The Fringe Wars

2.5

The Devil's Due

"Spate hasn't changed one bit. It's still a hellhole," Sixx said as he looked out the window of the taxi he and Reyne rode in.

"You grew up here."

"Yeah, so I know firsthand how much of a hellhole it is. The highest crime rate in the Collective, and the highest number of prostitutes per capita in the Collective."

At that moment, they drove by a string of brothels. Prostitutes stood outside, wearing skimpy dresses or tight shorts, depending on their gender. The masks they wore were painted in bright colors.

"That doesn't surprise me in the least," Reyne said.

Spate was a lifeless brown rock except for the community gardens protected by massive glass panes; the lush food orchards paralleled the beauty of gardens found on Myr or Alluvia. The only other thing it had going for it was the perfect combination of human-friendly gravity and atmospheric pressure so that only masks had to be worn to make up for air completely devoid of oxygen and carbon.

"This whole place still has that same stale smell. You know the stink that old gravity booths have, like sweaty socks left in a locker for a few weeks too long? That smell."

Reyne pointed to the rat-like rodents that scoured the surface. "I always attributed it to the vigs. Have you ever gotten a whiff of one of those things up close?"

"Too many times. I learned the hard way that when you're just a scrawny kid and you decide to chase one of them for fun, the whole herd just may decide to chase you back. And those furry little bastards can move fast." Sixx cringed. "I don't know how some people eat those things. They are the devil's spawn."

"Desperation is my guess."

They passed by a caravan of wombies pulling wagons filled with supplies from the docks. The small bumps on their stomachs always made Reyne recoil, but he had to respect how each planet changed the humans who dared to colonize it...sometimes in as little as a couple hundred years.

Wombies, mutated from generations of Spatens who'd survived chiefly on blue tea, had developed an almost camel-like ability to store what little water they took in on the dry world. They were living, shambling reminders that while blue tea could help humans survive on much less water, there were repercussions for playing with human nature. He'd made eye contact with a wombie once, and he could've sworn there'd been no intelligence, let alone humanity, left in those eyes. He looked away from the caravan and checked the time.

"Why did Lincoln have to move the stationhouse so far from the docks?" Reyne muttered. "The old one worked just fine. We're burning over an hour each way that we shouldn't have to."

Sixx chuckled. "Because he wants to take as much money as possible from anyone who lands at Devil Town. All those brothels we passed back there? Notice how the taxi automatically slowed by them? It's not a coincidence so many of Devil Town's diverse services are located on the main road between the docks and the stationhouse."

"At last we're here. Finally," Reyne said.

The taxi followed a line of taxis into a huge circular drive. The stationhouse was a mountain, built out of local brown stone and taller than anything else in Devil Town except for the space docks. Any and all interplanetary business and trading took place at the stationhouse.

When they reached the front entrance, the taxi relayed instructions. "You have arrived at your destination, the Devil Town stationhouse. The transport charge is thirty-one credits. Please hold your wrist comm under the scanner for payment."