Once they were in the private room, one that was filled with wall-to-wall muted royal blue carpet, overstuffed chairs with leather and cloth upholstery, and a small love seat that Tosh was sure could fold out into a bed, he pushed Azal away from him.

“What is—"

“Give me a good reason why I just used a gem worth more than ten times what the caravan you took form me months ago was worth to save your sorry ass.”

Azal dropped to the ground, weeping.

“I am sorry, sahib. Yet, it has been ten years, at least for me, since that incident. My love is dead. And I’ve been tortured and hurtled through time and space to make amends to you. Please, I beg you, listen to me. I have been waiting at the Zilmarian space port on Ganymede for two days.”

“And?”

“Tosh sahib. I come with a warning from the future. Heed my tale.”

Tosh wasn’t in the mood, yet the bandit was on his knees, begging and crying. Plus, he’d just changed his plans on a whim. Either way, it should be interesting. Before his journey with Bors, he would have made sure the man suffered more. As it was, the bandit looked broken.

“Continue.”

“Soon after I delivered you to the one who paid me to abduct you, it took me. She was a witch of great power. I was arrogant, and through trails, showed what a fool I was. To think that woman ever had feelings for me, or for any man.” Azal then told him of months in the jungles of Venus, of being ripped from the timeline for years, bouncing around, trying to understand what a petty man he had been, all thanks to an ancient witch.

“You mean . . .”

“Zella, yes. She never loved me, until maybe the very end. Yet, that’s a tale for another time.” He paused, head bowed for a moment, before continuing.

“The same force that took me gave me a quest to make amends. Someone is trying to kill you. I beg you, let me help you in your endeavors.”

Tosh regarded the man kneeling before him, broken and bawling. He took a deep breath, nodded, and sighed. “I will have need of someone of your skills. Do you still have your crew?”

“No, Tosh sahib. I only am one man.”

“Better than none,” Tosh muttered to himself. “Get up and use the facilities here to clean yourself and make yourself presentable. I’ll have the club get clothes that fit. However, you will have to remove that odious mask.”

Azal balked at that for a moment. Then he hung his head and muttered, “You were right, Nyla. The mask was always the last to go.”

Tosh quirked an eyebrow at his words. “Who—”

Azal waved a hand. “I am sorry, sahib. A silly thing.” He pulled off the leather and metal mask to reveal a face scarred by wind and aged by sun and heat. Yet, his eyes still shone like chips of hard ice. With sun-bleached hair and a soft chin covered in a fine fuzz, he wasn’t as terrifying as Tosh had thought.

“I will go and get cleaned up,” Azal said, giving a small bow and heading off.

Tosh spoke with the front desk about getting clothes for Azal.

“We will take care of it all, Mr. du’Vaul,” the woman said on the intercom.

At a high markup, I’m sure, Tosh mumbled in his head.

Azal bathed and donned an Occidental suit, and dark red blazer gifted by the club. It didn’t run Tosh out of funds, but it was still a hit to his wallet. As Azal settled down to eat, he did not try to gorge himself on food or drink. Tosh turned to see that there was a commotion outside of the Blue Carpet Club, in the beltway.

The walls of the Blue Carpet Club that looked outside to the rest of the port were of a smart glass design that would turn opaque if needed, or transparent, or even translucent. Tosh had just touched a button to change it to transparent when a klaxon went off.

Tosh stood and finished his drink. Looking out on the corridor before him, he spotted a large space port security force hustle past the wall-length window. Azal was already standing, his hand going to his belt. He cursed.

“What?”

“I thought the witch had at least left me with a weapon of some kind.”

“Transported right to me?”

“Yes, sahib,” Azal said. “As I said, it gave me this purpose, yet she failed to send me at the right time.”

“Yet you said you were taken moments after you dropped me off to the agents of the Grifter. You said you were gone years. Months spent in the jungle alone? Then what? It’s been almost six months since I set eyes on you, Azal. How could—"

The rest of Tosh’s question was lost as the klaxons wailed louder and something smashed through the glass wall of the club. A hulking figure stood in the ruins of the wall, throwing the ruined body of one of the security force into the inner glass wall of Tosh’s private room, five feet from where Tosh stood. A splash of gore and viscera struck him as the body crumpled to the carpeted floor.

“Tosh, duck!” Azal shouted.

Tosh’s instinct did as instructed. Throwing himself backwards, he caught sight of something massive leaping toward him. As he moved, falling backwards, a blur of a large white furry body surged inside. The roar of something he had seen before but couldn’t place for a moment came from the monstrous white shape.

Then the stench of the thing hit him, triggering a sense-memory of something he had seen on Mars while he and Bors stilled traveled.

A white ape. A twelve-foot-tall, white-furred, four-armed, shaggy, reeking simian creature that could grow to massive size on the red planet.

Tosh rolled to one side as he hit the floor, hand going to his ray gun. He drew it and aimed at the creature. Its shaggy mass moved with an impressive speed, slapping the weapon from Tosh’s hand with one of its two smaller arms. The other three went to grab at Tosh. Three piercing blue eyes in a triangular formation came to bear on Tosh with an intense malice that shook him to his core. A feral intelligence lurked behind those eyes, holding some eldritch sense of recognition of Tosh. It roared again, jaws open wide to show curved overlarge canines and massive flat teeth that could grind Tosh to meal. The other of the two small arms grabbed Tosh by the waist while the two overdeveloped arms beat the thing’s chest, drumming a loud triumphant sound.

When the two larger and thicker upper arms tried to grab Tosh at the shoulders, a small shield generator that had been woven into his clothing to give him a personal shield activated. The smaller hands holding him would crush the belt that held the generator’s power pack in seconds, yet the grunts of frustration as the white ape tried and failed to grab Tosh’s shoulders without a stinging pain made him smile. Knowing it wouldn’t hold up to something this size for more than a few seconds, he pulled free.

Tosh staggered backwards, trying to think of a plan. Even as he tried, he felt a hand grab one of his wrists, and a voice whispered in his ear. “Follow me, sahib.”

Tosh was about to ask, “How?” when Azal hefted Tosh’s ray gun and fired a dozen bolts point blank into the arms and legs of the beast. The blasts caught the ape unaware. It unleashed him and shouted even louder.

As the pair fled, Azal frowned at the ray gun. “What is wrong with this? It isn’t at full power?”

“Stun setting. There’s a—”

Azal waved him away as they rounded the corner of the private bank of rooms. The white ape had followed, yet it charged through two more walls of glass before it was running through the main room of the club.

Azal seized Tosh and shoved him to the ground, then turned to face the ape. With ray gun in hand, he fired at the charging white ape. The bolts were a much deeper green than the stun bolts of the Tellic Tosh was used to. Tosh watched from the floor as Azal held his ground for as long as possible before he turned and threw himself on top of Tosh as the large four-armed ape’s corpse fell onto them.

Hurt and choking on dust and the reek of the dead white ape, Tosh and Azal were pulled free by the remains of the space port security.

Once he freed himself and Azal from security, he could get onto his connecting rocket towards Europa. While they were in transit, an attendant came to him and told him Tosh had a holo call from Ahmed bin Saldin.

Tosh was a bit stunned to hear that his father was calling him. Yet, he still stood up and walked to the holo booth. The door closed and suddenly, there was a flare of light that blinded Tosh for a moment. Suddenly, all around him was one of the offices of his father. A massive desk of ebony wood. His father sat in a three-piece suit, leaning back in a large leather office chair.

The hardlight of the entire holo-call was more elaborate than Tosh thought possible. Yet, he also knew that his father would spare no expense to make sure his wealth thrown in the face of his wayward son. Then, his father spoke.

“Tosh, my son. It is good to see you.”

“Father?” Tosh asked, poleaxed by what his father had said.

“Yes, my son. Is that any way to speak to your own father?”

“What is—”

“I need your help. Renard, one of our oldest clients, needs a shipment, and I want you to meet him and negotiate.”

“Why?”

“You are my son. The future of the du’Vaul House, are you not?” Ahmed said, giving a sour smile.

Something felt wrong. “Why now?”

“It is best fore the optics overall that you are seen as the future, Tosh.” His father looked away from him. “Take that as a win. You’ll be given—“

“No. I want to have this in writing. I want this on the front page of—“

“Fine!” His father roared, lunging forward and grabbing Tosh, the hardlight around Tosh caused a buzz along his skin. “You can have your insignificant moment. I don’t care. I only want one thing. The General needs to go!

“Are you asking for me too…kill him?”

“Bah. You aren’t able to do anything like that. You are weak. I will have one of the servants do it. Maybe Tyla.”

Tosh closed his eyes and bit back what he wanted to say. “Very well, father.”

The holo-call cut off then. Tosh took a long breath, then waked out and joined Azal in his seat again.

“How was the call?” Azal asked, looking at Tosh and gave a small frown. “You seem upset.”

“My father is a bastard. He let’s me get close to the dream and then rips it from me.”

“Then ignore him and do what you want,” Azal said.

“Not that simply, Azal,” Tosh said.

“It never is, is it sahib?” Azal said, shaking his head and looking away. “I will get us transport.”

“You don’t even know—”

“Oh, but I do. The witch told me where you were going before your father would.”

Azal handed a slate to Tosh, revealing a route to the small desert of Gherdesk on Callisto. Tosh knew that desert well. He and Kimya had played there many times as a child. It surprised him that name came to him, he hadn’t thought of her since she had been married off to a bastard. Tosh knew that bastard had killed her, never admitting to it.