The Forgotten Planet
Chapter 3 – Swap Meet

Adan and I have found that the best place to make a swap of stolen merchandise is right out in the open. First of all, who would be stupid enough to trade stolen goods for cash in a public dining establishment? In this case, the two of us were in the outdoor seating area of Roscoe’s Bar and Grill, located in the heart of midtown Oasis. Second, there’s little fear of a gunpoint double-cross in an area bustling with people. Not that the latter was really a concern with our current client.

We’d been dealing with Ash Williams for years now, and after countless jobs had come to trust him – as much as you can trust a professional thief and liar. However, he did have a number of irritating habits, and running late was at the top the list. I’d been nursing my coffee for twenty minutes already, and I was itching to get the details of our final job on Palance and get back to the flat for a few hours’ sleep.

“Dude, where’s your boy?” I finally asked.

“Huh?” Adan asked. He’d apparently been distracted by a particularly top-heavy member of the wait staff. He grudgingly turned and looked at me, but it took a few beats for the far-away look in his eyes to recede. “Bro, you know Ash.” My brother made a little flourish with his mug and added, “He’s on Oasis time, baby.”

Everyone here in our city seemed to be on ‘Oasis time.’ It basically meant making an appointment was pointless. For someone who literally has a daily planner in his head, I found the concept annoying.

The duly named city of Oasis is a lush island of palm trees, hearty wildflowers and cool ocean breeze floating amongst a barren sea of sand. Confederation colonists likely chose this initial landing site based on the nearby cobalt mines and the proximity to a massive supply of both fresh water and seafood. The city began as an outpost of prefab structures arranged in a roughly square perimeter between the winding river Ix and the banks of the New Aegean Sea, and grew over time into a city of nearly a quarter of a million Terrans.

Adan gestured towards the buxom brunette waitress and said, “Relax and enjoy the scenery, bro.” Adan was a big fan of the owner Rosco Peco’s hiring practices – which involved a bit of symmetry in the hip and bust ratios among the wait staff. It didn’t seem to me to be a very efficient screening process for perspective employees, but I learned early on that I didn’t see the world in quite the same way as most Terran males.

Roscoe’s Bar and Grill was located on the fringes of the market, away from the high-credit bars and restaurants frequented by traders and visiting dignitaries. Where the aforementioned establishments catered to wealthy visitors that were accustomed to the Salarian ideal of baroque elegance, Rosco’s was all about old-Earth kitsch.

Bright pastel umbrellas covered each of the round, wood-slat tables. Strands of inefficient, multi-colored lights snaked between the dozen or so umbrellas and the roof of the bar, forming a garish faux-spider web pergola. Flocks of noisy and colorful parrots, whose vocabulary consisted of swear words and drink names, called the bar’s roof home. According to legend, their ancestors escaped the captivity of a private collector a generation ago and now flourished in this tropical locale.

Sprinkled here and there around the property were a number of oddities including a wooden statue of a stern, topless man in a grand feather-hat, and a plastic pink bird standing on one leg. It may have been gaudy, but at least it gave the otherwise drab and dusty boulevard a splash of color to contrast all the beige, colonial-era buildings.

“Whoa, ugly,” Aiden said a bit too loudly at the small procession of Salarian soldiers passing down the narrow boulevard. Rosco’s was in the original colonial section of the city and most of the shops and residences were only accessible on foot. The Lizards liked to parade down Main Street a couple times a day to cow the populace and show the colors. Our overlords were nothing if not consistent. Besides, it was all for show at this point. There hadn’t been even a minor Terran uprising in my seventeen years of life.

“Dude, keep it down,” I whispered. I mean, we literally had stolen items on our person. He wasn’t wrong though... they were ugly. The nose-less, bile-colored Salarian nobles were bad enough, but these vat-grown soldiers were downright hideous. Their face-shields were up, showing off their long snouts and buck-toothed grins. They always looked on the verge of tipping over, balancing on those little feet and backwards knees, with their blocky heads and ponderous tails somehow maintaining an unsteady equilibrium. They looked like baby dinosaurs, but we Terran’s just called them lizards.

“Relax bro,” Adan said. He sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “It’s a bunch of steel-caps. They probably can’t even understand Calí.”

The soldiers all wore identical silver nanocomposite battle armor, but their rank was evident in the form of various metals on their dewclaws and tail spikes. These guys were steelies and a bronze Sargent. The odds of them speaking Colonial Basic was astronomically small. Still, better safe than sorry. I studied my mug intently until they passed.

Our waitress came by to slap Adan’s feet back off the table, but didn’t stick around to see if we wanted refills. She was wearing the customary tight-fitting red top and short black skirt that Roscoe’s was known for. Adan admired her as she checked on an elderly couple a few tables down.

“Hot, but probably lesbian,” he said. His earlier lines of game had met with a wall of indifference.

“Obviously,” I answered. “What other possible reason could there be for her lack of interest?” He nodded, either missing, or choosing to ignore, my thinly veiled sarcasm.

I was in my normal walking around duds – grey cargo pants and a short-sleeved collared shirt. I have a bunch of the same style shirts and pants with slight variations in color. Everything basically matches everything else, so it makes mornings that much easier. It’s the same reason I keep my hair buzzed at an even three centimeters.

Adan’s mornings are like a diva fashion show. Do belts and shoes really have to match? I’ve been told repeatedly that they do. Anyway, Adan was in blue denim pants and a practically painted on black V-neck t-shirt, and his belt and shoes were black with turquoise highlights. A puca shell necklace rested a few centimeters above a tuft of Adan’s manly chest hair. I have seven hairs on my chest, arranged in no particular pattern.

We basically have the same DNA and look nothing alike outside of a few facial similarities, our Pop’s café au lait skin, and the same cowlick on the back of our skulls. It’s one of many reasons I settled firmly in the hard sciences. I’m happy to leave all that genetic variability to the slicers in the organic chop-shops.

“You think Poochy will be okay back at the loft?” Adan asked. Was that concern showing in his blue eyes? I wasn’t buying it.

“I really don’t care,” I answered honestly. “I just know you’re cleaning up whatever messes he leaves on the floor.”

“Whaaat?” he asked incredulously. “He’s a family pet Galen. That means family responsibility.” I gave him my standard eyeroll rather than responding.

The smell of deep-fried batter made my stomach rumble, and my eyes followed my nose to the table downwind, where a couple of day-laborers in grease-stained coveralls were blowing a day’s wages on an early lunch of fish and chips.

“Bro, you’re drooling a little,” Adan said, touching his chin. I wiped at my face before I could catch myself, and he smirked. “Just order something. We’ve got the juice, and you could obviously use the calories.”

“Maybe later,” I said, and he shrugged in reply.

The idea of eating while talking business wasn’t my idea of enjoyment. My plan was to hold out until I was off the clock and had a good book in front of me. I’d just gotten ahold of the final book in the Helmut Haase trilogy, and I was itching to see how it would end. Still, if Ash left us hanging much longer, I was going to break-down and order something deep fried and scarf it down while doing the unthinkable... socializing.

The waitress returned with the pot and refilled our cups. Adan beamed at her, and she expertly avoided making eye contact. I decided to bump her tip up to twenty percent just for that. My brother shook his head in frustration as she walked away, but still checked out her butt all the same. I’d just doctored my coffee to the perfect amount of tan and sweet when I caught the first whiff of Ash’s cologne.

Ash is a tall, light skinned Terran with wavy dark hair and a prominent chin. Today he wore tan slacks and a loud, button-up shirt that was open just enough to show off a bevy of gold chains. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and it gave his friendly face a slightly roguish quality. He signaled the waitress as he pulled up a chair.

“You boys got my merchandise?” he asked with a toothy smile.

“Of course, baby,” Adan replied. “Have we ever let you down?”

“I have to admit, you haven’t. That’s why I really hate to see you go.” Suddenly, Ash looked up and beamed. “Ah, here’s my girl.”

The waitress approached to take Ash’s order. “A pitcher of beer please Roxy.” The way he looked at her made it seem like she was the most important person in the whole wide world. I’d only bought it the first time I saw him do it. Now it’s old hat.

“Three glasses, handsome?” the waitress asked.

“No just one…” Ash said hastily, before asking, “Oh, were you boys drinking?”

It was 10AM. We shook our heads no.

“Just one – and make it a frosty one, please sweetheart.”

She smiled and nodded, and he ogled her as she walked away. When she was out of sight, he turned his gaze on us.

“So come on… don’t keep me waiting.” He rubbed his hands together in a greedy sort of way.

“Forgetting something?” Adan said, as he arched an eyebrow and rubbed his right thumb against his index and pointer fingers.

Ash rolled his eyes and sub-vocalized commands into his wrister. Like most people on Palance, Ash didn’t have an implant like I did, so he used a wrister as his mobile technology platform. Ash’s rig was top-of-the-line, with holographic displays and the ability to read his subvocalized speech. What he didn’t know was that my ’Seven could also read his subvocal commands – in so many different ways that it’s silly to list them all.

If he’d ever double-crossed us, I would have emptied his accounts in the time it took him to drain his first beer of the morning. Lucky for all involved, that was never an issue. Once I saw the payment flash on my HUD, I nodded to Adan, and he slid the palm-sized silver case across the table. Ash popped it open and stared like a wide-eyed kid at its contents.

“Would you look at that? An actual Derrick Jeter rookie card.” Ash looked up and added, “You know how many of these cards are still in existence?”

I shook my head no and Adan shrugged. Ash closed the case and stowed it in his breast pocket when he saw the waitress returning with his drink. She poured the beer into his frosty mug and smiled at him much longer than was necessary.

“Thanks, baby,” he said with a wink.

“My pleasure, handsome,” she replied, twirling a lock of hair. The waitress turned and walked back into the restaurant – but she did turn and take a look back at Ash before passing through the doorway. Once again, I marveled at how our species reproductive drive led to prizing mammary measurements, muscle mass and a vague air of danger.

“Oh, it’s on,” Ash said as he slapped the table. It shook from the impact, spilling a bit of beer from Ash’s frosty glass. Adan gave our friend an approving nod, his lesbian hypothesis apparently forgotten. Ten-to-one, this star-crossed relationship ends with Ash fleeting her flat half-dressed and dodging projectiles.

“So how many of the cards are there?” I asked. I didn’t really care. I was just ready to conclude business and get back to our flat with a to-go order of fish-and-chips. I’m generally not all that interested in making small talk with, well, just about anyone ever.

“Huh?” Ash shook away daydreams I had no interest in guessing at and said, “Oh, right – the card.” He took the case out again for another look. “There are three that I know of. The picture on the front was taken at Yankee Stadium about two centuries before the Servines,” he stopped to spit on the ground – which is what most Terrans do when forced to utter the name of our betrayers – before continuing, “turned it and the rest of the planet into a pile of radioactive slag.”

Ash stopped and drank some beer, likely to wash the bad taste out of his mouth. The Servine were humanity’s closest ally before and during the Great War with the Salarians. When they turned on us, we lost the war, our colonies and our homeworld.

“You guys ever seen a baseball game?” Ash asked, changing the subject.

“Is that what the uniform and the club are all about?” I asked. “I thought that guy was some sort of primitive gladiator.”

“I saw an old vid once,” Adan said. “Was crotch-scratching part of the competition, or were the uniforms just made out of horsehair?”

“Oh, that game. I seem to recall that spitting was important too,” I added

Ash sighed loudly and shook his head. “That’s what I get for trying to teach

you boys a little bit of Earth culture. Fine, on to business then.”