She pushed a few wet strands of black hair out of her eyes. “Dead or alive, huh? You trying to channel Kohl or something?”
“Speaking of whom,” said Nate, “where is he?”
“Said he was running errands,” she said. “Can we go inside?”
“Harlow’s not here yet,” said Nate. “Harlow is our key to not living on the wrong side of the binary edge.”
“The death side?” she said.
Nate frowned, playing the conversation back in his head. “Did you say,” he said after a moment, “that Kohl was running errands?”
“It’s what he said,” said Grace, looking over the crowd. “Hey. That your guy?” She was using her ice cream as a pointer, drops of water and mint-chip falling to the road.
Nate followed the direction of her gesture. Yeah, that was Harlow all right. He was being man-handled inside a building by two larger humans, one on each arm as they hustled him in. The building, in this case, was Harlow’s bar. Harlow ran a friendly place; welcomed spacers and grounders alike, served whiskey that wasn’t too watered down, and handed jobs to people like Nate when they were of interest. Nate and Harlow went back a few years, been through some shit, and in all that time Nate had never seen Harlow taken into his own bar against his will. Nate sighed. “Yeah, that’s Harlow.”
Grace nodded. “You know those guys with him?”
“I don’t,” said Nate. “I guess this explains why Harlow is late.”
She looked at him. “Do we go in there and … I don’t know. You said he was a friend of yours. We going to help him out?”
“’Friend,’” said Nate. “That’s an interesting word.”
“It was your word this morning, when you said we should come down to this particular rock and get some information. A lead.”
Nate gave her a sour look. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did, Cap,” she said.
Nate patted his blaster pistol, then tossed the remains of his cone in a trash can. “Well, let’s go get that information, Assessor.”
• • •
“Which one of you assholes,” said Nate, “wants it first?” He pointed his blaster in the general direction of Harlow, the two guys holding him down, and the man who wore a surprised expression above a black suit. Grace ghosted off to Nate’s right, lithe form moving in the gloom of the bar. Nate felt a momentary pang of worry — she was still carrying injuries from her run-in with Kohl, when the Ezeroc had been using the big man like a puppet theatre — but she seemed focused. Silent. A night killer. Unlike Nate, who had a metal leg that creaked in the rain.
Creak, creak. That was the only sound — his damn leg. That, and water dripping from somewhere. The bar — dark for the moment, empty of patrons — was silent as the grave. Perhaps not the best analogy, Nate.
“Nate,” said Harlow, through bloody lips. “Sorry I was late for our meeting.”
Nate shrugged, waving the blaster in a manner he hoped was both casual and threatening. A hard sea to sail, that one. “I can see your previous appointment ran over.” He tried to catch Grace’s position out of the corner of his eye, but failed — she’d vanished, like smoke on the wind. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
The man in black … reanimated, like he was waiting for a cue. “Who are you?”
“I’m Harlow’s eleven o’clock,” said Nate. “Who are you?”
“His ten o’clock,” said the man.
“This isn’t helping either of us,” said Nate. “Look, I’m just here for some information.” He gestured with the blaster again. “I mean, I can just take it and go if you like. You look like you’re busy.”
“Nate?” said Harlow. “Nate, what are you doing?” He spat blood onto the floor.
“Excuse me,” said the man in black. He pulled black gloves tighter onto his hands. “I … this is very confusing. You’re not trying to … rescue our mutual acquaintance? Lend assistance to Harlow?”
“Does it look,” said Nate, “like I’m crazy?” He frowned at his blaster. “Although I guess I have given a bad first impression.”
“Nate?” said Harlow. “A little help.”
“Yes,” said the man in black. “It does, at first blush, look like you are pointing a weapon with intent at me.”
“Hell,” said Nate, “that’s just to ensure no one does anything rash. If you can give me your assurance you’ll do … well, something just plain stupid, I can put it away.”
The man in black looked over at the two other men holding Harlow. He gestured, palms down, at them. Nate figured that for a calm down kind of motion, so he holstered his blaster. “There.”
“There,” agreed the man. “What is it you want to know from Harlow?”
“Nate?” said Harlow. “Look, if this is about the ship, I don’t even care anymore. You hear me? I don’t care. You can take it. On the house! Just get me out of here.”
“What ship?” said the man in black. He turned back to Harlow. “What ship?”
“The Ty—” started Harlow.
“Well, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” said Nate, walking forward. This whole thing will get a lot worse. “My question is quick. To the point. Brief, almost. I’ll ask it, then be on my way.”
“What of your accomplice?” asked the man in black. “The one with the sword.”
“Her?” said Nate, careful not to use Grace’s name. “She’s out back, checking for surprises.”
“There are no surprises,” said the man in black.
There was a short scream, then the sound of two things hitting the ground right next to each other, a kind of thunk-chunk sound. “No,” said Nate, “I expect not.”
The man in black winced. “She’s quite good.”
“She’s borderline average,” said Nate, “but that’s not the point. I feel like we’ve got off to a distrustful start. Two people like us, in a place like this? We need a few rules, so accidents don’t happen.”
“Hm,” said the man in black. “You look like a spacefaring man.”
“What specifically,” said Nate, “makes one man look spacefaring and another seafaring? One man a beachfront dweller and the other a gutter rat? One man a—”
“You walk like the world is heavy,” said the man in black, “and you are accustomed to low light. This bar,” and he gestured around the room, “is dark, and yet you are having no trouble seeing.”
“Fair enough,” said Nate.
“Also,” said the man, “you are wearing a ship suit under your long jacket.”
Nate looked down at himself, then back up. “That is another clue,” he said. “What of it?”
“Would you happen to be Captain Nathan Chevell?” said the man in black, taking a step closer to Nate. “Of the Tyche? Former military heavy lifter, sold to the land merchant Harlow, and used in the Absalom system?”
Nate flexed his metal fingers. “You know?” He frowned. “That is a super-specific set of questions.”
“What I’ve been trying to say,” said Harlow. “Nate—” He hissed in pain as one man holding his arms twisted.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said the man in black, tugging at his suit jacket. He turned back to his thugs. “If you would be so kind?”
The thugs looked at each other, gave each other the universal whatever-the-fuck-but-this-guy-is-paying-the-bills look, and let Harlow go. Harlow didn’t run, just kind of sagged in his chair, still trying to suck air in through a few broken teeth.
“There’s one small problem,” said Nate. He hadn’t reached for his blaster. The thugs paused, looking at the man in black, because this was the point where people would scream, or run, or shoot at them. Nate didn’t figure them for the intellectual persuasion, so they still had to spend compute cycles wondering: what the fuck is going on.