“At least I’ll die free!” Ruff was more dramatic, his chin high, striking a defiant pose.
“God! What a bunch of pussies!” Shaniqua moaned. “I’m gonna kill Dee for stickin’ me with the both of you two! If you’d listened to me earlier, Damn, I have to do everything! Just like a woman always does!”
Tiger felt the engines throttle up. She’d overridden the controls.
“What’re you doin’?” he asked. “You said we couldn’t outrun it?”
“We ain’t gonna outrun it,” she replied.
And she was right, outside the cockpit window, everything went white, brilliant, blinding white, and the Night Mare disappeared from a lonely section of space somewhere between the Earth and the moon.
***
Junior walked through Cargo Gate 8B of Von Braun Spaceport later that night, turned around and with a deep sigh, said a silent goodbye to his hometown and his home planet. Something in his gut told him he’d never see either again.
He found the pad where his ship was waiting. His heart sank, and his mood soured quickly. It wasn’t a Super Charger. It was an old Russian freighter, a relic from the early days of the Rush. The rusty old tub looked nowhere near spaceworthy. Even worse, the crew looked like they’d just been paroled from Penal One.
The captain or the crewman he assumed was the captain, was a middle-aged man with thin brown hair and a stocky build. He was doing some paperwork on his PDC while the other two made final preparations for launch.
“Excuse me … sir?”
The man looked up from his PDC with the watery blue eyes of a ‘beamer.’ He had thin lips and a scar across his right cheek. Everything about his looks screamed ‘shady!’ Junior surmised by the jagged, irregular cut it had probably been put there by a broken bottle, more than likely during a brawl or bar fight. He took Junior in with a look that let the young man know he didn’t rank very high on the dude’s opinion scale. When the man spoke, Junior’s night got even worse.
“You … you Tuttle?” He asked in a thick Eastern European accent. Granny’s Jesus! Not only was it a Russian ship. It had a Russian crew! Great! What a lovely trip this was shaping up to be!
“Yeah,” he replied, quite unenthusiastically. “I’m Tuttle.” He wanted to kill one Joseph Marchant right now. If he wasn’t on the run and half of Huntsville wasn’t looking for him, he’d be tempted to take the Mag-Lev back over to the union hall. But he was a man now with few options and no aces in the hole.
“I’m Yuri,” the Russian replied. He beckoned toward the ship, “Captain of the Milena. You got gear?”
“What I got on my back.” Junior smiled half-heartedly, but Yuri’s face remained stoic. “Good. Don’t need extra weight. You too much as is.” He nodded toward the boarding ramp. “Get aboard. Ivan will get you strapped in. We’re almost ready to start the countdown.”
“Sure.” The sooner he got on, the sooner he’d get off, he reckoned. At the rear of the old ship, the two other crew members were overseeing the last of the cargo being loaded by Spaceport personnel. They couldn’t have been more of stark contrast. One was a tall, beanpole of a man with a long, acne-cratered horse face and roman nose. His hair was shoulder-length and parted on the left side. It hung down in his face as he worked, covering his right eye. He had a pierced nose and lips. He wore grimy orange coveralls and looked straight out of a pod on the Backside of Rocket Town.
The other was a thick, muscular woman, dressed in a two-piece spandex ensemble. She wore an old Spacer frock coat that had seen better days, heavy black ankle boots and matching gloves. She had the look of a bodybuilder, with tiger-striped, platinum blonde hair, coiffed high with a big swirl in front like the top of an ice cream cone. She was talking to one of the cargo handlers and had a loud voice and boisterous laugh. She paused only for a moment to glance at Junior as he stepped up onto the ramp to board. She gave him an appraising look. She betrayed no emotion in her short pause to indicate her opinion and quickly resumed her conversation. Junior wondered whether he should worry if he did or didn’t pass inspection.
Which would be worse?
Down in the cargo hold, in cargo containers with false compartments, a heavily sedated Beatrice Oglethorpe, battered and bruised, lay unconscious. She was still in her purple nightie. The duct tape Gideon had applied still covered her mouth. A space travel diaper had been fastened around her midsection to help minimize the mess. All around her, in similar crates, a dozen or so other women lay. Their ages ranged from sixteen to forty, and they all slumbered in the same drug-induced state.
At some point during the flight, they all would awake, unaware of their whereabouts. Terrified, bound and gagged in a cramped, dark box, the only sounds heard would be the low droning of the ship’s engines … and the muffled screams and sobs of those around them.
But, by then, it would be far too late.
***
“Are we dead? Are we in Purgatory … or worse?”
Tiger had seen the nuke coming and then the bright white light. And then there was the long freaky tunnel of many colors. But damn! Nobody had told him to go into the light. Not a good sign! And Ruff was still here, an even worse indication.
“Where are we?” the AnthroSplice asked, staring out the window at unfamiliar space. Earth had vanished, along with the Grand Orbital. The shipyards were off the scanners as well.
“Maybe we’re ghosts,” Tiger suggested. “Maybe this is a ghost ship now. Maybe we’re destined
