Drifter's Run

by William C. Dietz

  "Just what it says," Essex replied icily. "I shut down at Mr. Devo's request from time to time. No other reason is required." Essex was starting to recover now that the original shock was over.

  "Fine," Lando replied. "Now back away from the desk. Good… Now I want you to…"

  Lando never finished his sentence, because at that moment an entire section of bulkhead slid open, and Daniel Devo stepped through.

  He was a big man with a mane of white hair, bushy eyebrows to match, and a ruddy complexion. He wore gray overalls with his own logo on the pocket, a utility belt, and a pair of knee-high black boots. Devo held a sheaf of printouts in his right hand.

  "Essex… where are the…" He stopped suddenly at the sight of two men with blasters. "What the hell?"

  "'What the hell' indeed," Itek said, easing his way around Devo. "Where's your wife?"

  Devo frowned, his bushy white brows coming together in a solid line. "I'll be damned if I'll tell you. This is hopeless you know. There are only two ways off this ship and both are guarded."

  A woman appeared in the doorway. She was a good twenty years younger than Devo and quite beautiful. She had long black hair, even features, and a well-sculpted body.

  "Dan? What's going on? I…"

  "Ah," Itek said, checking to be sure Lando had both men covered before shifting his aim to the woman. "Suzanne Devo I presume. And just in time for the party. Stand over there next to your husband."

  Lando frowned. Something was wrong. What was Itek doing? Why bring her into the reception area when he should do just the opposite? Surely the Devos' space suits were located in their living quarters.

  "Now," Itek said, "you're probably wondering what this is all about. The answer's simple. I'm an officer in the Imperial navy. A few weeks ago you killed an Imperial Courier, and now you must pay. Any questions?"

  Devo looked from Itek to Lando and back, as if checking their sanity. "Pay? It's money you want? Why didn't you say so? I'm sure we can…"

  There was a burp of blue light as Itek fired. As Suzanne Devo fell she revealed a scorch mark on the wall behind her.

  Lando spun toward the right. "Itek… what the hell are you…"

  But it was too late. Devo was already in motion. The flintlock pistol came off the wall brackets with ease and made a loud bang as it went off. The lead sphere hit Itek right between the eyes and went out through the back of his head.

  Lando fired more on instinct than thought, his first bolt catching Devo in the stomach, the second hitting the top of his head as he fell. There was an audible thump as Devo hit the floor and perfect silence after that.

  Essex and Lando looked at each other, both too shocked to move, both struggling to take it in. Itek has murdered Suzanne Devo in cold blood, not only that, he'd planned it all along. All the talk about taking them back had been little more than a ruse designed to gain Lando's cooperation.

  Essex moved slightly and Lando's blaster moved with him. "Hold it right there."

  Essex obeyed.

  "Sit on your hands."

  Essex stood, slid his hands under his ample rear end, and sat down again. Sweat covered the whiteness of his forehead and his lower lip trembled. Lando was a ruthless killer as far as Essex was concerned.

  "Don't move."

  Removing a length of monofilament line from his suitcase Lando tied Essex to his chair. With any luck at all the other man would be immobilized long enough for Lando's escape.

  After taking one last look around, Lando grabbed his suitcase, stepped into Devo's private quarters, and hit a wall switch. The door slid closed behind him with a soft thud.

  The Devos' quarters seemed small but were large by shipboard standards. Lando saw thick carpeting, a profusion of antiques, and the same soft lighting as the reception area. Wait a minute, what was that?

  Moving left Lando saw a raised area, a sleeping loft, and hurried that way. The loft would save him the time involved in moving furniture around so he could reach the overhead.

  Bounding up a short flight of steps Lando looked upward and laughed. There mounted flush with the overhead was a metal frame and hatch. A lock! An emergency escape lock. Of course! The Devos' back door. Would the lock alert security if he used it? Did it matter? After all, it should attract less attention than blowing a hole in the hull, and even if it didn't, the fact that the lock belonged to Devo might slow them down.

  Lando climbed up onto the Devos' bed. From there it was easy to push the red button.

  The lock opened with a hiss of escaping air. A motor whined and a ladder slid down. Lando reached back to pull his helmet on. When the helmet was in place Lando double-checked his seals, pressurized the suit, and climbed the ladder.

  After that it was a simple matter of pushing another red button, waiting for the ladder to retract, and sealing the hatch. Three minutes later the lock was depressurized and open to space.

  Lando felt a momentary lightness as he stepped out onto the surface of the ship's hull and left artificial gravity behind. Then the electromagnets in his boots kicked in and the feeling passed.

  Reaching down Lando activated the small transmitter attached to his utility belt and removed two laser flares. He flicked them on and they strobed in unison. The response was almost instantaneous.

  Martinez had already brought the scout in so close that Devos' security people were chewing her out when the unbroken tone came across her headset.

  Cutting them off in midsentence Martinez added power and brought the scout in. It was something to see. Lando watched in admiration as Martinez came in only inches off the larger vessel's hull, paused while he climbed aboard, and accelerated away.

  A few minutes later he was out of the space suit and strapped in beside her. "Any pursuit?"

  Martinez kept her eyes on the instruments. "Yeah, but it's too little, too late. We go hyper thirty-three seconds from now."

  "How 'bout the rail gun?"

  Martinez smiled thinly. "They've been shooting at us for two minutes now and haven't hit us yet. Not all antiques work as well as that flintlock pistol did."

  Lando started to say something but the NAVCOMP picked that moment to enter hyperspace. He felt the usual nausea and swallowed hard. With no nav beacon for a reference point random hyperspace jumps could be extremely dangerous. It was soon apparent however that Itek had anticipated this very situation and calculated the coordinates ahead of time. Another reason he and Martinez were so blase about the rail gun.

  Lando turned to Martinez and this time she met his gaze. "How did you know about the flintlock?"

  She shrugged. "I watched the whole thing live."

  "You what?"

  "I watched the whole thing live. There was a vid pickup and thin beam transmitter built into both of your suits. You didn't think we'd send Itek in there without keeping some sort of record did you?"

  She shook her head sadly. "Itek must have felt real stupid just before he died, a flintlock for God's sake, but them's the breaks. You got it done and Essex will spread the news: "Couriers are untouchable.' Case closed."

  "Just like that?"

  Martinez gave a snort of derision. "Sure, 'just like that.' What? You want me to cry 'cause Itek was an overconfident jerk? Amateurs. Get some rest, Lando. I'll have you home in no time."

  10

  Lando was sipping his second cup of coffee when Cy and Melissa burst into Junk's galley.

  It had been a week since his return and things were back to normal. In this case "normal" meant Cap was "sick" a good deal of the time causing Lando to shoulder most of the work, but what else was new? At least Cap had continued the cleanup effort during Lando's absence and met the minimum terms of their contract. There was still a week or two of work left to be done but the end was in sight.

  Lando had considered leaving, taking his share of the gold, and buying a passage out, but what good would that do? He'd still be persona non grata with the underworld and have a price on his head everywhere else.

  So, until La
ndo could figure a way out of his double bind, Junk was a place to be. More than that, a place where he was accepted, and no different from all the rest. Lando raised his coffee mug in a mock salute.

  "Greetings, O princess of space. Salutations, O silver one."

  Melissa curtsied in reply, while Cy rolled forward, then backward, suggesting a bow. Having done so, both were silent.

  There was something about them however, something about the repressed excitement in Melissa's eyes and the way Cy bobbed up and down that suggested an agenda of some sort.

  Lando raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

  Cy turned a vid pickup in Melissa's direction and she looked back. It was Cy who spoke. "Well, I've been overhauling the drives, and we've got a problem."

  Lando took another sip of coffee. "I'm listening."

  "It's the control module for the number two power accumulator," Melissa put in eagerly. "It was nearly worn out so Cy installed our backup."

  "And that means we need a new backup," Cy continued. "So we wondered if you would…"

  "Take the two of you dirtside," Lando finished dryly. "And once there you could have a little fun. What's Cap say?"

  "Well, that's the problem," Melissa said innocently, "he's sick, and that means you're in charge."

  Although Cap had never formally designated Lando as second in command, it was understood and accepted by all concerned.

  Lando smiled at the obvious attempt to manipulate him. Both knew full well that Cap would say no.

  Ever since the brawl back on Dista, and his own trip to the surface of Pylax, Sorenson had shown a marked aversion to going dirtside. The reason was fairly obvious. Jord Willer was out to get him and his crew. By maintaining a low profile Cap hoped to avoid trouble. Not only that, but Cap was still fixated on the Star Of Empire, and had little interest in anything else. Anything outside of a bottle that is.

  Lando put the mug down. What the hell, staying cooped up on a spaceship was no life for a little girl, or a cyborg either for that matter. A trip dirtside would do them all a lot of good. The odds against running into Willer were astronomically large. He smiled.

  "The shuttle for Pylax leaves in thirty minutes. There's some civilized people down there… so dress accordingly."

  About four hours later they stepped out of the tender, hired an auto cab, and departed in style. It took only a few minutes to cross the scorched duracrete, buy the control module from one of the many suppliers that lined the edge of the spaceport, and head downtown.

  Melissa chattered like a magpie as they rolled through Blast Town, while Cy zipped from one side of the cab to the other, and Lando looked out the window.

  There were people everywhere, walking, talking, doing things. And because this was Blast Town some were certain to be bounty hunters. Were they looking for him? Sorting through memprinted faces in search of his? Lando forced the thought out of his mind. To hell with them. He deserved some time off and by God he'd have it.

  The auto cab passed through the downtown area and headed for the suburbs. They'd agreed that each person could choose one activity and this was Cy's. Though trapped aboard ship for the past few weeks, the cyborg had access to all the planet's vid channels, and that's how he'd heard about bacca racing.

  Baccas were little eight-legged weasellike animals that could run up to thirty or forty miles an hour. Racing them, and betting on those races, was extremely popular on Pylax and Cy was eager to see the real thing.

  The cab slid into a tube way where it surrendered control to the city's transportation computer. Interior lights came on as the cab picked up speed and headed underground.

  Outside the windows dark duracrete rolled by, occasionally relieved by the sight of vehicles headed in the opposite direction, and platforms full of waiting passengers.

  Melissa passed the time by making faces in the glass. Seeing this Cy got into the act too. First he floated beside Melissa, so she had two heads instead of one, then he hid behind her and made a vid pickup grow out of her ear.

  Outside the cab there were occasional flashes of sunlight as the cab shuttled up and down between surface and subsurface tubes.

  Then, just when Lando was wondering if the trip would ever end, they rolled out of a hillside and onto a regular road. The cab coasted downhill toward a huge recreational complex.

  The building had a dome-shaped roof and, thanks to a mineral mixed into the duracrete, glittered like gold. Huge parking lots surrounded the facility and were packed to overflowing with brightly colored ground cars.

  Meanwhile, Cy was bobbing up and down with excitement and counting out the money he'd produced from a hidden compartment. Seeing this, Lando was reminded of how Cy had gambled away his body, and wondered if coming here was such a good idea after all.

  But good idea or not Cy was clearly determined to go inside. So, rather than challenge him, Lando resolved to give it some time and ease the cyborg out of the complex as quickly as possible.

  The cab pulled up at the main entrance, agreed to debit Cap's bank account, and whirred off with a new fare.

  Cy generated a few stares as they joined the throng that was crowding its way into the dome, but so did the scattering of other cyborgs, and nobody looked for very long. Lando was glad figuring that people who stared at Cy wouldn't notice him.

  The inside of the building was a large open space. Various kinds of vendors lined the outside walls. The crowd seemed to have divided itself into subgroups and headed toward various parts of the huge floor. Once there they seemed to mill around Lando couldn't see the attraction at first, but then he caught a glimpse of a boxlike structure at the center of each group, and realized it was a computer terminal.

  "That's how you place your bets," Cy explained eagerly, "the terminals will accept cash or credit. You can bet on a particular animal to win, place, or draw."

  "That's nice," Lando said, looking around. "But where are they? The animals I mean? And how can they race with all the people in here?"

  All of a sudden the lights dimmed, there was a flurry of trumpets, and a melodic voice flooded the PA system. "Fellow sentients! Welcome to the Pylax Pavilion! Are you ready for a bounty of bodacious baccas? Let me hear you say 'Hell yes!'"

  "Hell yes!" the crowd roared back, and Lando realized this a small army of booze and drug vendors had started to make their rounds. With each passing moment the pavilion seemed less and less appropriate for little girls.

  "That's the announcer Les Lexus," Cy yelled over the noise "Isn't he a riot?"

  "Yeah, a real riot," Lando agreed dryly. "Do you think this is a good place for Melissa?"

  Cy spun back and forth as if seeing the pavilion in a new way. "Well, now that you mention it I'm…"

  There was another blare of trumpets. Four holo projections, one for every point on the compass, snapped into being, each one filled with statistics on that day's races. Then the ceiling became a maze of pulsating red, blue, yellow, and green neon while the floor turned suddenly transparent. "Lando, look!"

  Lando followed Melissa's finger down toward the floor. What he saw was a softly lit transparent tube. A brown streak raced through it and Lando realized that he'd just seen a bacca.

  It was running through a complex system of tunnels under the pavilion's floor. Looking closer he saw there were actually two tracks, the one that was lit, and another more complicated version right next to it.

  A cheer went up. "Warm-ups are under way… it's time to place your bets, my fellow sapients… time to win, lose, or draw!"

  Lando turned to say something to Cy but he was gone. Standing on tiptoe, Lando could just make him out, placing his bet at a terminal, then speeding back.

  "Just one race," Cy said excitedly, braking himself with a jet of compressed air, "then we'll leave. One race won't corrupt you will it, Mel?"

  "Of course not!" Melissa replied indignantly. "Besides, I want to see what happens. How does it work, Cy?"

  "Well," Cy replied, taking on the air of a lecturing professor, "f
irst the tunnels are misted with rasa scent, those are the little animals that baccas like to hunt, and then four of them are released all at once.

  "That's no problem at first, because the tunnel's real wide, but then it narrows down and that forces 'em to go through one at a time."

  "And what happens then?" Lando asked, already having a pretty good idea.

  "Well," Cy said cautiously, sensing the trap that had just been laid for him, "they tussle a bit. You know, fight to see who goes first."

  "But that's mean!" Melissa said unhappily. "You're making them fight!"

  "Maybe a little," Cy admitted, "but they rarely get hurt. Then the tunnel widens out a bit, and two baccas can run neck and neck till they hit the maze."

  "The maze?" Melissa asked suspiciously. "What happens there?"

  "Here, I'll show you." Cy zipped over toward a cluster of people and waited for Lando and Melissa to arrive. Looking down they saw that what had been a single tunnel was now a maze of tubing, complete with twists, turns, false entrances, and dead ends.

  "There's only one way through," Cy said, "and they've got to find it. Once they do there's an underwater swim, an obstacle course, and a long straightaway to the finish line. The first one across wins."

  Melissa crossed her arms and tapped a small foot. Then she frowned and gave Cy a dirty look. "I think it's silly and mean. I hope you lose all your money."

  But this comment was lost on Cy as a bell clanged, a cheer went up, and the announcer yelled, "They're off!"

  Something moved up above. Lando looked up to find that the pulsating neon had resolved itself into a huge diagram. Since spectators could see little more than the section of tunnel where they happened to be standing, the diagram provided the "big" picture, and served as a universal reference point.

  Meanwhile, a small army of antigrav-equipped robo-cams had appeared all over the inside of the pavilion and were feeding images to the holos above. The pictures were the same ones seen all over the planet.

  Choosing the diagram over actual video Lando watched as four animated baccas were released from a stylized starting gate. At first they were side by side, racing down a short straightaway, heading for the point where the tunnel narrowed.