Enough doom and gloom, Rusco. Get on with the program.
After a brief recap of our plans, I screeched the tires to a halt on the warehouse asphalt and ordered my new recruits out. Wren sauntered out like a lioness, slinging her R4 rifle over her lean, sinewy shoulder.
I squinted around in the opaque light. The sullen sky did not improve what I saw. A rectangular shitbox of a warehouse, steel refab beams leaning on drunken angles. The lot, strewn with crumbled concrete, was no better than the rest of the city: a write-off. Some wrecked vehicles and lift loaders to the side, nothing now but mangled junk fallen to the fire of warships. An overturned jeep sprawled with bent wheels and a jerry-rigged flamethrower mounted on overhead bars. Made to look like an abandoned base, I guessed. Ten to one there were assault vehicles tucked inside just waiting to burst out and wreak havoc. To the other side lurked a tangled thicket that backed out onto another yard and some open land beyond, here at the western edge of the city. Broken light-posts teetered around the lot’s perimeter. Remarkably, one tall one still stood and its yellow lamp burned feebly by the warehouse door where some activity caught my eye.
Two sets of explosives I carried hidden in my breast armor, coin-size, not easily detectable. In case things went awry. Any arms dealer would have them. We wore fatigues, dirty grey and green-black, padded. All of us wore Kevlar vests underneath. “You know the drill,” I grunted at them. “No embellishments. Everything to plan.” I stared at Klane who’d already shown a tendency to waver from orders.
They growled at that. Two of them gave nods. These recruits still gave me cause for worry. Wren I needn’t worry about. She was an asset: wiry, statuesque, a gutsy brunette. We’d worked together before and she’d gotten me out of a lot of jams. Big ones. Like the one where we were shipwrecked on Talyon when Baer and his thugs had pinned us down. We knew each other. I’d fight to the end for Wren.
Two armed men stepped out of the doorway and motioned us to a rusted side entrance while others poked the back of the truck with their rifles, lifting a flap to peer in with oily smiles. They didn’t disarm us but I noticed they kept their sawed-off R4s well-trained on us—probably in case we were agents of Mong. The detail escorted us none too gently into the half bombed warehouse, down a stale-aired hallway reeking of kerosene and old cheese. From there, to a dim backroom with a rat-eaten table and two bulbs burning overhead.
The nearest man jumped up from a stool: Froy, our contact. He turned about with a scowl, impatient, surly, a half-chewed beedi leaning out of his tar-gummed mouth. “You’re late.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a fucking far way from Veglos,” I said. “We were told this is the place and that we should bring no others and here we are.”
Froy grunted, unimpressed.
The man was cloaked in ragged brown fatigues, frayed at the edges, hair askew. He’d suffered multiple wounds recently, judging by the hackjob on his khakis. Looked as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks. Pearly eyes were round saucers into nowhere as he blinked at us. I’d seen eyes like that on wartorn mongrels before. The enlarged whites gleamed—the mark of the invinco addict and crack hashish user if I’ve ever seen one, mixed with Myscol OD, floating in his blood. With nothing to lose, these war types remained volatile to the end. A chip on their shoulders as big as an anvil and an axe to grind. I looked at him in casual disinterest, hoping to disarm him. It failed. The situation would require careful maneuvering.
His henchmen who’d escorted us from the flatbed shifted, and one inclined his head with a flick of eyes. “They came in on a truck, Froy.”
“A truck? You check it?”
“It’s got the stuff.”
“Good.” Froy nodded, momentarily appeased, but still wound as tight as a prowling tiger. “I thought you were coming in on a ship, Rusco.” His voice was low, sinister.
“Plans change.”
“Yeah, and so does the price, smart guy. I just dropped it. Bad for you. Market’s low today, as is my mood.”
Klane surged forward. “What do you mean, dropped?” The gunman choked, licking his lips, gripping his R4.
Froy turned to him. “What does ‘price dropped’ mean to you, kid? You deaf or something?”
“Relax. Cool it,” I said, clutching at his elbow.
The idiot wriggled out of my grip. “Less profit for us, Rusco. We’ve got to get a profit out of this.”
Froy gave a sour laugh. “Profit? Kiss your boss’s ass for profit. This is wartime.”
I suddenly felt a noticeable dip in our security here. The hothead lout, Klane, was all elbows and knees, clacking teeth, as if Santa Claus had denied him a toy. Too worried about losing his share of the spoils, dumbfuck. Made a move too fast which spooked Froy’s nearest boy. The gunman’s barrel came up and Klane took this as a threat and whirled his piece about, another stupid move. He had the butt end braced in his gut like a gangster. The clack of fire nearly killed our ears in that tiny place. Klane’s innards spilled over the floor and his head exploded in a crimson mash like a melon bursting.
I jerked back, a warm sickness swarming my gut. “What the fuck—” I ducked, wiping the putrid slime of Klane’s brains off my camos. “You stupid dipshit, Froy. Why the hell did you do that?”
“Get them to shut up, Garr.” Froy stabbed out a fist at his men. “Bind these fuckers. Pissed me off enough today, and it’s been a bad day. We won’t be paying anybody anything today, Rusco. Mong’s up our ass.
