by Greg M. Hall
ted Drug Lab
My Pal The Bug #2
By: Greg M. Hall
Copyright 2010 by Greg M. Hall
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Traffic Control (Action)
Closure (Fantasy)
Rick’s Hostage (Horror)
The Gig (Horror)
My Pal The Bug #1: For They Know Not… (Sci-Fi)
No sweat.
In spite of the eons-old maxim of not looking down, Turlock did.
Several hundred meters below the wrist-thick wire rope that supported his boots, boulders larger than the hovercar he wished they had abutted a slow-moving, oozy black river of hydrocarbon sludge.
The stones, though polished smooth by centuries of liquid flowing over them, gave Turlock the impression that the landing might be less gory if he slipped. But with almost one and a half Earth gees working to draw him closer to Andajar’s crust, he’d still splatter.
Swallowing a lump of welling cowardice, he forced himself to look ahead and continue putting one foot over the other.
It didn’t make it any easier that Marve was almost completely across. The Lotian mercenary displayed his insectile evolutionary stock as he used the handgrip ropes alone, his limbs cascading forward, three to each side. The damn bug-man would be done and waiting for him on the other side in a few seconds.
C’mon: grab, step… grab, step…
Another fifty meters and five eternal minutes of excruciating balance had gotten him two-thirds of the way across the bridge. His burning muscles grew more concerned about rest than the chance of losing balance and plummeting, so the hovercar that blew overhead with a dark-shape flash and the wheeeez of magni-turbines juiced to max power startled him like a taser-bolt.
“Shit!” Turlock ducked, and in the process lifted his right hand above his head in a warding-off gesture. His left hand lost its grip, and with a flurry of commotion he waved like a spastic tightrope walker before pitching sideways with a yelp. He flailed both limbs toward the handgrip cable, and while his right got a decent hold his left bounced off and swung, with the rest of his body, into a pendulous dangle over the canyon. The sling of his assault rifle crept off his shoulder, and as it slithered down his arm he bent it, catching the strap in the crook of his elbow as it batted into his thigh.
He barely had time to squawk for help before Marve hoisted him, working one and then two of his carapaced limbs under his armpits, grunting with effort.
“Efft—what have you been eating?”
Turlock, kicking his legs in his best attempt to assist the Lotian in the rescue, grunted: “Lead weights. Hey—careful for that pock—”
Too late. As Marve shifted the grip he had on his partner’s torso, he’d gotten a limb underneath the ammo pouch sewn into the human’s overshirt. Four clips of 7.00 Universal heavy-jacketed, his entire meager supply, pushed up and through the snap-flap that held them in. They tumbled noiselessly, taking a full six seconds to strike an Orbital Freighter-sized boulder on the canyon floor, bounce off, and drop into the river. Two seconds after that, the puddop of a pair of rounds going off from the impact came back to them. By that time, the bug-man had restored Turlock’s footing on the main cable.
“Shit,” muttered the human. “Shitshitshit.”
At least Mantis-head didn’t make it worse by offering some of his ammo. Marve’s Benfield rifle carried an air of old-empire craftsmanship, but with it came an archaic caliber that had not been included in the Universal Ammunition System’s sizings.
At least the concern about how he could confront a threat with nothing more than an oddly-shaped club made Turlock forget about how he’d nearly sprayed his guts across the smooth rocks below.
“So who do you think that was?”
They’d put a klick or so between the river and their current position, and Turlock’s anger still burned at his ears and cheeks. “Who do I think what was?”
In many ways, though Turlock had initially thought the opposite, a Lotian was a perfect long-term pairing for a human in a high-stress job. Their mild demeanor and legendary patience let them weather the tantrums and outbursts of emotion that made Turlock’s race notorious. “You know: the hovercar that just about took our heads off. Who’d want to go flying around the badlands? Especially hugging the terrain like that?”
The bug-man rasped his top set of arms together, a gesture Turlock had learned was the Lotian equivalent of a shrug. “Something to do with the drug lab, perhaps. What else is out this way? Maybe the occupants of the vehicle are the source of the problems.”
Turlock grunted, knowing the implication of the question. They’d been sent to the remote lab because ‘technicians’, in truth no more than addicts who received their payment in use of the stocks they helped create, had been disappearing. The owners wouldn’t have let that bother them very much—you lose one tweaker, you just run out and get another one—except the missing employees began turning back up. Parts of them, anyway. It wasn’t good for employee retention. The capper was that all communication out of the lab had ceased the day before.
“I hope we’re not in a race to the lab,” said Marve.
“If the Cartel had wanted us to be more prompt, they’d have provided us with our own hover-car.”
They completed the ascent of another ridge, revealing a high plain dotted with scrubby plants and knee-high boulders. “But they told us coming in by air—”
A wad of crackling metal at the end of a long gouge in the stony ground completed the sentence. Whoever had buzzed them back in the canyon had run afoul of the lab’s air-defense system.
Turlock swallowed with a click in his throat. “Huh. Lovely walk we’ve been having, don’t you think?”
“It’d appear the budget for the facility is a bit more significant than we expected.”
Judging from the wreckage—or more accurately the existence of it—the vehicle had taken an EMP pulse strong enough to bypass cable and circuit board shielding, rendering the hover-car a gleaming airborne brick. Turlock didn’t envy the occupants, even if they’d nearly killed him with their reckless piloting, having to endure a descent that must have lasted a few seconds and felt like hours.
“Think there’s anything salvageable?”
Turlock shook his head. They’d come close enough to smell the fried circuitry and fluids oozing out of popped service lines. “Not unless you have a tow vehicle in your pocket.”
“The driver might have something of value on their person. You could consider it compensation for your lost cartridges.”
“Fine. Good luck getting that door—”
His partner leaped, grasshopper-like, to the stricken vehicle, jammed his limbs into a gap in the twisted metal, and pulled with a mandible-chattering effort.
“Holy crap, Marve! I didn’t know grave-robbing was such a thrill for you!”
He didn’t respond, only continued pulling with all of his insectile strength. With a dual crumple-shriek, a body panel yielded to the Lotian’s efforts. With a final plak it wrenched free, and he whipped it behind him like a two-handed, twenty-kilo Frisbee.
Turlock jogged toward the car until a dun-hued, foamy mass inside jarred him into action. He jumped up on the hood and plunged his fingers inside, pulling back to remove blocky, crumply chunks. Marve, who moments ago displayed the brute strength of a Carnivore Battlesuit, now fluttered the ends of his appendages into the foam on the other side in deft but blurry-quick strokes.
After a few mi
nutes of pawing through the brittle-soft material, Turlocks’ arms ached and his fingers had gone numb. When a couple of digits speared through the crumbly foam and pressed into something soft, it took a moment for him to comprehend.
“Careful,” hissed Marve.
“It’s okay—I can’t rip hover-cars in half like you.” He dug around the soft spot, quicker but with as much dexterity as he could summon, and seconds later he’d excavated a cheek. He worked his protesting fingers around, trying not to shudder as the moist softness of lips slid past his index, and pulled a large chunk away, revealing a female face. A human one.
Immediately, the mouth parted, gasping for air. Turlock realized that maybe brushing his hand against those lips wasn’t such a bad deal after all.
She opened violet eyes, sparkling with shards of silver in the irises. “Huh…huh…”
“Take it easy. We have to get the rest of this foam off. Try breathing slowly.”
The face, flawless, high-cheeked, began twitching left and right. The part of the brain that takes over in extreme circumstances wanted out, and wanted out now.
Turlock stopped pawing at the foam and grabbed both sides of her head, stared into those glittering