The firrit at Kragen’s side sniffed and growled.
Sharki approached with a palm extended. “What’s a matter, pooch? Don’t like the smell of a real man?” He laughed.
The firrit scuttled away and sank teeth into Silas’s leg.
“Ah, mother fucker,” the bounty hunter moaned. He smashed down with his metal dart gun arm to brain it but it deked away, snarling. He had only grazed it. The beast made a beeline for Sharki who blasted it between the eyes. The creature fell in a limp heap, convulsing, rotating a few rounds before lying still.
Kragen’s face turned beet red. “Hey, you fucker, that was an innocent animal.”
Sharki shrugged. “Didn’t like the look or smell of it.”
“Tough shit. Fifer didn’t like you. That’s why she attacked. Animal’s doing only what it should, protecting its own.” He pulled out his knife.
“You might as well slit your own throat with that penknife, friend,” Sharki said conversationally. “What you got there is worse than two pairs against a five card stud. Unless you’re a knife-hurling ace?”
“What you want? This is a respectable business. Take your bully-boys and get off my property.”
“Where you hiding them, crog? Seems I saw brisk activity a moment ago by those bins.”
“Employees is all, under my protection.”
“Oh, yeah?” With a vile sneer, he cocked his weapon and pegged a bearded slave trying to creep away. “There’s one dead employee. How many more will it take?”
Kragen made to throw the knife but Sharki lifted his weapon and capped the yardmaster in the fleshy part of the leg.
“OW, you son of a bitch!”
Sharki frowned and capped him in his other leg. Kragen rolled, moaning on the ground, hugging his bleeding lower limbs.
Vagas, Kragen’s chain gang man, leaped in to club Sharki on the side of the head but the bounty hunter got to him first. A gleaming dart went whistling right through his larynx. He clutched his throat and fell to his knees, gurgling.
“Any more of you pipsqueaks have any objections?”
Dead silence except for the Vagas’s and Kragen’s gurgles and moans.
“No? I thought so.” Sharki laid his boot on Kragen’s rasping throat.
Kragen had been good to us and I hated to see him die like that. “He’s an innocent man, leave him alone,” I rasped out from behind the barrels.
“Nobody’s innocent, fucknut. Come out and show yourself. Little Tweety-Bird has to pay for lying to the big, bad wolf. See, truth is, Silas here was not that bright and listened to lies the first time round. I ain’t the credulous fool he is.” He lifted his foot and ignoring Kragen’s bellowing protest, stamped down on his neck, snapping it like a rotten branch.
I winced. We slumped behind the oil drums, all three of us gritting our teeth. What an utter cockup. We were dead meat.
Three wasted, more to come. How to get to the ship with six armed men cutting off our escape?
“This voice have a name?” Sharki bellowed. “Let me guess… Jet Rusco. Two bit bandit, demolitions man, hustler, wise-ass. Rusco, I think you and me have some bones to pick.”
Damn Kragen. Lost his life, now reduced to a bleeding, shameless heap. Stupid fool no-gun policy. We had no weapons to protect ourselves but for a few monkey wrenches, tire irons and cans of paint. Great.
“I made it my personal mission to hunt you bastards down,” Sharki went on. “Messed up my station back there. Nobody crosses Sharki and gets away with it—all of them are six feet under, every one of them.”
I saw Deidra shudder and turn pale.
The gangster came marching up the yard, guns in both hands leveled to either side, firing indiscriminately while Kragen’s yardhands scattered or dropped, and his henchmen grinned and fanned out to cover the exits.
The slaves fled on, up into the catwalk, behind bins, quaking in their boots. Not easy for these two score of workers to flee Kragen’s yard with the high wall surrounding the compound and barbed wire gates at either end. I herded us deeper behind the drums, my mind trying to brainstorm a plan of action.
Sharki’s mop-up man was uglier than sin; a waddler, short, built like a tank, wide-spaced cow-like eyes. Sharki was no better. Warted brute with a sawed off nose, chunky cheeks, shark eyes and buck teeth. Wouldn’t doubt he was augmented like his bounty boy. Both garbed in silver kevlar plate with bands of leather wrapped across shoulders and thighs. Both armed to the teeth: R3s, bowie knives, morningstars. I nudged Deidra beside me who was quivering in the dirt and grease. “What’s the deal with this kingpin? Is that a nose or a mask he’s wearing?”
“Got it in a cat fight in Veglos,” she hissed. “Someone tried to teach him a lesson—whipped out a knife. Slice and dice. Let’s just say that thug’s a hole in the ground.”
Sharki marched on, whistling and chuckling. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Rusco, Jet Rusco, you playing possum on me? That’s no way to deal. Lots of little hidey holes to hunker down in here. We’ll find you all. And little Deidra—I can smell your pretty little hide.”
A movement to my left. Sharki fired full on into the bins, spraying oil every which way not ten feet away from us. If one of those bullets hit a pressure tank…
A man in coveralls fell, blood-drenched and croaking.
“Oops, excuse me. My condolences, grandpa. Thought you were rat fink Rusco, the thief who shot up my station. Forgive a fellow an honest mistake.”
He blew the head off
