by Mike Moscoe
“Good girl, and what did you get for your birthday this year?” Grandma Seddik was going straight into the security check that had become standard while the Unity bullies were around. No matter how scared a young girl like Lizie might be, she knew what she got for her birthday—and how to say it wrong if a gun was already pointed at her head.
“A doll, a rag doll, and shoes. Boots, really.”
“This is a legit distress call,” Grandma snapped. “Who’s in position to help?”
Ruth had been listening, even as she kept the tractor on course, spray darkening the beans, no overlap, no misses. Now she zoomed her guidance map out, and frowned. The Abdoes place was thirty miles away. Dots lit up as people reported their location and availability. Grandma would be getting a full readout on armament as well. Ruth was about to report her presence when someone at the house beat her to it.
“Sis, Pa wants you in fast,” came on the family channel. “Slim’s already in. Mom, Miriam, and the youngsters will hold the station.” Brother, Slim, and Pa were the usual contribution from the family to the community’s Quick Response Team. While she and Mordy had been working for the Seddiks, QRTs were the only times she’d seen family. Now, she was back on Pa’s team.
“On my way,” Ruth answered. She detached the sprayer; in a moment she was gunning down the row, careful of the bean plants on either side of the tractor’s big balloon tires. Once into a fallow field, she angled straight for home. Surrounded by barn and outbuildings, the white-painted two-story house with a new wing for Brother, Miriam, and their twins gleamed in the sun under a matte black roof of solar collectors. Pa, Brother, and Slim were waiting in the dusty yard between the house and the barn, ready to screw metal plates to the cab and vitals of the tractor. Miriam handed up Ruth’s rifle, extra ammo boxes, and a basket of food. Mom held the twins, one to each hip; Tina held all three of the women’s rifles. Ruth’s youngest brother and sister, ten and twelve, already peered from the sandbagged lookout post atop the barn, the family’s practice rifles pointed out. The kids looked scared and trying to hide it.
“Take care,” Ma said, blowing Pa a quick good-bye kiss. Miriam climbed up the tractor to give Brother the same. Ruth looked away, missing someone to say good-bye to.
“We always do,” Pa answered Mom, then turned. “Ruth, you drive. Boys…” His nod sent each of the men to a side view slot in the tractor’s makeshift armor. He settled into the seat next to Ruth as she put the rig in gear. “Head for the Krogers’ place,” Pa told her; Ruth gunned the tractor. The armor about balanced out the lack of something dragging behind, though it made for a top-heavy drive. When they were kids, Pa listened to the net on earphones. Today, he listened through the speaker. Reports of availability rolled over Ruth. She ignored them, concentrating on getting where she was going fast…and safe.
Still, Ruth couldn’t ignore the change. Slackers weren’t supposed to be problems. They were just people who didn’t want or couldn’t find work. Before the war, they’d begged and sometimes stolen a few things. During the war, they’d been rounded up and put in the army—the army Mordy was drafted into. Now Mordy was still gone, and the slackers were back with guns. She’d gone home…and Pa sandbagged the lookout post above the barn.
Ruth made it to the Krogers’ in twenty minutes.
Close to a dozen rigs were parked haphazardly between the Krogers’ house and outbuildings. Ruth hadn’t even brought the tractor to a halt before Pa swung out the door and trotted for a clump of elders. “Stay with the rig, crew,” he said without looking back. Slim was already getting out, his eyes on the Zabossa rig with Becky. With a sigh, Slim dropped back into his seat. Becky waved to him; Slim waved back.
Most of the crews left behind were alertly eyeing the open fields and rolling woodlands around the farm. A light smudge marred the horizon where the Abdoes’ place was. Ruth checked her motor readouts; storage was at eighty percent. She spread the solar wings to catch some rays, then called up the latest photo of the Abdoes’ station and the land between it and her tractor. Balancing distance against cover, she plotted the best course.
She’d just finished when Pa came back. “More are coming, but we got to get somebody there pronto. Those here are going now.” He glanced at the display. “You got a route planned?”
She quickly sketched her path. He nodded. “We’re lead tractor. Do it, Ruth. Boys, look sharp, lock and load.”
With a hard swallow, Slim pulled back the arming bolt on his rifle, then safetied it. Brother did the same. Ruth folded the solar wings as she gunned the rig. As usual, Pa was leading the first reaction team. Before he emigrated, Pa had put in his time with the army on LornaDo. Pa usually ended up with the lead on days like this, and Ruth had been studying how he went about it since she turned sixteen. Now Pa rarely modified her approach drives for fires, floods, and slacker problems.
Ruth covered the first half of the ten-mile drive at a good clip, keeping both eyes on the road and letting Pa and the boys worry about surprises. The other tractors and trucks followed in single file behind her, allowing plenty of room for her to spring any trap they were heading into. Ruth glanced at Pa; did he want her to slow down? His eyes were straight ahead. Swallowing her growing fear, Ruth kept the throttle forward as the smoke plume grew in the sky.
At the woods this side of the Abdoes place, Pa called a halt. He signaled for the rifle teams to dismount and hoof it through the trees, then went forward at the head of the men and women. Ruth edged the tractor off the dirt road, hunting for a path through the trees. She didn’t have to be told the road was no place for her today. She was almost through the woods when the net came alive.
“Don’t look like there’s nobody here. Let’s close in.”
Since that wasn’t Pa talking, Ruth continued her cautious advance. When she finally did come up on the plowed fields, several trucks were already parked in front of the blackened house. The homestead had been built with tough local wood; it smoldered more than burned. Ruth’s eyes were drawn to the front door. It had been blown in…explosives, or some sort of rocket. Pa would know. Carefully, she drove across the field and looped around back. Damage there was limited to windows and doors blown out. No bodies, just a few dead chickens. She spotted Brother and Slim kneeling beside tracks where the cows and horses had been herded off. Around the pig and goat pen were decapitated heads, guts, and blood.
“Looks like a quick butcher job,” Brother surmised.
Around front, the human casualties were already under blankets. “Who’d they kill?” Slim asked.
Becky was leaning over, her last meal splattered on the dirt. She wiped her mouth and looked up. “The kids. The little kids,” she whimpered. “Why kill kids not big enough for schooling? And their pa,” she added.
Slim knelt beside her, an arm around his future wife. Brother’s eyes had turned toward home, and his wife and twins. Ruth knew the answer. Kids slowed you down. These slackers must be planning on moving very fast. They’d better; if this posse caught them, they were dead. Ruth called up her map again. If she was running, where would she head?
North, east, south was open farmland—no place to hide there. To the west were mountains, with heavy forest and brush for cover. Lots of places to hide, no roads, no place to take tractors. But hills had rivers and lakes. She searched. Yep, there was the General Store. Old man Sanchez traded for pelts and herbs. His place was on Lake Guadalupe, easy to reach by boat. And he had boats that could reach back into the mountains faster than people could ride. “Brother.”
Both siblings looked over her shoulder as she outlined a pursuit. Brother nodded when she was done. “Let’s tell Pa.”
Pa was in the middle of the elders, and the elders were in the middle of an argument. Old man Seddik was all for going home. “We can’t catch ’em. Better we get ready for next time. Let’s talk next Thursday at the dance. We got to plan.”
The younger men, many friends of the dead Abdoes, wanted to hit the trail right now. “We got to s
top these bastards. They’re loaded down with the stuff they stole. We can catch them. I say chase ’em ’til hell freezes.”
“And what’s to keep them from bushwhacking you?” Ms. Zabossa cut in. That brought quiet for a moment.
Pa rubbed his chin. “You watch your step chasing them, and they get away. You chase them fast and reckless, and they set up an ambush. The damn army may not have taught them much, but it would have taught them that.”
“So what do we do?” came an anguished cry from the back. “Just sit on our thumbs while they kill our kids and steal our wives?” Ruth saw her chance in the silence and took it.
“Pa, we don’t have to chase right behind them. We could get ahead of them if we used the boats from Trader Sanchez to get up valley before they can.”
There was a long silence as people called up maps in their heads and roughed out what Ruth had done. “Yeah” came from several. Pa gave her a tight smile. Old man Seddik settled it with a nod. “Okay. You folks chase them, but not too close. Joe Edris takes half and heads for the trading post.”
“I’ll get horses.”
“I’ll start the chase on foot. You give me a call when you got the horses.”
Quickly, the teams organized themselves. In five minutes Pa was seated beside Ruth as she led five rigs for the trading post.
Ruth gunned the tractor, going for every bit of speed she could. Each curve was a challenge, each straight section a race. Pa said nothing. In the silence she felt his pride in her. That was something she hadn’t felt about herself in a long time.
Caution was what she felt as the Sanchez place came in view as they crested a hill above the lake. One glance showed none of the usual activity around the post. Even the dog was just lying there. Five minutes later, Pa ordered a halt. Through the trees and across a bay, Ruth had a better view. “The boats are gone,” Brother reported. The door to the store was hanging open. The dog was lying in its own blood.
Pa waited for the other rigs to catch up. Then he ordered the rifle teams to slip through the woods and surrounded the place. Pa kept his eye on the store for a good fifteen minutes before he had Ruth slowly edge the tractor forward. He and Brother entered the store while Slim checked out the dock.
“Boats have been stove in,” he quickly shouted.
Pa was slower in reporting. When he came out of the store, he whistled in the folks from the woods. Brother sat heavily on the steps. “Poor Paco didn’t even know it was coming. He’s there behind his counter, a shot between his eyes. Place has been ransacked.” Brother choked on his words.
“Where’re Agnatha and the kids?” Ruth asked, scared of the answer.
“Don’t know.” Pa sighed through a scowl. He reached through the tractor door for the phone. “Edris here. Stop the pursuit, Jeb. Sanchez’s place has been sacked. Old man’s dead. The rest are gone. Boats are sunk. Edris to everybody, we are gonna have to rethink ourselves.”
The acknowledgments were slow and bitter. Pa’s face was the deepest scowl Ruth had ever seen…and something else, hard and cold…as he handed back the phone. “Looks like I got to go to Hurtford City.”
“I’m going too,” Ruth added.
• • •
Zylon Plovdic didn’t bother getting out of her truck. She went down the form, quickly checking off one box after another. Yes, the survey team had sufficient supples for ninety days, their safety equipment was in order, and they had an emergency locator signal. True to the founders of Hurtford Corner, she verified only that they had what they needed for their own safety. She had no duty to check for hidden weapons, explosives, or other potential dangers to the community. She grinned; the rifles, ammunition boxes, and rockets were in clear view.
The leader of the “survey party” stood beside her truck. He accepted his official permit with a silent nod. He, along with five others, actually would be surveying for the mineral wealth identified in the permit.
The other dozen or so riders collecting behind the pack mules were another matter. Zylon knew every one of them. Over the last several years, she’d tossed most of them in jail for several kinds of unacceptable behavior. She’d been happy to pass them over to the first Unity Planet Leader when he arrived. Now she was just as glad to turn them loose in the mountains west of town. There, they wouldn’t cause her any trouble. Though, unlike the survey team, they would not long be riding west.
Soon enough, they’d be ranging with the other three batches of raiders among the farm stations to the north. But that was none of Zylon’s concern.
The survey team leader accepted his authorization from Zylon and passed her the check in the agreed-upon sum on an off-world bank. With mutual smiles, they went their own ways. He to the western hills, she back to her office at the Center for Public Safety. Yes, she had the most volunteer hours of anyone in the city, all of them officially to secure the public safety. What they were securing for her was another matter entirely.
TWO
“THAT’S HARDLY A town,” Izzy said, shaking her head at Hurtford City’s pretensions. It was the planet’s one claim to urban living. She doubted more than thirty thousand people occupied the shallow valley where two rivers merged. The ridge to its east did have a five-kilometer-long landing strip; a dammed river to its west offered a wide reservoir for shuttles who preferred a water landing. “Comm, have we been hailed by the port captain?”
“No, ma’am. I gave up waiting and called the number in the book. Got a recorded message. There’re out to lunch. Supposed to be back by one.”
The XO frowned at the screen. “Looks to me like nine, maybe ten o’clock local down there,” he said dubiously.
“Me too,” Izzy snorted. “Comm, did they say what day they’d be back from lunch?”
“Didn’t even say what month, ma’am,” Comm answered, getting into the humor.
Izzy had enough of the joke. “XO, break out the gig. Make sure any maintenance deficiencies on it have been corrected.” She tapped her comm link. “Lieutenant, I’d like a marine honor guard to accompany me dirtside. The emphasis should be more on the guard than the honor.”
“No trouble, ma’am.”
“On the contrary, I want you with me, Trouble.”
“Damn, that’s gonna interfere with my afternoon nap.”
“See you at the gig in half an hour, Lieutenant. Out.”
The XO was rubbing his chin and giving her one of his motherly looks. Izzy set a prim, innocent smile on her face and asked, “You got a problem, Stan?”
He leaned close and kept his voice down. “Ma’am, if there is a problem down there, a captain’s place is not in the middle of it. If you want, I can lead the marines.”
“Stan, we don’t have a problem. This is a formal call by the skipper of a visiting warship on the governor or whatever they’re calling their boss man this week. I’ll arrange for some liberty, see if they’ve got a rural hospital that needs painting. You know, do the nice stuff. And if Mr. Withwaterson wants to be at my elbow, making friendly sounds, he just may see some movement by the locals. I’m not going in there shooting, Stan, despite the stories you may have heard about me.”
The XO chuckled and shook his head. “And since you’ve made up your mind, butt out, boy.”
“I didn’t say that.” Izzy tried to look hurt. With her lack of practice, she doubted she succeeded.
“Then quit thinking it so loud.”
“Go check on the gig, Stan.”
“On my way,” he said, launching himself for the bridge hatch. With no station to swing around, the Patton was in for some serious zero-gee time; the crew would need liberty. They’d get it, as soon as Izzy verified the “bandits” were just a businessman’s hyperbole.
Two hours later, as they finished their landing roll, they still hadn’t heard from any portmaster. Izzy let the marines exit first. At the foot of the gig’s stairs, she took her first look at Hurtford Corner. Wheat or some sort of grain crop, spring-fresh and green, covered most of the shallow depression
between her and the city to the west. More green stretched away to where rolling hills started the climb toward the mountains they’d overflown on approach. A deep breath took in smells of cooling gig, morning rain, and sun-warmed earth. Several trucks and two cars raised dust on the single-lane road to town.
“Nothing like a sonic boom to let folks know they got company,” Trouble observed dryly. The marine lieutenant, in dress whites, sword, and pistol, shook his head at their immediate surroundings. “No hangar, no control tower. Must not expect much business.” Izzy nodded. The latest report on Hurtford Corner dated back to the war. Did they still have a governor, or, now that the Unity overlords were gone, had they returned to a group of elders with a city manager hired for the town? Intelligence was mildly curious; Izzy would inform them of what she found.
The first truck disgorged a chubby, balding young man with a broad smile and a hand out. “I’m Paul Withwaterson. I am so glad to see you.”
I bet you are. Izzy shook the offered hand. “We are here. You seem to be safe. Where’re the port authorities? Their voice mail said they were out to lunch.”
“Oh, that. They’ve been out to lunch since they lost the war. My ship got the same message. It hasn’t been changed?”
“No. Who’s the rest of the welcoming committee?”
Mr. Withwaterson turned. “The other trucks are from my competitors. That black car is the city manager. He’s the closest you’ll get to a formal welcome. He’s the one you have to talk to about the lack of police services. My warehouse has been broken into five times since I landed.”
“You got any cargo in that dinky thing?” came a shout from the next arriving truck. A big man with a mammoth red nose took in the gig and crew with a jaundiced eye.
“Commander Inez Umboto, captain of the Humanity ship Patton, at your service,” she answered.
“No shit. Well, no trade goods, no interest from me.” The man growled and did a U-turn. As he passed the next arriving truck, he shouted, “They got nothing, Dean. We wasted our time.”