Two of the guys immediately started mumbling nonsense about how they didn’t know anything. The third one was too spaced out to understand what was going on.
“Fine!” Howard said, jerking out of Barrow’s reach as soon as Barrow relaxed his grip. “He comes here in the mornings, most like. Haven’t seen him today, but you never know with that guy. He also has a stall over at the Night Market. You can find him there for sure, every day except Saturdays.”
Barrow nodded slowly. Howard looked like he was telling the truth, and if that was the case, then it would be pointless to hunt around for Streaker all over the slums in full daylight. They would just be inviting more trouble, and Barrow had no doubt that the little gang of teenagers they had beaten up earlier would have gathered more members by now, waiting for an opportunity to jump them again if they could get away with it.
The Night Market was probably their best bet. Barrow knew it opened just before dusk every day, and by that time the streets of the slums would be full with people going about their business. It would be much easier to get lost in those crowds and get to Streaker undetected.
Which meant Rigel and he needed a place to stay for the next few hours. And besides, Streaker might show up at the tavern after all. It would be unpleasant to hole up in here, but Barrow had stayed in worse places.
“Okay. I believe you,” Barrow told Howard. He nodded toward Rigel. “This guy and I will wait for Streaker here in case he does show up. Clear the table over there for us. Order some pizza, and send us a couple of cold beers.”
Rigel took out a crumpled bill from his pocket and put it down on the bar. Howard snatched it immediately but didn’t move yet, looking at his gun currently still in Barrow’s hand.
“You get this back when we leave,” Barrow told him. “You better go call for that pizza.”
Barrow turned around and went over to a table in the far corner of the establishment. It was scuffed but reasonably clean, and Rigel followed him as he sat down. Howard came along resentfully after a little bit, wiping a grimy cloth over the surface of the table to get rid of the dust and setting down two beers before them. Then he went back to his bar, and Barrow saw him pick up the phone. Satisfied, Barrow clicked the safety back on the gun and set it aside. He picked up his beer, opened it, and took a long swig.
When he put it down, Rigel was still trying to open his, but the tight seal on the cap was defeating him. Barrow frowned. The guy hadn’t been lying when he had said his hands were basically useless.
“Give me that,” Barrow told him, reaching for the bottle.
“I got it,” Rigel said defensively, twisting the cap as hard as he could. He grimaced in sudden pain and was forced to give up.
Barrow grabbed the bottle, twisted it open with an easy flick, and handed it back.
Rigel was blushing again. “Thank you,” he said stiffly.
Barrow nodded, distracted by Howard. He was still on the phone, and Barrow could not imagine that ordering a pizza could take that long. He wanted to go to the bathroom and wash the knife cut that one of the kids had given him earlier in the fight, but he wasn’t sure it would be wise to leave Rigel alone in here unsupervised.
He was still deciding what to do when he saw Howard put down the phone, a smug grin on his face. Howard’s eyes met Barrow’s, and in that instant Barrow knew. The little weasel had just called for backup.
Barrow stiffened, made a grab for the gun—but the back door to the tavern burst open, and someone came in along with a blinding burst of light and a blast of hot air. Barrow stood up and turned, but it was too late already. The new arrival grabbed one of the chairs lying around, swung it, and slammed it down on Barrow’s head.
RIGEL JUMPED
back just in time to avoid a flying piece of broken chair that had been about to collide with his face. He tripped over his own chair as he did so and lost his balance, crashing down on the floor and kicking the table above him involuntarily. It, too, fell to the ground, and both beer bottles shattered on impact, sloshing bubbly liquid everywhere.
“Get him!” somebody was yelling.
Rigel scrambled to his feet, but he slipped on the beer and fell back down again. Around him it was madness. Bodies colliding with each other, grunts of pain, and once the sickening crunch of a fist hitting something hard. Rigel looked around wildly and saw three men ganging up on Steve. One of them had grabbed his left arm and wasn’t letting go. The second one was trying to do the same with Steve’s right arm, but Steve wasn’t making it easy. From the bar, the guy Steve had threatened was shouting at the top of his lungs, urging his friends to take Steve down although he himself wasn’t joining in the fight.
Rigel saw Steve getting hit by one of the men right in the stomach, heard his oof as the breath was punched out of his lungs. Rigel needed to help him—and he saw the revolver, still on the floor, within his reach.
He picked it up, fumbling about for the safety until he got it. Then he stood up as quickly as he could and fired a warning shot straight up at the ceiling.
He got an overhead lamp by accident, which exploded in a shower of sparks and broken glass. Very dramatic, and it did the job. Everybody stopped and looked right at him. Rigel swallowed.
“Let him go,” Rigel said evenly, pointing the gun at the three men.
They hesitated, giving Rigel calculating looks that spoke volumes. They were probably considering whether they could get to him before he fired, and whether he actually had the guts to shoot them. To make matters worse, Rigel’s hands began to shake again from exhaustion. They obviously interpreted this as a sign of weakness, and one of them took a step toward him.
Rigel fired. Not at them, but close enough. The deafening bang made them jump, and Steve used the distraction to his advantage. He elbowed the man still holding on to him hard, forcing him to let go.
“Get out,” Rigel said, grabbing the gun as firmly as he could. “Or this time I shoot you.”
They backed away a little bit, but it was enough for Steve. He took his own gun out of his belt so it would be clearly visible. He didn’t even have to point it at the man. From the way he held it, it was evident he knew how to use it.
“Howard, I told you we just want to wait here calmly,” Steve said loudly to be heard over the residual ringing of the shots. He kept his eyes on the man who had attacked them. Rigel noticed that the bartender started, surprised at hearing his name. Rigel wondered how Steve knew it. “Tell your friends to go.”
The men who had been drinking at the bar were already sneaking out the front door, trying not to make noise. The bartender, Howard, scrunched up his face but nodded stiffly.
“Guys, get out of here. I don’t want my place more trashed up than it is.”
The men looked relieved to hear that.
“Sorry, man,” one of them told Steve. He raised his hands over his head, palms up, and the others copied him. “Must’ve been a misunderstanding.”
Steve jerked his head toward the back door. “Out.”
They left. There was a moment of awkward silence as Steve and Howard glared at each other. Howard was too cowardly to say anything, from the looks of it, because he was the first to look away.
“Get us that pizza,” Steve told him. “We’ll be here until dusk or until Streaker shows up, whatever happens first. Then we leave. Okay?”
“Yes. Okay,” Howard agreed, sounding as if he was forcing the words out.
“Good,” Steve said. “And get us a couple more beers.”
He led Rigel to another table, one in the middle of the room that gave them plenty of opportunity to see whether anybody would crash in on them from either the front door or the back. Howard got them their beers, called for the pizza, and paid the deliveryman when it came. He even got a couple of plates for them to eat and then disappeared behind his bar, turning up the volume of the TV and setting it between himself and his unwanted patrons as a kind of shield. He seemed determined to ignore them for the rest of the time they would be there.
“You should probably get that cut washed,” Rigel told Steve, when he noticed that his arm was bleeding. He supposed it had happened in the earlier fight with the teens.
“You’re right,” he said. “Will you be okay on your own?”
Rigel bristled. “Hey. I saved your ass from those three men, didn’t I? And I still have the gun I took from the CradleCorp guard and this old revolver. I don’t need you to babysit me.”
Steve grinned and gave him a little nod. He clapped Rigel on the shoulder. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it like that. Thanks for saving my ass, though.”
He left for the bathroom, which was good because Rigel could not have hidden the flush that crept over his cheeks at Steve’s words. And at the way he had looked at him, as if acknowledging that Rigel wasn’t just some helpless city boy but someone who could actually take care of himself. Rigel still felt the echo of Steve’s hand clapping him on the shoulder, the heavy yet welcome touch of that powerful man.
Rigel shook his head quickly and drank almost half his beer in quick gulps.
No. Don’t fall for him, Rigel. Don’t you dare.
He managed to talk himself into believing he really didn’t feel anything in the couple of minutes he was alone, but then Steve came out of the bathroom. The sleeve of his shirt was folded above the cut, the shirt itself straining against Steve’s muscular figure, and Rigel felt that little kick in the pit of his stomach that told him it was too late. He looked at Steve’s red hair, the stubble on his cheeks, and his intense green eyes, and found he could not look away.
Steve noticed and held Rigel’s gaze. He sat back down at the table.
“Hey,” he said, reaching out for his beer. His hand missed the bottle by several centimeters.
“Hey,” Rigel echoed.
Then Rigel finally managed to look away. He opened the pizza box clumsily, tore off a piece, and began to eat, looking everywhere except at Steve.
They ate in silence at first, the only noise coming from the TV where a news announcer was going on and on about the recovery efforts after the fire in CradleCorp. People were speculating on how it had happened, whether it had been an accident, as the official version insisted, or whether it had been something more sinister, like a Prime attack or maybe a terrorist. Rigel listened, although not very attentively. He was surprised at how hungry he was, and soon Steve and he had finished most of the pizza. Rigel wondered where the food had come from, whether there were pizza places here in the slums or whether it had been brought from the city. He knew almost nothing about this place even though he had lived practically next to it all his life. Steve, however, was obviously familiar with it. Rigel wondered whether he should ask.
After the second beer, he decided to risk it. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Steve answered. Rigel thought he heard a lightly guarded tone in his voice.
“Here in the slums, I mean. You know that guy,” Rigel said, pointing at Howard. “You also know this guy we’re looking for, Streaker.”
Steve’s eyes flickered over to Howard, but he wasn’t paying any attention to them, and the TV was loud enough that they could talk without being overheard.
“Yeah, I’ve been here. I told you about the airship business, right?”
Rigel nodded. “You said you had been a security guard for one of the ships or something.”
“Yes. We used to come to the slums often when we needed parts that we couldn’t find in the official markets. Also fuel, when we went over our quota. I used to come here with the captain of the
Titania
most of the times, acting as a bodyguard. I got to know the place pretty well.”
“And this… Night Market?”
“That’s where everything is sold in here. It’s really big, bigger than any department store in Aurora. You can find things they won’t sell in any official business establishment, things from other Havens, bits of scavenged technology, weapons, you name it. It’s dangerous to go there if you don’t know what you’re looking for or who to ask for, though. Not many city people talk about the place, let alone go there. You’ve seen how it is in here. People are more likely to stab you for the contents of your wallet than make a deal with you.”
“And so this man, Streaker, he can give us a vehicle that will take us over the desert?”
Steve shook his head. “Not him, not directly. But he’s one of my best contacts, and if anybody knows how to get an illegal four-by-four, it will be him.”
“But we don’t have any money,” Rigel said.
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t know that,” Steve said calmly.
“How are we going to get away with the car, then?”
“Well, the first thing is for Streaker to get us the vehicle. Once he gets it for us, I’ll talk to him. There’s got to be something he’s interested in. Maybe salvaged technology from the military site if we make it over there, maybe some information he can sell about this whole CradleCorp mess. Or maybe we just threaten him and force him to hand over the car. I’ll think of something when the time comes.”
“Okay,” Rigel said. “Although…. Well, if we do need to pay up front, I have the money my parents left me. I got all of it out of my bank account before getting to your apartment last night. Just in case. I have it here, in a data card.”
“Put it away,” Barrow said quickly. “How much money is there?”
“Not that much. A bit under a hundred thousand. I figured I might need it.”
“A hundred thousand dollars?”
“My entire inheritance. They left it to me when they died.”
“Okay. We’ll try not to use it unless we must.”
Rigel put the card away and smiled at Steve. “I’m just glad I’m with you, in all this awful mess. You saved my life several times over, and without you I wouldn’t even have known what to do. Thank you.”
Did Rigel imagine it, or did Steve look suddenly uncomfortable?
“Right,” Steve said. “I’ll go get more beers.”
They spent nearly the entire day in that bar, and although there weren’t any more exciting incidents, Rigel barely felt the passage of time. He talked to Steve as he hadn’t talked to anyone in a very long time, about his life before his parents had died, about art school and everything Atlas had ever told him, about his injury and how he had been forced to leave many things he’d used to enjoy doing. Rigel found himself venting about the many little frustrations his condition introduced into his life, from not being able to open a jar of pickles to the fact that he would never be able to paint again as he had done before. He told Steve about Misha, the only friend he had managed to keep, and he admitted that now he didn’t have anywhere to go. Talking to Steve, though, the thought was not scary but instead liberating. Steve listened, not interrupting, and nodding earnestly from time to time as if he knew exactly what Rigel was talking about.