Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  “Now the fun begins.” I turned to Noss and silently engaged the spider’s remote.

  The Alastar broke free of her mooring. Her docking arms ripped away and with it the covered walkway leading up to her.

  People’s heads turned in surprise. The station’s air locks closed in automatic response to avoid vacuum engulfing the main wing. For a second everybody froze. Then pandemonium broke out.

  The Alastar floated on low impulse power like a big obedient butterfly ninety degrees to the radial axis of the station. I stifled a murmur as her wings and many dips and angles glinted in the station’s artificial light. Noss and Blest blinked in unison.

  Gistron’s security cameras would show nothing. I’d remain out of sight. It’d remain a mystery to everyone how the starship had made her sudden exit.

  I feigned my own gasp of innocence while a klaxon rang somewhere down the docking hall.

  I turned to watch Detran’s expression.

  His face boiled in pure fury. “What the bloody hell—” He patted his side, felt for the missing passkey.

  He clawed at grey-bearded Lew’s arm. “The woman—” he rasped. “Where is the she bitch?”

  “There were a few dames on that last ride out,” growled Lew. “Could have been on any of them.”

  “Go after them, for shit sakes!”

  Detran scrambled to pull on the arm of one of his lackeys. Soon all were talking at once into coms.

  I couldn’t resist wading through the crowd to watch more of Detran’s panicked antics. Fun being a fly on the wall.

  “Stolen in broad daylight?” Detran blinked. “It makes no sense. Why aren’t they going after my ship?” He turned and his big brown hound eyes bugged out of their sockets. “Damn RSA. They instigated this.” He reached to his side and his face curled in a mean, prune-like grimace. “I’m sure that bitch must have been working in cahoots with those rotten RSA meddlers.”

  He turned to gaze in wild contempt at the dispersing crowd. Lew gripped his arm. “Wait, Hal. There’s our so-called RSA agent there. He looks as surprised as the rest.”

  “Then who the fuck…?” Halley’s perplexed moon face pinched and mouth pursed in a little ‘o’. “Find the woman,” he croaked.

  “She’ll be long gone now,” Lew objected.

  “Find her!” The big man waved a fist.

  Lew stumbled off on a run.

  Noss, Blest and I waited some minutes before the bedlam reached its peak then followed with a more leisurely gait after a few who made for the landing dock, perhaps gripped with the thought that their ships would do the same magic disappearing act. None of them looked as if they liked the way things were progressing. We headed up the padded carpetway down the boarding hall to the moored ships.

  “Slow,” I muttered at Noss. “Don’t look so freaked out. You look like your granny drowned your hamster.”

  Noss murmured an apology while Blest looked at me in dogged wonder, itching to get to Bantam.

  We approached the checkpoint and its wire mesh and I nodded at the officer at the turnkey on duty, decked out in his blue uniform. He packed a compact R3 at his hip. He gave me a stony inspection, then scanned us all with suspicion.

  Something in the way we looked perhaps, the pasty face on Noss, gave us away. Or maybe it was Blest’s challenging scowl.

  The officer held up his firearm and blurted out a deep-throated order. “Hold it! Identification.”

  I blinked. “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “Not yet, but you might have one. Pass me your ID, and don’t try anything stupid.”

  “Why us?” blurted Blest. “Those people up there are going through.” He pointed to the couple ahead of us.

  “We’re not running an equal opportunity checkout here, wiseass,” the guard grumbled.

  Turning to flash a reassuring smile at the officer, I felt the first beads of sweat running down my neck while warning bells went off in my brain. I glared at Blest. My hiss of warning did not reach him or Noss in time.

  Noss made a move for something at his hip. The officer whipped out his weapon and tagged Noss in the wrist, shattering it. Noss squealed in anguish as a bright red smear appeared from knuckles to wrist joint.

  “Down!” the officer roared. “On the ground, all of you!”

  I knelt slowly, my hand reaching for the tiny disc I had smuggled in. I pressed the arm button and I made as if to put my hands to my head. I released the disc at the same time and it hit the hand railing and flared up. The guard, momentarily blinded by the bright orange ball, gave a howling cry. Blest charged him. They wrestled, each with their hands on the gun with Blest gnashing and cursing. The weapon boomed yet again, clipping the officer low under the chin. He slumped, gave a gurgle of anguish and fell to the floor as a bright blotch blossomed on his throat. A glazed look appeared in his eyes.

  Blest grimaced in a daze. He threw the weapon down on the guard’s chest.

  I raised my hands to my hair and clutched at it. A moment of despair passed. I shook my head in resignation. “That’ll do it, Blest. Drag the corpse behind the kiosk!” I hissed at him. “We’ve got exactly one minute to get the fuck out of here. This heist is going sour. It was all sewn up.”

  “Sewn up, Rusco? Not really.”

  We booted it to Bantam, wasting no time to scramble to the bridge and get the engines fired up. All the time klaxon bells shrilled at our ears. Nobody was supposed to get wasted.

  Wren came running out of the corridor, blinking in perplexity. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “All’s not well, Wren.” I fiddled with the nav thrusters. “Get us the hell out of here, Noss. Move! Program the Varwol! And for fuck’s sake, Blest, don’t do anything more to fuck up the day.”

  Noss moaned, holding his shattered wrist. Wren hopped to it while Blest glared at me.

  I shook my head in sad acknowledgement. We pulled away from the berthing arms. Impulse power took us up from Gistron on to the stars.

  I took Bantam on an opposite course to Alastar, our runaway yacht speeding to Deneb, my finger ready on the Varwol.

  “Ignore the pain,” I rasped at Noss. “Keep an eye on Alastar’s progress. For Mary’s sake, pitch Alastar into warp if shots come at her, or some SOB comes too close to tractoring her in. She’ll lead Gistron’s security bozos a merry chase.” I hated to be hard on Noss, but the poor fuck need direction and these desperate times demanded desperate measures.

  The first ship came roaring up on our tail. But it wasn’t who I thought it would be. Wren pulled up the holo feed and zoomed in. A cigar-shaped fast-runner appeared, tapered on the ends, wider in the middle where the bridge lay. No security logo on her side. Odd.

  The message came crackling over the com, on a general hailing frequency. “Jorry Rambo, Jorry Rambo, cut your engines! We’ve weapons locked on your hull. RSA and Gistron security are aboard with orders to kill, regarding the murder of a security agent.”

  I scowled. On a whim, I paused, my fingers fluttering over the Varwol slider. To find out what they knew could be expedient.

  “Seems as if we have some uneasy people on our back,” I murmured at Wren.” I spoke into the com. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, captain. Must have the wrong guy.”

  A fat face appeared on the visual—Halley’s—and his angry face spewing invective rattled the line. “Rambo! We’ve got your number and we know you’re keeping a bimbo accomplice aboard. Turn her in. We might go easy on you.”

  “What bimbo? Are you mad?” Odd that Detran’d go after me instead of Alastar. The word ‘bimbo’ clued me into the fact that Detran and his cronies had no RSA or security team aboard. “Who am I talking to?” I croaked.

  “Name’s Halley Detran, you fucknut—organizer of the auction, a name you know well enough, unless you’re the most clued out SOB in the universe! Turn that hunk of shit around—”

  I killed the channel. “Rude bastard.” I never took well to insults. I nodded at Wren. “Okay, let’s make hay.�
�� I kicked in Bantam’s hyperdrive while she engaged Alastar’s Varwol. But Halley took a shot at us from behind. A deafening boom hit our hull. The shields held but I watched as the red light flickered on the structural overload gauge. The warp sequence failed.

  “What kind of bombs is that fucker carrying?” I murmured. “You want to play, Hal? Okay.” I swung Bantam about and grunted at Wren. “Fire at that bastard’s ass.”

  Wren loosed a fareon beam. A jagged streak of ionized light flared from our port and shook Halley’s craft till it was an ugly shade of dusky yellow.

  “Rusco, get the hell out of here,” Blest yelled.

  As much as I hated to back down from a fight, he was right. I hit the Varwol control but nothing happened. I gaped again. The red light was stuck at the ‘on’ position at an eight out of ten intensity. “Now, we’re fucked.”

  “Fix it, Noss!” I growled at him in utter helplessness. He grunted and rocked back and forth, holding his mangled wrist; sweat poured down his flushed cheeks.

  I swore again, gunning the impulse thrusters. I took us in a tight loop starboard and aft to avoid Halley’s continued fire. We played a game of dodge and dash for minutes until I saw our measly impulse thrust would lose us this game. From the direction of Gistron station came two security bogies, bearing down on us with wrath. Red flares issued from their port cannons. Directly at us. The jig was up.

  Noss, bless his hide, started messing with the controls and gave a sharp cry as he diverted the auxiliary power to the Varwol drive. The overload warning light flickered off for a brief instant. I slammed the hyperdrive to engage. The high-pitched whir of light drive was music to my ears. Space and time suddenly flipped; we were gone from this sector.

  Staring at one another in stunned silence.

  “Any chance of them tracking us?” Blest panted.

  “Not unless they have angels or psychics on their side,” I mumbled.

  They couldn’t track us. Not at least with the gizmo cloakers I’d installed in the forward drive vents some weeks ago. More yols down the drain, but necessary ones to keep degenerates like Halley off our tail.

  Blest drew a hissing breath through his teeth, “At least you avoided what was turning into be a lethal firefight, Rusco.”

  “For now. There’s always tomorrow. That yacht Alastar and the booty aboard’ll pay for our losses in Resus. We’ll head to Deneb, cook up some schemes to get us back in the green.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Blest said.

  I sighed. Noss gripped his hand and clenched his teeth to bite back the pain. “Good work, Noss,” I congratulated him. “You saved our asses. Wren, get our friend some regen before his hand turns into a bird’s claw beyond fixing.” She reached for the extra stash in the hidden bulkhead—stuff I always kept in an emergency. There was enough there to deal with Noss’s problem. At least I hoped.

  Making enemies everywhere I went. Not a good modus operandi.

  Chapter 9

  Alastar was off to Deneb and we were out of radio contact until the starship came out of warp. Nothing we could do but sit tight and follow her light trails. My eyes kept scanning the overload gauge. The bright red light kept flickering on, then off, only to fade out for a few minutes then flicker back on again. Noss’s efforts to keep a steady trickle of auxiliary power trained at the light drive seemed to be failing.

  “Damn it, Noss, what’s wrong with the blasted thing?”

  Noss shrugged, wincing as the regen did its work on his wrist. “Could be anything. The last hit jarred something loose. Bad connection maybe, a corrupted stabilizer? Take your pick.”

  I grimaced. “Don’t like the overload light coming on. We’ll stop along the way, get it checked. Where’s the nearest civilized world?” I looked to Wren.

  The holo image showed a green gridded layout with nearby suns of various intensities as she consulted the star chart. “Baladar in Kepler’s Reach.”

  “Baladar it is. Damn Hal and his bloody super ship. We’ll keep regular shifts at the helm. Noss, you turn in, get that wrist healed. Blest, you and Wren fight over who gets the first watch.” I turned to make my exit, moving down the hall to my cabin like a straw man, feeling the strain of the last few days building, a pressure under my temples.

  I entered my berth, paused in front of the mirror before the sink, scrutinizing myself. The rugged ruffian look. Hollow pits under eyes too dark and purple to signify anything good. Nor did I like the crows-leg cracks forming around the edges plus the whiskers turning a visible shade of grey. The cynical awareness was still there, of a lone glimpse into the facts of life: after all the blood has been shed and the guns have gone off, only the lies we tell ourselves remain, about what heroes we’d been, and how lucky we were to have survived the day.

  One Jet Rusco: a washed-up space hustler roving the stars, well past his prime, trying to strike some balance between having a stable life and making ends meet while risking others’ skins in the process. Not the best way to play it. On the bright side, a man with some conscience, maybe scant little, but some backbone, and a shred of basic decency floating around there somewhere, but slim pickings lately. Not the best recipe for making friends, or keeping friends.

  Perhaps it was this disquieting reminder of my own mediocrity that brought the greatest sadness, a life bereft of fulfillment, the hollow pit-in-the-stomach feeling while going through the motions of playing bandleader to other grifters on the path hunting for a paradise they’d never find.

  A knock came at the door. Wren seemed to have won that fight for bridge leave. “Come in.”

  I looked her over, liking what I saw in her fresh black and grey leather and all her lioness cheekiness. “Well, this’s a surprise.”

  “Is it, Rusco? You think I don’t care for you?” She smirked. “What’s the matter, not happy to see me?” She came up behind me and put long arms around my chest. In the mirror’s reflection, I saw her eyes agleam, a wry twist to her sun-bronzed brow.

  I turned and gave her a lingering kiss. I unlatched myself and led her to the cot then flopped down with a groan.

  She came to lie beside me. “Rusco, you look haggard.”

  “You think? Wake me in two hours if I’m not up.” I yawned, rolled over on my stomach and she pushed over to my side.

  “What’s wrong, Russy, out of sorts today?”

  “Too many foul-ups, Wren.”

  “I can unwind some of those nerves,” she coaxed. Running a warm hand over my shoulders, she pinched at some key places, which had me arching in response.

  “Maybe you could.” I turned and leveled her a meaningful glance. The briefest tigress’s purr escaped her lips.

  “How many problems can I help you forget?”

  “A number maybe, but I’m just a dead weight right now, Wren, not much good for what you have in mind.”

  “You could be worse off, Rusco—think of Noss, poor bastard. Speaking of which, what do you think of our new recruits?”

  “If I had my choice, I’d opt for more experienced people any day. Though I can’t fault Noss or Blest for their bravery and coming through with the goods. Though Blest is a pain in the ass most of the time.”

  She nodded. “I think Blest is going to cause you some more serious problems one of these days.”

  “No doubt. I’ll re-evaluate him and the situation once we get to Deneb. Maybe give Blest his share of the spoils and send him on his way.”

  She snuffled out a laugh. “Good luck. Blest’ll squawk like a rooster—he’s such a hard-head and chronic whiner. It’s for the better you send him packing.”

  She tickled an area below my belly that seemed overly sensitive and had me jumping up a few inches. “Hey, I’m supposed to be sleeping here, aren’t I?” I turned to hold her.

  “Sleep is for wimps, Rusco. You can sleep all you want when you’re dead.”

  I laughed.

  She rolled over. “How come you never tell me anything about your life?”

  “You wa
nt me to turn into one of those jolly boy blowhards like down at the station bar?”

  “Well, not that bad, I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.” I sighed, rubbing my temples, trying to think of something. “Okay, picture it, me back in midtown Nepasi, on a nowhere world, the place where I started my security guard gig with a man called Trex. Trex—all fun and games. Boozing, whoring, gambling, you know, shows me the town, the hot spots, the low spots, the dives. Once while he was guarding a hock shop, he wanted me to cover for him while he picked up some stuff, and this wise guy comes up and wants to put the drop on me, thinking me a pigeon he can pump for information, maybe score an angle, seeing as I am new kid on the block. He doesn’t know I was born on Jaunus 8, war shithole of every kid’s bad dream, and that I grew up on the streets. So he asks me where’s the best ‘gauge’. Testing me out by dropping the word ‘gauge’. Numbnut. Every greenhorn knows the new hip term for illegal tech and cop-channel decrypters and neuron stimulators and all that is gauge. ‘Dunno, man,’ I say, ‘I’ve got like two hour’s experience with the stuff.’ So, he starts thinking twice about getting by me and taking me by surprise which is his real play, robbing the joint. He asks me if I’m interested in working for a guy named Makey, as in his boss. Me, twenty-three, a dumb fuck, knowing nothing about anything. I say, maybe, how much? ‘Oh, a lot more than you’re making at this dump.’ And before I knew it, I was getting mixed up in a smuggling ring out of that backward planet. Mean fuckers. They’d drop your grandma for no more than the roll of a cigarette.”

  “Nice. How’d you get out?”

  I paused, my lip working a little knot. “Not proud of it, Wren, but I wasted a couple of those assholes, deputies or zarks as they called them. I snuck out of there fast as a weasel, as in fresh off the planet.”

  She winced. “Rusco, always running from something.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes it’s just part of who you are and it’s all you can do.”