The Space Mavericks by Michael Kring

Author:Michael Kring [Kring, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

8

“Will you turn that thing off?” Kohn asked.

I turned with a jerk and touched the button that snapped off the speaker. The police had been threatening us for two days, and each day, the threats had been more brutal and explicit. We had ignored them, or course. Renate had been alarmed, at first, when she had heard about the threats, certain the police would swarm over us and take us by force. Knowing the jungle as well as I did, I sincerely doubted they could send any force into that mess. It was a dangerous place, even for me. They couldn’t take off and land in the clearing with us, or hover over us, because if they tried that, we’d blast them out of the sky. We’d have to: there wasn’t enough room in the clearing.

They had made a flight over us the day I had come back from the ruins, but it was just to see where we were. They had gone back to their clearing, and threatened again. They weren’t very brave, that was certain. They were out of their element, which didn’t help their morale, either. I was just as happy about any of their misfortunes. I still couldn’t forgive them for firing that torpedo in Warp.

“Does it check out?” I asked.

Kohn fed data into the main comp, and it was testing the new interface with the monitor comp of the Warp engines. He shook his head a little and pressed off. The countless numbers on the screen blinked off without a sound.

“It’s close,” he said. He shrugged. “I think it’ll work, for a time. We’ll have to try it.”

“I don’t want to stay around here any longer than I have to,” I said. I picked up the check comp and went through my checks quickly. It bleeped at me as it verified everything was ready for flight.

“How are we going to handle the Customs Agent on Shadow?” I asked as I put the tiny check comp in its slot near the base of my chair.

“Don’t worry about it,” he answered.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “We don’t have a thing to bribe him with, except this ring, and it won’t come off!”

“We won’t have to worry about bribes,” Kohn explained. He looked at me, glanced over his shoulder in case Renate was near, then he looked at me. “It’s a Runner World.”

“A Runner World?” I gasped. “What? But . . . damn! Why in the Seven Hells did you take that cargo?!”

“It was either that, or nothing,” he said. “Runner Worlds aren’t really that bad, you know!”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “They’re not that bad. They’re worse! You know how it was on Savior!”

“This isn’t Savior,” he said softly. “Keep your voice down. I don’t know if Renate has heard about Runner Worlds before.”

“How do you intend to explain it to her?” I asked. “After all, it will seem pretty suspicious to their dirty little minds that we have a young, beautiful girl on board with a nasty bruise on her cheek.

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