Free Rift Breaker by Tristan Michael Savage Page A

common.’
    Grey smoke snaked from the drone’s gaping blast hole while its operational lights faded slowly to oblivion.
    â€˜Sounds reasonable,’ agreed Milton. They set off for the Inhibitan .

    Thick threads of yellow lightning cracked the sky. Rainfall gradually got heavier. Milton jogged through another back alley; this one was a lot cleaner. He held his arm across his forehead to see. Tazman and Luylla were not far ahead, arguing about the best route through the city. They stood at an alley intersection, glancing around for patrol bots and authorities. Tazman began ranting in the downpour.
    â€˜Oh no,’ Milton said to himself.
    The simian turned to Luylla, yelling and eccentrically making his point with flailing arms and whipping tail. Luylla, not paying him any attention, glanced up. She pushed Tazman behind a vent column and ducked for cover after him. Milton darted behind a pillar against the alley wall. A searchlight swooped over the area.
    The patrol vehicle hovered at the exit. Dots of light strobed from its frame and shadows moved behind its tinted dome visor. Rain steamed off its jets, blurring the air with escaping heat. Milton thinned his body and the light swept past his hiding place. The spot beam switched off. The moment lingered before the vehicle tilted forward to move on. Milton jogged up to the pair and addressed Tazman. ‘Are you finished?’ Tazman saidnothing, frowning with tightened lips and narrowed eyes. The trio moved on, crossing a thin street then pausing at the mouth of another, wider alley, shielded from the rain and filled with merchants, buskers and music.
    â€˜Don’t look anyone in the eye,’ advised Luylla, striding ahead.
    â€˜But that one has nothing but eyes,’ retorted Tazman, pointing as he followed on.
    Colourful shapes suspended above and across the buildings, outshining the bland half-sphere side lamps along the walls. Milton passed a stack of cages filled with feathered, reptilian and armoured birds. Beside them on a shelf were various shaped eggs under an incubating light.
    In another display two gigantic arachnids strummed their legs on metallic strings stretched tight over an elaborate rig above their multiple-eyed heads. Their prickling music screeched from amplifying horns. Tazman kept a hold of his tail.
    A tentacle wound around Milton’s upper arm and spun him back to face a shelf of polished bits of metal jewellery.
    â€˜Care to trade?’ the creature inquired in a breathy voice. It flipped its tentacles in an elaborate wave, emitting gurgles and sludge from a floppy, digit-covered mouth at the centre of an enormous scar-ridden head. A wayward tentacle slipped into Milton’s pocket and extracted the gold disc.
    â€˜Get off,’ said Milton. The creature let out a piercing wail. Milton grabbed the disc in both hands and threw his weight back. The tentacle slipped off and the disc broke free. Miltonmoved on, wiping his hands of the bio gunk. Annoyed, he pushed through the crowd with his hand protecting the treasure in his pocket, ignoring everything around him. He spotted the hangar entrance past the alley’s end. Luylla skimmed across the intersecting path. He crept up behind to find her stopped short of the opening.
    â€˜Well, that’s going to be a problem,’ she huffed. She wandered away from the entrance, looking at the sky, cursing and hitting the wall.
    â€˜What?’ Milton asked.
    â€˜You see that guy in the battle armour?’ she said, frustrated. Milton inched to the entrance and peered in. Among the crowd there stood a horned creature wearing a hard suit of black and red. Large shoulder pads and chest plating dominated the frame. The armour hugged tight around his small hips and grew thick again with battle-scratched thigh plating and boots. He held a rifle close to his chest. His expressionless gaze scanned the spaceport.
    â€˜Yeah,’ Milton confirmed.
    â€˜That’s a