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Once we were back in the skiff and clear of the Georgian System, Anna spoke to Franco.
“Tell me what happened to Selas,” she said. “Why’d she leave?”
“We had a fight,” Franco said without looking at Anna. He just stared out the front at the stars and fiddled in his pocket. He pulled out one of his cigarillos.
“Ah-ah-ah,” I warned him. “This is a no-smoking skiff, buddy. Forget about it.”
It wasn’t brand new, but the skiff was a pretty high-end model – red pleather seats, lo-shag carpets on the floor and walls, view-roof, aft sleeper with optional therapy bed, and a KG-rated engine. I didn’t want Franco stinking it up with his nasty habit.
Franco put away the cigarillo, pouting. “Your trouble is you’re all work and no play, Hilo.”
“And you’re the reverse,” I said. “Now I want an explanation – something better than ‘We had a fight’ – and I want a heading. Where are we going?”
“I’ll give you the heading first, then I’ll explain on the way. Take us to the Zilibi System.”
“Zilibi?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Franco. “I’m going home.”
I frowned at Franco, engaged the KG-drive and we gradually accelerated into slipspace. En route to Franco’s home world, Gerlax Prime, he told us a story that I knew was a pile of jacko crap.
It was so incoherent, it was clear he was actually shaken, because he was off his game. Usually, his lies were at least plausible.
Gerlax Prime was a small planet – about the size of Earth’s moon – and the only habitable rock in the whole Zibili System. At the time of Franco’s birth, it was a thriving little colony of about four thousand people.
Then Franco grew up, swindled his way into some money, and bought up the planet. And he kicked everyone else off – expelled his own people. Instead, he populated the settlement with robotic servants, set up his own little demented kingdom.
Then he got into financial trouble and had to mortgage everything. He lost everything except the deed to the planet. A few years later, he came crawling to me, looking for a job.
I was always a sucker for hard luck cases.
If only I’d known at the time that it wasn’t luck that was against him, but the cold hard consequences of stupendously dumb decisions and actions.
Franco quit telling us his tale about half way there. He didn’t finish the story – it didn’t make enough sense to have an end – he just stopped talking after one of his ridiculously contorted sentences.
I swear the man missed his calling as a politician.
We flew the rest of the way in silence. Anna went to the back bunk to sleep.
As we eventually arrived at Gerlax Prime, Franco spoke up.
“Set us down in the hills behind the castle.”
He called the main building on the edge of the settlement the “castle.” It was his home. But trust me, it was not a castle.
I set down in a small clearing in the woods a few hundred meters from the edge of the deserted town that was now known, egotistically, as Francoville.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I need your help.”
“I kinda figured that,” I said. “But if you want anything more than I’ve already done for you – by the way, you owe me for three kilos of molecular accelerant – you’re going to need to start leveling with me. The truth. Now. Or Anna and I leave you here to rot.”
Franco put is head in his hands and sighed heavily. “Fine. Here’s the deal.” He looked up at me, and he actually had tears in his eyes. I’m pretty sure they were real. “I tried, Hilo, really I did. But I just couldn’t handle it. Living the clean, normal, boring life. Working. Ugh. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a way to amass my fortune again, and buy back the life I had here on Gerlax. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but at least it was my life.”
I just stared at him.
“So, I, uh, I started appropriating some small items from some of our customer transactions. Just little stuff, here and there – nobody missed it. And I only took the stuff on the list.”
“What list?” I asked through a clenched jaw.
“The list the scientist guy gave me. The guy working for Puffy Listerman.”
“Puffy Listerman?” I asked, my eyes popping. “The crime boss?”
“The one and only. He’d hired the scientist to build a device that could be used to remotely control another individual who’d been implanted with a companion device. It was pretty rudimentary, really, just enough to alter certain – outcomes.”
“Outcomes.”
“Yeah, like, well – like the races.”
“Like on Yoro Beta.”
“Exactly. Puffy was paying me a small cut to supply the parts, but it wasn’t enough. So, I figured I’d just borrow the completed device for a little while – just long enough to score enough to rebuild my modest empire – and then return it. At the dog track, I fed the favorite some food that had a little pea-sized transceiver in it. During the race, I activated the remote in my pocket, and it sent a simple command – well, you saw the result. It worked perfectly!”
Franco smiled. I didn’t share his glee.
“Sorry,” he said. “Anyway, before I had a chance to use it again, Puffy’s goons showed up, and they weren’t happy. They scared Selas off, and, as you know, we barely escaped.”
I digested his story. I knew he was, for a change, being truthful. “So, what’s your plan to remedy this situation?”
“Well, -”
“What’s going on?” asked Anna, emerging from the back and rubbing her eyes. Strands of her long dark hair were sticking out in various directions and sticking to the left side of her face.
“Trouble,” I said. “Your cousin has really got himself – and now us – in deep this time. He was about to tell us how we were going to get out of this mess.”
Anna sat down and stared at Franco, shaking her head slowly. “Franco?”
“I do have a plan. We need to get inside my compound – I have some things we’ll need. I wanted us to set down out here, in case Puffy’s men come looking for me here on Gerlax.”
“Okay, we go into your ‘castle’ and get some stuff. Then what? How are you going to fix things with Listerman?”
“Puffy Listerman?” asked Anna, putting the name together. “The head of the Solar Eschelon?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Franco, looking a little ashamed. “That one.”
“Why are you mixed up with the biggest organized crime syndicate in the galaxy?” asked Anna.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I already told it to Hilo. He can fill you in. Right now, we need to get inside and get my – uh, my stuff.”
We hiked in through the woods and entered the castle through a rear entrance. Everything was covered in dust, but Franco’s security system pass codes still functioned.
The so-called castle was a four story stone building built from the granite-like rocks found nearby. The interior layout was designed as an administrative building originally, but when Franco moved in (simply because it was the largest building on the planet), he’d done a fair amount of remodeling, taking out walls to create a huge gaming room with pool tables and other recreational equipment that was now covered in dust.
It was as if he’d never really grown up.
“Come on – this way,” he said, leading the way down a stairway that led to the basement levels.
We arrived at a vault, which opened by the touch of his palm and a voice-access password. Franco stepped in and grabbed a case of cash off a shelf, and four laser weapons.
“Here,” he said, handing one to Anna and me. “Just in case.”
Anna looked at the weapon and then at me. “Hilo?”
I took a deep breath. “Just take it. You never know what might happen. Are you ready, Franco? Let’s get out of here – I’m getting kinda spooked.”
 
; “Oh, no worries,” said Franco, tucking his gun into his waistband. “If anyone comes, they’ll trip my perimeter sensors and -”
“Franco Barberi.”
The deep voice of Puffy Listerman stopped us all in our tracks. I turned slowly to see the tall, hefty goateed criminal in a business suit standing at the foot of the stairs, a laser rifle leveled at my wife’s cousin.
“P-Puffy – I mean, Mr. Listerman!” said Franco, trying as hard as he could to smile through his pant-wetting nerves.
“You insult my intelligence, Barberi. And you hurt me, personally. Using my tool, before I even had a chance to use it myself? It’s not nice to take a man’s toys.”
He made his point by blasting a hole in Franco’s left shin.
Anna let out a little scream, and I grabbed her and crouched down near the floor.
For Franco’s part, he just winced as his legs gave out and he squatted on the floor in the same spot he had stood.
“Who are your friends?” asked Listerman, reaching into an inside pocket with his spare hand and sliding a cigarillo into the corner of his mouth.
“Nobody,” whispered Franco. “Just – nobody. I mean, they weren’t involved in – in what I did.”
“And what did you do, Barberi?”
“I – I stole from you, Sir.”
“You know what the penalty is for turning on me?” asked Listerman, lighting his cigarillo.
“Death,” Franco whispered, even quieter than before.
“Not just death!” boomed Listerman. “Death to you and your whole planet! That’s why people don’t cross me! Now I’m going to have to blow up your whole blasted planet!”
I don’t remember making a conscious decision to do it – it was like my body just took over, and I pulled my weapon out from behind my back where I was hiding it, and fired on Listerman.
I’m a businessman, not a gunfighter – so I missed completely, frying a hole in the wall to Puffy’s right.
But the gang boss somehow got bewildered, and instead of firing on me, fired at Franco, who’d already dove behind a chest near the back wall of the vault. He popped up and fired at Listerman, just as Listerman was firing at him.
Franco’s weapon flew out of his hand as a powerful laser struck the barrel.
Anna and I looked for a place to take cover, but there was none. Then Listerman turned on us. He took aim at me and fired, just as Franco, who’d recovered his weapon, fired at Listerman. He hit his rifle, throwing off his aim – and causing him to shoot Anna square in the chest.
I screamed “No!” as the angry Listerman turned back to Franco, to find he’d escaped out a secret door in the back of the vault.
Intent on taking down the man who’d double-crossed him, Listerman took off after Franco, disappearing into the black doorway and not even looking back at me and Anna.
I dropped to my knees beside my wife, but there was nothing I could do for her – she was gone.
I scooped her limp body up in my arms and carried her up the stairs, made my way out of the castle, and into the woods to the skiff.
I lay her on the bed in the back, turned on the Med-Aid Stasis field – in the hopeless hope that she could somehow be revived – fired up the engines, and lifted off.
I looked down and saw Listerman’s ship – a shiny brass-colored cruiser. Beside it, two men were doing something to a metallic black sphere about ten meters in diameter.
A meson bomb.
Listerman had been serious – he really was going to blow up the planet.
But he was still in the castle, engaged with Franco.
As I reached the upper atmosphere, I targeted the meson bomb with my rear matter destabilizer.
Boom.
No more Gerlax Prime.
No more Puffy Listerman.
No more Franco, the little creep.
As the explosion became a tiny point of light behind my skiff, indistinguishable from the other stars, I plotted a course for home to bury Anna.
“Hilo.”
A whisper from the aft compartment.
I turned to see Anna weakly raising her head.
She wasn’t dead!
The stasis field had begun repairing the damage to her chest tissues.
So much for the planet.
But at least I still had my Anna.
THE END
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