Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

Gar looked sharply at Suri, brows furrowing. “Suri, was it? Where’s that accent from?”

“It’s from Nunya-Damn-Business,” Suri replied easily. “Nice little resort town on the coast of Bugger Off.”

Karalti watched us like someone following a tennis match, methodically stuffing pieces of fried fish into her face.

“Hah. Good answer.” A brief sloping smirk passed over Gar’s rugged face. “Anyway: How ‘bout you three come walk and talk with me to the docks? You want to leave tonight or tomorrow, right?”

“Tomorrow, early as possible,” I said. “I’ll walk with you—to make sure you actually have an airship and aren’t just jerking us around.”

“Oh, you better believe I have an airship. The fastest ship in port, and she has a ten-thousand mile range on her. Better than anything Whiskers here can fly,” Gar said.

“She’ll be a wreck in the bottom of the Passage by the time you’re halfway to Meewhome.” Captain Taksin rolled his shoulders. “Anyway, Starborn: I believe our business is concluded.”

“We didn’t have any business, so you still owe Red that favor.” I got to my feet. “Pleasure meeting you, anyway.”

The Meewfolk sneered. “Sampat khung lood’nam mao nah.”

“Ouch, that sounds rude.” Karalti popped the last piece of fish into her mouth, and after a moment of consideration, picked up the bowl of tartar sauce and chugged it, to the astonishment and concern of the other Meewfolk at the table.

“It’s amazing how ‘go suck a dick’ sounds roughly the same in any language.” I got to my feet, yawned, and stretched. “Alright, Gar. Let’s go see this ship of yours.”

“My pleasure,” Gar drawled. “Now—ladies and gentleman, if you’ll follow me, it will be my pleasure to introduce you to the Strelitzia, the finest ship in the Port of Taltos.”

Chapter 35

The three of us were on high alert as Gar led the way to the Dock Ward. It was the roughest area of the city besides the International District, full of factories, workshops, rooming houses, pubs and brothels. Sailors strolled the streets at all hours, enjoying their shore leave by gambling away their wages, collecting tattoos, and experiencing new and exotic STDs from the rowdiest hookers Taltos had to offer. Salt spray hung in the air, and the ground continuously shuddered under our feet, vibrating from the power of the hundred-foot waves thundering against Vlachia’s coastal cliffs.

“So, Gar: how does a player end up as a smuggler?” I asked, walking by Cutthroat’s right-hand flank. Suri and Karalti rode, with Karalti perched side-saddle on the back of the saddle, Suri astride at the front.

“Why wouldn’t I be a smuggler?” Gar drawled. “Get to see all kinds of nice places, play cards when I feel like it, brawl with assholes like Puss in Boots back there. What more could a red-blooded man want out of this excuse of an afterlife?”

“You don’t sound like you worked for Ryuko,” I said. “You don’t have that sweaty sheen of corporate plastic.”

“Hah!” He cackled. “Hell no. I wouldn’t ever work for no goddamn corp.”

“How d'you get in, then?”

“Same way nearly everyone did: good old-fashioned nepotism. If you’re here, you’re either from the military, related to someone who made the game, or you paid someone in Ryuko to get in,” Gar replied. “That’s as much as I’m willing to say on the matter. Let the sins of the past lie in the past to make way for the sins of the future, I say.”

“Only way it might bother me is if your past screws up our quest,” I said. “There’s a lot riding on this.”

“Something about that Emperor Hyland guy. Feh.” Gar hawked and spat into the gutter. “Sounds to me like he’s just spinning his wheels. All of us are here to run down the clock until the machinery that keeps this place running screws up, and then we’re all just as dead as each other.”

Ten uncomfortable minutes later, Gar led us out along a wharf—and there, hanging over the churning black ocean five hundred feet below, was a battered-looking airship that reminded me strongly of the Highwind, the airship that had played a huge role in the old classic, Final Fantasy VII. Unlike the Highwind, it didn’t have a zeppelin component, just a pair of huge mana-driven engines. It also had two large silver hoops that hovered around the back of it, one rotating clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. STRELITZIA was painted in big black letters along the streamlined keel, which ended in a bomber-style glass bridge. At the very front was what I was pretty sure was one of the Avatar totems: a golden lotus flower as big as my torso, mounted under the bowsprit and glowing softly with pulsing lines of mana.

“You’ve gotta be joking,” Suri said, reining Cutthroat up before the hookwing compulsively climbed the gangplank. “This piece of shit is able to get us to Meewhome?”

“This ‘piece of shit’ is a custom job that can and does make trans-continental runs between Artana and Daun,” Gar retorted, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Machined half the parts myself. None of those damn silverskin wonks can make anything like it.”

“I think he means, ‘wouldn’t be caught dead making anything like it’.” Karalti giggled into her hand.

“Anyway. I wanna see proof of ten grand in reserve to insure her against any damage, plus your berth fee. If everything goes well, you don’t pay nothin’ but the fee. If things fuck up and you don’t pony up the insurance money, I’ll make some calls and we’ll visit you and collect,” Gar said. “I’ll cut you a deal on the fee as a gesture of good faith. Six hundred a head, including the hookwing. Even throw in some meals. What do you say?”

“How many berths you got?” Suri asked. “We have another head coming with us.”

“Four,” he replied. “Two of you will have to cozy up. Hope you enjoy snuggling.”

Karalti