by Chris Turner
“Peekaboo.” I lobbed the phaso at him and he swatted out a hairy hand to block it, or grab it? It amounted to the same. As I dove sideways in a desperate roll, he blinked out of existence, flicked out to nowhere land like his buddy and Mitch and Billy before him. I shuttled forward, snatched up the dead gunman’s AK and did a wide sweep, expecting a host of criminals to come at me all at once. They didn’t. I loosed a spray of fire and a wolfish howl all around me in a half moon. Heart beating, I stumbled to the place where the phaso was and where Baer had last blinked out, as warily as a wolf who approaches a steel-ringed trap.
I stooped to pick up the glimmering disc with my sleeve and pocketed it. I grinned from ear to ear, familiar Rusco now, raw, crinkly grin. “Okay, good, everything’s good,” I assured myself. I staggered over to the tented hump of metal where Wren lay trapped and began pulling the sheets back. I had to use the full force of my dwindling strength, legs braced, while the aches crawled up my arms. Wren’s obvious distress gave me added haste.
“Okay, kiddo, we’re clear.” Grunting, with anguished efforts and the augmented strength of my mechano-hand, I pried back the last of the metal and dragged her to her feet. She was a dusty mess, all stooped and haggard, limping and bedraggled, but her dark eyes burned with a fierce light. A dark crust of blood caked her left forearm. She shook her slim body out, blinking. Her right hand massaged the small of her back where I’d guessed she’d lain for too long on her bulky R4.
“Took you long enough,” she groused. She looked around, scooping up her weapon from the cramped cubbyhole. “They all dead?”
“Dead.”
“Baer?”
“Dead.”
“Good.” She snuffled out a grunt of satisfaction. “All’s fair in love and war. So we’ve won?”
“I’d say so, outside of having no Starrunner.”
Wren swore. “Let’s go take a look. TK might be able to work some magic on it. Where is the old complainer?”
“I regret to say TK’s no longer with us.”
She gave her head a sad, wistful shake. “The man had a death wish right from the start. I almost felt he’d expected to join Billy one way or the other today.”
“Those were my very same feelings.”
She scowled. “Let’s get to the ship then.”
She held me tight, and I winced at the pressure of her trembling body, warm and a relief. “Thank you, Jet. You protected me when I thought I was done. You’re a good man.”
I grunted, not versed in any displays of emotion.
“Rusco, you’re quivering and all shot up.” She wiped away the blood smear off her hand.
“What about you? That nasty cut on your arm isn’t looking too good. Mine could have been worse.”
She lifted up my leathers, ignoring her own gash, and tore a strip off her own jacket and wrapped it around my ribs. “We need to get that wound cleaned up. You’re going to have a nasty scar there.”
“Nothing new.” I shrugged, taking only shallow breaths. “Looks as if we both need some patching up.”
We limped back to the landing dock.
Starrunner still smoked and crackled as we drew near. Molly’s voice, a low garbled robo staccato, rang out from the interior: “Warning, warning… Barenium irrecoverable leak...”
“Yeah, I know, Molly.”
The computer voice trailed out and died.
I blinked. Starrunner looked crippled beyond repair. I kicked my boot at her hull in despair. I winced at my futile action. “Sorry, Molly. Wherever you are.” I ran a caressing finger across the smooth smoking curve of her right wing. Maybe it was time to retire her. The old Rusco too—the one before the mechno hand, and let a new Rusco surface.
“Weeping for your old girlfriend?” she muttered.
“Sort of.”
“Sorry to hear, Rusco. She was a good ship to you, I know. She took you places. She brought you to me, and TK and Billy.”
“You don’t seem too broken up by her demise, considering she’s our ride out of here.” I clutched my side where the brown leather and makeshift tourniquet bulged and grimaced.
She looked at me with puzzlement. Her gaze shifted to the stealth ship. “What about that one there?”
“Worth a try.”
We advanced with caution. The ship was a black sleek killing machine, that manta-ray stealth V. I kept low, weapon ready, in case there were others aboard.
There weren’t. No movement, no life. I forced my way through the hatch. Kindly, the crew had left it open. None of the thugs had expected to lose this fight and resort to defending their ship.
We made our way to the bridge. Immaculate. The stealth V was a beauty with state-of-the-art weaponry, compact design, chrome, posh leather seats. Mong must have lent it to the dead Baer, rest his black soul. It would have trackers aboard, and that was a problem. We no longer had TK’s expertise to help us out with that. We’d have to make our getaway quickly then ditch the vessel first chance we got.
One more loose end to attend to. I jumped out and dragged two hulks of the shrapneled bodies over to Starrunner and lay them beside her open, smoking hatch. I was worried the Barenium might blow, given Molly’s last shrill warning, but risk was risk. I clambered in through the companionways, grabbing some personal effects, regen and the last bottle of whiskey from my smoked-out cabin. I coughed, edged back out in a hurry and dropped my gold watch on one of the charred remains. I aimed my blaster and blackened the remains some more, disfiguring the watch just enough so it could still be recognized. I grabbed Wren’s hand and tore off the ring that she still wore on her index finger. She protested, uttering no small number of profane words, but I ignored them. I put the ring on one of the corpse’s finger, nearly gagging from the state of the body. I made sure this one was messier than the last, and not easily recognizable as a male versus a female body. TK was next, dragged his sorry hide out, and placed it by the others, face down, what was left of it anyways. Dragged some more pieces of human torsos over to make it look more grisly and authentic. A thrum of voices ran through my head: Where’s Baer and the rest of the bodies? Who knows? Where’s the stealth ship? Oh, Baer and one or more of his thugs must have gone rogue and stolen it, took the phaso. Rusco and crew? Ha. You’re looking at them.
It was a sorrowful business, but anything that’d keep that killer Mong off my tail and make him believe we were dead, was worth the effort.
A sour taste flooded my mouth, surfacing from throat to palate, that bad bit of bile that comes from deep down as I mulled over the sordid events of the day. Up till the end it would remain a mystery to me what exactly TK’s motives were. I could only guess that he had some crazy scheme up his sleeve to try to rescue Billy or something. I was sorry he had to die, that the old man had to go and get himself killed, but he did it all under his own free will. For now, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he’d come back to help us.
We climbed aboard the stealth V and I slathered the last of the regen on Wren’s long gash, wiping the excess on my own ribs. I familiarized myself with the bridge controls while I invited her to take over the weapons console. I never looked back, doubted I’d ever seen Starrunner again.
Chapter 21
Maybe not whole, but I was alive and had one last piece of unfinished business to carry out. The prosthetic started to feel like a part of me, more natural. Maybe I was just getting used to the lack of sensations in my right fingers? I had this mechanized hand on the end of my wrist, something that used to be flesh and bone.
The ship crossed the gulfs back to Elphi Alpha. Returning in good time, our first priority was to ditch this stealth craft. We traded our state-of-the-art vehicle for Bantam, an Alpha-Omega Beamer similar to my own Explorer. Regzie’s WR, whom we’d done business with during the impound scam, was happy to oblige. He and his associates gave us an extra bonus in change—15k yols, citing our current track record of good business relations. I convinced them to throw in a bunch of tools and ship accessories on the s
ide.
“A mighty fine piece of hardware you have there, Mr. Rambo. Any more trades you’d like to propose, bring ’em our way.”
“Sure, I’ll do that.”
It was time to give Jesra and her brood of planets a rest and let Baer and his men’s ghosts lie. I took the Beamer on a direct course toward the inner planets, Tarsus.
“Where now?” Wren asked from across the bridge’s conference table. A pang of worry flicked across those dark-shadowed eyes.
When I didn’t reply, she grew more restless. “Rusco, don’t do anything stupid. That fucker Mong will break your legs and pluck out your eyebrows.”
“Don’t worry, Wren, nothing so dramatic. If I want dear old Mong dead, I’ll leave the heavy lifting to Batman.”
“Very funny, but seriously, why not let sleeping dogs—”
“Relax.” I outlined my plan to her. The fact that Pazarol was still alive was a loose end that couldn’t be tolerated. “Dollars to donuts, Mong’ll contract Pazarol to be my next executioner.” I grimaced, recalling Pazzy’s last promise of playing bounty hunter.
Wren shook her head in dim frustration. “Does it ever end?” She rubbed her eyes, heaving a sigh.
We came in smooth and low over the north end of the shell-shocked industrial zone that marked Belgen’s business section. Buzzing the haggard clumps of trees, we left Bantam just under a half mile away in an abandoned yard, not far from Pazzy’s crib. Close enough to make a mad dash if we needed to, far enough away that our landing would draw no undue attention. I cut the engines, grabbed my gear, the arsenal of weaponry and snips to cut the wire fence guarding the lot, then we’d have an exit hole readily accessible when the time came to hoof it out of there. It’d be nip and tuck. I had a remote control for the ship. I could run and operate Bantam in limited scope in case we needed the fury of her guns if the situation got desperate. I hoped to hell not.
I drew in a deep breath, inhaling the pungent odor of ozone, tar and something else—a far-off reek of petrochemicals lacing the air from some tall, grimed smokestacks farther down the way. A smoky glow lit up the early evening haze.
I convinced myself the main goal of our expedition was a rescue mission, of the workers whom I’d seen so bruised and mistreated. If Pazarol was there and just happened to get in the way, well, too bad. Right, Rusco, who are you kidding?
I slowed up, my determined stride coming to a halt at the sight of the crumbling line of the brick warehouse. Wren paused at my side, limber and relaxed, as if we were just staking out a kid’s birthday party. She had recovered nicely from her scrape at Belisar, given the regen and the efficient muscle machine she was. Those years on Talyon had sure toughened her up, surviving those scuttling dervishes and creepo mad boys. They’d blooded her like a SEAL, ironically made her ideal for the purposes I had in mind. Her loyalty was without question. We were like two peas in a pod. I grinned. Bonnie and Clyde, victims of violent disaster, lost family and trauma at an early age.
We moved with low-crouching strides, noiseless, straight toward the warehouse, through the tall, dry prickle-weeds and past the broken crates and skids, the old disused machinery.
The front and side exits we needed to secure. The guards were all inside. The cameras would pose a problem.
There’d be no grand entrance, no bombs or glitter. Just a stealth op, my specialty—the lives in there needed protection and a more delicate touch than the hack and slash fireflares I was used to. Dressed in my ragged camo suit and Wren in her black Kevlar gear, we slunk in like cats, our Uzis and R4s slung on our shoulders, the backup weaponry snug at our belts. I hunched just out of the view of the first overhead camera and aimed my disrupter at it, a thin black rod, bulbed at the end to shoot out a black net of spidery film. The sticky gel covered the lens and would dissolve in three minutes, giving us time to plant our explosives and move on. The lens would revert back to its original state. Enabling the cameras again was a key component in our undetected break-in. Just a brief outage, Ned. Must have been a technical glitch.
Wren did the same to the side cam. All this in prep for our exit, if exit there’d be. The tricky part would be getting the workers out, the young women and boys I remembered vividly with their bruised cheeks and blackened, despairing eyes. There was an ample margin of knuckle-gnawing in this excursion. A hair’s separation from death. Many things could go wrong.
We crouched before the last side entrance, wasting no time. A part of me knew this venture was insane, but I couldn’t back out now. Not if I wanted to sleep easy at night. It was one follow-up promise I’d made to myself. Might even take down Paz in the doing.
The high rusty door was an emergency exit and looked to have been little used. I applied some putty to the cracks around the edges and alongside the metal ring and wired the pulse cylinder. I hoped the door wasn’t under alarm. We turned and the silent blast jerked the door ajar.
It wasn’t wired. Good thing, otherwise Plan B would have come into effect, and that was a hell of lot messier.
Pazarol’s men were nowhere in sight. They were confident, these thugs, as evidenced by their cocksure posturing and loose-limbed gunwielding. Nobody would try to burgle the very place they called home.
Such conceit was a fortunate occurrence. I knew the workers lived there and it was off shift for the guards, having scoped out their movements in advance. Many of them had left, so only a skeleton detail remained.
We crouched, breathless, in a cramped foyer stacked with row upon row of shelves of old junk and open boxes of dusty uniforms and boots—rejects.
The sewing machines had mostly settled down for the day and I set out for the back of the warehouse, motioning Wren to get to the workers’ stations fast and move the women and boys back toward the side exit we’d breached. Hers was the harder job, I knew, convincing the laborers not to panic, bolt or raise an alarm. Her presence as a woman would command more trust and compliance. I hoped. If not, Plan C.
Keeping low and out of sight, I threaded my way through the many aisles of random equipment where the victims’ daily chores were ever the same: hunched on benches before long tables, cutting, dyeing, sewing the electronic components into fabric, pressing, working the tall, upright mantis-like machines to pump out Paz’s guerrilla wear. I dodged the sound of a guard’s coarse laugh and the murmur of nearby voices, finally to crouch before the fat, double heating pipes running length-wise three feet above the ground at the back of the sweatshop. I’d seen them in the floor layout and memorized the specs back when TK and I’d scoped the joint. Typical rectangular warehouse, complete with storage areas at the sides. I set my canister of gas down underneath them and armed it for thirty seconds. I pressed the mask over my face. The hiss grew as I beetled away, for soon it’d blow and the funland of hell would begin. We’d have seven minutes before the toxic gas spread throughout the compound and rendered the air unbreathable.
When I heard a distinct pop behind me as the canister released, I knew the die was cast. I scrambled back the way I’d come.
Gray clouds of hot steam hissed from the piping area, simulating a burst pipe, obscuring the view. This mix had tear gas in it for added effect. We’d have to get the workers out with speed, otherwise they’d choke to death.
I heard shouts to my right and the thuds of booted feet of big Paz’s guards, converging from their diverse locations. They’d be wondering what was up: a main pipe rupture or thinking the worst, some spontaneous fire. I snuck off in the opposite direction, keeping low between the lanes of dyeing equipment and the presses, blending in with the shadows. Confuse and misdirect; that was the name of the game, for as long as possible while Wren and I got the workers out.
I ran nose to nose with Pazarol and a few of his boys before long in the cleaning area on the way back to join up with Wren: a blur of dark suits, mustachios, Uzi blasters, foul tempers and tongues. I pegged off the first of his entourage, a bewildered bodyguard, his mouth wide and gaping, before answering fire sent me spinning under a workt
able.
Shots ricocheted off the shiny metal. I found myself pinned down before the dye vats. One beam nearly clipped me and I jerked away from a whoosh of green fire that nearly grazed my Adam’s apple. Both far too perilously close. Feet scrabbled around me. I shouldered in behind a large vat of toxic green dye, the chemical reek making my eyes water and my throat seize up. My mask had jiggled loose. I fumbled to secure it and shook out the chemical sting from my eyes. The gunmen weren’t equipped with masks, so I sent green dye pouring their way by blasting out the bottom far side of the vat. Soon they were reeling on the ground as the fumes from the dye stung their noses and throats while the more toxic billows of steam crept up on them like snakes through the aisles.
So began a shooting spree in a wild free-for-all that the gambler in me knew was bad odds at five to one. Yet gradually big Paz’s gunmen started to cough and reel back, snarling and cursing.
I slipped out of my hiding spot, my mask snug on my nose now. I picked them off one by one so there’d be no blasting us in the back while we were making our escape.
Pazarol, the fat fuck, lolled in the curling swirls of mist, wiping his eyes, drooling and spitting curses all the way. So, he was here. Bonus. Someone had thrown him a mask, the strap still dangling in his pudgy hands. I kicked the weapon out of his grip and beat him down to the ground with the end of my blaster. I looked down at him with little love.
His priceless expression was one of white-faced surprise. Rusco, a grinning pumpkin man returned from the grave.
“It can’t be! You’re dead!” he choked and sputtered, as if he’d been struck in the head. Wish I could frame that image and pin it on my cabin wall. “I saw you hauled off by Baer,” he croaked. “Then that Mong striding down the hall.”
He lunged up at me between phlegmy drools, spitting out blood. “Is that cropped he-bitch woman of yours alive too?” he gasped. “Should’ve plowed her while I had the chance.”
“Would have thought this little exchange had given you more humility.”