The scene shifts to Hidegar about a 150 hour journey from Sandstone
where Loptr and Garm are waiting while the Farbauti gets some needed
maintenance...
Hidegar -- a Trade World and one of the more sophisticated of the
group. While it's technology isn't quite at the level of the CCW,
Federation or Kronos League, it's still a busy and popular
interstellar port. It's also the home to the Mercenary Guild, where
operators from the Trades, Federation and the League all converge.
It's starport is large, taking up the acreage of two, modern,
international airports.
"Get down from there!" called the armored guard. The soldier waved
trying attract the onlooker's attention.
Loptr puffed on his cigar, blowing out a good-sized cloud of smoke.
Pretending not to hear the trooper, he smiled and waved back. The
mercenary was standing some 50 feet above, on a catwalk overlooking
a freight hangar at Hidegar's starport. Loptr's ship, the Farbauti,
was a half-dozen bays away, getting a look-see by a local ground-
crew. Loptr had picked up a cargo on Sandstone and headed straight
for Hidegar, to dump it. Once business was finished here they'd stop
at the Mercenary Guild and hire some muscle. Garm, the pilot, was
keeping an eye on the ground-crew as they futtered about the ship.
Loptr, bored after the space flight, had decided to take a walk,
have a smoke and watch one of the nearby freighters unload. The
doors had been locked, but this was no obstacle for the Temporal
Warrior.
"Get down," the trooper shouted, then waved.
Loptr waved back.
The trooper grew more animated, so Loptr spit.
"This is E9, what's going on out there sergeant?" a broadcast came
through on the sergeant's helmet. It was the troop commander inside
the hangar's modular office.
"Some jerk up on the catwalk's watching us unload, sir."
"You know company policy. No one allowed in the unloading area. Get
him out of there sergeant," the comlink went dead.
The sergeant radioed two of his men, giving them orders to secure
the overhead area.
* * * * *
Out of the corner of his eye, Loptr spotted the service elevator
with the two troopers when it hit the catwalk level. Both carried
their plasma carbines non-chalantly, so Loptr remained in place.
"You must leave this area immediately," came the voice through the
helm's external speaker as the pair approached him.
"Really?" said Loptr, "Why?" One of the troopers stepped behind him.
"None of your business. Now move it," the man thumped him in the
chest with the barrel. Loptr thought back to Sandstone and the port
bar. The odds were much better here. He shrugged, dropped his cigar
butt off the catwalk, then slapped aside the weapon's barrel,
locking the man's weapon hand in a hand-lock. Using his weight he
swung the trooper around then spoke the incantation to his Time Slip
spell.
By the time the pair realized Loptr was behind them, the Temporal
Warrior had already chopped the legs out from under the trooper
nearest him. The man's weapon discharged, striking the other trooper
in the throat. The unfortunate victim staggered, then toppled
backwards over the rail. Stunned at the sight of his falling
partner, Loptr easily wrestled the weapon from his grip, and body
slammed the man into one of the support beams. The Temporal Warrior
drew his own blaster...
* * * * *
"Crap!" screamed the sergeant, diving aside as the armored form of
one of his men plummeted down on him. Four other soldiers turned
when their armored comrade hit the ground with a sickening thud. On
the catwalk above, came the discharge of an energy weapon. The
outsider was the only one standing.
Pulling himself off the ground the sergeant barked for his men to
fire. They raised their weapons at the figure on the catwalk and
opened fire.
* * * * *
Loptr dropped into a crouch. The net-like pattern of the durasteel
catwalk allowed his opponents on the ground to see him, but still
provided an fair amount of protection, as the area around Loptr
erupted in a storm of energy bolts.
The trooper he'd hit with his point-blank shot was laying on his
back, and Loptr doubted that the men below would appreciate the fact
that his weapon was on the "stun" setting, especially since one of
their number was now laying on the hangar floor with a smoking hole
in him.
Loptr hit his wrist comm and tapped out a preset signal to Garm,
hoping tall, dark and shaggy has his comset turned on. Another
flurry of energy bolts struck the catwalk, so Loptr quickly hopped
over the unconscious trooper and rolled him against the rail as a
shield, halting the weapons-fire momentarily.
Loptr's mind went to work on an escape plan, since he had observed
at least a dozen armored men as part of the freighter's troop
detail.
* * * * *
Garm was under the Farbauti watching the groundcrew work on the
starboard landing strut's hydraulics, when his wrist comm beeped
several times. It was a prearranged signal and he was off
immediately, his mind following a single-thread: help Loptr.
He'd been so tuned to this thought, that he left the blaster Emerson
had given him inside the starship. He hadn't attuned the device to
himself yet.
Garm bolted out to the accessway, spotting a group of armored men
down the street, far to his left. He took off at a run, wrapping one
of his a huge, clawed hands around the hilt of the vibro-knife on
his belt.
* * * * *
Loptr could hear the service elevator as it groaned to life. Using
the unconscious soldier as a shield was a temporary victory. Once
the others came up, he'd be a sitting duck. He turned the other way,
noticing a cross-beam on the ceiling, about twenty paces down. It
looked close enough for him to jump from the catwalk's railing up to
it, then he could make his way to the roof and to safety.
A whirring noise interrupted his thoughts. It was the elevator,
heading up, no doubt filled with troopers. They'd be on the catwalk
level in moments. Setting his weapon to normal fire mode. He waited
until the elevator stopped, then fired a trio of shots to keep the
soldiers back, before dashing forward until he was under the
cross-beam.
* * * * *
As Garm finished his Dimensional Leap, he encountered a squad of
four troopers, no doubt what Loptr had signalled him about. Two were
already past him as he drew near. Since they weren't paying
attention to him, he was able to corral the last pair with a flying
tackle. The two skidded backwards along the floor and Garm tumbled
forward, dispatching both with a pair of blasts from the Phase
Beamer that suddenly materialized out of thin air, before either
could react.
The other two were calling the elevator down. One of them noticed
Garm, raised his carbine, aimed and fired.
Garm's adrenaline was already pumping and his mind was in high gear,
he avoided the attack with a Dimensional Leap.
He materialized behind a storage locker, however his giant 9-foot
frame was partially visible. Luckily the locker conveniently
shielded him from another volley of energy blasts.
Pausing momentarily, Garm realized the locker was next to a vertical
support beam. He placed his Phase Beamer inside one of the
Dimensional Pockets Loptr had conjured for him, grasped the thick beam
in his huge arms and climbed.
* * * * *
A sleek starship bearing the Federation Patrol's seal, a cluster of
eight silver stars on a white shield, dropped through the
atmosphere, touching down at Hidegar's eastern landing pod. After
identifying themselves to port control, they were relayed the pad
number of the Farbauti's berth.
Since Hidegar wasn't a Federation system, Furcas's Patrolship didn't
have the authority to set down next to the fugitive ship, instead
the Patrolman and his squad of six men had to hop from the eastern
landing pod to the area where the Farbauti was docked via their
open-topped, contragrav sled.
While the Patrol ship's personality simulator requested additional
assistance from the port authority, Furcas and his six men were
zipping from their landing spot towards their quarry.
With what they knew about these criminals, Furcas's team was armed
to the teeth. Each man wore body armor and carried a gravitic weapon
from the ship's weapons locker, which they already knew was
effective against the opponent on Baxta.
"Coming up on hangar 16," the pilot called into his helmet
microphone. He banked the craft hard to the port then dove straight
down, nosing up slightly to hover at the hangar's entrance, allowing
Furcas and his six Patrolmen to hit the ground running.
Inside the hangar was an small, old freighter. While his men
surrounded the groundcrew, Furcas boarded the open vessel.
* * * * *
Loptr grunted as his fingers caught the crossbeam's edge. His left
hand had slipped off and he hung precariously from the support. He
shifted his weight as best as he could and swung his feet. A pair of
energy bolts crashed into the ceiling so he had no choice but to
move. As his feet came around, he thrust them up and grabbed with
his free hand, catching the other side of the support beam with both
his hands and legs. Grunting, he began shinnying along the girder,
upside-down, chanting softly the words of an incantation.
* * * * *
The two troopers exited the elevator and were shocked to find Garm
waiting there. Using the same technique as during his climb, the
intervening space between the renegade Phase Mystic and his
opponents suddenly shrunk and he wrenched the weapons from their
stunned grasp, before it returned to normal. He dropped the two
weapons at his side and drew his vibro-knife.
Garm's blade slid between the gaps on the first trooper's
chestplate, sinking deeply into the man's armpit. He lashed out with
his leg and sidekicked the other trooper away, releasing the wounded
man. The other trooper retreated towards the elevator. Garm hit him
with a blast from his Phase Beamer and he melted inside the elevator
cage.
The wounded man was up and moving away. Garm's powers made it too
easy to overcome these unworthy opponents. He pocketed his Phase
Beamer, retrieved one of the weapons and pulled the trigger, but the
weapon didn't fire as it was keyed to the trooper's bio-sig.
Cursing, he grasped it in his hands as club and charged, taking out
the wounded soldier and moving on to the two others who were closing
in on Loptr.
* * * * *
Below, the formation of troopers had to disperse as one then another
of their armored compatriots rained down upon them. They regrouped
and resumed firing at the second intruder, that had suddenly
appeared.
Six dead troopers.
His bloodlust momentarily sated, Garm dashed down the catwalk,
climbed the railing and leapt to the girder, the thrust from his
powerful legs allowing him to cover the distance with ease. He was
up and snaking along the girder right behind his friend.
Loptr eased his D-Phased form up and through the roof, slowly. The
acrobatic stunt had taken some toll on him and forced his
concentration while he held his breath during the spell.
Garm's phased, furry head emerged through the ceiling a few seconds
later, vibro-knife clenched in his teeth. He put the knife in its
scabbard and growled at Loptr, who had paused to rest.
Loptr laid back, nodding, "I'm fine," he gasped between lungfuls of
air. "How many did you get?"
An evil smile Garm appeared on Garm's face which unmistakably meant
"All of them."
Loptr winced. They were going to have to leave Hidegar quickly.
The pair waited until Loptr caught his breath, then jogged across
the roof, away from the hangar-front. From this point, six stories
up, they could see the buzz of armed activity around the Farbauti.
"No!" Loptr's voice was almost a growl. Garm wanted to Fast Draw his
CAF Rocket Launcher and take care of the Patrolmen around the
starship. "Those guys down below will be up here quick!"
Growling, the Phase Mystic warped space around the pair and placed
them on the ground, behind the hangar, from where they fled.
* * * * *
It took the local authorities an extra half-hour to contact the
Patrol team due to some other emergency.
By that time, Furcas's men had their run of the Farbauti and had
already bypassed the third-rate security system on the starship's
computer.
"They didn't come here from Shyme, sir," reported the comm-
specialist who'd replaced Jenkins, viewing the ship's log. "They'd
gone directly from Shyme to Sandstone. Then they came here."
"Sandstone?" Furcas wasn't familiar with it, so the specialist
called up the data on his hand-held unit. "Frontier settlement near
the League. Intelligence has nothing on it."
Furcas grunted, "What about crew and passengers?"
"Pilot's someone named Garm, the owner/captain is Loptr, but no one
else this trip. Strictly a cargo run. Hmmm, looks like they had
three passengers last trip. A Mike Fields, Nevin Eaves and Myron
Baynes." It was nothing conclusive.
A Patrolman approached, holding an energy weapon, the one Garm had
left behind. It was the exact duplicate of the one they'd taken off
the dead man from the kidnapping site and the twin to the one on the
bank robbery video. Furcas was very happy.
The Patrolmen got descriptions of Garm and Loptr from the
groundcrew, before the local authorities finally arrived, en-masse.
Apparently they were already searching for a pair of criminals who
fit the descriptions of Furcas's fugitives.
to be continued...
where Loptr and Garm are waiting while the Farbauti gets some needed
maintenance...
Hidegar -- a Trade World and one of the more sophisticated of the
group. While it's technology isn't quite at the level of the CCW,
Federation or Kronos League, it's still a busy and popular
interstellar port. It's also the home to the Mercenary Guild, where
operators from the Trades, Federation and the League all converge.
It's starport is large, taking up the acreage of two, modern,
international airports.
"Get down from there!" called the armored guard. The soldier waved
trying attract the onlooker's attention.
Loptr puffed on his cigar, blowing out a good-sized cloud of smoke.
Pretending not to hear the trooper, he smiled and waved back. The
mercenary was standing some 50 feet above, on a catwalk overlooking
a freight hangar at Hidegar's starport. Loptr's ship, the Farbauti,
was a half-dozen bays away, getting a look-see by a local ground-
crew. Loptr had picked up a cargo on Sandstone and headed straight
for Hidegar, to dump it. Once business was finished here they'd stop
at the Mercenary Guild and hire some muscle. Garm, the pilot, was
keeping an eye on the ground-crew as they futtered about the ship.
Loptr, bored after the space flight, had decided to take a walk,
have a smoke and watch one of the nearby freighters unload. The
doors had been locked, but this was no obstacle for the Temporal
Warrior.
"Get down," the trooper shouted, then waved.
Loptr waved back.
The trooper grew more animated, so Loptr spit.
"This is E9, what's going on out there sergeant?" a broadcast came
through on the sergeant's helmet. It was the troop commander inside
the hangar's modular office.
"Some jerk up on the catwalk's watching us unload, sir."
"You know company policy. No one allowed in the unloading area. Get
him out of there sergeant," the comlink went dead.
The sergeant radioed two of his men, giving them orders to secure
the overhead area.
* * * * *
Out of the corner of his eye, Loptr spotted the service elevator
with the two troopers when it hit the catwalk level. Both carried
their plasma carbines non-chalantly, so Loptr remained in place.
"You must leave this area immediately," came the voice through the
helm's external speaker as the pair approached him.
"Really?" said Loptr, "Why?" One of the troopers stepped behind him.
"None of your business. Now move it," the man thumped him in the
chest with the barrel. Loptr thought back to Sandstone and the port
bar. The odds were much better here. He shrugged, dropped his cigar
butt off the catwalk, then slapped aside the weapon's barrel,
locking the man's weapon hand in a hand-lock. Using his weight he
swung the trooper around then spoke the incantation to his Time Slip
spell.
By the time the pair realized Loptr was behind them, the Temporal
Warrior had already chopped the legs out from under the trooper
nearest him. The man's weapon discharged, striking the other trooper
in the throat. The unfortunate victim staggered, then toppled
backwards over the rail. Stunned at the sight of his falling
partner, Loptr easily wrestled the weapon from his grip, and body
slammed the man into one of the support beams. The Temporal Warrior
drew his own blaster...
* * * * *
"Crap!" screamed the sergeant, diving aside as the armored form of
one of his men plummeted down on him. Four other soldiers turned
when their armored comrade hit the ground with a sickening thud. On
the catwalk above, came the discharge of an energy weapon. The
outsider was the only one standing.
Pulling himself off the ground the sergeant barked for his men to
fire. They raised their weapons at the figure on the catwalk and
opened fire.
* * * * *
Loptr dropped into a crouch. The net-like pattern of the durasteel
catwalk allowed his opponents on the ground to see him, but still
provided an fair amount of protection, as the area around Loptr
erupted in a storm of energy bolts.
The trooper he'd hit with his point-blank shot was laying on his
back, and Loptr doubted that the men below would appreciate the fact
that his weapon was on the "stun" setting, especially since one of
their number was now laying on the hangar floor with a smoking hole
in him.
Loptr hit his wrist comm and tapped out a preset signal to Garm,
hoping tall, dark and shaggy has his comset turned on. Another
flurry of energy bolts struck the catwalk, so Loptr quickly hopped
over the unconscious trooper and rolled him against the rail as a
shield, halting the weapons-fire momentarily.
Loptr's mind went to work on an escape plan, since he had observed
at least a dozen armored men as part of the freighter's troop
detail.
* * * * *
Garm was under the Farbauti watching the groundcrew work on the
starboard landing strut's hydraulics, when his wrist comm beeped
several times. It was a prearranged signal and he was off
immediately, his mind following a single-thread: help Loptr.
He'd been so tuned to this thought, that he left the blaster Emerson
had given him inside the starship. He hadn't attuned the device to
himself yet.
Garm bolted out to the accessway, spotting a group of armored men
down the street, far to his left. He took off at a run, wrapping one
of his a huge, clawed hands around the hilt of the vibro-knife on
his belt.
* * * * *
Loptr could hear the service elevator as it groaned to life. Using
the unconscious soldier as a shield was a temporary victory. Once
the others came up, he'd be a sitting duck. He turned the other way,
noticing a cross-beam on the ceiling, about twenty paces down. It
looked close enough for him to jump from the catwalk's railing up to
it, then he could make his way to the roof and to safety.
A whirring noise interrupted his thoughts. It was the elevator,
heading up, no doubt filled with troopers. They'd be on the catwalk
level in moments. Setting his weapon to normal fire mode. He waited
until the elevator stopped, then fired a trio of shots to keep the
soldiers back, before dashing forward until he was under the
cross-beam.
* * * * *
As Garm finished his Dimensional Leap, he encountered a squad of
four troopers, no doubt what Loptr had signalled him about. Two were
already past him as he drew near. Since they weren't paying
attention to him, he was able to corral the last pair with a flying
tackle. The two skidded backwards along the floor and Garm tumbled
forward, dispatching both with a pair of blasts from the Phase
Beamer that suddenly materialized out of thin air, before either
could react.
The other two were calling the elevator down. One of them noticed
Garm, raised his carbine, aimed and fired.
Garm's adrenaline was already pumping and his mind was in high gear,
he avoided the attack with a Dimensional Leap.
He materialized behind a storage locker, however his giant 9-foot
frame was partially visible. Luckily the locker conveniently
shielded him from another volley of energy blasts.
Pausing momentarily, Garm realized the locker was next to a vertical
support beam. He placed his Phase Beamer inside one of the
Dimensional Pockets Loptr had conjured for him, grasped the thick beam
in his huge arms and climbed.
* * * * *
A sleek starship bearing the Federation Patrol's seal, a cluster of
eight silver stars on a white shield, dropped through the
atmosphere, touching down at Hidegar's eastern landing pod. After
identifying themselves to port control, they were relayed the pad
number of the Farbauti's berth.
Since Hidegar wasn't a Federation system, Furcas's Patrolship didn't
have the authority to set down next to the fugitive ship, instead
the Patrolman and his squad of six men had to hop from the eastern
landing pod to the area where the Farbauti was docked via their
open-topped, contragrav sled.
While the Patrol ship's personality simulator requested additional
assistance from the port authority, Furcas and his six men were
zipping from their landing spot towards their quarry.
With what they knew about these criminals, Furcas's team was armed
to the teeth. Each man wore body armor and carried a gravitic weapon
from the ship's weapons locker, which they already knew was
effective against the opponent on Baxta.
"Coming up on hangar 16," the pilot called into his helmet
microphone. He banked the craft hard to the port then dove straight
down, nosing up slightly to hover at the hangar's entrance, allowing
Furcas and his six Patrolmen to hit the ground running.
Inside the hangar was an small, old freighter. While his men
surrounded the groundcrew, Furcas boarded the open vessel.
* * * * *
Loptr grunted as his fingers caught the crossbeam's edge. His left
hand had slipped off and he hung precariously from the support. He
shifted his weight as best as he could and swung his feet. A pair of
energy bolts crashed into the ceiling so he had no choice but to
move. As his feet came around, he thrust them up and grabbed with
his free hand, catching the other side of the support beam with both
his hands and legs. Grunting, he began shinnying along the girder,
upside-down, chanting softly the words of an incantation.
* * * * *
The two troopers exited the elevator and were shocked to find Garm
waiting there. Using the same technique as during his climb, the
intervening space between the renegade Phase Mystic and his
opponents suddenly shrunk and he wrenched the weapons from their
stunned grasp, before it returned to normal. He dropped the two
weapons at his side and drew his vibro-knife.
Garm's blade slid between the gaps on the first trooper's
chestplate, sinking deeply into the man's armpit. He lashed out with
his leg and sidekicked the other trooper away, releasing the wounded
man. The other trooper retreated towards the elevator. Garm hit him
with a blast from his Phase Beamer and he melted inside the elevator
cage.
The wounded man was up and moving away. Garm's powers made it too
easy to overcome these unworthy opponents. He pocketed his Phase
Beamer, retrieved one of the weapons and pulled the trigger, but the
weapon didn't fire as it was keyed to the trooper's bio-sig.
Cursing, he grasped it in his hands as club and charged, taking out
the wounded soldier and moving on to the two others who were closing
in on Loptr.
* * * * *
Below, the formation of troopers had to disperse as one then another
of their armored compatriots rained down upon them. They regrouped
and resumed firing at the second intruder, that had suddenly
appeared.
Six dead troopers.
His bloodlust momentarily sated, Garm dashed down the catwalk,
climbed the railing and leapt to the girder, the thrust from his
powerful legs allowing him to cover the distance with ease. He was
up and snaking along the girder right behind his friend.
Loptr eased his D-Phased form up and through the roof, slowly. The
acrobatic stunt had taken some toll on him and forced his
concentration while he held his breath during the spell.
Garm's phased, furry head emerged through the ceiling a few seconds
later, vibro-knife clenched in his teeth. He put the knife in its
scabbard and growled at Loptr, who had paused to rest.
Loptr laid back, nodding, "I'm fine," he gasped between lungfuls of
air. "How many did you get?"
An evil smile Garm appeared on Garm's face which unmistakably meant
"All of them."
Loptr winced. They were going to have to leave Hidegar quickly.
The pair waited until Loptr caught his breath, then jogged across
the roof, away from the hangar-front. From this point, six stories
up, they could see the buzz of armed activity around the Farbauti.
"No!" Loptr's voice was almost a growl. Garm wanted to Fast Draw his
CAF Rocket Launcher and take care of the Patrolmen around the
starship. "Those guys down below will be up here quick!"
Growling, the Phase Mystic warped space around the pair and placed
them on the ground, behind the hangar, from where they fled.
* * * * *
It took the local authorities an extra half-hour to contact the
Patrol team due to some other emergency.
By that time, Furcas's men had their run of the Farbauti and had
already bypassed the third-rate security system on the starship's
computer.
"They didn't come here from Shyme, sir," reported the comm-
specialist who'd replaced Jenkins, viewing the ship's log. "They'd
gone directly from Shyme to Sandstone. Then they came here."
"Sandstone?" Furcas wasn't familiar with it, so the specialist
called up the data on his hand-held unit. "Frontier settlement near
the League. Intelligence has nothing on it."
Furcas grunted, "What about crew and passengers?"
"Pilot's someone named Garm, the owner/captain is Loptr, but no one
else this trip. Strictly a cargo run. Hmmm, looks like they had
three passengers last trip. A Mike Fields, Nevin Eaves and Myron
Baynes." It was nothing conclusive.
A Patrolman approached, holding an energy weapon, the one Garm had
left behind. It was the exact duplicate of the one they'd taken off
the dead man from the kidnapping site and the twin to the one on the
bank robbery video. Furcas was very happy.
The Patrolmen got descriptions of Garm and Loptr from the
groundcrew, before the local authorities finally arrived, en-masse.
Apparently they were already searching for a pair of criminals who
fit the descriptions of Furcas's fugitives.
to be continued...
