Soul of a Gambler

Part I - "Cold Beer"

Some time had passed since Jax was scraped from the observation window of the transport and treated for his wounds by the group of doctors and medical technicians on the ship in exchange for his silence about the whole thing. He would be silent, of course, not because he would have hurt the benevolent reputation the group that called themselves The Bannerless cultivated, but because he was literally a fugitive of the Blackwatch who ruled everything from here to The Center. Medics and Doctors had oaths, and one mandatory reporter would have ruined everything for him.

Not like it can get any worse anyway. He thought after they finally dropped him off at the first major city they set down in.

To Jax Davis, there wasn't really a worse to be had. Okay, there was a worse, he could have lost his cigarette case in the fall. Thankfully, it was still tucked away in the inner pocket of his duster. But his wallet was lean, and his stomach was hungry. He'd been fed during his stay on the Bannerless ship while he was in treatment--his cover story being that he had fallen while doing some EVA and making in atmosphere repairs--and had plenty of time to rest and think.

He thought about how pissed his buyer must be, and how he would likely never be let back into the Double Down Saloon again because of it. It was probably best for him not to show his face around there anyway, even if the buyer who happened to own the place didn't blackball him completely, because there was a slim chance that his getaway pilot Arnie might have made away a free man. He was confident Arnie would shoot him if they crossed paths again. He would shoot him, if he were Arnie.

So he set into the city along the path of Beam Street, the largest street of the lower ring, moving on a narrow concrete sidewalk where about a yard or so away some of the fastest cars he had ever seen hurtled into and out of the city on pads that looked like downturned tires, gliding over the magnetic road surface. He focused mostly on the buildings in various states of neglect and disrepair that made up the lower-ring, looking for somewhere to plan his next job. There was only two places one could plan and recruit for the type of work that Jax carried out and smoke at the same time, those being the dive-est of the lower-ring bars--the ones with neon signs and no windows or bouncers outside--and the other being the alleys behind said bars. So he moved slowly with a freshly lit cigarette between his first two fingers, a hand rolled one with bulk purchased tobacco and no filter, the black coffee of cigarettes, past strange shops run by both humans and the strange blue-skinned fish-headed natives of this planet the Blackwatch 'civilized'.

Most were open, their wares twinkling behind the windows in the light thrown by burning street lamps and the opposing buildings on the far side of the street--the sunlight didn't get this far into the lower-ring--but many were closed down, shuttered, battened with wood over the windows and heavy doors like storm-doors. Posters in bold colors often plastered these buildings in rows, depicting the Blackwatch's poster-girl, the ever intrepid and skillful General Shadow often illustrated in full Blackwatch tactical gear with only her rank and unit patch on her left arm any color that wasn't black. Her head was covered with a ballistic helmet that bore the blank visage of a simple T-Visor. You were supposed to imagine yourself there, in poses of triumph against The Order's monarchy, over the slowly-organizing guerilla fighters in your backyard, and most proudly of all, over the unknown and uncivilized.

He stopped for a moment and took a long pull from his cigarette while he admired a large graffito spray painted across the entirety of a storefront with smashed in windows.

"THE WORLD EATER WALKS AMONG US, PRAISE BE UNTO THE VOID" along with a poorly drawn symbol of two concentric eyes forming a cross, one horizontal and the other tilted ninety degrees vertically. They seemed to stare deeply into him no matter what angle he took against them, and it made his head start to hurt as he kept trying to evade them.