Starhustler

by Chris Turner

  He nodded to the three of his goons with AKs at their belt. “I paid Pazarol to pass you off to us. Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He wanted to kill you outright. But that would have been a waste of time and useless for our purposes. We still have unfinished business, Rusco, don’t you remember?”

  “What do you want?”

  His bushy brows shot up in inquiry. “I assumed that’d be obvious. We got the phaso, thank you very much. But where’s my amalgo? Seems as if Lugi couldn’t find it on your ship.”

  I wondered how long it would take them to figure out I didn’t have the amalgo and the phaso was a dud. Wren sprawled on the floor, a sorry sight, coming to with a groggy shake of her head. She was stripped near naked. Dolgra was at her side, splayed in shameless abandon, out cold. I took one look at the two of them and I knew that the jig was up. We were dead regardless of what we did or said.

  That sneaky bastard Raez must have bugged the Starrunner before he’d died. How else could that maggot-spawn Paz, in cahoots with Baer, have known so much about our movements? I cursed myself for my carelessness, neglecting to sweep for bugs after I wasted that slime ball.

  My mind worked at any desperate plan at all. Needed to figure a way out of this, otherwise we were dead.

  Struggle was useless. They’d strapped me in tight. I hated my impotence, but gave my hosts my most defiant look.

  Baer grunted in disgust. “What about you, black beauty?” He turned and back-ended Wren with the heel of his boot. “Know anything about a shiny disc, glittering all colors, size of your hand that can take you to faraway places? What about my big horseshoe gadget, like a wonder magnet, something you may have seen in a haute moderne living room?”

  She looked away, shook her purpled face, looking as if she was going to vomit.

  “Thought so.”

  Had they gotten to TK? Maybe he was sprawled in another room, getting his face plastered all over the wall.

  With cat-like strength, Dolgra shot up and clawed at the nearest thug, bringing him down in a crashing heap. Thumbs caught in his eye. He cried out in pain as fingers worked and he kicked Dolgra off him. The other two pinned Dolgra’s arms and began clubbing him.

  The one rubbing at his face swore. “That miserable catclawer. Fucked up my eye.”

  “Whine somewhere else,” cried Baer. “Get that trash out of here. I need to have a one-on-one with Rusco.”

  He peered with critical appraisal at Wren. “And this bitch is a bit mannish for my tastes, so remove her too.” He motioned to one of his henchmen who gave an anticipatory growl.

  “A woman’s a woman, boss.” The bald-headed thug grabbed Wren by the ears and hauled her up and dragged her out by what had grown of her hair. Wren kicked and screamed all the way.

  Baer shrugged. “Nasty piece of work, Rusco. Such company you keep. Now, I might just let you live, albeit it painfully, if you’ll tell me where the amalgo is?”

  “What amalgo?”

  He gave a weary sigh. “We have to do this the hard way?” He nodded to his other man; they cut my right arm bonds and forced open my palm flat. I struggled but Baer shoved a coin-sized object in it, while the other thug closed and tied my fingers around it.

  I protested in horror when I saw what that silver thing was and what they planned to do. On a nod, all three left the room and whispered in anticipation amongst themselves.

  “I always repay any favors done to me.” Baer gave a last look. He closed the door while I counted the seconds.

  Kaboom.

  The blast came from far away in my mind as my ears adjusted to the shock, and my fingers were gone in a second and the hand with it. Blood and flesh kicked up in my face. Then the agony came in mountainous waves.

  Red hot gallons of it. A minute, two days, a year? How much time passed? I don’t know.

  I remember a figure larger than life lumbering into that room. Could have been an avatar, a dark angel, some figment of my distorted imagination. He was big, his shoulders so wide, hawk eyes so dark and bright at the same time. The man wore a long, wine-colored trenchcoat, with white stripes down the middle and golden eagles off to the side. His hair was thick and black as buffalo fur and trailed past the middle of his back. The eyes, sightless as a blind crow’s eyes, penetrated into my soul, windows into new universes. But the presence of the man was what awed and stunned me most, despite my pain. He made Baer look like a mangy rat. Those ageless eyes scrutinized me as a raptor might bore into a helpless rabbit, but then his eyes went soft and gentle, as if he were trying to coax the truth out of an errant child.

  “You’ve wandered far from the truth, haven’t you, child? Empty your soul, become one with the universe.”

  I must be in heaven, dreaming a benevolent dream. My hand had ceased to throb, just a warm jelly feeling there.

  “Yes, the pain is not that crippling, is it?” he asked. “Doesn’t last, like all things in this transient world.”

  His voice changed as he muttered something to Baer who had clumped in, “So this is your darkhorse, the one who’s been causing me so much trouble and giving you merry chase?”

  With my eyes adjusting to the pink mist of pain, I recognized that face!—Mong. The holo screen…I croaked a hang-man’s curse.

  “Yes, you know me, don’t you?” the warlord jeered with a grotesque grin. “You have something of mine. A very important item. Tell us about it, and I’ll make sure the pain goes away. Forever.”

  I shook my blood-stained head, coming in and out of delirium.

  He exhaled a sad laugh. “That phaso’s nothing but a cheap imitation. You expecting to pawn it off on somebody in a quick sale?” He gave a spitting growl. “Good luck.” In impatient, cruel pantomime, he reached in his trenchcoat and pulled out a green vial, which he opened and flicked the caustic liquid on my stump of a wrist. The fires of agony bit into my flesh. The severed nerves reanimated. A good reminder of the pain to come.

  Yet Mong’s promise of pain meant the end of me, a bullet to the brain or worse. I’d hold out and die. They’d never get the amalgo, those fucking scavengers.

  As if reading my mind, Mong grinned and pulled a pick-hook out of his grab-bag of tricks and approached me from behind. He jabbed it into my stub of a wrist bone and proceeded to carve out the marrow.

  I howled in misery, croaking out a rasp as a lunatic might make, hoping for the oblivion of unconsciousness. The warlord paused, his eyes blinking in expectation, his presence a still of death. As he leaned forward, I could not help but cringe—the man was built like a tank, an iron killing machine, a mountain of muscle.

  Baer muttered, “The girl might give us a location, Mong. Hold up. Right now Branx and Madler are working her over for the truth, loosening her up, if you know what I mean.”

  “Fool! I don’t care what your slackwit goons are doing to the bitch. I want my merchandise.”

  “Alright, hold your horses.” Baer held up his hand. “I’m working on her. If you hadn’t been so impulsive and brought the Megalians to their knees so early, I’d have caught up with this Rusco scum long ago on Skeller’s Reach—”

  Mong’s patience wore thin and his hand flicked out. I blinked as the air went cold and dark. An invisible force seemed to lift Baer up by the throat and slam him against the wall. The thug gurgled, coughed, snorted, his eyes bulging like a frog’s. His hairy face went beet red. Mong thundered out a curse. “You stupid bungler! You were the shipping agent. Your job was to secure those Mentera techs back in Hoath. You didn’t. The amalgamators were highest priority. It’s been weeks since you promised them.”

  “I—know, M-Mong. S-sure,” Baer croaked, his voice a high-pitched twang. His feet dangled inches from the bare floor. “Just a minor detail. Rusco’ll be squawking like a hen before long.”

  “I don’t see him squawking like a hen.” Mong released the thug with whatever voodoo powers he had, and the hate-mongering Baer fell to his knees, clawing at his throat, like a drowning man.

  A prolo
nged howl came from the adjoining room, a thin wail of helplessness like the cry of a tortured animal. It could have easily been Wren’s or Dolgra’s, and I shuddered. A lament that might come from my own throat soon enough. Mong seemed to pay no heed.

  “I came here on a call that I would get results and my tech in my hand. My devotees are waiting for me on Z-Mezarath—you know that, to rally them to the true path.” He thrust a finger high. “One day my religion will spread throughout the galaxy, as popular as the Christ savior of old.” His voice had risen to a self-righteous pitch.

  “Sure, Mong, sure. You know I’m your staunchest supporter.”

  “Shut up. That’s enough of your fatuous words for one day.”

  A beeper rang on the warlord’s communicator. He snatched at it. “What?” he growled. His face darkened.

  “Unacceptable, Ry-yin! Fix it.” He cut the connection. “Is there no end to incompetence?” He exhaled a dark breath. “The war on Questra is going badly, Baer. I must go. See that this worm talks or you’ll be the next in that chair.”

  The star lord’s contemptuous glance brushed me a warlock’s hex as he made for the exit. “A mere flesh baby,” he chided in contempt, shaking his head. “A few bruises, a missing hand, and some bodily discomfort and the weakling mewls like a newborn child.”

  I wanted to fling out an insult but my tongue could form no words, only gurgles.

  “If you experienced the primal initiations on my home planet, Rusco, you’d be laughing right now—a man of iron, daring me to bring on more.” He gave a final shake of his leonine head and flung open the door. “You are not worthy of my teachings.”

  He strode out and Baer flinched, his burning bearish eyes raking me with sinister fervor. He reached out with his prosthetic hand to squeeze my stump of a wrist, the exposed bone and purple flesh. The dirty, rough glove reached high, maybe to pour gasoline on the raw wound, I couldn’t tell. My eyes circled up in agony, even as blackness overcame me.

  Chapter 18

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, stirred by some distant blast, a thunder clap, or it could have been a faraway mountain exploding. It was all the same.

  Wren was beside me, slapping my cheeks, yelling in my ear.

  She unstrapped my arms and legs. No, Wren was dead. Her scratched, bloodied face gleamed with sweat and blackened soot and grime. Her leathers were torn, but a wild look blazed in her eye, the other swollen nearly shut, as if she’d been to hell and back. Good old Wren! She had come back.

  “TK came through, Rusco. If you want to live, let’s hurry.”

  I struggled, hobbling like an eighty year old. Gunfire and blasts echoed down the hall. I was limping with Wren’s supporting arm around my waist down the rubble-strewn corridors, the rat-darkened places, doubled over in pain. More booms resounded from the cracked concrete above and the crumpled steel.

  It seemed a million miles we staggered, half dragging ourselves along, my head snapping sideways, peering in horror into one of the nearby storerooms. The door was half ajar. I caught a quick glimpse of Dolgra sprawled there, head pulled back, eyes glazed up in terror. The muscular olive skin body lay half stripped, half naked, the small, petal shaped breasts exposed high on the sun-browned chest. I knew that, despite the denial of my instincts on first meeting, she had been a woman, dressed up in costume and posing as a man, jousting, fighting in a world ruled by males, trying to survive and rise up the ranks in a world ruled by iron fists. Metal picks stuck up her arms and pincushioned her ribs like a sewing-box voodoo doll. I couldn’t look away, let alone imagine the last minutes of her agony. I grimaced and forced my feet on, vowing that I would avenge that brave woman’s sacrifice, if I ever got out of this misery alive. Which didn’t look very likely with half an arm, and the ceiling crumbling over our heads. Bomb fire threatened to kill us all.

  Even in my daze, I couldn’t help but realize that Dolgra’s defiance to the end had saved both Wren and me, or at least delayed having our throats cut in ruthless spite.

  Wren kicked open the steel door at the end of the hall. We stumbled into the harsh light on the tarmac, my eyes adjusting to the white sunlight as it shafted through a rent in the clouds. I heard the blast of pulse fire, then the roar of engines. Fareon beams sighted on the warehouse roof. Another licked out at the diving Markest and the ship buckled in flames. Its grey bulk crashed into the warehouse. Right on target, TK! Starrunner burst through a cloud of fire and landed beside us, smoking. I looked up to see two of Mong’s auxiliary warships screaming in, which he’d left to safeguard the cargo. We were screwed. Wren pushed me through the open hatch, yelling commands. TK lifted off at full impulse, miraculously dodging the sprays of fire left by fareons, even as Wren got the hatch closing. Our reserve shields took major hits. I could hear Molly’s voice caterwauling: “Danger! Warning. Shields at 4%. Structural overload. Expected hull implosion in T minus 30 seconds.”

  I shook my head in despair, staggering to the bridge, the ship rocking to TK’s clever maneuvering.

  The sensors were off the charts. Starrunner was toast. I looked over at Wren, my eyes vacant.

  Wren seized the controls and spat fareon fury at the Warkhawk in pursuit. The vessel lit up in red but did not explode.

  She gave a wild start. “Aw, fuck it!”

  Her hand reached for the Varwol initiate. “No!” TK jerked forward to stop her, but too late. Starrunner’s warp engaged. We tumbled end over end in a funland of blinding multicolored light. Mong’s ships in immediate pursuit stretched out like pancakes, then flared.

  I heard banging like unholy drums, the deafening peals of hell ogres, as if the gongs of oblivion were out there to reduce us to atoms.

  Inconceivable forces arced from Varwol to Trellian gravity. Conflicting time and gravitational forces wreaked havoc on the continuum. Our bones were slowly popping from our joints, stretching to infinity. Wren, moving in slow-motion, released the Varwol, her face a rictus of agony. The ship dropped back to impulse, slewing sideways like some rogue comet caught in a collision of 3D and 4D realities. We floated in another realm, one with a black sky drawn like a curtain with pale stars, an eerie globe with craters below us. The ship idled; we blinked as raw agony throbbed all over but we were alive, as the sensors went quiet.

  Were we in the same system? In a different time? No. My right hand was still gone. The agony was still there, of course, if not worse.

  TK leaned over and vomited. He lifted himself up, pale as a ghost. He flicked some dials, pulled up a 3D visual. “We’re orbiting Feldris,” he coughed, a trickle of blood seeping at the corner of his mouth. My slow brain made sense of the name. We’d made Trellian’s moon in the few light seconds we’d been in marred, warped-up no man’s land.

  In other circumstances we would have been stretched to nothingness, at the mercy of infathomable physics.

  None of Mong’s ships showed on our sensors. I hoped they’d all been blown to space dust, entered the horizon of oblivion, but somehow I doubted that. How long would it take our pursuers, if any there were, to pinpoint our coordinates?

  I slumped back in the co-pilot’s chair, holding my mangled stump under an armpit. The cloth Wren had wrapped around it staunched the blood. I motioned to her to bring the Myscol from the cabinet and every damn painkiller there. She brought down a dozen glass pill bottles. I downed them at once like a starving man. I chased them down with what was left of the whiskey. Wren gobbled a few herself while TK felt too sick to eat anything.

  “Get us out of here,” I growled at Wren.

  “We’ve got to get you to a surgeon.”

  “I don’t know where the nearest black market op shop is,” I croaked hoarsely, “certainly not on that crater below us.” My voice, reedy and faraway, sounded alien to my ear.

  “Molly,” I coughed. “Op shop’s nearest to, to—where the hell are we?”

  “Feldris.”

  “Feldris!” I gasped.

  “Affirmative. Delta sector. Malron, Malron City on Gain
or.”

  “How long?” I cried.

  “Four hours, three minutes, on impulse.”

  “On Varwol, you silly girl.”

  “Varwol at 1% light speed capability makes it two hours.”

  “Set the course.”

  TK set the coordinates and engaged the drive, what was left of it, and we were in the unreality of sub warp. I looked up through bleary eyes, my arm quivering, my legs spasming, and waves of nausea assaulting my shattered nerves.

  Wren looked at me from a bruised face and through a blackened, swollen eye, but with a vindictive gleam and blood on the bowie knife belted at her side.

  I could tell the way TK was shivering, it was the bravest thing he ever did, coming back with Starrunner and blasting our enemies.

  He saw my incredulous look and gestured. “I hid in the hold, under the mattress and moldy blankets you gave Raez. They searched the ship, eight of them, looking for crew. Didn’t find any.”

  “The phaso?”

  “I’m afraid they got it. If it was in that strongbox you hid, it’s gone.” He bit his bloody lip. “Wren’s locator was dead. I knew you were in trouble. But yours was still active.”

  So, the fact that they had not damaged my locator had saved our hides. It was still plastered to my blood-sprayed jacket, weaved into the fabric to look like a button. I flashed Wren what might have been a grateful, questioning stare.

  She grinned. “You saved me from that sorry planet of Talyon, so the least I could do is save your hide.”

  “You did well. I don’t know how you did it, but you pulled it off.”

  Her shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Those cretins underestimated me, as does every lout, and they all died. I must thank you, TK. Those fareons you showered made them think twice and I grabbed the first scum’s knife and cut off his balls. Then I got his gun. Small payback for the pains those lowlifes’ve caused us.”

  I flinched and got Wren to bring the metal tin labeled ‘regen’ from the overhead bulkhead. I got her to smear a generous dose on my throbbing stump. I cried out in agony as the thick orange paste made contact with the exposed bone and the nerve ends. But the glopping goo did its work. A stinging pain, like pepper spray applied to an open wound, then a sizzling of flesh, as it cauterized the flesh and bone. Then came a flood of warm, tingling sensations, as small bits of tissue rebuilt themselves, and I was in heaven—momentarily.