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

blue robot to escort me to the bunker, I would have no chance of getting away. The robot was bigger than me and faster. And the remote control I needed to rescue Floyd from his imprisonment inside Big Blue was currently in Danny’s workshop. But it seemed that the Colonel liked to keep his new pet close to him. Casey summoned two men in from the entrance hall to escort me away.

The bigger of the two men had an impressive red beard and wore a tan corduroy vest over a red plaid shirt. It wasn’t a combination I’d have been brave enough to attempt. The second man was more your low-browed, crew cut rent-a-thug.

Rent-a-thug jerked my arms behind me and handcuffed my wrists. He passed the key to red beard who stuffed it into his vest pocket.

“Lock him in one of the empty bunk rooms,” Casey said.

Red beard nodded and led me out. I didn’t get the front door treatment this time. They took me down a narrow corridor and out through the back of the house.

The Colonel’s back garden still looked like a military encampment. Men bustled about between the tents and huts, doing whatever soldiers do when they are preparing for a military campaign. It looked like overkill if all the Colonel wanted to do was take back control of Cicada City. Maybe his hometown was just the first step and he intended to invade neighbouring towns later. Or perhaps he was just paranoid, afraid that invaders – human or alien – would try and conquer this worthless, squit-hole planet. Men like Colonel Hodge often referred to the threat posed by Ravagers, the land pirates who controlled the Badlands, but I had seen little evidence that these bandits posed any real threat to desert towns. Military men always seem to exaggerate potential threats to justify their demands for more and bigger guns.

Among the vehicles on the other side of the compound, I could see the truck that had carried the robots from the freighter. The container was on the back of it, but I couldn’t tell whether or not the robots were inside. If they were there, destroying the container would be the ideal way of solving the robot army problem. I squinted, trying to see if Harmony’s explosives were still attached to the container. I couldn’t see any sign of them. They had probably been found and removed when the container had been taken off the freighter. Pity.

If I couldn’t destroy the robots, Plan B had to be an attempt to delay the Colonel’s operations somehow. Even a twenty-four-hour delay should be enough time to allow the ACID Interceptor to arrive and deal with the robot army. But before I could attempt either Plan A or Plan B, I had to free Floyd. I wanted my robot back.

To reactivate the link between Floyd and the big blue robot, I needed to get the remote control from Danny’s shop. Without the remote, I would have to power-down the robot, open it up, and manually reconnect robot to artificial sentience. I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to get close enough for long enough to do this. When all this was over, I would upgrade the robot-Floyd link – make it so that it could be reactivated by speaking a code-phrase. For the moment, I had to concentrate my efforts on escaping and getting back to town.

I slowed down and staggered a little. The guy with the red beard shoved me in the middle of the back with a meaty hand and I staggered even more.

“Keep moving.”

“Feel dizzy,” I said. “Must have been the blow to the head.”

My two guards hadn’t been in the Colonel’s study so had no idea whether or not I had been hit. They didn’t seem surprised when I said I’d been whacked on the head. I staggered again and this time I stopped dead and fell backwards, bumping into red beard. He shoved me away from him, but not before I’d dipped my fingers into his vest pocket and lifted the key to the handcuffs.

The entrance to the concrete bunker looked dark like a cave. Once I was locked in there, my chances of escaping would be a lot less. I had to make my move now, while we were still out in the open. Even here the odds weren’t great. I was surrounded on all sides by military men with military equipment. If I managed to avoid them, I’d still have to tackle the twin lines of chain-link fence and the attack dogs that were loose between them. Stealing a vehicle was probably my best bet. Before I could do that, I’d have to ditch my chaperones and get the handcuffs off.

Fate often intervenes in our lives. Usually, she’ll trip us up or throw tacks under out wheels, but occasionally she’ll offer some small boon. Or in this case, boom. It was a very small explosion – little more than a flash and a puff of smoke under one of the vehicles. Flames licked out from under it. There were shouts and people hurried forward with fire extinguishers. I didn’t wait to see if they doused the fire successfully. I had to take advantage of the opportunity I had been given.

I turned and headbutted the man with the red beard, stunning him – and very nearly stunning myself. At almost the same time, I had the key in the lock to unfasten the handcuffs. I reached forward quickly, plucking red beard’s gun from his holster. Someone hit me from behind and the world went dark.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Chained up in a cell – this was always destined to be your fate, I think,” the Colonel said.

“My father would probably agree with you.”

“I’m disappointed in you Quincy.”

“You sound a lot like him too.”

I was in a dimly lit concrete room. Deep underground, I suspected. Underground no one can hear you scream. There were some tables of equipment off to one side of the room, but