by Ian Cannon
One of the rovers moved forward. It had an open design like a moon jeep with a driver up front, a gunner at back manning a twin barrel cannon. It rolled to a stop twenty feet from Ben’s position and the passenger stood up in his seat.
Ben’s shoulders slumped. He recognized this guy, too. He wore a bounty hunter’s light-armor over a bio-suit, a green/black helmet with opaque visor. Yep, another narse-hole.
Ben growled as the guy hopped down and strutted toward him in slow, swollen strides, over-confident and gloating, loosely holding a laser blaster in his hand. He flipped an audio patch-in coin and it zipped across the space thudding against Ben’s mask. He heard, “Well, well, well. Looky who we have here.”
Ben nodded his head, said, “Rogan.”
“Ben…” he scoffed back.
Ben said, “Tawny, you reading this?”
“Oh, she’s reading alright. She can see everything,” Rogan said through a voice bloated with glee. “And guess what, buddy boy. We can see her, too. Oh yeah, loud and clear. We even cut her comm. She says anything, and zap! She makes a move, and zap!” Then, in a tiny notion made huge with its condescension, he said, “Oops.”
Ben glanced across the entire entourage. The last time he’d seen Rogan, these two parties were shooting it out on an asteroid. How had it come to this? He said, “Rogan, what have you done?”
Rogan strutted toward him and said, “Don’t look at me. You’re the one said I should get a sniper. They’re awesome, right? Well, shoot,” he laughed, “I gotta tell ya, that was a good call. You got me there. I mean, yeah, that’s some good advice.”
Sniper. He had Tawny locked down. He yelled, “You Molosian leach!”
“Oh shut up, Ben!” he yelled back showing real animus. “This is your fault. You caused all this. Soon as you kidnapped their heiress you kick started the whole thing.”
“I didn’t kidnap the heiress. They kidnapped the heiress! I just took her back.”
“You have no idea who these people are. You don’t have the slightest clue, chump. But I do. Yeah—they told me all about what they’re doing, what they have in store. And they’re bigger than the Guild. They make the Guild look like a bunch of amateurs. Well,” he thrust a thumb at himself and bawled out, “I want to be a part of it.”
Ben shook his head pathetically and said, “Is that why you’re here, to join with these criminals?”
“Yeah. And guess what. That’s why you’re here, too. Whether you like it or not.”
“You’re insane,” Ben said.
Rogan made an insulted, snickery laugh.
Ben looked out at the far mountains to the west. “Tawny, what’s your situation?”
“Yeah, go ahead, Tawny girrrl!” Rogan heckled. “Say something. Get zapped. Oh, they’re on their way right now. They know where she is. Yeah—” he said very proudly, “I told them.”
“What do they want with us?” Ben demanded.
“I don’t know. Maybe your head on the wall. Or on a pole. Or on a plate. I don’t know,” Rogan said, still snickering.
Ben eyeballed the tank. It sat quietly as if observing the exchange. He gazed across the rovers. Their crews sat quietly, watching. Ben shook his head, and said, “No. If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead. They want us alive. Why?”
Rogan focused on him and said, “Who cares? This time … I get what’s mine.”
Tawny still lay prone at the edge of her mountain ledge overhearing the entire exchange. One word was all it would take, they told her. And she’d get sniped by some phantom operator hiding somewhere out there in the near-facing mountain range. She had no reason to believe Rogan. He was a backwater hillbilly. He wouldn’t kill Tawny. He didn’t have the sack.
But his new sniper was an X-factor. For all Tawny knew it was an android following orders as pragmatically as any machine would. And she was in its crosshairs right now. She couldn’t take any chances.
But it’s what her husband had said that gave her reason to act. His mind simply worked in a deeply tactical way. It was a beautiful mind, a strategist’s mind. He was communicating with her. He wasn’t talking to them. He was talking to her, directly. He’d said, “… they want us alive.”
They weren’t going to kill her. Not unless they absolutely had to. It made her grin, come up with a plan.
Taking a breath and holding it, she folded to her knees, got to her feet, stood upright folding her gun to its neutral position against her flank. Nothing happened. No plasma grenade. No laser bolt. No gas projectile. She was still alive.
What next?
She said into her bio-suit’s user comm, “What’s our altitude?”
“To the planet’s surface, two hundred and seventy three feet.”
It was an extreme drop, but it would give her jump engine time to fire off before she hit bottom. She said, “What’s my jump capacity?”
“Uh, what’re you thinking, Tawny?”
“Jump capacity.”
“The jump feature’s charged. You’re at one hundred percent, easy.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed hard. Her throat was dry. She said, “Prepare for a boost.”
“Tawny, no,” the bio-suit rebuked. “Not in gravity. It’ll kill you.”
Tawny knew her bio-suit was right. Boosting in a gravity environment freefall had been known to snap spines, blow out pelvises, crack vertebrae, pop ball joints out of their sockets—like hips—or hyperextend knees, splinter bone, whatever. The feature was designed strictly for outer space. But she had to try. Benji’s hands were tied. Breaking this situation was up to her. She whispered, “No it won’t.”
Without warning she stepped off the ledge and out into an ocean of negative space. In the moment before full freefall, she knew whoever was tracking her, wherever they were, would fire. She put her eyes up searching fast and hard. Sure enough…
Here it came.
A condensed light beam fired laser-straight from the dark mountain across a deep ravine, up higher than her perch, on the next peak over. She couldn’t see the shooter, just a powerful kill shot demarking his location. Then her fall began.
Tawny screamed as she dropped below the ledge and the shot came down erupting into a huge shower of rock. The blast impact knocked her further out showering rubble all around her, pelting her with rocky debris. She cried out feeling the hands of gravity pull her down faster, faster, and for one tiny second, her vengeful mind hoped the narse-hole up their shooting a sniper round at her would follow her down with their own jumpsuit, meet her at the mountain base below. Oh, she’d love that—meet this jackwad at the bottom, then bend him inside out, bounce his head off the rock like a gaga ball.
But no way. No one would be that stupid. Not even with a jumpsuit. It was a good way to crush a humanoid body into a wad of dough. But for her, it was too late. This was going to hurt like Wi’ahr hell!
She locked out her joints like mad. Locked her knees, locked her hips, her back, arms, neck, even her fingers, preparing for a mid-air jump boost.
“Bio-suit!” she screamed. “Jump boost, now-now-now!”
The igniter mechanism wound up in its harmonic tone as the mountain face slid away. The ground approached—that pitch black mass of rock and stone rising up to meet her at the speed of terminal velocity.
“Now!” she screeched in full panic.
BOOM—her jets ignited only feet over the surface. The power of the kick passed through her body with a jolt like a cannon shot. Everything rattled—muscle, bone, flesh, even her eyeballs. It stopped her plummet, broke her fall, suspended her perfectly still in mid air, but left her body limp under the pressure.
Then her fall resumed.
She hit the rocky mountain base as though she’d fallen from a dozen feet, bounced off one rock formation, crashed into another and settled on the dusty lunar floor. The jumpsuit tactic was the only way to minimize the impact of a three hundred foot fall. But the price had been dearly paid as her body absorbed the full energy of a sudden, jolting boost. As she settled on the
ground and everything came to a stop, she closed her eyes wondering if the darkness consuming her was sleep, or death.
Ben’s visor reflected the sniper beam. It was a thousand feet of light blinking through the dark sky at four clicks distance. But it was enough to snap his attention and spin him around. He looked way across the flatland and toward that mountain ledge. The explosion it caused was tiny—just a blink of fire sending rock out from the mountain at multiple angles. But he knew better. Up close, that blast was an enormous show of power pulverizing a whole section of frozen, solid rock. His eyes went wide, he gasped out loud. That was his wife.
“Tawneee!” he screamed. On pure impulse, he unholstered his twin blasters, spun back around and began blasting away. Strike points blossomed across the nearest rover, then the one next to it, sending bio-suited figures scurrying for cover. Even Rogan bit some sand.
Return fire from the spinner cannon atop that tank struck at Ben in a long jagged beam of light sending him diving to the lunar ground and rolling over. It was a lightning bolt, slicing overhead. It struck distantly lifting a curtain of topsoil. His suit’s power blinked and ebbed just from the laser bolt’s proximity. That was an electromagnetic zap.
He was outnumbered. Now he was outgunned. Time to go.
He scurried to his feet and ran for the mag-mule shouting into his headset, “Mule, fire up!” Its power indicators lit up, the bubble turret dropping open. And then…
Something pounded him in the back, picked him up and threw him powerfully across the land. His bio-suit coughed sparks and went dead. They hit him square, and they were going to hit his mag-mule next.
He landed hard and screamed one last command before his comm function died, “Starboard booster, fire. Fire now!”
And everything went heavy as he settled to the sand.
The mag-mule’s starboard booster boomed against the ground. Lunar sand exploded underneath and the entire two hundred feet of mag-spire tilted—a tower swinging over, losing its balance and breaking into a fall.
If he couldn’t destroy these bucketheads, he’d let his machine do it.
They all looked up as the shadow of the tumbling tower consumed them, eyes huge. Those standing in its path scattered like bugs, a few of them firing up rover engines, kicking gear transmissions into reverse. The tank lurched backward, started swinging around, but that shadow grew and grew, faster and faster.
Ben growled through a tight, desperate face and threw himself into a roll.
Rogan stumbled to his feet tripping and bumbling out of its way.
There was a final scream as the few doomed members of the party realized they were doomed, and the entire thing came down with a moon shattering crash, sheer tonnage banging down. The tank crushed like a beer can sending pieces of it squirting out. Water exploded like a geyser and came raining down. The cloud that lifted was thick and immediate. It offered Ben some cover. He pulled himself up to his knees shaking his head. Without power, his breather was down, his visuals were dead. Nothing worked.
Bio-suit lights pierced the dust screen. His enemy came near, and they were angry. He was pinned down, couldn’t move. As they surrounded him all guns drawn and pointing at him, he chuckled at the calamity he’d caused. One of them moved front and center pointing a rifle at him, and fired without hesitation. The bolt spread across his body in a web-work of electricity arching his back and locking his joints stiff. Through it all, he couldn’t stop thinking to himself through a sea of infuriated regret—Tawny was right. Bi-gods, she was right. These aren’t roughneckers. These are bad guys…
And then he blacked out.
Chapter Fourteen
Ben jolted awake and screamed, “Tawny!” His outburst pounded off metal walls and everything went silent. He lay supine on a tabletop inclined at a forty-five degree angle, wrists and ankles cuffed hard. He shook his head, looked around. This was a large stainless steel room, a hundred feet long with a full viewport toward the front. His table was only one in a long row. They each had cuff devices. He laid his head down miserably. This was a prisoner bay. Worse, it was an interrogation room. A torture room.
The stun shot he’d taken earlier left his body wracked and sore. He wondered how much earlier that had been. How long had he been here?
A voice chuckled from the shadowed corner. It said in a quirky, irritating, singsong fashion, “Tawn-ee. Oh Tawn-ee. Ta-ta-Tawny, bay-bee…” Rogan stepped forward.
Ben thrust his head up, looked hard. Rogan had traded his bio-suit for his civilian attire—a stolen utility jacket studded with ammo pockets, space pants and boots. He still had his characteristic lamb chop beard with greasy hair hanging in his face, most of it swept back behind his ears. He had a patch over one eye. That was new. Ben assumed he’d met one too many people at some out-of-the-way guilder’s pub. Good way to lose an eye, apparently. Ben sneered, “Rogan.”
Rogan’s voice dripped with narcissistic glee, “Uh-huh, yep, that’s me.” He laughed.
Ben squinted his eyes, cocked his head over giving him an angry look. He demanded, “Where’s Tawny?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Ben flexed against his restraints, hard. “Where is she?”
He pranced around the table making a condescending face, lips puckered, eyes wide. “Woo-hoo-hoo. Look at you, all yelling and hollering and screaming and such. Look, I don’t know where she is. I’m not the one to talk to about all that. I mean, I like the girl. She’s a banging little piece, ain’t she? Hotter than Ae’ahm and Wi’ahr on a colliding course. I hope she’s okay, I truly, truly do. In the mean time, you and me get to go around and around the ransom hole.”
“What?” Ben said, ludicrously.
“You don’t know what a ransom hole is?”
“No.”
Rogan stopped on his feet, gave him a dumb look. “It’s like a ransom.”
“Rogan, what’re you talking about?”
“C’mon, man! It’s a ransom. It’s like a ransom, you know?”
“Maybe it would help if you gave me some context.”
Rogan said, “Huh?”
Ben groaned, rolled his eyes and said, “You said ransom hole. What does any of this have to do with a ransom, or a hole?”
“You’re trying to confuse me.”
“I’m not trying to confuse you, Rogan. You’re just confused.”
Rogan smacked the table making a metal whop! And yelled, “Stop trying to confuse me!”
Ben yelled back, “I’m going to try to kill you.”
“Hey!” Rogan rebuked hotly, started pacing around again, “you’re the one that left me down there fighting it out with these wart scums.” He started reliving the moment comically as if watching Ben blast off in his jumpsuit—“Oh yeah—look, there goes Ben in his jumpsuit with my cargo, my yield. And what about me? How about some help, eh? But no! Instead it was, bye bye, Rogan. Have a nice fight, Rogan. Thanks a lot—BEN!” He looked back at Ben, suddenly grinning, “But surprise, surprise. Things didn’t turn out the way you thought they did, did they?”
Ben laid his head back and said with a sigh, “I don’t know, Rogan. I hadn’t really given it much thought.”
“Oh, very funny. Well let me tell you. I guess you could say me and the Faction came to a happy sort of ending. But only sort of. Look what they did to me.” He flipped up the eye patch and pointed at the wound wildly. It was just a hole with a flappy eyelid covering it. “You think this tickled? Hells no. This hurt like a Molosian wasp, only worser. Now I’m going to have to grow me a new eyeball, soon as I get the yield. A new eyeball!” he exploded flipping the patch back down. “You think I like doing business with these mac wads?”
“What did you call them?”
“Mac wads.”
“No. Before that.”
“Wart scums?”
“No, not that, you moron.” He thought a second. “You said—Faction?”
“Oh yeah—Faction. That’s what they call themselves.”
“Are they your new friends now?”
“Well, they like me a lot more than they like you, pal. And thank Ae’ahm for that. I’d be dead otherwise. Yeah—maybe I don’t have any friends, but damn, your enemies are some surefire flip tards.”
Ben scrunched his face absorbing his testimony and said, “Flip tard?”
“Yeah!” Rogan yelled. “As in flip. Tard. Got it?” He paced again, “You’ll see. They’re going to do this to you too, only worser. And I’m going to sit and watch, knowing every groan and every scream is because of me. Oh, I’m going to embellish in it.”
“Relish,” he corrected.
“What?”
“Relish in it! Gods…”
“Oh, you’re so smart,” Rogan chided him. “The real smart one. Look who’s got the brains. Yeah, only look who’s also strapped to a dimpler table. Man, they’re going to dimple you all over. Dimple dimple dimple.” He poked him with a finger. Ben found it particularly infuriating.
A thought snapped Ben back. He said, “Your doing.”
“Huh?”
“You said this was your doing.”
“Yeah,” Rogan said, “and it is.”
“No it’s not,” Ben argued. “You didn’t do this. You didn’t bring me here. This was a job, a contract. I was contracted to deliver water. The only other person who knew I was coming was …” his expression melted, eyes went wide. He said, “Sympto.”
“Sympto!” Rogan cried, flapping his lips. “Sympto didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“How did you know I was going to be here, then?” Ben asked.
“Huh?”
“How. Did you know. I. Was going. To be here?”
“Oh, uh—I just figured it out.”
“You figured it out.”
“Yeah, simple as that.”
“You can’t even figure out insults, Rogan.”
“Yeah, I can.”
“No, you really can’t, actually.”
“Yeah, I can!” he barked, feelings hurt.
“Did Sympto put you up to this?”
“No.”
“He had to have.”
