Outlaws (The Slingers Trilogy, Book 2)

Chapter 6

The ship was drifting through the inky blackness, debris from it's exploded hull drifting alongside it, spinning slowly through space like a wounded animal. On the inside, things were much worse. Since the artificial gravity had been shut off due to the several explosions, everything inside was floating. Dante had never experienced zero gravity before, but already he was unable to cope with it. It was like being paralyzed, yet you were still constantly moving. The first explosion had pushed him back against the wall, and now he was floating around the cargo bay, watching as everything moved in a sort of graceful pattern, like being underwater. To his left were the twins, both unconscious, their guns floating around them. The Swift had come undone from it's docking clamps, and was now moving around dangerously inside the cramped space , it's small stature now large compared to it's confinement. Koil had been flung into one of the rooms, and was now blocked by a collapsed door. The only one who didn't seem to be incapacitated was Bunker. His armour had taken the brunt of the impact. He looked at Dante, and then pushed off of a floating crate and grabbed onto the wall. "You alright?" Dante nodded and looked towards the medical bay. He could hear a mechanical whirring. He moved closer, and noticed that the whirring was coming from a wheel that was currently moving along the ground, magnetized. The wheel belonged to a medical android that Andress and Bunker had picked up years ago, named Dewey. Bunker went over to him, and his optic lights lit up. "Master Bronson!" He said in his metallic voice. "Thanks heavens, I was beginning to think you and the crew were dead." Bunker moved over to the door that Koil was trapped behind. "Dewey, help me move this." Dante, Bunker, and Dewey grabbed hold and lifted up slowly.

Soon, they had managed to remove Koil from his confinements, and they also revived Edvard and Elicia. They were now all in the ship's main cabin, strapped down to the chairs. Bunker was looking at the controls and shaking his head. "It's no good. Those explosives took out all of our navigation and interior systems. Thank God the life support is still intact. But for now, we'll have to deal with no gravity. Everything else is completely trashed. They crippled us." He looked sad, putting his head on his hand, then slammed the console in anger. "Damn it! They must have tagged us while we were still on the ship! I should have run checks, but I was in too much of a damn hurry..." Koil looked down in shame. "The GDF did this. But we're not out of this yet. The Swift is still intact, and we still have Dewey to take care of us. Plus, our engines are still working, and all three Dorado Pieces are accounted for." Bunker and the twins nodded grimly. They had found several leaks in the ship's hull which had been hastily repaired by Dewey. One had been found in the safe, but thankfully they managed to fix it before any of the Pieces had been lost. Dante scoffed, making them all look up. "This doesn't change the fact that we barely have any fuel, and that we still have no idea where Nolun and Andress are." He looked at Koil and Bunker again. "We may not be out of it, but we still have a lousy chance of winning."  Edvard and Elicia looked at Koil and Bunker, who stared back sheepishly. "Listen-" Elicia interrupted Koil. "Uh-uh. No apologies. I don't care who you used to work for or if you lied to us. We'll talk about this later. Right now, you're the captain, and we need to find our friends."  Koil looked at the twins surprised, then nodded and turned to the console.

The ship limped slowly through space, it's once intact and sturdy hull barely being held together by a robot and some duct tape. Bunker and Koil had worked around the clock to try and track where the ship or the pod might have gone, but without the algorithm for the Quantum Engine, it was no use. Koil sighed and put his head in his hands. "This is pointless. We're gonna run out of fuel by the time we figure this out." Bunker looked at the console and sat pensively. He then got out an old-fashioned star charter, and aimed it at the space in front of them. "I think I might have a solution to that." He quickly wrote down some coordinates, and flew the ship in another direction. "Where are we going?" Koil asked. Bunker looked confident for the first time in a while. "I know this place on the Fringe, somewhere where only the worst of the worst go. It was the site of an old battleground, and soon people just began dumping their junk there. It's had many names, but most people call it Scrap. We can get fuel, as well as some possible information on where Nolun and Andress might be." Koil nodded, then looked out at the stars. "I hope you're right..." Bunker nodded. "Me too." After a few hours, they made it to a planet which stuck out like a brown blotch of rust against the black endlessness. This was the planet known as Scrap. As they entered the atmosphere, they felt the gravity return, and continued down onto the planet's surface, but not before passing through a large plume of smog which seemed to stretch on for miles. Koil looked around and saw exactly what Bunker had described. It was like one gigantic junkyard, with large robotic cranes piling up scrap heaps to be melted down for other uses. The factories were large as well, and as Bunker crested another hill of junk, Koil saw the city, with two large smokestacks towering over it. They landed, and saw an old man with what appeared to be a bronze and brass cybernetic leg, with a bronze crutch attached to his arm, and two eyeglasses crafted from microscope lenses walking up to them. As Bunker walked out, he motioned to the twins and Dante to stand down. He walked up to the old man and smiled. "Hello Thadeus." The old man cracked a toothy grin and gave Bunker a hug. "Bronson, my boy! So good to see you again!" He stared at Koil. "Koil? Is that you? You look older! And you've changed your hair again!" Elicia snickered and Koil smiled and rolled his eyes playfully. "Hey old man." He gave him a hug as well, and then he looked at all of them. "What brings you to this hellhole I call home, huh?" Bunker motioned to the ship. "We need a good repair job, and a place to stay." Thadeus squinted his eyes. "What the hell did you do to it? Run it through a grinder?" Koil nodded and winced. "Something like that." Thadeus laughed. "Of course! You're always welcome on Scrap!" Unbeknownst to the group, several pairs of eyes were watching them from afar, and they were about to put that statement to the test.