Gunfight on the Alpha Centauri Express (Nick Walker, U.F. Marshal Book 5)

by John Bowers

  “Just like that?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “And you were witness to this?”

  “Yes, I saw the whole thing.”

  Godney nodded smugly. “Nothing further.”

  “Miss Cross? Cross?” Judge Moore chortled. “My apologies, counselor, but I’ve been wanting to say that.”

  Victoria allowed him a smile as she walked toward the witness.

  “Good one, your Honor.”

  She stopped six feet in front of the witness, still smiling. Ted Strong smiled back, his eyes scanning her from head to foot.

  “Good morning, Mr. Strong.”

  “Hello-hello.” His grin widened.

  “Mr. Strong, you testified that you are a businessman, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What business are you in?”

  “Objection. The witness already told us he’s in the water business.”

  “Sustained.”

  Victoria nodded and faced the witness again.

  “When you say ‘water business’, exactly what do you mean? What, exactly, is a ‘water business’?”

  “The Outback is a very dry region with very little rainfall. It’s a desert, but here and there one can find a spring that taps into the subterranean water table. My property sits on one of those springs, so what I have done is install giant pumps that bring the water to the surface. I pump the water, tank it, and sell it. Water is in such short supply that I make more money doing that than I could in any other enterprise.”

  “I see. So Strong Enterprises is like an oasis in the desert?”

  “Exactly.” He grinned. “I should hire you for advertising.”

  Victoria smiled.

  “What other businesses do you operate?”

  Strong shook his head with a puzzled look. “Nothing.”

  “So pumping, tanking, and selling water is your only source of income?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Nothing else on the side?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Asked and answered, your Honor.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Mr. Strong, you said that a few days before you met Marshal Walker, you had ‘rescued’ six girls from a slave transport?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you do that? Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Really? Not dangerous at all? I’m actually surprised, because I’ve been told that the men who transport slaves to the Outback don’t take kindly to interference. They stand to lose a lot of money if one of their slaves escapes or is…rescued.”

  Ted Strong laughed, a pleasant baritone sound.

  “It was nothing as noble as that, Miss Cross. I’m certainly no hero. When I say I rescued them, all I meant is that I paid the slavers for them.”

  Victoria’s head tipped to the side.

  “You…paid…the slavers for them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You paid the slavers… In other words, you purchased the slaves.”

  Strong shrugged. “That’s one way of putting it. It’s just semantics.”

  “Okay, let’s explore that for a minute. Somebody is selling teenaged Spanic girls as sex slaves, and you paid money to the slavers, thereby taking the girls into your own custody. With me so far?”

  “Yes, but it isn’t—”

  “Hold on, let’s finish exploring. You paid the slavers, actually purchased the girls, and now they belong to you. You set them up in a residence on your property and that’s where they were when Marshal Walker found them.”

  Godney interrupted.

  “Your Honor, Ted Strong is not on trial here.”

  “Is that an objection?”

  “Yes, your Honor. Relevance.”

  “Miss Cross?”

  “It goes to the weight, your Honor. The witness has painted a rather dark picture of my client’s behavior, yet it sounds very much like he was involved in criminal behavior himself. I would like a little more latitude.”

  “Impeachment?”

  “Exactly, your Honor.”

  “The objection is overruled.”

  “Mr. Strong, you testified that you were planning to return the girls to their homes?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Strong’s face had pinked and now he looked a bit defensive.

  “How long had the girls been in your custody when Marshal Walker showed up?”

  “I’m not sure. A few days.”

  “How many days?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “A week? Two weeks?”

  “No more than a week.”

  “All right, and when were you planning to return them to their homes?”

  “First chance I got.”

  “And when might that have been?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I can’t just drop everything on a whim and go chasing off up to Texiana. I have a business to run."

  “Based on what you just said, if Marshal Walker hadn’t arrived when he did and taken the girls with him, they might have been stuck at your place for quite some time. Is that correct?”

  “It might have been another week or two. I have no way of knowing when I would have had time to take them home.”

  “Weren’t the girls costing you money every day they remained in your custody?”

  “Of course. I provided their food and other amenities.”

  “Amenities? What kind of amenities?”

  “It cost money to air-condition their quarters; I provided other things, too. Databooks, for example, and holo V; cosmetics and clothing—”

  “Clothing? What kind of clothing? Negligées?”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “Mr. Strong, isn’t it true that when you paraded the girls in front of Marshal Walker, they were nearly naked?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it true that the only clothing that each of these six Spanic slave girls had on was a negligée?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have sex with any of these girls?”

  “Objection, badgering.”

  “Impeachment, your Honor.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Mr. Strong, did you have sex with any of those girls?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Strong, didn’t you tell Marshal Walker that he could sleep with any of the girls before he bought one?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you tell him that you had ‘tried them all out’ and they were all quality bedmates?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Strong, how much money did you pay the slavers to ‘rescue’ these girls?”

  “I—I don’t recall right off hand, but I offered them a lower price than they were asking.”

  “And they accepted your lower price?”

  “Yes. They had brought in about forty girls in all, and these were left over. Nobody had bought them, so the men on the transport had a couple of options—they could keep the girls another day and move on farther south, hoping to sell them, or they could accept my price and be on their way. It saved them money in the long run.”

  “Wow, you are quite a businessman. How much did you pay for the girls?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “A thousand sirios?”

  “More than that.”

  “Two thousand?”

  “More than that.”

  “Okay, hell, ball-park it. I don’t need to know the exact amount, so give me an estimate.”

  Strong wiped his mouth with a hand, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “As near as I can remember, maybe two, three thousand apiece.”

  “Two or three thousand apiece? Is that what you said?”

  Strong nodded, looking uncomfortable.

  “Something like that, but like you said, it’s an estimate.”

  “Fine, let’s go with that. Six girls and—let’s be conservative—two thousand
apiece. That’s twelve thousand sirios, Mr. Strong.”

  He nodded.

  “You spent twelve thousand sirios, maybe more, to rescue six girls from slavery; then you fed and housed them, bought them clothing and cosmetics, and paid for their air-conditioning…and you were just going to take them home? No reimbursement? No reward?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  Victoria stood up straight and held out her arms to him.

  “Mr. Strong, you are a humanitarian! You really are!”

  “Objection! Argumentative!”

  “Just complimenting the witness, your Honor. I’m impressed with his altruism.”

  “Overruled.”

  Victoria smiled at Ted Strong.

  “But I withdraw the ‘quite a businessman’ comment.”

  “Objection!”

  “Strike my last.”

  Victoria walked over to the defense table, winked at Nick, and turned back.

  “Mr. Strong, you told my client that you paid twenty thousand sirios for the cheapest girl in your stable, and you couldn’t let any of them go for less than thirty—”

  “Objection! Counsel is citing facts not in evidence.”

  Moore sighed and turned to Victoria.

  “Counselor, there has been no testimony to establish what you’re talking about. Please frame your question as a question. The objection is sustained.”

  Victoria nodded. “Very well, your Honor.

  “Mr. Strong, didn’t you tell my client that you paid twenty thousand for the cheapest girl and couldn’t let any of them go for less than thirty thousand?”

  “No. I never said that.”

  “Mr. Strong, isn’t it true that, even though your main source of income is pumping and selling water, you also run—at least at that time—a side business?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it true that, when the slave transports arrived in the Outback, some men who wanted to buy slaves couldn’t always attend the auctions? Isn’t it also true that, at that time, you were in the habit of purchasing a few girls from the transports that you later resold to those men who couldn’t attend the auctions? For a modest profit of, say, twenty percent?”

  “No.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Strong?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You’re a very handsome man, and wealthy, too.”

  “Not many women choose to live in the Outback. It’s a very harsh environment.”

  “What do you do for sex?”

  “Your Honor! Do we really need to hear this?”

  “No, we don’t. Skip over it, Miss Cross.”

  Victoria smiled. She looked at Ted Strong again.

  “Do you own a slave, Mr. Strong?”

  “No.”

  “No? You don’t own a girl named Yolanda?”

  “Yolanda isn’t a slave. She’s my girlfriend.”

  “I see. So some women do choose to live in the Outback.”

  “Yes, some do.”

  “Did Yolanda choose that life?”

  “Originally, no. Yolanda came to the Outback as a slave, but I rescued her.”

  “Oh! You rescued another one. And how did that work out?”

  “It worked out fine. I released her from slavery and gave her a job in my business. She’s still with me.”

  “Was Yolanda working in your business on the day in question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Yolanda see the shooting when Marshal Walker killed Marshal Baker?”

  “I think so. I’m not absolutely certain.”

  “But you saw it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is it that you saw it and Yolanda didn’t?”

  “I was standing outside the office. Yolanda was inside. But she may have seen it.”

  “Mm. Okay. You testified that Marshal Baker challenged Marshal Walker.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then Marshal Walker killed him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who drew first?”

  “Marshal Walker.”

  “Marshal Walker drew first. Were any words exchanged before Marshal Walker fired the fatal shot?”

  “Maybe. I was twenty or thirty yards away, so I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Are you sure that Marshal Baker didn’t draw first?”

  “No. He came up onto the edge of the parking lot from the street below. His hands were empty.”

  “When he challenged Marshal Walker, what did he say?”

  “You mean Steve?”

  “Yes. Steve Baker.”

  “He said something like, ‘Where the fuck are you taking those girls?’”

  Victoria nodded. “‘Where the fuck are you taking those girls?’ Those were his exact words?”

  “As near as I can remember.”

  “You were standing twenty or thirty yards away and couldn’t hear any words that passed between them, but you clearly heard Marshal Baker say, ‘Where the fuck are you taking those girls?’. Is that right?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Strong—if you could hear that so clearly, how is it that you never heard anything else that was said?”

  “Probably because nothing else was said. Like I said, Walker drew and fired. He killed Baker, shot him down like a rat.”

  Victoria pursed her lips and walked to the defense table. She picked up a plastic bag filled with recording chips and walked back to face Ted Strong.

  “What would you say, Mr. Strong, if I told you that these recording chips contained depositions from those six Spanic girls?”

  Ted Strong’s expression turned flat. No more humor, no more amusement.

  “I wouldn’t say anything. What am I supposed to say?”

  “I understand. You didn’t know about these, did you? Well, what if I also told you that every one of the girls on these chips tell a completely different story than the story you’re telling now?”

  Strong, now red in the face, shrugged.

  “I stand by my testimony.”

  Victoria smiled and walked toward the court clerk’s desk.

  “Your Honor, permission to enter these depositions into evidence as Defense Exhibits 1A through 1F?”

  “Objection! How is it that the defense was able to locate these six girls when no one even knows their names?”

  Victoria’s smile widened.

  “In his wisdom, way back in July of Four Forty-two, Marshal Walker anticipated that the facts surrounding the killing of Marshal Steve Baker might someday come into question. One day after he rescued the girls, he deposed them in front of a camera. Their testimony is clear and concise, and they all say the same thing—that Nick Walker killed Steve Baker in self-defense.”

  “Objection overruled. The exhibits will be entered into evidence.”

  Judge Moore popped a chocolate into his mouth.

  “Are you finished with the witness, Miss Cross?”

  “Almost, your Honor. Just one more question.”

  “Proceed.”

  Victoria stood in front of Ted Strong again.

  “Mr. Strong, when you traveled to Alpha Centauri to appear in court today, did you pay your own way? Or did you travel at the expense of the Federation taxpayers?”

  “Objection!”

  “Withdrawn. No more questions.”

  Thursday, May 18, 0445 (CC)

  71st Floor, Federation Building – Lucaston, Alpha Centauri 2

  Over the next couple of days, Brian Godney called other witnesses to the stand. Few did his case any good. In spite of his desperate need to get incriminating testimony into the record, Godney largely struck out, but Victoria Cross added points to the defense. Willard Kline and Roy Blake, of Kline Corners on Sirius 1, had only good things to say, as did Monica Maynard and Russ Murray of Ceres, and Drusilla Downing of Alpha 2.

  Turd Murdoch of Ceres and Antiochus Groening of Alpha 2 testified that Nick was abusive and overbearing, using excessive force, but on cross, Victoria established that b
oth were convicted felons whom Nick had arrested, and therefore had personal scores to settle with him.

  At some point Godney apparently realized he was only helping the defense, and decided not to call the rest of the names on his witness list.

  Because the rules excluded the defendant from fraternizing with opposing witnesses, Nick never got to speak to most of those Godney had called to testify against him. Just before Kline and Blake boarded a starship to return to Sirius, Nick had the opportunity to shake hands with them, but that was all.

  On Thursday, a minor media event took place outside the courtroom when an unexpected celebrity showed up. Reporters and holo-cams swarmed a man in his late fifties who said he had come all the way from Terra to support Nick Walker. In spite of the deep weather lines in his face, he was still recognizable to his billions of fans on five planets. His name was Rodney Manchester, a Hollywood actor better known as the legendary western hero, Yancy West.

  The reporters, mostly young and female, seemed dazzled at his presence.

  “Mr. Manchester, are you going to testify for the defense?”

  Manchester, calm and collected with an easy grin and a deep Midwestern drawl, shook his head.

  “I haven’t been called to testify, as much as I would love to. The fact is that I’ve never met Marshal Walker, so nothing I might say could be used as evidence—but I’ve certainly heard of him.”

  “Do you think Marshal Walker is being railroaded?”

  “I don’t want to impute motives to the prosecution, but I find it really troublesome that a man who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice, and has been so successful at it, should find himself in Marshal Walker’s position. I think it says something about the society we live in, that something like this could happen. From everything I’ve heard, the Federation has no evidence of wrongdoing; if they had, charges would have already been filed.” Manchester shook his head grimly. “No, this looks like a fishing trip to me, but again, I have no first-hand knowledge either way.”

  Manchester was still there when Nick and Victoria Cross emerged from the courtroom. Nick was stunned to see his vid hero standing there in person, and as the holocams closed in to capture the moment, felt suddenly overwhelmed, like a young boy meeting a famous sports star for the first time. Manchester shook his hand and turned to the reporters again.

  “When you watch my vids, you’re watching a controlled fantasy. Everything is scripted, nothing about it is real. No matter how dangerous it looks or how violent it may seem, I am never in danger. Everyone is perfectly safe.