Would they eat themselves alive? Would they fall prey to one of the scavenger gangs? Would they become a scavenger gang themselves and wait for the next load of sharks to be dumped on Tartaros?
"I wish we could help them," said Alna.
"Let's get this bunch back to Nance before we worry about anyone else."
I watched the burn trail fade from the sky and turned my attention toward the front of the column. That ship of sharks had nothing to do with us. They were too far north. Besides, I already had my hands full. So I just took what was going to happen to that new load of cons and jammed it into my mind's darkest corner along with all of my other nightmares.
This dawning I couldn't hear any voices. On that first morning after picking up the Mihvihtians the voices complained, bitched, pissed, and moaned about fate.
"How'd I ever get here?"
"I didn't deserve this."
"This is a violation of my rights."
"I'm innocent!"
"This is not fair!"
So much bullshit; so little time. The next night the voices only talked simple survival and observation.
"How much water you got left?"
"These nights can't get any colder, can they?"
"God I'm tired."
"Can you carry the baby?"
"There aren't any stars here."
"Where in the hell are we?"
"Where are we going?"
"These days can't get any hotter, can they?"
Can you carry the baby was a question that made my head smoke. Our group of sharks from Earth didn't include any urches or pregnant bits. The bunch from Mihviht included everything from babies to an adult set of Siamese twins. They don't look kindly on abortion on planet Mihviht, so the new bunch of sharks included about sixty babies that had been delivered on the ship. Three women had died in childbirth since we had picked up the Mihvihtians. Judging from the size of some of the sisters, more additions would be along directly.
What was worse than that, about a thousand of the Mihviht bunch were urches, under sixteen. Some of them were as young as twelve. The juicer on Earth still hadn't accepted that a twelve year old arsonist and murderer could be "without hope." Mihviht didn't have that problem.
A young little bastard asking for it and getting it didn't bother me, with the exception of Tani. One thing that did bother me, though, were all of the weenie wavers, kiddie bungers, baby snuffers, and other perverts back in the Razai. There were a whole lot of problems I hadn't had to deal with up until then because the Razai didn't have any kids in it.
Of course, it wasn't just the perverts in the Razai that were bothering me. I was bringing sixteen thousand new sharks into the mix. I pretty much knew the spectacular assholes from Earth. I didn't know a soul from Mihviht. I made a mental note to bring in some recruits for the RC from the Mihviht bunch. We needed information. We needed a few Mihvihtian watchers who could point out the short fuses.
Alna held onto my arm and rested her head against my shoulder. I liked it when she did that. It said she loved me, and that was something I needed to see and feel, as well as hear. "Bando, have you seen Nkuma?
"No. He's gone. Man, do I ever plan to lay a lump on his ass when I see him again. I can't believe he left me by myself with one rifle to thin Tani Aduelo."
"Baby, Nkuma could bust you in half if he wanted." She reached up and kissed my cheek.
I held her at arm's length. "Sister, you don't think that dumb bastard Nkuma took off by himself to meet those ships, do you?"
She quickly looked away, and I posted a mental note to remind her to stay away from poker games. Bloody hell. Was I going to have to make room for Nkuma's ghost too? I looked back toward the west. There wasn't any way I could catch up with him, even if I could figure out which direction he'd gone. "Bastard. I told him not to go."
"Rule Two, Bando. He's free to go wherever he wants."
I nodded. "Yeah. That's how he got almost three hundred sharks killed the last time."
Alna's unblinking gaze settled on me. It never failed. The more cranked I'd get, the smoother Alna would go. "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure it out, Bando. What he wants is to steer the new sharks away from the things that killed the people he led before."
There wasn't anything to do with it but accept it. After a few minutes of mental flogging, Alna and I got back to putting one foot in front of another. Just her and me in a valley of our own with no one else to be responsible for, that was my fantasy.
The sky was turning red and it was getting hotter. It was time to settle down and hide from the sun. Before I could even get my sheet over my head, a shout came from the front of the column. "Nicos! Up at the point! We've spotted some riders. They're wearing stars!"
││││
││││
││││
▫
A Minor Complication
▫
As Alna and I reached the limits of the point guard camp, it was a different world. Instead of everyone sitting around in clumps pissing and moaning about heat, fate, and the future, these sharks were all quiet and keeping down. They were frying in the sun like so many fish on a griddle, but they all had their aluminized sun sheets rolled dull side out and tucked away on their backs. If they had been wearing their sheets it would have been like a mirror convention to whoever was out there on the sand. The Mihvihtians hadn't shown up on Tartaros with much in the way of weaponry, but every one of the point guards was ready with something lethal. They had everything from homemade cutters and garrotes to belt wrapped fists and saps filled with sand.
The posted guards each kept an eye on his or her hunk of the perimeter, while the reserve guards crouched silently with their units. They were a bunch of crowbar jerk offs who thought discipline was a disease, and there they were like a case of razors, unwrapped, polished, and ready to slice. I mentally slipped myself a bit of taffy for fingering Colonel Indimi to push the point.
There was a line of sharks stretched out on their bellies examining the northern approaches to the camp. I bent over, tapped one shark on his shoulder, and asked "Where's the bald Eagle?" The eagle tag had to do with the Colonel's hairless pate. There wasn't a hair on his head except for thick, black eyebrows and a matching handlebar moustache. The shark I tapped turned slowly and looked up at me like I'd just farted in his face. He was a young chop with a jaw like a granite tombstone. He lifted his hand and pointed toward the east.
"The Colonel is over there," he whispered. He then turned his back and resumed studying the distant dunes.
There was that loyalty thing again. I had no doubt in my crowbar bound mind that the little chop on guard there would happily fight and die for the Colonel should the hammer drop. I looked them over one by one and knew that they all belonged to Colonel Indimi. I felt a pang of jealousy as I turned away and headed east.
Alna was grinning as she whispered at me, "I don't think he liked what you called the Colonel."
"You wouldn't kid a cop, would you, sister?"
I gave the laugh, but inside I was turning frog green. I'd never felt that loyal toward anyone, and no one had ever felt that way toward me. It was like being unable to love or be loved. I felt like everyone else had parts I was missing.
There's something mysterious that makes someone a natural leader. I'd seen it in school, on the block, and behind the crowbars a hundred times. Some character with nothing visible to recommend him is dropped into a crowd and the next thing you know is he's making plans and giving orders and most of the people around him are grinning, nodding, and saying "Yeah, guy. That's corners. What do you want me to do? Huh? Huh? Huh?"
Nance Damas was one of those natural leaders. Sarah Hovit, the commander of the Razai Army, was another. Three of the four generals under her, Rhome Nazzar, Yirbe Vekk, and Mig Rojas, were natural leaders, too. The fourth General, Tao Dao, was different. You didn't want to do for Ow Dao; you were afraid not to. That was all right because the bandit chieftain never was after a
nyone's approval. All he ever wanted was power.
I was different, too. I didn't hold my position as chief of the RCs because of anyone's loyalty. Nance'd dumped the job on me because I was the last in line. Nobody interfered with me for fear of being stuck with the job themselves. I was there because no one else wanted to take out the garbage.
I envied the ones who drew that loyalty from others. It was like some kind of ultimate stamp of approval from the universe. The trouble is, to get that loyalty, you had to be the kind of hairpin who didn't need it. They have to be able to see a certain something in you; something I couldn't see in anyone; something no one could see in me. I suspected to get that loyalty you had to be worth it. Was Bando Nicos worth it? The laughter in my head was a roar. The ghost of Tani Aduelo was right in there leading the rest of my spooks in a protest against the continued life of Bando Nicos. The delegation wanted its payback. It wanted me on the dark ride. That's what Bando Nicos was worth.
▫
Alna and I climbed quietly up the backside of a dune. Habran Indimi was on top lying flat on his belly. Indimi was a big man, his skin burnt as brown as mine, his head as bald as a baby's bum. His moustache was curled down at the ends, and he was on infinity hold for making an environmental statement. To prevent his commanding general from polluting the environment with one more stupid order, the Colonel had beamed a ray though the old boy's head.
Although he saved the day, won the battle, and earned the eternal gratitude of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, dropping the croak on his general earned him the enemy's most important decoration. The general, in addition, was well connected at the front office. It was real bad press on Mihviht. The media charged, tried, and convicted him. The juicer agreed with the verdict and put him on infinity hold. That much of his story I managed to piece together from crowbar gossip. The real man, however, is always something different from what you can see or hear.
I got down on the sand and slid up next to him. Alna slid up on my right. "What you got, Colonel?" I whispered.
Without taking his gaze off the distant dunes, he pointed a finger toward the southeast. I squinted my eyes against the glare and looked. In between the dunes, trying to stay in the shadows as much as possible, was a party of about twenty mounted and armed dune sharks. Some wore plain white sheets like Boss Kegel's gang, while others had sheets with colored markings, like Pau Avanti's mob, the Hand. A couple had yellowish sand-colored sheets that I'd never seen before. They were riding the broad-backed, shaggy, six-legged lughoxen and leading an additional half dozen of the critters. The horns and tusks on the creatures were highly polished. I was totally bent.
"Look at them bopping through the sand like they owned the grit. They could be ambushed by two crips with wet noodles."
"Maybe not," the Colonel observed.
I glanced at Indimi. "I was told they were wearing stars, like mine."
"Wait a bit. They're moving into the light."
The front of the column came around a dune into the glare from Alsvid. The lead shark had a bandage wrapped around his head and there was a flash of reflected light from his chest. "Stays."
"Who is he?"
"Martin Stays. A recovering anarchist. He's my number two in the cops. They're Razai, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why they're cruising the dunes. Talk about asking for it."
Colonel Indimi smiled at me as he twirled the ends of his moustache with his fingers. "As soon as you return, Nicos, I'll show you why."
Military types. They get so damned smug about their little plans and stratagems when they talk to civilians, they remind me of cockroaches. I let it go, got to my feet, and began waving my arm. The leader of the patrol held up his hand and the column came to a halt.
Stays dismounted and just stood there. "Why in the hell isn't he coming over?"
Indimi nodded and glanced up at me. "For all he knows, you're a hostage. You better go down there and talk with him."
I looked at Alna. "Let's go see what's up."
Alna slid down the dune behind me. As I reached the bottom I put up my hood to keep my melon from baking and groped beneath my sheet for the comforting feel of my ice pick. You never know what's going to happen in life, so be prepared for everything, Big Dave Cole used to say back in the Crotch. Expect everything to work out fine, but be prepared for it all to go down the shitpipe. That was Big Dave's plan for success in the crowbars. I was never much good at playing any of those let-go-and-let-God serenity games. My plan had always been to expect everything to turn to shit, and then watch it do just that. I wasn't often disappointed.
When we were close enough to his riding critter to smell it, I nodded at Stays and looked up at the others. The RCs he had with him were Marietta and our super cop Marantha Silver. Behind them was Rhome Nazzar, the Razai's point group commander. With him was Ondo Suth and a squad of yard sharks I didn't recognize. The whole bunch was grimmer than next month's parole board.
During the few days we'd been gone, my number two RC had grown a sandy brown beard and moustache which were about three shades lighter than his hair. He still wore the bandage on his head from the wound he had gotten in the fight with the Hand.
Nazzar had changed, too. There was a little scraggle of something growing on the yard monster's young face, and near that old scar on the left side of his chin, the beard was coming out silver white. Marantha Silver had cut her hair short. For a split second I wondered what Herb thought of Marantha cutting her beautiful black hair short, but then I remembered: to Herb Ollick, Marantha was a goddess. She could've told Herb to cut off his own foot and eat it, and he would've done it, bunions, toenails, whiff, and all.
Marietta had added a cutter to her weapons that looked almost big enough to be a sword. She had it slung from a belt on her back. Her hair was cut short, too. Ondo Suth looked the same: wiry and wary. The sharp gray eyes beneath those mousy brown eyebrows examining the tops of the surrounding dunes.
By the time we were in the middle of them, everyone had dismounted from their lughs and were waiting. "What's happening?" I greeted. There was nothing but silence. "Whose minding the store?" Everyone seemed to be searching the tops of the distant dunes. "Talk to me, people. Who's doing cops back at the Razai? What're you cheese heads doing on the dunes in the daylight?"
Stays frowned as he looked at me. "Cap, Margo, and Herb are out on the dunes chasing down and maxing the perps from the Hand's rape trials."
I glanced at Marantha and back at Stays. "Herb Ollick?"
"Yeah. We needed more RCs. I appointed him. Is there a problem?"
"Nope. If they're out chasing bad guys, I take it you fingered some more RCs to stay with the gang."
"Slicker Toan and Minnie McDavies."
I said to Stays, "So we're still a going concern. It's good to see you again."
He nodded, his face still grim. "It's good seeing you again, Sherlock." He nodded at Alna. "I'm glad he found you. I was concerned. Where's Nkuma? Dom said he went on with you two to meet a pit ship."
"I don't know where he is." I waved a hand at all of them. "I want an answer this time. Why are you assholes out on the sand here in broad daylight? We were following your signal flares in all right. Are you looking for trouble?"
"We were thinking," said Stays, "some other dune sharks might've been following the signals, as well."
Rhome called from the back. "Scouts said that a big gang was heading our way. We were just being careful."
I frowned. "You kidding, man? Riding out here as big as Bozo with a nose twice as red? With only twenty sharks? You call that being careful?" I shook my head. "Don't worry about it. That big gang your scouts saw is the sharks Nkuma, Alna, and me picked out of the sand to join the Razai." Stays glanced at the dunes and back at me. "How many of them do you have with you?"
"I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. "We have sixteen thousand, more or less."
Stays just stared at me with a dumb expression. I looked around and they all had the same dumb express
ion. "What's the matter with you people? If we're planning on hitting the Sunrise Mountains and doing the Hand, we're going to need one hell of a lot more than three thousand sharks." I looked at them more closely. "That isn't it at all, is it? Spill. What in the hell is eating you assholes?"
Stays looked down at my feet. Everyone else was looking every place else except at me. Finally Marantha Silver looked me in the eyes. "It's Nance Damas," she said. "Someone tried to kill her. She's been shot."
Suddenly, right in the center of that oven of a desert, it became very cold. Now that it had happened it seemed real stupid that I hadn't expected it. The truth was that it had never crossed my mind that Nance might be in danger. She was one of those people who're so tough and so necessary you just naturally assume they're immortal.
"Will she live?" asked Alna.
Stays scratched at his new beard. "Unknown. Mercy Jane was getting ready to operate when we left. Nance was hit in the left lung and it looks like the slug lodged near her spine or in it. The column's halted until she can be moved again."
I rubbed the back of my neck. "I take it when you said somebody shot her, we don't know who."
"That's right."
"Who's on it?"
"I am," answered Marantha.
I nodded. "Good. Maybe we can make some use out of all that hot shit Ministry of Justice training." I looked at the faces. "Who's taking over for Nance? Did she appoint another number two?"
Stays nodded and half smiled. "Yeah. You."
"That's not much of a joke, Watson."
He smiled all the way. "No shit, Sherlock. No joke, either."
"I can't even haul the load I got. I'm an RC. Those crowbar monkeys hate my guts. I can't do it. I won't do it."
"I told Nance that's what you'd say. She said maybe they hate you, sure enough, but they also trust you."
"Terrific." I examined the sand at my feet and shook my head. Here was some of that big time validation coming at me and I didn't want to be anywhere near it. Something else occurred to me.
INFINITY HOLD3 Page 32