Good Eats Space Cafe - a Dipole Series sci fi novel chapter

GOOD EATS CAFÉ

“You him?”

“Him who?” Tinker shrugged. “I mean, I am a him. A he. All man. You can check if you want.”

“You’re talking fast.”

“I’m a fast talker,” Tinker leaned against the bar.

He tried to make it look like he was relaxing, but really it was to hide more of his body.

The guy sitting on the stool two spots down and on the other side of the counter was dark. He wore black clothes, dusky skin and the black eyes of a predator.

He made people nervous.

It must have been a vibe or something because even though the café was crowded, the stools on either side of him were both empty.

Tinker couldn’t help but notice that it left a lot of room for the guy to draw either of the two blasters he wore on the side of his hips.

“Fast talking is a sign of nerves,” the man said.

He blinked slow. Tinker wondered if it was on purpose.

Maybe it was, but he didn’t think so, because if it was on purpose, it made the dark eyed man look dim-witted.

Except that he didn’t talk like he was dim-witted.
He talked like a half robot.

A killer.

“Are you flirting with me?” he tried to squat lower.

One of the guns popped out of the holster and rested on the countertop pointed at Tinker’s face.

From where he stood, the barrel looked huge.

Tunnel sized.

“I wasn’t trying to be offensive,” he said.

“I wasn’t offended,” the man answered. “Hands where I can see them.”

Tinker lifted up the small thick tumbler he was reaching for and lifted it in one hand, a towel in the other.

“Just trying to do work while we visited,” Tinker explained.

He nodded his head over his shoulder to point at the door to the grill.

“Boss gets kind of pissed if she just sees me standing here.”

The guy looked at the glass, then the door and back at Tinker.

“I thought you were reaching for a gun,” he said and slid the blaster back into the holster clipped to his waist.

“I don’t have a gun down there,” Tinker said as he lowered his hands and began wiping the glass.

“I’m looking for a guy that looks like you,” the dark man grumbled.

“Lots of guys look like me,” Tinker kept cleaning. “I’ve got that kind of face. Sucks for me.”

“Yeah,” the guy agreed. “Your face does suck.”

He pulled a tablet out of his pocket and keyed it open to a grainy work photo of Tinker in a janitor suit.

He held it up to compare to the man in the dirty apron in front of him.

“Suck’s to be you too,” he said as he lowered the tablet and reached for his gun again.

Tinker chunked the glass into his face and jerked a tiny blaster from the small of his back.

The man at the bar got his pistol out and almost up when Tinker drilled him with a pencil sized red beam in the heart.

The would be assassin flopped over backwards.

The crowd screamed and people darted for the front and rear exit.

“My gun is back here,” Tinker spoke fast and in a high voice.

The door to the grill slammed open and a thick woman with a heavy accent leaned out with a blaster the size of a blunderbuss.

She glared at Tinker and the way the crowd parted around the twitching body on the floor.

“Did you just shoot my customer?” she zeroed her aim on Tinker’s face.

“He wasn’t buying anything?” Tinker held his hands up again.

“How many times I got to tell you, give them a chance to look over the specials.”

“I don’t think he was here for the special,” Tinker glanced at the door.

Swirling lights bounced off the building across the corridor as sirens began to wail, drawing closer.

“What did you do?” she stepped out and set her giant blaster on the counter.

“It was self defense?!” Tinker sputtered.

“Pssh,” she waved him off. “I know a bounty hunter when I see one. Why is he hunting you?”

Tinker lowered his hands and slipped the tiny blaster back into the holster hidden in the waistband of his pants.

“I kind of stole a ship.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a good ship,” he said.

“And you thought hiding out here was a good idea?”

“Hiding out under his nose, so to speak.”

He glanced at the windows as the sirens got louder.

“Go out of the back,” said the woman. “I can get you five minutes. Maybe ten.”

Tinker nodded and grinned.

He yanked the apron over his head and dropped it on the dead body.

“Thanks,” his grin got wider. “Think I can get my last paycheck.”

Her eyebrows shot up to the crown of her head.

“It’s just, I was working to buy fuel so I could get away,” he tried to explain.

“Four minutes,” she growled.

“More than I deserve,” Tinker shrugged. “Thank you.”

“This isn’t a moment,” she told him. “We’re not having a moment. You’re wasting time.”

“Right,” Tinker hopped. “You’re right.”

He froze and turned around to vault over the counter.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He scooped up the fallen bounty hunter’s blaster and tugged the second one out of the holster at his belt.

“I can pawn these for credit,” he grunted.

He fumbled with them as he tried to tuck them into his belt, then missed the hop up on the counter and fell onto the dead body on the floor.

“Gross,” he gasped.

“Get his wallet while you’re down there,” she leaned over the bar.

“Good idea,” he rooted around in the man’s pockets and pulled out a credit chip.

“Mine,” she held out her hand as Tinker stood up and walked around the bar.

“But-,”

“For the mess.”

He dropped the chip in her wide palm as the sirens screamed to a stop in front of the café.

“You better hurry.”

He took her advice and hustled through the back door on the other side of the grill.

CHAPTER  TWO

Tinker slipped out of the back and scurried down the narrow space between buildings.

The space station residential areas didn’t have alleyways, but commercial spaces were built with narrow passageways between the walls of the structure.

They were supposed to contain the mechanical and electrical systems, plus waste, all the guts of the cities normally hidden under concrete, asphalt and in the walls.

In space, where weight meant more cost, the mafia bosses in charge of constructing the airtight floating cities often opted to forgo aesthetics like walls and safety measures.

Tinker was glad for their oversight for the moment, even if he had to step in unidentified piles of goo and goop as he made his sneaky way away from the twirling blue lights of the space station police force.

He stepped out into a corridor on the other side, separated from the mess he created by two buildings, and pointed his nose toward the docking berth where his ship was parked.

It was under another name and the tail markings were hidden under black smudges of soot and smoke, so he was confident that the small time gangster hadn’t found it, even if a bounty hunter found him.

He glanced around to be sure he wasn’t followed and double checked a couple of familiar faces.

Did they just look familiar?

Had he served them at the Good Eats Café?

Or were they on to him?

He shook his head. He needed a drink.

The heavy weight of the recently acquired blasters bounced against his leg in one pocket and tugged his pants down in the other.

Better to get rid of them than get caught, so he decided to find a pawn shop.

Lucky for him, he knew a couple of places that didn’t really care where the items in question originated, so long as they couldn’t be traced and could be moved fast.

The first place was closed.

A piece of metal was riveted to the metal struts on either side of the window, and the neon sign that hummed in the window was silent.

Tinker scurried to the next place he had in mind.

It was a second choice for a reason. That reason being the guy wasn’t going to give him a fair price, and he might call up the cops after he left.

Or worse, call Jaeger the Romanian gangster and tell him where a certain pilot turned smuggler could be found.

He almost skipped it.

There were other establishments that would traffic in gear adrift. But he didn’t know them.

And they didn’t know him.

Many wouldn’t work with a guy they didn’t know.

He took a deep breath and stepped through the automatic sliding door.
It whisked open with a screech that made the dinging alarm to announce his entry obsolete.

“Door’s broke,” Tinker said as he sauntered up to the desk on one side of the store.

Shelves packed with a variety of items lined the walls. Trinkets and treasures from people’s lives waited to be bought or traded, items that pioneers paid to bring into space and sold to buy drugs, food, or sex.

Maybe all three.

Tinker did not have sex on his mind.

Well, not at the forefront anyway. It was always on his mind, as ever-present as his heartbeat.

And it had been awhile.

Lady luck let a good thing land in his lap and in his bed and in his shower.

That good thing had robbed him of everything but the memory of the way her skin felt against his.

But she had also led him to his ship. And to the men hunting him.

Still, she had been hot and willing, which he counted as a W in the win column.

“You got a problem bub?” the hairy guy behind the desk glared at him over a toothpick chomped in the corner of his lined mouth.

“No problem,” Tinker shared a winning grin.

It didn’t work.

“Then why the hell are you standing there breathing my air like some kind of dumb shit? Are you a dumb shit? I didn’t know they let dumb shits into space anymore.”

“I’m not a dumb shit,” Tinker started to growl.

He decided that picking a fight would hurt the price he wanted for the stolen blasters and switched his voice in the middle of talking.

“I can see how you would make that mistake,” he said. “I mean, I was thinking about something. About a woman, if I can tell you the truth. And you’ve been there, right? Women? You know what I’m saying?”

“Breathing. My. Air,” the hairy man growled.

“Tink-,” Tinker held out his hand then jerked it back after he saw the way the proprietor glared at it.

“I can see you’re all about business,” he finished. “Let’s get to it.”

He pulled a blaster from his pocket and set it on the desk.

Then he stared up at the ceiling and wondered how he got on the floor.

His chest ached, and it was hard to breathe, and who let the stars inside the space station?

Tinker turned his head to one side and emptied what was left of his breakfast onto the cool metal deck beside his cheek.

He felt pressure against the other cheek and rolled his eyes over to see the hairy man towering above him, the end of an electric taser pressed against his temple.

“You scared the shit out of me, I ain’t gonna lie,” the hairy man grunted. “Pulled that piece out and I thought you had me. Good thing I’m faster than you, huh?”

“Gah,” Tinker answered.

“Yeah, you’re mouth ain’t gonna work for a little bit,” he said as he frisked Tinker and took the other blaster, plus his personal protection piece. He placed the weapons on the desk and stood back.

“You pissed on my floor,” the store owner observed.

“Gak.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna clean that shit up.”

“Gah?”

The hairy man glanced down at Tinker’s bottom.

“I don’t think you did it literally, but you never know how these electric things are gonna make you react.”

“Goh.”

“You’ll live.”

He picked up the first blaster from where it fell on the edge of the desk and examined it.

“This is quality shit,” he observed as he traded it for the second and nodded, impressed.

He picked up the third tiny blaster and snorted.

“Charge is gone. Hell, I think I got more power in my taser than you do in this thing.”

“Grup,” Tinker moaned.

He started to get feeling back in his legs and wished he hadn’t. Needles danced along the skin, a thousand pinpricks of pain that turned the swirling blue and purple stars into a hurricane of agony.

The hairy man reached down and hefted him up.

He plopped Tinker against the side of the desk.

“It helps,” he offered. “Gets the blood moving again. You want to sell these.”

“Yah.”

“See, the tongue is starting to work again. They stolen?”

Tinker shook his head.

Technically, they were spoils of war.

The proprietor raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know, authority comes looking for something like this, you’re gonna make me look like a dumb shit.”

Tinker shook his head.

Or at least he tried.

It sent the room spinning and he almost went down.

The hairy guy grabbed him be the shoulder and planted him against the desk again.

“Tell you what, why don’t you leave them here? I’ll see if I can find you a buyer and we’ll see what happens?”

Tinker tried to shake again, slower this time and with more control.

It worked most of the way.

“You want to get paid now?”

“Yah.”

“That’s gonna cost you extra,” he pulled a credit chip reader from a drawer in the top of the desk. “I’m assuming all the risk here. Cops show up and I’m out of product and what I’m paying to you, right?”

Tinker stared at him and waited to see how little he was going to walk away with.

“That puts me out twice, and if I do that kind of trade, I ain’t gonna be in business long, am I?”

He motioned to the shelf with the chip reader.

Tinker tried to sneak a peek at what he had typed in, but his eyes worked about as well as his tongue.

“Tell you what,” the guy continued. “I’m gonna add just a little bit here to make it fair to you. I don’t want you out there bad mouthing me.”

“Dum shift,” Tinker lisped.

“Right, telling people I’m a dumb shit. That won’t be good for me. Won’t be good for you either. You understand me?”

Tinker nodded and was surprised that it worked.

“Probably a good idea we just don’t talk about it at all,” the hairy man held the reader out to him.

Tinker tried not to groan at the number on the screen as he withdrew the chip.

It was half of what he wanted, and less than what he thought.

“You good?” the man smiled revealing yellow teeth. He shifted the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Yah,” Tinker said.

“Alright then, get out of here.”

He shoved against Tinker’s shoulder and sent him toward the door.

After a couple of steps, he was able to get his feet moving in almost the right way, though it felt like his legs were numb and asleep. Except for the needles, which still hurt.

He pocketed the chip and reached for the door.

The automatic feature screeched it open and he missed.

Tinker ignored the snort of derision and laughter from the proprietor until the closing door cut it off.