The Space Mavericks

by Michael Kring

  “I don’t believe it,” Kohn said softly as we began our descent into the atmosphere.

  “What?” I asked, almost afraid to hear his answer.

  “Those idiots are following us down,” he said. “They’re ignoring the Port Comp.”

  I was so shocked I didn’t even curse. The cruisers were on our tail, and were following us down. I’d known they had been gaining on us since they’d slipped out of Warp, but I had no idea they would antagonize a planet’s government by ignoring the Port Comp and come in behind us. They were more desperate than I had thought possible. What was Central after?

  I had no clue. There was nothing I could think of that could be that important to Central. They owned too much and had a monopoly on too many things to be that interested in one little girl. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. I began to get a headache. I could hear all sorts of orders coming from the Port Comp to various agencies on the ground, but no call for an army. Perhaps they didn’t have one.

  The ship shuddered as we landed, and I hoped I would see a vehicle come roaring out to meet us, but I didn’t. They were waiting to see what the cruisers would be doing. As the roar of the cruisers shook the Kraftwerk, Kohn and I rushed back to where Renate was strapped in. We helped her out of the chair, and had time enough to hear a horrible screech as the ship rocked once on its struts. There came a loud clang, and suddenly things were dropping down from the control cabin.

  I knew instantly what they’d done. “They’ve blasted the control cabin!” I screamed.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Kohn cried.

  We dragged Renate to the drop shaft, and, one after the other, we dropped down. When I opened the door, I could tell all was chaos. There were laze beams everywhere, and several land vehicles were on their sides, huge holes burnt into them. I dropped to the ground. I glanced back at the ship as Kohn dropped, and saw the black hole in her hull where the control cabin had been. If we had delayed another few seconds, we would have been nothing more that hot gases. It made me shudder.

  The cruisers were going all out to damage as many ships and vehicles as they could. A couple of flitters were whizzing in the air, keeping the main laze cannons busy, but given the firepower of the cruisers, I didn’t think the flitters would be up there long.

  A war was breaking out on the landing pads, and we were the cause of it. At least, Renate was. Kohn grabbed one of her hands, and I grabbed the other. We took off on a dead run toward the Strip. It was the nearest place would could see, and in the opposite direction of the cruisers. I couldn’t activate, since it would mean I would have to leave Kohn behind, so I just ran alongside them. The harsh sounds of the cannons and the squeaks, squeals, and screams of burnt metal and vaporized pad still boomed behind us. The nearest ship to us had already been blasted by the cruisers, and was on its side, burning somewhere. As we passed a melted hulk that had been a land vehicle, Renate sobbed.

  “What is it?” Kohn asked.

  “That’s one of my father’s cars!” she cried.

  “Don’t talk!” I told them. “Run!”

  They nodded, and we kept on running. I kept hearing sounds behind me, and then a loudspeaker called out, obviously from one of the cruisers. “They’re getting away! Don’t let them escape!”

  Someone had seen our little exodus.

  By the time we’d arrived at the outskirts of the Strip, there were quite a number of sight-seers and the like looking at the carnage of the Pad. A few of the Union ships had been damaged and few of the men were cursing loudly as they watched the cannons slice through their ships.

  I looked around for a taxi, but there were none to be seen. We rushed into the nearest bar, and told Renate to call her father. Perhaps he could send another car for us. We didn’t think the police would be able to get out of the cruisers any time soon. Kohn and I ordered a drink, as Renate called. She was very glad that her father hadn’t been in the car, but someone close to her had been, for there were tears in her eyes when she turned back to us.

  “He’s sending several more cars, in case we need some help,” she said.

  Kohn and I looked at each other, smiled, and finished our drinks. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Don’t move,” someone said from the front door of the bar.

  I turned not believing my ears. It was Heuser, all right. I didn’t want to believe it. How could he have gotten off the cruiser so fast? It must have had a vehicle of some sort.

  “I’m pretty good with this,” Heuser said, waving the pistol at us.

  I could tell it was merely a knock-out gun, so he didn’t want to kill anyone. Kohn yelled and jumped left. Heuser forgot himself and swiveled the gun to follow Kohn. I activated as Heuser fired, and leapt as quickly as I could. I saw Kohn go down, completely out of it. Heuser turned to me, and cried out as I jabbed my hand claws into his chest. I butted him in the nose with my head, as hard as I could. I pulled my claws out of his chest as he fell. The wounds would bleed, but I’d only stabbed about an inch deep.

  I deactivated. I glanced at Kohn, at Heuser, and heard a lot of yelling in the streets.

  I decided I’d have to leave Kohn and hope I could get in touch with Renate’s father. With the man’s obvious connections, he would be able to bail us out of anything. At least, I hoped so.

  “Is ... is he dead?” Renate asked me, pointing to Heuser. She knew what a knock-out gun was and wasn’t worried about Kohn that much.

  “No,” I said. “Merely out of it. We’ve got to get out of here. We’ll get Kohn later, after I’ve gotten you to your father. Those idiot police are trying too hard and playing too rough for me.”

  I grabbed her hand, we went out the back way. I hoped Renate knew something about the area, because I’d never been on Steel before. I had no idea what the city next to the Strip was like. Was it ghetto?

  “I don’t know this area,” she told me.

  “Well, let’s see if we can find a place we can hold up for a time. Maybe we can get a call to your father,” I said.

  “What about Kohn?” she asked.

  “He’s a big boy,” I said. “He can take care of himself.”

  Secretly, I wondered if Heuser would let him live.

  10

  Renate was as lost as I was, and I was hopelessly lost. After we had slipped out the back door of the bar, we had managed to maneuver ourselves out of the Strip area. We were at the business section of the city, and that was new to her. She had no idea where things were. She was just as baffled as any tourist by the strange names and turnings the streets made.

  The city itself was depressing, as most Frontier World cities are. The architecture of the downtown section of most of those cities is so alike I get incredible feelings of deja vu each time I wander through those streets. Most of the buildings around us were like towering boxes, almost phallic in their heights. I can never understand why groundhogs always make their business places so high. It’s as if they are trying to reach the top of the sky. The Tower of Babel syndrome, I guess.

  The cars crawling along the streets were fairly slow, and everyone seemed to obey the traffic signals. I didn’t see a single traffic accident as we walked along, and the streets were filled with the little gray beasts. I mentioned this to Renate, and she said the people of Steel did not like to hurry or rush anything, including their driving. I thought that a little odd, since on Most Frontier Worlds, the people are so intent in getting ahead and becoming like the Old Worlds: Reega, FarAway, Terra, Desdia, etc., they never slow down for anything. I shrugged to myself.

  Every now and then, I caught a hint of food cooking on the breeze. It made my stomach grumble, but I didn’t say anything to Renate about it. I had only a few credits in my jumpsuit, and I figured that would be enough to find a room in some hotel someplace where we could hole up until she got in touch with her father. He could, more than likely, bail Kohn out of any danger he might happen to be in. I hoped Heuser didn’t stomp him. I didn’t think he w
ould, but you never really know.

  The sky was a deep blue, and there were very few clouds in the sky. The air seemed damp, however, as if a rainstorm had recently passed. There were no puddles in the streets; in fact, everything seemed quite dry. Perhaps Steel just had high humidity.

  I felt a little silly walking along the sidewalks with Renate in tow: I in my jumpsuit, and she in her green outfit. We didn’t have any choice, however. We must have stood out like giant, pink rhinos, but none of the pedestrians gave us a second look as they shuffled past. I couldn’t believe that Spacers were that common in their downtown area, but perhaps they were all playing the big-city-super-sophisticated game. I guess they were in a big city, after all. At least, large for a planet like Steel.

  I didn’t even see him.

  The bullet smashed into the sidewalk, sending up a plume of pumice. The people of the city were all scrambling for cover. The weapon, a rifle, I suspected, was loud and made an ugly, barking sound that couldn’t be mistaken for any other sound. I barely had time to think as I dragged Renate against the nearest wall, took off my shoes, stuffed them in my pockets, and activated. I didn’t like doing it in public, but I liked even less the idea of being shot. Another slug smacked against the wall of the building we were leaning against, and it had come closer. I felt the debris slice into my face. Blood trickled down the side of my neck for a moment, but I didn’t have time to wipe it off. I was pretty sure the assassin was using comp sights, and was letting the rifle zero in on us. On me, actually. The next bullet would hit its target, and I knew it wasn’t Renate. Those bullets had been meant for me.

  We were the only people standing. I jumped from the building and into the middle of the street. I glanced around at windows, doorways, rooftops, everywhere, trying to find out where the shots were coming from. Renate was screaming at me, but I had no idea what she was saying, if anything. I yelled at her to stay against the building.

  He was lucky. The slug smashed into my left leg, just above the knee. I felt the bone snap as a red hot wire of agony thrummed through my leg. I saw where the bullet had come from. He was using a barker, and it gave out a cloud of smoke and a burst of flame. The pain quickly faded. He was standing in a doorway down the street, adjusting his sights, and grinning. He knew he’d hit me, and was a little too far away to see my fangs and claws. He thought he had me.

  I didn’t bother to wait for the next shot. I didn’t know how much longer the pain would stay away. I figured I was in shock. I hobbled as fast as I could toward him. I limped on my left leg, not wanting to use it that much. The blood felt warm and sticky as it oozed down my calf. But even at a hobble, I was faster than he expected. He just stood there as I rushed up, a stupid expression on his face as he finally noted my fangs and claws.

  I jumped at him when I had come close enough. He was trying to put the rifle back against his shoulder. A red haze was narrowing my vision, and there was a roaring in my ears as he fired wildly. A blinding flash obscured my vision for a moment, but I felt his presence. The slug smashed into the pavement.

  As I landed on him, I gripped him as hard as I could on the right shoulder with my left hand. He screamed in agony as his shoulder crunched beneath my hand. I reached out with my right hand and crushed his hand around the trigger of the rifle. I smiled as I felt his bones pop and grind against the wood and metal of the weapon.' The rifle fell to the sidewalk. He was no longer screaming. He was out of it. I twisted on my feet and threw him as hard as I could against the door. He bounced back from it. I grabbed the front of his tunic with my right hand and with a snarl of anger, I slammed my left hand, claws extended, into his heart. His body gave a convulsive shudder and blood pooled over my hand. I hurled his body into the middle of the street. A passing car smacked into him, and his body was like a limp rag doll that slid over the roof of the auto. It hit the pavement with a sickening sound.

  I deactivated. It suddenly hit me what I’d done. I shook, convulsed, and braced myself in the doorway. I vomited. I hate killing, but I had been so intent on not getting myself get shot again, and so damn angry at all the things that had been happening, I had let all my base instincts run wild. With the power I have in the fight mode, that is usually fatal to the person I’m fighting.

  The pain was back in my leg. It was a burning, itching sensation that ran through the entire thigh.

  Renate came running up to me, a wild look in her blue eyes. I didn’t know what she was thinking. She had seen me kill a man as easily and as coldly as most people swat an insect. It would have to affect her attitude toward me, and when I could breathe again, and there wasn’t anything in my stomach but bile, I glanced at her. She was crying, and she wanted to run away from me. But she couldn’t. I had saved her life.

  She kept asking me why, and I had only one answer: he had tried to kill me. That wasn’t good enough for her, I knew. She couldn’t cope with murder. She didn’t have the experience to understand just how cruel and cold-blooded men and women can be. She hadn’t seen countless bar fights were several people wound up dead and the ones not involved in the fighting had either cheered the battle on, or had ignored it. She hadn’t been beaten and stomped by Union goons just because she was a maverick and they wanted to teach her a lesson. She hadn’t seen lizarpods stabbed in the throat by men just to watch them die and hear their little voices cheeping, “Help me! Help me!” And not being able to do a thing to stop the slaughter, or get a knife in the throat. No, she hadn’t seen and heard such things.

  The friendship that had grown between us since Firelight was gone. I knew that for certain. She was scared, lonely, hungry, and I was a murderer; at least, in her eyes. But I was the only person she knew who could and would help her.

  After I could catch my breath, I noticed the people were coming out of the buildings, and cars were stopping in the streets. The bloody mess of pulp that had been the would-be assassin was unrecognizable as a human body. People were beginning to mill around us, looking at us, and starting to ask questions about us among themselves. It wouldn’t be long before the police would be coming up, and I had a feeling they wouldn’t be too pleased with what I’d done. I wasn’t too pleased myself.

  I dragged Renate along until we found the local metro station. We walked down the stairs until the transport came trundling up on its magnetized rails. We rode the thing to the opposite side of the city. After a few miles, it had come out of the underground, and was riding on tracks above the ground. The city looked a lot different.

  , There were parks, and the homes and buildings I saw were no longer boxes, but some were domes, and other shapes. I hate that boxy look.

  Renate had a vague recollection of this section of the city. She directed us to a fairly decent place to stay while she called her father. The comp at the desk didn’t ask any questions, but I had to give it the credits in advance. A light ball led us to our room, and the comp had coded the door with our retinal pattern. No one else could get in the room.

  Renate went straight into the bedroom and locked the door, without a single word to me. I didn’t blame her, but it still hurt. She had said only four or five words to me since the street scene. I shook my head. No, that’s not the proper name for it. Since the murder. That assassin hadn’t stood a chance against me. It was like a grown man killing a baby.

  I went to the bathroom to look at my wound. In the metro, I’d gotten some cloth to wrap around my; leg, and had put my boots back on. I hadn’t left a trail of bloody footprints to our front door, at least. I took off my boots and jumpsuit. I gasped as I stared at the wound. It was still bleeding, and there was a very large bruise surrounding the hole in my leg. But it was healing. I could tell it had already closed almost all the way. The pain was still there, but I had the feeling it had something to do with the accelerated healing process. I glanced at the ring on my finger, but it was still just its dull, red self. I stared at the wound for a few minutes, and then shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I put my clothes back on.
I wrapped a couple of strips of a towel I tore up around my leg to keep it from bleeding down my leg.

  I went back into the living room area and turned on the wall video. I kept my boots off, though I had my jumpsuit on. I sat in a chair and flicked around until I could find the news station. I waited twenty minutes before any mention of the Strip fiasco or the street murder came on the video. They called the mess at the Strip an “altercation” that had been caused by two cutthroat and ruthless pirates. I figured that meant Kohn and I. They had scenes of the Strip, and the damage to the pad area was worse than I had realized. They had only destroyed our control cabin, but other ships were totally destroyed, and there were a number of still bodies on the pads near their ships. There was no mention of the street murder, but they did broadcast a video of me, and they said I was “armed and dangerous.” At least, they spelled my name correctly. I waited about another hour before I turned it off.

  I must have dozed off in the chair, because the comp’s voice awakened me. “There is someone at your door,” it informed me. “Shall I let him in?”

  “Let me see,” I said. The wall video came on, and I saw a strange man standing in front of the door. I had never seen him before, but I knew he knew me. He was holding a disrupter in his hand. He was about six feet tall but thin. He had rather longish black hair and a black moustache. He was wearing a new style suit, but it was black. He had to be with Central. The disrupter was aimed at the door, and I could see it was set on max.

  “Let him in,” I ordered.

  The comp opened the door. The man stepped into the room with a walk of such utter arrogance that I immediately hated him. I stayed in my chair, hoping it would irritate him a little. His face never moved.

  “Please,” he told me, “Don’t make any sudden moves. I’m very good with this.” He glanced at the disrupter, and I got his meaning. “I could have disrupted the door, but I felt I had to be civilized.”