by Chris Turner
That feeling that grips you when you’re forced to make a quick decision in a time of trouble. Take Path A or Path B. The path through the woods on the tried and true trail, or that unknown animal path down by the lake you’ve never been to. Step right up, folks, sign your name on the dotted line in blood. The bad feeling that had been lurking in the pit of my stomach just suddenly jerked up a notch.
“Aw, screw me!” Acid boiling to my throat, I cranked the wheel hard, front tires spitting gravel. The flatbed broke through the rickety steel gate, and I pulled up to the loading docks.
Stumbling out of the vehicle, panting, I kicked open the rusty door of the warehouse with my good leg. Cursing, I tucked my hands in my sleeves. With hands shielded, I dragged the foreign parallel-plate gadget into the gloom, dropped it into a storeroom with only bats and mice flitting about. The place smelled of dung and mildew, but I didn’t care. Hadn’t been used in years. I pushed the tech deeper into the shadows and covered it with some old mildewed battered skids and tarps. One brown rat with pointed snout jumped out with a baleful stare and squeaked. Knock yourself out, rodent. Get blasted to oblivion, if you like. I limped out to the flatbed and gunned the engine, churning gravel all the way.
Forget Marty. Got to get to my ship.
I drove toward the outskirts of Hoath, following the main road. I must have driven for miles before I became aware of little oncoming traffic.
Warning bells chimed in my mind. What the hell? Minutes ago, only an odd lorry had passed, probably carrying dubious cargo. I didn’t know the side roads. Might have to run some detours, which was a bad thing. My leg tingled to the barest edge of feeling as the Myscol began to wear off. To drive that piece of junk into the city—was not ideal.
The flatbed rattled over the top of a hill. Ahead and below, I saw flashing lights. A blockade of some sort: steel girders, surface cars, a few air speeders and milling figures. No way! Men in uniform, hailing down traffic, and detaining and searching vehicles. My mind raced. Baer’s work? Coincidence?
Baer’s boys must have called in for reinforcements—which meant I was meat if I didn’t quit this scene.
I slammed on the brakes and did a full 180. An air speeder looped out after me, its airhorn piercing the stillness and scaring a flock of ducks with long spoonbill beaks. Those horseshoe-shaped air speeders looked like local law. Could Baer’s reach run so deep?
I screeched down a gravelled side road. The lights flashed as an official police van lurched after me from the blockade. Now I was up shit creek. This clunker wouldn’t hold up to air pursuit and souped-up cop van. In desperation, I cranked the wheel hard and ran her into the fields.
Not wise. The ground was wet and soggy with a recent rain. The engine whined at max rpm, tires spinning in the black mud. The van halted and two burly figures leaped out who looked none too pleased, grimacing through their beards. I could see their faces set and rifles in their hands. The air speeder came bearing down on me.
I bolted the doors, clutched my glock, but they smashed through the glass and hairy hands pulled me out onto the wet grass. I struggled, getting off a wild shot, but losing my grip on my gun, as it was kicked out of my grasp.
“You rotten prick,” I bawled. “Pick on someone your own size.”
“Funny man at two o’clock, Roy. Spike him.”
I still had some juice left in me from the Myscol and I kneed the bastard in the chest just as he bent down to clobber me with his rifle. These thugs were keen on taking me alive, otherwise they would have peppered me long ago. Wrestling, I jammed his weapon in his face, breaking his nose and mashing an eye. He howled and went down in the mud, clutching at the ruin of his face. His partner reached to help him as I staggered off.
The air speeder disgorged three air guards. Husky, military boys. They looked royally pissed, a mean bunch, though nothing more than mercenaries paid to patrol and beat down whomever their employers told them to—which in this case must be Baer. I could see the blue decals with the hunting eagle on the underbelly of the craft. Not that that meant anything, the insignia of city air guards.
Rat-a-tat-tat, Three men and a rat. The rhyme worked in rhythm with the slugs that ate into the flatbed.
I wasn’t going out without a fight. I pulled out a large hand-sized explosive from my waist kit. Tossed it at the air speeder. The marshals shielded themselves but I was the only one to duck in time.
Marshals and air speeder went up in a roaring flame.
I heard voices through the haze and smoke as I struggled through the wet sod.
“Nothing in the back!” cried one of the van riders. “No amalgos.”
“What the fuck? Where’s the amalgo? Where’s that shitweasel with the bombs?”
I grinned as I hobbled away. One came loping after me through the smoke, grunting again. “Where’s the bloody amalgo?”
“Up your ass, fucker. Eat shit.”
A billyclub came smashing down on my head and I knew no more.
Chapter 4
I passed from world to world, from past to present, in a kaleidoscope of fact and fiction. My disembodied self hovered above the floor that dim day out working as a security guard over at Crystal Mindworks Ltd. Days when I entertained a notion of upholding some law-keeping role in society. Five thugs busting down the door, wearing masks.
The beat down of the guards, Frenzetti and Markus, my friends, slain in front of my eyes. Two shots clipping from my R9, one killing the first, point blank, the other sending a lowlife writhing on his back. A bullet grazing by my ear. Stumbling out the side alley, my ears ringing, blood pouring down my scalp. My one thought was to get out of here while others roved about, knowing that the bungling would be pinned on me as an accomplice. Why were you the only one left after the robbery, Rusco? Trying to start the air speeder to get out there, start fresh on a new world. Taking other softer jobs offworld, working star carrier baggage, playing bouncer, pawn shop security, construction crew, you name it, but it only got worse—the violence, the murder, the theft, always catching up to me, as if I were some beacon for it, with a dark cloud hovering over my soul, plunging me deeper into a nightmare of illusion. The drinking becoming more intense, the only way to drown the pain, until Mela at last left me.
Dreams have the uncanny knack of telling us hard dark truths about ourselves.
When that saw edge of reality surfaced, so began my slow descent down the road ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. My looking for crime as a quick means to an end, flirting with its seductive narcotic, searching for the one big score that would never happen.
I came to, with the smell of sweat and machine oil in my nose. Some rough hands dragging me across the cement floor. In a dingy hall lit with fluorescent lights the familiar smell hit me. I groaned. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s fuckbuddy if I wasn’t back in that shithole warehouse.
Then I discerned the sounds of a beat-down. A familiar voice. Quiet, child-like, mixed with thudding sounds like a metal pipe whacked on flesh. Only because it came through a steel door left slightly ajar did it sound surreal, like something out of a cartoon. The two goons thrust me in. I rolled on a bare concrete floor, blinking like the bedraggled wretch I was.
I took one look at Marty beside me and knew things had gone very wrong. His haggard face resembled a terrified mask. He mouthed words “had to scram or give away your position.”
Marty sagged as a meaty fist clipped him in his well-purpled face. With two black eyes and lips messed up, it explained why I couldn’t recognize that voice right away.
The man who’d clipped him turned his burning gaze upon me. I had seen wild animals in the zoo less feral and repulsive than that aberration who stood before me. Everything about the thug screamed bear. A shaggy ruff of black hair like the fur of a large predator coated head and arms. Wide sideburns covered his cheeks, his bared forearms exposed by rolled-up sleeves. Wide-spaced beady eyes and mallet fists. A mouthful of shark teeth. Easily could have been the most hideous creature I’d seen. S
ome modern-day mutant? Or one who’d experimented with, or OD’d on too many modern day transfigurative drugs and lost the fight?
“Welcome, Mr. Rusco,” the man growled in his husky voice. “Glad you could make our little appointment.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” I spat blood, along with a tooth.
“You know who I am?”
“Mr. Magoo from the Metro Zoo. Dunno, don’t care.”
He flashed my long-nosed captor a meaningful look.
Long Nose grunted. “Busted up Floss and Bix real good. They won’t be walking too soon. Vin’s Air speeder took a hit. Some little incendiary he had up his sleeve. No amalgo.”
The man sighed, a murmur of grave amusement. “Clown Hair, you’ve been a busy boy. Care to enlighten us on the whereabouts of my amalgo?”
“Dunno anything about any amalgo.”
He paced the room, his lips getting cold and stiff, his teeth flashing as if ready to bite someone’s head off. “That’s funny. Fario, who lies with half his arm hanging off, claimed he saw one in the flatbed you crashed through my warehouse.”
“Fario sounds like a man with an overactive imagination.”
He jerked a thumb at Long Nose. “Clown Hair thinks he’s gonna word-play his way out of this.” He turned to me. “You know, one of the amalgos is no good without the other.”
“Do I give a fuck?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he echoed in wonder.
“Sure, Baer,” Marty slurred through a broken nose. “We do.”
“Mr. Baer to you.” He growled, turning his feral gaze on Marty. “Some clients of mine are going to be sorely pissed when they ask me where their amalgo is and I say, “beats me, Will, a couple of wise-guys broke in and stole it.”
“That’s a hard thing to have to say,” Marty wheezed. “I can understand, Mr. Baer. Rusco’s just bargaining for his life is all, aren’t you, Jet?”
Baer smiled and shook his head with a sad laugh. “I’ll ask you again, where’s the amalgo?”
One of Marty’s eyes had swollen shut. “I’m just the dog-boy here, Baer. If you want to pull somebody’s legs off, you’re looking at the wrong guy. Ask, Jet.”
“Like this sack of shit’s going to tell us anything?” Baer snarled. He flashed a pistol and held it to my head. “This fuck looks as if he couldn’t blow himself out of a paper bag. Last chance, Marty. You’re ribbing with the wrong man, with this, ‘ask Jet, shit’.”
“That’s rich, boss,” guffawed Long Nose. He gave Marty a jab in the ribs with his truncheon that had him groaning.
“Shut up,” growled Baer. “If I want you to open your mouth, I’ll rattle my zipper.”
I twitched, almost wanting to laugh. Marty, the faithless fucker. He was going to sell me to the dogs before long with his good-guy talk. I could see the yellow look in his eye. Fuck Marty. I’d have to rely on my own devices to live through this. The hoodlums seemed sure of themselves to have kept us unbound. They wouldn’t kill me as long as I knew where their amalgo was. Torture, yes, but there was the Myscol. What was Marty’s game? Was he done playing sycophant, giving up his only leverage of having something of worth they wanted? Unless, of course, Marty was being trickier still with his old good guy, bad guy routine. My mind was not thinking straight. I was in shock from the last ten hits to my skull.
Marty was stalling, always good at that, mixing fact with fiction, hopefully creating possibilities out of thin air to keep the enemy guessing and scratching his head. That it would stall Baer long enough before one of us could break out of here, was another thing. Marty wasn’t looking as if he could hack too much more.
“Search him,” Baer said.
“Already did. We found this little phaso on him. This big explosive too.” My husky captor tossed it to Baer.
Baer nodded. “Got that. Explains the wrecked speeder. Demolitions man, are you?” he said, turning to me.
I smiled.
“Where’s the amalgo? The funny little roboty-looking googad with twin parallel plates. Glows green when armed.”
I tossed back my wavy dyed purple hair, trying for a gambit. Nothing to lose, right? Well, almost right. Sorry for what it cost Marty. I am sorry for that.
The Myscol, still pulsing in my veins, fueled fire to an inner strength we all have but rarely tap into. I’d taken a triple dose, something unheard of—my doctored batch, the one they had no clue I’d taken. It drew them deeper into underestimating me.
Long Nose, on a cue from his boss, stepped in to truncheon me as he had Marty. That was a mistake. My steely fist crashed into his thigh. It’s as close as I could get to the brute. Left a charley horse he wouldn’t forget. He buckled over with a painful rictus and my steel-toed boot caught him in the throat and that made his charley horse look like a love tap. Teeth and blood dripped on the ground with sticky white drool. Nasty scene.
Baer made his move, but I was quicker. I snatched the coin-sized explosive out of his hand, ducked in a drunken roll and tossed it right back at him, just as I armed the detonator.
The white flare caught his right side, lit him up like a candle, as he held up a hand to shield his face. Too late. The blast also caught Marty and singed half his hair and upper cheek off. Me, I was blinded for a second and my left side blood-spattered and burnt. The boss roared like a bear, clutching at his burning arm, shorn at the elbow. He’d mend it with some bio-regen, if he hurried. Doubted he had any on him at the moment.
The shaggy man staggered for the side door, coughing blood through the smoke. How he did so was beyond me; the man must not be human. I pocketed the phaso he’d dropped, grabbed Marty, and stumbled after.
I hauled Marty’s sorry ass out of that burning, smoking death crib, lips curling in crazed grin at Baer’s tumult. We stumbled through the gaping ruin of the loading dock. Across the tarmac we beetled like a couple of twisted scarecrows. An air speeder and two lorries stood out back of a communications tower surrounded by wire fencing. Screw the lorries. Useless against air attack. That air speeder looked like a heavenly prize, especially since it was one of Baer’s.
I hopped around the other side of it with Marty all gasping and limping. The first parked vehicle shielded us from the machine gun fire that would have cut us in two. We scrambled back, ducking to the rat-a-tat-tat of stray bullets. I clawed open the speeder door, hopped in, as machine gun fire clipped the tail fins.
I pulled Marty in head down and dove behind the wheel.
Kicking the throttle full on, I veered straight up, as black smoke and pressure gauges plummeted. “Come on, baby!” I roared. “Get us out of here before old man Baer grows wings. To the air depot.”
“We ain’t gonna make it, Rusco,” rasped Marty, caressing his soot-grimed cheek and ruined ear that oozed fluids.
I grimaced at the sight and smell of his burned flesh. “Sure we will, Marty. Shut up. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Course we’ll make it.”
For the first time I got a good look at Marty and shivered at what I saw. His lank mustard-colored hair was coated in slick dark fluid. His breath wheezed in and out like a terminal smoker. Coagulated blood caked the side of his head and his right arm spasmed.
“You okay?” A dumb question that I wished I hadn’t asked.
He held up a quivering hand and grimaced through his pained, red-rimmed eyes. “Had better days.”
“Helluva ride.”
“Helluva ride. Didn’t by any chance snatch up that little phaso of his before Baer was grasping for pieces of his arm?”
“Not particularly.” Lies were easy to spill out of my mouth. The disc was a death curse and Marty wasn’t up for what was next.
“Uh huh. Guess we could end up with nothing then after all.”
“Guess so.”
Marty closed his eyes and lay back his slick head against the headrest as the air speeder sputtered along, trailing a stream of ugly black smoke. The engine growled and hiccupped. It wouldn’t stay airborne for long. Below us, the city came into view
in all its grisly glory: broken water towers, bombed-over apartment complexes, crumbled buildings, checkerboard smokehouse slums.
“Listen, I have to set us down somewhere. We can’t be caught again.”
A long pause. Marty shook his head. “Ain’t leaving Hoath, Rusco. You’re bad luck to me. Don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Don’t blame you, Marty. I can get you fixed up on Starrunner.”
“Forget it.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Drop me at the nearest U-ground link,” he croaked. “I’ll catch a ride downtown.”
“Dammit Marty, let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to say, Rusco.”
I shrugged. Marty was a proud man. I couldn’t blame him for despising me. The job was a cockup, we’d almost gotten killed, and in his mind, I’d screwed up and abandoned him. Perhaps that’s why I had ridden solo for so long.
Marty spat out a wad of blood on the floor at his feet. I veered down over a side street on the outskirts of the Jildaree district, milling with immigrants. One of the main streets would take Marty to the old market, downtown. He could disappear in the underground like a wisp of air. Part of me hated to leave him, but it was his choice.
In his lucid moments, he’d come to see the dark cloud hovering over me, the one that had shadowed my hide for so long now. The old, painful, rat-gnawing wound in my soul that drew danger and mishap like a moth to the flame.
“So long, Jet,” he muttered with a tired sigh. His crooked grin had gone cold and brittle.
As I landed in a disused equipment yard, I popped open the door and watched him ease off his seat, leaving a blood trail behind. “So long, Marty. Take care of yourself.”
He limped off into the yard, catching the blinking surprise of many ragged beggars and potheads warming their hands around their fires. I opened my mouth to say something, but thought better of it. I took off into the hazy sky, doubting that despite what Marty said, the poor bastard would make it through the night.
Chapter 5