I shrugged and focused on the last minute details of the operation. Yet TK’s voice had infected me with a bug that had my brain spinning. I pored over all the words I had ever heard from Mong and the news reports on him. So what drove the megalomaniac? Galactic dominion, yes. But why was the amalgo so important to him? Some men, or quasi-humans, desired power over all other beings. Mong was different. He wanted respect also—to be perceived as the next messiah. Go a peg deeper, Rusco. Was the man really that deluded into thinking that he was actually helping the human race by taking over their planets? A poignant snippet came to mind,“They do not know what they want. A unified community and existence, free of warring bandits, free from slums. I will give it to them, Baer. Through hell or high water, I will give it to them.” Vivid was the crusader’s manifesto I’d overheard back in that torture room on Trellian…
It seemed that Baer was no crueler or kinder than this master. But Baer was only a peon, a simple minion in the larger scheme of a grander visionary; Mong could have modelled himself on the warlord Genghis Khan, throwing in a twist of the cultist. No matter. The beast was after me, to the death. As was Baer. I’d robbed him of his limb, true, as he had mine. Now we were even, and one of us had to die…
I reviewed my strategies and could find no flaw. Starrunner’s shields were low, so I’d spared no expense in replenishing my ship’s defenses with a heavy duty Rexar 3 magno-electrovolt mesh, knowing one day the device might save my hide—like the present. Wren was grinning like a cat; TK was shitting bricks. As I punched the hyperdrive to get to Belisar, I wondered what ball I’d started rolling by the simple act of turning on that tracker.
The red lights glowed on the overhead panel, signaling our arrival at Deros as the Varwol cut out.
Asteroid belt, Merius, spread behind us and Deros station loomed below, a half billion miles from Jesra.
From what I had gathered of its operation, all ore and crystals, including Barenium, amassed from the nearby moons, asteroids and space rock, had been collected here for transshipment to neighboring worlds.
If this plan worked, the reapers would come knocking soon.
The camouflaged suit hung still there on the peg by the weapons rack, along with the poison-tipped boots Pazarol had given me. I looked at the garb and cast them a sour grin: Pazarol’s gift might come in handy.
I murmured to Wren, “They’ll probably try to ambush us when we get settled into the drop point. Let’s be ready.” I adjusted the straps on the AK custom blaster slung over my shoulder, and the pouch containing the grenades.
“You don’t know that,” hissed TK, his face grim.
“Your point?”
Wren interceded. “I’m surprised they haven’t tried to blow us up already.”
“Until Mong and his monkeys get their alien tech, they’ll keep us alive. That’s what I’ve been banking on this whole time.”
As we came within docking distance of the station, I made out more details: immeasurably long superstructure, shaped like a fish vertebrae with scores of side wings extending ninety degrees outward. The upper tiers of the main hub spread out like a honeycomb: rows for small craft like ours to dock in. Below that, larger octagonal ports spread, gray and sealed now, as they had been for centuries, since the large freighters had come to dock and transfer their payloads. An impressive piece of architecture all said and done. Belisar sprawled like a fantastic ark, the single portal open to the landing bay, just as we had left it. Already our scanners had picked up one bogey on our tail, too far away to do any damage, but proof that the bait had been nibbled. We’d hole up in the mining station before long, ready our explosives and wait for armageddon.
No sooner had we reached docking distance with upper deck loading bay D-2 than a sudden blue blip flashed across the starboard viewport. A black ship vaulted out of nowhere. Wtf? A stealth ship? Drone? It was shaped like a manta ray and had that sleek, streamlined look of new tech and black death, some harbinger of doom. Either way, it had slipped under our radar. A blue beam of destruction came flaring out of its fuselage, one of those long-range fareon rays. With horror, I realized my well-oiled plans were becoming unglued from the onset. Our enemies had timed their strike with just enough force to incapacitate us, rather than destroy us.
Our shields buckled; the ship rocked, sending us in a tailspin as we slewed into the landing port. I jammed the forward thrusters to compensate and save us from colliding with the side of the docking bay. Starrunner ran high up into the open landing bay.
Starrunner spun down on her side, trailing sparks from her underbelly, smoking from her midsection. What can go wrong, will go wrong, the universal law of consequences. Molly’s voice crackled through the gloom. “Critical meltdown of engine core. Ship’s Barenium unstable.”
At the edge of my vision, the viewscreen showed impending disaster. Baer’s ship and her companion vessel, a stealth V-Ray, glided in through the hatch before we could manually trigger the portal closed. Shit.
I snapped out of my daze. We were sitting ducks in this smoking coffin. “Out! Now!”
Wren and TK scrambled through the smoke, grabbing R4s and masks and coughing, staggered to the port hatch. The sealed landing dock re-pressurized automatically and I cranked the hatch wheel upon seeing the green lamp blink on the far wall. But it
