Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Air cars whizzed by. Rowdy youths too, weaving through the crowds on helium-powered scooters.

  The city had an alter ego of its own on the other side of the lake, a place called Lagoon City. An underwater network linked up to destinations on the far shore, offering mining incentives as beryl-rich as Tyrone to newcomers. Deidra pulled up data on her pocket coder.

  The automated voice droned on:

  Tyrone-Lagoon city: Transpo service, manufacturing hub for lucrative beryl industry. Thriving tourist trade. Visitors can witness the rare fish lurking in the lagoons and the canals, from shark hybrids to jelly crabs. Underwater sightseeing booked by Lagoon Travels Limited.

  Two-hundred years of terraforming makes Lagoon City the springboard for small business, investment and opportunity.

  Yeah, I scoffed, more like a haven for scum like Sharki and warlords to capitalize upon.

  Formed in 2531, the golden age of expansion, Tyrone became a settler and slave world. It showed potential but then crashed as warring factions took over…” The automated voice droned away over the noise of the passing traffic.

  Marty turned up his nose. “Interesting, but I’m not here for a geography or cultural lesson.”

  “Nor is anybody, Marty. Well, let’s go get you some regen. How many yols you got?”

  “Sixty six.”

  “Between you and me, that makes 100. We should be able to get a small tin. Here—” I pointed to a general purpose utility shop with neon in the windows and a bright sign, “Self serve, Food, Drinks, Utilities for all.” On display in the window sat spray cans and firrit food, detergent, canned food and beverages.

  I motioned the others to stand by while I slipped into the shop past the painted hookers. I found the regen on a top shelf, also got me some cheap, coin-sized flares in case we needed them. Not enough to do much damage, these mini-explosives, but enough to surprise the hell out of some unwary party. Not much of a line-up in here, so I made it out in good time. I smeared some orange paste on Marty’s ribs, then doctored up my own wounds and gave the rest to Deidra.

  He gave a relaxed sigh as the formula did its work. The goop had a remarkable ability to heal and knit inflamed tissue, cuts and bruised flesh back together. I too could feel it like a balm on my own cuts and scrapes and black-rimmed eyes. “We need to find some mechanic. Deidra?”

  “Index says, there’s a reputable one down Wailard’s Way. Seedy part of town, but all there is, unless you want to risk random hopping about? We could run into trouble.”

  “Any more trouble than we already have?”

  She had to laugh at that. Good to see her laughing. For a young one, she was too grim.

  Wailard’s Way ended up looking much seedier than I imagined though. Blackened brick, broken lampposts, gangbangers and miners roving about with tattoos and buzz cuts. Deidra would have done better to stay back on the ship. So she could fly off and wave bye-bye to us and never be seen again? Think again, Rusco, you dummy. Leave the thinking for Bozo the Clown. Didn’t like the look of those powder boys and pimps over there staring us down. Too obvious we were, as new fish to town, fresh marks to prey on. Hoped to hell Sharki hadn’t put word out on the street for us—a couple of space grifters wandering about looking for kicks. Likely he had. Bastard. Wondered how he was doing? Enjoying his shot-up foot, no doubt.

  Lots of seedy bars and clubs on this strip. Hoods too. Ex-miners and their sons and daughters gone bad, small time gang people, thieves, cutthroats, pimps in the making, trying to make a name for themselves, but without the experience to back it up.

  Live and learn. School of hard knocks. We all live by it.

  I hastened us along—not so that we’d look like a bunch of frightened chickens, but that we weren’t pausing to examine any wares or looking like goons to get robbed and beaten. I caught a pair of eyes looking our way. I let my gaze move easily past without offering up any challenge.

  We hunkered under a low awning, a fruit market, selling all sorts of natural and synthetic goodies. Huckleberries, mincemeat, local jackfruit. Marty popped a handful of grapes in his mouth while the squat, butch-looking vendor had her back turned. Market was selling pretty much everything here: fruit tarts, scarves, bandannas, fermented bog beer. Vendors chortled the worth of their wares in dialects and languages I couldn’t understand. They’d mangled the language into something barely legible in this quarter. Needed the pocket computer to translate it. We jostled our way through the milling crowd.

  Deidra looked up, shuddering. “Check it, there’s one of those sordid places Sharki’s threatened to shuttle me off to.”

  I squinted up, taking in the dilapidated neon tinsel cathouse. “Relax, Deidra. Won’t happen to you while I’m on duty.”

  “I keep thinking it’s still my fate.” Her shoulders trembled. “Can’t seem to shake it off.”

  I put my arm around her.

  Marty snorted. “Well, ain’t you the super daddy.”

  “Knock it off, Marty.”

  My eyes wandered past his brush-cut to a strange-looking woman staring at us across the way. Didn’t like the look of that one. She’d been staring intently at us for a while now. Rose-red dyed hair done up in a curlicue of weirdness, slight build, jet black eyes like a cat’s. She stood up on her heels and whispered something to the toughie beside her—a silent brute with harelip, bare chest, tattooed to the gills with a heaping handful of oiled muscles. The man stood arms crossed by the signpost as if he were street monitor or something.

  A whole story played out in my head—cat woman on the prowl, alert for persons matching our description, especially Deidra’s, a savvy watcher able to call on muscle boy to make a move. Call it paranoia or horse sense, I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Time to make ourselves scarce,” I muttered to Marty.

  A quick retreat would look suspicious so I grabbed Deidra and pulled her face close to mine. I latched my lips to hers, stuck my tongue down her throat. She grunted, struggled, huffed out an indignant protest, then she relaxed, as if thinking it some strange rough-and-tumble game or fantasy I’d had all along. She eased into a provocative pose, hands groping around my back with a sensual snarl in her throat.

  The moments passed and Marty kept walking.

  What was I doing? I dipped an eye back. The woman across the way had curled her lip, looking on in disinterest. Just a fly boy out for some cheap piece of ass at the five and dime titty club next door. The ruse seemed to have worked.

  Deidra disengaged. She looked up at me with new eyes, a flushed cast to her face and a murmur in her throat. “Rusco. How long you go under for? Didn’t know you had it in you to kiss like that. Not bad for an old timer. Like it rough, eh? Never guessed you had the hots for me.” Her eyes were all a-flutter. She grabbed at my waist and curled an arm around my butt.

  “Sure, baby doll. You’re everything I ever wanted.” Which wasn’t exactly untrue.

  While my head was turned she knuckle-drove me in the ribs. I stifled a groan, massaging my throbbing side.

  “Now we’re even.”

  Yes, I could have cued her into catwoman across the way but I didn’t want to alarm her and have her running. All good, Jet Rusco. Man of casualty damages.

  Call it fate, or bad timing, maybe it was both. Luck wasn’t on our side. Some punks, loitering nearby, attracted and turned on by our lingering embrace and roughhousing, stepped up to gawp. One made a point to slide too close to Marty and stamped a big boot in a puddle nearby, splashing him up to the knees in brown water as he went past. Marty looked at him with a dead stare. “Want to lick that off, punk?”

  “Shouldn’t stand so close to puddles, old man. You’re on Black Manxes’ turf. We just want to say hello to the little lady. Move your lard ass.” The hood pulled a switch blade on Marty. Glinted under the neon.

  “Woo hoo.” Marty pulled out his R4. “You want to sharpen your blade on this?”

  The kid backed off, hands upraised.

  One of his drunken friends though, th
ought to get cute and made as if to piss on Marty’s leg. Marty who was already in a poor mood, hoofed the douche-bag in the crotch. Things went downhill from there.

  Do anything but don’t provoke Marty. He smacked the other weasel coming in for retaliation. One got his arm in a quasi head lock around Marty’s neck but he slipped out of that hold and rapped the goon in the kidney, doubling him over like a broken rake. Up came the knee. I could see that coming. Ouch.

  All fun and games until someone loses an eye. We were supposed to be traveling incognito and Marty was not making it easy.

  I glanced with anxiety over at catwoman. She started to get interested again, especially at the R4 Marty clutched in his palm. I could see her beady eyes narrowing and her elbow nudging bronze boy in the ribs.

  “Marty,” I hissed. “Two o’clock, across market road.”

  “Yeah, but the principle, Rusco, the principle. Think, these rat-asses—”

  “Fuck the principle. Remember our mission. Incognito. No undue attention.”

  “Tell it to these bozos, half assed pricks.”

  A sudden grabass flurry of motion kicked in as they stormed us all at once, heedless of our weapons. Probably jacked up on street Myscol. I backhanded one of the punks with my R4, reluctant to open fire in the street. In the scuffle that followed the punks snatched Deidra and got the piece out of her hands before she could do anything. I heard her husky shriek as they pulled her into the alley.

  “Fuck! After her!”

  They were running, half carrying her down that spidery, black alley before Marty and I could catch up. Others too. Could have sworn they were joined up by bully boys like the bronze one with catwoman. One punk stayed back and shot at us with the gun he’d swiped off Deidra while the others slipped away. We crouched behind some trash bins and fired back at him. He threw the piece away soon enough and scrambled after his buddies. There were plenty of hidey holes in this scum alley. They’d escaped through one of them like rats in the sewers.

  We searched under trash cans, old canvas, burlap, through broken windows. No sign of them. They’d disappeared.

  I stood barefaced, chewing my lip, feeling a fool, as the drip-drip of fresh rainwater came splashing on the dirty concrete at my feet from the balconies above. Catwoman was up at the head of the alley, muttering words into her tablet. She dipped back when I lanced her a look. “Rotten bitch.” She was gone before we could catch up with her.

  Marty blinked and stared and gave a wheezing sigh. “Well, guess that’s that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Easy come, easy go, Rusco. What don’t you get?”

  I took a swing at him.

  “Hey, slow down.” He caught my fist. “You’re wound up. Just some chick. She’ll find a profitable life in one of these disco clubs along the strip.”

  I gritted my teeth, shook my head. “Not good, Marty. This is all wrong.” We walked slowly away from the market, me fretting and fuming.

  Deidra’s dark fear had come to pass after all even despite my protestations to the contrary. It seemed incredible. Some protector you are, Rusco.

  Easy to walk away, the cowardly way. Taking no action, I’d be complicit in signing her death warrant. What’d I owe her?

  Your life maybe, Rusco? Remember the episode back at the yard?

  Marty’s sense of indifference was warped. He didn’t see the big picture. But he was clear-headed enough to know we had to stick together to get through this shitstorm, so he humored me in my quest for the woman.

  So we spent the next two days trying to find a mechanic and track her down. Not easy tasks, given we were a couple of wise-guys in an unfriendly town with no leads. I beat myself up, worrying about Deidra’s well-being.

  We learned a lot of things, snooping around this town. I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter at Mak’s Smoke Shop. Opening the pack of nicoperm I’d purchased, I puffed on what could pass as a homegrown beedi. “Go on, Mak, you were saying something about this guy Sharki.”

  “Yeah, that bastard’s something else. Has ties in Tyrone like you wouldn’t believe. Nothing compared to his overlord, some Star Lord, Gong or Bong. I heard on good faith he’s like some strutting mogul thinks he’s Genghis Khan. Took over a few worlds out in Perseus as if flicking fleas off a firrit’s back. My cousin was enslaved by him and taken to his headquarters as a slave for life with a bunch of top people, scientists, executives, that type.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “All because of that bastard Sharki, beryl distributor shyster, the liaison who supplies him his warp engine crystal to fire his warships.”

  “That’s a crying shame,” remarked Marty.

  “Quiet, Marty. Can’t you see there’re people’s lives at stake here?”

  “Bite it, Rusco. Why should I care? What does anyone care of me?”

  “They’d care more about you if you kept your mouth shut and respected the dead and vulnerable.”

  “Only respect they’ll get is at of the end of my R4,” Marty blared, lifting his compact, lethal black weapon.

  “Let’s take it out of the shop, why don’t we? Don’t be stupid.”

  Out on the street Marty went full ape. “You’re respectful of the innocent? What of Kragen’s dead defenders? Who you kidding, Mr. Righteous? Hustling and dealing. Thinking your next angle is the most important thing in the world, capitalizing on whatever sucker comes along. Hypocrite, that’s what you are.”

  “I admit defeat on that one, Marty. I give you a point. Maybe we’re all hypocrites.”

  He softened. “Yeah, that’s about the truth of it.”

  We were just venting, bullshitting, barfing up crud on each other for all the wrath we felt in a world that could care less about us, or our individual scrabbling efforts and freedoms. The little guy, the faceless man, the downtrodden worker bee, all were bugs to be crushed under the heel of the powerful. Who was I trying to kid? When had it ever been different? We were just a couple of two-bit vagabonds wishing the universe was something other than what it was.

  Maybe I was sore because I’d lost her. She’d been starting to grow on me. On Marty too—but he was just too gruff to admit it.

  “What are we doing here, Marty? Scrapping and squabbling like a bunch of pre-pubescent school boys? We should be off saving that poor woman’s ass.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Let’s shake a leg and kiss and make up.”

  “Sure, I’ll go get the ring.” Marty shoved some more Myscol down his throat.

  “Say, you got an infinite supply of those pellets?”

  “Yeah, why? No, I ain’t gonna share.”

  “Good, cause I want to have a whole brain when I start beating on some heads.”

  “Good.”

  Only through a chance happening did we start to make any headway at all. That opportunity came soon enough.

  Chapter 6

  On scouting down Hell’s Acre looking at various dives, I stopped short. “There,” I nudged Marty in the ribs. “Look, that fucking skinhead from the other night. On the corner.”

  “Yeah, I remember him.” Marty’s eyes glistened. “The one who tried to piss on my leg. Didn’t you ream him good? Let’s pay the sod a visit.”

  As we approached, I chanced to overhear some street talk, him bragging to his punk friend, “Orders came from above, Cadd. Slap the bitch in one of the slave houses. We get 50 yols for a trade. Not enough though. Should’ve made that Sharki pay more out of his 30% commission.”

  I edged in with a crooked leer. “What’s this about Sharki?”

  “Nothing pops. Hey, I remember you—the old dude from the other night. Wow, you looking for something fancy? Some grab and ass tease—”

  “Where is she?” I growled.

  “Who?”

  “My woman you stole, munchkin, remember?”

  “Woman? What woman?”

  Marty grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shook him like a dog. Marty did something
nasty to his nose as it met his knee at a high velocity. Blood spilled everywhere.

  Hey, that’s not kosher,” squealed his friend like a pig.

  “Where is she?” I rumbled.

  “Dunno, man,” Bleeder wailed, snuffling through a flattened nose, dripping blood. “Try Barflies on Sunset, or Cuckoo’s Nest. Last I heard the bitch was there.”

  “Get out of here,” I snarled at him, my fists rapping him hard on the skull. My blood boiled. I was ready to smash his head in but I tempered that impulse.

  They huffed off, stumbling and tossing back threats.

  Deidra could become some exclusive playtoy rather than a general sex slave. 30% was far too high a payout for that sack of shit Sharki. My mind flashed on the amount of time she would spend on her back for the pleasure of others, passed around from hand to hand, working the slave dives, used and abused. Slaves became factory workers here, as well as courtesans to the public, laborers in every industry this planet supplied. What kept them from fleeing? Only the blue brand on their necks. If they escaped, as soon as they were found out, the authorities would ship them back to slave central in Tyrone. Some might make it offworld, but with that ugly blue brand they would be still looked on with disrespect.

  We couldn’t afford lodging, so we slumped down under a bridge of one of the canals, smelling of backwater, hands on chins, wondering what our next plan of action was.

  “Come dusk, we’re going in after her,” I said.

  “Are you nuts, Ruskie? Just because you traded spit with that broad doesn’t mean you’re beholden to her.”

  “Get moving. We’re going to do something.”

  “And what may that be?”

  “This jughead Sharki rubbed me the wrong way. Killed Kragen and the others. It’s uncalled for. We’ve got blood on our hands, Marty.”

  “Like hell we do. They just got in the way. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “No way. We created this mess. We have to fix it.”