by Chris Turner
I glided down to the refueling-docking station where I had left Starrunner, a big sun-bleached yard with two mid-size control towers and four rusty hangars. Glad I’d paid my twenty yols to secure it—safe for a little while at least. Anything over two days wasn’t guaranteed, neither here nor at any approved docks on this planet.
I set the stolen speeder down in a designated landing zone and hobbled up to the security guard at Hangar 3. I gave the gate security guard my most disarming smile. He gave me the once-over, frowning at my blackened and bruised appearance and tattered clothing, but after positive ID, he let me pass.
My ship, a sleek and gray Alpha 9 had a rough diamond shape at rear with ox horn-shaped prow at front—a balm for my soul. Many adventures we’d shared together. She’d gotten me out of jams before.
Several other ships were berthed nearby, from the dingiest rustbuckets this side of Vega, to a few Alpha retrofit models with double-flared ion thrusters, cigar fuselages and weapons defense to boot. I couldn’t help but admire these vessels despite my haggard state, beauties in their own right in this day and age. One fine morning I’d graduate to a Kepler 350 or a Hexler 410 A2.
Stay focused, Jet.
The hatch peeled back after I fumbled the controls at the side. I’d rewired the thumbprint ID-pad to bypass the scan, in case my thumbs were less than thumbs.
I ducked into the hatch and stumbled to the bridge, fired up my eagle. I reached below the console and took a bottle, downed a chug of Astra whiskey to loosen me up. Then another. I needed something to take the edge off my agony when I started to really come down off the Myscol. I patted the console with all her lit-up sensors and the extra upgrades I’d installed over the years. A better version of the battle hound older models. Self-refueling, drawing the radiant energy from suns when she came close to one, replenishing the Radium-Cesium ion thrusters and wafer cells. It had less range on impulse power and less speed at sub-warp, but it saved me a lot of grief, and yols, in risking refueling at some redneck, outer-planetary dock.
As the sallow sky grew flat, stars tinkled at the edge of my vision. I heard whispering voices in my head over the hum of the engines as Starrunner passed through the clouds. Hoath became a faraway memory. A stab of bright light licked out from the sun Tiga then disappeared as I arched into planetary shadow, then the blackness of space.
At this point I’m wondering what the hell am I doing? Why pursue this gig, Rusco? Are you a masochist?
Smartest thing would be to get out of the Phaedra sector as fast as I could. To where? Beleron 6? Mixraen? Both planets were safe—relatively speaking. Mixraen, one of the less shabby worlds where I could get this knee looked after without being at risk of infection or some botch-up. The throbbing had receded to a dull ache but that likely wasn’t going to go away soon.
Thing was, Starrunner wasn’t protected from pot-shot hunters. Easy for Baer and his goons to do a hyperclasson trace on the heat signature, if they so desired. Triangulate from last vector before light speed. I’d have to jump worlds to give them the slip.
With such thoughts crowding my mind, I programmed the Varwol light drive for Mixraen, in the meantime coasting on steady impulse power toward Brisis’s moon, knowing I’d have to clear planetary gravity before I could risk engaging the light drive.
I gazed with pride upon my rack of guns, from small pistol to semi-automatic RX series to Uzi to remodeled AK to modern high-blaster. A weapon for every day of the week. Even experimental ray guns at the end of the rack. But I tended to go for the older-generation guns. Call me a traditionalist.
My attention drifted back to the view in space. Several monstrous cylinders hovered before me. I eased past the now hulking derelict remnants of ancient planetary defense systems, orbiting Brisis. Their nuclear powerplants had winked out of existence ages ago, their pulse ray cannons, at one time able to destroy star cruisers, now iced and inert. Many half shorn barrels looked back at me. Though hollow and scavenged by junkers or freelancers for parts, they still sent shivers down my spine.
A blip appeared on my sensor readouts. I frowned. A bright object reeled in behind the nearest cylinder. At first I thought it was the actual derelict coming to life.
But no. Raiders! Clinging to the underside, piggy-backing off the defense probes like tics, eluding my sensors.
The klaxon rang from the overhead bulkhead and Molly’s computerized voice began beating out an insistent monotone, “Red alert. Enemy in pursuit. Pulser waves to hit in five seconds.”
What the bloody hell! They weren’t active when I flew down to this god-forsaken planet.
I activated shields and banked Starrunner in a steep dive away from the pulse beams arching my way. It gave me a few more seconds. But the impact grazed the starboard thruster and sent me in a tailspin. Shit! The Varwol couldn’t engage this close to planetary gravity, so I was scuppered.
“Great, Molly. Skgurian raiders? What this time?”
“Databanks report high probability of Skgurian origin.”
Two more bogies popped up out of nowhere on my short range scanners. Three old, refitted craft with high stems, bullet noses and gray bodies. No match for Starrunner on a good day, but a risk now with her in a side slew. I maxed out the stabilizers and with help of the ship’s computer, managed to pull her out of her tailspin. “Molly! Lock weapons on their engines, now!”
“Affirmative.”
As the forerunner gained ground, I caught a glimpse of the raider’s forecannon. Large and lethal. Nothing less than heat-seeking missiles, spiked cubes with wicked guiding systems. They’d pulse Starrunner to immobility, then blow me open like a tin can with one of their torpedoes, with the added bonus of being able to scavenge at their leisure with the crew dead.
My mind worked in furious calculation. Raiders as these went for the small fry like myself and left the big freighters alone—the big cargo transports moving world to world selling their ores, raw materials and contraband on less impoverished worlds than Hoath.
The Skgurian stalkers turned on an intercept course. I sent out a high-energy fareon beam, after Molly had done the math. The first enemy craft careened left too late as concentrated pulser made contact with metal, and a bright orange ball burst outside my starboard viewport.
I cheered. The lights dimmed and reserve power took a hit, and the shields took a beating upon the return fire. But the other two banked off.
I struggled to gain control of the fluctuating sensors. “T minus 10 to escape window,” Molly droned. Like slow leaps into infinity, the seconds ticked by. Just as the next spiked missile came a ghost’s breath away, the Varwol kicked in, and the universe slipped sideways. Colored lights dazzled my visual space, a million sparkles of bright light licked out at me from the void ahead. Then blackness. Starrunner had entered the no-zone of singularity. Running again. Rusco’s signature.
Yet something was off. The last hit must have damaged the singularity stabilizers. My heart did a dive.
Odd thing about warp is that sound is often distorted. One’s movements seemed blurred around the edges, as if reality is skewed, impinged by an external force. A human hand moves a little too late, or an extra finger appears on that hand but it’s just a blur of five fingers moving at once. The mobilitor’s tech corrected and tried to adjust for the time-dilation effect, but even that was never infallible and created little glitches of speech and movement. Exaggerated now with the mobilitors impaired.
“Molly, do something.”
“Mobit tech at 82% and dropping. High impulse beam was sustained by shield at 40%. Compensating.”
“Do what you can!”
A sudden dark thought edged my mind. I clawed at my pant’s pocket. Still there. I grabbed a soft cloth and extracted the phaso and lay the disc on the bridge console with extreme care.
The object sat there in its weird way, shimmering with a dull iridescence. I eyed it as a tiger might eye a steel-rimmed trap. Something about the thing did not seem natural, or of any human world, with
its unreadable script and its strange symbols writ along the curve’s inner edge. Hieroglyphics? Numbers? Coordinates? I shook my head. Inscribed on the light hyperbarsol they reeked of heavy mystery. I daren’t touch the script, for it looked as if it might be where the last schmuck had fingered it, and gone into hyperspace.
I shivered, moved the evil talisman into a metal strongbox I kept in the storage bulkhead. I closed the box with a loud clack and stuck it under the console. A spasm of pain rippled through my knee. My hand reached down, clutched at the bulged rent in my leather spaceman’s garb that covered my quivering kneecap, aching and swollen.
The hydrophane from the Myscol was wearing off. Spidery pain crawled up my leg with a ripple effect, from shin to knee. I stumbled to the medicine cabinet, biting back curses, fingers arching for that place where I kept my stash of get-well drugs. My hands shook as I reached for the little pink bottle, the one I saved for special occasions. That I’d distilled from a home blend of morphine and dyzanol. I refrained from another shot of Myscol, knowing well the next jolt would send me into cardiac arrest. Muscle up, Jet boy. Stomach your pain.
Fingers beaded with sweat, I stuck a wooden rod between my teeth and champed down hard.
Eyes glued to the sensors, I watched the Varwol integrity dip down to 62%. But it held. Movement was tricky in this syrupy warp and repairs impossible. As long as it didn’t get below 40% before the next planet, I was okay. If it did…ship and crew would disappear into a singularity.
I cruised for hours, maybe days, enjoying the silence of deep light travel, warring with old thoughts, aware of a nagging feeling brewing at the back of my skull. Something about this situation seemed worse than past ones—a shadow zone, as if I were staring in the black pit of the unknown. I really didn’t know what my next step was, something unusual for Jet Rusco. Calm, cool, phlegmatic Rusco of the dark pool of scammers and avengers, with a million cons all ready to go. To have survived them thus far, had given me a richer confidence than I deserved. A dangerous place to be. It was a bubble waiting to be burst. That grand bungle in Hoath had been the first warning; staring down death, not once but twice. It had shaken the belief in my invulnerability, got me thinking.
Thirty-nine going on eighty, melting into the wasteland of middle age. I wasn’t getting any younger. The creaks in my spine were getting all too loud and more frequent. The lithe pliancy, the hard muscle that had once moved fast and rattled so many heads had toned down a peg.
The warning sensor came back and Molly’s shrill voice seeped into my brain like a bullet shredding chipboard.
“Systems failure. Port wing stabilizer. Varwol disengaging. T minus 6. Impulse power at 10%.”
“Molly, you doom-monger! Where the hell are we?”
“Minos sector, The Orion Zone. Coordinates T56.988234—”
“Alright, nowheresville. Target the closest habitable planet.”
“Affirmative. Planetary gravity field affecting compromised Varwol.” She brought up the nearest planetary datasheet on the holo display. A dusty world, of shell-shocked craters within range. Estimated indigenous population: 12,000.
“Great, okay, make for it. What is it?”
“Talyon 8A. Terraformed planet settled in the second wave of the settlers’ rush, circa 2945.67.123—”
“Yeah, yeah.” The fourth planet showed as a pale saffron disc in orbit around Silirus, the bright orange star dead ahead. The nearby planet’s gravity was too much for the drive. The Varwol fluttered to a halt, leaving me on impulse, caught within grappling distance of Talyon’s gravity. The main thrusters, already compromised, shuddered under the tidal grab, not potent enough to steer me clear.
I guided the ship as best I could down through the colorless atmosphere. Even that was rocky. Starrunner couldn’t stay in the air.
I picked the straightest strip of sand I could find, between two massive mountains of what looked like monstrous garbage piles, and what looked like massive pits beyond them. I kept the nose high, tightening the straps securing me in the pilot’s chair.
Starrunner’s fuselage heated up to a red blur. Ship sensors warned me of further failures. I shut them off.
The ship ground its gray underbelly along the alien turf as I bashed along and watched my fragile existence flash before my eyes. No regrets, Rusco, none. Though there should have been a thousand.
The grinding of pebbles against the hull came to a screeching apex; the buffeting, rocking knocked my brain about, as I was jostled and jerked until blackness stole over my mind.
Chapter 6
I jerked up with a gasp, passing a hand over my brow. It came back crimson from a throbbing gash. Some loose object must have whacked me on the skull.
Blood dripped down my cheek. I blinked through the porthole at a giant mound of reddish-black crud and scummy earth glaring back at me. Whiplash, bruises and aching joints strobed in and out with red welts where the straps had held me. No broken bones. The ship’s interior functions blinked in nominal condition. Better condition than what I expected. Emergency lights bathed a pale glow over the power console and sensors kept bleeping.
The pilot panel flashed like something out of a gamer’s session and dust particles hung thick in the air. The ship was useless to me with the drive so impaired. Nor was I any ace mechanic. I counted the seconds as I drifted in and out of crash daze. I could sit there like a grinning statue, pretending none of this had ever happened, or I could get up and brave the elements. At some point I would have to, as my supplies were not inexhaustible. The sooner the better. My eyes traveled to the surplus space suit hanging from the wall. I visualized the sustenance I would have to gather up, stumbling about on an alien world. But who knew what horrors lurked out there? Sucking in another gasp of air, I hitched off my safety straps and collapsed to the metal-grated floor before groping to my knees and picking myself up to hobble across the bridge. The pain clutched at the heart of my nerve centers.
Readout showed a breathable atmosphere, a few decimals shy of 38 Celsius. Damn, hot out there. Terraformed likely centuries ago. But a bad feeling brewed in my gut. Shaking my head, I grabbed an R4 blaster, part Uzi, part modern tech, from the weapons rack close-by and opened the hatch. Dull sunlight struck my eyes. I staggered out, wincing, feeling the haze of disorientation.
Starrunner’s fuselage smoked. I swayed on unsteady feet, struck by the heat wave. I closed the hatch, rolled up my sleeves, made the mistake of grazing the gleaming metal while keeping my balance. “Ouch, you fucking mother—” My wild curse fell on dead air. I shook out my hand.
A sandy lane disappeared around a bend between massive piles of twisted junk. Behind, a sandy streak where my smoking ship had skidded to an unceremonious halt. This looked like a vast human-made dump. Broken plastics, twisted metal, pipes, culverts, wires, charred wood, every bit of refuse I could imagine. An old dusty reek filled my nostrils, as if the cloud of slow decay had floated over here for generations. No rain had fallen here for what, decades? The dryness had ground decomposition to a halt. I reached out, touched a hank of metal, a lance-edged piece from the bumper of an old ground vehicle. The metal seemed little rusted for the time it had spent here.
The Veglos system and all the rest of the galaxy had gone to hell, but did I have to get marooned on a shit pile like this?
What were these giant mounds of garbage? Not just ass-wiping little dungcock heaps you see on the satellite, five and dime feeder worlds, but giant mounds. Miles of them. An ecological disaster. Not that it mattered much considering my plight on this forsaken world.
Sound to my left. A flicker of movement. I ducked behind a small heap of mangled wires and prosthetic robot parts, gripping my R4, my senses on high alert.
Two figures emerged, one tall, one short. They carried no weapons that I could see, only what looked like a Geiger counter held in the hands of the older, taller man. I blinked, shaking my head of the cobwebs.
“Billy,” the older one croaked in an excited voice, “looks as if we’
ve found our pot of gold. The sounder has found our fortune.” His loose tan-brown desert rags drooped from neck to toe. “There, just like I said! A downed craft. Yahoo!” He slapped his thighs in glee, stabbed a finger of triumph at my ship, the place where she smoked and crackled.
The boy, no more than fifteen, jumped up and down like a sidekick, did a kind of jig like one of those crazy panhandlers I see back at Hoath.
“Careful, Billy,” the man warned. “This thing could be booby-trapped.” He pulled the teen away with a determined hand. He looked ready to cry.
I narrowed my brows. Whoever these halfwits were, I was at a low melting point with an itchy trigger. As the older fellow blinked and set down his metal detector on the hot sand, he gave my ship a careful inspection and reached within his rags, withdrew a tool of some sort to tinker with the outer hatch.
A small smile touched my lips. Good luck, pops, getting in that titanium-sealed—
My jaw dropped as the door slid open and the old man gave a victorious chuckle. The alarm sounded, a piercing intermittent klaxon whose lows and highs dripped with Molly’s anticlimactic warning,
“Intruder alert, intruder alert!”
I cringed. So did my guests who stared around wild-eyed, as if monsters were ready to eat their brains. The old man’s eyes kindled in desperation and he fiddled with the cowling trying to disable the alarm.
No luck. I gripped my R4, ready to blast these two desert rats. They’d invaded the one sacred place left to me in this big universe. Another voice called out a throaty drawl that made me pause.
“Back off, weasels! Mine first.” The figured motioned the narrow bore of her rifle at them. Youngish to middle age, bowlegged, dressed in worn leathers, goggles strapped tight as protective eyeware against the sun, she was a sight to behold, legs set wide in an aggressive stance.
The old man turned with care and put a restraining arm around Billy’s shoulder. Seemed the boy was keen on running out and getting himself shot. He snarled like a vicious animal, like some wolverine I’d seen on the nature holo-feed.