by Chris Turner
Long Nose, on a cue from his boss, stepped in to truncheon me as he had Marty. That was a mistake. My steely fist crashed into his thigh. It’s as close as I could get to the brute. Left a charley horse he wouldn’t forget. He buckled over with a painful rictus and my steel-toed boot caught him in the throat and that made his charley horse look like a love tap. Teeth and blood dripped on the ground with sticky white drool. Nasty scene.
Baer made his move, but I was quicker. I snatched the coin-sized explosive out of his hand, ducked in a drunken roll and tossed it right back at him, just as I armed the detonator.
The white flare caught his right side, lit him up like a candle, as he held up a hand to shield his face. Too late. The blast also caught Marty and singed half his hair and upper cheek off. Me, I was blinded for a second and my left side blood-spattered and burnt. The boss roared like a bear, clutching at his burning arm, shorn at the elbow. He’d mend it with some bio-regen, if he hurried. Doubted he had any on him at the moment.
The shaggy man staggered for the side door, coughing blood through the smoke. How he did so was beyond me; the man must not be human. I pocketed the phaso he’d dropped, grabbed Marty, and stumbled after.
I hauled Marty’s sorry ass out of that burning, smoking death crib, lips curling in crazed grin at Baer’s tumult. We stumbled through the gaping ruin of the loading dock. Across the tarmac we beetled like a couple of twisted scarecrows. An air speeder and two lorries stood out back of a communications tower surrounded by wire fencing. Screw the lorries. Useless against air attack. That air speeder looked like a heavenly prize, especially since it was one of Baer’s.
I hopped around the other side of it with Marty all gasping and limping. The first parked vehicle shielded us from the machine gun fire that would have cut us in two. We scrambled back, ducking to the rat-a-tat-tat of stray bullets. I clawed open the speeder door, hopped in, as machine gun fire clipped the tail fins.
I pulled Marty in head down and dove behind the wheel.
Kicking the throttle full on, I veered straight up, as black smoke and pressure gauges plummeted. “Come on, baby!” I roared. “Get us out of here before old man Baer grows wings. To the air depot.”
“We ain’t gonna make it, Rusco,” rasped Marty, caressing his soot-grimed cheek and ruined ear that oozed fluids.
I grimaced at the sight and smell of his burned flesh. “Sure we will, Marty. Shut up. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Course we’ll make it.”
For the first time I got a good look at Marty and shivered at what I saw. His lank mustard-colored hair was coated in slick dark fluid. His breath wheezed in and out like a terminal smoker. Coagulated blood caked the side of his head and his right arm spasmed.
“You okay?” A dumb question that I wished I hadn’t asked.
He held up a quivering hand and grimaced through his pained, red-rimmed eyes. “Had better days.”
“Helluva ride.”
“Helluva ride. Didn’t by any chance snatch up that little phaso of his before Baer was grasping for pieces of his arm?”
“Not particularly.” Lies were easy to spill out of my mouth. The disc was a death curse and Marty wasn’t up for what was next.
“Uh huh. Guess we could end up with nothing then after all.”
“Guess so.”
Marty closed his eyes and lay back his slick head against the headrest as the air speeder sputtered along, trailing a stream of ugly black smoke. The engine growled and hiccupped. It wouldn’t stay airborne for long. Below us, the city came into view in all its grisly glory: broken water towers, bombed-over apartment complexes, crumbled buildings, checkerboard smokehouse slums.
“Listen, I have to set us down somewhere. We can’t be caught again.”
A long pause. Marty shook his head. “Ain’t leaving Hoath, Rusco. You’re bad luck to me. Don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Don’t blame you, Marty. I can get you fixed up on Starrunner.”
“Forget it.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Drop me at the nearest U-ground link,” he croaked. “I’ll catch a ride downtown.”
“Dammit Marty, let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to say, Rusco.”
I shrugged. Marty was a proud man. I couldn’t blame him for despising me. The job was a cockup, we’d almost gotten killed, and in his mind, I’d screwed up and abandoned him. Perhaps that’s why I had ridden solo for so long.
Marty spat out a wad of blood on the floor at his feet. I veered down over a side street on the outskirts of the Jildaree district, milling with immigrants. One of the main streets would take Marty to the old market, downtown. He could disappear in the underground like a wisp of air. Part of me hated to leave him, but it was his choice.
In his lucid moments, he’d come to see the dark cloud hovering over me, the one that had shadowed my hide for so long now. The old, painful, rat-gnawing wound in my soul that drew danger and mishap like a moth to the flame.
“So long, Jet,” he muttered with a tired sigh. His crooked grin had gone cold and brittle.
As I landed in a disused equipment yard, I popped open the door and watched him ease off his seat, leaving a blood trail behind. “So long, Marty. Take care of yourself.”
He limped off into the yard, catching the blinking surprise of many ragged beggars and potheads warming their hands around their fires. I opened my mouth to say something, but thought better of it. I took off into the hazy sky, doubting that despite what Marty said, the poor bastard would make it through the night.
Chapter 5
I glided down to the refueling-docking station where I had left Starrunner, a big sun-bleached yard with two mid-size control towers and four rusty hangars. Glad I’d paid my twenty yols to secure it—safe for a little while at least. Anything over two days wasn’t guaranteed, neither here nor at any approved docks on this planet.
I set the stolen speeder down in a designated landing zone and hobbled up to the security guard at Hangar 3. I gave the gate security guard my most disarming smile. He gave me the once-over, frowning at my blackened and bruised appearance and tattered clothing, but after positive ID, he let me pass.
My ship, a sleek and gray Alpha 9 had a rough diamond shape at rear with ox horn-shaped prow at front—a balm for my soul. Many adventures we’d shared together. She’d gotten me out of jams before.
Several other ships were berthed nearby, from the dingiest rustbuckets this side of Vega, to a few Alpha retrofit models with double-flared ion thrusters, cigar fuselages and weapons defense to boot. I couldn’t help but admire these vessels despite my haggard state, beauties in their own right in this day and age. One fine morning I’d graduate to a Kepler 350 or a Hexler 410 A2.
Stay focused, Jet.
The hatch peeled back after I fumbled the controls at the side. I’d rewired the thumbprint ID-pad to bypass the scan, in case my thumbs were less than thumbs.
I ducked into the hatch and stumbled to the bridge, fired up my eagle. I reached below the console and took a bottle, downed a chug of Astra whiskey to loosen me up. Then another. I needed something to take the edge off my agony when I started to really come down off the Myscol. I patted the console with all her lit-up sensors and the extra upgrades I’d installed over the years. A better version of the battle hound older models. Self-refueling, drawing the radiant energy from suns when she came close to one, replenishing the Radium-Cesium ion thrusters and wafer cells. It had less range on impulse power and less speed at sub-warp, but it saved me a lot of grief, and yols, in risking refueling at some redneck, outer-planetary dock.
As the sallow sky grew flat, stars tinkled at the edge of my vision. I heard whispering voices in my head over the hum of the engines as Starrunner passed through the clouds. Hoath became a faraway memory. A stab of bright light licked out from the sun Tiga then disappeared as I arched into planetary shadow, then the blackness of space.
At this point I’m wondering what the hell am I doing? W
hy pursue this gig, Rusco? Are you a masochist?
Smartest thing would be to get out of the Phaedra sector as fast as I could. To where? Beleron 6? Mixraen? Both planets were safe—relatively speaking. Mixraen, one of the less shabby worlds where I could get this knee looked after without being at risk of infection or some botch-up. The throbbing had receded to a dull ache but that likely wasn’t going to go away soon.
Thing was, Starrunner wasn’t protected from pot-shot hunters. Easy for Baer and his goons to do a hyperclasson trace on the heat signature, if they so desired. Triangulate from last vector before light speed. I’d have to jump worlds to give them the slip.
With such thoughts crowding my mind, I programmed the Varwol light drive for Mixraen, in the meantime coasting on steady impulse power toward Brisis’s moon, knowing I’d have to clear planetary gravity before I could risk engaging the light drive.
I gazed with pride upon my rack of guns, from small pistol to semi-automatic RX series to Uzi to remodeled AK to modern high-blaster. A weapon for every day of the week. Even experimental ray guns at the end of the rack. But I tended to go for the older-generation guns. Call me a traditionalist.
My attention drifted back to the view in space. Several monstrous cylinders hovered before me. I eased past the now hulking derelict remnants of ancient planetary defense systems, orbiting Brisis. Their nuclear powerplants had winked out of existence ages ago, their pulse ray cannons, at one time able to destroy star cruisers, now iced and inert. Many half shorn barrels looked back at me. Though hollow and scavenged by junkers or freelancers for parts, they still sent shivers down my spine.
A blip appeared on my sensor readouts. I frowned. A bright object reeled in behind the nearest cylinder. At first I thought it was the actual derelict coming to life.
But no. Raiders! Clinging to the underside, piggy-backing off the defense probes like tics, eluding my sensors.
The klaxon rang from the overhead bulkhead and Molly’s computerized voice began beating out an insistent monotone, “Red alert. Enemy in pursuit. Pulser waves to hit in five seconds.”
What the bloody hell! They weren’t active when I flew down to this god-forsaken planet.
I activated shields and banked Starrunner in a steep dive away from the pulse beams arching my way. It gave me a few more seconds. But the impact grazed the starboard thruster and sent me in a tailspin. Shit! The Varwol couldn’t engage this close to planetary gravity, so I was scuppered.
“Great, Molly. Skgurian raiders? What this time?”
“Databanks report high probability of Skgurian origin.”
Two more bogies popped up out of nowhere on my short range scanners. Three old, refitted craft with high stems, bullet noses and gray bodies. No match for Starrunner on a good day, but a risk now with her in a side slew. I maxed out the stabilizers and with help of the ship’s computer, managed to pull her out of her tailspin. “Molly! Lock weapons on their engines, now!”
“Affirmative.”
As the forerunner gained ground, I caught a glimpse of the raider’s forecannon. Large and lethal. Nothing less than heat-seeking missiles, spiked cubes with wicked guiding systems. They’d pulse Starrunner to immobility, then blow me open like a tin can with one of their torpedoes, with the added bonus of being able to scavenge at their leisure with the crew dead.
My mind worked in furious calculation. Raiders as these went for the small fry like myself and left the big freighters alone—the big cargo transports moving world to world selling their ores, raw materials and contraband on less impoverished worlds than Hoath.
The Skgurian stalkers turned on an intercept course. I sent out a high-energy fareon beam, after Molly had done the math. The first enemy craft careened left too late as concentrated pulser made contact with metal, and a bright orange ball burst outside my starboard viewport.
I cheered. The lights dimmed and reserve power took a hit, and the shields took a beating upon the return fire. But the other two banked off.
I struggled to gain control of the fluctuating sensors. “T minus 10 to escape window,” Molly droned. Like slow leaps into infinity, the seconds ticked by. Just as the next spiked missile came a ghost’s breath away, the Varwol kicked in, and the universe slipped sideways. Colored lights dazzled my visual space, a million sparkles of bright light licked out at me from the void ahead. Then blackness. Starrunner had entered the no-zone of singularity. Running again. Rusco’s signature.
Yet something was off. The last hit must have damaged the singularity stabilizers. My heart did a dive.
Odd thing about warp is that sound is often distorted. One’s movements seemed blurred around the edges, as if reality is skewed, impinged by an external force. A human hand moves a little too late, or an extra finger appears on that hand but it’s just a blur of five fingers moving at once. The mobilitor’s tech corrected and tried to adjust for the time-dilation effect, but even that was never infallible and created little glitches of speech and movement. Exaggerated now with the mobilitors impaired.
“Molly, do something.”
“Mobit tech at 82% and dropping. High impulse beam was sustained by shield at 40%. Compensating.”
“Do what you can!”
A sudden dark thought edged my mind. I clawed at my pant’s pocket. Still there. I grabbed a soft cloth and extracted the phaso and lay the disc on the bridge console with extreme care.
The object sat there in its weird way, shimmering with a dull iridescence. I eyed it as a tiger might eye a steel-rimmed trap. Something about the thing did not seem natural, or of any human world, with its unreadable script and its strange symbols writ along the curve’s inner edge. Hieroglyphics? Numbers? Coordinates? I shook my head. Inscribed on the light hyperbarsol they reeked of heavy mystery. I daren’t touch the script, for it looked as if it might be where the last schmuck had fingered it, and gone into hyperspace.
I shivered, moved the evil talisman into a metal strongbox I kept in the storage bulkhead. I closed the box with a loud clack and stuck it under the console. A spasm of pain rippled through my knee. My hand reached down, clutched at the bulged rent in my leather spaceman’s garb that covered my quivering kneecap, aching and swollen.
The hydrophane from the Myscol was wearing off. Spidery pain crawled up my leg with a ripple effect, from shin to knee. I stumbled to the medicine cabinet, biting back curses, fingers arching for that place where I kept my stash of get-well drugs. My hands shook as I reached for the little pink bottle, the one I saved for special occasions. That I’d distilled from a home blend of morphine and dyzanol. I refrained from another shot of Myscol, knowing well the next jolt would send me into cardiac arrest. Muscle up, Jet boy. Stomach your pain.
Fingers beaded with sweat, I stuck a wooden rod between my teeth and champed down hard.
Eyes glued to the sensors, I watched the Varwol integrity dip down to 62%. But it held. Movement was tricky in this syrupy warp and repairs impossible. As long as it didn’t get below 40% before the next planet, I was okay. If it did…ship and crew would disappear into a singularity.
I cruised for hours, maybe days, enjoying the silence of deep light travel, warring with old thoughts, aware of a nagging feeling brewing at the back of my skull. Something about this situation seemed worse than past ones—a shadow zone, as if I were staring in the black pit of the unknown. I really didn’t know what my next step was, something unusual for Jet Rusco. Calm, cool, phlegmatic Rusco of the dark pool of scammers and avengers, with a million cons all ready to go. To have survived them thus far, had given me a richer confidence than I deserved. A dangerous place to be. It was a bubble waiting to be burst. That grand bungle in Hoath had been the first warning; staring down death, not once but twice. It had shaken the belief in my invulnerability, got me thinking.
Thirty-nine going on eighty, melting into the wasteland of middle age. I wasn’t getting any younger. The creaks in my spine were getting all too loud and more frequent. The lithe pliancy, the hard muscle that had once moved
fast and rattled so many heads had toned down a peg.
The warning sensor came back and Molly’s shrill voice seeped into my brain like a bullet shredding chipboard.
“Systems failure. Port wing stabilizer. Varwol disengaging. T minus 6. Impulse power at 10%.”
“Molly, you doom-monger! Where the hell are we?”
“Minos sector, The Orion Zone. Coordinates T56.988234—”
“Alright, nowheresville. Target the closest habitable planet.”
“Affirmative. Planetary gravity field affecting compromised Varwol.” She brought up the nearest planetary datasheet on the holo display. A dusty world, of shell-shocked craters within range. Estimated indigenous population: 12,000.
“Great, okay, make for it. What is it?”
“Talyon 8A. Terraformed planet settled in the second wave of the settlers’ rush, circa 2945.67.123—”
“Yeah, yeah.” The fourth planet showed as a pale saffron disc in orbit around Silirus, the bright orange star dead ahead. The nearby planet’s gravity was too much for the drive. The Varwol fluttered to a halt, leaving me on impulse, caught within grappling distance of Talyon’s gravity. The main thrusters, already compromised, shuddered under the tidal grab, not potent enough to steer me clear.
I guided the ship as best I could down through the colorless atmosphere. Even that was rocky. Starrunner couldn’t stay in the air.
I picked the straightest strip of sand I could find, between two massive mountains of what looked like monstrous garbage piles, and what looked like massive pits beyond them. I kept the nose high, tightening the straps securing me in the pilot’s chair.
Starrunner’s fuselage heated up to a red blur. Ship sensors warned me of further failures. I shut them off.
The ship ground its gray underbelly along the alien turf as I bashed along and watched my fragile existence flash before my eyes. No regrets, Rusco, none. Though there should have been a thousand.