Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  “Yes, you know me, don’t you?” the warlord jeered with a grotesque grin. “You have something of mine. A very important item. Tell us about it, and I’ll make sure the pain goes away. Forever.”

  I shook my blood-stained head, coming in and out of delirium.

  He exhaled a sad laugh. “That phaso’s nothing but a cheap imitation. You expecting to pawn it off on somebody in a quick sale?” He gave a spitting growl. “Good luck.” In impatient, cruel pantomime, he reached in his trenchcoat and pulled out a green vial, which he opened and flicked the caustic liquid on my stump of a wrist. The fires of agony bit into my flesh. The severed nerves reanimated. A good reminder of the pain to come.

  Yet Mong’s promise of pain meant the end of me, a bullet to the brain or worse. I’d hold out and die. They’d never get the amalgo, those fucking scavengers.

  As if reading my mind, Mong grinned and pulled a pick-hook out of his grab-bag of tricks and approached me from behind. He jabbed it into my stub of a wrist bone and proceeded to carve out the marrow.

  I howled in misery, croaking out a rasp as a lunatic might make, hoping for the oblivion of unconsciousness. The warlord paused, his eyes blinking in expectation, his presence a still of death. As he leaned forward, I could not help but cringe—the man was built like a tank, an iron killing machine, a mountain of muscle.

  Baer muttered, “The girl might give us a location, Mong. Hold up. Right now Branx and Madler are working her over for the truth, loosening her up, if you know what I mean.”

  “Fool! I don’t care what your slackwit goons are doing to the bitch. I want my merchandise.”

  “Alright, hold your horses.” Baer held up his hand. “I’m working on her. If you hadn’t been so impulsive and brought the Megalians to their knees so early, I’d have caught up with this Rusco scum long ago on Skeller’s Reach—”

  Mong’s patience wore thin and his hand flicked out. I blinked as the air went cold and dark. An invisible force seemed to lift Baer up by the throat and slam him against the wall. The thug gurgled, coughed, snorted, his eyes bulging like a frog’s. His hairy face went beet red. Mong thundered out a curse. “You stupid bungler! You were the shipping agent. Your job was to secure those Mentera techs back in Hoath. You didn’t. The amalgamators were highest priority. It’s been weeks since you promised them.”

  “I—know, M-Mong. S-sure,” Baer croaked, his voice a high-pitched twang. His feet dangled inches from the bare floor. “Just a minor detail. Rusco’ll be squawking like a hen before long.”

  “I don’t see him squawking like a hen.” Mong released the thug with whatever voodoo powers he had, and the hate-mongering Baer fell to his knees, clawing at his throat, like a drowning man.

  A prolonged howl came from the adjoining room, a thin wail of helplessness like the cry of a tortured animal. It could have easily been Wren’s or Dolgra’s, and I shuddered. A lament that might come from my own throat soon enough. Mong seemed to pay no heed.

  “I came here on a call that I would get results and my tech in my hand. My devotees are waiting for me on Z-Mezarath—you know that, to rally them to the true path.” He thrust a finger high. “One day my religion will spread throughout the galaxy, as popular as the Christ savior of old.” His voice had risen to a self-righteous pitch.

  “Sure, Mong, sure. You know I’m your staunchest supporter.”

  “Shut up. That’s enough of your fatuous words for one day.”

  A beeper rang on the warlord’s communicator. He snatched at it. “What?” he growled. His face darkened.

  “Unacceptable, Ry-yin! Fix it.” He cut the connection. “Is there no end to incompetence?” He exhaled a dark breath. “The war on Questra is going badly, Baer. I must go. See that this worm talks or you’ll be the next in that chair.”

  The star lord’s contemptuous glance brushed me a warlock’s hex as he made for the exit. “A mere flesh baby,” he chided in contempt, shaking his head. “A few bruises, a missing hand, and some bodily discomfort and the weakling mewls like a newborn child.”

  I wanted to fling out an insult but my tongue could form no words, only gurgles.

  “If you experienced the primal initiations on my home planet, Rusco, you’d be laughing right now—a man of iron, daring me to bring on more.” He gave a final shake of his leonine head and flung open the door. “You are not worthy of my teachings.”

  He strode out and Baer flinched, his burning bearish eyes raking me with sinister fervor. He reached out with his prosthetic hand to squeeze my stump of a wrist, the exposed bone and purple flesh. The dirty, rough glove reached high, maybe to pour gasoline on the raw wound, I couldn’t tell. My eyes circled up in agony, even as blackness overcame me.

  Chapter 18

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, stirred by some distant blast, a thunder clap, or it could have been a faraway mountain exploding. It was all the same.

  Wren was beside me, slapping my cheeks, yelling in my ear.

  She unstrapped my arms and legs. No, Wren was dead. Her scratched, bloodied face gleamed with sweat and blackened soot and grime. Her leathers were torn, but a wild look blazed in her eye, the other swollen nearly shut, as if she’d been to hell and back. Good old Wren! She had come back.

  “TK came through, Rusco. If you want to live, let’s hurry.”

  I struggled, hobbling like an eighty year old. Gunfire and blasts echoed down the hall. I was limping with Wren’s supporting arm around my waist down the rubble-strewn corridors, the rat-darkened places, doubled over in pain. More booms resounded from the cracked concrete above and the crumpled steel.

  It seemed a million miles we staggered, half dragging ourselves along, my head snapping sideways, peering in horror into one of the nearby storerooms. The door was half ajar. I caught a quick glimpse of Dolgra sprawled there, head pulled back, eyes glazed up in terror. The muscular olive skin body lay half stripped, half naked, the small, petal shaped breasts exposed high on the sun-browned chest. I knew that, despite the denial of my instincts on first meeting, she had been a woman, dressed up in costume and posing as a man, jousting, fighting in a world ruled by males, trying to survive and rise up the ranks in a world ruled by iron fists. Metal picks stuck up her arms and pincushioned her ribs like a sewing-box voodoo doll. I couldn’t look away, let alone imagine the last minutes of her agony. I grimaced and forced my feet on, vowing that I would avenge that brave woman’s sacrifice, if I ever got out of this misery alive. Which didn’t look very likely with half an arm, and the ceiling crumbling over our heads. Bomb fire threatened to kill us all.

  Even in my daze, I couldn’t help but realize that Dolgra’s defiance to the end had saved both Wren and me, or at least delayed having our throats cut in ruthless spite.

  Wren kicked open the steel door at the end of the hall. We stumbled into the harsh light on the tarmac, my eyes adjusting to the white sunlight as it shafted through a rent in the clouds. I heard the blast of pulse fire, then the roar of engines. Fareon beams sighted on the warehouse roof. Another licked out at the diving Markest and the ship buckled in flames. Its grey bulk crashed into the warehouse. Right on target, TK! Starrunner burst through a cloud of fire and landed beside us, smoking. I looked up to see two of Mong’s auxiliary warships screaming in, which he’d left to safeguard the cargo. We were screwed. Wren pushed me through the open hatch, yelling commands. TK lifted off at full impulse, miraculously dodging the sprays of fire left by fareons, even as Wren got the hatch closing. Our reserve shields took major hits. I could hear Molly’s voice caterwauling: “Danger! Warning. Shields at 4%. Structural overload. Expected hull implosion in T minus 30 seconds.”

  I shook my head in despair, staggering to the bridge, the ship rocking to TK’s clever maneuvering.

  The sensors were off the charts. Starrunner was toast. I looked over at Wren, my eyes vacant.

  Wren seized the controls and spat fareon fury at the Warkhawk in pursuit. The vessel lit up in red but did not explode.

  She ga
ve a wild start. “Aw, fuck it!”

  Her hand reached for the Varwol initiate. “No!” TK jerked forward to stop her, but too late. Starrunner’s warp engaged. We tumbled end over end in a funland of blinding multicolored light. Mong’s ships in immediate pursuit stretched out like pancakes, then flared.

  I heard banging like unholy drums, the deafening peals of hell ogres, as if the gongs of oblivion were out there to reduce us to atoms.

  Inconceivable forces arced from Varwol to Trellian gravity. Conflicting time and gravitational forces wreaked havoc on the continuum. Our bones were slowly popping from our joints, stretching to infinity. Wren, moving in slow-motion, released the Varwol, her face a rictus of agony. The ship dropped back to impulse, slewing sideways like some rogue comet caught in a collision of 3D and 4D realities. We floated in another realm, one with a black sky drawn like a curtain with pale stars, an eerie globe with craters below us. The ship idled; we blinked as raw agony throbbed all over but we were alive, as the sensors went quiet.

  Were we in the same system? In a different time? No. My right hand was still gone. The agony was still there, of course, if not worse.

  TK leaned over and vomited. He lifted himself up, pale as a ghost. He flicked some dials, pulled up a 3D visual. “We’re orbiting Feldris,” he coughed, a trickle of blood seeping at the corner of his mouth. My slow brain made sense of the name. We’d made Trellian’s moon in the few light seconds we’d been in marred, warped-up no man’s land.

  In other circumstances we would have been stretched to nothingness, at the mercy of infathomable physics.

  None of Mong’s ships showed on our sensors. I hoped they’d all been blown to space dust, entered the horizon of oblivion, but somehow I doubted that. How long would it take our pursuers, if any there were, to pinpoint our coordinates?

  I slumped back in the co-pilot’s chair, holding my mangled stump under an armpit. The cloth Wren had wrapped around it staunched the blood. I motioned to her to bring the Myscol from the cabinet and every damn painkiller there. She brought down a dozen glass pill bottles. I downed them at once like a starving man. I chased them down with what was left of the whiskey. Wren gobbled a few herself while TK felt too sick to eat anything.

  “Get us out of here,” I growled at Wren.

  “We’ve got to get you to a surgeon.”

  “I don’t know where the nearest black market op shop is,” I croaked hoarsely, “certainly not on that crater below us.” My voice, reedy and faraway, sounded alien to my ear.

  “Molly,” I coughed. “Op shop’s nearest to, to—where the hell are we?”

  “Feldris.”

  “Feldris!” I gasped.

  “Affirmative. Delta sector. Malron, Malron City on Gainor.”

  “How long?” I cried.

  “Four hours, three minutes, on impulse.”

  “On Varwol, you silly girl.”

  “Varwol at 1% light speed capability makes it two hours.”

  “Set the course.”

  TK set the coordinates and engaged the drive, what was left of it, and we were in the unreality of sub warp. I looked up through bleary eyes, my arm quivering, my legs spasming, and waves of nausea assaulting my shattered nerves.

  Wren looked at me from a bruised face and through a blackened, swollen eye, but with a vindictive gleam and blood on the bowie knife belted at her side.

  I could tell the way TK was shivering, it was the bravest thing he ever did, coming back with Starrunner and blasting our enemies.

  He saw my incredulous look and gestured. “I hid in the hold, under the mattress and moldy blankets you gave Raez. They searched the ship, eight of them, looking for crew. Didn’t find any.”

  “The phaso?”

  “I’m afraid they got it. If it was in that strongbox you hid, it’s gone.” He bit his bloody lip. “Wren’s locator was dead. I knew you were in trouble. But yours was still active.”

  So, the fact that they had not damaged my locator had saved our hides. It was still plastered to my blood-sprayed jacket, weaved into the fabric to look like a button. I flashed Wren what might have been a grateful, questioning stare.

  She grinned. “You saved me from that sorry planet of Talyon, so the least I could do is save your hide.”

  “You did well. I don’t know how you did it, but you pulled it off.”

  Her shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Those cretins underestimated me, as does every lout, and they all died. I must thank you, TK. Those fareons you showered made them think twice and I grabbed the first scum’s knife and cut off his balls. Then I got his gun. Small payback for the pains those lowlifes’ve caused us.”

  I flinched and got Wren to bring the metal tin labeled ‘regen’ from the overhead bulkhead. I got her to smear a generous dose on my throbbing stump. I cried out in agony as the thick orange paste made contact with the exposed bone and the nerve ends. But the glopping goo did its work. A stinging pain, like pepper spray applied to an open wound, then a sizzling of flesh, as it cauterized the flesh and bone. Then came a flood of warm, tingling sensations, as small bits of tissue rebuilt themselves, and I was in heaven—momentarily.

  The flesh-regen was good for rebuilding small tissues like a missing ear, damaged tongue or even major skin damage, but not, I knew, for regenerating bones. Ligaments or complex nerve tissue would need a level of regen I did not have. But the orange paste would keep the tissue primed if there was any hope for a new hand—which I seriously doubted at this point.

  I began to drift away, my eyes dilating, swinging back in my skull like a church bell, with the loss of blood and Wren slapping my face. She began mouthing words, anything that would keep me from fading into non-existence. I remember a garbled story, out of sync with the words coming from her lips. She was probably trying to keep me from succumbing to shock and bleeding out, despite the regen.

  “Stay with us, Rusco, you stupid sod.” Slap, slap. I blinked. “Think of my daughter before you think of dying. I lost Kela and I was a broken, empty doll. No purpose or direction. The manner of her death messed me up most, Rusco, brought me nightmares every sleepless night. I tucked myself into some safe harbor, away from them, away from harm, knowing that those scumlord sadists were out there hiding in the shadows with their machetes and ships and guns, waiting to rape and torture and wring every bit of goodness out of me and everybody else—my kin and friends. So, I hid like a feral animal, just like what we’re doing now, and went back into a deep, dark place, like the sand dervishes, hiding under rock, dunghill, every piece of broken metal, a dirty, scavenging castaway killing anything that threatened us with my sawed-off rod. Once when the thing refused to fire, I used it to beat off two grimy, hooded lowlifes with lust and murder on their minds. Another time four had tried to gang rape me, pulled off all my clothes, bloodied me up, broke my fingers. This one never healed right—” She held up her left hand and in my delirium, I saw how the index finger had been twisted and crooked. But I knew that already, didn’t I?

  “They failed, Rusco. Not too far off from what the scum tried to do to me today in that storeroom, but they got a surprise.”

  Her voice faded in and out, as we neared Gainor and she took our earnings from the stash box where I kept the phaso and I mouthed the combination in her ears, not TK’s, as I didn’t trust the man despite his recent heroics...

  I sat there, my mind hallucinating as if I were on psychedelics with the regen and the Myscol.

  The next series of events passed in a dream, with a strange bliss punctuated by snippets of conversations and figures I knew must be medics. Concerned faces peered at me. Men and women dressed in white coats, objects of whimsy and perplexity. Echoes of endless speculation and questions arrowed at me. I blinked like a dumb mule, opened my mouth, unable to fire up my vocal chords.

  When I came out of the anesthetic, I realized Wren had taken me to some black market shop. A raw ache trickled down my right side. Fingertips alienated from fingers, fingers alienated from hand, hand alienated
from wrist, alternating from a dull numbness to rabid agony.

  I grunted, rolled over with a curse.

  “Careful, sir,” the female attendant said. “The circuits will need time to adjust to the nerve signals. I know it is disorienting.” I looked down at my duck hand and flexed the mechanical fingers. Pain, lots of it; the effort to get them to flutter, even the minutest, was staggering.

  “Therapy will be in-depth and intense,” she said. “Two weeks you should have most of your motor control back, but not strength. We installed a Trinbal T4 circuit limber in your wrist. It was within your budget.” The orderly’s remark seemed to be almost an afterthought.

  I flashed Wren a sallow grin. Step right up, kids—JR, mechno man coming through!

  I got back to the Starrunner, and we made for the nearby world. I didn’t know which one nor did I care. So began the first day of a long series on a road to depression. The worst had finally caught up to me. Maimed for life.

  But now was not the time for self pity. I gathered TK and we scoured the bridge. At last we found that tracking bug hidden under the console. Like a tiny black parasite. Raez’d taken a panel off. It was a clever plant; TK’s previous searches for the phaso had not found the tracker. I motioned the old man’s hand away when he reached to pull it off and destroy it. “No!” A part of me was still Jet Rusco, the cunning fox that never gave up. I knew that miserable device would come in handy one day. “Can you disable it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do it then.”

  TK complied without a grumble. An hour later it was done and I took the bug and locked it away in my cabin.

  Looking down at my mechno hand, I admired the fake covering of human skin, a hue slightly lighter than my own, the fingers stronger than my fleshy ones, but not my own. Feeling something of dead and wooden weight there.

  And with it came the raging urge to strip off my old identity, become the fierce torrent, the unstoppable rush of what I was to become. The old Jet Rusco was gone, kaput. A vengeful one birthed—an avenger to destroy every scumbag crime lord I could get my hands on, starting with Pazarol, Baer and that mad fuck, Mong, who had caused so many senseless miseries and the deaths of so many people. I didn’t care who died, who lived, or who got mangled up, or if I got robot parts to replace my whole body. Those fuckers were going down.