Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Keep moving. That’s your middle name, Rusco. Another botch up. How many more there going to be? I should kill you myself, put you out of your misery. The shell shock of the last blast had spun my head sideways. I did a quick scan.

  Wren was in good shape. Tager had taken a minor hit, his left forearm grazed. Blest was ruffled but seemed okay.

  Me, some cuts and scrapes and bruises here and there, nothing I couldn’t handle, a wicked ache in my left thigh.

  I shrugged, fingered my compact R4. Always liked the snug feel of the wooden stock in my hand and how it slipped so easily into killing mode. One of the older models. Trustworthy. The black, fast-action carbine sported an energy-pulse with good range and accuracy and unlimited shell action.

  This wasn’t what I had planned. But is there anything that is?

  We rounded a curve in the road in a direction I roughly estimated led to our parked craft. I studied the ruined city below. Ugly as a mummy’s crypt. I grimaced. I’d give Froy’s screwball rebels dibs for spunk. So far they’d survived this hell. I’d promised them arms at a decent price because I have a hard on for that bastard Mong—well, okay, I like the money and the smell of it and I too have to eat. Getting too old for this shit.

  We hustled down the slope into what was once a main boulevard in that concrete jungle of shattered shapes, keeping our heads down, our guns aimed in front, and alternating rearguard. We crossed the main street, past broken, burned-out vehicles. The rank smell of soot and charred flesh filled our nostrils. Our boots crunched over rubble. We passed a small pile of blown-out stone in the center of the street, something that used to be a monument. I could see the toppled marble head with a crown or coronet, some heroic figure of the past, with the eyes bullet-holed out.

  Maybe not such a good idea to play hide and seek here with my ship so far away now from the drop site. I’d landed it five miles at the edge of the city in case of treachery. Treachery we got, but now Bantam, my Alpha-Omega Beamer, wasn’t here to help us out of this madness.

  The instant they’d wasted Klane, we were running on borrowed time.

  The biggest problem was how to get back to Bantam without getting our heads blown off. Froy’s thugs seemed farther behind us than five minutes ago. With some luck, some more of these cross-alleys would help us lose them. But that tactic could backfire at any instant.

  “Loop around past the old section,” I directed, “more shelter there and less chance of getting bottled up in a narrow alley.”

  “Mines?” Tager croaked.

  “We look for signs and watch our steps.” I shrugged. Wren cast me a fugitive glance which I ignored.

  Why was everything so dark on this miserable world? Was this a solar eclipse? Only a creepy, leaden light from Ramus’s sun. No, there was Arkades poking through the clouds like a timid widow. This world was downright eerie. Another dumbass decision to risk a quick venture on a backward planet. I ran through the rubble, breath rasping, clutching at the burning ache in my leg. No time to apply regen. Unless I wanted to get a pulse-burst in my guts. Wren labored at my side, breathing heavily like a winded mare. Blest ran a few paces behind, thin, wiry, the whites of his eyes darting back and forth from the broken structures ahead to the moving shadows behind. Tager, squat, burly, lumbersome brought up the rear, giving covering fire when he could, huffing and puffing like the Billy Goats Gruff. Was he trying to be a hero? The fool was lagging and going to get himself tagged. I dropped back. “Get up ahead, Tager. I’ll take over as rearguard.”

  A rumble rolled across the sky. An enemy ship? Moving fast. Question was, what enemy, Mong or Froy’s rebels? Likely Mong, the Star Lord.

  I ducked. Shellfire rained at our sides. Rat-a-tat. The nightmare echo of my sweaty dreams.

  “Get Noss the fuck over here,” gusted Blest.

  My fingers itched to do it, and call up our shipmate. But I held back, feeling a tingle in my wrist and hearing a little creak in the left finger of my prosthetic hand.

  “Oh, for Christ sakes,” cursed Blest, “I’ll call him myself.”

  “Can’t. They’ll trace it. Then alert their scouts. If that’s who I think it is, Warhawks’ll blow Bantam out of the sky. I can’t chance losing that ship.”

  “He’s right,” grunted Wren. “Noss is neither tactician nor marksman. They’ll make mincemeat out of him.”

  “Then we’re screwed,” cried Blest. “So what do we do?”

  “Do what we’re doing. Come hell or high water, we get to Noss and the ship.”

  “You should have had a backup plan, Rusco.”

  “Right, like it was obvious to guess that our business partners would be so kind as to turn wolf on us. What’s with you?”

  Blest bleated something unintelligible.

  “Speaking of which, weren’t you the one gave the all-clear after radar-scouting out the city and telling me Mong’s forces were gone?”

  Blest licked his lips. “They must have come back.”

  “No, you dickhead, you didn’t look hard enough and they were hunkered down somewhere, tucked away like bugs. I should have done the scan myself.”

  The arguing was doing us no good. Blest had fucked up. I had fucked up. Klane had fucked up, and then he paid the price with his life. I wiped my sweaty brow then rubbed my eyes. All adrenalin and rage and frustration thrown in for fun. A lethal, toxic mix that needed an outlet. But now we needed to move on and concentrate on surviving.

  Supposed to have been only a simple drop off, for shit’s sake. A hundred crates of R4s and various land mines and fire snares. Everything set up by our contact Romos and his gang of scumbags. Nice bunch of people to work with.

  It’s never simple, Rusco, you should know that, you dreamer.

  If that idiot Klane hadn’t shot off his mouth, we wouldn’t be in this jam. Didn’t he know that shortchange was part of the whole package? I’d allowed for it, factored in the slippage, that’s why I charged 20% more. Something I’d been expecting. I should have briefed Klane better though. Hindsight. All this fled through my mind as we ran. Move on, Rusco, the boat is leaving the dock.

  Some brief gunfire flashed from the side, startling us as we scooted across a vehicle-sprawled square. Tager dropped as a slug slammed him high in the shoulder. He gave a hound’s yelp as another smacked into his temple. I looked back, saw blood gushing from his mouth. No saving Tager now.

  With a choked gurgle, Blest dropped down behind an alley’s corner.

  “What are you doing? Blest, get up, you fool!”

  He ignored me.

  Two figures burst into the square, one covering the foreground while another offered covering fire.

  Blest’s R4 spat out a vengeful burst.

  The figure flopped like a ragdoll. Wren tagged the other.

  “Nailed the bastard,” croaked Blest.

  “What do you want, a kiss?” I hissed. “Pipe down, there may be more of them.”

  Wren mumbled, “Good shot.” She touched Blest’s arm and he gave her a terse nod, working his lips and struggling on ahead.

  A sour wave of nausea hit me. I pushed on through the empty streets, shaking my head like a dog, herding myself along.

  I stared down at the gash in my leathered thigh. More blood was trickling where the shell had grazed me. My nine lives were running out.

  The distant rumble of ship’s engines coursed above. Closer now. Much closer. Made more menacing by the low cloud cover. The explosion in the warehouse must have alerted Mong’s imperial scouts.

  The endless maze of streets was disorienting. More and more squares with shelled fountains, toppled statues and broken buildings and fly-ridden bodies, young, old, short, fat. Death did not discriminate. At one time it looked as if this city had been built in an elegant baroque, the style probably deliberately copied from Earth by some high class types, but with cathedrals dedicated to a new, modern-day savior.

  Stone bridges ran over the canals; blown out now, so we had to wade through rank, brown-scummed water. Grey
sluggish streams dotted with bloated bodies; animals too, what looked like kangaroos crossed with mastiffs.

  These insurgents, I knew the type, had their noses ground in the mud too often. They’d been fighting this guerrilla war for months now. Turned red devils into savages. I hadn’t realized how far they’d regressed until I snatched a look at Froy back there. I caught a flutter of movement in the arched ruin of a church.

  Swore it was Froy, cloaked in his ragged brown khakis, loping like a tiger. Wild eyes gleamed with a special something of vindictive madness. The squad was far enough away for me not to be shitting bricks. He and his goons’d lost sight of the cause, chasing us like rabbits. I mean, who in their right mind would go after their supplier? Were we their enemy, or Mong? I looked over and saw the Warhawk T-wing roving the sky in the low-scudding cloud, the roar of its heavy engines polluting the desolate silence over the doomed city, drowning out the raucous croaks of strange, oversized crows. The ship’s homely green and brown prow thrust out like the beak of a bird of prey.

  A sudden sound broke behind me.

  I aimed behind me and shot a spray of death. A rebel with full beard and a fuckboy cut fell clutching his leg as one of my fire bursts hit home, knocking the feet from under him. His two lithe partners hopped over him like gazelles.

  We ducked into a culvert that curved under a shell-pitted road. Puddles of water pooled at our feet, the echo of our boots sloshing through stagnant water. We scrambled out the other end then down another ruined alley, our breaths hissing in our throats, lungs pumping.

  Still another mile or two to the ship, if my bearings were correct. Everything looked the same in this wreck of a city. Piles of rubble and dead bodies feasted on by carrion birds. Feral kangaroo creatures foraging for scraps and rooting amongst the dead. I kicked one of them out of the way that snapped and growled at me, defending its turf like a guard-dog of the dead. Most of the people who’d survived this holocaust had fled, but there was the odd hobo or old coot hanging around.

  We’d taken a wrong turn and gotten jammed up in a dead-end alley. Shelled buildings rose to either side, the windows blown out. We were just about to backtrack when a ragged transient lurched out, scared out of his wits. A bottle of whiskey or rubbing alcohol lay clutched in his hands. “Don’t shoot me, misters, don’t shoot—”

  The cry died in my throat as he staggered for a few steps then exploded in scarlet spray, his head blown clean off. I winced as the corpse fell in a ragged heap, the head pumpkin jelly. I flung myself to the ground behind a rubbled heap. I pulled Wren with me. Blest dove the other way into the shelter of a debris pile, broken dolls and a human foot.

  A voice called out from the silent rubble, “You’re a dead man, Rusco.”

  Froy.

  The sound of my name bounced off the battered walls.

  “Kill my men, will you?” he taunted. “We’ve got the arms. You’ve lost your payout.”

  “You killed my man first, Froy.”

  “Your boy was out of line,” Froy called. “What I want is your ship, and you can throw in the woman as a bonus. Come out with her and I may spare your asses. We’ll take your little raven tail for a ride or two.” He chuckled, a sleazy echo answered by one of his henchmen.

  I ground my teeth. Yes, they’d turned into savages.

  I tried to make sense of it. Distorted perceptions. Any stab at a perceived enemy made a logical target. Too many loved ones snatched away in too brief a time. Too many pent-up hopes shot down in flames. Froy, half-baked on invinco, a hair-trigger finger on anything that moved, friend or foe. Now his goons’ communal libidos were jacked up to rapacious pitch—maybe some god-awful side effect of the invinco.

  “We’ve got to keep that bastard talking,” I muttered at my two team members.

  Wren gave a fierce nod. Blest gazed at me with resignation, his belly hugging the damp dirt. His curly blond hair was covered with dust and a blood smear to the side where he’d bashed his head on something.

  The first pangs of desperation crawled over me. I called Noss on the com. Things were desperate. No answer. Where the fuck was Noss? Deserted? Stolen my ship? Sorry bugger’d get a rude surprise if he tried to leave this planet’s gravity without authorization. I’d rigged something up to deter all such adventurous forays from pilots who didn’t know how to disarm the sequence. The electro-force would kill him if it kicked in and would bathe his world in hell.

  My red eyes roved above the cracks of the apartments and blackened stone where Mong’s forces had taken out a whole block. Monstrous crows, a threesome, or what looked like a threesome, flapped out of the gaping windows, their dissonant croaks echoing down the alley of shell-blasted stone.

  “I’ll sit tight, draw them in,” I wheezed. “You go up there, Wren, sniper them down.”

  She tensed. “They’ll kill you. Why sacrifice yourself?”

  I shrugged, gave my usual clown’s grimace of a smile. “We’re already dead, Wren. Trapped here. Go!” I slapped her on the back. She shook her head, her lip downturned.

  Shots echoed from up the alley. Covering fire ricocheted as her weapon leaped out while they tried to pepper her.

  I crouched, whipping out shots, laying into the moving figures with everything I had. Blest picked up on her cue and beetled down the alley to purchase a sniper position.

  I debated taking the building on the right versus closing in after her. I risked a peek past the crumble. I saw four bogies in black suits, heavy-set, crabbing forward from pile of debris to debris. High-powered R4s. They must have taken them off the flatbed.

  The gunmen blasted my shell hump of refuge with heavy fire. Enough to rattle my teeth. I pinched my eyes shut, and prayed not one of them would see me.

  Fire flashed from overhead. Two of the enemy went down. I took the opportunity to poke my R4 out and spray anything in sight. One burst caught the closest not twenty feet away, tagging him in the shin and he hobbled with a curse. I heard the rat-tat-tat above me and Wren blasted the other bitchdog to kingdom come.

  More were crawling out of the woodwork. How many of them were there? These last bastards were not so easy. Froy’d survived this long and he knew where we were and what our capabilities were. He might have even known that I was injured.

  Come up with a winning plan, Rusco, or you’re dead. This Froy fucker’s mean as a snake and will gutshot you in an instant.

  While Wren sprayed her next volley, I took a risky, stumbling dash, hoping my boots wouldn’t crunch too loudly on the crumble. Fire nipped at my ankles and I dove into a jagged opening on the other side of the alley, just in time as shells nearly ripped off my heels. I edged my way up a ruined stair, my heart pumping, keeping my head down.

  My breath came in ragged gasps. Some loss of blood. Enough to throw me off my game.

  Klane was an idiot. You’re running on borrowed time. What if they have more backup?

  So you gun them down.

  I squinted hard, thrust out the voices from my head and shook my reeling skull. If Wren dies…

  She won’t die. Keep moving.

  Chapter 3

  Through a broken window, I saw her, moving low, on the second floor of the building on the other side of the alley. Others’d be coming up the stairs after us now. A risky move, but I knew Froy’s type. All risk and bravado and a sureness in himself that would make a leopard weep. He had to be juiced, on pure invinco—that would give a man enough courage—or a death wish—

  Gunfire raked us from below, peppering the window where Wren had last hunkered down. Clouds of dust and plaster rose. Silence. No movement from within. I felt a sick dismay rising up from the pit of my stomach. I poked my head up to look out my window. A part of me sagged in despair. I forced myself to keep moving, telling myself she was still alive while dread haunted me with every step.

  I shook my head in shame and mounted some more stairs and crept along an office of broken tables and water dispensers and whatnot when the rat-a-tat of fire nearly deafened me, ripping
into the wall beside me. “Hold up! Weapon down.” The harsh voice lashed out at me.

  I slowly held up my gun, not daring to turn around. Think fast, Rusco. Stall them. It’s your only hope.

  “If it’s me you’re after, you’ve done it, Froy, let the girl go free.”

  “Turn around, slowly, Rusco. Kick the weapon away.”

  I did as Froy ordered and saw he had his piece leveled point blank, his face a livid mask of contempt. Another rebel was fast booting up the stairs.

  “Where is she?” the newcomer barked. “The bitch killed Brex.”

  Froy’s white ferret eyes darted about the room. “How many more of you rats are hiding here?” he shouted at me.

  “I think you killed the rest of them,” I said.

  “You’ll wish you’d joined them, Rusco. Move!” He rapped me with his gun. “Now it’ll go the worse for you. Those RPGs could have given my team cover and saved our asses.”

  “If you’d been using them now instead of chasing me, maybe you could have blown up some of your real enemies.”

  The distant roar of an enemy ship echoed above and Froy’s head turned in a shiver of fear. I likened it to a squirrel that’s got dogs on both sides of him.

  The rebel gripped his weapon with instinctive reflex and twisted the barrel to the window. “Shut up.”

  He motioned to the others, three more mounting the stairs. “Take this bugger to base. I have special uses for him. The rest of you, ferret out the woman.”

  They nodded.

  I made as if to stall.

  “Move!” Froy rapped the butt end of his rifle into the back of my skull. Stars flashed in multicolor. I massaged the lump growing there. My only hope was that Wren and Blest had the sense to keep away and get to Noss and the ship. If she were still alive.

  Despair gnawed at my gut.

  Rusco, you’re not thinking fast enough. I walked, as slowly as I could, with the gunman prodding me along. All your fancy footwork isn’t going to amount to jack shit if you don’t come up with something quickly. Look for an opportunity. Use your wits!