A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) by Paul Tomlinson (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) 📕

I wasn’t his type. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was really nothing to say. I shot him in the chest with the zap gun and he slumped forward. I bound him with duct tape and got out of there, locking the door behind me.

“Any problem?” Harmony asked as I re-joined her.

“No, I caught him with his pants down.”

“I regret not volunteering. Did you get an eyeful?”

“He hadn’t quite reached that stage. And you weren’t his type either.”

“He’s not going to wake up and cause trouble, is he?”

“I bound him with duct tape.”

“Kinky.”

“One down, three to go,” I said.

“How long have we got?”

I glanced at my watch. “My guess is about ten minutes per man.”

“Speed dating, huh? Not really my thing.”

“We could wait for another one of them to wander back this way,” I said. “But I don’t think we have time for that. We may have to rush the cockpit.”

“That corridor’s very narrow,” she said, “we’d have to go in one at a time.”

“One high one low?” I suggested.

“I’m on top,” she said.

“That sounds familiar.”

“Might be safer to divide and conquer,” she said.

“How?”

“Make some noise back here to draw their attention. If one or two of them come into the hold, we pick them off. Then we can just hold a gun to the pilot’s head and tell him our new landing spot.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, nodding. “What sort of noise did you have in mind?”

Harmony opened her mouth and screamed. It was louder than anything I’d heard in the jungle – and I’d heard a dragon shriek.

Running feet. Two of the mercenaries coming down the corridor towards us, one behind the other.

“I’ll take the first one,” Harmony said. I had to read her lips because the scream had made me deaf. I hoped it was temporary.

We took up positions on either side of the doorway. We wouldn’t be visible until the mercenaries reached the hold. I checked to see that Harmony was holding a zap gun and not her revolver. She saw me look and winked. She probably had the zap turned up high, but the mercenary was a big, fit guy so would survive it with only minor burns. I hoped.

I waited for her to fire, concentrating my attention on what I had to do after that. When the shot didn’t come I flicked her a sideways glance. A problem with her gun. No time to think about it. The first mercenary was already through the door into the hold. I fired, hitting him in the chest, and he went down. The second man was startled by this, but his reactions were good. His gun was halfway out of his holster when he came through the door. Something hit him between the eyes and he staggered. Harmony had thrown her useless zap gun at him. Its charge spent, mine was also no good now, so I bounced it off the man’s skull. He went down on one knee. His eyes rolled up until only the whites showed and he pitched forward onto his face.

“Sorry about that,” Harmony said.

I shrugged. “If you don’t keep them topped up, the charge leaks away,” I said.

“I don’t use mine much,” she admitted.

We stood blinking, waiting for the afterimages of the lightning bolt to fade from our eyes.

“Shall I do the honours?” Harmony said, taking my roll of duct tape.

“I’ll watch for Casey,” I said.

Flying this low to the ground, I doubted he’d flip on the autopilot, but you never knew. Some people trust their computers more than others.

“It’s a while since I did this,” Harmony said, finishing up with the tape.

“Don’t get any ideas,” I said. “That stuff hurts when you rip it off.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

“Stay here and set the explosives around the container,” I said.

I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen next. We might end up destroying the freighter and have to abandon ship. I dragged the three comatose mercenaries and stuffed them into one of the escape pods. I hit the eject button. The pod’s parachutes would ensure it didn’t smack into the desert too hard. I hoped. At least I had removed the risk of Harmony shooting them when I wasn’t looking.

“I’m going up front to have a chat with our pilot,” I said.

“Tell Casey I said ‘hi’.”

Casey was giving his full attention to flying the freighter, keeping it low and trying to avoid the rocks that stuck up out of the sand. I didn’t really want to distract him. He didn’t turn when I entered the cockpit, but he knew I was there.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“You’re the turd that just won’t flush, aren’t you, Quincy?” Casey said.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“No one but you wears that awful cologne.”

“It was a present.”

“From one of the exes that hates you?”

“You can see my reflection in the window,” I said.

All sorts of warning and proximity detectors were flashing and beeping on the instruments in front of Casey. It is a really bad idea to fly a ship that big so close to the ground. And it takes a damn good pilot to pull it off. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder.

“Your mercenaries won’t be coming back,” I said. “They got a better offer and jumped ship.”

“You mean it’s now down to you and me?” he said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“You’re fibbing again. You have an accomplice with you. And so do I. He’s right behind you.”

“I’m not falling for that old...”

I felt something cold and large calibre pressed against my skull behind my left ear. For one horrible moment, I thought it was Harmony. But when I looked at the reflection in the cockpit window, I could see that it was one of the Colonel’s robots standing behind me.

“You should always have a back-up plan, Quincy. Don’t you know that?”

I let my gun fall to the deck. I glanced behind me, looking back down the corridor. How many of the robots had been activated?

“If you’re worried about