Starship Rogue series Box Set

by Chris Turner

  “Maybe.”

  I frowned. “Now your turn.”

  She gave her shoulder a small twitch.

  “Aw, come on, Wren. When were you ever one to turn down a story swap?”

  “Maybe because I don’t have a story to tell right now.” Her lips pursed, in a masked chuckle or a mock curl.

  “I know that false smirk. What are you thinking of? Come on, I know you’re recalling something.”

  “Just an old childhood memory.” She let out a cooing sigh. “Never forget the time my little brother left the chicken coop open. A bunch of hens got out, so did two roosters. Then they scooted out of the yard and little Freedy, my youngest brother, went chasing them, thinking they’d get eaten by coyotes or something, and I got scared that he was going to get eaten by coyotes himself. We didn’t get back for hours, wandering around the hills, all dusty and scratched by desert weeds and fire thistle. I was only eleven, Rusco. Oh, was my dad ever mad and he gave us a tanning for losing those egg-laying hens.

  I grunted. “Very quaint, Wren. Glad you shared that story.”

  “Okay, Rusco, maybe not as invigorating as your shoot-em-up-and leave em in a body bag yarn, but I’m not up to blood and guts tales right now. Sure, got me some more to tell though.”

  “I’m sure you do, Wren, baby. Like those zombie creepsters you blew all to hell on Talyon.”

  She settled down, shook her head and laughed. “Sorry, I get a little defensive sometimes. Don’t know why I thought of that dumb chicken story.”

  “The mind is a strange thing.”

  “Like shit it is, Rusco. You make this stuff up as you go along?” She pounced on me and nearly knocked the breath out of my tired lungs.

  “Okay, I give up. Enough story telling for now.”

  “How about some quiet girl kisses then? I’m in the mood for looove...” She gazed at me with long, hungry eyes.

  “Again? Didn’t we—”

  “Hours ago. Why, you not up for it?” Her kittenish arch of smile hit me with that level of challenge that stirs a man to bawdy deeds. Rusco, no matter how tired he is, can always rise to a challenge.

  I rolled over to pull her to my bare chest. “After this deal is over, you and me have to go on some long vacation. Maybe Palm Monteray. Spas, beaches and warm rays. What do you think?”

  “Sounds like fun. What are we going to do with Blest and his buddy?”

  “Forget those two. Pack them off to Timbuktu with Winnie the Pooh. They’ve got each other.”

  She laughed. So the tired JR surrendered to the magical pump and grind of big, talented, desert girl with all the bells and trimmings to go, and the endless mysteries and unfettered openness that was Wren.

  I must have dozed off to warm, bawdy memories of Wren, but then dreaming of shooting off down some wind tunnel like I was going to get blown to Arcturus. High winds were buffeting me every which way. Damn those archetypal dreams…

  I was running through the bushes, breath huffing out a rasp. Gilm and his contingent of hoods were somewhere behind me, switchblades, billy clubs and bare fists on the ready. Reg, my buddy, had been robbed, beaten down. I was next. We were the only ones aware of the gang’s doings on the east side of the river. They’d kill me. I’d only my wits about me. Precious little. I sucked in a wheezing breath, then another breath, willing myself not to make more noise. Up came a flash of pipe, for my throat. I blocked it, plunged a knife into the wanker’s yielding belly.

  Someone’s hand jarred me awake. “Rusco, get up.”

  “Wha—”

  “Signal came in from Alastar.” Noss stood over me, blinking like an owl. Wren was nowhere to be seen.

  I shook my head as if registering for the first time what he was talking about and where I was.

  Noss frowned at the slowness of my brain. “You left your door open. You weren’t answering your com.”

  I let out a moan. “Alastar couldn’t have gotten that far that fast.”

  Noss looked at me as if I were still jacked on Myscol. “You’d better come look.”

  “Aw, shit.” I threw on my clothes and stumbled down the dim-lit hall.

  Chapter 10

  Wren and Blest were gathered at the bridge, Blest looking like some ragged, bleary-eyed raccoon.

  “What’s this about Alastar?” I growled.

  “Beached somewhere in quadrant 3.21AZ.” Blest stabbed a thumb at the holo star chart.

  I blinked. “That’s a fuckhole of a place to crap out in—”

  “Right, she must have conked out somewhere at the edge of The Dim Zone. Her standard paging signal relayed through the world, Daerzoo. Must be regular transports flying in and out that carried the message through the warp tunnel.”

  “How far in is she?”

  “A few light minutes from Daerzoo.”

  I sighed.

  “You’re talking dangerous territory,” grumbled Blest. “Pirates, scum killers, freaks. Why don’t we leave it, Rusco, try some easier fish?”

  I scowled. “Wren and I went through a lot of pains to get that ship, my friend. We need to protect our investment.”

  “That ship may be worth nothing with the Varwol toast,” Blest warned.

  “But there’s a half mil of Myscol out there,” I argued. “If Detran was even half telling the truth, we’ve got to get it. We’re already several thousand in the hole. We’d be stupid not to take a crack at salvaging her.”

  Blest puckered up his lips and shrugged. “Whatever. Do what you want. What do you think, Wren? Is it too risky?”

  “I’m with Rusco.”

  Noss nodded his agreement.

  “You guys!” Blest licked his lips, his red-face burning with annoyance. “I get pissed getting outvoted every time we’re on this bridge.”

  The clock said 04:35 which meant that Alastar had been in warp for some three hours. My foggy brain tried to piece together the events. Facts: Encrypted messages are uploaded to servers and travel to other ships leapfrogging across the gulfs, until the messages finally make it to the receiver, the same way. Fact 2, the free store interstellar net shares information across the star systems. Fact 3—

  Rusco. Focus. So that meant Alastar had dropped out of light drive at 02:00, and a few light minutes from Daerzoo put her something of an hour plus change away from us…Couldn’t risk our own Varwol crapping out on us. Which meant—

  “Where are we now?”

  “Ten minutes from Baladar.”

  I nodded. “We get Bantam fixed up and immediately warp to The Dim Zone.”

  On the space dock orbiting Baladar, I rode Bantam in as fast as I dared. We made prompt dock and inquiries for maintenance. We were lucky to land a spot at Reyce’s Gut Shop as today they were not inundated with service calls. The head mechanic, a slack-jawed man in blue coveralls, with grease on his chin and rag in his hands, listened to our story with grunts and nods, trying not to grin too hard at my fabrications. I saw it wasn’t gaining us anything, so gave an expansive flourish.

  “Okay, I’ll cut the bullshit. Truth to tell, we were in a firefight in a world I shall not name. Bantam took a couple of hits that knocked something important loose. Can you fix it?”

  He nodded and signaled his henchmen. I watched the man as he went to work.

  We waited in the reception, pacing like tigers.

  He came back wheezing and wiping his hands on a dirty white rag. “Good thing you got it looked at. Left stabilizer shot. Replacement 900 yols, labor 200. It’ll get you through the next month. But there’s more serious damage to the time-drive mechanism. My scanners picked up a hairline crack in the drive crystal. You’re looking at minimum 5k repair job, and three days’ work in the sweat shop.”

  “Aw, shit. Three days?” I groaned. “We don’t have three days. More yols down the hole.” I waved a weary hand. “Well, do the minimum.”

  The mechanic nodded and left to talk to his hired hands.

  I had to dip into my reserve to pay for even that minimal fixup. Now I was
riding on empty. More than ever did we need Alastar with its Myscol payout. If I had been a bolder man, I’d risk flying in without the repairs, but experience and wisdom of age told me to temper that impulsive plan. I didn’t trust Bantam’s warp drive not to leave us stranded out in no-man’s land as it had Alastar.

  We bundled up and set a course for Daerzoo. ETA 1 hour. I hoped the gamble was worth it. We’d be in time—for what?—to get the spoils, hoping no other parties had got there ahead of us?

  I had Noss soon adjust our course to rendezvous with Alastar. If it weren’t for her encrypted homing beacon, we’d have a tough time finding her, like the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was a risk. I just hoped others hadn’t been listening in too long.

  Alastar loomed up on the viewport against the faraway stars. A defiant old bird of a previous generation—her prow shaped like a hammerhead, her body that of a sleek mermaid with twin tail fins. Her robust Vega-6 drive was not so robust any more. I wonder what she thought of her new owners. I killed the homing signal that had alerted us to her position via the spider.

  “Let’s check her out and find that Myscol and transfer it to Bantam. How I’d like to get her to a safe port…then auction her off as quickly as possible for real this time.”

  “Won’t they be looking for her?” Noss fumbled with the autopilot. “Crosschecking drive codes, insurance records, the like.”

  “They can’t patrol every port in the galaxy, Noss. Places out this way could give two shits about some heist back on Gistron station.”

  Noss smiled. His wrist looked less puffy and bruised than earlier, though he wouldn’t be doing any handstands too soon.

  He murmured, “The ship looks okay. We can keep her on impulse drive to wherever she needs to go in the meantime.”

  “How long would it take us to get her to Daerzoo?” Blest asked.

  “Two weeks,” Wren answered. “Give or take a day or so.”

  “Two weeks we don’t have,” I mused. “This is The Dim Zone, remember?”

  “Can’t we go over and fix it?” Blest piped up.

  “Yeah,” I barked, “like the hyperdrive just needs a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease.”

  “I dunno, just asking.” Blest withdrew, flushed-faced.

  “All the same, a few of us’ll go over and see what’s gotten into her.”

  Noss and Wren stayed aboard and I took Blest with me on the shuttle: a small oblong, eight-legged craft built for short distant hops from ship to ship. I flicked the spider’s remote to engage and opened Alastar’s starboard hatch. We maneuvered Lander to dock in the starboard port. The steel-grey door closed shut and we hung inside the landing bay while the pressure equalized. The little green light blinked and Blest and I hopped out, guns at the ready. I motioned him to cover me in case there were some unpleasant surprises we hadn’t counted on.

  We moved to the forward hall, weapons drawn, choosing not to err on the side of caution. The place was quiet as a tomb. Pilot emergency lights showed through a dim ambience. Eerie. A sixth sense alerted me to something indefinable.

  We crept up the companionway then stalked the corridor leading to the bridge. I held up a hand to Blest to cool his heels. Something felt not quite right.

  I saw that a small white plastic dish lay out on the conference table. A fresh vacuum pack of oat flakes sat beside it. Could have been maintenance crew. But why would they have been so careless when potential buyers were roaming about the ship? It seemed odd.

  Blest was about to blurt out something, but I put a finger to my lips.

  I heard a muffled sneeze. Also caught a glimpse of the console panel to the left of the nav displaced, as if someone had tried to put the cover hastily back on. So my suspicions were not unfounded. I cautioned Blest and crept over to the wall and kicked open the hatch.

  A pale figure, some thirty-years old, sat hunched in the dimness, quivering like a jellyfish.

  “Who are you?” I hauled him up. The pale-faced man held up his hands. I recognized him from Halley’s crew. “Bloody hell.” Blest’s gun was in his face, the barrel practically shoved up his nose.

  “My n-name’s Krel Follee. Don’t shoot! Lew told me to make sure Alastar was ready to fly on short notice. To unlock the nav system.”

  “So did you?” I demanded.

  The stowaway shook his head, a pronounced quiver on his bottom lip. A momma’s boy, some geek clever with tech, with a high pitched whine to his voice and a nervous tic on the left cheek.

  He didn’t answer right away and I wondered if his explanation were a cover. His logic made sense but now we had a problem on our hands. “Lucky we found you, otherwise you’d be a skeleton by the time anyone came looking for you.”

  “Lucky, how? I got your friend jamming a gun down my throat.”

  I croaked out a mirthless laugh, impressed despite myself at Follee’s spunk. “Lower your weapon, Blest.” Blest withdrew his R4. I gave an update to Noss and Wren over the com. “Found Halley’s geek code cruncher hunched in the forward bulkhead. A Krel Frowlee. Seems our charmer, Detran, didn’t check all his inventory before blast off.” I chuckled. “One unlucky dabchick stowed away.”

  “That’s Follee and I’m not a geek. I’d have fixed the drive eventually. Even if I had to rip every component out of the stupid panel and piece it back together.”

  Blest licked his lips and grinned. “So what do we do with this jitterbug?” He redirected his weapon at the stowaway.

  “Maybe I have a use for him, Blest. Can you diagnose ships?” I barked at Follee. “Can you pull code, break into systems?”

  “Sure, I suppose, all of the above.”

  “It’s no ‘suppose’, Fowlee, you either can or you can’t.”

  “I can,” he growled.

  “Then I give you a choice. You either work for us, or stay locked up in the brig on my ship.”

  “But you’re thieves and pirates.”

  “Anything less than what your employer was?” I sneered. “You don’t know the half of Detran’s evil.”

  He struggled with the concept, working his lips in a frown and muttering. Then his eyes went wide and he gave a grave nod. “I suspected him. Never liked that puff weasel anyways. Where the blazes are we? Alastar dropped out of light drive in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t do anything with the controls. Hal’s passwords were useless. I was lucky to even force open the food hatch as it was.”

  “That’s because they’re locked by my spider,” I said proudly, holding up the black, square-faced remote.

  “How did you get the code then?”

  I fluttered my fingers and mimed a mysterious expression. “Little pirate magic.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Don’t get so hot and bothered, Fowlee. I’m short on recruits. As I said, you may come in handy and your options are kinda limited. Where’s the Myscol?”

  “Myscol? What Myscol?”

  “Like the stuff your blowhard employer uses to pad his ships with.”

  Follee blinked. “You mean the medicines? They’re in the engine room, right behind the artificial grav generators.”

  Blest and I exchanged glances and raced for the hold, hustling our friend along with none too gentle hands.

  “Medicines,” I scoffed. “Where the fuck did you get such a bird-brained idea?”

  “Hal said it was for research: a philanthropic move to fight cancer and other deadly diseases.”

  “Did he now?” I crooned. “Boy, you’ve got real dibs on the Gullible Gus award of the year. Your pals’ve been running drugs. That makes you an accessory.”

  “No way, I—” He gulped.

  We reached the engine room. I heard the low hum of the Vega 6 impulse engines, electro-stroke, quasi-sol drives. Neat stacks and coils on her, running vertically up the wall to the silver-foiled ceiling. Follee pointed. “Over there, behind those black, square units.”

  I nodded and we crowded in close. Blest and I took the butt end of our guns to the fibrofane and w
e ripped off the paneling. I saw twin rows of clear plastic packs containing pink powder with elastic bands tied around them.

  I shoved Follee’s head down to take a look. “Does that look like cancer medicines to you?”

  He gulped, licked his lips. “Hey, be careful. I’m not your punching bag here.”

  I ripped open a hand-sized pack and dipped a finger and ran my tongue over it. “Here, try some,” I said to Follee with a grin. He recoiled, like a frightened baby. “Mmm good. Pure stuff. Blest, you should try some too.”

  “Here, you eat it.” I had Blest hold Follee while I forced open his mouth and plugged my pink-snuffed fingers past his tongue. He spat and hissed like an angry cat.

  “Consider it your inauguration to Myscol.” I laughed. Follee struggled and I shrugged. “Won’t do any good. Enters the bloodstream fast.” Ah, Rusco, you’re a real hoot.

  Blest, wearing a lizard’s grin, thrust the stowaway aside. I even got a rise out of Blest as he dipped his finger in the bag and took a generous dose.

  Both our eyes glazed over a bit. I shook my head, enjoying the buzz. “Now, Fowlee, here’s how it’s going to fly. Your name, Fol, that’s your name from now on. Mr. Fol.”

  “Naw, just Fol for short,” said Blest.

  I conceded to the name change.

  Follee held up his hands. “So you got your stuff! What’s in it for me?” His nervous gaze rested on Blest’s itchy finger caressing his weapon.

  “This is how it works. We look for opportunities. We split the profits down the middle. I take an extra cut, since it’s my ship and I assume the risk. We share in the overhead. You try any fast ones, we blow your head off. Or at the very least, finger you as an accomplice for stealing this pleasure craft.”

  “Sure,” he stammered, “but as long as I don’t have to do anything illegal.”

  I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes.

  Blest cast me an impatient glance. “Don’t think I want to play nursemaid to baby brat here, Rusco. Though, may give me some amusement on a slow day on my shift.” He reached over and rubbed his knuckles on Follee’s scalp of thin sandy hair and Fol cried out, telling us to lay off him, not appreciating the threats and sarcasm.