A plain table sat with three chairs to one side. One of those chairs had leather straps on the arm rests. Didn’t surprise me.
They tossed Blest like a sack of potatoes on the floor where he lay dazed and groaning. I looked over at Mong with sullen contempt.
He stood facing the wall where a star map glowed with a simple console and buttons fitted below. His back was to me and gnarled, massive hands knotted behind his rippling back. “Now, Rusco, about that amalgo.”
I sucked in a breath, ignoring the question.
Mong signaled and Balt struck me in the kidney, causing me to buckle over with a gasp. I lashed out with my machine hand, clipping Balt on the hip, prompting a startled yelp. He smacked me again as his cohorts pinned my arms behind my back.
“The thing was on the Bantam,” I gasped. “Your bungling Skugs blew it to shit. You saw it yourself.”
Mong motioned again to his man, Balt. They had an ingenious way of getting a hostile and unwilling participant to talk. One clamp on the left hand, another on the right foot. One man to apply a squeezing force. Balt clicked a remote which opened a drawer in the wall, withdrawing two black squarish devices as ancillary props with prongs and vises and a base not much bigger than my spider. The fastened those devices to both limbs and kicked Blest in the gut as they walked by. They forced me down into that chair. With the screws tightened, those clamps would have a regular GI Joe confessing to stealing money from his momma’s purse or pranks like snitching on a big sis’s sexual theatrics with Jocko the Stud while parents were away.
I babbled more, blurting out nonsense, but pretended as if I were jacked on Myscol. They weren’t buying it.
“An easier question, Mr. Rusco,” said Mong. “Why were you and your crew in The Dim Zone at that abandoned station? Seems a long way to venture out on a pleasure jaunt?”
“We were collecting my ship, Alastar. The Varwol cut out.”
Mong frowned. “That seems improbable.”
“Well, sorry then, for the truth. Maybe I always wanted to tour The Dim Zone.”
Mong nodded, a sigh of amusement on his lips. “I think conventional means would be better, eh Balt?” He gestured and Balt removed the clamps and hooked his thumb around my baby finger.
Snap. My baby finger hung askew, nearly twisted off.
“Aw, fuck you,” I roared. “You fucking ape, baboon, dipshit, fuckbitch bastard—”
“Hush, Mr. Rusco,” chided Mong, shaking his head. “Back to my amalgo. Where? You still have to tell me.”
I shook my head, uttering profanities, spitting insults.
Balt snapped another finger and I howled in pure agony.
“The amalgo!”
Mong sighed. “We will continue to break every bone in your miserable body, Mr. Rusco, until you tell us where that alien tech is. You’re off to a bad start here. Remember, you’re of no value to me without giving information.” He inclined his head to Balt, who grabbed thumb and forefinger for another twist.
“Wait! Hoath,” I yelled. “Go to Hoath.”
Better to get it over with quick. I wasn’t so good at enduring torture—ever since he’d blown off my hand. It kind of sticks in the memory. Cellular memory and all that.
“What about Hoath?”
“That’s where you’ll find your stupid toy.”
The Star Lord’s face twisted in interest. He rubbed his chin. “Hoath…So, it was always there, and you tricked us into believing it was elsewhere.” He breathed. “I might have known. Amazing how a few broken fingers will open a mouth.”
“Set the course for the Tiga system,” he ordered. “And Rusco, you better not be playing games with me, unless you wish to become a paraplegic sipping pablum out of a straw.”
We took a ride to Hoath on Brisis 9. Vowed I’d never visit that shithole city again—at least of my own choice. A walk down memory lane, those shabby warehouses out on the north end of town, wrapped in barbed wire, squalor and neglect. The smelly, scummy, sallow-skied excuse of a planet. The local cops, nothing more than crooked mercs, who gave our five Warhawk team a wide berth. Probably savvy of what Mong was capable of. It didn’t take much to follow the holo-screen broadcasts and see what such a psycho did to uncooperative worlds that resisted his tyranny.
We transferred to one of his smaller Warhawks by shuttle while the other four escorts stayed not far out of range.
“Where exactly?” Mong demanded.
“Some old warehouse near Baer’s.” I grimaced, nursing my mutilated hand.
“Which one? There are many.”
“Some old moldy place, maybe a mile from Baer’s crib.” I shrugged. “I dumped the tech in haste. Memory’s a bit dim.”
“No doubt. Let’s sharpen it up. Tell you what, we’ll visit every rusty warehouse in this section until we find it, or something jogs your memory.”
“I don’t know why you have such a hard on for that crap device—Ever try getting your kicks over a woman?”
Mong nodded and Balt, catching the look, biffed me in the face, sending a stream of blood down my nose. Bloody fuck!
“The amalgos are sacred, Rusco, and I’ll tolerate no disrespect for them.”
There was no point in antagonizing that big lout further. He was going to get his transporter anyway and he knew it. He’d tear apart this universe, killing everyone in it to get it. I was already a dead man. Soon as I gave him the location, bye-bye Rusco.
The ship circled low over a jumble of rusted factories and boarded up warehouses visible through the viewport. A swollen river flowed behind the line of industrial buildings from an era of the past.
It seemed like eons ago when Marty and I had scouted this terrain, planned that fateful heist on Baer’s turf. I remembered that scumbucket
