A Tangled Road to Justice

by Olan Thorensen

  “That’ll be fine with us,” Johnson said. “We’d rather focus on our research than on preparing and sending out samples. Our work is funded for the next ten years, but we had to agree to send materials to advanced labs in the core worlds. Once there are other teams sending samples, our obligation will be fulfilled, and we can concentrate on research. It would also mean the robbers might leave us alone.”

  I wondered whether such men wouldn’t then find other ways to impinge on the researchers, but it was none of my business. I had first watch, while the other two slept.

  The next morning, we climbed seven kilometers up a natural cleft in a mountain ridge covered with lollipop trees. It had long since stopped being what you’d call a road but wasn’t quite unimproved, meaning there were so many bumps and ruts, it took us hours to reach the pass. We had only a few moments to appreciate the views in both directions before heading down.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was mid-day when we arrived at the research station. I expected tents as the main shelter but instead saw two prefab buildings and two wooden-looking structures well laid out next to a stream. Two horses similar to those pulling our wagon grazed on the knee-high, fern-like plant. A tank and piping testified to water catchment, and banks of solar cells covered the roofs of both main buildings.

  “Go ahead and tell me you brought all this in by wagon,” I said to Johnson.

  He laughed for the first time, “No. A cargo dirigible brought most of it here about four years ago. A mining company originally built the site. Preliminary surveys suggested rare earth deposits this side of the mountains, but the company dropped the idea when richer deposits were found elsewhere. The Interstellar Geographic Society picked up the site for a song, and we’ve been here for two years.

  “We converted their geology prefab into a biological laboratory, and we were able to live in the housing unit as is. The geologists kept their equipment and battery-powered cycles in the sheds, but we use the structures as storage and a barn.”

  While Johnson talked, five other people appeared and gathered behind him—two men and three women.

  Three couples? Makes sense if they’ve been out here most of the time for two years.

  One of the men appeared reasonably interested in our arrival, but the other man and two of the women looked at us as if we were something they’d stepped in. One woman couldn’t take her eyes off our guns—both Millen and I had holstered pistols and slung rifles. Their expressions I’d seen before. I half expected one or more of the women to launch into the standard speech—“Weapons don’t solve problems; they just cause them”—or act polite, if they reluctantly accepted that guns were sometimes necessary, but they’d prefer to have as little as possible to do with those who used them.

  Johnson did the introductions. I only remembered that one man was Jared, who would point us to where we could sleep in the barn—no co-housing here, please—and that Joy was an incongruous name for a woman giving us the worst stink eye. The plan was to load up the samples the next morning and head straight back to Justice.

  Before the station staff went back to whatever they were doing, Millen and I eschewed the barn and the opportunity to cohabit with horses, in favor of a patch of dense ground-covering ferns a hundred meters away. Before we parted for the evening, Millen cemented our pariah status.

  “By the way, we’ll be testing our guns, so don’t be alarmed at the noise. Shouldn’t last more than thirty minutes or so.”

  “We don’t usually allow guns on site,” Joy said in a grating tone.

  “What about animals?” I asked, annoyed at her tone. “I hear there are a few dangerous ones around.”

  “They leave us alone if we don’t bother them. Animals are aggressive only in response to humans.”

  Oh, boy, I thought. One of these days some innocent animal is going to bite your naïve ass.

  “All works out, then,” Millen said, never twitching, “since we won’t be on your site. That’s assuming the site doesn’t include all of Astrild.”

  He turned and walked away without waiting for a response. Joy looked like she’d eaten a jalapeno-spiked lemon. I followed Millen before I laughed and totally wrecked our community relations. Millen was starting to grow on me.

  That was the last interaction we had with the six researchers, except for Johnson. He said that he’d bring us bowls of meatless stew and bread later that evening.

  We set out our sleeping bags under a ten-meter cycad surrounded on three sides by boulders. The ground cover was only eight to ten centimeters high and made a nice cushion under our sleeping bags. After setting up motion detectors around our temporary home, we walked half a kilometer from the site to find a spot with enough open sighting to test fire. It also worked to reduce the noise the station staff had to endure, but somehow I doubted they appreciated it.

  The rifles were first. We’d brought two hundred rounds for each, which I hoped was overkill for some highwaymen. I was with Millen, though, in thinking that you never had enough ammo. We assaulted various fronds and branches out to about five hundred meters. The assault rifles were okay for another couple hundred meters, but they were meant for closer work. Millen was a good shot, but I’m a really good shot. At those distances, anyone we had to fire on would be in serious trouble.

  The pistols were another matter. In my previous line of work, if you had to use a pistol, you’d either run out of rifle ammunition or stupidly gotten yourself into a situation where your target was up your ass.

  Not that I’m a bad shot with a short gun, but most of my experience, real and in practice, was well beyond pistol range.

  Evidently not so with Millen. The first target was a 20-centimeter-diameter tree trunk maybe 30 meters away.

  “Let’s start with six rounds each,” Millen said. “You go first.”

  I pulled my pistol, seated the first round, assumed a recommended stance, and methodically fired six times. Five hits on the offending trunk.

  “Not too bad,” Millen said. “There’s something we can work with.”

  Before I could rejoinder, somewhat offended at his lack of appreciation for my outstanding marksmanship, Millen pulled his pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and fired off six rounds in the time I’d fired twice. I’d have sworn he hadn’t aimed. I walked over to the fern. My hits were scattered at about the meter-and-a-half level. Just above were six holes forming a line across the trunk. They didn’t deviate more than a centimeter from being perfectly straight.

  I stared, then turned to Millen. “Do you have sex with pistols or just sleep with them?”

  “It’s all a matter of practice and the needs of the job. Your experience has been at a distance. Some of what we might run into will be similar, but other times it’ll be up close and more personal. Try it again, but this time don’t take so long to shoot. Consider that the fern also has a gun and wants to shoot you.”

  This time, a round was already in the chamber. I cocked the hammer, raised the pistol to eye level, and fired six shots in a third the time of my first try.

  I hit the fern once.

  “Could be worse,” Millen consoled. “You’d only be dead five out of six times.”

  I wanted to snap back at him, but on what basis? The prick was obviously so superior to me with the pistol that anything I said would sound like whining.

  “Okay, so I suck at fast pistol work compared to you. How do I improve? Lots of practice?”

  “Sure, that’s a big factor. But situational awareness is just as important—something you should be good at with some work and thinking about it. It’s a sliding scale of what’s most important. If someone is pulling a gun on you from only a few meters away, there’s no time to aim—just pull that thing out and let go. On the other hand, if he or she’s farther away than that tree, shooting too fast is likely to miss. Even I can’t hit at that range every time if I go as fast as I can.”

  The “I” in his statement sounded like he meant “God.”

  “At those l
onger ranges with a pistol, actually hitting the target becomes more important. Chances are, he’s going to be a worse shot than you. Shooting fast from a distance, you’re only going to get hit with his first shot if you’re unlucky. But the more shots he takes, the better his chances, so make that first shot count. Naturally, it’s best to be both fast and accurate.”

  Millen ragged on me for the next half hour, as I shot off two-thirds of our 10-millimeter rounds. I took this to mean he didn’t expect our highwaymen encounter to be at close range. By the time he called a halt, I had to admit I’d improved in both speed and accuracy. Yet my intuition told me it wouldn’t make any difference if I practiced to the end of time—I’d never be as freaky good as Millen with pistols.

  Sniping was something else. We’d brought along the Napua so I could zero it. Millen pulled it out of its case, admiring it as he turned it over in his hands. “Lovely piece of work. I’ve always wanted one of these, but even with corrective implants, my eyesight isn’t good enough at long distances. I’m afraid I can’t do justice to this beauty, so I’ll leave it to you.”

  He handed me the sniper rifle. I checked the sights for targets starting at 100 meters and worked out to 500 meters.

  “That should do it,” I said, after the fifth shot and fine adjustments.

  “Okay,” said Millen, “let’s see what you do with it.” He pulled out a monocular and swept the landscape. “See out there about eight hundred meters. There’s one of those ball-shaped trees with fruiting bodies or nuts or whatever. One of them is hanging out to the right of the rest of the tree. Think you can hit it?”

  I looked through the Napua’s eyepiece, found the tree and the target. I touched a button on the side of the eyepiece, and a ranging overlay popped up. The target was 819 meters away. I hit the button again to clear the eyepiece and lowered the rifle.

  “Yeah. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Standing was not possible at such ranges, so I found a fork in a low-branching plant. After cutting away obstructing parts of the plant, I sat and rested the barrel in the notch, elbows on my thighs—my favorite position, although prone works best when you need to maintain the lowest profile.

  I increased the magnification until the target filled the view.

  That wasn’t easy. At this distance, even the tiniest movement of the scope shunted the target out of view. No, it wasn’t easy for most people, but it was for me. It wasn’t something I’d trained for; it was just a knack I had—freezing. Only the barest hint of quiver affected the crosshairs on the target. I squeezed gently.

  Bang! The trigger engaged, and the firing pin hit the back of the cartridge. I knew what to expect on the recoil, and I had the target lined up again before the round hit four centimeters off dead center. Millen had been watching through his monocular.

  “Not bad. Not bad at all. Can you do it every time?”

  “At this distance, most times, but you can never tell about a wind change or propellant variation in each round. But, yeah, most times.”

  “How about farther away? What’s your limit?”

  “The book says twelve hundred meters, but I can do better. You just have to pay even more attention to wind, absolute elevation, and the up or down angle of the shot.”

  I looked through the scope, focusing farther and farther away. “This one looks pretty interesting. Another of those fruits, cones, or whatever. See the rock formation beyond the first target? See the tree between the two biggest boulders? Target’s the one hanging down in front of the smaller boulder.”

  “Christ. I think I can see it. Are you sure that isn’t too far away?”

  Bang! I fired as he finished his question. “Says it’s fifteen hundred and thirty-one meters.” As I finished the last word, the target jumped. The hit was dead center.

  “Don’t tell me you can do that every time.”

  “Not every time and not dead center, but most of the rounds should be within a thirty-centimeter circle, if there’s no elevation change to the target, if there’s no wind, and if I guessed correctly on effects of humidity.”

  “Okay, that settles that. You’re taking all the long shots, and we do what we can to keep any people mad at us as far away as possible and still see them.”

  Finished shooting up Astrilian flora, we went back to our camp. We cleaned all the weapons, ate the food Johnson brought us, and crawled into our bedrolls as the stars came out. I stared for half an hour, trying to find a constellation I recognized. Two patterns of stars looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure. Even only fifty-two light-years from Earth, relative positions changed enough to make me uncertain.

  Something woke me during the night, and I lay awake an hour without hearing anything before going back to sleep.

  A boot rocking my butt welcomed me to the new day. Millen was already dressed, and a breakfast of instant coffee and hot biscuits awaited—Millen had gotten the ingredients from the researchers.

  “Time to saddle up,” Millen said.

  “Saddle up? I assume we’re going by wagon the same way we came. The only saddles you’ve seen are back at Justice or on those holovids you’re attached to.”

  Millen used a finger to tilt his hat back, then stuck thumbs in his belt. “Sorry, pardner, no holovids around this here cattle drive. We’re hittin’ the trail to town. Gotta be aware of any rustlers or Injuns.”

  I stared, bleary-eyed. “Cattle drive. Rustlers. Injuns. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Millen tugged his hat back in position. “Well, as long as we’re going to be hired to bring peace and order to Wild West–like places, we might as well use the lingo. You watched a couple of the classic vids on the train ride. When we get time, I’ll let you immerse in some more of my holovids. I’ve a portable projection setup in Justice. I still can’t believe you’re from the old United States and don’t know more about Westerns.”

  His language was back to normal, and it occurred to me I had no idea where he was from. “The old United States? That’s where you’re from?”

  “Never been to Earth, but I’ve got a great collection of Western holovids on my comm unit. Both original formats and hologram conversions. You’ve seen The Magnificent Seven and Appaloosa, but your education and cultural awareness have been sorely deficient if you’ve never seen High Noon, Shane, True Grit—the original, not the stupid remake—Tombstone, Shadow of the Gun, and My Darling Clementine. I’ve got all of them and hundreds more. Great stuff. They just don’t make them like that anymore.”

  Most of the occasional holovids I’d watched were modern and a mix of comedies, military, and thrillers. If I had a favorite genre, it was wars against evil aliens, even though humans had yet to come across other living sentient races.

  Millen expounded on Westerns for the next hour, while we packed up and waited for Johnson to be ready to head back to Justice. Despite my initial lack of interest, Millen’s evident obsession was more of a peek into who he was than I’d seen before. Hey, we all had our idiosyncrasies, and if Millen fantasized about roping cows and Okay Corrals, who was I to judge?

  When we got to the research layout, the same wagon was hitched to two different horses of the same breed. I knew they were different because the one on the right didn’t try to bite me as I walked past. In place of the supply boxes and bags from our trip out, the wagon held two metal containers, one about a meter square and the other half that size.

  “They’re the freezer unit for the biological samples and the battery to run the freezer,” Johnson said. “There’s enough juice for five containers, so we have enough to spare to get to Justice.”

  Johnson had told us there were always three or four robbers, but it hadn’t occurred to me to ask their mode of transportation or how they carried off the samples—so I asked.

  “They ride electric cycles,” answered Johnson, “one of which has a trailer with a built-in freezer unit. Our unit is too big for their cycle, plus it’s the only one we have. If they took it, we’d be out of business until we
got a replacement.”

  That told us a lot. “So, they must have a home base not too far away. One-man cycles are only good for about forty to fifty kilometers from a charger grid.”

  Johnson grimaced. “One of Cherkoff’s ranches is about thirty kilometers from where they usually stop us in the pass over the mountains. Not that there’s any question who’s doing it. I’ve seen at least two of the men in town drinking or walking with other Cherkoff men.”

  “Well,” said Millen, hitching up the belt holding his pistol, “we’ll just have to make the acquaintance of these fellers and let them know their stagecoach-robbing days are over.”

  Great, I thought. Back to the Western jargon.

  One of the women, I didn’t remember her name, piped up. “We need to get our samples through, but we’re against violence. I thought you two were just here to discourage them from taking our stuff. It’s not worth anyone getting hurt over.”

  I wanted to say something pithy, but Millen switched back to real language and made an attempt at reasoning. “I agree with you. These samples probably aren’t that important, although I can’t really judge that. What I do know is that it’s the idea they can rob with impunity that’s the real issue. If there’s no control over this, then no civil society can develop. From what I hear, a lot worse goes on around Justice. One way to stop it is to deal with each event as it happens. If we can prevent the theft of your samples, then maybe we can help plant the seed to take root that other, more serious, offenses won’t be permitted.”

  Neither she nor the others were persuaded, but I didn’t expect them to be. I suspect Millen didn’t either. But you had to try—at least, occasionally.

  I took up my position in the wagon bed, sitting on my pack this time and balancing with my hands on a side rail and the freezer box. We reached the base of the pass with two hours left before dark, but we camped there so the next day we’d have full daylight when we expected to be intercepted.