Lucky Day in Hell: Act 1, Scene 2
Act One
Scene Two
Greasy, she felt greasy. Her hair was stringy and...gross and there was always this thin grimy sheen of pollution and grease on her face. Beka tried to hide her discomfort as she leaned against the hatchway to the Maru, waiting for Bobby to return.
The worst part was the flies. It was too cold up in space for many of the bacterium and...amoebas that existed on planets. Insects had always been her biggest problem with planets, but here...God in Heaven, it was like a frelling petri dish. Spiders the size of her hands skittered across her feet, her arms were already scarred up with bites, and she was starting to think she was developing a phobia about bugs in her hair.
She scratched at her neck, where the dust and grease and bites accumulated, and wished a thousand deaths upon Bobby for leaving for so long. Bobby had warned her, in the condescending sort of tone that he had started to get lately, to stay with the ship lest 'hellians' come and bash it in or steal parts. She wanted to tell him that she knew how to protect her own home thank you very much, but she believed him so she did what he said.
The very least this miserable planet could do for her was rain. Back in the deep, cold womb-hold of Mother Universe you wouldn't need to shower for days. Nothing grows, nothing multiplies, everything has the same brisk regulated metal-smell of sanitation and cleanliness. Even the Maru, while not exactly a luxury liner, was always clean. Here she felt like she could scrub for years and still be dirty.
"What the hell took you so long?" She demanded when Bobby finally returned, rubbing his eyes, looking as bad as she felt.
"Beka..."
"I've been waiting here for hours! You know I hate being dirtside!"
"Jesus, Beka, if you'd just-"
"It would really kill you to show me an ounce of respect, wouldn't it?"
"Beka, shut up!" She crossed her arms. Bobby rubbed the bridge of his nose, his hands shaking. "Don't talk so loudly. Someone might..." he trailed off. "Do you know how hard it is to get information out of the people who live here?"
"Well, where are we supposed to go?" She leaned back against the hatchway and tried not to scratch.
"It's supposed to be hidden in the arms factory, wherever that is. Nothing's posted. And no one here can read." The disgust was evident on his face; Bobby wasn't exactly the most compassionate person around. "It is in the possession of a certain Nietzschean, Kago Goyashu. He's a henchman to the owner of the arms factory. Wherever the hell *that* is!" He kicked at the Maru.
"Stop that!" She bit back "you asshole". "So we find some kids to go in there and get it. Not so hard, if they work in the factory he probably won't even notice."
"Yeah. Yeah," He rubbed his face again. "That sounds like a plan, go do that," He started wobbling up the hatchway.
"What?" Beka was indignant. "We were supposed to be a partnership in this, Bobby."
"Well I just spent the last two hours out there trying to find where this stupid thing is!" He responded as defensively as she had. "I need to lie down or...something, *please* Beka?" He leaned over on the railing and ruffled his eyebrows at her.
"Fine," She sighed haughtily. Anything if it meant her getting off this dirtball faster.
--
He had gotten past the layer of earth that was mostly eroded sand and was at the real hard clay digging now. Seamus still shook slightly from his previous encounter with Big Ugly, in addition to his malnutrition that made hard labour all but impossible. All but sweatshop-workcamp-breathe-and-die-labour.
"Hey, kid," Someone said behind him. He stopped for a second, less than a second, a curious hesitance that would be barely noticeable by anybody else, a tiny little admittance of fear. He went back to digging, hoping she was talking to someone else, pretending to be deaf and/or stupid.
She waited a moment before kicking some dirt up at him. "Hey!"
Seamus turned around, still scared, a little angry now. "Wha-" He stopped. God, she was gorgeous. Ripped-out-of-the-pages-of-some-ancient-space-bound-magazine gorgeous. Tall, redheaded, tough, beautiful, and you couldn't even see her bones!
Seamus stared. And she stared right back.
Blue eyes.
*Smouldering* blue eyes.
Black leather.
Wow.
"Ye...yeah?" He answered, intelligently enough.
"You think I could get some help?"
"S...sure!" Seamus stepped forward a little too quickly, his previous fears forgotten, his hormones getting in the way. Hell, his fifteen-year-old hormones were all that was keeping his emaciated little body standing up.
The woman crossed her arms in front of her not-hugely-endowed-but-better-than-Earther chest. "I'm looking for a Nietzschean named Kago Goyashu."
"Never heard of him." He cringed. "Sorry,"
She sighed, and Seamus noticed something familiar in the look of her eyes. It was the look of a woman who was sick of searching for something better, and had resigned herself to whatever she had. Seamus had seen that look a lot. It was disconcerting to see it on One Who Has Everything, but he quickly forgot about it.
"He operates the arms factory. Does that help?"
Seamus' eyes really widened, but he quickly covered that up, too. "I know a lot of people who work at the arms factory. They're there all the time, they'd know."
"Wanna help me get hooked up with them?"
Okay, beauty aside, it was time to be suspicious. Seamus narrowed an eye at her.
"There's a...thousand thrones in it if you do it for me."
He stopped narrowing his eye, but he didn't answer right away. A thousand was a *lot*. It would help him get a start to leaving this godforsaken rock, anyway.
But he was still distrustful.
She sighed again. "And a meal."
A thousand thrones was a thousand thrones, but a meal was a *meal*! "Okay," He said, cheerfully enough.
-- They were sitting on the ground in an alley in the old, crumbled downtown. She had gone to the spaceport and bought food from the vendors, there exclusively for the Nietzschean overlords and 'visitors' like herself. Seamus had hung back in the old dirty shanty city while she was gone, thinking to himself /I'm gonna eat today!/.
She stared at him like she had never seen someone eat in her life. Seamus stopped his constant running routine of hand to mouth and looked up at her, suspiciously.
"Don't make yourself sick, kid," Valentine, as she had introduced herself as, said.
"Don't you worry about *me*," he retorted. He stopped whatever he was going to say next and just stared at her, a little afraid that she would drop the deal.
Apparently, she was beyond caring. She suddenly wiped her hands all over her arms and legs, like she was trying to get something off of her. "Who are these people who work in the arms factory?" Her voice was a little disgusted, but Seamus deduced that it wasn't in the same context.
He had started eating again and spoke around a busy mouth. "My cousin Brendan, and some friends and Brendan's mom. But...she doesn't really count."
"When can I meet these people?"
Seamus hesitated, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea. Brendan was idealistic to being *moronic*, and Seamus had a sinking feeling that no matter how much he explained that it would be beneficial to the humans of Earth, he might not do it. He still had this silly notion that revolution could be peaceful, that the salvation of the enslaved billions lay in peaceful negotiations with the Nietzscheans, not in blowing lots of shit up and running away.
"Every single revolution in the history of humanity has been bloody," Ozzie had once said, trying to reason with Brendan.
"Oh yeah, and look what a fine situation that landed us in!" Seamus' cousin and new guardian had retorted.
He swallowed the last of his sandwich and looked up at her again. "You can...meet them tonight. In the subway tunnels. I'll talk to them and then I'll come and get you. On your ship, right? In the sand flats?"
"Yeah..." She regarded him a moment. "I can trust you, right? You're not seeing any of the money until this is all done. And if you betray me, or any of these people you mentioned, I will have to hurt you. Okay?"
Seamus hesitated again. The big, skittery, survivalist part of him positively screamed that it was too dangerous. Every single Neitszchean in the Boston area was on orders to look for him, Seamus Zelazny Harper, and he couldn't get caught mixed up in something like this, whatever this was... but it wouldn't be him. He didn't know anything about the arms factory. It would be his cousin...oh, god, Brendan. How could he put Brendan in that danger?
But Seamus was still in the childish, hero-worship phase that made him believe Brendan could put the sun out with his bare hands. If he wanted. Brendan would probably say that was interfering with the natural structure of the galaxy.
And, dammit, a thousand thrones was a thousand thrones! And he wanted off this rock so *badly*.
"Okay!" He said. "For a thousand thrones, Jesus, you'd better believe you can trust me!"
She looked at him a little sadly. "Okay. You know where to find me." She didn't cast him another glance as she walked off.
Seamus was a little nervous, but the feeling was soon replaced by more hunger. Feasts for armies wouldn’t be enough food.
He forced himself to feel a little happy. He would be okay. He was going to get a lot of money. He could buy some decent clothes, get an identity forged...and get the hell off of Earth.
He was leaving.
He *was*.
--
It made her sick to her stomach, sitting there watching him eat. It was the single most harrowing, perverse thing she had ever done. Sit there and watch a starving kid eat what was probably the biggest meal in his life while she talked him into being used.
God.
The worst part was the insects. Beka had spent the entire time, when she wasn't shooing other bugs away from her, watching a fly that seemed to live by a small cut near Seamus' right eye. It was actually landed on his face and Seamus didn't seem to notice. It wandered around there, at one point settling right by the point where his upper and lower lips met. Seamus moistened his lips and his *tongue* actually *touched* the fly! And he didn't even notice!
Beka was almost sick all over herself right then and there.
/It's okay, you'll survive/ she whispered in her head over and over. Only a few days. Find these kids, throw some money at them, watch shit blow up, and get off Earth forever. Deliver the discs to her employer, grow fat off the profits, and live the rest of her live with Bobby on a nice, affluent, clean spaceship, taking as many jumps to nowhere as she wanted.
Beka Valentine, once she got past the disgust and immediate culture shock, couldn't wait.
Onward to Act 1, Scene 3!
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