by Chris Turner
Option# 2 had its appeal, considering the potential rewards. One of those phasos still sat in that box, so when blinky eye decided there was nothing to see and booted it, I could easily snatch the disc-ring plus the larger amalgo with parallel plates which looked like antennae, but wasn’t. It didn’t look homemade, more like some alien tech unless that script on it was some language I’d never seen before.
Rusco, focus.
I heard the other speak into his com, his hands shaking. “Sully, you there?”
The guard tapped his com. No answer.
“Damn you, Sully! Mitch’s out. Fucker’s dead. Gone. Vamoose. Where are you, you idiot? You’re supposed to be watching the entrance. You let some nosepickers in.”
Bloody hell. Fario was not giving me many options at this moment, scratching his head like a monkey, then loitering too close by. That box of phasos could be worth some serious dough, if I got it to the right people. Maybe Q wasn’t so deadbeat after all. But where was Marty? Why hadn’t he checked in? Maybe he couldn’t, without being made.
A more likely scenario—Marty had fucked up and was probably dead. As I’d be soon if I didn’t do something quick.
This was getting complex and ugly so I scrapped my well-intended plans. I needed to get out of here fast before my luck ran dry. These guys would kill me for whatever was in that back room. The stuff was hot, maybe too hot given my meager resources.
Fario shifted and I sighted in for the kill, trigger finger ready to deal with him. As I was rounding the vehicle door, keeping my eyes on him, a sudden waft of air tickled my skin. Boom! My left knee exploded in pain. Another guy was over me like a bad rash, kicking away my weapon. He must have been lurking there, heard my breathing or something. Or was it Mitch reappeared back like a genie? Grinning, with his AK hoisted, poised to swing it like a club to clock my other leg, I could see the gloating look in his eyes: to have scored the intruder who had nicked the contraband. Bully was written all over that miserable face, reveling in a sense of superiority over his victim, a toy he could play with.
But stupid of any bully not to take his victim out while he had a chance.
Chapter 3
I slid out of my painful daze as the guard’s weapon came swinging down. I rolled aside. The cold metal only grazed my left ribs. I grabbed the stock and wrenched him forward, at the same time ramming my right boot as hard as I could into his groin. He sagged with a high-pitched cry. While he was gasping for breath, I reached for the syringe tucked in the kit at my belt and jammed it in my left thigh. That got me howling the banshee’s yell from hell with the pain stabbing me like a longbow of agony. But above the pain I was already feeling a euphoric high. Myscol, aka Devirol, was the wonder drug of the new age and made me suddenly superman. For a moment the pain fled to a far corner of the universe, but it would come back.
I saw anger and adrenaline and invincibility wash into a blur of unreality. My attacker’s face went white as he doubled over, weapon clattering to the ground. I became a fire bomb—a demon juiced up on Devirol, the old form of the ancient speed, or some derivative. Down he went in a tumble of tired muscle as my boot connected with his skull.
I snatched up his flesh ripper, the AK—didn’t want him to use it on me, if he were to recover, unlikely as that might be.
Everything ticked in slow motion. The man’s drool and broken teeth spilled out of his mouth along with a trickle of blood, his quivering cheek pushed flat to the concrete. The staticky whine of voices crackled on his com.
Fuck, there was backup coming. I shook the haze out of my head. A dark spot appeared on my leg where he’d clubbed me. I staggered to the flatbed, still clutching the man’s AK, wrenched open the door and started the engine. The vehicle jolted forward, past the forklifts, down the hall, straight up the middle toward the exit. The other guard, Fario from the tickle-trunk room, came barreling after me, shooting at random. I rolled down the window, angled my weapon back at him, releasing a spray of machine fire, but I couldn’t aim properly. Rotten bastard had a fast leg and caught up with me as I dodged and weaved, grasping the edge of the open window, grabbed my weapon out of my hand and wrenched it backward. Grunting, trying to jam the prick with my elbow while holding the wheel, I wrenched his arm about, snapping bone. He cursed and I kept his arm locked. The machine gun clattered to the paves. I gunned the engine straight for the sheet metal wall where I knew the loading bay to be.
A strangled scream broke from the guard’s lips, as the whites of his eyes mooned in horror. The bumper sheared through the bay doors as jagged metal folded him sideways, erasing his shoulder and crushing his right limb.
The shredded gatepieces clattered behind as I crashed through the sheet metal, the wheels bucking as they took the two-foot drop without hiccup in the absence of any loading ramp. I looked back in the mirror to see his palsying form sprawled on the concrete. I burst out into the pale overcast, wondering where the hell Marty was. No one in sight. A sallow glare streamed from the sky.
Sense started to come to me. What to do with that piece of tech?
The gears in my brain worked with slow precision as I hit the gravel road and headed toward Hoath. I looked for a quick solution. Take the device to my ship at the rendezvous point, several miles out from the east end of town. A no brainer, right?
No.
An abandoned warehouse came up to my left and my heart did a little tumble.
That feeling that grips you when you’re forced to make a quick decision in a time of trouble. Take Path A or Path B. The path through the woods on the tried and true trail, or that unknown animal path down by the lake you’ve never been to. Step right up, folks, sign your name on the dotted line in blood. The bad feeling that had been lurking in the pit of my stomach just suddenly jerked up a notch.
“Aw, screw me!” Acid boiling to my throat, I cranked the wheel hard, front tires spitting gravel. The flatbed broke through the rickety steel gate, and I pulled up to the loading docks.
Stumbling out of the vehicle, panting, I kicked open the rusty door of the warehouse with my good leg. Cursing, I tucked my hands in my sleeves. With hands shielded, I dragged the foreign parallel-plate gadget into the gloom, dropped it into a storeroom with only bats and mice flitting about. The place smelled of dung and mildew, but I didn’t care. Hadn’t been used in years. I pushed the tech deeper into the shadows and covered it with some old mildewed battered skids and tarps. One brown rat with pointed snout jumped out with a baleful stare and squeaked. Knock yourself out, rodent. Get blasted to oblivion, if you like. I limped out to the flatbed and gunned the engine, churning gravel all the way.
Forget Marty. Got to get to my ship.
I drove toward the outskirts of Hoath, following the main road. I must have driven for miles before I became aware of little oncoming traffic.
Warning bells chimed in my mind. What the hell? Minutes ago, only an odd lorry had passed, probably carrying dubious cargo. I didn’t know the side roads. Might have to run some detours, which was a bad thing. My leg tingled to the barest edge of feeling as the Myscol began to wear off. To drive that piece of junk into the city—was not ideal.
The flatbed rattled over the top of a hill. Ahead and below, I saw flashing lights. A blockade of some sort: steel girders, surface cars, a few air speeders and milling figures. No way! Men in uniform, hailing down traffic, and detaining and searching vehicles. My mind raced. Baer’s work? Coincidence?
Baer’s boys must have called in for reinforcements—which meant I was meat if I didn’t quit this scene.
I slammed on the brakes and did a full 180. An air speeder looped out after me, its airhorn piercing the stillness and scaring a flock of ducks with long spoonbill beaks. Those horseshoe-shaped air speeders looked like local law. Could Baer’s reach run so deep?
I screeched down a gravelled side road. The lights flashed as an official police van lurched after me from the blockade. Now I was up shit creek. This clunker wouldn’t hold up to air pursuit and souped-up cop v
an. In desperation, I cranked the wheel hard and ran her into the fields.
Not wise. The ground was wet and soggy with a recent rain. The engine whined at max rpm, tires spinning in the black mud. The van halted and two burly figures leaped out who looked none too pleased, grimacing through their beards. I could see their faces set and rifles in their hands. The air speeder came bearing down on me.
I bolted the doors, clutched my glock, but they smashed through the glass and hairy hands pulled me out onto the wet grass. I struggled, getting off a wild shot, but losing my grip on my gun, as it was kicked out of my grasp.
“You rotten prick,” I bawled. “Pick on someone your own size.”
“Funny man at two o’clock, Roy. Spike him.”
I still had some juice left in me from the Myscol and I kneed the bastard in the chest just as he bent down to clobber me with his rifle. These thugs were keen on taking me alive, otherwise they would have peppered me long ago. Wrestling, I jammed his weapon in his face, breaking his nose and mashing an eye. He howled and went down in the mud, clutching at the ruin of his face. His partner reached to help him as I staggered off.
The air speeder disgorged three air guard. Husky, military boys. They looked royally pissed, a mean bunch, though nothing more than mercenaries paid to patrol and beat down whoever their employers told them to—which in this case must be Baer. I could see the blue decals with the hunting eagle on the underbelly of the craft. Not that that meant anything, the insignia of city air guards.
Rat-a-tat-tat, Three men and a rat. The rhyme worked in rhythm with the slugs that ate into the flatbed.
I wasn’t going out without a fight. I pulled out a large hand-sized explosive from my waist kit. Tossed it at the air speeder. The marshals shielded themselves but I was the only one to duck in time.
Marshals and air speeder went up in a roaring flame.
I heard voices through the haze and smoke as I struggled through the wet sod.
“Nothing in the back!” cried one of the van riders. “No amalgos.”
“What the fuck? Where’s the amalgo? Where’s that shitweasel with the bombs?”
I grinned as I hobbled away. One came loping after me through the smoke, grunting again. “Where’s the bloody amalgo?”
“Up your ass, fucker. Eat shit.”
A billyclub came smashing down on my head and I knew no more.
Chapter 4
I passed from world to world, from past to present, in a kaleidoscope of fact and fiction. My disembodied self hovered above the floor that dim day out working as a security guard over at Crystal Mindworks Ltd. Days when I entertained a notion of upholding some law-keeping role in society. Five thugs busting down the door, wearing masks.
The beat down of the guards, Frenzetti and Markus, my friends, slain in front of my eyes. Two shots clipping from my R9, one killing the first, point blank, the other sending a lowlife writhing on his back. A bullet grazing by my ear. Stumbling out the side alley, my ears ringing, blood pouring down my scalp. My one thought was to get out of here while others roved about, knowing that the bungling would be pinned on me as an accomplice. Why were you the only one left after the robbery, Rusco? Trying to start the air speeder to get out there, start fresh on a new world. Taking other softer jobs offworld, working star carrier baggage, playing bouncer, pawn shop security, construction crew, you name it, but it only got worse—the violence, the murder, the theft, always catching up to me, as if I were some beacon for it, with a dark cloud hovering over my soul, plunging me deeper into a nightmare of illusion. The drinking becoming more intense, the only way to drown the pain, until Mela at last left me.
Dreams have the uncanny knack of telling us hard dark truths about ourselves.
When that saw edge of reality surfaced, so began my slow descent down the road ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. My looking for crime as a quick means to an end, flirting with its seductive narcotic, searching for the one big score that would never happen.
I came to, with the smell of sweat and machine oil in my nose. Some rough hands dragging me across the cement floor. In a dingy hall lit with fluorescent lights the familiar smell hit me. I groaned. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s fuckbuddy if I wasn’t back in that shithole warehouse.
Then I discerned the sounds of a beat-down. A familiar voice. Quiet, child-like, mixed with thudding sounds like a metal pipe whacked on flesh. Only because it came through a steel door left slightly ajar did it sound surreal, like something out of a cartoon. The two goons thrust me in. I rolled on a bare concrete floor, blinking like the bedraggled wretch I was.
I took one look at Marty beside me and knew things had gone very wrong. His haggard face resembled a terrified mask. He mouthed words “had to scram or give away your position.”
Marty sagged as a meaty fist clipped him in his well-purpled face. With two black eyes and lips messed up, it explained why I couldn’t recognize that voice right away.
The man who’d clipped him turned his burning gaze upon me. I had seen wild animals in the zoo less feral and repulsive than that aberration who stood before me. Everything about the thug screamed bear. A shaggy ruff of black hair like the fur of a large predator coated head and arms. Wide sideburns covered his cheeks, his bared forearms exposed by rolled-up sleeves. Wide-spaced beady eyes and mallet fists. A mouthful of shark teeth. Easily could have been the most hideous creature I’d seen. Some modern-day mutant? Or one who’d experimented with, or OD’d on too many modern day transfigurative drugs and lost the fight?
“Welcome, Mr. Rusco,” the man growled in his husky voice. “Glad you could make our little appointment.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” I spat blood, along with a tooth.
“You know who I am?”
“Mr. Magoo from the Metro Zoo. Dunno, don’t care.”
He flashed my long-nosed captor a meaningful look.
Long Nose grunted. “Busted up Floss and Bix real good. They won’t be walking too soon. Vin’s Air speeder took a hit. Some little incendiary he had up his sleeve. No amalgo.”
The man sighed, a murmur of grave amusement. “Clown Hair, you’ve been a busy boy. Care to enlighten us on the whereabouts of my amalgo?”
“Dunno anything about any amalgo.”
He paced the room, his lips getting cold and stiff, his teeth flashing as if ready to bite someone’s head off. “That’s funny. Fario, who lies with half his arm hanging off, claimed he saw one in the flatbed you crashed through my warehouse.”
“Fario sounds like a man with an overactive imagination.”
He jerked a thumb at Long Nose. “Clown Hair thinks he’s gonna word-play his way out of this.” He turned to me. “You know, one of the amalgos is no good without the other.”
“Do I give a fuck?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he echoed in wonder.
“Sure, Baer,” Marty slurred through a broken nose. “We do.”
“Mr. Baer to you.” He growled, turning his feral gaze on Marty. “Some clients of mine are going to be sorely pissed when they ask me where their amalgo is and I say, “beats me, Will, a couple of wise-guys broke in and stole it.”
“That’s a hard thing to have to say,” Marty wheezed. “I can understand, Mr. Baer. Rusco’s just bargaining for his life is all, aren’t you, Jet?”
Baer smiled and shook his head with a sad laugh. “I’ll ask you again, where’s the amalgo?”
One of Marty’s eyes had swollen shut. “I’m just the dog-boy here, Baer. If you want to pull somebody’s legs off, you’re looking at the wrong guy. Ask, Jet.”
“Like this sack of shit’s going to tell us anything?” Baer snarled. He flashed a pistol and held it to my head. “This fuck looks as if he couldn’t blow himself out of a paper bag. Last chance, Marty. You’re ribbing with the wrong man, with this, ‘ask Jet, shit’.”
“That’s rich, boss,” guffawed Long Nose. He gave Marty a jab in the ribs with his truncheon that had him groaning.
“S
hut up,” growled Baer. “If I want you to open your mouth, I’ll rattle my zipper.”
I twitched, almost wanting to laugh. Marty, the faithless fucker. He was going to sell me to the dogs before long with his good-guy talk. I could see the yellow look in his eye. Fuck Marty. I’d have to rely on my own devices to live through this. The hoodlums seemed sure of themselves to have kept us unbound. They wouldn’t kill me as long as I knew where their amalgo was. Torture, yes, but there was the Myscol. What was Marty’s game? Was he done playing sycophant, giving up his only leverage of having something of worth they wanted? Unless, of course, Marty was being trickier still with his old good guy, bad guy routine. My mind was not thinking straight. I was in shock from the last ten hits to my skull.
Marty was stalling, always good at that, mixing fact with fiction, hopefully creating possibilities out of thin air to keep the enemy guessing and scratching his head. That it would stall Baer long enough before one of us could break out of here, was another thing. Marty wasn’t looking as if he could hack too much more.
“Search him,” Baer said.
“Already did. We found this little phaso on him. This big explosive too.” My husky captor tossed it to Baer.
Baer nodded. “Got that. Explains the wrecked speeder. Demolitions man, are you?” he said, turning to me.
I smiled.
“Where’s the amalgo? The funny little roboty-looking googad with twin parallel plates. Glows green when armed.”
I tossed back my wavy dyed purple hair, trying for a gambit. Nothing to lose, right? Well, almost right. Sorry for what it cost Marty. I am sorry for that.
The Myscol, still pulsing in my veins, fueled fire to an inner strength we all have but rarely tap into. I’d taken a triple dose, something unheard of—my doctored batch, the one they had no clue I’d taken. It drew them deeper into underestimating me.