Race to the Finish

by Craig Martelle

  “I need to check on some of my friends who didn’t complete the race,” Thad said as he pushed through the throng of reporters and stunned fans.

  Shaunte ran forward.

  He tried to ignore her like that famous Earth actor who usually played cowboys did in that Scotland movie, or was it Ireland? Thad couldn’t remember. The Quiet Dude was the name of the movie. Something like that.

  Thoughts raced through his head; justice for Tia and the others, Mast’s secrets, the secrets of P. C. Dickles, regrets that his troops from Centauri Prime weren’t here to celebrate with him.

  Shaunte ran after him.

  Thad turned to avoid her, gave up, and faced her right as she jumped into his arms. She hugged him hard. He held her feet off the ground.

  “Mast told me he thought you were going to get killed in the…special part of the race course,” Shaunte said. “Um, you can put me down now.”

  “I could. You’re so small, I could carry you back to Darklanding,” he said.

  “Whatever for, Sheriff?” She blushed immediately.

  He put her down and watched her smooth her thousand-credit suit and compose herself.

  “I am very glad you are okay. As the Company Man of Darklanding, I officially congratulate you on your success,” she said.

  “It’s not the official congratulations I’m interested in,” Thad said. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, not caring what happened next.

  The reporters were flustered in their desire to catch the moment in both stills and video.

  A nondescript, state-of-the-art, SagCon ship lifted from behind the half-stadium and flew toward the race course. Thad watched it go and wondered what Sledge was going to do to Leslie and Chelsie.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Professionals

  Dixie shifted in the copilot’s seat, struggling to get the five-point harness around her ample form. It wasn’t made for a woman of her gifts. Sledge seemed very interested in helping her.

  “Can you fly the ship and let me worry about fitting my boobs into this contraption!”

  “As the pilot, I am responsible for your safety,” he said, leaning away from the controls to manhandle the buckles.

  She slapped his hands. “Mister Hammer. Fly the ship, if you please. I am…more than capable…of clicking these buckles! There!” She exhaled forcefully.

  Sledge flew the ship over the maze of canyons. “I should have left you at the stadium.”

  “You are not talking to my girls without me.” Dixie was glaring at Sledge, but he wouldn’t take his eyes from their flight path. “Whatever you claimed they did is irrelevant. They signed a contract at the Mother Lode and that means they get a clean slate. Pierre has all of the contracts—including zoning exemptions, statutory amendments, and judicial review—in hardcopy and digital formats. These girls are mine.”

  “I never understood the necessity for all that fuss if prostitution is legal in Darklanding,” Sledge said.

  “Well, it is,” Dixie huffed.

  “Only for long-term residents of Darklanding.”

  “How did you know that?” she asked.

  He looked at her, letting the airship continue on autopilot—she hoped.

  “I’m a SagCon Special Investigator, not a bouncer at the Mother Lode. I can read,” he said.

  She crossed her arms, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the uncomfortable safety harness. “Then you will also know this: none of my girls can be held accountable in civil court for the actions of the patrons, nor can they be charged criminally for the intentional or incidental violations of the statutory code as it applies to Darklanding.”

  “If you allow people like—I don’t know—LeClerc and the other ultra-rich guests currently on Darklanding to misbehave at the Mother Lode, there will be others. Your establishment will be the place everyone with money and influence will come to to act out their fantasies without consequences.”

  Dixie rolled the possibilities through her mind.

  “That would make Darklanding a boom town, until someone even worse than LeClerc shows up. I think you care about your girls more than you let them see. LeClerc will kill one of them before he leaves here. I’m friends with the Melborn State Investigator in charge of his case. He knows the man better than his mother or his psychologist. LeClerc is working up the courage to kill.”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” Dixie said. “Don’t hide your real intent under a story like that. What do you want with Leslie and Chelsie?”

  He concentrated on flying the ship that could fly itself. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  Dixie ground her teeth and stared through the cockpit’s front window.

  Sledge landed near the wreckage of the Pink Revenge where Leslie and Chelsie were sunning themselves on a broken wing. Dixie unbuckled and rushed to the aft door of the airship. She dropped a narrow set of stairs and hurried down, careful to protect her outfit and her hair from gusts of canyon wind.

  “You girls are going to ruin your skin!” Dixie said.

  Leslie waved a hand without opening her eyes or otherwise moving. “Don’t care.”

  Dixie hissed in a lower voice once she was closer to the scantily-clad women. “Sledge is here! What did you two little hussies do!”

  Leslie sat up a second faster than Chelsie. “What did you say?”

  Dixie wondered, just for an instant, if the woman was offended by what she had called her. “SagCon Special Investigator Michael Hammer is here and you two young women are in trouble.”

  Chelsie pulled a small tube of lotion from the belt-line of her short-shorts and spread it over her body. “No, Dixie. We’re not in trouble. But you might not want to be here for this.”

  “Could get ugly,” Leslie said, standing on the wing as she stretched one arm over the other.

  Dixie frowned. “Now I am really confused.”

  Sledge sauntered up behind her. “Dixie, would you please wait in the ship?”

  “I will not!”

  “Would you please wait near the ship? That way you could stand witness and retain plausible deniability,” Sledge said.

  Dixie crossed her arms and stared him down.

  Leslie and Chelsie slid off the wing to stand barefoot on the sand.

  “Leslie Yang and Chelsie McMullin, you are both absent without leave from the Melborn Intergalactic Reserve Airforce Expeditionary Forces.”

  “The charter for Darklanding Entertainment Establishments…” Dixie said.

  “Does not cover desertion,” Sledge said. “These young woman have been AWOL for a lot longer than they told you. Don’t get mad. They were probably only concerned with your plausible deniability.”

  “Or we didn’t trust her back then,” Leslie said.

  “And now we don’t want her involved in the shit-show of our lives,” Chelsie said. “Miss Dixie, can we please talk to Sledge in private?”

  “No,” Dixie said, aware that neither of the girls were doing their slut act. This gave her a bad feeling for reasons she didn’t understand.

  Sledge crossed his massive arms and spent a full minute considering Dixie before he spoke. “I wish you hadn’t put yourself in this position.” He faced Leslie and Chelsie. “My employers need both of you for a mission.”

  “No, you don’t, Sledge. My girls don’t do house calls. Not even for a bunch of rich jerkoffs. Didn’t you just spend an annoyingly long time telling me to keep the ultra-rich and powerful sex freaks away from Darklanding?”

  “SagCon wants us for a mission?” Leslie said.

  “You know better than to ask that,” Sledge said.

  Dixie held up a hand to silence the woman and was frustrated it didn’t work as well as it should have.

  “Does it require us to screw anyone?” Leslie asked.

  Dixie furrowed her brow. “Wait… What are the three of you talking about?”

  “They’re assassins, Dixie. They kill people for money. I have a feeling their latest attempt was pro bono. Y
ou two should have killed him in his bed.”

  “That would have been scandalous,” Chelsie said.

  “But he would have still died a LAR champion,” Leslie said. “This was the only way to take that from him.”

  “The Darklanding LAR is a private exhibition paid for by SagCon, not a sanctioned Galactic LAR League event. He’d still would have died undefeated,” Sledge said.

  “He survived?”

  Sledge nodded.

  Both girls cursed until Sledge took an involuntary step back. “That… I never thought I could learn so many new curse words at one time. What the hell is a bandersnatch?”

  “You’re the bandersnatch, Mister Hammer,” Dixie said. “I don’t think you should talk to my girls until they have a lawyer present.”

  Leslie and Chelsie moved to Dixie and hugged her from both sides. “You’re the sweetest madam in the galaxy.”

  “I wish I had your boobs,” Chelsie said.

  “Well, uh…thanks,” Dixie said.

  “We don’t want to leave Darklanding. You’ve been good to us,” Leslie said.

  “Neither of you have agreed to take the mission I’m offering,” Sledge said.

  “That’s because it is probably a SagCon mission and we’ve been burnt before,” Leslie said. “Who does SagCon want us to kill now?”

  “Sheriff Thaddeus Fry.”

  * * *

  Thad stood in companionable silence with his deputy. He hadn’t forgotten how the Unglok had saved his life during the survey of the caves near the Kuskokwell village. He smiled at the thought of Mast’s too young Unglok girlfriend, then decided he better not think too much about his deputy’s romantic life. He wondered where Sledge and Dixie had gotten off to and hoped they were having a good time, despite a small, unexpected twinge of jealousy. He wanted nothing to do with the madam but would miss her flirtations and outright sexual advances.

  Shaunte was something different. He’d taken his shot at her a couple of times now…disastrous attempts that made him blush despite his age and experience. How could one woman completely confound his game? It was like being an awkward teenager who had never kissed a girl.

  Relax, Fry-man. Breathe. Enjoy the double moons and bright stars of Darklanding’s sky. Forget about it. She’s not interested in an old warhorse like you.

  He stared off the edge of the Darklanding mesa at work crews in the distance. Mast seemed to ponder his own thoughts. Maximus slept in a ball of rough fur and restless dreams.

  On the distant floor of Transport Canyon, SagCon teams dismantled the half-stadium and pulled up race markers with military efficiency. To be honest, Thad thought, they were more efficient than the Ground Forces—at least when it came to profit and loss scenarios. Waste time tearing down the LAR exhibition center, waste credits. Transport ships, forklifts, and other heavy tools ran all night with headlights slashing back and forth across a ten-kilometer area that would soon be nothing but a sand-covered landing strip.

  “We have to talk about your spirit quest,” Thad said.

  “I muchly disagree. Do you also want to date my sister?”

  “What?”

  “It is very impolite to ask after an Unglok’s sister,” Mast said.

  “Or ask about an Unglok’s spirit quest,” Thad said. “I get it. But we’ve talked about it before. You never give me a lot of detail, but we both know this is important to your people and Darklanding.”

  “I have told you all I know, Thaddeus. There is a deep vertical shaft beneath Darklanding, very wide and dark. I believe I saw a ship and monsters at the bottom of the shaft,” Mast said.

  “I found another shaft,” Thad said.

  Mast stared at him.

  Maximus whined in his sleep.

  “What do you mean? How could you go on a spirit quest? Are you Unglok now?” Mast asked.

  “There is no footage from the race. I turned off the camera view once I entered the cave,” Thad said.

  “There cannot be another shaft as grand as the one I took many days to explore,” Mast said, crossing his arms and staring at the SagCon work crews in the distance. Ships dropped into the atmosphere and flew their regular deliveries and pickups to the Darklanding spaceport. The two activities seemed separate but balanced.

  “I flew straight down into it. Not sure how deep we went. I was trying not to die. The shaft matches everything you said about yours except for the ladders and ledges your people use to explore the place,” Thad said. “There are at least two shafts, which mean there are probably two alien ships down there.”

  “I am not certain the ship was real. Or the creatures who attacked me,” Mast said.

  Thad closed his eyes and massaged his brow. “This won’t go away. When SagCon or, God forbid, TerroCom, finds out, your planet will be swarming with off-worlders.”

  Mast refused to look at Thad for a long time before speaking. “You must show me this place.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  No Service

  Thad sat on his barstool, keeping a low profile—not an easy task for the planet’s law enforcement authority. Pierre frowned at him. He stopped wiping the bar, placed both hands near Thad, and stared. Noise from the double-capacity crowd threatened to shake the paint off the cheap walls.

  “Piss off, Pierre. I’m not in the mood,” Thad said.

  Old Pierre retreated. “Pierre, take over at the bar. I have…things I must attend to.”

  The proprietor went to his regular table while the moody young man who worked in the saloon when he wasn’t daydreaming cleaned glasses and ignored customers.

  The auto-piano was turned up so loud it distorted. A trio of Dixie’s girls danced from the stage to a tabletop and kicked up their heels. Dixie stood near the stairs leading to the brothel with her arms crossed. She hadn’t made a single attempt at Thad’s virtue all night. She hadn’t walked near him with or without her cleavage on display and her skirt slit up to the side of her hip.

  Sledge was gone, not just from the Mother Lode but from Darklanding. One minute he was delivering Dixie and her girls from the crash site of the Pink Revenge, the next he was on a shuttle to high orbit.

  Tia sat near the piano and sang a lovely melody, Thad assumed. He couldn’t exactly hear from this distance. About twenty men surrounded her, sitting like they were about to propose marriage.

  P. C. Dickles entered the saloon and made his way to Thad. The crowd of boisterous miners, spaceport workers, and other SagCon support crews thwarted his forward progress. Every step forward cost him two sideways. Thad saw him slip and fall at least once, grabbing the side of a table for balance and nearly getting in a fight.

  Leslie and Chelsie descended the stairs and cut through the crowd with less difficulty. Gone were their short-shorts, half-shirt tank tops, and race goggles.

  “Put on those short-shorts!” a man yelled. “Why are you wearing jumpsuits? Are you working at the mine now?”

  “I’ll train them for the mines,” yelled another man. “Time for an inspection!”

  Thad pushed his shot glass toward the young Pierre. “Refill that in ninety seconds and slide it back to me.”

  “You’re going to fight girls?” Pierre asked.

  Maximus looked up as though intrigued.

  Thad looked at the young man, surprised by the question. Fighting was exactly what his instincts told him to do. Confused, he hesitated before stepping away from his bar stool.

  P. C. Dickles reached him first. “I want my ship back, you son-of-a-bitch. And tell that damn deputy of yours I will pay my bets to his Glok friends when I can. Might as well since I am paying everyone else.”

  “You bet against me? Why are you gambling with Ungloks?”

  “Not that many of the more sophisticated bookies would even take wagers for you to finish,” Dickles said.

  “By more sophisticated, you mean human.”

  “Yeah.” Dickles looked around, spotted Leslie and Chelsie advancing, and backed up a step.

  The crowd part
ed as the two women strutted forward wearing work jumpsuits and long coats.

  “I don’t have time for you right now,” Thad said, pushing Dickles out of the way. He had the undeniable feeling, the gut instinct of street fighters and self-taught frontier sheriffs, that the women were going to draw. He knew they’d been pilots in the Air Forces. They had basic training and a round or two in survival school—escape and evasion stuff. What made them think they were gunslingers?

  A chill went down his spine. He squared his body to the strange new threat. Better to take a blaster round head-on—through one lung rather than both lungs and the heart. He’d seen poorly trained cops and soldiers stand sideways like they were in a karate match. Good for kicking and punching, not good for a shoot-out.

  The girls stopped. Someone shut off the auto-piano. Tia’s song delicately trailed away to a melancholy dissonance. Hundreds of men and women backed away, staring at the silent scene.

  “Sorry about your deputy,” Leslie said. “He was fun for an Unglok.”

  Maximus lowered his head and pretended to sleep. Thad glanced at the animal. “Not impressed with you right now, dog. I thought you’d have my back. Can you growl or something?”

  He lowered his right hand, pretending to hook one thumb into the belt of his SagCon jumpsuit. The move placed his hand closer to his sidearm without causing them to draw. He wanted to ask about Mast but understood he couldn’t afford distractions. The simple task of speaking would be a fatal mistake. One of the women would shoot him mid-sentence.

  He waited for a villain’s monologue for the same reason. As soon as the girls started to gloat, he’d step laterally and shoot on the move. Wondering what the hell was going on and why Dixie’s girls would want him dead was also a luxury.

  But he had to wonder. All Dixie’s girls liked him. And why was Dixie standing at the stairs, arms crossed, blocking her other girls, who were just as pissed off and confused by the treachery of Leslie and Chelsie as Thad was?

  “You two get out of here. I lost money on you as well,” Dickles said.