The smuggler relaxed a little. The desert was as flat as a pancake. One vehicle, two people, and nowhere to hide. Things were looking up.
He kept a close watch on the sensors as Zack stepped out of lock, moved towards the ghostly blobs, and stopped. He had something in his hand. A suitcase of some sort.
"I'll be damned… Dox Morlan… so the rumors are true."
Lando could hear the other man's reply, thanks to his father's mike.
"They certainly are," Morlan replied cheerfully, "and in a month or two you'll be able to scream it from the rooftops. In the meantime, however, I won't mention your name if you don't mention mine."
Lando heard his father laugh. "Fair enough… now, where's the money?"
"Right here." Lando saw something hazy pass between the two figures. "Why don't you count it while my friend and I move the crystals out of your hold?"
"Seems fair," Zack replied evenly. "Queenie… open the hold."
Lando touched a key. The cargo hatch swung open and some indicator lights came on. Zack had addressed himself to the ship by prior agreement. The less Morlan knew about his opposition, the better.
Lando activated one of the hold's vid cameras. He saw that four trunk-sized cases had been secured to the deck. Two men appeared and headed straight for them.
One was short, stocky, and heavily armed. His head jerked this way and that like a bird on the watch for predators. He bent over a trunk, released a catch, and lifted the lid. Morlan? No, too twitchy.
The other man was taller, darkly good-looking, and visibly cheerful. He waved towards the monitor as if aware that Lando was watching, and undisturbed by it. Yes, this was Morlan. Lando was sure of it.
The smuggler felt a chill run down his spine as the men closed the trunk and moved it towards the hatch. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Maybe Morlan did have plans to take his ill-gotten gains and flee for parts unknown, but why so casual about his identity? What if Zack were caught, or sold video of Morlan to the news nets, or a hundred other possibilities? No, it didn't add up. Morlan was too smart to make himself vulnerable.
Lando turned his full attention to the scanners. Normal, normal, normal. Everything looked so Sol damned normal. But it couldn't be. There had to be something unusual, something to give him a hint, something to tip Morlan's hand.
But try as he might, Lando found nothing at all. How about the truck? Was it loaded with mercs? Or concealing a missile launcher? Lando had just started to consider those possibilities when the transaction came to an end. The smuggler glanced at the security camera and found the hold was empty. He saw three blobs clustered around the back end of the truck.
"Well," Morlan said easily. "How's the count?"
"Five million," Zack Lando replied. "Right on the nose."
Morlan laughed. "That's good, because it's my money and I plan to spend every credit of it."
Everything happened at once. Zack Lando grabbed the case full of money and started to run. A third man popped up out of a hole in the sand and fired a shoulder-launched missile. It sailed into Queenie's cargo bay and blew up. An entire chorus of buzzers and Klaxons went off. Lights flashed red.
Lando gritted his teeth and concentrated on the heads-up display. He swiveled crosshairs to the left, heard a beep, and squeezed the trigger. Blue light passed through the short man and melted the sand beyond.
Lando looked at the IR screen. A blob was nearing the ship.
It fell as a line of white hit it from behind. The entire ship shook as something exploded.
Lando yelled for his father to get up, and swept the sand with blue fire. Morlan saw the beam coming and ran. It hit his feet first and ate him from below.
The man with the launcher fired again. He couldn't miss. This missile punched its way through a soft inner bulkhead and destroyed the drive room. A series of small explosions rocked the ship from side to side.
A prerecorded voice flooded the control room. It said, "Abandon ship, abandon ship, abandon ship," over and over again. The voice belonged to Lando's mother and he started to cry.
The man with the launcher stood straight up. The launcher felt warm against his cheek. Something winked blue. He ceased to exist.
Lando flipped a cover up, hit the button it had concealed, and heard the thump of a small explosion. He reached down to the left of his seat, found the handle, and gave it a twist. The emergency escape hatch fell open exactly the way it was supposed to.
The smuggler released his harness, stood up, and stepped through. It was a twelve-foot drop to the sand below. He got to his feet and started to run. He was a hundred and fifty feet away when Queenie blew up. The force of the blast knocked him off his feet.
He lay there for what seemed like hours but was a matter of only seconds. There was sand in his mouth and it stuck to his face where the tears had been. He spit it out and got to feet.
Dad… he had to find Dad… see if he was alive. He stumbled back towards the still-burning wreckage, finding Morlan's body first, and then his father's.
Zack was facedown near a pile of burning debris, a hole through his back, the case full of money only inches from his fingertips.
Lando kicked it out from under the wreckage and saw that it was charred. Another kick opened the lid. The five mil was a smoking mess.
The smuggler laughed, tried to stop, and found that he couldn't. Not until the laughter had turned to tears, and run their course.
Time passed and he staggered to his feet. By some miracle the truck stood untouched. There was a shovel clipped to its side. Lando took it and dug a grave for his father right next to the corpse of his beloved ship. The sand slid over and around his father as if welcoming him home.
On his way to the truck he saw the money case, stopped, and turned it upside down. A chunk of melted and half-melted plastic fell out and hit the sand. But wait! The bottommost layer of bills was untouched. Thirty or forty thousand, enough to get him off-planet, and far, far away. Lando peeled certificates away from the bottom of the case. His father's still-empty suitcase lay a few feet away. He grabbed it, stuffed the money inside, and looked around.
It would take them time to ID the bodies, get a make on Queenie, and backtrack from there. But the outfitter would talk, the Nister Needle would be found, and the whole thing would come together. Not the way it was, but the way it seemed to be.
Lando could see the headlines now: SMUGGLER MURDERS CUSTOMS OFFICIAL! It would be all over the place. They'd put a price on his head and dump his description into membanks all over the empire. Bounty hunters would add the particulars to the others they had memprinted inside their heads and the hunt would begin.
Lando looked up into the night sky. He saw hundreds, thousands, of stars. Each offered a place to hide. Maybe, just maybe, he'd find his way out of this mess. He turned his back on the past and headed for the truck.
I would like to thank Dr. Sheridan Simon for his design of the planet Angel, for his unending patience, and for his good-humored advice. The "good science" is his, and the "bad science" (if any) belongs entirely to me.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by William C. Dietz
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
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