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hours."
He slicked back the tuft of white on his otherwise balding
head and released a short chuckle. He looked closely at Jack.
"Judgin' by your bloody arm, looks like your friends already
found ya once." He sneered. "You didn't lead 'em here did
ya?" His hand went to the weapon at his belt.
Jack shook his head. "We had a run in with our friends, but
we "
Edge interrupted. "We took care of both of them." The look
in Edge's eyes was enough to make the thug take a step
back.
"Alright then, don't ask for medical shit," he threw his
arms up. "Supplies like that are hard to get, and expensive."
He tugged at his belt. "We're not into bloody charity, but who
knows, maybe someone with a kind heart stowed somethin'
or other on your ship." He gave a cockeyed grin, rubbed the
butt of his weapon and shrugged.
"They should join us, they're already famous!" One of the
other thugs commented, slapping a comrade on the arm.
"They'd bring too much heat on us," another wiry man
said. All but his beady gray eyes was covered by some sort of
a darkened leather cowl, slit open only enough to allow sight.
He glared at Jack and Edge with unrequited malice, before
trundling off down a side cavern.
"Why do ya think we asked for a million, eh? It was fifty
thousand 'til we knew their baggage!" Another black marketer
muttered.
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"Alright you rabble, break it up and move on, our little
meeting is adjourned," the lead thug yelled. He, along with
the remaining ruffians, strode off laughing and clapping each
other in congratulations. "They're as good as dead," Edge
could barely hear one of them say as they vanished into the
darkness.
Edge rubbed at the dagger hidden in his sleeve. Who are
these people? They don't seem like more than a bunch of
thugs to me.
That's what I was thinking. I'm guessing they're
intermediaries. Black marketers, high priced ones, Jack
thought back.
Should I start worrying yet? Do you think he was hinting
that some medical supplies will magically appear for us? I'm
not so good at reading people, Jack.
Not yet, maybe soon, and I have a feeling the supplies we
need won't be a problem.
A few moments later, two bedraggled men came out of
another side cavern tunnel riding on a scraped up and dented
four wheeled vehicle, motioning to Jack and Edge to climb on.
"Where the hell are we going?" Edge asked, as they bumped
along on what he figured was an old cast off golf cart, from
the looks of it. The walls of the corridor were barely wide
enough for it, and the driver was not too worried about
scraping the sides as he pushed the cart to its top speed.
Twenty miles an hour may not seem fast, but in these tight
quarters, it might as well be one hundred.
"The Borgen, the one and only Europan freedom fighter
vessel," Jack whispered. He leaned closer to Edge, trying not
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to get tossed off the cart. "From there, we'll go to Ganymede.
They have an enclave there that I suspect is deep below the
surface."
Edge blinked at him. "How?" He had never heard of such a
place, and he thought he had been told everything before he
left Earth. He knew Ganymede was the system's largest
moon, but it had been marked as off limits thirty years ago.
Why, he didn't know. Radiation ... It's so intense there, it can
play tricks even with our cloned DNA.
And we're going there? Wonderful...
Don't worry, it's not like we'll be there long, besides,
you're an assassin, don't you like to live dangerously?
I did what I had to do, Jack. I did it for us!
I'm not faulting you, Edge, calm down.
Jack chuckled softly and waved his hand around, trying to
change the subject. "This place has been here for twenty
years, these people " He gestured to the two fighters in the
front of the cart. "They've been stealing, dealing, and building
a base on that moon. One day they'll launch a revolution. It's
all going to begin there the fight, the battle, the war." They
may very well succeed, if we help them.
The rebels will never stand a chance, Edge thought. He
looked Jack in the eyes. How is your arm, really?
Jack could only shrug. Not good, but don't worry, just try
to be a little less pessimistic, my lover.
They reached the end of the tunnel and the cart came to a
halt in a wide-open area, well lit by incandescent bulbs,
hanging from the carved-rock ceiling. Before them was an
airlock, an old one by the looks of it. Several pressure suits
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hung from hooks on the wall. Jack noted several small crates,
helmets, gloves, boots, and some extra harpoon pistols.
Nasty things, tipped with poison, usually. Out here, just as
good as a bullet, or a tazer.
"Put those on and go into the airlock, it'll take you up to
the shuttle," the driver told them. He flipped a switch on the
wall and entered a series of numbers. "It's unlocked now
you're on your own." He got in the cart and looked at Jack.
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