CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vastor Ugrich laid the small stack of money alongside the others and sat back, folding his arms across his chest. “Satisfied?”
The surly Wolvark right in front of him shook his head slowly. “The deal was for $500, Vastor.”
Vastor shrugged his Slig shoulders. “What of it?”
“I did the job for you,” the gruffian said, in a tone that reminded Vastor of a mother lecturing her child for the fifth time in as many minutes. “You said I’d get $500 out of it. I did the job. Now you pay me. Get it?”
The Slig leaned his back against a rock, arms at his hips, not straying too far from the old-fashioned but punch-packing Snuzi gun he’d looted from the wreckage of Vykkers Labs a few years back. This Wolvark — Gurchin, or some odd name like that — was competent enough, but Vastor didn’t have the credits to waste on a bruiser like him.
Still, Gurchin was holding a Firespray on him, and Vastor didn’t want to go up in flames like the long-dead Brewmaster. This job he’d have to take his time in seeing through.
“What if I don’t have the money with me?” he suggested.
Gurchin laughed coldly, clicking the cock on his flamethrower as if reminding the Slig of its presence. “In that case, I shoot you and take all that you do have on you.”
Vastor sighed, spreading his arms wide. “And I thought we were going to be friends here.”
“That depends on if you’ll fork over the cash,” the Wolvark growled, “or if I have to pull this trigger and make you do a little thing I call a Pain Dance.”
Vastor brought his arms back together, clenching both hands together in one big fist. “I don’t think so.”
Gurchin pulled the trigger—
But Vastor was already half a meter away from the yellow blaze that came pouring out the Firespray’s barrel. The Slig was already coming out of his roll and back up onto one knee, Snuzi gun already in hand and firing three times in a split second.
The roar of flames from the Firespray came to a halt, as Gurchin’s limp fingers fell off the trigger, and the Wolvark slid to one side with three holes through his brain.
Vastor grinned. “Well, that wasn’t too bad.”
He holstered his Snuzi gun once more, reaching out for the Firespray. There was no reason to check the Wolvark’s vital signs; the gruffian was definitely dead. The Snuzi Corporation might have gone out of business a few decades ago, but their guns were definitely not weak. Maybe they were bullet guns, but they did nearly as well as the modern laser rifles that all the industrial Sligs used.
Vastor clenched his fists. Industrial Sligs. He hated the thought of those slick-backed city losers. Vastor had once been one of them – that was how he’d gained his mechanical pants – but that didn’t mean he admired them for their weakness.
With the Glukkons to keep a tight hold on the new technology, the industrialist Sligs would always be at top-capacity. But they would also be spoiled and lazy; they would never understand what it meant to be fully self-sufficient, nor would they ever be able to live in the wild. Where city Sligs had night vision goggles, radars, and laser rifles, Vastor had his Snuzi pistol and his instincts.
He glanced at the Firespray’s fuel charge and laughed. “Gurchin was duller than I thought; he only had four seconds’ worth of fire left.”
He tossed the flamethrower to one side. Someone might find it, and refuel it, but Vastor had no current use for it, not when he still had 85 rounds left in his pistol.
The Slig searched Gurchin’s body for goodies, and within minutes had found a good amount of worthwhile items. There were $322 in paper and coin money, a small life-form area scanner, a tiny Give-em-Old-Harry pistol, and even a gas grenade. Vastor had no use for the tiny pistol, but he gladly accepted the money and grenade.
He glanced at the area scanner. “Should I use this industrialist thing, or keep on by instinct?”
As soon as he spoke, he knew what his answer was. What a stupid question that was to ask.
He tossed the scanner aside.
But even before the device had struck the ground, it was making small bleep noises. Vastor whirled around, bent to pick up the small scanner, and saw on its little green screen that there was a being approaching from the south.
The scanner identified the being as a Mudokon.
He almost snorted aloud. Nothing to be afraid of, just a Mud. And none of them has the sense to carry a weapon.
The Slig drew his Snuzi gun, dropping the scanner to the ground and crushing it under his heel. Whoever this stupid free Mudokon was, he wasn’t going to be alive much longer.
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