While Gris’s men bore down on us, Dolgra ducked around the side of the pod, motioning his men to sneak out and cover him.
Blasts raked the hallway, blue and green beams, pinning us down in the docking area. Not good.
“Wren, you fake them out, and I’ll try to blow Gris’s boys to kingdom come,” I whispered. She nodded. I looked to Dolgra. “Now!” I lobbed a hunk of broken pipe fallen from the ceiling at the closest of the men down the hall.
Blue fire came spitting to blast the metal to a pulp. Wren pushed off in a crouching run. She rolled for cover behind a white-paneled wall, aiming a stream of fire at the wall for added subterfuge. Good girl. I chose to pepper the place where the other man lurked, my gunfire eating away at the wall. Showers of sparks and metallic rubble covered the wretch. He cried out in pain, a shot catching him high up on the shoulder. The smoke and dust masked my rush for an instant, so I ran through, bold as brass. Dolgra, swift as an ocelot, ran close on my heels. It was now or never. I caught a glimpse of a dark form lurking in the smoke and sprayed it with fire, hoping I could snag even the slightest of body hits. Return fire spat back at me, but I rolled on my belly, moving like a fish out of water. I heard a painful cry and hiss of anger as my assailant fell over. My lips curled in a triumphant grin.
I caught a glimpse of Gris. No mistaking that salt and pepper grey, the ends of the hair trailing at the back. It was a fine mullet for a man of his age, but he had on a gas mask and that alerted me.
The man was good, a cold-blooded killer. Deadly. I saw Dolgra’s man, Yeir, lying face down in a smoking heap, blood pooling around his inert form.
A clink of metal sounded in front of me. My head shot around, eyes blinking as a silver cylinder, six inches in length rolled a few feet away. Smoking gray coils rose from its core. My eyes started to burn.
“Tear gas. Get back!” My throat contracted in a wheezing rasp. This was something I hadn’t expected.
Dolgra, Wren and I staggered back into the pod. A rain of blue fire came ripping into the shuttle, decimating our only defenses.
Lolling on the rubble-strewn floor, I clawed for the utility panel in the forward bulkhead. Through the clouds of dust, I motioned Wren to grab the masks inside. I sprayed the entrance with fire so that some bright light didn’t march in and waste us right there. She and I snatched masks from the bulkhead. Wren tossed extras to Dolgra and others. I lay low, urging Dolgra’s two henchmen to curb their wretched, muffled yells.
I knew they’d be advancing through dusty clouds in the murk, protected by masks and breathing tubes. They’d keep low, their weapons aimed to kill anything that moved. Gris, the crafty bastard, knew his assault techniques. Perhaps I’d underestimated his cunning.
More was yet to play out. Gris was about to move in and waste us, but I held Dolgra back, made a small hand signal indicating I would draw them out and he would storm in and kill them. He gave a grim nod and patted me on the shoulder, wishing me luck.
I grabbed a piece of ruined pipe at my feet, knowing I had perhaps seconds to live. The blood pounded in my ears. In a rolling twist, I tossed it out as I frog-hopped along the edge of the shuttle’s wall, blasting the grey cloud before me. I heard a cry of anguish, the pad of desperate feet behind me. Dolgra and Wren scrambled forward, taking advantage of the confusion.
My last barrage of blasts must have charred Gris’s right side and he stumbled out, like some wounded animal, cursing in the open air, dropping to his knees.
I seized the man’s shoulders and jerked him around, gun trained.
Gris croaked, “You fucking popsicle-brain, Rusco. When Paz hears—he’ll kill—”
Dolgra jumped in and peppered the man full of holes. “That’s for Yeir.” The man’s last act of contempt. Grisheimer sank in a heap of charred, limp bones.
Silence. Even the alarm had blown itself out.
The ship was ours.
We stripped the bodies of their communicators and weapons. I helped Dolgra drag Gris and the others to the jettison hatch, disposing of the bodies in a brief whoosh of vacuum. Though I had no personal quarrel with any of these thugs, I felt no remorse in seeing any of them go. Too many lowlifes in this universe. The rational part of my brain said it was a cleansing.
Dolgra suffered a broken finger, Wren a scraped elbow, me, my usual battery of cuts and bruises while rolling and shielding my head from falling debris. All in all we were lucky to have survived, but not so lucky, Yeir and Dolgra’s other man, Benzit.
Wren looked around with contempt. “Raez or Gris’s going dark will signify something went wrong and one or both of them are dead. We’re screwed.”
I made a low sound. “If we can hide the ship or TK can reprogram the tracking beams, we can be in the clear.”
“Where’ll we do that?”
“We backtrack, hide the load on Phoros, that large asteroid on the fringe of the belt. No one will look for it there. Once the dust settles, we’ll take Urgon elsewhere to sell the product, maybe one of the outer planets. Shouldn’t be hard, if this stuff is hot.”
“It’ll take weeks to get there.”
“So? At least we get paid and blow Pazarol off.”
Dolgra shrugged. “We
