“Okay, I give up. Enough story telling for now.”
“How about some quiet girl kisses then? I’m in the mood for looove...” She gazed at me with long, hungry eyes.
“Again? Didn’t we—”
“Hours ago. Why, you not up for it?” Her kittenish arch of smile hit me with that level of challenge that stirs a man to bawdy deeds. Rusco, no matter how tired he is, can always rise to a challenge.
I rolled over to pull her to my bare chest. “After this deal is over, you and me have to go on some long vacation. Maybe Palm Monteray. Spas, beaches and warm rays. What do you think?”
“Sounds like fun. What are we going to do with Blest and his buddy?”
“Forget those two. Pack them off to Timbuktu with Winnie the Pooh. They’ve got each other.”
She laughed. So the tired JR surrendered to the magical pump and grind of big, talented, desert girl with all the bells and trimmings to go, and the endless mysteries and unfettered openness that was Wren.
I must have dozed off to warm, bawdy memories of Wren, but then dreaming of shooting off down some wind tunnel like I was going to get blown to Arcturus. High winds were buffeting me every which way. Damn those archetypal dreams…
I was running through the bushes, breath huffing out a rasp. Gilm and his contingent of hoods were somewhere behind me, switchblades, billy clubs and bare fists on the ready. Reg, my buddy, had been robbed, beaten down. I was next. We were the only ones aware of the gang’s doings on the east side of the river. They’d kill me. I’d only my wits about me. Precious little. I sucked in a wheezing breath, then another breath, willing myself not to make more noise. Up came a flash of pipe, for my throat. I blocked it, plunged a knife into the wanker’s yielding belly.
Someone’s hand jarred me awake. “Rusco, get up.”
“Wha—”
“Signal came in from Alastar.” Noss stood over me, blinking like an owl. Wren was nowhere to be seen.
I shook my head as if registering for the first time what he was talking about and where I was.
Noss frowned at the slowness of my brain. “You left your door open. You weren’t answering your com.”
I let out a moan. “Alastar couldn’t have gotten that far that fast.”
Noss looked at me as if I were still jacked on Myscol. “You’d better come look.”
“Aw, shit.” I threw on my clothes and stumbled down the dim-lit hall.
Chapter 10
Wren and Blest were gathered at the bridge, Blest looking like some ragged, bleary-eyed raccoon.
“What’s this about Alastar?” I growled.
“Beached somewhere in quadrant 3.21AZ.” Blest stabbed a thumb at the holo star chart.
I blinked. “That’s a fuckhole of a place to crap out in—”
“Right, she must have conked out somewhere at the edge of The Dim Zone. Her standard paging signal relayed through the world, Daerzoo. Must be regular transports flying in and out that carried the message through the warp tunnel.”
“How far in is she?”
“A few light minutes from Daerzoo.”
I sighed.
“You’re talking dangerous territory,” grumbled Blest. “Pirates, scum killers, freaks. Why don’t we leave it, Rusco, try some easier fish?”
I scowled. “Wren and I went through a lot of pains to get that ship, my friend. We need to protect our investment.”
“That ship may be worth nothing with the Varwol toast,” Blest warned.
“But there’s a half mil of Myscol out there,” I argued. “If Detran was even half telling the truth, we’ve got to get it. We’re already several thousand in the hole. We’d be stupid not to take a crack at salvaging her.”
Blest puckered up his lips and shrugged. “Whatever. Do what you want. What do you think, Wren? Is it too risky?”
“I’m with Rusco.”
Noss nodded his agreement.
“You guys!” Blest licked his lips, his red-face burning with annoyance. “I get pissed getting outvoted every time we’re on this bridge.”
The clock said 04:35 which meant that Alastar had been in warp for some three hours. My foggy brain tried to piece together the events. Facts: Encrypted messages are uploaded to servers and travel to other ships leapfrogging across the gulfs, until the messages finally make it to the receiver, the same way. Fact 2, the free store interstellar net shares information across the star systems. Fact 3—
Rusco. Focus. So that meant Alastar had dropped out of light drive at 02:00, and a few light minutes from Daerzoo put her something of an hour plus change away from us…Couldn’t risk our own Varwol crapping out on us. Which meant—
“Where are we now?”
“Ten minutes from Baladar.”
I nodded. “We get Bantam fixed up and immediately warp to The Dim Zone.”
On the space dock orbiting Baladar, I rode Bantam in as fast as I dared. We made prompt dock and inquiries for maintenance. We were lucky to land a spot at Reyce’s Gut Shop as today they were not inundated with service calls. The head mechanic, a slack-jawed man in blue coveralls, with grease on his chin and rag in his hands, listened to our story with grunts and nods, trying not to grin too hard at my fabrications. I saw it wasn’t gaining us anything, so gave an expansive flourish.
“Okay, I’ll cut the bullshit. Truth to tell, we were in a firefight in a world I shall not name. Bantam took a couple of hits that knocked something important loose. Can you fix it?”
He nodded and signaled his henchmen. I watched the man as he went to work.
We waited in the reception, pacing like tigers.
He came back wheezing and wiping his hands on a dirty white rag. “Good thing you got it looked at. Left stabilizer shot. Replacement 900 yols, labor 200. It’ll get
