by Scott Moon
“You’re under arrest for damaging SagCon property,” Thad said.
Zane Trustman remained relaxed and fluid, hardly seeming concerned about the violent apprehension. “I didn’t know the Glakridozian was property of SagCon. Did the company purchase the Glakrid System and locate Glakridoz Prime? Because that would be a neat trick.”
Thaddeus shoved him back, expecting him to trip and fall on the curb. The man maintained his feet and his balance, then smoothed the front of his coat.
“I don’t think he wants to resist arrest,” Dixie said, arms folded in front of her. “Not that you need a reason to kick his ass, in my opinion. He nearly killed Maximus.”
“Oh, I doubt that very much. My blade came nowhere near the Heart Stone,” Zane said. “And besides, the filthy creature attacked me. I came to Darklanding because you need help, and I have the skills you need to deal with all these crime trends.”
Thaddeus thought about Nebu and the others he left handcuffed to a pole with only a wounded animal to stop them from escaping. Think one thing, do something else. That made sense. So that’s what he did. “I don’t need your help.”
“If we’re going to be partners, can you ask your deputy to stop pointing that blaster at me?” Zane Trustman said.
“We’re not going to be partners,” Thad said.
Mast holstered his blaster. “There can only be one deputy in Darklanding, just like there can only be one sheriff.”
“Is that true, Sheriff? Can there be only one deputy?” Zane asked.
“Don’t be a smartass. Mast Jotham is the only deputy I need, and you know it. I got the memo from P. C. Dickles about some guy wanting to provide security who wouldn’t take no for an answer but was told no anyway. Why do you think your luck would be better here? And just for the record, stabbing my friends doesn’t exactly boost your resume,” Thad said.
“I could subcontract. Kind of like a municipal police force within limited jurisdiction while you have the whole planet,” Zane said.
Thaddeus glanced toward the spaceport entrance where a crowd was getting loud. There were too many buildings between him and the noise, but he didn’t like what seemed to be happening there. Darklanding had been impossible to manage during the boom, but now that things were going bust, it was worse. He didn’t need this obnoxious stranger to help him, he needed a squad of his TerroCom soldiers from the Centauri Prime Campaign.
“Don’t muchly forget that this man who is named incorrectly stabbed Maximus many times. And he said he was going to wear his teeth as a necklace,” Mast said, pointing at the macabre trophies hanging from Zane’s neck.
The man tucked them into his shirt. “My grandfather gave me those. Family tradition. I wasn’t meaning to offend anyone.”
“You said you were going to grind up his hooves and smoke them! You’re a bad human,” Mast said, balling up both fists in frustration.
“Did I say that?”
Thaddeus stepped between his deputy and the stranger who had taken such a strong dislike to Maximus. “Mast, stand down. I’ve got this. As for you, I don’t need your help, now or ever. And stay away from my dog or you’re going to really piss me off.”
Zane shrugged and backed away. “All right. It’s all good. Hunky-dory. Your pet will be fine, unfortunately. The Glakridozian savages heal at an accelerated rate as long as they’re carrying a Heart Stone. I’ll be around if you change your mind.”
Thad watched him go, wondering if he should’ve called the paddy wagon for this man instead of the thieves. “Mast, go to the entrance and wait with Maximus until the paddy wagon picks up Ugly Joe Nebu and his crew. I need to help Dixie with something.”
“Mast Jotham can very muchly do this I am thinking.”
“And one more thing. The next time Zane Trustman even looks at Maximus, shoot him in the face. Zane, not Maximus,” Thad said.
“Yes. That makes bigly sense. I will shoot at his jerkface.”
“Don’t miss.”
“But missing is what I do best.”
“Let’s go, Dixie,” Thad said, shaking his head and smiling at his deputy’s turn of phrase.
The Mother Lode Madam took his arm like they were on a date, pushing her body against his every chance she got. “Tigerlily will be grateful, but so will I. You won’t regret this, I promise. I will be soooo grateful. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“With talk like that, I’ll be wanting to rescue your girls every day.”
“Oh, Thaddeus. I hope so.”
They checked three apartments, each less likely than the last. No one admitted to having seen her.
“You said you knew where she was,” Thad accused.
“I didn’t say that. You’re the trained lawman. You have to read between the lines,” she said, then became suddenly apologetic. “I’m sorry, Sheriff Fry. Let me…make it up to you…” She twisted a lock of hair around one finger.
“You’re a wicked woman.”
“You know you like it.”
“Maybe.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shaunte looked like she’d had a good night’s rest, a full body massage and makeover, and two glasses of wine.
Thad leaned both hands on her desk. “You’re getting an early start.”
She looked up, widened her eyes in surprise, then smiled warmly. Two seconds later, she was up and around the desk and hugging him. “Oh, you do feel good. Where were you last night? I was lonely and thought about you.”
Thad returned the embrace. “I had to catch Ugly Joe Nebu and his crew three times. The first time at the spaceport, which nearly became a riot, the second time before the paddy wagon arrived, and the third time when they managed to get one of the doors open and jump out while it was still moving. Mixed in with all of that was Dixie’s drama.”
Shaunte stepped back and picked up one of her data tablets. “That is an impressive list of materials you recovered.” She studied him shrewdly. “What drama did Dixie have this time? And how is she paying you, with her services?”
“I’m the sheriff. She doesn’t have to pay for me to enforce the law and find her wayward girls. Which I didn’t, but that’s another story.”
“Just remember that, Sheriff Fry. I don’t want to find out she’s been offering you her goods.”
Thad half-smiled and cocked his head slightly. “She always offers.”
Shaunte slapped his arm playfully.
He studied her, wondering at the smallest details of her face. How had he ever resisted her? Once upon a time, he told himself to stay away. She was trouble, he thought. It was inappropriate to get involved with the Company Man, even if said Company Man was an extraordinarily attractive and capable young woman.
She seemed glad to see him but not as ecstatic over the fortune he had recovered for SagCon as he thought she would be.
“What’s wrong, Thad?” she asked.
“I just returned several hundred thousand credits’ worth of material to the corporation and took another thieving crew off the streets. Thought you might be glad.”
“I’m glad. Extremely glad. It’s great that you got this taken care of, because there’s a whole new problem in Transport Canyon. You’ve done a great job in keeping the outlaws in that sector under control, but there’s a lot of territory out there. Each time we establish a new maintenance facility or loading depot, another one of these bandit gangs spring up.”
“What’s the chances I hire some more deputies? I can’t be everywhere at once,” he said.
“You can’t?” she asked mischievously. “The talk on the street is that Sheriff Thaddeus Fry can do anything.”
“What are the details? I’ll handle it.”
Shaunte typed furiously with one hand, looking up from time to time as though guilty she had not paid more attention to him. “I’m sending the information now.”
“Send me budget approval for a squad of SWAT officers. I prefer they come from the TerroCom soldiers, but I’ll take anyone qualified. I could send
them out on raids and spend more time here in Darklanding. I don’t want another incident like what happened at the Cheap and Easy with Dregg and what’s her face, his sister.”
Shaunte turned pale at the mention of the incident. “That was horrible. Nonetheless, there are certain limitations to changes in budget line items. I can probably have it approved in eighteen months, unless it’s expedited.”
“In which case, it’ll still take eighteen months,” Thaddeus said. “I guess I’ll make do.”
“That’s the spirit. So, about the outlaws in Transport Canyon…”
***
Thad admitted the Calico was one of the ugliest ships in Darklanding, and that was saying a lot considering it was competing with freight haulers and fuel barges. Parts and panels had been scavenged from various ships over the years, giving it a multicolored appearance with gray and maroon primer paint being the dominant colors. There were odd yellow stripes like half-chevrons around the exhaust ports and scorch marks around the nose cone that suggested it had made atmospheric entry at a bad angle.
What he cared about most were his own additions to the ship he made and had rebuilt after the race with LeClerc, most notably the heavier armor, extra fuel tanks, and minigun. Ammunition was almost impossible to find, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Thad was never sure of the reasoning behind the half-chevrons and wondered what kind of moron had taken this thing into space. Someday he would catalog all the different numbers on the salvaged pieces of this and that. The ship was definitely a mutt, kind of like Maximus.
Unseasonal rain poured straight down with no wind to disturb its course. He shielded his eyes and looked up at the dark clouds, watching for lightning. “Come on, let’s go. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can be back in Darklanding putting out fires.”
“I am muchly hoping this is one of your strange speech figures,” Mast said. “We should not worry about spreading flames in this rain.”
Thaddeus, Mast, and Maximus boarded the Calico and strapped in. Thad went through the checklist quickly and fired up the engines. He took off while his deputy was still complaining about the abruptness of the safety protocols.
“I will not learn to fly from you. Perhaps you are the best sheriff in Darklanding but not the best teacher of flying,” Mast said.
“You want to fly?” Thad asked.
Mast shook his head violently. “No! You should be giving me big kudos for even getting in the ship. I’m not braving this way. People do not muchly enjoy flying.”
“Then what I’m about to do will not change that.” Thaddeus flew aggressively, determined to reach Transport Canyon in record time.
***
“Of course there’s a plan. I’m sure it’s a good plan,” Thaddeus said. “It’s just not fully formed in my mind. I’ve gotten too accustomed to having highly trained, highly competent soldiers taking the initiative. If I had my TerroCom soldiers, it would just be a matter of assigning them to mop this up.”
“They seem to be spreading out. Yes, muchly they are less close together. They are also slowing down?”
Thaddeus rolled back the throttle until the ship was about to fall out of the sky. “Smart. I can go slower, but it takes more fuel. We should expect they have some formal training, maybe as ex-soldiers or one of the private security firms that hire out mercenaries.”
Mast continued to ask questions while the pig-dog licked his wounds and pouted.
Thaddeus waggled the wings of the Calico, hoping the transgressors would take the hint and stop. Somehow, he didn’t think this crew was going to surrender as easily as Ugly Joe Nebu did.
He saw their hideout near the horizon. Located near the complex maze on the south side of Transport Canyon, which was almost a valley, it was in the opposite direction from the race course with which he was more familiar. He wondered if they had bribed the race officials to plan the course in the other direction, or if they had organized their outlaw band after his showdown with LeClerc. A lot of raw materials were moved through Transport Canyon, but most were on bullet trains that were nearly impossible to stop without causing a large-scale disaster.
“Get ready. We’re going to land before the two-wheelers get there to warn them,” Thaddeus said.
“What if they have radios? Wouldn’t they have warned their coconspirators?” Mast asked.
“If they had already done that, then the rest of their gang would have fled or would be shooting at us right now.” Thaddeus slammed the throttles forward and blasted over the fleeing motorcycles, knocking one of them sideways with the back blast from the Calico.
Maximus finally came to life, scrambling to the cockpit window and howling.
Thad flared the engines to land in a cloud of dust in the courtyard. He was betting the stone fortress was abandoned. As soon as the engine shut down, he dropped the ramp and sprinted to the fortress gate. He slapped the ‘close’ button and watched the heavy portcullis fall.
The lead two-wheeler applied too much rear brake and went into a slide. The driver tensed as the bike hit the gravel, then flipped over, sending him asshole over elbows into the closed gate. The helmet made a crunching sound. Afterward, the man didn’t have any limbs pointing in the right direction.
The next two stopped well short of their reckless companion. Four more arrived and arranged their motorcycles in a half-circle outside of the gate. Dust and grime coated their armor and helmet visors. They could have been messengers from the underworld except that demons would’ve been more talkative.
Mast and Maximus joined him at the gate. The tall Unglok deputy looked sick. The pig-dog from Glakridoz darted here and there, urinating on vertical objects.
“They’re waiting for something, I am thinking,” Mast said.
Thaddeus nodded. “Keep an eye on them. Stand where they can’t shoot you. I’m going to check the rest of the fortress and make sure their confederates have actually vacated the premises.”
The bandit hideout showed signs of recent occupation. Someone had put down the gravel and replaced both doors with new ones. There wasn’t much style to the place, but not everyone out here was as flamboyant as White Skull had been.
He holstered his weapon but kept his hand on it. Drawing it would take a split-second, and he didn’t want his arm shaking with fatigue when he needed to be fresh.
Most of the doors were locked. He wrote an X on them in the dust and moved on. When he had inspected the place to the best of his ability, he returned to the gate where Mast was still watching the six remaining outlaws.
“Give me an update,” Thaddeus said.
“They seem to be talking to each other, but not often and never leave their positions.” Mast switched his blaster to his other hand. Maximus laid at his feet half-asleep.
Thaddeus looked over his shoulder, sweeping his eyes over the abandoned stronghold. The locked doors were a problem. There could be armies of outlaws behind them, but once he started kicking them down, the six individuals outside might hear him and his preoccupation.
He doubted they would have much trouble getting past Mast. Maximus was another matter, but he could only do so much against armed men fighting as a team.
“We’re not in a great position,” Thaddeus said. The criminals outside the gates were waiting for something. Then, as he replayed the chase across Transport Canyon, he reversed his decision to stay. “Our position is untenable. Get on the ship. Run! You too, Maximus!”
He drew his weapon and divided his attention between the locked doors and the closed gate as he jogged toward the Calico. “Fire up the engines once inside. Be ready for takeoff.”
“I can’t fly!” Mast yelled back at him.
“You won’t have to, but that thing will be ready when I get in there.” Thad tucked and rolled, perfectly timing his evasive maneuver with the start of the ambush.
Doors slammed open in unison. Blaster bolts wove a spiderweb of crisscrossed beam patterns just above his head. He didn’t see if Ma
st and Maximus were able to enter the ship in time. He could only hope.
He came to his feet, shooting on the move. One went down, his fingers on the trigger causing him to shoot into the air as he tumbled away from the fighting. Thad jumped behind one of the landing struts, peeked out, and shot another in the throat.
The front gate screeched open as the motorcycle commandos used their entrance codes and raced into the courtyard. The deadly crossfire ceased as though they had planned this.
Thad took the opportunity to move closer to the ramp.
The Calico’s engines flared to life, effectively clearing the area behind the ship of any combatants. Gunmen from there moved to the front and laid down heavy suppressive fire on Thad’s position.
Thad dug his radio out of his coat pocket and keyed it. He screamed into the microphone to be heard. “Mast, you have to fly the ship. You have to scoop me up on your way out.”
“This is muchly impossible. Are you okay? Your position does not look advantageous.”
“Fine. Ask Maximus if he knows how to fly,” Thaddeus yelled into the radio receiver.
“I don’t like the way you say that. It hurts my feelings very muchly. I’m a very bad pilot, but I’m not a pig-dog.”
“Grab the controls and get us out of here!” Thad dove for the next landing support, rolling to his feet and firing in one motion. He was pretty sure he didn’t hit anything.
The Calico shuddered and slid forward several feet, bumping bodies and throwing them into the open. The outlaws, stunned, ceased firing for almost a full second. Thaddeus fired his pistol over his shoulder as he ran for the open ramp. Firing at random, he was happy to have not shot his own ear off.
Once he was inside the Calico, he went straight to the rotary dome on the central hub. Without securing the safety harness, he started firing, mowing down outlaws as quick as he could. Unfortunately, before he could finish the job, Mast was lumbering randomly through the air and gaining altitude.