Yeah, no. We killed a Congressman. There were only a hundred sixty of his ilk. They’d be pissed. Demand deeper investigations. The opposition might use it as an excuse to blame the President’s policies.

  Moon wondered out loud if Rypien was actually Q6. The thought crossed my mind for a split second then vanished. Nah. That would’ve been too great a stroke of dumb luck. If Q6 was coordinating an interstellar plot to bring down the Collectorate, he wouldn’t be seen in the neighborhood of his fellow conspirators. Whoever sat on top of that pyramid was the biggest goddamn coward of all.

  “If they don’t pay,” Moon said, “what’s our next move?”

  “Same as if they had, my friend.”

  “Desperido?”

  “Ship promised to compile a full list of goods and services in three days. I promised to return on the fourth. If I don’t, he’ll lose faith.”

  Moon grumbled every time I mentioned the kid.

  “He’s damaged goods, Royal. Your words, not mine.”

  “Everybody’s damaged, my friend. That’s what life does to you, no matter how privileged. Ship was betrayed and mutilated by his own family. He works for Lumen because he’s got no options.”

  Moon grunted. “He has a job, a home, and food on the table. He’s had three days to look around and realize his life could be worse. You expect the kid to risk everything for a sweet-talker making big promises.”

  “Hah! My voice is not sweet. It’s dulcet.”

  Moon chomped the cigar between his teeth.

  “Today’s adjective?”

  “You like?”

  “Don’t care. It’s one word, means the same as the other. You’ll choose a different one tomorrow.”

  “Dulcet has a pleasant aroma. It might stick for a while.”

  Moon grumbled while he puffed.

  “It’s a nice trick when it works, Royal.”

  Knowing full well what my partner was intimating, I said:

  “Whatever do you mean, my friend?”

  “Humans fall for it because they don’t know you like I do. Ever since the day we met, you’ve used language like a sword. You think you’re the smartest guy in the room.”

  “You arguing to the contrary?”

  “No. You’re a master, and you damn well know it. There’s gonna come a time when you’ll meet a human that plays your game, but better. They won’t buy your bullshit. They’ll be three steps ahead, and you won’t know until you lose.”

  “You’re not wrong, my friend. Arrogance does lend itself to blind spots. But I’m a god, or close enough. I’m entitled to snobbery and the occasional assholery. I’ll be around long after these background actors are dust in the wind. So will you.”

  “That’s the plan, assuming you don’t ruin it.”

  When did I last hear Moon speak with such passion and clarity about a topic other than the joy of murder? He’d been quite chatty since we returned to the fort. My theory? His lunchtime sojourn with the full-figured ginger had been productive after all.

  “How precisely will I screw the pooch, my friend?”

  “You’ll think you’re in control when you’re not. You’ll underrate a human. Overlook an important detail. Who knows?”

  I sighed. “Well, I am a fallen god, so I’m familiar with having my ass handed to me. I damn sure had a hefty share of comeuppance when I was human. Life ain’t fun if you’re guaranteed to win.”

  “If we lose, Royal, and we have to reveal our true identities …”

  “Will never happen, my friend. All bases are covered. The Desperido plan will work. You made cogent points about Ship, but I know the mentality of a teen boy with stars in his eyes. I used to be him, but a damn sight worse. He’s our point of entry.”

  “You’ll make it work, Royal. You always do. I question the timing. Let’s say we set up our little kingdom in Desperido. Maybe we settle in real nice. Then the Prez calls us for another mission.”

  Moon was a beacon of critical thought today. I saw his point.

  “You wonder whether a clever trickster will exploit our absence if we leave the town unattended. I’d rate a high probability for just such an affair, but an equal likelihood for remarkable failure. I have a plan for safeguards. Likewise if the Prez chooses to send her people after us for killing the congressman. We’ll be ready.”

  Moon sighed with a resignation that said he wasn’t going to talk me out of my well-conceived machinations. The holowindows behind me caught his attention. Something in the feeds from Qasi Ransome or Amity Station.

  “There she is.”

  He pointed to a striking fortysomething woman of Hokki birth speaking from a dais in the Congressional Media Center. The emblem of the People’s Collectorate – a fluted U containing forty stars clustered around a single square (Amity Station) – dominated the wall behind her. I’d known President Aleksanyan at a pair of precious moments in her life, both of which I held in my hands. Almost killed her the first time but saved her on the latter occasion.

  Life is a balancing act.

  I opened the sound on her speech. She filled it with predictable political pandering, words of prayer for the late congressman, and empty vows to stamp out terrorism. She might have meant every word, but I knew she had a selective view of what qualified as terrorism.

  She mentioned the need for “order” in the Collectorate. In my experience, humans had a tricky relationship with that word. A teacher wanting order in a classroom had expectations a damn sight different from a supreme leader who set goals for whole planets. Order was one degree shy of control, which easily lent itself to “shut up and do as I say or I’ll show you my big guns.”

  In one regard, I pitied the President. She believed in the office and truly wanted to hold these forty worlds together. She actually thought thirty-six billion people might follow the party line. On the other hand, she hired a pair of remorseless, shapeshifting killers to take out her enemies. Now a few hundred innocent bystanders were dead, and I reckon she felt a tinge of guilt. Not enough to stop her from going on about her business. She’d either send more work our way or hire another cadre of ruthless killers to take out the shapeshifters.

  Eh. She was a tough coit. A woman of conviction. Who would argue with that?

  Between President Aleksanyan, my new acquaintance Lumen, and this mysterious but intriguing Senora Cardinale, I was enthralled by the sisterhood of feminine power brokers.

  I reckon this hardly qualified as a new development. I once stabbed a galactic empress through the heart. She had it coming.

  Different universe. Wacky times.

  “No worries,” I told Moon when the President finished speaking. “She’ll pay us. Might be awhile until the next job, though. She’s threading a needle, my friend.”

  I poured us each a shot of whiskey. Moon tossed back his liquor and propped his boots onto the forward panel.

  “What’s the first move, partner?”

  “A grand entrance.”

  One day later, the townsfolk of Desperido heard the gentle hum of Carbedyne fins as I landed my cerulean blue luxury sedan on the dusty central avenue.

  Judging by the greeting party that emerged from Lumen’s cantina, I doubted the locals had seen so fine a piece of equipment grace their streets.

  Instead of gawking, they would have run and hid if they knew the ferocity of the storm I intended to set upon them.

  14

  T WO CONSTANTS EMERGED when I hopped and skipped across the nine universes: Stars and humans. Too damn many of both, for my taste, but only one group was capable of sticking around to the end of time. A self-perpetuating furnace didn’t overthink things. Just burn. Humans, on the other hand, had the great misfortune of being well-educated, emotional, and beholden to concepts such as liberty, personal branding, and the pursuit of shiny things.

  Admittedly, I fell prey to these weaknesses during my brief sojourn as a human. I ran away from home at sixteen, lived in the sewers for a while, sported long braids the color of a rainbow, and worked hard to fit in with friends and lovers who happened to be terrorists. My chest was tattooed with a green sun sprouting red rays. My guns were small and sleek, befitting a man who brought an up close and personal touch to each assassination.

  My young friends came from every rung on the social ladder but shared a deep aversion for the standards of “proper society.” Normies labeled us as disaffected, malcontented, ill-mannered, ungrateful, misinformed, hypocritical, sociopathic, xenophobic, and countless other terms which missed the point entirely. You see, they never called us audacious, courageous, or righteous because they would have exposed their own insecurities. Deep down, in the private spaces they shared with nobody, the normies wanted to be like us. They wanted to throw off the constraints that held them back.

  Regulations. Laws. Social protocols.

  What they would’ve given for a tiny dose of anarchy.

  That’s always been the struggle for humans: What they’re taught vs. what they crave. That fight will never end until they’re swept away and nothing’s left but those damn stars.

  To tell the truth, I dread it. What will a pair of lonely fallen gods do when humans die off? Sit around and wait for galaxies to collide? Eh. Sweet special effects, but kind of a slow burn.

  Humans brought spice to an otherwise dull party. Hence the people of Desperido, as fine a collection of weirdos, anarchists, and disaffected loners as a fella could meet.

  These were the folks you might find in tattoo parlors, cyberhead conventions, nomad caravans, desert music festivals, hillside caves, or libraries. Nothing about these people screamed “proper society.” They dressed light and practical, although I suspected they rarely changed clothes or paid attention to proper grooming and diet. Having said that, none I encountered on my return visit produced a disagreeable odor.

  Outside, they wore wide-brimmed hats and dark glasses, accounting for the no-doubt considerable portion of their lives spent underground. One might expect to find a rugged and hardy population living amidst a wasteland. One would be wrong. If anything, these Aztecans leaned toward the pasty.

  Those qualities did not diminish my opinion of them or reduce my confidence in the future soon to disrupt their lives. For all their peculiarities, the people of Desperido were an educated lot. Their first reaction to Bart and subsequent conversations proved they would be damn useful.

  They eyed me with suspicion – especially the ones who saw me inside the cantina four days ago – but they were far more intrigued by Bart. Even out here, they were not averse to the lure of shiny things.

  “Are you lost, senor?” A heavyset woman in her thirties asked.

  An older gentleman wearing a spectacle and a foot-long gray beard rubbed his hand against Bart’s bow. He answered for me.

  “The man who pilots this craft knows precisely where he is.”

  A twentysomething male with a biotech implant behind his left ear studied my sedan with a giddy curiosity.

  “Never seen a Ladybug class in person. But I’m updated on the pertinent specs. Mark 4.2 or 4.3?”

  “The best of both,” I said with a wink.

  “I love the Carbedyne fin design. Is it true what they say? The heat transfer ecoefficiency is one nanojoule less than a UNF warship?”

  Like I said: Educated.

  “Put it this way, my friend. I won’t be in need of replacement power sleeves for a few years.”

  He pointed excitedly toward small nodes adjacent to the roof.

  “Wait! When was the Ladybug approved for interstellar travel? I … I never heard anything about wormhole ability. That has to be the catalyzer pulse for a commercial-grade worm drive.”

  Maybe too educated.

  “No, no. It’s a long-range comms modification. I see how you might be confused. It does resemble a catalyzer pulse.”

  In my zeal to impress the hell out of these locals, I forgot about our one tech addition that violated interstellar law.

  “Makes sense.” The cyberhead laughed. “A sedan this small would never survive the towhead effect of an aperture.”

  “Ah. Done much worm travel, have you?”

  “One day, senor. I hope. I have a condition.” He pointed to the back of his skull near the implant. “Myostemic plastosis.”

  Poor sod. A few hours in an artificial gravity environment, and he’d likely suffer a fatal aneurysm.

  “I see. And the device behind your ear is …”

  “A cure, I hope. Or one step toward it.”

  “Good luck. I’m pleased you discovered your condition before … well …” I pointed skyward.

  “It was a close call, senor. I tried to join the UNF when I was seventeen, but they spotted my condition on a phasic scan.”

  The disorder had no cure. For all their advances, humans still came up short in matters of the brain.

  “Theo, doublecheck the syneth core. See if there’s a formula to solve this condition.”

  He responded with predictable disdain.

  “What? You intend to waste perfectly good syneth on him?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth. Shut up and research.”

  “Fine, old man.”

  I reached out my hand.

  “Raul Torreta. And you are?”

  “Elian.”

  “If I have time later, I might show you the inside.”

  He beamed like the sunshine.

  “Yes, please. That would be wonderful, Senor Torreta.”

  “Raul. If all goes according to form, we’ll have ample opportunity to talk at much greater length.”

  “And why’s that?”

  The question came from a tall, sturdy woman who wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and pulled from a digipipe. I saw her on my previous visit. She gave me the stink eye while I negotiated with Cardinale’s men.

  “What business does a man like you have in Desperido?”

  “A practical question. And you are?”

  She set her hands to her hips and stared. My new admirer Elian answered instead.

  “I’m sure he has a good reason, Varna. Don’t waste your energy on this one, Raul. She has her nose up everybody’s pants.”

  Before the woman erupted, which appeared imminent, I defused the tension with a beatific smile. This wasn’t a difficult proposition for a handsome son of a bitch who owned the shiniest thing these people had seen in quite some time.

  “Please. I don’t wish to create discord or sow suspicion. I’m here to speak with Senora Lumen on a simple financial matter. It’s nothing nefarious. I promise.”

  “Looking to collect credits, you mean. A man like you don’t waste his time here unless you plan to steal from our pockets.”

  Every town had someone like Varna: Paranoid and angry, scowling for the sake of theater. Perhaps that was her meager contribution to Desperido. Instinct told me to respond: “I don’t steal. I kill.”

  Yeah, no. A little too early for threats.

  Eight eccentrics gathered around me and Bart. I answered their questions, committed their names to memory, and inched my way toward the cantina. Varna wasn’t done with me.

  “Where’s the other malgado? The ugly one with the beard that made off with Trina last time?”

  Moon never mentioned the prostitute’s name.

  “My partner Ilan is engaged elsewhere today. He sends his regards.”

  Moon sat inside Bart, using our sedan’s mods to survey the town. I doubted he’d uncover anything of great note, but the surveillance job made him feel useful. He was an ear bead away should he find a headline-making development. More to the point, I needed him out of the way while negotiating with Lumen and her unibrow.

  To my utter lack of surprise, she was waiting for me at the front door, shock club in hand.

  “Twice in five days? Whatever your story, Raul Torreta, I’ll have none of it. Turn around and …”

  “Senora Lumen. Please. I come with open hands, a generous heart, and a deep bank account. All I ask is a few moments of your time.”

  She ignited the club.

  “You paid a tab and kept the peace inside my establishment. I rewarded you with one free pass. That’s all I’ll stomach.”

  “Senora, I don’t understand the anger. You’re protective of this town, no doubt, but what threat do I pose?”

  When Lumen laughed, her unibrow twisted like a serpent. I made a note to point this out to Moon.

  “The Horax are headache enough. I won’t have another member of a cartel slinking about my town.”

  “Cartel? Far from it. Senora, I’m merely an interested investor. I want a few minutes of your time to talk prosperity.”

  She eyed me head to toe.

  “A regular gaucho, you are. Purchase that duster in a tourist shop on Rodolfo Street? You Southerners play the same strings. Take your prosperity and your sedan back to Mesquine.”

  Interesting. She had either listened in on my conversation with Vincente and Mando, or she was fishing.

  The townsfolk closed in behind me. Time to avoid an awkward scene with veiled threats.

  “OK, senora. I must confess. I do have associates in the Mesquine cartel, but so do most legitimate businessmen and financiers of the region.” I assumed such arrangements existed. “I am here as an independent investor looking to add unique opportunities to my portfolio. My dialogue with Senora Cardinale’s men was necessary to pursue my interests without interfering with theirs. A few moments, senora. Please.”

  “You, senor, are a grifter.”

  “Does a grifter pay other men’s tabs to the sum of nine hundred UCVs?” I reached for my pom. “I could show you the veristamped deed and bill of sale on my Ladybug class sedan. I’ll throw in my business credentials and a family history, all free of charge. Hear me out, say no, and I fly away.”

  I thought one of the Ladybug gawkers would spring to my defense, but their silence clarified the relationship between them and Lumen. Perhaps their lack of objections persuaded her.

  “OK, Raul. I’ll sit you inside for a fifty-credit surcharge.”

  “Steep.”

  “If that’s too rich for …”