And now the next phase of his plan to capture Gat Hathor began as the squid released a titanic, pain-filled groan.
It took only a few seconds for the monster squid to vomit forth the obstruction. Rechs dialed back the shield size to avoid getting lodged in the creature’s throat, and found himself racing up through the passage of its gullet and into the sled-laden air above the churning sea. It was like being shot out of a cannon inside a space-carnie funhouse.
Free of the fleshy cannon soaring and into the burning skies above the lagoon, he had to be fast.
Acidic squid vomit sprayed into the sky all around him, splashing over a sled full of hired blasters circling just above the mayhem of monster and victims. The vomit-covered sled plowed into the waters, its crew and guards, lightly armored and now covered in skin-burning gastric juices, screaming in terror.
Rechs brought his jump thrusters to full hover as the bubble shield collapsed. He didn’t have much jump juice, and therefore flight time, available. He targeted the reveler-swollen decks of the pleasure-maran and rocketed straight at them.
One of the blaster towers aboard the pleasure-maran was currently engaged in a furious firefight with a nearby hovering guard sled. Three of the four turrets aboard the smaller but better-armed guard ship had already been destroyed. The fourth was firing back at the tower most likely occupied by the little Nubarian gunnery bot.
The armor’s HUD acquired the bot’s signal and linked comm. The bot was whooping digitally as it disabled the remaining guard sled turret and then fired seemingly at random at its own vessel, adding to an already chaotic environment. The crime lord’s palace guards, along with the scantily clad and gaudily appointed revelers who’d swarmed aboard to partake in the gory festivities, ran every which way to avoid the incoming fire from the gun tower at the front of the ship.
Rechs ordered it to keep up the pressure, but under no circumstances was it to engage the primary target on deck three of the pleasure-maran.
Gat Hathor was his.
Rechs could have aimed himself for the top deck, where he would find his target. But at the moment Rechs had no weapon. A situation that would have to be corrected. That was step one.
He set down on the lower deck amid a flare of rocket blast and swirling debris. His armor was still dripping with the gastric juices of the monster bellowing and raging in the lagoon below. And no longer so far below. The massive pleasure-maran had lost altitude during the crisis.
As if to illustrate the point, one massive tentacle slapped the hull, and the ship shuddered in response. Partygoers screamed and ran, swarming over the guards reacting to alarms on every deck. Chaos ruled the moment.
In the distance came the rattle and whine of the Nubarian-controlled defensive gun shooting directly into the pleasure-maran superstructure. The ship pitched over to port, but repulsor compensators kicked in and stabilized the listing a second later.
Two thugs, both hired blaster types with low-riding hip rigs, came running at Rechs, firing. The shifting deck and general chaos played havoc with their targeting. Rechs dodged and lost his own footing, sliding as the deck went dangerously to one side. Along the lower deck, several partygoers went over the railings and fell into the sea below. Or, if the tyrannasquid was fast enough… into its greedy clutches.
Rechs stumbled toward the railing, grabbed a pole used to string party lights from, and yanked it out of the deck as his boots grabbed hold with gravity assist. He reared back and threw the pole like an unyielding javelin, launching it straight through one of the hired blasters coming for him.
That guy stopped running and started tumbling for the edge instead. Rechs tried to grab him, if just to get the blaster he was carrying, but the momentum of the listing ship, now suddenly righting itself as the repulsor compensators again kicked in, flung the thug’s body well out of reach as he soared off the side of the ship.
The other hired blaster, a mean-looking zuigar, his snarling face twisted by the background radiation of his home world, had chosen to hang on to the pavilion line and fire with his free hand. Rechs ducked, barely avoiding a direct hit right in the bucket. He crouched down, then surged up the deck at the man, using a richly appointed seating area as cover. Pillows and bronze goblets went tumbling across the deck. Rechs launched himself toward the gunman and landed a terrific blow on the side of the hired blaster’s head.
The zuigar shook it off and tried to pump three shots into Rechs’s gut. In an oft-practiced motion, Rechs batted the pistol aside and grabbed hold of the thug’s wrist, twisting until the blaster released. He grabbed it during the drop and followed up with another jackhammer fist right at the temple. The zuigar collapsed in a heap and went sprawling, unconscious, across the tilted deck.
There wasn’t any time to think, or even to discover what kind of blaster Rechs had just acquired. Incoming fire from farther down the shadowy deck was already smashing into the gaudy decorations along this section of the maran’s belly.
Rechs turned and saw two more blasters, aliens in masks and therefore hard to identify, racing at him, firing in tandem. He pulled the trigger on the slender blaster, targeting almost in the same moment. At once two shots came out. The first missed. The second turned one of the incoming aliens’ heads to nothing but a spray of bone and gray matter.
Some tactical background app that constantly ran in Rechs’s mind groaned inwardly. The joker he’d acquired the blaster from had modified the trigger pull for two shots. An amateur-pretending-to-be-a-pro move if ever there was one. Two untimed shots split the energy charge by adding an after-market diffuser. The weapon fired faster but did little damage beyond the sweet -spot kill of the brain stem. Everything else was
