Dark Wheel
24 Mar 2021Er1cksson
I sat in the grimiest bar on Garay Station, the Docker's Rest. It wasn't really a place for pilots and squadron leaders, but I'd already worked my way through all of the official, and most of the unofficial, bars. The beer on offer was especially potent, as was the liquor. Perfect for taking away the pain of a hard shift working in hazardous conditions. So strong, that I'd been nursing the same drink for nearly half an hour. Not something which enamoured me to the bar tender. It had taken me nearly three weeks to get to this point and my stomach fluttered with nerves. Four weeks ago I'd been sat in a very nice restaurant, chatting to some of my pilots, paying for their meals as a reward for all of their hard work. We'd been talking, drinking, eating great food, and generally having a great time.
Great times don't make great stories however. This was a proper restaurant where the food was prepared by humans, and served by actual humans as well. And not slaves, or indentured workers at that. It was going to cost me a fortune, but my people were worth it, and whilst I was still trying to get my company back on its feet I wasn’t going to skimp on rewarding my people.
I digress. That’s not the point of the story, more of a bit of background. No, the true story happened when one of those human waiters had an accident. There was a table next to us, only four people sat there.
None of them had spoken much, and when they did they used low tones and a form of sign-language I hadn’t seen before. It’s common amongst corporations to develop anti-surveillance techniques in order to protect their interests.
The restaurant we were in, Castle, had top-notch anti-spying technology as part of the service. We didn’t need it, as we weren’t anywhere near the level of business that required such secrets.
But the other table, they did. They’d activated the lot as soon as they’d sat down, white noise immediately muting their conversation. Not that the noise was distracting, not in a restaurant like Castle.
I’d tried to not pay attention when they’d done that, but it had set my spine tingling because they way they walked, the way they held themselves spoke of organisation, discipline. They weren’t your usual pilot.
As a guess, I’d have said they were current or former military. I had enough employees to recognise that. I’d found it distracting enough that I kept a side eye on them. And it was because of that, that I was watching when the waiter accidently spilt Djiwalian gravy onto the arm of one of the diners.
To say she was less than unimpressed was an understatement. She sent that waiter flying with a vicious back hand. As the waiter stumbled back into our table, the pilot reached out and grabbed her by her blouse.
‘Not cool!’ I leapt to my feet as my pilots tried to save their drinks from being sent flying. Grabbing hold of the pilot’s bunched, and pressing my thumb hard into the flesh between her thumb and index finger, I loosened her grip, then twisted her hand palm up.
That’s when I saw it. A tattoo, just at the base of her wrist. It tickled something in my brain even then. The punch the pilot threw rocked my world. After that things were a little hazy. But I do remember that the meal didn’t get finished, and I had a cracking shiner for a week.
My brain continued to tickle though. That tattoo. I knew it from somewhere, I was sure of it. In the end I drew it as best as I could, then tried a reverse image search.
‘Holy fucking hell,’ I breathed as the result came up. It was an emblem. Specifically, it was the emblem. One which had been burned into the minds of people through pop-culture.
Dark Wheel. No-one in their right mind would have a tattoo of that organisation. Tied into the lore around the organisation itself was that those who weren’t members of that organisation but who had that tattoo met grisly ends.
And those that crossed the them, or got themselves involved in matters that didn’t concern them, met similarly grisly deaths. Or just disappeared. Which meant that I could well be forgiven for feeling like I had a target on my back.
By trade I’m a bounty hunter, bodyguard, sometime combat pilot. Which meant that I’m not one to sit around and wait for someone to stick a vibro-blade into my back. So with some gentle seeding of funds I couldn’t really afford, I’d hired the Dock 56 Detective Agency to find the woman.
And whilst they were asking around, they’d be drawing attention to themselves, and hopefully away from me for the moment. It was underhand of me, but they were tough men and women, former Federal Navy, so should be able to handle any rough housing sent their way.
With them diverting attention I hoped that I’d be able to do some digging of my own. And by digging, I meant hours and hours in every establishment, nursing a drink, watching who came and went.
Because, after tracking down the waiter and slipping them a loaded cred stick, I’d found out that the ship the woman had arrived on hadn’t left. I was taking a gamble that she hadn’t left on a different one, but it was one I had to take.
One way or another, I was going to find her, and I was going to find out what the Dark Wheel were doing in Garay Station.