Space Rodeo

by Jenny Schwartz

  What could they learn from him?

  “Excuse me.” Thelma released Max’s wrist and rose to leave. She was smart. She could observe the meeting with Lon while giving Sargus nothing.

  “I hope it wasn’t anything I said.” Sargus smirked as the inner hatch sealed behind Thelma.

  “You smell,” Carl said bluntly.

  Max blinked.

  Carl looked at him. “Captain Sargus is a functioning alcoholic. The stink of liver decay is on him. His new liver, his third, is overdue.”

  “You insubordinate, cyborg bastard.” Rage and embarrassment flushed the Anubis’s captain’s face.

  “Carl Jafarov is my deputy,” Max said. “He’s sharing information I need. Since Covert Ops didn’t warn me or brief Carl as to the hit out on me, I’m assuming you dangled me out here as bait, hoping to learn who ordered my death. You then, thanks to the Lonesome’s stealth ability, lost us. Instead of informing me of the risk I was running, and which arguably threatens everyone on the Lonesome, you stayed silent. I agree. I’m definitely owed an apology. So is Carl whom you put in danger with incomplete orders.”

  Sargus’s jaw set stubbornly.

  Max nodded, his assessment of the captain confirmed. The sooner the man was off his ship the happier Max would be. To Max it wasn’t the man who stunk, but his attitude. “So, warning delivered, apology skipped. What do you want from me?”

  “Who ordered you killed?”

  It was a good question.

  “People I’ve arrested, their families and associates, have threatened me. Each threat is recorded in my reports.”

  A jerk of his chin conveyed Sargus’ sharp rejection of Max’s answer. “The Cadre isn’t hired to dispose of a sheriff.”

  Max considered Carl’s narrowed eyes. The other man had recognized the name. Max didn’t. “The Cadre?” he asked him.

  “Assassins. They take high profile targets. Word is with a seventy percent success rate.”

  Max studied the stare down between the two Covert Ops agents. “I hadn’t heard of them. Do they minimize collateral damage?”

  “It’s not a priority,” Carl said.

  Sargus volunteered some information. “Their contracts aren’t open-ended. If you kill the lead assassin assigned to your case, the Cadre terminates the contract. They keep the fifty percent upfront fee.”

  “What else do you know about them?” No, the question was too vague. Max had to extract the maximum pertinent information from Sargus. “Will they know the identity of the person who ordered the hit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Under what circumstances would they give me that information? Would they trade a Cadre member’s life for it?”

  Finally, Wesley Sargus smiled. “Yes, they would. You send them the assassin and keep his left ear. Then they’ll whisper the name into the ear, metaphorically speaking.”

  As barbaric as that sounded, it was less awful than the mutilation and insanity of the bunyaphi mech-mods Max had viewed earlier. “You want that name. What help will you give me?”

  “You’ve got him.” A chin jerk in Carl’s direction. “And if you don’t give us the slip, the Anubis will trail you, fully cloaked.” Sargus was promising a personal bodyguard and a spaceship one. It was a commitment of serious resources.

  “What is Covert Ops’s best guess as to when and how the assassin will strike?”

  “Soon.” If Sargus had other information—and he undoubtedly did—he wasn’t sharing it. He departed after being refused his request for a tour of the Lonesome.

  “Eleven tracking devices,” Lon reported ten minutes later in disgust. “Disposed of.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carl said. “I didn’t know.” He stared at his hands.

  They were in the kitchen, the proper kitchen, not the public lounge. Thelma was skinning tomatoes for a rich savory sauce to serve with pasta. That was the odd, but effective balance that the Lonesome provided: ordinary life to counter the danger and violence outside its hull.

  “We annihilated two of Keele’s spaceships, one a destroyer, when they ambushed us.” Thelma looked as if she was paying strict attention to peeling the tomatoes that had been dunked in boiling water to blister their skins, but her voice was thin with tension. “They’ll aim to attack you when you’re away from us, Max.”

  “Even spaceships as shielded as the Lonesome can be destroyed,” Carl said.

  Thelma disposed of the pile of tomato skins and picked up a knife. She didn’t point it at the agent, but her scowl suggested she’d like to.

  “Max should stay on the Lonesome. It’s safer than going solo,” Lon said.

  “And the Lonesome gives me options I don’t have alone. Thank you, Lon.” Max watched Thelma in profile. She would fight to stay with him. If she’d have been on the Zephyr spacedock, he’d have conceded that the Lonesome was the safer option. The attack at the Sheriff’s Office had demonstrated that. But she wasn’t on Zephyr and they did have another option—although it wasn’t one they could argue about in front of Carl.

  She put the tomatoes, herbs, wine and whatever cooking magic she used in the saucepan, set it on the stove to simmer, and grabbed the open bottle of wine and three glasses. When she sat on the sofa, the two men joined her automatically: Max beside her and Carl in Harry’s recliner. The wine was red and mellow, a half-glass for each of them after she’d used it generously in the sauce. Thelma raised her glass. “To living well, which is the best revenge.”

  “To happiness.” Max clinked glasses with her.

  Carl merely nodded and drank.

  But the tone was set. They had to move beyond shock and anger, and into planning to live.

  “Sargus doesn’t make friends,” Carl said. “But his intelligence and instincts as an agent are usually accurate. For him to visit you here, he must think the threat against you is imminent.”

  “I have assigned additional resources to scanning for threats,” Lon said. “Max, do you have a direction you wish to move in?”

  “Back to the Space Rodeo and angling closer to Zephyr.”

  “Hiding behind the Navy is a temporary solution.” Carl’s gaze was on the red wine he swirled in his glass.

  Max wasn’t a big fan of wine. His glass was on the coffee table. Thelma held her glass as if it was a brandy snifter and she had to warm it between her hands. She was the reason Max was heading back behind the Navy’s perimeter. What he said was, “We have to be somewhere while we prepare.”

  At minimum, the arena for the Space Rodeo would be safer because Max wasn’t the first responder to any threats detected there. Outside the arena he, and the Lonesome, could be lured into a trap by duty.

  “I want to know why,” Thelma said. “Why is Max being targeted?”

  Lon answered. “The implication of Sargus’s comments is that it’s not related to Max’s sheriff’s role, which means not criminal. So financial or political.”

  “I can’t think how my death—” He broke off to rescue Thelma’s wine glass as the contents sloshed at mention of his death. He waited for her fingers to uncurl, then put the glass on the table and lifted her into his lap. “Hugo told me it was time to return to the core worlds. My brother,” he added for Carl’s benefit.

  The cyborg glanced at them, and away. “You should be careful how you contact him. His comms may be monitored.”

  “I’ll tell him we’re considering his advice, but if I returned, what could I do back in the core worlds? Hugo has a strategist’s grasp of power shifts and trends. If there’s something that I could affect, he’ll mention it.”

  “You’re thinking that someone ordered your death as a preventative?”

  Max smoothed a hand down Thelma’s back to rest on her hip. “I don’t think the answer’s in my past, so it must be in my future.” Thelma gripped the front of his shirt before flattening her palm over his heart, a heart that seemed to try to beat out of his chest at her touch. He covered her hand, trapping it against him. “A future I intend to protect.”
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  But the very intensity of their feelings meant they fought once they were alone in their cabin.

  “Can you comms Reynard?” Max kept his voice soft; a request, not an order. “That AI is strange, but I think he considers you a friend, and Harry trusts him. I’d like you to remain with Reynard in the Space Rodeo arena.” Inside the security of the Navy’s perimeter. “Lon can evade Covert Ops long enough to make the transfer—”

  “The transfer? You mean shoving me off the Lonesome while you go out to face assassins. No!” She paced their cabin, while he stood still. The small space all but vibrated with her passion and energy.

  There were very few times he could resist her. This had to be one of them. His gut knotted with tension and, yes, with fear.

  She gripped his arm, her hand sliding down till they were clasped palm to palm. “You’ll let Lon and Harry and even Carl risk their lives to protect you, but me you’re trying to tuck away. You can’t, Max. I’m a trained Galactic Justice graduate. I’m not helpless. I can’t sit by as if I am.”

  “For me. Please.”

  She shook her head, mouth tight, eyes glimmering with unshed tears.

  He pressed their joined hands to his lips. “It’s not just about keeping you safe. It’s selfish, too. Who I have to be to be capable of capturing and mutilating an assassin isn’t any part of how I want you to know me.”

  “I love you.”

  “Don’t ask this of me.” He abandoned pride and begged. “It would kill me to think that you have those memories of me while we make love.”

  “Max.” Her voice broke. She wrenched her hands free of his, and hugged him. “You could come to me covered in blood and I would love you.” She was crying: his Thelma, who never cried.

  Fury at those who’d caused her fear burned in him. But he only showed her tenderness. He rubbed her back and pressed his face against her hair, lips finding her ear. “The Lonesome is our home. I don’t want memories of cruelty to be part of it for you.” This was their home. He would protect it for her.

  “It’s cruel. They’re forcing you to do this. When we find them, whoever they are, they have to be punished. I want more than the justice of the legal system. I want their schemes unraveled and their reputations destroyed, as they deserve to be.”

  “They will be.”

  Thelma’s last hope for resisting Max’s request evaporated when Reynard agreed to host her on his spaceship.

  In fact, the AI made a solemn vow to Max as to Thelma’s security, and Max equally solemnly shook one of Reynard’s tentacles in the equivalent of a handshake. The way Reynard’s other tentacles immediately raised the AI an inch taller suggested that the handshake—the recognition, respect and trust it represented—meant the universe to Reynard. It also meant that Reynard’s social awareness and sense of self was growing if Max’s opinion mattered to him.

  Lon prepared a trolley stacked high with food and supplies for her. That was his way of caring. It went through the lock tunnel first.

  Harry hugged her. “Reynard understands the security protocols, including those around communication. You’ll be running silent till our signal.”

  She nodded against the hard shell of his armored mech body. “We’ll be careful. You do the same.”

  He kissed her temple. “Always, honey. And I’ll look after Max.”

  “I know you will. And he’ll look after you.”

  Harry’s chuckle was a rumbly sound of comfort. “He always does.” The powerful AI respected Max’s instincts to protect. More than that, he shared them.

  Thelma and Max had already said their goodbyes in their cabin. One final kiss and Thelma forced herself, one step after the other, through the lock tunnel, leaving Max to face the worst kind of trouble without her.

  Chapter 11

  As part of Reynard’s running dark protocol, Thelma had left her personal comms unit on the Lonesome. Until Lon gave the all clear, Reynard was to remain out of contact with the Federation. That suited the reclusive AI perfectly. Thelma found it more oppressive. She was locked into a small world of her thoughts, conversation with Reynard, and entertaining herself with the media and data that he had stored on chips.

  Reynard’s conversation centered on results from the Space Rodeo. He was monitoring specific spaceships as they dived through the comet helices. Different approaches apparently resulted in different launches from connecting with one of the helix spars and spring-boarding the spaceship in question out to what Reynard assured her were most definitely not random locations.

  “Although I’ve yet to determine all the factors involved in the dive launch and landing site.”

  Weeks ago, Thelma had refused to discuss with Reynard Harry’s research into the legendary specters, the people who had cached raphus geodes throughout this galaxy and the next—the one Nefertiti had entered to communicate with the Revered Ones of the Kampia aliens. But now that she required a distraction from the comms silence and her worries, she found herself considering Harry’s quest.

  It seemed that the specters, whoever they had been, were the progenitors for the Federation AI. All species wished to understand their ancestors.

  The specters had left behind them raphus geodes, seeds of life. For what purpose? Out of a primal desire for life to continue?

  Thelma fell off the treadmill she’d been jogging on.

  “Are you injured? Ill?” Reynard appeared in the room as she sat on the floor rubbing her right knee, the pain of which promised to bloom into a massive bruise.

  “I had a thought.”

  “And it hurt?” He hunched his tentacles, lowering himself closer to her level.

  She pulled a face at him. “I notice you’ve mastered sarcasm.”

  “I believe I have a natural talent. What was your thought?”

  “That the raphus geodes your specters left are adaptable to both organic and inorganic life forms, giving you the broadest range of life form possible.”

  Reynard extended a tentacle and helped her rise. “To increase our chance of survival.”

  “Mmhmm. But beyond survival, look at all the possibilities open to others born of raphus geodes. Your stories could be anything. That’s what your specters gifted you. The chance to make your life stories amazing.” She leaned against a supporting wall of tentacles. “That’s what parents hope for their children.”

  Reynard was evidently feeling a bit cantankerous. “So, not a revolutionary thought worth falling over for?”

  Her happiness at the specters’ love for their children, some of whom were her friends, faded. “It was the next thought that tripped me. I was thinking about how all sentient beings when alive shape their stories. But when we die…” Her voice thickened. “Maybe that’s why someone ordered Max’s death. They have a story they want to tell, and they can’t risk him being alive to shape his own story.”

  “I understood your words, but not what you mean.”

  She stiffened, forcing herself to express her terrible fear clearly. “Someone wants Max dead so that they can twist his life story for their own purpose.”

  Reynard considered the idea. “Does that give you any idea of who it could be?”

  “Maybe.”

  Max was fighting Carl in the Lonesome’s training ring.

  They had left Thelma with Reynard over two weeks ago and had been traveling further from the Space Rodeo ever since. Their course had no direction. They were the bait hoping to lure the assassin into acting. By their transmissions, they ensured that whilst the Lonesome’s specific location wasn’t known, a rough approximation of it could be calculated.

  Carl had officially taken on deputy responsibilities for the territory.

  “Thelma’s prettier,” had been the general public’s response to that.

  To which Carl had replied, “I’m nastier.”

  After that exchange, Lon judged that honors were even between Saloon Sector citizens and the newest Interstellar Sheriff official sworn to protect them. People on the frontier took a wh
ile to warm up to new folk.

  There were a lot of new folk at the moment. As well as those drawn in to participate in the daredevil excitement of the Space Rodeo, even more were arriving just to gawk.

  The spectators who turned up in their own spaceships were often annoying. They were accustomed to the heavy official presence of the rest of Federation space. Life on the frontier required a greater degree of self-reliance.

  But even as Lon and Max, and now, Carl, directed resources such as the Navy reservists to assist the dudes, the bigger issue bothering Max was the starliners who’d altered their usual routes to include cruising the Saloon Sector.

  In normal circumstances as sheriff, Max would be relieved to have so many potential points of trouble—dudes—corralled on the starliners. That made them the starliners’ officers’ problem. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and currently, when he looked at the starliners marked on Lon’s data map, all he saw were potential victims.

  He circled Carl searching for an opening to attack, well aware that Carl was doing the same to him. It was a dance of mutual respect. Both wore bruises from earlier training sessions. “Part of the problem is that Lon’s predictive algorithms were too effective. For weeks we pre-empted trouble, and probably killed a couple of the assassin’s schemes.”

  “Or delayed them.” Carl blocked a hit with his right forearm, jabbed with his left fist.

  “Now we’re waiting for him—or her—to regroup.” Max grimaced as Carl’s follow up hit connected with an old bruise. “Do you have to hit the same shoulder?”

  Carl grinned. There was blood on his teeth from a split lip. “Move faster.”

  In spite of his training with Harry, Max would never be able to match Carl’s cyborg reflexes. His deputy was taking it easy on him, and Max took full advantage.