“Thank Space you’re here!” exclaimed Rex. “We found your gun runners! This whole village is armed to the teeth. My robot and I came here to try to sell some jewelry to the locals, and we were appalled to find that the place is overrun with gun-toting hoodlums. I think those Salmon Brigade fellows are importing guns from offworld and storing them on this island until they can ship them to Chicolini City.”
“We’ll see about that,” growled the man on the right. The two brushed past us toward Trentino City.
“Sir, how long do you think that ruse is going to –”
“I give it about thirty seconds,” said Rex. “Get us off this island before Tad and Kevin smelt us.”
We hurried to the ship and climbed into the cockpit. I was about to start the preflight checklist when I noticed the two Ursa Minor goons had stopped walking toward Trentino City. One of them was gesturing our way. They had their hands on their lazepistols.
“Just get us out of here, Sasha! Forget the damn checklist!”
I skipped to the end of the checklist and hit the thrusters. We shot into the air as Tad and Kevin blasted the underside of the ship with their Lazepistols.
“Alright,” said Rex. “Let’s get off this namby-pamby peace-loving planet. I don’t know what I was thinking trying to sell guns to these boneheads. But hey, at least we still have a shipload of money.”
A shipload doesn’t buy what it used to, I thought, as a red warning light flashed on the control panel. It was the pressure sensor. We were losing air.
“Sir,” I said. “We have a problem. There seems to be a leak in the hull. We’re going to have to land.”
“Land?” cried Rex. “No, we can’t land. We need to get the hell off this planet.”
Sure, now he wants to get off the planet.
“Do you think you can hold your breath for the next twenty light-years?” I asked.
Rex sighed. “OK, put us down somewhere we can repair the hull.”
“It’ll have to be a spaceport. I can’t repair a hull breach in the field.”
“Fine! Whatever!” snarled Rex.
I set a course for Chicolini Spaceport. We could only hope that every group of people we had angered on Chicolini was now on the island of Trentino.
We weren’t quite that lucky. The whole spaceport was crawling with cops. We didn’t know if they were looking for gun runners, mobsters, or Salmon Brigade partisans, but we didn’t particularly want to find out. Getting Serendipity repaired was going to be impossible under the circumstances. Our best bet was to stow away on another ship. In this endeavor, fortune was kinder: a luxury cruise ship called Agave Nectar had stopped at the Chicolini spaceport for some minor maintenance before continuing its voyage. Spaceport security was so busy assisting the local police in whatever it was they were doing that nobody seemed to be watching the Agave Nectar very closely. All we had to do was walk up the ramp and find a place to hide out until the ship disembarked.
This plan was complicated by Rex’s unwillingness to leave behind the container full of Chicolinian hexapennies.
“It’s a box full of money!” Rex exclaimed, as we sat crouched behind a pile of baggage, watching travelers well-heeled travelers walk up the ramp to the Agave Nectar.
“Chicolinian money is worth even less than it was when we got to this planet yesterday, sir,” I said. “It’s certainly not worth risking our lives over.”
“The box of money that I leave behind is the box of money you can bury me in,” announced Rex.
While I wasted precious seconds trying to parse this statement, Rex found half a dozen large steamer trunks and begun dumping their contents onto the ground. “Come on, Sasha,” he said, dragging two of the trunks toward our container. “Help me fill these with money.”
I sighed and went after him, taking two more of the trunks. Taking care to dodge the police, we made our way back to the container and filled the trunks with stacks of bills. When they were full, we dragged them back to the Agave Nectar and then returned to the container with the remaining two trunks.
“Not all the way,” said Rex. “We’re going to hide inside the trunks. It’ll make it easier to get on the ship, and we won’t have to worry about getting separated from our money.”
“Except for the 700 quintillion we’re leaving behind,” I reminded him.
“We’ll have to come back for it,” said Rex. “This will get us by for now.”
I wondered how long Rex thought a hundred quintillion Chicolinian hexapennies would last us. I still hadn’t had a chance to check the current exchange rates, but I knew there was no way it was going to cover the repairs on Serendipity, much less the rental fees. Presumably at this point he planned on stiffing the rental company – which wouldn’t be so bad if Ajax Spaceship Rental wasn’t the last company in the galaxy who would still rent to us. Hopefully we had enough to buy us a few meals on the Agave Nectar – assuming we didn’t get found out and tossed into the vacuum. “Spacing” freeloaders was technically against interstellar law, but some cruise lines had found a way around this law by killing stowaways with food poisoning before ejecting them from the ship.
After Rex locked the container, we dragged the trunks back to the pile of luggage and climbed inside. As a robot, I don’t need air, and can remain motionless in a cramped space for as long as necessary. I understand it’s much more difficult for human – particularly a hyperactive, impatient human. The fact that Rex remained in his trunk for three hours without making a peep can only be attributed to his boundless love for hard currency.
While I was ensconced, I tapped into the local Hypernet node and checked the exchange rate on the Chicolinian Hexapennies to Malarchian Standard Credits. It currently stood at a hundred quintillion to one, which meant we had just enough money to buy a club soda. At cruise ship prices, probably not even that. Also, the bills smelled like fish.
We were loaded into the cargo hold of the Agave Nectar and a couple hours later, the ship took off. I heard a lazegun blast and a moment later my trunk opened. “Whoops,” said Rex, looking at the lazepistol in his hand. “I thought I had it set to torch mode.” What was left of his trunk lay in charred pieces on the floor.
I climbed out of my trunk and looked around. We were in a large room surrounded by boxes and baggage. Rex lost no time opening several of the fancier looking suitcases and rooting through them to find a change of clothes. After seven tries, he found a suit that fit.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Very dapper, sir,” I replied. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Thought I’d see if could find a poker game. Gotta be some well-heeled types on a ship like this who are just aching to lose a few thousand credits.”
“We don’t have any money, sir, except for these hexapennies, and I’m fairly certain a ship like this frowns on….”
Rex was already breaking into more luggage. This time, it took him only three tries to find a strongbox full of cash. He cut it open with the lazepistol and stuffed several hundred credits in his pockets.
“That ought to do it,” he said. “Let’s go make some money.” He climbed over a pile of suitcases toward the door.
“Sir,” I said. “Perhaps you should leave the lazepistol here?”
“Oh,” he said, regarding the gun. “Good point, Sasha.” He stashed the gun behind a suitcase and opened the door. “Let’s go find some suckers,” he said, and walked into the hall. I refrained from suggesting he locate a mirror. If Rex had any capacity for self-reflection at all, he’d have realized we were the suckers. We’d been taken advantage of by practically everyone we’d met on Chicolini, and all we had to show for it was six steamer trunks full of nearly worthless currency. If there was any silver lining to our circumstances, it was that our new enemies were mostly confined to Chicolini. The Ursa Minor mafia probably didn’t know who we were, and so far we seemed to have stayed off Gavin Larviton’s radar.
We took the elevator to the casino floor, which was filled with ri
ch vacationers trying their luck at blackjack, roulette, craps, and other games of chance. Rex’s eyes lit up. Rich people trying to beat the house was one of the few sights more beautiful to him than people trying to kill each other with sticks.
Rex slipped a twenty credit note to an attendant. “Any high-stakes games going on?” he asked.
The attendant frowned. “There is one,” he said, “But it’s invitation only.”
“How do you know I haven’t been invited?” Rex demanded. “You don’t even know who I am.”
“Precisely,” said the attendant, with a sniff.
“Look, pal,” said Rex. “You may not know my face, but I’m not the sort of guy you want to make enemies of, OK? Now what do you say you go find whoever is running this game and tell him Rex Nihilo is here.”
The attendant shrugged and walked away.
“Sir, do you think that was a good idea? What if the person in charge of the game doesn’t know you?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Rex. “But he doesn’t have to. I just have to make him think he should know who I am.’’
“I’m not sure I follow, sir,” I said.
“Watch and learn, Sasha,” he said.
After a few minutes, the attendant returned. Alongside him strode a balding man with thick, bushy eyebrows. He smiled when he saw Rex.
“So you’re the infamous Rex Nihilo,” said the man. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. My name is Gavin Larviton.”
RECORDING END GALACTIC STANDARD DATE 3013.04.29.04:47:13:00
Want More Rex?
Rex and Sasha’s adventures continue in Starship Grifters, available on Kindle, audiobook and in paperback!
And now available: The long-awaited sequel to Starship Grifters, Aye Robot!
“Once again, Kroese gives me a story I can't put down with a hero I can't bring myself to despise. A brilliant sequel to one of my favorite space romps of all time.”
- Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
After interstellar con man Rex Nihilo hijacks a cargo freighter on a whim, he decides that he and his long-suffering robot sidekick Sasha have found their calling as space pirates. But when the ship's cargo turns out to be a cryogenically frozen religious fanatic who holds the secret to a vast galactic conspiracy, Rex and Sasha find themselves on the run from real pirates--as well as agents of the oppressive Malarchy, crazy space cultists and the Ursa Minor mafia. If Rex is going to get out of this jam alive, he might just have to save the galaxy... again.
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More books by Robert Kroese
The Starship Grifters Universe
“The Chicolini Incident” (short story)
The Yanthus Prime Job (novella)
Starship Grifters
Aye, Robot
The Mercury Series
“Mercury Begins” (short story)
Mercury Falls
“Mercury Swings” (short story)
Mercury Rises
Mercury Rests
Mercury Revolts
Mercury Shrugs
The Land of Dis
Distopia
Disenchanted
Disillusioned
Other Books
The Big Sheep
The Last Iota
Schrödinger’s Gat
City of Sand
The Foreworld Saga: The Outcast
The Force is Middling in This One
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The Chicolini Incident: A Rex Nihilo Adventure (Starship Grifters Universe Book 0) Page 4
