Sharki laughed and recited a kids’ rhyme. “Me, oh, my, folk I do spy, dying in the heat of the day. Hum dee hum. No need for all this bloodshed, Rusco, if only you’d bring your cowardly ass out and fight like a man.”
I ducked back. To my right stood oil canisters stacked three high, a reeking, rancid grease pit; to my left stacks of tools, cellophane and fencing. One of those tire irons might be a good weapon. The whites of Marty’s eyes gleamed. The hothead was about to do something rash, with his pipe wrench tight-fisted in a hand, so I gripped his shoulder and shook my head. I crept around back, careful not to disturb a pebble, searching for some way to even our odds. No chance. The smart thing was to get that weapon off our bounty hunter or one of his tag-alongs. The stupid thing was to try some heroic kamikaze act, like these other bozos.
I felt pity for them. They’d no love for Sharki, after what he did to their boss. The ones who ran off got darts in their faces or bullets through their chests. Rat-a-tat. It was like a sick symphony.
“That’s it, Silas,” laughed Sharki as he poked hither and yon with the butt end of his rifle. “Round ’em up like steers.”
Silas moved on, huffing, in a wincing limp. They moved up on the crucible platform, and the beginnings of the catwalks.
“Hoof it up, you laggard, you’re dragging. One little dog bite isn’t anything to get worried about. Just a chicken scratch.”
Silas wanted to tell Sharki to bug off. I could tell, judging from the red spreading up his neck, but as they walked under a higher catwalk, a wild shape leaped out of the air.
Bessy, for all her bravery, took a wild plunge from her catwalk level, right onto Silas’s back, knocking him backward against the main crucible. Yowling and cat-scratching, she hooked her extended claws in his face. Silas howled. His left arm pinwheeling grabbed a hank of hair, flailed into the acid water, singeing half his side and arm. He let out a blood-curdling shriek.
Sharki shook his head in dumb amazement. He bullet-holed Bessy on the spot. “Idgit.” Her eyes stared up in glassy death.
“Silas, you witless knob, what the hell have you gone and done? Got yourself dunked like a dumb dog in a poison pool.”
“Help me,” he begged, writhing on the metal-gridded platform, clutching at his sizzling burns.
Sharki clicked his tongue. “You’re beyond help, Silas. Best I can do is put you out of your misery.” He lowered his R3 to the back of Sila’s skull. Brains flew in three directions.
Sharki barked out orders into his com. “Man down! I repeat, man down. Get your asses over here—Kragen’s crib! Full speed.”
I looked to the sky, knowing in minutes Sharki’s lightfighters would be touching down to fire us full of holes. I wanted the hell out of here. Yet I also wanted to hunt him down and waste him badly, but that would mean the deaths of us all.
I tapped Deidra on the arm. “Try to distract him. Make some noise or something, throw a wrench his way.”
She peered at me with owl’s eyes. “You insane? He’ll shoot us to pieces.”
“Do it or we’re dead,” I rasped. “Only a matter of time before Sharki flushes us out. I’ll try to figure something out.”
She shook her head in exasperation.
“Marty—go with her,” I hissed. “Cover her. Throw pipes, tire irons, whatever. If I can get that weapon off Sharki’s bounty hunter, our problem could be solved.”
Marty grimly accepted the task.
I saw Deidra’s green look. “He’s not that stupid. Not going to kill you…maybe enslave you and your pretty ass, so stall him as long as you can.”
I moved out of my hiding place, keeping low to the line of shadows, gauging my time. One, starship, two starships. You’re moving too slow, Rusco. Get up on that scaffolding. You’re going to—”
Crucible #2 tilted as some yardbird worked the hydraulic controls. A foul slop of chemical slurry poured out on the hardtop. One of Sharki’s hirelings screamed, splattered with hot acid.
“Holy fuck!” Sharki bawled. “Kill that bastard working the controls.”
Fire sprayed up at him on a first level catwalk where the great iron crucible yawed and a bullet-holed body sagged and fell headfirst to the tarmac. The slick spray on the hardtop gave off noxious sulfurous fumes. It was the diversion shield that allowed Marty and Deidra and me to crawl our way to better cover.
But something crackled behind me. Sharki caught a whiff of movement, maybe my shadow moving a fraction too fast.
“Hold it.” He came waltzing back down the catwalk, gun leveled at me. “Where you going, spider man? Back it up, don’t try to run off.”
I exhaled a curse, holding my hands up, rising from my crouch.
He walked up and sized me up. I closed my eyes just as his fist came angling up. An explosion of pain burst across my mouth with the coppery taste of blood. Disoriented, I opened my eyes, wiped off the streaming liquid. Gave him back a twisted grimace.
“You know, Rusco, it’s scabs like you make my job a lot harder.” He backhanded me another stinging blow in the face. “An honest rogue trying to make a living in this depraved universe gets messed up by a prick like you. It’s like having a hot tong jabbing you in a sensitive place. You sticking your nose in business you have no right to. Turning my own against me like that liver-licking Deidra piece of ass who’s careening fast to a reckoning in the sluthouse.”
He kicked me down to my knees.
“Stay down
