Starhustler

by Chris Turner

  STARHUSTLER

  Chris Turner

  Copyright 2018 Chris Turner

  Cover design: Battlemage

  Published by Innersky Books

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 1

  I got the transcall from Marty two days ago on Starrunner. Meet me at Drenny’s Bodega. Bring explosives.

  I was tempted to blow it off, but something in my gut told me to follow through. Business was slow out in Veglos and the cons I had pulled up and down that wretched sector, had either blown up in my face or been substandard. Like that smuggling op to get land mines down to the rebels on Rlenion. Three shipments, discovered at the last minute, up in flames.

  Looking at the decadence and slummery of Hoath here on Brisis 9, capital of the supplier planet of all goods, I wasn’t quite so sure now. A giant shanty town of neon and old glitter, a place I’d vowed never to return to, with its seedy dives, black markets, toothless hawkers and painted brides.

  What was the point of it, I asked. Without one taking a chance, opportunity always made its way to the next bidder.

  Maybe that’s why I was in the traders’ depot. Following up on the lead just come in from Marty. That or a slump. Call it what you want, a malaise of spirit, some last desperation after the last string of bad luck.

  This waiting line was taking too long. Really? That many shmucks in line for firearms? Granted, the depot was the best place to go for munitions this side of the Orbego ghetto, aside from regular black market channels. But I didn’t feel like getting my legs blown off today.

  The eminent sociologist, J. Markel Braeth, wrote in an informal essay, that human corruption reaches its peak during times of a dark age, after war has obliterated the countryside, after the planets, once prosperous, ache for green once again. When the worlds far and near, once so proud and with such potential, cry tears of dry sand, vomit up garbage pits and every half-baked crime lord in the galaxy.

  I’m inclined to disagree with Sir Braeth’s statement of tomorrow. I think it can go lower.

  Rusco, you moron, who cares what you think? You’re just another rambler risk-taker wanting to play it loose and fast. No different than the other hustlers in what’s left of the free sectors of the galaxy, those lawless regions, the pleasure domes, the ghettos, the gang-ruled cities. The difference is you pride yourself on being one step ahead of the average con, a little quicker on your toes, a little edgier, sidestepping the dangerous beast waiting around the corner. It’s a dangerous assumption, one that can get you killed.

  All six-foot leathery hide of me reeked of the same starveling message. Go easy on the burnt-out con today. Here’s my medallion of battle scars as proof of claim. The pale purple-tinted hair trailing to shoulder hiding the torn off ear. The wicked tear-dropped curve on the left wrist from that knife fight on Tethris. The pink scarring down the right cheek where a red hot iron had pressed the wrong way and the fleshy part of ear had kind of up and disappeared. No broken bones, no implants, no prosthetics, or anything that modern flesh-regen couldn’t fix, given the right amount of funds. All it said was you were lucky.

  As I scrutinized today’s clientele at the depot, I felt the familiar tired sigh hiss through my teeth. What was the sod in front of me going to do with those stolen bills he clutched in his purple-veined fingers? Grab the luger off the shelf, go out and rob the local diner? Kill a couple of innocent women or some old man to feed his mescal habit?

  Merc Surplus was just a hop, skip and jump down the line, stocking mint-condition gas lanterns, bowie knives, lighter fluid and rope, you name it. Great kit for arsonists or hangmen. On the other end, a pawn shop and the ubiquitous recyclo-mart distributing everything from boxsprings, old leather boots, water pumps to sex toys and tire irons. This edge of the colonized worlds had gone from seedy to seediest. Technology had all but vanished on this out-of-the-way planet. But then again, where hadn’t it? The last of the space wars had gutted mother nature’s belly, milked her dry. Now she sported only bands of raiders savaging the free planets. Outlaws, hoodlums, scumbags, wannabes, small men carrying big guns and wanting to be big chiefs in a messed-up world. A feudal universe of settled planets, raped of their resources; burned out cities ravaged by pulse cannons, run by organized crime thugs, crazies, religionists, every known breed of gangster the criminal world could offer.

  The odd resistance fighter still roamed about, sure…freedom fighters they called them, fighting against decadence and injustice, but those were few and far between, and stupid in my opinion for risking a bullet in the head or torture by flamethrower to prove a point. For what? Wearing their crispy, blood-drenched capes to the grave. Martyrs without a cause, or hope? The slippery slope for Jet Rusco started long ago. I could have been a greater man, but instead settled on the life of a two-bit thief, trying to make ends meet, a sad vagabond, owner of a dilapidated space junker I’d won, or rather stolen from a couple of dying ruffians. Yet a part deep down in me wanted to be one of those valiant types that made a difference in this decrepit framework of humanity. I croaked out a laugh, shook my shaggy head, thinking maybe not today, Rusco, maybe not today.

  The guy in front of me with the pale, haunted eyes moved off with his quivering fist clutching a handgun.

  “I’ll have one of those,” I said across the scarred counter to the attendant poised behind the reinforced cage mesh. A lot of pulse guns and ammunition sat there, weaponry of all sorts stacked on the walls. Everything the local desperado could ever want.

  The attendant flashed me a cool glance, lifted a disinterested finger to a row of black, cylindrical objects spread in a neat, tidy line.

  “Yep, those ones—with the black mufflers on the ends. Mighty fine pieces,” I said, trying to fake out a drawl for kicks.

  “They’re double-range explosives,” he asserted. “Fine kick, twenty yols extra.”

  I flourished a hand. “Let me gauge them for weight. Two, please.”

  The attendant engaged the safety which ensured a ten minute lead in case of accidental detonation, passed the merchandise through the gap. Everyone knew there was no chance to steal merchandise and run. Hidden cameras worked with regular efficiency behind those reinforced panels and security gunmen posed as beggars or others traipsing about the place ready to pounce on any snatch-and-grab thieves.

  I held the black cylinders in my hand, admiring the compact efficiency of their streamlined deadly potential. Juggling the canisters from hand to hand, I turned for a second, using my body to shield me from the camera, then worked my old confuse and switch gag, reaching down at an opportune time, replacing the one in my left hand with the dud concealed in my left jacket pocket. It was a ruse I’d been practicing for years. Worked every time. Oldest trick in the book.

  I put on a long frown. “Actually, I’ll go for the brand down, chief. These babies’re a bit heavy and my pocket’s a little too light.”

  “Told you,” clucked the attendant. “Pass them back. Don’t get fancy and waste my time.”

  I nodded and grinned and thrust them back through the hole in the cage, as if lowly equipment clerk
s’ reprimands were the highlight of my day.

  I fingered the coin-sized, scaled-down models pushed through the wire mesh, passed through twelve yols and thrust the goods in my dusty pockets as I fiddled for a home-rolled cigarette. The air was stifling and my head swam to a babel of voices. I was reaching my limit of how many shoulder jostles I could take from druggies and tough guys today. I sauntered out of the depot, whistling a tuneless jingle out of the side of my mouth. My meeting with Marty came up in the hour. A shoddy place The Bodega, but it would have to do.

  As I slogged through the puddles from a recent rain toward the market, I could hear the beats of techno-music exuding from the tarped-up shanties down the way: all bass and some mid-range slurred female voice-overs in an unrecognizable mash. A glut of offworlders roamed about, a slum of small tent-like enclosures made from pieces of old rubber tires and broken vehicles. Rusty oil drums with smoking garbage burned away. Several grubby figures congregated in a huddle. An altercation broke out and knives suddenly flashed in dirty hands. Then the crash of broken glass through the grimy window of what looked a clapboard salami shop. Two ham-handed men stood arguing over who had chopped the last livers and mixed them with the pork, or some dumb thing.

  As I stopped to ponder, I felt a tug at my pantleg. A mousy brown boy sat, legs splayed in the dirt and puddles, his leg missing below the knee, begging for coins. I crouched down and gave him a few of the loose yols I had, catching the dull look in the sunken, young eyes, drinking deep of the sorrow mirrored there then moving on.

  My eyes wandered over him and other such sights with a familiarity that created tiny ripples in my soul. I’d had to steel myself to the suffering of others to get the jobs done that put food on the table. Only a rare glimmer of compassion did I let steal over me from time to time. The universe was what it was. Long ago I’d accepted such travesties as fate; they would continue on, regardless of what I did or didn’t do.

  A sickly glow permeated the sky with the sound of thunder promising more rain. I trudged through the rubble and the mud puddles, skirting wide piles of bomb debris. An air-speeder whistled past close overhead. I gave it little attention, little concerned with the comings and goings of the privileged and few. That, and the rattle of electric three-wheelers on the dingy streets whose riders wore their goggled ski-masks, racing the odd ramshackle van or lorry to the next barricaded junction.

  I came to Drenny’s. An eatery of fine repute, of battered brick and energetic graffiti scrawled on front, wide swoops and swirls of the lost symbols of modern vernacular. Overhead, mothers’ laundry dripped and kids screamed from the balconies of squalid apartments. The city cops, aka hired mercenaries, came to this meet-place of smugglers, dope dealers and lowlifes less often than the hotter places closer to downtown. A collection of mixed sorts huddled about in drab clothing, generally trench coats and beat-up boots, sitting at tables and mumbling monosyllables or milling around at the bar. Some machines stood at the back, upright gambling units and old pinball machines, while low, distorted lounge music huffed out a muffled beat.

  Marty sat over at a far table. He hunched in the dimness, bullet head and chin tipped down in the haze of blue smoke. He sat away from the hubbub and the bar. He got up and waved when he saw me. I approached with measured confidence and he took my hand with a firm grip and nodded, the faintest of grins. “Rusco, been a while. You look good.”

  “Could be better.”

  Marty patted my back with more vigor than necessary. “Attaboy! Keeping up the faith?”

  I shrugged. Marty, a shock of mustard-colored hair that clung to his oiled scalp like a fish fin, was a short, heavy-boned bully with thick lips and crooked grin. But fast. Last guy who underestimated Marty lay in a shallow grave.

  Marty was a good guy, well-informed but somewhat of a fanatic for odd jobs, volatile, headstrong, violent, ready to plug shells into a problem rather than think it through. Don’t ever get him angry or he’d rip your head off and shove it up the next guy’s ass. That’s Marty. Got to know him in Rega. We’d been drinking, shooting the shit at the local casino bar, and got to musing… ‘you know, like maybe we should join forces or something and capitalize on the smuggling market, a couple of delivery wise guys like us, we could be peddling and fencing weapons and contraband versus collecting the chump change we’re making now.’ So we got to thinking and the old gears got whirring. Now I was a little ahead of Marty in big picture planning and could play three angles at once where he could only play one, so I humored him into thinking it was all his idea—you know, the whole let the big bad dog think he’s the alpha-male, pissing on every corner, while the nice little white dog keeps his head down.

  “So what’s this about?” I asked.

  “Got something down the line. Some easy pickings on the river way in the warehouse district.”

  “What, those abandoned factories and chop shops?”

  “Yeah, something like that. Some small time gangsters run out of there, moving stuff new and old, you know? Big stuff.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  He scratched at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, this and that.”

  “What? You don’t even know what it is we’re pulling?”

  He looked away with an offended glare.

  “What about transpo?” I growled. I peered over with annoyance at the two deadbeats playing old retro video games in the back shadows. The noise of buzzers and beeps and their grunts and sniggers rubbed at the edge of my concentration.

  “You got your ship,” said Marty, “plus we can steal some local rides if need be. They’ve got some air speeders I’ve heard.”

  “What, like we’re just going to fly in there, gun them down, and take their goods?”

  “Something like that,” Marty said with a grin.

  I shook my head, blinking with amazement. “You’re something else, Marty, you know that? I think all that gumtox you’ve been chewing has gotten to your head.”

  “Careful there, Ruskie. The old Q himself gave me this drop. And he don’t drop favors like that for nothing.”

  “Maybe.” I grunted, licking my lips. “I just like to know what I’m getting into.”

  “Don’t be a pussy. It’s half the fun not knowing everything.”

  “Not really, Marty. Remember the last time we winged it, was nearly the end of us working together.”

  “This is your chance to make it big, Rusco. A slam dunk, instead of all those cheap little gigs out in backwaters-ville. I need ride and backup and figured you’d be good for it. I’ll wait point while you nose around, scoping the place out. We’ll keep in contact by bug wireless. Here—” He held up a pair of little black earpieces. “These little babies are untrackable. Shortwave or something. Tape it behind your ear.”

  “Shortwave,” I scoffed. “Why me, stuck with the dirty work?”

  Marty grinned his cat-like grin. “You’re the security guard, aren’t you? Didn’t you tell me once you did—”

  “Yeah, yeah, let’s skip the little Red Riding Hood story.”

  “You were always good with B & E. I’m a better bullshitter and better at messing up wise guys, you know it.”

  I looked at him in wonder, seeing where this was going.

  “Relax, this is what we’re going to do, Rusco. We camo our faces, go in like cats, knock out their surveillance system. Those cams they have are ancient tech like everything on this scumbucket planet. CCTV, or something like that.”

  “Nighttime heists are tricky, Marty.” My voice wavered between the condescending and serious.

  He shook his head. “There won’t be a ‘nighttime’. I’ve been staking them out. The contra-crews and loader-boys work nights. Daytime, just a dumb fuck bunch of skeleton crew guards. Sleepy types, nothing ever happens during the day in Baer’s yard. We go in in broad daylight.”

  “And transpo? You still haven’t told me what your plan is for that. What are we going to do, fly there on our pink little wings? We’re going to need a van or
something to go in and truck out a load.”

  “You kidding me? A truck parked on the side of the road is a red flag, asking for attention, conspicious as doggy-do.”

  “Scooter then,” I said with irritation. “We hide it somewhere in the grass and foot it the rest of the way.”

  “Better. From what I gather, this contraband is not needing a lot of horsepower to move it. We can always snag some wheels along the way.”

  “I’ll think it through,” I said. I bridled my doubts, clamped my jaw shut, cradling chin in my hands.

  Chapter 2

  We took an electric three-wheeler with high chopper handlebars a buddy of Marty’s had stored up on the end of the old U-line in his equipment yard. I made Marty sit in the back, be the bitch for once, indicated we’d hide it in the ditch when we got closer. The wheels rolled up on the hardtop which turned to gravel as we snaked along the river. More fenced yards, larger plants, disused factories, metal-pressing mills, boatyards. Not much of anything here away from the smelly, dirty city that was Hoath. Abandoned warehouses, loading docks, crane and metal factories, food packing companies, you name it, suppliers and distributers of every manufactured product one could imagine. The river wound itself tightly alongside a service road behind those complexes, black, slimy water that back in times of older generations used to carry cargoes into town. I felt a desolate unease wash over me. The memories of old sin and dark doings lingered about these tumbledown bastions of yesteryear. Again, that nagging feeling pricked at me, of regretting I had taken on this job.

  Now the river was fouled with contaminants and garbage, thick oily water that no respectable fish would be caught dead in. I looked in wonder at the sight of the makeshift shelters and wanderers dressed in tattered khaki or lumberjack shirts, with hand-made rods casting out for fish. I shuddered to think what they’d catch.

  Marty tapped my shoulder and pointed at the looming warehouse. We slowed up. Beyond a fenced yard two large, gray-muzzled Behusian hounds yanked at their rusty chains by the cement block outbuilding. I didn’t like the beasts’ incessant yapping, so I moved away and ditched the three-wheeler, hiding it in the weeds while Marty did his best to usher me along.