Alien Alliance Box Set

today.”
“You’re traveling light?” Her eyes flicked down to the scuffed bag at Regers’ feet.
“Just a change of clothes, toothbrush and comb.” Minus the E1 and accessories that blow people’s heads off.
“I’m trying to visit my family. I’ll have to go the long way, it seems. Bother.”
“Guess so.”
She smiled. “I’m Marise.”
“Good to meet you, Marise. Name’s Regers.”
He felt a tremor pass through her side where their shoulders touched. She murmured, “Axus is so dangerous these days. People knifed in the street. Violence, guns everywhere, bombs going off. Terrorist plots. I’m looking forward to getting out.”
Yeah, well, you picked the wrong city and the wrong universe, lady.
Shame a pretty thing like that, going to waste on some other egghead. Marise cast him another look, kohl-blackened eyelashes fluttering.
Hell, he should be living it up. Big cheese Mathias, Cyber Corp CEO paying for his transpo out to Phallanor. Bunch of other fuckballs too, he reckoned. Merc head bashers roving about the galaxy. He wondered how Mathias assembled his roster of toughies. Probably had some department devoted to recruitment, a think tank working computers, dedicated to amassing raw talent, the bully boys having the muscled idiocy to pull off whatever sordid job companies needed done to fulfill their corrupt aims.
A half year ago that wild cockup out in Biyon had earned him some karma points, probably put him on Cyber Corp’s radar. Rotten pricks had earned their death sentence, heads rolling before they were nailed to posts.
And those fucking lowlifes complicit in the murder of his wife a year back. Two had died in buckets of blood, he’d seen to it. Still four more of them to go, but he’d track them down in due time, if it was the last thing he did. When he got more funds together. Now he needed a reprieve away from the death zone in case that bastard Olg, their gang leader, got paranoid and went underground. Needed a wide sweep security net to flush out the last four, including Olg, which would rack him up at least 15k yols, he figured.
The bus creaked to a halt at a dingy terminus, sporting a cracked cement backdrop of pylons and faded pinned-up ads: Chinuanda bananas, Land for Sale, Dial a friend, Out of work, in need? Support your local war! The Quinconedas must band together!
A line of about ten other figures stood waving tickets. The driver honked and slowed down. Through the grimed window, Regers glimpsed the faint turquoise line of the ocean a far way off. Closer now.
“Why’re we stopping here?”
“Haldud Bus Junction,” Marise explained. “Last stop before the harbor.”
Regers’ eyes glazed in weariness. Seemed as if others had got snarled in the transpo problems and were making a rush to the docks. Not that this bus could hold too many more. Those ten new passengers’d find room aboard this rust heap, that’s for sure.
They did. Half of them scrambled up the ladder at the rear to the roof. Five disheveled, rough-looking men clomped up the front steps before the driver, two jealously guarding a hip-high, oblong package wrapped in cardboard and taped with clear plastic.
“You can’t bring that on,” the driver grumbled.
“Says who, Chief? You got a piece of paper says we can’t?”
Regers craned his neck. Rifles? Croquet set for Uncle Barista? He gave a sour hiss. Longer they stayed in this stifling heat, the worse the stench would get…and the easier to miss that damn hovercraft. But nothing he could do, short of pulling the compact E1 from his bag, and wasting these fuckers and force friendly driver on to the port. Three of the men, wearing dusty black leather with crosses and other decorative hatchmarks on the thighs, shuffled to the back, carrying backpacks that rattled with metal parts, oblivious to the driver’s shrill protests. But long hair, the leader of the group, stayed back to argue, said it was valuable merchandise, and the driver backed off when he stared him down.
Long hair and his mate joined their comrades, making a leisurely swagger down the aisle, brushing Regers’ extended leg as he passed. Regers grumbled under his breath. They all took back seats, forcing other intimidated passengers to vacate, hogging the extra space for their package.
“Hey, make room,” a burly man objected with a jerk of thumb. “Put your parcel topside. There’re women and children need to sit. This here’s a public bus, not a private tour coach.”
“No, we like it back here,” long hair said in a toneless voice. “Plenty of space up front for brats and bitches like you.” He pointed to the package and grinned at his mates. “It stays where it is, old man, unless you want to be eating corn out of your ass?”
The man muttered but slunk back, thinking better to stay cool than to pick a fight with these roughies. Regers didn’t blame him. Five against one were bad odds. Especially against bully boy types. On the rag. Trouble with the law maybe? Maybe got shafted out of a flight, like him. Pissed at the cancellations and now decided to head to port and take it out on anybody caught in the crossfire. He’d no doubt they’d all be going to the same destination.

Chapter 8
 
An excruciating two hours later, Regers flexed his aching legs as the bus screeched to a rattling halt in a dingy parking lot that’d seen better days. Its asphalt cracked and crumbled from weeds poking through. A few other beat-up buses and dented taxis parked by a low wall. A plain adobe brick control room stood to the side, with some lazy custom officials waving buses and assorted vehicles on. The passengers disgorged in a frantic wave.
Regers was only too happy to exit that hot, battered crypt with the sweaty multitudes who naturally gravitated to a wired-off ticket booth by the waterfront where