Carter's arms wheeled wildly like a dervish as the shove from behind forced him to stumble forward into the office of the 'Godfather of Fortuna Prime'. All the augments, and the drugs their over-adoption all but mandated, that passed hands, every bit and byte of transaction data sending creds from one account to another, were at his behest, within the station itself, and only purportedly. In reality, his control was far more nebulous and insidious than merely handling the flow of goods and currency. The station's crowning highlight, the casino, was his playground, and everyone who lost more than they could afford to give up without selling their excess organs, became his pawns to push around through the sector, galaxy even, so long as he had them dancing in the palm of his hand.
Carter gave a withering glance back over his shoulder to the heavy who had shoved him, but dusted himself off and instinctually patted the pocket where he used to keep his cigs. Oh right, that was thousands of years ago, how many times have we done this before, Carter? Society had barely escaped the confines of its pre-spacefaring roots when his long cold sleep began, which to him felt like only a few years, but to everyone else he might as well have been a dinosaur. A dinosaur with a nicotine addiction and little by way of fixes. He was a die-hard luddite in a world that had moved on to bizarre holo-hookahs and stim injections, and his chosen vice had all but died out. Until he croaked, though, he would be keeping it alive.
As if reading his very mind, the shadowy figure sitting behind the desk at the center of the room, backlit by the glare of the beacons of the station ring through the glass behind him, pushed forward a delicate cardboard carton of deep-vintage stock. It wasn't Carter's preferred brand, but any port in a storm. Without reading too much into it, Carter started towards the carton, only for it to be pulled back meaningfully as he closed the distance with the Godfather.
"Not feeling charitable? It's the season of giving. If Earth were still around, that is..." Carter grumbled.
"I'm very well aware of your ancestral traditions, 'Lucky Jack'," the Godfather retorted. "It's precisely because of your background that I invited you to join me. I have an offer for you."
"Is this 'offer' the kind I can't refuse?" Carter asked, unsure of whether the station-boss's namesake was a valid point of reference in the present day. Even Carter was too young to have seen the movie itself, but some memetic remnants of its cultural influence had persisted up until he drew the jackpot and was one of the 'lucky' souls consigned to occupy the cryo-chamber class of the Promethean. Now, having been cracked open again after countless years he had barely been even technically alive through, he wasn't that keen on getting frozen again. Not that he could even foresee a future in which the Godfather would let him get out the easy way from his trillion-credit-plus gambling debts and countless unanswered favors.
"Oh, by no means," the Godfather said, in a superficially reassuring tone. "You can refuse it, of course, but if you did, I would have no recourse but to send you in a freezer-capsule to the delightfully anthropophagous individuals of the Ixiod Consortium. Not that I imagine your lungs, liver, nor very much left of you would be in any condition worth serving to anyone with taste-buds. Your choice, of course."
"I'll take you up on that offer, if it's all the same," Carter replied coolly, trying to hide the slight tic in his right hand at the mention of the Ixiods.
Truly, if anything in Jack Carter's life could be considered 'Lucky', not having to experience the first contact between humanity and the Ixiods was the top candidate. If the old bastard Lovecraft had been alive to see them he'd promtply shit his britches and die.
"It's simple," the Godfather said. "My son-in-law wants a rocket-sled."
"A rocket-sled? That's, what, a hundred mega-credits max with express shipping included. I can't imagine the price-tag is what is stopping you from getting one without my involvement..." Carter mumbled.
"Quite astutely, my friend. You see, it's not just any rocket sled my son-in-law wants. It's the very rocket-sled of jolly old Insane T'nik."
"So it's Ixiods either way, huh..." Carter grumbled. "I won't say no, but if I have the right to even ask, what will I be getting out of this, other than one more day not eaten by the space-jellyfish?"
"For starers, your down-payment," the Godfather replied, actually pushing forward the first pack of cigarettes out of the carton, and pulling his hand back away from it so Carter could see there were no more sleight-of-hand tricks to bait him in further from this point on. Carter reached forward hesitantly, half-expecting to be denied his millenium-old vice a second time in the same day. But he was out of the woods, or so the expression went. Soon it was right where he was used to it being, in his pocket. Despite the deep grain of his habit, he was very fastidious about savoring each smoke rather than chaining them. The number of cigarettes left in the explored universe was dwindling, one butt at a time, winking out like dying stars. He had precious little freedom to indulge in any quantity to make up for the quality being so degraded by time and substandard storage conditions.
"What's the order, boss?" Carter asked, mentally lighting up his first cigarette of the New Year already even before the Post-Terran Yule had started in full swing.
"Leave the Ixiod corpse, take the sled," the Godfather instructed him. "Don't worry about witnesses, I have enough shinks on my personal payroll who will vouch for the deep-rooted psychosis of anyone who claims that Lucky Jack Carter shot Alien Santa with a hard-light revolver. Speaking of which, you can get your piece back on the way out of the casino. As usual, of course."
"What about the insane-deer? Rued-Ol'f and his crew?" Carter asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing as insane-deer. That's just a lie parents tell to their children, " the Godfather replied, dismissively.
"Could'a fooled me. Where I come from, Insane T'nik is just as hogswash," Carter quipped.
"Would that I lived in such a blessed world," the Godfather said wistfully. "Now out with you, I can already smell the smoke. I'm a curator of old curiosities, but doesn't mean I care to whiff the scent of them being burned."
"Yeah, yeah," said Carter as the heavy who shoved him in in now approached him meaningfully. His welcome stay in the office of the Godfather was coming to its end. "Just tell your son-in-law he'll get the rocket-sled of his dreams."
'Lucky Jack' Carter found himself cracking a smile as he walked with purpose back across the floor of the Grand Fortuna Casino. Despite himself, he found a tune creeping up to his lips as he pursed them and began to whistle.
You'd better not look, you'd better not see
The foul countenance that was never meant to be
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
It's gurgling in glee, it's writhing in pain,
A blood-curdling shriek, it will drive you insane
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
It lurks in every shadow, it knows your deepest fears,
It craves the taste of blood and sweat so go easy on those tears.
So you'd better not look, you'd better not see,
Its sleigh is approaching docking bay three,
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
Reaching the entrance to the casino, Carter went over to the gun-check kiosk and pressed his thumb against the scanner, which beeped cheerfully and coughed out his piece. He slung it into place in the empty shoulder-holster under his jacket and started back towards his ticket off-station, which had hopefully been refueled, and on the Godfather's tab at that. The last thing he needed was to go into any more debt on the Godfather's account, with nothing to show for it but a hard-won pack of cigarettes. He had made a personal pact to smoke only one before completing the job---if he was destined to die to the Ixiod menace, he wasn't going to die clean---, and save the rest for the way back with the sled in tow.
What in the blazes the Godfather's son-in-law wanted with the rocket-sled in question, that was his own damn business. Carter knew what questions not to ask, and weren't worth asking in the first place. There was a time and a place for the reasons, and the less he knew, probably the better.
As he clambered awkwardly into the cockpit of his cherry-red T-Wing, he reached for the first and only cigarette of what would probably be a long flight to the Polaris system---everyone knew that Insane T'nik's lair was in that vicinity, after all.
If he had known this sort of shit would be the best case scenario for celebrating Christmas once he got out, would Carter even have agreed to get in the cryo-pod in the first place?
Then again, murdering a legendary cosmic horror and jacking its ride certainly beat having dinner with his crappy family back on Terra.
He checked the seven-chamber cylinder of his revolver, and nodded approvingly as the hard-light caps were all present and accounted for. He had never actually killed an Ixiod before, not for lack of motivation, but he idly wondered how many shots it would take.
Always bet on seven.
The personal code that had gotten him into this crappy situation would surely carry him through it all in one piece.
As the station tech automatically carried his ship into a cargo-airlock, he turned on the entertainment console of his ride.
"'All I Want for Christmas is You'?" he muttered to himself, incredulously, at the insane tenacity of the millennia-old seasonal chart-topper. "Hell, I guess some things never die."
The thrusters roared to life as he cranked the throttle past red into ultraviolet, the miniature warp-drive automatically igniting once the impulse-speed had maxed out, and he felt the disorientation of the cosmic weave enshroud him. It was like gunning a souped-up sports car into the red on a long stretch of straight desert road, times ten million. If he had eaten anything for lunch, he would be looking at it again by now.
"He's not even goddamn Italian..." Carter complained to no-one in particular, as he punched in the destination and let the ship's auto-pilot figure out the math to get him where he needed to go. And let his eyes close, ever so briefly, into the cold embrace of sleep.
Carter gave a withering glance back over his shoulder to the heavy who had shoved him, but dusted himself off and instinctually patted the pocket where he used to keep his cigs. Oh right, that was thousands of years ago, how many times have we done this before, Carter? Society had barely escaped the confines of its pre-spacefaring roots when his long cold sleep began, which to him felt like only a few years, but to everyone else he might as well have been a dinosaur. A dinosaur with a nicotine addiction and little by way of fixes. He was a die-hard luddite in a world that had moved on to bizarre holo-hookahs and stim injections, and his chosen vice had all but died out. Until he croaked, though, he would be keeping it alive.
As if reading his very mind, the shadowy figure sitting behind the desk at the center of the room, backlit by the glare of the beacons of the station ring through the glass behind him, pushed forward a delicate cardboard carton of deep-vintage stock. It wasn't Carter's preferred brand, but any port in a storm. Without reading too much into it, Carter started towards the carton, only for it to be pulled back meaningfully as he closed the distance with the Godfather.
"Not feeling charitable? It's the season of giving. If Earth were still around, that is..." Carter grumbled.
"I'm very well aware of your ancestral traditions, 'Lucky Jack'," the Godfather retorted. "It's precisely because of your background that I invited you to join me. I have an offer for you."
"Is this 'offer' the kind I can't refuse?" Carter asked, unsure of whether the station-boss's namesake was a valid point of reference in the present day. Even Carter was too young to have seen the movie itself, but some memetic remnants of its cultural influence had persisted up until he drew the jackpot and was one of the 'lucky' souls consigned to occupy the cryo-chamber class of the Promethean. Now, having been cracked open again after countless years he had barely been even technically alive through, he wasn't that keen on getting frozen again. Not that he could even foresee a future in which the Godfather would let him get out the easy way from his trillion-credit-plus gambling debts and countless unanswered favors.
"Oh, by no means," the Godfather said, in a superficially reassuring tone. "You can refuse it, of course, but if you did, I would have no recourse but to send you in a freezer-capsule to the delightfully anthropophagous individuals of the Ixiod Consortium. Not that I imagine your lungs, liver, nor very much left of you would be in any condition worth serving to anyone with taste-buds. Your choice, of course."
"I'll take you up on that offer, if it's all the same," Carter replied coolly, trying to hide the slight tic in his right hand at the mention of the Ixiods.
Truly, if anything in Jack Carter's life could be considered 'Lucky', not having to experience the first contact between humanity and the Ixiods was the top candidate. If the old bastard Lovecraft had been alive to see them he'd promtply shit his britches and die.
"It's simple," the Godfather said. "My son-in-law wants a rocket-sled."
"A rocket-sled? That's, what, a hundred mega-credits max with express shipping included. I can't imagine the price-tag is what is stopping you from getting one without my involvement..." Carter mumbled.
"Quite astutely, my friend. You see, it's not just any rocket sled my son-in-law wants. It's the very rocket-sled of jolly old Insane T'nik."
"So it's Ixiods either way, huh..." Carter grumbled. "I won't say no, but if I have the right to even ask, what will I be getting out of this, other than one more day not eaten by the space-jellyfish?"
"For starers, your down-payment," the Godfather replied, actually pushing forward the first pack of cigarettes out of the carton, and pulling his hand back away from it so Carter could see there were no more sleight-of-hand tricks to bait him in further from this point on. Carter reached forward hesitantly, half-expecting to be denied his millenium-old vice a second time in the same day. But he was out of the woods, or so the expression went. Soon it was right where he was used to it being, in his pocket. Despite the deep grain of his habit, he was very fastidious about savoring each smoke rather than chaining them. The number of cigarettes left in the explored universe was dwindling, one butt at a time, winking out like dying stars. He had precious little freedom to indulge in any quantity to make up for the quality being so degraded by time and substandard storage conditions.
"What's the order, boss?" Carter asked, mentally lighting up his first cigarette of the New Year already even before the Post-Terran Yule had started in full swing.
"Leave the Ixiod corpse, take the sled," the Godfather instructed him. "Don't worry about witnesses, I have enough shinks on my personal payroll who will vouch for the deep-rooted psychosis of anyone who claims that Lucky Jack Carter shot Alien Santa with a hard-light revolver. Speaking of which, you can get your piece back on the way out of the casino. As usual, of course."
"What about the insane-deer? Rued-Ol'f and his crew?" Carter asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing as insane-deer. That's just a lie parents tell to their children, " the Godfather replied, dismissively.
"Could'a fooled me. Where I come from, Insane T'nik is just as hogswash," Carter quipped.
"Would that I lived in such a blessed world," the Godfather said wistfully. "Now out with you, I can already smell the smoke. I'm a curator of old curiosities, but doesn't mean I care to whiff the scent of them being burned."
"Yeah, yeah," said Carter as the heavy who shoved him in in now approached him meaningfully. His welcome stay in the office of the Godfather was coming to its end. "Just tell your son-in-law he'll get the rocket-sled of his dreams."
'Lucky Jack' Carter found himself cracking a smile as he walked with purpose back across the floor of the Grand Fortuna Casino. Despite himself, he found a tune creeping up to his lips as he pursed them and began to whistle.
You'd better not look, you'd better not see
The foul countenance that was never meant to be
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
It's gurgling in glee, it's writhing in pain,
A blood-curdling shriek, it will drive you insane
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
It lurks in every shadow, it knows your deepest fears,
It craves the taste of blood and sweat so go easy on those tears.
So you'd better not look, you'd better not see,
Its sleigh is approaching docking bay three,
Insanta Claus is coming aboard.
Reaching the entrance to the casino, Carter went over to the gun-check kiosk and pressed his thumb against the scanner, which beeped cheerfully and coughed out his piece. He slung it into place in the empty shoulder-holster under his jacket and started back towards his ticket off-station, which had hopefully been refueled, and on the Godfather's tab at that. The last thing he needed was to go into any more debt on the Godfather's account, with nothing to show for it but a hard-won pack of cigarettes. He had made a personal pact to smoke only one before completing the job---if he was destined to die to the Ixiod menace, he wasn't going to die clean---, and save the rest for the way back with the sled in tow.
What in the blazes the Godfather's son-in-law wanted with the rocket-sled in question, that was his own damn business. Carter knew what questions not to ask, and weren't worth asking in the first place. There was a time and a place for the reasons, and the less he knew, probably the better.
As he clambered awkwardly into the cockpit of his cherry-red T-Wing, he reached for the first and only cigarette of what would probably be a long flight to the Polaris system---everyone knew that Insane T'nik's lair was in that vicinity, after all.
If he had known this sort of shit would be the best case scenario for celebrating Christmas once he got out, would Carter even have agreed to get in the cryo-pod in the first place?
Then again, murdering a legendary cosmic horror and jacking its ride certainly beat having dinner with his crappy family back on Terra.
He checked the seven-chamber cylinder of his revolver, and nodded approvingly as the hard-light caps were all present and accounted for. He had never actually killed an Ixiod before, not for lack of motivation, but he idly wondered how many shots it would take.
Always bet on seven.
The personal code that had gotten him into this crappy situation would surely carry him through it all in one piece.
As the station tech automatically carried his ship into a cargo-airlock, he turned on the entertainment console of his ride.
"'All I Want for Christmas is You'?" he muttered to himself, incredulously, at the insane tenacity of the millennia-old seasonal chart-topper. "Hell, I guess some things never die."
The thrusters roared to life as he cranked the throttle past red into ultraviolet, the miniature warp-drive automatically igniting once the impulse-speed had maxed out, and he felt the disorientation of the cosmic weave enshroud him. It was like gunning a souped-up sports car into the red on a long stretch of straight desert road, times ten million. If he had eaten anything for lunch, he would be looking at it again by now.
"He's not even goddamn Italian..." Carter complained to no-one in particular, as he punched in the destination and let the ship's auto-pilot figure out the math to get him where he needed to go. And let his eyes close, ever so briefly, into the cold embrace of sleep.