A rumble rolled across the sky. An enemy ship? Moving fast. Question was, what enemy, Mong or Froy’s rebels? Likely Mong, the Star Lord.
I ducked. Shellfire rained at our sides. Rat-a-tat. The nightmare echo of my sweaty dreams.
“Get Noss the fuck over here,” gusted Blest.
My fingers itched to do it, and call up our shipmate. But I held back, feeling a tingle in my wrist and hearing a little creak in the left finger of my prosthetic hand.
“Oh, for Christ sakes,” cursed Blest, “I’ll call him myself.”
“Can’t. They’ll trace it. Then alert their scouts. If that’s who I think it is, Warhawks’ll blow Bantam out of the sky. I can’t chance losing that ship.”
“He’s right,” grunted Wren. “Noss is neither tactician nor marksman. They’ll make mincemeat out of him.”
“Then we’re screwed,” cried Blest. “So what do we do?”
“Do what we’re doing. Come hell or high water, we get to Noss and the ship.”
“You should have had a backup plan, Rusco.”
“Right, like it was obvious to guess that our business partners would be so kind as to turn wolf on us. What’s with you?”
Blest bleated something unintelligible.
“Speaking of which, weren’t you the one gave the all-clear after radar-scouting out the city and telling me Mong’s forces were gone?”
Blest licked his lips. “They must have come back.”
“No, you dickhead, you didn’t look hard enough and they were hunkered down somewhere, tucked away like bugs. I should have done the scan myself.”
The arguing was doing us no good. Blest had fucked up. I had fucked up. Klane had fucked up, and then he paid the price with his life. I wiped my sweaty brow then rubbed my eyes. All adrenalin and rage and frustration thrown in for fun. A lethal, toxic mix that needed an outlet. But now we needed to move on and concentrate on surviving.
Supposed to have been only a simple drop off, for shit’s sake. A hundred crates of R4s and various land mines and fire snares. Everything set up by our contact Romos and his gang of scumbags. Nice bunch of people to work with.
It’s never simple, Rusco, you should know that, you dreamer.
If that idiot Klane hadn’t shot off his mouth, we wouldn’t be in this jam. Didn’t he know that shortchange was part of the whole package? I’d allowed for it, factored in the slippage, that’s why I charged 20% more. Something I’d been expecting. I should have briefed Klane better though. Hindsight. All this fled through my mind as we ran. Move on, Rusco, the boat is leaving the dock.
Some brief gunfire flashed from the side, startling us as we scooted across a vehicle-sprawled square. Tager dropped as a slug slammed him high in the shoulder. He gave a hound’s yelp as another smacked into his temple. I looked back, saw blood gushing from his mouth. No saving Tager now.
With a choked gurgle, Blest dropped down behind an alley’s corner.
“What are you doing? Blest, get up, you fool!”
He ignored me.
Two figures burst into the square, one covering the foreground while another offered covering fire.
Blest’s R4 spat out a vengeful burst.
The figure flopped like a ragdoll. Wren tagged the other.
“Nailed the bastard,” croaked Blest.
“What do you want, a kiss?” I hissed. “Pipe down, there may be more of them.”
Wren mumbled, “Good shot.” She touched Blest’s arm and he gave her a terse nod, working his lips and struggling on ahead.
A sour wave of nausea hit me. I pushed on through the empty streets, shaking my head like a dog, herding myself along.
I stared down at the gash in my leathered thigh. More blood was trickling where the shell had grazed me. My nine lives were running out.
The distant rumble of ship’s engines coursed above. Closer now. Much closer. Made more menacing by the low cloud cover. The explosion in the warehouse must have alerted Mong’s imperial scouts.
The endless maze of streets was disorienting. More and more squares with shelled fountains, toppled statues and broken buildings and fly-ridden bodies, young, old, short, fat. Death did not discriminate. At one time it looked as if this city had been built in an elegant baroque, the style probably deliberately copied from Earth by some high class types, but with cathedrals dedicated to a new, modern-day savior.
Stone bridges ran over the canals; blown out now, so we had to wade through rank, brown-scummed water. Grey sluggish streams dotted with bloated bodies; animals too, what looked like kangaroos crossed with mastiffs.
These insurgents, I knew the type, had their noses ground in the mud too often. They’d been fighting this guerrilla war for months now. Turned red devils into savages. I hadn’t realized how far they’d regressed until I snatched a look at Froy back there. I caught a flutter of movement in the arched ruin of a church.
Swore it was Froy, cloaked in his ragged brown khakis, loping like a tiger. Wild eyes gleamed with a special something of vindictive madness. The squad was far enough away for me not to be shitting bricks. He and his goons’d lost sight of the cause, chasing us like rabbits. I mean, who in their
