After The Fall

A dusty trideo in the corner of the bar moaned suggestions about what a modern businesswoman should wear if she wants to get noticed in the workplace. Along the beer-drenched curve of brown plastiwood, seven different voices shouted demands to change the channel. Wedge was not among them. He sat at the end of the bar closest to the windowless iron door. His head was slung low. A drink filled the space between his sweaty palms. Blue tinted cyber-eyes jerked upward constantly to regard whoever wandered in or staggered out.

“He isn’t coming kid.” The gravely voice belonged to a waitress whose nametag read ‘Tammy’. She had layered brown hair. Makeup frothed wrinkles encircled her eyes whispering her age. He checked his watch as he had done every hour for the last three. As he had done every day this week.

“He’ll come.” He mumbled the same low phrase over and over again, rapping his knuckles against the near empty glass.

“Sooner or later, he’ll come.”

Mr. Kyle rambled in after 11pm. If he noticed Wedge slouched at the bar, he made no outward show of it. Wedge however, was up in an instant.

“Mr. Kyle! I believe I owe you a drink.” He spread his arms and smiled, motioning towards the ratty barstool beside him.

Mr. Kyle was a short man with thinned gray hair and worn eyes. He tensed visibly at the mention of his name grunting, “I know you boy?”

Wedge’s mouth fell open curiously, but no words came out. He scrunched his razor-thin eyebrows till they joined in a ‘V’ and said, “We met about five weeks ago. You were telling me things.” Then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “About the shadows.”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember you. The dumb kid. New runner on the block right? Vader, Luke, or some drek Lando?”

“Wedge.”

“Yeah, something like that. What do you want?” Mr. Kyle was fishing in his pocket for change. He didn’t come up with much. Crumpled pack of Black Death cigarettes, 4 pennies, and a doublemint wrapper.

“You and I talked for a while remember? It was five weeks ago. You told me some things about me and my crew that nobody should have known.”

One of the black colored cigarettes found its way to Mr. Kyle’s mouth. He sat down beside Wedge at the bar and mumbled, “I say a lot of things when I’m tanked. Where is your crew anyway?”

“Dead.”

Mr. Kyle nodded passively and waited for Wedge to light his cigarette. Wedge complied.

“The ones who did make it out alive are hiding. I don’t even know where half of them are.” Wedge’s hands trembled as he spoke.

“So, what happened?”

“You went through with the job. Even though you knew it was a trap?” The way Mr. Kyle said the words made it sound more like a statement than the question that it was.

“Of course. I mean, a runner’s nothin if he doesn’t have a reputation for getting the job done right?”

Mr. Kyle was nodding and tapping his ashes on the bartop. He blew a stream of smoke into the air and motioned for Wedge to continue.

“Well, we hit the computer and pulled the data off their mainframe but not before I lost one more runner. Harper.” Wedge’s voice cracked a little when he said the name.

“Everyone else got out ok then?”

Wedge shrugged. “It depends on what you call ok. Nobody else died if that’s what you mean, but things are real fragged up Mr. Kyle. There are people out looking for us. I heard they killed Slade at his own home. Right in front of his kid.”

Mr. Kyle looked surprised. “If somebody’s hawkin’ you, how come you haven’t gone to ground yet?”

Wedge’s eyes danced with confusion and fear. “I am hiding out. What do you think I’m doing here?!”

“You stupid boy? This ain’t going to ground! Drek, I know that you come here all the fraggin time. You must be tryin to get us all dead before our time. It’s been a nice chat.”

Wedge stopped Mr. Kyle from leaving by grabbing his wrist. He squeezed hard enough to leave red indentations. Mr. Kyle spun back around and Wedge let go.

“You touch me like that again boy, you won’t have to worry about some bird-dog takin you out.”

Wedge put his hands up plaintively. “Hey, hey I didn’t mean no disrespect Mr. Kyle. I just… I need your help ok?”

“My help?”

“Yeah, your help alright?! I’m in a bad way. People want me dead and I don’t have a fragging clue what to do about it. The last time we talked you told me things, and if it wasn’t for that, I’d be dead like everyone else. I don’t know, maybe I thought you could help me out again, show me some way out of this drek. I have money. I can pay you ten thousand creds.”

Mr. Kyle stood there forever before climbing onto the stool beside Wedge. He motioned to the bartender for a drink and explained that Wedge would be picking up the tab. “I gotta warn you kid, I doubt you have the kinda creds you’re gonna need to get yourself a new identity. That’s about the easiest way you’ve got to get the monkeys off your back.”

“Yeah but you have connections right? You know somebody who can help me get a makeover or whatever it is you’re talking about. I have plenty of cred from that last run.”

Mr. Kyle’s drink was a double-shot of Jack Daniels, just like before. He gulped it down and motioned to the bartender for another. He said to Wedge, “Connections are like cred kid. They ain’t ever there when you need them. And when they are, they ain’t ever enough. People like that know when someone’s in trouble, and when they are, they’ll frag with you. They’ll jack up their prices for services or if you’re really hot, they’ll stay away from you all together.”

“So what are you saying? Are you saying that you can’t help me?”

He chuckled. “First things first Lando. You said your crew got wiped out. Anyone else still walking around beside you?”

“There were six of us when it all started. China, Mac and me. That’s all who’s left now.” Wedge lowered his eyes when he talked. He looked around the bar as if he expected someone to jump out at them, as if the mere mention of his crew was enough to awaken the assassins he knew were somewhere out there. But the bar was filled with drunks and whores; street wretch dressed in skimpy skirts, pimps in their cheap suits, hired help. Some of them packed guns. Cumbersome, bulky things. None of them streamlined; nothing professional.

Mr. Kyle followed Wedge’s stare round the bar then he snapped his fingers and focused the young runner’s attention back upon himself. “Ok, good that gives us something to work with then. Can you trust the other two?”

Wedge looked surprised. “Of course I can. What reason would I have not to trust them?”

“Jesus boy you really were born yesterday weren’t you? Who’s to say that those two won’t sell you out to make some get away cred or in exchange for their own lousy lives?”

“That won’t happen. You see Mr. Kyle, crew doesn’t sell out crew. That’s a shadow rule.” Wedge sounded confident.

“I thought that too once upon a dream. Sucks to wake up, it sure does.”

“Don’t worry about my crew Mr. Kyle, there isn’t enough cash in the corps to come between us. We’ve been through too much together.”

“Come on boy, I’ve run before too. Crews are slapped together like two tongue depressors and Elmer’s glue. You can trust your people just so long as you can see them, no matter what kinda drek you think you all went through together. Unless you’re blackmailing ‘em there’s no way to know that they ain’t gonna cut you down for maximum profit. Hell even then you’re sittin on fifty-fifty odds.”

Wedge slid out of his seat and turned towards Mr. Kyle angrily. “Look old man, I came here to ask you for some advice, maybe even some help if you could spare it. I didn’t offer you ten thousand creds to get lectured about how my crew is out to betray me. That’s bulldrek and I don’t need it. If I had anywhere where fraggin else to turn I would have already. But I don’t. I trust my crew and if you’re going to help me, if you’re going to help us, then I need for you to believe that I trust them. I don’t have any reasons or blackmail or any of that. I just trust them. If you can’t believe in that then I’m better off on the streets than I am in here.”

Mr. Kyle didn’t hesitate. “Sit down boy.”

Wedge slowly eased back up onto the ripped black barstool. “Well?”

Mr. Kyle said, “Call your people. You trust them so much, let’s see how much they trust you. There’s a place in Fort Lewis called the Urban Combat simulator. If you can get over the outer wall there’s an area inside the zone called grid fourteen. Tell them to meet us there.”

“So you’re gonna help me.”

Mr. Kyle showed his teeth. “Yeah, I’m gonna help you. But you gotta do something for me first.”