I wasn’t going out without a fight. I pulled out a large hand-sized explosive from my waist kit. Tossed it at the air speeder. The marshals shielded themselves but I was the only one to duck in time.
Marshals and air speeder went up in a roaring flame.
I heard voices through the haze and smoke as I struggled through the wet sod.
“Nothing in the back!” cried one of the van riders. “No amalgos.”
“What the fuck? Where’s the amalgo? Where’s that shitweasel with the bombs?”
I grinned as I hobbled away. One came loping after me through the smoke, grunting again. “Where’s the bloody amalgo?”
“Up your ass, fucker. Eat shit.”
A billyclub came smashing down on my head and I knew no more.
Chapter 4
I passed from world to world, from past to present, in a kaleidoscope of fact and fiction. My disembodied self hovered above the floor that dim day out working as a security guard over at Crystal Mindworks Ltd. Days when I entertained a notion of upholding some law-keeping role in society. Five thugs busting down the door, wearing masks.
The beat down of the guards, Frenzetti and Markus, my friends, slain in front of my eyes. Two shots clipping from my R9, one killing the first, point blank, the other sending a lowlife writhing on his back. A bullet grazing by my ear. Stumbling out the side alley, my ears ringing, blood pouring down my scalp. My one thought was to get out of here while others roved about, knowing that the bungling would be pinned on me as an accomplice. Why were you the only one left after the robbery, Rusco? Trying to start the air speeder to get out there, start fresh on a new world. Taking other softer jobs offworld, working star carrier baggage, playing bouncer, pawn shop security, construction crew, you name it, but it only got worse—the violence, the murder, the theft, always catching up to me, as if I were some beacon for it, with a dark cloud hovering over my soul, plunging me deeper into a nightmare of illusion. The drinking becoming more intense, the only way to drown the pain, until Mela at last left me.
Dreams have the uncanny knack of telling us hard dark truths about ourselves.
When that saw edge of reality surfaced, so began my slow descent down the road ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. My looking for crime as a quick means to an end, flirting with its seductive narcotic, searching for the one big score that would never happen.
I came to, with the smell of sweat and machine oil in my nose. Some rough hands dragging me across the cement floor. In a dingy hall lit with fluorescent lights the familiar smell hit me. I groaned. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s fuckbuddy if I wasn’t back in that shithole warehouse.
Then I discerned the sounds of a beat-down. A familiar voice. Quiet, child-like, mixed with thudding sounds like a metal pipe whacked on flesh. Only because it came through a steel door left slightly ajar did it sound surreal, like something out of a cartoon. The two goons thrust me in. I rolled on a bare concrete floor, blinking like the bedraggled wretch I was.
I took one look at Marty beside me and knew things had gone very wrong. His haggard face resembled a terrified mask. He mouthed words “had to scram or give away your position.”
Marty sagged as a meaty fist clipped him in his well-purpled face. With two black eyes and lips messed up, it explained why I couldn’t recognize that voice right away.
The man who’d clipped him turned his burning gaze upon me. I had seen wild animals in the zoo less feral and repulsive than that aberration who stood before me. Everything about the thug screamed bear. A shaggy ruff of black hair like the fur of a large predator coated head and arms. Wide sideburns covered his cheeks, his bared forearms exposed by rolled-up sleeves. Wide-spaced beady eyes and mallet fists. A mouthful of shark teeth. Easily could have been the most hideous creature I’d seen. Some modern-day mutant? Or one who’d experimented with, or OD’d on too many modern day transfigurative drugs and lost the fight?
“Welcome, Mr. Rusco,” the man growled in his husky voice. “Glad you could make our little appointment.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” I spat blood, along with a tooth.
“You know who I am?”
“Mr. Magoo from the Metro Zoo. Dunno, don’t care.”
He flashed my long-nosed captor a meaningful look.
Long Nose grunted. “Busted up Floss and Bix real good. They won’t be walking too soon. Vin’s Air speeder took a hit. Some little incendiary he had up his sleeve. No amalgo.”
The man sighed, a murmur of grave amusement. “Clown Hair, you’ve been a busy boy. Care to enlighten us on the whereabouts of my amalgo?”
“Dunno anything about any amalgo.”
He paced the room, his lips getting cold and stiff, his teeth flashing as if ready to bite someone’s head off. “That’s funny. Fario, who lies with half his arm hanging off, claimed he saw one in the flatbed you crashed through my warehouse.”
“Fario sounds like a man with an overactive imagination.”
He jerked a thumb at Long Nose. “Clown Hair thinks he’s gonna word-play his way out of this.” He turned to me. “You know, one of the amalgos is no good without the other.”
“Do I give a fuck?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he echoed in wonder.
“Sure, Baer,” Marty slurred through a broken nose. “We do.”
“Mr. Baer to you.” He growled, turning his feral gaze on Marty. “Some clients of mine are going to be sorely pissed when they ask me where their amalgo is and I say, “beats me, Will, a couple of wise-guys broke in and stole it.”
“That’s
