Dark blue knobs decorated the globe’s throat stem. Biggs fingered those, got one glowing and pulsing a dark sickly green.
An odd warble filled the air. Regers opened his mouth in a painful yawn, feeling a wonky sensation overcome his nerve centers. He felt lightheaded and experienced an inexplicable wooziness. His temple throbbed. Clutching at his head, he felt like retching. The thugs seemed to sag and nearly lose their grip on the globe and throat stem. The hostages in their seats groaned and some fell to their knees, retching into the barf bags.
The ships’ first blasts of fire hit perilously close to the port side, peppering the sun-dappled waves. The attack boats seemed to falter. One slowed and hove to broadside in the waves. The other veered off in an opposite direction, perpendicular to them, as if pilotless.
“Haha, nuked those mother-fucking parasites,” Choko gloated, brandishing his rifle in defiance.
Men who were on the cutters’ decks seemed not to be standing anymore, just huddles of black-camoed bodies slumped senseless. They’d all be dead on these decks too if the device hadn’t been aimed out to sea.
Flip grinned. “So, this is our wonder weapon. What is this fucking thing anyway?”
“It can’t take down a plane but can warble people’s brains,” said Biggs. “Make ’em bleed from the ears. Told you, it’s some disruptor alien tech.”
“Yeah, but you never—”
“My enterprising brother died yapping about some secret tech on a wrecked ship and an alien vessel worth a gold mine for salvage. He was out exploring somewhere in The Dim Zone. A planet called Hades.”
“So you went all the fuck way out there to get this?” Choko asked.
“I finish what he started. After all, his blood was on my hands. My fault he ventured there in the first place. On a tip I had from this smuggler guy. He found this old alien Orb in bad shape. Most of the tech was smashed aboard. But rows of creepy tanks—eerie, putrid, glass all shattered, were there with some alien specimens inside them: squids, crickets, human-size, all shriveled up.” He grimaced. “Worth shit. On the bridge though there was this alien device. This black globe on a black stem about waist high. I loaned it to some geeks doing R & D in a university basement. Geeks I knew. They told me it was some kind of mind fuck instrument. They tinkered with it, discovered its ‘other’ properties.”
“Which is saving our ass now,” said Choko.
“Got that right. Got to deliver it to Drakin and his gangsters in the next day or so or the deal’s off. His den is a hell of ways away from here.”
“Where exactly?”
“In the Karudi hills, don’t you fucking listen, Gila? Told you all this this morning.”
Gila turned away with a grunt. “We’ll never make it.”
“We’re going to fucking make it, or die in the attempt.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Biggs,” said Choko. “If Zoral and his gang hadn’t waylaid us—”
“But they did. And yeah, we might have made it. And if I find the mother fucker who tipped them off, I’m going to cut off his head and shit down his throat.”
Regers, listening to it all, grimaced in understanding. These scum would pawn the disruptor off to some local gangsters for big money. In the same hills he’d been contracted to secure the medicinal trade. Plenty of killers and opportunists out there.
Question was, what the fuck was this thing? Hades? Dim Zone? It sure did look like something not from this universe. Those weird looping symbols carved in it gave him the shivers. He wondered what powered it. Maybe it had self-perpetuating power. He shuddered at the implication. Possibly the only thing that really truly scared the shit out of him was alien tech.
On a whim, Regers tried a gambit. “Reckon they’ll pay you anything for it, Biggs?”
Biggs scoffed at the question. “You kidding? You saw what the thing can do. Took out two coast guard destroyers. Big pile of golden yols for this baby.”
“There’s a difference between seeing one demo and making practical use of it. The thing could break down any time. Where’s its power source? Maybe the juice is getting low.”
Biggs shrugged. “Maybe. But what do I care right now? I’m just selling, not a speculator. You on board with my team, Regers, or you a chicken shit just going to nitpick?”
Regers blinked and smoothed his jaw. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not if you don’t want to join those other fucks bleeding out, or shark bait. Window of opportunity is fast closing. Don’t think too long, Regers.”
“I’m in.”
“Good choice.”
Regers cupped a frightened hand over his mouth. “This alien tech has me all a-tingle. Let me go splash cold water on my face.”
A faint wisp of smile passed over Biggs’s face. “Watch the lip. Time and place for it and now ain’t the time. My patience is running about zero right now. And Choko and Flip have itchy trigger fingers.”
“Must be the bam in my blood.”
Choko thumbed his gun with a cold, empty, serial-killer look.
Flip whined, “Forget Regers. Only a matter of time before we get blown out of the water, Biggs. Even with that disruptor technology. It can’t take out a whole armada. Closer we get to Balden or Mantos, closer our doom awaits in my opinion.”
“We’re not going to Balden. We’re going straight into Byarus.”
Choko blinked. “What if they sic jets on us?”
“We got RPGs, remember? Fuckers won’t expect that kind of firepower.”
Choko’s eyes gleamed.
Sure enough a black speck grew
