by Chris Turner
It wasn’t wired. Good thing, otherwise Plan B would have come into effect, and that was a hell of lot messier.
Pazarol’s men were nowhere in sight. They were confident, these thugs, as evidenced by their cocksure posturing and loose-limbed gunwielding. Nobody would try to burgle the very place they called home.
Such conceit was a fortunate occurrence. I knew the workers lived there and it was off shift for the guards, having scoped out their movements in advance. Many of them had left, so only a skeleton detail remained.
We crouched, breathless, in a cramped foyer stacked with row upon row of shelves of old junk and open boxes of dusty uniforms and boots—rejects.
The sewing machines had mostly settled down for the day and I set out for the back of the warehouse, motioning Wren to get to the workers’ stations fast and move the women and boys back toward the side exit we’d breached. Hers was the harder job, I knew, convincing the laborers not to panic, bolt or raise an alarm. Her presence as a woman would command more trust and compliance. I hoped. If not, Plan C.
Keeping low and out of sight, I threaded my way through the many aisles of random equipment where the victims’ daily chores were ever the same: hunched on benches before long tables, cutting, dyeing, sewing the electronic components into fabric, pressing, working the tall, upright mantis-like machines to pump out Paz’s guerrilla wear. I dodged the sound of a guard’s coarse laugh and the murmur of nearby voices, finally to crouch before the fat, double heating pipes running length-wise three feet above the ground at the back of the sweatshop. I’d seen them in the floor layout and memorized the specs back when TK and I’d scoped the joint. Typical rectangular warehouse, complete with storage areas at the sides. I set my canister of gas down underneath them and armed it for thirty seconds. I pressed the mask over my face. The hiss grew as I beetled away, for soon it’d blow and the funland of hell would begin. We’d have seven minutes before the toxic gas spread throughout the compound and render the air unbreathable.
When I heard a distinct pop behind me as the canister released, I knew the die was cast. I scrambled back the way I’d come.
Gray clouds of hot steam hissed from the piping area, simulating a burst pipe, obscuring the view. This mix had tear gas in it for added effect. We’d have to get the workers out with speed, otherwise they’d choke to death.
I heard shouts to my right and the thuds of booted feet of big Paz’s guards, converging from their diverse locations. They’d be wondering what was up: a main pipe rupture or thinking the worst, some spontaneous fire. I snuck off in the opposite direction, keeping low between the lanes of dyeing equipment and the presses, blending in with the shadows. Confuse and misdirect; that was the name of the game, for as long as possible while Wren and I got the workers out.
I ran nose to nose with Pazarol and a few of his boys before long in the cleaning area on the way back to join up with Wren: a blur of dark suits, mustachios, Uzi blasters, foul tempers and tongues. I pegged off the first of his entourage, a bewildered bodyguard, his mouth wide and gaping, before answering fire sent me spinning under a worktable.
Shots ricocheted off the shiny metal. I found myself pinned down before the dye vats. One beam nearly clipped me and I jerked away from a whoosh of green fire that nearly grazed my Adam’s apple. Both far too perilously close. Feet scrabbled around me. I shouldered in behind a large vat of toxic green dye, the chemical reek making my eyes water and my throat seize up. My mask had jiggled loose. I fumbled to secure it and shook out the chemical sting from my eyes. The gunmen weren’t equipped with masks, so I sent green dye pouring their way by blasting out the bottom far side of the vat. Soon they were reeling on the ground as the fumes from the dye stung their noses and throats while the more toxic billows of steam crept up on them like snakes through the aisles.
So began a shooting spree in a wild free-for-all that the gambler in me knew was bad odds at five to one. Yet gradually big Paz’s gunmen started to cough and reel back, snarling and cursing.
I slipped out of my hiding spot, my mask snug on my nose now. I picked them off one by one so there’d be no blasting us in the back while we were making our escape.
Pazarol, the fat fuck, lolled in the curling swirls of mist, wiping his eyes, drooling and spitting curses all the way. So, he was here. Bonus. Someone had thrown him a mask, the strap still dangling in his pudgy hands. I kicked the weapon out of his grip and beat him down to the ground with the end of my blaster. I looked down at him with little love.
His priceless expression was one of white-faced surprise. Rusco, a grinning pumpkin man returned from the grave.
“It can’t be! You’re dead!” he choked and sputtered, as if he’d been struck in the head. Wish I could frame that image and pin it on my cabin wall. “I saw you hauled off by Baer,” he croaked. “Then that Mong striding down the hall.”
He lunged up at me between phlegmy drools, spitting out blood. “Is that cropped he-bitch woman of yours alive too?” he gasped. “Should’ve plowed her while I had the chance.”
“Would have thought this little exchange had given you more humility.”
“Fuck off, dogshit asshole. I hope you and that broad get wasted—”
I finished him off with a single shot. He lay still, with a gaping, smoking hole in his forehead. Good riddance. Couldn’t stand the man.
A death was a death, and this was no less gruesome, though more like putting a rabid hound out of its misery. But the cost of taking a life always stirred the hairs on the back of my neck.
I caught up with Wren. She and the others were hustling toward the east wall, the workers frightened out of their wits at the echoes of gunfire blasting away and the hint of white steam floating ever closer toward them. “Out the side door!” I grunted. “This area’ll be gassed out in minutes.”
A group of fifty of them looked at me with dilated eyes of terror. “Who are you?” they cried.
“Pazarol’s nemesis. Get moving! This is your lucky day. I’ve a ship waiting.” Blinking in astonishment, they stumbled on trembling legs and I bunted them toward the side exit. Wren sighed with relief at the sight of me, alive and whole.
Some of them were too frightened to take action and stood immobile. Others gaped like fish, cowering behind the rows of khaki wear they had toiled so hard to produce. I gave a croak of frustration. “Do you want to stay here enslaved, victims of these scumlords?” A lean, hollow-cheeked woman with dark circles under her eyes visibly trembled. She wrapped her bruised arms around her chest, gave a choked sob and a call of action to others. Then took to her heels after Wren. Some I had to leave behind, blinking in the dim emergency light as the alarms rang. So be it. I joined in a mad scramble, prodding the others from behind down the main corridor, blaster in hand. When more rats with foul teeth came out to play, I stayed back as their rounds clipped out toward us, and rolled under equipment tables, using the gathering smoke as a screen through which I shot at will. Tools and instruments skidded off tables; khaki fatigues lined up on hangers shredded around us to the rat-tat-tat of gunfire. Wren was somewhere ahead of us, gesticulating with her R4, herding the mob forward through the double doors, three and four abreast so undernourished they were.
It was a wild rush. Desperate figures burst out into the damp air onto the weed-ridden tarmac, the grey light of dusk hitting us, and the smell of chemicals in our noses. Down the service yard, past rusty forklifts. Again I had to drop back as five others came out of the emergency exit we’d booby-trapped, staggering like strawmen in a gale. I fired shots back at them.
I hit the detonator switch. All disappeared in a cloud of white flames as their charred limbs flew, severed from torsos.
More stumbled out of the side door closer to the back. This time caustic smoke billowed out at their heels like sidewinders’ tails. I jammed down the detonator. It didn’t fire. “Fucking hell!” The canister was a dud. I threw the useless thing away.
They chased after us. Gunmen rained fire like cannons. Two wom
en fell, shot in the back. I cried out in dismay. A tousle-haired boy tripped and crashed to his knees, sobbing. I winced and hauled the featherweight up on his feet, urging him to run like he’d never before. Like panicked sheep, they all ran after Wren through the weeds and cracked tarmac toward the distant fenced yard. I thought some would expire from sheer exhaustion and terror before they made it to the hold. They kept apace each other, some women gripping boys’ hands.
I stayed back, kneeling, pegging off those who came within range. Blaster fire kicked up. One caught me in the left foot and I cursed, felt a zinging burning sensation in my toe. Shit, this was not progressing well.
“Move your asses!” Wren cried, swatting at them with the flat of her gun. She crowded them forth, through the fence toward the ship, herding them in the direction of the hold like cattle at a roundup.
When the last worker was in the ship, I came hobbling, sucking in lungfuls of air. I closed the hatch. All were secured and Wren already had Bantam circling in the air. I raced to the bridge, used the remote to fire her front cannons, bright lasers which licked at the snipers retreating in haste back to the compound. I grimaced in triumph as bodies fell.
I scanned the ground. Some survivors piled into the dormant X-R Rover craft sitting out in Pazarol’s dilapidated yard. The V-winged tri-fighter whisked up at us, fareon beams pouring out, catching our shields, but Wren was pounding them with our own pulse beams. We were already well ahead, engaged, and I maxed Bantam’s impulse out to the twin moons, past the atmosphere and out into space. The go indicator flashed yellow and free of Tarsus’s gravity, the Varwol engaged. The universe slipped sideways. Stars, light flashes, multicolored beams sheared on impossible angles that bent in wrong places and made no sense to any waking eye.
We were off to the stars, and I could only breathe a gasp of relief.
* * *
I came down into the hold, limping with Wren at my side. There they all crouched in a miserable huddle, murmuring and sniffling like lost orphans, some in shock. The women held each other like frightened sisters, consoling each other and some of the younger boys. Wish I’d had a rescue like this when the bombs and pulse beams were going off and dropping on us during my teens. I let the memories slide by, shaking loose those frightful, estranged years of a lost youth. I blinked, emotionally spent, such feelings suppressed for decades now.
I’d take these victims to a far off world and let them start fresh, give them a second chance like Wren. They deserved it. The boy I had set right came hesitantly forward, touched my mechno hand. He smiled. I placed my good hand over his with a startled glance.
I felt a stir tingle in my breast. Seeing those grateful, teary-eyed faces affected me. A wave of something memorable and wholesome blossomed in the depraved chaos of this world for a change. It was a spark of some miniscule change. So much different from the killing and the violence, the cons and blowing everything to shit. It had been so long since I had experienced anything comparable.
Wren came beside me and curled an arm about my waist. She flashed me her lopsided grin.
I thought of that tech hid in the warehouse north of Hoath and a derisive rumble caught in my throat. Let Mong search the universe for it. The bastard’d never find it and I’d never go back to retrieve it.
The phaso I’d keep as a souvenir to remind me of what I had lost. But the other half of the amalgamator would sit there and rot in the darkness. No place for that evil caricature of bug-alien engineering in a human world. I thought of Billy’s demise and TK’s grief-stricken face before he died. It sent chills down my spine. No less that harrowing glimpse I’d caught out in nowhere land when I touched the phaso. All together, it had cost me my hand and taken a year off my life, or more. But it had given me something else—a sense of purpose. A spur that had driven me to liberate these downtrodden people, whom I never would have met or helped otherwise.
Somehow I knew there’d be more victims squirming like worms on the hooks of evil scumbags like Baer, Pazarol and the fanatic Mong.
I gave a gusty sigh and swung back to the bridge with Wren. “Going all maudlin on us, Rusco? Need to step up your game, I think.” I croaked out a laugh and drew nearer to my companion-in-arms, a crooked grin pasted on my haggard face and my eyes agleam. “Wren, you ever hear of Xerxes station out in Perseus?”
“No, should I?”
“Well, it’s remote, certainly off the radar of the big moguls. Far from Mong, far from terror. Easy pickings. We could work ourselves a master con. Dress you up real pretty. Minimum risk. That boy shows plenty of promise too.”
“Leave the boy out of it. But I’m game.”
* * *
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Starhustler
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Read the pre-prequel to Starhustler here:
The Dim Zone
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Other books by Chris Turner:
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The Timelost
Future Destinies
Avenger : a swords and skulls fantasy
Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon
Conan: The Dragon of Skar
Denibus Ar
Freebooter
Forsaken Magic
Fantastic Realms
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