“You’re late with your payment, Nick.”
Nick stepped back from the colossal biped blocking his path. Barely a meter-and-a-half tall himself, he scarcely reached the waist of the being in front of him. Even if Nick had been the same size as the thug, he’d have been no match for him. Nick’s tidy potbelly, round like his head, bespoke too much beer and too little exercise, whereas the goon’s arm muscles threatened to burst the double-XL sleeves of his suit.
Dressed in a pink pinstripe suit and a fedora that clashed with his necrotic yellow skin, Urk’s top debt collector, Durkin, was well-known to Nick. And, given Nick’s recent bad luck at the casinos, the thug’s visit was no surprise.
Another of Urk’s enforcers blocked Nick’s progress as he stumbled backward. Swallowing hard, Nick licked his lips before answering.
“Please, Durkin, I’ll have Urk’s credits by next week. Payday’s only a couple of days off. You know I’m good for it. Just give me more time.”
The thug leaned over, grabbed Nick by the neck, and squeezed. Hard. Water from the planet’s perpetual mist ran down the sleeve of the mobster’s suit, mixing with the tears running down Nick’s face. His native world, Ghoul, was a desert planet, and his aversion to water amplified his sense of drowning as he struggled to breathe.
“That’s what you said a week ago. You’ve gambled away even more since then, and Urk don’t run a charity. He said to collect one way or the other. And since you don’t have the credits,” the thug smiled as he drew an ugly black cylinder from a pocket, “today, it’s the other.”
Nick staggered as the neural whip lashed his chest, then screamed as the thug brought it back across his face. The whip’s electronic thongs left black stripes across his red skin. One curled around the short, sensitive horns on his forehead, lifting him to his toes in agony. Whimpering, he fell to his knees. A rush of relief flooded his loins as Durkin swung the whip back for another blow, only to catch his partner Dweeble in the head instead.
“Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Watch what you’re doing, you farking moron!” Holding his scorched forehead, Dweeble gave Durkin a hearty shove.
“Watch it yourself, Dweeble!” Durkin recovered his balance and grabbed his partner by the lapels.
Seeing his chance, Nick crawled away, then sprung to his feet and ran. As he turned a corner, he heard the smack of fists on flesh.
Nick kept going as he splashed down narrow alleys between run-down buildings of brown brick. Etched by eons of the planet Downside’s nauseous climate, they loomed over him as he ran.
The mist soon turned into a frigid downpour, and he pulled up the hood of his jacket to ward it off. All that did was concentrate Downside’s pervasive smell of rotting vegetation. As he slogged through the fetid mud, Nick thought this was one of the vilest planets he’d ever visited, and he couldn’t wait till his ship reached for space.
Not that he needed more incentive to leave the place.
His next paycheck wouldn’t cover what he owed to Urk, and everybody knew what happened to people who failed to pay their debts. It was hard to think that anything could be worse than a beating from a neural whip, but people disappeared without explanation, and the local organ banks never seemed short of material.
Nick hesitated at a street corner. Left would take him to the short-lease apartment he was using while his ship, the Vagabond, was in port for overhaul; right would take him to the spaceport. His shift didn’t start until evening, but it would be an excellent place to hide from Urk’s debt collectors for a bit. Security was tight, and even though his crew space was tiny, there was no way for Durkin or any other thugs to get to him. He could swing by his apartment later to get the set of grav tools he used to operate the ship’s wormhole and the few other belongings he kept there.
Without conscious thought, Nick reached into his pocket for his lucky dice. Running them through his fingers helped him calm down while considering his options. Making up his mind, he turned right. A block later, he was on a main boulevard where he could catch a slidewalk to his destination.
When he reached the spaceport’s gate, he tapped his thumb against the ID scanner. It compared his thumbprint with the personal ID chip embedded under his fingernail, verifying his identity. Then, after checking his access permissions with the AI that ran the port, it opened the gate. Nick scampered in, looking back to see if he had been followed. Though his spaceship was secure, the port itself was not. There was no knowing if Durkin or one of Urk’s other goons had bribed their way in and might already be lurking there.
A few minutes later, he was at the Vagabond, where one of the ship’s security guards was stationed at the crew hatch. Nick had heard that the captain was nervous about a prolonged stay in the refuse heap that passed for Downside’s spaceport.
But when Nick tried to board, the guard stopped him and said, “I’ve been waiting for you. Got orders to take you right to the first mate.”
“Why?”
The guard sneered and took him by the arm. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
He shoved Nick into the first mate’s office a minute later. The first mate, a potato-shaped creature with multiple tentacles and myriad eyes, sat behind a polished aluminum desk. Glancing around, Nick felt his heartbeat speed up when he saw the chief engineer sitting in the corner of the room.
The chief engineer disliked ghoulies, a sentiment shared by most galactics, and had made Nick’s employment miserable, blaming him for everything that went wrong. The satisfied look on the chief’s space-pocked ochre face looked sinister.
“What’s up?” Nick asked, trying to stay calm.
The first mate waved one of his tentacles, dismissing a holo display he had been scanning. Then, leaning forward, he fixed three of his five eyes on Nick and said, “I have a report indicating serious misconduct on your part.”
“What, uh, would that be?” Nick fidgeted under the officer’s withering glare and kept glancing at the chief, who remained silent.
“A surprise inventory has revealed that some expensive supplies are missing. Four cases of bivalve oil. At a thousand credits apiece, that’s quite a sum. Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Yet, the video logs show that you are the only person who accessed the supplies locker when the items went missing.”
“But I’m innocent. How can that be? I didn’t—”
“Please, don’t bother denying the facts. The chief engineer himself provided the logs to me. And your gambling problem is well-known. According to the chief, you’re heavily in debt, and it’s obvious you stole the supplies to pay it off.”
Nick turned to stare at the chief, realizing he’d been set up.
Leaning back in his chair, the first mate continued, “Under the circumstances, I have no choice but to terminate your employment immediately and with prejudice. The cost of the missing supplies has been deducted from your final paycheck. And since the result is a negative number, no credits will be issued.”
“But…but don’t I get a hearing?”
“Yes. This was it.” The first mate gestured to the waiting guard. “Throw this thief off the ship. And don’t be gentle.”
Before Nick could protest, the guard put him in a painful arm lock and frog-marched him out of the room. Another guard joined them in the hallway, grabbing Nick by the neck and his other arm.
When they reached the exit, the first guard smacked Nick in the head, making his eyes water as the world spun. The other guard kneed him in the hip, then together, they rushed Nick down the gangway and face-planted him in the mud.
For several moments, all Nick could do was lie in the soup and sob.
His dream of becoming rich and respected seemed farther away than ever. Not only was he deep in debt to a notoriously blood-thirsty loan shark, but now he’d lost his job. And was stuck on Downside. The prospect of being stranded on a planet whose chief export was pessimism left Nick deeply depressed.
Gathering himself, Nick got to his feet, pausing for a moment until the world stopped spinning. Then, rubbing his left shoulder, he limped away from the spaceport. Stunned at his savage turn of bad luck, Nick tried to think of where to go where he might be safe. Nothing came to mind. Hopping on the slidewalk, he headed into town, vaguely intending to return to his apartment.
