-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Thirty One

Rufus’s Avengers were being served a lovely luncheon in City Hall, surrounded by celebrities of every variety. They were having a wonderful time, basking in the glare of fame’s spotlight. They were all dressed in their finest clothes, if they were in the habit of wearing any that is.

A man got up and went to the podium, introducing himself as David Glassaway, president and CEO of the Enzyme Corp, and began to give a speech in which he, on behalf of the corporation, thanked them for their bravery and told them they were all going to be the guests of the new hotel that the corporation had built nearby for as long as they wished, absolutely free of charge. After waiting for the applause to die down, the executive finished his speech with, “And the Enzyme Corporation wishes to personally thank you for saving all the lives of the beings on board the ship taken by the pirates.”

That was when the Qualm, who just happened to be the same Qualm that Rufus had used as a living lie detector during the questioning of Winnse the pirate, all of a sudden shouted, “He lies!” in a ghostly wail.

Needless to say, this caused some measure of awkwardness and much hushed whispering in the large formal dining room.

Meanwhile back across the bay, Rufus was trying to come to grips with what he was being told by the more or less young man.

Rufus’s mother was never one to dance around a subject. She cut right to the heart of the matter by asking, “Well why on Earth would they want to do that?”

“Because Enzyme set those pirates up! The head of the corporation is a guy named David Glassaway, and he has some mysterious alien backers as silent partners. And he has this kid who works as his executive assistant, and this kid is a snake, I mean like pathological. He does anything he’s told to do. He got close to the Wasp Whips, kept them on booze, and drugs that he slipped into their food. And I mean exotic alien drugs from somewhere. He took them to Disneyland, made sure they went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Then he showed them all these pirate movies. They were so out of it they didn’t know what was going on, and this Dalton guy, that’s the executive assistant, he just played them like prize suckers.” Kirk was almost in tears at this point.

“You were there, weren’t you?” asked Rufus’s mom gently.

“Like I said, I’m in procurement. That means I have to find out where to get things. Whatever my Boss wants, I’m supposed to find it for him. But I didn’t know what he was planning on using them for, I swear.” Kirk sounded beaten. “The Boss wanted to use some human gang bangers at first. Just lowlife street punks that would be easy to get rid of afterwards. But Dalton found the Wasp Whips wandering around LA. They were perfect. They were supposed to hijack the ship and then hide out on some small planet somewhere while they waited for the ransom. But the Boss, I figure he meant to double-cross them all along. He was probably going to send the mercenaries to kill them where ever they ended up hiding. There is a tracking device in all our star ships that only the Boss and his two partners can operate.”

“So how come you decided to come clean now?” asked Rufus as the official spokes-representative of the skeptical.

“Dalton found the Wasp Whips before I found any suitable gang members, so I got assigned to helping him. I finally figured out part of it. I knew Dalton was prepping them to hijack one of our cruise liners. I figured maybe for the insurance and a share of the ransom. Nobody gets hurt, and I get my bonus. I could have lived with that, I am ashamed to say, but then I found out the rest of it just three hours ago. I was in the security room at Corporate Headquarters in the city, finishing some computer entries. Then Dalton came in and ordered all of the communications people out of the room. He didn’t see me behind my monitor. I heard him on the comm system talking to Rubar, the leader of the Bosses’ pet mercenaries. They are Reavers, and you do not want to mess with them. They invented those magnetic guns the pirates used. Dalton told Rubar that it was all set; the Boss had arranged it so that the pirates would be transported down to Treasure Island, under escort by the Marines, in a ships launch from the U. S. S. S.  Obama. Dalton told Rubar to destroy the launch, and then disappear. His money would be transferred to his accounts. He said it just like that, like he was ordering breakfast,” Kirk said in disbelief.

“But why?” asked the Professor. “What does your boss hope to gain by all this?”

Kirk sounded suitably horrified when he answered, “The alien partners, they want the humans.”

Rufus and his mother and the Professor all started asking questions at the same time. Kirk looked quickly at his watch and held up his hand. “Please, the launch from the Obama is going to be landing in less than a half hour. The mercenaries are going to shoot it down right over the bay.”

“Why shoot it down in the atmosphere and not before?” the Professor asked.

Kirk was trying hard to pass on everything he knew that would help. “Too many alien ships out there I guess. Some of them might have the technology to track the Reaver ship. I don’t know all the answers. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“So what do you want me to do about it, exactly?” Rufus wondered out loud.

“We have the ship the Wasp Whips used to get up to the cruise liner. It was anchored to the liner all along. Some of Enzyme’s security people brought it down to the Corporation’s private landing field, over south of San Francisco.” Kirk was talking faster and faster.

“So what good does that do us?” Rufus asked with some exasperation.

“It should be up there by now,” Kirk said, pointing a finger straight up into the air and looking up at the same time.

“In orbit?” Rufus’s mother was obviously not getting the point either.

“No,” Kirk told them, “I mean it should be up there on your roof.”

The other three exchanged puzzled glances, and Kirk reached a hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a small blue-glowing disk about the size of a CD only thicker. The disk was lit from within although it looked to be made of solid metal that resembled burnished stainless steel. “I have the key.” Kirk went on, “I stopped by the landing field first on the way here and stole it so no one else would be able to use the ship. And the key has a remote call function that should bring the ship here automatically. I activated it as soon as I parked my car out in front, because if I didn’t find you guys, I was going to try to do something myself.”

Feel free to do that anyway, thought Rufus somewhat selfishly.

And that was how Rufus found himself standing on the flat roof of his childhood home beside Kirk and the Professor, looking at a wicked little space ship about the size of a train locomotive, but sleek and dangerous as a, well, a wasp seems to be an appropriate comparison at this point.

“Don’t do anything silly, Rufus,” he heard his mom say from the patio bellow.

“You mean, for a change,” Rufus finished for her helpfully, under his breath.

They got a hatch open and scrambled inside, passing through the open passenger cabin and into the small cockpit. “This isn’t a Wasp Whip ship at all, it’s made by the Reavers, and it’s exactly the same as the one the Reavers are in,” explained Kirk. He went on, but rather reluctantly, “These ships have everything; stealth capability, FTL drives, and some kind of missile type things, and even guns. But the thing is…”

Here it comes, thought Rufus, and this time he was right.

“There are no missiles or ammo for the guns on our ship. The Boss didn’t want the Wasp Whips to accidentally blow up the liner or the Hub, I guess.” Kirk sounded as sorry to pass on this information as Rufus was to hear it.

“The other Reaver ship is fully armed, I assume?” asked the professor, as if he were asking a student to answer a simple history question.

“Oh yeah,” admitted Kirk.

“So what the hell are we supposed to do exactly?” Rufus asked, not for the first or last time in his life.

“How the hell do I know?” said Kirk, matching him a hell for a hell. “You are the damn heroes.” I guess, in poker terms, that would be raising Rufus one damn.