Starhustler

by Chris Turner

  The flesh-regen was good for rebuilding small tissues like a missing ear, damaged tongue or even major skin damage, but not, I knew, for regenerating bones. Ligaments or complex nerve tissue would need a level of regen I did not have. But the orange paste would keep the tissue primed if there was any hope for a new hand—which I seriously doubted at this point.

  I began to drift away, my eyes dilating, swinging back in my skull like a church bell, with the loss of blood and Wren slapping my face. She began mouthing words, anything that would keep me from fading into non-existence. I remember a garbled story, out of sync with the words coming from her lips. She was probably trying to keep me from succumbing to shock and bleeding out, despite the regen.

  “Stay with us, Rusco, you stupid sod.” Slap, slap. I blinked. “Think of my daughter before you think of dying. I lost Kela and I was a broken, empty doll. No purpose or direction. The manner of her death messed me up most, Rusco, brought me nightmares every sleepless night. I tucked myself into some safe harbor, away from them, away from harm, knowing that those scumlord sadists were out there hiding in the shadows with their machetes and ships and guns, waiting to rape and torture and wring every bit of goodness out of me and everybody else—my kin and friends. So, I hid like a feral animal, just like what we’re doing now, and went back into a deep, dark place, like the sand dervishes, hiding under rock, dunghill, every piece of broken metal, a dirty, scavenging castaway killing anything that threatened us with my sawed-off rod. Once when the thing refused to fire, I used it to beat off two grimy, hooded lowlifes with lust and murder on their minds. Another time four had tried to gang rape me, pulled off all my clothes, bloodied me up, broke my fingers. This one never healed right—” She held up her left hand and in my delirium, I saw how the index finger had been twisted and crooked. But I knew that already, didn’t I?

  “They failed, Rusco. Not too far off from what the scum tried to do to me today in that storeroom, but they got a surprise.”

  Her voice faded in and out, as we neared Gainor and she took our earnings from the stash box where I kept the phaso and I mouthed the combination in her ears, not TK’s, as I didn’t trust the man despite his recent heroics...

  I sat there, my mind hallucinating as if I were on psychedelics with the regen and the Myscol.

  The next series of events passed in a dream, with a strange bliss punctuated by snippets of conversations and figures I knew must be medics. Concerned faces peered at me. Men and women dressed in white coats, objects of whimsy and perplexity. Echoes of endless speculation and questions arrowed at me. I blinked like a dumb mule, opened my mouth, unable to fire up my vocal chords.

  When I came out of the anesthetic, I realized Wren had taken me to some black market shop. A raw ache trickled down my right side. Fingertips alienated from fingers, fingers alienated from hand, hand alienated from wrist, alternating from a dull numbness to rabid agony.

  I grunted, rolled over with a curse.

  “Careful, sir,” the female attendant said. “The circuits will need time to adjust to the nerve signals. I know it is disorienting.” I looked down at my duck hand and flexed the mechanical fingers. Pain, lots of it; the effort to get them to flutter, even the minutest, was staggering.

  “Therapy will be in-depth and intense,” she said. “Two weeks you should have most of your motor control back, but not strength. We installed a Trinbal T4 circuit limber in your wrist. It was within your budget.” The orderly’s remark seemed to be almost an afterthought.

  I flashed Wren a sallow grin. Step right up, kids—JR, mechno man coming through!

  I got back to the Starrunner, and we made for the nearby world. I didn’t know which one nor did I care. So began the first day of a long series on a road to depression. The worst had finally caught up to me. Maimed for life.

  But now was not the time for self pity. I gathered TK and we scoured the bridge. At last we found that tracking bug hidden under the console. Like a tiny black parasite. Raez’d taken a panel off. It was a clever plant; TK’s previous searches for the phaso had not found the tracker. I motioned the old man’s hand away when he reached to pull it off and destroy it. “No!” A part of me was still Jet Rusco, the cunning fox that never gave up. I knew that miserable device would come in handy one day. “Can you disable it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do it then.”

  TK complied without a grumble. An hour later it was done and I took the bug and locked it away in my cabin.

  Looking down at my mechno hand, I admired the fake covering of human skin, a hue slightly lighter than my own, the fingers stronger than my fleshy ones, but not my own. Feeling something of dead and wooden weight there.

  And with it came the raging urge to strip off my old identity, become the fierce torrent, the unstoppable rush of what I was to become. The old Jet Rusco was gone, kaput. A vengeful one birthed—an avenger to destroy every scumbag crime lord I could get my hands on, starting with Pazarol, Baer and that mad fuck, Mong, who had caused so many senseless miseries and the deaths of so many people. I didn’t care who died, who lived, or who got mangled up, or if I got robot parts to replace my whole body. Those fuckers were going down.

  We’d lost our payout and our cargo, and our shields were whittled to about zero—as our Varwol.

  These details I noted and considered, as we limped along to the next planet, though I was barely there in essence, going through the motions like some sock puppet powered by a clown master. I felt half a man, as if my manhood had been shunted. Biomech Rusco, suffering from implant stress disorder. Mech organ rejection.

  Whatever the fuck.

  I didn’t care and I had to snap out of this downward spiral.

  Chapter 19

  After repairing the Varwol on Gainor, I pushed TK away from the controls and set the course for Merius, the asteroid belt. To a place on the fringe where I remembered Deros the dwarf planet shone with its greenish tinge around its edges.

  “Rusco? Are you out of your mind?” TK gasped.

  “They fucked with the wrong asshole.”

  “What’re you scheming?”

  “Lure those scumbags into a trap they’ll wish they’d never sprung.”

  “How?” TK’s mouth twitched. “I don’t like that murderous look in your eyes, Rusco. I’ve seen it in you before and I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Tough shit. Get used to it, TK. There’s a reckoning to be had.”

  “With big bad Baer?” he guffawed. “What have you got to bargain with? The phaso’s gone. Remember, they got it?”

  “Yeah, too bad about that.”

  He flashed me a perplexed look. “You don’t sound too broken up about it.” His eyes widened. “Wait, you still got it?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “You’re a tricky bastard, Rusco.” He slapped me on the back, his lips working in a grin. I pulled away, not liking his overly familiar back slaps.

  It was a full scale war I waged now on Baer and Pazarol. Unfair of me to ensnare TK and Wren in it, but I was committed and I knew I’d need their help. Bounty hunters had no doubt been alerted, with a larger price on my head and all our miserable hides. Our ship, bugged, a magnet for slaughter and yet I planned to push the red card a little further.

  Time to install the tracker back in the ship. As I tinkered under the console with wires I’d ripped out two weeks ago, TK’s jaw went slack.

  “What in hell are you doing?”

  “Installing the bug back in the transcom, what’s it look like?”

  “Are you crazy?” He reached down to pull the device out.

  I slapped his hand away and told him to back off. “It stays on.” I flashed him a dangerous look.

  “What do you mean, it stays on?”

  “Listen, can you jumpstart this thing, TK, so we can monitor it, where it transmits?”

  He blinked, gave me a dazed inspection. “I can, sure. But why? There’s a risk you’ll tip them off by sending sta
tic down the line.”

  “Just want to know the message is getting through and it’s received. A lot depends on this working, like our lives.”

  He gave me a lip-chewing appraisal when I told him more of my plan. “I can do that.”

  “I’m banking that they won’t kill us, without getting their precious phaso back.”

  Misinformation. Misdirection. We’ll lead the flies to the spider’s web. A ghoulish smirk played across my lips. I looked down and flexed my robot hand. Pulling myself to my feet, I recalled all the forsaken derelicts of this solar system floating out in space and an old memory stirred: Belisar One, Primary Ore Station near Deros, the largest of the dwarf planets in the asteroid belt. I tapped some keypads and it came up in the holo field. “There!” I zoomed in and we studied the floor plans. “It’s still intact. We can probably rig the place without suits, if the air generators are still operational.”

  TK muttered under his breath.

  I summoned Wren to the bridge and told her the basics of my plan. “The phaso and amalgo are the imaginary bait we use to seed the dropoff point. Some fictional buyer while our gangster friends are listening on the wire. They come running to seize the cargo, but a little surprise awaits them. Simple.”

  “Sounds doable.” She grinned.

  “And dangerous,” TK snarled. “I don’t think it’s survivable, Rusco, given the firepower they had on Trellian.”

  “I wasn’t asking you. Now can you study the upper floor plan and map out entrances and exits? It’s vast. We need a confined area to work from.”

  The Varwol kicked out and got us to Deros, a misshapen would-be planet, looming brown and grey under distant Jesra’s weak light. On the near side hung Belisar station, an old derelict fish-spine station with multiple bays and landing docks stemming from the main vertebrae—one of those giant outposts left over from yesteryear—a monster of the past no longer operational. Had the works: artificial gravity, ore processing equipment, massive storage, redistribution.

  The station grew closer as Starrunner’s impulse engines guided us in to its central core, a desolate hulk, which had survived massive wars, now dark and dead. Life support systems? Unlikely. Air, heat, emergency lights, I hoped, if we could activate them.

  We approached the top, diamond-shaped crown and landed in a still-open port—Bay D-2. I tried various radio signals hoping to trigger the hatch behind. One of the common bands worked. The hatch closed behind us and sealed the depressurization chamber, letting the air flood back up. A green light showed on the inner wall. So…some of the systems were still online after all these years—incredible. A power source was still connected, solar, I deduced from the array of panels deployed on the station’s superstructure.

  I got out with Wren, wearing a light mask and suit. At the back of the landing pad, double doors led to a command bay that had been looted over the years. Many ore bins and sorting stations that it overlooked on a lower level caught my attention. A perfect ambush zone. We could stage an explosive web of horrors for our guests. Blow those bastards out of the sky.

  Wren and I worked for hours installing explosive packs and trip wires that I’d picked up on Gainor, booby trapping the place nicely. The artificial grav docks were still functional, a definite plus, otherwise we’d be floating off our feet. Heating and air systems had automatically kicked in with our presence. When it was done, we had two sets of fireworks installed in the command bay, fore and aft. All exits were wired to the touch of a button. Both Wren and I would carry remote detonators.

  I’d even rigged Starrunner to explode should the worse-case scenario occur, we got boarded, then we’d all go up in a cloud of smoke. Let’s hope it didn’t come to that. TK’s bulging eyes blinked when he saw what we were doing and what I was planning.

  “Why don’t we just zoom off to a faraway star system? Do we have to be so dramatic?” His voice was a low plaintive mutter.

  I snorted. “And have the next ice man waiting around to jab us with a pick? Gotta nip these moguls in the bud, TK, buddy. Do you want to live running in fear for the rest of your days?”

  “No, but you’re not considering all the risks.”

  “Trust me. This is the minimum risk. Once we get rid of our bugbears, we’re free to roam the galaxy, working our scams.”

  Wren mumbled her agreement. “I’m fed up with being shadowed by murderous scum.”

  TK sighed and threw his hands up in the air. The man looked gray and worn around the edges. Arolin, a martial arts expert, once told me the color of a man reflects his aura when his number is up. I think TK was feeling a bit of that. That slight quivering in the left wrist, the nervous tic of eye, the quick labored breathing and grey pallor of face. Perhaps the scrape back on Trellian had been too much, or maybe Billy’s death had got to him, or my hand being shot off. Whatever, he looked as gray as a ghost, and I guessed he was on his way to cracking.

  I set Starrunner on a course for Elphi Alpha’s airspace to stage the call, far away from Deros. I made sure that we were out of warp and the tracker was active and we were speaking within range of its pickup. I had my friend Loue on Elphi Alpha play an imaginary script, rehearsed in advance on an encrypted line. I didn’t want to give Baer and his mongrel brood a lot of time to plan an attack on us, so I only gave them two hours lead time.

  “Loue? Meet us at the upper dock D-2 on Belisar…yeah, that’s the one, the abandoned ore hub orbiting Deros…Yes, that’s two hours on the nose, not a minute later or sooner. Don’t worry, I’ll have both phaso and amalgo ready and waiting for you….Price, an even 40. Any fuckups, or no shows, and the price goes up 50%... Believe me, I’ve had enough hassles with these pieces of shit and I’ll be glad to get rid of them…that cockroach Baer’s almost cooked me twice. After this deal I’m going on a long ride to Pegasus or Ramses or whatever…Yeah, bittersweet memories.” I cut the line and saw the activating circuit light in yellow and knew the message had gotten through, to whoever, wherever. The signal piggybacked off our own transcom and would be sent through encrypted and unencrypted channels.

  “It’s done,” I said and moved away from the pickup range.

  Wren remarked, “Let’s just hope they don’t seize the opportunity to blast us out of the sky.”

  “Don’t worry, Wren. We’ll get our payback.”

  A particularly dark legend surrounded Belisar station, one of alien origin lost in time. Strange and inexplicable artifacts found down there on the dwarf planet: a squid-like intelligent warlord race, Zakro or Zipri or something, extinct now, whose only legacy was scattered bones with fanned, herring-bone spines turning up on the odd world or two. Made me shiver. All the mine charters came through Belisar at one time, the mining deeds for every jackleg asteroid, no matter how small. But some unknown scourge had infected the dwarf planet, an epidemic or parasite of some sort, made its way into the mined ore and the station had been closed.

  “You should be more worried about Mong than Baer,” said TK, interrupting my reverie, “at least from what you describe of the man while you were strapped in that chair. If it were me, I’d turn tail and never look back.”

  “That’s you, not me. As I said, TK, there’s no bucking necessity.” Still I recalled that frightful face of the star lord and his hulking presence and shivered. Mong was a red herring who was impossible to read.

  TK’s bright bird-like voice chirped. “Mong’s lust for the alien tech exceeds what you’d expect from a power monger of his sort. He could have empires, planets, wealth and power beyond measure! Yet he’s chasing us all over the galaxy for a tiny piece of hardware. Ever think of that? Something to consider before you leap into the lion’s jaws.”

  I shrugged and focused on the last minute details of the operation. Yet TK’s voice had infected me with a bug that had my brain spinning. I pored over all the words I had ever heard from Mong and the news reports on him. So what drove the megalomaniac? Galactic dominion, yes. But why was the amalgo so important to him? Some men, or quasi-humans, d
esired power over all other beings. Mong was different. He wanted respect also—to be perceived as the next messiah. Go a peg deeper, Rusco. Was the man really that deluded into thinking that he was actually helping the human race by taking over their planets? A poignant snippet came to mind,“They do not know what they want. A unified community and existence, free of warring bandits, free from slums. I will give it to them, Baer. Through hell or high water, I will give it to them.” Vivid was the crusader’s manifesto I’d overheard back in that torture room on Trellian…

  It seemed that Baer was no crueler or kinder than this master. But Baer was only a peon, a simple minion in the larger scheme of a grander visionary; Mong could have modelled himself on the warlord Genghis Khan, throwing in a twist of the cultist. No matter. The beast was after me, to the death. As was Baer. I’d robbed him of his limb, true, as he had mine. Now we were even, and one of us had to die…

  I reviewed my strategies and could find no flaw. Starrunner’s shields were low, so I’d spared no expense in replenishing my ship’s defenses with a heavy duty Rexar 3 magno-electrovolt mesh, knowing one day the device might save my hide—like the present. Wren was grinning like a cat; TK was shitting bricks. As I punched the hyperdrive to get to Belisar, I wondered what ball I’d started rolling by the simple act of turning on that tracker.

  The red lights glowed on the overhead panel, signaling our arrival at Deros as the Varwol cut out.

  Asteroid belt, Merius, spread behind us and Deros station loomed below, a half billion miles from Jesra.

  From what I had gathered of its operation, all ore and crystals, including Barenium, amassed from the nearby moons, asteroids and space rock, had been collected here for transshipment to neighboring worlds.