Chapter 14 The Yacht Club
The fog was a cold, clinging curtain of dampness as we stepped out from the small access terminal into the night. The cheery brightness of the terminal was quickly lost in the looming shapes and shadows of the boats parked in long rows fading into the night. Except for the strings of terminals, the tarmac was vaguely lit only by the glow of the Yacht Club building far astern and the undefined brightness of the towers of Primecentra that filled half the sky to the north. A lower and vague band of light stretched around to the south – broken by the dark massifs of warehouses and hangars that lay beyond the southern edge of the Yacht Club. The Ghost was parked on the edge of tarmac, several rows of parked boats away. A two-minute walk. Min had opted for the least expensive berths. We turned up our collars and snuggled deeper in our coats, setting out at a brisk pace.
The tarmac was quiet. To the east, a flare and the faint, muffled roar of a rocket blasting off from the passenger port, and closer, on the far side of the tarmac – the sharp whistling roar of a yacht taxiing – neither did more than highlight the smothering silence. We quickly put the brightness of the access point behind. Following a faint pedestrian walkway painted on the tarmac, we crossed a wide taxiway and into the darker space between a double row of parked yachts and snow banks. The rhythm of Min's metallic foot falls, and my own shuffling stomps seemed the last sounds left in the world. I had my exoskeleton powered on but it had been a long day in gravity. It was low on power and I was rather dragging.
The first whistle came from behind us as we started across the taxiway beyond the first row of boats. It was followed by an answering chorus of others from every direction. Min froze.
'Wharf rats.' she said quietly.
Wharf rats, a spaceer term for the assorted gangs inhabiting the cracks and shadows of every port – packs of dock and warehouse thieves, smugglers, dealers, pimps and crimps, loan sharks and hired thugs. Stray from the bright lights of Star Gate Boulevard into the tenements beyond or into the maze of hangars, warehouses and transport hubs of Port Prime at night, and you're likely to make the acquaintance of the wharf rats. But...
'What are they doing in the Yacht Club tarmac? I'd have thought the Club would have rules against wharf rats...' I said in a low voice.
'I'd have thought so too, that’s what I'm paying dues for. I'll have to have a talk with the committee. But those were certainly wharf rat calls. I suppose any security barrier can be breached. If you can breach a warehouse security system, the Club grounds might not be all that challenging. The real question is why they've run the risk of coming so far afield – so dangerously out of their dockland holes. This is not the place you'd want to steal a boat from, it can be tracked too easily. And there's little else to steal...It doesn't make any sense,' she mused, and reaching for her pocket, added, 'Let's get moving. If you have a billy-blade, get it in hand. I don't have a good feeling about this...'
'Back to the terminal. It's closest,' I pointed out as I pulled out the short, heavy, handle of my billy-blade from my jacket pocket. 'We've nothing they'd want, so I don't imagine they'd put much effort into preventing us. And may I also suggest we call club security or the Guard?'
'You can try, but I'm sure they're using jammers... Standard procedure.'
I touched my com link but heard only a loud hiss of static from my implanted speaker....
'The terminal wouldn't give us any protection, better strike out for the Ghost where we'd be sure to be safe once aboard her. It's not all that much further. And since they seem all around us, there's no avoiding them, if they decide to tackle us...'
'Right.' I said shifting and tightened my grip on my bundle of purchases, grabbing it the middle to give me something like a shield. 'But let's pile some on the gee's.'
I'd have retreated to the lighted terminal, but she's my owner and time was of the essence. And if the pack was looking for a fight, we'd not avoid one in either case.
She shook out her billy-blade and started out briskly, her long legs covering meters with every stride.
I started after her, running, activating my billy-blade, holding the handle down to allow the D-matter metal to flow out and solidified into a prefigured form, a forward weighted, half meter long, blunt edged blade – the self-defense weapon of choice for spaceers. It's handy, effective and legal everywhere since it's (somehow) classified as non-lethal. Closed, it fits in a pocket, or in a fist if that's how you like to fight, and extended, it's a blunt edged blade of an indestructible mutated metal that can deliver bone breaking blows. Confine your blows to your opponent's arms and legs and you'll stay clear of official trouble on self-defense grounds. Using lethal (classified) weapons on the worlds of the Unity will get you surgically de-sexed and a life sentence in an unsupervised criminal preserve – usually an enclosed valley on some airless moon, commonly known as Felon's Rift – though the official name varied planet to planet.
'I don't intend to stop and gossip,' Min said as I caught up to her as we plunged into the shadows between the next line of boats. She quickly proved her point.
Two slim dark figures leaped on to the path from the shadows of the boats, bars in hand. A wharf rat's scope of operations does not justify the risks associated with a lethal weapon so they fight like spaceers with pipes, bars and billy-blades. Dressed in dark, close fitting garments, faces hidden in bands of black cloth, save their eyes and mouths, they stood braced to receive us. They whistled again and the pack responded. Min didn't hesitate. She leaped forward on one of her long, bird-like legs and brought the other up with a sweeping kick landing on the jaw of the wharf rat before her, sending him sprawling, the half meter bars he was holding flying out of his hands and landing in a clatter on the tarmac.
I followed her, half a second behind, taking the first heavy blow of my opponent's bar on my bundle next to my head as I made a low swipe for his forward knee. He tried to block it with his other club, but was off balance and my billy-blade got in crushing the side of his knee. I stumbled with the force of his blow on my bundle shield and my low swing at this knee, but recovered and leaped over his falling form, reached a second line of assailants who'd appeared a few meters beyond. Min was already engaging the three of them. Clearly she hadn't spent all her time on Kimsai meditating, and with the momentum on her side had already flung one to the side with a kick and a blow to his shoulder. I plunged in beside her, connecting with a blow to the arm of her second opponent, and flung my shield arm up to block a blow from the wharf rat before me.
I've been a student of Barlan Dray, a master of the Mycolmtre's sword and dagger style of fencing throughout my years aboard the ship since it was an interesting way to exercise, requiring speed, reaction, anticipation and precise control over your weapons and body, all of which came to my aid now. But a bundle is not a short blade and a billy-blade is not a long sword. The billy-blade requires sweeping motions with your body behind it to give it the heft it lacks, so there's not a lot of actual duel-blade style actions that translates into this type of fight. And, too, I'd mostly sparred with Barlan in free fall, though a rush of fear and adrenalin was doing a lot to counter the weary weight of gravity.
Even as the blow landed on the bundle, I plunged, semi-stumbling, forward, billy-blade extended to strike him in his chest. We both lurched to my right, but my momentum carried me into him, sending him to the ground while stopping my fall. I gave him a blow to the arm nearest me and leaped past him out into the taxiway.
Min spun and gave a sweeping kick to a wharf rat who had come up unnoticed behind me, sending him flying. I stumbled out into the taxiway beside her, and we started running briskly up the middle of the lane, she looping nimbly on her long legs as the wharf rats whistled signals around us in the fog. I chugged along beside her, breathing hard. Only my exoskeleton working at top speed kept me up with her and she was likely holding back. We'd perhaps a hundred yards to go to reach the Ghost, and only one more row of parked boats to cross on our left.
A dark figu
re half stumbled out of the fog. I gave a downward chop with my billy-blade to an extended arm and continued on without a pause. I heard his blade clatter to the tarmac behind me. Then two dark figures materialized out of the fog before us. We did not hesitate, but plunged ahead to take them, with the whistles of the pack following us.
Our early, relatively easy success was likely due to the fact that we were dealing with the younger or more stupid wharf rats. The boys and girls of the gang. Coming in contact with the two before us was an altogether different experience, these two were faster, smarter and an order of magnitude more dangerous. My opponent was a female, who easily parried my first several blows while delivering several nearly catastrophic ripostes – one I just managed to parry with my bundle and the other only just deflected with my billy-blade, nearly ripping it out of my hand. The relative lightness of my billy-blade made fencing with her solid billy club iffy, since she could muscle my blade out of line. I did, however, have more body mass to put behind my light weapon than she had to put behind her heavier billy club so that I could move my weapon a little faster and with enough force to mostly counter hers.
Our clubs clanged back and forth for several seconds, but the longer we battled, the more time the pack had to come up on us from behind. I sought desperately, but ineffectively, to get past her, but she did it for me. I fell for a high feint on my left side and could not get my bundle down in time to block her low blow to the side of my left knee. It should have taken me down with a smashed leg, but her billy club hit the exoskeleton rib running along the outside of my leg with a clang, sending my legs sliding out from under me, the leg numb, but unbroken. My response was already underway as she struck her blow. I swept down with my billy-blade at her low arm as it struck my leg, momentarily trapping it against my leg, my half fall giving even more force. The blow no doubt smashed her wrist, sending her billy bouncing to the tarmac as I ended up on my knees, stunned. She, in shearing pain, dropped her other billy that had been poised over her head to deliver her final blow and also collapsed to the ground before me.
I saw Min connect a flying kick to her opponents outstretched arm, spinning him around and continued the spin, delivering a crunching billy-blade blow to his shoulder sending him flailing to the ground. She gave me a wild glance and breathlessly pointed to the darkness between the two parked boats to our left. I nodded. She turned and bounded for the gap. I scrambled to my feet and followed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see more of the pack emerge out of the fog not ten meters away.
We plunged into the shadow. A leap took Min over the snow bank between the two rows of boats. Two figures stepped out from the shadows of the boats beyond the taxiway – slim dark silhouettes against the brighter fog of the taxiway. One of the silhouettes raised an arm and aiming the faint blue projection beam of a darter at Min and snapped off half a dozen shots, as fast as the darter could charge the dart.
Min's slim body was outlined in a bright blue electric storm of light as the plasma darts struck her and exploded, rapidly, one after the other. Her body twisted, collapsing backward into the snow bank. The figure briefly watched her fall, turned to me, standing, frozen in shock. The darter's faint projection beam swung to me, brightening as it crossed my eyes to come to rest on my forehead even as the second silhouette reacted, who, like me, must have been frozen in shock.
Blue light. Very bright. Very hot. Then nothing.