by Chris Turner
“Move,” she ordered, roaring in a harsher voice, motioning to where a charred single mangle of metal hung out of the smaller mountain of debris.
Grumbling, the two hurried to stand beside a crumpled space cruiser, clinging out of the pile like some squashed insect.
She padded toward the open ship with a slow saunter, and I blinked, getting my senses together, then crept after her, my blaster raised.
“Back away,” she growled. “I get first dibs on this crate, you bumpkins, then you can paw your way over it as much as you like. The grubs’ll be coming out soon. Yes, the crazy boys, and you know what that means.”
She leveled her sawed off black rod, a custom blaster, rigged with flamethrower and bayonet. Peeking into the entrance bay, she nodded in appreciation.
I frowned. What a filthy piece of work. Dirty as sin. Grime all over her skin and face and loose leather jacket and pants and shin-guards. Black, of all colors, in this stifling heat. Yet underneath the grime was a limber female, with lean muscles to boot.
Before she got the bright idea of staking out my ride, I stepped over and called out a pleasantry. “Okay, commander Tomboy, ease back real slow.”
She whirled, lifted her weapon, but misfired a round that whistled inches from my ear. I shot off a slug that nicked the bayonet’s end and made her think twice about another shot.
She held her hands up and let her weapon drop.
“That’s smart. Kick it away,” I said. She did, though with sullen reluctance which irked me, all that lioness pride.
I frisked her from chest to toe and she quivered in rancor. This one didn’t like to be touched, I could tell. Couldn’t blame her.
“You’re wasting your time,” she rasped. “When the crawlers get wind of this little ship, there’ll be nothing left of it.”
The old man clicked his tongue. “Nasty bit of luck, landing here on this planet.”
“Shut up.” I ducked into the hatch, entered the key code that shut Molly’s remorseless voice off and whirled on the skinhead lady who seemed ready to make a move. “Who are these crazy boys you’re talking about?”
She snorted. “You’ll find out soon enough.” I didn’t like the sound of that or the lazy smirk curling across those lush lips, pretty ones in a former life.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She licked her lips with a smirk. “Just wait, fly boy.”
I gave her the once over. She gave me a once over, appraised my gleaming sinew and my doubtful looks.
Not that I was prejudiced or anything. Not my type. Too tomboyish—and dirty. The challenging stare, the tough girl stance, the stiff thrust of hip. A slight swagger that didn’t quite fit her, and that mannish little brush cut—ouch, butch written all over. I wondered what this planet had done to her.
“My suggestion is, lose the butch raven cut,” I grunted.
“What do you know?” she snarled, ducking in a crouch to grab for another weapon I’d missed strapped at her ankle under the dust-grimed black leather.
“Unh uh,” I warned, motioning her up with my weapon, and she rose in slow motion from her cat-like crouch. I confiscated the weapon.
“Well, looks as if we got ourselves a regular standoff here,” said the old man wistfully.
“The hell we do.” I shook my head, flakes of soot dropping, leftovers from the explosion at Baer’s crib. “From my position, you’re looking down the end of a loaded barrel.”
“Maybe,” croaked the man, “but if you want to save your ship, you’ll let Billy and me get it moving to safer ground.” I saw his white mustache bristle and tassel of gray rooster hair twitch. A keen intelligence lurked behind those bushy brows. The boy had a mousy face and busy fingers, and looked as if he had as much brains as two hammers left out in the rain.
I jeered. “What you going to do, get on your hands and knees and carry it to safety?”
“Billy can run back and get a couple of anti gravs, can’t you, Billy? The AGs’ll lift it and we can propel it along with jet thrusters.”
Snot-nose Billy gave an eager nod.
I blinked in new amazement. “Some joke, old man? Last I heard anti-gravs were quite large.”
“Not mine,” he called.
“How far away are these AGs?”
“About half mile back, though I think if you’re thinking of following Billy, it’s a bad idea.”
“Why would I think of that?”
“Just thinking. Billy’s a fast runner.”
I exhaled a long breath, wiping the river of sweat from my forehead.
The woman grunted out a sardonic breezy sound that in no way improved my mood. “Well, now that we’ve got that all sorted, how be we set us up a table and napkins and have some tea and cookies before the mad boy’s join us?”
“Thought they were the ‘crazy boys’—suddenly now they’re the ‘mad boys’?”
“Happy to meet you too, space man. Name’s Wren.” She thrust out a hand.
“Mine’s TK.” The old man stepped forward.
I stared at the two of them—as if I were on a planet of crazies. The heat, the injuries were getting to me. “Rusco,” I snapped with reluctance.
“Well, that’s dandy,” said Wren, rubbing her wrists and clapping her hands. The woman was all smiles and chuckles now.
The old man whispered some energetic words in the kid’s ear who then beetled off down the sand path and disappeared around a curve in the nearest mound and was gone.
“Billy’s a good boy. A little slow on the mark, but dependable.”
“What’s to stop your munchkin from bringing a posse down on me or some other unpleasant surprise?”
“Nothing. What other options you have? Not to worry, Billy doesn’t do stuff like that anyway. Found him hiding under a mound. Burrowed himself deep like a cricket hunting for food. Shivering. His parents had been taken by the mad boys. He had the sense to hide under the refuse and I’ve taken him under my wing ever since.”
“Very touching,” I grunted.
My leg had started to quiver. The older man’s eyes glowed with a trace of curiosity at my discomfort. I hunkered down to massage my burning knee. The blazing heat was making me sweat something awful, as if I had a bad fever. I must have sweat a cup of liquid in the last fifteen minutes. Tongue swelling up in my mouth, I rolled it over my parched lips.
Wren grinned. “What’s the matter, space boy? Rat nip you in the knee?”
“Shut up, for crap sakes!” I lurched to my feet, rounded on her. I glared at the old man. “What if you get the ship skyworthy? I doubt if you’re going to do any favors as a good samaritan?”
He lifted his chin and scratched his neck. “About time I got off this planet. How about transpo to Aldebaran?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“While you’re at it,” called Skinhead. “I could use a lift to the nearest transhub.”
“Like I owe you something?” I turned and glowered at her.
The sun seemed to inch its way across the yellow sky like a big bad ball of fire kindling my insides. Sweat did wonders to help combat the pain. I pulled at my vest, snapping open the buttons, exposing my chest.
The day was long on this forgotten world—double the daylight I was used to.
My leg amped up again and throbbed. I crouched and sprawled in what was a patch of shade. Maybe I drowsed for a second then. My head lolled and I caught the woman creeping up on me with a fist clenched. “Back!” I grunted, motioning my weapon at her. Her slinking frame came to a standstill, and she gave me a forced, sullen grin.
All the time I expected monsters to come jumping out of the garbage and kill us all, like those mad boys they kept yapping about. I picked up on the woman’s apprehension; even the old man was edgy, making me nervous with his shifty feet and eyes darting to the surrounding dungheap. No matter, we’d all just sit tight until somebody showed.
At last, Billy came skipping out of the shimmering heat waves, eyes all a-glimmer, sport
ing a toothy grin like a cat that’s caught a fat mouse. Three rectangular-shaped objects he clutched in his tanned-brown hands.
“That was quick, Billy,” congratulated the old man. “Let me see them.”
The boy returned some words I couldn’t understand. Mumbles, child-like baby sounds. Was he a mute?
TK took the square blocks out of his hands, dug a small hole and fixed them up under the fuselage, one at the front, two at the back. He fired up the power on one and while I hobbled over in curiosity, he rubbed his gnarled hands. “The grav-push is heli-powered, courtesy of good old Silirus.”
He went around and pressed a button on each unit and they folded in a curious way as pressure rotors kicked in and the bottom gripped the sand and the top extended and clamped to the hull. It pushed up on it, like some kind of hydraulic arm. I gaped and stood in awe as the ship levitated two feet off the ground with a blue glow shining off the flattened sand and a similar glow off the underside of the AGs. Some gravo-thrust kept the tons of metal aloft. At least some advanced technology was still alive in these days of collapse. He activated some other gizmo on the side and used the remote control he’d snatched from Billy. It spurted jets of white steam from the AG’s lower flanks and pushed the Starrunner down the sandy ravine like a magno train. Wren and I loped after the old man and his prize.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch—”
Sand dunes curled up to the edges of the mounds on either side.
“About that ride out of here…,” persisted Wren. “Shit! Incoming.”
We’d barely gone fifty feet when the woman dove into the sand drift. The whine of engines roared overhead.
I swore and scrambled for the nearest mini dung pile as a flash bomb flared, nearly singeing my hide and knocking me and snot-nose and the old man off our feet. Luckily the shell had missed Starrunner by a sliver and her reinforced battle plates took the shrapnel.
Two ships came angling out of the sky: lean, grey with cannons locked. I opened my mouth in a startled cry but Wren was already moving. She was skipping under my line of fire before I could do anything and jumping into the hatch. The first ship dropped down in the space between us and the mountain of crud.
I fucking knew it. Baer!
I got to my feet, dazed from the blast. I gimped along, somehow twisting my already savaged leg in the fall. My eyes stung, blinded by the bomb’s flare. The second ship waited in the sky, weapons trained.
“For fuck’s sake!” I was shaking my head, aiming too late before a blaster beam clipped the barrel, and I dropped it as it became sizzling hot.
The man, Baer’s man, wearing helmet and blue body armor, jumped out of the hatch, pointing his blaster at me. “Easy, chief. No stupid moves. Drop the other weapon. Edge back away from the ship.”
“Relax, no need to get excited.” I let the mini-glock that I’d tried to snatch from my belt fall at my toes.
“Move away,” he snarled. Two more emerged from the hatch to stand at either side.
While TK and Billy scuttled sideways like crabs, my mind worked to come up with a plan.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye—some slinking, mummy-wrapped shape. “Dung mite!” I cried, motioning to the pile to the man’s left.
He whirled and with a snarl, shot the head off some grotesque figure dressed in rags in a spray of blood and brains.
I licked my lips. “Good play, chief. Aim for the head, always the best percentage shot. Good thing I’m watching your back.”
“Cut the cute talk, smart man.”
“Let’s cut a deal here,” I wheedled. “You can see I’ve nothing. If I did, think I’d be hanging around with these grubbers?” I made a sweep of hand toward TK and the boy huddled in the refuse. “You go your way, I go mine. Maybe we can come to a solution.”
“You’re a dead man, Rusco. Baer wants you dead, and I do too for wasting Kriegs, plus a cut of the reward money on your head. Rub is, we have to bring you in alive.”
“Isn’t that interesting? I’m suddenly a celebrity. Worth more than Marvin K. Dicks.”
“Shut up. You’re a dead mother fuck—” The right front cannon of Starrunner lifted and a hell of a blast came spitting out from her barrel to fry the man on the spot.
Hot damn, that crafty skinhead knew how to shoot! I rolled as blaster fire came a hair’s breadth from my throat. The two other thugs crouching by the ship, rained fire at anything that moved. Hunched like a beetle, I ran up to the pile, grabbed my weapon, emptied it on the closest merc. He crumpled with a shot-out leg just as the damned mummy people, who I guessed might be the mad boys, crawled over them like ants and the downed ship. Must have poured out from some lizard hole behind the ship. There were thuds of metal on metal, broken glass and screams as mummy flesh met thug flesh. Then followed only the harsh breathing and hillbilly grunts like some redneck rape scene out of a bad horror movie.
Misshapen men, women, or neither, it was hard to tell, came streaming from out of the garbage pits and stinking heaps from all directions, clutching black batons like truncheons, hunks of metal, any weapon they could forage out of those refuse piles. All wrapped in rags, bandaged like lepers, only their fingertips showed, clawed nails glinting through the dirty brown wraps of cloth. Snorkel masks frogged their mouths, black-rimmed goggles on the eyes. Metal caps on the skulls.
The mummy people were coming for us next, but the second ship banked in and sprayed pulse beams at them. They took care not to wipe our ship out. Red fire exploded into the mass of moving figures. Limbs and heads separated from bodies. Starrunner’s rear cannon swiveled, aimed and shot the ship out of the sky.
“Yeehow!” I yelled at TK to get Starrunner moving. I could detect faint motion, for activity still stirred amongst that rubble. The sad, stark reality was if they got the ship, we were sunk.
The old man came huffing and puffing around the side of the smoking metal, hauling Billy by the arm. “Get a move on! More ships can drop on us any second.”
Wren jumped out of the hatch, a fresh AK in her hand, breathless, flushed at her kills. I was warming to this lady.
“Let them come. We’ll let them blow the crap out of these dunghill rats.” She kicked at one of the mummy-wrapped things lying in a smouldering heap after I’d blasted it, their albino heads gleaming ghoulishly in the sun.
I winced.
“The sun eated them up,” crooned the kid, all smiles, the only thing he’d said so far.
“That’s right, Billy. You know it, don’t you?” TK said with a sad laugh.
The mad boys seemed occupied with their spoils, rustling like rats. Two smoking ships and a trio or more of fresh corpses. Needless to say, I kept an eye out for more unexpected crazies as we jogged along Starrunner’s moving flank, putting the hustle on to get the ship away from here.
We left the smoking rubble and the dead vestiges of humanity behind. Despite my gratitude for the quick bloodshed, I almost wished Wren hadn’t blasted both Baer’s ships out of commission. At least then there’d have been an alternative means of escape off this planet, if the old man couldn’t get Starrunner operational.
Rounding a bend out of sight down another sandy corridor, TK aimed the AG jet spurts to guide us between great mounds of crud and garbage.
“How long before they catch up with us?” I asked.
“Half hour, maybe less.”
I pawed at my grimy grimace.
“Don’t worry, I have protection,” TK said.
“It better be good.”
I looked at the old man’s billyclub, the firepipe he clutched in his hand that he’d pulled out from his desert cloak. “That’s all you got? You’re going to get killed with primitive junk like that. Stop the rig.”
He did. I jumped into the hatch, motioning him to stay put. “There’re weapons in the hall aft. Wait here.”
A few limping strides and I was rummaging around through the spare armory rack. Old man didn’t listen and came stumbling down the main aisle with wide ey
es, blinking in the semi-dark of emergency light. “Wow, this ship’s something else.”
“I told you to stay out,” I rasped, pushing him back down the hall, leveling my weapon at him.
“Sorry.” He gaped. “Been a long time since I’ve seen an Alpha Explorer, anything remotely like the interior of a working ship.”
Something about the comment made me feel compassion for the man and his plight, marooned here on this trash planet.
“She’s a vintage model,” I said grudgingly. “Couple of gangsters heisted it. They’re no longer with us, so I took the liberty of being its ward. Renamed it Starrunner.”
“A fine name.”
“I thought so.” I tossed him an R3A, a short-range blaster that would kill anything within a twenty yard range.
The kid came in, pointing and gibbering. I backed the two out into the hall by the hatch and gave Wren a helping hand up into the ship. I urged TK and his boy with strong words to get Starrunner moving along with full speed. I didn’t need to repeat myself. This way there’d be no tracks. As long as we gave the mummy boys the slip, the scavengers couldn’t follow us.
Chapter 7
We wound through sandy paths with TK and Billy guiding Starrunner. TK sat legs dangling out the hatch, looking up along the line of the hull. Wren crouched, flashing me weird, curious looks, until the mounds to either side became less massive and we arched up over a wide, well-trodden path along a ridge. The distant teeth of broken buildings spread below us down a long valley, the settlers’ city: toppled towers, blasted squares, a sight all too familiar for me—some war-torn urban wasteland abandoned for generations.
We came abreast a large mound and TK halted the convoy. We climbed out while the ship hovered two feet above the baking sand. A ruined building hulked to the side, only the corner posts and a few girders showing like the ribs of a desiccated whale.
“Why’re we stopping?” I asked as TK flicked off the jets, leaving a heavy silence over the desert.
“You want to circumambulate the entire planet?”
“Why here? Where’s this safety you promised?”