The Last Coffee Shop

Chapter 12: Many Hats Never Mastered Anything

Luc and Graynard were awake and packed by the time Mads opened her bleary eyes. Mads was sore everywhere, but she felt decently rested, despite the circumstances. She watched her captors through slit eyes as they replaced crates and collected refuse. 

Like a half-remembered netfilm, the previous evening was replaying in her head. What in the stars had she gotten herself mixed up in? That Luc and Graynard were actually after Jupiter Jive wasn't a shock. With that many Galactics on the line, Mads wondered who wasn't after the dancing criminal. But the fact that there were usual smuggling routes and other settlements on Ithir? That blew her mind.

Mads sighed and sat up with care. The last thing she wanted to do was pull a muscle out here. Neither of her captors looked her way, but Graynard tossed her discarded haz suit in her general direction.

"Suit up kid, and get that sleeping bag and pillow put away. We've got to keep moving."

Mads yawned and stretched, relishing the brief, beautiful feeling of limbs unhindered by haz suit. "Fine. Do you think they'll follow us?"

"Who?" asked Luc, who was carefully sealing his helmet.

"The Jivers. Or Peace Keepers?"

Luc shook his head. "I hate to dash your hopes, but it's very unlikely that local PK forces would ever follow us into the waste. I can't think of a time they've done it. After all, they would just count us dead like everyone else. And the crew? They might, so that's why we just get the job done and get out."

Mads rolled up her bedding and placed it in the proper crate. "And what then?"

"What do you mean?" asked Luc, sounding curious.

Mads pulled on her suit with reluctance, making sure every bit was secure before moving to the next part. She tucked the legs into her boots, which suctioned on, and then did the same with her helmet. Last came the gloves. When she had rechecked all the seals, she turned back to Luc. "I mean, what happens when you get what you came for? What are you going to do with me?"

Luc shrugged. "That depends."

He turned to Graynard. "Got everything Gray? Good. Daylight is wasting."

"Depends on what?" persisted Mads as they crowded into the airlock.

"On how things go down. I might need you as collateral so I can make my escape, when the time comes. I might not. In that case, I'll probably dump you on the first planet we come to, with enough Galactics to get you home. Problem solved."

"So you don't plan on killing me?"

Luc looked down at her as he checked the airlock's pressure. His eyebrows twitched, "No, but plan is the key word. I didn't plan on a lot of this." His eyes were so bright that Mads could see the green of them even through the yellowed helmet.

Mads held his unreadable gaze, and then nodded her head. "Good enough."

They trooped back through the decoy room, down the passage and past the bundle of corpse, and all the way back to the ladder. It seemed inordinately long. However, when they shoved the metal hole cover aside and crawled out, it was bright and warm outside in comparison to the tunnel.

Mads craned her neck, peering around with interest at her first real look at the greater Waste. Out here, it was much flatter and more boring than around Springs Village. The sun was ghostly pale behind clouds of dust and smog, still thick after so many centuries. There was blackened decayed asphalt as far as the eye could see. The rotten, moldering wreckage of a building rose up to their left. It had been enormous, if you could guess anything by the size of the pile it had left behind. It was out of a dent in this pile that Graynard retrieved their skimmer. Other piles, much smaller, dotted the asphalt around them.