Gravel - The Black Lung Cont.
With
@TokyoPewPewGravel’s jaw ticked. For half a breath, the room shrank - just him, Rix, and the echo of the man he used to be. The one time had stolen piece by piece, until all that remained was a shell that liked to think it knew better.
Once, nobody would’ve dared talk to him like that. Back then, his name alone carried its own kind of gravity. The old him would’ve reached across the table without a second thought, wrapped that greasy collar in his fist, and bounced Rix’s skull off the counter until the jewelry stopped clinking. Just for the disrespect. Just to remind him what weight used to mean.
But the moment passed, like a wave breaking before it hit the shore. The urge was there, same as always, but there wasn’t any satisfaction in it anymore. Besides, there was too much potential at stake. If Gravel ever wanted any sort of return to the limelight, it began here and now, with the swallowing of one's pride.
So he let the thought cool behind a slow exhale, fingers flexing once before settling flat on the table. The revolver’s weight in his coat pocket reminded him it’d be easy, too easy, and that was the problem.
He leaned back instead, letting the chair creak under him, feeling the ache settle in his shoulder. Rix was
still talking, puffed up and proud. Something about it almost made Gravel laugh. Not the kind of laugh that bubbles up from joy, but the tired kind that comes when you see a man mistaking noise for power.
Because that’s what this was: noise. The same song he’d heard a thousand times from men who used to matter. Rix wasn’t talking business, he was performing. Trying to fill the space with sound so nobody noticed how empty the room had become.
The truth was no one came to Adrastea looking for opportunity; the corps had strip-mined that long ago. What was left were vessels like Harrow, hollow men clinging to whatever scraps of relevance they could still convince themselves they owned.
Gravel shot a glance toward Mo when Rix wasn’t looking. The man met his eye, and for the briefest second, they shared it - the quiet absurdity of it all. A small roll of the eyes, a flicker of understanding between old partners who’d both seen better hustlers in worse bars.
Wait it out. Let the silence hang. Let it do the work.As Harrow’s speech wound down, Gravel exhaled through his nose and gave a slow, weary and obvious yawn. Reaching for his cigarette case, his thumb brushed the scuffed metal before snapping it open with a soft click. The flick of the lighter followed, a low hiss swallowed by the flame.
Gesturing lazily toward the bar, he waved the barwoman over without looking up
“Double Eastcheap and tonic. On the rocks. Half-ounce simple, one lime. Shake it, strain it twice. Don’t forget the absinthe spritz.”A pause. The faintest ghost of a smile.
“Or the rind from the lime. Man’s particular about that.”He leaned back, slow and deliberate, chair groaning against the shift in his weight, smoke curling from his lips the way the smiles curled across their faces: the bartender’s for overhearing the first interesting tidbit of conversation all day (and maybe scoring a decent tip for her troubles); and the old conman’s, for having scored the free drink he was fishing for.
The magician behind the bar started on her potion inside the chilled, sweaty shaker tin, reaching and uncorking, measuring and straw-tasting, but it was Harrow’s exuberant squint what truly meandered their smoky environs, unconstrained by the rag-polished countertop. The other patrons inspired little scrutiny—though he gave to each of them the cursory shady glance, scouring for too much curiosity, too much intrigue—no, what gave him pause was the eye contact he made with the rooms’ corners; with each of several cameras, their gazes hard and black and unblinking.
“It’s too quiet in here,” he muttered between stiff lips and braced jaw, perfunctorily wary of the lip-reading heuristics coded into every unit that left the assembly line. “Feels more like a funeral than a family reunion, don’t you think?” In the corner sat a jukebox, as weary and forlorn as the old-timers themselves, and over to this Harrow ambled, though not before popping his knees, squealing his chairlegs, hoisting himself from his seat with a labored groan. Dummy vinyls collected dust inside the scratched dome of this thing; a skeuomorphic coin slot slowly, painstakingly rusted off its screws. Harrow was across the room procuring from his stylish velvet blazer a debit chit when Big Mo’s unamused expression met Voith’s.
“
It’s too quiet in here,” echoed the quartermaster—bitterly, but not unsubtly as he peered across the room, watched the withered old conman’s gangly fingers swipe the chit and then the song list.
Gravel caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, Mo stifling a yawn which wasn’t for show. The big man shifted off the wall, straightened, and gave the faintest bounce on his heels like he was half a mind to call it.
Gravel lifted both hands from the table, palms open in a slow, easy gesture that said steady. His eyes met Mo’s, a silent promise threaded through the look:
Soon. I know.Mo hesitated, then settled back into place, arms folded, gaze drifting somewhere far past the bar.
A soundbyte of a heavy coin rolling, clunking down into a receptacle and the machine-generated pop-folk muzak decrescendoed away into the sulkiness of the bar the way daylight dissolves into gloaming: seeping, percolating, edgeless. A moment’s silence—a silence unsettled only by the wet, rheumy coughs of the other patrons—by the omnipresent space-hum—and
the first song strummed to life. Harrow danced his way back to his seat to find his concoction waiting for him, cloudy liquid cradling cloudier ice spear. Condensation crawling down the Collins. The bartender had been waiting for him, aiming the perfume bottle over the rim and giving the beverage a heady spritz but only when he was looking, only when his great hooked nose was right there for the assailing. Fennel and sweet onion notes dispersing on the mist, hitting all three noses so hard they could taste it. When Harrow picked up the glass only the water tension kept the G&T from spilling, the stuff beaded and domed just over the lip of it. When he set it down again two quaffs later it was two-thirds full. “Ah! Amazing what lubricants we didn’t used to need, us rusted-up, worn-down machines, eh, Voith?” he said, his tongue smacking the roof of his mouth, his sigh a satisfied one. “Alright—now that we can’t be overheard—”
Again he steepled his coltish, imitation-gold-yoked fingers, again he leaned hard into the crooks of his wrists pressed down into the tabletop, again he crossed knee over knee and peered out over the rims of his teashades—”the sob-story, or straight to business?”
Despite feeling Mo’s stare boring into the side of his skull, Gravel didn’t answer right away. He drew a slow breath through his nose, took another drag from his cigarette, and finally looked back at Rix.
“Business’ll do fine,” he said flatly. He tapped the ash into the tray, eyes half-lidded but steady.
“Ship’s not docked here on charity time, and I ain’t payin’ port fees to listen to nostalgia.”“What’s the rush?—a little time-theft is the least of your sins. C’mon, Voith, just relax a little. Have a drink and a smoke with some old friends and cool off. Hey—I won’t tell the captain if you don’t, if that’s what’s got you so nervy.” Rix wasn’t much of a thespian; maintaining his cool under the hot lights, keeping a straight face in an interrogation room, sure, but the way he went to punch Garran’s shoulder, then noticed the heat behind his eyes—the way he flinched as if expecting a fist, the way he threw his hands in recoil, his every fiber screaming
don’t hurt me, oh please god don’t hurt me—it was corny verging on embarrassing. Too corny to be anything but a great big joke, with Voith himself as the punchline. He was taunting him. Rix fucking Harrow—a flabby pink mole-rat in a cheap suit and ugly sunglasses—was all but daring the old man to grab him by the flaps and folds of his turkey-neck, to make him suck on a barrel. To show him exactly how insecure, how shakable, how fragile the great Garran Voith had become. And yet Voith could not. Not if he wanted the job, not if he needed the money (and he did), not if MacLaine and the
Dullahan were going to carry him back into the limelight. Rix could smell the weakness (no—worse—the desperation) and he was savoring every second.
The class clown act slipped away, however. Harrow’s smile shut, his lips pursed tight, thinning the creases running from mouth to hairy nostrils. He took another drink, ice and grimy crystal knocking like a baby’s rattler. Set down the glass and swiped the hand along his thigh, smearing the condensation there across his pant leg in long, dark, tiger-claw stripes. “The local drug lord’s running on borrowed time. He’s pissed in too many cereals and he knows it, but more importantly so do his faithful
soldatos,” said the mover with a wipe and a sniffle. “Any day now StarPol’s gonna send in a sting. Or maybe a bounty hunter or private security—courtesy of Mackee’s corporate—or maybe a rival pusher who smells blood in the water. Either way some of these boys can see the end of the line for this little gravy train and they want out before it gets here.”
Harrow shrugged his shoulders. Shrugged his brow, furrowing the slope of his forehead with all those feathery wrinkles. “It’s that simple, really. Escort these kiddos safely to your ship—sorry, your captain’s ship—got to figure this Grev Van Zantz character won’t appreciate being deserted in his hour of need, after all—get ‘em where you’re going, drop ‘em off on the next rock and that’s it. They get their
tabula rasa, you get your chits. So? Sounds pretty easy, right?”
Each jab landed like a pebble in Gravel’s gut - barely noticeable at first, but they’d started to pile up, pressing heavier with every word. The truth was beginning to gnaw. Here he was sitting in one of Jupiter’s armpits, being toyed with by a washed-up wannabe in mirrored shades. And every word of it - every smug, needling word - scraped against his buried pride.
The pulse in Gravel’s neck thudded so loud it drowned everything else out. The weight in his coat pocket was pulling, dragging at him like a black hole. His fingers twitched. The revolver wanted his hand - it
ached for it - and for an instant, he nearly let it have him. The old reflex, hot and bright as magnesium, burned its way up from the pit of his stomach. Acid flooded his throat. He could almost see it: Rix’s head snapping back, the whole charade ending in one clean motion, the room going blessedly quiet.
But before the thought could bloom, Mo’s voice rumbled through the smoke.
“Too easy,” he said quietly, not to anyone in particular. “You don’t move a whole crew off a rock like this for nothing. Somebody’s paying. Question is - who, and why?”
The sound cleaved through Gravel’s rage like a battleaxe. Mo wasn’t worked up, hell, he didn’t even look angry. Just tired. Suspicious. And that, more than anything, cooled the fire.
Gravel blinked slow, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. The old dog still paced, but its teeth weren’t bared anymore. He exhaled once, low and steady, then looked back at Rix.
“He’s right, y’know,” Gravel said, voice even but rough-edged.
“Whole thing smells too clean. You talk about moving people - but you ain’t said where the coin’s comin’ from. Or why you care if a bunch of goons make it off this rock in one piece.”He leaned in just enough to let the dim light catch his eyes.
“So what’s the truth, Rix? You even know? Or are your corporate overlords just jerkin’ the strings while you dance and call it business?”“Last I checked,” Rix answered blandly, “‘upfront and in full’ was all the ‘why’ you needed. No?”
Gravel shifted his eyes sideways towards Mo, a small flick of the brow, a silent cue.
Mo caught it and leaned forward slightly, his voice rumbling forward, filling the space between them. “That’s it?” he asked. “So everyone’s packed and ready to go? How many people are we talking here?”
Gravel stayed quiet, watching Rix over the rim of his cigarette.
Rix reached up to his face, shoved the sunglasses up and aside; the fingers wriggling beneath the nose pads to access the bridge of his nose, massaging its bumps and ridges. “Didn’t bother with a head count yet,” he confessed, squinting, seeming all the sudden a bit exasperated. “Figured I’d do that when you were back at the ship getting the O.K. from your boss. But a dozen at least. More, once the others catch wind of a guardian angel stopped in for breakfast.”
This time it was Mo’s jaw that tightened, the muscle beneath his temple jumping as he took a deliberate step forward.
Gravel didn’t look at him - just raised a hand, palm out.
Steady.This was it. This was all they were gonna get. A dozen half-promises and a maybe. There was every chance Rix wasn’t holding out, not totally anyway. By the look of him, he just didn’t have anything left to give.
“Fine,” Gravel said, tapping the last of his cigarette into the tray and grinding it out with his thumb.
“We’re in. What’s the score?”“Peachy.” The glasses restored; the weary, feeble scrunch of tired eyes replaced once more by the unflinching glint of mirrored glass. “You’re looking at five digits a head on the ones who can pay their way upfront—that’s, uh, lieutenants,
caporegime types, that kinda shit. Thirty thou a man at least. Less for the small fry, but don’t you worry. I’m absorbing most of the risk there.”
Gravel rose from the seat, the legs of the chair scraping along the floor.
“Ok, deal.” he said, nodding towards Mo.
“We’ll be in touch soon.”
1x Thank
