The Lanthe Chase (or Making a Questionable Buck) [FT,CLOSED]

[Valinon]

Komorebi system

---

Cool blues, dark greens, and the migratory patches of white mingled in blurry patterns through Ranjit Das unfocused vision. Aoao was a garden; a planet far into the habitable zone of the reddish-orange fire of Komorebi’s primary. It was a chartered planet, managed by a consortia of Valinor corporations and tentatively under the martial administration of the Eucer Corridor Command’s districts.

The swirling colours passed underneath Ranjit as he lay naked against the exposed bubble of his ship’s retractable observation deck. He attempted to focus on one of the unnaturally bright, much lighter greens cutting in over the the planet’s terminator line. A pattern of duller, artificial colours and lights faded along with the darkness spinning away. Peacock Jones, or Kasen, one or the other this far south.

The cocktail of chemical secretions and old-fashioned liquor still lingering in his system impossible to orient fully. It didn’t matter. Komorebi, playground of bioscientists, corporate espionage, and brokerages would soon be closed–to him at any rate.

Whatever city it was grew more quickly. The ship’s RI sounded an alarm; Ranjit utter a clawing scream at it to stop. He rolled over on his side, facing away from the planet.

The perimeter just beyond cislunar orbit was skewed with energy disruptions and the warping of the starfield he had been waiting for more than week. Blurred vision only partially distorted the signals and idents fed by the RI and the system traffic controllers.

The collection of triangular, conjoined armoured plates of a Sariel-class dreadnought led the massed formation. It was followed by a quartet of cruisers and several other screening warships. But behind that was two dozen fleet tenders and other logistics ships, three massive tugs hauling a quintet of massive asteroids, and the long, bulky frames of modular defence stations broken down for redeployment.

The vessels idents scrolled outward, none larger than the dreadnought HMS Aleksander. The ship, or its commander, would write out the old days of Komorebi, creating a new redoubt for the broadening scope of the EXROA-COM’s commerce protection and defence arrangements.

Ranjit screamed at the approaching convoy. There were no more options. None. Another jump to the Losieda Corridor and a job he couldn’t want any less but no other options.

The Decker racer slipped away from Aoao’s planetary orbit hours later as the Kriegsmarine warships formed a new perimeter beyond the orbit of the planet’s two moons. It jumped with the deck still exposed; Ranjit wanted nothing more than to lose himself in the strange patterns and colours of the Verner drive activation.

Losieda

---

The third or fourth whisky was warming in Ranjit’s hand as he wandered aimlessly through the misaligned interior design of the ad hoc auction house buried in the bowels of The Furnace. Some 50 or 60 pieces of garbage, art and looted artifacts of a half dozen worlds and civilisations, jockeyed for space in a series of platforms joined by stairwells that altered the gravitational orientation as one walked them. Someone enjoyed creating the overly involved echo of pseudo-mathematics and surreal Cubism long forgotten to all but some obscure diehards of Old Earth’s dead eccentrics.

Someone also placed a high value in The Furnace’s reputation as a mindless rave and ignored the substance of that reality.

Ranjit turned away from the supposed collection of pre-interstellar scrolls. Who knew if they were real? Who cared? He looked down at the centre of the would-be maze of stairs and platforms.

Several stories below was a vast semi-ovoid traditional canvas more than 70 metres high. An intricate starscape was worked into a repetitive but divergent pattern with an older rendition of the Raumreich’s tradition two-dimensional astrographic projections. Along the far left of the ovoid, a long slash bisected the canvas and was upheld by a intricate lattice work of microfibers not observable at this distance.

Surret’s Reaches of the Grand Duchy was the reason for the whole display. The Ortagan artist was considered the height of the pre-Hegemonic Ducal culture. The intricate starscapes where a mixture of pinpointed laser mapping and painstakingly random patterns created by Momo Surret’s brushstrokes and sometimes hammering of a canvas with a whippoorwill wood shoot. The astrographic charts woven into it were all hand-rendered woodcuts of unfathomable scale. It captured the height of the Ducal government’s expansion just before the disastrous Colony Wars, and Surret himself attempted to destroy the piece when the Hegemonic revolutionaries stormed the capital of Silesia before being stopped and executed in the street.

The massive construct disappeared after the Great March War. Stolen from some museum in the war and Ortagan civil war that followed. Until it reappeared here; where someone thought they could sell it far beyond the Raumreich.

The gem at the well’s bottom was why more than half the aimless masses around the temporary gallery, regardless of what they stared at now. It was certainly the reason Ranjit was here, though not because he wanted to be.

His muse chirped an alert at him, and he heard a sharp, long series of footfalls momentarily altered as they stuttered from the orientation of the stair to the platform.

Lilaine Noyer-Meier was not the frontrank of information brokers in the empire, but she was capable and connected. A Falas married into the famous and infamous Great Valinor Meier clan of Alpha Centauri, she represented a combination of the new and old lines of the empire even centuries after the accession of Falasmyon into the imperial fold.

And she did so with style.

Lilane was tall, closer to two-metres tall than not. She strolled across the platform with an even, careless gait. A black cover swirled from her shoulders to mid-thigh, but it covered nothing. A pearlescent pattern of what might be cloth covered her bodily tactically, stretching from just below her breast bone to end at her calves. Similar constructs with high heels swept upward from her foot and fountained around her ankles. Intricately woven circlets of pearl moved along with her wrists peaking in and out of the cover’s sleeves as she walked.

The lazy gait hid a purpose and it was seconds before she was alongside Ranjit, left arm sliding through his left and securing itself with a casual ease and a smile from the same corner of her mouth. Taller than him, her head declined ever so slightly downward.

‘Ranj,’ her eyes traveled over his older suit, ‘you’re monochromatic.’

‘I would’ve worn all white if I knew it would be the whole background for the evening.’

There was a throaty chuckle as Lilane plucked a stemless flute from one of the hover trainings drifting through the platform atole, ‘Add Herr Das to my account for the evening.’

There was a sharp chirp, and Ranjit found himself guided to the edge of the platform.

‘I’m glad to see you is a lie, Ranj.’

‘I-’

‘You’re here because you’re a fucking moron and your money is gone. Let’s not waste time,’ she sipped the teal cocktail Ranjit couldn’t care to name.

‘There’s also the matter of the Kriegsmarine invading Aoao.’

Her eyes rolled, ‘Invasions are centuries ago, especially when it’s there territory to begin with. You tried to be a freedom fighter, nationalist, or whatever the fuck it was too long ago for me to care. Longer than anyone on Chandara cares. Don’t expect me to put up with it.’

‘Don’t expect me to put up with your usual shit, Liliane. If you were anyone else, I wouldn’t be here.’

Her glance was sharp, ‘You’re dead in the water, Ranj, even if I do love your stupid, stupid romanticism. Bergmann tried to burn you, you know? Burn your ass from here to the Talosian Expanse.’

‘Bergmann is a fucking has-been who can’t find work outside his tables in Sunset space.’

‘A has-been with more contacts than you. Reflect on that. A has-been who did keep you from flying far and wide into Union space. How does that feel?’ She threw back her drink. ‘Don’t answer.’

She guided him by the arm to the edge of the well.

‘You saw it already?’

‘I came early, as you suggested. The Ortagans had soul, once, more than the Valinor ever did.’

A repeated throaty chuckle, ‘Ask Surret where soul gets you. Or Archduke Raphael. Or you.’

‘Are we going to continue this?’

‘No, but,’ she gestured downward.

‘Awe inspiring, and the reason you are here.’

‘No, there’s you, hard as you made it.’

‘I don’t want this.’

‘Yet here you fucking are, Ranj. Between here and nothingness. I told you to leave years ago, and yet you persisted, and here we both are. You already cleared the security, so you’re committed. You understand what is being asked of you?’

‘Trading knowledge on the empire. How hard up are these morons?’

‘Does it matter? You’re their pilot for this run, Ranj, in the oldest sense of the word. Someone wants into the other side of the Lanthe, beyond the Lee, and they can pay well but not enough for someone who’s not got an ISS warrant. Which is why we are meeting here.’

‘Because you need to rob some painting for who knows who.’

‘Because the ghosts of the ghosts are already here, you idiot,’ they both looked down at the Surret. ‘There are no less than a dozen ISS and ESS agents here. Do you want to know who they are looking for? Whoever the fuck coughed up that oversized piece of canvas, and no one cares about who it goes to or who buys it. You are safer here than you can possibly be outside a cell.’

‘And you don’t care?’

‘About buying from some Hegemonic exile forced to either sell this and make it obvious or eat his last Wickian baby? No. But it will-fuck!’

Ranjit tense.

‘Not you!’ Liliane pulled him to one side. ‘Share your local with me.’

Their muses conspired and soon Ranjit found his telltales and reality swimming with much more information about the auction and numerous other distorted windows and ‘feeds hidden by Liliane’s extensive privacy measures.

There was a knot of activity at the bottom of well, but more of it was clustered around the couple who just arrived. Émilien Blanchett, system director of the United Pholus Banking Guild’s Losieda Operations, and his wife Agota made their way through the crowd. The couple were almost never seen outside the Gardens; certainly never beyond the Constellation. But the dour three-piece suit worthy of a court function and demur maroon dress were unmistakable.

‘They’re not supposed to be here,’ Liliane’s mouth was tensed.

‘What about that buyer’s stoic face?’

‘I will bid from here, idiot. Now go get drunk elsewhere. We’ll talk later.’

Several hours later it was all over; Ranjit saw Liliane’s crossed arms several platforms below him. He also saw the Blanchetts rise and demurely acknowledge their winning bid for the Surret with little more than terse nod and a deposit of a few empty glasses. His muse chittered a message and address from Liliane only a few minutes later, a club along the dark alcoves of The Furnace’s spindle.

It was dark; the music throbbed. He was guided by a floating drone whose pulsing telltales could barely be differentiated from the strobes and pulses of the endless thrum around them.

Liliane grabbed him by the collar and offered a strange tetrahedron in the palm of her hand. Ranjit reached for it. Her palm snapped shut.

‘Embry’s Seppun, tomorrow, or none.’

‘You’re a goddamn tease.’

‘And you already have your own advance if you don’t want it for free.’

‘I have the time.’

‘Good. Now come on,’ she pulled him toward the null-gee part of the dance floor.

‘Wait. Do you want to-’

‘No, no fuck, I don’t, Ranj. We both know what this is. You’re going to take your money and the cocktail. We may or may not fuck our brains out. But we both know what is eating away at the space beyond the Reaches. I don’t want to fucking talk about it; and neither do you. Remember this or don’t, but I’m not fucking talking about it.’

[New Dornalia]

Embry’s Seppun

The legend goes that Dornalians are not a subtle people. And to be fair, one would be correct if their experience was with the man sitting at the bar. He was giant of a man. Bald, with an unusually square jawline and a goatee, and a muscled frame which was barely contained by a suit that he had just paid for somewhere else.

In front of him was several cans of beer--the good stuff. It was a bit pricier and more potent than he expected. The man was used to stuff like Alamo, or Spacers’ Delight. Fairly inoffensive lager beers whose job it was to get you and yours good and plastered. This stuff was heavier, and more to be sipped and savored. And frankly, he had done that and then some, as the cans attested to.

The man looked up at the bar, and then groused in a voice which had a thick Texas twang--and a rough one at that--”Barkeep! BARKEEP!” The man picked up a beer can and wiggled it in the air, with an air of directness, before asking, “Do you got any more of this shit?” The man wasn’t the most polite, but he knew what he wanted and he wanted more beer. Plus, the man left a large tip to recompense the management for his blustery mood, and he seemed to have plenty more money where that came from.

The man looked about the room, surveying with a sort of attention to detail. Even inebriated, his gaze didn’t miss a beat. If anything, the alcohol seemed to make him function better. Scanning around, he was looking for two people. One was this guide he had hired, and the other was his Perseid associate. Part of some group called the “Mesembria’s Fury” or whatever. Both of them had been hired by some group of jobbers named the Children of the Stars or whatever, and the two parties agreed they needed a guide to help them find their way around the Lanthe. Either way, the Mesembria’s Fury and the Toombs Gang would have to work out the details--a part he was more than willing to do, with his fists and groundfighting moves if needed.

He was also looking around for any feds as well. He didn’t know if the ICBA or the Republican Marshals went this far out, but he did know that if he were back in the Republic, there’d be hell to pay. The name of Dexter “King Cobra” Toombs was on the shitlist of a lot of lawmen, and even some other criminals as well. His hands were aching--a fact that he hid by making it look like he was rubbing his hands in anticipation of his next few beers. The Valinor definitely knew how to make a damn good beverage, for sure, which helped with the coverup.

Then again, when you tended to use your fists, as well as a few unusual wrestling moves, like you did, striking from nowhere with the fury of a thousand suns? Your rep tended to catch up with you.

In fact, he had just made his dramatic escape from some of the Jade Phoenixes the other day. That accursed smuggling gang--having survived a brutal fight with the Feds and some terrorist gang in New Monterrey and their leader going to jail--had run afoul of Mr. Toombs’s gang of pirates and had put a bounty on the man’s head. Apparently, raiding a shipment of Vitamin Y and then reselling 80% of it before distributing the rest to your pirates for their personal use wasn’t the best way to make friends with rival smuggling syndicates.

In fact, part of the reason his hands were presently sore was that he had actually engaged in a brawl with some Jade Phoenix agents that thought they trap the King Cobra…

***

Several Days Earlier
Angry Catgirl Bar and Grill
Piersson Space Station
Piersson Station, New Monterrey County
Colonial Republic of Earth

The Angry Catgirl Bar and Grill wasn’t anyone’s idea of fine dining, but it was tasty enough. It was, at its core, a fast casual chain restaurant with waitresses wearing maid outfits one size too small doling out foods such as fish and chips, fish tacos, boneless wings of all sauces and types, and a surprisingly wide array of beers. It wasn’t quite a family restaurant, given the maid cafe theme, but for that action one could go to Spiro’s.

This particular Angry Catgirl branch was nestled onboard the Piersson Space Station, one of the many border pit stops between New Monterrey County and the rest of the galaxy proper. Like many such places, it had food, shelter and working bathrooms for the many travelers, space truckers and transients that stopped by Piersson, along with law enforcement to keep things nice and tidy. Of course, given that the station wasn’t as busy or as prominent as Obregon Major was, things were a lot quieter….which made it a much easier place to get through for people who worked on the decidedly shadier side of the law.

In this case, the local Angry Catgirl branch hosted a group of men and women in somewhat dressy casual clothing, save for one man who looked like leader material with his suit, tie, and old fedora that made him seem like something out of an old gangster film from the pre-Apocalypse. The group of men and women seemed like any other group of friends on a night out, waiting for another guest or two.

And yet they seemed expectant, with that focused look in their eyes and an air of menace about them that demanded privacy. The waitress serving their table definitely seemed to recognize that much--she put down a tray of beers and then promptly walked backwards, nervously bowing and inviting the people at the table to make further orders, even nearly hitting one of her coworkers in the process.

The man in the fedora looked around, and then heard a commotion, before he saw the tall, stonefaced Russian woman wearing a sailor suit with a long skirt, kanji and Cyrillic everywhere and long sleeves. The waitresses gave her a wide berth. One of the waitresses saw on the woman’s back a logo of a figure kicking a neko in the nether regions, and winced.

The woman sat down, and glared at the people at the table. The glare was returned in kind. The two sides had a frosty relationship, reinforced by the fact the woman folded her arms in front of her, sizing up all of her dinner companions with a curious eye. The two sides stared at each other for several moments, the mood punctuated only by the brief request by the woman in the sailor suit of “a glass of water.” She stared, until one of the others at the table spoke.’

“Where’s your friend?”

The sailor suited woman spoke, her voice tinged with contempt and a laconic stoicism that a Russian accent somehow made stronger.

“He will come soon.”

One of the others interjected, annoyed, “His ass better come here. Or has he been drinking again?”

A few titters, and one of the others at the table interjected with his own take.

“That’s like saying the sky’s blue, man. King Cobra Toombs is a good friend of Mr. Jack Daniels, ain’t he?”

The man who made the quip looked at the Russian Sailor Suited Woman, and glared, asking sternly, “I said, he--”

“I know what you said,” the Woman said with a frown. Dismissively, the woman said, already growing bored of this business, “His business is his business. It is not mine.”

A long pause soon developed, again punctuated only by the ordering of various foods. A blooming onion. Approximately five pounds of boneless Tribble strips, made with Hajarran Teriyaki flavoring--basically like Teriyaki sauce, but a bit more tangy and less sweet--with french fries. And, corn on the cob with garlic compound butter. The food was going to take a while to come out, the waitress promised. And so she left.

Otherwise, the long stares and awkward looks continued. The man in the suit and fedora was growing impatient, and he glared at the Russian, fiddling with his fingers before he blurted out:

“Your friend doesn’t know the value of keeping appointments, doesn’t he?”

The Russian said only, “He does.”

“If he was part of my organization, I’dve shot him already,” Fedora man said, gritting his teeth and looking like he had enough. “I don’t give a fuck who he is. When he deals with my people, he shows up on time, with the goods in hand and the shit that I want.” THe man looked around and leaned closer to the Russian his tone growing icy as he was heard saying in a low whisper, “Now I am done with being fucked around with. Where is he?”

The Russian said simply, with a shrug, “He will come.” The Russian seemed unfazed by the tone, and even yawned and shifted her form around a bit--revealing a holster on her side with a blaster in it--a clunky, large stick in a large leather holster.

The man in the fedora shrugged, and said, looking around, “Fine.” He then leaned back, and made the rest lean back slightly as well, exposing their own blasters ever so slightly as if to make the consequences of a draw very clear.

Just then, a large man came out of the kitchen. He was wheeling a cart full of goodies. He didn’t look like the usual neko waitresses. He was a large, musclebound man for whom a chef’s uniform and hat seemed almost comically undersized. He had a surgeon’s mask on, and looked at the table with deadly seriousness. Pulling up to the table, he then said in a Texan drawl, “‘Scuse me, ma’am? I understand y’all ordered wings?”

The Fedora Man said, “Five pounds of Boneless Wings. One Blooming Onion. French Fries. COrn on the Cob,” with an icy tone, as if dealing with incompetent restaurant staff was going to set him off.

The chef nodded, and then picking up the wings, proclaimed, “Here you go,” placing them down on the table. As he placed the items on the table, the chef casually asked, “You come here often, son?”

“No. I don’t.” was the Man in the Fedora’s reply.

“Ah, shame.” Looking around, the man made eye contact with each of the patrons, as he said, “Well, sometimes, you gotta come out here and enjoy the ambiance. Meet new people, that sort of thing. Don’t worry about me, by the way, the staff was shortstaffed, and well….they needed good ol’ me to come out here.”

The Man in the Fedora rolled his eyes and sighed.

“I’m going to use the bathroom. Excuse me.”

The man got up and walked away, eager to find somewhere quiet to scream to himself out of anger. As he walked, he heard footsteps. Turning around, he saw the chef approaching him.

“Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with you?”

THe man smiled, and ripped off the surgeon’s mask, revealing a goatee and a very sly grin, revealing himself to be King Cobra Toombs.

The Man in the Fedora seemed--well, any emotion he had would have only been given a brief chance to register before the chef kicked the Man in the Fedora in the gut, hard. As the Man doubled over in pain, the Chef turned around, grabbed the man by his head and neck using his arms, to force the man into a headlock with the head elevated. He then proceeded to leap and land on the floor, the impact forcing the man’s jaw against his shoulder with a sickening crunch. Letting go, the chef then proceeded to kick the man repeatedly, going, “Huh?! HUH!? GET UP! GET UP!” He then grabbed the man and tossed him out into the dining area, where people were already beginning to panic and wonder what was going on. The chef then ran forward, grabbing an unused chair and beginning to strike the Man in the Fedora with it.

The Russian, for her part, leapt to the side as the man’s compatriots pulled out their blasters and began shooting. She then stomped her foot on the ground, shouting a loud shout as she suddenly burst in a ball of green fire, and came back with an angry, glowing green aura around her. As she came back, she unsheathed the stick, and smacked it against a booth to create a long staff with a glowing green crystal at the end--that she promptly used to fire lightning bolts at the others in the booth. Within seconds, they had been reduced to ash, flashfried by very angry and malevolent energies.

Meanwhile, the chef grabbed the Fedora Man--or tried to as Fedora Man pulled out his own blaster and screamed, “Son of a bitch!” firing shots at Toombs.

Ducking behind a table, he heard the chef scream, “Where are you, you sonofabitch! HUH!? Where are you!?” The Fedora man began crawling under tables and moving about, hoping not to be caught. As he moved around, he heard the man shout and scream, “You think you can come down into a family restaurant, and try and kill King Cobra Toombs?! Fuckin’ Jade Phoenix bastards think you can sneak up on the cobra in a family restaurant, and kill him in cold blood? Well guess what--I saw through you sons of bitches! I SAW THROUGH YOU!”

The Fedora man saw an opening and tried to break across it--

--and was met with a kick to the head and a toss onto a table. Toombs stood up over him, grabbing him and pulling the man close, holding Fedora Man’s wrists as he said, “Just as I saw you now.”

“You motherfucker!” Fedora Man shouted. “DO you know who you just fucked with!? Once word of this gets out, you’re a dead man. You hear me? A DEAD MAN!”

Toombs smirked, and then tossed Fedora Man over a booth into a fleeing patron, as he shouted, “WHAT?! I can’t hear you over the sound of you choking on your own dick!”

The Fedora Man made a break for it, only to be tripped up by the Russian. Aiming her staff at the Fedora Man, Toombs shouted, “DON’T!”

The Russian stepped back, and as Fedora Man winced in pain, Toombs picked him up, and then found the cart from earlier. Shoving Fedora Man onto the cart, Toombs said simply, “Tell your friends in the Phoenix that the next man they wanna bring to kill me, better bring a whole fuckin’ army. Because it takes mroe than a squad of sumbitches to kill me.” He then said, “Nod your head.”

“W-what?”

“WHAT?!” was KIng Cobra’s reply.

“WHa--”

“WHAT?!”

King Cobra looked at The Fedora Man, who took the tone and the glare as a sign that he better do what the man said. So, nodding, Toombs then shoved him out of the restaurant, and then, grabbed a box, took the wings into the box, and then looked at the Russian. He then nodded and said, “Good job. Let’s go, Lyudmila, I don’t wanna get my ass kicked.”

The two then split, as the sounds of sirens could be heard...

***

Toombs looked around, and he grumbled under his breath with an annoyed, “Damnit.” The man didn’t appreciate his time being wasted, and as much as he liked his beer, he had come here for a specific purpose which was not at the moment being handled.

Still, he promised to meet up with his new associates. And so, he waited, keeping a lookout….