There was no way off this fucking planet. Everyone said so. The sentiment had become a by word for accepting things which could not be changed, or a reference to all fates being in the hands of God. This did not stop people from trying, any more than Allah’s prohibitions prevented Sin. The data net was swamped with vid imagery of ships attempting to break the blockade only to be met with meson cannon fire from the Terran Flotilla followed by, if there were any survivors, boarding teams eager to fill the quotas for asteroid mining crews, gladiatorial combat, and a half dozen other fates which didn’t really bear thinking about.
Of course for most of the inhabitants of Allur Sahar this made little difference. To a dealer in nuts and sweetmeats who had never ventured beyond his own dome the stars were only a distraction, to the bandit out on the sands, merely a way to navigate the endless dunes, completely unknown to the narco-burnout or the aged beggar in his alley mouth hovel. Sure, prices were higher as the Terrans squeezed merchant shipping but prices were always climbing, and the poor and desperate would always find a way to pay.
In the meantime there was fun to be had.
The Palm Tree Club had been more or less taken over by the score of Terran Spacers. It was a quasi-respectable place, what the locals called ‘aspiring’ for being half way between the upper and lower spires. It was the kind of place where the lower classes could blow a week’s pay to pretend to be up and coming, and the upspires could slum and imagine themselves to be in more danger than they were. It was on the east side of the dome, which meant natural light was available through the constant efforts of the Polishing Guild who labored in their charm draped environment suits to keep the exterior armor glass clear. Real estate with real light was valuable, which meant that things got dingier, and cheaper as you moved towards the center of the domes.
The Club was a freestanding construction of artfully painted concrete, floored in light wood, meant to evoke the warmth of the desert, and walled in pale sandstone that had been polished to the rippling suggestion of dunes. Glass roofing let the light filter down, bolstered by several expensive sun lamps which burned night and day. Numerous fountains, each with a statue of a well-endowed desert maiden, produced a continual susurrus of falling water that was faintly audible beneath the wail of electric citars. Indoor plants, palms, and dates for the most part, clustered around the fountains, though most were more polyester than chlorophyll. In any case the main attraction was not botanical. The Palm Tree was renowned for its dancing girls, three specimens of which were currently performing on the main stage. Two of them were dusky examples of the local stock, with dark hair and almond shaped eyes. They were young and sported impressive hips which they ornamented with discs of polished brass and semi translucent silks of red and metallic silver. Their hair was piled high in an elaborate style that relied on combs that looked jade but probably weren’t, an affection which drew the gaze down their bodies rather than to their faces. Those faces were distorted only slightly by the veils they wore, less substantial than a glimmer of sweat. The third dancer was something different. She was pale and her hair was a light blonde which seemed to catch the omnipresent sun. Her eyes were an almost luminous green and her figure was both fuller and more balanced than the local girls, stinting on neither bust nor hip. This exoticism marked her out as much as her outfit did. It wasn’t that local dancing girls were homogenous, just that most off worlders tended to find different trades in which to flourish. The blonde wore the same style as the locals but her silks were green with metallic gold and stretched provocatively in a vain attempt to cover her considerable assets. Though she wore the veil, her hair was gathered back into a single thick braid which hung to her hips and swayed like a snake as she gyrated to the music, her movements daring and suggestive, setting her whole body into a conflicting series of slow rolls which made her shift distractingly beneath the thin sheen of silk.
Terran sailors hooted and tossed credit sticks, local coins, and currency from a half dozen worlds onto the stage in a desultory shower of gold and inlaid circuits. The few local patrons muttered at this breach of decorum but it had only taken a couple of busted lips and a black eye to remove any lingering doubts as to whose cultural norms would be observed tonight. The Terran’s weren’t huge brutes, but they were fit and in uniform, and they had the swagger of a group of men who knew there wasn’t much the locals could do but cringe. It probably didn’t help that strong drink had been flowing for several hours either. A wise manager might not have sent the girls out at all, but Habib had worried that they might tear the place apart in a riot if deprived of other entertainments.
“Take it off!” a drunken petty officer shouted, his face flushed with drink an arousal. In truth there was little enough for any of the girls to take off but such minor details weren’t to be bothered with. The blonde twisted sensually, sliding closer to the edge of the stage, bringing her perilously close to an array of grasping hands willing to enforce the petty officers direction. Her eyes met those of a lieutenant, recognizable by the peaked cap he wore at a jaunty angle and the fact that he wasn’t QUITE as drunk as the rest of his men. That officer licked his lips and reached up for the dancer, only to be interrupted by a thundering crash. Everyone spun to the large glass doors at the front of the club, all four of which had been half smashed from their hinges. In the doorways stood four huge mutants, each one over eight feet tall and close to four hundred pounds of vat grown muscle and biomolecular enhancement. They wore armor of a sort, quilted leather dyed various shades of red and black and their brutish faces and massive forearms were covered with calligraphic script which has already beginning to run with their slightly acidic sweat, giving them a dirty oily look. Breakers from the Red Mosque. The Red Mosque might have once been a religious center but had, like many such institutions, found ways to parley it’s spiritual power into the temporal. They were puritanical fanatics, but not so puritanical that they were above drugs, protection, and other less than hallowed ways of extending their influence.
“Zis zen of enquarty iz closed,” the largest of the Breakers declared, struggling to push the words out of a mouth disfigured by a pair of protruding lower teeth that definitely counted as tusks.
“The fuck it is!” the petty officer declared, lurching drunkenly to his feet and brandishing a bottle as though it were a cavalry saber. A roar of drunken agreement went up from the sailors while the few remaining locals scurried for whatever exits they could find. The Breakers charged forward, cocking fists the size of hams, knuckles popping like gunshots. The Terran’s armed themselves however they could, producing vibro-knives or grabbing chairs to use as improvised cudgels.
“They will kill me!” the green clad dancer gasped, leaping down from the stage to land beside the Terran officer with surprising grace. Graceful or not, the landing was nice to watch, the officer decided as the woman bounced to her feet in more ways than one. His hand strayed to a holstered pistol at his hip, though he hadn’t quite escalated to drawing it.
“Surely they…” further speculation was interrupted as the charging Breaker’s hit the Terrans. The battle roars of both groups melded with the sound of shattering wood, breaking glass, and heavy impact of flesh on flesh. The scent of blood, sweat and hormones seemed to surge up all around them as though borne in by a great wave.
“Please, you have to get me out of here, I will do anything!” the blonde wailed. The officer hesitated a moment, vestigial honor and priapic desire going to war with his higher intellect. For a second he hesitated but then he grabbed her wrist and half lead, half dragged her through a door into a kitchen space. The staff had already abandoned it, unknown cuts of meat still turning on spits and dates scattered everywhere. Several pots of what might be soup were beginning to boil over out of neglect.
“Go out the back and…” The officer’s eyes glazed as the blonde drove a small shock rod into the side of his neck and triggered it. The rod snapped electric blue and the officer’s muscles contracted so hard he leaped into the side of a stainless-steel refrigerator purely on the strength of his own misfiring nerves. His head struck the unit with a musical pong and he collapsed to the floor, the fine hairs on the side of his neck smoldering. Jocasta patted them out as she rolled him onto his back. Taking his left hand she turned it palm up and stared at it intently for several second. The wetware in her eyes located the chip implanted in his palm, a standard Terran practice for carrying idents and clearance codes. A moment later a small metallic dragonfly zipped down from the ceiling, holding an expensive and illegal card cloning unit in its rearmost set of legs. It hovered for a moment until the unit made an approving beep, indicating the clone was complete. Jocasta let the officer’s arm drop and peeled back his eyelids, staring intently into his eyes to allow her wetware to copy his retinal patterns.
“Ok time to…” The kitchen door burst open as a Terran sailor rag dolled through the air, struck a falafel and ricocheted into a pile of pita breads. A Breaker followed him in, half crouching to fit. One of the brute’s eyes was gone and blood leaked down over its left cheek. The ink was really running now, and the words of the sutras were completely illegible. It blinked it’s one good eye furiously as inky sweat tricked into it. The smell of male hormones and chemical performance enhancers prickled in the air.
“The whores of the unbelievers shall suffer the same chastisement!” the gene-altered brute roared, exposing a mouthful of broken shovel-like teeth.
“You couldn’t have waited ten more seconds?” Jocasta complained, then pulled the officer’s side arm from its holster, tumbling the safety off and chambering a round with a flick of her thumb. The Breaker smiled a horrible bloody smile and charged. Jocasta fired two shots into its body before she realized that it wasn’t going to be enough to stop the charging brute. Her aim shifted and she fired once more, shattering a vast ceramic amphora to her left. A wave of olive oil engulfed both combatants in a shimmering golden tide. The Breaker, fully committed to his charge, lost his footing on the oil slicked floor, his rush turning into a floundering slide. Jocasta tried to leap clear but found she had been too clever for her own good. She scrambled against the slick floor but could find no purchase thanks to the oil. The Breaker hit her like a billiard ball, sending her tumbling into the corner to crash against a counter, the impact rocked the shelf hard enough that it knocked over several jars, dousing her in a rain of cumin, coriander, and cardamon that stuck to her oil slicked flesh and scalp. She sneezed violently. The Breaker was already clambering to its feet and to her dismay Jocasta found that she had lost the pistol somewhere in the confusion. Desperately she scrambled for a weapon but could find nothing more convincing than a paring knife. Seeing her distress, a wicked smile spread across the Breaker’s face as he stepped towards her. With a zipping whir the little Dragonfly drone flew into the mutant’s face. There was a series of audible pops as the drone danced away and the Breaker’s head was snapping up and down violently, as though trying to nod itself to death. Jocasta could see parts of its skull as arcing electrical discharge pulled from its face and realized that the drone had shoved the shock rod up the things nose. She watched in mute fascination for several seconds as the creature’s entire face from crown to chin flexed violently. There was an extra loud pop and the brute stood like a statue, smoke drifting from its nostrils and ears, then like a falling tree, it slowly toppled to one side and struck the corner of the prep table. The impact flipped the table like a tiddlywink, hurling knives, crockery and other Bricker Brack at the door at the very moment the drunken Terran Petty officer opened it. He squealed and toppled back out of the door porcupined with cutlery. The door swung morosely on its hinges for a few seconds before coming to rest closed.
“Unbelievable,” Jocasta muttered and limped towards the door.
The woman who entered the Smuggler’s Blues an hour later bore a superficial resemblance to the exotic dancer at the Palm Tree. Her sheer ensemble was partially covered with a gray leather jacket and the towel wrapped around her hips, fighting a losing battle to preserve her modesty. The stylish heels she had been wearing were broken and dirty and she kicked them off in disgust. Her body glistened with oil, save for the red and yellow patches around her scalp and face where fragrant spices had adhered. She stomped across the room and flopped into a chair before glaring belligerently at the bar tender.
“What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?” she demanded.
