“I told you I wasn’t responsible for what happened to the crew of that med ship,” Remy said.
The sheriff coughed, strands of her black hair obscuring her face as her body was wracked with convulsions. Yep, that gas was pretty rough.
“This backwards-assed planet of yours seems to have some serious problems,” he continued, letting her recover. “But soon, we won’t be one of them. We’re taking the med ship.”
He searched her face for a reaction. Anything.
She fixed him with a stony stare. “We will hunt you down.”
He spread his hands. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”
“Loud and clear. You had me at ‘I told you so.’”
“You know…” Remy lowered his gun an inch or two. “You could be just about the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. And I’ve met quite a few.”
Her dark eyes glittered. “I’ll bet you have.”
“Captain, hate to interrupt this sweet moment,” Dreyla said, “but we need to be leaving.”
Her note of caution felt like a slap to the face. What was he doing, wasting time here? He nodded, backing toward the corridor, gun still trained on the sheriff.
“This isn’t the last time you’ll see me, Captain Bechet.”
Part of him wished that were true. What if things had been different here? She had some cojones, that was for sure. But then again, there was an entire universe of extremely hot, savagely badass women out there; he didn’t need this particular sheriff, who was intent on killing him.
Seems like a lot of hot women want to kill me.
Remy thought of Shaw, recalling that she, too, was out there gunning for him.
“Unless you’re gonna chase us back to our solar system, I don’t think I’ll have that pleasure.” Remy turned and, without a backwards glance, stalked off the bridge with Dreyla and Tosh in tow.
At the open airlock door, he paused to regard the clunky white form of the med ship sitting less than thirty yards away across the salvage yard. He felt his two skeptical crewmates looking at him.
He sighed. “Well, it sure ain’t the Jay, but she’ll have to do. Come on, keep up behind me.”
He dashed down the exit ramp, scanning the left side of the area while Dreyla did the same on the right. It would be marvelous, if unlikely, to avoid trouble.
Blasts pinged the ground behind them almost as soon as their feet hit the sand. The air filled with the whines of weaponry. Someone was attacking them from a distance.
Cowards.
“Hurry,” he yelled.
The three of them were far enough from their assailants not to be easy targets. They might just make it. Even Tosh, despite his age, kept pace with Remy and Dreyla. As gunshots trailed them and sand sprayed everywhere, they dashed helter-skelter up the ramp onto the med ship.
Dreyla clutched a rail for support. Tosh was bent double, hands on knees. Unless the old man was having a heart attack, they’d gotten lucky.
“Who… the hell… was that?” Dreyla gasped.
“At this point, who knows?” Remy hit the largest button on the panel next to the door, which promptly descended and sealed.
Catching his breath, he moved down the short hallway onto the much smaller bridge and flopped down in the main pilot’s seat.
The controls on the console were far from self-explanatory. Any one of the buttons with the tiny, obscure labels, such as “sequence 4-X” or “ancillary endo-sensors,” could be the one to power up the engines—but which? He prodded a few while Dreyla and Tosh gazed out onto the grounds of the scrapyard.
Nothing happened. He banged several more switches with the side of his fist, one of which brought up the ship’s internal systems but not the main power.
“Those don’t look like the sheriff’s people,” Dreyla mused, her face pressed to the glass.
“You’re right. And isn’t that Shaw in the back?” Tosh jabbed at the window with his index finger.
A sonorous hum filled Remy’s ears—the gratifying sound of the ship coming to life. He’d finally hit the main power button, although he still couldn’t say which one it was. He raised his eyes to see what the others were looking at.
Five dark-clad, heavily armed men advanced on the two ships. Trailing by only a few feet came the svelte form of Commander Tara Shaw, a big-ass weapon dangling from her mechanical hand.
“They’re going to kill everyone on the Jay,” Dreyla said with a quiet intensity.
She exchanged a glance with Tosh, and then they both turned in unison to look at Remy.
“Hey.” His head swiveled from the brown pair of accusing eyes to the older, gray pair. “Not our problem. We have one concern, one, and that’s getting off this damn planet. Capiche?”
He wrenched back on the lever, and the ship rose with a belly-tugging lurch.
Two of the armed men took shots at their departing ship, but they soon gave up and returned their focus to the Jay.
Remy steered the ship in a daring swoop, narrowly missing a control tower. Yeah, this ship would take some getting used to. He already missed his trusty steering wheel.
Gazing one last time at the Jay, he reflected on all the eventful years he’d spent with her. And all the times she’d saved his ass from seemingly inevitable oblivion. She was part of him, and now he had lost her. All because of a stupid portal. He gritted his teeth and continued flying.
Dreyla and Tosh both turned away from the front view, heads bent. Their silence spoke volumes.
Yeah? Well, not my problem.
Galactic Blues
Episode 6:
I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man
A Newton’s Gate serial
by
C.J. Clemens
Copyright © 2018
C.J. Clemens
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imaginations and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, businesses, and individuals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For more information, visit the authors’ website: NewtonsGate.com
For Andy and Chris...
two brothers who have given us unwavering support.
Chapter 1
LILLY
“Bechet’s gone.” Deputy Davis stood at the entrance of the R.L. Johnson’s bridge, holding an armload of weapons. “But he dropped these in the airlock.”
Sheriff Lilly Greyson nodded as fresh questions mushroomed in her mind. Side effects from the poisonous gas that had knocked out her and her compatriots still lingered, making her reactions sluggish at the worst possible time. Bechet and his crew had a lot to answer for, but right now, she had even bigger problems.
She turned to survey her band of bedraggled cohorts, who were in various stages of recovery from the gas. Other than watery eyes and coughing fits, they seemed intact.
“Alright, everyone,” she said. “I think it’s obvious that those are Darkbur’s men out there. And that they’re not here for a social gathering.”
Mayor Cansen awkwardly gripped his small pistol in his smooth, pink hands. Clearly, the guy had never shot anyone in his life.
“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” he asked, inadvertently pointing the gun at Lilly.
With a long, pale finger, Jacer gently pivoted Cansen’s gun away from her. “I think, Mayor, it’s obvious he’s making his move.”
“Move… to do what?” Cansen asked.
“To take control of the planet,” Nate said, stepping out from a darkened corner of the bridge. He was armed to the hilt, and his scruffy jaw clenched with a determination she’d rarely seen in her brother.
“Yeah, how about we couch the what and focus on the how.” Lilly powered up a rifle and hols
tered her other guns back in their usual places around her body. She felt a whole lot better fully dressed. “Cuz right now, we’re essentially trapped.”
All faces turned to her in concern.
She groaned inwardly at their sheepish expressions and their default expectation that she could provide all the answers. Since taking the job of sheriff, she had dealt with just about every type of situation, from domestic abuse issues to standard robberies and murders. She had maintained a firm foot on the neck of Naillik’s black market, never putting her full weight on it but making sure it didn’t turn the town into another Bane. One lawless city on the planet was more than enough. All of these duties had been a natural part of the job, but this? Being targeted? The planet threatened by a hostile takeover? Was this really what she’d signed up for?
Bechet was right about one thing: this was a backwards-assed planet.
“Sheriff?” Davis prodded.
“Yeah, yeah, OK. Davis, you and Pierce, come with me,” she said. “The rest of you, stay here.”
Before they could bombard her with questions, she headed off the bridge, Davis in tow. It wasn’t much of a plan, but she had to try something. Halfway down the corridor, though, she heard only one set of feet tramping on the metal decking behind her. Pierce wasn’t following.
She turned back to the doorway, where the older deputy stood in an apparent daze. “Pierce, now!”
“Uh, yeah.” He bolted forward and caught up with them.
By the time they reached the airlock ramp leading off this strange ship, half a dozen people were storming their way. Darkly-dressed, heavily-armed assassins… Gono’s assassins. They were still fifty yards from the Johnson, so Lilly opened up with her rifle, sending several blasts towards them.
Five members of the hit squad kept coming, zig-zagging in their approach, while one hung back. It looked like that woman Gono had brought into the station. Lilly shifted her focus back to the five assassins headed her way, all of whom had started returning fire.
Neither Davis nor Pierce was shooting. Her deputies crouched to one side of the doorway, using the outer wall for cover, while she shot from the other side.
Lilly pointed at their guns. “Aren’t those working, or what?”
Davis began shooting. A moment later, Pierce unleashed his own rifle.
If she ever quit being Naillik’s sheriff, perhaps even got off this infernal planet and returned home, then one of these two might end up as her replacement. What a sobering thought. Davis wasn’t a bad deputy, but he didn’t have what it took to be in charge, to make the hard decisions. Well, at least not to make the wise decisions, since he seemed to think with his dick more often than was probably healthy for a sheriff. Pierce, well, he’d have a nervous breakdown in the first week on the job. Hell, at the moment, he looked on the verge.
Could she just leave? Abandon Naillik? Did she really care?
She managed to hit one of the approaching men, but the shot only struck him on his shoulder and deflected off into Skully’s holding yard. The man shrugged and stomped onward.
“Dammit, they’re wearing body armor,” she called out. “Aim for their heads.”
She twisted her own head to ensure that Pierce was still coping. He had his rifle sight up to one eye, tracking an attacker, fully engaged, but he was leaning too far beyond the cover of the hull. She opened her mouth to warn him, but her words were ripped from her throat when a shot from one of the assailants whined though the air and hit Pierce in the eye. The plasma blast exploded out the back of his head, and his body slumped across the doorway.
Lilly stared at the unnatural, black hole in the back of her deputy’s head, fringed with blood-matted, silver hair. Pierce had always taken such pride in his full, shiny mane.
Something that had been holding her up inside cracked. Another light of reason and goodness extinguished. Darkness and chaos were going to win.
“Get this damn door closed!” she screamed at Davis.
Davis patted around frantically on the wall. He opened a panel and reached inside. “There’s a manual crank,” he grunted, “but Pierce is in the way.”
She tried to reach outward and get ahold of the dead man’s body, but several shots struck his lifeless torso. One almost caught her hand as it penetrated Pierce’s shoulder just two inches away. She whipped her hands from his corpse.
OK, different plan.
Davis was still attempting to crank up the door, but part of Pierce’s corpse dangled outside the ship, wedging the ramp open. She fiddled with her rifle, locked the safety into place, and then banged it against the edge of the doorway.
Davis paused in his futile cranking. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring him, she pulled out some of the wires from the gun’s broken power source.
“Hell,” Davis said, “let’s forget the outer one and just close the inner door.” He retreated from the panel and wiped his brow on his forearm.
“Negative. They’ll blow through that door with one shot. We need to get this door up; it’s heavy enough that their blasters won’t penetrate the hull.”
She finished rewiring the gun and pulled the trigger to test it.
Davis paused again and looked down at the weapon.
“I’m overloading it,” Lilly explained. “Take cover, Davis. We need to finish closing the door.”
Once her deputy had complied, crouching behind the outer wall, she tossed the rifle thirty feet into the scrapyard. It wouldn’t be a massive explosion, but that wasn’t why she’d done it.
As expected, the gun overloaded and burst apart. Chunks of dirt and bits of sand sailed into the open airlock. Lilly waited a few seconds, then stepped out into the doorway.
“No, Sheriff!” Davis yelled.
But as soon as the large cloud of smoke billowed up in front of them, Davis must have grasped her plan. He stepped out to join her, and the two of them dragged poor Pierce’s body inside by his blast-riddled legs. She then moved to the panel, wiped the sticky, warm blood off her hands, and started cranking the door handle as if her life depended on it.
Well, hell, it does.
The ramp lifted slowly but easily. Davis sent a couple of shots out as the smoke started to clear. Finally, the crank came to a stop, the door sealing with a satisfying sucking sound. They’d managed to close the entrance.
They were safe, for now. But it wouldn’t take long for Darkbur’s crew to figure out how to get inside. Hopefully, none of them would try manipulating the hydraulics, as Skully had initially done.
Thank Zog they’re assassins, not mechanics.
In the meantime, Lilly needed to conjure up a plan… some way to get her people off this weird ghost ship and back to safety.
What would Tim do? Hell, at this point, what would Bechet do?
Chapter 2
SHAW
Darius had just disengaged from shooting at Bechet’s armored ship. For Commander Tara Shaw, this was a clear signal that the mission had turned pointless.
“Your men just screwed the whole thing up,” she snapped over the comms to Darkbur. She had to yell over the noise of the blasts from his other assassins, and that felt good.
“What’s going on?” Darkbur demanded.
Darius whipped the comms unit from her, shooting her a somewhat betrayed look. “They split into two groups. One took off in the med ship. I think it was the guy they’d locked up. He was with a kid and an old man.”
“I don’t care about them. What’s the status of the others? The sheriff? The mayor?”
Shaw raised an eyebrow at Darius.
Got yourself into a bit of a jam there, big boy.
Darius scowled. “The others… have locked themselves inside that unclassified ship. Heavily armored. We can’t get in with our blasters or grenades.”
“I gave you one damn job,” came the harsh voice over the comms.
Darius clenched his fists and gazed up into the sky.
Shaw smirked. Was it possible that Gono Darkbur didn
’t have the total loyalty of his men? Like Larker Max, he controlled through fear and intimidation, so if someone didn’t fear him enough to do his bidding, he likely didn’t consider that person effective in his eyes. Even someone as reliable as Darius.
Not the most enlightened way to run a team.
Darius now stared off into the distance. Shaw followed his gaze toward a giant monstrosity of a machine—part crane, part excavator, part bulldozer—which was presently dismantling the wall of a derelict building with its powerful jaws.
“Darius?” the comms crackled again.
He held the device close to his mouth. “I’m on it.”
Shaw flashed him a knowing smile. “You think you can rip the airlock door off, don’t you?” She liked innovative schemes, but this one seemed foolhardy.
Darius stiffened his posture and brought his dark, impenetrable eyes to rest on her. She assumed he didn’t appreciate her insolence and skepticism. He had a sort of should-I-kill-you-or-should-I-let-you-live? look on his face. It made Shaw smile.
“Don’t know,” he said gruffly. “But I’m sure as hell gonna try.”
He handed her the comms unit and headed toward the jawed beast. She clutched the communicator, which seemed like a token of their new camaraderie, and monitored his progress, stupidly rooting for him and his crazy plan.
Several of the workers from the salvage yard approached him. They clearly had no idea what was happening, only that there had been gunshots. They all backed off after Darius pointed his rifle at them.
This guy definitely has some style.
The comms unit beeped again.
Oh, hell no.
Galactic Blues - Box Set Episodes 4-6: A Newton's Gate Space Opera Adventure (Galactic Blues Box Set Book 2) Page 8