The Wench– Ch. 2: Asendor
Asendor Ku’s home was part storefront, part industrial factory, and part livingspace. Hals had helped him find it almost two years ago, after helping him out of a nasty debt he’d incurred down in Red Crescent at the chance houses. Once he’d managed to get his business up and running, he quickly became known as the premiere body-modder on Adumon. It was late enough that he was probably asleep, so Hals used her key and opened his back door, slipping in and waving at the automated defense mecha that guarded the door. It bleeped at her and went back to sleep, sliding its very powerful blaster away quietly. Fifth hadn’t even noticed.
“You live here?” she asked, as Hals flicked the lights of the back room on. This was where Asendor stored his in-progress bits and bobs, and also a cot. “No, I just said that back at the bar to give people the wrong idea. I don’t want anyone looking for you to actually find you,” she said.
“Looking for me?” Fifth said. She was a little droopy now, and Hals found the folding cot beneath a pile of prosthetic arms that hadn’t had flesh grown over them yet. She picked them up and dumped them to the side, then unfolded the cot and brushed it off. There was a little oil stain on the corner of the blanket, but it’d do.
“Just take a lie down here, okay Fifth?” Hals said. “I’ll talk to Asendor and get things sorted. We’ll chat in the morning.”
“So you’re not staying with me?” the girl said, a little quaver in her voice. Hals sat on the edge of the cot and patted it, gesturing for Fifth to join her. The young pup did so, even going so far as to take her hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “I just need to talk to Asendor. I’ll be back down in a few minutes, and I’ll be here after you wake up too. Okay?”
“I’m really in trouble,” Fifth said. Her eyes were partially closed now, which meant the pick-me-up was probably wearing off. She’d be asleep in minutes. She stretched out on the little cot and put her head in Hals’ lap, sighing. Hals went rigid, her hands raised slightly. Fifth didn’t seem to notice her face was pressed into a metal leg.
“I think I made a mistake, coming out here,” Fifth said sleepily. “But I’m glad I met someone kind. Not many people are kind, to me. Not anymore.” She yawned, and that was that. She was asleep.
“What in the name of space have you brought me this time, Halsirena?” a voice from the doorway said.
“Hello, Asendor,” she said back. “Brought you a stray.”
“I can see that,” he said, yawning. “Woke me up from a lovely dream, too.”
“Lovelier than two women in your bed?” Hals asked, gently shifting Fifth to the side and then putting the dingy pillow under her head. The girl snored on, unaware.
“Yes, in fact,” Asendor pouted. “I had just devised a way to trick core planet DNA sensors, and was going to make enough money to buy this entire station.”
“That does sound nice,” Hals said. “Let's talk elsewhere, hmm?”
Asendor let out a slightly mechanical sigh and waved her forward. He was older, he’d seen about fifty Core years, and aside from a bright blue cybernetic eye he looked relatively unremarkable. That was a testament to his skill and craft, however; the entire left side of his body from his neck down was prosthetic. Every time someone asked how it happened, he’d invent a new story. Hals didn’t think she’d heard the truth of it yet, and wasn’t sure she ever would. Asendor walked her through the storefront and unlocked the door to the stairs, and brought her up to his living quarters. Once inside, he flopped back onto his bed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Okay Halsirena, what’s the story this time?”
“That girl was kidnapped by a pirate crew on a ship called the Gilded Esposs. The captain was in the Maiden’s Lament and got caught cheating at cards, and somebody gutted him. Fifth, the girl down there, started to freak out, so I--”
“Took her under your wing, like you do to all of us pathetic fools, yes, I know that part,” Asendor said.
Hals grinned at him. “You didn’t seem to mind it much when it was your pathetic ass I was helping,” she pointed out.
“Obviously not,” Asendor said grumpily. “I’m a selfish bastard.”
“You’ve been talking about hiring an assistant.”
Asendor stuttered a few times, his eyes snapping open. “Her! You don’t even know-- and what are her qualifications? And what if they come looking for her, this crew you mentioned? If she’s worth money to them, they’ll--”
Hals sighed and sat on the corner of the tinkerer’s desk. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Nobody will be looking for her by tomorrow night.”
Asendor grimaced. “This is not ideal,” he said.
“You do owe me,” Hals pointed out quietly.”
“Hals,” Asendor sighed. “You know you don’t need to make this about owing, or debts. I’ll help because you are my friend. No need to call in a favor. You’ve got an unlimited stash of credit with me.”
He said it so casually that Hals thought for a moment he was joking. When it was clear he wasn’t, a lump formed in her throat.
“I didn’t, um--”
“You really think I’d refuse you anything?” he said. He just looked tired now. “After what you did for me?”
“I just--”
Asendor waved a hand, cutting her off. “You’re unbelievable, my friend. Do you want to stay the night here?”
“No,” Hals said. “I need to go home, just in case someone comes looking for her. That’s where they’ll expect her to be. But I’ll come back in the morning to talk to her. She was out of it, I don’t think she knows she was going to be ransomed back to her family by that crew.”
“And you know that for certain?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Hals said. “It’s a pretty common job, honestly. I’m just surprised they took her to a spaceport before turning her back over to her family for the ransom.”
“Pirates are stupid,” Asendor said, then yawned. “Let me go back to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“May Pal’tho bless your dreams,” Hals said, giving him a tiny bow.
“Same to you. Go out the back door, please.” Asendor waved his hand and the lights in the room dimmed. Hals felt her way down the stairs and back out into the alley, stopping only to more fully cover Fifth in the blanket that had slipped off her shoulders.
Hals lived at the cheap edge of Red Crescent, all the way on the other side of the station. And of course, it had started to snow. She sighed and started to walk, cursing the triplets who ran the station, the Wazishakis. They were from a planet that celebrated a particular holiday around this time on the Core calendar, and to make it festive for everyone, they’d mined a comet so the weather simulators could make it snow. Hals shivered as the first few flakes began to touch her neck and considered ordering a ride. Walking to the other side of the station at night through the stuttering snowfall wasn’t going to be enjoyable. Hals pulled out her legible and stretched it until it was big enough to cover her forearm. The thin, elastic screen booted up fitfully; she really needed to save up for a new one. She checked the balance of O-marks in her account and sighed. If a new legible was in her future soon, she was going to have to walk.
She started trekking toward her place along the gentle curve of the crescent. The long walk was brisk and chilled her, but it was also refreshing. Even late at what accounted for night on the station, she passed hundreds of people along the main crescent roads. Most of them lived on Adumon Station, and were hawking their wares to the crewmates that were on station-leave. It was an odd mix of people, altogether. Everybody here had some reason to be avoiding the core planets or other more civilized lands. Even among Flagless ports, Adumon had a reputation for savagery, which was rightly earned. Hals noticed at least two bodies in gutters as she walked home. They’d be cleaned up by the tidying mecha in the morning, but for now they were collecting snow.
It took the better part of half an hour before she made it over into Red, and she started to weave her way through the alleys and side streets to get to her little apartment. It was on the second floor of a two-story living box that had been dropped off here by some enterprising soul when the station had been new. Once these were nice places to live, and now they were affordable. Hals had managed to get the apartment on the end, which meant she only had one noisy neighbor to deal with. She felt relief just seeing her building; she was nearly home. And then a tickle along the back of her neck warned her to be careful. She slowed her gait and took stock of what she could see, trusting her instincts. And sure enough, someone was crouched under the stairs of her place. She squinted. Several someones.
Hals couldn’t hide, she was in the middle of the street and in clear view, so she just kept walking past her place, her heart pounding, trying not to look suspicious. As carefully as she could, she looked out the corner of her eye to try and figure out who it was. Just some junkie trying to avoid the snow? No, that would be too convenient. It was probably Fifth’s crew. How had they known where she lived?
Hals hurried along past her building and down a few more blocks just to be safe. No one followed her, and she quickly got to the end of the street and turned down another alley, and then another. Finally she stopped, trembling. She hadn’t expected the crew of the Gilded Esposs to find her so quickly. Or at all, if she was being honest with herself. They’d probably already broken down the door, realized she wasn’t home, and then decided to wait until she arrived. How long they’d wait was the question. Hals had her blaster-- no sane person would walk around the station without a weapon– but she wasn’t sure she could kill all of the crew hunting after Fifth before they got her, too. There were supposed to be six of them, now that the captain was dead.
Hals sighed and looked up, past the dirty alley walls and falling snow to the stars beyond. Adumon Station was floating somewhere outside the Kor nebula on the edge of what most people considered civilized space, which meant Hals had an amazing view of swirling clouds of gas and the little glowing blips as craft jumped into and out of Neverspace. She could probably get work on one of those smaller ships. They usually needed capable hands, willing to get into an engine and clean it, or tear down and repair old equipment. She was good with her hands. She could just leave.
But she had a life here, at least as much of one as she could manage. And she wasn’t going to give that up because of six assholes who wanted to kidnap a kid for ransom. She nodded, and started looking for a ladder.
Up on the roof of a three story habitation unit about a block away from her place, Hals had a pretty good view of the haphazard roads that made up this section of Red Crescent. She took a deep breath. It was very cold up here, and the snowfall was actually starting to accumulate. This was going to be dangerous. She grinned. And fun.
She ran and leapt for the nearest building. For a very brief moment, she was soaring and the gap between habitations loomed, ready to gobble her up and add her body to those being cleaned in the simulated morning light. And then she was across, skidding to a stop on the next building over with preternatural grace. Sometimes, having a prosthetic leg custom built by Asendor had its advantages.
It took her less than a minute to get to her own building’s roof, which had a shallow slant leaning toward Red crescent’s tip. The snowfall had abated; presumably the weather drones were out of excess water vapor, or the frigid conditions for snow were too difficult for the atmo regulator to keep up for very long. There was still snow on the roof though, a thin layer of it, so Hals was careful to step along the metallic roof’s bolts for the extra purchase they offered. She got to the side of the building where the stairs were and hunkered down. She heard voices in her apartment.
“-actly how long?” A stony, female voice asked.
“Long as it takes till you find the girl,” a second voice replied. This one was tinny, sounding vaguely robotic; probably speaking through a legible or similar device. “She’s worth more than our ship; we can’t just lose her to some floozy looking for a good roll.”
“I know. Without the Captain around though, how we gonna ransom her?”
“Leave that to me,” the person speaking through the communicator said. “You sure you got the right place?”
“It’s where we got led,” replied the woman tersely. “We jumped a guy as he was leaving that bar, and he knew the wench Fifth left with. Said he saw her makin’ moves on Fifth, and this is where she’s supposed to live.”
“But she ‘ent there,” the voice asked.
“Nuh.”
“Maybe you got lied to.”
There was silence. Hals leaned a little closer to the edge and peeked an eye over. The woman was almost directly below her, talking into something that looked like a wrapped up scroll. Unless she missed her guess, it was a ship’s horn, one of a set of devices all programmed to be able to hail the vessel at a moment’s notice. Hals slid her hand into her jacket and found the hidden pocket that concealed her weapon, easing it out as quietly as she could. She carried a simple weapon, little more than a barrel, a power core and a trigger. It wasn’t accurate over anything more than a few meters, and it chewed through power cores because it overdrew. She called it the Gobbler, and that last feature was exactly why Hals picked it.
“Maybe you need to go find that guy and ask again,” the voice said over the horn. The woman below Hals rolled her eyes, and for a brief moment, they made eye contact. She froze, and Hals swung the Gobbler around and aimed straight into the crown of the woman’s head.