Boom Town

by Craig Martelle

  “It has three settings—single shot, full auto, and shotgun. I’ve had her since I left the service,” she said.

  Thad went downstairs and found that Mast had returned with the two retired SIs. Sledge was about five minutes out of a hangover. Penelope was as hard and cold—and beautiful—as always.

  “The only reason I’m here is to pull my partner out of his downward spiral,” she said.

  “Hello, Penelope. Good to see you. This is going to be like old times,” Thaddeus said.

  “God, I hope not.”

  “Sorry, Thad. We didn’t do much good while you were gone. I think Shaunte was counting on us to hold the fort until you got back,” Sledge said. “We’ve been helping Dixie at her greenhouse. Trying to salvage as much as possible. She’s broken up over the loss. I think everyone is. Darklanding won’t be the same without her black market peaches and that drink the Ungloks love so much.”

  “I should have been here. This is my fault,” the sheriff claimed.

  No one argued with him.

  “Let’s put together a plan,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  No Plan Survives First Contact

  Thaddeus and Mast made a direct approach to the Cheap and Easy. Leslie and Maximus approached on a parallel course using side streets and alleyways. Sledge and Penelope moved over rooftops on Thad’s left flank. Andronik and his human friend Bobby were recruited at the last minute to scout ahead and whistle if they saw signs of an ambush.

  “You better stay back a bit, Andro. None of Dregg’s crew likes Ungloks much. They’ll be suspicious. I’ll dart ahead and whistle the moment there’s trouble,” Bobby said, watching his friend closely. The Unglok had healed quickly from being thrown off the building, but it had changed him. Subtly, but Bobby saw it.

  Thaddeus waited until the two kids were a block ahead. He saw the human kid take the lead. Andronik seemed to like the boy and Thaddeus trusted Andronik. The Unglok kid had helped him out several times since he arrived on Darklanding.

  “We won’t go inside. Just have a look and get a feel for how they run their external security. No need to rush to failure. Why get one of them when we can have the entire crew?” Thaddeus said.

  “There will be many of them,” Mast said.

  “Once we put Dregg in his place, the others will be easier.”

  “I am muchly nervous.”

  “You should be. I’m always nervous. It keeps me alive.”

  Freighter after freighter crossed over Darklanding to circle the spaceport landing zones. The Cheap and Easy was closer to the pads than the Mother Lode. Warehouses and machine shops stood side-by-side in every direction. No one lived in this area. “I guess if you’re going to have a loud, obnoxious bar, this would be the place to have it.”

  “But we are going to shut it down, is what I say.”

  “Yes, we are, Mast. We’re going to kick some ass tonight,” Thad said. He held up a hand for everyone to stop, hoping the other parts of his team saw the signal. “Something’s not right. Andronik is just standing there facing us.”

  “That does not appear muchly correct. If he is looking for the enemy, he should be facing the other direction,” Mast said. “This is the first I have seen him since he ran ahead. Normally, he is sneaky.”

  “He’s being held hostage or something,” Thaddeus said. He continued to walk as though he had seen nothing unusual. “Keep your eyes open and be ready to take cover.”

  Mast veered toward a building on the right as he walked.

  Thaddeus pushed away needless thoughts. He strode toward Andronik with one thing on his mind. Save the kid. The Cheap and Easy wasn’t going anywhere. Was this a trap? Of course it was. Would he die? Maybe. The trick was to keep his friends safe, give them a chance to escape.

  “Thaddeus! Go back!” Andronik yelled.

  A strong hand shook the Unglok youth. “Shut your Glok mouth.”

  “Why don’t you step out of the shadows and face me like a man?” Thaddeus said, taking several strides closer.

  “I’m not planning to get shot,” said the shape lurking behind the hostage.

  “Are you Dregg or one of his cronies?”

  “You got me. Dregg Hardtime in the flesh. We’ve got a friend in common.”

  “Dregg Suv Humanity you mean, and I doubt we have anything in common.” Thaddeus shifted to his left. Dregg was holding Andronik in the mouth of the alleyway. Shadows covered him but not the Unglok boy.

  Dregg pulled his victim back a step. “That’s about close enough. I doubt you can shoot as good as everyone says, but why take the chance? Times are changing in Darklanding. You can get on the payroll or you can get dead.”

  “Interesting. If you’re going to make threats, you can consider yourself under arrest. Surrender now and save us both a lot of trouble.”

  Maximus howled in the night. Thaddeus saw Dregg’s shape flinch, look around, and step into the light. The man was huge and more muscular than the sheriff had expected, despite the way everyone talked. It was almost ridiculous. Thaddeus wasn’t sure how he walked or took a crap. But muscles were muscle. He had to be strong. Thaddeus didn’t want the violent brute to get his hands on him.

  “I’m sorry I got caught,” Andronik said.

  “Let him go,” Thaddeus said. “I’ll take you on with no guns. Boxing and wrestling or whatever.”

  “I’m not stupid or naïve. You probably have a dozen snipers out there. So why don’t we do this instead.” He yanked Andronik into the shadows. The Unglok kid screamed in pain.

  Thaddeus drew his blaster and rushed forward, activating the small light under the barrel as he went into the darkness. Two steps into the trap, that he knew was a trap but went anyway, Dregg’s crew struck.

  He expected to be struck with clubs or maybe shot dead, although they could’ve done that while he was standing in the light. What he got instead was a heavy net dropped from a second-story window. Lead weights made it fall in a perfect arc. He twisted to get free.

  Three men fell upon him with clubs, sticks, and metal rods. He laughed crazily, the pain-filled laugh that came when things were going seriously wrong. He wanted to fire his blaster, but it was smashed against his leg. Dregg and his men rolled Thad into a ball and pummeled him north and south.

  Maximus burst into the fray snarling and snapping his teeth. Leslie attacked at the same time with a jumping front-kick, smashing a man’s teeth in. Half of the ambush team whirled on the new attackers and overwhelmed them with numbers. Thaddeus couldn’t get a count from his position. Dregg and two other men were still beating him. He twisted to minimize the force of the strikes, but it was no good.

  He heard Sledge and Penelope rush into the alley firing their blasters. Dregg and the others vanished in all directions as though it was a preplanned maneuver. Thaddeus fought against the net but only tangled himself further. When he finally came to his feet, he saw Leslie standing unsteadily and holding her head with both hands.

  “Fraking stun poles,” she wobbled, staggered, nearly fell. “Those things are made for cattle, not attractive working girls like me.”

  “I’ve got perimeter overwatch,” Sledge said.

  “They were at least platoon strength. Probably more out there we can’t see. We need to move before they decide to use their own blasters,” Penelope said.

  “They could have weapons staged,” Sledge said. “Ambush points pre-planned.”

  Thaddeus ripped the last tangle of net from his legs and hurled it away. “Like this ambush point? Where’s Andronik?”

  “The Unglok kid got away. I sent him to the Mother Lode.”

  Three glass bottles stuffed with burning rags arced over the building.

  “Clear out! Back to the street!”

  The bottles hit the alley pavement, shattering and throwing fire in three large circles.

  “Amateurs,” Sledge said.

  Thad used his phone to call the first three people on the volunteer fire brigade phone tree. “F
ire in the warehouse district. Block three-twelve-bravo.”

  Twenty unarmed men and women stepped onto the street. “We’re unarmed, Sheriff. Came to help put out the fire,” a woman said.

  “Can’t do much good with you all pointing blasters at us. Put those things away and help us with a bucket line,” another said.

  “The fire is not muchly spreading. The brigade will bring a water truck. I think we should not help these people,” Mast said.

  The crowd deepened and advanced. Half of them were drunk, fresh out of the Cheap and Easy.

  “Street party!” several men and women yelled.

  “Fire! Oh my god, Darklanding is on fire!” yelled another.

  Dregg’s goons mixed through the throng of confusion, pushing closer and closer to Thad and his friends as they retreated.

  “None of the online classes discussed the proper method of containing a party-riot,” Mast said.

  “Nope. Retreat might work.”

  “Get him!” Dregg shouted from the crowd. He charged with his loyalists. “Sheriff Fry is trying to burn down the Cheap and Easy!”

  “No! That’s bullshit!”

  “We have to fight the fire!”

  “Get the sheriff!”

  “That freaking dog bit me!”

  Thad drew his blaster and pulled up the bottom of his coat to soften the impact of flying bottles and rocks. “Split up. Escape and evade. Rally at the Mother Lode.”

  He fired a shot in the air, then aimed it at the growing mob, slowing them to a walk. They kept coming, but none of them seemed ready to die.

  Sledge and Penelope moved smoothly into an alley that wasn’t on fire. Maximus stopped dragging one of Dregg’s goons, lifted his leg on the crying man, then raced after Leslie as she retreated with her blaster rifle.

  “I’ll shoot anyone who comes after me!” she yelled.

  “What do we do?” Mast asked.

  “Back away slowly and keep backing away. That’ll give the others time to get clear,” Thad said. Blood ran down his forehead.

  “Your face is bleeding. How did that happen?” Mast asked, pointing his own blaster skyward.

  “Cut on my forehead. Looks worse than it is.” He glanced at his deputy. The Unglok was covered with bruises and cuts.

  “I’m going to give you an order, Mast.”

  “It must not be to leave you here. I am muchly staying with you.”

  “Get out of here. Go for help.”

  “I’m staying!”

  Thad knew what he had to do, but it hurt worse than the flying bottles and the humiliation of his failure. “Get the hell out of here! I don’t need you! I never needed you! You’re only making it worse. Just go!”

  Thad thought this was a strange place to meet his end. After everything he had survived on Centauri Prime and escaping from the inside of a collapsing mountain, he was going to be beaten to death by a drunken mob.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Great Tigi Society

  “Sheriff Fry!”

  Thaddeus recognized Andronik’s voice.

  “Come this way. Bring Mast with you.”

  “It is muchly nice of the child to invite me in this rescue attempt,” Mast said.

  “Remember what I said about walking slowly backward?” Thaddeus asked. “Forget about it. Run!”

  They sprinted through the warehouse district with Andronik in the lead. A group of Ungloks herded pigs across the street as soon as they passed.

  “Get those animals out of the way!” Dregg shouted. He fired a blaster at one of the shepherds. Animals and Ungloks scattered.

  Thaddeus and Mast kept running.

  “This way!” Andronik yelled, waving for them to follow him into the Unglok district.

  The streets were narrow and the buildings leaned toward each other in the old township. Whoever planned the streets didn’t like to make them straight. There were no alleys as humans knew them. Every third or fourth building had a walkway connecting upper levels. Laundry hung on lines that sagged lower and lower. Several of Dregg’s goons became twisted in an Unglok woman’s underwear.

  Thaddeus caught up with Andronik and several adult Ungloks he recognized from the Mother Lode. “Why are you helping us?”

  “We are friends of Miss Dixie. She made the Tigi which we have not seen for many generations. There can be no Tigi Society without Tigi. These men would burn you like they burned the peaches for Tigi,” the old Unglok said. “I do not run fast like the young ones. Follow them and trust them.”

  “Thank you,” Thaddeus said. “What was your name?”

  The old patriarch was already gone.

  “Dregg and his goons are coming. They are breaking everything. I will get you out of here so they will not stay and do more damage,” Andronik said.

  “That is muchly good,” Mast said.

  Maximus appeared from one of the Unglok streets and ran alongside them.

  “Where’s Leslie?”

  “Snort, snort, grunt, grunt, grunt.”

  “Forget I asked,” Thaddeus said. “Andronik, how do we get back to the Mother Lode from here?”

  “We will go through the new Unglok neighborhood. Prefabricated human buildings that are bigly ugly,” Andronik said. “Then I will find Bobby and punch him in his traitor’s face.”

  The Unglok boy led them into the cliff dwellings facing Transport Canyon from the side of the Darklanding mesa. Men, women, and children sang as they continued with their lives. Some paused to watch Thaddeus and his friends race by. Others scowled at the approach of Dregg and his crew.

  “We are getting away,” Mast said. “They do not seem to be good at running long distances.”

  “Could be another trick, but I think you’re right.” He stopped on one of the uniquely public balconies of the Unglok community and stared at the moon and stars over Transport Canyon. “Do you hear that?”

  “Yes,” Mast said.

  Maximus barked once.

  All across the Unglok cliff dwellings, above and below and on each side of Thaddeus, families stared at the mountain foothills.

  A ship lifted into the air. Not a single light marked its passage. It would have been invisible if not for the faint reflections of the night sky. The engines roared then went silent as it rose higher.

  “It is good that the ship is free of the planet,” Mast said. “I know Ruby is safe inside. May she live long and muchly well in partnership with it.”

  Thaddeus heard Dregg yelling at an Unglok a few streets behind him. “We need to go, Andronik.”

  The Unglok boy saluted him. “This way, sir!”

  * * *

  Penelope and Sledge waited until the chaos passed, then followed. “I’m counting three dozen. Six look like they have training and keep a pretty good security perimeter around Dregg.”

  “Six is too many. Assuming we could get past the others, and through this crowd,” Sledge said.

  Bottles flew through the air and bounced off the sides of buildings. Space freighters swooped low on their approach to the landing pads just beyond the warehouse district. It felt like a combat zone even though Penelope was pretty sure the pilots in those ships couldn’t care less about what was happening below. Their job was to deliver freight to the spaceport, load up, and fly out again. They probably didn’t even see the riot flowing through the streets.

  “Do you think this was part of Thad’s plan?” Sledge asked. “When he said draw out the enemy assets, I thought he meant the core of Dregg’s crew.”

  “He’s smart enough to realize no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I doubt he wanted Darklanding burnt to the ground,” Penelope said. “These buildings aren’t especially flammable. If these looters make their way into the Unglok sector, things will change for the worse.”

  “I’d rather not see that happen.”

  Penelope agreed, but she wasn’t sure where this conversation was going or what good it would do. She knew there were TerroCom soldiers on the other side of the plane
t and suspected they went off their designated training site more often than the SagCon Board of Directors wanted to admit. But it didn’t matter. She had no way to call them and they wouldn’t obey her orders even if she did.

  “All right, Sledge, watch my back.” She let down her waist-length red hair and shook it out. With her blaster held down at her side, she ran into the thick of the drunken disturbance. “What are we doing out here? The beer is inside the Cheap and Easy! And the girls!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Screw this! Let’s go back and get hammered. I bet they can’t even charge us right now!” She waved one hand toward the Cheap and Easy beer hall almost a mile away now. The crowd roared with enthusiasm as they rushed back toward the promised intoxication and sex.

  About twenty men and a few women, including the six professional soldiers around Dregg, turned on Penelope. Sledge was waiting for them with a blaster in each fist. “Time to dance, boys and girls.”

  Two men came up with weapons. Sledge shot them before they aimed. The others spread out to find cover.

  “On me, Sledge! Move!” Penelope rushed toward a fire escape. She pulled the ladder down and scrambled up. Sledge followed. When she was at the top, she fired several rounds to discourage pursuit. Sledge shook the entire wall when he clambered upward.

  They ran across a rooftop and jumped to the next building. Sledge hit so hard, his right boot punched a hole in the waterproof tiles. Penelope pulled on him until he was able to yank his leg free. None of their pursuers attempted to jump. They shouted at their confederates on the ground, who took potshots at the SIs.

  “Come on. Pick up the pace, you big tank,” Penelope said. They raced across two rooftops before climbing to the ground and heading away from the Unglok sector.

  “Just like old times,” Sledge panted.

  “Why’d you really come back to Darklanding?” Penelope asked. She jogged backward for a few strides to check for pursuit.

  “Cost of living is pretty low here, or was with the new discovery of exotics. Before that, I couldn’t have afforded it for long even with my expense account. I thought maybe Dixie would come around,” Sledge said. “Why’d you come?”