by Scott Moon
Ahead of them sat a single man guarding a White Skull ship. He had his helmet off. Staring at the moon, his blond hair and beard marked him as Stacy Rings, White Skull himself.
Maximus stared at the outlaw for a moment, then twisted around and crawled toward Sledge. He poked the big SI in the face with his snout, jerked his snout back the way they came, and left.
“He wants me to follow? Really? I could have just waited back there,” Sledge said.
“Dumb thing has been on the money so far. He must want you to help Ruby. Don’t forget our bargain,” Thad said.
Sledge looked him in the eyes but didn’t answer. A moment later, he was crawling after Maximus.
Time could drive a soldier crazy or save his life. Patience, not one of Thad’s natural attributes, had served him well during the Centauri Prime campaign. A hard-assed advanced infantry training NCO had taught him the lesson and he had passed it along to every member of his company. Now he dusted off the skill and watched Rings until he was sure the man was alone.
Should I ambush him? Shoot him in the back?
Thad couldn’t do it. He knew he should, but it went against every fiber of his moral code. He slipped out of his fireman’s coat, placed it over a rock, and moved quietly into the sandy clearing around the ship.
Rings turned around. “Good evening, Sheriff. I’m surprised to see you.”
“I bet.”
“I should have tossed a blasting charge in your new office, but my men have a fondness for the Mother Lode,” Rings said. He stood, reaching for his helmet and long-blaster on the rock next to him.
Thad drew his blaster and aimed from the hip.
Rings pulled back his hands. “You’re going to lose this contest. I may not have my helmet on, but I have armor and you have a shirt that needs to be washed. What’d you do, crawl all the way from Darklanding?”
Thad looked over the black combat armor and the sloppy white skull painted on his chest. He didn’t see loose pieces or damaged areas. If he shot the man, it would need to be in the head. At this range, he could knock him down with a torso blast, but it wouldn’t be enough to take him out of the fight. He glanced at the ship, fearing he was wrong about the crew.
“Nice of you to guard the ship while your men are out getting killed,” Thad said.
Rings laughed. “They’re hunting and gathering, so to speak. Once they’ve marked the exotics in this area for pickup, they’ve got my permission to claim some Ungwilook wolf pelts. They’d have some Glok trophies as well if not for this damn A19.”
“You thought you scared me off,” Thad said.
“Thought you were smart,” Rings said. “But you’re as dumb as my brother.”
“Well, I’m sorry he stole your girlfriend.”
Rings cursed and lunged for where his long-blaster leaned against the rock.
Thad fired, clipping him on the shoulder plate near his head. The force flipped the outlaw over the rock, but he was able to grab the blaster by the barrel and drag it over with him.
Thad sidestepped, then rushed forward.
Rings popped to his feet and fired where Thad had been a second ago.
Thad fired twice and moved again.
Rings circled the rock in the opposite direction, squatting low as he hopped sideways with the long-blaster pulled tight to his shoulder to aim as he moved.
Thad sprinted, grabbed his coat from the rock, and threw it like a net.
Rings fired, punching a hole through the dark shape of the fireman’s coat.
Thad aimed and squeezed off a single blast, striking Rings in the knee. The armor held, but the outlaw went down hard.
Thad rushed forward, firing on the move.
Rings rolled onto his back and aimed awkwardly as he pushed with his feet, sliding backward in panic. He held the trigger down to spray blaster bolts at Thad.
Thad dropped to his stomach, scrambling forward. He reached the rock where Rings had left his helmet and circled it. Popping up to one knee, he aimed with one hand and fired twice.
Rings screamed as his left hand disappeared and a second bolt hit the sand next to his face.
Thad rushed him, stepping hard on the outlaw’s good hand. “You can die right now.”
“Wait.”
“Now you want to talk? What was that about blowing up my office?”
“Wait. I can call back my men. Just help me. My hand’s gone!”
Thad reached down and unlatched the breast plate of Rings’s armor. “Your wrist was cauterized by the blast. Get that armor off and put these on.” He dropped his binding cuffs on the ground next to the outlaw.
“I only have one hand!”
“You’ve got a hand and two ankles. Pick one,” Thad said. “I promise not to post videos of you trying to walk on the thug-net afterward.”
“You’re crazy,” White Skull moaned.
Thad tipped his head sideways and narrowed his eyes in mock concentration. “The term I think you’re looking for is ‘winner.’ Say it with me, Sheriff Fry wins every time.” He picked up his coat and pulled it on, ignoring the large hole in the middle of its back panel.
Rings swore as the pain of his injuries caught up to him.
* * *
Ruby waited for the dog-thing to return. She needed to slip away from the crews of the two ships that had inconveniently landed on both sides of her hiding place while she slept. Which really pissed her off because she had been getting some serious rest for once.
Odd how the middle of a desert clouded with A19 and God only knew what else brought peace. She’d crossed half the galaxy looking for a good night’s sleep, or it sure seemed like it. Maybe her nightmares and demons didn’t like Ungwilook.
Lying on her stomach as she watched the two ships, she rolled her right foot to forestall a cramp. As long as she moved slowly, she doubted she would be seen.
There were two ships and three crews of outlaw mercenaries in the ridiculous White Skull armor. She listened to bits and pieces of their conversations on the wind. Their boss had let some of them go hunting Ungwilook wolves, which they had no intention of doing. They preferred drinking a stolen cache of whisky and telling stories about the girls at the Mother Lode.
Ruby needed to tell Dixie about that. She didn’t think it would be hard to spot men posing as miners. These grunts weren’t secret agent types. She’d faced assassins and spies who understood how to blend.
“I’m bored,” she said.
One of the soldiers looked around, then went back to drinking.
“Boys and their booze. Gets ‘em every time,” she said, not too loudly. She wasn’t totally crazy.
No one heard her this time.
Something like an owl called in the night. She answered with a perfect imitation of an Ungwilook night bird, then waited for Thaddeus and his dog to join her hiding spot. It surprised her that the sheriff didn’t do better bird sounds.
“Hello, Miss Miranda,” a deep voice said.
Ruby locked her teeth together and glared at the new arrival. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Taking you back to your grandfather,” Sledge whispered.
“Oh, really. I thought you worked for my mother,” Ruby said, not whispering.
“She pays me. A lot of people pay me. That’s why I’m always so happy. Now before you do something stupid, just listen to me for one minute. Sheriff Fry’s a decent man. He needs to get to the mines and stop a bunch of his friends from being killed during the real raid these assholes have set up. I told him I’d help. So if you are going to run again, can you please do it after I honor my obligation?”
She studied his face in the dim, A19-muted light of the twin moons. “I’m not into charity cases.”
“Charity? Call it a temporary alliance. Could be fun. Remember that time we busted up that bar in Tagolin 5?”
She snorted. “I convinced everyone to attack you then felt bad about it. You think that was fun?”
“Fighting and free drinks afterward. What’s not to
like?”
A pair of armored feet stepped near their faces. A fully armored White Skull merc stared down at them, speaking through his helmet mic. “Well, look what we have here.”
Sledge winked at Ruby, then grabbed the man’s ankle and flipped him onto his back.
Ruby scrambled away from the fight.
Several of the outlaws rushed to help their friend. None of them saw her in the shadows. She slammed her forearm across the neck of one as he rushed forward. By the time he landed on his back, she was gone into the night.
She paused to watch Sledge. The man could fight. He front-kicked one of the armored men in the chest, launching him backward. Without hesitation, he dropped low, spun in a tight circle, and tripped the other with a leg-sweep. Then he was shooting on the move with a blaster in each hand.
She considered her options, then ran up the ramp of the closest ship.
* * *
Sledge was sad to see Ruby go. He’d really thought she would be up for a team fight. They’d never be friendly, but they had a lot in common. She was small but quick. Her parents had forced her to train in self-defense from an early age, and she had a natural ruthlessness in a fight that served her well. He had a couple of scars to prove it.
Two more of the White Skull’s goons rushed him. He took them out with aimed shots to their throats. The blasts didn’t penetrate the armor, but dropped them all the same. He holstered one of his weapons and started unlatching one of the breast plates.
Blaster fire forced him back. He returned fire and circled back to the half-removed breast plate, yanking it free of the groaning man, who was probably going to die from a crushed larynx. Then he used the black and white plate like a shield.
The ship Ruby had boarded lifted off.
He moved away from the downdraft of the engines.
The ship hovered, turned, and swooped low.
He stared in surprise, then roared. “Thanks, Ruby Miranda!”
The engines of her stolen ship had cleared a path to the other ship. He sprinted up the ramp and evicted the pilot from the cockpit. “Go ahead and jump off before we get too high up. I’d hate for you to break your legs when I throw you out the door.”
He primed the engines as the pilot considered retaking control of his ship. “White Skull is going to make you pay for this!”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Sledge said.
The pilot ran down the ramp as his companions were trying to charge up it.
Sledge punched the engines and lifted off, dumping the entire squad on their asses.
He looked back once, then established a pursuit vector of Ruby Miranda and her stolen ship.
Something wasn’t right.
He looked down as Maximus settled in for a nap under the instrument panel. “What did you eat today?”
The dog-thing rolled its eyes, then curled into a large, ugly ball of fur.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Three Ships
Sheriff Thaddeus Fry, former ground forces captain, thought he might have been a decent Air Force or even Space Force pilot. He burned toward the mines like judgement tearing apart the sky. Once his vector was set, he started checking his long-range scanners—radar, sonar, and infrared because that was what he was familiar with. He left the more esoteric instruments alone.
What he found was both good news and bad news.
There were a lot of huge ships touching down near the mines. He thought most of them were freighters. Two small ships flanked them, then paused. He was too far away to know for sure, but he assumed these were deploying White Skull squads to seize the landing zone.
Minutes felt like hours as he pushed the engines of the airship as hard as he could. The only way he could stop two full squads in combat gear was to catch them in the open and hit them with ship guns. He hoped they would surrender first.
Once they made it inside the mines or any of the support buildings, he’d be screwed. One ship and a sheriff with a blaster couldn’t fix this. He needed a company of ground troops. Flashes of the first Centauri Prime assault haunted him for the rest of the trip. His memories felt dry and distant this time, but clear as the day they happened.
He brought the stolen ship into a tight orbit pattern around the mines and saw mountains of exotic ore flowing from the open doors of storage bays. The White Skull mercs pointed guns at groups of miners and shouted at them.
The crowd of miners grew larger and larger, outnumbering the armored soldiers by five to one, then ten to one, then twenty to one. Which only meant more of them were about to die.
Thad looked for a shot, but couldn’t find one. He wanted to swoop in and face down the squads with the ship, but knew the engines would burn the growing crowd of angry miners. P. C. Dickles was at the front holding some kind of cutting tool as a weapon.
The two airships that had deployed the mercs lifted off and turned toward Thaddeus.
He dove on them and fired as soon as they were clear of the landing area. The first ship fired back as it struggled to build speed and altitude. Thad’s guns cut it in half. The wreckage tumbled into the canyon.
The other ship followed it, using the dive to build speed. Thad went the other way, uncertain of how he should fight the other pilot. Suddenly, his own skill in the cockpit seemed woefully inadequate.
The White Skull ship appeared behind him and fired.
Thaddeus steered to the right and then hard to the left. The airship felt slow and vulnerable. Something impacted one of the stubby wings. He lost altitude as warning klaxons filled the cockpit.
He struggled against the steering grips. The ship started to stall. He let it fall as his stomach jumped into his throat. “Air combat is for crazy people!”
The ship caught up to him and fired again. He narrowly avoided it. A red light appeared on the dashboard. Stunned for a second, Thad hammered the flashing button.
“Hello, Sheriff. Would you care for assistance?” Ruby Maranda asked.
“Why not,” he said as he flew increasingly desperate evasion patterns.
A new set of guns lit up the night. His pursuer went down in a ball of flames.
Several of the outlaw freighters still flying toward the mines veered away after seeing the dogfight.
Thad leveled his flight vector and checked his instruments. There were two ships following him now. “Ruby, I think you have a bogey on your tail.”
“Yeah, you might call him that. I don’t think he is quite mad enough to kill me,” she said.
“I might be,” came the voice of SagCon Special Investigator Michael “Sledge” Hammer.
“Don’t get too excited,” Ruby said. “There are still two squads of White Skulls down there.”
Thad circled back to the landing field that was more than half full of surplus ore. The situation had turned into a tense standoff as both sides watched the ships. The outlaw mercs pointed guns at the crowd of miners. Neither side backed down.
“I’m going to land and negotiate,” Thad said. “The two of you need to stay in the air.”
“Sledge should go down with you to watch your back,” Ruby said.
“So you can escape when it suits you,” Sledge said. “I don’t think so.”
“As long as one of you maintains air superiority, I don’t care who it is,” Thad said.
“She’s not going down there. She could get hurt,” Sledge said.
“How sweet,” Ruby mocked. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“Listen, kid. You’re worth a lot of money and I don’t want your grandfather—or your mother, for that matter—sending a guild assassin after me,” Sledge said.
Thad landed his airship as they argued. As soon as it touched down, he realized it was never taking off again. The short wings had been damaged more than he thought. A little longer in the air and he would have become a glider that didn’t glide.
He took off his headset but kept it around his neck as the runaway and the SI argued in circles above the crowded landing field. He pulled his hat snug and made sure his c
oat wasn’t blocking his blaster.
P.C. Dickles strode toward him. “Sheriff Fry, what are you doing here?”
“You’re welcome, Dickles,” Thad said.
“I will thank you when you’ve cleaned up this mess. My men work hard. We need better security to protect what we pulled from this backward planet,” Dickles said.
“I don’t disagree. Unfortunately, all you have is me. Why didn’t you call the Marines at the spaceport?” Thad said, knowing the answer before he asked it.
“We couldn’t get through. I couldn’t even contact the Company Man,” Dickles said.
“That’s probably not a bad thing right now,” Thad said. He faced a man who looked like the senior of the two squad leaders, maybe the equivalent of a lieutenant or first sergeant. “We’ve got a problem here. You can take the freighters and leave, but my ships will just shoot you down. And even if you get by them, it will be with empty hulls. These men aren’t helping you load them.”
“White Skull will make you pay for this,” the squad leader said.
“Probably not,” Thad said.
The squad leader looked at the other squad leader. Radio communication Thad couldn’t hear passed between them for nearly a minute.
“Did you kill him?” the lead asked.
“Would you be in charge if I had?” Thaddeus asked.
“No. We would avenge him. Just because we were forced to steal doesn’t mean we are without honor,” the leader said.
“I’m not sure I agree with your loyalty, but I understand it. I have him in custody. This raid of his is over. I need you to put down your weapons and surrender. We’ll let the courts decide your fate after that,” Thad said.
“You mean SagCon.”
Thad didn’t respond.
“Return White Skull to us and we will leave,” the senior squad leader said.
“Can’t do that,” Thad said.
“Then we start killing.”
“You could,” Thad said, wishing Dickles would tell his crew to get out of there. “All of you are soldiers. I can see that easily enough. We probably fought in some of the same battles. I know you could kill everyone here, but I think you’re bluffing. Slaughter gets old, doesn’t it?”