To distract him, Delagarza offered him a cigarette which the apprentice waved away with a distracted gesture. He was looking at a pair of homeless men who were searching the trash in a distant corner of the corridor, looking for either drugs or disposed reg-suit battery packs they could use to get them through the night.
“Thanks, but no thanks. That shit will kill you.”
“Doubt it. Cigarettes here are so synthetic they barely have tobacco on them anymore. Besides, the stim juices will get to us sooner.”
That got Cooke’ attention. Thankfully, because the two men had started to stare back at the apprentice like a pair of hungry wolves. Their gazes shifted half-way to Delagarza—and his own reg-suit—before they caught his stare and they shuffled a bit farther away.
That’s right, Delagarza thought grimly, don’t get any ideas.
“Stims are harmless,” Cooke said. Delagarza had to do a mental double-take to remember the conversation’s thread. “We would die without them.”
“First one’s false, last one’s true,” Delagarza said, taking another long pull of his cigarette. “Unless you can afford to buy brand, of course. Which, if you could, you wouldn’t be here with me in the first place.”
Stims were a requisite in any colony set in a planet with a gravity lower than Earth’s. They were cocktails of muscle-growth hormones, altered testosterone, bone-reinforcement gels, and many other drugs. The more expensive ones—brands—even had nanobots in them, and made sure all internal organs, even blood and bone marrow, worked at their best.
Thanks to stims, Alwinter’s inhabitants didn’t waste away while Dione’s .69g eroded their bones day after day.
Stim juice’s cheaper versions (the ones that most people could afford) also burned your liver to a crisp after two to four decades of use, depending on their quality.
“Ever wonder why there isn’t any old, poor people in Alwinter?” Delagarza said, putting the nail in the coffin of Cooke’ doubts.
The young man winced and subconsciously raised a hand to his forearm, to the spot where the stim catheter was installed.
Delagarza finished his cigarette.
It wasn’t like he enjoyed messing with Cooke, despite what the apprentice would say about it. The truth was, Delagarza took his mentorship seriously. It wasn’t just teaching the tools of their trade. If he didn’t warn Cooke, didn’t show him what living in a Backwater World was all about, Delagarza would be negligent. He could get his apprentice killed.
And negligence was a crime.
“They are here,” Delagarza told his apprentice after a couple of minutes in silence. He nodded in the direction of a concealed service hatch in the corridor’s gunmetal walls. Four shadows emerged from them, and coalesced into three men and a woman, all wearing maintenance worker coveralls over their company-provided reg-suits, along with hardened helmets, and highly technical tools magnetized to trays strapped to their waists. “Act normal and stay quiet.”
“What do you mean act normal, what’s that supposed to—”
“Yo, Lotti, my regular!” Delagarza called, waving his hand at the woman. He infused his voice with the saccharine over-enthusiasm of modern ganger culture. “Over here, doll, how have you been?”
Lotti looked like a starving wolf, hard edges instead of curves, cheekbones sharp as hunger, eyes that had to be regrown at separate occasions (she had chosen different colors for each, so one was pink and the other electric green, which made her look deranged), a smile peppered with silver molars, a scar that started at her jaw and disappeared down her neck. She claimed to be twenty-five, but Delagarza had it on good measure she was seventeen.
“Spectacular, Sammie, darling,” she said, “You’ looking fine, Pudgy Pops. Life’ treating you good, yes? That your son over there? He looks cute as fuck!” Her tone was so sweet she could’ve starred in her own kids show. The flower stickers on her overalls added to that impression.
Delagarza had seen her stab a man’s eye out with an ice pick one second after calling him “Snuggle Stickypoo.”
“This here is my apprentice, Nick Cooke. I’m teaching him to fend for himself.” Delagarza gestured at Cooke with one hand while touching his hood with the other, the very image of gallantry. He also nodded at the three men that escorted Lotti. They were her age, had their share of scars adorning their faces, and were smiling happily at Delagarza and Cooke. Their hands never left their coverall’s pockets.
“Pleased to meet ya,” Cooke said, flashing a tense smile and actually bending his waist a bit as if doing a reverence.
Tourist, Delagarza thought with despair. If Lotti or her men thought Cooke was mocking their manners…
Instead, Lotti laughed like a hyena and said, “You’re a charmer, Cookie Bear. You can call me any time. We’ll get milkshakes at the Soda Fountain.”
The offer seemed to take the words out of Cooke’s mouth. Before the newcomer had a chance to embarrass himself, Delagarza butted in:
“I heard you had something for me, Lotti-doll.”
“Something for you? And what could that be?” Lotti said, giving him a sultry look while toying with her neon purple hair.
It was a trap.
“Business, I hear,” said Delagarza without missing a beat. Lotti smiled, the sultry look disappeared, and he knew he had passed the test.
For gangers, sex and violence were closely intertwined, and the first option wasn’t available for the out-group. It wasn’t that Lotti wanted to attack him, it was just that these kinds of traps were the bread and butter of her group. A way to make sure you were dealing with friends. A loyalty test.
“Got it in one, my regular,” she said. She turned to one of the male gangers, a gnarly kid with a dead stare. He searched his pockets and handed Lotti a fist-sized box, packed in shiny-red gift wrapping and a bow. “We found this and thought you may like it, given how you’re into ‘ware and all.”
Lotti handed the gift box to Delagarza. He accepted it and said:
“How thoughtful, Lotti-doll. I love gifts. What kind of computer?”
Lotti shrugged. “Dunno, I’m not into ‘ware,” she said.
“It’s a Motoko,” said the kid who had given Lotti the box, “from Seizo Electronics. They make sexy tamper locks, I hear, but the model is five years old. Nothing a manly cowboy like you can’t handle.”
“Nerd,” Lotti told the guy, affectionately. Then added, to Delagarza, “What do you think?”
“Seizo’s are solid models, but I can make do,” said Delagarza. “Both hard and soft locks they use, I’ve seen before. How about this? I take a look inside for you and send you anything I find. As a thank you for such a nice gift.”
“Promise you won’t peek?” said Lotti. Given modern software, the more a piece of crypto-data had been observed, the less it was worth.
“You know me, Lotti-doll,” said Delagarza, “I’m all about professional integrity.”
She gave a look to her friends like a little girl who had just woken up to a pony in her bedroom. “You heard him, boys? Trusty buddy Sammie to the rescue again.”
“All around regular guy,” agreed the gangers.
Delagarza relaxed his shoulders. Reunion was over, and no one had gotten their eyes stabbed out. Next to him, Cooke smiled the same tense smile he had maintained during the entire talk.
“Oh, here,” said Lotti, handing Cooke a hard-candy lollipop. “A little something for the road, Cookie Bear. So you remember me.”
After the gangers were gone, Cooke handed Delagarza the candy-shaped psychedelic.
“They didn’t seem so bad. Given gangers’ reputation,” said Cooke, “they seemed rather…friendly.”