So, this particular arc starts off in a bar, naturally. It was a regular enough meeting point for my primary employer – client – you could say. The crowd was about as humanoid as you get out here, and that’s using the term loosely. The forgiveness was in the darkness of the place, not much unlike many clubs back home. The bars and tables were lined with luminescent metals that glowed like neon. The music, I can only describe as not being Jizz, or space jazz or whatever they called it. This was much more than a cantina after all. In an ordinary club you feel the vibrations of the bass and the rest of the sounds just become noise. Here, it was more about the frequency of those vibrations. Poetic really. The vibrations, often not a physical sensation, elicit various sensations in the patrons.
The consumables were consistent and relatively safe for my liking. Something I had learned the hard way over the course of numerous such establishments was that no two chemical or metaphysical compounds are alike. The drink here – I won’t bother trying to draw you a map to where it is, that would only put my contact in an unnecessary amount of exposure – was closest to somewhere between alcohol and sneezing. It has the essence of a strong champagne beer and the near death experience of sneezing. Sneezing while driving, I mean. Though it’s not much of a difference. I once sneezed so hard on the stuff that I winked out of existence for a few minutes. Talk about a wicked hangover when I rematerialized. I call it ‘sneeze’. And it’s cheap. That’s why I call the place Sneezey Pete’s.
I was sitting with Wade. Wade was what I called him and he eventually stopped giving me that weird squint of his/its eye slits after a while and just accepted the name. This was mostly due to his appearance resembling a buddy of mine from back home. I say mostly in that our initial encounter was blurry on my behalf. Nevertheless, there was one less criminal alien syndicate of cockroach looking mobsters bothering this particular proprietor. But that is another story.
“I don’t like it,” Wade told me. “I was adamant that you don’t work for me. I don’t even know how he knew that we were associated.”
“Well, you didn’t lie,” I told him. “I don’t work for you. I work for your money. Or whoever’s money it is that’s funneled through you to me.”
Wade looked away with a hint of resignation on that featureless teardrop shaped head of his. It was a huge green thing with small holes and slits for gas exchange and eyes, or whatever they are. They gives me the creeps if I think too much of it as that bulbous head is leering towards me.
“And besides,” I continued, “he owns galaxies. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. He’s what we would call back home the Illuminati. They know everything.”
“Those tales you tell of them give even me the chills.”
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, and I couldn’t help but spin a few yarns for him in the past. With some artistic liberties. I’m the only one out here with a history of Earth after all.
“I still don’t like it,” Wade went on. “Once you’re on this guy’s radar, there’s no getting off of it.”
“Come on man,” I said, raising my open hands out to the side. “This is me we’re talking about.”
A chair crashed into me out of nowhere, exploding into pieces. Not from hitting the round hard moonlike glowing table, or bench around it, or some kind of magic. The chair exploded on impact with me. It hurt. A lot. So I did what anyone else would do that was just used as an anvil for a chair hammer.
I threw the table at the closest rock creature goon I saw.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. What kind of cliché is that for a henchman and how many tropes – if I’m using that word incorrectly, I don’t care – are there going to be about the universe? Quite a few, let me tell you. From our perspective, the universe is far more absurd than you can imagine.
Thug One was not expecting squishy little me to launch a quazinite table at him with enough force to… I’m not familiar enough with their anatomy to tell you the results of the tables turning. Bad pun. The quazinite only partially existed, making for convenient storage, and to lessen the impact of insurance claims for just such an event. But still, throw something hard enough and its going to hurt.
Wade had disappeared, whether into the darkness, or phasing into the ether, I wasn’t sure.
Goonba number two marched towards me, towering over me by a good two feet. We locked eyes. Eyes and marbles. I’ll get anatomy books one of these days.
“I’d offer you a seat, but we’re fresh out,” I grumbled harshly at him, trying not to sound too much like I had just fractured three ribs.
I could have sworn that there was a change to his face that echoed confusion of how I was still standing after eating a chair. Or I could be projecting. Then he said, “You’re coming with us.”
“No,” I said simply and waved to the bar for another drink.
Rock thing grabbed my shoulder, nearly finishing what the chair started. I winced, but luckily I was looking towards the bar, needing a bit more than a sneeze. There was a pzew sound and my shoulder was free.
I turned back to see a tower of molten rock melting away to reveal Wade standing there with his little pistol. A short translucent green blob of a cocktail server wiggled up to my side with a tray containing four glasses like there was nothing out the ordinary going on. It was generally a safe and quiet place, but come on, I was there to do shady and unscrupulous dealings. Nothing was really too far afield for them.
“Thank you,” Wade said lowering the pistol on the other pile of rock now trying to stand. “I don’t think our friends will be staying though.”
The pile in front of him had already melted through the floor, leaving a gaping black hole. I took the extra drink and threw it back. Wade grabbed one with his free hand and I picked up the other two. Waste not, want not.
We were about to coax the thing into one of the backroom’s of Sneezey’s. By we, I mainly mean Wade. I was busy chasing the drinks for my intoxication to surpass the adrenaline that was blocking the pain before it wore off. Then in a hazy moment between one dimension and another, I saw the serving blob morph its way over to the door. As an unsettling side note, the green blob was a living definition of a social chameleon. They have a way of knowing what physical form most appealed to the patronage. When I first met it, it said a lot about me, let me tell you. Everything was on display, and how. Wade definitely spared no expense on the place.
Back to the story, Wade not only owned the place, he was my handler you could say. He brokered deals on planets, as in the buying and selling of planets. A lot of peripheral work comes from such an enterprise. The cutthroat world of real estate. So it wasn’t entirely a surprise that the guy who buys galaxies, and was trying to buy me, happened to walk through the front door.
If the devil was an alien mobster, he was trotting across the floor in what was a pretty good approximation of an expensive suit. The server morphed into a seemingly sexless counterpart to the figure, which was not much surprise. The odd part was that it was in a position of prostration, bowed at his weirdly moving tentacle leg things as if begging for a command. It may have been the booze, but behind and around him a couple shadowy figures floated off to his flanks.
Let me clarify. Either I was suffering a traumatic brain injury from the chair, or the shadowy figures were actual shadow figures, barely visible in the darkness, serving as body guards to Mr. Gold Suit with the round features.
“Uh, Wade?” I think I said. “I think we have company.”
“Shit,” I think he said looking up at the guest, or a colloquial equivalent.
The hostage was then dragged back towards the door by the shadows.
“Please,” the suit said in a surprisingly sweet voice, motioning towards the door. “Let us discuss business in private.”
“It is rather opportune,” Zalud said once we were all seated uncomfortably in the back room, “that I should show up at such a time to protect my interests.”
I was still rather off put by the voice. I mean, I knew who he was, mostly from speculation, but I was not expecting a slender, pale, doting Mike Tyson with beady little eyes. Let’s just hope this thing can’t read minds. The next concoction I was ingesting was as much to keep me from laughing as it was to level the rest of my mind and body out for just such a visit.
“Yes it is,” my handler handled; better him than me. “We were just discussing the terms of the job when Vince was attacked.”
“And impressive it must have been,” Zalud said looking from Wade to myself. “Considering that Troggles are notoriously difficult defeat, I’d say I put my money on the right horse.” He didn’t say horse. I have no idea what creatures they bet on out in this part of this particular galaxy, but apparently the expression is intergalactic. “But in the interest of saving my daughter, I will be sending someone with you that should be of assistance.”
I slumped right then and there. First off, uh, just no. No. No. No. He went on, nevertheless.
“Someone who I hope to utilize much in the way you operate for my own purposes.”
I was furiously rubbing my temples by this point, hoping the gestures were universal. Universal, ha. At least Wade got the message, but he was too late.
“I work alone,” I interrupted. “I understand that this is your daughter and that certain conditions have to be met to fulfill the ransom, but no. Not only is it a liability, it’s a liability. Liability here. Liability there. Catch my drift?”
Zalud looked patiently to Wade, waiting for a translation.
“He means that to operate such a difficult mission he would require working with someone who would be tactically in conjunction with himself.”
“Not…” He didn’t let me finish, which was usually for the better.
“It would jeopardize every facet of the mission.”
Zalud looked back at me and said:
“I’ll double the pay. Regardless if the associate survives.”
So, in my most off-telling, couthless, nasty, profane, and offensive way I could I told him:
“Sold!”
So, not only was I going to get paid enough to go home and buy Earth multiple times over, I would be able to buy off every person on it into gladly letting me launch the planet into the sun using a rocket fueled by cash.
Wade was flabbergasted for all of a half second. He wanted to be in disbelief, but knew my flexibility. Rigid only in principal, not so much morality.
“My associate,” Zalud began to say.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said leaving. “Fill in my agent here on the deets. I have to go pay my taxes.”
It was a wicked piss indeed. There’s nothing quite like being messed up chemically and physically and finally being able to take a piss. I nearly fell asleep at the… let’s just call it a urinal. I threw the biology book out the window not long into this journey. Come to think of it, it might have been the trashcan I was whizzing in.
When I came back out, Wade was back to sitting back at our table, everything back in place like nothing had happened. Without the universe’s largest criminal syndicate’s monarch I should add.
“Oh, good I was just hallucinating.”
“He has us all by the balls, as you would say.”
My face dropped. That had all actually happened, which would explain the insurmountable amount of pain that was creeping into my mind and body.
Wade slid an envelope across the table to me. Cliché as fuck.
I opened the pack of obligatory maps, photos and notes.
Blah, blah, blah, pickup and drop locations. Coordinates. Weaknesses and strengths of opposition. A picture of my new boss’s lackey…
Ugh, is all I can say. Unless this creature is a seriously underwhelming looking savage of a species, it is a good thing my pay is not contingent on its survival.
It resembled a number of things. A nerdy guy with glasses and pockmarks I used to work with was among them. I could see the angle though. I, I mean we, were going into a goliath of a business sector with delicate politics often met with an unreasonable amount of violence for infractions. Howie – as I am going to call my new partner whether he likes it or not – was a good approximation of the suits of the area and my species. They were pasty, corpse looking creatures with rocklike swirls where hair would be. Howie certainly had the complexion of a human corpse with glasses and beady little eyes. His distinctly balding hair was curly and chitinous. If one of all three species were placed shoulder to shoulder it would look like the caveman evolving into a chimp at a typewriter.
He was going to get me killed. I felt it in my gut. Like a knife. Or I was suffering from a ruptured spleen.