by Chris Turner
“You’re looking at it.”
“This broken pile of cement blocks and pillars?” I reached for my gun, temper short, guessing that the old man was pulling a fast one on me. Wren was looking straight at me with her raven-pearl eyes glinting with something of mirth, watching what I’d do next.
“Relax.” TK held up his hand. He herded me over to the ruin and got me to take a closer look at the pit yawning below. The floor had collapsed long ago, but I saw in the depression below a basement or somesuch, a section of one side which had crumbled. I stared at it for a while. What my eyes didn’t first register was that it had been tarped up with clever handiwork to blend into the sand and conceal a large space behind.
I looked up at the four stone pillars and a spider-web roof framework. This place could have been a cathedral as easily as a warehouse, or some eccentric’s mansion.
Scratching my head, I watched as TK worked the remote control with a wink at Billy. The propellant steamed and the antigravs guided Starrunner down into the pit.
TK clambered down a steep, crumbling staircase and I followed, gripping my gun with a ready hand. He moved over to the tarp, cranked the handle of a hidden wheel cached in the earth and up ratcheted the tarp. A huge work area burrowed within that far side of the pit.
I gave a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be a damned monkey.”
TK did a little bow. “You can congratulate me later, Rusco. Here, Billy, help me guide this thing in.”
I stepped inside the darkened quarters, suppressing a grunt. The place projected deeply into the back of the pit. Old engines, machine parts and housing lay strewn on the sand, rotors and gears and panels, whatnots, some on workbenches and tables. The old man lit a pair of battery-powered lights near the door while Billy guided my ship over the sprawl of engine parts then let her rest by the wall. Wren scooted in before TK closed the flap. “Never can be too careful,” he said with a worried grin.
I could see the desert man had built something of a garage for himself. Tables with hammers, drills, electrical gauges, hoses, cables, all salvaged from the rubbish heaps outside. Old vehicle batteries were linked together to give him the power to do his tinkering. “I charge them from solar panels rigged out back where no one can see them. From time to time I need to change them.”
He motioned to a series of jigsaw cutters, pry bars and twisted pieces of metal. “I salvage whatever’s useful from the dump, always more to find even as the years roll on.”
“So I see. Very clever.”
“Never gave up trying to get off this heap,” he said wistfully.
“Some grand little shop you have here, old man.”
He nodded, beaming with pride. “Never had enough of a working engine to get off this rock though. Believe me, friend, I tried.” He picked up a mini pneumatic drill and smacked it on the table. “Been scavenging parts from these dumps since as long as I can remember. Still haven’t given up on the mother lode. You can appreciate my excitement when I saw your Alpha coming down out of the sky.”
“I bet.”
He laughed at the memory. “I once got an old Rixen Eagle space probe up a hundred yards into the air before she crashed past the washboard wastes other side of these mounds. She still sits there collecting dust. Nearly killed me and Billy.”
“How long to fix this thing?”
“Depends on what’s broke.”
“Well, I can tell you the mobilitors are in bad shape, probably dead. Less than 60% before she went down.” I eyed him, checking to see if the term meant anything to him.
“Mobilitors, eh? They can be tricky.”
“What isn’t?”
“Let’s have a look-see then.” He crouched beneath the underpanel while the AGs kept Starrunner aloft. He unscrewed a panel, crawled up the conduit a ways, gave it a shifty glance. “What have we here?”
He knuckled a fist at the twin Barenium cylinders. I poked my head in and blinked. Barenium cylinders…That much I knew. About waist high. Green in a liquid medium, with a golden glow around the edges. Some unstable isotope discovered way back, the liquid masking the radiation somehow, from what I gathered.
“All gunkum to me,” growled Wren, crowding over my shoulder.
“That green liquid there,” he said. “Think of it as a compact potent pressure pump. When excited with photons from that light gun at the end, you’ve got yourself warp power to go.” He waved a casual hand like a professor explaining something to a young child.
“Left one’s shot. Explains why you were down to 60% integrity.”
I sighed. “So, what’s the damage?”
“Won’t know until I look inside.”
“Okay. Let’s check it out.”
While Wren poked around the cowling, I watched over the man’s shoulder like a hawk as he hiked her up higher on the AGs and got Billy to monitor the power.
He stood back, poking an elbow in my ribs. “Oi!” give me some breathing space, will you?” I stepped back with a reluctant grunt. I didn’t like anybody prodding around my ship. Especially the engines. Not to mention, I wanted to learn something in case I needed to tinker with Starrunner myself some day.
“What gets me is we’re light years from Brisis. How the hell they tracked me so quickly—”
“No mystery there,” interrupted TK. “Your enemies traced the residual Barenium from those leaky seals—Couldn’t have had a clearer signal, active dust on the outer cowling from the burn warp, a clear heat signature. The failed mobilitors would have made even more of a dust trail. You’re lucky to have gone any distance at all.”
I gave my head a sober shake. “Just my luck.”
“In my opinion, Rusco, you’ve had plenty of luck. Nine lives of it.” He squinted hard at the canisters. “I can fix it at 50%. Enough to get you to a proper station.”
“Better than sitting around here waiting for Baer and his bounty hunters to nab us.”
TK grunted. “Let’s get to it then. Show me to the bridge. I’ll check the warp engine controls.”
We went on board, down the main service hall lit in dim crimson by the emergency lights, past the cabins and the head into the bridge, with Billy and Wren trailing like kites in the wind.
I shuttled TK over to the pilot’s chair where the console still blinked and lay bathed in the eerie glow of the emergency lights.
TK sighed. “Bring up the warp panel. These modern interfaces are a little more new-fangled than I care for.”
“As you like.” I hit some side bars on the keypad, showed him the utility menus and he played long fingers along the touchscreen, bringing up a menu. “Varwol 6.0. Mezanine 3.4 kbs. Waxrin thrust gain, nominal. There, Barenium seal. See, you’re too low.”
He played with the sensors and he couldn’t help but notice the iridescent disc that lay three feet away below the auxiliary console. It must have flown free from the strongbox during impact. Could have been it or the box itself that hit me on the head. “What’s this shimmering disc you have here on the floor?” He reached for it.
I snatched it out of the old man’s hand before I remembered how dangerous the thing was, and dropped it like a red hot coal. “Nothing. Just some artifact.” I lanced the old man a wary look.
He did a double take and jerked back his head. “Artifact, my eye.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s why those men were chasing you, right?”
“Forgot to tuck it away in the back. Kinda hard when you’re crashlanding in a garbage pit.” I grabbed it up with my sleeve, laid it out on the control board with care. Something told me to trust the old man, as he’d figured most of it out anyway.
“It’s a small version of something else I saw back on Brisis. Some sort of weapon, I figure. Careful, it’s dangerous.”
He flipped it over in his gloved hands, while Wren came to stare over his shoulder, peering at it with doubt.
“Any more of these things?” he asked.
“None aboard. A larger version of something that looks quite different is locked in a saf
e place,” I said cryptically.
“What you’ve got here is a phase shifter. Moves atoms around from one time or place to another. How it does it, the physics is beyond me, but I’ve read about them.”
“Even you?” I guffawed. “Thought you were Mr. Fix-it-up and Encyclopedia man.”
“Not me,” he barked, “still a long ways to go. This here’s a remnant of another newfangled tech before the galaxy went to shit.”
I grunted, a thoughtful murmur on my tongue. “Explains how one yobo dematerialized to nowhere-land in front of my eyes.” I wondered how Baer and his idiot hirelings got it. They must have stumbled on it somewhere digging through the many crates of contraband going through their warehouse. Holding out for the highest bidder, like the vultures they were.
TK mused, “In the hands of ruthless people, this device could mean trouble.”
Wren blew air out of her nose. “Don’t you think we’re already on the road to hell, old man? As a species we should have been stamped out long ago.”
“No argument there,” he laughed.
“I think that sinking ship has already sunk,” I said.
“See those key codes or glyphs, bug script?” TK said. “Somehow they set a location. But they’re scrambled or encoded in some cryptic language. Nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”
“Bug, what do you mean, bug?” I croaked.
“Mentera tech, lost long ago—an old alien insect race. Rulers of the galaxy. Good luck finding a translator key.”
“So it’s useless?”
“I wouldn’t say that. The technobrains could probably back-engineer it. Someone with the yols and the clout to organize a think tank.”
“Hence your friend Baer, trying to fence it to someone,” muttered Wren.
Some star lord, if I recall.
“See, I think—” I reached for the thing without thinking, and wished I hadn’t, because TK had somehow armed it with his handling. As soon as I made contact—Zap. I came out in some other place, clutching that thing, blinking like an owl.
A sallow dawn greeted me, a snaky loop of smoke misting on the horizon. Cold dry air entered my lungs, very hard to breath. I clutched at my throat, gasping. Aphid-like shapes moved with slow synchrony across a steely grey sky. I saw more there than ever I cared to see in any lifetime.
The eye can only process so many things at once. I dropped to my knees, fiddling with the device, trying to get it to push me back to the world where I had come from. But nothing seemed to work and it just pulsed that eerie, iridescent glow all the stronger, like an evil eye while my lungs croaked for air. Clouds, strange life forms flitted over the horizon. Birds, aliens, far-off alien craft? I didn’t know, nor cared to guess. Maybe I was hallucinating. The future, past, present? Could have been all or none. From the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of desiccated human bodies lying about. Whatever I did next, fiddling with the script, something jarred the thing back to life.
Zap. I was back in Starrunner, peering up at the hazy forms of figures prodding me. “You okay?” Wren snapped. “You just blinked out there for a second.”
“Holy crap!” I gasped. I sank lower on my knees, chucking the thing aside, as if it were radioactive. “I was out there—somewhere. Some putrid, rotten world. A ruined city. War was in the air, out there, somewhere in time. Alien wars. Strange things roved on the horizon. Decayed bodies all around, leathery skin and old bones.” My voice quavered. “Maybe it was all a dream of the past.”
“Easy, Rusco,” said TK.
“That’s nutso,” scoffed Wren, shaking her head. “Either one or all of us is on some kind of drugs.”
“No trip,” I growled. “It was real, right down to my bursting lungs.”
“Your eyes went wide and staring, as if you were a ghost, fading fast. My hand passed right through you,” she said.
TK muttered, “Phase shift, to some far world. Could have been any one of the desolate planets out there.”
The old man placed a hand on my arm. “Can’t let this get into devils’ paws like those after you.”
“Like who?” sputtered Wren. “Some rich, wicked little buyer trips out to his favorite planetary resort for holidays? I’m shaking in my boots, TK.”
“No, you fool! I mean, by installing one of these devices on a drone or a mechnobot, they can blast any city or space station to smithereens and come back out of it without a scratch. An army of these could—well, make ruin of what’s left of the populated worlds.”
Wren scoffed. “Yeah, just like these bug-like things you talk about that are now extinct. Fat lot of good this tech did them in taking over the galaxy.”
“The details of the Mentera’s demise are lost in time.”
My trembling reverie came to an end. “Let’s just keep it out of anybody’s hands for now.” I shuddered to think what a brute like Baer would do with it, or who he might sell it to. He’d talked about some star lord wanting to buy it. It now dawned on me what had happened to Mitch, the guard back there. The phaso seemed to work its mischief when some combination of the alien script and its surface was touched. He’d gone to one of those worlds, but without the device, he couldn’t get back. I only managed to get back because I had a firm grip on it. Mitch didn’t.
I couldn’t help notice the hungry look in TK’s eye as he studied the disc, despite his gallant words. I quickly gathered the strongbox up from under the conference table and locked up that evil, little treasure. I kept it clasped in my arms, thinking to hide it away somewhere on the ship.
Mumbling, rubbing hand on chin, I stepped back a few paces, while he rubbed his brow with a dirty cloth. “I’d better start fixing that drive. All of you, leave me alone. Sit on your thumbs, swap tales, play tiddlywinks, I don’t care, just don’t distract me. I need space and quiet to concentrate.”
“Sure thing, pops,” I said.
“Billy! Change up the batteries. Load the spares that I charged yesterday. We’re going to need more juice to incite the Barenium.”
I granted the old man his space. Leaving him to his tasks, I wandered through his workshop, staring in a daze at the maze of machinery. Wren was at my heels.
“So what’s it like out there?” she asked. “Always dreamed about going to the planets.”
“Lot of poverty and corruption. Believe me, you haven’t missed much.” She was all for asking a bunch of questions, but I waved her off. My mind was preoccupied with Baer’s bounty hunters and if more would be on their way.
Some time later TK came to us, rubbing his oily hands with a soiled rag.
“So, I did a full scan and mustered what I could. The Barenium’ll take time to settle in those canisters. I’m guessing about eight hours. We give it a try after. If it starts up first shot, we’re lucky, if not, we’ve got ourselves a problem.”
“Let’s hope it starts up then.” I wished it was sooner, but realized the settling was out of my hands.
We edged back out of the workshop, the bright light stinging our eyes. “So what now, professor?” I asked him, squinting under the glare. The sun looked as if it had not dipped a degree in the sky.
“Time to eat,” he said. He and Billy ratcheted up the tarp. “This way.” He pointed a forked hand to another place, far away from the workshop. “It’s a forty hour day on this world, so it’s easy to get hungry.”
I could see the method in TK’s madness, keeping his residence far from work, in case one of the ‘mad boys’ happened to stumble on his crib. He’d have a temporary place to lie low in, if that wasn’t compromised too.
Chapter 8
TK had made his residence in the side of one of the dung piles, like an igloo of crud, indistinguishable from the rest of the other compost.
I stepped closer to the fifty-foot-high gummed mass, recoiling at the sudden cloying stench that hit me, but a skittering sound had me turning around wild-eyed. Aiming my blaster at two mean-looking scorpion-like knee-high crab things scuttling across the sand straight at us.
; “Fuck! What are these things?” I got off a shot, but didn’t do any significant damage.
TK let out a shrill whistle, his finger to lips. He slapped down my weapon before I could get the next shot off and waste it too. The creatures bobbed back, springing on their spindly, segmented legs a foot away. They hissed and clicked, barbed stingers coiling over their scaled backs. The pincers out in front looked like capable clipping machines.
“Protection,” TK explained. “Come on, inside.”
I realized the scorpion dung at the side of the mound was the source of the smell. Gingerly I stepped around it, eyeing the six-legged crustaceans with a wary eye. Clear translucent exoskeleton, eyes perched on stalks, armored carapace, one could see right through to the lungs pumping, heart beating, and some black red, kidney-shaped organs.
I shivered and Wren ducked in a defensive crouch, muttering some foul words under her breath.
I whirled to another sound, my blaster lifting. A mummy-like shape hobbled out of the shimmering heat waves, a walking stick in hand. Brown-wrapped rags hugged the sleek body, up to the high hood; white albino eyes shone through the black oval of a cowled face. The scorpions didn’t budge.
“Relax.” TK pulled down my weapon. “I know him.” He lifted a hand in greeting. “Oi, Toog. Some new friends I’d like you to meet.”
He introduced the wary figure to us. The newcomer was about five seven, thin, wiry like others of his kind. Only his eyes showed, white pools into nowhere. Even his hands were mitted as if he had scabies. Those eyes, as white as an egg, mesmerized me.
“Toog’s been a friend for a long time. Ever since Billy caught desert fever and almost died two seasons back.” My foggy, tired brain pondered on how long a Talyon year was.
“You’re welcome to join us, Toog,” he said. “We’re just sitting down to a meal. This here’s Wren and that there’s Rusco.”
Toog dipped his head in thanks, accepted Wren and I as equals, seeing as we were friends of TK’s.
A trap door led inside the igloo of sanctuary, camouflaged to look like the other junk metal and plastics in the pile. Inside it was dark and surprisingly cool, protection at least from the mad boys.