Stellar Ranger

by Steve Perry

  Tuluk smiled, He truly did enjoy this part of the game. He would have been a great sub-rosa espionage agent, he often thought.

  * * *

  The com unit on Cinch’s beltline cheeped. Given that his com was on his pants and his pants were neatly hung on a hook against the gym’s far wall, he had to amble that way to click the unit on–the voxcontrol was off-line, since he didn’t want to be yelling at the com from across the room and maybe have somebody overhear him.

  “Hey, old ranger. How you holding up?”

  He grinned. “Not too bad, old pub owner.”

  “Listen, that thing we talked about, it’s a done deal.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  “Why don’t you drop by here in the morning and let’s you and I roll around and break a little furniture?”

  Cinch chuckled. If somebody had his com leeched, that ought to give them something to think about.

  “Sounds good to me. See you about eight.”

  “Discom it,” she said.

  Cinch put his com on standby again and went back to the mag machine. At his age, you had to keep the blood circulating and the muscles flexing or time might get ahead of you. With Wanita, the blood circulated just fine. Sore as he was, the magnetic weights he had been moving made him feel better. He could still bench his own kiloage ten times, and while that didn’t make him real strong, it kept him as strong as he’d ever been. A man had to do what he could.

  As he punched in a weight, he smiled. There were reasons to stay in shape other than just to keep ahead of the bad guys.

  * * *

  “What?” TiIluk said.

  Lobang came into the office, waved a small flatscreen.

  “The ranger and Wanita are playing dork and bush,” he said. “Damn, that’s hard to believe.

  “Why, because she turned you down?”

  “She didn’t turn me down,” Lobang said. “I never asked her.”

  Tuluk smiled, Perhaps he hadn’t said it in so many words, but if he’d dropped any more broad hints in front of the black pubwoman, they’d be stacked so high they’d reach the ceiling. Must be quite a blow to Lobang’s ego to have her pass on him and pick the less muscular, older–and thus much inferior in Lobang’s eyes–ranger. Tuluk might not be the galaxy’s greatest expert on women, if indeed the galaxy could claim to have an expert on women, but he knew that Lobang’s swarthy good looks and big muscles wouldn’t compensate for his tiny brain in the eyes of a fem like Wanita. She was too smart herself just to want a dick-in-the-box.

  “Well, I never did,” Lobang said.

  “Lobang, do you think I care? Do you think anybody cares? It might be something we can use.”

  “They are getting together again in the morning.” Lobang waved the flatscreen.

  “Good. Maybe if he’s busy having his lizard milked he won’t be getting in our way.”

  Lobang shrugged, and Tuluk saw that the ranger’s success with Wanita bothered him. Too bad. Lobang’s ego seemed to be bigger than his biceps and that was his problem. There were times when keeping the big man around seemed to be a lot of trouble. One day it might get to be too much and he would have to go. Knowing what he knew, however, he couldn’t be allowed to Ieave just like that. An accident would have to be arranged.

  “Just keep your people on him,” Tuluk said. “And don’t say, ‘You’re the boss.’ All right?”

  Lobang opened his mouth, seemed for a moment like a fish gasping for water, then shut up without speaking.

  As he left, Tuluk shook his head. Don’t pee on the rug on your way out, he thought. Be a good doggy.

  THE SHOWER felt good and he didn’t spare the hot water or the foaming gel. He used the no-fog mirror to see his face while he depilated, to make sure he got all his whiskers. Didn’t want any burry patches left. Never know when his face might be called on to rub something tender, and he didn’t want to be using sandpaper. He smiled and ran his hands over his face. Smooth as a cue ball. Well. A cue ball with it few wrinkles and scars on it, anyhow.

  As Cinch stepped out of the shower, his com chimed again.

  “’Yo?”

  “M. Rudyard Carston? ID 436705369AF?”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “This is Pos Manusi at the GalaxNet office in Lembukota.”

  “What can I do for you, M. Manusi?”

  “I have a sealed com from Stellar Ranger HQ for you, came in on the mail drophopper ten minutes ago.”

  “Thanks. I’Il pick it up in the morning.”

  “Uh ... it’s marked ‘Urgent,’ Ranger.”

  Cinch had to smile at the unseen speaker. The message was, at the minimum, a week old. Likely older than that, given the vagaries of ship schedules in this quadrant. Probably had been sent before he arrived here and thus couldn’t have anything to do with what he’d learned so far. But civilians did get agitated when they saw official dispatches. “Thanks for your concern, but it’ll keep until morning.”

  All clean and shiny, he padded naked to the bed and slid under the sheet. As he drifted to sleep, he rolled the ideas he’d been having around in his head. Could be things were maybe a little more complicated than he’d first thought. Well. If that was the case, he’d just have to unwind it all a bit more carefully, that was all. Hell, he was a Stellar Ranger, wasn’t he? The complex stuff they ate for breakfast, right.

  Right.

  * * *

  “My brother will be here in ten minutes,” Wanita said, pulling the tabs on Cinch’s shirt open. “Think you can manage something that fast?”

  He laughed. “I’m not that old.”

  Afterward, as Cinch hustled into his clothes, he said, “Knowing that I’m being watched, isn’t it risky for Pan to be sneaking in here?”

  “Oh, he’s been here for a couple of hours. He’s down the hall in the spare room, reading or watching the entcom channel.”

  Cinch raised an eyebrow,

  “Well, I needed this ten minutes. It’s been so long for me, you know?”

  “Yesterday was that long ago?”

  “Eons, Ranger.”

  They both smiled.

  Cinch followed Wanita into the pub itself, not yet open for business. After a couple of minutes, Pan came in. He was grinning.

  “Something funny, little brother?”

  He made a show of sniffing the air. “Smells funny in here,” he said. “Smells like ... oh, hmm ... what is that smell?”

  “Fuck off, Pan.”

  “Too late,” he said, “you beat me to it, at least according to my nose.”

  Cinch watched them as he listened to the banter. These two liked each other.

  “So, what can a bandito do for the Stellar Rangers?”

  Cinch had already decided he was going to trust Wanita, and by extension, Pan. They might be part of a conspiracy, but he didn’t believe it. You got to know somebody a little when you screwed your brains out with her, and it was not logical but it worked for Cinch.

  “Our friend Tuluk is up to something,” Cinch said.

  “Something highly illegal he doesn’t want anybody to know about.”

  “You mean out in the blueweed patch?”

  Cinch leaned back against the bar and looked at Pan with a sharper eye. “You ahead of me here?”

  Pan shrugged, He did look a lot like his sister. “Not really. He’s touchy about everything, but seems to get particularly upset if we poke a finger in that direction. I thought at first it might be the blueweed itself, but that doesn’t make any sense, No way to steal the stuff and boil it down unless you can run trucks and build a major processing lab, and he knows the raj can’t do either.”

  “Any ideas as to what it might be?”

  Pan shook his head. “Could be anything. Maybe he’s cooking and eating people out there. Sacrificing them to his patron demon.
No way to tell.”

  “I think there might be a way,” Cinch said. “But I’ll need your help to do it.”

  “Call it. You got it.”

  * * *

  Tuluk glanced at the chrono inset in the limo’s backseat for the eighth or ninth time. Ulang was late. It was half an hour past midnight and there was no sign of them. He leaned forward.

  In the front seat, Lobang anticipated the question and said, “No sign on the radar, boss. Maybe he ain’t coming.”

  Tuluk leaned back. “He’s coming. He’s just very cautious. In his business, mistakes are very expensive and sometimes fatal.”

  Outside, the night had chilled, like a bottle of champagne buried in ice. The sky was crystal and thick with stars, the air still as the inside of a casket. From where the limo was parked on the mesa, Tuluk could see the ground below for a hundred klicks in all directions. It was mostly bare, save for scrub growth and rocks, sand and dirt; if the lizards or night birds were about, they padded or flew silently. Tuluk had the window down and the frosty air ghosted into the vehicle with invisible tentacles, touching his face softly.

  “Good evening, M. Tuluk,” a voice said.

  Tuluk jumped, nearly hit his head on the limo’s roof. Lobang swiveled in the driver’s seat and came around with his handgun drawn.

  Outside the car stood Ulang the dope merchant.

  “Good God, man, how did you get here?”

  Ulang was tall, thin to the point of emaciation, with excellent teeth and a shock of red hair even the dark couldn’t disguise. He said, “’Tell your muscle to put his weapon away.”

  Tuluk waved at Lobang and the gun disappeared.

  “If I may ... ?”

  Tuluk slid over and Ulang opened the limo’s door and got in.

  “Cold out there,” he said. Given that he wore expensive heat threads with gloves and a headband, Tuluk doubted that he much felt the night’s chill.

  “How did you–?”

  “It’s a big part of my business to be careful, M. Tuluk, and how I go about it is something I prefer to keep secret. I am wanted on several planets, and some of the rewards are quite substantial.”

  “I understand. Though you are taking a big risk for all your stealth. What if Lobang and I were Intergalactic Drug Enforcement agents?”

  Ulang smiled. “Iggy? You ?”

  Although it was as remote a possibility as being able to breathe water or fly by wiggling his toes, it irritated Tuluk that Ulang dismissed it so easily. He did not like being irritated by one such as Ulang,

  “Why not? As you said, the rewards are quite high.”

  Ulang’s thin face lost its humor and grew hard. “The sum of all the rewards out for my capture would not equal a week’s income for you.”

  “Still, it is an interesting thought. If we were Iggy, we would have you.”

  Ulang’s humor returned. He chuckled. “So you would. Except for this.” He pulled a small electronic control from his pocket. “I have a two-meter length of pyrohex cord wrapped around my waist, with a primer tuned to a complicated frequency,” he said. “If I raise the protector, like so, and press this button, guess what will happen?”

  In the front seat, Lobang sucked’ in a quick breath.

  Ulang’s smile grew. “Your muscle knows what pyrohex is, I see.

  “Lobang?

  “Yessir. It’s military-grade shape-charge, explosive. If he’s got two meters of it on him and it goes off, all that will be left of us and the car will be a crater deep enough you could use it for a swimming pool. Deep enough you could use a diving hoard at the end and not hit your head on the bottom.”

  Tuluk nodded, unafraid. He preferred dealing with careful men.

  “Very good, M. Ulang. I like your style. Shall we get down to business?”

  Ulang stared at him for a moment. Tuluk fancied that the merchant saw the lack of fear in him and when he did, he put the control away. “Let’s do that.”

  * * *

  Cinch took the message tube from the clerk at the postal net office. It was a bucky-metal one-time, looked much like a solid-gray gelcap rounded on both ends, about the size of a child’s forearm. In theory, if anybody tried to open it without using the addressee’s personal security code, the entire capsule would disintegrate, taking with it the chemically treated plastic of the info-marble inside. Codes could be cracked, of course, but even so the tube wouldn’t reseal. In theory.

  Outside in the already warm and dry day, Cinch popped the seal using his code and rolled the info-marble out into his palm. He pulled his reader from his belt, clicked the ball into place, and put the short-range L-O-S plug into his left ear for privacy. He lit the reading laser and played the vox-only message. It was a one-timer too, so he listened carefully as the voice of Sector Commander Ingmar “Hacksaw” Harvey came to faux-life in his ear:

  “Hello, Cinch, and I hope you are enjoying your stay on lovely Roget. I was there once, thirty years or so ago, and unless it’s changed radically, it’s hot, dry and boring.”

  Well, Cinch thought, two out of three. But then he was seldom if ever bored, no matter where he was. Being bored, Cinch figured, was the mark of a less than mature mind.

  “Probably nothing I can say at this remove is gonna do you much good, but there’s a couple things you ought to know FYI.

  “First, we started getting heat about sending a ranger to yon backrocket planet before your ship got fifteen minutes into the Warp. Somebody’s got a big ear and they got the word to somebody with a bigger mouth real quick. Assume, if you haven’t already, that every move you make is watched by unfriendly eyes.”

  Cinch had to grin. Every ranger always assumed that on every assignment, if he or she wanted to live to retire. Or just until the case was over. But Hacksaw always reminded them. He was like a mama dog with puppies sometimes.

  “Second thing is, we’ve come across some intelligence that suggests something is brewing over and above the original complaints we got. Something of a major nature. Now I don’t have anything specific to give you on this, but every time the name ‘Roget’ comes up in certain circles, expressions get blank or eyebrows get raised and ice wouldn’t melt on normally hot foreheads, if you get my drift.’

  Cinch nodded at the recorded voice of a man who was light-years away. The key term here was “certain circles.” In ranger parlance, that meant other agencies who fielded their own peace, or control officers. That covered a lot of territory, of course: G-marsh, Delivery Service Operations, Galactic Security, the Intergalactic Drug Enforcement Agency, IG Monetary Patrol, plus half a dozen smaller operations–not to mention the tens of thousands of system or local police departments. It could mean something. What could be almost anything. There was a lot of petty crap that went on between those in charge of enforcing various aspects of the law and sharing information was not high on anybody’s list. On a good day you might get rangers to trust other rangers–getting them to trust a Gooney, Dipso, Iggy or Coinflipper was impossible. Cinch didn’t feel too bad about the derogatory nicknames for the other operatives on the galactic level, given that they called rangers Shit Stompers–though not to their faces if they wanted to keep low premiums on their dental insurance.

  “Anyway, kid, that’s the news from horne. What I hope is, you’ve already gotten this sucker cleared and are on a ship heading home, but if not, watch your ass. Something’s off there and you don’t want to get caught flat-footed. That’s a discom. Later.”

  Cinch pulled the earplug and tucked it back into the reader, then ejected the ball. Nothing there worth worrying about, and the ball was supposed to be wiped, but he would drop it in a disposal grinder somewhere to be sure.

  Hmm. Interesting that somebody offworld had figured out what he had, that there was more than met the eye on first look here. ‘Course that also meant he might be running into more trouble and that wasn’t go
od. Ah, well. If the job was easy, anybody could do it.

  He grinned and walked across the dusty road toward Wanita’s. It had its compensations, the job.

  “THIS WHOLE THING is as illegal as hell,” Pan said. “I thought you were a lawman, a peace officer.” But he grinned.

  Cinch nodded. “Yep, it is illegal, technically speaking. And there are worlds where it would be cause for serious character revision and a long stay in locktime. But out here on the frontier, you have to work with what you have. If I’m wrong, I’ll pay the Devil, Sometimes the end justifies the means. Not always. Whether it does here or not, we’ll just have to see.”

  Wanita laughed behind them as she charged the drink dispenser with carbonation. “Well, well. Listen to the police officer and the bandit discussing the philosophy of crime.”

  “I don’t think you’re wrong,” Pan said. “But then, I’m biased. If you told me Manis Tuluk ate babies for breakfast, I’d believe it.”

  “I doubt there’s any profit in such a diet. I think that’s what drives Tuluk, profit. Old ranger investigative techniques say if you can find out where the bad guys get their money, you can usually solve the crime. My guess is that whatever Tuluk is doing in the blueweed, it’s designed to generate income.”

  Wanita said, “You’d think he has enough money–he’s got more than anybody else on the planet.”

  “But he doesn’t have more than anybody in the galaxy. With really rich people, money is . not so important in itself, it is more, how they keep score. Get the most, you win.”

  “Crazy,” Pan said.

  “May be, but that’s not our problem. How is your end of things shaping up?”

  “No problem. Diji and Po are off in Cube City buying the supplies you wanted. I don’t suppose you’ II let us keep any leftovers after we’re done?”