Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure)

by Robert Kroese

  “Bad little kitty!” Rex cried.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Pepper Mélange’s ship! Bad Little Kitty!”

  “What should I do, sir?” I asked.

  “Follow her! It’s not like we have a lot of options.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I shoved the yoke forward, causing the Flagrante Delicto to plunge dramatically toward the ground. Bad Little Kitty rolled right, dodging a barrage of lazecannon fire. The Flagrante Delicto did the same, with somewhat less grace and a significantly narrower margin of error. Someone banged on the door to the cockpit. “What in Space are you doing?” growled General Issimo’s voice. “You’re making us all sick!”

  “Sick beats dead,” Rex snapped. “And watch the upholstery.”

  Bad Little Kitty leveled out for a second and then rolled right and dove. I approximated the move as best as I could, and the Flagrante Delicto groaned in protest. It wasn’t made for these sorts of maneuvers. We dodged another lazecannon volley and then dove into a long, narrow canyon below the cannons’ line of sight. We followed the canyon wall for a few kilometers and then slowed. Bad Little Kitty landed on a small plateau and I set the Flagrante Delicto down next to her.

  The terrain of Gulagatraz made Schufnaasik Six seem downright welcoming. In place of Schufnaasik Six’s dull, brown, rocky plains were endless jagged gray peaks and crater-pocked canyons. The plateau we had landed on was the first patch of flat ground I had seen since we entered the lower atmosphere.

  Rex exited the cockpit and opened the main cabin door. The three young rebels stumbled outside and simultaneously vomited over the side of the plateau. The general looked queasy but held on to his lunch.

  “Are you two complete idiots?” demanded Pepper Mélange as she hopped down from the cockpit of her ship. “I don’t know how you managed to get out of Gulagatraz, but anyone in his right mind would be a hundred light-years from here. I mean, do you know how many known habitable planets there are in this galaxy? Do you? Three hundred forty-seven. And do you know how many of them are nicer than Gulagatraz? Three hundred forty-six. Even that worthless ball of rock Larviton owns is more pleasant than this dismal wasteland.”

  “Used to own,” corrected Rex.

  “What?” asked Pepper, confused.

  “Larviton doesn’t own Schufnaasik Six anymore,” Rex said. “I won it in a card game.”

  For a moment Pepper’s mouth hung open in amazement. At last she said, “Well, I guess that answers my question about whether you’re idiots. And it also explains how you managed to rack up a 1.6-billion-credit debt. I thought everybody in the galaxy knew that Schufnaasik Six was Larviton’s money pit.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the planet,” Rex said defensively. “It’s just a bit overleveraged at the moment.”

  “If Schufnaasik Six was any more heavily leveraged, it would be a black hole,” said Pepper. “And if there was anything worth a damn on that planet, you’d be there rather than being roasted alive by lazecannon fire on the far side of Gulagatraz. You guys are just lucky I had a tracer on your ship.”

  “Lucky?” snarled Rex. “You shot us down!”

  “I saved your asses. If you’d have climbed any higher, you’d have been vaporized by the stealth satellite.”

  “What stealth satellite?” asked Rex.

  “Exactly,” replied Pepper. “So can I assume your ill-advised return to Gulagatraz has something to do with a desperate plan to salvage your financial situation?”

  “For your information,” Rex declared, “we’re here on a humanitarian mission.”

  A pained expression came over Pepper’s face. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to break someone out of Gulagatraz.”

  “Yep. A guy named . . .” Rex trailed off.

  “Wick,” I said.

  “A guy named Wick,” Rex said. “We need him for a super-secret rebel mission we have planned.”

  “Hang on,” said Pepper. “Wasn’t there a guy named Wick on your ship when I captured you?”

  “Same guy,” said Rex. “He’s my collateral.”

  “So this Wick fellow is critical to the success of your mission?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you used him as collateral?”

  “Right,” said Rex. “I know it seems a little counterintuitive, but in my defense, Wick didn’t become vital to the success of the mission until I knew he couldn’t possibly take part in it.” Rex glanced over at General Issimo, who was sitting on a rock breathing heavily, oblivious to the conversation. Rex leaned in closer to Pepper and whispered, “See, I’m trying to delay the mission as long as possible, so I insisted that Wick be on the team. Since he’s imprisoned on Gulagatraz, I knew he’d be unavailable. Pretty clever, huh?”

  “Yeah,” replied Pepper, “except for the part where you apparently then agreed to break him out of prison.”

  Rex scratched his chin thoughtfully. “It’s true, that part of the scheme sort of got away from me.”

  Pepper shook her head. “You realize that there’s only been one successful escape from Gulagatraz in over a hundred years, right?”

  “Sure,” said Rex. “But there’s a second time for everything, right? I mean, except for things that only happen once. Anyway,” he said quietly, “we don’t actually have to break him out. Frankly, I’d prefer if we didn’t. We just need to waste a few days and put on a good show of trying to break him out. Is there an abandoned refinery or something out here that we can pretend is the prison? Some place where the boys can wave their lazeguns around and kick a few doors in? When they tire themselves out, we’ll just say that Wick must have been moved to another cellblock or something. ‘Better luck next time,’ and we’ll skedaddle out of here.”

  “Do you have any idea where you are?” Pepper asked incredulously. “This side of the planet is completely uninhabited. The temperature at night drops to negative three hundred degrees Celsius. Not to mention the S&D bots that will undoubtedly pinpoint our location within the next ten minutes.”

  “S&D?” asked Rex. “If that stands for ‘sex and drugs,’ it’s probably not appropriate for the younger members of our team.”

  “Search and destroy,” replied Pepper.

  “Oh, that’s all right then,” said Rex. “Wait, what does that mean exactly?”

  “It means they kill anything that moves.”

  “That could be a problem,” said Rex. “We’re big fans of moving.”

  “Well, don’t get used to it,” said Pepper. “If the bots don’t get you, you’ll be frozen stiff two hours after sunset.”

  “Why did you help us if we’re just going to die anyway?” I asked.

  Pepper sighed. “I have to admit, I was tempted by your offer of a hundred and sixty million credits. When they let you out of Gulagatraz, I figured the GCB must know something I didn’t. They wouldn’t let you go unless they thought there was a good chance you could actually come up with the money.”

  “So you shot us down to try to scam more money out of us?” Rex asked. He sounded more impressed than angry. If I didn’t know he was incapable of it, I’d have thought he was in love.

  “Yeah, but I can see now that was a mistake. The only way you two are going to come into possession of a billion credits is if you start some kind of charity for the incurably stupid. I should have known that it wasn’t going to be that easy.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say I’ve got my own money issues,” said Pepper. “A hundred million credits would solve a lot of problems for me. Anyway, good luck with the S&D bots. I’m getting out of here.” She turned and made to climb back into her ship.

  “Wait,” said Rex. “I realize that my methods are, shall we say, unconventional, but I really am on the verge of making a lot of money. That guy hyperventilating on the rock over there? That’
s General Issimo, the leader of the Frente Repugnante. I’ve got a deal with them to outfit all their ships with cloaking devices.”

  “There’s no such thing as a cloaking device,” said Pepper dubiously. The general scowled at Rex.

  “That’s the genius of it,” said Rex. “Low overhead. I’ll clear half a billion in profit easily. And that’s not even counting the development funds I’m going to collect from the Malarchy when they blow up Schufnaasik Six.”

  “The old development fund racket, eh?” said Pepper. “Are they still falling for that one?”

  “Yep,” said Rex. “Just last week they gave the Livonians two billion credits to compensate them for wiping their planet off the map.”

  “Livonia?” asked Pepper. “Where’s that?”

  “It doesn’t exist,” said Rex. “It was a spot of jelly on the map that accidentally got classified as a planet. Like I said, they paid two billion credits for wiping it off the map.”

  “Huh,” said Pepper. “I’m in the wrong business. OK, it’s worth a shot, I guess. If I get you off this planet alive, I get twenty percent of the development funds. And thirty percent of your ‘cloaking device’ sales. That’s gross, not net.”

  “Ten percent,” said Rex.

  “You see that fuzzy gray glow on the horizon?” said Pepper. “That’s the last sunset you’re ever going to see if I don’t get you out of here.”

  “We’ll just stay inside the ship,” said Rex.

  “Good plan,” said Pepper. “Except for that glow getting brighter in the other direction. Those are S&D bots, and they’re all done with the S part.”

  “Remind me what the D means again?”

  “She means they’re going to kill us, sir,” I interjected.

  “Right!” exclaimed Rex. “I knew that. OK, twenty percent.”

  “You’re insane,” said Pepper. “With no shields, you won’t last ten minutes against those bots. They’ll blow you to atoms.”

  Rex smiled. “I know desperation when I see it. You blasted your way into a Malarchian battle station to collect the bounty on my head, and now you’re risking your life to skim a percentage of the take from my development fund racket. Twenty percent on ‘cloaking device’ sales, that’s my final offer.”

  For a moment Pepper stood staring at Rex, whether in disgust or admiration I couldn’t say. Her gaze drifted to the lights on the horizon, which were growing rapidly brighter.

  “Fine,” she said. “Twenty percent. Get in your ship and follow me.”

  We did as instructed. By the time the Flagrante Delicto had taken off, Pepper had taken out the half dozen or so bots with Bad Little Kitty’s lazecannons. She veered back into the canyon and continued in the direction we had been going. “Try to keep up,” her voice crackled over the ship’s comm system. “More bots will be on their way.”

  We scoured the bottom of the canyon for a few more minutes and then Bad Little Kitty pulled up sharply, leveled out, and dove straight down.

  “What in Space is she doing?” Rex gasped. Pepper seemed to be on a suicide course.

  “Unknown, sir. Should I follow?”

  Rex bit his lip. On the rear viewscreen a score of tiny lights were growing slowly brighter. “All in,” said Rex. “We don’t have much choice but to trust her.”

  I threw the yoke forward and the Flagrante Delicto dove toward the canyon floor.

  “What’s that?” Rex asked, pointing at a dark circle in front of us. In the dim twilight, Bad Little Kitty had disappeared completely. There was no way to know if she was still in front of us.

  “Some kind of tunnel, I think,” I said. “Should I slow down? I can’t see a thing.”

  Rex glanced at the viewscreen again. The bots would be within firing range in seconds.

  “No,” he said. “Keep going.”

  For a moment we were completely blinded by the blackness around us. Then I caught sight of Bad Little Kitty disappearing around a bend in the tunnel.

  “Turn!” shouted Rex.

  The Flagrante Delicto groaned as I pulled the yoke to the left. A shower of sparks illuminated the darkness as the right side of the hull scraped against the tunnel wall. Bad Little Kitty straightened out and then rolled right. I followed as best as I could. Rex’s knuckles were white on the crash handles. From behind us we heard the rebels retching and howling in fear.

  A series of thuds followed by a shower of light informed us that the bots had been less successful in negotiating the turns.

  “Sorry about that,” crackled Pepper’s voice. “Had to lose the bots. There’ll be more of them, but they’ll never find us down here.”

  “How far do these tunnels go?” asked Rex.

  “The whole planet is riddled with gas vents. That’s why it makes such a great prison. It’s mostly hollow. Slap some bars over the tunnel openings and voilà! Instant prison.”

  “How do you know so much about Gulagatraz?” Rex asked.

  “Remember when I said only one person had ever escaped from here?” Pepper said.

  “Uh-huh. Wait, you’re not saying . . .”

  “Yeah,” replied Pepper. “It was me. OK, you’re going to want to pay attention for this next part. Try to keep up.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  After an hour of flying through subterranean tunnels, I began to suspect that Pepper was lost. After eight hours, I was virtually certain of it. She wouldn’t respond to my transmissions except to say that she needed to “concentrate.” The general was furious, but Rex took a more sanguine view. “He can’t blame us for getting lost in these tunnels,” Rex said. “We may as well waste a few days down here. Eventually we’ll find our way out and then it will be too late to execute the sabotage mission. This is going to work out perfectly.”

  Four days later we ran out of vodka again and Rex’s confidence was beginning to erode. The general was furious and the crew was on the verge of mutiny. A few more days of this and we wouldn’t have enough fuel to get back to the Frente’s base. We might never even find our way outside Gulagatraz.

  And then suddenly the tunnel opened into a large cavern with a perfectly flat concrete floor. Bad Little Kitty landed and I set the Flagrante Delicto down next to her.

  “Where the hell are we?” demanded Rex, storming out of the ship.

  “This is an old landing bay,” said Pepper, climbing down from her own ship. “Left over from when they were building the prison. Almost nobody knows it’s here. This is how I escaped.”

  “You really expect me to believe that you escaped from Gulagatraz?” said Rex.

  “How do you think I found this place?” asked Pepper.

  “Um, by flying randomly through the planet for four days?”

  “It’s a big planet,” said Pepper. “It takes a while to fly through it.”

  “Did we go all the way through?” I asked.

  “Yep,” said Pepper. “The misery reactor is a hundred meters or so that way.” She pointed at a door.

  “The what?” asked Rex.

  I explained, “Everything on this planet is powered by a huge underground reactor that works by combining the six known forms of misery and converting them into energy. Most planets use zontonium reactors, but not Gulagatraz. Gulagatraz is one of only two planets in the galaxy that gets one hundred percent of its power from misery. The other being New Detroit, of course.”

  “That’s right,” said Pepper. “And the prison is right above the reactor.”

  “We’re near the prison?” asked Rex. “I thought I told you I didn’t want to . . .”

  “Didn’t want to what, Nihilo?” growled General Issimo, who had come up behind him.

  “Er, didn’t want to sneak up on the prison from underneath,” replied Rex. “We had our hearts set on a full frontal assault.”

  Pepper shrugged. “It was the only safe place to land.
You can hide down here while your shields regenerate. What you do while you’re waiting is your business. Good luck.” She turned to get back in her ship.

  “Where are you going?” demanded Rex.

  “Anywhere but here,” replied Pepper. “I’ve spent enough of my life on this planet.”

  “Did you really break out?” I asked.

  “I did,” she replied.

  “What were you in for?”

  “Before I became a bounty hunter, I was a thief. I had a pretty good streak going until a friend gave me a tip on the delivery of a custom-built luxury ship. Turned out the ship was owned by Heinous Vlaak, and he doesn’t like it when people steal from him. He tracked me down, took his ship back, and had me thrown in Gulagatraz. I’d still be in prison if it weren’t for some contacts I had made in the Ursa Major Mafia. They offered to help me escape in exchange for doing some jobs for them. After I got out, they gave me a new identity and paid to have my DNA scrambled.”

  “Oh, man,” said Rex. “DNA scrambling is the worst. Last time I had an ear growing between my shoulder blades. People acted like they didn’t notice it, but I could hear them talking behind my back.”

  “You’re not going to the right doctors,” said Pepper. “Mine gave me these.” She unzipped her top halfway to her waist.

  “Those are way better than an ear in your back,” Rex remarked.

  Pepper nodded. “I couldn’t complain. The mafia got me out of prison and gave me a pair of phenomenal knockers, and in return they just wanted me to do a few jobs. At first it was just stealing stuff for them, but when they decided they wanted me to be an assassin, I told them I was out. They informed me that they owned me, and that the buyout was a hundred million credits. I’ve been paying what I could for three years, and I’m barely keeping up with the interest. The five million I got for capturing you bought me another week.”

  “I see now why you’re so desperate for a paycheck,” said Rex.

  “Yeah,” said Pepper. “If I don’t come up with at least fifty million in the next few days, they’ll kill me. So as much as I’d like to keep babysitting you, I need to follow up a few other leads if I’m going to have any chance of making that payment.”