“Don’t you remember me? No, you don’t, do you? But I’d recognize your smarmy, whiny voice anywhere. Old Regers is here to collect his dues.” A clown’s laugh came over the receiver. “Come out and play, Yul boy. Uncle Regers’s coming for you. Fuck your sweet ass nice and pretty.”
Yul half choked, hardly daring to believe what he was hearing. “Regers?” His bull throat worked, swallowing dry air. “You died down there—on Phebis.”
“Oh, ho. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Me’s the man! A hundred lives for old Regers. Prepare for a sweet reckoning, Yul. Get the grease out. Whoopee!”
“Who is this nut case?” Cloye rasped.
Yul’s eyes swung to the tactical holo view. A blue blip came hurtling out at breakneck speed, a rogue ship diving out of the multitudes, veering their way.
Yul gazed in awe, not without some trepidation. Regers. Could it be? No way. The cannons were locked on their much smaller ship. A pink blot of fire blipped out at them.
The ship rocked to a concentrated blast. Warning yellow lights danced across the console.
“Friend of yours?” grumbled Cloye.
“Damn that fucking Regers! He’s actually going to take pieces out of our hide. Can’t he see who the real enemy is here?”
Cloye set the target lock. “Give me the word, I’ll nuke him.”
“He’s no friend of mine, Cloye. Blast him.”
“With pleasure. Mentera are sending suspicious eyes our way.”
“Forget the Mentera. Concentrate on Regers. Fucking bastard. He’s going to spoil our whole ruse.”
“Thought you said we were already made?” muttered Hresh.
“I was wrong. How the hell did he...?” Yul croaked. He wet his dry lips. “The signal’s encrypted.”
“Ever hear of a decrypter, bozo?” Regers jeered.
Yul scowled down at the receiver, not realizing he had a live channel still with Regers.
“Grendel rules. This is state-of-the-art shipcraft, Yul baby.”
“What the fuck’s he talking about?” muttered Cloye.
“He’s a madman.” Yul shook his head. “Crazy as a loon.”
Skimming recklessly over the streets, past ships, round bends and ruined apartment blocks, Yul tried to lose his new menace. Brilliant bursts peppered around them. Shields fell. Now other Mentera craft, perceiving Regers’ vessel as hostile, took pursuit. But Regers state-of-the-art Roamer was more than a match for the inadequate mantis fighter he was flying. Yul cringed. He suffered through the irony that he was glad to have Mentera hostiles on his tail.
The street was coming to an end. Surprise. A sheer wall of stone.
Yul slammed the lightfighter up and over for a better view. A lofty wall fifty yards high, glinting of reinforced concrete. Set in a rough oval, it covered about a quarter of the city’s perimeter and looked over the grubby tenements. What was it for? Some kind of semi-transparent dome rose shimmering over the wall to further enclose a ghetto of decrepit buildings beyond.
Mentera heavy bombers and RPG drones rocketed in. Some ships bounced off the force-field of the near-transparent dome and went spinning out of control. A shield of some sort.
Yul blinked as an explosion of white light hit hard somewhere down below.
Transformers and power grids went up smoking and burning in ruined heaps outside the wall’s perimeter. The shield was down. It crackled and sizzled sparks where the edges used to meet the top of the concrete wall. The locust ships flew in, through the smoke, fires and electrical arcs while Regers’ Roamer went ballistic. Mentera cargo holds opened and dropped payloads to pepper the streets.
Masses of people scurried for safety, panicked out of their mind, hoping to evade the effects of the pressure bombs. Yul banked in for a closer look while citizens swarmed in denser configurations. Maybe they could lose Regers in the twisted streets in this protected quarter. The shield had been constructed of some semi-opaque flexible material, an electro dome, some technology similar to ship defense shields. The locusts wanted badly to penetrate this inner quarter. Why? Higher density of people? More fodder for the taking?
No time to ponder. Regers had sighted them again. His ship came roaring through the smoky haze, a streamlined blur cutting through grey webs of confusion.
Chapter 25
Regers clamped a hand on the bridge’s console beside Deakes. Multiple bogies came soaring after the Alpha Roamer in the tactical view. “Deakes, blast their asses.”
“I’ve told you, Regers,” grated Jennings. “You’re in over your head here. How long before those bugs get wise, gang up and blow us all away?”
“Dez got us a suped-up machine—extra shields, tactical AI, quad cannon, all the bells and whistles and trimmings. Not even one hit yet.”
“Until one of those bug fighters snags us in a trap and slams us good.”
“Ain’t seen it yet. I’m savoring every minute of ham-stringing this Yul Vrean. Bitch must be quaking in his boots. Look at him run!”
“Yeah, maybe because he’s got red hot bogies on his ass too,” said Deakes. “Including a stealth Mentera bomber. They must have made him, figured he’s a spy.”
“Good. Hope they nuke him. Though that too won’t matter much. We can outrun these filth puppies. Outshield ’em and outwit ’em.”
“It’s insane.” Jennings mopped his brow with a frustrated groan.
Shabby soot-covered tenements whistled by, row upon row, and the odd warehouse with sagging chimneys. Disheveled figures ran amok in the streets below at the roar of the ships hurtling overhead.
“Looks as if we’re in the slum district,” said Regers. “See those ragamuffins in lepers’ garb running about as if they haven’t a coin between them?”
“Yeah. Seems as if the rich folk had something against the commoners and boarded them up in a kind of quarantine,” Deakes remarked, “via some electro-shielded dome. Bugs made short work of it.” He laughed.
“Haha…the dumb bastards,” chuckled Regers. “They never knew the bugs’d be their saviors, freeing them from their pens. Come out, come out wherever you are,
