-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Thirty Four

David Glassaway, head of Enzyme Corp, called his executive secretary and his executive assistant over for a small conference. David Glassaway was not a man to stay idle for very long. He liked to keep things moving, and he liked to keep track of all of his ongoing projects.

“Dalton,” he asked his executive assistant, “did you set the device?”

“Yes, sir,” Dalton assured his Boss, “I put in inside a vent in the engine room. I showed up a little early for our final briefing this morning.” Dalton gave a smile that never warmed his cold, slightly manic eyes.

Dalton’s coldness warmed his Bosses’ heart. Every executive should have at least one psychopath working for them, he thought to himself. Psychopaths get things done and don’t let unimportant things like emotions get in the way. He turned to Laural Willis, his executive secretary. “You did remember to cancel that money transfer, right? Rubar certainly won’t be needing any money where he’s going.”

“Of course, sir,” replied Laural with a smile that was only marginally less arctic than Dalton’s. “I have earmarked those funds for our next special project.” David considered the fact that executives didn’t need too many psychopaths, not when good, old-fashioned greed and a minimum of scruples were so much easier to control. ‘Special project’ he also thought to himself. Special is right. The whole plan is so simple, so foolproof.

I could mention a theory that Rufus has at this point, and that theory is this; there is no such thing as a foolproof anything, you simply need to find a better fool. And David Glassaway did not know it yet, but in Rufus Blacke, he might find out that he was dealing with a fool of immeasurable abilities.

Rubar regained control of his ship and angrily swung it back to its original heading. The launch had just landed on Treasure Island, and he still had a job to do. Rubar may well have been a jerk of epic proportions, but that didn’t mean he had no redeeming qualities. Hitler was said to love dogs and children for example. Well Rubar’s one redeeming characteristic is that he is a conscientious employee. And he loved his work, so there you go.

He lined up on the launch and pushed the firing stud, launching a small seeker-drone as soon as he felt the lock-on signal. Now here was a true sitting duck of a target. Then he thought, what the hell, and pressed another knob to fire a short burst of his wing guns. Ah, nothing like it for releasing a little job related stress, I’m sure.

In orbit far above, Captain Browne was watching the scanner screens alongside her two techs. All three had watched the Reaver ship turn back on a course to follow the launch after it had been bumped by the other Reaver ship.

Well, I guess we know who is in which ship now, Captain Browne thought. A small red dot separated from the hostile ship and zipped straight into the launch’s blip, which had reached the landing pad just moments before. The launch’s blip swelled and then disappeared. I hope Rufus bought them enough time to get out, she went on in her own mind.

The Marines, sailors and prisoners mostly kept their heads down as they had been told to do, but one eighteen year old Marine could not conquer his curiosity. He watched in fascination as the seeker-drone slammed into the launch. He would regret this soon enough.

The warhead penetrated the launch’s main cabin before detonating. To the young Marine, the explosion when it came did not look like any explosion he had ever seen, and he had seen more than a few during training. Instead of the reds and yellows of flame and the black and gray-brown of smoke which one usually associates with human chemical explosives, this blast went off with the electric blue-white of an arc welder. And this blast did not simply expand away from its center in all directions either. It shot out bolts of lightning which then curved out and arced back towards the center as if destroying the target just once was not fun enough.

The blast also had an eerie inner core of sapphire blue light which danced like a witch’s fire for a moment, and then began to twist and spiral up and in like a small and upside-down tornado, increasing in brightness and size before flaring out and dissipating. The young Marine did not see the end of this series of events because his retinas were fried by the glare. He would be blind for the next six hours, but the image would stick in his mind forever. He would tell his Marine buddies that it did not look like an explosion at all, but rather like one of the magic spells that a powerful wizard might cast in some video game.

But the main point here, I suppose, is that he was not able to watch the superheated wire shards from the magnetic mini-rail guns tear up the landing pad. This is too bad, in a way, because it was really quite a spectacular sight. The wire was traveling at such a velocity and with so much kinetic energy that it was like a powerful fire hose hitting a pool of water, or maybe even a pool of hot bacon grease.

Back in his ship, Rubar had a very nice view of the destruction, even if he flew by too fast to get a long look. He saw the flare from the seeker-drone, his windows automatically going dark momentarily to shield his eyes. Then he watched his wing guns rip the hard concrete up into a dust storm filled with chunks and chips. Rubar felt warm inside, but there was no time to savor a job well done. He had to get his people away safely before he could start celebrating.

And where was that other ship, the one that had almost crashed into him? He checked his sensor display and spotted his quarry immediately. He thinks he is hiding under the Golden GateBridge, but the scanner picked him up right away, thought Rubar with glee. But the glee faded as he checked the identifier tag beside the blip on his display.

Son of a gun, thought Rubar, another of his favorite human sayings, that is my other ship. Who the hell is flying it?

Well, we all know who was flying it, don’t we? And just to set the record straight, Rufus knew that Rubar could see him on the screens. He knew things about the Reaver ships that Rubar didn’t know, because Rufus’s information came from the designs and designers themselves though the memory stone. He had access to the accumulated recorded knowledge of all who had built and flown the ships under every conceivable type of conditions. He could extrapolate the strengths and weaknesses of the ship’s structures and capabilities in ways that no one else could have.

But Rufus was not hiding. He was setting himself up as a live piece of dangling bait, to draw Rubar away from the launch and Treasure Island. Say what you will about Rufus, but he does have some measure of bravery, and he was not above taking a calculated risk.

Rubar knew from his readouts that he was no longer operating in stealth mode or with a force field either. And he knew he should begin making his escape, but he didn’t want to leave one of his ships behind as evidence. Mostly he didn’t want to leave behind the person who was flying the other ship, not after he had disrupted Rubar’s plans in such a rude manner. At least not while that person was still breathing.

And Rubar knew that the other ship was carrying no ammunition for its drone-launchers and wing guns. So there should be just enough time to exact a little revenge while tying up a loose end. You see, Rubar is an efficient and loyal worker. He arced the nose of his fighter craft around and aimed it at the little blip nestling under the big bridge. He waited until he felt a vibration in the control stick that meant that his next seeker-drone was locked on target and he began to squeeze the firing stud, but the other ship suddenly vanished. Oh come on, thought Rubar to himself, feeling his frustration level continuing to rise.