A sudden sound broke behind me.
I aimed behind me and shot a spray of death. A rebel with full beard and a fuckboy cut fell clutching his leg as one of my fire bursts hit home, knocking the feet from under him. His two lithe partners hopped over him like gazelles.
We ducked into a culvert that curved under a shell-pitted road. Puddles of water pooled at our feet, the echo of our boots sloshing through stagnant water. We scrambled out the other end then down another ruined alley, our breaths hissing in our throats, lungs pumping.
Still another mile or two to the ship, if my bearings were correct. Everything looked the same in this wreck of a city. Piles of rubble and dead bodies feasted on by carrion birds. Feral kangaroo creatures foraging for scraps and rooting amongst the dead. I kicked one of them out of the way that snapped and growled at me, defending its turf like a guard-dog of the dead. Most of the people who’d survived this holocaust had fled, but there was the odd hobo or old coot hanging around.
We’d taken a wrong turn and gotten jammed up in a dead-end alley. Shelled buildings rose to either side, the windows blown out. We were just about to backtrack when a ragged transient lurched out, scared out of his wits. A bottle of whiskey or rubbing alcohol lay clutched in his hands. “Don’t shoot me, misters, don’t shoot—”
The cry died in my throat as he staggered for a few steps then exploded in scarlet spray, his head blown clean off. I winced as the corpse fell in a ragged heap, the head pumpkin jelly. I flung myself to the ground behind a rubbled heap. I pulled Wren with me. Blest dove the other way into the shelter of a debris pile, broken dolls and a human foot.
A voice called out from the silent rubble, “You’re a dead man, Rusco.”
Froy.
The sound of my name bounced off the battered walls.
“Kill my men, will you?” he taunted. “We’ve got the arms. You’ve lost your payout.”
“You killed my man first, Froy.”
“Your boy was out of line,” Froy called. “What I want is your ship, and you can throw in the woman as a bonus. Come out with her and I may spare your asses. We’ll take your little raven tail for a ride or two.” He chuckled, a sleazy echo answered by one of his henchmen.
I ground my teeth. Yes, they’d turned into savages.
I tried to make sense of it. Distorted perceptions. Any stab at a perceived enemy made a logical target. Too many loved ones snatched away in too brief a time. Too many pent-up hopes shot down in flames. Froy, half-baked on invinco, a hair-trigger finger on anything that moved, friend or foe. Now his goons’ communal libidos were jacked up to rapacious pitch—maybe some god-awful side effect of the invinco.
“We’ve got to keep that bastard talking,” I muttered at my two team members.
Wren gave a fierce nod. Blest gazed at me with resignation, his belly hugging the damp dirt. His curly blond hair was covered with dust and a blood smear to the side where he’d bashed his head on something.
The first pangs of desperation crawled over me. I called Noss on the com. Things were desperate. No answer. Where the fuck was Noss? Deserted? Stolen my ship? Sorry bugger’d get a rude surprise if he tried to leave this planet’s gravity without authorization. I’d rigged something up to deter all such adventurous forays from pilots who didn’t know how to disarm the sequence. The electro-force would kill him if it kicked in and would bathe his world in hell.
My red eyes roved above the cracks of the apartments and blackened stone where Mong’s forces had taken out a whole block. Monstrous crows, a threesome, or what looked like a threesome, flapped out of the gaping windows, their dissonant croaks echoing down the alley of shell-blasted stone.
“I’ll sit tight, draw them in,” I wheezed. “You go up there, Wren, sniper them down.”
She tensed. “They’ll kill you. Why sacrifice yourself?”
I shrugged, gave my usual clown’s grimace of a smile. “We’re already dead, Wren. Trapped here. Go!” I slapped her on the back. She shook her head, her lip downturned.
Shots echoed from up the alley. Covering fire ricocheted as her weapon leaped out while they tried to pepper her.
I crouched, whipping out shots, laying into the moving figures with everything I had. Blest picked up on her cue and beetled down the alley to purchase a sniper position.
I debated taking the building on the right versus closing in after her. I risked a peek past the crumble. I saw four bogies in black suits, heavy-set, crabbing forward from pile of debris to debris. High-powered R4s. They must have taken them off the flatbed.
The gunmen blasted my shell hump of refuge with heavy fire. Enough to rattle my teeth. I pinched my eyes shut, and prayed not one of them would see me.
Fire flashed from overhead. Two of the enemy went down. I took the opportunity to poke my R4 out and spray anything in sight. One burst caught the closest not twenty feet away, tagging him in the shin and he hobbled with a curse. I heard the rat-tat-tat above me and Wren blasted the other bitchdog to kingdom come.
More were crawling out of the woodwork. How many of them were there? These last bastards
