by Michael Kingswood
Ray knew he was in trouble the instant the lights came on.
It wasn’t the two grim faces staring at him, round cheeks and narrowed eyes so similar the two men had to be brothers.
No, it was what Ray saw past them that clinched it. A broad window through which he could see nothing but the starscape of deep space. And the blocky, dull-grey form of a heavy lift starship, the kind that carried cargo and passengers; not a ship of war.
And it was receding fast; very fast like it was thrusting away from Ray’s vantage point. Except that he was looking at it from amidships, not bow or stern-on.
So he was the one zooming away. In this little grey-blue walled space with the window, and him sunk into a surprisingly comfy black faux-leather upholstered crash couch with the two bulky brothers in brown suits staring down at him. The matching brown curls atop their heads going well with their matching eyes and scowls.
Ray didn’t need to ask which ship that was. It was the SV CANDLEMASS, on which he had hoped to make his getaway from Icarus before the Syndicate could catch up with him.
So much for that grand plan.
Ray’s throat was scratchy, like with the beginnings of a cold, and his head ached. Whatever tranq the two men had hit him with seemed like it was going to leave him with one heck of a hangover in a short while.
He turned his head to look at the rest of the compartment where he sat. Plain walls, and a single sliding door—hatch—off to the right, with a plain black touch pad next to it. The operating panel.
Recessed lighting overhead that was tuned to a warm light that, unless he missed his guess, simulated a G5 star like the one Icarus orbited. White floor tiles, not shiny like brand new but still obviously well maintained. And from the feel of his body in the crash couch, the grav plates were tuned to Icaran local, 1.02g. Or close enough, anyway.
To the left, the bulkhead was dominated by a built-in vidscreen, which was black from inactivity. But it was big, and Ray could see speakers mounted in various places in the ceiling; a surround sound setup.
The air was dry and cool, and smelled ever so slightly of lemon, and Ray pursed his lips.
This wasn’t a prison room or holding cell. Not a store room. It was more like a sitting room or entertainment center. He could almost be comfortable here, except…
Turning his gaze back on the two brothers, Ray found their expressions unchanged, their stance still quietly menacing.
He swallowed, which helped the sourness in his mouth but not his throat, then tried a grin at the two men.
“So boys,” he said, and raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Where are we going?”
The guy on the left just grunted. His brother’s scowl turned into a vicious semi-grin.
“Fryberg wants to see you.”
Fryberg. That was a surprise. Ray hadn’t interacted with him or any part of his organization before, at least not that he knew of. Of course, in Ray’s line it was entirely possible to have done so without knowing it.
Still…
Ray felt his spirits lifting. Fryberg wasn’t out for his head, nor did Ray owe him any money. So though his carefully laid plans had been foiled, he wasn’t completely screwed.
Hopefully.
“Well I am at his disposal,” Ray said, grinning with all his might. “When will we be arriving?”
“Now,” said the brother who had spoken before.
The quiet one stepped forward and reached out to grab Ray’s upper arm, saying, “Get up, pretty boy,” as he did so.
Ray tried to pull away, but the guy’s fingers were like vices, and he could only obey the sudden tug as the thug shifted his weight back, pulling Ray up onto his feet.
“I can do it mysel—“ Ray’s protest died in his throat as he reached his full height. His head immediately began swimming, and he saw double for a second.
Which was unfortunate because that meant he saw two of the scowling thug’s face spinning around in front of himself, and one was enough.
Ray felt himself swaying on his feet, and for a second it was only the thug’s grip on his arm that kept him from falling.
Yeah, that tranq the brothers had used must have been a doozy.
He shook his head, and slowly regained his equilibrium, blinking to make the images of the brothers settle down.
The guy holding him looked stern as ever. The other—the one who had spoken first—looked, if anything, amused for a second. Then he turned toward the door and tapped the control pad.
“Come on, tough guy,” he said.
The door slid open, and Ray half-stumbled, half-walked, half-got-dragged through into a space that was simply too large to be on a starship, unless it was a hangar bay or a cargo compartment. But even then…
It had to have been twenty meters across and thirty deep. The doorway to the little entertainment room, or whatever it was, lay at the left-hand corner of the room, from Ray’s perspective.
The entire place was covered in thick greyish-white rugs that Ray would be willing to bet had been hand-sewn. Heavily-cushioned divans colored red and blue and black were strewn about apparently at random, the kind of intentional randomness that only a master designer could obtain. Toward the rear of the room was a long table that looked to be carved from real wood, and was flanked by a dozen chairs that also looked wooden. To the right from the table was a short dais on top of which sat a single simple, though still wooden so decidedly expensive, chair.
The entire place was illuminated by the same recessed lighting as in the entertainment room, though looking around Ray supposed this place was where the real entertainment happened. But here the lighting was a bit more muted, and closer to the red end of the spectrum.
The air was warmer as well, a bit more humid, and Ray scented incense on the nearly imperceptible breeze that the ship’s ventilation created. And sure enough, turning his head further to the right, he saw a pair of brass braziers dangling from chains in the ceiling, each emitting a slow stream of fragrant smoke.
That alone, more than anything else in the room, screamed the wealth of the ship’s owner. To allow open flames onboard, even the tiny ones an incense burner required, and apparently without concern…
The thug gripping Ray’s arm yanked him forward, and Ray stumbled for a second before catching himself.
They threaded their way through the sea of divans toward the dais at the back, and Ray noticed there was a woman reclining on one of the divans at the foot of the dais.
He had overlooked her when he first looked around, but as he got closer he questioned how that could have been possible.
She was striking. Long, muscular legs and a torso boasting every curve a man could want. With long, wavy black hair that flowed over her shoulders onto her chest, and skin that was healthily tanned, but just enough. Her eyes were slightly angular, like she had descended from Han or Nihon who had fled the Tsago Dominance.
She wore a loose-fitting, black and silver silken skirt that clung to her thighs enticingly, and a blue silk blouse that was equally loose, and equally enticing without being revealing. She held a crystal goblet in her left hand that was filled with a deep burgandy-colored wine, and silver chain earrings dangled from her ears, making little tings that almost seemed to be tuned to specific notes as she turned her head to regard him when he approached.
“Ray Tanaga,” she said, and rose to her feet in a smooth, languid motion. “Welcome aboard.”
Ray put on his best smile and quickly looked her up and down, making it obvious since she so clearly wanted him—and everyone else—to do so. “Glad to be here. And who might you be?”
She raised an eyebrow, and her lips twitched slightly. “I am Fryberg.” With that, she ascended the dais and turned back around to face him, then slowly, gracefully, she settled herself down onto the chair waiting for her.
Ray’s smile slipped, and he found himself gaping before he could catch himself. “You— You’reFryberg?”
She nodded slowly, amusement twinkling in her eyes.
“But…” Ray shut his mouth, swallowed, then tried again. “I thought—“
“You thought I was a man.” Her lips turned up fully now, and she took a sip from her wine. “Most men do.”
Ray had no response to that which could in any way come off as witty. So he just shrugged. “Well, what can I do for you?”
Fryberg took another sip of wine and leaned back in her chair. From this close up, Ray could see that the chair was slightly padded, with blue-upholstered cushions inlaid into the wood frame. But they couldn’t have been very thick, those cushions. Still, Fryberg’s body language said it was a comfortable sit.
Go figure.
She lowered her glass and regarded him with frank, piercing eyes, which he suddenly realized were green.
“Ray Tanaga. Small time con artist and petty thief. But somehow you managed to catch the attention of both the Martucci and Jenkins families. And,” that eyebrow lifted again, “get the Jenkins family to put out a contract on you.”
Ray didn’t reply, he just watched her. His initial reaction to her beauty was fading into wariness, and as she laid out his situation so plainly, he began to feel a smidgeon of fear.
But just a smidgeon.
“Why?”
He blinked. “Why what?”
“Why did they put out a contract on you?”
Ray looked left, then right, and saw the burly brothers still flanking him. Though they had backed off a couple feet. For now.
“You already know the answer to that.” He met Fryberg’s eyes again, and raised his own eyebrow.
She chuckled ever so softly, then shrugged and took another sip. “Better than you, I expect,” she said, after swallowing. “Shall I tell you?”
Ray shrugged. “I’d rather you just get to the point.”
Fryberg’s eyes narrowed, her lips compressing slightly. Then she said, “You scammed a thousand credits off of a witless coed. And,” she raised her glass toward him almost in salute, “took her virginity as well.”
Ray blinked. He remembered that scam. It was about five months back, and he hadn’t thought about it since. But that wasn’t why the Jenkins family wanted him dead. They wanted him dead because he had—
“You didn’t know this, but that coed was the daughter of Kevin Jenkins’ brother in law.”
Ray’s train of thought skidded to a halt. “Wha—?” He shook his head.
Fryberg nodded. “Oh yes. And of course, they are Catholic, so an abortion was out of the question.”
Ray’s knees felt wobbly again, but this time his vision didn’t swirl. He just felt light-headed and he tasted bile.
Totally not the tranqs.
“A—“ He coughed, to clear the sudden clenching of his throat. “Abortion?”
Another nod. “Thanks to you, the Jenkins clan will be welcoming a bastard soon. And their niece is now quite unmarriagable.” Fryberg paused. “By their standards anyway.”
Ray shook his head. “No, that’s not right. They want me because I—“
“Because you helped the Martuccis steal the Amestenol they so recently smuggled past customs.”
Ray couldn’t do anything but nod.
“That did anger the Jenkins’, to be sure,” Fryberg said. “But when they found your DNA at the scene of the theft and ran it, they discovered, quite by accident, that it was a parental match for the baby.” She smiled wickedly at him. “Pre-natal care at its finest.”
She drank from her goblet again, then said, “They probably wouldn’t have killed you for the theft. Just made you work off the debt. But the violation…” She shook her head, and made a tsking sound.
That lifting of spirits that Ray had begun to feel earlier faded completely. He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat, then tried grinning at her again. “I don’t suppose you brought me here to congratulate me on my prowess.”
Fryberg actually laughed out loud, and shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“And you’re not looking for a baby daddy as well, I take it?”
Her lips pursed and her eyes tracked up and down Ray’s body. For a second, he thought she almost might take him up on it.
Then she shook her head. “Definitely not. No,” she leaned forward in her chair, all amusement lost from her face as she regarded him with eyes that seemed to stab straight through him, “I’m going to collect the bounty on your head.”
“Well, hang on now. We can—“
“Vasili,” she said to the brother on Ray’s left. Then to the one on his right, “Liev.”
As though taking their names as orders, the two men sprang on Ray, and grabbed him by the arms.
He tried to squirm out of their grasp, but they were too strong, and anyway he was still a bit loopy from the tranq. Or maybe they were just too strong.
Either way, he found himself being dragged away from Fryberg’s little throne.
He cried out again; surely he and her could come to some other arrangement. He could do some jobs for her. Something. Anything.
But she just watched him go, sipping at her wine with a strangely satisfied expression on her face.
#
The trip back to Icarus was a lot shorter than Ray thought it should have been. After all, the CANDLEMASS had been halfway to the closest of the system’s jump points went Fryberg’s goons jumped him. And it had seemed to take forever to get that far.
But, before Ray really had time to get used to the idea that he was being taken back to his doom, the door to the little room where he had been stashed—quite a bit less comfy than the entertainment room he’d first met when he came aboard—opened, and the two brothers dragged him out.
Ray considered trying to fight. Actually began the attempt.
And then gave up on the idea as soon as it came. He was a talker, not a fighter. And these two fellows were the opposite. And each of them outweighed him by at least twenty kilos.
So after just a short struggle that didn’t even count as such, he found himself dragged down a relatively short passageway and then down a ramp through which sunlight streamed.
On the tarmac beneath the ship, he blinked in the glare, so much brighter than the shipboard lights he had grown used to. But glare or no, Ray recognized the features of the man Vasili and Liev brought him to stand before.
Head and shoulders taller than both of them, lean and powerful despite the weight of many years, which had dug deep trenches into the lines of his face. With silver-grey hair cut short on the sides and back but left to grown long on top, and a thin, pristinely manicured mustache.
Ray had only met him once before, but he would never forget him.
Vincent Jenkins. The Jenkins family patriarch, and the head of all their enterprises, both criminal and not.
The old gangster looked Ray up and down when the toughs brought him to a halt, and a trace of a smile appeared on Jenkins’ face.
“Ray,” he said, his voice a silky-smooth baritone that almost seemed to purr as it issued from his lips. “How nice to see you again.”
Liev poked something into the left side of Ray’s neck, then the world went black.
#
Ray didn’t wake as easily this time.
On Fryberg’s ship, it was like going from lights out to lights on, like a switch had been thrown. The tranq Liev hit him with this time was both more gentle…and less.
The transition back to consciousness was easier, more gradual. But damn the headache was like someone taking a ball-peen hammer to his temples. Add in nausea and a taste like rancid meat on a tongue that felt like sandstone in his mouth, and it was worse than the worst hangover Ray had ever experienced.
Which is why he just lay there on something cold and hard, squinting his eyes shut against bright light that seemed to want to tunnel through his eye sockets and fry his brain, and groaned.
Loud.
His limbs felt like lead, and his stomach was twisting in his belly like a serpent coiling itself around a victim. But he heard the voice that said, “He’s awake.”
Heard it, recognized it, and then groaned even louder when the recognition registered in Ray’s beleaguered brain.
It hadn’t been a nightmare. That had been Vincent Jenkins he’d seen before. And that voice belonged to his son, Kevin.
Kevin, of the uncle-in-law to the girl Ray had taken five months ago variety.
“Get him up.”
Ray felt hands grasp him beneath the armpits, and he found himself hauled to his feet.
The light was still bright, but his eyes had adjusted. A bit. So he was able to see the room around him, mostly.
He rather wished he could not.
It was smaller than Fryberg’s reception room, or whatever it had been, despite being in a building on a planet instead of within a starship. It was the back room in a warehouse, unless Ray missed his guess. Metal shelving that showed surface rust in numerous places lined the walls in front of him and to his right, and harsh LED lights hanging from the ceiling provided illumination. The floor was tiled in black and white squares, and the place smelled like dust and sweat.
But Ray didn’t pay mind to much else except the man in front of him.
Kevin Jenkins had similar facial bone structure to his father, but aside from that they were opposites. Where his father was tall and lanky, Kevin was short. Short and built like a brick shithouse. His shoulders were almost half as broad as he was tall, and his muscles strained the long-sleeved, collarless, navy blue shirt he was wearing until Ray could swear he heard the threads in the shirt’s seams screaming in agony.
His hair was dark brown, not silver like his father, and he wore a closely-trimmed beard. His eyes were hazel, and hard as they burrowed into Ray’s face. But he wore an expression of satisfaction.
“Good old Ray Tanaga,” Kevin Jenkins said, and it sounded like he was talking familiarly with someone he wasn’t about to have killed. “How you been, Ray?”
“Never better, Kevin,” Ray managed to say, though the words came out jumbled and he could barely recognize his own voice, scratchy as it was. “Nice seeing you again.”
Kevin snorted, then gestured to his right, where a second man stood. He was muscular, though nowhere near to Kevin’s level, and a couple years younger than Kevin, which still put him at least ten years older than Ray. His hair was reddish blond, and he wore a light grey business suit, without tie; the collar of his light blue shirt was undone.
His eyes were green, but not as green as Fryberg’s, and they looked at Ray with hate that should have set him on fire, it was so intense.
It had been five months, but Ray remembered the girl in question, and he saw reflection of her pretty face in this man’s.
He was so screwed.
“This is Stephen O’Donnel,” Kevin said. “He’s been wanting to meet you for a long time now.”
Ray nodded companionably at Stephen and tried putting on a pleasant grin. “Nice to meet you.”
The right cross took him in the cheek, and Ray’s head snapped to the side. His ears rang and he saw stars. He tasted blood, and thought he might have bit his tongue. Or maybe the punch had taken out a couple of his teeth. He couldn’t tell; the entire side of his face ached and his cheek was already swelling, and he couldn’t pick out what part was broken, what was just hurt, and what was screaming out in sympathy for its neighbors.
He spat out a mouthful of blood and turned groggy eyes back toward Stephen, who shook his hand out in front of his chest, letting his fingers loosen and the sting of his punch leave a bit.
Stephen did look a bit less hate-filled right that second; he even returned Ray’s nod. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Then he grinned, and the smile contained promises of long, long days of many unpleasant things in Ray’s future, and that Stephen was going to enjoy every minute of it.
Ray would have swallowed, but his jaw didn’t seem to be working right then. He glanced back at Kevin, who had a look of impassive almost-amusement on his face. The sort of expression that said he didn’t much care about what was happening, though it was interesting to watch.
“Look,” Ray said, and the word came out like, “Wook.”
Great.
“Look,” he said more slowly, turning back to Stephen. “I didn’t know, ok? I’m sorry. You don’t need to kill me.”
“Kill you?” Stephen’s eyes widened slightly, then that grin came back. “I’m not going to kill you. Just cut on you a little bit.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a long, broad-bladed steel knife. The blade gleamed almost like silver in the LED light, and Stephen made a little gesture with it toward Ray’s crotch. “Only a little.”
Ray felt his eyes widening, and he tried to take a reflexive step back, but the hands holding him up, belonging to some nameless goon who had picked him up and was still standing behind him, gripped him tightly, and forced him to remain still. “Is that really necessary? I mean—“
Stephen stepped closer, so there was barely a foot between them, and Ray felt as much as saw the knife move downward.
“There’s has to be another way we can work this out.”
Stephen’s eyes narrowed. “We can work it out, all right. Your choice as to how.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re gonna to do right by my girl. Or you’re gonna be a eunuch. Up to you.”
Do right. He didn’t mean… Did he?
Stephen nodded. “Yer gonna marry her, take care of her, and stay true to her. I learn she’s not happy with you in any way…”
Ray flinched as he felt the blade—the flat of the blade, thank God—tap his nether regions.
“Of course, if you prefer to stay a single man…”
“No! No, I can do that. Be a good husband. Always wanted to be a Dad.” He really hadn’t, but right then, he didn’t see a whole lot of choice.
“Thought you’d see it that way.” Stephen’s smile was satisfied, but also more than a little sadistic.
#
And so, a week later, Ray found himself in a cathedral, in a tuxedo, exchanging vows with the lovely Miss Loretta O’Donnel. Stephen gave her away, then stood behind them as they said the vows, and Kevin was his best man.
As Ray slipped the ring onto his young bride’s finger, he remembered a picture he had seen from old Terra, centuries before man had expanded to the stars. Of a young couple in a church, getting married, with the girl’s father standing behind them, shotgun in hand.
He never thought it possible that a shotgun wedding could still take place. But he had no doubt what would happen if he didn’t go through with it.
Then again, when he looked up from Loretta’s hand to her face after he put the ring on her, he saw the simple beauty of her, augmented by the glow that all pregnant women seem to get. He thought of his son—they had found out it was a boy—growing within her. And as he saw the thing that almost was happiness—and the promise that it could perhaps truly grow into that over time—in her eyes, he figured it could be worse.
A whole lot worse.
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A collection of Michael Kingswood’s published stories are available here: