STAR FIGHTERS BUMPER SPECIAL EDITION: Stealth Force (4 page)

They came to a dusty, empty town square. On one side there was a stone well in the shade of a tree, next to a horse trough. Buildings stood all around the square. One of them had a sign over the door that said,
Saloon
. A ball of brown tumbleweed rolled through the square.

‘It’s quiet,’ Diesel said. ‘
Too
qui—’

The double doors of the saloon bar went flying across the square, spinning and flipping through the air, then hitting the ground and smashing into pieces. Two Westrenian lizard-like men stumbled out of the saloon, fighting. They fell and rolled in the dust, continuing their tussle. Occasionally, they lashed out their lizard-tongues, which made loud, snapping sounds.

I bet those lizard-tongues can do some damage
, Peri thought, hoping they wouldn’t get into any fights on this strange planet.

‘This way,’ Peri hissed, dragging Selene and Diesel into a narrow alley. ‘Until we know what this is all about, we should stay out of sight.’

A third Westrenian crashed through an upstairs window of the saloon and bounced off the awning below. He was just picking himself up when a fourth jumped through the broken window and sprang off the awning to bundle his foe to the ground. The two of them started slugging it out in the street.

Then a whole crowd of greenish lizard-men tumbled out into the square.

‘It’s a free-for-all!’ Selene said.

‘
Ch’açh
!
’ Diesel said. ‘I take that back, about it being too quiet.’

Peri laughed. ‘It’s a shame Otto can’t see this. He’d love – Whoa!’ He ducked as a bar stool hurtled through the air and narrowly missed him.

‘Do you think we should do something?’ Diesel said, watching two furiously struggling bodies roll down the street.

Beside him, Selene dived down as a bottle flew by.

Peri felt a tingle of anxiety in his bionic belly. ‘Why isn’t there anyone charging in to arrest them?’

‘Maybe they don’t have any cops in this town,’ Diesel said.

On the other side of the square, Peri spotted a two-storey building with a painted sign hanging outside, displaying a seven-pointed blue star.

‘That might be a sheriff’s office,’ Peri said. ‘Come on!’ He led them around the edge of the square.

The Star Fighters managed to avoid the flailing fists and feet, the snapping tongues and spinning bottles. Finally, they made it. Peri stepped on to the creaking wooden veranda and pushed open the door.

‘Hello?’ he called.

No answer.

Peri beckoned to the others, and they went into the little office. Their boots sounded loud on the wooden floor. There were posters of wanted men on the whitewashed walls. Six cells with iron-barred doors stood open and empty. It gave Peri an eerie feeling.

Beyond the six cells was another door.

‘Shall we try it?’ Peri asked.

‘There won’t be anyone there,’ Diesel said. ‘This place is obviously deserted.’

‘We’ll see,’ Selene said. She knocked on the door and turned the handle.

A tall, gangling Westrenian boy was sitting at a desk in the small back office. He was wearing a sheriff’s uniform that fit worse than Otto’s cowboy outfit. He was hunched over a metal box with a twisted antenna sticking out of it, tapping away at it with some sort of metal instrument. Peri thought it looked like an old-fashioned telegraph and a record player rolled into one.

At the sight of Peri, Selene and Diesel, he leapt to his feet. His hat fell over his deep, black eyes as he groped for his weapon.

Peri and Diesel ran round either side of the desk to grab the boy’s arms and keep him from drawing his weapon. His skin felt rough and ridged.

‘Easy,’ Peri said.

‘Get off, you bandits!’ shouted the boy. ‘You evil outlaws –’

‘We’re not evil outlaws,’ Peri said.

Diesel removed the gun from the boy’s holster. When he saw that it was only a wooden toy, he threw it down on the desk. Peri lifted up the boy’s hat to see the boy’s face staring straight back at him. He was nervous but brave.

‘Did Wild Will send you?’ the boy demanded.

‘Who’s Wild Will?’ Selene asked. ‘We’re not from these parts.’

‘If you were, you’d know Wild Will. He’s the most evil, dangerous bandit in the whole of
Westrenia.’

‘We’re here to help you,’ Peri said. ‘We heard your distress signal.’

The boy looked with pride at the metal instrument he had been tapping. ‘You mean this thing actually worked? Wild Will’s gang smashed the machine my father uses to send messages to other towns. I tried to give this one a boost by building an amplifier on the roof. I wasn’t sure if it would work at all, let alone send my message as far as the next town. Are you folks from Dry Gulch City?’

‘A bit further away than that,’ Peri said, sharing a secret smile with Diesel and Selene. They let go of the boy and Peri offered his hand. ‘My name’s Peri and this is Diesel and Selene.’

‘Dexter.’ The boy shook hands with all three of them in turn. ‘I still can’t believe someone heard my message. I hope you don’t mind my saying but aren’t you a bit . . .
young
to be able to help me?’

‘
You
look a bit young to be a sheriff,’ Diesel replied.

‘My father’s the real sheriff. He was kidnapped by Wild Will and his gang.’

‘Is that why you were signalling for help?’ Selene asked.

Dexter nodded. ‘My father, Sheriff Lexor, had finally caught Wild Will and locked him up in this jailhouse, but then Wild Will’s gang busted him out and kidnapped my father. No one knows what they’ve done with him. So the town has no sheriff, which means Wild Will and his gang are in charge. They’re unstoppable.’

‘No, they’re not,’ Peri said. ‘You’ve got us now!’

Dexter’s story had woken Peri’s sense of justice. It just wasn’t fair for a villain like Wild Will to bully a whole town into submission. The IF code demanded that the Star Fighters put it right.

‘But what can you do?’ Dexter asked. ‘What can anyone do?’

‘If Wild Will has a gang,’ Peri said, ‘I guess we’ll have to get ourselves our own posse.’    

Chapter 4

Diesel wiped the sweat from his bedraggled strip of hair. ‘
Prrrip’chiq!
Westrenia is hotter than that rubbish incinerator on Xion!’

Early the next morning, the Star Fighters had gathered at the junction where the stagecoach road met the dirt track. Already the sun beat down pitilessly and the desert landscape shimmered in the heat haze. They stood in the small patch of shade cast by a giant cactus, which wasn’t nearly big enough for all three of them.

‘Why did we have to come out here?’ Diesel said. ‘Why couldn’t we stay in town?’

Peri sighed. He’d only explained to Diesel ten times already. ‘With Wild Will running Buckskinville, we don’t know who we can trust. We need a safe place where we can make our plans in secret.’

‘Dexter should be here by now,’ Selene said. ‘Do you think he’s having problems recruiting for our posse?’

‘No way, loads of Westrenians will want to join so they can settle their scores,’ Peri said, trying to sound confident. ‘According to Dexter, the town has been terrorised by Wild Will for ages.’

Peri checked the Mission Update screen on the control strip of his Expedition Wear:
109 hours, 24 minutes
. Would that be enough time to help Dexter
and
return to the IF Space Station? Peri hoped so.

He scanned the horizon and saw a short line of figures in the distance.

Three of them.

Peri’s heart sank to his space-cowboy boots. The two figures alongside Dexter weren’t much bigger than the sheriff’s son. Peri did his best to put on a brave face.

‘Here they come!’ he said. ‘At least Dexter managed to get a small posse together.’

‘Yeah, two kids,’ Diesel complained.

‘Plus Dexter and us!’ Peri said. ‘That makes six.’

‘How can six of us take on a gang of armed bandits?’ Diesel groaned.

Peri looked at Selene for support, but his engineer friend was looking at the ground.

‘And it sounds like Wild Will has lots of bandits in his gang,’ she said.

‘So what?’ Peri said. ‘We’re Star Fighters. We’ve fought whole armies and survived –’

‘But we were in the
Phoenix
then,’ Diesel said. ‘If we had the
Phoenix
now, Wild Will and his gang wouldn’t stand a chance. Without it,
we
don’t stand a chance!’

‘We didn’t have the
Phoenix
when we beat the Xio-Bot,’ Peri reminded him. ‘And anyway, we’re not going to turn our backs on those in trouble!’

Dexter and his two friends had almost reached them now.

Peri waved. ‘Howdy!’

‘Howdy!’ Dexter said. ‘These are my friends, Spike and Gunner.’

They were tough, cool-sounding names, but the boys themselves looked neither cool nor tough. Gunner was taller and skinny, with a long neck and high shoulders. Spike was short and squat, with a thatch of bristly red hair under a little white cap. They both looked rather meek and distinctly worried. Their black eyes were wide and their lizard-tongues flicked in and out of their mouths nervously. Gunner’s hands seemed to be wrestling with each other, while Spike kept fiddling with his cap, trying to get it to sit right on his bristly hair.

‘Good to meet you,’ Peri said.

‘L-l-likewise,’ Gunner said.

‘Oh!’ Spike’s gaze was fixed on Selene. ‘I didn’t know girls could be in posses.’

Selene glared at him. ‘I can fight as well as any boy.’

‘Fight?’ Gunner said doubtfully. He looked at Dexter. ‘But she’s a girl!’