The Betwixt Book One (9 page)

‘
We'll take both kinds – and maybe two rifles,’ Od jumped
in.

The Hantari looked up and directly at Od. He obviously wanted
to know if the little monk was playing a game. ‘Have to be ordered
in, don't stock these – too expensive, too rare.’

‘
Very well – how long will it take. We are,’ Od looked at me,
‘short for time, I'm afraid.’

‘
Tomorrow,’ the Hantari was clicking his claws together
quickly. He wanted to see the color of our Central Credits, I could
tell. ‘Pay now.’

Crag'tal started to growl, and I just stopped myself from
jumping at the unexpected rumble. ‘Only if payment is
registered.’

‘
Of course.’ Now the Hantari straightened up, his claws drawing
to a rest. Perhaps he thought we weren't joking any
more.

‘
Splendid,’ Od drew a hand into his robe, and soon the
transaction was complete.

I didn't know much about the physiology of the Hantari, but I
could bet my still existent life savings that he was surprised when
Od brought out the Eluvian Platonium ore. If his race had eyebrows,
they would have jumped off and done a merry dance.

It was agreed that the guns would be delivered to my quarters
tomorrow, and soon we left the lower decks, transaction
complete.

Crag'tal followed us all the way up, our more than appreciated
bodyguard. But when he reached the promenade, he left with a
grunt.

‘
Hold on,’ I called after him, ‘can't I say thank you for all
your help? I could buy you a meal? Sea bass?’

He slowed down a touch. ‘Getting off this station,’ he
rumbled, ‘first the ghost ship, now the GAM cruiser – not
safe.’

‘
Sorry?’ I caught up to him, face plastered with confusion,
‘what GAM cruiser?’

‘
Big one. Crag'tal heard the rumors – trouble in the engine
core.’

I shook my head quickly, not following at all. Why would
engine trouble in a GAM cruiser cause a Crag, of all creatures, to
leave the station? 'I don't understand. I'm sure their engineers
will fix it – it would take more than that to make it go
nuclear—’

‘
Not destroyed, not nuclear. Something in engine core. GAMs
don't believe it, Crag'tal does. They closed off whole deck – lost
a GAM. Heard them talking in diner—’

Od leaned up on the tips of his alien toes. His face had that
same stretched, almost manic surprise it had had the day we'd first
met. ‘Unexplained engine fluctuations, disappearing
crewman . . . ‘ he trailed off, eyes big.

‘
Crag'tal knows. Crag'tal told you yesterday, human – Twixts.
Got off the ghost ship, then to cruiser.’

A chill was slipping across my back, as if a man whose hand
was covered in ice was touching his fingers along my spine.
‘Twixts, I croaked, ‘got off the ghost ship . . .
‘

Oh . . . no.

I put a hand up to my mouth, my eyes practically welded-open
in horror. There had been two, there had been two Twixts on that
ship! The one I had felt in engineering, then the one in the cargo
bay! I had – I had just left without finishing the job!

I felt like doubling over and collapsing into a ball right
here in the center of the promenade. My brief victory at managing
to secure weaponry had burnt away in the flash of my horrible
realization. Crag'tal had said they'd lost a
GAM . . . someone had died . . . died
because I hadn't finished the job.

Tears started to well up at the corners of my eyes.

Crag'tal looked at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking,
and I didn't care. I was crying in the middle of the promenade
because I had . . . I
had . . . .

‘
Non corporeal, non substantial entities from the in-between
dimensions,’ he said.

I managed to look at him, eyes full of tears now, his image
reflected and distorted by my sorrow. He had said word-for-word
what Od had told the Hantari. That was the thing about Crags – they
didn't always speak in staccato, caveman English. They could form
grammatically accurate sentences when they wanted to. Why they
chose to speak the way they did, I didn't know. But it was obvious
Crag'tal was trying to make a point.

‘
Crag'tal only knows of one creature – Twixts.’

I shivered.

‘
Crag'tal doesn't want to know why you bought the guns. Your
business. But Crag'tal wishes you happy hunting.’

With that, he turned away and walked off through the crowd,
his lumbering mass clearly visible towering over the heads of most
of the other people and aliens.

Happy hunting . . . 

I turned to Od who was nodding at the retreating form of
Crag'tal, face obviously appreciative. ‘There are few we can trust,
Mini—’

But Crag'tal seemed to be one of them, I finished off his
sentence in my head.

‘
We must now go back to your quarters to plan,’ Od turned and
disappeared into the crowd, like only a two-foot creature
could.

I just stood there for a moment, not bothering to wipe the
tears from my eyes as they trickled down my cheeks.

When I looked up, the crowd had thinned a little and a
familiar looking face was staring at me from across the room.
Commander Jason Cole. He appeared to be talking to a security
detachment, but was ignoring the person he spoke to, and glancing
over their shoulder towards me. His brow was sunk with confusion,
mouth pressed into a commiserating smile. And it wasn't just one
side of his mouth, it was both.

I smiled, beside myself. One of those sad smiles where your
chin dimples in and only the tiniest corners of your lips
rise.

My life was changing – distorting before my eyes into the
strangest, most incomprehensible of shapes. I was changing too –
fighting Twixts, making friends with Crags, and buying expensive
guns. But at least I could still remember how to
smile . . . .

Chapter 5

This was the worst, most anxious shift of my life. I couldn't
believe that I had actually bothered to show up for work. But I
had. Od had insisted on it.

‘
We can't go after the Twixt on the GAM cruiser yet,’ he'd said
over breakfast, which had been another sustenance bar. ‘Not until
your guns arrive. But you must not be idle. Your position at
Marty's Space Diner, it is the perfect work for you this morning.
You can listen carefully to the conversations around you – glean
information on our foe from the GAMs and station crew.’

I could do that walking the decks too – there was nothing
special about the diner. Well . . . Marty always
said that food made people talk. And in a way, he was right. The
diner would concentrate all sorts together, and soon enough they
would always start chatting about the latest gossip while throwing
down their Space Blasters and Eluvian Ales.

So I kept my ears out as I mindlessly entered
orders.

‘
Closed down a deck? Are you serious? Why did they go and do
that?’ A station engineer asked a cargo crewman as he twisted his
drink in his hand. ‘If it's core trouble, then they've got to get
in there and stabilize her before she's lost.’

‘
They can't get in there,’ the cargo crewman leaned forward,
eyes darting from side to side in classic conspiratorial style.
‘Something is in there – it has already killed.’

‘
Can't get in?’ the engineer was apparently incredulous, but I
could see his eyes widen with interest. ‘Don't they know where the
doors are?’

‘
They think it's some kind of infestation, maybe Clouds – don't
know where they would have picked them up though.’

Clouds, despite the friendly name, where a hive creature made
up of billions of tiny, floating cells. They were infamous for
infesting engine cores and feeding off the energy. If there were
enough of them, they could destroy a ship. And the cargo crewman
was right, it could just be Clouds. But no GAM ship would be that
careless. Clouds were a known entity – all incoming cargo was
scanned for them.

I continued to pick up fragments of various conversations
though – some more ridiculous, some harrowing, some too cryptic to
understand.

‘
They're going to send in a contamination unit – scan for
entities,’ a GAM said to his friend.

‘
They're not going to find anything. Jenkins works on that deck
– he said he saw that guy before he died, said he heard this noise
that wasn't there—’

‘
What the hell does that mean?’

‘
I don't know, ask Jenkins.’

Noise that wasn't there. I knew exactly what that meant, and
it made me want to jump into the center of the sun just to feel
warmth again.

After a while, things became a little too much and I had to
stand off to the side of the bar, one hand covering my face. This
was my responsibility, I kept thinking to myself, it was up to me
to fix this, and it was my fault that it had gotten this far. A man
had died, a man had died . . . 

‘
I would say go to a doctor,’ a voice said from the other side
of the bar, ‘but you don't like those.’

I pulled my hand away quickly to meet the gaze of Commander
Cole. ‘Oh, it's you.’

‘
Yes, it is.’

It always seemed to get awkward quickly when I talked to the
Commander, and now was no exception.

He licked his lips, eyes staring off into the middle distance
for a moment. He appeared to be considering something carefully. ‘I
saw you yesterday,’ he eventually offered, ‘you
alright?’

For some reason those two little words startled me into
smiling lightly, and I could feel my eyes stretch open. It was the
way he'd said it . . . 

He tilted his head to the side, awaiting my reply.

‘
Oh, of course. I had just . . . ‘ I cast around
for an excuse. Because I wasn't about to tell the Commander that I
had indirectly killed a GAM by not destroying a Twixt when I had
had the chance. But I couldn't think of anything to say – not a
single thing.

‘
You don't have to tell me,’ he said quickly, looking off to
his side at a passing Hantari.

There was that awkward note again.

The thing is, I wanted to tell Jason. I really did. Okay, so I
didn't know the guy . . . but he
seemed . . . well, I'd like to think he would be one
of the few I could trust.

‘
So, have you worked on this station long?’

I bit into my lip with my front teeth. ‘A couple of years –
which is long enough, I guess.’

He conceded with a polite nod. ‘I guess it has its
perks.’

Sure, if perks included recycled air and enough credits to
stock your cupboards with second-hand military sustenance rations.
‘We get a lot of different races through,’ I was playing with the
ties of my apron: flicking them around and digging at the hem with
my fingers. ‘Not like being a GAM though. I imagine you
see . . . things.’ I blushed at the sheer stupidity
of my comments. He saw things? Of course, everyone who had vision
saw phenomenon that could be categorized as ‘things’.

‘
Oh,’ he laughed, ‘you could say that.’ His eyes met mine, but
then dropped to my blouse, and I noted with a flush of heat, that
they didn't immediately move.

When his eyes finally flicked away, he
looked . . . 

I couldn't stop biting my lips now, and I was whipping my
apron ties around so furiously that they were little
blurs.

I knew I should be capitalizing on the moment and asking the
GAM Commander about the situation aboard his ship, but I couldn't
speak. If I opened my mouth now, it would be to unleash the dam of
babble.

‘
Mini—’ he cut off, obviously trying to form an uncomfortable
question from the look on his face. ‘Do you—’

I hung on his every word.

‘
Mini,’ another voice cut in from the side.

I turned to see the Hantari Tech Industry's salesman from the
lower decks. He was still in his navy blue uniform, his holo badge
blinking out for everyone to see. He was carrying two big metal
cases, which he placed carefully on the bar. They had the Tech
Industry's logo all over them.

The Commander leaned back, eyes fixed on the boxes, one
eyebrow raised. ‘Those aren't what I think they are?’ he asked the
Hantari. ‘New generation, Tech Power rifles with second
function—’

‘
They are.’ The Hantari nodded with the quickest flick of his
insect head. ‘Offer to GAM at discount, if he's
interested.’

The Commander laughed, his face lighting up. ‘Oh, I can't
afford those.’

The Hantari turned back to me. He handed me a pad. ‘The
Kroplin was not in your quarters – give your bio scan for
confirmation of receipt.’

My face was burning 100,000 degrees of white-hot heat. I
couldn't look at the Commander, but I could see his head tilt my
way with surprise.

I did the scan then handed the pad back. The Hantari nodded,
and to my complete horror, proceeded to open the boxes right there.
‘They have been DNA fixed. No one else can fire them,’ he added,
obviously remembering I was a complete idiot when it came to
weaponry. ‘You have also received free Tech Industry holsters,
because of your considerable purchase. Now you have seen the
goods,’ he quickly shut the cases, ‘you take. Return to my stall if
you have trouble,’ he looked at me and made a noise which I could
tell was the mosquito version of a harsh laugh, ‘when human has
trouble.’