The impressive quasi-amphibious passenger boat was moored to a cement pier that ran some five hundred feet out to house more boats: private cabin cruisers, electric-powered sloops, jerry-rigged skiffs. The hovercraft appeared somewhat avant-garde in comparison to the other moored vessels. Alongside the battered bus and tired terminus along the pot-holed roads, no contest. Its shallow flat-bottom could beach on any reasonable surface. Blunt bullet nose and pilot cabin ranged up front. Cargo bays to either side. Passenger space loomed up higher to either side with lifeboats. Powerful quad propeller engines sat at the back, doing justice to hovercraft technology.
Regers’d seen vehicles like this before. The Mercorian fly-wheel engines had good torque and came with enough power to cruise at 45 knots. Excellent for managing swamps, shallow water or deep-troughed waves. Some of them could even cruise in the air several feet off the water like hydrofoils if the engines worked up enough rpms. Not this one, Regers bet. The stink of diesel wafted even from this distance as the terminus staff tested the high-powered engines.
The sun beat down with a vengeance. He motioned to Marise, then pulled his light cap tighter down over his lank black hair as they descended to the boarding area.
Crossing the straits would mean moving into a new territory. A new ‘country’ in truth, though the term was loosely applied around these parts. Borders were always changing. Nothing was definite.
The aqua-blue waves shimmered golden highlights in the freshening breeze. Regers sucked in a waft of cooler air. Sandy beach ranged to either side of the cement wharf and its huge cement pylons. Towering rocks loomed farther down. A seaside village of adobe brick homes amid twig-like trees sprawled upshore. A picturesque seascape, but isolated. Not a place Regers’d like to settle in. The locals must have caught a whiff of the future, what it was like to live under tyranny and the threat of bloodshed erupting at any instant in the built-up areas. The smart ones had packed their bags, loaded their kids and various animals and set out to hop borders before those borders closed forever.
Long hair and his four monkeys took their time, coddling their mysterious cargo, but they seemed wary. At least two of them glanced anxiously about as if under threat of getting spotted. Regers frowned. These men were bad news. If he hadn’t been under a time crunch, he’d wait for another boat.
Marise shook her head in disapproval, gave her thin shoulders a small shudder. “Gostases freyas. Local boys. Thugs and ruffians.”
Regers nodded and glanced wryly at the surge of the freyas making beelines for the hovercraft’s international loading area and quickly switched lines from regular fare to first class. As he brought out new folded bills for the premium seats, he earned the envious stares of several locals. He had the cash. He’d ride first class. He was about to pay premium fare for Marise too when the squeal of tires shot out from behind. The passengers were not yet half loaded when a dusty black van pulled up about fifty feet away. A gang of men burst out with uzis in their hands, wearing dark sunglasses and leather jackets with tassels. One opened up fire on the crowd.
“Holy shit. Down!” Regers flattened himself on the tarmac. He pulled Marise down with him. Regers you’re a fucking magnet for trouble.
A man and woman a few feet away dropped, limp ragpuppets, blood gushing from multiple wounds. Regers reached for his travel bag to grab his preassembled E1.
Long hair and his men dropped their package and reached for weapons of their own. They returned splats of fire. One of the hoodlums beside the van crumpled in a spray of blood, neck blossoming in crimson.
Regers blasted an armed figure in the left calf and rolled away before he got peppered himself.
Long Hair stood legs-braced and fired at the aggressors using the bodies of gutshot innocents as shields. Two of the gunmen went down in fleshy ruin. The man to Long Hair’s left got half his throat ripped out with uzi fire. Long Hair gave a frustrated howl. He raised his submachine gun and sprayed back two dozen rounds at the attackers, riddling the van full of holes and shredding bodies. Tires exploded. A human figure slumped out of the passenger side, rifle clattering to the pavement.
“Choko!” Long Hair cried. “Nail the last ones!”
“I see them! More of them at two-o’clock, Biggs.” Choko, the chunky thug to long hair’s left wearing a thick black bandanna, shouted back.
The leader rained more fire, pegging another of the van gang in the knee. He went down screaming, with his uzi tilted, spraying fire, killing civilians and dock personnel. Biggs waved his gun. “Gila! Choko! Flip! Snatch their weapons off that van. We’re gonna need them. We’ll have fireflies on our ass before long. Move!”
Bullets zinged and Regers cursed as chunks of tarmac splattered up from return fire and stung his right hand. His sixth sense warned him too late.
Before he could recover and get off more shots, Choko ran behind him and kicked the E1 out of his grasp. Choko snatched it up. “Get aboard the ship. Now! Move!”
Regers hesitated but when the ugly mutt’s gunhand lifted, Regers grabbed Marise and shuttled her up the gangplank along with the other passengers scrambling about in panic.
Biggs’s three surviving thugs beetled to the rear of the van. Choko of the black-bandanna, Flip with his brush cut and Gila with his mop of oily brown curls. They bullet-holed open the back, killing anyone who may have been seeking cover inside. Regers saw the three haul two RPG launchers out of the van’s shell-holed crumpled back doors. Biggs covered them from the side as they carried the RPGs
