of the black, shattering it to white as I’m engulfed in the stunning brine, sinking, freezing, hearing the Nostromo’s hull creak and moan like some dying whale as it gives in to the pressures of the deep.

I hold onto the rope, every nightmare I’ve ever had playing back through my mind as fast as nitro-quicksilver. The rope’s taut as I kick and flail and heave myself hand over hand up, up, up, finally breaking the surface. Gasping. Freezing. Someone’s yelling off behind me, begging for help, but I barely hear him. And if I could?

Then I’m pulling hand over hand on the rope, drawing myself toward the whaleboat I moored off the starboard side of the lost Nostromo.

White smoke like a mist slides in banks of choking misery, concealing the crime.

Sopping wet, huffing and puffing like some asthmatic steam engine, I grip the edge of the boat and pull, casting a leg up, wrestling myself in a most inglorious manner over the side. I collapse across a bench. The three masts of the nearest ship shiver and shimmy like a mirage, the only things I can see above the heavy smoke.

Beneath, the Nostromo’s still somehow burning, a great amber jewel shimmering and wobbling orange as its million facets ripple and fade and reconstitute themselves in an endless chromatic dance.

I pull my arm out of my jacket, squirm out of the rest of it, collapse again, spent.

Someone’s still screaming in the endless white. I fetch my Webley-Colt from under one of the seats, unwrap it. The someone yelling is splashing, carrying on. Nearby. Flotsam and jetsam bob at the surface, burning chunks of hull and cargo suffused in an oil slick that spreads out all thin and wavy-rainbow. I bend my back to the oars and pull, navigating my way through the mess till I hear something slap against the bow. A dark hand reaches up and grabs onto the side, followed by a face.

“My man,” Brooklyn gasps as his face peeps over the gunwale.

“You’re going about this all wrong,” I say as my good pal Brooklyn hauls himself up. “Grab some air.”

Eyes wide, halfway on board, he freezes. And with good reason. My Webley-Colt’s trained on him keen as a circus dog. He swallows, stares up the length of my gun barrel, gives a little smile, knows what’s coming. “Your duds are ruined.”

“New style,” I say, between chattering teeth, “nihilistic digs.” My gun wavers, but only from the cold. “What was your score for selling me out?”

“Wasn’t like that.”

I raise an eyebrow.

He winces a mite, finally fesses all crestfallen, “Twenty.”

“Kali’s tits…” I bemoan, disgusted. “The children of today. No insight. No etiquette. No endgame.” I cock the hammer back on my gun. “Take notes.”

He still hasn’t moved a muscle except for the violent shiver wracking him hard.

His undivided attention is mine.

“Brick by brick you gotta build your word on the street. For the long haul. People have to know it’s solid.” I lean forward, gun leading, emphasizing my every point. “Unbreakable. And you’ve got to keep it that way through thick and through thin. Then, when the big fish come calling, begging, knowing you’re the only one on the street solid enough for his job, the only one he can trust, and he starts forking it over hand over fist, then you sell out. You sell out once, and you sell out hard. Benedict the shit out of him.” I spit over the side. “Then you retire and you relocate. Growing a mustache ain’t a bad idea, either. You dig?”

Brooklyn doesn’t move, just stares, waiting. He doesn’t beg.

I would in his place. “I said, ’you dig?’”

Brooklyn hazards a twitch of a nod.

“We square?” I ask, leaning forward, squinting, dead serious.

“No way, my man,” he twitches his head a mite, “I owe you, big time.”

“Well alright then, you have my permission to come aboard.”