I took the helm and slapped Noss on the back. “Good man!” He gave me a curt acknowledgement and flung back his head of brown curls. He ceded the weapon’s helm to Wren.
She worked the controls, lashing out at the Warhawk which was fast looming up on our viewport.
The holo grid showed black-green silent death stalking us. Auto-guided missiles blipped bright red on the most vulnerable areas of our hull; Wren fixed her own targets mid-wing near the power cells and the reactor on the bogey’s weapon’s port.
Torpedoes flew out of our wing cannons. They smashed harmlessly against the enemy craft’s shields and heavy armor. I cursed, maxed out Bantam’s impulse power, took us straight up toward the twin moons of this sorry world, away from our low wide arc that skimmed over the remains of Resus and the nearby sea.
We couldn’t warp out in the planet’s gravitational field. Not without risking structural overload.
Nerve-wracking seconds passed. Shields dimmed to 5%. The hull shuddered to surface blasts, then another. Shit, the next hit would finish us. Wren’s lips parted in a gasp. The enemy missile launched, loomed on the viewport, coming up on our rear at gut-wrenching speed. A half second to impact. I felt that faint flutter of life flashing by before my eyes as we cleared planetary gravity. The Varwol light drive clicked in. Bantam’s hull became a non-entity. Space-time collapsed—or whatever contradiction the physics people call it, for an object cannot be in two places at one time. In a half-light second we were thrown down the wormhole, unreachable by any Warhawk fire.
Through the slipstream of hyperdrive we passed like insignificant ants within an ethereal world. I saw Wren and Blest as they moved puppet-like on a screen out of a cartoon. As the nightmare slowly washed away from my mind, I thought of Froy and his doomed cause. Despite the man’s madness, his unexpected turnaround had surprised me. It helped me better understand him and his people and others like him, terrorized by Mong and his military machine around the Veglos sector. The warmonger was a menace. He must be stopped.
But how? It looked as if no force in this universe could stop the man. Small time arms traders like me could hardly scratch a dent in his growing empire.
Chapter 4
My body ached from the bruises back on Resus. Staring at the silent controls and its maze of blinking lights, I marveled at the machinery that took us those light years and beyond, away from the dust-rubbled planet.
A hollow pang stuck at the back of my throat. The loss of Tager and Klane could not be brushed off. A sick feeling pressed at my insides, knowing the obscene thousands of yols I now owed my long-time seller, Gretch, from that failed arms’ shipment. I’d promised him his share the first chance I got. Though he’d warned me of the risk of COD. Now he’d be breathing fire about the botched deferred payment and out for blood. Ready to set his enforcers on me.
We slid through the ethers like greased eels and I reflected on the wonder it was to be alive. The three of us had survived Froy’s manic persecutions—though we all should have been dead. That said, I wouldn’t be going anywhere near Uziles in Veglos nor Gretch for that matter.
A voice intruded on my bleak speculations.
“What now, Rusco?” Wren murmured. She turned, shook out her dusty hair and let out a long sigh. Studying the holo image of the vast star cluster of the Veglos sector, she looked a figure of enchantment. Noss stared at the panorama too, gloomily, drumming his thin, pale fingers on the console, as if watching the stars with an air of fatality. Blest, beside him, oblivious to the others, picked at the mole on his left cheek.
I needed regen badly. I reached a shaky hand for the emergency kit in the forward bulkhead just as the orange light flickered on the transcall unit—I knew instinctively it must be a message from Gretch. I turned the unit off.
First things first. We needed to ease out of the stupor of battle so I held back on the regen, cracking out the Binny’s Gin instead and the Black Dog Whiskey. I poured stiff rounds for all of us and pushed the shot glasses before our team of heroes gathered around the communal table on the bridge.
I poured Blest a double dose. Seems as if our bully boy needed it. All bleary-eyed and bruised and sullen, he looked like an alley cat come out of the rain after fending off a pack of wild dogs.
He lifted his glass, inclined his head at Noss, asked him why he’d come when he did.
Noss swallowed a mouthful of Black Dog. “I saw your beacon. More than far enough away from where you should have been. The Warhawk was taking crossfire from the warehouse. Figured it was the only chance to get you out alive.”
“Lucky you did,” I grunted.
“Took you long enough,” Blest said. With a shake of head, he cursed under his breath.
“Get off it, Blest,” I growled. “We all should be dead, you included.” He shut up when both Wren and I glared at him.
“Klane was an idiot.” Wren muttered. “Shot off his mouth after they tried to shortchange us. We’d maybe still be whole and with loot in our fingers if he hadn’t gone south.”
I gave a wincing grimace. So what was to be learned from this wasted exercise? The futility of war? The dumb luck of a crew of misfits? Considering my bad luck of the past, I’d been expecting disaster.
I sighed. We’d have to lay low
