Alien Hunters

CHAPTER TWO: THE BLUE STRINGS

CHAPTER TWO

THE BLUE STRINGS

Raphael "Riff" Starfire, blues musician extraordinaire, was playing his guitar onstage when the men who had murdered his mother walked into the club.

     At least, he considered himself an extraordinary musician. Throughout the night, the crowd had seemed to think otherwise, pelting him with beer bottles, chicken bones, and once even a dwarf. But it was that kind of club. A place in the dregs of sprawling Cog City. Many folks claimed that the entire planet Earth was now the dregs, that the best of humanity had long since departed to the stars.

If Earth is a stain of puke on a rug, Riff thought, The Blues Strings club is a coughed-up furball in its center.

In addition to his guitar prowess, he also thought himself quite good at metaphors.

All sorts of sleaze filled the club most nights. Smugglers and bounty hunters sat at the back tables, faces scruffy and hair greasier than the burgers the Blue Strings served. Boozehounds hunched over the bar, their office clothes ruffled, their faces flushed and their cups going from empty to full and back again. Old men in corduroy sat closer to the stage, smoking and sipping rye, bobbing their heads to the music. The old-timers--retired bootleggers and moonshiners--were usually the only ones who appreciated Riff's playing. Something about the blues, shuffleboard, and prune juice just seemed to appeal to the elderly.

But this night it wasn't just the usual assortment of riffraff that filled the shadowy club. This night, for the first time since Riff had begun playing here, Cosmians stepped into the Blue Strings.

     Riff's playing died with a discordant note.

     All across the club, men turned toward the new arrivals and fell silent. The dwarf, only just recovering from being tossed onstage, hid behind a chair.

     "Cosmians," Riff muttered. "I hate these guys."

     There were five of them, all clad in black robes and hoods. They could have passed for monks, if not for the heavy guns they carried, nasty things larger than the exhaust pipes of most starjets. The emblem of their order, a black planet with three moons, was embroidered on their chests--the distant planet of Skelkra.

     Bloody nutters, Riff thought. The Cosmians were human, but they worshiped the skelkrins, ancient aliens that were probably just a myth. Riff had never been a religious man. His idea of a spiritual experience was hearing the music of his idols, legendary blues duo Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid. The idea of worshipping bloody aliens was downright disturbing.

     His mother had thought the same.

     His mother was now dead.

     "Carry on, everyone!" said one of the Cosmians, his voice grainy. "We're only here to enjoy the music."

     The man who spoke walked ahead of the other Cosmians, presumably their leader. With every step, metal clinked and machinery buzzed. Riff squinted, peering through the haze of cigarette smoke, and lost his breath.

     Oh gods of blues, he thought.

     A mechanical arm, tipped with steel claws, emerged from the Cosmian's sleeve. Within his black hood gleamed one human eye, one red mechanical orb.

     "Grotter," Riff whispered.

     He grimaced. The room spun around him. Riff was there again, thirty years ago. Only a boy. Only a terrified child. That mechanical claw was grabbing his mother, tugging her away. Riff screamed--only he wasn't Riff then, only a boy named Raphael. He tried to attack the Cosmian, to free his mother, yet that claw slammed against his face, cutting him, knocking him down, and his mother cried out and tried to reach him, but they dragged her back, and--