The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

"True." Dirken flashed his partner a smile. "But you're still alive!"

"Half of me is!"

"Fine! We're coming out!" Dirken yelled out the hatch, then he and Yiorgos threw their blasters out the hatch. They fell to the grav plating of the ramp. "Don't shoot!" Dirken yelled.

The two stepped into view, careful to step onto the grav plates of the ramp, hands up except for the one carrying the safebox.

"Right," said the pirate who had been speaking — a human who had a badly-healed scar that ran from under his heavily-stained red cap down the middle of his face and across his neck. Half of his nose was gone, and part of his lips. Dirken wondered how the man had survived a laser burn like that. The pirate stepped forward, kicked the blasters back to the others, and took the safebox, almost dropping it in surprise at the weight, and stripped him of his pack.

The two were placed with pirates in front and behind and escorted down a series of narrow corridors. Just as they passed a viewing window, though, they saw two shining United Worlds warships appear out of gravity wells.

Those damned chrome bastards never looked so sweet! he thought.

The corvette bucked into a tight turn and acceleration. Everyone lost their footing, including Dirken and Yiorgos, and lurched right into the hull. Dirken took advantage of this and hit the human pirate square in the jaw, then lunged for his Gree-tech blaster, which was being carried by a Rigellian in one of his long, flap-like hands.

No sooner had Dirken's hand wrapped around the handle than his head exploded in pain, hit from behind. The last thing he saw as he passed out and rolled over was the Rigellian and the human pirate leaning over him. "Night, night, sweetheart!" the pirate said, giving a wave, and the Rigellian laughed with a weird "lulululululu!" cry emitting from the tentacled mouth at the top of its head, its row of tiny black eyes sparkling.

Then the human hit him again, and everything went black.

CHAPTER SIX

HOW THE GIG BEGAN

The last thought running through Dirken's mind as he blacked out wasn't his blaster or the laughing Rigellian. It was, How the fuck did I get in this situation?

The whole thing had been hush-hush from the beginning, only a couple Earth days before. A contracted middleman had found them in a seedy alien bar on Mars called the Gamma Ray Gramma.

Half of the bar catered to aquatic species, with the entire lower level composed of a pool of cold, briny water. Eel-like Argulans milled around with Ursan "space octopuses" and a school of hundreds of Shan-toth-min, a species of silvery fish with bulging, transparent skulls and human-like arms projecting from an otherwise cod-like body. In the middle of the aquatic level was a massive Procyonese bartender with its hulking yellow body covered in eyes and mouths and at least a dozen thin tentacles that reached out with servings of specially-formulated liquor globes. All of this was visible through the transparent aluminum floor under Dirken.

Up top, though, the bar was less distinguished and definitely dingier, the walls streaked with stains, including traces of blood from dozens of species. The smoke of half a dozen illegal drugs hanging in the air in a haze of skunky-smelling marijuana from Earth and floral jojona petals grown on Corthos. Smugglers from across the sector gathered here to relax, free of the hassles of law enforcement thanks to the Craters, the gang that ran Mars Colony 1 (or "Crater City," nicknamed due to the old part of the colony having been built in the massive Hellas Crater).

The bar was named after Gramma Jones, a self-described "Old Martian Bitch" who used to rule over a smuggler route to Rigel, but she was the nicest old lady Dirken had ever met… until you failed to pay your tab, at which point you became the plaything of her five genetically mutated mastiffs — double the size and musculature of a normal dog — and your remains were fed as "chum" to the bartender.

The middleman, a human with long, greasy black hair, Asian features, and a poor attempt at a mustache, had been seated in the smoky corner of the bar watching the crowd. His gaze came to rest on Dirken and Yiorgos and lingered on them a little too long, making eye contact. In a place like Gamma Ray Gramma's, you don't look someone in the eye for long or it may be the last thing you see.

Just as Dirken had been ready to put his blaster on the table, the man got up and walked over, brazenly inviting himself to take a seat, holding his hands away from his trench coat to show he wasn't going to reach for a weapon.

"Hey," he'd said. "Name's Weed."

"Weed, huh?" Dirken replied. "As in something everyone wants to get rid of? Beat it."

Weed ignored the command. "I hear you need a gig."

"Yeah?" Dirken said. "From who?"

"High level people. They pay good, and the job's easy."

Dirken leaned over the table toward Weed. "No job that pays good is easy."

"What 'high level people' are these?" Yiorgos asked.

Dirken flashed his partner a quick look as if to say, You're really going to listen to this moron?

Weed looked around to check if anyone was listening. "Top government officials on Earth."

Dirken and Yiorgos had looked at each other, not bothering to hide their incredulity.

"Really," Weed had said. "They heard about a gig you did off Proxima Centauri."

Dirken kept a poker face, but inwardly he was wincing. They had transported a missile array from the planet of Proxima Centuri B to a moon of Proxima Centuri C for the Proximan Dawn, a crime syndicate. It was a closely held secret. How the hell did they learn this? he thought. What else do they know?

"I don't know what gig you're talking about," Dirken said.

"Uh huh," Weed said. "Look, all you gotta