Most of the Sun Factory was automated and empty of people. It was a giant construct and it would have taken billions of people to fill. There was a funny psychological fact concerning it. Most people wanted to be around other people. So there were a few areas in the Sun Works Factory were the vast majority congregated. The Pleasure Palace was one of those places. The shock-trooper training area was another and the third was the Highborn facilities.
Each was an oasis of humanity amid an empty sea of thousands of miles of corridors and holding bays.
“You owe me a drink,” Kang said as they rode the lift.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Marten said.
“Where do we go first?” Vip asked Lance. “The game pit or the card room?”
“You got to study the crowds first,” explained Lance. “Get a feel for the luck of a place.”
Vip nodded sagely.
Kang said, “Only losers talk about luck.”
Vip laughed in a know-it-all way, while Lance looked at the ceiling and pursed his lips.
“I don’t how many times I’ve heard losers whine to me to give them a second chance,” Kang said. “‘The shipment got fouled up due to bad luck,’ they’d say. ‘Yeah?’ I’d ask. ‘Real bad luck, Kang. You watch, and my luck will turn around. No,’ I’d say. ‘I don’t think your luck will ever change. Why not, Kang? Sure it will.’ I’d shake my head, get up and stick a vibroblade in their belly. ‘That’s why not,’ I’d tell them. I was never wrong.”
“Where was that?” asked Lance, perhaps a bit too eagerly.
Kang shrugged.
Marten knew where. Back in the slums of Sydney, Australian Sector where Kang had been the gang leader of the Red Blades. Just like in the old French Foreign Legion, many in the shock troops kept their past to themselves. Neither Lance nor Vip had been with them in the Japan Campaign, back when Omi, Kang and Marten had been soldiers in the 93rd Slumlord Battalion of the 10th FEC Division.
Before anyone could say more, the lift opened and they were assaulted by noise and a waft of mingled human odors. They hurried onto the broad passageway with its glittering festival-lights. Slender imitation-trees swayed in the perfumed breeze, while crowds seethed across the floorspace. The people wore bright party clothes and happy drunken grins. Paygirls or men in even gaudier costumes draped on a partygoer’s arm. Dotted among this mass were the obvious uniformed police and undercover monitors. Along the sides of the passageway stood souvenir shops, restaurants, pleasure-parlors and game and card rooms. Snack-shacks provided a shot of pick-me-up that aroused the sluggish or pills and sandwiches to provide energy.
“Back at ten?” asked Lance.
“Don’t be late to the shuttle or it’s a mark against all of us,” Marten said.
Vip waved good-bye and then plunged into the crowd. Lance strode after him.
“Now what?” asked Omi.
“Now Marten owes me a drink,” Kang said.
Marten peered at the festive masses. Tonight few cared that the Highborn ruled, few cared that a vast civil war raged in the Inner Planets. This was Level 49, the party palace. “What’s your poison?” Marten asked Kang.
“Smirnoff on the rocks at Smade’s Tavern.”
“Never heard of either,” Marten said.
Kang turned his bulk toward the crowds and waded in. Marten glanced at Omi, who shrugged. They followed Kang. Like a bear or gorilla, the huge Mongol shouldered people out of the way. Many saw him coming and hurried aside. A few glared. Those found themselves sprawled on the floor. A policeman with a truncheon squinted as Kang headed straight at him. With a brutal shoulder-shove, Kang knocked the cop flying.
As Marten passed, the cop leaped up and snarled into a mike on his collar. Then he sprang after Kang.
“This could take care of our problem,” Omi said.
“No,” Marten said. “Kang’s 101st. We’ve got to back him up.”
“Getting motherly are you?”
The cop grabbed Kang’s arm. Kang jerked his arm in annoyance and kept moving. Then the crowds thinned and two more policemen bore down on Kang. At a more leisurely pace behind them, there followed a thin man with bushy eyebrows. He wore a red tunic, with purple pantaloons and curly-toed slippers. He was older, with sparse hair, maybe in his late forties.
“Halt,” said the cop behind Kang.
Kang neither halted nor acknowledged that he’d heard.
The two approaching cops glanced at one another. They drew shock rods and flicked power so the batons hummed. They braced themselves.
Kang stopped so suddenly that the cop behind crashed into him. Kang seemed barely to swivel around, but he put that cop in a headlock and applied pressure so the man’s face turned red.
“Let him go,” warned the taller of the other two cops.
The thin man with the purple pantaloons and curly-toed slippers widened his eyes in astonishment. “Kang?” he asked.
Kang peered at the thin man with sparse hair. The man had foxy features, sly and cruel. Kang snorted. “Heydrich Hansen, huh? Good old Sydney slum-trash.”
The taller of the two police turned to Hansen. “You know him, sir?”
“Indeed.”
“What are your wishes for him, sir?”
“Sir?” Kang asked Hansen. “Changed professions, huh?”
Hansen’s smile lost some of its charm. “Why not let the policeman go, Kang. I’ll buy you a few drinks—to make up for that time I was late.”
Kang seemed to consider it, as if he was doing Hansen a favor.
Marten leaned near Omi, whispering, “Do you know this Hansen?”
Omi frowned, shaking his head.
The policeman in the headlock had started to turn purple. He no longer seemed to be breathing.
“Sir!” said the taller of the two policemen.
“I’ll buy your friends a round, too, Kang.”
“You said several rounds,” Kang said.
Hansen turned rueful. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but these days I’m a monitor. I’m presently on the job.”
Kang tapped the shock trooper patch on the breast of his jacket.
Hansen peered at it. “Ah. You and your happy band of killers are here tonight. Seems like nothing ever changes.”
“No,” Kang said.
“Why not consider yourself my guest tonight?” said Hansen. “For old time’s sake.”
Kang thought a moment longer and finally released the cop, who dropped like a sack of carrots. The cop shuddered and wheezed. He began to tremble.
The two cops with shock rods warily advanced toward their fellow peace officer.
Kang paid them no heed. He lumbered up and slapped Hansen on the back, staggering the monitor, the secret policeman for the Highborn. Marten and Omi trailed behind.
“Where were you headed?” asked Hansen.
“Smade’s,” Kang said.
“I should have known. It’s a rat hole. Just the place a Red Blade would want to go.”
Kang put a heavy paw on Hansen’s shoulder and pushed him along. Then he peered over his shoulder at Marten. “You still owe me a round.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Marten said.
Smade’s Tavern was dim. An oaken bar stood in front a mirror where an ugly bartender hid like a troll under a bridge. Waitresses went to him and sauntered back with drinks on their trays. Booths and tables littered the gloom. Serious drinkers hunched over their glasses. A few nibbled on peanuts.
The four of them sat at two mini-tables that Kang had shoved together. With his thick fingers, Kang twisted a vodka bottle’s cap, breaking the paper seal. The clear liquid gurgled as he poured into a glass filled with ice cubes. He lifted the glass and stretched out his lips, slurping.
“Ah…” Kang said.
Bushy-eyed Hansen grinned like a fox.
Marten and Omi sipped spiced tea, a pot of it on the table. They had declined any liquor or party pills.
“Do you know why Hansen is so happy?” Kang asked Omi.
Hansen cleared his throat, shaking his head when Kang glanced at him.
“They didn’t call Hansen
sir
back then,” Kang said.
“No?” Omi said.
“A moment, please,” said Hansen.
Kang frowned as he poured himself more vodka. “You interrupting my story, you little maggot?”
“You know me better than that, Kang,” Hansen said. “But why rehash bad feelings? I’m not that man and you’re no longer chief of the Red Blades.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kang asked.
“Only that life has committed one of its constant pranks and rearranged our roles,” said Hansen.
You calling me a mule, a drug runner?” Kang asked.
“No, no,” said Hansen, holding up his slender hands. “Simply that once you ran a vicious—the most vicious—gang in Sydney. Who dared tread on your territory? None!”
Kang stared at Hansen.
“Now,” said the thin man with sly features, “I run Level 49, the Pleasure Palace.” He leaned forward, whispering, “Chief Monitor Bock is my only superior.” Hansen leaned back and crossed his arms, grinning.
“They put a petty thief in charge of security?” asked Kang.
Hansen shook his head. “Kang, Kang, let bygones be bygones. Otherwise I’ll—”
Hansen stopped because Kang dropped a hand onto his wrist. “What’ll you do, you little maggot?”
Hansen licked his lips, and he minutely shook his head.
Marten, who had reached for the teapot, glanced around, trying to see whom Hansen had signaled. He spotted two big men at the bar. They wore silky shirts with billowing sleeves. One of them palmed a gun of some sort. The other slid his weapon back into a sleeve-sheath. Monitors! Marten realized. Secret policemen to back up their— Hadn’t Hansen said he reported to the Chief Monitor? Did he mean the chief preman monitor of the entire Sun Works Factory? As Marten poured tea, he noticed another pair of monitors sitting several tables over. They were a man and woman team, but too hard-eyed to be partygoers, too observant and tense, and too intent on watching Kang.
“Listen up, maggot,” Kang told Hansen. “I know you got a few bully-boys around here. I’m not blind. But you’re in the last stages of syphilis if you think we’ve switched places. You still slink around sniffing people’s butts. I still kill.” Kang tapped the shock trooper patch on his jacket. “Even if you and your thugs could take me out—” Kang leered. “I turn up missing, you little maggot, this party-town gets trashed as the HBs search for me.”
Hansen laughed, a trifle uneasily it seemed to Marten. “Oh, what does it matter? We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
Kang breathed heavily through his nose, let go of Hansen’s wrist and poured more vodka. After a stiff belt, he said, “Omi used to be a gunman for Eastman.”
“Really?” said Hansen. “Eastman always broke people too soon—in my professional opinion. But then that must have given you a lot of work,” he said to Omi.
Omi shrugged.
Hansen laughed more freely now. “Oh, the old days. I don’t miss them, I’ll tell you. The gang leader and the gunman, two toughs that nobody wants to meet in a back alley or in his home. Good old Sydney! But now you’re shock troopers, hired guns fighting for the Highborn.”
“So speaks the part-time drug runner and full-time informer,” Kang said.
Hansen slapped the table in outrage. “Now see here, Kang. Maybe I smuggled a tot or two of black sand—I won’t deny that among friends. We all lived in the slums, after all, and had to make ends meet. But this charge of, of…” He angrily shook his long head.
“Informer,” Kang said. “Job training, in your case.” He snorted. It was his way of laughing.
Hansen’s foxy eyes narrowed and his veneer of joviality vanished, leaving him sinister seeming.
“Bet I can guess you how you got this far,” Kang said. “You must have fast-talked the HBs when they were looking for people to trust. Yeah, sure, I bet that’s how you did it. You’d learned enough about undercover work to fool them into letting you be a monitor.”
“You used to hold your liquor better,” grumbled Hansen.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Kang said. “We’re all friends here, like you’ve been saying. A gang leader, a gunman, a drug runner and a—Marten, you didn’t live in the slums.”
Marten shrugged.
“Where are you from?” asked Hansen, a bit too eagerly, no doubt to stop talking about old times with Kang.
“He’s from here,” Kang said.
“You’re from the Sun Works Factory?” asked Hansen. “That’s very rare for someone here to have made it into the shock troops.”
“He emigrated to Earth first,” Kang said. “Didn’t you, Marten?”
Hansen lifted his eyebrows, giving Marten a more careful examination. It heightened Hansen’s narrow features, the weakness to his chin and the crafty way his pupils darted. He seemed like a weaker animal, one that constantly judged danger and how close it was to him. “How did it happen that you emigrated to Earth?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Marten said. He slid his chair and stood. “Nature calls.”
“He’s a quiet one,” Marten heard Hansen saying as he limped away. “They’re always the most dangerous. Remember the time…” Then Marten went to the restroom, relieved himself and as he returned, he noticed a woman in the main doorway glancing about the tavern. He might not have noticed her but she seemed so out of place and frazzled, worried, at wits end.