by John Bowers
“Where you headed, Marshal?” he asked. “You look like you’re in a hurry.”
Nick hadn’t planned on telling anyone what he was up to, but since the boy had asked, it only made sense to let someone know, in case he ran into trouble.
“You know where the highway intersects the one up to Texiana?” he asked.
“Yeah. About three hundred miles west of here.”
Nick nodded. “That’s where I’m going.”
Nathan’s eyes widened a fraction. “Why are you going there?”
Nick stared at him a moment, chewing his lip. He pulled the nozzle free and hung it up, capped the tank, and handed Nathan cash to cover the purchase.
“I have a tip that a hovervan is coming down from Texiana,” he said. “I hope I’ll get there in time to meet it.”
Nathan nodded, but looked confused. Nick dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“Nathan, if I’m not back by dark, I want you to tell Sheriff Blake where I went. Tell him I may need help.”
Alarm spread across the boy’s features.
“You mean this is dangerous?”
“It could be.”
“Let me go with you!”
“No! You’re a minor. The last thing I want to do is put you in danger too. You just do what I told you, all right? When I get back, I’ll go either to the Sheriff’s office or the Vega, so you check both places this evening, and if nobody has seen me, then you talk to Roy Blake.” He squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Nathan didn’t look happy. “Nick, I can handle a gun. I can back you up.”
“That’s out of the question. Your dad would shoot me if anything happened to you, and he’d be right to do it. You and I have a plan, all right? Let’s stick to it.”
Nick got back into the car, nodded at Nathan, and lifted off. Nathan watched until the hovercar disappeared in the distance.
* * *
Joel Graves stood beside the pickup and urinated on the ground. Dust swirled around his feet and the hot, gusting wind blistered his face. Sweat soaked his shirt, but he hardly noticed.
The pickup rocked steadily on its suspension, the squeaking punctuated by the girl’s cries. Slim Owens was inside with the girl, and when he finished it would be Joel’s turn again. But at the moment the idea didn’t appeal to him. His dad’s voice came through the earpiece of his porta-phone, turning his blood cold.
“Arrested you? When?”
“Yesterday,” Graves told his son. “Bastard came to ranch headquarters and wanted to see my tattoo. He locked me up for kidnapping and trafficking.”
“Trafficking? What does that mean?”
“Selling those girls. He said it’s a felony, that I could do prison time.”
“That’s bullshit, Dad! Slavery is legal on this planet!”
“Not in Kline Corners, apparently. The marshal said it’s against Federation law.”
“Who gives a shit? There’s no Federation court here! In a few years there’ll be a confederacy and the whole planet will be united.”
“I know, but until that happens, we have to watch our step. Mr. Kline got me out of jail for the moment, but he said that marshal is looking for you! He wants you to come in and talk to him.”
“What the hell for?”
“Look, Joel—he found some of those girls and brought them back. They identified us. You best keep clear of that son-of-a-bitch until we can figure a way out of this.”
Joel stared toward the horizon, now hazy with blowing dust.
“Did anybody tell him where I am?”
“I think Willis did, but he didn’t know anything about this until yesterday, and he still doesn’t know you were involved when I sold those girls.”
“Fuck!”
“You can’t come home, son. Not for a few days. That Marshal is going to arrest you for rape.”
“Rape! I didn’t rape anybody! I just screwed them. They’re not even people! They’re serfs!”
Gerald Graves sighed. “If he finds you, don’t admit that. Don’t admit anything. It’s your word against those girls, and they can’t prove you did anything. Without a confession, he can’t prove it either. If he pushes you, just tell him you have the right to remain silent, and then don’t say another fucking word.”
Joel paced several yards, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. He turned and paced back.
“Goddamn, Dad! What’s the galaxy coming to? Can’t even screw a serf without getting arrested!”
“Joel, it’ll be all right. Just stay clear of that Marshal. Ron Gates didn’t last and this one won’t either. Just keep your head and stay out of sight. If he doesn’t find you, he can’t do anything.”
Joel stopped pacing, squinting against the dust. The pickup stopped rocking and he heard Slim groan loudly; the girl was still sobbing.
“What about you, Dad?”
“I’ll be okay. Mr. Kline has already called a lawyer up in New Dallas. We’ll fight the charges. I may have to plead to something, maybe a misdemeanor, but it’ll only be a fine. Don’t worry about me, just watch your own ass.”
Joel sighed unhappily.
“Okay, Dad. You too.”
He disconnected the call and leaned against the pickup, worry wrinkling his brow. His dad arrested? By some upstart marshal who only got into town five days earlier? This was crazy! He wished he knew who had killed the last marshal, he’d pay the bastard to kill this one too.
He turned to look as Slim backed out of the pickup, breathing hard and wiping his face with a towel. The skinny old man tilted a water bottle and poured some of it over his head, shaking it like a dog. He looked at Joel and grinned.
“She’s a good’un!” he said with satisfaction. “Healthy little thing.”
Joel glanced inside the pickup; the girl was curled up on the seat, weeping, her red dress stained with sweat and grime. Contempt boiled up inside him, and he felt like breaking her stupid neck. All that trouble over a damn serf girl? It didn’t make sense! He was tempted to drag her out of the pickup and kick her to death with his boots. See what the big shot U.F. Marshal thought about that!
But the hovervan from Texiana was due in an hour, and they would pay a healthy sum for her worthless little carcass.
Joel wanted the money.
Chapter 19
“You may encounter some situations in which you are outnumbered and outgunned. You may have to decide the mission isn’t worth your life, and withdraw…
“Or not.”
—Professor Milligan, U.F. Marshal Academy
Nick headed west at a steady pace. Going flat out, the fastest hovercars could make two hundred knots or better, but it put a strain on the turbines and drank fuel at an alarming rate. Nick held steady at 175, hoping that would get him to the intersection before the Texiana transport arrived. He kept his altitude at forty feet, low enough not to strain the lifters, high enough to avoid ground traffic.
The farther west he went, the dirtier the air became. The wind had been rising all morning, and now he was hit by ever more powerful gusts. Behind him, Sirius A was starting to set, and Kristina had told him that during Sirian Summer the atmospherics went nuts when that happened. Sirian Summer hadn’t officially begun, but everyone seemed to think it was only a matter of hours.
Even with one sun setting, the one overhead was hammering the planet with radiation—the weather was getting hotter.
* * *
Nathan Green puttered around in his dad’s garage, not really doing anything. His dad was rebuilding a turbine for one of Kline’s cowboys and Nathan had no immediate chores. Sometimes the garage was extremely busy, at other times almost dead. With Sirian Summer almost here, the work was trailing off. People weren’t even buying fuel.
Nathan was troubled. It had been a disappointment that Nick had postponed the trip to the Outback, but that wasn’t the problem. Nick had seemed distant just now when he filled up the rental car. He’d been a little cryptic about why he was making the
trip, but Nathan thought he could guess. Kristina had told him about the slave girls Nick had rescued, and it probably had something to do with that. Nathan didn’t know too much about slavery on Sirius, but knew from personal experience that some men could get real mean when a woman was involved. Willis Kline had left the proof on his face.
If Nick was planning to confront men like that…
Nathan stepped outside the garage and stared down the street again. He really liked Nick—if anything happened to him…
“Dad?”
Dennis Green looked up from the turbine in front of him, his face smeared with grease.
“I’m gonna take the taxi for a run,” Nathan told him. “Might be the last chance I’ll have before the weather sets in.”
Green frowned a moment. “Which way are you going?”
“I’ll head west for a bit. I shouldn’t be gone long.”
“Okay. Watch yourself out there. The wind is getting worse.”
Nathan nodded and turned away. He stepped into the office to get the keys, then went outside and opened the taxi’s boot. It contained the standard equipment everyone carried in this part of the planet—several gallons of water, two respirators, a portable shelter, a medical kit. Nathan reached into a compartment and drew out a laser pistol. He glanced through the garage door to make sure his dad wasn’t looking, and slipped it into his pocket.
A minute later he cleared the end of main street and lifted to twenty feet, heading west at 200 knots.
* * *
Sirius A was almost down in the east, and the wind was rising to a shriek. Joel Graves cowered in the shelter of the pickup and turned his back to the wind, lowering his head against the stinging grit.
Slim sat crouched on his haunches a few feet away, idly drawing designs in the dirt. It was a few minutes past noon.
“Where is that goddamn hovervan?” Joel sputtered. “It was due here twenty minutes ago!”
“Weather prob’ly slowed it down,” Slim said. “Anyway, it ain’t like the monorail—they don’t have no schedule to keep.”
“Maybe they’re not coming.” Joel frowned at the thought; the girl was worth a lot of money…but what would they do with her if the van didn’t show?
“They’ll be here. If they got a load of women, they have to sell ‘em. Costs too much to feed ‘em if they don’t.”
Joel didn’t reply, but he figured Slim was right. This would be the van’s last trip until after Sirian Summer, but they would surely have to complete this trip.
“You might’s well do the girl again,” Slim suggested. “You still got time.”
Joel glanced at the skinny old man in disgust. “Slim, have you ever screwed a grown woman?”
Slim laughed, exposing stained, crooked teeth. “Don’t think so,” he chortled. “Never had to.”
Joel looked away with a sneer. How had he ever got into business with this old pervert? It was one thing to take a young serf when it was convenient, he thought, but what kind of man wanted no other kind? At his age!
Joel wiped the grit off his face and glanced at his watch—
—and spun around as the sound of a turbine reached him. Something was coming, but he couldn’t see it. He held up a hand against the dust and peered north, but all he saw was flying dirt.
The turbine was getting louder, closer, and it wasn’t coming from the north. He looked east, his eyes narrowed, and caught the shape as it loomed out of the billowing gloom. It wasn’t a hovervan, he saw, just a private car. It shot past him at forty feet of altitude, still heading west, instantly swallowed by the brown fog.
He lowered his hand and stared after it in disappointment. The car had looked familiar, but passed too quickly to identify. One of the local cowboys, maybe. He hoped whoever it was kept going, because he didn’t really want anyone to see what he and Slim were up to.
He heaved a sigh, checked his watch again, and looked to the north. Where the hell was that Texiana transport?
* * *
Visibility was getting really bad. Nick could see only a few hundred yards ahead, and was going much too fast for conditions. He switched on the car’s radar, hoping it was operational. After a moment he saw the sweep and felt better. If he came up on an obstacle the radar would warn him before he crashed into it.
He almost missed the intersection. Just before he reached it, the radar sweep showed something, a vehicle maybe, just ahead. It was on the ground, not moving. Concentrating on that, he didn’t see the intersection until he shot past it. That was when he realized the parked vehicle was sitting at the very spot he’d been looking for.
He frowned, easing off the acceleration and letting the car slow. Who was sitting at the intersection? More importantly, why?
He dropped his speed dramatically, then set the car down beside the road. He was a quarter mile past the intersection now, and the parked vehicle was still there. He’d barely got a glimpse of it when he passed—it had looked like a farm vehicle, some sort of pickup.
Nick shut the turbine down and popped the clamshell. Dust swirled into the car, the wind almost lifted the hat off his head. He placed the hat on the seat, stepped out of the car, and closed the door. Bending his face against the wind, he started walking back toward the intersection.
* * *
Joel was losing patience. This was taking too long, and he and Slim needed to get back to the foggers. The wind would die in a few hours, as soon as Sirius A was far enough over the horizon, but the heat would remain in the triple digits for the next few weeks. Those cotton fields had to be fogged constantly to keep the plants from shriveling.
Maybe it was time to forget the money and get back to work. They would have to do something with the girl, though—it wouldn’t do to have her identify him and Slim and report what they’d done to her. The serfs had no legal recourse, but there were a thousand ways they could get even, and even if they didn’t, it would be ten times harder to catch the next girl.
Joel hadn’t brought a gun, but they could drown the girl in the cotton fields. No one would find her for months, and by then it would be impossible to prove who had killed her.
He glanced over at Slim, who was pouring water over his head again. Slim would be disappointed about not getting paid, but at least he’d sated his lust with the girl, so that was something. Joel was about to speak when Slim looked up, his eyes peering through the dust storm to the north.
“I hear it!” he said.
Joel turned and looked in the same direction. Now he heard it too—heavy fans, the roar of a large hover vehicle. He held a hand over his eyes and squinted as the big van loomed above the roadway. He quickly stepped away from the pickup and waved his arms. They should be looking for him, since he or his dad had met every slave transport that came through here in the last six months. His spirits lifted as he saw the van start to descend, and a moment later it settled onto the roadway a few yards in front of him.
He turned to Slim. “Get the girl.”
* * *
Walking quickly through the gusting sandstorm, Nick wasn’t sure how far he’d gone, or how close he was to the intersection. When he heard the heavy turbines of the transport, he knew he was close—and he was out of time.
Drawing his weapon, he dashed forward at a dead run.
* * *
Joel couldn’t see through the hovervan’s windows, but the forward door opened as he walked up to it. The pilot watched him warily as a second man came down the steps. Joel had seen the second man once before, when he and his dad had sold a girl to the transport. The man had never given them a name, had never said much at all. He looked about thirty-five, lean and muscled, with a black goatee and shaved head. His piercing black eyes gleamed at Joel as if considering him for dinner.
“Whatcha got?” he demanded in a clipped voice.
In spite of himself, Joel felt a chill in his guts. “Serf girl,” he said. “Slim!”
Slim Owens manhandled the girl forward. Terrified, she struggled and screamed. Th
e shaven guy regarded her critically, stepped down and grabbed her under the arms, lifting her up and turning her in all directions for inspection.
“How much?” he asked.
“Two thousand.”
The black eyes pierced Joel again.
“I’ll give you one.”
Joel frowned. He’d planned on a thousand sirios apiece for him and Slim.
“Fifteen hundred,” he faltered
Skin Head set the sobbing girl down, turning her head from side to side.
“She ain’t very pretty. One thousand.”
“For Christ sake! She’s a virgin!”
The black eyes looked amused as the man shook his head again.
“She has blood running down her legs. She mighta been a virgin this morning, but she ain’t no more.”
Joel glanced at Slim, but the old man’s eyes looked slack.
“The miners won’t know that,” Joel said. “You tell them she’s a virgin and you’ll double your price.”
The skin headed man sighed.
“Okay, kid. I sort of like your daddy, so I’ll give you twelve fifty. But not a sirio more.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills.
* * *
Nick almost crashed into the pickup in his haste to reach the intersection before the transport could depart. He dropped into a crouch and moved around the front of it. Driving dust stung his face, but didn’t hide the scene in front of him. Two men stood with their backs to him, one a young man with broad shoulders—Joel Graves?—the other a wizened scarecrow with unruly hair. A third man, with a goatee and bald head, was counting out money. A short Spanic girl stood between them, shaking with fear.
Nick had no time to plan his move. His heart pounding, he took several strides forward and raised his weapon.
“U.F. Marshal! Freeze!”
Joel Graves and the old man spun in surprise, the bald man’s head jerked up, and the girl screamed. Then everything happened at once.