Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  The guy in front of me with the pale, haunted eyes moved off with his quivering fist clutching a handgun.

  “I’ll have one of those,” I said across the scarred counter to the attendant poised behind the reinforced cage mesh. A lot of pulse guns and ammunition sat there, weaponry of all sorts stacked on the walls. Everything the local desperado could ever want.

  The attendant flashed me a cool glance, lifted a disinterested finger to a row of black, cylindrical objects spread in a neat, tidy line.

  “Yep, those ones—with the black mufflers on the ends. Mighty fine pieces,” I said, trying to fake out a drawl for kicks.

  “They’re double-range explosives,” he asserted. “Fine kick, twenty yols extra.”

  I flourished a hand. “Let me gauge them for weight. Two, please.”

  The attendant engaged the safety which ensured a ten minute lead in case of accidental detonation, passed the merchandise through the gap. Everyone knew there was no chance to steal merchandise and run. Hidden cameras worked with regular efficiency behind those reinforced panels and security gunmen posed as beggars or others traipsing about the place ready to pounce on any snatch-and-grab thieves.

  I held the black cylinders in my hand, admiring the compact efficiency of their streamlined deadly potential. Juggling the canisters from hand to hand, I turned for a second, using my body to shield me from the camera, then worked my old confuse and switch gag, reaching down at an opportune time, replacing the one in my left hand with the dud concealed in my left jacket pocket. It was a ruse I’d been practicing for years. Worked every time. Oldest trick in the book.

  I put on a long frown. “Actually, I’ll go for the brand down, chief. These babies’re a bit heavy and my pocket’s a little too light.”

  “Told you,” clucked the attendant. “Pass them back. Don’t get fancy and waste my time.”

  I nodded and grinned and thrust them back through the hole in the cage, as if lowly equipment clerks’ reprimands were the highlight of my day.

  I fingered the coin-sized, scaled-down models pushed through the wire mesh, passed through twelve yols and thrust the goods in my dusty pockets as I fiddled for a home-rolled cigarette. The air was stifling and my head swam to a babel of voices. I was reaching my limit of how many shoulder jostles I could take from druggies and tough guys today. I sauntered out of the depot, whistling a tuneless jingle out of the side of my mouth. My meeting with Marty came up in the hour. A shoddy place The Bodega, but it would have to do.

  As I slogged through the puddles from a recent rain toward the market, I could hear the beats of techno-music exuding from the tarped-up shanties down the way: all bass and some mid-range slurred female voice-overs in an unrecognizable mash. A glut of offworlders roamed about, a slum of small tent-like enclosures made from pieces of old rubber tires and broken vehicles. Rusty oil drums with smoking garbage burned away. Several grubby figures congregated in a huddle. An altercation broke out and knives suddenly flashed in dirty hands. Then the crash of broken glass through the grimy window of what looked a clapboard salami shop. Two ham-handed men stood arguing over who had chopped the last livers and mixed them with the pork, or some dumb thing.

  As I stopped to ponder, I felt a tug at my pantleg. A mousy brown boy sat, legs splayed in the dirt and puddles, his leg missing below the knee, begging for coins. I crouched down and gave him a few of the loose yols I had, catching the dull look in the sunken, young eyes, drinking deep of the sorrow mirrored there then moving on.

  My eyes wandered over him and other such sights with a familiarity that created tiny ripples in my soul. I’d had to steel myself to the suffering of others to get the jobs done that put food on the table. Only a rare glimmer of compassion did I let steal over me from time to time. The universe was what it was. Long ago I’d accepted such travesties as fate; they would continue on, regardless of what I did or didn’t do.

  A sickly glow permeated the sky with the sound of thunder promising more rain. I trudged through the rubble and the mud puddles, skirting wide piles of bomb debris. An air-speeder whistled past close overhead. I gave it little attention, little concerned with the comings and goings of the privileged and few. That, and the rattle of electric three-wheelers on the dingy streets whose riders wore their goggled ski-masks, racing the odd ramshackle van or lorry to the next barricaded junction.

  I came to Drenny’s. An eatery of fine repute, of battered brick and energetic graffiti scrawled on front, wide swoops and swirls of the lost symbols of modern vernacular. Overhead, mothers’ laundry dripped and kids screamed from the balconies of squalid apartments. The city cops, aka hired mercenaries, came to this meet-place of smugglers, dope dealers and lowlifes less often than the hotter places closer to downtown. A collection of mixed sorts huddled about in drab clothing, generally trench coats and beat-up boots, sitting at tables and mumbling monosyllables or milling around at the bar. Some machines stood at the back, upright gambling units and old pinball machines, while low, distorted lounge music huffed out a muffled beat.

  Marty sat over at a far table. He hunched in the dimness, bullet head and chin tipped down in the haze of blue smoke. He sat away from the hubbub and the bar. He got up and waved when he saw me. I approached with measured confidence and he took my hand with a firm grip and nodded, the faintest of grins. “Rusco, been a while. You look good.”

  “Could be better.”

  Marty patted my back with more vigor than necessary. “Attaboy! Keeping up the faith?”

  I shrugged. Marty, a shock of mustard-colored hair that clung to his oiled scalp like a fish fin, was a short, heavy-boned bully with thick lips and crooked grin. But fast. Last guy who underestimated Marty lay in a shallow grave.

  Marty was a good guy, well-informed but somewhat of a fanatic for odd jobs, volatile, headstrong, violent, ready to plug shells into a problem rather than think it through. Don’t ever get him angry or he’d rip your head off and shove it up the next guy’s ass. That’s Marty. Got to know him in Rega. We’d been drinking, shooting the shit at the local casino bar, and got to musing… ‘you know, like maybe we should join forces or something and capitalize on the smuggling market, a couple of delivery wise guys like us, we could be peddling and fencing weapons and contraband versus collecting the chump change we’re making now.’ So we got to thinking and the old gears got whirring. Now I was a little ahead of Marty in big picture planning and could play three angles at once where he could only play one, so I humored him into thinking it was all his idea—you know, the whole let the big bad dog think he’s the alpha-male, pissing on every corner, while the nice little white dog keeps his head down.

  “So what’s this about?” I asked.

  “Got something down the line. Some easy pickings on the river way in the warehouse district.”

  “What, those abandoned factories and chop shops?”

  “Yeah, something like that. Some small time gangsters run out of there, moving stuff new and old, you know? Big stuff.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  He scratched at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, this and that.”

  “What? You don’t even know what it is we’re pulling?”

  He looked away with an offended glare.

  “What about transpo?” I growled. I peered over with annoyance at the two deadbeats playing old retro video games in the back shadows. The noise of buzzers and beeps and their grunts and sniggers rubbed at the edge of my concentration.

  “You got your ship,” said Marty, “plus we can steal some local rides if need be. They’ve got some air speeders I’ve heard.”

  “What, like we’re just going to fly in there, gun them down, and take their goods?”

  “Something like that,” Marty said with a grin.

  I shook my head, blinking with amazement. “You’re something else, Marty, you know that? I think all that gumtox you’ve been chewing has gotten to your head.”

  “Careful there, Ruskie. The old Q himself gave me this drop.
And he don’t drop favors like that for nothing.”

  “Maybe.” I grunted, licking my lips. “I just like to know what I’m getting into.”

  “Don’t be a pussy. It’s half the fun not knowing everything.”

  “Not really, Marty. Remember the last time we winged it, was nearly the end of us working together.”

  “This is your chance to make it big, Rusco. A slam dunk, instead of all those cheap little gigs out in backwaters-ville. I need ride and backup and figured you’d be good for it. I’ll wait point while you nose around, scoping the place out. We’ll keep in contact by bug wireless. Here—” He held up a pair of little black earpieces. “These little babies are untrackable. Shortwave or something. Tape it behind your ear.”

  “Shortwave,” I scoffed. “Why me, stuck with the dirty work?”

  Marty grinned his cat-like grin. “You’re the security guard, aren’t you? Didn’t you tell me once you did—”

  “Yeah, yeah, let’s skip the little Red Riding Hood story.”

  “You were always good with B & E. I’m a better bullshitter and better at messing up wise guys, you know it.”

  I looked at him in wonder, seeing where this was going.

  “Relax, this is what we’re going to do, Rusco. We camo our faces, go in like cats, knock out their surveillance system. Those cams they have are ancient tech like everything on this scumbucket planet. CCTV, or something like that.”

  “Nighttime heists are tricky, Marty.” My voice wavered between the condescending and serious.

  He shook his head. “There won’t be a ‘nighttime’. I’ve been staking them out. The contra-crews and loader-boys work nights. Daytime, just a dumb fuck bunch of skeleton crew guards. Sleepy types, nothing ever happens during the day in Baer’s yard. We go in in broad daylight.”

  “And transpo? You still haven’t told me what your plan is for that. What are we going to do, fly there on our pink little wings? We’re going to need a van or something to go in and truck out a load.”

  “You kidding me? A truck parked on the side of the road is a red flag, asking for attention, conspicious as doggy-do.”

  “Scooter then,” I said with irritation. “We hide it somewhere in the grass and foot it the rest of the way.”

  “Better. From what I gather, this contraband is not needing a lot of horsepower to move it. We can always snag some wheels along the way.”

  “I’ll think it through,” I said. I bridled my doubts, clamped my jaw shut, cradling chin in my hands.

  Chapter 2

  We took an electric three-wheeler with high chopper handlebars a buddy of Marty’s had stored up on the end of the old U-line in his equipment yard. I made Marty sit in the back, be the bitch for once, indicated we’d hide it in the ditch when we got closer. The wheels rolled up on the hardtop which turned to gravel as we snaked along the river. More fenced yards, larger plants, disused factories, metal-pressing mills, boatyards. Not much of anything here away from the smelly, dirty city that was Hoath. Abandoned warehouses, loading docks, crane and metal factories, food packing companies, you name it, suppliers and distributers of every manufactured product one could imagine. The river wound itself tightly alongside a service road behind those complexes, black, slimy water that back in times of older generations used to carry cargoes into town. I felt a desolate unease wash over me. The memories of old sin and dark doings lingered about these tumbledown bastions of yesteryear. Again, that nagging feeling pricked at me, of regretting I had taken on this job.

  Now the river was fouled with contaminants and garbage, thick oily water that no respectable fish would be caught dead in. I looked in wonder at the sight of the makeshift shelters and wanderers dressed in tattered khaki or lumberjack shirts, with hand-made rods casting out for fish. I shuddered to think what they’d catch.

  Marty tapped my shoulder and pointed at the looming warehouse. We slowed up. Beyond a fenced yard two large, gray-muzzled Behusian hounds yanked at their rusty chains by the cement block outbuilding. I didn’t like the beasts’ incessant yapping, so I moved away and ditched the three-wheeler, hiding it in the weeds while Marty did his best to usher me along.

  We walked past that place and stared at the next yard, Baer’s yard, where the docking crane lay and the chain-wired fence, and ugly looking cinder-block, prison-like warehouse with its equally rundown outbuildings.

  “This is it?”

  Marty opened palms in what looked like a mock apology.

  “Seems kind of dumb, Baer having this kind of setup for something this big.”

  Marty’s lips hooked in a knowing grin. “All part of the act, Rusco. Small security crew means nothing worth stealing. The bigger players don’t bother. Works well, costs them less, and doesn’t draw attention.”

  “Whatever you say, Marty.” I’d only met Q once, and didn’t like the man, that big shaggy mother of a criminal, with a dirty cigar hanging out of his mouth, brown teeth, b.o. and a shifty gaze.

  Marty stabbed a finger over toward the far side closest to the river. “Right, we jump a ride over there.”

  “Okay, you can work on ‘jumping a ride’. One of those air speeders?”

  “I don’t know, there may be something inside you can nab that’s better.”

  I shrugged. “I’m liking this less and less, Marty. Shoddy planning, it means somebody gets killed.”

  “Relax, Ruskie. You always worry too much.” He patted me on the back, again a little too hard. “Let’s go with the flow. This is a hot lead I’ve privileged your ears with. We’ve got a few hours’ lead on any other hustlers Q decides to spread the news to.”

  I rounded on him, my teeth bared. “So, why doesn’t big Q do this thing himself, instead of pissing this lead your way?”

  “Q’s done with Hoathville. Too many enemies here. He’ll call in his favor to me at some time. But by that time, I hope to be long gone.” He gave me that moony grin I knew too well and rubbed his chin as a flicker of past dealings came and went across that swarthy face of his. “Okay, I’ll let you in on a secret, Rusco. Word is ‘what’s going down in Baer’s crib is bigger than Lwippi’s spread back in ‘82’. Those were Q’s exact words.”

  My eyes dulled. “Woo, think I’m going to faint with excitement.”

  In the end I agreed to give the scope-out a shot, though I was ready to call it quits right there. Much against my better judgment, I contemplated the wire fence, ignoring that little nagging voice in the back of my head, the one that says, you stupid horse’s ass, Rusco, what are you thinking? The promise of riches to a man in a hard place though, was a hypnotic lure outweighing risk.

  Baer had taken over an old welding shop. A long rectangular building—white-washed cement blocks with tall twin brick chimneys missing several pieces. Rusted metal lay ripped off the outbuildings. Some dingy cargo-holders, transports, v-gauge Cessnas with wings clipped, fly-trucks, auto-meltzers, rusty cranes, some loading docks peeked around the edges. Probably a variety of stolen goods and contraband inside, worthwhile metal parts, salvageable electronics, fuels, explosives. Baer was likely a middle man for some bigger fish up the line. Okay, I was intrigued.

  One guard was way down the other end. From where we crouched by the service gate in the gravel, I could see him pacing by the wall, machine gun in hand. No dogs that I could see, fortunately. Just a single sentry.

  I looked across the dark thatch of river and caught the rise and fall of heavy metal arms, moving rigs. Migrant workers toiled in the fields there, shipped in from Escaron to work those oil rigs and the strip mines. Many died there, but that was life. A source of cheap labor and cash to boot and work for them. Hard to believe, but a better place for those migrants than the war-torn planets from where they had come. Marty interrupted my reverie.

  “What I figure is we take the guard down, blast the door with that dynamite I told you to bring.”

  “Or maybe not,” I grunted. “It ain’t dynamite either. Pipe down, I’m trying to think.”

 
Marty grumbled, his fists curled.

  When the guard was well down the length of the wall doing his marching soldier routine, I aimed my R4 with its muzzled silencer and took out the main camera with a single, well-aimed shot. No more sound than the buzz of an angry bee.

  Marty blinked. “Why not just shoot the guard too?”

  “I got something against murder.”

  Marty snorted. “Give me the gun.”

  I pulled the weapon back from him and gave him a sullen stare. “Save your groping for your boyfriend.”

  Marty shook his head, muttering some disparaging comment.

  We checked our earpieces. We were still in good working order. Marty donned the black ski-mask; I settled for soot on my cheeks, not that either would save us if it came to a firefight.

  Killing the guard early on would be bad for us. First off, Marty was all too impulsive. If he thought the guard was down, he might get some cock-eyed idea, get careless and think he could slack off and just blast his way to the spoils. I didn’t feel like getting myself killed the first five minutes into our heist. Nor did I like the restless way Marty got up and started pacing from side to side. It was sloppy, and sloppiness meant disaster. More practical reasons were self-evident: cameras maybe I had missed. A dead body bleeding out on the tarmac. The other thing is that sometimes these solitary guards were wired such that if their vitals failed, it sent a signal to a command post higher up that something had gone wrong.

  I was banking that nobody was checking that camera very often, if Marty’s information was to be believed. Our faces were covered, so nobody could ID us. I checked the kit strapped at my waist: pry tool, custom glock, penlight, blaster, explosives, medicaments, other useful knickknacks.