“Is it really so hard to have some manners? Just because it’s a bar doesn’t mean it’s a dive, much less a dump.” He shook his head and walked back behind the bar.
“The perpetrator?” the Asian-eyed newswoman continued, “One Rork Sollix, a known Cartel agent that sources say was once banned from a Luna City bar and is now determined to wipe out all Lunans.”
What the hell? Where do they get this from? Rork pushed his palms deep into his eye sockets and wished he was in another solar system.
“Rork Sollix, you’re under arrest,” came a deep voice from behind him.
Rork went stiff. “Geez, let me finish my beer, alright?” He grabbed at his drink but something thin and hard jabbed into the bumpy crown of his head.
“Don’t move.”
“Alright. Alright.” He put his hands up. At least I’ll get my foot taken care of.
Slow, careful footsteps sounded behind him.
But Lala. That was an obligation he couldn’t shirk. He readied his fists, his upper body swaying like the drunkard he was.
A mop of dark hair appeared around the corner of the high-backed booth. He readied his fists. The black hair plopped into the seat across from him.
He raised an eyebrow and burped.
“Still want to get into the Barbary Cylinder?” It was Mary Ellen.
“Jumping Jupiter, woman, I almost beat that gorgeous face of yours to a pulp. I’m half-drunk! Anything could’ve happened.” He burped and his head flopped back.
She shook her head. “This is about the worst moment for you to drink.”
A rolling burp escaped his throat. Halfway through, he covered his mouth and glanced at the barkeep. “I lied. I’m fully drunk.” He grinned at her.
“Are you ready to get the bastard?”
“I’m ready to get another few pints! Barkeep!” Rork leaned in to Mary Ellen. “Can I borrow some money?”
Mary Ellen fanned the smell of Rork’s breath away. “Where would I get a dime? I’ve been on the run for months.”
“The barkeep’s going to kill us.” Rork slouched back in the tall, right-angled bench. “This is really uncomfortable, you know.” He pushed his butt and legs to one side and half-lay against the wall. “Yeah, that’s better.” He closed his eyes.
The table bumped and Mary Ellen whispered something far away. Rork didn’t care. He had to sleep. His thoughts turned to Lala and a tropical island.
A frigid wet hit Rork in the face and ran straight down to his underwear. Rork stood up fast, his mouth open. “Hey!”
Mary Ellen grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the booth. Rork limped along behind her, bent over and trying to pull his pants away from his now icy private parts.
“What about the bill?” Rork whispered.
“I took care of it.” Mary Ellen pulled him through the too-narrow, creaky plastic front door and onto the black street.
The spring-enabled door swung shut and clipped Rork’s bad foot. He groaned and held the partial appendage gingerly in his two hands.
“Quiet.” Mary Ellen turned and batted her eyes, her black hair swaying above her ample bosom. “Now. Do I have your attention?”
Rork nodded, his eyes roving from her chest to her face and back.
“Good. Barbary will take the kids to a transport hub and distribute them from there to the different mines. Do you understand what that means?”
Rork nodded.
“That means that we only have a short time to save them.”
Rork forced himself to stare at her curly-lashed brown eyes. “Of course.” Rork’s world wobbled from side to side.
“Careful. We’ll need a large ship, too, really big. And I need you to pilot it.”
“I’m kind of drunk.” Rork burped.
The road was narrow and long. Low shops and towering capsulement buildings lined it. Cross streets contradicted its stretch straight to the hazy horizon.
But there was no traffic today, only a smokey miasma that grayed out the artificial landscape even more than its steel and aluminum construction. The air smelled of burning metal and sour flesh. Rork felt the urge to heave.
The bar door opened and clipped Rork’s foot again. He stifled the scream and hopped along, willing the pain to oblivion.
A sky-blue-suited man stepped out, pulse pistol in hand, a yellow star pasted on his chest. “Lady, have you seen anyone leaving here?”
“Dark-haired guy, kind of dangerous-looking?”
The cop nodded.
She pointed toward the spaceport. “He ran down that way about ten minutes ago.”
The cop held her in a steady gaze. He turned to Rork. “And who might you be?”
“A cripple and a drunk.”
The cop grabbed Rork’s face and held his cheekbones tightly. “Hey, bring me that photo.”
Mary Ellen played with the zipper on her blouse, revealing breast, then hiding it, then revealing it again. She inched her other hand towards her lower back.
Another cop exited the bar and handed the first one a screen. The first one held it up to Rork’s face and compared.
“Could be him. Take this one—”
Mary Ellen pulled a pulse pistol from her lower back and pointed it at the cops. “‘Fraid I can’t allow that. Close the door gently.”
The cop obliged.
“Lay down in front of the door and set your pistols in front of you.”
The cops laid their bulk down, their hands ahead of them, palms down. They pushed the guns away.
“Get their guns,” she said to Rork.
“I don’t deserve to be armed,” Rork mumbled.
Mary Ellen stepped over to him and slapped him hard across the face. “I said pick up the guns, Rork Sollix!”
The door opened, pushing the cops on the floor forward. Three other cops fell through the doorway at once.
“Run!” Mary Ellen sprinted in the direction of the spaceport.
Rork hopped slowly after her.
“Rork Sollix,” one yelled, “you’re under arrest for crimes against—”
Another cop piled on and rolled over top of the others, out of the door. The first one picked up his pulse pistol and fired a shot.
Rork collapsed to the ground, head-first and didn’t move.
25
“I CAN’T— The pain is just too much.”
Rork lay flat on his nose on the cold tarmac. Everything hurt. Those charged electrical wires ran through his limbs, his gut, chest and head again. The headache was a low brain buzz that made his stomach churn and his vision blur.
“The ship is just five-hundred meters down the road.” Mary Ellen crouched down and rolled Rork over onto his back. She returned fire to the bar. “Rork, we’re close. First the children, then Barbary. Then you can die, if you want, but not before we do this.”
“What do you care?”
The haze grew thicker and the sky opened into a muddy rain. The cops fell over themselves back into the bar.
She grabbed Rork at the shoulders and pulled him towards a capsulement. The front door was open. The tiny, yellow-tiled lobby sported a single chair and an elevator. She dropped him next to the chair and sat down.
“I was due for a bath.” Rork edged over to the wall and sat up against it. He tucked a pulse pistol into his underwear.
“That rain could be radioactive.”
Rork grimaced. “Oh brax. Luna City could become uninhabitable.”
“You asked why I care.”
Rork met her eyes and nodded.
“He tried to force me to marry him. He kept me against my will. I was there, inside the Cylinder. It’s a beautiful community. We can’t destroy it, you understand?”
“What if it just gets destroyed? You don’t fyuke Luna City and get away with it. You’re not the only one who knows where it is, right?”
She held out her hand, palm down, to silence him. “But it’s built on evil: on slavery, rape, murder. I saw only a glimpse but it was... just horrible. I can’t fin
d the words, you know?”
The elevator doors opened and a perfectly-coiffed gray-haired lady stepped out. She wore a red dress and she smoothed her hair back before she spoke.
“I saw you on the cameras. You are Rork Sollix, aren’t you?” she asked.
Rork grinned, his eyes half-closed. “Indeed I am, ma’am. How can I be of service?”
She shook her head and waved her hand in front of her face. “No, you’ve done enough for me, you and your father. Just... Oh, come on.” She stepped back into the elevator. “Hurry before someone else sees you!”
Mary Ellen wrapped her warm arm around Rork’s back and helped him up. They walked to the elevator and the old woman tapped the panel to close the door.
The front door opened and a man in a dark blue raincoat ran in. “Hold the elevator,” he yelled.
The lady jammed her well-manicured, mustard yellow fingernail into the panel again and again and the doors slammed closed in the man’s scruffy face.
“Should I be worried?” Rork asked.
The lady turned, her hands folded in front of her against her body. She took a solemn breath. “I’m Mrs. Dalrymple. And I could see from a mile away that that man had bad energy.”
Rork grinned. “Okay.”
The doors opened on the thirty-third floor with a soft flush of air. Mrs. Dalrymple waddle-shuffled right and opened the first door of at least thirty on that side alone. She took two steps in, turned and smiled.
“Welcome to capsule 3301! My humble abode.” She tapped the wall and a slab grew out of it at a right angle. “Lay him down here, honey.”
Mary Ellen dragged him over, his feet increasingly refusing to rise. She laid him down, his head near the window, his legs close to the door.
He sighed. “I’m just going to close my eyes.”
“Sorry, honey, now I know these cramped quarters are no big deal for space rats like you,” Mrs. Dalrymple said with a tweak of Rork’s cheek, “but I can barely stand it. So I’m afraid I can’t invite you to spend the night.”
“We need to get—” Mary Ellen started.
“Now, we’re going to give you a sponge bath and get those nasty rags off of you. Mary Ellen, I know you’ll give me a hand,” the lady said with a wink and a grin, “and then we’ll attend to your health. Have you back up there among the stars in no time. Oh yes.”
“Sounds good to me,” he mumbled.
Mary Ellen scowled. “I’m not sponge-bathing him. Let him do it himself.”
Rork giggled.
Mrs. Dalrymple walked over to her. “Now dear, Rork here is a strong man doing a dangerous job and he needs a strong woman with him, ready to take on any—”
“I’m not his woman. And I won’t be any man’s woman.”
“Oh dear, one of those, eh? Well, let’s make the best of it, shall we?” Mrs. Dalrymple walked to the space under Rork’s shelf and popped a drawer out. A plastic bucket clomped to the artificial hard wood floor and other items dropped into the receptacle with muffled plunks.
“Take this, honey doll,” Mrs. Dalrymple whispered in his ear.
Rork rolled over and held out his hand.
“Open,” she said, and he obliged. She dropped two tiny, white tablets into his mouth and he swallowed.
“This will slow the onset of your disease and will give you some relief from the symptoms.”
“How do you know about that? How did you even find us?” he asked.
“It’s just a little something I cooked up in the community garden out back. Added a few extra ingredients of my own selection, like my great grandma taught me. It’s an old medicine. Worked for your daddy.” She ducked under his shelf again and rummaged around. “I have a few more that I’ll leave with Mary Ellen. Take two per day for a month and you should be all set.”
A modicum of strength returned to his limbs and the electric fire of the disease eased. He sat up. “You know my dad? He had this, too?”
“Anorxoma?” She stood up and nodded. She kicked the now-empty bucket towards Mary Ellen. “Down the corridor a ways there is a little kitchen. Be a dear and fill it about three-quarters.”
Mary Ellen scooped up the bucket, her lips pursed. “We need to get going,” she said to Rork.
Mrs. Dalrymple threw the objects in her hands to the floor. “Well, how do you expect the man to be any use to you? He’s on his death bed. Haven’t you noticed? That and his clothes are ripped to shreds, he’s filthy and I smell liquor on his breath, too. This man, this good man, is worn out, burnt out, a fuelless rocket,” she said touching her neck and turning to Rork, “No offense to your manhood, of course, my dear.”
“When you’ve got—” Mary Ellen started.
“Are you going to get the water or not, young lady? If that’s what you consider yourself.”
“Fine,” Mary Ellen mumbled. She turned, opened the door and it closed gently behind her with a soft hydraulic hiss.
“I hope you weren’t thinking of putting a ring on that one,” Mrs. Dalrymple said.
Rork grinned, his eyes at half-mast again, his strength evaporating.
“Now get those clothes off, young man.”
Rork pulled what remained of the space suit off his chest and feet. He bumped his bad foot and cringed.
“You seem to be missing a chunk of foot. Your father swore off such adventure as you’re now known for.”
“How did you know him?” He looked up at her and studied her face. “I don’t remember you.”
“Oh well, he called on me for certain manly needs from time to time. You know. And I took good care of him, I promise you that. If I wasn’t so over the hill now, I’d proposition you for the same. I’m a strong, independent woman. But I know how to take care of a man, too.” She grabbed Rork’s foot and ripped the bandage off.
Rork gripped the space suit rags in his two hands and groaned.
“Sometimes it’s the quickest cut that is the most merciful.” She sighed. “This bone has to go, darling. It’s protruding from the wound and you’re going to re-open it with every step you take.” She shook her head.
“I... I’d like to wait on that.”
Something clicked nearby and the agony tensed Rork’s muscles. He tried to stand up but she forced him back down. He rocked up and down on the shelf, suppressing his screams.
“Now, now. It’s not that bad. I just had to take off that nub of a metatarsal. It’s no big deal really and this will free you up. Now hold on.” She applied a cool liquid to the burnt flesh of his foot and a new burning plagued him.
“Come on,” he mumbled through clenched teeth.
“Just a little more. Just adding a sealant, to protect it from further infection. Then I’ll—”
The door burst open and a hail of laser shots sparked across the capsule. Rork drew his pulse pistol from the waistband of his underwear and put three quick shots through the door. A body wrapped in a dark blue raincoat slumped to the floor and gurgled.
“Help me, Jupiter!” Rork said.
Mrs. Dalrymple lay flat on the floor, burning discs smoking from her heart, neck and right eye.
26
“I SPREAD death wherever I go!”
Rork limped behind Mary Ellen in his underwear, his foot hastily wrapped in a gauze bandage. “And I didn’t even get the sponge bath.”
She stopped short and pointed to a cargo sled. “That’s it.”
The long, low, rectangular yellow box sat on the auxiliary landing platform like a heap of ejected space junk.
He shook his head. “They call them sleds for a reason. They’re impossible to maneuver. You set them on a trajectory and they just go, and fast. There’s no power steering, it’s just dead speed.”
She nodded. “That’s what we’ll need to get out of there. Larger forces are at work now. You can’t fyuke Luna City with impunity. There’s going to be a major reaction. Everyone will be gunning for Barbary now. We’ll have to hurry if you’re to get your revenge.”
“How do you kno
w so much? Where did you find that old lady, by the way?”
“I know things.” She shrugged.
“Can I at least get some new clothes before we go? Something to eat?”
The light cut off and Rork looked up. A sharp-prowed ship flew overhead, above the dome. Then a hiss to his left. A small EDF shuttle landed near him. Black-armored troops piled out.
“Stop right there, terrorist!” one of them yelled.
“Oh, Jupiter.” Rork hobbled toward the sled and started up the ramp. Behind him, dozens of pairs of boots hit the ground, weapons clicked and voices screamed at him.
“Hurry up! Remember, you have to pilot this thing out of here.”
He reached the top, Mary Ellen right behind him. The ramp closed and the sounds of the EDF soldiers disappeared. He took a seat in the cockpit and hit the red ignition button at his lower right. A low rumble sent a wave of turbulence through the floor and his chair. His sight blurred momentarily as his eyeballs pulsated in tune with the ship. He strapped himself in with a comforting click. If they burned up in some atmosphere or in a collision, at least he’d be secure. He smirked.
Second and third EDF shuttles landed and dozens more troops poured out of them. Rork’s radio blinked with an incoming call. His radar showed the earnest red blip high above him and in his flight path. It was the main EDF ship, a destroyer likely, maybe even his old friend the John McCain.
“Should I strap in?” she asked from behind him.
“Only if you want to survive this insanity.”
He switched to takeoff mode and jammed the accelerator forward. Laser shots bounced off the viewscreen and sizzled on the hull. A cloud of aqueous air burst from under the ship and blasted the soldiers onto their backs. The ship zoomed straight up. He held the radar blip in the corner of his eye. He made straight for it.
“We’re boxed in!” Mary Ellen found the co-pilot’s seat and strapped herself in.
Rork slowed the vertical acceleration, punched it into maneuvering mode and turned right towards the spaceport. “I can’t tell...”
“Look ahead to your left,” Mary Ellen said. “There’s a narrow corridor that leads to the spaceport and from there the exit—”
Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) Page 14
