as written by Stellar and Calcos
There were three things that Pandora hated about the Parameta Astro-Mall.
One, people in places like The Parameta Astro-Mall were like drunk cattle pin-balling back and forth between both storefronts and bodies attracted to holographic neon lights like bugs to a bug zapper that made a usually easy point A to point B trajectory completely unnavigable. It was a place where common phrases like 'excuse me' and 'sorry' and all other similar mannerisms were deemed unnecessary and personal space was a commodity afforded to only those with a vanguard of personal security.
Two, every single employee was unnecessarily happy to the point they all seemed to be hopped up on some commercial form of ketamine that caused every single phrase that stumbled out of their overzealous and polite smiles to be coated in a protective layer of sunshine and rainbows.
And lastly, three, every thing was sterile and aseptic and utterly and completely polished to the point it was damn-near impossible not to catch her reflection in every surface within her sightline that she felt like she was caught in some endless house of mirrors at some horrendous neon-coloured carnival.
Simply put, she hated people. She hated people. She hated flashy storefront windows. And she absolutely hated malls.
And yet, here she was anyways, being carefully escorted by a welcoming committee from her ship
Polaris to the belly of the Astro-Mall chewing on the side of her cheek while maintaining the practiced patience of a Buddhist monk.
This trip was about business and she was in the Parameta Astro-Mall to see a man about a horse. Or rather, to stick a barrel of a gun down a traitor’s throat and demand the return of her employer’s merchandise under threat of having his insides splattered all over the mall’s pristine polished marble floors. Of course, she wasn’t supposed to kill him exactly, but she treated that clause in her contract as a more-or-less of a guideline. The end was more important than the means—or so that philosophy went.
Now it was just a matter of finding him.
Fortunately, ParaMarx tagged all their employees with an inert chemical residue of nanoparticles that conveniently bound to the matrix of osseous tissue removable only by a finite burst of energy with a specific resonance that wasn’t presently commercially available. Nevertheless, Targard Tillman was a resourceful son-of-a-bitch and the Astro-Mall was a place where the impossible was made possible with the right sum of money. It was only a manner of time before he had this tracking device removed as well, which meant time was of the essence.
Free of her welcoming entourage, Pandora tapped a finger against a rubber band around her wrist. A computer sparked to life, flashing a holographic screen above her arm with a blue-tinged map of the floor’s current layout. A single dull orb glowed at the centre of it.
Pandora smiled a predator’s grin.
____
Kaim regarded his companion with something of a mixture of amusement and stupor. He merely looked at Sterling for a moment, the dumbfoundedness in his eyes spelling out how he wanted to respond, but he merely held his hands out and grinned. "A job," he said flatly, turning his attention back to his scouring.
This place was a sort of home away from other homes Kaim had known, a hub that offered every pleasure or vice a man could want, and Kaim was no stranger to spending his money on such frivolities -well, he was lately, not having the money to spare on such wastefulness. His pockets were a desert, containing just trace amounts of the substance he needed in order to survive.
Finding no physical items of value, he decided to crawl the local clubs and bars that the Astro-Mall contained, hit up a barkeep or a dozen for rumors, a job, of rumors of a job. Ultimately, he just needed to feel the sensation of having full pockets again, and he was willing to go to almost any length in order to feel such a way again.
Almost.
He still had his guns, so he needn't resort to selling his body just yet, however, the thought had crossed Sterling's mind before. "You've got the face, the body, the charm," he had said, "And I've got the business sense and monetary responsibility. We can make this work!" Kaim had merely shaken his head and walked away. "A male prostitute-pimp duo isn't marketable, Sterling!"
Before he realized it, he was standing before the
Nova, a pretty popular club nestled in the south end of the Astro-Mall. From behind the door, Kaim could hear the obnoxious
electronic music blaring over the loudspeakers. Finding illicit employment in a place like this was decidedly easy pickings most of the time, as plenty of shady figures hung out in the general vicinity of the Astro-Mall. Sizing the place up, Kaim took a breath and stepped forward...
...before being stopped by the very large bouncer at the door. "You got lead for brains, pal? Get the fuck in line!" he barked, pointing towards the long queue of individuals lined up outside the establishment, many of whom were casting glances decorated with a variety of emotions at the wayward outlaw. Kaim chuckled, patting the bouncer on the shoulder.
"I'm a VIP here pal. Name's Ashtar.
Kaim Ashtar." The bouncer cocked an eyebrow, not even bothering to check the VIP list as he put Kaim in his place. "Yeah right. I bet the last time you were in a VIP booth you were servin' up drinks. If that. Get lost, bozo." Kaim straightened up, laughing some more, trying to appear as if he wasn't taking the security seriously. "Ah, I guess you'd know me better by my other name: Astro Jack," he said, taking a step towards the door.
The bouncer pushed him away. "What the hell kinda fairy name is that?" he asked rhetorically. "Ain't gonna tell you again, pal, get in line or get the hell outta here!" Kaim felt rather defeated, dejected and determined to stand there and convince the guy that his name carried weight around this place. Weight that, admittedly, amounted to a feather's encumbrance. But he was persistent.
"I'm telling you, I'm practically a celebrity around here!" The bouncer scoffed. "And I'm the queen of Tarsus." Kaim looked at Sterling, shifting his gaze between his partner and the bouncer.
'Set this guy straight,' the look on his face said.
____
Meandering about the mall while dodging human contact like every Astro-mall inhabitant was a plague victim, the single stationary orb led Pandora to her final destination. X marked the spot, but instead of some extravagant historical treasure chest filled to the brim with gold coins, it was a dance club teeming with manhandling hormonal drunkards and some horrendous rendition of discotheque.
The Nova.
You got to be fucking kidding me. Her frown was omnipotent.
Somewhere beyond the line and the hulking figure of man standing at the door was Targard Tillman and the merchandise she had to recover amidst the squalor.
Pandora frowned, not just at the irritating repetitive beats resonating through the fiberglass walls and reverberating through the floors, but at the realization that she would reluctantly had to subject herself to the sort of people that populated the other side—drunks, philanders, and some asshole who thought he was this galaxy’s next big thing not unlike that same asshole who was presently arguing with an unimpressed bouncer at the front of the line—
“—
Ashtar?” The name fell off her lips humourlessly, the very word was tinged and cased in a perfectly manufactured box of revulsion from experiences come and gone and interrupted only by the sort of chaos that Kaim Ashtar himself could bring, “—the hell are you doing here?”
“You know
this guy?” The bouncer sounded surprised. Unenthused, but surprised, nonetheless.
Pandora didn’t have to guess as to why.
Crossing her arms against her chest, she exhaled a sharp breath of air, letting the holographic screen dissipate with the motion. “Unfortunately.” Grey eyes held onto Kaim, cynicism growing by the passing second.
Ignoring Kaim and his companions’ presence, she reached her hand into the lining of her jacket to procure an identification card. Flashing the surface of the card across the bouncer’s clipboard scanner her identification popped up on the screen: Sangine O’Hara, SSSR.
She returned the card to her pocket. “I need access to this club for an official investigation.”
Eyebrow cocked, the bouncer’s eyes glazed over the clipboard before dismissing the screen and giving a curt nod.
Unlatching the red velvet cord, he let her pass on ahead. Once she was on the other side, she threw a look back over her shoulder, her gaze met Kaim’s behind her with her ensuing words directed to the bouncer. “Word of advice: you best have him removed before he contaminates this place with idiocy if you want to avoid a pandemic. He is notorious for breaking everything he touches.”
Pandora then flashed a semblance of a smile that lacked all forms of amiability, before she continued on ahead.
____
Like a sharp pin to a balloon fit to burst, Kaim's ego took a destructive blow that would bring a lesser man to tears and send him home crying to his mother. Kaim, however, had a bit more dignity and self-respect than to allow that, and merely stared at the woman incredulously as she began to disappear from his view and into the dark, over-loud embrace that was the inside of The Nova.
He held out a hand as if he could reach far enough ahead to grab her shoulder, maybe persuade her to convince the asshole posted like some type of Nazi outside the door to let him in. But alas, she was content to let him fester outside, his agitation spiking as his chances of landing a big job slipped further and further away as his options began to run dryer than a well during drought season.
With a mere huff, he reset his focus on the bouncer, who continued to stand by, crossed arms helping construct his imposing frame, eyes cast down as he awaited the asinine outlaw to show him a new trick. Alas, Kaim resorted to the same tired, rehashed routine the bouncer had dealt with several times.
Reaching into his pocket, Kaim withdrew a series of 20 credit notes, walking up and stuffing them into the shirt pocket of the watchman's rather nice dress shirt. He merely watches the money sink into his shirt, Kaim patting the area of his chest to assure him that yes, he had just been bribed.
"I think my good friends there can speak for my credibility," Kaim said with a smile. The bouncer sighed, amusement having fled the scene five minutes ago. At this point, the outlaw's desperate attempts at making himself out to be a bigger shot than he truly amounted to were just getting rather sad, and very much annoying.
"Ya know, normally I'd feel bad about taking a guy's life savings. But you? I'd do so graciously." Bringing a hand to his face, Kaim rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, groaning as he watched his money uselessly pissed away into the man's pocket. Trying to reach for it back would be ill-advised, as he was likely to lose a few bones in his hand if he tried.
"Look, just...what do I have to do to get in there?" Kaim said, almost pleadingly. The bouncer gave an expression of mock-contemplation, casting his gaze up and to the left as if legitimately pondering options to serve up to the poor schmuck standing before him. Finally, he spoke, "Well, you can either stand in line and hope you're allowed in, -which at this point I'm really not so keen on- or you can go home. Up to you. I don't care either way."
With a weighty sigh, Kaim resorted to the former option, striding sluggishly, his spirit crushed into minute splinters, to the back of the line. "You're pretty sad, you know that?" one of the waiting patrons told him as he passed by. He let slip another sigh, giving a half-hearted wave as he walked down the line.
"Yeah, I know."
____
The club was stuffy and smelt like a smorgasbord of fermented yeast mixtures with the rich hint of perfume and an unpleasant dash of body odor. It was unbearably hot and sticky as the music blasted three-years off of her auditory lifespan while she navigated around scantily clad women and men with a survival sense belonging to that of a Neanderthal.
She brought the tracking system back to life, holding it up just enough to fit within her sight line as her eyes traced across the dance floor.
From what ParaMarx had told her, Targard was a wormy man with a trunkful of vices and an ego to match. He was also—by company standards—smart, intuitive, and incredibly resourceful and a special case of ‘handle with care’. What he was doing in a place like this, however, she wasn’t entirely sure. But she doubted it involved a dance and a drink with the fairer sex. Best-case scenario, he was meeting with a contact to trade off the merchandise. Worse, he already knew someone was on to him and he was trying to drive him or her off with unfavourable surroundings.
Clicking her tongue off the roof of her mouth, Pandora slid her way along the bar, passively glancing over faces as the screen flickered beneath. At this range, the tech wasn’t doing her much good, leaving her to rely primarily on her instinct and senses—which was damn near impossible while experiencing both auditory and physical assault and avoiding near head-on collisions with a sea of drunken morons.
A job was a job. Still this one was reaching her threshold for annoyances.
She stopped when she was damn near on top of him.
Twisting on the heel of her boots, she spun on the spot, frantic glances mulling over the sea of faces as she bit on her bottom lip. The dance floor was an ocean of bodies filled with a chaotic current fitting only that made by a hurricane.
That’s when she saw him, the back of his head merging within the waters.
“Shit.” She muttered returning purpose to her steps and drawing the gun from her hip.
Pushing her way through the crowd, her barked commands of ‘get out of the way’ were swallowed by the cacophony and the flock of sheep too drunken and stupid to move out of her way. Nudging a shoulder and hip through the mass, she kept the gun lowered and locked, gnawing her molars together as she followed in the wake of Tillman’s movements.
Someone grabbed her hips, drunken smear of a smile flashing at her as he dragged his body towards her. With sharp knock of her elbows, she smack the middle of his lower jaw, knocking him back and sending him flailing into a few figures behind him. Tillman had made it through the worse of the crowd and stood still a dozen or so feet away. He smiled at her, smiled something sharp and knowing as a rectangular screen lit up above his forearm. Then, he looked up to the scaffolding above them.
“Fuck.” She said, eyes never once leaving Tillman’s face.
The sprinklers went off as an earsplitting alarm squealed with a flare of red lights. Bodies chaotically scattered, ramming into one another like a crowd of heedless ants scampering from a crushed anthill, and Pandora was swept up with them into the eye of the storm.
Barely holding her balance, she pin-balled between forms, holding a vice-like grip on her gun while others slipped on the pooling puddles at her feet. Unlike the rest, she remained stationary, desperately trying to relocate her target only to realize in the short span it took him to set off the fire-system that he had hacked and fried her locator rendering it about as useful as a concrete lifevest.
Shaking her head with the temperament of a nearly drowned cat, she returned her sidearm to its holster and bit down sourly on her bottom lip. Now near empty, she was the only person still standing in the middle of the dance floor of the club, gazing defeated at Tillman's last known location.
Throwing the tendrils of water-dreaded hair onto her back, she reemerged at the entrance of the club, making puddles with each step as she jutted a single pointed finger at Kaim’s chest. Pandora slammed the tip of her finger hard against his solar plexus. “I can only assume you are here because you are looking for work. There’s someone I need to find before he does something extremely stupid. Right now, you are the only person who might be able to think stupid enough to find him.” Wiping a trail of water off her forehead with the back of her hand, she fixed him with a hard look. “So, how about it,
Astro Jack” an inflection rose in her voice with the use of his moniker, “do you want to make yourself some money?”