I licked my lips, contemplating my options which were few.
“You’re in a heap of trouble here, Rus-boy. Think I’ll kill you slow, draw out the pain—for every atom of damage you did to my operation.”
“Knock yourself out.”
He hoofed me in the gut this time. I was feeling some serious pain right about now. He reached down to pistol whip me but something alerted him at the last minute. He jerked back as a rat-a-tat came at him. He gave back a high-pitched yelp.
At the same time some engine started up behind us, to the side. A forklift, headlights glaring, came to life barreling toward us. What the fuck? Someone managed to get it up and running. Marty?
Shots rang out, shattering the glass. Sharki’s #3 boy, crouched and ready, laid into the approaching metal, ripping the cowling to bits. I saw a dark form dive out of the cabin as the thing came whizzing by. Good old Mar!
Where was Deidra? Her bullet caught Sharki on the left toe. He was hobbling around, cursing and hollering orders, but nowhere near incapacitated. Nothing worse than a wounded shark.
I scrambled away to cover before he decided to pop me.
Marty came out of his roll, smashing into the crouching guard taken by surprise. The man fell backward. Marty ripped the weapon out of his grasp.
He tossed a sawed off rifle into my hands as I rushed forward. Must have lifted the other off one of the dead guards. I grabbed it, nestled it against my beating chest. The stock felt warm from the sun. A grin of triumph broke out on my blood-dripping face.
Sharki half limped behind the shell-shot forklift which had crashed into the cement wall and stalled out there, smoke rising from its hood.
Steel whipped out and Marty’s carbine flared. He and Deidra took out the last of Sharki’s stooges in a burst of crimson blood and guts.
I followed up with fire of my own, aiming for Sharki’s hideaway. He laid into us with all his firepower, shells ripping what little cover we had. Me and Marty scuttled like land crabs on our hands and knees out of gun shot range.
Deidra sprinted in a wild dash beside me, her hot breath on my neck.
Sharki called out of his hiding place. “So the traitor bitch shows her true colors!” He spat phlegm and coughed. “You’ll be on the end of a leash before sundown, slut. Mark my words.” He shot blind at us.
Deidra howled, a gobbling, gulping sound and I had to pull her back. “No sudden moves, you fool. You’ll get gunned down. He’s just trying to goad you into showing yourself. We have to think smarter.”
Sharki was tucked in behind that broken, smoking fork lift, firing blind shells out at us. Anyone tried to get too close to that mad dog would get his legs shot off.
“Come on, let’s move!” I rasped. “The ship’s waiting and isn’t going to come to us!”
We raced back to the main gate and out into the adjacent yard where Goliath stood parked. My eyes ever roved to the sky waiting for Sharki’s lightfighters to blow us to bits.
Chapter 5
The service yard was a beehive of activity. Slaves running, firrits barking, shouts, bedlam, general waves of confusion. The gunfire had spooked them. Kragen’s no-gun policy had them ill-prepared and running scared. But a few intrepid slaves grabbed up tire irons and were about to storm the refinery. Good luck to them. Didn’t doubt the local law was on its way too. Good time to get the hell out of here. We scooted into Goliath’s open cargo bay and hoofed it to the bridge. Deidra started Goliath’s impulse engines and we blasted off.
“Why don’t we buzz Sharki and finish him off?” Marty bawled when we were in the air.
“No, he radioed in for backup, remember? By the time we flush him out, he’ll have a battalion of V-Zons on our ass. What we can do is slam his ride. Circle back,” I instructed Deidra. She swung the vessel around in a wide arc. Sure enough a high-powered V-Zon sat parked in Malley’s smaller yard with a bunch of other vehicles. “Zone in, let me shred that shitter.”
She came in close and I worked the weapons grid, riddling the enemy fuselage with bullets. Sharki’s ship smoked and sizzled and looked a sorry sight.
Marty grunted in satisfaction. “Why don’t we buzz the forklift he’s hiding under too?”
“What, and kill innocent yardhands? Sharki’s moved on by now. We spray the yard, innocent people die.”
Marty grumbled, “So where to now?”
“We aren’t going far until we get this warp drive fixed, after all, 10k yols worth of repairs already done. Tyrone City, Narpoon Town?” I expelled a breath of frustration. “I just want the hell out of this place. Not going to let this shipment slip out of our hands though. Worked too hard for it.”
Deidra sighed. “Last place Sharki’ll think we’ll go is Tyrone City.”
“Then Tyrone City it is. He’ll be banking we head to some out of the way yard again.”
“As good a plan as any,” Marty conceded.
A quick mental check. An innocent stop at one machine yard ends in tragedy. I could just see the headline: Machine yard Bloodbath. Crog and gangster bloodfest! Good one, Rusco. How many more people going to die as a result of your recklessness?
The yardmaster didn’t have to die. That was our doing, at least indirectly. I hated random, useless deaths. But then this was a dark time, the colonized worlds were a seething cauldron of violence. Stealing from the bad guys had not been working out too well for us.
“Question is where can we hide the ship?” interrupted Deidra, disturbing my thoughts.
“We can’t be gallivanting roughshod with this clunker,” I said. “It’s like waving a
