Chapter Text
It wasn’t often that you encountered hitchhikers out here, on the fringes of settled space. When Andrew saw the hitcher’s beacon appear on the Mustang’s navigation screen, he’d assumed it was just the system playing up again. It was only when he docked at the service station and was greeted by a man floating towards him that he realised the signal had been genuine.
“Thank god you’re here,” the hitcher said, catching hold of one of the Mustang’s tail fins so he could bring himself to a halt. “Any chance I could catch a ride?”
“Where’re you heading?” Andrew said.
“Anywhere but here.”
“I’m going to Catalina, is that okay?”
“I’ve been stuck here for three days. You know what it’s like being stuck on an unmanned service station with no gravity for three days? There ain’t nothing to eat but fauxtato chips outta the vending machines, and as for the toilets –” The hitcher shuddered.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Andrew said.
The hitcher grinned at him, pushing off from the tail fin towards him.
“You’re a gentleman, Mister – uh –“
“Call me Andrew,” Andrew said, holding out his hand.
“Eddie,” the hitcher said, shaking his hand enthusiastically as he drifted by, eventually colliding gently with the nearest wall. “God dammit. I hate zero gravity,” he muttered to himself.
“Grab the refuelling lines while you’re over there, would you?” Andrew called.
“Sure.”
Andrew used his hands to manoeuvre himself up the Mustang’s side and over its back, opening up a hatch near the tail end to expose a series of refuelling hubs. He looked over at Eddie to see how he was getting along with wrangling the various supply hoses, taking the opportunity to perform a quick visual assessment.
He had the lanky build and pale skin of someone who’d grown up somewhere far from a star and with sub-Earth gravity, and between that and the accent Andrew guessed Old Colonies. His clothing was no indicator as to his origins, being a strange thrift-store jumble of items from different worlds and cultures, most of him hidden under dust-farmer’s robes that billowed around him whenever he moved. Something about his body language suggested ex-military; the weird attire and wild curly hair put an emphasis on the ex. Probably a drifter, Andrew decided, and probably harmless, but he’d be careful just in case.
“So, what brings you out here?” Andrew asked, as Eddie came back and passed over the first of the bundle of hoses. “Not many people come by these routes except truckers and smugglers.”
“And which are you?”
“Neither. Bounty hunter.”
“That explains the fancy ride,” Eddie said, giving the Mustang an appreciative look. “What make is she?”
“She’s a mutt,” Andrew said. “Started off as a second-hand RV, but between the modifications and the replacements there’s not much of the original still left. The engines and the navigation hardware are army surplus, the steering’s from a middleweight racer, and most of the rest’s been pieced together from custom-made components and scrap.” He’d originally called her the Mustang because she was about as easy to handle and comfortable to ride as a wild horse. However, years of constant refinement – plus the gradual improvement of his own piloting and engineering skills – had made her speedy, smooth-flying and, with her gleaming silver finish and gaudily painted nose and fins, really rather handsome.
Although she was large enough for Andrew to comfortably live inside, with space for storage and for accommodating guests on the rare occasions that he had them, she was a tiny little thing compared to the spacefreighters that service stations like this were designed for. The process of filling the fuel tanks and emptying out the garbage was done within a couple of minutes.
“Go on in,” Andrew said to Eddie, gesturing towards the open doorway on the underside of the Mustang’s nose. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Andrew tidied away the refuelling lines, paid the charge, and returned to the Mustang. When he boarded, the first thing he saw was Eddie splayed flat against the ceiling of the entry-way, a terrified expression on his face.
“I think I set off your security system,” he said, sounding somewhat strained.
“Skipper!” Gunny barked through the Mustang’s speakers. “Caught this hobo tryin’ to sneak in while your back was turned, neutralised him for ya.”
Andrew sighed. “Gunny, I invited him in. Let him go.”
“Aye, Skipper.” Eddie dropped abruptly to the floor as the distribution of the Mustang’s artificial gravity returned to normal.
“I’m sorry about that,” Andrew said, offering him a hand up. “The ship’s AI is a bit temperamental.”
“You’re telling me,” Eddie said. “Does he greet all of your guests like that?”
“Not always. Sometimes he tries to electrocute them instead.”
Andrew hadn’t been a very experienced pilot when he’d first bought the Mustang, so he’d purchased a model with a GUNNAI installed – a Graphical User Networking and Navigation Artificial Intelligence. While the craft could be controlled entirely using the manual steering and the touchscreen information displays, the computer also had a personality and the ability to think independently, so Andrew could give it orders and let it run the ship as if he had an invisible co-pilot doing most of the work. The system worked pretty well for most routine operations. However, maybe there were some bugs in the software, or perhaps the mechanism by which the AI was meant to develop a persona that would complement your own had been programmed by someone with an eccentric sense of humour, because the Mustang's GUNNAI had a personality like a fighting pitbull. It was a good companion, for a computer - Andrew had taken to affectionately referring to it as 'Gunny' - but it didn't play well with others.
“So,” Andrew said, guiding Eddie towards a chair he could safely flop into, “you never did tell me how you got yourself stranded on an unmanned service station.”
“Not much to tell. I ain’t got no home; I just hitch around, try to find work where I can. Sometimes I get lucky and get to stick around for a month or two. And sometimes freighter pilots drop you in the middle of nowhere and fuck off into hyperspace.”
“Nice.”
“Shit happens.” Eddie shrugged. “So, what’s goin’ on in Catalina? Anything fun?”
“Could be. I had a tip-off that the DeLisle gang are in town – they’re a family of arms smugglers I’ve been keeping tabs on for a while. Any one of them’s worth a good price, and if I round up all four I’ll have enough to keep me going for months.” Andrew tapped at the nearest of the Mustang’s command screens, double-checking that the doors were sealed and setting the route for the next stage of the journey. “All set, Gunny?”
“All set, Skipper,” Gunny confirmed, as the engines hummed into life.
“Then we’re off to Catalina.”
Catalina was a place where what you saw was what you got, and what you saw was overwhelming. Only twenty years ago it had been a mere stopping-off point between mining colonies, with little more to it than the service station, a general store, and Big Suzie’s Brothel and Fried Chicken Shop. In recent years, however, the ongoing boom in ore prices, and its convenient location a long way from anywhere that could feasibly exert external control, had led to its development into a fully-fledged city-state. It was gaudy and wild and you could do pretty much anything you liked there, as long as you didn’t get on the wrong side of the Duchess – as Big Suzie, Catalina’s de facto ruler, liked to call herself these days.
When they dropped out of hyperspace, they were greeted by a riot of light and colour. Catalina itself was an unplanned jumble of different modules and developments that, taken together, looked like a tangled ball of multicoloured string. Orbiting around that was a neon halo of space junk and floating advertisements, along with spacecraft of all shapes and sizes materialising out of the hyperspace gates and approaching the docks as a jostling, undirected crowd. Andrew used to hate chaotic approaches like this, but now he preferred them to waiting in organised traffic – the Mustang was relatively small and sleek, and with a keen eye and a light touch on the controls he neatly weaved through the obstacles and landed them at the nearest dock.
It was more of a challenge fighting a way through the crowds to the transport tube that would take them into Catalina Central, an experience which never failed to leave Andrew bruised, disorientated, and usually missing any spare change or other unsecured items he had left in his pockets. Finally, however, they managed to scramble their way out of the crowded tube carriage and onto the open street.
“Well, here we are,” Andrew said. “All in one piece?”
“Think so,” Eddie said, checking himself over, “though it was a close run thing for a while there.”
There was an uncomfortable pause in which both waited for the other to move or speak. In the end, it was Eddie who was first to break the silence.
“So, uh, thanks for the ride, I guess. G’luck with the hunting.”
He made to move away, but Andrew blocked his path. Perhaps it was because he’d gone several weeks without anyone to talk to but Gunny, or perhaps because he felt it was unfair to leave someone in a place as dangerous as Catalina without setting them off in the right direction first, and it was probably at least a little to do with Eddie being rather good-looking in a hard-bitten frontiersman kind of way, but he didn’t want them to part ways just yet.
“Hey, what’s the rush?” he said. “Let’s get a drink and something to eat. You must be starving.”
Eddie laughed. “Yeah, alright. I ain’t gonna say no to free beer.”
“Beer? You’d be very lucky to find beer here. But I’m sure we can scrounge up something that probably won’t kill us.”
Beer didn’t travel well through hyperspace, and making spirits was difficult without a regular supply of the grain to make them from. As a result, the traditional drinks of the Old Colonies were rare and expensive here; in Catalina, your choice was between lurid cocktails made using powdered alcohol, or the potent and occasionally deadly local hooch, distilled from fermented fauxtato starch.
Andrew personally favoured Miss Grey’s when he was drinking in Catalina. Miss Grey was a volatile character, by all reports, but the bar’s home blend was reliably safe, and the home-made fried grasshoppers were crisp, spicy and came in generous servings. He ordered two shots of the former and a bowl of the latter, and led Eddie to his favourite table at the back, where he had a good view of everyone else coming and going.
They had only just sat down when they were greeted by a familiar voice that Andrew had not expected, but was not at all surprised to hear.
“Hey, Ack-Ack. Long time, no see.”
Andrew twisted around to get a better look at the man peering down at them over the dividing panel between their tables. “Good morning, Snafu. Or is it evening here?”
“It’s feedin’ time at the shark tank, is what it is. Place is full ‘a bounty hunters tonight.”
Andrew had recognised several of his rivals as they had come in, and a second look over the assembled drinkers and diners confirmed the presence of quite a few more.
“Somethin’ big going on?” Snafu asked.
“It’d be unwise of me to say.”
“It’s the DeLisle gang, right?” Snafu smiled lazily. “Two of ‘em already down and the others on the run, so I heard. You might catch ‘em if you get back to your craft and hightail it after them. If all the other guys doin’ the same don’t blow your ass away first.”
Andrew cursed under his breath. That was the last thing he wanted – squabbling with other bounty hunters over the same case was a waste of time and effort, and it was plain rude to butt in on someone else’s pursuit. The others still here would be in the same situation as him, looking for other local cases to take. He’d be lucky if he could get a reward for finding a lost dog.
Snafu looked over Andrew’s head at Eddie, who was ploughing through the bowl of grasshoppers like a man starved (which, all things considered, he probably was). “Who’s your pal? He don’t say much.”
Eddie looked up, hastily swallowing a mouthful of grasshopper. “That’s alright. I ain’t got much to say.”
“Curious kinda accent you got there. You from the Old Colonies too?”
“New Virginia,” Eddie said.
Snafu’s eyes widened slightly. “Shit.”
“S’alright. Wasn’t you blew it up.”
“So how come you’re with Ack-Ack?”
Eddie frowned. “I wouldn’t say I’m with him. I just hitched a ride, and he offered to get me dinner as well.”
“Oh, I get it,” Snafu said, giving them both a look which suggested that whatever he’d ‘got’, neither of them were in on the joke. Andrew knelt on his seat so he could face Snafu eye-to-eye across the divider (and if it happened to block Snafu’s view of Eddie, that was a convenient bonus).
“So since you’re here,” he said, in a low, quiet voice, “is there anything else you can tell me?”
“About what?”
“Guess.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Another drink, and I'll owe you a favour. Knowing you, you'll need it.”
Snafu shrugged. “Wish I could help, but I told you all I heard already.” Something buzzed in his pocket; he took out his messenger. “Anyhow, I gotta be at the docks in five.”
Andrew knew better than to ask Snafu what his business was at the docks. “Well, it was good to see you. Tell Sledge I said hi."
“Sure thing, Skipper. See you around, maybe.” He leaned over Andrew’s shoulder to look at Eddie. “You too, hillbilly.”
Eddie looked perturbed. “Did he just call me –“
“Oh, don’t mind Snafu. We called him that for a reason.”
Eddie gave Andrew a thoughtful look. “He called you Ack-Ack.”
“A lot of people do. It’s my initials, A.A.”
“He called you Skipper, too.”
“Your point being?”
“Never mind.” Eddie gave Andrew a look which could only be described as ‘extremely suspicious’ and attempted to follow it up with a long, thoughtful sip of his drink. The effect would have been quite intimidating if he hadn’t immediately broken out in a fit of coughing.
“Jeez louise, what is this? Rocket fuel?”
“Well, not officially, but you probably could use it that way. Do you want me to get you something to mix it with?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.”
While Eddie ventured off to the bar in search of something that would make Catalina spirit palatable, Andrew got out his battered old messenger and checked the local listings for new cases.
It was pretty slim pickings, all things considered. There were a few small cases available within a one-jump radius – a woman called Kathy had put out a bounty on her cheating husband, another guy was offering a reward for anyone who could get back his favourite pair of moccasins, the Enforcers were asking for information on some smugglers called Chuckler and Hoosier (where did these guys get their names from?) – but it was all the sort of stuff that’d barely cover the expenses of taking the case in the first place.
The rest was all political, and Andrew didn’t much care for doing the Dictatorship’s dirty work. Officially, he was neutral. He’d happily take an Enforcer-sponsored case if it was someone who was no good anyway – murderers, pimps, drug traders, the usual criminal lowlife. But he didn’t do hit jobs, and he didn’t chase enemies of the state. After all, all it took to be declared an enemy was to speak up at the wrong time, or to have come from the wrong place, or to have fought on the wrong side. He was at least two out of those three, and had done a few things which could complete the set if the information got back to the Dictatorship, which one day it probably would. Not that it was a major concern. Even when they were on the government’s side, bounty hunters very rarely made it to retirement.
He scrolled past another listing asking for information on the whereabouts of the Secret Nine, noting idly that their bounty had been doubled, when Eddie returned with two more shots of spirit and a jug of pineapple juice. (While most fresh food was hard to come by here, hydroponics farmers had managed to ensure a reasonably stable supply of certain fruits, and the bugs that thrived in such conditions had become the staple protein of Catalina cuisine.)
“Hey, I recognise that guy,” he said, glancing down at Andrew’s messenger. He frowned and leaned in closer. “Damn, that’s Arturo Blix.”
“You know him?”
“Well, not personally.” Eddie sat down and topped up his drink with juice. “I was in the Solomons during the war.”
Well, that explained it. The Solomons were a string of rocky, irregular planetoids sharing a single orbit around a dull, red star. Supposedly they had originally been one giant planet that had shattered in its distant past, leaving behind jagged chunks and exposed sections of metallic core. Rich with gold and valuable ores, they had been named by human settlers in honour of King Solomon’s mines. Many prospectors and speculators had faced the challenging climate and dense forests in the hope of making their fortunes there. Few of them had succeeded.
Arturo Blix had been a big deal in the Solomons before war broke out between the Alliance and the Dictatorship, and he was an even bigger deal afterwards. While the other mine owners had fled, Blix had seen it as a business opportunity. First he’d just sold the goods his mines produced to the highest bidder; then he started allowing the land he owned to be used for bases and factories, and from there to actively working with the Dictatorship as a means of expanding both their influence and his economic interests. The mines of Solomon had always been dangerous, and most of the miners were indentured labourers who’d been forced by threats or starvation into signing years of their lives away, but under the war Blix’s workers became slaves, and his mines a place where the unfortunate were sent to die. When the Alliance arrived to try and take the Solomons for themselves, those same labourers and their guards became soldiers. A lot of Alliance fighters had died there – so, too, poorly supplied and challenged by the climate, had a lot of the Dictatorship’s troops. Nobody had done very well out of the Solomons campaign. Nobody except Arturo Blix.
Andrew had already guessed that Eddie had fought for the Alliance, and the admission came as no surprise. “Me too,” he said.
Eddie grinned. “Yeah, I figured that out, Ack-Ack.”
“I told you, it’s just my initials.”
“Ah, so it’s just a coincidence that you share a nickname and initials with the guy who single-handedly shot down all those incoming fighters at the Siege of Bay Forty-Nine? You’re just some other war veteran who served in the Solomons, gets spoken to by his friends like an old company commander, and whose reasons for being cagey about his past have absolutely nothing to do with having fought the current government of half the colonised galaxy to practically the last man?”
“Well, since you clearly know your old Alliance Corps lore, you should know that that Ack-Ack Haldane had his head blasted off by a sniper on Brogol Point, and was never seen again.”
“Yeah, well. I got shot full of holes on that same damn mountain range, and I’m still here. I always did take the rumours with more ‘n a pinch of salt.”
Andrew sighed. “Okay, fine, I give in. Well done. I didn’t know anyone wanted me that badly, but I hope the reward’s good.”
Eddie laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic, I was only bein’ nosey. Like I said, I was at Brogol, we all heard the stories.” He leaned forward, resting on his elbows. “So what really happened?”
“Reports of my death were somewhat exaggerated,” Andrew said. It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked – once you got close enough it was hard to miss the faint scars that even DeTone fluid couldn’t fix completely, or the mismatched iris patterns which gave away that one of his eyes had been transplanted. “I caught a blast to the head, but I didn’t die – though it was a close thing. Enough to take me out of action for the rest of the war and then some.”
Eddie nodded. “Same here. I was out for six months while they were growing me a new digestive system. I finally wake up and the war’s over, the Alliance’s lost, my home’s gone…” He took the next shot neat, and then downed two glasses of juice to remove the taste. “You should take that Blix case. Half the shit that happened in the Solomons was down to him. You know it was him who poisoned the water supply on Brogol?”
“If I could, I would. There’s been a bounty on his head for years. First the Alliance and now –“ Andrew double-checked the advert. “-looks like the Dictatorship are sick of him too. But they wouldn’t be asking if they knew where to find him. Wherever he is, he’s got protection.” He shook his head, and scrolled onwards, looking for something a little more feasible.
“Enough about my work, anyway,” he said, and snapped the messenger shut. “What are your plans?”
Eddie shrugged. “Place as big as this, there’ll be work somewhere, and I figure if they don’t check us coming in nobody’s gonna be too fussy about ID papers or work permits, neither. Long as I got something to eat, a place to sleep, and I don’t have to sign away my freedom for the privilege, I’m good.” He wiped the grease from his fingers, had another glass of juice, and got to his feet. “Thanks for the ride and the meal. I owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it,” Andrew said. “You won’t stay for another drink?”
“Best not. It’s going to my head already.” Eddie touched his fingertips to his forehead in an informal salute. “Nice meeting you, Ack-Ack.”
“You too,” Andrew said. He watched as Eddie left, sipping thoughtfully at his drink. Something about how quickly he’d got under his skin and figured out his past had rattled him. He had the strangest feeling that as long as he remained on Catalina, this wasn’t the last they’d seen of one another. He was looking forward to the next time already.