Kestrel Run Read online

  Her scowl deepened. She clearly did not like the situation. Gorm had somehow misled her and she was not happy about it.

  “You’re just gonna turn me down flat without even hearing my proposition, old buddy? Voided shame if you ask me.” Gorm leaned back and propped his feet up on the table between them, clearly at ease with himself.

  “And why is that? I see you’re running with a new crowd now.” Glancing at the two shirtless mercs that had vice grips on his shoulders, Phaser shot, “What does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?”

  Gorm flashed a smile full of teeth capped with white gold. “Well, you heard the man. Get Mr. Madsen a drink.”

  “I prefer Captain Madsen,” Phaser added as the mercs swept past him to get drinks.

  “If I’m not much mistaken, captain is a title reserved for people who own a starship.”

  “And what do you call the Iridium Fox?”

  “Oh? My sources must be wrong. I was under the impression that you were just a petty smuggler without a credit to your name. In fact, I hear tell that you owe some rather unsavory men a fair amount of credits for a botched job.”

  “I just hit a few bumps in the road is all. I’ll be back on my feet soon.”

  “I hear those bumps are rather large—five figures kind of large.”

  Phaser didn’t like the sound of that. He stared at Gorm as calmly as he could as drinks were placed between them. Any kind of leverage he might have been able to use against Gorm was disappearing rapidly, and he wasn’t enjoying being wedged between a rock and a hard place. Bash was right. He really couldn’t afford to not take the job, but Phaser knew the kind of man Gorm was and he didn’t like it. Something about the whole situation was starting to stink and it wasn’t just the massive unwashed merc standing beside him.

  Speaking of the merc, that worried Phaser. Gorm had his own band of merry head-knockers. The mercenaries’ presence didn’t bode well for Phaser. The whole thing reeked of a lot of credits, and big money meant bigger trouble. Trouble Phaser couldn’t afford.

  Gorm drained the green liquid from his drink in a swallow and then rubbed his palms together. “All right then. Let’s talk business. You need cash, and I need a smuggler. Someone fast who I can trust won’t narc me out to the first Cooperative police cruiser that comes their way. Someone who can make the Kestrel Run in 1,000 megameters.”

  Phaser nearly choked on his drink. “Beat the distance record? That’s nearly impossible,” Phaser said.

  Gorm flashed a wicked smile. “Yep. Win the race and you’ll have enough money to pay off your ship. I’ve even taken the liberty of having a fake ID tag created so you won’t have any run-ins with the Cooperative.”

  Enough credits to pay off the Fox. The money involved in this whole deal kept getting bigger and bigger. Phaser glanced at the purple-eyed girl. She glared back with a sour expression. “That’s it? I just have to run a race? Don’t get me wrong, I know how dangerous that sector is, but I know you, Gorm. What are you not telling me? What’s in it for your friends?”

  Gorm’s smile melted into a smirk. He clicked his fingers. Four Doodmaak mercs disappeared behind a curtain and reappeared lugging a titanium crate between them. They lugged it to Gorm’s table and dropped it with a thunk. They bowed sycophantically and skulked back to the group surrounding Phaser and Gorm.

  “What’s that?” Phaser asked. He had the feeling that he wouldn’t like the answer.

  Gorm leaned forward. “That’s need-to-know, and you don’t. Deliver this quietly to a client of mine who will make himself known to you at the Kestrel Base, and you fly away with your precious Fox free and clear.”

  Nothing was ever that simple when it came to Gorm. Phaser needed to buy some time to figure things out. “I’ll need to confirm with my second before I can authorize any transportation of shipment.”

  “You don’t need to check with Bash. You’ll do this job for me, Phaser,” Gorm snarled, his face darkening again, “or your mutant kangaroo will be the proud new owner of the Iridium Fox courtesy of the recently departed Phaser Madsen. I’m sure he’ll be happy to do the job for me.”

  “How about you take your giant mystery box and shove it where the sun don’t shine?” Phaser growled, his temper boiling to the surface. “There’s no way I’m making a run for murdering scum like the Doodmaak. I’m done. I’m out. I’m going straight from here on out.”

  The atmosphere in the room thickened. Gorm and Phaser locked eyes, neither willing to look away.

  “Going straight?” Gorm said, his voice low and even. “I don’t think you understand that once you’re in this business, there’s no getting out. You will—what are you looking at?”

  A flashing red light had drawn Phaser’s attention to one of his cuffs. It blinked a repeating pattern—old Morse code for “Look out below.” It took a moment for Phaser to work out the message’s meaning. He glanced up to see a bright red line forming a circle on the ceiling. Panicking, Phaser threw himself on the floor and crawled under the table just in time.

  Gorm and the mercs weren’t so lucky. A section of ceiling twenty meters across crashed down, bringing Bash in with it. The Metatherian’s green eyes blazed with fury. He boomed out a hearty, yeehaw, before drawing two electro burst shotguns from the pouch on his belly and began spraying jets of compressed energy in all directions.

  “Run, Phaser! I’m right behind you,” he shouted.

  Phaser barely heard him over the sound of breaking glass and exploding bursts of laser fire returned by the mercs. Still, Phaser ran for the curtained exit. On his way out, he clotheslined a merc who had been hiding in the corner. Phaser reached for his blaster as he ran. Empty. His holster was empty. He slid to a stop. He had forgotten they had disarmed him while he’d been out cold.

  “My blaster!” he yelled at Bash.

  “Leave it!” his co-pilot said, unleashing a torrent of fire at a grouping of mercs taking cover behind the bar.

  “I can’t. It’s important.”

  “It’s a piece of junk.”

  Phaser swept his eyes around the room. His blaster had to be around here somewhere. His eyes locked on Gorm’s. The man stood to the side, unafraid of the laser fire going off all around him.

  “I’ll buy you another one,” Bash said, bouncing around the room to avoid the return fire.

  “You can’t; it’s vintage!”

  Bash yelled something highly inappropriate back at him.

  Phaser grunted in anger and turned to run. He found a door that led out of the bar and burst through. He swung his head around until he spotted the PPT pods outside the bar. He reached them just ahead of Bash. Phaser frantically pummeled the button to call the pod up as Bash joined him.

  “About time you showed up,” said Phaser, gasping.

  “A thank you might be nice,” Bash snarled. “I didn’t see you doing any better when you were making goo-goo eyes with Señorita Psychopath at the bar. Or was that part of your plan, too?”

  A pod shuddered to a halt in front of them and they dove inside. Phaser smashed the first button he could reach to get the pod moving. Just as the doors sealed shut, Gorm and the mercs burst out of the bar. Phaser and Bash waved at them through the transparent doors. Phaser locked eyes with Gorm and grinned smugly. He nearly lost his balance when the pod shot up.

  Just before the mercs disappeared from view, Phaser watched Gorm motion for the mercs to follow him and step forward. Yellow liquid exploded onto the black floor of the Cantina, and the thugs all slipped in one wild motion. Bash doubled over and laughed, his ears flattening against his head as his body twitched.

  “What’s so funny?” Phaser asked.

  “Remember those 100-year-old eggs I picked up that one time?”

  “Yeah, it took a week to get the stink out of the ship. Why?”

  “I told you I was going to eat them.” He cast a mischievous grin at Phaser and pointed out the window at the platform falling away from them.

  Phaser stared at a billowing cloud of yellow smoke engulfing the group of mercs. “You weaponized it?”

  “Yeah,” Bash croaked through laughter.

  “It’s gotta smell horrible.”

  “Yeah!”

  Phaser joined in the laughter.

  It took some redirecting of the pod to get them moving in the right direction. When it deposited them on the bay where the Iridium Fox was anchored, they were immediately accosted by a frantic TC-99.

  “Sir!” the droid called, hurrying down the Fox’s loading ramp.

  “Not now, TC,” Phaser said, intent on getting on the ship and away from the outpost as quickly as possible.

  “Sir, I’ve been trying to hail you on comms for the last hour.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Phaser said, slowing at the bottom of the ramp. “Why didn’t you hail Bash?”

  The droid’s bright blue eyes flicked to Phaser’s co-pilot. “I didn’t think—”

  “Do you ever?” Bash growled.

  “Sir,” TC-99 said, ignoring the jab, “you should know that—”

  “Now’s not the time,” Phaser interrupted. “We need to get out of here.”

  “But, sir. We can’t.”

  “Nonsense.” He turned to Bash. “Get the Fox fired up. I want to be out of this sector before Gorm figures out where we’re parked.”

  Bash nodded and hurried past the droid, muttering something about crossed circuits. Phaser stepped off the ramp to make a quick inspection of the ship before takeoff.

  “Sir!” TC-99 said again, raising her electronic voice.

  Phaser stopped mid-step. “What?”

  The droid held out a comm-tab to Phaser. He hesitantly took it from her, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. He thumbed the tablet to life. Bright red words appeare
d on the screen.

  Phaser could only comprehend the bold letters at the top. “NOTICE OF REPOSSESSION.” There was more legal junk underneath, but those words blurred to a mess on the screen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he yelled.

  A moment later, Bash reappeared at the top of the ramp, blasters in both hands. “Where are they?”

  When he saw Phaser standing dumbstruck, he moved to read the tablet over his shoulder. He laughed. Phaser had a strong desire to pitch him over the railings to the level below.

  “What are you laughing at?” Phaser asked.

  “Yes,” TC-99 said, still sounding flustered. “My system fails to calculate any scenario in which this could be considered a joke.”

  “Forget this,” he snarled, and swiped the repossession notice off the screen. He glared at Bash. “What are you doing down here? You’re supposed to be getting the Fox ready for takeoff.”

  The Metatherian narrowed his eyes at Phaser, but TC-99 interrupted before he could say anything.

  “But, sir.”

  “If you say that one more time . . .”

  “The Fox has been disabled.”

  Phaser stared at her, his mouth hanging open. “It’s what?” he finally managed.

  “No way.” Bash hopped up the ramp and disappeared inside. A moment later, he reappeared. “She’s right. We’re locked out.”

  “That’s what I was trying to say,” TC-99 said. “As per the terms spelled out in section ten, paragraph four of the repossession notice—”

  Bash broke out in laughter, though there wasn’t any mirth in it. “Well, it looks like we’ve got to take Gorm’s job after all. Unless you’ve got another ship I don’t know about?”

  Phaser’s wristcom beeped again. It was Gorm, looking a little yellow and sick with rage. Before Gorm could say a word, Phaser, Bash, and TC-99 all responded as if they’d rehearsed ahead of time.

  “We’ll take it.”

  Chapter 2: Press the Red Button in Case of Emergency

  The Iridium Fox was ugly. Phaser knew that, but he had built it himself from bits and pieces he had salvaged from a scrapyard. Sure, it probably could use a little more TLC than Phaser had time to give it. Luck was not an often-used engineering procedure, but the Fox hummed like the well-oiled machine it was—usually. More importantly, it was his—almost.

  The Iridium Fox was an oddly misshapen ship resembling a dragonfly, with the cockpit at the front and twin cold fusion ramjet reactors on both stubby wings. To add more power to the ship, Phaser had mounted another set of ramjets on the skinny, finlike rear.

  While Phaser could take a friendly insult or two, he certainly wasn’t about to let anyone talk bad about his Iridium Fox. Especially not a know-it-all accounting droid, a used droid salesman would have trouble selling.

  “You had one job, TC. Guard the Fox,” he insisted, waving the comm-tab. “Make sure nobody broke into her systems. I specifically left you behind to do that just in case something like this happened.”

  TC-99 crossed her metal arms with a clank. “My programming is accounting—”

  “I repurposed you,” Phaser said.

  “—not very skillfully,” TC-99 added.

  “Hey, I did the best I could with what the Cooperative had cobbled together.”

  TC-99 remained silent, her glowing blue eyes staring holes into Phaser.

  “I mean, your parts are solid, but their programming was a little screwy,” Phaser said. “I just had to fix—”

  “Your hole is getting deeper,” TC-99 warned. “My programming is accounting, not babysitting this foul-smelling pile of spare parts.”

  “You don’t have the sensors necessary for scent,” Bash said.

  “You’re not helping,” Phaser ground through his teeth.

  “But you’re not wrong about the smell in here,” Bash muttered under his breath.

  TC-99 huffed and initiated sleep mode. The blue lights in her eyes dimmed and she went still.

  Phaser growled in frustration. “That’s not helping either.” When TC-99 didn’t reply, he added, “I know you can hear me. I need you to figure out how to get the lock off the Fox while we deal with Gorm. If we play this right, we can still figure out a way to actually twist all of this to our favor.”

  TC-99 powered up and after a moment of glaring at Phaser, she stormed up to her nav tower.

  “I told you we should have just taken the job,” Bash said. “We both know you needed the credits to pay for the loans you took out to cobble this hunk of junk together.”

  Phaser ignored him and stormed to the bottom of the Fox’s ramp to wait for Gorm.

  With his head full of dreams of being a pilot, he had run away from home at an early age and spent the majority of his life gathering pieces of ships from a scrapyard nobody else would touch. He thought the parts should have been free, but nothing in this galaxy was. He had racked up a large debt buying the parts he needed. Thus far, he had avoided most of the creditors, but it looked like they had finally caught up to him. He was pretty sure it was with Gorm’s help. The man knew he was coming to the outpost. He also knew how to get to Phaser.

  Phaser had also built a false reverse reactor under the hull of the ship, which he used to store and smuggle cargo for his clients. Since the Iridium Fox was composed of parts from a Cooperative Naval Cruiser, it also had access to the Tactum sub-space communications link, which was both a blessing and curse for Phaser. A blessing because of the wealth of galaxy-wide information it contained and a curse because Phaser had had to take out more hefty loans to pay for the permits required to build his ship and connect it to the Tactum.

  Phaser looked up from his ruminations to see Gorm and the lot manager exiting the booth in the far corner of the lot. Gorm’s white outfit looked as crisp and clean as ever, the nauseous, yellow tint to his skin gone. Gorm had a wicked grin plastered on his face. Phaser’s hope that TC-99 would find a way to unlock the Fox before having to make a deal with the devil were truly and firmly dashed.

  “Well, your rear ends officially belong to me, and your ship is free to leave. You’ll get the deed when I get the winnings. That’s our deal. You can keep your souls, for now.” Gorm looked at Bash and Phaser standing on the loading gate to the Fox and held his arms out to the side like he had just performed a miracle.

  “Oh wait, is this the part where we kneel down and grovel at your feet? I think I saw that in a superhero movie once.” Phaser smiled, but it quickly turned into a grimace. “Only you’re not a hero, and I sure as heck don’t plan on rolling around at your feet.”

  Gorm frowned. “Someday we’re going to meet on a day when I don’t appreciate your sarcasm so much. You mark my words.”

  “I’m writing them down as we speak.” Phaser scoffed, then shouted up through the loading gate of the ship, “TC, did you get that recorded? Gorm says to mark his words.”

  TC-99 emerged from the Fox. “I have recorded the conversation, sir, but I am unsure as to what end and purpose.”

  “See, Gorm? Even TC can’t find any purpose in listening to you.”

  “Big talk for an unarmed man. Don’t you think?” Gorm glowered at them, then unbuttoned his jacket, removed Phaser’s blaster from a holster at his side, and tossed it onto the end of the loading gate. “I’m not sure why you carry around that worthless hunk of metal.”

  Phaser had to place a hand on Bash’s shoulder to stop him from doing anything stupid. Bash’s paws were in his pouch, gripping what Phaser guessed was the handle of a weapon. When Bash relaxed slightly, Phaser let go of him and jogged down to grab his pistol. He stuffed it firmly back into its holster.

  “We still need to pick up a few supplies,” he told Gorm. “Once we’re all set, we’ll meet your people at the loading docks to pick up the cargo. If we run into any Cooperative resistance at the docks, our deal is off. We can take care of ourselves once we’re off the Outpost, but until then we’re counting on your people to keep things quiet.”

  Gorm’s eyes were expressionless and cold. “Understood.” He nodded slightly, then turned to leave. He hesitated for a moment, foot in midmotion. “Oh, and Madsen, one more thing. Once you’re in the Kestrel Run, do not turn back. No matter what.”

  “Or what?” Phaser shouted at Gorm’s back.

  Gorm made no reply as he and the lot manager walked away.