Looking down at my mechno hand, I admired the fake covering of human skin, a hue slightly lighter than my own, the fingers stronger than my fleshy ones, but not my own. Feeling something of dead and wooden weight there.
And with it came the raging urge to strip off my old identity, become the fierce torrent, the unstoppable rush of what I was to become. The old Jet Rusco was gone, kaput. A vengeful one birthed—an avenger to destroy every scumbag crime lord I could get my hands on, starting with Pazarol, Baer and that mad fuck, Mong, who had caused so many senseless miseries and the deaths of so many people. I didn’t care who died, who lived, or who got mangled up, or if I got robot parts to replace my whole body. Those fuckers were going down.
We’d lost our payout and our cargo, and our shields were whittled to about zero—as our Varwol.
These details I noted and considered, as we limped along to the next planet, though I was barely there in essence, going through the motions like some sock puppet powered by a clown master. I felt half a man, as if my manhood had been shunted. Biomech Rusco, suffering from implant stress disorder. Mech organ rejection.
Whatever the fuck.
I didn’t care and I had to snap out of this downward spiral.
Chapter 19
After repairing the Varwol on Gainor, I pushed TK away from the controls and set the course for Merius, the asteroid belt. To a place on the fringe where I remembered Deros the dwarf planet shone with its greenish tinge around its edges.
“Rusco? Are you out of your mind?” TK gasped.
“They fucked with the wrong asshole.”
“What’re you scheming?”
“Lure those scumbags into a trap they’ll wish they’d never sprung.”
“How?” TK’s mouth twitched. “I don’t like that murderous look in your eyes, Rusco. I’ve seen it in you before and I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Tough shit. Get used to it, TK. There’s a reckoning to be had.”
“With big bad Baer?” he guffawed. “What have you got to bargain with? The phaso’s gone. Remember, they got it?”
“Yeah, too bad about that.”
He flashed me a perplexed look. “You don’t sound too broken up about it.” His eyes widened. “Wait, you still got it?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You’re a tricky bastard, Rusco.” He slapped me on the back, his lips working in a grin. I pulled away, not liking his overly familiar back slaps.
It was a full scale war I waged now on Baer and Pazarol. Unfair of me to ensnare TK and Wren in it, but I was committed and I knew I’d need their help. Bounty hunters had no doubt been alerted, with a larger price on my head and all our miserable hides. Our ship, bugged, a magnet for slaughter and yet I planned to push the red card a little further.
Time to install the tracker back in the ship. As I tinkered under the console with wires I’d ripped out two weeks ago, TK’s jaw went slack.
“What in hell are you doing?”
“Installing the bug back in the transcom, what’s it look like?”
“Are you crazy?” He reached down to pull the device out.
I slapped his hand away and told him to back off. “It stays on.” I flashed him a dangerous look.
“What do you mean, it stays on?”
“Listen, can you jumpstart this thing, TK, so we can monitor it, where it transmits?”
He blinked, gave me a dazed inspection. “I can, sure. But why? There’s a risk you’ll tip them off by sending static down the line.”
“Just want to know the message is getting through and it’s received. A lot depends on this working, like our lives.”
He gave me a lip-chewing appraisal when I told him more of my plan. “I can do that.”
“I’m banking that they won’t kill us, without getting their precious phaso back.”
Misinformation. Misdirection. We’ll lead the flies to the spider’s web. A ghoulish smirk played across my lips. I looked down and flexed my robot hand. Pulling myself to my feet, I recalled all the forsaken derelicts of this solar system floating out in space and an old memory stirred: Belisar One, Primary Ore Station near Deros, the largest of the dwarf planets in the asteroid belt. I tapped some keypads and it came up in the holo field. “There!” I zoomed in and we studied the floor plans. “It’s still intact. We can probably rig the place without suits, if the air generators are still operational.”
TK muttered under his breath.
I summoned Wren to the bridge and told her the basics of my plan. “The phaso and amalgo are the imaginary bait we use to seed the dropoff point. Some fictional buyer while our gangster friends are listening on the wire. They come running to seize the cargo, but a little surprise awaits them. Simple.”
“Sounds doable.” She grinned.
“And dangerous,” TK snarled. “I don’t think it’s survivable, Rusco, given the firepower they had on Trellian.”
“I wasn’t asking you. Now can you study the upper floor plan and map out entrances and exits? It’s vast. We need a confined area to work from.”
The Varwol kicked out and got us to Deros, a misshapen would-be planet, looming brown and grey under distant Jesra’s weak light. On the near side hung Belisar station, an old derelict fish-spine station with multiple bays and landing docks stemming from the main vertebrae—one of those giant outposts left over from yesteryear—a monster of the past no longer operational. Had the works: artificial gravity, ore processing equipment, massive storage, redistribution.
The station grew closer as Starrunner’s impulse engines guided us in to its central core, a desolate hulk, which had survived massive wars, now dark and dead. Life
