Ten towers of components stood twelve feet high in a neat row in the center of the room. We’d made it this far. Horseshoes must be up our asses. We were in the control depot that fed the station its juice and controlled auxiliary functions and artificial grav. Luckily I knew where to look. I’d broken into such places before and had a good success rate. That meant diddly squat though. Every caper had its pitfalls.
Marty catfooted it past nine towers to the far end of the room and began fiddling with the last tower, particularly the box that contained the control port door stabilizer. I’d coached him how to sabotage it to keep those doors wedged wide open.
The place buzzed with an electrical hum, high voltage, high-powered fluorescent lights. The smell of dust and staleness permeated the air. A disused feel. Nobody had been in this place for a long time.
While Marty got the faceplate off the upright rig nine towers down and worked at short-circuiting the outer port, I moved to the first stack. In sync we had to undermine the power grid as quickly as possible. If we could get both components to misfire at the same time, we’d have the perfect diversion to steal our cargo hauler and be on our way. One shipload of that rare, treated beryl could weigh in upwards of 30k yols. Not bad for a day’s haul by a couple of starveling hustlers.
I unscrewed the faceplate off the first stack, crouching at waist level. Just a couple of wires snipped here and there in the right places and joined to the right leads and the overhead energy holo grid would go down. Half the job would be done, just what we needed. Sharki and his goons wouldn’t know what hit them.
Marty, however, was slower than dogshit. Too long dicking around with the auxiliary port controller. I hissed into my com, “We’re good to go, Mar. On blackout for T-30.”
His raspy voice crackled over my ear piece. “This one’s a bust, a prick and a half.”
“What you mean a bust? I gave you the ‘easy’ job.”
“You know how it is, Ruskie. The easiest ones’re always the hardest. Some geeks must have parallel-wired the port mechanism, adding triple redundancy or some shit. Have to knock out three of them if we want our door to stay open.”
I groaned. “Well, hurry up, or this operation’s lizard shit. We could get made. Those doors are under auxiliary power. Could cancel out my blackout magic.”
“We can always bail—Damn these snips!” He swore as he made sucking sounds, likely cut his thumb.
“There’s no bailing. We invested a lot in this job, Marty. Let’s make the best of it. Wait, on second thought, let me handle it.”
I heard him swearing like a sailor as I envisaged him fumbling about with a bloody finger trying to stitch two leads together. Something else crackled over the com, Gras’s choked voice.
“Fuck… Gras’s made,” Marty rasped.
I ducked over to the wall to sneak a peek through the glass, saw two security apes hauling what looked like Gras out of Algernon’s port doors. Fuck! Now what? The two thuggish security men with brawny tattooed arms were dragging his sorry hide none too gently. I leaned back and sighed. Completely screwed. I told him to fly off or at least lay waste to this pig run if things went sour. Must have tried something heroic and got himself messed up.
“Abort,” I hissed.
Marty was at my side, clacking his ugly teeth. “This is bad. What about the doors?”
“Forget the fucking doors. We’re screwed! Backup plan.” Which wasn’t much of a plan if you call a free-for-all shoot out at the OK Corral some kind of fallback. I ran back to the stack knowing we were done for, so hard-wired the main circuit to a full out short. The lights flared, then took a plunge. There was a massive electrical surge and sizzle and cries and bedlam in the loading deck. Security men were hopping about, R3’s hiked and Marty and I were on the move.
The emergency lights flickered on. In the dim periphery sat the hauler, a tempting, easy getaway vehicle. I was itching to get my hide in there. First thing though, we had to try to save Gras’s ass. Somebody was going to die. Maybe all of us. Marty and I moved like lynxes toward the security men, Marty, grim face set, was thinking the same as me.
Before their guns lifted, we took them out, thumping them like sledges on anvils. The first man’s face exploded in a tiny ruin as my gunstock slammed down hard. I caught Gras as he slumped, pulled him the hell away from them. Gras choked, getting hold of his senses. His face was white. “I tried to warn you guys…but they snuck in back.” His breath wheezed. “Must have
