I applied regen paste on sensitive areas, the sticky stuff causing me to wince. Wren came to assist. She pulled up my leather pantleg and rubbed in a wad on the red, raised sore where the bullet had grazed my flesh. I could feel the skin stitching over. My supply of miracle glue was getting low, in need of replenishing. Another task on the to-do list. Once we got some money together, I’d get a whole box of the stuff.
I dipped my fingers in the jar to apply some salve to Wren’s shoulder but she declined.
“I’ll be okay.” She waved my ministrations away then passed the jar to Blest.
“We need to go where the goods are,” I said.
“Yeah, like really?” said Blest. “What goods would those be?—and where do you get the idea finding jobs is as easy as picking apples off a tree?”
“Stuff isn’t going to come floating to us.” My eyes stared at a faraway place in the endless panorama of stars that glowed in the viewport. “We need to go out and find them.”
Blest sighed.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I reiterated. “We can’t let a little setback stall us out.”
“How about a little setback featuring two broken legs and a cracked back?”
“Hold on, that’s not the kind of—”
“Tager and Klane dead and you want to flirt with more disaster?”
“No, to stay alive and keep our heads above water. Keep a cash flow going.”
“It’s madness,” protested Blest.
“It’s a mad world out there.”
Wren touched the young man’s arm. “We need to stay in the game.”
Blest loosed a bitter laugh. “You too, Wren? I thought you had more sense than him.” He glared at me. “I only listen to her. Not you. If she weren’t here—”
I grinned. “What? You’d chicken-whip me, Blessie? Give me a big whooping? Good thing we have her.”
Blest shrugged. The conversation was fast losing its conviviality.
“We lost big time on that last job,” I said absently. “Paid a lot of money and got nothing back. Two dead. Damn it.”
I let the words sink in. “So, needless to say, we have to amp up our game. We’ll get stocked up—food, water, and maintenance at the next hub. O two hundred. I’ll see what I can do to rig up some new angles on a gig. Always something out there, if we look hard enough, keep our eyes and wits about us.”
Blest peered at me between his dark lids. “Seems you’re always flying by the seat of your pants, Rusco.”
“And so?”
“Just wondering when you’re going to nosedive and get us all killed. I’d like to have some advance warning about my death.”
“This isn’t a ma and pa rig. If you want to go somewhere else, Blest, we’ll let you off at the next hub. You can find your fortunes elsewhere.”
The others looked at him with mouths set. A tense silence ensued.
Blest just cracked his knuckles and shrugged. “I’ll stick around for a bit, Rusco.”
“I thought you would.”
I picked at my teeth. Blest wasn’t a team player. Surprised he didn’t get busted up back there. Klane was just plain foolish, a dumb fuck extraordinaire. We were close to nailing that deal and he had to go and foul up the nest and get himself killed. But then, that had been said too many times already, so maybe I should just drop it.
Chapter 5
On an inspiration, I searched through the free store—the spacefarer’s planetary-wide network of information. I checked some ledgers and current events and set the course for Badinis Major. According to the register there, a space station orbited the productive world of Gistron, rich in Beryl and other minerals useful for drives and ship hulls. Gistron station had escaped the long arm of Mong’s domination—thankfully. Apparently an auction was in the works on the station—for used and vintage star cruisers. Interesting. Likely it would draw a well-to-do crowd that I could work some angle on. If not, vie for the ships themselves at least. I expected a mix of the usual space prospectors, entrepreneurs looking for easy pickings, the ubiquitous greaseballs, hangers on and con artists. My kind of crowd.
We turned in to our respective cabins and slept the sleep of the dead. We took turns to watch the helm. I instructed them to wake me in case of a contingency, no matter how minor. Not much could happen while we were in the slipstream cocoon of warp—or could it?
Bantam auto-kicked out of Varwol and I heard the tiny whir of engines. The thrum of power circuits booted up as they now returned us to the dimension of reality.
The space station loomed up in the viewport, a gigantic
