“It is not your favorite thing, Kemosabe,” Hirotoshi conceded with a wry smile.
“Not my favorite?” Tabitha snorted. “Give me five hundred years, and I will never tire of your gift for understatement. I need an administrative minion. My old one isn’t cutting it anymore.”
“What she means,” Achronyx sulked, “is that she annoyed me, and now I won’t do it for her. She was trying to get Peter to do it for her last week.”
Hirotoshi snickered. “I can imagine how that went down.”
Tabitha gasped theatrically. “Achronyx! I can’t believe you would be so disloyal. Just for that, you should clear my backlog for me.” She stopped snickering when the door opened wide and the people sidled out into the shipyard.
“Um…” Tabitha saw the arrivals’ nervous edge. They stuck together for protection like a group of meerkats while they walked over to the freighter. “They don’t look much like royals. Or scumbags.”
They actually looked a little scared. The group of no more than a dozen edged toward the gunrunner, who stood waiting for them with their body language screaming boredom.
Tabitha got up and leaned over her console, balancing on her hands to get a better look. “Turn up the volume, Achronyx.”
Achronyx did as Tabitha asked just as the meet began.
“You have what we asked for?” the man at the front of the group asked.
The space-suited figure nodded once. “You have the credit chip?”
The man made a face and pulled out a drawstring bag. “It’s not all on one chip. Your services don’t come cheaply. We had to pool our resources for this.”
The seller took their helmet off, revealing his weaselly-looking face at last.
The man pulled his hand back when Weasel Face reached for the bag. “Show us the guns first. Do we look like we came off the first colony ship?”
“Achronyx had it wrong as well,” Tabitha remarked. She rolled her eyes at Hirotoshi’s stony expression. “What? I’m just trying to make light of the situation.”
“I was closer than either of you,” Achronyx retorted. “It is a shame none of us decided to go for ‘angry civilian,’ since that is what we have here by the look of things.”
Tabitha smirked. “Never mind, I’ll find another way to get my paperwork done. The bet is voided. Get ready, we’re going down there.”
Tabitha and Hirotoshi worked quickly to get their weapons strapped on, then ran for the drop doors in the cargo bay while Achronyx piped the audio from the people on the ground through their comms.
Tabitha snagged a G-bar from the rack on the wall and headed over to the drop doors. She grabbed one of the straps that dangled from the reinforced bar above her head and waited for Achronyx to open the doors.
She checked her grip as Hirotoshi joined her and they leaned out with their feet planted firmly on the lip of the drop.
All the while, the events continued to unfold in the shipyard below. The sale was already looking precarious. It spiraled rapidly into a less-than-fortuitous deal for all involved when the seller demanded an extra payment on top of the already-agreed-upon price and the man lost his temper.
The other buyers had found their courage at that point, their initial nerves at the illicit nature of the meeting offset by the simple mathematics of twelve against one. They all began shouting at the seller, filling Tabitha’s audio link with an incomprehensible babble.
Tabitha groaned when she saw the gunrunner’s blaster hand twitch. “Aw, shit. We can’t let this go down. This asshat is either going to rob these people blind or blow their fool heads off because they spooked him. Light them up and let’s go fishing, Achronyx.”
Achronyx switched on the ship’s floodlights at the same time he released the drones. Tabitha gave the signal, and she and Hirotoshi let go of their straps and plummeted through the open drop doors.
Tabitha heard Achronyx read the people on the ground their rights over the ship’s external speakers.
“Citizens of the Etheric Empire. You are under arrest. You have the right to shut the hell up and do as the nice Ranger tells you, in which case you will receive a fair hearing. Or you can resist arrest, and she will be happy to beat some obedience into you and then you will receive a fair hearing. Your choice, really.”
Tabitha snickered and twisted her G-bar to activate it. Nice intro.
You are welcome. Do you realize you’ve activated the manual control on the G-bar?
Uh-huh. It’s only a short drop. Tabitha’s hand slipped and caught the control, and the G-bar halted in midair with a sharp jerk. The sudden reintroduction of gravity pulled the breath from Tabitha’s lungs and constricted her chest painfully while simultaneously stretching the joints in her arms and shoulders to their limit.
All she could do for a second was hang there treading air.
As Hirotoshi passed the spot where Tabitha hung from the bar, he winked and continued his smooth dive.
Fiiine, she conceded. Achronyx, take this thing over.
Achronyx brought them down at the edge of the shipyard. The drones zipped around in a coordinated sweep, discharging their taser nets into the conflict. The hapless civilians went down immediately, twitching under the nets as they were captured.
The gunrunner tried to flee, which Tabitha counted as resisting arrest. She shot him in the back with a round designed to incapacitate a raging Shrillexian.
She went over and poked the criminal with her toe to turn him over. The man flopped over like a jellyfish and began to snore. “Oops. Probably shouldn’t have hit him with that. He’ll have a really long nap, right, Achronyx?”
He’ll be fine... Well, I think he will wake up.
Tabitha didn’t think he sounded too hopeful about that. Net him anyway just to be sure. I don’t want to get back here to arrest him and find he escaped.
Tabitha waited for the drone to appear before she left to find the man she thought was the leader of the people. She scooped her tiny drones out of their pouch on her belt and released them by Weasel Face’s ship as she walked past. The drones snapped through the air, working to get scans of whatever was inside the freighter’s cargo hold as Tabitha continued on her way.
Tabitha found Hirotoshi with a man. He was awake and struggling in the net that held him despite the electric shocks it gave him each time he strained against the mesh.
Tabitha told Achronyx to turn off the shocks unless anyone tried anything as she walked over. She squatted by the angry man, turning her head sideways to look at him. “Are you in charge of these people?”
The man glowered at her. “Who the fuck are you?”
Tabitha shook her head. “What is it with the lack of manners these days? My name is Ranger Two. And you are?”
“Pissed off!” the man bawled at the top of his lungs. “You let me out of this right fucking now!”
“Jake, don’t piss the Ranger off!” A woman with a plaster cast on her foot stormed haphazardly from the building. Tabitha raised an eyebrow as she and Hirotoshi shared a look.
She waved one of her crutches and called as she got closer, “Sorry, Ranger ma’am. He doesn’t mean it.”
“I damn well do mean it!” the man roared, struggling. “Let me go!”
The woman reached Tabitha and poked Jake with her crutch. “Carry on disrespecting the Ranger and I’ll ask her to leave you in there overnight, you gobshite. If your da could see you now, he’d tear a stripe from your hide.”
Tabitha had to hold back a fit of giggles. “Hopefully that won’t be necessary, Mrs…”
The old woman beamed. “Oh, you’re a sweet one. The name’s Eileen, and you don’t need any introduction at all, my dear Ranger. Thank you for your work on Elysium about seventy years ago. You saved my grandfather from a mine collapse, and I’m pretty sure that you just saved my grandson from catching his death due to a sudden case of stupid.”
Tabitha smirked and accepted Eileen’s hug. “You are welcome, but I can’t save him from stupid entirely. Unfort
unately, I caught him attempting to buy black market weapons, and that comes with a penalty.”
Eileen shook her head sadly. “I understand.”
“You can stop talking about me like I’m not even here,” Jake complained. “I’m not a child anymore.”
“Was it a very adult thing you did today? Who will look after your daughters now?” Eileen shook her fist at her grandson. “Me, that’s who. And one of them is addicted to dust, so who will have to keep her under lock and key?” She whacked him with her crutch to punctuate her answer. “Me!”
Jake growled in frustration. “None of us would be here buying illegal guns if anyone had taken us seriously, but noooo. They’re scared to do anything about the gang that’s destroying our families, but they will send in a damned Ranger to arrest us when we grow the balls to do something about it ourselves.”
Tabitha folded her arms and listened to the tale unfold while Jake ranted it out. There was a drug problem here; some gang had found a way of producing this “dust” without breaking a single law.
The parents had learned of the problem too late.
Tabitha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Your children are dying, and this gang is responsible?”
Jake nodded miserably. “That’s the short version, yeah.”
Tabitha considered the situation. Achronyx, you won the bet after all. These people need Justice.
Then aren’t they lucky you showed up?
I’m not sure they needed me. They could just send this fierce woman in. Tabitha smirked at Eileen, whose verbal flaying of her grandson contained an enthusiastic rage that reminded her of someone close to her heart.
“Your solution was to buy weapons from a shady dealer and shoot the place up?” Eileen tsked. “You were going to go to Bright’s and do what, exactly? You wouldn’t get past his security, even with guns.”
Tabitha walked over to the woman. “I’m going to take care of the gang problem.” She looked at Jake. “I haven’t decided what to do about your grandson yet.”
“He’s a good boy, really,” Eileen assured her. “They all are. This is a bad situation we’re in.” She hobbled over to Jake and knelt beside him.
Achronyx, you can drop the nets now, except for the one holding the gunrunner. Tabitha sighed and recalled her drones as Hirotoshi came over. “This is not as cut and dried as I had hoped it would be. The longer we’re here, the more the chance I won’t make it for Merry’s birthday.”
Hirotoshi smiled and touched the sword at his hip. “Then we shall endeavor to keep it as simple as possible.”
Omidian, Abandoned Shipyard
Hirotoshi freed the other parents from the nets while Tabitha spoke with Eileen and Jake. He had put the gunrunner in a secure cabin, where he would remain under the watchful eye of Achronyx until they were done on Omidian, and now he was overseeing the transfer of the weapons from the freighter to their ship.
Tabitha looked the group over. “You can all thank your lucky stars that I’m not going to arrest you for this. As it is, I get that you’re all worried for your children, so I’m letting you off with just a warning—provided you go home to your kids and give up the idea of revenge.”
She heard one of the women mutter to another that she was going to wait until the Ranger left and attack the hideout anyway.
Tabitha sighed. This must be how Barnabas felt when she argued every point he was making. Maybe she should do that less in the future. “Anyone I find near the gang’s location will be arrested. No exceptions. By the time I leave, all that will be left of that gang will be a smoking crater. Now go home. All of you.”
She watched them leave the shipyard. A few were still grumbling, but they were drowned out by Eileen’s loud appreciation of the pain Tabitha was about to bring down on the gang who had ruined their lives.
Hirotoshi returned from loading the ship in time to hear the tail end of the grandmother’s rousing speech. “She has a lot of faith in you.”
Tabitha nodded. “Now all I have to do is live up to it.”
Tabitha and Hirotoshi left the shipyard and made their way through the settlement. The streets were laid out on a grid, like many of the places humans had colonized. Tabitha found that predictability easy to work with, and soon they were crossing the last few blocks to the gang’s lair.
The tone of the neighborhood changed as they got closer to their destination. The cheery front yards and well-kept community areas were replaced within the short space of a few streets by an area that felt to Tabitha like somewhere the people just survived, not lived.
Tabitha and Hirotoshi glanced at each other. They were experienced enough to know that they were getting closer to the cancer at the root of this settlement’s problems.
Tabitha stood in the shadow of a tree at the intersection between the main road and the side street the gang’s hideout was on. The target property was a little way down the street, at the end of a row of what had probably been perfect family homes not so long ago.
There were no families around now, and no children playing in the early morning sunshine. The empty houses around the drug den had graffiti-covered metal sheets over the doors and windows. The whole street had an undertone of menace that radiated from the house the gang was holed up in.
Tabitha moved a step closer to the tree when a vehicle approached from the other end of the street. It cruised past the hideout and stopped a few feet away from where Tabitha and Hirotoshi hugged the shadows.
A teenager of around eighteen or nineteen got out of the passenger side. The boy pulled his hood up to cover his face and set off walking with his hands in his pockets. He skulked along the street and up to the front of the house, skirting the piles of junk and garbage in the front yard as he sidled up to the door.
The door opened just a crack, and Tabitha caught a glimpse of a sallow face through the gap. The teenager thrust something, Tabitha assumed the payment, at the person behind the door. A few seconds later, the slump vanished from his shoulders and he practically skipped back to the vehicle.
Tabitha wasn’t here to play community safety officer; nevertheless, she had to do something. She covered the few steps to the teenagers’ vehicle in a blink and opened the door.
She ducked her head in and snatched the bag of drugs out of the clueless teenager’s hand. “I’ll take that.”
“Hey! You can’t just—” He looked up into Tabitha’s red, red eyes, and then behind her at Hirotoshi and his mouth dropped open. “Whaaat?”
The girl in the driver’s seat let out an involuntary yip when her eyes alighted on Tabitha’s badge. “Kelvin, look. R-r-ranger T-two.”
Kelvin’s mouth opened and closed, but all that came out was a series of wheezy gasps. He finally squeezed the words out. “We’re not breaking the law, Susie. She can’t arrest us.”
Tabitha toned the eyes down now that the teens were listening to her satisfaction. She held the bag up. “This drug is now illegal by decree of the Empress’ Rangers, so yeah, I can arrest you.” She tossed the bag to Hirotoshi, noticing the way the teens’ eyes followed it all the way to Hirotoshi’s pocket.
“Are you going to arrest us?” All the color had drained from Suzie’s face.
Tabitha almost felt sorry for them. Almost. “Consider this a wakeup call,” she told them sternly. “You two have decided to turn over a new leaf, starting right now. Your parents didn’t give you life hoping for you to turn out like this.” She slammed the door closed. “Go home; they are probably worried sick. And for crying out loud, get a better hobby than taking drugs. What a Gott Verdammt waste of your youth!”
Tabitha stood with her hands on her hips and glared at the vehicle as the girl reversed and drove away. She didn’t care if she sounded like a stuffy old woman. She hated to see so much potential wasted.
Every one of the teenagers this gang had its claws into had once been an innocent. It might be beyond Tabitha’s powers to get that back for them, but she could prevent the same theft from happening t
o any more of these children.
She turned back to the house up the street, catching the movement of the door closing from the corner of her eye. She resisted the urge to shoot the scumbag behind the door outright. “Why dig in somewhere like this? Couldn’t they operate out of the docks like the rest of the space rats?”
Hirotoshi walked beside her with stony disapproval etched into his normally impassive features. “Apparently not.”
“At least we got confirmation that they’re all there.” Tabitha’s lip curled. “Probably because it’s the only place they’re welcome.”
They passed one empty house after another. There were signs of the previous occupants leaving in a hurry and the squatters who had replaced them all along the street. What appeared to have once been a pleasant neighborhood had been run to ruin by the presence of the gang.
Tabitha glanced into a driveway and saw a small stuffed toy lying abandoned in a dirty puddle by the doorstep. The curtain beyond twitched and then fell.
Her jaw clenched, and her hand dropped to release the extra pouch on her belt. “This ends today.” She fished two small boxes and a remote control out of the pouch, and handed one of the boxes to Hirotoshi before putting the other and the remote in her pocket for easy access. “You take the outside, I’ll take the inside.”
Hirotoshi’s eyebrows went up when he opened the box to confirm the contents. “No prisoners?”
“No. No speeches, no excuses, and no survivors.” Tabitha’s face was cold. “I’m not even going to announce myself. I’ve hit my limit of children being used to make a profit. This whole stinking mess has been the single most disgusting thing I’ve had to deal with in all my time as a Ranger. Shit. Hell, in all my time as a human being.”
Hirotoshi shrugged, and when he spoke his tone was deliberately level. “I’m not against it, Kemosabe. However, you usually reserve skipping the hearing for perpetrators of slavery.”
“What is this, if not slavery?” Tabitha raised a hand and swept it around to encompass the street. “This is their hearing. They brought the evidence against themselves. They’re guilty, and all that’s left is to deliver the punishment.” She stalked toward the house, throwing a hand into the air to release her drones.
Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright Page 75