Dale Mettam

by The Pub at the Center of the Universe (retail) (epub)

  “You will be avenged,” he whispered to the corpse.

  He heard running feet and turned to greet the rookie officer rushing into room.

  “They left an hour ago, Chief,” panted the rookie.

  Chief Skake nodded as if he had expected this news.

  “And their accomplices?” he asked.

  The rookie hesitated. He had been on the promenade when Plaach and Toast had been brought in, and while he wasn’t certain, he didn’t think that the other two had been on friendly terms with those arrested.

  “Are you sure they were working together, Chief?” he asked.

  Chief Skake studied the rookie for a moment, and then a warm smile appeared.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Junior Security Officer North Rubik, sir,” the rookie replied nervously.

  “I remember when I was as naive as you are now, Rubik,” he said. “When I joined the Spaceport Security Service, I thought it would be to help people in need. But I learned. You’ll learn too if you’re careful, and don’t get sloppy like our fallen comrade here. They were working together alright. The four of them stage a fight, and then suddenly there is no one to verify who we arrested.” He glanced around, as if to make sure no one was listening who shouldn’t be, and lowered his voice.

  “They were inside then, you see?” He continued. “They took our man by surprise and struck at the heart of our operations. And the heart of poor Officer Pobble there, as well.”

  The rookie looked down at Officer Pobble, then back at the Chief.

  “They all made the jump to Sevres Prime, sir.”

  Chief Skake gave him a knowing look and nodded sagely. “Should I inform Sevres Prime authorities to look out for them? Detain them? I can send them the information.”

  Chief Skake took the rookie by the shoulder and bodily turned him to look at Officer Pobble again. “This is a matter of honor for us. We take care of our own business. You and I will travel to Sevres Prime and bring these dogs back. We don’t need anyone else to pick up after us. Now get your things together and meet me at the jump lounge in thirty minutes.”

  The rookie looked hesitantly at Chief Skake.

  “Will I get traveling expenses, sir?” He asked.

  “Of course not!” said the Chief, laughing.

  “This is a matter of pride. When we enter that jump chamber, we take off these uniforms and step outside the law we defend so vehemently. It’s the only way we can bring justice to our fallen colleague.”

  The rookie looked worried.

  “You have a question, son?”

  The rookie nodded.

  “Well go on. Spit it out. We are comrades on a dangerous mission now.”

  “When we step out of our uniforms, sir? Can we step into other clothes?”

  “Why of course we will. We’ll be going deep undercover!”

  The rookie still looked uneasy.

  “Anything else, son?” asked the Chief.

  “Do I have to change out of my uniform... with you... in the jump chamber? Can I do it before?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The initial relief and pride Kirk felt when the loader grabbed hold of the Star Slug’s communication dish was slipping.

  Shortly after they managed to get a message through to Dexter, they lost the other seriously damaged arm and the third, which seemed to be the better of the inoperable ones was shaking violently.

  Additionally, the one standing between them and apparent oblivion was wobbling. It wasn’t anywhere near as wildly as the other, but it was making the entire loader vibrate. In addition to adding to his nausea, Kirk couldn’t help but worry how long the small ship could handle this kind of punishment.

  He glanced down at the speed gauge, which bore an uncanny resemblance to his uncle’s panel van speedometer. The needle was well beyond the maximum recordable speed of 80 mph, and Kirk decided he didn’t really want to know their actual velocity.

  He looked up at Lu and wished he hadn’t. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in a nonchalant manner, but the tension in her face was clear. Even a little fear was revealed if he looked closely. If she was scared, then Kirk knew things were bad.

  “Lu? You still there?” The loader’s communications system sparked as Dexter’s voice came through. Kirk jumped, then looked at Lu. Her expression revealed what he suspected. The journey was taking a heavy toll on the loader. The small, short-range craft was simply not engineered to withstand this kind of torture. It was a testament to the ship’s design and construction that it hadn’t hadn’t shaken apart already.

  “Go ahead,” Lu answered.

  “Not good I’m afraid. You’re too far away from an airlock,” Dexter said. “I considered improvising one, but you would need to get that rig of yours so tightly pressed against the Slug’s hull to give us any chance of getting you out fast enough and getting the thing sealed up again before we were sucked inside out.”

  “You mean we’re going to have to sit out therest of the journey here?” Lu asked.

  There was a long pause before Dexter spoke again. When he did, the tone of his voice was heavy with unspoken concern.

  “I don’t know if your ship will be able to last that long. There’s still a good couple of hours before I drop back into real space. You know that as soon as I dropped into the breach, I was locked into this route. There’s no way I can make any changes once I’ve started. I’m as much a passenger here as you are.”

  Lu sighed and slumped back in her seat.

  There was a sickening sound of metal straining under extreme pressure and then a sharp jolt.

  The arm was finally surrendering under the heavy abuse. Wiring from the arm was beginning to snap and wave wildly, thrashing ominously at the cockpit and slapping the window with frightening violence.

  Kirk looked out at the flailing cables, and then he noticed beyond the wires there was a large section jutting up from the hull. It looked about the size of a small office block rudely stuck onto the freighter’s hull.

  “What’s that?” he said pointing.

  Lu looked up. “The habitat section,” she said. “The round half of the ship is engine, to create the power to breach the fabric of space. Most of what is left is set aside for cargo. There’s a cockpit at thefront, and the crew’s quarters, mess hall, things like that, are stuck on to the outside. In space you don’t need to be too aerodynamic as there’s no resistance in a vacuum. The swooper was designed to travel inside an atmosphere so it had to consider shape. Stringer’s are too big to make planetfall, so it isn’t an issue.”

  Suddenly one of the cables smacked at the window again, making both Lu and Kirk jump. The cable left an oily smear up the window.

  “Bugs,” Kirk muttered, staring at the smear.

  “You aren’t still hung up on the Enonians are you? Because they really are the least of our worries at the moment.”

  Kirk ignored her, still looking at the window.

  “I wonder?” He said to himself.

  “What?” Lu asked.

  “Move over,” Kirk said.

  “Why?”

  “I have an idea.”

  Kirk was now sitting in the pilot’s seat with Lu pointing out the controls. It wasn’t as though he needed her assistance now, his F.R.B. had distorted his perceptions again, but he got the feeling she needed it more than he did, so he went along with her and nodded when she asked if he’d got it.

  “How much power do we have left?” Kirk asked.

  “Enough for one more really strong burst,” Lu said. “Loaders aren’t designed to recharge rapidly. The hydrogen engines on the swooper suck in hydrogen from anywhere and everywhere at an incredible rate, which is how they can go so fast. Loaders don’t need speed, so they take in hydrogen at a
much slower rate. Plus since we’re in a breach there’s nothing out there at all. It’s part of the reason why Stringers don’t use their engines when they travel this way.”

  Kirk nodded again.

  “So what’s your idea?” Lu asked.

  Kirk looked at the smear on the window again. “You don’t want to know.”

  The loader was shaking wildly now and the sound of the hull straining under the pressure was growing louder.

  Kirk increased power and as the strain on the arm was relaxed slightly, the shaking subsided.

  Lu looked at the gauges. “We don’t have much juice left. Whatever you’re planning, we won’t have room for a second chance.”

  Suddenly the arm gave under the tension.

  Sections of its structure hurtled past them, immediately swallowed by the blackness behind. The loader lurched wildly, dropping back as well.

  An alarm blared and lights flashed on the console. Kirk stamped down on the power pedal and the loader leapt forward. The console quieted, but sweat now beaded on Kirk’s forehead.

  Free of the tenuous link to the stringer, the Loader stopped shaking as much, though the occasional grind of metal suggested that the loader was probably going to need some serious overhauling when this trip was finished.

  “Fuel cells have dropped into the red,” Lu said.

  Kirk pushed the pedal as far as he could and the loader seemed to inch forward at a painfully slow rate. Kirk was focusing on the Habitat section of the Star Slug. He was vaguely aware of the strange distortions the breach was causing to his vision, but he ignored it. He felt a headache starting, but if this failed, there would be little need to worry about a headache.

  The loader gradually drew level with the Habitat section and then crawled ahead of it. Kirk tried to look down to make sure they were past but he couldn’t see for sure. He cursed under his breath, then gave the steering column a sharp jerk and flipped the loader upside down.

  The stringer was now above them, and he could see they were clearly past the Habitat section.

  “We’re almost out of power,” Lu cried out.

  “I just need enough to cushion this last maneuver,” said Kirk.

  The loader eased slowly down in front of the habitat section.

  “We’re dry!” shouted Lu.

  Behind them the engines gave an angry splutter, then died. For a moment, the loader seemed to hang motionless, and then it dropped backwards, slamming into the Habitat section.

  The engine housings crumpled, then sheared off, bouncing over the top of the freighter and disappearing. As the engines ripped free of the loader, the cockpit was flipped down, then it too slammed into the Habitat section with a bone-jarring thump.

  The loader was now pressed against the front of the habitat section, the shell once again began to shudder and creak under the new pressure exerted on it.

  Kirk quickly looked at Lu. “You Okay?”

  “I’ve been better, but I’m not hurt,” she answered.

  “Okay, I don’t think we have much time. Better put that P.R.P. to good use,” said Kirk, pointing to the back of the loader’s cockpit.

  Lu gave him a suspicious look. “How did you know I had a P.R.P.?”

  Kirk gave her a sly smile. “You travel a few light years with someone, you know what they’re capable of. I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed that if there was one available, you would have picked one up back on the Citadel.”

  “And if there hadn’t been one available?”

  Kirk gave her a knowing smile. “You’d have found one anyway.”

  There was another worrying groan from the loader.

  “Part of the plan was to have us pressed against the hull of the ship so that you could cut through and we could get to safety, but the down side of that is that the loader is being pushed into the freighter’s hull as we speak. Either start blasting us through, or we’ll be real thin, real soon,” Kirk said.

  Lu unfastened herself from her seat and climbed to the back of the loader. She pulled out the P.R.P., set for maximum dispersal, aimed and fired. The large glowing sphere bit into the loader’s hull, swelled and then popped into a hardened sphere. There was darkness beyond, but Lu had obviously shot through into the freighter’s hull as well.

  Kirk climbed up beside her as the loader began to groan louder and longer.

  “Ladies first.” He pointed to the hole. Lu looked at him, then dove through. Kirk had one more look behind him at the exploding console, then dived through himself.

  As his feet cleared the hole, there was a deafening screech of metal grinding against metal and small explosions as the remaining functional loader systems were crushed under the pressure.

  The loader flattened against the Habitat section. Kirk lay in the dark room and let out a sigh of relief. The room seemed small, but relative to the room they would have had inside the loader now, it was like a ballroom.

  Suddenly the room was lit with a harsh light and he saw Lu standing beside a light switch. He surveyed the room and realized it was a toilet. He smiled.

  “For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I’m glad I ended up in the crapper!” He laughed.

  Lu smiled. “You know you just saved us,” she said. “Where did that idea come from?”

  Kirk sat up.

  “Remember when the arms of the loader were breaking off and the wiring was slapping at the screen?”

  “Yes.”

  “It reminded me of driving on a summer night back on Earth. You drive along and you hit lots of bugs flying across your path. One minute they’re buzzing along, the next they are one with the wind-screen. Since you said we needed to be flat against the hull to cut through I figured that maybe we should try to modify that theory.”

  “It was a pretty desperate solution,” Lu said.

  “But our alternatives were a little thin on the ground,” he replied. “As they say back on Earth, sometimes you’re the wind-screen, sometimes you’re the bug.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thirty-one light-years away from where Kirk and Lu had just dropped through the fabric of space, Restive Pro was having fun. In the dim light of the corridor where she now stalked, a thin smile revealed her sharp shiny little teeth. Her movements were liquid smooth, and anyone watching would have been amazed by the fact that her bronto hide clothing didn’t make the slightest noise as she moved.

  She paused, sniffing the air. Her smile became a little wider. In one sudden, yet terribly graceful move she spun, drew a large knife from her boot-sheath and sliced at the man who was lunging at her from the dark recesses of a shadowy doorway. With a stifled gurgle, he collapsed to the ground.

  “I know you are down here, Bolch,” she said, her husky voice heavy with menace.

  Down in a darkened corner of the corridor, Proton Bolch cowered. He had, up until about an hour ago, been one of the most feared men in this part of the universe. That was until one of his men made a terrible error in judgment. Ordinarily, this kind of mistake was the type that brought a long painful death from Proton, who demanded only one thing from his men, an attribute he found to be of dwindling supply in the galaxy as a whole, competency.

  Luckily for the minion in question, he was saved a visit from Bolch that would have lasted several days, and resulted in his being left in no doubt that he was no longer a member of the Bolch gang. It would also have left him in really small pieces, one of which would still be alive enough to really regret having disappointed his boss.

  Luck only runs so far though. The reason this lowly gang member had been spared a torturous death was because he was quickly dispatched to the hereafter by Restive Pro, the most feared assassin and bounty hunter in the universe.

  There were several reasons why Proton was now quaking in his damp little alcove. Not least
of which was that there had been a misunderstanding that left Restive with the distinct impression that the Bolch Gang did not intend to pay her for the last job she had done for them. There was, of course, no chance that this was the case. Even if Restive had failed miserably, she was always paid.

  Always.

  Not that she ever did fail. But on the remote chance she did, the last thing anyone considered was pointing out she hadn’t quite lived up to her hype. She had a reputation for making a point swiftly. Rather than cutting to the core of a problem, Restive was more prone to cut to the bone, sometimes not stopping there.

  The other reason that Proton was gnawing on his own knuckles in a pitiful attempt not to scream in terror was that Restive Pro was an Amygdalan. One of the key attributes of all the native peoples of Amygdala is their highly active and specialized pheromone response to any kind of conflict, which Proton Bolch was experiencing at this very moment. Anyone not originally from that planet is immediately filled with abject fear and an almost overwhelming urge to flee. Not surprisingly, Amygdalans had formed exceptionally profitable peace treaties with their neighbors.

  Restive continued down the corridor, her eyes adjusting to the increasingly dense shadows. Proton could see her approaching. Almost insane with panic now, making a run for it, even though Restive stood directly between him and freedom, was maybe not such a bad idea after all.

  Maybe he could even take her out. Maybe she wasn’t as deadly as people said. Sure, she had cut her way through his entire gang in an amazingly short amount of time, but he had been meaning to make changes himself. If they couldn’t take out one attacker, then they couldn’t have been that good anyway.

  In the dark alcove where Proton sat, his eyes began to glaze over giving the distinct impression that his sanity had just checked out, without paying its bill or leaving a forwarding address. Proton leaned forward and bolted upright. The corridor was empty. She had gone. Relief began to subdue his intense feelings of fear, and he let out a huge sigh of relief.

  Slowly, cautiously, Proton stood and made a quick dip of his head into the main corridor, then back again. He was definitely alone. Now was his chance to escape. But she could be waiting outside. He would have to stop on his way to make sure he was well armed. That shouldn’t be a problem as there were now plenty of arms scattered around his compound, as well as several legs and a few heads as well. But it was the weapons he was focusing his concentration on now.