Nova Cassidy's Chronicles: Back in the Saddle, pt 6
06 Feb 2017Nova Cassidy
“No. Stop. Please!”The panicked, filthy man was writhing in the dirt, backing up as fast as his broken body allowed. He’d been scrambling to get away from the wreck of his crashed Diamondback, barely crawling out of the smoldering, twisted wreckage with his life. After that, he was scrambling to get away from me. But it was wasn’t going to happen. It had been pathetically easy to stroll up to the battered figure dragging itself along the desert sand and scrub brush until I was standing directly over him, my shadow blotting out the sun.
Seeing that there was nowhere to go, he cowered, rolling to his side in a fetal position. I held up my holoslate and verified one last time that I had the right man. I did.
Ray Roy Scudder. Assault, piracy, theft, extortion… and murder. You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you?
The translucent hologram showed a dour mugshot from years ago, on one of the rare times that he had been caught. The hardened look on his past self’s face was a far cry from the whimpering, pathetic figure at my feet. A gust of desert air as blew my duster open to reveal my pistol. The hunt was all over. I’d tracked Scudder down, chased him back to Old Col, and blasted his ship to bits in the atmosphere of this scrubby desert world. Once, he’d had a hand in terrorizing the locals. Now, he would die here.
Fitting, I thought.
Even if he’d found some place to hide, the trail of blood from from his ship would have led me straight to him. Through the gouges on his flight suit, I saw the charred, bloody flesh that told the tale of a burning canopy and a narrow escape through scorched, jagged hull plating, still burning hot from re-entry. His limbs moved at odd angles, and the amount of blood that he had been losing was gradually lessening as his body ran out of blood to lose.
Ray Roy Scudder was a dead man, and he knew it.
I held up the pistol, the barrel centered squarely on his battered face.
“Stop? Why? You didn’t. Not at Paradiso, not at Harris Station, and not at DeLany Township. I know you remember that one.”
I took a step closer, kicking some dirt on the man’s wounds. “How old was she, Ray Roy? Fourteen? And her folks had already given you everything they had. But you plugged ‘em anyway, didn’t you? And you’ve been runnin’ with the Gold Hand ever since.”
The man didn’t answer, only receding further into his fetal curl. He murmured something, his lips moving but no words escaping. Even as helpless as he was, the man was the very image of contemptibility. His face was plastered with long, greasy hair that had long been thinning from the top, and his mouth was lined with rotting teeth. Acne scars dotted his cheeks under patches of facial hair. Yellowed eyes looked up to silently beg for mercy, his mouth still trying and failing to form words.
The man was beaten. I lowered my pistol, holstering it. Even in the maddening pain, a look of relief crossed the criminal’s bloody face.
“You’re right,” I said simply. “You’ve had a rough enough day without some bitch shootin’ a fifty cal slug into your gut. Just doesn’t seem worth it.”
Ray Roy wheezed for a moment, hope growing in his sickly yellow eyes. I smiled sweetly and extended my hand. He shifted his body, summoning the last of his strength to raise his broken limb to mine. His trembling fingers were almost within reach when I flicked my wrist, extending the concealed pistol.
“The ammo for this one is much cheaper. Your bounty ain’t that much!”
The man was just opening his mouth to scream when the first bullet went straight through it, snapping his head back with a sickening crack. The second tore through his exposed throat, vaguely reminding me of my failed attempt to kill the Inquisitor Gideon Hathaway. The ground under the man turned red as the puddle of blood, bile, and skull fragments grew like a halo. Ray Roy’s body twitched and convulsed, the last traces of life draining along with the blood.
I retracted the wrist pistol, the familiar scent of gunpowder in the air. Stepping over the body, I held up the holoslate, snapping a picture of the bloody, charred corpse to turn in for the bounty. It would be unique. Most of the time, the only proof I had of a kill was the twisted debris of the ship I’d just turned into slag. Doing the job up close and personal wasn’t my usual style, but-
I spat on the ground, taking one last look at the corpse that in life had been the man known as Ray Roy Scudder. But I can make an exception for scum like this. At least he put up a fight before I shot out his engines. The Gold Hand ain’t got a pot to piss in when it comes to a bona fide reaper knocking on their door.
And knock on their door I had. Even since I’d announced my private war against them by dropping the destroyed remains of one of their ships’ hull on the middle of their hideout, twenty more of their number had been hunted down and destroyed. Their raids against Harris Station had ceased, and even the trashy haunts on Paradiso were unusually peaceable. The money from cashing in their scalps hadn’t been anything like deep-bubble reaping, but it was a hell of a lot better than mining.
Besides, I hadn’t paid for a drink back at Harris in nearly a month.
“Good load today, Mills?”
The burly, hard-working refinery foreman looked over his shoulder, nodding at my approach. He was in his usual spot at the bar, hunched over a beer at a corner booth with several of his co-workers. They looked a little more smudgy and haggard than normal, and were downing the golden liquid with a little more gusto, too.
Grubby miners hurriedly scooted to make room for me as I approached the table. The bartender saw me and poured a shot of whiskey as I settled in among the miners. Mills took another pull from his bottle before answering.
“Two thousand tons of ore just this afternoon. The warehouses are filling up with metal. Had to send out a k-cast just to get another ship down here to take it all away. Another day like this, and I’ll have to start turning away loads.”
Another miner with grey in his hair grunted. “Haven’t had that problem in-”
He turned to his foreman. “- well, since before the misses packed up and left.”
The miner glanced at me, a hint of longing in his tired eyes. “And that’s been a long, long-”
Mills shoved a rough elbow into the man’s side, snapping him out of whatever was going on in his imagination.
“And it’ll be even longer if you keep up like that.”
The man nodded, looking down and then back at me. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” I said. The miner’s name was Johannsen- and he wasn’t a bad man, not really. Just another lonely soul in a place where to be a woman of childbearing age meant having your pick of the local menfolk, such as they were. I had too much blood on my hands for most of them to want me more than a night, anyway.
Mills took another swig of his bottle the same time that my shot showed up. “He’s not wrong, though. The smelter’s been running day and night. The boys are feeling better about being away from town. Safer, you could say. They’re scooping up as much ore as their trucks can haul, and they’re doing it longer. I don’t remember the last time I paid out so many credits.”
A burly man next to me raised his glass. “Aye, and it’s no secret why. To our blue-haired guardian angel!”
The miners around me all thumped their palms on the wood of the table in approval, clinking their beers together and toasting me. I smiled and touched my shot glass to their bottles, sharing the toast. It had been an unexpected surprise, finding acceptance and companionship in the ass end of nowhere. Mills and his gang of grubby miners weren’t friends, exactly- but they appreciated what I was doing, and I appreciated them back for it. True, I wouldn’t be taking any locals on a tour of the Snowbird, but at least I wasn’t drinking alone.
I took a moment to let the fiery heat of the liquor subside, and looked around the table. “Well, don’t go calling me an angel just yet. Today was a real messy one.”
Stories about bounty hunts always pique a civilian’s interest. Doubly so when their own safety is on the line. A grave look settled over Mills’s face as he leaned forward.
“Anything you’re allowed to talk about?”
I chuckled to myself. “‘Allowed’? A bounty hunter can talk all they want about their work. Some never shut up about it. But yeah- this one didn’t go down easy. Fought him in atmo, but he survived the crash. Had to land next to the wreck and track him down on foot.”
“And?”
I pursed my lips, the grisly images of the broken man in my eyes. “And I’m owed a bounty voucher.”
The table had gone quiet. It always did, like every time they were remembering that the pretty young thing drinking with them was a professional killer. Not that any of them had any real problems with it. If they did, they didn't dare say anything. Around me, the men looked at each other, none of them wanting to ask an ignorant question. Eventually Johannsen took a swig of beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Anyone we might know?”
I leaned back in the seat, conscious that some of the man’s blood might have gotten onto my duster.
“Ray Roy Scudder,” I said.
The silence around the table persisted as the men looked into their beers. Finally, one of them spoke.
“Jesus,” he said. “The one from DeLany Township.”
A few of the men around me soberly nodded. Mills finished his beer and signaled for another.
“Damn maniac, that one.”
I nodded, having a feeling that Scudder had been a worse offender than the sheriff's rap sheet had let on. “Sounds like’s got a bit of a rep.”
An uncomfortable look crossed the foreman’s face, which was the first time I’d seen him lose his easygoing air of authority. “Aye. He was one of the worst. Just a drifter who showed up in DeLany one day, asking around for work. The McMullen family took him in, let him sleep in their garage. They didn’t have much, but they convinced a few of the locals to let him do odd jobs for a meal or credits.”
Without needing to be asked, the barkeep had brought another shot of whiskey over. I downed it without hesitating and looked Mills hard in the eye.
“No good deed goes unpunished, huh?”
The man let out a ragged breath. “He’d been on the run from both Authority and bounty hunters in a few systems already. But he just couldn’t escape what he was.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what exactly was he?”
Mills swallowed and looked around the table. “Apparently, ol’ Ray Roy was from some shithole backwater settlement.”
Seeing the look of skepticism in my eye, the man’s mouth briefly lifted in a knowing smirk. “Yes, miss- even more so than here.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
The man chuckled humorlessly to himself, and continued. “In addition to being from nowhere, he was also raised in some kind of offshoot religious cult. The Hangarfull movement, it’s called. Fills their members’ heads up with bullshit from the time they can speak. Marries their girls off young, keeps ‘em knocked up and in the kitchen for the next twenty or thirty years. Kids grow up, get hitched to other Hangarfull people, and the process repeats. Like a hanger full of ships that-”
The thought of being treated like a breeding mare for my entire life caused my belly to twist in revulsion. “Yeah. I get it,” I said. I didn't need to ask, I already knew what he did. Ever since the Lysenko job, I did my damn homework before I killed someone.
Mills shrugged and returned to his beer. “Well, I guess ol’ Ray Roy was feeling like he was about twenty kids short of his quota, and the McMullen’s daughter was starting to look good. So he decided that they were married, and that her dowry was everything that her folks owned. Pretty sick shit.”
I frowned, the image of that disgusting man laying in a pool of his own blood suddenly not a bad one. “And that’s when it happened.”
“Aye. He fled the system before Authority could do anything. Been with the Gold Hand ever since.”
Fighting the sick feeling in my gut, I hardened my face and shook my head. “Well, the only crew he’s running with now are the sand maggots.”
There was another round of table-thumping. Part of me wanted to regale them with more stories of adventuring and reaping, but I thought better of it.
Don’t forget why you’re here, Nova. Blend in, lay low, and don’t draw attention to yourself. You got enough stories just in this one system.
I sighed, the Snowbird a mammoth oddity to be landed in the outskirts of town. Most of the folks here had never seen a ship other than a beat-up T-6 or a Hauler, let alone rubbed elbows with a bona fide reaper. And I had acquired something of a celebrity status among the locals for handling their crime problem.
And of course, the blue hair and bionic eye made it impossible for me to mistaken as one of them. What was I supposed to do, dye it some shade of icky brown? Wear an eyepatch?
Well, maybe blending in wasn’t in the cards. As long as I’m not on the front page of Gal-Net, I should be fine.
Mills tilted the bottle high in the air, draining the last of his beer before slamming his beer down with air of satisfaction. “Well, as long as him and all those Gold Hand bastard don’t come ‘round again, I’m a happy man.”
I stood up, pulling out a credit chip to cover my drinks. “They won’t. Not as long as the Snowbird and I have anything to say about it.”
He looked down at the credits in my fingers and frowned. “Aye. And as long as that’s the case, your drinks are on me.”
I smiled, flipping the credit chip to the barkeep and turning to walk away. “You’re the galaxy’s last true gentleman, Mills.”
From behind me, I heard him call out.
“How long you think you can keep up this one-woman act?”
I stopped, looking ahead of me. Now that’s the million credit question right there.
I glanced over my shoulder, blue locks of hair falling across my cheek.
“Until the job’s done.”
A solemn look crossed Mills’s face, and he reached into the pocket of his coveralls. He tossed a small bronze object my way. I caught it, feeling a small prick in my hand. Glancing down at my palm, I beheld a dull six-pointed star.
Sherriff. Just the one word. As simple as it gets. How long had he been waiting to give me this?
“It’s not supposed to be worn until Harris Station gets its official corporate town charter. But I’d say that you’ve earned it, charter or no.”
I looked up, my eyes widening. “You know I can’t accept this.”
A look of amusement lifted the old foreman’s eyebrows. “In my book, you already have. What have you been doing out here, anyway?”
I looked down at my boots. Some of Ray Roy’s blood had gotten on the duster. “Just workin’, same as everyone else.”
The man pointed a finger at me, and then in the direction that the Snowbird was parked. “No. Not the same. Big fancy ship like that, you can go damn near anywhere. Instead, you’re here, in Old Col, cashing in bounties that probably don’t even cover h-fuel.”
My jaw dropped, and I started to protest. Mills held his hands up in a gesture of conciliation.
“Now, I’m not pryin’ into your past. That ain’t none of mine or anyone else’s business. But in these parts, your actions define you. And you, miss blue-hair city slicker, have been guardin’ this town like a damn she-wolf guards her pups- and we both know that there ain’t any money in it. There’s something else going on in that pretty head of yours.”
The barkeep brought the man another beer. He opened it and took a swig. “And whatever it is, it makes you the sheriff. So you’re it ‘till you move on or we find someone better.”
Son of a bitch.
I looked down again at the six-pointed star. “One of these days, you’re gonna have to tell me how some backwater refinery foreman knows so damn much about the life.”
The barest hint of a secret glinted in the man’s eye. “Folks come out here to start over,” he said. “And even we dumb ol’ yokels have pasts. Now git!”
The twin moons of Old Col were well on their way through the purple, starry night. The shadows of the Snowbird’s canopy had slowly crept across the darkened bridge. I was sat in the commander’s chair, a proper drink in my hand and my gaze settled on the endless desert wastelands. Sleep just wasn’t happening, no matter how tired I was or how strongly I mixed my drink.
Something’s wrong. The Gold Hand has been taking it lying down for too long. No reprisals, no threats, no demands to Harris Station. Nothing. Not even a gang of backwater hicks gets rocked this hard without a reaction. Instead it’s like they’re just giving up.
I frowned, swirling the liquid in my glass and watching the pineapple chunk travel in a circle. Fresh fruit had been one of the few luxuries I’d taken with me out to this hellhole. It had been meant to make life on the run easier, but now it only seemed like a mocking reminder of what I was missing out on. And I certainly hadn’t expected to suddenly become responsible for the welfare of a sleepy little backwater.
I stood up and finished the drink, softly pacing up and down the Snowbird’s bridge. On the center bank of controls had been the sheriff’s star. I picked it up and held it in front of my face. It wasn’t much, just a stamped piece of metal, the six points of the star set against an outer ring. It wasn’t particularly large, and it wasn’t even that shiny. The idea of accepting it still seemed preposterous.
But still…
What was it that Mills had said? “What have you been doing out here?” Well? What have you been doing?
He’d been right. I didn’t have to be here. By all rights, I could- in fact, probably should have hit the frameshift out of the system right after the encounter at the bar. It was hard enough to be in hiding from the Inquisition without trouble from a gang of murderous locals.
So why hadn’t I?
Exhaling slowly, I thought of my life up to this point. Unremarkable childhood, washed out of college, taking shit from scumbags at the bar for years. Saw and heard about terrible things, working my way up from nothing in my time as a pilot-
You hate injustice. Always have. You hate injustice, and you’ve suffered for it. The corporation that ran the university kicked you out because they didn’t like your views. You were always in trouble at work because you didn’t let the customers treat your tits and ass like squeeze toys. And you ditched running cargo to become a bounty hunter because you hated the idea of the strong preying on the weak.
My mouth hardened as I looked again at the star. It’s who you are. It’s what you are. And now you’re here, waging a one-woman war on a gang of cutthroats for gas money.
I turned and looked out the canopy glass, the slim outline of my face staring back at me. The bionic eye glowed red amid the darkness.
But it was never about the money, was it? It never was.
My memories stretched back, recalling that heady first encounter with the pirate. It was that first kill, wasn’t it? That first kill that empowered you. That proved you weren’t helpless against those who prey on the weak. When a pirate tried to shake you down and you got so angry that you killed the, watching their ship turn to slag right before being told you were awarded a bounty voucher. That opened the door to something better, a higher purpose for your life. You would be a guardian, one who protects those who can’t protect themselves. You dyed your hair, changed your name, and that’s been the path you’ve followed, wherever it leads.
I sighed, watching the moonlit desert horizon. And now it’s led you out of the bubble and into Old Col.
Mills was right. The gun and the duster had fit, so there was no reason to not wear them. The same went for the badge.
They need you here, and you ain't going anywhere until they don't.
In the darkness, I walked down the Snowbird’s corridor to my stateroom. On the bed was the duster, still in a heap the way that I had tossed it. I stood over the heavy coat, spreading it out and smoothing out the edges. Carefully, I pinned the metal over the right breast of the jacket, pushing the needle through the heavy fabric and securing it into its holder. For a moment, I looked at the jacket before putting it on and looking in the mirror.
Staring back at me was the future. When I’d become a pilot, I became more than just another shiftless civilian. When I’d become a reaper, I became more than just a pilot. My face hardened as the bronze star reflected in the low light.
And now, it’s time to become more than just a reaper.
