Red Star Sheriff

by Timothy Purvis

  “Think you’ll be able to fly this thing for real?” Durante asked, his voice still raised for the din of the collapsing building.

  “We’re gonna find out! If not, this is gonna be a real short trip!” She toggled all the functions on. The plasma shield raised, the waverider lifted off, and she retracted the struts. The vehicle spun towards the doors and Aidele found herself stumped going through all the selection menus. “How… how do we open the doors!?”

  “One of a million questions that should have already been asked! Maybe there’s a switch in the control room? I can—”

  “We don’t have time for all that!” She growled in frustration and scrambled through all the icons then stopped. “Hello. What have we here?”

  “What, what? What do we have here?” he leaned forward and saw her trigger an icon. Then the ship icon altered to show two large barrels erecting from the tip of the cannonlike nose up front. A grin plastered across Aidele’s face in recognition.

  “Holy shit! Forget the office! I just found a set of keys!”

  Durante gasped. “This thing has guns!? The professor built a flying waverider, for your mom, and gave it guns!? What the hell were they planning!?”

  “Hey, guns are the quickest way ta mah heart, I tell you what! Maybe they were a Honey-Day gift?”

  Durante was too stunned to retort as Aidele saw the indicator showing where the triggers were located (a pair of switches above the grip locks that could work in tandem with twisting the handle grips forward) and fired. The interior rang with a loud thrumming as the great barrels let loose their payload. Whatever the ammunition was streamed straight through the shielding with no issues whatsoever.

  ASTA GLARED DOWN at the prostrate form of Thompson who was now trapped under a collapsed section of ceiling. The building shook violently and she could feel Drevan tensing up next to her. All the other soldiers were dead. All except Thompson, who was weakly trying to push the debris on his chest away, his face a purplish red, one cheek hanging off like a blade had been taken to it and carved halfway down. Blood poured from the wound and she knew he didn’t have long one way or another.

  “Lynch,” Thompson forced out, grunting in the effort, his voice rasping on his own blood.

  Asta held her revolver forward and cocked the hammer. Anger, hate, and, strangely, a hint of relief was in her voice as she spoke.

  “Don’ worry, sugah. Nielson’ll be joinin’ ya down in hell soon ‘nuff.”

  She pulled the trigger and what was left of his face exploded sending flesh and ruddy droplets of liquid splattering across her face. Drevan put a hand on her shoulder and she holstered her revolver.

  He motioned with his chin. “We need ta git outta here.”

  “What ‘bout Aidele?”

  “If’n she ain’ dead, she’d better be tryin’ ta figure a way out. Either way, we kent help her now.”

  She nodded and together they raced over the strewn bodies and down the now blood red hall and towards the hangar bay. From somewhere deeper within the labs, they heard a deep thudding like cannon-fire reverberating through the walls. Neither one commented on it as they reached the shuttles.

  “Fuck mah life!” she screamed.

  Every ship in sight had been crushed by crossbeams and collapsing ceiling. Remarkably, the plasma shields were still holding. There was a hole in the roof showing sky from where one section had completely come down, but the emergency shielding had it covered against depressurization. The labs had a lot of safety backups, but by the way all the shields were flickering, it looked like it was reaching its limits. Drevan pointed at a pair of atmosuits hanging and wavering on a wall near a small airlock.

  “Ah’ll wager that leads to a path for external repairs. If’n we’re lucky, it’ll take us ta the surface proper. Care fer a walk?”

  “Uh, not really, but what’re our options?”

  “Precisely shit.”

  They rushed over to the suits and said nothing as they went to work putting them on. The disquieting sounds of rupturing wall and tearing metal wracked the entirety of the building. All of the internal structures had to have already gone. Which meant the shields were all that was holding the place together now. Drevan helped her with her oxygen connections and she returned the favor. Once all was declared functional, they hurried through the airlock. It was an eternity as they waited for the depressurization and the opening of the outer airlock door. As they exited, they heard and felt a loud piercing squelch and glanced over their shoulders long enough to see that the shields had given way and everything in the hangar was now being blown out into the canyon. They tore their eyes away and started up an inclining path with branching pathways. One way went up and around the labs. The other way led up towards the canyon summit.

  Drevan led the way up the narrow path and she followed sparing a brief look over the edge. Which turned out to be a mistake as she got a sudden sense of vertigo. She’d forgotten how deep the canyon was. To fall would mean a four-mile or so trip to a slow death. Oh, the stop would be quick, but one would have a lot of time to think about it before getting there. Drevan grabbed her and she took his arm gratefully.

  “Are you awright?” he asked.

  “No, but ah ain’ gonna let that stop us gittin’ outta here.”

  They picked up the pace up the path when it felt like the whole Crags was collapsing. Something whizzed by through the air over the canyon. Asta was amazed to see a flying craft of some sort surrounded by a slightly shimmering purple shield that was being piloted by Aidele with Mr. Weiss behind her. Asta smiled. Guess she made her grand escape after all. Good on ya, girl. Ya show those fucks what’s what.

  “Was that Aidele?” Drevan said looking over his shoulder as they climbed the path growing incrementally steeper the further they went. Asta laughed. “Fuck. That woman’s slippier than a greased up nighthog.”

  “She is at that.”

  Behind them, the buildings performed their final bow and, even in the thin atmosphere and through their thick atmosuits, the sound was like a thousand shuttles crashing. Hulls shredding and exploding in unison. A cacophony of thunder and wind tried to blow them off the path and into the canyon. Asta had to grab onto a boulder as the path behind them crumbled. Drevan grabbed her hand and they clawed their way over rupturing ground until they found themselves on an even narrower ledge of rock only a few feet wide. Her heart hammered as they witnessed a sheer slide of shattered cliff fall into the canyon. Holding hands, they kept their backs to the wall of stone still standing behind them and shimmied as quickly as they comfortably could to the summit that was only a dozen feet away.

  Managing not to fall, they came up and over the summit to stare out towards a wide series of plains reaching into the horizon. To the far west, there were a series of shallow mountains barely peaking up into the sky. They looked back at what was left of the labs. The buildings were now part of the rocky detritus covering part of the sparkling PSN. The surface they were on continued to flow down and around to the framework as if the buildings had never been there to begin with. There was a new cavity running down beside the Crags that made up the wall between the Wastelands and the canyon. And in that cavity, she saw the redundant shield flowing through what was once a network of offices.

  “That…” she pointed at the cavity and Drevan followed her sights, “that’s not going to be a problem, is it? Ah’d hate fer a whole lotta people ta die cuz the Union is a buncha bastards.”

  “Ken already see the redundants. Should be fine. Sucks, though. However, we ain’ got time fer it. Need ta git ta the kids fer Nielson gits word ‘bout what happened here.”

  “Where ya think he done tore off ta, anyhow?”

  “Kent hazard a guess. Wherever it is, ain’ good fer us, ken tell ya that.”

  They turned towards the west and Asta sighed. “That’s a long fuckin’ walk.”

  “Better git a move on then. We kent git back down inta the canyon. Only path ah knew was jus’ nixed. But, if’n memory s
erves, there’s a tram station down the ways a spell.” He braced his fists on his hips. “We start out now, should git ta it in five hours or so.”

  “Awright. Lead the way. Shor am glad not ta be a pancake right now.”

  “Woulda been a right shame, too,” he replied. “Fergot the syrup.”

  Asta shook her head, “You think yer funny, but yer not.”

  Drevan glanced at her, “No? Ah’m pretty shore ya find me funny.”

  “Uh huhn. Funny lookin’, maybe.”

  Drevan gave a hearty laugh and they started off towards where they hoped the tram station was located.

  ACT THREE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MEETING OF THE MINDS

  SHATTERED STONE FLEW in every direction as Aidele struggled with the controls of the waverider. They plowed through an outcropping of ruddy rock reaching out from the sides of the canyon walls causing the shields to shimmer brightly, but they held. She couldn’t help herself. A laugh broke loose in spite of everything and she maneuvered back into the center of the canyon.

  “For fucks sake! I thought you were getting the hang of this!?”

  Canyon walls zipped by in a blaze. Their speed was already well above trains and trams and steadily climbed higher. The readouts showed a speed over thirty-five-hundred miles per hour and fast approaching four-thousand. At this rate, they’d be in Aquila Mons sometime in the next ten to fifteen minutes, even though the vast city was some three-thousand miles away from the labs. The speedometer crossed over the four-thousand mph barrier and sped along, the miles getting greater on the meter. Aidele swallowed and tried on a smile.

  “We’re fine! This is great! Got total control!”

  She triggered the vertical lift pedal and they rose upward, the canyon floor so far beneath them getting even further still.

  “Why are you raising us up!?”

  “I’m leaving the canyon so you’ll stop your whining about me hitting shit! Also… I want to open her up.”

  “Of course, you do. Where are we at, speed-wise?”

  “Five-thousand, four-hundred and… well, it’s zipping by too fast to see the single digits anymore.”

  They were now over the canyon summit and looking down onto the expanse of the Martian surface. Aidele stared out across the dusty plains, saw the massive domes of the ancient volcanic Mons now playing host to several cities. Bellator Mons, far to the south, not quite as massive as Aquila Mons, but still intimidatingly awesome. The city at its center was more exposed and took up a wider berth than Aquila Mons, but its citizenry was of lower numbers. Further north, the medium size city-state of Fortis Mons. It was a dirty, dusty bastion of mechanized labor and astronomical technologies. There, engineers could join guilds formed to show everyone who the greatest inventors were. Sure, it was ostentatious, sometimes the people a little too serious. But there was nowhere better to find emerging new technologies on the cusp of changing the system of Sol and driving it forward in civilized advancement. The smallest of the Mons cities located on the Tharsis Bulge plateau, was Magna Mons. Though half the size of even Fortis Mons, the city was a magnet for sociological thought and philosophical debate. Its rising skyscrapers were like needles aglitter in electric lighting emulating morning dew. They were fast approaching this city-state now, where it lay in the center of the two other Tharsis Mons. Once, the greatest philosophers in Sol had called Magna Mons home. This was centuries ago, back when the golden age of the colonial efforts was at its finest.

  “That’s fine. Just don’t go past sixteen-thousand miles per hour. We don’t want to go so fast we punch a hole right through Aquila Mons,” Durante said, his focus still on the vehicle readouts.

  “Isn’t it… amazing?” Her voice quavered as she stared at Magna Mons, still half-a-dozen miles away. She felt like they were gnats buzzing a giant that was almost nine miles tall, a wide mound of rock and dirt with a shielded city resting in its center.

  “Uh huhn. Did you hear me about the—”

  “Yes, yes. Keep it under sixteen-thousand. Good thinking. Are you not stunned by the view, though?”

  “I’m trying very hard not to think about it.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You mean to tell me, in the middle of all this splendor, you can’t take a moment to just enjoy the sights?”

  Durante cocked a brow. “Enjoy? Aidele, we’re inside a ball of energy hurtling across the surface of Hinon at nearly eight-thousand miles per hour. Were the shields to suddenly cut out, we might have two-minutes at most to live. Providing the fall didn’t kill us first, of course. ‘Enjoy’ and ‘Amazing’ are not words I’d use to describe this situation.”

  She gave a raspberry and turned around. “You are just no fun. I mean, how many people can say they’ve seen the surface of Hinon with their own eyes? With only a plasma shield between them and all of this, obstructing their sight? It’s just so… awesome.”

  “Really wish I wasn’t one of them. If you could enjoy this less, that would be the awesome part.”

  Aidele burst out laughing and dropped them down to just above the surface as they passed through the Tharsis Mountes region and sped along towards Aquila Mons. They were now doing better than nine-thousand miles per hour and a long trail of Martian dust was rising up in their wake.

  TOBIN CHECKED HIS logbook and frowned. Too many of the employees were coming in late. There was too much that needed done and even one tardy employee would put him behind by a day. They were entering the holiday seasons and he needed everyone performing their best. Shining or not. Justin had been late, again. Sure, it was merely fifteen minutes, but in a city of two-hundred-fifty million people, punctuality kept the docks flowing. And now he had to explain work ethics to the uncooperative bastard.

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” Justin said, arms waving in the air like somehow it was Tobin’s fault he couldn’t find a lift in to work. Not like they didn’t run every ten minutes or anything. “I mean, it’s the same shit every day. Some asshole brings his shuttle in and you park it. Then you go home. What’s fifteen minutes, man? You act like I brought the whole operation to a standstill!”

  Tobin rolled his eyes. He was already tired of this argument. “Stop giving me your nonsensical excuses! This is the fifth time this week! We are too busy for you not to be here on time to change the shifts! Everybody needs to pull their weight! Your fifteen-minute tardiness cost us a sixteen-shuttle backup in dock fourteen! It’ll take until tomorrow to sort it all out! Either be here on time, or don’t bother coming back!” Tobin pointed a finger at his face. “I’m not running a goddamn charity! Here, we work! You don’t like that? There’s the fucking door! Nobody’s stopping you!”

  Justin shook his head and spat out, “You’re a real fucking saint!”

  Tobin growled as the man turned and walked away. He shook his head considering he was going to have to re-evaluate his hiring practices. The people he was picking up as of late were more and more belligerent. The workload was just getting too overwhelming for this nonsense. Aquila Mons was growing by the day. Even the upper escarpment surrounding the mountainous volcano was starting to look like it got a bad plague with all the settlements being built. The bulbous shielding networks plentiful all the way to the edge where the scarp became sheer cliff for miles to the surface below. It was getting to be too much and he was seriously considering transferring to Fortis Mons where some semblance of sanity remained. That and there were some one-hundred-twenty million fewer people.

  Just last month two more docks were added to the south wing and the burden to manage them was on his shoulders. Blasted Council! It’s because of those know-it-alls I keep getting burdened with idiotic ideas! I don’t care that the ‘people wanted it’, it’s screwing with my schedule! He stormed towards his hovercart and got into the driver’s seat. The shields out by the public terminals needed inspecting and that meant driving down three floors. Then there were docks ninety-one and ninety-two that had to be shut down due to some rich kids’ party gettin
g out of hand. And to top it all off, Clivesdale wants to do a walkthrough tomorrow! Pain in my—

  “Tobin! Tobin!” Tobin paused, his hand on the initiator and his nostrils flaring. His colleague, Erso Shire (a tall, dark-skinned Dekon who’d been with the docks for nearly two decades), came running up waving his hand through the air trying to get his attention.

  Tobin clenched his eyes shut, the growling thought in the old Chuhukon’ mind being, By the fucking Spirits! Now what!? I’m going to start murdering people if this keeps up! He sat up and forced the snarl off his lips.

  “Yes, Erso? What’s the big emergency? Don’t know if you heard, but there’s an inspection coming up and the passenger totals are nearly two-hundred thousand already. And it’s not even ten yet!”

  “Yeah, I heard. But I was just given a message.” He handed a pad to Tobin who took it with a grabbing snatch. “Looks like family business. I didn’t read it, but I saw who it was from. Apparently, he thinks you’re not answering his calls intentionally.”

  Tobin looked it over and scowled. “But of course, it’s him. Yes, I am intentionally ignoring the sniveling fuck. Thinks if he wastes your time as well as mine… he can’t be serious! Dinner!? After how he treated Janus last year? He left me, you know? Blames me. Says I act just like the bastard! Well, I’m not anything like him! And I’ve been trying to prove that to Janus for eight months now! And he’s only just lately been willing to go out to dinner with me! If that obnoxious twit thinks he can… Do me a favor, Erso, reply to him and kindly tell him to fuck off. You can quote me on that.”

  Tobin handed the pad back to Erso and leaned over to turn the floating gravimagnetic cart back on. Erso frowned and shook his head quickly as the vehicle hummed to life.