A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) Paul Tomlinson (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

“He was right, you did sound like an expert,” I said, impressed.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of squit in my time.”

“Were you looking at me when you said that?”

“Not directly.”

We drove over to the repair shop and pulled up beside it. It would have looked suspicious if we hadn’t. While I got out and strode around looking like I was easing my aching back, Harmony went inside to tell them that we were there to fix their toilet flushing problem. She would tell them that we’d be on site for a couple of hours and that they’d have to hold it in until we got the job done.

I was checking to see if we’d have any problems when the security cameras came back online. The cameras in this part of the airfield were high up on poles, placed to keep an eye on what was happening to the cargo being unloaded rather than on the people doing the unloading. There were one or two spots where the angle of a camera meant my face might be picked up and I made a mental note to avoid these areas.

Harmony sauntered out of the repair shop. From the way she was swaying her hips, I figured she knew the guys inside were watching her.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“They were pleased to see me. It smells like a fart bomb in there.”

“I bet it always smells like that.”

“I ought to reopen the valve before it gets too deep.”

“Do you need a spanner?”

“Not unless I get the urge to hit you with one. I’ve reset the system and we should hear the pump start up again right about – now.”

“Show-off.”

“How long until the ship touches down?” she asked.

“You mean your computer doesn’t have a little countdown going on in your head?”

“Yes, she does. I was just testing you.”

“Seven minutes,” I said, not looking at my watch. The time and temperature were displayed on the front of the hangar behind her. “We should go and find some shade,” I said. “It must be thirty-seven degrees out here.”

“There’s a fire escape at the back of the repair shop,” she said. “We could go up onto the roof.”

I nodded. We needed a good vantage point. Somewhere that the gunrunners wouldn’t spot us. And the repair shop was in the shade cast by the hangar next to it, so it wouldn’t be unbearably hot up there.

“We should have brought a picnic,” I said as we were walking around to the back of the building.

“Your fart smell ruined my appetite.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been told that. Sorry.” I made fart noises all the way up the fire escape.

“At least the air’s fresher up here,” Harmony said. She stood at the little parapet admiring the view.

“I can soon change that,” I said.

“Don’t you dare!”

I made one last fart noise and this one did raise a hint of a smile. It’s not only boys that laugh about farts.

“They’ve started their descent,” Harmony said. “They’ll be landing at...”

“Pad C,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Someone’s disabled both the cameras that watch over that one.”

“When you say disabled...?”

“Looks like they used a shotgun.”

“Lacks finesse,” Harmony said.

“I don’t think the Colonel’s people do finesse,” I said. “Not like us.”

This time Harmony made the fart noise and it came from behind her. I tried not to laugh. Failed miserably.

“Here it comes,” Harmony said.

“Not another one!”

“The spaceship, idiot.”

As it turned out, the spaceship wasn’t called Idiot. It was the Countess of Frisbee, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a real place. It dropped out of the sky like a huge steaming turd. Trust me when I say it wasn’t a sight to inspire poetry. The Countess was hideous. Bulbous and with an outer hull made of thick intertwining tubes that looked like a bucket of snakes. She was a uniform matte brown colour and the engines stuck out of the back like the Countess was giving birth to them. I don’t know what I’d expected gunrunners to be flying around in, but this wasn’t it. As she came into land her engines made wheezing and blatting sounds and there seemed a real danger that she would explode like a fart bomb.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“That is the ugliest ship I have ever seen,” Harmony said. “It looks like a horse-apple on legs.”

We were crouching down on the roof looking across at the landing pad. We’d watched the big ugly come down out of a clear blue sky and neither of us had been prepared for the sight.

“Maybe it’s deliberate,” I said. “To stop people coming in close for a better look.

“It’s big,” Harmony said.

It was difficult to judge the size of the Countess – until you realised that the little things moving around underneath it were people.

“Not for an interstellar,” I said. Most of the ships that dropped down wormholes and punched out the other side of the fold were bigger than this. But they were too big to make planetfall like the turd-ship in front of us.

“It looks old. Pre-war.”

“That’s what we’re supposed to think,” I said. “I bet the hardware under the shell is a lot more modern.”

“It’s not like any pirate ship I ever saw.”

“No, it isn’t. There’s definitely something wrong with this picture.”

“We should get closer before the others arrive.”

There was no sign of the Colonel’s ship and our best guess was that we had perhaps half-an-hour before they turned up.

We made our way down the fire escape and stood out of sight at the corner of the repair shop.

“I’m going to send the drones in to get some video of these guys,” I said. I dropped to one knee and pulled Gnat and Mozzie out of my backpack. I called up the menu on my watch screen and gave them their instructions. Harmony watched me, shaking her head.

“You really need to update your tech,” she said.

The drones zipped away, staying close to the ground to minimise the chance of anyone’s sensors picking them up.

“We’ll go on foot,”