Space Cowboys 3: Return of the Bookaroo
Author: Daniel G. Zeidler; Rick Cutler; A. Kristina Casasent; Alma T. C. Boykin; Mikaela A. M. Johnston; J. Kenton Pierce; Mike Peterson; Sanjay Lier; David Johnston; Joe Long
Date: 2023-09-26 07:00:00+00:00
Description: When there are no frontiers left on Earth, humanity will head to the stars.And the cowboys will be there, riding herd on rockets, asteroids and whatever animals make it to space with us.Join these 10 authors as they tell the stories of life, death, justice and the struggle to survive on humanities next frontier.

Space Cowboys 3

Edited by Kortnee Bryant

Raconteur Press

The Cards on the Table

Copyright © 2023 by Rick Cutler

Showdown At Dehydrated Gulch

Copyright © 2023 by Joe Long

A Wrangler’s Gotta Do

Copyright © 2023 by Sanjay Lier

Of Bureaucrats and Gulyas

Copyright © 2023 by Alma T.C. Boykin

A Marker in the Dark

Copyright © 2023 by David Johnston

Like Father, Like Son

Copyright © 2023 by Mike Peterson

Tin Badge for Tima

Copyright © 2023 by Daniel G. Zeidler

The List

Copyright © 2023 by Mikaela A. M. Johnston

Space Dog and the Runaway Asteroid

Copyright © 2023 by A. Kristina Casasent

Pride and Peppers

Copyright © 2023 by J. Kenton Pierce

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1. Foreword

1. Brennen Hankins

2. The Cards on the Table

2. Rick Cutler

3. Showdown At Dehydrated Gulch

3. Joe Long

4. A Wrangler’s Gotta Do…

4. Sanjay Lier

5. Of Bureaucrats and Gulyas

5. Alma T. C. Boykin

6. A Marker In The Dark

6. David Johnston

7. Like Father, Like Son

7. By Mike Peterson

8. Tin Badge for Tima

8. Daniel G. Zeidler

9. The List

9. Mikaela A. M. Johnston

10. Space Dog and the Runaway Asteroid

10. A. Kristina Casasent

11. Pride and Peppers

11. J. Kenton Pierce

Also From Raconteur Press

Call To Action

Foreword

Brennen Hankins

Space. The Final Frontier.

Not to be confused with Montana, whose state motto is “The Last Best Place,” or Alaska, proudly known as “The Last Frontier.”

What’s interesting about monikers of that nature is the imagery it conjures: a vast, open landscape, full of possibilities and opportunity. Like a fresh painter’s canvas, unblemished by brush or pen, these landscapes, when first settled, offered unlimited opportunities to become literally anything the pioneers of this land desired to make of it. The possibilities were endless. From the well-off and established, looking for a fresh challenge to turn their minds to, to destitute immigrants, hoping to improve their station in life and finally provide a comfortable living for their families, these strange new lands held something of value for everybody.

It could be said, then, that the most valuable commodity the untamed American West offered was Second Chances.

When freedom and fortune were only a bedroll and a saddled horse away, who wouldn’t leap at that opportunity? Such a decision was not without risks—destitution, disease, and death could strike at settlers from literally any corner—but there’s something heroic about venturing out and pitting yourself against the wilds with only your wits and a gun for company that captures the imagination.

If second chances really were the greatest commodity the Wild West offered, it could also be said, then, that Old West Cowboys are the personification of Second Chances.

The continental U.S. is pretty well settled at this point. Via Interstates 29 and 80, U.S. Routes 26 and 30, and Interstate 84, it is possible to drive the route of the famed Oregon Trail, a journey that used to take up to six months, in less than three days. Flying from Missouri to Oregon only takes a matter of hours. With the advent of phone lines and the Internet, we are more connected as a species than we have ever been at any point in our history.

Our forefathers made their mark on the western United States, and our current society is the result. The land’s mostly all bought (or protected by the government), everything’s established, and there just aren’t the same opportunities to make one’s mark on the land as there once was.

Feels awful crowded, don’t it?

Now, Alaska’s a special case. Unless they were born in the state, like my father and his siblings were, chances are that if you meet somebody in Alaska, they are a refugee from somewhere else. Whether they’re running from a criminal history, family trouble, looking for work, or just seeking adventure, life in the Lower 48 for whatever reason was not working out for these newcomers, and so they traveled to the Forty-Ninth State in search of a Second Chance. People still move up there seeking that Second Chance to this day.

Then that peanut Jimmy Carter, caving to demands from environmentalists demanding that we “preserve” the pristineness of Alaska, signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law in 1980, and now, whenever somebody wants to do something outside of the settled parts of the state, you more or less need approval from the Department of the Interior. ANILCA didn’t quite kill the opportunity for Second Chances in Alaska—even the settled parts of the state are not completely tamed—but it sure put the kibosh on a twenty-first century version of the Great Western Migration.

And so the possibility of free and open access to Second Chances have thus been nerfed again, and it’s beginning to feel like Second Chances, much like the wildness of the West, are fading away.

Maybe Space really is The Final Frontier: the one last, true place where Mankind can find a Second Chance.

What you are holding in your hands is a collection of ten stories exemplifying the spirit of these who seek that shot at redemption—the wanderers, the pioneers, opportunists, vagrants, criminals and heroes. Those who would dare to pit their will against the harshness of that black landscape, of the other worlds found within, and dare to make their marks upon them. Rugged, independent types, hats stuffed full of dreams, grit, courage—and hope.

Cowboys.

Cowboys tamed the American West and paved the way for settlement by others who followed. Now, NASA is preparing for an astronaut mission to Mars, the first of its kind. Billionaires have turned to space exploration as a side hustle. I guarantee that if either of them send a bunch of cowboys on a mission to space, those boys are going to bring The Final Frontier to heel like a roped steer, and if these stories aren’t an accurate forecasting of what is to come from space exploration, I’ll eat my hat.

After all, America is the Land of Second Chances…and America loves its Cowboys. They wouldn’t have put me on the cover otherwise.

Happy reading, and happy trails.

Brennen Hankins

Great Falls, Montana

September, 2023

The Cards on the Table

Rick Cutler

“How the hell can I be losing when I’m playing poker with a corpse?”

The candle on the table flickered as a breeze from one of the mine’s drifts rolled through the large cave. It played with the shadows in the dead man’s empty eyes.

Colt Ostergaard drew his last card from the top of the deck and shook his head. The three of diamonds. The dead man beat him with three jacks over his two pairs of aces and eights.

“Easy come, easy go. Right, Big Fella?”

“Go-go?”

Big Fella, his six-legged riding yima, popped his head up from his nest of old blankets and looked towards the tunnel leading back outside.

“Sure, buddy. It sounds like the storm has passed.”

Big Fella had found the cave, an abandoned lithium mine, just before the storm hit and they were lucky he did. It came down like a gully-washer. The dead man sat at a table inside that cave with a half-played game of Solitaire, a game he probably started fifty years ago.

He was one of the Winter Dead. Fenris had an eccentric orbit, giving the Fenri forty years of Winter, forty of Summer, plus three more long seasons in between of Thaw, Spring, and Fall. The brave and the foolish toughed out the winter and stayed on their land. Those that died waiting for the Thaw were the Winter Dead, and they were found everywhere on the frontier, like the man at the table.

His quaint suit and a Stetson big enough to double as a feed bag were callbacks to styles popular before last Winter, as was the Diamond six-shooter strapped to his thigh. Diamond Firearms hand-crafted seventy-five “Shark Elite” double-action .45s to exacting specifications for their seventy-fifth anniversary. It made them a piece of art some folks would kill for.

Colt wasn’t one of those folks. He might play poker with a corpse to see if he could “win” the six-gun, but he wouldn’t rob the Winter Dead. They, and all their goods, deserved a proper funeral pyre to give them rest.

He stood and put his flat-crowned hat back on, then pinched the brim to salute the dead man.

“Well played, sir. The table is yours.” He left his twenty silver on the table and picked up the candle instead.

“I’ll be back in a day or two when it dries out and give you a proper funeral.”

Big Fella stood up and shook himself.

“Go-go?”

“Yep.” He saddled Big Fella, gave the back of his furry ostrich head a good scratching, then led him out of the mine.

The air outside was fresh, and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. Down below in the valley was Piano Gulch, one of the hundreds of ghost towns brought back to life by returning families and folks from back East. Some came looking for fortune or adventure. Others just wanted a fresh start. Colt legged up onto Big Fella.

“Maybe they won’t have the net yet. It would be nice to be able to hold down a job for more than a week.”

Big Fella snorted.

“Shut your beak. A man’s got a right to dream.”

The sun was already down by the time Colt and Big Fella rode into Piano Gulch. It used to be a boom town until Winter piled on the ice and snow. Now only the shops on Main Street survived and thrived, like the Silver Hand Saloon and Gambling House. Laughter, screams, music, and bright lights spilled out of the saloon and onto the street. Colt tied Big Fella to a hitching post and went inside.

A holographic piano-man in a white jumpsuit with rhinestones in his hair pounded out last year’s hits on an upright, and the tables were crowded with ranch hands, farmers, shopkeepers, and the odd man or woman in Eastern business suits.

Colt took a spot at the end of the bar and used his last silver to buy a beer. He scanned the room, looking for someone in worn denims and a sun-bleached shirt, someone who wasn’t flush and needed a strong back more than they needed answers about who he was or where he’d been.

The swinging saloon doors banged open as an older man in a white Tee and bib overalls stumbled into the room. He waved an old six-shooter in the air.

“Shaner! Grant Shaner! Where are you?”

Someone hit pause on the piano and conversations across the room followed suit. Back beyond the Roulette, Blackjack, and Poker tables, a tall man in a dark gray suit stood up.

“Go home, Mr. Petosky. You’re drunk.” Shaner had a harsh, East Skadi accent.

Two baby-faced blonds in matching suits stood up on both sides of him. Shaner rested his hands on their shoulders and shook his head. Everyone between Shaner and Petosky grabbed their drinks, chips, and silver and moved out of the way. Colt put his beer on the bar.

“We’ve had our disagreements, Mr. Petosky, in and out of court, but that’s all settled now. Go home. Nothing good can come of this. Think about Emma. What about her? What about your kids?”

Petosky pulled back the hammer on his gun and fired. The shot hit the wall above Shaner’s head. He let go of his two men. Colt bolted off his stool and shoved his way through the crowd.

He was too late.

Shaner’s men pulled electro-mag railguns out of their shoulder rigs and fired a half-dozen shots. Petosky staggered back, dropped his gun, and dropped to his knees. The railguns hummed, charging up for the next round.

Colt caught Petosky before he hit the floor.

“Gone.” Petosky stank of corn liquor and blood soaked his bibs where the iron rounds took him in the chest. “They’re gone. Left me.”

Colt laid him down and rested his hand on the man’s shoulder until he coughed out his last breath.

“Are you a friend of Mr. Petosky?”

Shaner’s men stood on the other side of the body. Colt reached for his side iron and stopped when he saw their hands were empty.

“Never met him. I just wanted to stop him before he hurt anybody.”

The two men looked over Colt’s head.

“Sheriff,” they said together.

A big man with a badge on his vest stepped up beside Colt. He looked at Petosky, Colt, and then the two men.

“Mallard. McKay. Heard tell about some trouble. Seems I found it. Care to tell me what happened?”

“He came in, waving a gun.” The one on the left nodded at the piece on the floor. “Called out Mr. Shaner and fired a shot. We returned fire.”

The sheriff looked across the room to where Shaner was sitting, then at the holes in Petosky’s bibs. “Nice grouping from way over there.”

“Mr. Shaner pays us to be good,” said the one on the right.

“I’m sure he does.” He looked at Colt. “What’s your part in all this?”

Colt stood and shook his head.

“Got none. Just rode into town not twenty minutes ago.”

“And already in the thick of things?”

“Seems that way.”

“You got anything to add to Mallard’s story?”

“No, sir.”

“Sheriff?” McKay raised his hand. “We can carry him over to Ryan’s place and lay him out, if you want.”

“Naw. No doubt this will be classified as another righteous shoot, but I won’t be disrespecting Petosky by having his killers lug him around town.” He pointed at two men in the crowd. “Jim. Nick. You’re deputized for the next ten minutes. Get Petosky down to the furniture store. Wake up Ryan if you have to.” He stuck his thumbs in his gunbelt. “These shootings are getting to be a thing, and don’t think you’re pulling the wool over my eyes. I know you’ve got documentation on every single one, but I’m watching you two. Now mosey on back to Mr. Shaner. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Someone hit “play” on the piano and folks moved back to their tables, buzzing with new grist for their gossip.

“Got a name, mister?”

“Colt.”

“Just Colt?”

“Don’t need more than that.”

“Hm. What brings you to Piano Gulch?”

“Looking for work.”

The sheriff eyed Colt’s six-shooter.

“What kind of work you looking for?”

“Ranch hand, if I can get it. I’ve punched a few New-Cows and put up a fence or two. You know anybody that needs an extra pair of hands?”

“Mr. Shaner’s got the biggest spread hereabouts, although he’s got some funny ideas about ranching. I have to tie up a loose end with him. Follow me over and I’ll get you acquainted.”

Shaner stood up again when they got to his table. The man had a thick salt-and-pepper mustache that matched his slicked-back hair. His suit, vest, and silk shirt were immaculate. A man sitting on his right had a mohawk and transparent, wraparound comms glasses. The red light over the bridge of his nose said it was recording and streaming.

“Good evening, Sheriff Bergman.” Shaner gave the sheriff a short bow.

“Evening, Mr. Shaner. Denzil.” The last was addressed to the man with the comms glasses. “I don’t suppose you have a vid of what happened, do you?”

“From start to finish.” Denzil tapped the tabletop like it was a keyboard. “I’m uploading the raw footage to your office right now.” He touched the side of his glasses. “Done.”

“Thank you.” He dropped a heavy hand on Colt’s shoulder. “This young fella just got into town. You got any work on your ranch he could do to keep him out of trouble?”

“As a matter of fact, I do, Sheriff.”

“Good. I’ll review the vid and let you know if I have any questions.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

They both nodded and Bergman walked away. Denzil looked up at Colt for a long second, then slid aside, still tapping on his invisible keyboard. Mr. Shaner waved at the empty chair across from him.

“Have a seat, Mr. Ostergaard.”

Colt blinked and took a step back. He dropped his hand to his side iron.

How the hell does he know my name?

“Don’t be alarmed. I mean you no harm.” He caught the bartender’s eye, held out five fingers, then looked back at Colt.

“Denzil is a top-notch data miner and a code savant. When I saw you helping Mr. Petosky, he ran a facial recognition for me and pulled down a profile on you.”

The bar-man personally delivered a bottle of Five Jacks whiskey and two shot glasses. Shaner pulled the glass stopper on the whiskey and poured them both a drink.

“Mr. Ostergaard, by all accounts you have been riding a hard trail for quite a while. You need a bath, a shave, and clean clothes. I have a proposition for you, and I’ll pay for your time if you’ll sit for a moment.”

Colt checked the room behind him, then sat.

“Outstanding.” Shaner saluted Colt with his glass, then closed his eyes and took a sip. “Damn, that’s smooth.”

The fat-bottomed bottle had the jacks from all four suits etched into it and a donkey in the middle for the fifth jack. Colt took a sip and let the smoky burn roll down to his stomach. Five Jacks was not for the weak of heart.

“Mr. Ostergaard, what would you say is our biggest export to Alpha Lympos?”

“Probably ore. Heavy metals.”

“Exactly. We’re practically a single-resource economy. We need to diversify, to build up multiple industries, because a single-resource economy is beholden to buyer. Our only buyer is Alpha Lympos.”

“If you say so.”

“Ah. I’m up on my soapbox again.” His eyes glazed over as he took another drink and shook his head.

“Let me put it another way. To keep Fenris strong and independent, we need a product people will pay for, and that’s fur.”

“Fur?”

“Yes!” He slapped the table. “Everybody’s got leather from New-Cows and wool from sheep, but only Fenris has luxury fur from fur-snakes.”

He’s nuts. Fur-snakes are apex predators, not sheep.

“Mr. Shaner, have you ever seen a full-grown fur-snake?”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know. But you can neuter the young ones and domesticate them. A good-sized herd will make you a fortune.”

“Sir, what is it you think I can do for you?” Colt sipped his whiskey.

“Colt…may I call you Colt? You don’t have a personal comm. You don’t have a slate linked to the net, or any other electronics.”

“I travel light.”

“It’s like you do everything you can to stay off the grid, to make it hard to find you. But people still do.” He rapped his knuckles in front of Denzil. “Denzil, tell me what the net says about Colton Ostergaard.”

“He’s an Alphie collaborator, kicked out of the Fifty-First Regiment because he took a bribe. He let hundreds of Alphie war criminals go back home so they wouldn’t have to stand trial. He can call up a fur-snake if he needs one, which is crazy, I know, but there’s actual video of him doing that.”

“Wait—”

“He’s a known back-shooter and he engineered the massacre at Yodersen’s ranch with one of his Alphie cronies. He’s been run out of a dozen towns in the past year.”

“That’s not—”

“I know, I know.” Shaner raised his hands. “Lies. Distortions. Half-truths taken out of context. I’ve dealt with the same all my life. Or I used to.” He finished his drink and poured another. Colt held his hand over his glass when Shaner offered to refill it.

“How would you like a clean slate? A fresh start? No more rumors or lies. To just be a simple man living a simple life? You could even settle down and start a family, if that’s what you want.”

“How?” It sounded too good to be true.

“Denzil can do it.” He looked at his man. “He’s got this recurring virus that wipes out anything associated with your name. Even new entries, like it’s waiting to pounce.”

“The word’s recursive, and that’s not—”

“No, no. I know I’m using the wrong words, but I’m just a businessman. That stuff is all over my head.” He turned back to Colt. “He did it for me. He can do it for you. Give you freedom and a new life.”

“What’s the catch?” The hairs on the back of his neck stirred. It felt like someone was watching him. He checked the room again. Nobody stood out. When he looked back at Denzil, he saw the red light was back on.

“There’s no catch. It’s a straight exchange of services.” He looked down and cradled his drink between his hands. He dropped his voice and kept talking. “A family of jumpers—land jumpers—is squatting on my land. I’ve already filed a suit with the courts to evict them, but you know that’s going to take months and months to get them off there. In the meantime, they’re killing my fur-snakes. It’s costing me thousands.

“I offered to let them stay if they left my livestock alone, but they weren’t interested. I need a man like you to put an end to this before they kill all my fur-snakes and I go broke.”

“A man like me?” He looked at Mallard and McKay. “If you’re looking to shoot someone, you don’t need me.”

“What? No! No shooting! No killing! This has to be legal. Mallard and McKay can’t get close enough to talk to them without getting shot at. But you can. They don’t know you. Talk to them. See what I need to do to fix this. I don’t want them dead, just off my property.” He reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a gold coin. He slid it across the table to Colt.

“No strings. Just compensation for your time, like I said.” He kept one finger on the coin and turned to Denzil. “Erase him for a day. Let him see how it feels to walk around without looking over his shoulder. Can you do that?”

Denzil nodded.

“Excellent. So, Mr. Ostergaard, get a room, get a bath, get a nice suit, if you want, and stop by my office tomorrow.” He let go of the coin and sat back. “Tell me if getting those squatters off my land is worth a new life.”

Colt stood and tipped his hat.

“I’ll think on it.”

It was full dark when Colt unhitched Big Fella and led him down the street towards the Ivories Hotel. The hairs on the back of his neck stirred again, and when Big Fella whipped his head around to look behind them, Colt ducked, rolled, and pulled his side iron out before the woman finished saying “You bastard.”

She tracked him in spite of the dark and pulled the trigger on a scattergun. Nothing happened. She pulled it again. Still nothing.

Colt shot to his feet and charged. She swung the gun like a club. He caught it and pulled it out of her hands. She turned to run, and he swept her legs. She hit the ground on her hands and knees and tried to keep going. Colt cocked the hammer on his six-gun.

“Ma’am, I can shoot your legs right out from under you as easy as spitting chuckleberry seeds, so just stay right there and you can keep both your kneecaps.”

He picked up the scattergun, broke it, and dumped the single shell. He couldn’t see inside it without a light, but by the way the hammer wiggled, the hammer spring must have broke. It happened a lot with firearms that sat for years without being serviced. He dropped it on the street beside her.

“Ma’am, who the hell are you and why are you trying to shoot me?”

She turned over and sat on her butt.

“Jolene Finberg.” She said it like it was supposed to mean something.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And why are you trying to shoot me?”

“It’s self-defense. I saw you and Shaner drinking together. I saw him pay you to come out and kill us like you killed Petosky.”

Colt holstered his six-gun and whistled for Big Fella. The yima strolled over to him.

“I didn’t kill Petosky and I’m not a gun for hire. Shaner did ask me to evict some squatters camping on his land. I’m guessing that’s you?”

“It’s not his land! It’s been in my family for 150 years. His hacker erased all the records online and then Shaner took us to court.”

“Have you got anything on paper?”

“Not since the Land Office burned down. We have letters and photos, but we filed our paper copies of the deed with the Land Office like we were supposed to after the Thaw. Now those are gone.”

“Get up.” Colt scratched the back of Big Fella’s head. “You been killing his fur-snakes?”

“Every chance we get. That man is crazy.”

No argument there.

“I haven’t said yes or no to Shaner, but it seems I should hear your side of the story. If I drop by tomorrow morning, would you be willing to show me what you got?”

“You taking a bath first?”

“Seems to be the general opinion that I should.”

“Head north to Shaner’s fence line, then east towards the Foxhill Mountains. We’ll find you.”

“Tomorrow, then. Take your scattergun and go.”

She picked up the shotgun, took a step backwards, then another, then ran off in the dark.

“What do you think, Big Fella? Are they squatters or landowners? Should I run them off? Is that all I have to do to get a clean slate?” The idea of walking down the street without looking over his shoulder hit him hard in the gut. “I got to sleep on this. Let’s start with getting you stabled.”

Bathed, shaved, and sporting a new shirt and denims, Colt knocked on Sheriff Bergman’s open door early the next morning.

“You got a minute?”

Bergman looked up from his antique flatscreen and nodded.

“A minute? More than that.” He picked up a mug and pushed back from his desk. “Coffee’s ready, if you don’t mind bitter and black.”

“Maybe next time. I heard your Land Office burned down. If I were to take a liking to a piece of land around here, how would I stake a claim?”

“The usual way. Look it up with the online Land Office and if nobody else put in a claim, submit your own.”

“I don’t have a personal comm or access to the net. Is that something I could do at your Town Hall?”

“Who doesn’t have a personal comm?”

“Me, for one.”

“Hm. Well, our Town Hall doesn’t have a net connection set up yet. We mostly use the Hall for meetings and Sunday Socials. Most official business is running through this office until we get around to rebuilding the Land Office.”

His office featured two prison cells, his desk, and a coffee machine. An old upright printer/copier stood next to the glass-faced gun cabinet.

“Your printer still work?”

“Last time I checked. What do you need?”

“If I file a claim, I’d like a paper copy.”

“Why would you want that?”

“If it’s not on paper, it didn’t happen.”

“Strange way to look at things. You come from people who don’t like technology?”

“We like technology fine. We use it everywhere on the farm.”

“And where exactly would that farm be?” He put his mug down and leaned his elbows on the desk. “It’s an official question. You’re a witness to last night’s shooting and I need more than ‘Colt’ on the report. I screencapped you from the video that Denzil sent me, but facial recognition didn’t get any hits.”

“It didn’t?” Denzil pulled up more than just my name last night. Maybe that virus of his actually works. He shrugged. “Colton Ostergaard.” He spelled it out for Bergman. “Greensborough, New Helsinki province.”

“New Helsinki? You’re a long way from home.” Bergman started typing on his computer. “I’ve got a Nathan Ostergaard, married to a Cindy Rose.”

“That would be my brother.”

“I see the resemblance. No Colt or Colton. No social media, public or private profiles, no comms numbers.”

“Nothing about fur-snakes or Yodersen Ranch, either?” Colt tried to look indifferent.

“There’s a BOLO, that’s a Be-On-the-Look-Out, for a Shelby Yodersen, but she’s sixteen now and free to go where she wants. Were you involved in the Yodersen massacre?”

“I saw it go down, but it wasn’t me.”

“Hm.” Bergman kept typing. “No property holdings, no criminal or military records. You work for the government or something?”

“No, sir. Not since I was discharged. I served in the Fifty-First Regiment during the war. I’m not a Luddite or a backwoods Feral, Sheriff, but if you can’t find me on the net, that’s not on me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re on the net now. At least on my report about the incident last night.”

“We done?”

“For now.”

“Thanks. I’ll come by later to see about filing a claim if I see anything I like.”

Colt looked up at the Shaner Ranch sign and shook his head. The “S” in “Shaner” was a stylized fur-snake. It had to be a pretty big spread, because there wasn’t a house or barn visible from the virtual fence surrounding the property. He snapped the reins and headed east, keeping outside the fenceline. After ten minutes, the fence gave way to plain ironwood and rusty barbed wire. After another five, he saw a young man about sixteen on the other side of the fence, sitting on a stump and kicking it with his heels. He’d buttoned one strap of his bib overalls and let the other hang. A ball cap shaded his eyes, and he wasn’t as engrossed in his personal comm as he pretended to be.

“Heysome.”

“Heysome, mister.” He didn’t look up at Colt.

“Are you my guide or do I keep riding?”

“It’s me.” He jumped off the stump and barefooted across the field. Colt reined Big Fella around and charged the fence. They cleared it easily and caught up with the boy at the homestead.

If they were squatters, they picked a good place to do it. The homestead was two stories of field stone with an actual rampart lining the roof. A plain woman in a black Tee under an open, rolled-up denim shirt stood on the wraparound porch. Her hair was tied back in a braid, and she had a six-gun strapped to her leg.

“Ma’am.” He pinched the brim of his hat. “You fired that gun yet?”

“Yes, and it works fine. You take a bath?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come inside.”

She led him into a wood-paneled kitchen that smelled of cinnamon and fresh bread. A fat manila folder sat on a butcher block island.

“Letters, photos, death and birth certificates, wedding licenses. It’s all we got left.”

Colt opened the folder and sifted through the ebb and flow of five generations. He pulled out one photo taken on the front porch. A man in a suit with a ten-gallon hat stood with two young girls. He had a Shark Elite strapped to his leg.

“Who’s this?”

“My mom and Aunt Cecille.”

“No, the man.”

“He’s nobody.”

Colt looked at her and waited.

“Fine. Grandpa Orth. He deserted us right before last Winter’s big snow, so Grandma had to leave the ranch and move on. We’re in this mess because of him.”

“You went to court and showed the judge all this?”

“Yes. He agreed that we proved we’ve been on the land, but since there weren’t any deeds or claims on file, the property was open to whoever filed a claim first, and that was Shaner.”

“Ma.” The boy walked into the room.

“Not now, Aiden.”

“There’s a man out front. I think he works for Shaner.”

Jolene gave Colt the evil eye.

“He’s not with me. Was it just one man?”

“Yeah.”

“Blond, not much older than you?”

“Yeah.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stirred.

“Ma’am, I don’t think this fella rides alone. If his buddy is out there hiding somewhere, it’s not ‘cause he’s shy. How about the two of you keep away from the doors and windows while I go out and say howdy?”

“You’d do that?”

“I’m not a target. At least not yet.”

“All right, but I’m going to be listening to everything you say.”

“Fair enough.”

She hung back as Colt sauntered out to the porch and leaned on the rail.

“Morning. Is it Mallard or McKay?”

“McKay. You rode by the ranch this morning.”

“Yep.”

“Now you’re here.”

“Yep.”

He stared at Colt, fidgeting with a laser pointer hanging from his belt. “Well?”

Colt pushed back his hat and scratched behind his ear.

“My apologies, Mr. McKay. I’m a bit slow. What was the question?”

“Is it done? Did you take care of business?”

“No business to take care of. Yet. How about you? You have any business to take care of out here? I thought Mr. Shaner said you couldn’t get close enough to talk without getting shot.”

“They’ve shot before. Just because they haven’t tried yet doesn’t mean they won’t.” He looked around the homestead, squeezing the laser pointer in his hand.

“I’d be real careful with that laser, Mr. McKay. I’d sure hate to have to shoot your hand off if you accidentally painted me or anyone else with it.”

McKay let go of the laser and held his hand up, fingers spread wide. With his other hand, he backed up his yima and rode off without saying another word. Colt saw someone ride up to meet him at the skyline. It looked like the other rider had a long gun strapped over his shoulder. If he had his 30-06 in hand, he could plink them both.

“They might be sureshots, but them boys never served, that’s for sure.”

“What’s that?” Jolene called out from around the edge of the door. “Is it clear now?”

“Yep.”

She joined him on the porch. “Thanks.”

Colt nodded and kept watching the skyline. Mallard and McKay were gone.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Don’t mean to be difficult, but it’s hard to say. I won’t be shooting you or your boy, so you can take your hand off your side iron.”

She looked away and crossed her arms.

“Is it just you and the boy here?”

“We got a half-dozen cousins that Shaner scared off. I’m hoping they’ll come back once this gets settled. It takes more than two to run a ranch.”

“Did Shaner ever offer to let you stay if you left his fur-snakes alone?”

“Let me stay? On my own land?” She spat over the railing. “Bastard.”

“I got it. I’m just looking for a solution where nobody gets hurt.”

“Since when did that become your job? You could just ride away. Why don’t you?”

“Shaner’s got something I want, but it’s looking like he’s up to no good. What I want ain’t worth getting mixed up in any of his schemes. So I will be riding away, but not before I set things right. You trust Sheriff Bergman?”

“He’s never done me any favors, but Shaner don’t own him. He’s his own man.”

“Seemed that way to me. Round up your documents and let’s go pay him a call.”

“What good will that do?”

“Maybe nothing, but I got an idea or two that might help.”

Sheriff Bergman wasn’t impressed.

“I’ve seen all these, Jolene. So has the judge. Nothing here proves you own the land and squatter’s rights don’t apply, because you haven’t continually occupied the property.”

“About that, Sheriff.” Colt leaned back against the wall and put his hands in his pockets. “What if there was fraud in the land records?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I could prove there was fraud involved in Shaner’s claim, would that change things?”

“Sure. How are you going to prove that?”

“Log on to the Land Office and check out a claim for me.” He gave Bergman the location of the lithium mine. Jolene turned around in her chair.

“That’s not part of my ranch.”

“Nope. But it’s a rightful part of your property. Did you find it, Sheriff?”

“Yes. Two winters ago, it belonged to the New Western Mining Company. The Company folded the following Winter, and it’s listed as abandoned now.”

“Could you open a claim in Jolene’s name for it? And print a copy before you close the form?”

“Sure.” He gave Colt a puzzled look, finished the online paperwork, and printed the form.

“Thanks.” Colt picked up the document from the printer and handed it to Jolene.

Bergman shook his head. “What was that supposed to prove?”

“Reopen her claim and you’ll see.”

He punched up the Land Office and did a title query. He frowned and did it again. He searched by location, name, and claim number.

“It must still be processing.”

Colt sifted through Jolene’s documents while the sheriff kept trying to find her claim and slid the picture of Orth across to Jolene.

“That piece of the mountain has an old lithium mine on it. Your grandpa didn’t abandon your family. He was trapped in that mine, probably by a snowslide. I took shelter in it last night. He’s still there, wearing the same suit and hat that’s in this picture. He’s one of the Winter Dead and he’s sitting on his claim. That mine is yours.”

“But—”

“Sheriff, you couldn’t find me online this morning because Denzil erased me. Check and see if I’m still in your write-up of last night’s shooting.”

“No. Your name’s gone. What the hell? I saved it and a backup copy.”

“That’s Denzil. He’s got some kind of bug that will keep erasing me no matter how many times someone puts my name out there. What if he used the same hack to erase the land records for Jolene’s family?”

“He’d have to hack the Land Office in Port Skadi, too. And it’s secure.”

“But you have access to it. How many times has he sent you raw footage of something involving Shaner or his men?”

Bergman started cursing under his breath.

“Tell me Jolene’s claim on that mine has been recorded.”

“I can’t.”

“Sounds like land fraud to me.”

Bergman stood and shook his head. “It’s suspicious as hell, but messing with the Land Office is a big accusation. It won’t hurt to—”

A beep on his computer interrupted him. He looked at the screen, then looked at Colt.

“I just got a ‘Most Wanted’ on you from the Tylis Provincial Courts. A 10K bounty with extreme prejudice.” He dropped his hand to his side iron.

Colt stepped back and held his hands up. “This morning, you were saying I didn’t exist. A minute ago, you saw my name was deleted from your report. If I’m suddenly a person again, with a bounty on my head, I think Shaner’s got wind of me helping Jolene and he doesn’t like it much.”

“Maybe.” Bergman kept one hand on his six-gun and picked up his comm with the other. He hit a speed-dial, and the Tylis Courthouse answered.

“Sheriff Bergman from Piano Gulch. Calling for Judge Russo. Thanks, I’ll hold. Heysome, Judith! Bergman here. I got a ‘Most Wanted’ bounty notice for a Colton Ostergaard. Well, it’s over your name. Is that so? Well, all right then, I’ll handle it on my end and keep you in the loop. Thanks.”

Bergman put his comm in his shirt pocket and let go of his side iron.

“Bogus. Judge Russo’s doing what she can to scrub it and sic her data dogs on tracking down the breach.” He shook his head. “You know this means it’s open season on you. Anybody who takes a shot can use it to justify shooting you.”

“In that case, I wouldn’t mind if we hurried on over to talk to Denzil. If he did this, he could undo it.”

“Right. Give me a minute.”

Colt stepped around the desk to face Jolene while the sheriff rummaged through his desk.

“If this goes sideways, Shaner might take the opportunity to get you killed in a crossfire.”

“Found it.” Bergman strode over to the gun cabinet and unlocked it. “He’s right, Jolene.” He pulled out a shotgun and a box of shells. “You best be staying in here. Lock the door behind us and feel free to shoot if someone tries to break in.” He handed the shotgun and shells to her, then looked at Colt. “Ready?”

“Almost.” He checked his six-gun and reholstered it. “Jolene, I got rules.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like don’t be a backshooter and don’t cheat at cards. You can live by your own rules, that’s up to you. But thinking about last night, I got to say if someone busts in here, don’t waste your breath calling them names. Just pull the trigger. You’ll live longer.”

“You done with the jaw-boning?” Bergman stood at the door.

“Done enough. Lead the way, Sheriff.”

Shaner’s office was a short walk past the bank, a dry goods store, and the Town Hall. Colt shadowed Bergman as he stomped through Shaner’s door and planted himself in front of a man behind a desk.

“Morning, Hayden.”

“Good morning, Sheriff Bergman.” Hayden was balding, underfed, and looked as if he called in sick on a regular basis. He put an unlit pipe down on a stone pipe stand and folded his hands on his desk. “Mr. Shaner isn’t here right now.”

“I’m not looking for Mr. Shaner. Not yet. Where does Denzil hang his hat?”

“His office is next door to the server room, but you can’t go back there without an appointment.”

“It’s official business. I don’t need an appointment and I’ve got questions for him.”

The slate on Hayden’s desk dinged with a notification. He glanced at it, did a double-take, and stared at Colt. Bergman shook his head.

“Hayden, that bounty ain’t real.”

“But—”

The sheriff leaned his fists on Hayden’s desk and got in his face.

“It’s not real. Anybody that gets it into their head to take a shot at Mr. Ostergaard will answer to me. For murder. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

There were two doors behind Hayden. One had a frosted glass window with Shaner’s full name on it. The other was a swinging door.

“That one?” He pointed at a swinging door.

“Yes, sir. Past the breakroom. All the way to the end, then left.”

“Do not tell him I’m on my way or you will be charged as an accessory. Got that, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come on, Ostergaard.”

They pushed through the door and headed down the hallway. Colt stopped halfway there.

“Sheriff?”

Bergman stopped. “What?”

“Hayden didn’t believe you. I saw the 10K look in his eyes.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to force my hand. Are you going to have a problem with that?”

“Probably, but not this minute.”

“You gave him a fair warning. What happens next is up to him. Go see Denzil. I’ll be along shortly.”

“Make it righteous, if you have to shoot. I don’t want to hang you when this is all over.”

“I don’t cotton to being hanged.”

Bergman headed down the hall and turned the corner while Colt turned around, loosened his six-gun and waited. Sure enough, a minute later Hayden burst through the door with a twelve gauge. He saw Colt, pulled up short, and raised the shotgun.

Colt drew and shot out Hayden’s kneecaps. He went down, hanging on to the shotgun and aiming it at Colt.

Colt fired a round through Hayden’s shoulder.

“Hayden, stop. You’re chasing a lie. It’s not worth it.” Colt walked up on him, keeping him covered.

It could have been the adrenalin, or maybe the shock hadn’t hit him yet. Hayden, sitting on his butt, raised up his shotgun one last time.

Colt shot him point blank between the eyes.

Hayden finally went down.

“I hope that was righteous enough for you, Sheriff. It sure wasn’t kind or merciful.”

He flicked open his six-gun, dumped the used shells, and started reloading.

The sound of a gunfight erupted from down the hall where Bergman turned the corner. The lights dimmed for a second and then the gunfire stopped. Colt clicked the cylinder shut, spun it, then trotted towards the firefight.

There were two doors around the corner. One was to an office. Empty. The one to the Server room was ajar. Colt toed it open.

Denzil was sprawled out on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Blood oozed from the holes in his chest and gut. Wild shots from the gunfight had hit the servers and they were as dead as Denzil. The room stank of blood, crap, ozone, and burnt plastic. Bergman sat with his back against the wall, his hand pressed against his stomach, holding back the blood seeping out from between his fingers.

“Denzil didn’t like my questions.” He shuddered and took a slow swallow. “I don’t know what a ‘lowbot’ is, but I’m pretty sure he thought it was insulting.”

“Could be.” Colt checked Denzil, making sure he really was dead, then holstered his six-shooter. “I’ll go get a doctor.”

“Doc Johansen is already on her way.” He held up the comm in his other hand. “Just don’t shoot her when she gets here.” He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth. “Damn, that hurts. What happened with Hadley?”

“I tried. He wouldn’t stop.”

“Damn. Some folk got nothing under their hat but hair, and he was short on that.” He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a round badge, and tossed it to Colt. Colt let it drop.

“Not taking that, Sheriff.”

“Do it. It puts you under the Color of Law. Might even stop you from getting hung.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Bergman groaned and put both hands on his belly.

“Keep your head on a swivel out there. That Mallard likes the high ground. Caught him a couple times hanging out on the rooftops.”

A soft sound and a swish of air warned Colt that someone was at the door. He drew and spun, keeping Bergman behind him.

A woman with a black medical bag looked him up and down.

“You going to shoot me or let me take care of my man?”

“Your man?” He looked at Bergman.

“Why do you think I got her on speed dial? Now get out of here and don’t get killed.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Colt eyed Main Street from Shaner’s front door. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The city folk know something bad is about to go down. He opened the front door and slammed it shut, watching the roofline across the street. There was movement on top of Ryan’s Furniture and Funerary.

Gotcha. If Sheriff Bergman hadn’t warned me, Mallard could have bushwacked me in the middle of the street. He sat on the edge of Hadley’s desk and pushed back his hat.

Back in the Fifty-First, we’d call up some fire support or toss in a few grenades to clear out a sniper nest. All I’ve got is my six-gun.

He looked around the office for something useful.

Shaner probably has some liquor in his office. I could make a Molotov cocktail out of that, but I’d piss off a lot of folks if I burned down half the town just to get to Mallard.

Hadley’s pipe stand caught his eye. It came with a tiny jar of wood matches.

Now there’s an idea. He grabbed the matches and headed for the breakroom. A few minutes later, he rustled up enough sugar and cold packs to make a sizable smoke bomb.

“God bless the Fifty-First and their IED training.”

He slipped out the back of Shaner’s office with the smoker cradled in the crook of his arm, dashing down alleys and side streets, through the broke-down part of town until he was far enough away to cross the street without Mallard seeing him. He checked his six-gun, his range knife, and then made sure he still had extra matches in his pocket.

Time to slow down. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. He worked his way over to the backside of Ryan’s two-story building, where a wood staircase led up to the roof. It creaked as he walked up the steps.

No way Mallard’s not hearing this. He stopped just below the roofline and called out.

“Mallard!”

There was a scrape and shuffle up on the roof.

“Mallard, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can still walk away.”

Mallard didn’t answer.

“At least tell me the plan. Was it to shoot Jolene and me at the ranch and then stage it to look like we gunned each other down? Or was it just going to be me and you blaming her for it?” If anybody else can hear me, that should raise some questions later on.

Colt pulled out a match and struck it. It blew out before he could light her sister on the bomb. He covered the next when he struck it, and the fuse caught. He waited until it was burning strong and tossed it onto the roof. It exploded and he threw himself over the top, rolling to the side. Mallard was spread-eagled on the roof, facing the staircase. His long gun, a rail shooter, screamed as he fired a dozen rounds. The smoke messed with his auto-targeting, but he still caught Colt with a bolt in the leg.

That’s going to hurt like hell if I live long enough to feel it.

The rifle let out a rising whine, recharging the battery. It clicked as Mallard dropped the mag. He’d shot himself dry.

Colt stood and emptied his six-gun into Mallard, walking up on him until the hammer clicked on a spent cartridge. Mallard died with a spare mag in one hand, and an empty long gun in the other.

Colt kicked the railgun aside and his hands shook as he fumbled through a reload. Pain needled his thigh, throbbing with each heartbeat.

Damn. He pulled his knife and sliced off a shirt sleeve to tie around the wound. Mallard, Denzil, and Hadley are dead, that leaves two loose ends: McKay and Shaner.

He stumbled back down the stairs, holding onto the railing. His leg screamed with every step. Blood soaked his pant leg. He pushed on, making his way out to Main Street.

McKay was waiting for him there.

The man dumped his suit coat and shoulder rig for a thigh holster. His gun-belt had spare mags and he held his hand out over his side-iron, another electro-mag, ready to draw down on Colt.

At least he’s got the guts to stand out on the street and not behind cover.

“I’ve seen you draw, McKay.” He hobbled out to the middle of the street. “You’re faster than me.” He felt lightheaded. This had to end fast. “I know I’m a dead man, but I’m still fast enough to put six into you before I go down. Do you want to die, too?”

McKay hesitated as he dragged iron. He got off three shots, nailing Colt in the shoulder and twice in the chest. Colt ran his six-gun dry, stitching McKay with bullet holes from his belly up to his forehead.

They both went down.

Four down and one to go. He tried to dump his brass and reload. It hurt like hell to move. He didn’t make it before the last loose end showed up.

Shaner stood over Colt with a scrimshawed wheelgun in his hand.

“Ostergaard, you set me back today, but I will rebuild. Mallard and McKay were expendable, but men like me are the future of Fenris. We make the hard choices and stand by them. It’s not fair, but sometimes good men have to choose evil to get things done.”

“Bullshit. You ain’t a good man.” He took a gurgling breath. “A good man plays the cards on the table. You can’t cheat and steal and murder if you don’t like your hand.”

“Oh, yes, I can.” He closed one eye and aimed his .45 at Colt’s forehead. “And I’ll keep doing it long after you’re dead.”

A shotgun blast took Shaner from behind. The shooter racked the shotgun. Shaner swung around and caught another round in the gut.

Jolene Finberg racked her shotgun one more time and rolled up on him. She stuck the barrel in his chest and blew his heart out.

Shaner collapsed at Colt’s feet. Jolene nudged Shaner with her toe, then looked at Colt.

“I broke your rule about back-shooting.”

“Much obliged.”

Colt reined up Big Fella outside the mine entrance and slowly got down off his saddle. It hurt to breathe, but it was better than the alternative. He pulled an ironwood cane off his saddle and leaned on it, waiting for Jolene and Aiden to catch up with him.

The Doc called him lucky. Sheriff Bergman said he was just too stubborn to die. Apparently “almost dead” was a real thing. The Doc said he’d have issues if he didn’t get ahold of some Alphie medical tech and grow a new pair of lungs, but for now, he was alive. The sling on his arm, the brace on his leg, and the mess in his chest meant he had a long recovery ahead of him.

“I can hardly see it.” Jolene squinted at the entrance as she and Aiden got down from their yimas. “How’d you ever find it?”

“Big Fella nosed it out.” He patted the yima on his middle shoulder. “He’s good with things like that.”

“And Grandpa Orth is inside?”

“Yep. He’s not so pretty, but he’s still in pretty good shape. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it is. I promised him I’d be back to give him a proper funeral. I hope he’s not peeved because I took so long.”

“I’m sure he understands.”

Aiden looked at Colt and then his mother.

“He’s dead, Ma. He don’t care about nothing now.”

“He’s young.” She shook her head and smiled.

“He’ll learn. Fire up your lantern and let’s go inside.”

Grandpa Orth was still sitting at the table. Jolene hung back, but Aiden walked right up to him.

“The subzero temperatures in winter are hell on electronics.” Colt leaned on his cane and watched the two of them. “Now that the Thaw’s over, there’s going to be a boom on lithium for batteries. The mine should set you up for the next sixty years, until Winter comes around again. That should help with hiring hands to work your ranch.” The data dogs were still unraveling Denzil’s handiwork, but Judge Russo handed down a summary judgement, giving Jolene the ranch regardless of what the Land Office did or didn’t have.

Jolene stepped closer, the lantern held over her head. It started to flicker.

“I’m sorry for the things I said about you, Grandpa. I didn’t know. And I wish I’d got a chance to know you, too.”

“Ma?” Aiden picked up one of the silver coins on the table and held it up to the light. “These are silver Fens. They’re only a couple of years old.”

Jolene raised an eyebrow at Colt. He cleared his throat.

“We played poker to pass the time. He beat me. End of story.”

“What were the stakes?”

Colt sighed.

“My silver against that six-gun of his. It’s a real beaut.”

“Why didn’t you just take it?” Aiden shrugged. “I would have.”

“I don’t steal from the Winter Dead.”

Aiden grunted and looked at the cards on the table. “Doesn’t a full house beat three of a kind?”

“Yes.” Jolene edged closer to her grandfather.

“Grandpa only has three Jacks. Mr. Ostergaard has a full house. Eights over aces.”

Colt limped over to the table. “I only had two pair. My last card was a three.”

Jolene held the lantern over the table. “Come take a look.”

Instead of a three, it was the eight of diamonds.

“It was a three when I left.”

“It’s an eight now.” She put the lantern on the table and knelt next to her grandpa. “You said you got to play the cards on the table.” She pulled the Shark Elite out of Orth’s gun belt and replaced it with her six-gun. “Here you go, Grandpa. You aren’t headed into the next world without some iron to back you up.” She stood and handed Orth’s side-iron to Colt. “This one is yours now.”

“You sure? It’s part of your family history.”

“And now so are you. Take it. You won it fair and square.”

“Much obliged. Well, hell, more than just much obliged, but thank you.”

What were the odds that I’d end up helping Orth’s granddaughter? Strange coincidence there. Colt looked into the dead man’s empty eyes. The flickering light made it look like they twinkled. Or maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence. Thanks, old man.

Jolene and Aiden said he was crazy, but he could have sworn he saw the dead man give him a nod.

Showdown At Dehydrated Gulch

Joe Long

G’barg Snarsh settled its carapace firmly into the species-specific support which served Glantorians in place of a chair. There were several such pieces of furniture in the Dehydrated Gulch saloon on Driskon—four, scattered among the seats appropriate for the assorted other species in attendance.

When G’barg had shoved the swinging doors aside, all Glantorian accommodations had been occupied. Each occupant immediately had lurched upwards, and bowed to the floor, holding its position until G’barg had chosen which of the others to displace. G’barg took his time about it, letting them smell spilt liquids and sawdust before sauntering over to the obvious choice location. It eased itself down casually.

The former Glantorian occupant scuttled out of the saloon bug-style, never raising its head. In fact, it stayed so low, the swinging doors remained motionless. The Glandorian scooted under them with inches to spare. G’barg coiled its chintcles sardonically, in a gesture members of its species recognized as contemptuous. The other Glantorians lifted themselves slowly and resettled in their “seats.”

G’barg’s appearance in The Dehydrated Gulch Saloon had often heralded a mass exodus of its fellow Glantorians, out of respect, fear, or disgust (concepts deeply intertwined in Glantorian psychology). Tonight, however, they stayed. A chance to hear genuine, live human music, particularly of the Rural Western variety, changed their social calculus.

G’barg scorned the soft-fleshed aliens upon whom it had frequently preyed (in both the economic and gastronomic senses) during his outlaw career. Like its fellows, though, G’barg did value the priceless aesthetic experience of human stringed instruments, particularly playing minor chords. Some trick of Glantorian nature rendered the experience exquisite, though somewhat dangerous for an outlaw like G’barg, since the effect of the chords was mildly hypnotic, as well. Still, it was an experience to seek out when possible, and a human musical performance was a true rarity in this sector. Most of the Glantorians on this world had made their way to the performance tonight, and would return each night until the musician travelled on.

Golden-furred Droonogs, however, made up the majority population of the planet and the majority of the crowd. Many sported the wide-brimmed earth hats which signified “cattle children,” the humans of the ancient past who had managed livestock, pioneered Rural Western music, and frequently shot one another with primitive handguns.

Indeed, the evening’s program began with an ancient human ballad regarding one such homicide, G’barg noted with amusement. A soft-fleshed alien from Earth, “female” by their species’ all-important biological taxonomy, introduced her song briefly, though not briefly enough for G’barg’s taste. It cared nothing for her words, only for the strumming of that magical guitar.

The Droonogs, of course, hung on every word. A heroic ballad, even (or especially) a translated ballad with an alien physical and cultural setting, appealed deeply to the Droonog soul. They were incurable romantics. Many began to sway as she finally (FINALLY!) began to strum and sing.

To the hell-planet Aggzorgia came a human, one fine day,

Where the twin suns’ rays each morning burn the noxious mists away,

No one asked that human why he’d even stepped off his ship

For the stranger bore a plasma-spewing blaster on his hip;

A blaster on his hip!

The she-human paused in her singing for an interlude of narration. This would have normally annoyed G’barg, except she continued strumming her guitar rhythmically through a progression of those wonderful brain-tingling minor chords. Idly, he watched the translation crawl across the wall above her.

“This very ancient human ballad did not originally feature a trip to Aggzorgia, at all, nor any species other than our own,” she explained. “It was the story of a law officer pursuing a criminal, culminating in a fatal duel with handguns on a public street. These stories were very important to our people and preserved musically, with variations over the centuries. “

G’barg’s chintcles curled and straightened in time with the rhythm and in proportion to its amusement. An open, fair, public duel, with handguns or any other weapons, between a law officer and an outlaw, would be viewed as folly from either perspective. Certainly G’barg had never given a pursuer “fair play,” for outlawry was not a game. Real outlaws and lawmen—at least, the ones who survived for long—used surprise, ambush, and any available edge.

Droonogs would not understand this, and would take the song at face value. Humans, however, in G’barg’s experience, knew better. Was this a recent lesson in their history? It doubted that. Certainly, by the time they bore personal handguns, they would have developed tactical sense…

The human resumed her song.

The second sun had just risen. when he rode into the town,

On an Elon Corp grav-cycle, slowly lookin’ all around,

His boots caked in the blue dust, in his eyes a wicket squint,

His swagger like John Wayne, but his expression more like Clint.

A lethal stare like Clint!

G’barg didn’t bother reading the translation crawl during the next speaking interlude which followed, for it had caught the allusions. Two Muntorian years in a human-space prison had made it something of an expert in human culture. G’barg chittered to its neighbor, “She sings of ancient saints or deities of humanity. Jonathan Wane was a god of rugged perseverance, much admired by a species so soft and vulnerable. Clinty Swood, called ‘Clint,’ was a patron of marksmen, and of those who were dirty and hirsute.”

Its neighbor nodded frightened agreement and eager obeisance.

The wonderful song continued, its minor chords truly tickling at this point. G’barg eased its outer cranium open a crack, letting the sound more easily reach the inner skull. It would not have done this without establishing dominance among the other Glantorians in the room and scanning carefully for dangerous aliens. Too many vengeance oaths had been sworn against G’barg for such carelessness. It had established by now, however, that the other Glantorians were cowed. None of the Vashnor were of the battle caste, the Zzik were always contemptible, and the she-human’s companion he-human, preoccupied apparently with her musical equipment, had not even dared to glance his way.

She continued to sing.

In the outpost dwelt an outlaw who’d slain many a biped,

A tentacular monstrosity with twelve eyes, human-blood-red;

It was vicious and a killer with a wicked thirst for gore,

And the pistols which it wielded numbered one and nineteen more,

One and nineteen more.

Of course, the creature stopped again to talk. That was becoming annoying. Those minor chords (humanity’s sole contribution to the galaxy, in its opinion) remained soothing, for now, but the patter was tiresome. She should be chastised.

Then G’barg recalled the violinist it had captured, and how pitifully the human had crumpled when struck, and its uselessness afterwards. Best to let the musician babble.

“Now, the ‘blaster’ was, in the original song, a ‘big iron.’ Humanity has largely forgotten why a handgun was once a large and heavy construction of metal, but historically it was so.

“I have an example, of sorts—non-functional, of course.” Patrons of the saloon muttered or nodded, according to their natures. The settlement’s weapon restrictions were quite strict and sensors quite effective. Still courtesy (to the Droonogish in the room, in particular, who were meticulous about such things) required that even a stage weapon appear only after a warning to the crowd. “My pardner will now withdraw a model of an ancient handgun, incapable of launching a projectile, from our baggage and carry it about the room for your consideration.”

That functionary, dressed in a cattle child hat and footgear and bearing an oversized belt buckle, lifted an object about a forelimb long. It looked ungainly, with a barrel of an impractical length, even for an ancient slugthrower.

She continued to play as he took over the patter. Ah, those minor chords!

“An ancient human lawman carried this sort of pistol, sometimes called a Buntline Special. A slug thrower like those referenced in the song, the Buntline Special also functioned as a bludgeon.”

Ah, now that made sense of a sort. The male human strode past G’barg, courteously offering to allow it to handle the weapon, a gesture of quite extreme submission, if only the human had known. The thought amused it, but not as much as the continuation of the song. G’barg waved the human past him scornfully, towards one of the Droonogs, who touched the barrel of the Buntline Special reverently and shivered.

The human explained himself, quietly, while the dust swirled,

He’d been there only a few hours, and would soon be back off-world,

He came here to take an outlaw back alive or maybe dead,

And he said it didn’t matter; he was after Twelve-Eye Red,

After Twelve-Eye Red.

Wasn’t long before the story was relayed to Twelve-Eyed Red that he’d have to face a showdown with the avenging biped.

The music was marvelous. G’barg knew that opening the outer carapace any further exposed to vulgar view his inner cranium—hardly thicker than a human skull—but he neither respected nor feared anyone in this room. G’barg relaxed entirely to let in the wonderful, wonderful music.

This also let in the barrel of the non-firing Buntlines Special, which bounced off the Glantorian’s inner skull and caused the brain inside it to rebound against it. The knockout, administered by a mere human, was as clean as any which Wyatt Earp had administered to troublesome drunks of Dodge City. The Glantorian collapsed. The human male bounty hunter then demonstrated, for a crowd of curious Droonogs, a species-appropriate modified “hog tie.”

Up on stage, the singer extemporized:

It was over in a moment, and the Droonogs gathered round,

There before them lay the body of G’barg upon the ground.

And just as the Buntline Special cleaned up the city of Dodge,

You’ve seen it used this evening to take out some more “gar-bodge…”

The pun was lost on the audience, but the melodrama was not. The next night’s concert was for an overflow crowd. By then, though, the singer’s assistant had flown off into the sunset, leaving behind only the Buntline Special, now mounted on the saloon wall behind the bar.

A Wrangler’s Gotta Do…

Sanjay Lier

Kip boarded the lift with his new partner and punched the A-deck button for the live animal hold. “Well, I hope you got enough to eat. There’s a steep learning curve to this job. Are you feeling frisky?”

“Shoot, man,” said Jory, “I couldn’t eat another bite! The breakfast buffet was awesome. But nothing compares to that slice of oxfin they served us at orientation!”

Kip’s eyes lit up. “Right? The flavor of that little sliver of meat still haunts me, and I’ve been here since they started the bio division six months ago.”

Jory pursed his lips in thought. “Can meat be addictive?”

“I dunno, but if anything was, it’d be ox!” said Kip. “They want us to know what we’re trying to build here. One taste of that meat is worth a thousand training videos. And probably a thousand credits, too! So, welcome to Zooshipt, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Tunny and Beal, and most of the rest of us, are prior service, because that’s just how they roll. They know we’re all experienced spacers and agile enough to work with dangerous live animals. It’s easier to teach spacers how to handle animals than it is to teach animal handlers how to space, right? They’re hiring wranglers who can give them intelligent feedback on how to manage these animals in free fall.”

Jory was flattered at the off-hand compliment and determined to make a good showing. “Do they give everyone stock when they hire on?” he asked.

“No, just us in Zooshipt Bio. Livestock is a huge risk because all Terran animals are shipped in cryo with few fatalities. That’s where they made their original money, when we started colonizing new worlds back in the 2080s. They’ve got the science down pat. Nobody ships live animals but us, so we’re figuring it out as we go. If we make it big, then you and I and everyone else in ZooBio are gonna be rich! But we’re all learning. This is very much uncharted territory. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had a chance to read your file. What was your Navy rating, anyway?”

“Corpsman.”

“That’ll come in handy. Maybe even this morning! You’ve gotta be careful. They’re weightless, so they can’t charge, but as soon as they see us, they’ll try.” Kip chuckled. “It’d be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.”

Jory rolled his eyes. “Funny, huh? I saw the training vids! That one guy…” He shuddered. “What did they have left to send home to his family?”

“Not much, I reckon,” Kip said. “Anybody could see the horns and tusks. But claws on a hoofed animal? Nobody saw that coming! They were rounding up one of the first bunches on Valhalla when that happened. ” He shrugged. “S’why they pay us the big bucks.”

Jory looked at the medium-sized med bag he’d been carrying all morning. Most medics he knew never went anywhere without at least a basic first-aid kit. He had spent last night, after Kip checked him into his quarters, considering how to pack a mixed first-aid trauma bag for this new gig. Based on the videos he’d seen, he’d prepared for tracheal trauma, cuts, sprains, abdominal and thoracic gorings from those huge, wicked-looking horns, and even eye wash because, as Kip had mentioned over breakfast, shit could float anywhere. An ocular E. coli infection was to be avoided! He considered his choices, knowing there was the equivalent of a Combat Support Hospital in the Shelby’s sick bay. His mental inventory continued: quick clotting packs, a tourniquet, airway, elastic bandage wrap, wound wash, and more. He nodded, satisfied he could keep someone alive on the slow journey back up the spoke and through the station to the med unit. Maybe even himself.

Kip had noted, with hearty approval, the big red-cross patches on Jory’s bag when they’d met for breakfast. He’d hired on as a wrangler, not a medic. It spoke well of his initiative. Kip continued, “So today, we’re going to be checking on the animals, maintaining the bots, servicing the filters, that sort of thing.”

“Kinda like the Navy, huh?” said Jory. “Always something to do, even if it’s busy work. But I didn’t mind. It made the time go by. Seems like the last few decades, all the military does is escort landing parties onto colony worlds.”

He paused. “I mean, we definitely still serve a purpose, but it’s like humanity’s gotten away from war fighting. There aren’t even any intelligent alien adversaries! All the old Earth rivalries started disintegrating after warp drives became practical. I thought it was pretty cool to give the first habitable planet we discovered to all the world’s African descendants as reparations. And kind of ironic, too, considering the genius who made commercial space travel possible was from that continent!”

“It was a good idea whose time had come,” Kip agreed. “And they named it New Africa right off. I hope they’ll be happy there. We cryoed all of Africa’s iconic wildlife for them: lions, giraffes, zebras, gazelles, wildebeests, you name it. Two by two, with extra frozen sperm and ova, of everything. Even hyenas! Can you imagine? Just like Noah’s Ark, but with a few refinements. They were even gifted four elephants: a bull and three cows, plus sperm and ova from the last few left on Earth, for as much genetic diversity as possible. One day it’ll be a hunter’s paradise. Think of the prospects they’ll have for safari work! It’s a beautiful world.”

Jory said, “Yeah, but what I’m getting at is that we’re spreading out enough to ease the historical frictions between groups of people. Heck, give everyone their own colony world, then let ‘em sink or swim! There’s enough elbow room for everybody now.”

“And Zooshipt will be there to help!” Kip said, exaggeratedly rubbing his hands together, at which they both laughed.

After a moment, Jory sniffed his coveralls, wrinkling his nose. “Don’t they ever wash these things?”

Kip snorted. “That is washed! Oh, did I mention that the low man on the totem pole does laundry?” He grinned, punching Jory lightly on the shoulder. The lift stopped at an interim deck and the door opened. Two pretty girl techs started to enter, then clapped their hands over their noses as they recognized the young men’s vendor patches.

With muffled giggles, they said, “Uh, thanks, but we’ll take the next car!”

“As you wish, ladies!” Kip grinned, bowing gallantly to them as the door began to close. “See you at Tito’s later?”

“Yes!” they chorused before the door cut them off from view.

Jory cocked an inquiring eyebrow at his new boss. Kip obliged him. “I’ll introduce you all later. Tito’s is one of many watering holes on the Shelby. We really don’t work all the time.” He paused. “It just seems like it, sometimes.”

A gentle bump jostled them, signaling the end of their ascent, and the lift door opened. They turned right into the corridor, past signs pointing toward the animal hold and other destinations. With the ink barely dry on Jory’s discharge papers, he fought the urge to walk exactly in step with Kip, but he was still getting used to the Coriolis effects on this station. He had to be content with making headway and keeping his breakfast down.

As they approached the Zooshipt cryo unit, the door opened and a handsome, dark-haired young man wearing clean scrubs and a lab coat backed out, maneuvering an insulated cylinder strapped to a small hand truck. A strand of hair from his rockabilly Pompadour fell rakishly across one eye. Kip lifted his chin in disdainful greeting. “What’s up, Rigo?”

“As soon as we figure out how to freeze those oxfins without killing them, we’ll all be better off not having to smell you stinking wranglers.” Rigo smiled condescendingly toward Kip’s ginger-colored high and tight haircut, then turned his gaze to Jory. “I see you’ve hired a mini-me.” To Jory, he said,“You must’ve been desperate for a job, huh?”

“Ignore him,” Kip said, evenly. “He’s just jealous because we work for the same company and he’s never even smelled grilled oxfin, let alone tasted it. He can’t afford it. You, however, could buy their entire department a round of drinks with your first check.”

Jory did the bar math in his head. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah! Hey, Rigo, you know what that smell is?”

“What?”

“That’s the smell of money! No wonder you don’t recognize it! C’mon, Jory, we’ve still gotta suit up, and we’ve got a ways to go to the hold.”

“Hey, you gonna buy me a drink?” shouted Rigo as they walked away.

“Nah,” said Kip.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a prick!” He and Jory snickered and continued down the corridor.

“Those guys think they have it made,” said Kip. “All they have to do is roll racks of cryo crypts into the pressurized shuttle holds, roll ‘em off, and thaw their livestock dirtside. Easy-peasy.” He winked. “And it shows on their pay stubs!”

So far, oxfins had suffered hundred-percent fatalities coming out of cryo-sleep. Not even their sperm and ova had survived the treatment. Experiments were in progress to see if oxfin embryos could survive implantation in a variety of Terran bovine species. If successful, they would see if fetal oxfins could survive cryo in Terran surrogates. Scientists speculated that since they originated on a planet where the largest landmass was high on the Northern hemisphere with long, brutal winters, there was a natural anti-freeze at work, similar to that of arctic ground squirrels on Earth, which interfered with the artificial cryogenic protocols.

The immense horns, some exceeding three meters in width, and the tusks, located similarly to Terran elk ivories, were thought to be used to break through ice in search of food and water. The retractable claws, nestled in a waxy sheath between two ordinary-looking cloven hooves, functioned as ice axes. When the digits spread apart, as they would on slippery ice, the claws deployed reflexively, springing forward in an arc, to stab into ice. Or attacking predators. The claws also deployed defensively in startled animals.

Well-funded research was underway to explore every detail of their physiology. Oxfins were widely regarded as the most delectable meat animal humanity had ever encountered. At least one researcher had posited that the biological antifreeze, while potentially toxic if consumed in sufficient quantities, might even be the source of the oxfin’s particular succulence. If they could solve the problem of cryo-death, there were literally worlds of money to be made.

There was a ready secondary market for the long guard hairs, from reddish-brown to almost black, and the under-wool, as well. Even better, the wool and lighter hairs took dye beautifully. Oxfin wool was as fine as cashmere. The hides were thick, with a beautiful grain, lending themselves especially well to footwear and saddlery, both in great demand on low-tech colonies. Having conquered space at last, civilization had come full circle. Humanity conceded that leather, fur, and other natural fibers actually were better for the environment. Synthetic fibers were still indispensable for many applications, but the pendulum of social mores, and the level of technology on the colony worlds, had swung to encourage “Home grown, home sewn!” With a delicious, fur-bearing animal three hands taller at the withers than the extinct Terran aurochs, fiber merchants weren’t the only ones eager to establish contact with any ZooShipt employee in the hopes of parlaying any such relationship into a lucrative foot in the door when the technical difficulties had been surmounted.

After walking a considerable distance, during which the nice, clean office-type corridors gave way to a more industrial appearance, they reached the entrance to the animal hold’s locker room. Just beyond, the corridor ended at a huge bulkhead. Jory noticed a faint, pungent aroma in the immediate vicinity and recognized the whiff from his coveralls.

Kip said, “They like to keep us as far away from the hoity-toity types as they can. It’s all right with me. I never did like crowds.” He grunted as he heaved the metal sliding door open. The smell intensified immediately as they entered an anteroom with lockers and neatly stowed gear to their left. A hallway leading to separate showers and laundry facilities branched off to the right.

Six stained, patched EVA suits hung along the left wall inside wire lockers. Raising his eyebrows in surpise, Jory asked, “Are those things safe?”

“For our purposes, they are,” answered Kip. “We don’t have any reason to spacewalk. They’ve been modded to de-fog and filter cabin air so we don’t have to pre-breathe O2. The regular tanks supplement cabin air. There are elastic cuffs so you work without suit gloves. You can even open the visors. All we need is the jet packs, air filtration, and the protection of the suit itself against the oxfin’s natural weapons. A small leak is no big deal when we’re in the hold.

“A big part of our job during this start-up is to observe which animals seem least agitated by a space environment so they can be used as foundational breeders. We’re expected to take a lot of notes in real-time. The tentative plan is to try farming them in Siberia on Earth. That means tagging ears, keeping records on each animal, making reports, and so on. Just like ‘riding the pens’ in Terran feedlots. You ever watch old ‘Westerns’? After I took this job, I binge-watched a bunch of old movies in the genre.

“In those shows, they hadn’t developed the twentieth century-type feedlots yet, but I ended up learning about those, too, while trying to familiarize myself with what I might be doing here. They’re still in use on Earth. In fact, I helped write some of the training vids based on agricultural documentaries. In the feedlots, the pen riders, actual cowboys and cowgirls, ride horses doing part of their jobs. We do pretty much the same things as they do, only we use spacesuits.”

Jory chimed in. “What about you? What was your MOS? I mean, why’d they hire you?”

“Military police, dog handler. I’ve always liked animals. Kinda prefer ‘em to people, to be honest. I’ve never had a dog lie to me. When I ETSed, ZooShipt seemed like a perfect fit, and so far, it has been. The hours are long, the work is dangerous, but the pay is good. What’s not to like, eh? After all, the Army did promise me fun, travel, and adventure! “

Kip flashed another of his trademark grins. “I usually leave my coveralls here, actually. Today I wore mine and brought those for you to wear to kind of throw you in the deep end. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, when shit is flying all around you, some of it is bound to stick! Rigo is particularly obnoxious about it, but ‘most everybody can tell what we do from the
lingering aroma of animal manure. Like those girls on the lift. No matter how hard you try to keep from getting it on you, there will be a spot you miss somewhere.”

“Gee, how exciting,” Jory said laconically.

“That’s the spirit!” said Kip with a chuckle. “So pick an EVA suit that fits, and climb in. Make sure your tanks are full, primary and auxiliary air, water, and that your batteries are fully charged. You can skip the TMG layer, but you’ll want the ventilation garment. And shuck the coveralls. Those are mostly for chores around here. We have an office down the corridor, for all the record-keeping and stuff. While you’re doing that, I’ll get you logged in on a hand-held, and you can familiarize yourself with the basics on the way down the spoke.”

Jory rooted through the neatly stacked undergarments, looking for his sizes, carefully stowing everything as he found it, dogging doors shut as he went.

“I got the station orientation yesterday but I’m still trying to get the feel of the Shelby. I must admit, their signage is great compared to some scows I’ve been on. So we berth in the rings at either end of the central ‘axle.’ I get that, so we can have spin grav. But I would think oxfins, or any live animal, would be more comfortable with even slight fake gravity. What am I missing?”

“That is an excellent question, young apprentice! They probably would prefer firmer footing, the better to trample us with, for one thing. In free fall, they’re still dangerous, but they can’t get traction. Usually. The mass of a herd of oxfin, which is considerable, is enough that it would need to be distributed equally around the ring, which uses space we humans want. The trouble with that is the filtration systems necessary to clean up after animals that can’t use a vacuum flush toilet like we humans, so they are confined to the central stack or axle, which renders them mostly weightless, although there is minimal centrifugal force in the cylinder. It also consolidates the specialized filters, bots, et cetera, in a smaller space. A wise man once said, ‘The answer to the question, “Why don’t they____?” is always money.’ That is your answer. They’re in the axle because it’s safer and cheaper.”

Kip handed Jory the hand-held computer, then began his own wardrobing process. Jory adjusted the wristband cradle onto his left forearm, then began sanitizing the inside of his helmet and defogging the faceplate.

“Safer and cheaper. Well, at least that makes sense. What about the name? How did they come to be called oxfins? I can see calling them ox after the old Terran oxen, but where did the fin part come from?”

Kip’s muffled voice could be heard through the fabric as he changed into a t-shirt. “One of the scientists on the expedition to Valhalla, where they found them, was Norwegian. Between the horns and the tusks, they started calling them bull hogs. In Norwegian, that’s oxse and svin. Oxfin. Y’know, I’ll bet there were a lot of disappointed scientists in the early days.”

Jory looked up. “How come?”

“Ever since humans have been imagining life on other planets, it was always some kind of terribly dangerous monsters or sapient aliens who were vastly superior to us intellectually. So far, all of the creatures we’ve encountered are different in the details, but very Earth-like in general. I mean, oxfins are mammals and even ruminants, just like Terran cattle. They had plenty of them to study after the first bunch woke up dead. I think they’ll do fine on Earth, just like yaks or bison.”

He hunted through a locker, pulling out a large, zippered pouch, which he filled with energy bars, other snacks, and a couple of one-litre water canisters, and tossed it on a bench. He then dug out a much larger wheeled duffle bag sporting an array of pockets, loops, and carabiners.

They continued suiting up. Kip fussed over Jory’s kit, always mindful that good habits could save your life in space. In turn, Jory checked out Kip’s suit. Then they donned their helmets and did a fit check. Taking the helmets off again, Kip stowed his in the big duffle, clipping the retaining ring to a short leash attached to a row of loops inside, and Jory followed suit. Kip clipped the snack bag inside, along with another bag of incidentals.

Jory peered into the duffle. “Can we fit my trauma bag in there?”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Kip. “Hand it over and we’ll see.” It, too, was clipped by the handles to inner loops of webbing, and the duffle bag was zipped shut. Satisfied that everything was squared away, they slid the wheels onto the deck, and both grabbed the large handle, then moved toward the sliding door leading to the corridor.

Letting go of the duffle, Kip stepped over to a rack on his left and lifted out two long, stiff rods a couple of meters in length, with a trigger-handle grip at one end, and a semi-rigid loop on the other.

“These,” he said with a flourish, “are our lassoes.” He handed one to Jory. “It’s as good a name as any for a wrangler’s main tool, same as the old-time cowboys! I had them custom-fabricated on Earth from CAD specs.” He demonstrated the mechanism, closing the distal loop by clamping down on the handle. “This button here locks it in place. You loop it around one horn, lock it, and jet yourself and the oxfin to a holding web while keeping it a safe distance away from you. You do not want one within kicking distance!”

Jory took the proffered lasso and promptly leashed it to his belt. Resuming their grip on the duffel, they exited the locker room, closed the door, and turned to the bulkhead wall. Kip dug his badge out of a pocket on the arm of his suit, where the retractable lanyard was clipped to a loop inside. He swiped the card reader, and a light beside the door turned green as the electromagnets released the lock to the bulkhead door. Kip spun the wheel and pulled.

Ponderously, the heavy door swung open, and they clumsily stepped over the low lip into the spoke brace, a section of ring bracketed by a pair of heavy bulkheads, where one spoke intersected perpendicularly to their wheel. In the center of the fifteen-meter expanse were two freight lifts leading up to a wide catwalk for access to an overhead hatch.

They were entering one of twelve spokes making up the aft wheel, so-called due to the location of the command information center in the other, or forward, wheel. Moving toward the central stack was inward. The reverse was outward. Spinward and anti-spinward described the direction in which one was traveling on the circular decks within the wheels. Nadir was planetward. Zenith was space-side.

The Shelby was a commercial station, pure and simple. She was fairly new, so the mechanicals were mercifully glitch-free. The crew were first-rate, disciplined professionals. ZooShipt had leased four spokes’ width, one quarter of a wheel, for the cryo and bio enterprises, as well as the entire aft section of the stack for the livestock, more than almost any single nation on Earth. From space, the blues and greens of the Zooshipt logo were clearly visible on the hull outside each section of their corporate domain. Accented with white script, a red heart dotted the ‘i.’ Kip and Jory were players in a massive gamble, and their turn on stage was about to begin.

—–––—

Kip closed and battened down the bulkhead hatch behind them, then helped Jory lug the duffel onto the wire freight lift. “Speak up if you feel like you’re going to hurl, Jory. There’s no shame in that, even for long-timers. I have barf bags in here, too.” Jory nodded. The lift reached the top inside edge of the wheel. In a moment, their orientation relative to the spin grav on the wheel decks would change as they traveled inward on the spoke. Near the top, the lift paused, and Kip pressed another button. With a clang and a hiss, the hatch popped open on shocks, and the lift elevated them into the spoke.

When they emerged from the brace section, Jory was nearly blinded by the sight of the bright white interior of the spoke stretching off into the distance overhead, lined three-quarters of the way around with rows upon rows of growing greenery. The air smelled fresh and invigorating. He stared in wonder. “Wow! How many square meters are under cultivation?”

Kip shrugged. “I don’t know. Several acres, I’m sure. This outfit leases the spokes in our quarter. Nice people. You’ll meet a few of them on our ride down to the hold. We’re going down the spoke in open suits because it’s pressurized for the hydroponic farm. No sense in using up our canned air before we have to.”

He grabbed the duffle, and Jory scrambled to help as Kip headed toward two sets of narrow-gauge rails running the length of the spoke on the anti-spinward surface. A rail car awaited them at a dock, with seating for about eight adults, and an open cargo bed with netting. In addition to safety harnesses, each seat had rings and bars on the gunnels for hooking a personal leash, equipment bags, or any number of things. Life in space was characterized by places to hook oneself and one’s possessions, lest an unexpected change, or planned docking cessation in the spin grav, cause everything to float away.

They hoisted the duffel and lassoes into the cargo bed, clipping the tethers to rings. Kip unzipped the big bag and dug around, producing a couple of flattened packets with plastic rings in one corner of the top edge.

As if presenting him with a gourmet dish, Kip handed them to Jory. “Your barf bags, sir!” Jory grinned ruefully as he accepted them, then stowed them in an outer sleeve pocket. Smiling in commiseration, Kip stretched the netting over the bag to secure it. “This is where your equilibrium goes wonky. How much time did you log in a Barany chair before you hit space?”

“A fair bit,” said Jory. “I seemed to handle it all right. The worst I’ve had is a few queasy minutes here and there. Thanks for the bags, just the same. You never know when it will overpower your conditioning, and I’m a firm believer that prevention is the best cure. Better to contain it than breathe it!”

“No doubt!”

With their gear stowed, Kip unplugged the charger. They climbed into the front seats, strapped in, and Kip pressed the power button. They were now oriented to the spin grav as if they were lying on their backs in chairs. Pushing the accelerator bar forward, Kip began their descent inward. In the far distance, Jory could see giant machinery on the second set of tracks, with at least three mechanical arms fanned out in all directions. It looked to be a slow trip, so he turned his attention to the computer on his left forearm.

“All right, you said I was logged in. I tapped and got a home screen. Do I need a password and all the usual rot?”

“Of course.” Kip grinned. “Computers gonna compute!” He spent the next several minutes bringing Jory up to speed on the data they would be collecting, and where and how to enter it. “We’ll even be taking blood samples and giving them to the veterinarians in cryo. You may not be an animal doc, but I can already see what a useful addition your skillset will be to this outfit. I haven’t been able to do half the stuff they want by myself. I’m glad to finally have an extra set of hands!”

Jory was a quick study, and paid attention as Kip explained. By the time they reached the machinery on the other track, he was able to quickly switch screens to view individually numbered animal datasets, and more.

The hydroponics lift mounted on the other car enabled several tethered workers to tend the arc of greenery overhead as the lift traveled along the spin-grav gradient. The three arms were spread out to allow access to about four double rows each, with one person per bucket and one on the deck of the lift. The crew consisted of two males and two females. The man on the deck hailed them with a smile.

“Hey, Kip, who’s your new hire?”

Slowing, he replied, “Hey, Sam! This is Jory, on his first trip to the stack.” Friendly greetings were exchanged all around.

A giggling feminine voice from above said, “Ooh, fresh meat! Grrrr!”

Snickering, the other gal said, “Shayla, you are such a tramp!” and to Jory, “Don’t mind her! We’ve been working too much overtime! She really does have manners!”

The other man on the lift said, “Whether they’re good ones or not is another question, right, Shay?”

“Oh, poo, Dane!” she answered. “Bree’s just mad because I saw him first!”

Bree’s voice floated down. “Are y’all going to Tito’s later?” Kip gave a thumbs up and accelerated past them.

Jory said over his shoulder, “Nice to meet you all!” Facing forward again, he said, “Crikey, mate, no wonder you smile all the time!”

Kip laughed. “See? Good people! How’s the gear looking, by the way? If it isn’t secured, we’ll soon find out. We’ll be floating in micrograv soon. How’s your stomach?”

“I feel pretty good, actually. I’m looking forward to finally seeing the oxfins face to face!”

“Good!” nodded Kip. “Can’t say the feeling will be mutual for them, but I guarantee it will be exciting!”

The end of the track gradually hovered into view. They bumped the dock, and Kip shut down the controls as they floated against their restraints, then set about carefully reconnecting their tethers while exiting the webbed safety harnesses as they drifted free of the seats.

Kip rolled back the webbed cargo cover, and the big duffel bag floated free on its leash. He opened it, unclipping Jory’s helmet, and handing it to the other man. They seated their helmets and activated the air filtration systems. Kip’s tinny voice sounded in Jory’s ear. “Radio check. You got a copy?”

“Loud and clear!”

Kip retrieved his lasso and clipped it to his belt. “Hang tight while I bounce over to the hatch.” He swiped his badge and opened the door. “All right, grab the duffel and bounce over.”

Jory clipped the duffel and his lasso to his utility belt. Grabbing both by the handles with his left hand while holding onto the rail car with his right, he gave them a quick shake to gauge his total mass before gently launching himself and coming to rest gracefully by the grab bar, under Kip’s appraising eye.

“You look like you’ve done this before.”

“Eh, maybe a time or two!”

One at a time, they rotated into the last anteroom before the hold, closing the hatch to the spoke behind them.

——

Jory examined the chamber they occupied. Clearly labeled lockers of all sizes lined nearly every surface. By habit, he noted the first-aid station to the left of the hold door. He pointed with his chin. “Mind if I have a look inside?”

“By all means!” said Kip, who busied himself tethering the items they’d brought in. Jory clipped his lasso to a grab bar. Thus unimpeded, he pushed off across fifteen meters of air space to land neatly beside the sizable aid station. He smiled as he tethered himself near an extendable dip net. He’d seen that solution before. In a medical emergency, untrained personnel were apt to fling open compartments haphazardly, allowing multiple small objects to float free. The net made gathering them up easier.

He began checking dates and found a few expired ones. “Hey, you got any trash bags in there?” Kip rooted through the duffel and brought out a couple of compressed disks, then launched himself to hand-deliver them before bouncing back to the duffel where he was outfitting two kit bags.

As Jory continued to sort through the medical supplies, he became aware of a vague sound or sensation he couldn’t identify. His suit muffled everything, even with the visor up. He paused to consider it, as he finished weeding out expired products and making notes in the hand-held, then clipped the trash bag to his belt.

Kip tucked both lassoes under his left arm, and pushed off to land on the other side of the door as Jory closed the panel on the first-aid box. He handed Jory a lasso and a kit bag. “You hear that? Or rather, feel it? That’s them bellowing and mooing. They’re so big the sound reverberates in your bones!

“Our main tasks today are to check feed and water, tag and record as many ears as we can, same with drawing blood, and do filter maintenance. We’ve got fifty head: ten bulls, and the rest are cows, all various apparent ages. Four herds of ten are payloads. The calmest ten are going to Siberia, so take detailed notes on individual behavior.” Kip gave him a sly sideways glance. “Are you ready?”

Jory nodded. “Let’s do it!”

“It’s show time!”

Kip opened the hatch, and a tidal wave of impressions assaulted Jory’s senses. The stench of animal manure hit him like a wall. A cacophony of blubbery-sounding, deep-throated bellows, and higher-pitched mooing rolled over him like an aural avalanche. Service bots flitted about, vacuuming up globules of waste that escaped the individual cages lining the walls. He glimpsed
flashes of red and brown hair through the multiple round ventilation ports in each cell. Light tan horns protruded through these holes in many of the cages. The clanging flurry of hoof and horn against metal died down somewhat after their initial entrance. Jory smiled in fascination at the scene before him.

Kip was observing his reaction. “Pretty awesome, huh?” he said, with an answering smile.

“It’s freakin’ incredible! Where do we even start?”

“We can clip our lassoes on the cage here while I show you how to load the feeders. Feed cubes are in those color-coded storage bays adjacent to this entry cage. C’mon!”

Referring to the computer strapped to his left forearm, Kip exited the cage surrounding the hatch and bounced off lightly, heading for a nearby storage bay. They each grabbed a ten-pack of vacuum-sealed feed cubes, strung through the handles on short loops of cable. Jory noted the twenty-three-kilo weight printed on each bag, readied himself for the jump, and more importantly, the landing. He visualized grabbing the bar with both hands and gently directing the mass of the bags to collide with the cage and not himself.

Kip pointed toward an occupied cell with a red light on the end panel. “That’s our first stop, number forty-two. The green ones are empty.”

For the next couple of hours, they stayed busy filling feed bins, checking the pressure plates that dispensed one cube at a time, clearing water lines, and other routine chores, gracefully bouncing from task to task with the ease of long practice, against a steady background of animal sounds. One of the service bots was drifting aimlessly. Clipping the last string of empty bags to the door cage, Kip said, “Help me park that unit on the charging dock. Ready? Three, two, one…”

They bounced at the same time, intercepted the drifting bot, and expertly braked, using tiny puffs from their jets for the first time. Counting down again, they jetted to the charger and wrestled the unit into a dock. No LEDs lit up.

“Well, dang,” said Kip. “It’s something else. I’ll have to schedule a service call.” He made notes on his handheld. “This is the same company that makes the scrubbers for the rec rooms, y’know.”

Jory felt his cheeks burning. “Oh, thanks! I’d managed to put Shayla out of my mind so I could concentrate on work, and you bring up the rec rooms!” They both laughed.

Humans, no matter where they found themselves, always seemed to figure out how to facilitate two things in short order: making alcoholic beverages, and socializing. Space was no exception. The concept of rec rooms for the purpose of amorous acrobatics had proved, unsurprisingly, to be immensely popular. What started out as tourism rapidly became a recruiting perk. Rigorous employment physicals weeded out STDs. Consequently, space was mostly inhabited by vigorous, healthy, open-minded, very happy individuals.

Kip finished sending his message, then swatted Jory with the back of his hand. “All right, Romeo, now for the fun part. Let’s get the lassoes and head for the bull in number nineteen.” Armed with the tools of their trade, they clung to either end of the front gate panel as Kip explained the mechanism. Jory found it hard to concentrate on the words, because the enclosed animal was bellowing, tossing its head, kicking the walls, and creating a terrible ruckus which was loud even through the suit. As the cage itself vibrated with each blow of hoof and horn, his apprehension increased. Kip was explaining that they were to each lasso a horn and jet over to a mechanical arm holding a net to stabilize the animal so the webbing could contract around the animal’s barrel, suspending it away from anything that could give it leverage from which to push. Having restrained the oxfin, they could safely draw blood and tag ears.

Jory was internalizing Kip’s words, mentally rehearsing the scenario, and suddenly it was time. Kip said, “Here we go!” The face of the gate clanged straight out and then slid up, like a curtain on a stage, exposing the beast feet-first. “You snag the right horn. I’ll get the left one! Use your jets to compensate, ‘cause he’ll launch right at you!”

The furor inside the cage increased as the agitated animal bumped around in the microgravity. A deep-throated bellow was followed by a horn hooking the edge of the rising gate. Jory’s heart pounded as he laser-focused on the task at hand.

He slipped the loop of his lasso over the tip of the exposed horn, waiting for the chance to run it all the way to the poll on the oxfin’s head before clamping down. As the gate raised further, the oxfin ducked his head under the bottom edge. Kip zipped into action and slipped his lasso onto the left horn as Jory snugged his tight, just as the gate opened completely.

The oxfin’s eyes fastened on Jory as the massive hindquarters flexed against the back wall of the cell. In an instant, 1,500 kilos of enraged bovine shot out of the cell, trailing the men like streamers as they clung to the lassoes on either horn.

“Brake! Brake!” shouted Kip into his microphone. Jory was already orienting himself to counter the bull’s forward momentum. The animal was galloping in midair, legs ablur, seeking purchase on non-existent turf. The legs gradually slowed, and the animal stared stupidly about, occasionally resuming an aerial dogpaddle to no avail.

By this time, the two men had brought the animal under control, and they laughed at the quizzical look on the oxfin’s face as they jetted to the restraint arm and fastened the webbing around the bull’s midsection. Swapping lassoes for kit bags, they began the tagging process.

Kip described to Jory how to locate the tail vein. “Since you’re a medic, I guess I don’t need to tell you how to use these vacutainers, do I?”

“Nah, I think I remember!” Jory smiled.

“We draw all three vials, a red top, a green top, and a purple one, for the most complete assay on each animal. The bulls get blue ear tags. The cows get red ones. You grab a vacutainer and I’ll grab the tail.”

They moved to the bull’s powerful hindquarters, mindful of the danger. They hung inverted over the tail while Kip held it up, and Jory swabbed it with alcohol. The long guard hairs were troublesome to keep out of the way, but with two people, it simplified the process. The bull struggled futilely against this affront, vainly paddling his lethal feet in the air. Then Jory inserted the needle, eliciting a protracted roar of bovine outrage, and more vigorous air-galloping.

Working fast, he drew the vials of blood and stowed them, and they moved to the bull’s head. He was already fumbling for the pliers and the blue tag parts to insert in the jaws when Kip said, “Nice work! I’ll tag the ears. We’re almost done with this big guy!”

This time they floated horizontally, to steer clear of the horns and front hooves. The sheer size of the oxfins worked to their advantage, as the humans were small enough to be inside the arc of a sudden head swing. If they were careful.

Jory held onto the left horn as Kip loaded the tag onto one jaw and the cap onto the needle, then, gauging his chance, he grabbed the mule-sized ear, quickly punching the tag into place, then pushed out of reach as the bull exploded into a paroxysm of impotent fury.

“Wow, he’s pissed!” commented Jory.

Kip nodded. “You would be, too, if you’d just been stuck fore and aft with sharp objects!”

They took a minute to observe the alien creature as it calmed down somewhat. Alien, and yet eerily familiar. Except for the claws, it could have been a selectively bred Terran bovine.

Jory slid his visor up to wipe the sheen of sweat from his face as he jetted back into position, and was assaulted with the incredibly organic smell of animals and their effluvium. “Crikey, but they stink!” He replaced the shield. “Awright, so how do we enter the tag number on this animal?”

Kip was writing the tag number on each blood vial. After stowing them in the kit bag, he demonstrated the process on the hand-held, then retrieved his lasso and said, “Let’s put Boss here back in his cell.”

The two men each lassoed a horn, then Kip released the web binding the bull, who immediately started paddling the air. A hind foot pushed against the floating net, but didn’t get much leverage. They easily jetted him toward his open cell. “Here’s where it gets tricky,” said Kip. “We need to hit the close button and chuck him in there quick before he can bounce back out with his kicking. You undo your lasso and start closing the gate when we’re just outside the cell. I’ll use mine to get him drifting in, then let him go as the gate closes.”

Jory jetted into position by the control panel. When Kip had the bull about six meters away, he said, “Hit it!”

The panel clanked downward, and with a final shove, Kip pushed the bull toward the cell as the door descended, obscuring the enormous beast’s upper body before he could touch the far wall and shove off. As the gate clanged shut and the red light winked on, Jory peered into a ventilation hole, then looked at Kip.

“I don’t think this one should go to Siberia. Do you?”

Kip laughed. “I agree!”

They tagged eight more animals before taking a break to eat a snack. Kip was pleased to note that Jory’s personality remained easygoing under stress. His spacing experience was obvious, and he had a knack for understanding the oxfin’s behavior. As a dog handler, Kip knew some people had a way with animals and some just didn’t. Jory was a natural.

“Whaddaya say we do one more for an even ten, then knock off for the day? We still have stuff to do in the office before we’re done.”

“You’re the boss!” Jory smiled agreeably.

They approached a cell that contained a smallish cow. The cow’s horns were smaller, but just as deadly, and their tusks were less prominent. This particular animal seemed notably calmer than many of the others they’d handled. Getting her out of the cell and into the web was uneventful. She barely flinched during the entire tagging process. She even submitted to the ultimate indignity of having her head scratched by both men, and appeared to enjoy it.

“Look at you, girl!” Kip said to her. “Are you going to be a big ol’ pet? Yes, you are!”

Jory was rubbing the base of her ears and soaking in the details of her limpid gaze, the coarse hair, and downy-soft underwool. The regular sound of her exhalations indicated a relaxed creature. Without warning, a tremendous frisson shook her as she sneezed, and suddenly he was spinning out of control.

He braked to stabilize himself amid the swirling debris the bots hadn’t yet cleared, and realized he was looking at red globules of blood. He looked down at his left calf with a fleeting thought at the irony of the name. Blood was gathering at a ragged puncture in his suit.

“Are you all right?” Kip said as he jetted over.

“Cor, but she nailed me fair! I don’t think it was deliberate. I let my guard down.”

“Hell, it happens with any animal. You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. I need to seal the suit, though. The bleeding is superficial. We can put her away and I’ll clean what I can with the first-aid locker outside.”

“I have just the thing!” Kip said, reaching into his kit bag and holding up a roll of grey tape.

“Is that…?”

“Yup! Duct tape!”

Laughing, they bent to the task of patching the hole.

—––

Back in the anteroom, Jory wriggled free of his suit to clean and bandage his wound, then donned it again. They collected their gear and loaded the rail car for the trip back up the spoke.

Passing the quiescent hydroponics rig, Kip said, “If we don’t hurry, we’ll be the last ones to get to Tito’s!” There followed an animated discussion of the Shelby’s many entertainment venues.

Back in the locker room, they cleaned themselves, their suits, made additional notes, and stowed everything for the next day. On the way to the lift, they stopped by the cryo lab to drop off the blood samples. Exiting the lift on E Deck, Kip said, “Tito’s is on this deck, Concourse Two. Can you find it?”

“Sure!”

“Meet me there at, oh, twenty-one. Suit?”

“I’ll be there!”

At the appointed time, Jory approached Tito’s. He’d have recognized the club atmosphere anywhere. People were silhouetted against a backdrop of flashing lights, music, laughter, the smell of food, and spilled drinks. He smiled to himself and heard Kip’s voice coming up behind him. “C’mon in and I’ll buy the first round! How’s your leg feel?”

“I could dance, if sufficiently motivated.”

Kip clapped him on the shoulder. “Hooah!” They laughed and headed inside.

At the bar, they were talking over the day’s events when a strikingly beautiful woman in glittery, form-fitting, club wear sidled up to Jory and said, “I haven’t seen you before. With whom did you hire on?”

Kip let him speak, uninterrupted. “Zooshipt, actually.”

“Cryo or bio?” she asked.

“Bio. Why?”

“I represent a consortium of investors who…”

“Wait, you’re a lawyer?”

“Yes, she is,” a familiar voice said. Shayla, from the hydroponics farm, turned to the woman and said, “Mind if I cut in?” while wedging herself between Jory and the predatory representative, who scowled and whirled away with her drink.

“You have perfect timing!” Jory smiled. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Of course! And while I’m waiting for it, you can tell me all about yourself! If the drink gets here before you’re done, we’ll find someplace else to finish the story!”

Jory hailed the bartender, who took her order, before Shayla commandeered him toward a corner booth.

Kip smiled and sipped his own drink as the girls from the lift came in and snaked their arms around his waist, theatrically begging for kisses.

Jory turned toward Kip and raised his glass. Kip returned the salute and raised his voice over the din. “Welcome to Zooshipt!”

Jory smiled and replied over his shoulder, “I think I’m gonna like it here!”

—–-‐

The End

Of Bureaucrats and Gulyas

Alma T. C. Boykin

“It looks right,” István Gabor said as he walked around the small pen. “Color, horns, hoofs, body shape, all correct. But…not mammal?”

Dr. Szentmihaly spread his hands in a shrug. “Not mammal. None of the bovine genetic stock we brought to Novi Magyarsk proved viable. Ovine, yes, but not bovine or equine yet. We need a herd grazer now, and this native-base stock works. The meat tastes like beef.”

István studied the grey creature contentedly munching hay in the portable pen. The bureaucrats from Colonial Approval would refuse to allow such a thing. If they knew about it. “Has anyone made an official report to—?” He pointed up at the sky.

“No, sir. No time, and we need the power for more urgent needs.” A small smile appeared under Dr. Szentmihaly’s thick mustache. “It is better to delay any reports until sufficient resources are available.”

István smiled in return. “Most certainly. Survival of the settlement is our first priority,” he quoted. And if that meant preserving the botanical environment with a reptile-based gulyas, well, so be it. “No milk?”

The biologist shook his head. “No. But we have sheep and goats, and can work from there.”

“Well done. Cream in our coffee can wait.” He missed that, but all things came with time. The grasses needed to be grazed as soon as possible. The build-up of senescent material already posed a fire risk in some parts of the colony. He started to return to his vehicle, then caught himself. “Wait. No horses yet?”

A long sigh met his question. “Not yet. The stock they sent seems to be unviable. Our,” he waved at the white and tan buildings and half-domes housing the genetics workers, “first try with a native species… The legs are too thin and would break too easily. We can’t thicken them and keep the creatures docile enough to have around people.”

Collocated genes struck again. “Thank you for trying. I know your team will find a way. The cattle are our first priority, and the sheep.”

Dr. Szentmihaly smiled again. “You’re welcome, sir. We’ll start breeding more of these and send them out to the ranches.”

Five planetary years later, Dr. Szentmihaly sounded disappointed. “It’s not perfect.” He shook his now-bald head. “The genes for a mane were co-located with a lethal cardiac defect.”

Fulop Gabor shook his head in awe and wonder as he studied the stallion. “He’s beautiful as he is, Doctor.” The dark grey stud’s long, flowing tail blew like a banner as he trotted around the pen, then stopped and came toward them, snorting. Calm brown eyes studied the humans, and his ears twitched. The stallion’s hoofs thumped the dirt, strong and sturdy. He was broken to ride, but not fully trained yet. “Uncle István will be delighted.”

“I hope so. To have cattle without horses… The founders would throw meteors at us.” The biologist scowled. “Or paperwork.”

“Paperwork. The consul from New Texas avers that paperwork is worse than storms, volcanos, or a locust plague.” The locusts should not have been in the terraforming package. Honey bees should have been included. Non-viable horses and cattle were the least little woe compared to that!

Dr. Szentmihaly frown shifted to a smile. “Csirip. This one, three mares, are yours. We will trade out stallions to mix the blood after three years, until a large pool develops.” He shrugged.” And we cross more, now that we know how. Are the cheese goats working?”

Fulop wagged one hand, still watching the almost-horse. “Mostly. The hard cheeses are taking longer than planned, but that’s not the milk. Do these,” he nodded to the animal, “have a name?”

“Majdnemio,” came the instant reply. “‘Almost horse’ in the old tongue.”

“My-nem-eeoh.” Fulop nodded. “Perfect.”

Fulop’s uncle met him and the transport the next day at “Tanyanagy,” their ranch. Fulop opened the side of the transport, lowering the ramp, and the four majdnemio walked out. They wore halters, so the waiting men approached slowly, each clipping a lead rope to one beast. “Behold, uncle. Horses.”

István busied himself with the pale brown mare, leading her to the pen. Once all four had been turned in, fed, and watered, he sighed a little. “No hair.”

“Only the tail, and the skin in winter, sir. Dr. Szentmihaly said that manes and heart death are collocated.”

The medium brown mare shook all over, then rolled in the dirt. “Oh.” István watched the horses for another minute or two. “They are shorter shoulder to tail than the video animals.”

“Sprinters, Uncle. We’ll find a way.”

Uncle, nephew, and ranch employees shared tired sighs. It was the unofficial colony motto. That, along with “Swear, then Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome,” and “Bureaucrats and fish stink in three days.” Off-worlder bureaucrats, especially.

The next few months passed in training, feeding, and riding the majdnemio. Getting them used to gulyas, grass runners, and whip-cracks took more patience than did making proper saddles and blankets that fit. Come spring, Fulop rode out on Janka, the almost-black mare. She and Grey, the stallion, matched the gulyas grazing the lush grasses of the estate. Small gulyas followed their dams, nibbling the most tender new vegetation. Janka snorted and shook her head, but behaved.

Mmmmbay? a black calf called, staring right and left.

Mmbooooh. The calf trotted to its dam, happier to be in familiar company. The gulyas faded with age, turning grey after a half planetary year.

A dozen colour quail flushed from the grass near a tree, crimson and green flashing as they swept into the air. “Csirip! Csirip!” Fulop glanced up. Bright yellow eyes in a yellow and orange head peered down at him. A Jacobi’s imperial perched in the tree, no doubt watching for bugs. Higher up, one of the carrion eaters soared on a thermal, sun gleaming on leathery hide. The biologists had filled the niches as best they could. Janka shook her head again. Fulop leaned forward and patted her neck. “Dobra io.” Good horse.

They continued their rounds. “Oh, not again.” Fulop unstrapped his stock whip and held it in his left hand as Janka trotted closer to the clump of gulyas. “Hai, away from there,” he called. The cattle had bunched in a fence corner, trying to get to the identical grass on the other side. That grass belonged to the neighbor, Beglarka Martinson. For some reason, these six gulyas refused to leave the fence alone. “Hai!”

The grey and off-white gulyas stared at him, then returned to pushing on the inner fence. Crack! He snapped the whip over head. The cattle startled, then moved away from the sound. He never hit them with the whip—the sound alone got them moving. Crack! The gulyas sped up to a fast walk. Janka half-trotted to keep up. Blaaaaaah, one of the females protested. Crack! He pushed them back to the larger group.

“Supper, one of these days,” he warned. “You will be supper.”

Horse and rider returned to the long, low main house in later afternoon. Sera, Fulop’s younger sister, met them at the gate to the animal yard, barn, and stables. She waited as he dismounted, then led Janka to her stall. “Aunt Janka’s still put out that you named a horse after her.” Sera smiled and turned on the water for him.

He “undressed” the mare and hung the saddle and blanket on the stall’s chest-high partition wall for the moment. “At least it wasn’t a gulyas.”

The trim, dark-haired girl pretended to throw a sponge at him, then handed him the cleaning bucket. In spring and summer, majdnemio only needed wiping, not brushing, aside from the tail. Winter had been different. Dr. Szentmihaly had been right—majdnemio grew hairy coats in winter. Very thick, hairy coats that had to be brushed, that they then dumped all at once over a few days in mid-spring, leaving shed hair everywhere.

“Uncle István got a message from Eszternovi,” Sera warned. She eased out of his way, moving slowly to keep from spooking Janka. Sera tipped her head up, nose in the air, and recited, “The Colonial Inspection Directorate has announced that in light of the findings at New Texas, all subsidiary worlds, independent or not, will be visited to confirm that they are upholding the proper standards and procedures enshrined in the charters and memoranda of membership in the Union of Worlds.”

“You sound like the last Union Day speech recording.” He checked Janka’s hoof as the mare ate.

Thppppppth. “For that, you can clean your own stalls and buckets.” She stomped down the central corridor of the animal enclosure.

Fulop cleaned the saddle, bridle, and blanket, then went to the main house. He smelled sweetwood smoke and meat, and smiled. Aunt Maja had made good on her threat to turn the weanling calf into dinner. “Tender as a blackie” had become a local approbation for a reason! His mouth watered as he imagined the evening meal.

He washed his face and hands, and tidied his thick, black mustache. His hair looked presentable, and a fresh shirt served to guarantee entry into civilization, or at least into the dining room. Once he got cleaned up, he tapped on Uncle István’s door. “Come in,” his uncle growled from behind two screen projections. “Any problems?”

“No, sir. The grass looks very good, and all the calves are mothering up well. I saw one leatherwing, but it passed through going south. The usual six tried to get through the fence, so I shooed them back to the herd.” Fulop sat on one of the gulyas-hide chairs. “Sera warned me about a pending visit.”

The greying, heavyset man snorted, sounding like Grey, the stallion. “Woe unto us. The Palatine may recommend Tanyanagy as a model ranch for the administrators to visit, since we have the third highest species diversity in this district.” He leaned back in the chair. “What bothers me is the news from the National Grasslands Park. Here.” He waved his left hand, and the image projection pivoted, turning so Fulop could see.

“St. Stephan the Horseman, that’s horrible!” Blackened grass and clumps of something smoked, kilometers and kilometers of it. Here and there, a few patches of dead, senescent overgrowth remained. “What happened?”

“Storm started it. It hasn’t been grazed, aside from a few native antelope-like things, ah, larifari…I can’t recall the official name.” István sat up in the chair, which adjusted to match. “The environmental advisor for the Palatine’s worried that we will be sanctioned for that, since it is supposed to be maintained as pristine habitat.”

“Ah, but it was pristine habitat, sir, more or less.” Terraforming didn’t leave many native species on any world, especially not plants and soil microbes. He’d studied far too much of that before opting out of the upper-division administrative track. Agricultural management and animal husbandry suited him much better, and cost far less, since he’d had Tanyanagy to use for any required projects.

He blinked several times as a thought hit him. “Sir, is that why you and Mr. Farkas and Dr. Szentmihaly rushed to get the gulyas and sheep and goats onto the land?”

His uncle smiled, a slow blooming expression of pride filling his sturdy square face. “Yes. Now you understand. Grass needs grazers or fire. That’s one reason our line clan left Old Terra, because we were no longer permitted to manage the environment the way it needed.” The smile faded, and his uncle reached back, smoothing his long, grey ponytail. “I’m worried, if what the consul from New Texas reports is true, that the Colonial Oversight Administrators are getting more and more rigid about penalizing local adaptations that have not been approved by the Central Worlds Colonization Variances Committee.”

Fulop looked once more at the news holo from the grassland preserve. The image recorder had reached the edge of the designated reserve. On the other side of the protective energy barrier and biota-block, knee-high greenish-blue grass covered the gently rolling land as far as the image went. A few white heart flowers bloomed among the green, and he noted the thorny spikes of stay-for-me. Grass, forbs, and a nitrogen-fixing shrub, all healthy and all grazed. The early stems of the stay-for-me would die off in a few weeks, leaving the roots to continue their work. The plants regrew once cooler weather returned, and gulyas, sheep, and native grazers loved the tender autumn stems of the legume. He shrugged. “Nothing we can do until we know, sir, aside from going through all our files to make sure we documented everything we needed to, and nothing we don’t need to.”

Uncle István’s smile returned. “Exactly. The next time you go out, look at the calves, and see if any of the twins are weak. We’re eating the winter twin today, and I want to start fattening two or three for the summer table.”

Fulop thought as his uncle reversed the image projection once more. “There are two in the south pasture, and one in the marshy pasture. None of them are growing as fast as the rest of their cohort, but all seem healthy.” He stroked his mustache. “I’m not sure about the brindled female in the marshy pasture, sir. Her calf was later mothering up last year, wasn’t it?”

His uncle leaned back once more, eyes closed, fingers tapping the arms of his chair. “The brindled female with the asymmetrical horns?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, ah, yes, she was.” He kept his eyes closed. “We’ll take that one, then the other two you suggested.” He opened his eyes. “Oh, we’re not supposed to eat gulyas, according to the latest recommendations from Central Committee for Species Relations.”

“Not eat the gulyas? What a—” Fulop caught himself before he said something very rude indeed. “May we shear the sheep and goats?”

“Yes, but only if they truly need it to keep from overheating, or if something tries to move into their coats.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes half-closed. “Once again, I give thanks to St. James, St. Stephan, and St. Fiacre that we abide at the far end of the Union of Worlds.”

“Amen and amen!”

By midsummer, Fulop felt comfortable with the majdnemio mares and stallion. Grey seemed far more easygoing than the mares were, leading to some far under the breath observations by the other men about females of all species. Uncle István ignored the comments. He consulted with Dr. Szentmihaly and decided that they would breed the majdnemio in early autumn, after the last seasonal gulyas gathering and marking finished. The gulyas stayed calmer when the men rode majdnemio. The gulyas trotted away from even the smallest, quietest runabout. In contrast, they ignored the majdnemio.

One warm, clear morning, Fulop, his uncle, and several others rode out to look at the fences and check the water. One of the auto-waterers had developed a programming error, so all of them needed inspection. Fulop didn’t mind. He preferred riding out under the open sky to working in the office, confirming genetic diversity and checking sale prices. The midsummer heat agreed with him.

The ever-present wind stirred the grasses in the marsh pasture. Fulop turned Janka toward the drier end of the grass. Two dozen gulyas grazed or napped, grey and black lumps in the green and pale brown grass. Here, some wetland species held on, native grasses that grew taller than the preferred grazing plants. The gulyas ate the natives, just not as quickly they devoured the terraform species. Fulop waved away a swarm of stinging gnats. Janka’s tail swept forward, swatting the flies that tried to settle on her skin.

He studied the grasses and other plants. What he could see looked good. He considered the taller, wet-footed plants. They reached almost shoulder-high to a man on foot. Fulop made a mental note to tell his uncle and the others. They needed to thin the stand, get rid of the dead standing growth to encourage fresh.

A clump of reed-like plants waved and bowed, then bowed again, against the wind. Two gulyas turned, staring at the tall grass. Fulop backed the mare. He began to turn Janka away from the marsh grasses. A calf trotted toward the tall plants, head bobbing. Its dam followed more slowly.

Mmbwaaaaaaahhhhhh! A bull sounded a warning cry. Fulop turned his mount toward the bull. He heard grass move behind him.

The calf called. Blaaa—

Thud. The calf’s cry stopped faster than it started.

Fulop looked back and caught a glimpse of cream and black stripes pulling the calf’s body into the dry, ungrazed grasses. Janka kicked toward the shape, then sprinted away. Two more gulyas screamed. A grey and black stream of cattle sprinted east, toward the higher ground and shorter grass.

Crack! “Hai! Hai hai hai!” Crack. Other riders approached on the trot. Uncle István, Ferenk, and Beglarka came closer. Beglarka cracked her whip again, turning the gathering herd north, away from the marsh.

“What?” his uncle demanded.

“Striped jayger.” Fulop slowed Janka from trot to walk. He caught his breath. “Grabbed a calf there.” He pointed with the butt of his whip. As he did, the grasses shifted once more, visible even from this distance. “Can’t shoot it in the dry grass.”

“Nem.” His uncle’s face darkened. “Chase it out.”

How? Before he could ask, Beglarka’s brown and white majdnemio reared. The tall woman kept her seat. The stallion landed with a heavy thud, then surged forward. His rider cracked her whip. Ferenk rode after her.

“Follow,” István commanded. Fulop turned Janka and let go of the coils of leather in his right hand. The mare began to trot again. The other riders eased as close as they dared to the grasses.

Crack! Crack crack snap crack! Beglarka snapped her whip over her head as Ferenk shouted, “Hai, Haiai! Abcug, abcug!” Be gone!

Hraaaaaooooor! Beglarka’s stallion roared a challenge, then lunged ahead, into the grass. He rose onto his hind legs and crashed down.

Hairesssss! Cream and black erupted from the grass! The jayger bounded out, mouth open, fury made flesh. Fulop and Janka gave chase. István raced past them, rope already in hand. He threw, snaring the predator’s back leg. Grey spun and raced away, dragging the false-cat. Ferenk and Beglarka rode past as Janka snorted and slowed.

Fulop let the mare walk, then dismounted. She needed to rest and cool down without him on her back. The majdnemio remained sprinters, although they recovered quickly. He coiled the whip and hung it from his belt. He led the mare, walking her until she calmed. It wasn’t that far to water, and the others had matters well in hand, or in rope. Who would have thought that István Gabor, starship navigator, would be one of the best ropers on Novi Magyarsk? Too bad the talent had not passed to his nephew. Janka shook her head, then shook it again. Fulop reached up and awkwardly drew the long blast-carbine from the saddle scabbard. Better safe than eaten or trampled. Whatever had troubled her passed without sound or sign, and the mare settled down.

The others joined him at the water. Beglarka and István carried the body of the jayger slung between them. “Here.” Fulop took the other man’s lead rope as Ferenk dismounted, then untied the jayger from the two saddles. The other riders dismounted, as well, and walked their majdnemio cool before letting them drink. The brown and cream stallion shook his head and acted very pleased with himself.

A hole marred the predator’s flank, punched through flesh and muscle straight into the heart. “Good shot,” Fulop said.

Ferenk shook his head. “It’s not so hard when the thing’s stretched out with ropes on front and hind feet.” He tipped his flat, tan hat back and raked sandy-blond hair off his forehead. “I don’t think that’s the only one.” He went to take his mare’s lead rope from István.

István crouched, inspecting the remains once he took his catch rope off them. “I don’t see anything obviously wrong, no broken teeth or bad legs.” He shook out the rope, then coiled it, glancing at the material as he did. “Stretched a little, but still usable.”

Beglarka left her majdnemio drinking from the spring-fed pond. She, too, crouched, studying the slender, short tail. She counted something, then dropped the tail and stood. “It’s young, two planetary years? A xenobiologist would know better, but the tail’s thin without the fat reserves of a full adult. The tails get longer until about age ten, or so the experts think. I saw a holo of one, tail this long.” She spread sturdy arms almost to their full reach. “It fit the rest of the body, not like this boy’s.”

István nodded and rubbed his mustache. “Right. None of us saw it, it wasn’t here. There are no native predators in this district.”

Beglarka opened her mouth, then stopped. She nodded so hard that some curls escaped the red and green scarf wrapped over her thick black hair. “No jaygers. Only small remnant species, as the terraforming results reports clearly show.” She considered the remains. “You’re not leaving it near water, are you, István?”

“No. We’ll put it behind me on Grey, and I’ll dump it where the district sanitation commissioners can find it.” He winked, and Fulop grinned. The Palatine’s joke-name for the leatherwings had spread. His uncle continued, “After all, native species are best designed to deal with native species.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferenk said. He pulled his hat back down and sniffed. “I wonder if the leather would tan at all?”

“Keeping the scales on would be a challenge,” Beglarka said. “Or cleaning all of them off.” Her majdnemio plodded over to stand beside her. “Dobry io,” she said as she reached up and patted his heck. He snorted and spattered her shoulder with nose slime. “Spatny io!” Bad horse!

Fulop turned away, studying his mount and the gulyas. He coughed, fighting off laughter, then managed, “Sir, shall I see about finding that calf you wanted us to separate out?”

“Yes, do that. I’ll take care of this minor matter, and join you.”

Fulop carefully did not look at Beglarka until he’d gotten himself under control. She had a quick temper some days. She’d almost brained a man on Fargonne Station after he made one crack too many about her superstructure, which was quite impressive. He’d recovered, but she’d decided to settle dirt-side. She maintained a lot of the touchier equipment in the district, as well as ranching. He heard her saddle creak, then she said, “If you’re culling calves, I’ll buy one. And a beef gulyas, as well, if you have a spare. I only had two pairs of twins this year, so I’m trading bulls with the ranch north of Eger Two.”

“If you don’t mind cow meat, we’ve got one we were going to cull.” István nodded. “Fulop, Ferenk, bring crook-horn and three calves to the home farm.”

“Yes, sir.”

#

“…Why was the atmospheric thermal disturbance permitted to cause such damage?” The inspector’s overly-patient tone grated on Fulop’s ears. “Was there a programming error?”

“No, Xeno-Inspector Bufon,” Dr. Szofia Bathory, the grassland biologist, replied soothingly. “This world’s terraforming package did not include weather or atmospheric controls once past the primary post-preparation stage. Such weather phenomena as caused the damage are inherent in the planetary atmospheric circulation.”

“Oh.” The slender man sniffed, then sniffed again. He studied the land outside the air-transport’s windows. “This area is not damaged. I was told that no attempt had been made to contain the fire.” He shifted in his seat, as much as he could in the full five-point harness, and glared at Fulop. “Mr. Gabor, I was told that the fire burned without containment. I see no evidence of damage below us.”

Fulop bristled at the accusation in the man’s voice, but held onto his temper with both hands. “That is correct, Xeno-Inspector Bufon. The flames consumed senescent material within the preserve, but did not encounter sufficient fuels to continue burning once the fire reached the border. All the land you see below us is grazed in order to encourage the optimal health of the introduced botanical species.” He did his best to sound like an official report, or the terribly boring data files on nutrient pathways in grassland biomes.

“Oh.” The inspector did not appear pleased. Or perhaps he had been born with an unhappy expression and had chosen not to seek cosmetic modification. Fulop met Szofia’s eyes. She gave him a quick, conspiratorial smile, then schooled her features back to sobriety. He liked her smile. He did not like the inspector’s disdain for everything on Novi Magyarsk.

“We are going to a residential unit on an agro-industrial property?” Xeno-Inspector Bufon half-asked.

“Yes, Xeno-Inspector,” Szofia said. “Tanyanagy was the third site of gulyas introduction, and the first for majdnemio. It will provide you with the best example of long-duration, non-cultivated agricultural land use on this continent.”

The man turned toward them once more, frowning more deeply. “Tahnee-ah naj? I was told that Unit Eight Four decimal Two was the proposed location, not an urbanized area. Or is Tahnee-ah naj a dialect usage?”

Dr. Bathory said, “The generational land managers found the nomenclature of their home culture easier to remember and less prone to digit reversal, Xeno-Inspector, and refer to the various divisions of ground by names. Tanyanagy translates to ‘very large cattle raising area’ in the original Magyar language.” She made a small, soothing gesture with her left hand. “The revised colonial charter provides for such language use, so long as the original designation is retained for official document files and reports.”

Bufon nodded. “Just so, provided that clarity of the data is maintained.” He paused, thin, pale eyebrows drawing down into a fine V between his narrow eyes. “What is the second species you mentio—” The transport bounced a little in the late morning wind, and Bufon closed his eyes for a moment. He remained silent until they landed and disembarked at the pad two kilometers from the main farmyard. Aunt Janka and Sera waited for them with the larger of the two transports. The women wore practical, divided skirts and knee-high black boots, with white and green blouses, and black hats to keep off the sun. Szofia guided the visitor to the women without seeming to as Fulop collected the man’s three bags, including one bulging at the seams with hardcopies of settlement maps.

As Szofia introduced “Nutritional specialist Janka Varady-Gabor, and assistant livestock technician Sera Gabor,” Fulop loaded the man’s gear into the transport. He made a second trip with Szofia’s small bag and wedged it into a corner. Aunt Janka had put all the safety belts and pads back into the transport, reducing it to four seats plus cargo. Fulop hid a scowl. If he rode on the rear hatch, the bureaucrat would die of horror, or call in the Union authorities over the matter. Walking in his dress shoes would hurt.

Behind him, Fulop heard a whistle. Uncle István had ridden up to the fence, leading a second majdnemio. The others got into the transport. Sera gave him a worried look, but Fulop tipped his head back, toward his uncle. She nodded and smiled, then got in herself. Once the transport trundled off toward the house, Fulop ducked through the fence and took the reddish-brown gelding’s reins and lead rope. “Thank you, sir.”

“I thought you could use a respite. How’s the weather up north?”

Once he mounted, Fulop said, “Chilly, with broken clouds. No rain or snow yet, but some was coming in from the west, just light rain. Temperature was ten degrees or so.”

“We could use a little, now that the hay’s baled and stored. We have Beglarka’s old stallion, and she has a fresh one, five years old, very solid. Grey went to the other continent, as you guessed.” His uncle scowled for a moment. He’d lost the wager. “But rain, perhaps?”

“Yes.” They rode slowly toward the home farm. “Dr. Szentmihaly’s assistant showed me some of the new grasses, and that hot-climate gulyas. The gulyas put on weight even in mid-summer at the southern test facility.” Their red-brown hides matched the dirt, something the biologists assured everyone was an accident. Pure accident. No one seemed to believe them, including Fulop.

“Hmmm.” István stayed quiet for a while. The cool wind felt good. The dusty dirt smell washed off the last bit of what his aunt called “urban itch.” Fulop let his eyes rest on the horizon. The late season grasses extended to the edge of the sky. A few clouds bubbled to the north, but no sign of rain troubled the sky for now. At last, Uncle István asked, “Are the inspectors as bad as rumor has it?”

Fulop waited until the gelding stopped shying at something only he saw. “Easy, boy. Yes, sir, although they seemed far more worried about our not having built a large city around the original spaceport yet. We are behind on the development plan’s schedule for population growth and infrastructure expansion.” He took a long breath, sniffing the wind. “But they also expressed mild concern at the large average family size and are not entirely satisfied by the sex-ratios among technical field graduates.” Boys liked equipment more than girls did, and many women didn’t want to work outside the family farm or business after marriage.

A hearty sigh greeted his words, along with an under-the-breath mutter in Spacer. “Some things have not changed, I see. I was almost denied a training berth because of a lack of women in the class, and the ratio of placements being uneven.” He shook his head, as did his very dark brown majdnemio. “Dobry io.”

They left the gelding and mare in the stable, still saddled but with without bridles, then went to the house. Aunt Janka met them. “Sub-Inspector Bufon needs a computer support surface out by the gulyas pen. I have to finish the meal and see about answering two stock-purchase queries.”

“We’ll get it. Where’s Ferenk?”

“Out with Sera getting more gulyas. The visitor wants to see one of each sex, plus a steer, and one of each age class.” She sounded irked. “All at once. Here.” Her expression softened. “Dr. Bathory is at the fence to the east, studying the grass. She will return shortly.”

Fulop glanced at his uncle. István’s face had darkened, but his expression didn’t change. “We’ll get it. Thank you, dear.” Aunt Janka hurried back into the food preparation and storage area. “Change shoes and we’ll get the heavy table. I’ll get the floats. He might want a seat, as well.”

“Yes, sir.” Fulop traded nice shoes for sturdy boots and met his uncle in the secondary office, where they stored currently unused furnishings. István mounted the floats under the table. Fulop leaned forward, adding his weight as his uncle turned the floats on. The small repeller fields eased the weight of the table, and the two maneuvered it out of the office, down the hall the short distance to the emergency door, and out. It was not hard to find Sub-Inspector Bufon. His snug, brilliant yellow jacket and slim black pants stood out from the medium grey gulyas and pale brown dirt of the pen. He had not gone into the pen. His bags sat on the ground beside him.

“Sub-Inspector, sir,” Fulop called. “Where would you like the work surface located?”

“What?” The man turned, scowling. “Oh. Right there, beside the green bag.” He turned back to watching the two table calves as they drank from the water trough. “Is that water purified?”

“Yes,” István said, once he turned off the repellers under the table. “It is the same system as serves the house.”

“Oh.” That seemed to be the inspector’s favorite word. He walked to the table, watching the ground and lifting his feet to avoid clumps of grass. “Thank you. You are?”

Uncle István inclined toward him, not extending his hand. “István Gabor, owner of Tanyanagy and senior species diversity manager.”

Sub-Inspector Fulop relaxed and returned the semi-bow. “Thank you. This will work. I need to see representative samples of all domestic livestock present on the property. I was told that there are no poultry currently present?”

“That is correct, Sub-Inspector. As part of the genetic stock expansion program, the poultry resident here have been relocated to three other locations to increase genetic variability, and replacements have yet to arrive. Until then, we are allowing the poultry housing unit to continue self-cleaning, and are resting the environmental-enrichment enclosure.” The older man did not hesitate as the technical terms tripped off his tongue.

“Good. The well-being of the introduced species is a primary concern for the Colonial Quality Inspectorate.” Bufon had begun unpacking his data terminal, along with what appeared to be atmospheric sensors of some kind. “The two animals, there in the enclosure. Are they ill, or under post-stress observation?”

Fulop made the gesture for “neutral negation.” “Growth rate observation, sir. We were asked to evaluate growth rates for nutritional supplements that might be used to augment the standard grazing diet. We found it easier to do so while the juvenile animals are confined. Measuring metabolic gain or loss on free-ranging individuals has proved to be difficult.” As for the long-term life path of the weanlings, well, bureaucratic ignorance might be bliss.

“Oh.” The man entered the data. As he did, Uncle István peered toward some dust.

He pulled a vision augmenter from his jacket pocket and looked again. “Fulop, stay here,” he murmured. “I think Ferenk needs assistance.”

Where was Sera? “Yes, sir.”

After his uncle had hurried to the stable, the Sub-Inspector turned to Fulop again. “Why do you use the archaic title?”

What? Fulop blinked, then grabbed an answer. “My father’s brother was a jump-ship navigator, sir, prior to filing a patent for colonization. He still prefers the use of on-ship forms of address while on duty.”

“Oh. How archaic. Does it cause difficulties with inter-personal and gender relations?”

“Not here, no. Many of the foundation generation were space-trained and employed prior to settlement.”

The man found another screen on his device and entered more data. He frowned, changed screens once more, and added comments and observations. Dr. Bathory strolled toward them. The inspector ignored her. Fulop approved of her practical split-skirt and sturdy shoes. She gestured toward the pasture behind her. “Mr. Gabor, has that been grazed recently?”

Fulop tried to recall the rotation. “Ah, three weeks ago was the last time. We do high-intensity-short-duration here,” he pointed down. “Rotating at no more than five-week intervals. Right now, we are supplementing with stored grasses because of the dry weather.”

“Are the grasses stressed?” The bureaucrat sounded very concerned. “What signs of distress did you observe, Dr. Bathory?”

She shook her head. “None, Sub-Inspector Bufon. Any grazing damage has grown out, and the plants and soil appear to be in excellent condition. These are a species that goes dormant in the warmer seasons, appropriate for use in enclosures that are only occupied in cooler periods.”

“Oh. I see. Thank you.” More data entry followed.

Szofia started to say something, then stared at the approaching riders. “Are they on gulyas? No—” She caught herself. “They’re even better looking than I thought!”

Ferenk and Uncle István rode on either side of a herd of three gulyas steers, five females, and three calves. Sera followed behind, ushering one of the bulls along at a dignified pace. Fulop eased away from Dr. Bathory and the bureaucrat. They needed to get that bull into a separate enclosure as soon as possible. He trotted over to the reinforced pen they used for stallions and bulls, and opened the gate for Sera. She and her gelding encouraged the broad-shouldered, thick-necked gulyas into the pen as Fulop turned on the waterflow to the trough. The bull hesitated, then smelled the water and went for a drink. Sara turned her mare, and they eased out. Fulop closed and locked the heavy gate before the bull noticed.

Sera dismounted and led the mare over to where Fulop stood. “I think we need to line them up like the gulyas show videos do? I’ll walk Pinta a little, then come help.”

“Thanks.” Thus warned, Fulop walked with slow, smooth steps toward the very puzzled gulyas. The men had already sorted them by age and color, so Fulop concentrated on lining up the beasts. Ferenk handed him a riding stick, and Fulop used it as if it were a show stick, nudging the older cattle into the best poses. Sara and Aunt Janka appeared with some fodder, and they set some out for each animal, helping keep them quiet as Sub-Inspector Bufon stared, then began inspecting the gulyas through the fence.

“Have they been exposed to excess ultraviolet radiation?” the man demanded. He pointed to the calves, then to the oldest female. “The color should be uniform among the age groups.”

“No, Sub-Inspector,” Sera said. She stood beside the fence on the inside, near the sub-inspector. “This species grows lighter in color as it ages. At birth, the darker protective coloring absorbs heat, assisting with metabolic efficiency, and helps the young blend into the grasses in case of predators. As the gulyas age, cooling becomes a greater concern, and the camouflage is no longer needed for defense.”

Dr. Bathory, arms folded, nodded her head. “That’s a common trait among the young of many species, Sub-Inspector Bufon.”

“Oh.” He went back to the table and entered the information, frowning as he moved from screen to screen, or so Fulop guessed. One of the steers hefted his tail and made a large deposit of used fodder. Sub-Inspector Bufon sniffed, then sniffed again. “What is that smell?”

“Fresh excrement, sir.”

Another frown. “I trust it will be removed promptly, so as to prevent the spread of disease? The animals are not trained to use a waste disposal facility?”

Fulop didn’t dare meet his sister’s eyes. He studied the dirt as she said, “Thus far, gulyas have not proven amenable to such training. We keep them spread apart, and gather the waste on a regular basis to compost for fertilizer.” When he glanced up, Dr. Bathory had one hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. He glanced back at the soil, and the hoof of a calf. The calf sniffed him. He presented one hand, flat, fingers together. The small beast sniffed again, tasted with the tip of her soft brown tongue, and decided that he wasn’t edible. She returned to her dam.

“Is that normal behavior?”

Fulop nodded. “Yes, Sub-Inspector. The calves do not fear humans, and as long as we are quiet and the dams, the mothers of the calves,” he added quickly, “are calm, the calves will sniff, perhaps lick at us, then find other things of interest.”

The sub-inspector made notes on five gulyas before he finally noticed Ferenk and Uncle István, or rather, noticed what was under the two men. Sera had gotten on her mare again and had removed the four documented animals, taking them back to the pasture. Fulop checked on the bull and gave him a bit of fodder, then returned to his post. Bufon straightened up from studying the second steer and stopped abruptly. He pointed to the dark brown mare. His eyebrows rose, his eyes opened wide, and he yelped, “That’s not a gulyas!”

“No, sir,” Fulop said. “That’s a majdnemio.”

Bufon raced three paces back to his computer and entered data, then searched through screen after screen, or so Fulop guessed. The frown grew deeper and deeper. Dr. Bathory came closer to the fence and studied the mare. The majdnemio remained calm and looked almost bored, if they could be bored. Ferenk’s gelding seemed to be dozing. “Where? What?” Spluttering sounds followed the words, then, “I see no record of those. They cannot exist, there is no record. Nothing about them at all.”

“They are horses,” Uncle István stated. “They are as to old Earth horses as gulyas are to old Earth domestic cattle.”

The slender inspector shook his head. “No, they are not, and cannot exist. I have no record of such an animal, no approvals for such animals, and without records and documentation, they cannot exist. Whatever they are, they are not legal or acceptable.”

“Larifari.” Dark clouds seemed to gather around the older man. He growled, “They. Are. Horses.” The mare shook her head and glared, as well. Or was Fulop imagining things? Uncle István rode closer to the fence. The gulyas parted for him. The mare swished her tail, flashing a bit of coppery red among the darker brown.

Ferenk gave Fulop a worried look. He extended both index fingers and wagged his hands, pointing to his left. Move the gulyas. Ferenk nodded and the two of them nudged, prodded, and shifted the cattle away from fence and confrontation. “This might not end well,” Ferenk observed. His light brown gelding shook all over, then stamped once. “What he said.” He gave Fulop a weak grin.

The bureaucrat declared, “I repeat. Without documentation, the creatures are not permitted to exist. All steps of any breeding program must be documented, submitted for approval, tested for possible complications and environmental impacts, then properly confirmed, with samples submitted on demand. The gulyas were allowed because of the need to maintain the botanical health of the ecosystem. These. Are. Not. Approved. No document, no creature. They must be destroyed.” Sub-Inspector Bufon stuck his chin out and tried to look down on Uncle István.

The back of his uncle’s neck had turned deep red. Fulop gulped. One large hand clenched into a fist, then drifted down to the whip coiled at his knee. “Slussz!” Enough! “They act as horses, move as horse, eat as horse. Is horse!” Crack! The whip snapped in the air overhead.

The mare rose on her hind legs, then landed with a puff of dirt. Raaaaaahhhr! she declared, echoing her rider.

Sub-Inspector Bufon turned white. He wove back and forth, then collapsed into a heap beside the table.

Dr. Bathory hurried to take his pulse. She looked up, shaking her head, eyes dancing with laughter. “He fainted!”

The mare snorted. Uncle István patted her neck with his free hand. “Dobry io.”

“…No, Sub-Inspector Bufon,” Dr. Bathory assured the visitor an hour later. “You entered all the data and reports, and uploaded them before you had your spell. I’m sorry. I should have offered you more water. You got dehydrated on the trip down, and you drank less than a liter once you arrived.”

“Oh.” He finished the bottle, then ate more of the wonderful—meatless—lentil and herb soup Aunt Janka served them. “But all the data uploaded properly?”

The botanist nodded, mouth full, then said, “Yes. I made certain to save the confirmation reply, and backed the data up to the secondary backup site as well as the primary, just as you showed us.”

Fulop gestured his agreement, as did Sera. Ferenk and Uncle István would eat later. They were returning the gulyas to the proper pasture. The bull had been less than inclined to cooperate, of course. That Dr. Bathory had finished the data entry while Sera, Fulop, and Aunt Janka carried the visitor indoors and watched over him need not be mentioned. Nor the absence of any hint of a mention of the majdnemio.

After all, as Bufon himself had said—without documentation, the horses did not exist.

A Marker In The Dark

David Johnston

The trouble with working in space is wherever you go, the nerds have beaten you to it. This is how a working stiff like me ends up piloting a MARVIN drive Verne-Class escort ship on a herding run for a group of eight Cthulhus. Not even the “Latin” was safe. Gargantio Lovecraftia didn’t even have tentacles, but when the geeks first laid eyes on the spiny, vaguely lobster-like forms the size of a blue-water battleship riding the magnetic currents between stellar masses, it had to be old Earth horror.

Space is full of stuff like that. Get a bunch of lonely engineers out past the last Noyzewski-Collett junction and within a few years they’ve given everything names derived from a few hundred years of well-curated geek crap. That, and established some really weird traditions, like the one currently playing merry hell with my instrumentation.

“Hey, Gerbil, you get a fix on that old drive core? Computer is having a hard time peeling out the noise from the lulus.”

“Yeah, Troy, got a lock. Sending coordinates and state over now; computer should even out soon.”

Hank Gerber, or Gerbil to those who know him, was on the far side of the pod. Some poor sap had died out here, and his companions had left the Farradium core of his MARVIN drive open as a waymarker for anyone passing by. I’m sure the dead guy appreciated screwing over the nav systems for everyone else traveling in the sector until his core self-immolated in the nearest star.

For those who don’t know, the Magnetic Acceleration by Ruparashielded Variable Ionic Number drive works by selectively shielding part of the ship from interacting with the external magnetic field. Shove some extra electrons in there, and you’ve got a positive charge moving through a magnetic field. Assuming you don’t get stupid and axis-lock yourself with the field, it allows you to maneuver. At least, so long as the only maneuver you care to make is a big helix parallel to the field. Violating the conventional laws of physics is only possible thanks to Farradium, which wonder material, of course, brings us back to the lulus, and why our crew was flying for months watching them.

This is why the geeky epic names fall flat. Farradium, Cthulhus, MARVIN drives, it all sounds cool until you’re the guy whose job it is to monitor the beasts for crap. That’s right. Farradium, the exotic material that enabled mankind to efficiently move through sidereal space, is extracted from armored space whale poop. My crew and I were the lucky ones who got to collect it, in all its greasy, stinking glory.

My computer chirped, and the noise on the screen settled into a clean display of actually relevant information: Gerbil on the east, eight lulus strung in a rough line, me on the west, and Tom and the off-rotation crew in the Pequod in the trailing position. As I watched, lulu number 248 made our day.

“Pequod, this is Advance Two. Tom, do you read?”

“Go ahead, Troy. You get that noise clear?”

“Yeah, Gerbil got a good lock. It isn’t moving much, so same coords should work for you when you get in range. Cleared just in time, we just made rent. Lulu 248 left a present. Looks like a good one based on the delta vee. Sending vectors now.” The higher the delta vee, or acceleration, the stronger the magnetic forces involved, which usually meant more, or purer, farradium.

“Good news! I’ll get the intercept calculated. Tom out.”

In about twelve minutes, Tom would have the Pequod ready to capture, process, and store the useful bits out of a turd the size of my ship, and we’d be that much closer to meeting quota and going home.

The engineers on the NC Junction stations had used the spin of their rings to make some serious headway on aquaponics tech. Fresh foods of most sorts you’d care to have were all available for less than an hour’s pay. Pequod didn’t have that luxury. While the habitation ring was spun up for comfort, every time the ship maneuvered, it had to shut down. Zero g plays merry hell with plants, so everything we got on a jaunt was frozen or dried. Centuries since the dawn of computing, and somehow we still ended up eating rice and beans.

I sat down next to Gerbil at the dining table. We’d passed Jules and Stanford on their way out to the ships for their shift, but Pete and Emmett, Crew Three, were on sleep hours and had decided to sit up with us for a few before we started Pequod duties.

Emmett grinned at me. “Pretty nice loot box you spotted out there, Troy! Enough Farradium for about half a MARVIN, according to Quillet. First one in, what, twelve days?”

“Thirteen,” I replied, grimacing at Emmett’s insistence on calling our ship’s computer by its official “Quillet” designation. Named, of course, for an evil supercomputer from a crappy twenty-second century holo game. Not enough to call it something nerdy, oh no; it had to be evil, too. “We almost missed it, honestly. I had barely gotten my screens cleared from some Murphy damned magnetic anomaly. Another idiot mistaking a navigational hazard for a fitting memorial.”

“I don’t mind fixing the computers. It means someone still knows they were there,” replied Gerbil around a mouthful of beans.

“Keep your Murphing mouth shut when you eat. I don’t want to be swimming in bean backwash next time we’re in here in zero g. And of course you don’t mind. You’ve been a sentimental sucker ever since you met Ada,” Pete quipped.

Gerbil flushed while Pete and Emmett laughed. Gerbil was barely the youngest on the crew at twenty-seven earth equivalents, but had easily the least seat time. Hence, his getting paired with salty old me for training. “Come on, guys, tell me you wouldn’t want something left behind if you died. It’s hard to imagine anything lonelier than dying out here.”

“Buy a round for me back at Nautilus, put me on the memorial wall at Olympus Mons, do what you want. I wouldn’t be around to care,” Pete replied, thumping Gerbil on the arm.

“But what about the people back home? Don’t you think they’d want something to mark it? Who would you be leaving behind?”

Pete grew still. I chided, “People have all sorts of reasons for being out here, Gerbil. A lot of those reasons come from stuff back home. Don’t go prying into what isn’t yours to know.” Gerbil reddened, and Pete relaxed a little.

As the conversation drifted towards the rumors about a new hull planned by Argonaut, my mind drifted back towards home. Emmett was spacer-born, but he was the only one on the crew. My dad had been a terraforming engineer on Luna. It was a dang sight more comfortable than the barren vacuum rock that pioneers like Armstrong had first stood on, but turning that into something earth-like was gonna take more than the few centuries we’d had. It’s got enough atmosphere now for you to be aware of how cold it is, but the rad shielding was still only there by the dint of work of guys like my dad.

Sometimes, that work took a bit more from you than your typical nine-to-five. Dad had bought it after an accident with a high-pressure line on one of the bigger colony field generators. Mom had been gone for years, and after that, there wasn’t a lot keeping me on Luna. Seemed only natural to head out into the NC network and see what I could find. Mostly what I found was hard work and empty space, but sometimes, that’s what a body needed. I honestly didn’t understand Gerbil. He wasn’t like the rest of us, since it seemed he actually had worthwhile reasons to stay back stationside. Men have lots of reasons, sure enough, but most of them have to do with getting away from something rather than going toward.

I sighed and pushed my half-eaten meal into the slot, interrupting an animated discussion of the relative merits of alloys versus the new carbolattice hull struts. “Come on, Gerbil, we’ve still gotta repair that reclamation backup system. Pete and Emmett need to rest up before their next lulu shift.” I gave the two a pointed look.

As we walked into service bay two, past the Turbo Encabulator chugging merrily away on 248’s dropping, Gerbil stopped me. “I don’t belong out here, do I, Troy?” The kid looked remarkably morose.

“Belong? Probably not, no.” His face fell. “Now, I’m not sure I’d say anyone really belongs out here. It’s not a place to stay. It’s a place to work. Even so, you’re not the typical outrider.” My tone softened as Gerbil scuffed his feet dejectedly. “You’ve got too much worthwhile elsewhere. No one ‘belongs’ out here because there’s nothing out here, but nothing fits better for some of us. I don’t know how you even ended up out here. It’s not like there aren’t any jobs on a typical station.”

“It’s not that easy. ”

“Never is, but it’s hard to say outriding a lulu herd is, either. Now, come on. There’s stuff to do.” I pulled the housing loose on the reclamation unit and turned the manual shutoffs. The computer was supposed to have shunted flow to the other units already, but I swear that thing sometimes lived up to its evil video game namesake. I grabbed hold of the first filter panel. “Okay, you hit the releases and I’ll pull.”

Gerbil hit the first release and started talking. “It’s not what I expected out here. Some of the old outriders who lived in Huygens, back on Mars, would talk about it, and it always seemed… I dunno, it sounds stupid, but it sounded glamorous. Just you and a single ship, alone in space among the biggest living things humanity has ever found. Like something out of an old story.” I grimaced at the reminder of where most of the stuff out here got named. Why was Gerbil telling me this? I handed him the first panel and started to pull the next. Gerbil kept on. “I thought it would be this great adventure, but most of what we do is fix stuff, eat beans, and wait for crap.”

I had never been fond of talking about this stuff, and tried to redirect back to the work as I handed over the second filter. “See any damage on those panels, Gerb?”

“Nah, these two look fine. Dirty, but I guess that’s the point.”

“Figures. It’s probably the feed lines. This’ll take a bit more time. Hand me the multidriver.”

Gerbil was unperturbed by my attempt at stifling the conversation. As I wormed my way into the reclamation unit trying to access the routing module, he continued. “I don’t think I would still be out here at all, but… Ada. Or I guess, Ada’s dad. He’s big on commitments, and I know he’d never approve of me proposing if he knew I’d left before my contract was up. And you know, I guess he’s right. If I don’t stick with this when the glamor wears off and it turns to work, then how does he know I’d stick with his daughter when things got hard?” I grunted noncommittally and asked him for the magnagripper. “I’ve only got another year and a bit on my contract. Ada says she’ll wait. And it’s not like I don’t get back to Niven Station from time to time.”

I sighed and squirmed my way out of the system holding the routing module. Branch C had gotten clogged, so at least we knew the problem. Of course, it was in the murphing middle of the system. Guess I wasn’t escaping the conversation. “I suppose that all makes sense, Gerbil. If you don’t plan on sticking with it, though, why’d it bother you when I said you didn’t belong?”

Gerbil looked thoughtful as he took the module from me and started feeding in the snake. “I figure it’s all part of the same thing. If it’s obvious I don’t want to be here, am I really committed enough?”

“Hey, now, I didn’t say you didn’t want to be here. I said you didn’t belong here. There’s a difference.”

Gerbil shrugged. “This is all for her. I guess I just get a little caught up in feeling like I’m not doing it right, you know?” That gave me pause, because honestly, I didn’t. It was just the job, and you got it done. If the job wasn’t done right, you weren’t done.

He continued, “I’ve got an uncle who manages a water processing facility on Europa. He’s always hiring, and says I’ve got a job whenever I want it. Definitely not glamorous, even less than this, but stable, meaningful, and I can be home every night.” He pulled the snake free, carrying a glob of schlock with it. More quietly, he said, “I will miss the lulus, though.”

Now that, I did understand. I took the module and started reinstalling it. Hank Gerber was a better man than I. “Sounds like you’ve got a good plan. Don’t let me get you down, Gerb.”

Our next out-rotation got off to a rough start. Crew Three had apparently decided to stave off boredom on their shift by pushing their delta vee to see how tight a spiral they could take. No condemnation, we’ve all done it, but Pete, in his enthusiasm, apparently knocked loose a chemical fuel conduit. The chemical thrusters are normally only used for take-off and landing, and Pete had cleaned up the mess, but it still stank of fuel in Advance One. Gerbil was in a bit of a mood over it, so I was mostly leaving the comms on low and watching the stars.

As I half-listened to Gerbil curse Pete and his ancestry, I tried to remember the names of the local stars. I had grown up on Luna, so the same stars humans have talked about for years were my normal. Out this far, though, on a run between Niven’s Star and Randall Monroe in M71, everything is different. Even the constellations not wrecked by parallax were obscured behind the local cluster. Still, I had been out here long enough that I was starting to get the hang of them.

As my eyes fell on the familiar stars of the Sherlock constellation, I noticed something off. Between Zelazny’s star on the brim and Poul’s Giant on the pipe, I saw two stars I hadn’t noticed before. As I watched them, one split, with the offshoot slowly shifting closer to Poul’s Giant. And closer to us.

Aw, hell.

“Tom, Gerbil, we’ve got inbound. Chemships, coming in from -48.5 degrees, 128.2 polar.”

“Copy, Troy, this is Gerbil. Are you loaded hot?”

“Yeah, getting weapons systems online. Do you have a line on them? Tom, can you run triangulation?”

“Already on it. Three ships at 140 klicks and closing. You boys are gonna have your hands full real quick.”

Chemical reaction ships were always bad news. First, they were more maneuverable than our MARVIN drives, which made dealing with them difficult. Second, they were much shorter range. While this meant they had a limited area of effect, it also meant whenever you ran into them, you were on their home turf. Rustlers tend to not want their victims being able to point out their hidey holes. With all that, when the only thing around for millions of klicks worth paying attention to is you and your lulus, you learn pretty quickly not to trust surprise visitors.

Three on two wasn’t the worst odds I‘d dealt with, but it wasn’t fun, either. With the spread of a typical lulu pod, Gerbil and I were about fifteen klicks apart. That’s not as big as it sounds, in space, but it was far enough that we weren’t getting to each other quickly. Our weapons were pretty standard: missiles at distance, lasers for close, and the plasma lance for stupid close, especially in as strong a field as we were in. None of them would do much good in a hurry if one of us got in trouble from that distance. The missiles had decent delta vee and could cover that distance in about seventeen seconds, but a lot can happen in seventeen seconds.

Gerbil’s voice popped back on comms, uncharacteristically shaky. “Troy, I’ll drop a minefield on the 125-135 spread. Hopefully they hit those first and we don’t have to fight all of them.”

“Gerbil, calm down and remember how this works. The mines don’t have MARVINs. You’ll need to launch when you’re at the ninety. Set release when you’re at the thirty-five to forty-five polar.”

“Shit. Right, tangents. Coming up on release, then.”

“What are they loaded with? I don’t want to pinch a lulu.”

“I know, I know, just can openers.”

“Copy that, Tom, depressurizer mines on the 125-135 polar.”

We probably weren’t lucky enough for the can openers to work. Despite the space marine-fueled dreams of the geeks, spacecraft were pretty fragile things. You don’t need to obliterate the entire ship when a couple three-centimeter gashes in the hull can vent all your air. A thumb-sized, prox-detonated chunk of explosive surrounded by a scored tungsten wire wrap like our depressurizer mines could do a number on a living compartment, but the target ships were small, and space…wasn’t. An EMP mine, or pinch, had a much larger area of effect, but could badly hurt our lulus.

I increased my ship’s apparent charge and felt the increased centripetal force snug me a little deeper into my seat. We tended to keep our fifteen-kilometer diameter counterclockwise helix to about a three-minute revolution, which gave us a pretty comfortable standard Earth-g delta vee. Doubling my charge doubled my apparent weight, but halved my radius, tucking my ship a little closer into the lulus. The rustlers certainly meant to kill them eventually, since they could hardly follow them into Randall station as if we had never been there. Killing a Cthulhu wasn’t a particularly simple process, though. They’d do for temporary cover.

Once into the pod, I set the computer into a figure-eight holding pattern just in time to see the first chemship slide into view under lulu 544. Looks like Gerbil had short straw and had drawn two, leaving me the solo. My first Nemo missile streaked off the left pylon a moment later, locking on to the heat sig. He’d been on a decel burn, and the residual heat on the engine bell lit up thermals like a christmas tree. The tiny missile covered the two kilometers in a bit over six seconds, trailing a crazy swirl of plasma through the magnetic field. The rustler fired rotaries, but the missile easily corrected. I grew hopeful that this might have been an inexperienced crew until the telltale blue streak of ionized hydrogen from a lateral plasma lance swatted my missile.

Okay, not inexperienced. Just crazy. And dangerous. Normally, plasma lances were oriented forward only, to avoid sending a trail of superheated death whipping in a halo around your maneuvering ship. These rustlers seemed not to care.

“Gerbil, looks like they’ve got multiple lance mounts. Don’t let them close.”

“Little busy, Troy! I can barely keep both of them in view at the same time.”

“Roger. I’ll be there as soon as I can swat this guy.”

“Sooner would be better!”

I turned my attention back to the chemship, which had shifted its vector and was paralleling 544. I got my first decent look at our uninvited guest. Unsurprisingly, they were in Poe-class chemships: old, cheap, but generally reliable, and with all the aesthetic sense you’d expect for something named for Edgar Allen. A missile popped out of his lower bay, forcing me to quit gawking and start evading. A quick pop up to seven gs scooted me out of the way, and without a big, hot engine bell, the incoming missile didn’t have a good enough lock to track, and it zipped off to empty space.

We were at the edge of the typical effective range for our x-ray lasers, and the Poe knew it. Speed of light, line of sight weaponry sounds lovely, but the tradeoff was that the Lidenbrock laser needed a couple seconds continuous connection to dump enough energy to do much. That’s hard enough to do under a changing reference frame on a stationary target, and the Poe kept just mobile enough to stymie my attempts to lase him. He fired another two missiles, causing me to nearly black out with quick sequential high-g spirals in opposite directions. Better dizzy than dead, though.

At least, it seemed that way, until I realized just how close he’d gotten at the end of the second turn. Plasma seared just above the viewport as he opened fire. He’d used the opportunity to slip into the pocket behind me, and his first shot had gone just over my head.

I’ve said already that Verne-class aren’t the most maneuverable things. They can’t even change their tangential speed without chemical thrusters, and with a starting t-speed almost 300 meters per second, there’s a real limit to what sorts of acceleration you can take, that limit mostly being the squishiness of the human body. In desperation, I flared negative charge, peeling into a clockwise spiral and sending the incoming lance of pure ionized plasma dancing away in the electric field. Bile rose as gravity reversed and static sent pops shivering down my arms.

As I dropped the charge to zero, my cockpit shook with the boom of an explosion, and I disorientedly checked my status screens to see what the damage was. MARVIN was intact, chemical system intact, weapons, everything seemed perfect. I suppressed a retch and checked out the rear of the cockpit bubble to see what the Poe was up to.

My jaw fell open in shock. Somehow this crazy pilot had gotten within a mere few meters of my ship. I could see straight through my opponent’s bubble into his cockpit.

My jaw dropped further still as I saw that he was very dead.

Everyone says you can’t hear sound in space. No medium to carry the sound. It turns out you can hear things in space, if you’ve got someone else’s atmosphere venting against your hull.

The plasma lance had splashed from my charge surge and painted the Poe’s fuel tank. I’d say I’d have to remember that trick, but I can’t imagine ever again running into someone crazy enough to get this close. As our velocities carried us slowly out of the lulu pod, I reengaged my MARVIN and checked in with Gerbil.

“My bogey is down. Should have taken my own advice about letting them in close. How’re you doing, Gerb?”

“Lost track of one, but got the other…right…where… GOT HIM!”

I saw a flash as one of Gerbil’s Nemo missiles caught a chemship, and I set my drive back on a vector that would bring me closer to his position.

“Great shot, Gerb, but don’t get cocky. You said you lost the other one? Tom, do you have a line on him from Pequod?”

“Negative, Troy. None of us do. Pete had the last visual, saw him scooting near 248. Gerbil, keep eyes on that region. Reverse pole and close position with Troy.”

“Copy, Tom. Computer says thirty-eight seconds to linkup.”

I scanned the darkness with eyes and heat sensors, but saw nothing of note until Gerbil’s Verne came within a kilometer. The goals had just shifted. There was no way the last rustler wasn’t still skulking around, not least because Tom and the crew in the Pequod were doing all they could to support, which mostly meant watching. If Pequod had been fast enough to be of help, she wouldn’t have needed the escorts. Big meant slow, but was generally worth the trade for long-term life support.

Gerbil and I adjusted course, using precious chemical fuel to slow our tangential so we could have tighter, more manageable helices as we searched. We started with an interlocking search pattern down 248. A lulu was certainly big enough for a twenty-meter single ship to shelter near. Their heads were mostly featureless, smooth, and carapace-like. After the dorsal taper, though, they had interlocking plates with spiny appendages poking through the seams, many of which were large enough to hide our missing bogey.

I was tense. The rustler was not in a good way, and knew it. He was alone, outnumbered, and on unfamiliar turf. As good as that sounded for us, hunting a desperate man was dangerous under the best of circumstances, and this group had already proven themselves reckless. We started at 248’s head and slowly spiraled our way down.

As I scanned along 248’s body, I thought darkly back to yesterday’s conversation with Gerbil. A lot of men were driven out into the stars by stuff they wanted to leave behind, but I had never understood outlaws like these. They weren’t driven out here. They were drawn, lured by the promise of easy prey in the void. Space was too big for the Hussars Corps to enforce law anywhere other than permanent colonies or stations, or the occasional larger asteroid.

Gerbil and I were counter-revolving, so we passed each other every half-circuit, about every twenty-five seconds. Thermals had picked up a hot spot near the vent, but couldn’t resolve whether that was our Poe or the lulu. The vent was one of the less efficiently insulated parts of a lulu, and a lot of rustlers had figured out that they could mask their heat by snuggling in close to it, in among the scaly fins of the lulu. I was focused intently on that point.

“Gerbil, you getting anything?” Advance One was a little newer, and had marginally better scans.

“Nah, Troy, just the hot spot at the vent. We might want to check on 248 after this, though. There’s a weirdly cold spot showing ahead of me. She might be sick.”

“Mark it and we’ll come back. Stay focused on the Poe, not the cold spot.”

“Got it, Troy.” Gerbil’s voice was remarkably steady as he flew. “I’m gonna have a clean angle on the vent in a couple sec… MURPHY!” I saw Gerbil’s pod swerve away as I cleared the curve of 248, MARVIN and thrusters both going strong. An icy cold spot had moved away from 248 on thermals, with blooms of heat forming from the thrusters of our hidden rustler. He must have chilled his entire ship with liquid nitrogen or similar to hide, and had waited until Gerbil had passed to start getting clear of 248. He was vectoring away, apparently trying to escape now that we were headed the wrong direction.

Plasma flickered towards Gerbil, but he had seen him in time and moved out of the way. Despite my admonition, he had probably been trying to check on 248’s cold spot, helping him spot the chilly Poe visually. “Gerbil, get clear on thrusters. We’ll get him with range!”

“No, I can slip in behind him and get him with the lance!” As I watched, my own thrusters burning to get closer, Gerbil whipped his ship around into the space directly behind the rustler.

Directly into the path of the chemships main drive. “Move now! Get clear before—”

A plume of flaming gas spiked out of the Poe’s engine bell as he began accelerating away. It hit Gerbil’s cockpit bubble directly, and I watched in horror as it disintegrated beneath the furious exhaust. The fuel fumes that had so vexed my wingman earlier in the day ignited, throwing what remained of Hank Gerber out into space.

Grief had to wait. This outlaw rustler had to die. His burn continued to accelerate him away from what was left of Advance One. I set my MARVIN to colinear acceleration and fired most everything I had. My remaining five Nemo missiles fanned out and converged on him from several directions, while laser and lance both painted the space around him. The lance missed, but the laser began to scorch away paint and hull. He tried desperately to dodge, firing his own lance, but only clipped 248’s carapace briefly before the missiles converged in a point of brilliant light.

Five missiles and a laser sound like it would make quite the mess, but the warheads were tiny, meant to destroy delicate single ships, not armored tanks. They were still more than enough to rip the Poe-class apart. As the debris slowly spread out, I sank back against my pilot’s couch. As 248 rattled its spines in response to the hit, I shut my eyes and began to cry.

Advance One was wrecked. The fire had traveled from the cockpit back through the service tunnel, slagging fuel lines, computer, control systems, most everything. The MARVIN drive was the only thing left untouched. Farradium was resilient stuff, and worth a fortune. I stared at the drive core through the lens of my EVA suit for a long time.

“Troy?” Tom’s voice popped on, unusually quiet. “Status? Anything recoverable?”

It means someone still knows they were there.

“No, Tom. Total loss.”

I reached out and dragged the manual release on the core wide open, seeing my magnetic readouts fuzz as the wreckage began a slow acceleration.

I drifted back along the tether to Advance Two, and began recalibrating the computer for the new signal.

There were worse things than magnetic anomalies.

Like Father, Like Son

By Mike Peterson

As Cade pushed aside yet another stack of endless transit trace reports, this particular miniature mountain of paper decided it had received more than its share of abuse and ejected the top two inches of documents to slide across Cade’s desk and floor. With a groan, Cade scooped up the papers on his desk into an untidy fan and mindlessly slapped them on top of the offended stack as he bent in half in his chair to snag the reports that had fled the farthest. The stack, of course, found this to be of no further acceptability, and so the fan Cade had added to the top now came tumbling down on his head. “Oh, for the love of—” began Cade as he momentarily gave up. He stood and slammed his fists down on the desk in frustration. This, however, was all the excuse the giant stack needed to slowly lean and then finally leap to the floor, granting Cade the all-new cubicle-wall-to-cubicle-wall paper carpeting that he’d never wanted or needed.

As his eyes tracked the extent of the spill across the floor towards his door, he discovered an expensive pair of heels filled by an expensive pair of legs (Cade had once been shown the cybernetic implant bills as proof), topped by the rest of his friend, Shauna.

“I swear, Cade, sometimes the things in this office really do have a grudge against you.”

“It’s nothing compared to how much I hate every inch of this place,” he growled, stepping over the waves of paper to escape from his cubical.

“Look, Cade, you’ve been here for four years now, ever since your injury. At some point, you’re going to have to figure out how to come to terms with the place.”

“Nope.”

“This job was a godsend for you when you had to withdraw from the circuit. It’s taken care of you and Alaina.”

“Didn’t we already have this conversation this week? Let’s wait ‘til next Monday.”

“Cade, come on. Data entry in the transit hub isn’t glorious, but it is—“

He interrupted her. “I don’t have to like working here in order to work here! I hate the paperwork. I hate the cubicles. I hate the droids that drop off the paperwork and pick up the wrong stacks. I hate all four of my managers. I hate everything about this job. But do I miss even one day?”

“No,” she acknowledged. “You’re here every day.”

“And am I ev—“

“No,” she cut in, “you’re never late.”

“And do I ever miss—“

“No. You get it all done. Every quota. Every detail. It’s always exact.” She sighed. “Okay, you’re right. We’ve done this too many times. Coffee?”

Cade looked ruefully at his cubical. He let a devilish grin slowly spread across his face. “Got a match?”

After a brief trip to the cafeteria, the elevator doors opened to let Cade and Shauna back onto the megafloor where their cubicles were both located. Cade was half a step forward when Shauna grabbed his arm and yanked him back into the elevator with a snap. His coffee cup went flying out of the elevator without him, and for a brief moment, time seemed to slow down, and he saw the brown liquid morph, bulge, and fly through the air before splashing onto the floor.

“Ouch,” he snapped, “watch it with the cyber strength, would you? Some of us still have all our meat.”

She held up a hand to quiet him as she peered around the corner of the door. “Mackenzie’s in your area.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Oooh, wait. Nope. He’s actually near your…oh, nevermind.”

“Wait, so Mackenzie’s not there?”

“No, he is,” she cautioned. “…But he’s actually at your desk.”

“Oh, that’s great. Well, sh—“

“Calm down, it’s probably nothing.”

“With Mackenzie, it’s never nothing,” he said. “That asshole maggot leech doesn’t get off his butt to do anything if he can’t crush an employee or two.”

A sweeper bot was dispatched from the base of the wall. The coffee and cup both disappeared almost immediately.

Cade thought for a moment before asking for more clarification from Shauna, who was still peering sideways around the door. “Is there any chance I’ll be able to avoid him?”

“No way. He’s sitting right in your door. Yikes, and he looks…excited? I don’t know what’s up, but he’s scary right now. Maybe it’s time to take a lunch break?”

Cade charged past her into the hallways that would eventually wind him around enough cubicle cores to get to his own. “This ain’t no horse I’m going to let myself be afraid to ride.”

He didn’t try to hide on the way back to his desk. He also didn’t dilly-dally. While he thought about making a big show of his return and calling across the fields of cubicles, he thought better of it and just tried to walk as quickly and efficiently as he could. It took an extraordinary effort, but he even managed to glue a beaming smile on his face before coming around the final turn towards his cubicle and confronting Mackenzie.

Unfortunately, the absurd scene at his desk almost choked him up with laughter. A transport droid had apparently come by at some point to pick up the stack that had fallen off his desk. Finding the mess, it had automatically summoned a sweeper bot. If Cade were to lay his bet, it would have been that the bot upside down on its back and being serviced by a technician was the first sweeper, and the second would have been the higher-powered one was a backup that had somehow managed to wedge itself halfway under the transport droid. How that second collision had happened, he had no idea. Apparently the cubicle didn’t like sweeper bots much more than it liked Cade.

Mackenzie soured his face the moment he spotted Cade. His gravelly voice practically poured out of his mouth and sat heavy in the air. “Mr. Ruperts, a word?”

Cade managed to keep his smile and add a friendly nod. “My time is yours, of course, Mr. Mackenzie. What can I do for you?”

“You can’t, I’m afraid. I’m here to let you know that we have to let you go. Cutbacks, you understand.” The way Mackenzie said it, along with his doleful gaze at the bizarre display of paper and droids at Cade’s desk, made it clear that cutbacks might just be a convenient excuse. Either way, the outcome was the same. Cade felt like the world was spinning and pulling away from him at the same time, as though the transit hub’s gravity generators began pulling him in every direction all at once.

“Wait, what? I’m the top clerk for clearing traces. I’ve worked more hours. I even get paid less than Jack Chalk!” Cade took the liberty of pointing at the latter’s cubicle, which was conveniently kitty corner from his own. Jack took only the briefest moment to pointedly look up from his work and shoot Cade a highly irritated glance. No one wanted Mackenzie’s attention brought upon them even at the best of times.

“Nothing to be done, I’m afraid. The selection was done by HR algorithms. Above my pay grade.”

“Aren’t you the vice president over HR?” Cade was trying to stay as calm as he could, but thoughts of Alaina, their new baby, and whether they could afford to either pay the rent on the station or pay a transit company to move the weight of their belongings swam through his head in a haze, and he could hear his voice getting strained and squeaky.

“HR algorithms are moderated and chosen by the board. Can’t be helped.” With his back to the cubicle, Mackenzie pulled out a glossy black prox card and swiped it over the cubicle’s doorjamb. A klaxon sounded as walls quickly dropped from the ceiling, sealing the cubicle. The maintenance man who’d been fixing the droid could be heard banging on the walls. Mackenzie gave a grunt, but didn’t seem to see any reason to show if he regretted the oversight. Cade heard the gravity generators reverse under the cubicle and the papers, books, and everything else that wasn’t literally bolted down were sucked upwards by the air handler, to be sorted by droids later. The maintenance man’s swearing voice rose higher and higher until it vanished into the high ceiling.

Mackenzie continued without seeming to notice the shouts. “Your things will be delivered to your apartment within three hours. These men will see you out.”

That’s when Cade noticed that security officers had appeared from behind him. Cade was already starting to turn around and head back to the exit when one of the guards motioned for him to move along. His eyes didn’t register anything as he walked, zombie-like, to the elevators. He only briefly recognized the lobby as he was ushered out. And once the doors closed behind him, even the tramway looked odd and faded. He swiped his pass to enter the first car that came along, and barely had woken from his daze the second time the tram approached his stop.

Cade was counting his blessings that his extra loop around the hub had left him late enough to be coming home only slightly early. He didn’t know how to explain what had happened to Alaina. Sure, he hated his job, but he had also intentionally applied to it the most diligent work ethic he could. Growing up on the farm, his daddy had always driven home the importance of, “Do it right, or don’t start it at all. Don’t make someone else clean up the pieces you scattered.”

The unboarding droids from HR had been fast. Cade’s box of very few personal belongings from the office was already sitting outside his apartment door when he arrived. Before walking in, he flipped through briefly and pulled out a picture from his desk from about two years prior, when he and Alaina were still engaged, wondered whether the maintenance guy was going to miss his handkerchief, and took the rest down the hall to the disposal chute. He tucked the picture into the back of his belt, pulled his shirt down to hide it, and walked in.

Alaina was passed out on the couch while the baby stood, holding the rail of the crib, and smiling. The little guy bounced for joy as he saw Cade. The doting father picked up his son and walked through to the bedroom, where he drew the picture frame from his belt and buried it in his clothes dresser.

Jim Ruperts always kept Cade close on tours. Every win, every loss, every record broken was another chance to make memories with his son. And when Jim watched other rocket riders’ performances, Cade was always there, breaking down the rocket’s sequence and grading it with him. Rocket rodeo was in the Ruperts family blood. “It’s a Ruperts rocket rodeo or a rotten rodeo. There’s no in between,” announcers would say.

Cade had even embraced the technical side of the sport more than his father had. Although he was never certified, he would spend days straight with the rocket mechanics, refinishing fuselages, slowly polishing vent and thrust hinges to ensure that the flaps didn’t get too loose and accidentally raise or lower the turbulence rating on a given rocket. He learned to program the thrust computers and maintain the fuel lines. He helped design and redesign saddles and pressure suits for individual riders. Although the mechanical technology fascinated him, his heart was always in the riding, just like his father.

Jim Ruperts retired from riding much later than most rodeo cowboys did. He always claimed that it was because he just hadn’t gotten rid of “all that spit and vinegar” in his blood. His wife knew, however, that he was just having too much fun, especially once Cade had started competing on the same circuit. Once the two of them had been able to start hosting “Ruperts Rallies” with exhibition riding, and both Ruperts performing and competing together, there was a different energy in life for the whole family.

Sure enough, though, age had eventually taken enough wind out of Jim’s sails that he couldn’t keep up the pace. Instead of slowly fading into the sidelines, he announced his retirement during a big title event when he’d come from behind for a big win, surprising even the bookies who’d slowly started raising the odds against him.

Cade continued on his own trajectory for years afterwards, breaking not just most of his father’s records, but even records his father hadn’t ever attempted. “Ruperts’s Reign Over Rodeo Records,” the newspaper headlines had read. Cade’s technical understanding had helped him become even more sensitive to the moments before a rocket would roll into a turn or shudder and rise for a flip.

As his tours got more intense and required more performances, Cade had slowly grown his team. He still wanted to be part of every step of the process, but occasionally physical needs like sleep overwhelmed his ability to inspect every aspect of preparation. So when the day came that on a particularly turbulent rocket, dialed up to a level nine, his safety clips failed to release properly and tore his suit open while breaking his hip, well, Cade took that as a personal failing. He blamed himself rather than his staff for not being more diligent. The injuries were severe and ranged from space burn to a shattered pelvis. And while it hurt to return ticket sales, pay unused arena fees, and cover breach of agreement penalties, that wasn’t what ended up hurting Cade the most.

He’d met a girl recently while on tour. She wasn’t a rodeo fan and didn’t even follow the sport. Alaina was literally just someone Cade happened to bump into randomly at a transit hub. He’d had a problem with an automated rejection of his transport permits through the hyperspace conduits, and she was the one who fixed the problem by reattaching his certifications. Their first dinner was that night, and the next morning Cade had almost missed the start of his own show from having stayed behind.

Alaina was supportive of Cade’s career, even though it made her nervous. She and Cade’s mom had commiserated over the worries of being a rodeo wife. Never once did she ask him to stop, slow down, or ride lower leveled rockets. When he couldn’t make it back to her terminal, she would often come see him while he was on tour. One such trip had been to a resort station with a galaxy-famous arena and rocket garage setup. They’d taken a picture together that had later ended up tucked into the back of Cade’s belt.

It wasn’t long after that when Cade had his accident. The recovery had taken over a year, but the two of them had spent the time joyfully together. Cade still needed a wheelchair at the wedding, but the two of them were stronger than ever. Cade’s recovery had brought them closer than ever. All day, the only thing either of them had ever thought about was how soon they’d be back together. The only surprise anyone had when they announced that baby Travis would be joining the family was that it hadn’t happened years sooner.

Cade knew he’d made a choice along the way, but he wasn’t sure exactly when. His first love was rocket rodeo, but he loved Alaina even more. When he first woke up after the accident, still on an iron lung after being released from hyperbaric care, the thing that had hurt him most wasn’t the pelvis that was now almost as much metal as bone, nor his space-burnt eyes. What hurt most was seeing how worried he’d made his fiancée. The fear, concern, and sympathy in her eyes was like an iron rod through Cade’s heart. Although he didn’t actually make the choice at that point, that moment had led to him eventually deciding that he wanted to find something else to do for work.

The lengthy recovery plus the piling medical bills had necessitated at least temporary work, anyhow. With Alaina’s connections, helping Cade find work in a transit hub (and a bonus permit to also live on-station) had been easy. Unfortunately, apparently Cade had somehow been gifted the chance to work in some manner that had annoyed his bosses, and so they’d never made it easy on him. They treated him like it was a personal affront that he’d gotten the job. Still, Cade was never one to back down from a challenge, and the harder they made it, the more he wanted to rise to the occasion. He’d quickly become one of the fastest and most accurate tracer clerks in the entire network, much to their chagrin. Years slowly passed, and while Cade hated his job more and more, he’d never considered going back to rodeo.

A week after being laid off, Cade was starting to think a little differently. He’d spent all day, every day, looking for solutions. All he had to show was incontrovertible proof that there weren’t any station jobs he qualified for and, according to the station stabilizers, the mass of the items in his apartment was about three times what they could afford to have a transport move to somewhere else.

Cade still hadn’t brought himself to be able to admit to Alaina that he was unemployed. He wrestled with the self-inflicted shame of being fired, even though he had no misplaced belief in the integrity of his former bosses. Shauna herself had done a bit of snooping to find that only one employee had been downsized, and that unfortunate poor soul had the last name of Ruperts.

And so it was that Cade had found himself in the station’s lower decks, wandering while he thought and tried to figure a way out of his jam. Whether he’d planned it or not, his feet had managed to shuttle him to the gray market quarter, where he found himself outside of Greaser’s Wagering Emporium. Greaser’s was not the place that respectable people let themselves get caught making a bet on anything. The one redeeming feature, at least in Cade’s mind, was that Greaser occasionally ran tiny rodeo events around the station with just a few riders each, or maybe even tacked on a few rodeo rides to other, unrelated events like lunar derbies or shuttle regattas. And best of all, Greaser had an old, decommissioned Helene Mk. Four rocket outside his door, the kind Cade’s father had cut his teeth on.

Cade ran his hand along the front edge of the forward cowling, feeling the front edge of the blunt-nosed rocket. The Helene had been stylized like the front of an ancient propeller plane from Earth’s First World War. The wide, flat front made it easy for rodeo riders to add weights and microthrusters inside the forward edge to slow down or inhibit certain types of turns. Once better thrust computers and gimbal systems had come along, however, the old-fashioned physics-based rockets like the Helene series were all replaced.

It still held a special place in Cade’s heart, though. His first belt buckle had been won on a Helene Mk. Eighteen. And the first record of his father’s that he broke was on a Helene that they’d had to refit at the last moment because his entire stable of regular rockets had been damaged in transport when the pilot had tried to take a shortcut through an asteroid belt near Cappala IV. The belt had been mined in the Cappalan Civil War, and the pilot managed to find what must have been the last magneto-gravitic popper.

He found out later that his father had set that same record in a rodeo where he rode against a rider on that same Helene. Cade had tried for years to buy the rocket from the corporation that owned it. He wasn’t sure they hadn’t scrapped it in the end just to spite him and make him stop.

Lost in his memories, Cade hadn’t noticed when Greaser had come out. The bookie’s tight, squeaky voice startled Cade and shook him out of his reverie.

“Yeah, you always were the best. And do you know why, Cade? It’s because it was in your blood. Yeah, that’s right. In your blood. Just like your father, and his grandfather before him, and his daddy, and so on. Yeah.”

“Sorry, Greaser, just lost in my memories.”

“Not here to bet, huh? I’ve got a decent rodeo exhibition coming up. Yeah. Good odds on some of the riders. It’d be an easy way to make some money, yeah?”

“No bets. I can’t right now. I’m just a bit tight,” Cade said. And then, just in case he’d said too much, he tried to cover himself. “…What with the baby and all. Kids are expensive, you know?”

“The baby, yeah.” Greaser seemed unconvinced. “Is he going to grow up to be a rider like his dad, and his grandpappy, and his family before that? Yeah?”

Cade was a bit too slow to answer to hide the truth. “Uhh, yeah, we’ll see. Sure would be lots of fun, though, watching him ride.”

“Whaaaat? You wouldn’t ride with him like your daddy did with you? That wife of yours is against rodeo, yeah? She’s going to put her foot down? The end of the Ruperts rodeo line is here, yeah?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Cade started in defensively, “I just mean that Travis can choose to do what he wants.”

“Yeah, that’s it, sure.” Greaser was clearly not convinced, but he let it play like he was, just to be cooperative with Cade’s narrative. “What about you, though, yeah? Can you do what you want?”

“I haven’t ridden in a long time. I don’t think that—“

“Don’t think, then,” Greaser interrupted. “Just listen. I want to level with you, Cade, but I need you to keep something on the downlow. I can trust you, yeah?”

“Uh, sure. I guess so. What’s up, Greaser?”

“Listen,” Greaser looked side to side as he talked, as though he was looking for someone who was listening in. “I gotta be straight with you, yeah? Things haven’t been great lately. Yeah, business has been really bad. I’m running tight myself, and the station wants me to pay up over a…misunderstanding, yeah. I need this little event of mine coming up to pay really good. And at the moment, it desperately needs a big name. Yeah? And I was thinking that maybe you could use some extra walking-around money since you’re tight, and you’d maybe want to ride just one last time. Yeah, for old time’s sake.”

“A lot of tight situations going around lately.” Cade shuffled his feet as he looked down. He didn’t want Greaser to see the spark that had been lit in him.

“Yeah, sure. Well anyway, I need to know soon. You think about it and talk to me in the next day or two, maybe. Yeah? I’d give you top billing and a huge payout. Say, ten percent of all the cash just for riding and eighteen if you can ride an entire cycle. Yeah?”

“Whoa. Ten percent just to ride?”

“Yeah. Special rate if you can help me out. And eighteen percent if you stay on. Think about it, yeah?”

“Well, you sure know how to make sure I do, Greaser. I’ll let you know.”

If Greaser had wanted to make it hard for Cade to think about anything else, he succeeded. In fact, Cade was so distracted thinking about riding one more time for a huge cut that he completely overlooked what Alaina was going to think and feel about it. So of course, when he talked to her that evening, he couched it as a way to make money and potentially move off-station, since he had lost his job anyhow. Needless to say, this was a seriously shortsighted approach.

All the fears and uncertainty about Cade losing his job, talking about moving, and a sudden interest again in rodeo was entirely more than she could handle all at once. She didn’t take it all that well. Cade felt like he’d opened a can of worms with a hurricane inside. Although he wanted to listen to her and be responsive to her concerns, he had to admit later that between the “how-could-you-even-think-of-something-so-reckless-when-you-have-a-child-now-you-are-not-going-to-risk-your-life-on-one-of-those-things” and whatever she was screaming when the door to their room slammed, he had managed to miss a ton.

Cade recognized that his delivery of so much bad news at once had been terrible timing, not just for Alaina, but for himself, as well. He hadn’t fully processed anything yet, and throwing it all at her at once had been a great way to make sure that he was almost as overwhelmed by her reaction as she was by the news.

Still, as he laid there on the couch all night, two thoughts dominated Cade’s insomnia. The first was that he didn’t think Alaina was entirely closed to the idea of him riding, just surprised and hurt by the news. More than anything else, he was certain that what she resented was the idea that he might be risking himself again. And second, that he couldn’t think of any other ways to take care of his family. They were in a terrible bind with him getting fired, and all the options available to resolve the situation required more money than they currently had in their account. After a week’s worth of honest, diligent searching, he’d found nothing other than this opportunity to ride that could provide a pathway to stability for his wife and child.

So the next morning, when Cade stole off to Greaser’s again, he was confident that not only could he resolve this situation to Alaina’s satisfaction, but also save his family from shuttle drifting, crammed into a teeny space and begging for kindness from strangers for fuel and money just to get to somewhere they could scrounge food.

“You’re back. Yeah! I knew you’d be back, yeah? We’re going to make a lot of money on this one, believe me. Yeah, it’s all going to be fine.”

“Hold up, Greaser. I’m not agreeing yet.” Cade stuck his hand out to stop Greaser and suddenly felt a creeping suspicion slip into the back of his mind. “I’ve got a few stipulations.”

“That’s fine, yeah. What does old Greaser need to do for you?”

Cade took a deep breath and counted the points off on his fingers. “First, I’m not going to ride anything over a level eight. That should be enough to make money on the bets, but mild enough that I’m not really risking an injury, especially if I had to cut my safeties.”

“Aww, what? You’re killing me. Yeah. Well, whatever. If that’s the deal, then that’s the deal.” Greaser stuck out his hand to shake.

Cade didn’t take the hand. He counted off the next point, instead. “Seriously, only an eight. If I get on and find that the computer was up-programmed or the thrusters have any specials attached, then you and I have some seriously unfinished business.” Years in the circuits had taught Cade how to be threatening when he really needed to be. In this case, his not-so-veiled threat had Greaser trying to squeeze behind his desk to give him a bit more space from Cade’s fists. Cade was pretty sure he got the point loud and clear.

“Third, I don’t have a stable of rides right now, so I need to borrow a rocket. And I don’t want to be buying the fuel, either.”

Greaser protested on this one. “What? Not fair, yeah? Listen, a rocket I can do, but fuel is on the rider, yeah? I’ll cover in case anything happens to the rocket, but it’s your ride, so it’s your register. I can’t be responsible if you screw the pooch on this one and ditch right off the bat. Yeah. The fuel risk is too big.”

“You know as well as I do that I’m not ditching! If you thought I was going to ditch, you wouldn’t be asking me to ride in the first place. Still, fine. I’ll cover fuel, but it comes from my winnings, not up front.”

“Deal, yeah.”

“Okay, Greaser, then you have yourself a headliner for your rodeo! Draw up the contracts. I’ll be back by this afternoon to sign them.”

“Deal. Yeah. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

With an event on the books, Cade needed a team. In this case, he didn’t need any of his production or administrative crew, but there was one person he wanted more than anything else, and that was his old lead mechanic, Gabriel. Unfortunately, that conversation didn’t go much better than the one with Alaina the night before.

“…So I’d need you here, but I can even cover your travel, if you’re okay with me reimbursing you after the rodeo. The sooner the better.”

Gabriel was flabbergasted. “Cade, have you lost your motherloving mind? You’re going to ride an eight? For Greaser? On one of his own rockets? I could work on the thing for a week and not find half of the things he could’ve done to it. You’re insane!”

“It’s okay, Gabriel. I don’t think he’s got the balls to try to screw me over. He needs this too badly. He wouldn’t want to tick me off, because he might need me again in the future.”

“That’s a load of crap and you know it! Greaser doesn’t care about anyone but Greaser. It’s why he lost his Rocket Rodeo Association licensing so many years ago and can’t get it back. Even if you still had your own rocket, I’d say you were crazy, but in this case…”

“Come on, Gabriel, just one more ride for old time’s sake.”

“I’m sorry Cade. I can’t. I can’t feel responsible if something were to actually happen to you.”

And so it went, down the line of Cade’s old garage crew. No one was willing to sign on for the single event. This left Cade in a bind. Although he planned to help with the work anyhow, he knew he needed assistance with all the suit prep and rocket diagnostics he was going to need to do before the rodeo. Unfortunately, there was only one way to get what he needed.

“Greaser, I’ve got one more complication that’s come up for the ride.”

“No problem, yeah. What do you need?”

“I need a mechanic. None of mine can make it in time.” Cade felt like the white lie was better than the truth.

“Yeah, I can do that. You’re going to pay the parts and labor on that, though. Yeah…but I’ll give you a discount on the retail price.”

“Retail? You can’t charge me wholesale even on the mechanic?”

“Mechanics’ services are but one of the services we provide to riders. Yeah.” Greaser was clearly reciting a familiar refrain. “No rider is required to use our mechanics, but no rider is promised a discount, neither. Yeah.”

Cade sighed. “Fine…but again, it comes out of my earnings and not up front.”

“Yeah, sure. Deal. Are we going to sign this thing or what?”

On the big day, Cade went through his normal routine in the morning. He rose, ate, spent some time visualizing his ride, checked (and rechecked) his suit, and bid a warm farewell to his family. Alaina had refused to come watch, although she promised she’d be listening to the radio broadcast of the event. Cade checked in at the garages and verified that Seamus, the mechanic Greaser had recommended, had been equally diligent. Cade had largely been satisfied with Seamus, but you couldn’t be too careful. He ran the rocket through a full thrust cycle with Seamus, and together they checked the diagnostic logs.

With everything checked and cleared, Cade got about to doing the final work on himself. He got suited and booted, had Seamus check the seals and safeties, and settled in to wait his turn. He traded a bit of banter with the other riders, but mostly tried to just sit quietly and clear his head. He’d always found that giving himself a calm before the storm was the best way to prepare.

Cade had actually started to doze lightly when Seamus came to set him up for the final ride checklist. The two of them headed to the launch chute, checked the pressurization, loaded the rocket together (an older but still occasionally used Mjolnir C-series booster), and went through the final safety checks.

He took a few deep breaths as Seamus closed the hatch and depressurized the launch chute. There Cade sat, held in place by the mag-field clamps, listening to the announcements and commentary as the final few riders before him finished.

And finally, after all the anticipation and waiting, the field clamps released, the chute doors opened, and a furious hellfire was ignited only an arms’ length from Cade’s posterior.

For the entirety of his ride, Cade didn’t make any vocal sound. Audio from his helmet seemed almost mechanical in its stable rhythm. Forensic investigators were able to determine that not only did the thrust computer show on the screen that it was reorienting to an up-programmed level nine just before the launch, but that the wildcat gimbals added to the thrusters were on the revised system inventory that showed at the same time. Cade knew from the very start of his ride that he’d been betrayed by Greaser. He also knew from the start just how much of a challenge the whole ride was going to be.

To his credit, Cade rode that Mjolnir like he’d never taken a day off the circuit. He was smooth as silk and stayed stuck to the rocket like he was glued on. Debates still rage today, occasionally, on whether the hacked system would have properly warned when the fuel line began to rupture. The wildcat gimbals (improperly adjusted because they’d been hidden) slowly burned a hole in the fire shields. While that should have sent up more than enough alerts for Cade to have time to see them and cut his safeties before the explosion, all anyone can be sure of is that he never came off and seemed in complete control the entire time.

Plenty of experts suggest that the Mjolnir line had a mechanical safety flaw that was exposed by the hidden hack. Others hold that Cade stayed on the rocket simply to spite Greaser and his betrayal. Did the alerts ever show on the hacked screen? Could Cade have seen them and believed they were errors? Or did he see them, figure he was toast either way and decided to go out with his boots on, riding one of the most turbulent rockets of his career? We may never have all the answers.

Regardless, the result is one of the most famous rocket rodeo accidents in history. I can’t tell you anything about the explosion that you don’t already know. The thing is, the record books will all tell you that Cade Rupert managed to ride that level nine (with specials) longer than anyone else before him. He even broke his own record from his heyday in the circuits.

And tomorrow, when I hop on my Mjolnir J-series, I’ll do even better than my dad did. I’m going to ride longer, come back home alive, and prove beyond a doubt that it was Greaser’s cheating (and not a flaw in the Mjolnir line itself) that caused the accident. And if not, I’ll die trying. You know: like father, like son. Man, I wish Grandpa was still around to see me do it.

…Just don’t tell Mom until after we get home tomorrow, okay? She’d kill me!

Tin Badge for Tima

Daniel G. Zeidler

Ain Ch’Tima paused to ensure her poncho was draped properly to present a modest appearance; it was important that she appear as unthreatening as possible. She took a deep breath, put on her best smile, then stepped up onto the low wooden porch in front of Ain Bruic’s ranch office. The doors to the office slid open, and she breezed uncaringly through them.

“Forgive me for being early, Ain Bruic, but I— Oh!” Tima halted midstep and blinked several times before taking a step back, as if afraid, but stopped just short of the point where the doorway sensor would cause the doors to reopen behind her. Two burly men wearing the uniforms of Divine Right Naval Infantrymen held Ain Bruic by his ankles, pinned upside-down against the wall behind Bruic’s enormous desk. A third Naval Infantryman seemed to have been in the midst of deciding where best to employ the disreputable-looking dagger in his hand on Bruic’s person. The stolen hunting rifles of all three Divine Right men were leaning against the desk, but within easy reach. Bruic, despite being upside-down, somehow managed to slump his shoulders while the Naval Infantrymen stared at her in confusion.

“Now isn’t the best time, Ain Tima,” the rancher said, deliberately omitting the Ch- prefix from her name in order to conceal from the Naval Infantrymen the fact that she was of the House Clan. “Perhaps you could come back later?”

“No, she can stay and entertain us after we’re through with you. You certainly won’t be needing her services,” the lead Naval Infantryman growled as he returned his attention to Bruic. “Now give me those access—”

“I am not here to entertain Ain Bruic,” Tima quipped. She looked the lead Naval Infantrymen in the eyes and squared her shoulders. “I am the local Marketing and Sales rep for Cardea Fencing and Security Systems, and I—”

“Marketing and Sales rep! Never heard it called that before,” one of the Naval Infantrymen holding Bruic against the wall said as he traded an amused glance with his companion. Tima wasn’t sure if the other man leered at her or if he was grimacing from the effort of holding Bruic up, off the floor.

“I don’t care what you call yourself. Sit quietly in that corner there until we’re ready to leave. If you behave, things will go easier for you.” The lead Naval Infantryman pointed his knife at Tima and motioned toward one corner of the office. When she remained in front of the doorway, he scowled and began walking toward her.

Tima met his eyes and waited for him to move a few steps further away from Ain Bruic. She was, however, young and impatient, so she decided to hurry him along. The Chairman’s seat of House Ain had been held by Tima’s family since before the fall of the Terran Imperium and founding of the Commonwealth. All eight centuries of her ancestors would doubtless have been impressed by the sheer volume of aristocratic disdain she deployed in her single, sneered insult. “Zdrevazzi!”

The morning had started off no differently than the mornings of any other previous day of the prior few months. Tima looked glumly around at the walls of her prison and didn’t bother restraining the sigh that followed. If pressed, she would have grudgingly admitted that what she called her prison was technically the Commonwealth Frontier Marshal Service office for the Ain homeworld. She was also technically not a prisoner; according to Marshal Tass ke’Dolh, her official title was Deputy Marshal Trainee. The Noble ke’Dolh, however, was a kind man as well as an idealist from Makhtar, the capitol world of the Commonwealth; it shaded his views on things. Tima, on the other hand, was not only a native of the Ain homeworld, but she was also a daughter of the very Clan Ain from which the House and the World took their names. She believed she had a more realistic, Septisolaran view of her situation: she was a prisoner in a prison and deservedly so.

Several months earlier, a Divine Right crew thought to engage in a cattle raid on the pastoral Ain homeworld. For centuries, the other Septisolaran Houses, save for House Chafu and House Yahra, all honor to them for knowing better than to try, had attempted to steal livestock from Ain; in all that time, none of them had succeeded. Even the worst of their efforts, however, had been better planned out than the Divine Right raid. Tima remembered well how she had chafed at being told to take shelter with the children instead of joining the adults who were going to fight the raiders. She’d slipped away from the shelter, donned her sister’s old raiding armor, and set out to prove her worth by reconnoitering the area around the Divine Right’s ship.

In retrospect, Tima could not deny that it had been poor judgement on her part. She’d been captured by the Divine Right, like the child she’d been trying to prove that she was not, and taken aboard their ship. If Marshal ke’Dolh and Zdrev, his canid mech-sent, hadn’t rescued her, things would have gone very poorly for her, to say the least; the Divine Right did not treat its prisoners kindly.

Life among the Seven Suns was often hard and there was little tolerance for the sort of failure that included both disobeying orders and being captured, particularly when a member of the House Clan was involved. In times past, it had not been unheard of for the more problematic sons and daughters of the House Clans to discover that the term fail-safe airlock was less absolute than one might hope. After she was rescued, Tima’s parents never once mentioned the peculiar and fickle nature of airlocks, but they had informed her, at length and in great detail, of the opportunities for personal growth to be found while working in the General Labor Pool of an asteroid mine or while tending to the hydroponics bays of the distant Seven Suns Military Production Facility.

While Tima had been spared either of those dire fates, she had been stripped of her deck assignment on the Clan’s lead starship and reassigned to the Commonwealth Frontier Marshal Service under the Noble ke’Dolh. To her surprise, her duties were not nearly as onerous as she imagined working in an asteroid mine or in the hydroponics bay for a deepspace shipyard would have been. Mostly, she took her place at her assigned desk in the admin area and worked on her normal academic courseload, in addition to a number of other courses covering what the Noble ke’Dolh called the art and science of frontier law enforcement. Sometimes, they would go to the firing range for weapons training, and other times she would be tasked with engaging in the administrative combat necessary when requisitioning supplies from the Commonwealth bureaucracy.

The fact that she was learning interesting things and had access to the Noble ke’Dolh’s top-of-the-line zahrah machine made her feel as if her punishment was too lenient, compared to the extent of her failure. She was even permitted to go home at night, which, given her parents were still angry with her, wasn’t as pleasant as it might have been, but it was awkward, not oppressive. She had reason to suspect, indeed a part of her even hoped, that the lenient period of her punishment was coming to an end.

Tima powered down her terminal and rose from her desk. She was alone in the marshal’s office, as duty had called Marshal ke’Dolh and Zdrev to the other side of the planet, where they would likely remain for several days. Before he’d left, however, the Noble Marshal had told her that the Commonwealth, in its wisdom, was sending the Ain a Deputy Marshal who, among his other duties, would be taking over her training. If the Deputy Marshal arrived before Marshal ke’Dolh and Zdrev returned, she was to consider the Noble Deputy to be her new Deck Officer and follow his orders accordingly. She did not feel this boded well for her future.

The only area of the marshal’s office Tima had not explored thoroughly was the confinement block. The cells were currently empty, so she made her way to the rear of the building and through the security doors that led to the holding cells. On Commonwealth worlds, and on the homeworlds of the more pretentious of the Seven Houses, confinement cells made use of force fields, a shameful waste of energy when good hull-steel bars were more than capable of doing the job. She stepped into the first cell on her left and ran her eyes across its minimal furnishings: a pull-out sink and toilet and a sleeping platform with a thin mattress.

“So…what are you in for?” a deep, gravelly voice with a strange accent said from the cell across from the one Tima occupied. She spun toward the sound and saw a brown-furred Dussakairay, wearing a dark gray field jacket, matching utility trousers, and work boots, taking a seat on the sleeping platform in his cell. The Dussakairay were bear-like aliens who, along with the Breg, had been recruited by humans roughly five centuries earlier to form the Commonwealth.

After the recent addition of the Seven Suns to the Commonwealth, a wave of Dussakairay immigrants had arrived on Ain seeking work as ranchhands. Much to the surprise and delight of House Ain, the Dussakairay proved to be highly-skilled drovers and herdsmen, and it wasn’t long before nearly every ranch on the planet had at least one Dussakairay on its payroll. There was, however, a tendency among the Dussakairay to view drunken barroom brawls as a recreational sport suitable for any festive occasion, with the most festive of all occasions being anytime a House Chafu ship was in port and its crew on liberty. Jail space was at a premium during such times, and the confinement block at the marshal’s office was often used as an overflow holding area for the more pugilistic Dussakairay.

“I’m not a prisoner,” Tima said quickly as the Dussakairay’s blood-red eyes sized her up through the bars of the cell. “I’ve never been to this part of the marshal’s office before, and I thought the cells were all unoccupied.”

“They were. You were so lost in thought that you didn’t notice me come in after you. I’m Elgar Surl, the new Deputy Marshal whose glorious arrival was no doubt foretold to you,” the Dussakairay said as he repositioned himself on the sleeping platform. He twitched his ears and motioned toward her. “Your uniform says one thing, Ain Ch’Tima, but the expression on your face says prisoner. I can understand. You disobeyed orders, got captured, had to be rescued in a daring and dramatic fashion…and now, instead of being assigned to the crew of a starship, like most Septisolaran humans your age, you find yourself consigned to doing busy work in the marshal’s office. A sad fate, if you were to ask me.”

“News of my failure seems to have spread farther than I imagined possible,” Tima said as she sat down heavily on the sleeping platform behind her. In her despair, she confessed her deepest fear. “I don’t see how I will ever be able to redeem myself.”

“And that, Noble Trainee, is why Marshal ke’Dolh, all honor to his House and his dog, placed your training in my hands. We served together in the Commonwealth Marines during the war, and he is well acquainted with my many and varied skills. Doubtless this is why his orders on the matter of your training are notably lacking in specificity, though, really, he should know better. We shall begin our training today with a jailbreak,” Surl said cheerfully as he rose to his feet and exited his cell. His ears angled back along his head, and he narrowed his eyes at Tima. “Sharply now, Noble Trainee. Come with me to the armory.”

Tima knew an order when she heard one, and the Marshal had instructed her to consider the Deputy Marshal to be her new Deck Officer. She rose quickly to her feet and fell in behind Surl as he exited the confinement area. The path he took to the armory told her that he’d been to the marshal’s office at least once before, but not yet often enough for him to know the most direct routes between various points in the building. Her suspicions were confirmed when the armory door opened in response to Surl’s command, and she wondered why Marshal ke’Dolh had left her behind to help the new Deputy get settled in. As she followed Surl into the armory, she suspected she was about to be tasked with more of what Surl had called busy work.

She was, therefore, both surprised and confused when the Noble Deputy pressed her gunbelt into her hands and then issued her a needler pistol and three magazines of tranq-needles. She looked up at him in surprise, and he twitched his whiskers.

“You have qualified on this weapon, have you not, Ain Ch’Tima?”

“In the Seven Suns, life is not so easy as it is in the Commonwealth, Noble Deputy.” Tima assumed the most indignant posture she could manage while juggling all of the gear in her hands. She paused to place everything on the counter beside her before continuing. “I have qualified on every weapon in this armory,” she hesitated and pointed to a rifle she did not recognize, “except for that one. I have never seen one like it before. Is that your rifle, Deputy Marshal?”

“This, Noble Trainee,” Surl told her as he removed the rifle from its place in the weapons rack, “is a hand-built, custom-made, Breg needler rifle with extended dual-helix accelerator coils, a Dussakairay combat grip and stock, and a Juman Industries Sharpshooter-Four optics package. To fire it is to experience the divine. One day, I shall grant you the honor of carrying it for me, but for now, you may take joy from gazing upon the splendor of its perfection.”

Tima looked down at the needler rifle when Surl extended it reverently toward her. She knew Dussakairay had a cultural fondness for their weapons, but she suspected the Deputy Marshal was having a bit of fun with her. She played the hunch and replied with a dry, “Truly, my heart beats faster.”

“Well done, Noble Trainee.” Surl chuckled and clapped her on the shoulder solidly enough that she really felt it, but restrained enough that she wasn’t knocked off balance. “Now, get that gunbelt on and grab your Go-bag.”

“My Go-bag, Deputy Surl?” Tima asked as she fastened her gunbelt, then slid the needler pistol into its holster. She clipped the spare needler magazines into their carriers and glanced over at the olive drab pack the Marshal had issued her on her first day with instructions to see to it that it contained everything she would need to spend a few days in the backcountry. She’d been fairly certain at the time that the Noble Marshal had merely been inventing ways to occupy her time.

Surl’s ears swiveled back, and his whiskers bristled. “Ch’Tima, please assure me that you are not one of those poor misguided souls who has filled her Go-bag with odds and ends and dirty laundry?”

“Certainly not, Noble Deputy! I have packed it in accordance with regulation and the wisdom shared with me by Marshal ke’Dolh,” Tima said as she knelt beside the pack, intending to open it for the Deputy to inspect for himself. He motioned for her to stop, and she rose to her feet, pack in hand, with a puzzled expression on her face. “Dirty laundry? Did…did someone really do such a thing, Deputy Surl?”

“I see the Noble ke’Dolh has not yet told you the tragically hilarious tale of Sergeant ke’Gazsi. You should ask him about it when we next see him. I look forward to witnessing your reaction.” Surl slung his needler rifle over his shoulder and picked up his own Go-bag. “Let us make our way to the landing cradles, Trainee Ch’Tima, and take our jailbreak to the air!”

There were two small landing cradles on the roof of the marshal’s office, and Tima was surprised to see a shiny, new Meteor-class Commonwealth Defense Force shuttle sitting in the second cradle. Surl paused at the foot of the Meteor’s rear boarding ramp and motioned for her to precede him.

“I’ll take care of stowing our gear, Ch’Tima. Please be so kind as to file the flight plan in the shuttle’s computer with Traffic Control, and be sure to designate yourself as pilot in command,” Surl instructed as he put his bag down and placed his rifle inside a weapon storage locker in the rear of the shuttle.

Tima glanced into the shuttle’s cockpit just long enough to note that it had the sleek look that Makhtaran designs seemed to favor. Surl was obviously testing her. “Noble Deputy, as I am sure you are aware, I have only recently earned my Basic Piloting Certificate.”

“And you are not certified for this class of shuttle, which I shall remedy with this flight. You also require pilot-in-command time in order to upgrade your piloting certificate, which is the official reason why you will be designated as such for this flight,” Surl told her, then grinned in the Dussakairay fashion by showing the tips of his fangs. “The real reason I am having you file our flight plan, Noble Trainee, is that you are High House. Ain Traffic Control will ask no questions of you, and they will quietly reroute all traffic around where we are flying.”

Tima’s shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “I am a disgrace to my House, Noble Deputy. I very much doubt Traffic Control will be as deferential as you suggest.”

Surl’s whiskers twitched. “You underestimate yourself, Ain Ch’Tima, and there is no disgrace in being a Deputy Marshal. Call in our flight plan. You will see.”

A short time later, Surl sat down in the co-pilot’s chair and began strapping himself in. He flicked his ears and asked Tima, “Were you successful, Trainee Ch’Tima?”

“Flight Control seemed to be taken aback, but, as you predicted, they asked no questions and, looking at the tactical display, it would seem local air traffic is indeed being discreetly rerouted around our planned route,” Tima replied, and gave Surl a puzzled look. “I am…curious about our destination, Noble Deputy. My family’s horse ranch is only thirty-five miles from here. Even for a training flight, that seems like an extravagant use of a Jump-capable shuttle.”

“We are going to pad our flight time a bit, Ch’Tima, with valuable and completely job-related training. You are going to be practicing flying a search and rescue grid while I am going to be doing a little refresher training using the shuttle’s passive sensor arrays.”

Tima looked down at the nav display. Aside from her family’s horse ranch and a small, isolated sheep ranch, most of the terrain they would be flying over was hilly wilderness. She glanced back over her shoulder at the weapons locker, then arched an eyebrow at Surl. “I have heard this area is good for hunting, though one should take care to avoid Ain Bruic’s ranch. He takes great offense at having his flocks disturbed and, because he is a Veteran of the Betrayal and a twice-decorated Hero of the People, the House permits him to indulge in his idiosyncrasies—so long as no one is seriously injured or killed.”

“Hunting? You begin to divine the true purpose of our jailbreak, Noble Trainee, but you are not there yet. All will become clear when the time is right,” Surl assured her. Before she could ask any further questions, he motioned to the cockpit displays. “Let’s get through the pre-flight checklist and get ourselves airborne, shall we?”

Several hours later, Tima cautiously set the Meteor down on one of the landing cradles at her family’s horse ranch. Surl declared it to be a good first effort; then, while they were putting on their body armor, he suggested he might be able to teach her how to perform a high-speed, no grav-plate combat landing once she’d mastered standard landings. Tima wasn’t certain what that entailed, but, based on the name alone, she had resolved to spend more time working on landing sims before she’d even finished donning her protective vest.

When the shuttle’s boarding ramp lowered, the Sept Leader for the ranch and his senior Deck Officer were waiting for them at its foot. Both of them placed their fists over their hearts and inclined their heads to Tima. The Sept Leader then smiled at her and said, “It is a pleasure to see you, my lady; we are honored by your visit.” He shifted his attention to Surl and offered him a smile, as well. “It is a pleasure to see you again as well, Noble Deputy. Have you come to visit your horses?”

Ignoring the surprised look Tima gave him, Surl shook his head. “Not precisely, Sept Leader. The Noble Marshal has kindly offered to let me stable my horses at his ranch, so Deputy Trainee Ch’Tima and I will be taking them there. You have my continued gratitude and thanks for caring for them here while I searched for some place closer to home to keep them.”

The Sept Leader and the Deck Officer traded a subtle glance, then turned to Tima, who, to their relief, looked surprised as they were at hearing Deputy Marshal’s plan. Tima reassured them with a subtle hand motion before turning to Surl. “Deputy Marshal, I’m afraid our shuttle is not configured properly to transport horses. I’m certain ground transport could be—”

Surl chuckled. “I see I’ve been misunderstood. Rest assured, I had no intention of trying to stuff those poor horses into the back of our shuttle.” He gave the Sept Leader and Deck Officer a grin. “The Noble Deputy Trainee and I will be traveling to Marshal ke’Dolh’s ranch on horseback. It is less than a two days’ ride from here, and the weather is expected to be pleasant.”

“You want to travel…cross-country?” The Sept Leader gave his Deck Officer a wide-eyed look. He turned back to Surl. “It is not uncommon to encounter predators this far into the backcountry, Noble Deputy, and these past few months, there have been reports of poachers in the area.”

“We have no House Security personnel here at the moment, Noble Deputy,” the Deck Officer said quickly, “but I’m certain we can assemble an escort—”

“No need,” Surl interrupted. He turned to Tima. “Deputy Trainee Ch’Tima, in addition to your needler, do you have the Utility Cutting Tool the Noble Marshal gave you?”

“Yes, Noble Deputy, of course.”

“And do you have at least one other knife hidden on your person?”

“I do.”

Surl turned back to the Sept Leader and the Deck Officer. The grin he gave them as he hooked his thumb on the sling of his rifle was particularly toothy. “There, you see? I have no need for any additional escort. Deputy Trainee Ch’Tima is bristling with armament. She will be more than capable of ensuring my safety on our journey to Noble ke’Dolh’s ranch.”

“As you say, Noble Deputy,” the Sept Leader responded before his Deck Officer could form a reply. He’d thought The Ain, Ch’Tima’s father, had gone Commonwealth-soft when he’d reassigned her to the Frontier Marshal Service, rather than furthering her education in a more traditional manner, like a good House raid or two. Of course, raid tickets were few and far between since the Seven Suns had joined up with the Commonwealth, but a smuggling run out to the Uria-an Confederacy would have been an excellent substitute. The young Lady Ain needed a proper life-broadening experience to boost her confidence after her run-in with the Divine Right and, all honor to the formidable Marshal ke’Dolh and Zdrev, he had doubted that working at the marshal’s office would provide it.

A cross-country trip on horseback, however, with poachers afoot and a Dussakairay Leatherneck Deputy, who didn’t bring his fancy Breg rifle with him because he thought it needed more fresh air and sunshine, had a certain classic appeal to it. Bringing a string of prisoners into town from the backcountry would be proper hard work of the sort that built character; all honor to the Noble Deputy. It was probably also not precisely what The Ain had intended for his youngest daughter, which meant the best thing the Sept Leader and his Deck Officer could do to serve the House was to not ask any more questions.

He nodded to Surl. “I imagine you’ll be wanting to head out as soon as possible, Noble Deputy. Let’s head over to Barn Two so Ain Ch’Tima can meet your horses.”

“I’ll get your saddle from storage, my lady, and meet you at the barn,” the Deck Officer said with a slight bow at the waist.

Tima smiled warmly at him. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

Three hours later found Tima and Surl on horseback riding across the rolling plains of the backcountry. Surl had chosen a pair of what the Ain called range horses, a tough, hardy breed with ancestry that dated back to the Mustangs of Old Earth, that he had named Gin and Tonic. Both horses were sixteen-hand, raw-boned bays with white stockings and feathering around their hooves. Gin had a Roman nose with a bald face and just enough of a mischievous personality to need an experienced rider to keep her focused. Tonic, on the other hand, had a blaze running down his Roman nose and more of a quiet and reliable personality. The Noble Deputy, much to Tima’s surprise, was by far the more experienced rider; he’d apparently joined the Commonwealth Marines because it was easier than working the family herd of meat-beasts back on Dussak. She hadn’t the slightest idea what a meat-beast was, but she’d been more than happy to let Surl ride Gin while she rode the more easygoing Tonic.

The hills behind them, to the west, had long concealed the ranch from view. Ahead of them, to the east, the plains seemed to stretch on forever, while to the south they ran only as far as the Coastal Range, whose distant, snow-capped peaks Tima could just make out on the horizon. To their immediate north was the Stega, a vast, rugged terrain of hills and low mountains dominated by oaks. It was a pleasant day for a ride, or at least it would have been if the Noble Deputy hadn’t been keeping his true intentions a secret, only replying to her queries with a frustratingly cryptic, “All in good time, Deputy Trainee. All in good time.”

A lazy breeze drifted past, and Surl cast a questioning look at Tima from beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You seemed unhappy with the way everyone back at the ranch treated you, Ch’Tima. Why is that?”

“They were being kind and respectful and they shouldn’t have been. During the raid, I failed in my duties and…it may be difficult for an outsider to understand, no offense intended, Noble Deputy,” Tima said and turned her head to look off toward Coastal Range. She turned back to Surl and found him watching her patiently with his alien eyes. The fact that he wasn’t human somehow made it easier for her to talk to him. “To suffer a personal failure is no different in the Seven Suns than it is in the Commonwealth. To fail one’s clan, though, is a terrible thing, and to fail one’s House is even worse. I am a daughter of the House Clan; this entire world and its people bear our name, and they are proud to do so because we have led them through the hard times from the collapse of the Imperium all the way up to the war against the Divine Right. The Ain know they can depend on the House Clan to continue to lead them through any other challenges that may yet come our way, because members of the House Clan don’t fail. I didn’t just fail my clan and my House—I failed an entire world. I should be shunned, banished, tasked with impossible deeds until I have redeemed myself, but no one seems to care about my failure. If my failures don’t matter, Noble Deputy, then what conclusion can I draw other than, to my world and my people and—and even to my family, I don’t matter?”

“Before the Commonwealth was formed, my people were much like you Septisolarans—we were worse, even. We had a well-deserved reputation as ruthless pirates who were quick to seek vengeance at the slightest offense. I understand your situation, but I am not so certain that you do.” Surl narrowed his eyes, and his ears swiveled back beneath his hat. “Tell me, Trainee Ch’Tima, why did the Septisolarans join the Commonwealth?”

“The Divine Right was too powerful an enemy for any one House to withstand alone, and the idea of six of the Houses agreeing to submit to one of the others? No, just…no.” Tima shook her head, then rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “The only great power the Seven Houses could agree to unite behind, the only one we could be certain would deal with each House fairly, was the Commonwealth. As it happened, the Commonwealth, though larger and more powerful than the Seven Suns, was neither large enough nor powerful enough to defeat the Divine Right without our help. It was an arrangement that benefited everyone—except the Divine Right, of course.”

“That’s true, as far as it goes, but the Divine Right was really just an excuse. Your House Elders joined the Commonwealth for the same reason the Dussakairay of Old helped the Makhtaran humans found it five centuries ago: they wanted a new way of life for their people. They wanted a future that didn’t involve the likelihood of their children being maimed or killed in the raiding and blood feuds that neither they, nor those who came before them, knew how to bring to an end.” He pointed to her. “Your parents want this for you, but during the Divine Right raid, you rather clearly demonstrated the flaw in their plans: they have thoroughly trained and educated you in the old ways, and it is the old ways you will return to in times of crisis. They are at a loss as to how to teach you the new ways. This is why you have been assigned to the marshal’s office.”

Tima’s shoulders dropped. “Does this mean that it is your intent to spend two days riding through the backcountry talking to me about…philosophy?”

“Not hardly,” Surl rumbled, and Gin skipped sideways a few steps in excitement. While keeping his eyes fixed on Tima, Surl guided Gin back over to Tonic using only his legs. “Like you, I am also a bit old-fashioned. Since we are partners, I aim to help you resolve the unfinished business you have with the Divine Right azzi who captured you. I know, I know—everyone says all of the raider’s crew is accounted for, but they are wrong, and the Divine Right crew is lying when they agree with it. I went over that garbage scow the Divine Right calls a raider, and I say there are four Naval Infantrymen still unaccounted for. They are the ones who captured you, not those fools who brought you back to the raider. When the raid went south, they ran and hid themselves in the Strega.”

The Seven Suns were isolated by distance from the rest of the local star systems, but even so, Tima had read stories about the traditional Dussakairay of pre-Commonwealth times. “Noble Deputy, by traditional, do you mean—”

“There will be no severed heads, Trainee Ch’Tima. We are going to hunt them down, arrest them, and then march them back into town as our prisoners for all to see,” Surl told her, then pointed to the ground. “We will follow this trail north until we reach one of their old campsites. Then we can determine our next move.”

Tima searched the ground around them and saw nothing but prairie grass, with nothing to distinguish one patch from any other. She looked up and saw Surl had already started Gin heading to the north. “I mean no disrespect, Noble Deputy, but…what trail?”

Surl looked back over his shoulder at her. “The signs would be almost impossible for a human to detect, but they are clear enough to a Dussakairay. Step lively, Noble Trainee, we are burning daylight.”

It was midday when they reached the edge of the Stega, and Tima hadn’t decided if the Deputy Marshal was pulling her leg about the supposed trail he was following. He certainly acted as if he were following a trail; he’d even lost it once and they had needed to double back a bit so he could pick it up again. The oaks on the edge of the Stega were widely spaced and provided only momentary shade from the sun, but after an hour, the trees started becoming closer together, forming a canopy that steadily grew denser. Surl continued to follow his trail, and she continued to be unable to see any signs of it for another hour before he brought them to a halt and quietly told her to dismount.

Surl dismounted, as well, and walked a few paces away from Gin. He knelt on one knee and scooped up a small handful of leaves and soil. Then he crushed the leaves with the fingers of one hand and sniffed them before dropping them back to the ground. Surl brushed his hand off on his thigh as he stood up and in a quiet voice told her, “Something is buried nearby. Animals, perhaps something else. Get the scanner from your saddlebag, Ch’Tima, and bring it over here, but do not turn it on until I tell you.”

“Yes, Deputy Surl.” Tima went back to Tonic and retrieved her scanner. She gave Tonic a friendly pat, then rejoined Surl, who had gone back to Gin and retrieved his rifle. She looked down at the scanner, and then back up at Surl with her eyes narrowed. “You mapped this whole area with the passive sensors on the shuttle while I was busy practicing flying a search pattern. There’s no trail and you know exactly what’s here, don’t you, Noble Deputy?”

Surl chuckled. “That gag never gets old. Remember it for when it is your turn to train a new deputy.” He went down on one knee and motioned to the ground beside him. “You will need to go prone here, set the scanner to its shortest range, and hold it close to the ground before you activate it. If our quarry truly is Divine Right Naval Infantry, that will minimize the chances of their detecting your signal. The passive sensor readings I took from the shuttle suggest they are several hours east of here, but Naval Infantrymen are treacherous, dangerous foes who must be accorded appropriate respect. They may have left something behind to alert them if they were being pursued.”

Tima did as he instructed, then powered up the scanner. She was about to ask him what she should be scanning for when an image resolved on the scanner display screen. “There is something buried here…about thirty feet in front of us. It looks like the disarticulated remains of a great many animals. Divine Right azzi—not even the most brazen of poachers would engage in such slaughter!”

Surl went prone beside her. “This is just the edge of the anomaly I detected from the shuttle. We need to scan more of it, so we will remain prone and advance cautiously forward. You keep your eyes on that scanner and alert me the moment it shows anything new. I’ll make sure our path is clear of tripwires or buried surprises. Clear?”

“Shouldn’t the scanner pick up any tripwires and, ah, buried surprises, Deputy Surl?”

“There are methods for deceiving a scanner that has been set to minimum power to avoid detection, but that is a lesson for another time.” Surl swept his eyes across the ground in front of them, then turned to Tima. “If I give the command to fall back, immediately turn off the scanner and crawl backwards the way we came in. No matter what happens, do not stand up until you are back by the horses. Is this clear?”

“Yes, Noble Deputy.”

“Good. Let us proceed. Stay close. Stay sharp.”

They crawled forward in stages, pausing so Surl could inspect their immediate path forward, then advancing a yard to repeat the process. As Tima pulled herself forward, she realized the only sounds she could hear were she and Surl dragging themselves across the leaves and Gin and Tonic shuffling about where they’d left them tied. In her peripheral vision, she saw Surl signal they were clear to move forward again, and when she began to inch forward, her scanner beeped softly.

“More bones, Noble Deputy, a few yards past the animal bones, at ten o’clock,” Tima said, furrowing her brows in concentration as the display updated. Her eyebrows rose. “Human remains! Three individuals, all male.”

“How long have they been here?”

Tima shook her head. “Indeterminate. We’ll need to get closer to get a clearer reading.”

“Very well. Let us advance.”

They advanced twice before Tima’s scanner beeped again. A series of readouts began scrolling across the small screen, and Tima impatiently instructed the scanner to skip ahead to the final results. “The human remains have been here for about three months. The animal remains…there is quite a variance here, Noble Deputy. The oldest animal remains were placed here just over three months ago, while the most recent have only been in the ground for about a week.”

“The captain of the Divine Right raider didn’t bring his ship to this world as part of a planned raid; he came here out of desperation. The Naval Infantrymen assigned to his ship were not equipped for field operations, and what equipment they had, mainly zero-G powered armor and heavy pistols, was in poor condition,” Surl explained, and motioned toward her scanner. “Our quarry obviously came across these poachers shortly after evading capture, then killed them and made use of their equipment and supplies while they were hiding out.”

Before Tima could respond, her scanner beeped, then immediately beeped again. A puzzled expression appeared on her face as she studied the scanner’s readout. “More human remains…and the scanner is indicating they belong to a Divine Right Naval Infantryman. It hasn’t even fully resolved the location of the remains yet. How could it identify them as belonging to a Naval Infantryman already? And why is the scanner taking so long to resolve everything, anyway?”

“The Divine Right, Noble Trainee, uses medical nanites to embed identification tags in the cervical vertebrae and long bones of its citizens, in order to make tracking and controlling them easier.” Surl levered himself up a few inches to visually inspect the area displayed on Tima’s scanner. “Our quarry has gone to great lengths to make this spot as difficult to scan as possible; doubtless they have concealed many traps up ahead. That does make it strange that the scanner picked up on the Divine Right ID tags so soon. It’s almost as if the tags are exposed.”

Tima’s scanner beeped again, and her eyebrows rose slightly when she saw the results. “They may be, Noble Deputy. The Naval Infantryman’s head has been severed, most likely by a utility cutting tool; all honor to the poachers.” When her scanner beeped again, her brows furrowed, and she tilted her head slightly to the side. “It says there are trace elements of unknown metallo-ceramics.”

“That is our signal to fall back. Slow and steady, Ch’Tima, no need to rush.”

After they crawled back to the horses, Tima brushed the leaves off her uniform and protective vest while Surl studied the readings she’d taken with her scanner. He handed the scanner back to Tima, then brushed himself off. “The metallo-ceramic reading suggests there is at least one power cell from a suit of Divine Right powered armor buried in there. Even nearly depleted, one of those could be used to fashion an explosive device that would be more than powerful enough to kill us both, even without all the potential shrapnel present.”

Tima noted the potential blast radius Surl had placed on the map and glanced nervously toward the burial site. “That blast radius is rather…concerningly large, is it not?”

Surl shook his head. “We’re fine here for now. The question we need to be focusing on, Ch’Tima, is what happened about a week ago that caused these Divine Right to abandon their hiding place and head east?”

“East? They went toward Ain Bruic’s sheep ranch?” Tima looked off to the east and frowned.

“That is where the sensors picked up evidence of more recently used campsites,” Surl told her. His ears flicked. “On the subject of Ain Bruic’s sheep ranch: during our flight, I noted not only a distinct lack of sheep, but also a distinct lack of signs of there ever having been sheep on that so-called ranch.”

Tima looked back at Surl with a carefully neutral expression on her face. “As I said, Elgar Surl, the House grants the Noble Hero much leeway in his idiosyncrasies. If it is the Hero’s wish to tend imaginary flocks, certainly it is no concern of ours.”

Surl’s whiskers twitched, and he chuckled. “There is no need to go all High House on your partner, Ch’Tima. The House may permit Ain Bruic leeway in his pastimes, but that doesn’t mean the House remains ignorant of them. I feel confident that you know what he really does on his, ah, sheep ranch. I intend the Noble Hero no disrespect, but it could be important.”

“It is nothing sinister, Noble Deputy,” Tima replied, as she returned her scanner to its place in one of Tonic’s saddlebags. She turned to him and shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. “He distills significant quantities of liquor.”

It was a moment before Surl responded. “Are you seriously telling me that he makes…bootleg whiskey in his barn?”

“I am given to understand that it is extremely popular on trade station Doba Sahkyo. He has an arrangement with a Breg Consortium to make a one-for-one trade of Ain moonshine for red bosk. No credits are exchanged, so—” Tima broke off abruptly and looked back to the east.

Surl didn’t notice, because he’d begun coughing, though it sounded suspiciously like he was hiding a laugh. He cleared his throat and took a breath. “So he not only makes bootleg whiskey, but he also trades it with a consortium of Breg rum runners? And they make their exchange on Doba Sahkyo, the sketchiest trade station in all the Commonwealth? No one back home will believe me when I tell them this…”

Tima turned back to Surl, her eyes wide and her face pale. “Deputy Surl, Ain Bruic returned from his most recent trip to Doba Sahkyo last week. He hides his shuttle at his ranch.”

“Who else lives at the ranch with him?” Surl asked, with his ears forward and his brow furrowed.

“No one. The Naval Infantrymen have been observing him for a week now, Noble Deputy. They’ll know he lives there alone.” Tima pulled Tonic’s reins free of the branch she had secured them to and positioned herself to swing up into his saddle. “We have to get to his ranch before they do and warn him or help him defend the ranch, if necessary.”

“We will, Ch’Tima, but cautiously,” Surl told her as he climbed into Gin’s saddle. “If we head there directly, the Naval Infantrymen will almost certainly spot us as we cross all that open ground and pick us off. Not too far from here, though, there’s a dry streambed running down from the forest and out onto the prairie. We can follow that; it passes pretty close to Ain Bruic’s ranch, and it should provide us with enough cover to make it there without getting shot.”

Two hours later, Tima was again crawling across the ground on her elbows alongside Surl. After reaching the dry streambed without difficulty, they had dismounted and had only just begun to make their way down toward Ain Bruic’s ranch when they’d spotted the impressions of Divine Right-issue combat boots in the dusty soil. They had pressed forward, cautiously but steadily, without catching sight of the Naval Infantrymen. When they reached the point where the streambed passed closest to the ranch, they followed the Naval Infantrymen’s footprints up its bank and went prone before working their way up the small rise beyond it.

Tima knew from Bruic’s file at the marshal’s office that the weathered-looking red barn a short distance from them contained the distillery. A little further on were two grain silos, painted the same red as the distillery-barn, that concealed the advanced communication arrays Bruic used to tap into the planetary comm-net and traffic control. Across from the silos was a modest horse barn with an attached garage, respectively housing Bruic’s horse and his gravitic speeder. Beyond the initial cluster of buildings was what appeared to be a long barn whose walls had been fashioned to simulate the look of unpainted wood that had aged to a warm silver color. Attached to this supposed barn, which Bruic used as a warehouse and as a hangar to hide his shuttle, was a one-room building that served as an office. Bruic’s house, a long single-story building with a wraparound porch, was furthest from their current position.

Surl tapped her shoulder and used his hand to direct her attention to the trio of Naval Infantrymen. A chill ran down Tima’s spine when she saw they already held Ain Bruic at gunpoint. They directed him onto the porch outside his office, and when the double doors leading into the office opened, one of the Naval Infantryman propelled Bruic through the doorway with a blow from his rifle. All three of the Naval Infantryman followed Bruic inside, and the doors snapped shut behind them.

“We have to save him, Noble Deputy! They will torture him for the access keys to his shuttle and then kill him,” Tima whispered intently as they crawled back to their horses. “You were a Commonwealth Marine; you must know plans for dealing with situations like this. What should we do now?”

“We call for reinforcements and then we sit tight and wait, Trainee Ch’Tima.” Surl made a calming gesture with one hand to forestall her reply. “I know that isn’t the answer you want to hear, and I understand. Really, I do. We have no idea what the situation is inside that building. They could know we are here, and we’d be walking into a trap. Even if it isn’t a trap, the first thing they will do when we come through the doors, assuming they are unlocked and we could go through them in the first place, will be to shoot Ain Bruic. Without knowing where they are beforehand, there’s no way just the two of us could take all three of them out before one of them kills him.”

“What if I distract them? That would give you time to line up shots on two of them, and then I could take out the third one.”

The cant of Surl’s ears and drape of his whiskers was a study in a Dussakairay silently expressing doubt. Tima was undeterred.

“During the raid, while I was being held captive, the captain of the raider informed me, at length, about how long it had been since he or his crew had the pleasure of female companionship.” Tima shuddered, then nodded her head toward Bruic’s office. “Those zoetta holding Ain Bruic have been hiding in the woods for three months, on top of that. They will probably even find the fact that my clothes are covered in dirt and I smell like a horse to be irresistibly fetching.”

Surl shook his head. “I’m afraid the gunbelt, body armor, and badge will more than counter your inherent fetchingness, Ch’Tima.”

“Which is why I will disguise my appearance.” Tima removed her hat and hung it on the pommel of Tonic’s saddle. She withdrew an all-weather poncho from a saddlebag and put it on. Then she unpinned her work braid, shook her hair free of it, and quickly rearranged and repinned it into a messy bun. She adjusted her hat’s chinstrap out to its maximum length and put it back on so that it hung down on her back between her shoulders. For her final step, she hung her gunbelt on Tonic’s pommel, drew her needler pistol, and concealed it beneath her poncho.

She turned to Surl. “You see, Noble Deputy? I’m just a harmless cowgirl who has stopped by to visit dear old Ain Bruic. Hardly a threat to three Divine Right Naval Infantrymen.”

Surl’s ears went flat against his head as he gave her a stern look. His whiskers twitched to the left. “All right, Noble Trainee, here’s the plan…”

“Zdrevazzi!”

The term loosely translated into Standard as harmless lapdog of an uncultured, barbarian outsider, and it was widely considered to be the worst insult one could give in Septisolaran-dialect Standard. The Divine Right Naval Infantryman may not have known this, but Tima decided he clearly recognized her tone. His scowl deepened and he increased his stride as he came around from behind Bruic’s desk, leaving his two companions alone as they continued to hold Bruic up against the wall by his ankles. Tima edged back, causing the doors to open behind her, and concentrated on thinking very small.

She heard what sounded like the whines of a small swarm of angry mosquitoes and distortion trails cut through the air on either side of her. The two Naval Infantrymen holding Bruic released him and toppled over like fallen trees. Bruic hit the floor, tucked into a somersault, and rolled onto his feet. He dove for the hunting rifle closest to him, but the look on his face told Tima that he knew he would not reach it in time.

The remaining Naval Infantryman was only a handful of steps away from her, his knife poised to plunge into her heart. The look on his face said he’d decided that he wasn’t going to leave Bruic’s office alive, and he was going to make sure Tima didn’t, either. He seemed confident no one would have time to stop him.

Concealed beneath her poncho, Tima held her needler pistol in her hand. She brought the pistol up, just as she’d drilled countless times before, and loosed a three-needle burst. All three crystalline needles hit the Naval Infantryman in the neck, rendering him unconscious even before he realized that he’d been hit. His momentum continued to carry him forward, though, and she had to twist to the side to avoid having him land on her as he hit the floor and tumbled up against the doorframe.

Tima flipped her poncho back over her shoulder to reveal her body armor and her Frontier Marshal Service badge and, lacking a holster, transferred her needler to her left hand. She heard the front porch creak behind her and looked back to see Surl rushing up to the open door. He paused beside the doorframe, did a quick visual survey of the room, and clapped her on the shoulder.

“Well done, Deputy Trainee.”

She gave him a quick grin, then turned back to Bruic and assumed a position of attention as was appropriate when addressing a Hero of the People. “Honored Hero, I come to you as Deputy Trainee Ch’Tima, and this is my partner, the Noble Deputy Marshal Elgar Surl. Please accept my apologies on behalf of the Frontier Marshal Service for intruding on your privacy, but we have come to arrest these three Divine Right fugitives and bring them in to face justice for their crimes.”

“Deputy Ch’Tima, eh?” Bruic looked down at the unconscious Naval Infantryman on the floor, then, after the merest of glances at Surl, ran a critical eye over Tima, like a Sergeant Major inspecting the kit of a new transfer of uncertain merit. He had long ago replaced his Septisolaran cybernetics with far more advanced and lifelike Commonwealth cybernetics, but he wore the right pauldron from his old artificial limb on the shoulder of his jacket. Proudly embossed on the pauldron were the Ain House badge superimposed with a black V, identifying him as a Veteran of the Betrayal, and the Laurel Wreath with a Single Star, indicating his status as a twice-decorated Hero of the People. He looked her in the eyes and gave her a subtle nod.

“This is not how we would have handled things back in my day, Lady Deputy, but…you’ll probably tell me that these are new days for the Seven Suns. I confess that I had my doubts, right up until you cussed this one out before shooting him. I reckon your way works okay.” He came to attention and saluted her by placing his fist over his heart. “Ain hearts beat true.”

She returned his salute and felt a touch of pride at the feel of her deputy marshal’s badge between her fist and her heart. “Ain hearts beat true.”

The List

Mikaela A. M. Johnston

Shaped like an Old Earth beluga whale but opalescent gray, Delilah was my ride in the vastness of space. I was a tall man, but the sinuous bulk of my fourteen-foot-long space dewgong had always seemed to fit just right. Reflexively balancing myself, I marked <Centauri 4: request to intercept and arrest satellite hijacker> off The List, and returned the small screen to its pocket in my spacerider’s vest.

Another one complete. My hand patted Delilah on the neck as I sat in our saddle. She was my only lasting companion. That thought triggered an image of permanently tousled orange curls crowning a woman’s smiling face.

I closed my eyes and sagged. I was a cancerous shell of a spacerider, but I was what I needed to be. I answered the calls for help that most would just cluck with sympathy over. It’s okay if some people get cancer, I thought. Especially if there’s no one planetside who needs him to come home.

I gently bent Delilah’s black spine, aiming its glowing blue tip toward my less useful arm—the left one. The voided arm was pocked from all my previous carcinogen injections.

“Bones! Mollybones! Don’t do that!” called Copter, with his garish teal hair and his omnipresent smile. Our spacerider setups allowed his voice to be transmitted straight to my ear without needing sound waves. He glided in close, his dewgong floating gently next to mine. “We have o-fficial thanks to receive for bagging that canner!”

Canners. People who had to be “canned” in a spaceship to travel safely among the stars. And yet, we space cowboys were the ones who needed “cans” if we were ever to go planetside. Or asteroidside, or moonside, or whatever size of rock was being inhabited. It’s all planetside to me.

My fellow spacerider turned his dewgong toward an incoming ship. My chest constricted, but my eyes hungered. I wanted the companionship. I just…didn’t want their thanks. I was doing what I had to do.

Other Assistance Adverts I’d answered and checked off ghosted in front of my eyes. <North of Betelgeuse: request to investigate newly found asteroid; danger possible.> <Mars West: request for dewgong rider to give demonstration to school children.> <Saturn 7: locate…>

Copter was glancing at me sidelong. I let Delilah’s spine go from my right hand. Molly’s face and orange curls bounced in front of my eyes again. She would’ve berated me if I hadn’t shown up to one of these congratulatory events.

But Molly was dead. And something in me had died with her.

“See ya ‘round, Copter. Truly a good workin’ relationship.” I knew I said it out loud, because Copter reacted. I knew it came out like the grind of a poor prerecording, because his reaction was concern.

“Well, Bones, you’re a piece of work!” He slapped me genially on the back. “But great on the job. You want to work side by side again, ring me up. You can find my signature.” I felt and heard the ping on my comm. “And if you’d like a different kind of thanks for the work you do, try coming by my waystation near Asteroid DB-11.” Offer extended, Copter’s dewgong turned and swam through the open blackness toward a slowly approaching spaceship, presumably the one with planetoid officials ready to shower us with thanks for answering their justice advert.

It was nothing. I was nothing. So I turned Delilah toward the void, and we swam into it.

Still seated on Delilah, like I almost always was, I scrolled through the advert list. Fatigue settled over me like a lead blanket. So many requests for aid, each posted among dozens of similar adverts to a central request repository in the hope that someone would answer—and the number of posted adverts was only increasing, despite all my work. I found an advert sent from near the Asteroid DB-11 area Copter had mentioned. The request said that there were missing persons, and to meet with colony leader “B. Stanger” to discuss the matter.

I considered the distances. It was probably going to be a long trip, far away and with missing persons. I’d need plenty of tumors to keep my body from fatally popping in space. So I gently bent Delilah’s spine to my arm and gritted my teeth just before I pressed the sharp, hollow tip in, steeling myself for the pain of the puncture and for the violent, inimitable flow of carcinogen into my blood and body.

I swear I can almost feel the graying of my skin. I can actually feel the repressurization of my tissues. Shoulda crapped before running away from Copter. I grimaced. It wouldn’t’ve been polite before, not while sailing in Smooth Space, with their cameras everywhere. Civilization had expectations. And…I forgot. I barked a laugh at my expense. Having to hold it in now, I remembered, all right.

If someone in Jagged Space—those sparsely inhabited places on the margins of society and law—had seen me let loose a crap, they would’ve laughed. I checked the advert. The areas around Asteroid DB-11 were definitely in Jagged Space, from the non-bureaucratic sound of it. I’d jettison my popdroppings there. This B. Stanger had sent the location both in traditional hyperspace coordinates and in dewgong frequencies, so I oriented Delilah, leaned my face toward the port on the back of her head that puffed out oxygen, and whispered, “Giddyup.” I felt her rev in her chest, and we burst through space.

Asteroids lazily floated about us. Some appeared inhabited, with spaceships zipping around them and protrusions that were too evenly rectangular to be natural. The gigantic asteroid to my left looked like a pretty big mining operation, though it was still Jagged. I felt my gray cheeks twitch, as if they wanted to grin, but had forgotten how to actually do it. Still. Something about sharp edges, trailing wires, and trouble made me feel…something. That was, well, something. Assuredly in Jagged Space, I quickly arranged to crap, and sent it shooting away from Delilah and me.

Delilah shifted ever-so-slightly underneath me, and I immediately sharpened my focus. I twisted some nobs on my goggles to get a better look where she was aiming, since apparently Delilah saw something my auto-adjusting lenses didn’t think was worth zooming in on.

Dewgongs. A whole pod of them, swimming the skies near one of the smaller asteroids. They blinked in and out of sight as their natural camouflage did its thing.

Beauty. As I stared, I felt the stirrings of magic again.

What a universe. I remembered when the strange space-dewgongs had first been spotted. We humans hadn’t had any idea what we’d been seeing. Good thing the beasts seemed to like us. Too much, I thought, rubbing the scarred skin underneath my right ribs. Still, I couldn’t complain. Delilah’s mother had probably saved my life. I patted Delilah’s back as I reminisced. It wasn’t her fault that humans didn’t know how to stay still for injections of life-saving vacuum-of-space poison. I glanced at my left arm. Well, some of us figured out how to stay still for them. When I’d started going gray in my skin from the growing cancer, Molly’s eyebrows had furrowed, but she’d smiled and said she had enough color for the two of us.

My hands ached to go around her waist again. B. Stanger was temporarily forgotten. I crumpled forward.

For a time, I just let Delilah carry me where she wanted to go.

You couldn’t really be a wanderer in space, not unless you had a dewgong. The creature kept you alive, kept you moving, and you didn’t have any circadian schedules to keep. Usually, no one was waiting for you, either. Just had to keep getting cancerified regularly. Just had to remember to eat. Just had to find a meaning to all the black space, long nights, too-bright lights, and inability to spend any significant time on a planet. A planet where actual humans laughed and cried and drank intoxicants that would only temporarily poison them. A planet where girls’ dresses fell straight toward the planet’s center of gravity and it took ingenuity, charm, or matrimony to get them to go the other way. A place where you could find a Molly, and only ever want her after she’d gotten to you.

A place where spaceriders could not stay.

Delilah moaned her strange space moan that seemed to say, It’s okay, I’ve got you.

I gripped the reins. Right. And I have work to do. The List. “Let’s go meet B. Stanger,” I croaked. Without any enthusiasm, I pulled a calorie ball out of my spacefarer’s vest, peeled off the auto-sealing foil, and started to chew.

It was something of a production, getting Delilah settled in the outer atmosphere and getting me settled in a vacuum chamber down planetside. The chamber was depressurized just like space, and I could talk with planetsiders in their natural habitat without giving myself tamp. And speaking via intermediary microphone was normal to me. And I deserved to be in a jar.

A tall woman walked into the planetside receiving room. Dark hair, strong features, but nice to look at. She sat down like the chair was her throne. “I am Birgitte Stanger, in charge of this mining colony, and a few of its nearby asteroids. I understand you are responding to our posting for aid with missing persons?” She eyed me like the territorial leader she was.

I just nodded, maintaining eye contact.

“Good,” she replied. An unexpected pleasure ghosted through me at being able to communicate nonverbally with a human. No need for a voice and a comm to just communicate “yes.”

Her expression gentled a little, like I was a skittish planetside animal that needed comfort. Maybe I looked like one. Her voice was still all business, though. “There appears to be a moving space station that is the base for an unusual number of dewgongs. I occasionally intercept transmissions from there, but I haven’t gotten clearance to tap their lines.” She does not look pleased about that. “And none of the transmissions come directly to our colony leadership. We also have had several missing persons, all girls, and I want to know if I should be searching the skies or the ground.” As she was speaking, her expression smoothed from stormy back to professional. “My objective for you is to locate this mobile dewgong station—since you have a dewgong—and determine its legitimate business, if any, and record and return to me its electronic signature so we can be enabled to track it even through the dewgong electromagnetic interference. Understood?”

I nodded. I imagined myself crossing this task off The List, as well. Another line, another justification for my continued existence. I stood slowly. “Do you have a spacerider’s net I could use to sleep here, near the colony?” Normally, I just had Delilah jet me somewhere far away from everything, and succumbed to unconsciousness strapped to her. I trusted her more than anything in the aching emptiness of space, but it always seemed more appropriate to stay on location when you were working closely with the locals.

Birgitte Stanger nodded. “It’s not much in the way of accommodation, but it will provide privacy, protection, and a nearby checkpoint. Also, keep hold of this.” She gave me a small chip, which I assumed was where the ship signatures were supposed to go. I pocketed it.

My stiff face muscles creaked toward a smile. “No worries, Miss–Madam.” I coughed slightly over my rudeness toward her position. “I like Jagged Space.”

Birgitte looked sternly pleased at my appreciation of the rough outskirts of civilization. She stood and began to turn, but paused. “I will send in someone to coordinate with you about your spacerider net. Are you comfortable for now?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” And she turned and left.

Birgitte’s subordinate got everything set up while I scrolled through the List. When the net was ready, I tucked my screen away, got myself inside the little bag of a room, and sighed. It was good to sleep in something that felt like a room. Even if rooms always made me think of my last roommate. Molly. I exhaled, letting the ache of her absence fade away. Like I would someday. I fell asleep.

I woke up to a feeling of security. That probably meant I wasn’t working hard enough. I uncurled, chewed up another calorie ball, and expelled my crap. I saw I had a message. <A pod for ablutions has been sent up to you. Take advantage. Once clean, comfortable, check in before departure.>

Peeking out of the spacerider net, I saw what she was talking about, and I did as I was told.

Feeling clean and inexplicably stronger because of it, I reported in with Madam Stanger, then set out to find this mysterious station. I hoped it wasn’t where Copter was. Missing persons was bad business.

Finding the station was easy, docking Delilah equally so. I climbed in a welcome hatch, wondering when things would get hard.

The station was pressurized. Not as much as a normal-person space station, but still uncomfortable to me. I jerked a cord on my suit, and it stiffened up on me, making me slightly more comfortable as it tried to hold the atmosphere away from me. Space cowboys adopted the vacuum. I could feel my face squishing. I saw lights go on at my feet, guiding me to where I could hear rowdy talking, but I took a moment to pull out one of my hypodermics and prick myself around my ears, mouth, and most importantly, eyes. The tamp would send ugly black threads out along my skin from where I inserted, but it was better than my face collapsing in on itself.

Clomp, clomp, clomp. I didn’t like the sound of my footsteps. I was used to hearing voices because I had a mic to relay conversation, for either coordination or simple companionship. But the sound of my feet flapping against a floor had become more than a little unnerving. I grimaced, but didn’t let the moment make me act squeamish like a schoolgirl. Sorry, Molly. No offense intended. One quick pang, and I was past the memory. As I stepped into a bright room with lots of men around, something like a mess hall, the noise drowned out the individual sound of my movements, and my legs relaxed. A man with slightly smashed features, teal hair, and wearing a bodysuit with some stylization came up to me with a friendly smile. Did he ever stop smiling?

“Bones!”

I nodded, smiling weakly in return. “Copter.”

“You took my invite?”

I nodded. We swung our arms in tandem, ending with a tight clasp of forearms that brought us closer together. He took in my face. “Ah, I see you’ve taken precautions, but,” he waved a small, capped hypodermic, “I have more tamp, if you need it. Plenty, actually,” he said as he pocketed it. “As well as some depressurized rooms.” He turned toward the main mess of people. “Care to join us?” He tossed me a mischievous grin. I shrugged, but smiled wanly and walked forward with him.

A young man who looked like he’d just been initiated as a dewgong rider—meaning he looked stabbed to within an inch of the void—was on a foldout seat, leaning tiredly back. Still, he looked self-satisfied. A bunch of men clustered around him, as well as the first two women I’d seen on the space station. The one crouching in front of him had a medic’s smock. Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and while her movements were precise and confident as she tended to him, her face seemed stiff, as if nervous or unhappy, but controlling it. Maybe he was her boyfriend, and she’d been less confident about his well-being than she wanted to let on. I let my eyes slide past her to the other girl. She was a sight. Shining waves of black hair, warm bronze skin, and a body worth crying for. She wasn’t Molly, but she looked good. It made me uneasy. She patted the initiate’s leg reassuringly, and I wondered if it was suggesting a bit more than platonic comfort. I raised my eyebrows. The medic was probably just strung up because she had to deal with self-inflicted injury.

I shook my head. The one with tumbling black locks looked twice as self-assured as the boy, and I wondered how many initiates she had “comforted.” As I started to look around for something to drink—which I really needed—a girl in a jumpsuit stepped up beside me and offered me a bottle. I smelled it. “No, thanks.” Her eyebrows lifted and she swapped me out for another bottle. Sniffing it, I smiled an actual smile. “No, something lighter.” She smiled back at me and made a third switch, still completely quiet. The third drink was pure hydration tonic, and I swigged it thirstily.

I watched as the girl slipped away. So there were at least three females on this station. I wondered if they were permanent residents, on rotating shifts up at the space station, or the missing persons Birgitte–Madam–Stanger had mentioned. Why didn’t I ask who I was lookin’ for? I took another swig of tonic and glanced back toward Copter as he drew everyone’s attention.

“Here we have Jonas! And a fine stabbing he took. Angela!” he crowed, and the brunette medic winced a little, “how is he taking it?”

“His wound is clean, and he’s been adequately stitched. It was a good positioning for a first injection, and I have taken care of the tensions in the stitching and muscles. He should be good to go soon.” Her eyes shuttered. You’d think she’d be happy he wasn’t dying under her watch. I furrowed my brows.

“Good girl!” cheered Copter. “Levi, take Angela to somewhere more to her liking, eh?” A man with an impassive face came, helping Angela the medic up and escorted her to, supposedly, a quieter section of the ship. “Now, Lacy, you have anything for us?” The beauty that had stroked lucky Jonas’s leg stood up into a saucy pose.

“For you?” She cast a look over the assembled males, her look managing to be both disdainful and delicious. “No. But I might have something in the back rooms.” The men whooped as Lacy tossed her silky head of hair.

I just leaned against a pillar, taking a swig of a second bottle of hydration tonic.

Jonas’s eyes turned greedy and bright. My guts clenched and my arms started to shake, slightly. I really didn’t want this to be what I feared it was. Void almighty. I was starting to feel warm. I hadn’t felt warm in…so long. I stood taller, looking around for the little thing that had brought me something to drink. The men around me laughed in a way that made me feel even hotter. I watched how the men broke up into groups. Many of them went to Lacy, and seemed to take her directions. Others went off to sundry places on the ship. Some men, by their grayed skin or by their minimal movements, seemed to be spaceriders, and the rest, with their exaggerated motions and smooth faces, seemed to be planetside people. I took a drink, slowly draining my hydration tonic, thinking.

If space taught me one thing, it was that misdirected effort could literally kill. What was my goal here? The List said I was to report to Birgitte about missing persons. Birgitte said my goal was to locate the dewgong station, see what their business was, and report back to her. But I also had a second motive now. Anger. Should I go look for the water girl? Should I try to find the medic? Or the racy Lacy? Should I just follow Jonas and see what kind of trouble I could get him in? I smirked at the thought of messing with Jonas, but decided against it. Striding up to a wiry man against a bar of foodstuffs and drinks, I leaned against it lightly. “Do you figure the medic went back to the infirmary? Just want to check in, since it’s been a while since I’ve had a proper checkup.”

“Sure, that’s where she usually is,” he said equably. “Don’t get too friendly, though. She’s worth her weight in gold, that one, as long as she keeps all of us and our vices running smoothly. Understand?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“I do,” and I swiveled toward a hallway in pursuit of answers.

As I’d expected, there was helpful floor lighting. If this ship was made at all in the same model as most, the orange strip of lights with the slow pulse of red moving through it was a guide light to the infirmary, where I expected to find my medic. Didn’t take much time, with my stride. The first door to the infirmary was just a doorway with a scanning laser that you’d have to walk through. The laser scanned you before any humans had to deal with triage. Or at least, that’s how it was on fancy Smooth Space ships. Here, I walked through the red wall of light and I saw a white partition. Red arrow pointing right, blue arrow pointing left. No automated voice told me which way I had to go, and I didn’t want to wait, so I went right toward red.

Stepping around, I saw the medic. I fumbled in my space-jogged head for her name, but it wasn’t Delilah, Molly, or Lacy, so I gave up. “‘Scuse me, ma’am.” I looked around, and the infirmary looked empty, and I heard no commotion behind any of the nearby doors. I kept talking while I scanned. “I ended up visiting here because I saw the dewgongs.” No one appeared to be anywhere near, and Ms. Medic with her tight brown ponytail was looking at me without commenting. “Do you normally get visiting spaceriders here?”

A pause. “No. We generally provide a waystation for spaceriders of this…company…only, though we do get regular visitors from various planet or asteroidside locations.” I could only imagine why she wouldn’t say the word “company” normally. She picked up a pressure monitor and stood smoothly up. “Would you like your pressurization checked, spacefarer?”

She doesn’t look anything like Molly. She doesn’t talk like her, doesn’t move like her…except she does look capable. I had no idea why this medic had my chest twisting up, but if that was going to be a problem, I needed to solve it. I just needed to complete the requested task. I stepped closer compliantly. Using a low tone, which I hoped was calming, I asked, “Is it safe here for you?”

She tweaked some controls on her pressurization monitor. “Let me focus on heartrate real quick.” And she pressed the monitor to me.

I just looked at her steadily, the little fire inside still going. Apparently, I passed muster. “I do feel unsafe here, though I am perhaps the safest female on board. Except for Lacy.” Her eyes flashed at the name.

I reached out to take her shoulder, but stopped midreach, because I didn’t want to scare her. “How many females are on board?”

Her lower lip and chin trembled. That had been the right question. Unfortunately. “Many,” she whispered.

Something like a spasm traveled down my neck and through my chest and arms. Disgusting. These space pimps had taken the ultimate freedom of space and turned it into an inescapable prison. Not everyone could survive in the vacuum outside. And here space’s very openness was a gulf that was being used to separate women from their families and their lives. I could feel my face tightening into a mask. “Where are they?” I growled.

Medic-lady, conversely, was all business again. “There’s a…brothel, basically. They maintain it on board. They bring in the men and—”

“Where?”

Medic’s voice went from professional to flat. “They are kept in several places, though I should ask whether you are wanting an entertainment room or to visit them in their own private space. Private unless you want in, of course.” Her voice was bitter and dark.

“How can I save them?” I asked, jaw clenched.

Medic looked at me. “Is that what you’re here for?”

I forcibly relaxed my taut hands. Well…no. That wasn’t why I came here, at least. I looked around the medical bay and its pristine white equipment, and imagined crying girls. Saving them wasn’t exactly on the mission description, but it was what I wanted. I looked back at her. “I want to do something that…maybe isn’t on the checklist.” I took a breath and looked my earnestness at her. “How?” I pressed.

She frowned at me. “There is an emergency medical override. It will lock all of them in their rooms and, for a time, keep the men out. Men and occasional woman. But it won’t last long. How quick is your rescue plan?”

I had none. “How can I do the override?”

She rubbed her face with one hand. “You can’t. It requires me.”

I smiled at her. “So we’ll do this together.” Together.

She looked me in the eye. “No.”

What?She continued. “Not many are up for abuse today. And, if I give you access to override, it will still be my override command. Then not a single man on board will prevent my being raped, beaten, my skin flensed, and the resulting strips hung on the ceiling to warn my successor to ‘be careful.’” Her breathing rate was up, her words were cold, and she spoke with a frigid control that brooked no argument.

Why now? Why do I have to start feeling now, when I can’t do anything?

Medic opened her mouth to continue while my mind tortured me with nightmare images of Molly’s body, strips sliced from it. Molly’s body, dripping with a red much deeper than her hair. I shook my head roughly, eyes closed. I grabbed the thought of Molly mutilated and shoved it out. To the void! Then I opened my eyes and looked back at the medic, shaking only a little.

Medic—Angela, that’s what Copter called her—nodded at me and continued: “I can’t get the girls—or you, if you’re idiotic and suicidal—to safety. But I can get you information.”

I pulled out the chip Birgitte gave me. “Can you put that information—specifically, the ship’s electronic signature—on this?”

Angela smiled and took the chip.

That makes this easier.

She moved to open a locked wall compartment and began a tiny tirade as she connected the chip to some electronics inside it. “This moving hellhole has been too hard to track, and definitely too hard to take down, with the dewgongs lending these disgusting pimps the secrecy and power they need to stay out of the hands of our limited Jagged Space authorities. But you’re an insider.” I leaned and glimpsed a progress bar pop up. Huh. This ship signature must be pretty complicated. While it ticked toward completion, Angela turned and looked at me speculatively.

A small beeping turned into a warning chime. Closing the wall over the precious contraband, my co-conspirator’s voice hitched momentarily, but she began smoothly diagnosing me. “I don’t think the pressurization is sufficient for you to go back down immediately, but I am sure you will find it quite comfortable here.” She’d just finished the words when Copter strolled to us. She looked at me as if politely closing our conversation before turning smartly to attend to him. “Yes, Sir Copter?”

My chest constricted as my erstwhile partner entered the room where we were betraying him. Luckily, I was used to my insides rearranging unpleasantly. I put a nonchalant expression on my face and looked him dead-on. He looked at me, catching the focus—or maybe just the relative aliveness—of my expression, and smiled widely back.

“You’re doing perfectly, Angela. Thank you.” Turning to me, he asked, “Care to sit?” and he guided me toward some foldout chairs that I hadn’t cared to use before. “Now, Angela here is an excellent medic, but we also have other…therapeutic caregivers.” He nodded at me. “My impression, Mollybones, is that you are an excellent spacerider who needs to get a little unwound. Mind if I direct you? Or does Angela still need to check you?”

“He is within normal parameters.” One side of her mouth quirked up. “It takes a lot to seriously upset the body functions of your kind.” She smiled somewhat darkly before adding, “Well, other than go planetside.” All business again, she tapped a chart. “I recommend he check back with me in half an hour or so, and I’ll check to see if his tamp is taking well.”

I had forgotten about the injections to my face, and I twitched when they were referenced. At least most of the skeezbags on this boiling voidhole didn’t also have faces so perfect for giving nightmares as mine was.

“Well, there you have it!” cried Copter. He leaned in closer. “Angela is in charge and spends the majority of her time here. So, about some of my other therapeutic caregivers. Most are females of a compassionate sort, who could help you with stiffness and the like. Shall we?” He braced my shoulder companionably.

What else would I do? “Can’t say I’ll be up for much in the thirty minutes Doc Angela has given me,” I avoided her gaze and grinned languidly at Copter, “but I wouldn’t be against some sightseeing.”

Copter walked me down halls to section C of the ship-station. Then he took me to the C-A subsection. In here was one warm-skinned female who was wearing vaguely nurse-like clothing. The medical professionalism of her attire was spoiled by the fact that she was wearing some type of underclothing that popped her cleavage up, and almost through, the unbuttoned top section of her white uniform.

If she had been Molly, I might have cared. As it was, her dark red lips just looked crass to me as they slightly pouted, completing her doe-eyed look of concern. “Sir Copter! How may I assist you?”

“I’m just fine. See to my friend, here, though.” With a grin, Copter slapped me companionably on the shoulder and headed out.

The “nurse” turned to me. “Are you exhausted from your travels, sir?” she cooed, breathlessly. She gestured one tastefully manicured hand toward a massage table. “We have painkillers and depressurizers, of course, but we also firmly believe in massage, therapeutic and otherwise.” And she smoothed her wrinkle-less dress down her side.

Something angry inside of me wanted to whip out guns, but what I had would be way overpowered inside a ship, when it was meant for the void of space. And while I’d’ve loved to blast a hole in this ship and make a break for freedom on the back of Delilah, the freedom my dewgong offered me would not extend to anyone else here who was worth saving. I had to stay trapped on this ship until I could figure out a way to extract the prisoners without their bodies boiling in the escape. I glanced toward the massage table. Molly would kill me…

“I…eh…perhaps something light for now.” I gestured toward a massage chair. It was more upright. “I have a meeting with the medic, Angela, in less than thirty minutes, and I don’t want to get too relaxed.” I smiled apologetically, though Void knows what I was apologizing for, and strolled my long legs over to the chair. I tried to imagine my footsteps as authoritative instead of oafish and flappy. Before I folded myself into the seat, the sexy-nurse poster child had slid in right next to me, put her hands on my spacefarer jacket, and gently lifted it. Not enough to spook me physically, but enough to make me emotionally uneasy. I was putting myself under the hands of a sex worker while some poor woman “scheduled for abuse,” as Angela put it, was being put under the hands of some—

I unclenched my hands. Can’t say what my face looked like, but I wanted to snarl.

Addressing me in a tone that managed to be both business-like and silken, the tawny-skinned brunette asked, “Would you like your undershirt on or off for your massage?”

She was good at this. I was clearly not a regular, and she was trained well enough to seem somewhat professional until I had expressed some sort of “preference.” I guessed. “I’ll keep it on, if that’s not too much trouble.” I settled myself into the chair. “And please take it as a high compliment if I doze off under your hands. It’s been a long day, and you look quite practiced.” I closed my eyes, leaning back. “I need to be up and moving in twenty-five minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured, and I felt her hands whisper from the crown of my head, down the sides of my neck, and across my shoulders. I felt like I might actually fall asleep.

“Just knots, that’s all I want gone…and seriously, wake me…”

A firm pressure on my shoulders and a cheerful, “Good morning” woke me up. The masseuse smiled a much more relaxed, open smile at me than the one she had used to greet me when I was in Copter’s care. “It’s been twenty-five minutes. I hope you feel refreshed!” I stretched and stood up. Someone needs to put Sleep on The List, because I apparently need to track down more of it.

“Thank you,” I told the girl, and clomped back to the infirmary.

Seeing Angela again, in an actual medical uniform, with her hair in that no-nonsense tail of hers, and her lips a normal shade of pink, relaxed a tension I didn’t realize I was carrying. “Hey, Doc,” I said, and smiled.

She nodded back professionally and waved me closer. Using a couple of different instruments, she pinched here, pressed there, and at one point slid an old-fashioned stethoscope under my shirt. Hearing my heart beat normally, she parted my shirt a bit more, scraped at my chest a bit and told me—not asked me— “I’m going to apply a vacu-pad. This may pinch more than you are used to. Don’t squirm.” And indeed, the vacu-pad she pressed to my rubbed-raw, squeaky-clean chest patch sealed onto me with an unpleasantly high pressure in a small ovalish area. She nodded significantly at my questioning look. So that’s our contraband. I sighed. I could handle the pressure, if it meant safely transporting the ship’s signatures to Birgitte. Angela pressed around the edges of the patch with some organic sealant, then looked me seriously in the eyes. “Keep that on until you get to your next destination. Then use this to take it off. At that point, massage in some muscle ointment.” She handed me two small packages that could’ve been hard candies, and I pocketed them carefully in a zippered pouch on my spacefarer’s vest. She nodded and began judiciously and calmly putting away her instruments.

“Anything else?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You have clearance to go.”

She noted something on a medi-screen. I hoped it was a note of my discharge, and not a traitorous message to Copter. I steeled myself. I chose to trust that, while she was leery of risking herself alone to get this horror-ship dismantled, she was willing to share the risk with me.

I got off that can as fast as I could, activating my comm with Delilah. As I sealed the inner door of the station and pulled myself out of the outer hatch, Delilah was right there, my faithful companion. I grabbed on to her harness and placed myself with an economy of movement that’d do any space cowboy proud. Then I leaned over and kicked the space station for the void of it.

Time to go find Birgitte.

Ms. Stanger somehow sat in a way that conveyed power. “Are you tamped sufficiently for comfort, spacefarer?”

“I’m good, Madam Birgitte. May I give you the package?” They had at first tried to keep me in a vacuum chamber so I wouldn’t start growing tumors in front of their eyes while I spoke with their leader, but there was no way I was staying in a little jar. There was too much to do. So here I was, tamped up and standing, the vacu-pad and its cargo removed from my chest, while Birgitte eyed me triumphantly. She gestured to the table next to her, so I pulled out the small electronic chip Angela had filled for me and placed it on the table. The table lit up briefly, like it was doing a diagnostic.

That was cool.

Birgitte nodded. “Thank you.” She pressed a short sequence of buttons, satisfaction seeming to gild every gesture. “Now, before I let you go, what can you tell me about the individuals running that operation?”

I grimaced. Copter. “One of the leaders was a spacerider I’d actually ridden with before. Teal hair, goes by Copter. He worked with me to check off the last justice advert I answered before coming here.”Birgitte eyed me. “How often do you reply to justice adverts?”

“That’s all I do.” But I shifted. Was that all I had to do? I was torn. I needed to be useful. But…

“Hm.” Looking at me compassionately, Birgitte gently gestured to the chair across from her. I took it. She smiled warmly, then took a moment to focus on a tablet she’d pulled out of the diagnostic table. Her brow furrowed. “Copter Fairborn?”

I laughed. “Yeah, if that’s his name.”

Birgitte’s eyebrows drew together. She made some careful notes, swiped around her tablet, took some more notes, and repeated this process until she must have scoured half a galaxy’s worth of data. I watched with some concern as dissatisfaction tarnished her triumphant glow. Looking at whatever conclusions she’d made, she cocked her head, ever so slightly. With effort that I could practically see, she looked away, turned to me, and launched into an interview about who I saw.

Turns out Angela was a medic of some renown, who had been traveling to the mining colony to take a high-ranking position for them. She had never arrived. Lacy was apparently one of the missing girls. Birgitte looked incensed to hear she was part of selling out other women. The small woman who had gotten me a drink was named Alina, and had been engaged to one of Birgitte’s lieutenants. My head was dizzying with names—and maybe the tamp. Or maybe I’d just been too transient to sit through a debriefing before. Still.

“Madam Birgitte.”

She had been staring intently at her tablet again, and she took her own sweet time to make eye contact. Her expression scorched as our eyes met. I rocked back in my seat. Birgitte was fierce, intelligent, competent—but also compassionate, as I was increasingly noticing. Why stare fit to boil me? “Birgitte… Was there anything else you expected from me?”

Madam Birgitte’s eyes went to her screen, and her intense expression settled into exasperated resignation. “No,” she sighed.

Tap, tap, tap. I watched with trepidation. Who knew such a slender index finger could be so ominous?

Then her eyes lit up, and her pretty mouth curved wryly. She looked back at me. “But now I do.” Her grin turned devious. And determined… “Will you marry me?”

I gaped.

“I promise it won’t be an inconvenience,” she said smoothly, leaning back nonchalantly and putting down her screen so she could focus her striking good looks on me. “And I’ll take good care of everything.”

My throat felt dry as dust. “Why?”

She smiled darkly. “Copter owned several of the asteroids around here, and with your instrumentality in his downfall, the rights to those go to you. Finders-Keepers. I can’t see a way of separating them from you for a grace period of at least two galactic-standard years, and I want them now. So—marry me.”

“So you can have the asteroids?”

“Yes.”

“And you want nothing else from me?”

Birgitte shrugged elegantly. “If it’s nuptials you’re worried about, I accept your choice, either way.” She grinned cheerily. “I already have a polygamy law in the pipeline, so I’ll be able to get myself another husband for any sundries that you would prefer not to dabble into with me. But you’ll be my first pick.”

I felt dizzy. Answered an advert, like the automaton I was…found that an ally was a boiling pimp, turned him in, was propositioned by the territorial leader of a sizable colony and its surrounding asteroids, and she was already planning on replacing me.

I looked down at my flappy feet. Steadying yourself was different on a planet. In the sky, you just stayed tied to your dewgong. They were your safety. But what safety was there on land? My heart ached. Molly, what should I do?

I figured I had done enough to mark this missing person investigation off The List. Part of me, the part that was a drone, wanted to pull out my tablet, uncaringly cross off the task, and do the next. And the next. And… I’d been doing that for so long. Molly liked my sense of justice, but would she really have liked the way I was living now? What would she think of the name I’d taken on myself—“Mollybones”?

She’d laugh and tell me I wasn’t dead yet. Besides…I looked around at the Jagged room, high technology but no comfort. It was beautiful to me. And I had met more people here than just criminals. I had seen more than just wrongdoing and its justice. In fact, I hadn’t even seen the justice at all! I had the feeling Birgitte wasn’t planning on me going on the actual rescue mission. She probably just wanted to protect Delilah, as she could get caught up in whatever they were planning on doing to the other spacerider’s dewgongs.

Regardless, I felt like I knew something of this place now. If I refused Birgitte, would I leave this colony safer than I found it? Birgitte said Copter owned nearby asteroids. Abandoned asteroids bred criminals. Would I be back here in a year, answering another call the same as this one? I saw the face of Alina, the young woman who had hydrated me on that boiling brothel-ship. I imagined Lacy, sensuously powerful. If I got a call in a year, Lacy might be in charge of a new operation. She seemed halfway in charge of the current one.

I looked up at Birgitte. Her self-contained expression softened a bit. She seemed like a good lady. She was straightforward but considerate, indomitable but compassionate. She was nothing like Molly’s easygoing, laughing charm, but she was everything like Molly’s personal strength and her desire for what was good.

I had felt sickened by the proposition of sexual favors earlier. But a proposition of marriage…that was entirely different.

Perhaps a proposition of marriage wasn’t entirely different. I had been right in assuming Birgitte was keeping Delilah and myself from the action. She assured me it was intended as a gift to us. I watched on a screen as her strike team converged on Copter’s station, attached hulking devices to it to begin disabling it without hurting those inside, and then began breaking in. A more mobile contingent set about severing the tethers of all dewgongs that had been tied to the ship. My eyes stayed transfixed as I saw the strike team begin extracting people, victims and villains. Soon, they were sending ships back down.

They brought Copter to Birgitte immediately. She gave him a murder-stare and personally slammed a collar around his neck that could only be removed surgically. Then she grinned and sent her men to put him somewhere. I wondered if they were just going to put him in a normal planetside prison cell and let the cancer eat him alive. Whatever her plans, collaring Copter had put my fiancée in the giddy mood one might expect from a bride.

And so it was that, after little more than a day, I was married and experiencing the most bizarre situation I’d faced since Molly died: Birgitte, standing in the crisp white uniform she had married me in, hands on hips and staring at me defiantly. “Take your clothes off.”

Me, standing in the most comfortable clothes I had worn in years: “No. I’m comfortable.”

“You’ll be more comfortable if you do as I say.”

“I don’t need you to undress me.”

“True. You’re a grown man. So undress yourself.”

“You just need to have legal access to my asteroids so you can prevent a turf war.”“I legally have access to your asteroids in space. What if I want the ones on your person?”

I could feel my eyes becoming saucers. Did she really just say that? My breath hitched. “You can’t.”

“I can.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“…No.”

I exhaled, uncertain if my traitorous self was relieved or disappointed that Birgitte wouldn’t try and wrestle me to the ground. Or bed.

What would Molly think of all this? My gaze caught in the distance and a warm pain seized my chest.

She would laugh at me. A sob caught in my throat even as I felt like smiling, really smiling. I looked at Birgitte, resplendent in her well-intentioned ferocity. And Molly would probably tell me not to embarrass her by giving Birgitte a lackluster time. She was crazy, Molly. I grinned, closing my eyes on the tears.

Birgitte had glided closer. I opened my eyes to look at her. She reached out and touched the skin around my eyes, where I knew black lines were spidering out from the tamp injections. “I accept you as you are,” she said quietly.

I grinned an unstable grin at her. “Well, and I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You could never disappoint me.”

Laying down with a sleeping Birgitte in my arms, I wondered if I shouldn’t have napped while Birgitte was setting up the wedding. Now she was sleeping sweetly and I was lying awake.

Thinking.

Something I haven’t seriously done for a while.

I sighed, but I wasn’t upset. Not really. It was a beautiful view. Birgitte was in my arms and a huge skylight stretched above me, so I could see the stars.

If I stayed planetside, the cancer that stabilized me for outer space would start to grow out of control. The tamp used to slow the growth of the tumors and to strengthen my body for gravitational pressure was itself toxic and not a long-term solution. So if I stayed here, I’d die here.

Not in my plan. So I’d return to space. Gazing up at the stars, idly wondering if some passing whiteness was debris or Delilah, I was comfortable with that idea in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. Being in space, tackling the List—it wasn’t a sentence. It was an adventure. I’d look up requests for help, exploration, justice—and Delilah and I’d be there. And when we want to…I looked at Birgitte… we’ll be here.

I had almost felt banished to the void by Molly’s death. But now I looked at it more the way I once had: not a void, but a frontier. It didn’t claim me; I claimed it.

With that thought, I tucked Birgitte closer and fell asleep.

Space Dog and the Runaway Asteroid

A. Kristina Casasent

Sunset barked, a meaningless, happy sound, as she toggled her thrusters and barrel-rolled around the space sheep. She watched for sudden movements or gaseous emissions as she guided her space suit around the tail. This was an average-sized specimen right at ten meters from one side of its manta-ray body to the other. Her radiation counter clicked up a notch as she passed over the mineral wool it produced. Lots of wool.

“This fella must’ve been eating lots of transuranics to generate that level of radiation,” she thought.

To Sunset, the best part of shearing space sheep was that she got to spend a lot of time flying her suit really fast. While nanotech injections had uplifted her to sapiency, some deep instinct encoded in her Miniature American Shepherd genome called for her to go fast and keep the sheep in line. It was best when she could do both at the same time!

Over the comm, a deep rumbling bark sounded, and while Sunset’s collar translated it to English, Sunset had no trouble understanding the original canine words.

“Sunset, this is Carter. As Brinkley would say, ‘the Newfie has landed’!”

“Lieutenant Carter!” Sunset yipped back. “You finally made it!”

The newly retired Lieutenant Carter, a Newfoundland dog formerly of the Space Marines, was visiting his longtime remote paw pal. Sunset had met the black and white Landseer Carter through another friend of hers, Brinkley, who was her main correspondent amongst the Space Marines. Carter liked the stories of space sheep ranching so much, he wanted to try it out for himself.

Sunset spun her suit around and zipped back to where their—her and her human, Sparky—ship, the Yellow Rose of Texas, was floating next to an asteroid at the edge of the space sheep grazing ground.

“Skip the Lieutenant. I’m retired. This place sure is beautiful.” Carter’s deep boof could be heard behind the translated English supplied by the suit.

Sunset spun and dove through the maze of space sheep, keeping to the edges so as not to push any, and was just in time to see Carter’s ship, The Sopwith Camel, being tethered by Sparky to their own ship.

“That sure is a bright red.” Sparky whistled over the channel. “Come on in, Sunset. You have to see the high shine on Carter’s ship.”

“On my way,” Sunset yipped.

She had to keep from rolling her eyes, though, as Sparky sometimes forgot she couldn’t see the same colors as humans, but then again, humans couldn’t smell almost anything, and she often forgot that. So she had to take Sparky’s word, confirmed by her suit if she asked it, that the ship was red. It looked brown to her eyes, since the nanos that made her a sapient didn’t change her rods and cones, just her intellect and her telomeres, which granted uplifted dogs and cats the same longevity as humans. Not that Sunset had met a cat, as much as she wanted to.

She finished moving smoothly through the herd, keeping enough space in order not to disturb their pressure bubble and scatter them, when a black and white suit, painted to match its owner, literally rocketed out of the red Heavy Metals Amalgamated-built ship and headed straight for her.

And into the middle of the group of six space sheep Sunset had already rounded up that morning. The hexad of space sheep of course stopped using their solar wings for movement and expelled built-up gas and darted away.

In six different directions.

Belatedly, Sunset’s transmission rang over the channel. “No, Carter. Bad dog! Now I have to gather those space sheep up again.”

“Sorry, Sunset. Can I help fix it?” Carter’s howl sounded sincerely mournful.

She sighed, remembering that Carter didn’t know any better, and part of the reason he was here was to learn enough to decide if he wanted to become a rancher. “Sure. I actually don’t mind doing the extra herding. It’s fun.” Sunset wiggled her whole body, instinctively showing excitement, even if Carter couldn’t see it.

“But you—”

Sunset hung her head a little. Calling Carter a bad dog might have been overdoing it. She gave a bark and tried to explain. “Carter, you came during shearing season—which means Sparky and I need to get the sheep sheared and the wool to Boogaloo station, and the appointment is on a timer! Still, if you’re going to help, let’s introduce you to Sparky, and get you fitted with electromagnetic teeth.”

“Spider silk steel jaws and cat claws in the Space Marines. And now electromagnetic teeth? Am I a GMO or a cyborg?” Carter gave a canine laugh that almost overloaded his microphone.

They gathered back in the flight deck of the Yellow Rose of Texas. Carter nosed around, examining the working ship with all its scuffs and dents, and smells. He sniffed around before finding his manners, waving his huge flag of a tail as he walked over and plopped down. Sunset tried to start introductions with a tilt of her head and a nudge to the quiet human. She finally had to prod Sparky into speech by jumping up and butting her nose against his side.

Briar “Sparky” McNeil straightened, pushed his brown cowboy hat back over his red hair, and hitched his gun belt up. “Howdy, Lieutenant Carter. It’s nice to meet you. Lately, you’re all Sunset talks about, even more than herding.”

Sparky put his hand out, palm up.

Carter, in a move as old as human and canine’s relationship, plopped his paw into it. His huge Newfie paw had large, black nails, short, trimmed fur, and webbed toes for swimming. The mass of fur entirely covered Sparky’s hand, which seemed to startle Sparky for a moment.

“Thanks, Sparky. And it’s just ‘Carter.’ If I never hear ‘Lieutenant Carter’ again, it’ll be too soon.” Carter’s voice came from a small bulge on his collar while Sparky inspected his webbed toes. “Humans,” the former Space Marine thought, “were just plain strange sometimes.”

Sunset stretched her tricolor body, head down, rear up. She finished with a big shake, starting at the nose and working back to her stub-tailed butt. Bits of black, white, and tan fur flew off, to be electrostatically collected by the air system onboard Yellow Rose. “I thought you liked being a Space Marine.”

“I do! Or I did. And the benefits were awesome. Not everyone has a partner like you to help stake them a ship and translators. And some of us were uplifted at the labs and not by a family. Even with all the changes the Space Marines made to accommodate Nano-Sapiens like us in the ranks, some of us get tired of working for others.”

“Humans get that way, too. That’s why I’m out here with Sunset.” Sparky laughed, dropped Carter’s paw, and gestured towards the equipment room. “But if you don’t mind, let’s get you fitted out so we can get those cantankerous space sheep collected.”

Carter’s ears and tail drooped at the mention of his faux pas.

“Buck up, pal,” Sparky continued. “Sometime, ask Sunset about the first time she saw a space sheep.”

Sunset’s ears went up and down and she licked her lips. “I think we should get Carter rigged out.”

The small tricolor dog made a quick about-face and ran ahead to the machine room.

“That bad, huh?” Carter chuckled.

“Oh, yeah,” Sparky snickered.

The two males exchanged smiles and followed.

“That’s it!” yelped Sunset. “Now, one last light nip at the heels.”

With the delicate touch learned working with unstable explosives, Carter electromagnetically stroked the tail of the large gold-bearing space sheep. It was an awkward motion, but he was starting to get the hang of it.

“I’m glad electronics still use gold,” he growled out, most of his attention on the space sheep.

“Me, too because our range here has a lot of gold. Wish it had more transuranics. That’s where the money is at nowadays.” Sparky gave a long whining whistle that shrilled slightly.

“That means ‘good job and come on in,’” interpreted Sunset, her suited bob-tail wagging fiercely. “He still uses the old Earth herding whistles sometimes. We both know them from before I was uplifted. It is kind of comforting.”

Sunset turned and Carter quickly followed. Together, the small and large dogs jetted back to where Sparky had a glowing electric-lasso on a small space sheep he was checking for health.

“What’s with the glowing lasso? I haven’t seen one like that in any movie or documentary.” Carter took a big woofing sniff of air in vain, trying to smell the lasso despite years knowing he couldn’t in the space suit.

“Our friend KuKaKlick gave it to me.” Sparky touched the handle of the electric-lasso, releasing the small but healthy space sheep. The white-gold on its back had to be strontium, since white-gold didn’t occur naturally outside of a jewelry store that he knew of. “It’s accurate and insulated against any amount of electricity we’ve tried on it… Or heat.”

“Hey, I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean to run the Yellow Rose’s thrusters through your gift.”

The two ranchers and Carter inspected the small, compact mass of space sheep. Carter was still undecided about his future as a space rancher, but he was enjoying learning more.

“Are we breaking for the day? I brought the latest episode of Kaiju and Cthulhu: Battle in the Valley of Xanadu,” Carter grunted.

“That’ll rot your nanos,” observed Sparky, giving the Newfie a skeptical look.

Carter gave a goofy smile, letting his long, drooly tongue hang down, sure that Sparky could see it this close, and lisped, “Nonsense. I haven’t missed an episode and I’m fine. Although you should meet Vera. That cat and you might get along really well.”

“Cat?” Sunset looked at Sparky hopefully.

“You want to meet a cat?” Carter looked downright flummoxed.

Sunset nodded, human fashion. “I’ve never met a cat in the flesh, and I’m curious if they are all as strange as Brinkley’s letters and the comics suggest they are.”

“But—” Carter started.

Wahooogah!

A warning signal blared over the comm channel.

“What in tarnation?” started Sparky.

“Oh,” Sunset yipped. “It’s KuKaKlick! Carter, wait till you meet him!”

An alien but familiar elongated sphere of royal blue with a pastel green stripe slid to a stop as its inertia-less drive shut down.

“Cha-cha-cha— Greetings, friends!” Familiar chirping alien laughter was followed by a rich soprano voice.

“KuKaKlick?” Sunset and Sparky asked in unison.

“But of course, friends. One moment and I shall be right out.” KuKaKlick in a silver spacesuit exited the blue vessel, six-fingered hands working controls. The alien’s long tail held the familiar safety line linking suit to ship.

The three friends met in an incomprehensible babble of voices and the occasional dog bark. Carter stood and watched, letting out an amused huff at how unintelligible they were.

“Oh, manners!” Sparky turned to Carter and gestured back at the alien, the round clear helmet showed a lemur-like face with bluish-grey fur, huge furless ears, sharp rodent-like teeth, and long whiskers. Occasionally, sparks worked back and forth along the whiskers.

“KuKaKlick, this is Carter, a friend of ours,” started Sparky.

“And Carter, this is KuKaKlick, whom we told you about, although speaking English is a new thing. Don’t ask us about it,” finished Sunset.

“Yes. Cha-cha-cha—” laughed the furry biped. A six-fingered hand with odd-shaped uneven digits was extended to Carter.

Careful of the long middle finger with a claw, Carter pressed his paw against the alien paw.

“Shall we adjourn to your wonderful yellow spaceship? Perhaps we shall imbibe some of the National Beer of Texas while I explain?”

Carter laughed so hard he fell off the bench. Fortunately, he did not spill his bowl of beer off the table. “I gotta call the Houston. Vera’s gonna have a hissy fit. And she’s good at ‘em. You learned English watching entertainment shows? Do you know Kaiju and—”

The alien’s soprano interrupted. “Cthulhu: Battle in the Valley of Xanadu.”

Sparky muttered, “I understand Sunset and Carter watching that nonsense. But how can a reasonable man like KuKaKlick watch it? I mean he seems way smarter than that.”

Carter struggled back onto the bench. Delicately, for even if he was a giant Newfoundland dog, he was several beers into an evening, he leaned toward KuKaKlick and gave a big slobbery, snorting sniff.

“About that,” woofed the former Space Marine. “You’re wrong there.”

“Nonsense,” yelped Sunset. “KuKaKlick is incredibly smart.”

“Oh, no. I mean ‘he.’ There’s a lot of alien smells, and maybe you’re not used to them, Sunset, but close your eyes, listen to KuKaKlick’s voice, an’ smell.” The Newfie flopped his head back towards the blue alien and blinked at the purple cowboy hat perched on the triangular head. “Say somethin’.”

“What shall I say?” asked the perplexed alien.

“Girl!” howled Sunset. Her ears dropped in embarrassment and her little nub of a tail hid itself even further.

“What is it, Sunset?” The alien took a bite from the flattened aluminum can held in one six-fingered hand.

“Woman!” growled the little tricolor Mini.

“Yes. Both descriptions, based on my understanding of English from entertainments and computer abstracts, are appropriate for me.”

Looking at Sparky, faintly, almost abstractedly, Carter observed, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a redhead blush so much.”

Sparky was almost maroon in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, KuKaKlick.”

“What?” Her lemur-like head tilted to one side. “I don’t understand.”

Sparky mumbled incoherently.

Sunset found an interesting smell on her hind foot and chewed on it.

KuKaKlick delicately turned to Carter. “What is going on?”

The tipsy Newfie snorted. “Oh, they’re sorta embarrassed. Human culture, which includes Nano-Sapiens like we. Like us? Any way, human culture ‘cause of biological imperatives puts a’ importance on telling boys from girls. And they’ve been calling you a boy.”

“Cha-Cha-Cha—” KuKaKlick crushed her can and ate the remains. “That is quite hilarious. I shall have to wear a dress next time we meet. To help them remember.”

Sparky busied himself, helping Sunset groom her rear paw.

“Oh, I don’ think they’re gonna forget anytime soon.” Carter laughed until he hiccupped.

“Wake up, everybody!” Carter yelled out in his deepest, booming Newfoundland dog howl. He had learned how to get soldiers started after a night on the town. It was an incredible wake-up alarm. Not as good as Vera’s cat-barfing over the intercom, but effective.

Sunset blinked blearily at Carter.

“Do we get to herd the space sheep to Boogaloo Station for shearing today?” Carter’s excitement edged his barks and ended with a high, excited squeak that should never come from a dog as large as he was.

Sparky appeared in the doorway of his room. “Yes, but if you don’t stop, you’ll make my ears bleed.”

KuKaKlick chirped up from where she half-hung next to the entrance to the control cabin. “I shall look forward to participating in this ‘shearing.’ I have observed several documentaries on the removal of organic wool from Earth sheep. But I have not seen one on space sheep. My electric cows do not have wool.”

“Electric…cows?” A large strand of drool slowly slid, unnoticed, down Carter’s muzzle. After a long pause, he shook his face, spraying the room with drool.

This time, Sparky made a squeak that should never come from a grown man his size.

Joining the conversation late, Sunset added in the middle of a yawn, “Yes, his…I mean her electric cows look sort of like an eight-legged electric storm. KuKaKlick and her electric cows live off the plane of the elliptical.” She nodded her head upward, the typical direction used for off-elliptic.

“I believe I live in that general direction.” One long finger with a claw pointed forward and slightly left and down.

“In any case, we’ll let Carter and Sunset drive the space sheep. KuKaKlick, you want to ride with me? We can come back for your ship and Carter’s ship after visiting Boogaloo.” Sparky rubbed one finger under the sweatband of his brown cowboy hat.

“That shall indeed be acceptable and delightful,” the blue alien lemur replied, and her whiskers glowed and sparkled.

“We’ll eat on the move, then. Welcome to the space sheep drive you two.”

Sparky and KuKaKlick sat in the control couches on the flight deck and discussed the drive to Boogaloo, while the canines rounded up the space sheep and pointed them in the correct direction.

“Here is where we are.” Sparky pointed in the three-dimensional tank, which showed their current position, as well as where they had originally met KuKaKlick and the sun of the Boogaloo Station system.

“And we are going here?” Blue-furred fingers entered coordinates and a claw indicated Boogaloo Station in the tank.

“Yup.”

“Sparky, are you sure of these coordinates?” More sparks seemed to build on KuKaKlick’s whiskers by the second, darting back and forth.

“Well, unless someone moved a giant immobile space station that can’t take more than a hundredth of a gravity of thrust, yes. We’ve been going there for years.”

“Sparky, call back our four-legged friends. We, if I may include myself, have a problem.” KuKaKlick’s voice clicked a few times and the electricity on her whiskers turned a yellow hue. She took a deep breath, held, exhaled, and the electricity returned to its normal calm blue.

“Hold that thought.” Sparky watched his companion as he whistled into the comm, calling in the other two sapients.

KuKaKlick nodded and stayed quiet. The two Nano-Sapiens raced in, panting as if finishing a jolly run, and Sparky decided they all needed breakfast before KuKaKlick announced her news.

It turned out KuKaKlick and Sparky both liked their coffee black. Carter liked his with chocolate milk. Sunset did not believe there was such a thing as a safe amount of chocolate for a canine.

“Being human-sized has its advantages. I can drink a lot of chocolate coffee before I get sick.” Carter growled and shook his head, sending slobber everywhere.

Sunset’s muzzle wrinkled in faint disgust. “I don’t even like the smell.” She buried her nose deeper into her peanut butter and honey oatmeal, to rub out the bitter smell of coffee mixed with the odd chemical aroma of over-processed chocolate.

Sunset noticed that Sparky nodded at KuKaKlick, who was still having occasional random electrical whisker issues. The alien took a deep breath. “Sparky showed me the coordinates for Boogaloo Station. However, it turns out that I already had knowledge of these coordinates.”

She took a disk, familiar to Sunset from KuKaKlick’s last visit, from a pouch on her gun belt. KuKaKlick placed the disk next to her breakfast refuse of tin can labels and tapped it with one long claw. She continued narrating what the three-dimensional image was showing, while Sunset licked at her fluffy peanut-flavored oatmeal.

“This is the Boogaloo Station System. Here is where we met the first time, the local sun, and where my electric cow herd is currently grazing.”

A new spot appeared in the image, off the elliptic, with a dashed line passing through the system and appearing to intersect with Boogaloo Station.

“I recently received an alert about a long-period comet. The comet is actually a rogue asteroid that was captured by this system ages ago. The composition scan, at least at a distance, does not match anything in the local Oort cloud or asteroid belts.”

Carter nodded along. Sunset almost snorted when she saw how serious he was. He might have retired, but it looked like how she imagined him before a mission: sitting at attention. His posture and concentration shouted, “Military briefing! Rapt attention! Don’t let anyone see you yawn!” Sunset snickered and almost snorted some of her peanut-flavored breakfast. It looked like some habits took more than a week or two to wear off.

Sunset pulled her nose out of her now-empty bowl and watched KuKaKlick with half her attention as she licked her nose clean. Next to Carter, she and Sparky seemed almost negligently relaxed. She watched as Sparky sipped his coffee, still half-asleep and maybe a little hungover.

KuKaKlick continued, “The so-called comet actually consists of a heavy metal nucleus and little else. No real volatile gases accompany the asteroid, making it difficult to spot, especially within the orbital plane of this system, which has many scattered asteroids and gases.”

She extended a curled claw. “Here is the object in scale with the information Sparky gave me about Boogaloo Station.”

Her clear soprano translation halted while the disk zoomed in on Boogaloo Station, then panned back. And back. And back.

The gigantic, bustling megaplex of Boogaloo Station, home to thousands and thousands of sapients and industries, was a small dot in front of the huge, ragged asteroid.

“The reason I recognized the coordinates is that the asteroid appears to be on a collision course with Boogaloo Station. The courses shall intersect in twenty-seven days.”

“It’s the Lost Buckaroo Asteroid! It’s coming back!” Sparky grabbed his hat and smashed it in excitement.

All three furred faces turned towards Sparky at this outburst, and in perfect unison, tilted their heads.

Sunset, used to thinking she knew everything important that Sparky knew, licked a last bit of peanut oatmeal off her nose and whined slightly. “But I’ve never heard of it.”

“When you were in the uplift center, an old prospector came into Boogaloo. He was a system sensation for the week until he died. He insisted he’d found a ridiculously sized source of transuranics way off in space. After he died, lots of people went looking for it, but never found anything.” Sparky stood and started pacing the small area, waving his hat around as he spoke. He was overly excited.

Carter shook, scattering drool and chocolate milk coffee across the compartment, making Sunset backpedal to avoid the slime.

Carter cleared his throat. “It can’t be. Nobody knows about it at Boogaloo. I stopped to register my homestead—the one I told you about, Sunset, with the Pallas-class mass. We have to let them know.”

Sparky turned back to the group. “That’s a great idea. They can’t evacuate many, even in three or four weeks, but if it is going to hit, it’ll save a lot. And maybe we should check out the Buckaroo. KuKaKlick, you said ‘appears to be’? Any chance it could miss?”

KuKaKlick chewed her tin can thoughtfully. “Possibly. The survey was from a long distance, and once it was seen to be clear of our settlements, they quit calculating. I shall have to remind them there is a sapient population within the mass disc of this system that will appreciate alerts about life-threatening events. They shall be a bit embarrassed at forgetting about elliptical sapients…similar to mistaking a ‘hot chick’ for a guy.”

Carter explosively snorted his coffee. Sparky reached over and took a gulp of his own. Sunset busied herself looking deeply into her now-empty breakfast bowl.

KuKaKlick chuckled, but continued with business. “We shall head out to the Buckaroo and double-check its course. In spatial terms, it is ludicrously unlikely for two such relatively small objects to intersect. But as any decent statistician will tell you, unlikely does not mean impossible, even for small p-values.”

The four sapients set out immediately, taking all three spaceships, red, blue, and yellow. Carter heard Sunset make one change to the plan.

“Sparky, I’ll drive the space sheep up behind everyone. We can let them graze on the asteroid while KuKaKlick and Carter are doing their math. It’s supposed to be heavy metals, and transuranics are money!”

Carter managed to peered to the side as he set off in his starship. Like the Yellow Rose, The Sopwith Camel was modified with canine controls. The small fleet of three was drawing ahead of the space sheep. He could just make out the herd being chivied onward by a determined tricolor Mini American in a long-haul spac esuit. The suit was painted with the old Texas flag, the light blue field and yellow star bright against the dark backdrop of space.

The first sight of the Buckaroo filled Sparky with foreboding. It was so big, and it was solid, and the sensors echoed what the old prospector had said. The Buckaroo was rich in transuranics.

“Carter, your Space Marine pack is faster than our suits. Can you place the sensor beacons?” queried Sparky.

“Roger that, Yellow Rose.” Moments later, the overly large black and white Space Marine suit blasted from the red Heavy Metals Amalgamated ship. Carter zipped a curving path to the asteroid.

The Landseer’s suit disappeared around the curve of the asteroid-comet. A few minutes later, his voice boofed over the radio. “What the hornswaggler? Yellow Rose and Clicking Beetle, you’re never going to believe what I found. Check sub-channel gamma.”

“Clicking Beetle?” KuKaKlick asked. “Is that me?”

“I think so, KuKaKlick. I guess Carter didn’t know the name of your ship and made one up. Space Marines usually use ship names on comms.” Sparky found it ironic explaining to an alien about Western Hemisphere Confederacy Space Marine comm protocols. KuKaKlick’s species was the first non-hostile alien the WHC had encountered.

“I like it and approve. I shall update my transponder with this information. Look at the gamma sub-channel. It looks organic to me.” Her voice vibrated with clicks and a high-pitched eerie tone that Sparky was never quite sure he heard right.

“It is organic,” interrupted a panting Carter. “But it’s a pulse jet. And I’m finding more of them. I think someone has been directing the Buckaroo towards Boogaloo Station! We should check the trajectories, but I’m pretty sure this mass is targeted at Boogaloo Station. Better update them on that.”

“Could it be the Monarchs? I know the Space Marines are fighting them, but no butterflies have been sighted in this sector,” Sparky guessed as he tried to see into the huge mass.

“No. If it was Monarch technology, it would be crystalline instead of organic. This is somebody new,” the former Space Marine growled.

“I have started the appropriate calculations,” KuKaKlick broke in. “As new beacons are placed, new information shall be integrated into the running program. If some incomprehensibly immoral intelligence has directed the Buckaroo at Boogaloo Station, is there some way to save the station?”

“Well,” replied Sparky, trying to think hopefully but failing. “We can’t move the station. It would take months of planning and micro-thrusts to move Boogaloo. And none of the ships in-system are set up for towing or bulldozing.”

Carter broke in. “Yellow Rose, what if we tied the space sheep to the asteroid and pulled it out of the way? I know I’m new to this, but we used to pull all sorts of stuff around in the Space Marines. All of us Newfies love pulling, anyway. Our carting genes, I guess.”

“We don’t have anything that strong,” started Sparky. He wasn’t talking about the space sheep. They could be used for pulling. It was strange to the space sheep, and they didn’t always like it. But he had used them to haul small pieces of equipment before. However, they had no way to tether the beasts to the asteroid.

“My friend, I believe that you are mistaken,” interrupted the lemur-like alien’s soprano, clicking and hooting audible in the background. “Have you tested the tensile strength of my gift to you?”

“Your electric-lasso is that strong? But we need several dozen of them.” Sparky rubbed his fingers under the sweatband of his cowboy hat.

“I can have a couple gross delivered relatively quickly. I believe the vendor shall rent them strictly for wear and tear at a reasonable rate. We can work it out while the package is in transit.”

“Two gross? Why so many?”

“If our intrepid friend Carter will help, he and I shall herd my electric cows here and we shall use them to pull the Buckaroo, also.”

“Herding on my own?” asked the Landseer Newfie. “That sounds like fun! But do I have time to set some charges and blast the pulse jets? I’ll take lots of video first, though.”

“Sounds like a plan, Carter! I’ll let Sunset know to put some extra bite on the space sheep.” A click indicated the blue and gray-furred soprano changed channels to talk to her electric-lasso vendor. Sparky then clicked over to a long-range channel to talk to Sunset.

An hour later, the black and white suit rejoined the three ships.

“I’m triggering the charges now,” Carter barked.

Small spots of light flickered from multiple points of the asteroid.

Carter quickly boofed questions, running them together. “Sparky, can you set the tie-downs while KuKaKlick and I are gone? Also, can you arrange the pulling to get the Buckaroo to intersect with the coordinates I’m sending you? It should keep the asteroid from being a threat in the future. And might be good for us too.”

“No more information, Carter? Sure, I can do that. I might not be up to your or KuKaKlick’s math standards, but I can manage that. Have a good trip.” On the trip out, everyone had figured out Carter and KuKaKlick were the best at working out complex math. But with the best mathematicians busy, Sparky started the painstaking process of calculating a trajectory and the thrust vectors needed to make it happen.

“Electric cows are incredible,” thought Carter as he looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t know anything that’s going to top this.”

The Buckaroo had four different sets of mount points, color-coded blue, yellow, brown, and gray. Sunset and Sparky had chosen dog-friendly colors. Blue and brown were dedicated to electric cows. Yellow and gray were for space sheep.

KuKaKlick’s vendor, KrackAKow, had dropped off almost three hundred electric-lassos in return for a case of the National Beer of Texas and the promise for one of the four people on the project to authenticate each lasso as “used during the Return of the Buckaroo rescue operation.” Evidently, KrackAKow was an optimist and intended to sell useful souvenirs.

Carter watched Sunset “nip” at the “heels” of a space sheep, drawing it gently into the yellow group, while Sparky handled the electric-lasso with practiced ease. Nobody had ever bothered to make an electric-lasso a canine could use, because the ranching dogs were almost always from herding stock, and would forget about the lasso after a few minutes.

But Carter returned his attention to the electric cow he was herding. He had become familiar with the blue octopoidal blocky creatures with their horned heads on the trip. They weren’t very cow-like. They were, however, very good at sending out sparks of electricity if startled. Carter understood Sunset’s occasional insistence on calling them octopi, but his nascent herding instinct accepted and even appreciated the term “electric cow.”

“Cat claws, spider steel jaws, and a Mini American’s herding instinct. And a robot’s electromagnetic bite. I’m a Renaissance Newfie!”

“What was that, Carter?” asked KuKaKlick.

“Nothing, just talking to myself. Are you ready for this electric cow? I think this is the last one for blue. Looks like we have about a dozen left after this.”

“I believe I am ready and shall continue the harnessing process on brown once this one is attached.”

KuKaKlick made quick work attaching the electric-lasso to both the electric cow and the Buckaroo.

“Do you think we’ll beat Sunset and Sparky?”

The two teams had fallen into a good-natured race. Space sheep and electric cows were equally obstreperous. And while Sunset was the more experienced and more natural herder, Carter’s suit was faster, and his Space Marine experience was surprisingly useful when dealing with the horned, blue octopoidal creatures.

“I have hopes. There are ten space sheep left and only two hands of electric cows. And we are well within the time margin needed to minimally deflect the Buckaroo according to Sparky’s calculations.” She waved a six-fingered hand and laughed. “Cha-cha-cha-. But I think your extra speed will help. Also, Sunset has been selecting the more placid subjects, which lets them pull ahead. The ones left are the worst of the lot.”

As if in response to her words, Sparky’s panicked voice filled the common band. “Sunset! Dive now!”

In the second it took Carter to spot Sunset’s position, it was over. A runaway space sheep looped around the asteroid and back into the small flock of ten, the distant sun reflected from the pretty, lead-colored but sparkling jewel-like boron wool on its back.

And a small space suit, accompanied by the cloud of frost indicative of a major air leak, careened uncontrolled towards the asteroid.

“Help, y’all! The boron wool on the space sheep’s back cut her suit when it hit her, and she’s not responding!”

All three burst into motion. Carter put his thrusters into military overdrive. They would need extensive servicing afterward. His suit was faster, but Sparky was still closest. Sparky’s path intersected with Sunset first and he grabbed onto her with all four limbs, placing himself between her and the asteroid. But her inertia was too much, and he didn’t have strong enough directional jets to stop them. Civilian space suits were just lacking, in Carter’s opinion.

The two sheep herders hit the asteroid like a kaiju hitting downtown Tokyo.

“Ooomph!” Sparky involuntarily transmitted.

“Are you still intact?” a worried soprano voice asked, agitated clicks and hoots underlying the words.

“I’m almost to them!” howled Carter.

“I’m okay,” Sparky finally transmitted. “I’m patching Sunset’s suit now. But we need to get her inside.”

Carter’s suit arrived in a flurry of braking jets. “Can you strap her to my back? I can get her to the autodoc in my ship. It’s closest.”

“Thanks, Carter.” Sparky was already attaching the unresponsive Sunset to recovery points on Carter’s armor.

With a baying howl of distress, Carter, still on military power, streaked back to his ship.

For a while, he transmitted nothing but panting and the occasional splash of slobber hitting the microphone. Everything went silent for a moment as Carter passed through the airlock and kicked the button initiating the airlock sequence.

Sparky waited at the asteroid impact site as KuKaKlick arrived and checked his suit for leaks. The tough material was scratched but intact. They headed to Carter’s ship as fast as their suits could go.

They were almost to the airlock when a relieved Newfie boofed excitedly onto the airwaves. “She’s okay! The autodoc says she’s concussed, but her internal suit air-collar cut in, so her lungs are okay. She lost a little fur to the space sheep, but she’ll recover fine.”

KuKaKlick and Sparky arrived at the airlock and entered The Sopwith Camel.

“Is she awake?” asked a shaken Sparky.

“No. And the autodoc’s going to keep her sedated for a while,” the Newfie barked in reply.

“Will we be able to redirect the Buckaroo without more space sheep?” asked Sparky. His fingers clenched, worriedly crushing a non-existent cowboy hat still sealed inside his suit.

“One moment,” the Newfie and the blue lemur sapient replied together. They started talking math at each other. After the first few vectors and integrations, Sparky lost track. His worry for Sunset made his already slow math-brain stall out. He had the autodoc send him Sunset’s full vitals while the other two calculated a few derivatives and disputed a planes of principal curvatures.

Finally, the blue-grey alien answered. “We need more. Half to save Boogaloo Station, the rest to make the original plan.”

Sparky started to grunt a reply and realized they needed decisions. “Well, I wanna stay with Sunset, but she’d bite me if I let people die because I wanted to mope beside her. I guess we should get to work. Carter, are you up to this? I can’t herd. Sunset gave up trying to teach me, but I don’t think it is somethin’ humans are built for, the way she does it.”

KuKaKlick’s chirping translation cut in, “I, too, am not capable of performing herding duties. Carter saw the remote vehicles I use for this activity when we picked up the electric cows. We did not bring any, as their control and fueling station is not particularly portable.”

“Well, a Newfies got to do what a Newfie’s got to do. Let’s get to work.” With these words, the airlock opened, allowing Carter to exit. Burns and melted points on his armor showed where his jets had damaged the suit. The Newfie launched himself towards the electric cows as he transmitted. “Sparky, can you please help KuKaKlick? I’m going to try bringing in two electric cows at once. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to one at a time. Maybe the space sheep will calm down or something before we get to them.”

“But we only need one group—” started Sparky.

“But I want both groups. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m going to be occupied for a while.”

The next while was busy for all three, but Sparky figured busy was better than waiting, although he had the autodoc ping him when anything changed with Sunset.

Carter managed through KuKaKlick’s and Sparky’s advice to drive two electric cows at a time towards the pair of bipeds. The brown group was quickly filled out.

“KuKaKlick, I know you can’t herd, but can you start prodding the electric cows in the correct direction? We can start the change of vector now, while Sparky and I start on the space sheep. I’m going to do them one at a time. Just in case.”

Sparky raised his eyebrows, but kept his mouth shut. Carter seemed to have a plan, and Sparky wasn’t up to talking trajectory triggonometry with a space dog. So he just followed orders and nodded.

Carter started with the small strontium-wooled space sheep Sparky had been checking for health when The Sopwith Camel first arrived. The space sheep seemed more relaxed now, and the Newfie quickly drove the white-gold-backed manta-ray to Sparky at the gray mount point. Sparky barely had time to think. He used one of the last alien electric-lassos. After tying the electric-lasso off, he tapped the button on the end that sent supposedly soothing pulses to the slightly confused beast of burden.

The next several manta-winged creatures went quickly, and Sparky found his hands too busy to even check Sunset’s status. It seemed like each space sheep tried to make a break, but between his warnings and the occasional military burn, Carter kept a grip on them.

Finally, only the boron-laden manta shape was left.

“Let’s get goober brain here hooked up, too,” the Newfie growled as he jetted towards the final specimen.

Sparky nodded, nervous and tired. He started to whistle at Carter, before checking himself and switching to verbal commands.

“Way to me!” he shouted.

Carter made no protest and adjusted his course immediately, working counterclockwise around the boron space sheep.

“Walk up!” Sparky directed the Newfie even as his lips itched to just whistle.

Carter promptly stopped his loop and headed towards the target. He gently prodded it with his electromagnetic teeth.

In a flash of sparkling gray boron, the obstreperous creature changed directions with a spurt of gas.

“Go by!” Sparky shouted, wincing at the switch of direction.

Carter gave a meaningless bark, but managed to start a clockwise turn around the space sheep.

His heart no longer pounding, Sparky directed. “Steady!”

Carter stopped his turn.

“Walk up!” Sparky said with a slight sigh.

And the huge Newfie started prodding the space sheep again.

Moments later, an electric-lasso slid through space and gently fastened into place.

“Are we done?” panted the tired canine. “I think I need a nap.”

Almost four weeks later, the livestock returned to their respective pastures, and a mostly recovered Sunset joined the other three in the common area of the Yellow Rose of Texas.

Carter was splayed on his back on the floor. He insisted he still needed a nap after his work while Sunset “took her vacation.” She had stuck her tongue out at him, but couldn’t really blamed him. He wasn’t really built to herd.

“Did I miss it?” yipped Sunset.

“Not yet, my small canine friend. We shall see if we have the impact Carter planned in approximately ninety seconds.” KuKaKlick smoothed out her bright blue dress and returned to nibbling a bowl of washers Sparky had found for her.

“At least Boogaloo Station is safe, for sure. And they replaced my beer. And helped us fill out the certificates on all those electric-lassos while we got our shearing done.” Sparky sighed. “And to think, I came out here to avoid paperwork.” He scratched Sunset’s head when she flopped down next to him.

“Cha-cha-cha-. And KrackAKow is selling them for twice what he would get back at the main settlement,” KuKaKlick cackled.

“Smart man,” commented Sparky.

“I shall let him know his marketing genius is appreciated—”

“Oh! Here it comes,” Sunset interrupted KuKaKlick, as she peered at the display.

Silently, the giant asteroid of transuranics impacted with the Pallas-class mass in the middle of Carter’s homestead.

“Yahooo!” howled the awake Newfie, making Sunset and her companions jump.

“Are you going to explain what your so-called ‘great plan’ is?” growled Sunset.

“I’m more than a little curious, too. You and KuKaKlick have been mumbling away at each other all week.” Sparky raised his beer in a toast to everyone and sipped.

Sunset stuck to her iced tea, as she didn’t feel one hundred percent yet.

“Looking at the sensor readings, it’s still preliminary, but I think the Buckaroo has been shattered. And all those transuranics are in my homestead.”

Sunset’s head shot up, tongue frozen mid-lick in her bowl. She shook her entire butt back and forth. “Oh, you sneaky Space Marine you!”

“KuKaKlick is going to bring her, actually our, electric cows to graze here. We think we have a good idea about marketing. Turns out electric cows perform nuclear transmutation. They turn one element into a heavier element.” Carter took a long Newfie lap of celebratory beer.

“’Our’ electric cows?” asked Sunset, recovering from her display of excitement.

“Yes. I shall be relocating to the elliptical and shall become Carter’s partner. I hope Sparky will teach me proper herding commands. I was amazed at how well you directed Carter with the last boron moron space sheep.” KuKaKlick looked at Carter, her whisker’s vibrating with blue electricity.

The huge black and white Newfie gave a half-bow, and his alien partner continued. “Carter and I have talked it over. It would not be proper for us to profit at the expense of friends. We shall offer you grazing rights for your space sheep on our homestead.”

“She forgot to mention that most of the first two-thirds to three-quarters of the periodic table, electric cows won’t eat. And we like doing business with friends.” The big Newfie turned a drooling head towards each of them.

Carter continued, “Also, I sent pictures of those pulse jets to Brinkley, back on the CA-30 Houston. He showed it to the Space Marine analysts. There appears to be a new invader. This is a little different from the Monarch Empire. But they have the same method of operation.”

The click as the airlock opened drew everyone’s attention.

“Instead of producing, they steal,” boofed an all-black Newfie in Space Marine green armor from the airlock. Brinkley came forward, careful of the armored pods on each side of his suit, to touch noses with the two canines.

“Yes. The Pirate Squirrel Supremacy has entered the equation,” a sleek female Maine Coon cat mewed from one of Brinkley’s pods. A delighted Sunset lost control of her stub-tail as she met and smelled her first cat.

Pride and Peppers

J. Kenton Pierce

Year 857, Terran Empire Reckoning

Nuevo Tejas Prefecture, Hesperides Colony

Rosenberry’s Pride Hacienda

I’d just waved off a second cup of coffee when a burning woman fell out of the sky and crashed headfirst through the bunkhouse roof.

She exploded through the timber ceiling in a spray of wooden shrapnel and smashed into the rugged old table that was the closest thing to a bar for a hundred klicks. Her fiery impact detonated a dozen bottles of homemade tequila and the cask of twelve-year old brandy we’d won by showing up those smug cabrones from the Lazy Star Ranch at the last district rodeo.

I threw my arm over my face and dove behind a bunk as a roiling ball of blue-yellow flames filled the room. The polycrete floor didn’t make for a soft landing, and I was really too damn old for that sort of shit, but I managed not to break anything.

Flaming booze spattered everywhere, and the whole place would have burnt down if the Old Man hadn’t ponied up for fire suppression systems that were as good as anything in the Core Worlds. Gouts of foam spewed from the non-wrecked parts of the ceiling, smothering the flames in moments.

I hauled myself to my feet and gave my people a quick once-over. Nobody’d been hurt too badly, mostly cuts and nicks from furniture shrapnel. The worst was Danny Bozeman. He had a cluster of chopstick-sized splinters sticking out of his bicep.

“You able to make it to the infirmary?”

“Yeah, Jefe,” Bozeman responded. He glanced at his arm and didn’t seem impressed by the injury. If I left it to him, he’d yank them out with pliers and slap some tape over the holes. “Had worse.”

Bozeman resumed staring with a mildly curious expression at a smoldering, red-trousered leg sticking out of the foam and wrecked furniture.

“Doin’ better’n she is, anyway.”

“Go get patched up,” I said, and turned back to the corpse on our floor. “Tell Doc we’ll need a bag. Cryo or a trauma tank won’t do this one any good.”

Definitely a corpse. Nobody survived punching through a roof, then hitting a polycrete-slab floor hard enough to shatter it. Our infirmary had a trauma tank, but there wouldn’t be enough intact brains left for that to matter.

Beams creaked overhead, and pieces of busted terracotta tile clattered down through our new skylight.

“Jenny,” I said to the big blonde woman peeking from behind the stove, the coffee pot still in her hand, “clear the building, then get someone up there to check the roof. Make sure this place isn’t going to come down on us.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Jenny Kellogg barked, dropping back into both her New Detroit accent and her Terran Commonwealth Marines mindset.

I should have gone outside and waited for the all-clear, but something was off. Any unexpected dead body was pretty unusual, but something was really, really off about this one. I couldn’t put my finger on what bothered me about the corpse on my floor beyond the fact that she was a corpse. On my floor.

I moved carefully through the wreckage and knelt by the shattered, twisted form on the floor. No, she was actually in the floor in some spots. At what I figured to be the impact points, the polycrete was smashed to powder. She’d hit hard.

I wondered where all the blood was.

There oughta be blood. Lots and lots of blood splattered everywhere. The only red was the ragged and scorched fabric of her uniform.

The fire suppression foam started to dissolve and melt away, giving me a better look at her. The red uniform wasn’t just any old red: it was Imperial Scarlet.

Flag-rank Terran Commonwealth officers wore that color as part of their daily uniform. Since those weren’t too common, it was more likely she was an employee of some business that’d received a Royal Warrant of Appointment and liked to show off their status with the Imperial family. Maybe she’d been a skimmer-bike courier or member of a flight crew or something.

Then I saw it, in her dead, staring eyes. The pupils were fully dilated, and deep in her eyes I caught a ruddy gold gleam, like the eyes of an owl reflecting firelight.

Like the reflection off an artificial retina, the type used in cybernetic eyes or the optical sensors of a bot. You could spot them if you knew what to look for, and the lighting was just right. I laughed a little when I realized that I didn’t smell burnt hair or flesh, either, just scorched plastics and hot metal.

She was just a synthetic of some sort, so I wasn’t looking at a dead body. This broken body was alloy and synthetics rather than flesh and blood. High quality materials and built for rough service, given how relatively intact it was, but still just a bot. Maybe in-flight hostess AI or something. She was just cargo or equipment, not a person whose family I’d need to write a letter to. I’d had a bellyful of writing those letters back in the day.

Cooling alloy went tick-tick-tick as I looked her over. A length of breakaway chain around her neck led to dog tags half-buried in the melted plastic skin. I carefully dug them out with the tip of my saddle knife.

The tags were Commonwealth military issue, just like the ones I still wore. Dense, hard alloy was treated to be matte black, except for raised letters that said, HMS ASCENSION OF MAN. No name, rank, or service number, just that ship’s name and registration number.

My relief slid away as a chill went down my back like a trickle of snowmelt. The Ascension was one of our heavies, a battleship or something like that.

The shattered robotic form on my floor wasn’t some cheap AI flight attendant that served drinks and lugged people’s bags around. Terran Commonwealth capital ships housed a Synthetic Intelligence that was way more complicated than the AIs you could fit in a human-sized body or even a house. They were past the Turing Point into emotions, intuition, and real non-biological intelligence.

This was one of the remote bots that served as the ship’s human face among her crew, her literal hands outside the vessel’s networked systems. Stuff like that didn’t just randomly drop out of the sky.

The math was easy enough: Two plus two equaled oh shit.

My com slipped in my sweating, shaking hands when I pulled it off my belt. I fumbled it, kicked it under a bunk and had just snatched it up as Jenny stuck her head back in the door.

“Esteban,” she yelled with a little panicky hitch in her voice. “Get out here!”

Jenny and I were both twenty-year troopers. She’d had a bellyful of dingy industrial worlds like New Detroit and had followed me back home when we’d mustered out. Wanted to see “the wild frontier” of Hesperides Colony.

The lady was tough. Jenny’d seen the elephant before she’d even joined Her Divine Imperial Majesty’s Service. At thirteen, she’d been a corner-boss for the gray-market family that ran her neighborhood on New Detroit.

She didn’t rattle so easy, but her eyes were wide and her face had gone pale as that time on Blue Infinity when she’d damn near bled out from a bit of shrapnel that’d nicked an artery.

I bolted out the door, stumbled, then froze, staring as our sky burned and fell. In every direction, the sky blazed with sheets of flame and trails of smoke as wreckage tumbled and burned in re-entry.

Bright streaks pierced the clouds, hammering down at points beyond the distant hills.

I’d seen that before, too, but never on a world I’d called home. Orbital bombardment. Kinetic energy weapons coming in so fast that all I saw were the afterimages.

City killers.

My mestizo heritage wouldn’t let me go as pale as Kellogg had, but that wasn’t for lack of trying.

The Terran Commonwealth was at war, and it wasn’t going so great for us.

“Jenny, tell Mendez and Wallace to get the kids into the shelter,” I said around the wad of fear in my throat. “I’ll check in with the Old Man.”

Instead of running through the rose garden to the hacienda’s main house, I jogged so I’d look purposeful and not pants-pissing terrified. Panic was contagious.

The Old Man’s study was a mix of dark, polished old wood, antique furnishings, and new communications gear he’d camouflaged as much as he could with rustic cabinetry. He scowled at a display as he tried to sort out babbling newsfeeds. His round, usually jolly face was scrunched up in a mixture of worry and frustration.

“Nothing on the Emergency Broadcast feeds or any official channels. News should be screaming, but nothing. You’re the veteran, Esteban,” he said in a surprisingly detached voice. “Evacuate, or hunker down?”

“Tell you in a second, sir,” I said. “Gotta figure out if they’re softening us up or scrubbing us out.”

I’d never served in Intel or Plans, but between serving in both the Hesperides Defense Force and the Royal Commonwealth Marines, I’d picked up a few things about Mutual Prosperity battle doctrine.

“Give me a list of all the locations that’ve gone completely dark,” I told the household AI. The list dried up my mouth and made my belly ache like I’d been punched. All the orbital habitats and yards were offline, same with our biggest groundside population centers. Equinox City. New Brecon. Costa del Astra. All silent.

It wasn’t just the official or corporate network feeds; there were no small business or personal signals. No landline, q-net, or anything. Nothing on any media or social network was coming out of those cities.

There wasn’t even a single, lonely, amateur wireless operator.

“Give me live channels from anywhere around a city that’s just outside the radius that’s gone dark,” I said, scrubbing at my eyes, trying to think.

The system’s AI filled the big display with a couple dozen live channels. Some showed empty rooms, ceilings, or corners like the comm had been dropped in mid-broadcast, others nothing but useless jumbles of frantic movement.

“There!” I said, tapping a stationary feed of a crowd that wasn’t mindlessly running and screaming. “The plaza with the fighting. What’s that one?”

“T-Ring Book and News exterior public cam two, Little Philly Farmer’s Market, Taylorstown, New Delaware Prefecture,” the AI said.

The feed I tapped expanded to fill the screen. It was fighting, all right, but not what I was expecting.

A bearded, turbaned Sikh businessman wearing a suit worth half our horses held off a crowd with his kirpan in one hand and a broken chair leg in the other. Behind him, robed Benedictines finished throwing casks of beer and wheels of cheese off their abbey’s battered old air-truck. Other monks bodily heaved children up into the cargo bay as the kid’s mothers scrambled up beside them.

An aproned barista, this skinny blond guy, made a run for the truck and won a chair leg upside the head. He went down on his face, bawling.

The oldest monk, a white-haired little guy I figured to be the abbot, hustled a teenage girl into the cab. He pressed the key fob into her hand and frantically gestured upwards.

The last of the monks hopped down from the cargo bay and slapped the side of the truck.

The vehicle lifted off, going straight up at a speed that’d bring every traffic cop in the prefecture running.

Most of the crowd spun off in various directions, while others milled around in a sort of hopeless, baffled confusion.

The Sikh sagged for a moment, then dropped his chair leg and sheathed his blade. He gave the monks a small bow, straightened his suit, and calmly started tending to the guy whom he’d just beaten down.

“What the hell’s he doing?” the Old Man asked. I was just as puzzled by what the Sikh did next. We’d both expected the dapper badass would be waving his chair leg, directing the remaining people to a civil defense shelter, or trying to rally them to fight.

But the Sikh businessman just sat down with the woozy barista he’d clobbered, embracing the guy and gently rocking him like you would a little boy who’d just lost his dog.

Twenty years in a profession where I had to make out what people were trying to say while shit exploded around me left me a fair lip reader.

The businessman kept saying to the boy, “It’s okay. I’m with you. I will not leave you.”

The monks looked over the stragglers from the frightened crowd and gathered in front of the wreckage of their stall. The old one who I figured to be the abbot spoke briefly and earnestly for a moment, and then a trio of monks arranged themselves in a half-circle and began singing.

Another monk scavenged a loaf of bread and a jug of wine that had survived the crush. He held them while the Abbot said a few words.

Running. They should be running, getting to shelter or vehicles. Why weren’t they running?

“Viaticum,” the Old Man whispered as we watched a few people approach and accept the Eucharist from the younger monk while the Abbot performed what looked like a mass-absolution for any of the weeping, terrified people who seemed to want it.

“Esteban, this is bad.”

I just nodded. I hadn’t been inside a chapel except for the odd wedding in decades, but I remembered an old regimental chaplain explaining that the Mother church gave some wiggle-room on the rites for mass casualty events. My mouth was full of sawdust or something.

The monks were still singing when a frothing brown and white tumult blotted them out and the channel died.

We stared for a couple seconds. The Old Man found his mental feet first.

“Give me a map,” the Old Man said quietly. “Red lights for each station or channel that’s gone dark. Start when the first feed went out. Play at ten-times speed.”

Red dots appeared on the Glimmer Sea: feeds from cruise ships, cargo, and fishing vessels. Then the coastal cities and arcologies lit up, followed by towns and cities farther inland until the map looked like it had caught an arterial spray, from the coast up to the highlands.

The simplest explanation for that was the ugliest.

“A rock,” I managed to rasp. “They dropped a goddamn rock on the Glimmer Sea. Some goddamn maniac has dropped a goddamn asteroid on the Glimmer Sea, let the tsunami do their killing.”

Part of my brain tried to add up how many millions of people lived—had lived—in those cities.

I locked that down. I’d almost thrown a shoe there, for a second.

“Who?”

“Mutual Prosperity’s my bet,” I said, pushing through the trash clogging my brain.

To be honest, that had been my automatic assumption. I’d spent twenty years waiting to fight the Mutual Prosperity, so it kind of became my go-to. Shit had gotten too dangerous for me to keep making assumptions.

“Unless there’s a new player, a big one, we’re not close enough to the frontier for hostile xenos to send anything but the odd raiding party,” I said, scrabbling to see if I had facts to back my assumption. “Those couldn’t take out our local defense fleet as well as whatever Commonwealth vessels were in-system. They sure as hell couldn’t handle Hesperides Skywatch or engage in orbital bombardment on this scale.”

Farther inland, any place with a credible military presence was getting clobbered from orbit.

“Give me any feed reporting ground fighting,” I said to the AI. Ground fighting would be good; it would mean we weren’t simply being exterminated from space.

Feeds from some industrial sites and a couple minor cities with spaceports popped up.

I selected one from a personal comm that seemed pretty stable. It showed a couple dozen Mutual Prosperity troopers as they secured a spaceport concourse. The invaders occasionally glanced towards the recorder, but didn’t really seem to care about being broadcast.

One big blond fellow in sooty, battle-scarred armor elbowed his buddy and pointed at the camera. They grinned and flashed the ancient, two-fingered “V for “Victory.”

A tall, armored woman with a big damn gauss rifle stepped into the feed. She placed a hand on her hip and cocked her head. The age-old body language of a sergeant or junior officer wondering exactly why the hell troops were clowning around while there’s a war to be fought.

The two moved with a purpose out of the shot and she turned to watch them go. I got a good look at her face. Her features were aquiline. Strong without being masculine. Black hair kissed with the faintest ruddy highlight, dark bronzed skin, and brilliant jade-green eyes.

There was something familiar about her. Something from the ancient, pre-Jump paintings that the Old Man loved, maybe. I might have seen a face like hers on a girl wearing brilliant silks, filling a clay jar at a well…or maybe on a rani or sultana reclining on a throne and coolly passing judgment on some miserable petitioner.

Too bad she was the enemy.

I grinned a coyote’s grin, sharp and nasty. Sloppy operational security could get really expensive. Our forces would learn lots of useful things from vids like that. Stuff like unit insignia and loadout was probably being processed by our intel weenies and their AIs while I watched.

That initial satisfaction curdled in my belly when the camera zoomed in and let me get a better look at her, and I really processed what I was seeing.

Those Prosperity troopers weren’t conscripted coil gun-fodder. Her armor and gear were the best I’d seen, and every last trooper filing past her was a two-meter tall, downright heroic-looking specimen of humanity. They had the solid, lean musculature of professional fighters and those idealized action-vid stars.

Even the women were pushing two meters in height and strode through the concourse with the confident, graceful power of lionesses.

Genejacks. Goddamn genejacks.

The Mutual Prosperity troopers weren’t demonstrating sloppy operational security. They wanted all of Hesperides Colony to know that they’d sent their very, very best. Those trooper’s genetic enhancements made them stronger, faster, tougher, and smarter than baseline Terrans, but what really made them formidable was their parentage.

Genejacks weren’t clones. They were crèche-raised from genetically optimized ova and sperm that three centuries’ worth of military personnel had donated to the old colonial gamete-banks back before the Mutual Prosperity worlds had seceded.

They were literally the co-opted, weaponized sons and daughters of humanity’s greatest heroes from an era when pretty much every battle had been a desperate last stand. Children of the ancient heroes who’d dragged humanity off the endangered species list.

About as good as it got, as psychological weapons go.

Aw, shit. There are heroes, and then there are Heroes. As in, “Recipient of the Lion of Terra.” That officer looked familiar because I had seen her face before: in historical documentaries. On statues. On assorted souvenirs in museum gift shops.

Despite the enhancements to her size and musculature, I realized that I was looking at none other than the daughter, centuries removed, of Corporal Tanveer Kaur, her very damn self.

Tanveer Kaur was pretty much the face of the Spring Thunder campaign, back when Ainara Jingu had led humanity out of hiding and forged an empire on the scorched bones of the xenos that had murdered our birthworld. If any single trooper other than maybe Captain Tomoe Gozen could be credited for winning that final battle, it was Tanveer Kaur.

Her little girl was all growed up now, and here to kick our asses.

“This isn’t just a raid, sir,” I said. “They’re here to stay. Jefe, my vaqueros are tough, but this fight is way above our weight class. Prosperity regulars? Those are just conscripts from their labor castes. If we can pick the ground and time, we’ll eat their lunch. But not Legionaries.”

The Old Man nodded. “What’ll the Prosperity do with us?”

“We sell meat to the Hesperides Defense Force and provide Her Majesty’s Due to any Terran Commonwealth warship that enters the system to resupply, which is bad enough. But we also sell to the Sketh’ya hives on the southern continent,” I said. “The Bugs do systems design and coding for the colonial militaries in a bunch of other Commonwealth systems, and for some of our Coreward League allies, too.”

I drew in a breath, straightened, and faced the Old Man to give him the bad news.

“As far as the Prosperity’s concerned, we’ve got a history of supporting ‘counter-liberation activities’ on both the system and interstellar level. Social Remediation camps for the kids. As for the rest of us, that’ll depend on if they need manpower more than they want public examples. They really like examples.”

The Old Man looked around the house that had been the heart of Rosenberry’s Pride for five generations. He took his grandfather’s gauss rifle off the wall, checked the power cell, and locked a magazine into the well.

“Land’s just dirt, Esteban,” he said as he slung the old rifle. “People are home.”

There was no arguing with that. If it were just me, I’d be plenty happy to throw down with the sons of bitches. But I had no right to waste the lives of my vaqueros, much less their families.

I nodded and walked out to the veranda, where I clanged the dinner bell to get everyone’s attention. It had only taken me a moment to mentally file through our emergency plans and settle on “Worst-Case.”

I honestly couldn’t think of a lousier situation.

Back then, I had no idea just how limited my imagination was.

“Listen up! We’re at war,” I bellowed over the babble of questions. “The orbitals have gone dark, the Mutual Prosperity’s landing genejacks, and that’s about all we know. We’re bugging out until the HDF and Commonwealth forces can rally, or our Coreward League allies show up to relieve us.”

Anger pushed aside some of the fear on people’s faces. That would help. I could get them to view every act of survival as one of defiance against the bastards who were murdering our world.

“Everybody get your personal go-bags,” I said. “Absolutely no wireless devices are to be used! Pull the power cells, if you can’t pull the wireless module. I catch anyone using wireless, I. Will. Shoot. You. I don’t want some bastard in orbit mistaking us for a military unit and dropping a rod on us.

“Then start breaking down equipment in your work areas, according to Disaster Plan Zed. I say again, Disaster Plan Zed. Total evacuation and relocation. Doc will bust out the stims as needed. We’re looking at a long day and a longer night, so move with a purpose!”

I turned to Kellogg. Her jaw was set, eyes hard like when we were doing a pre-drop briefing. She was in mission mode. Probably the only way she could function right then.

Her family had lived in Equinox City. All of it.

“Get the vaqueros saddled up,” I told her. “We’re taking all the horses. Cut out the hardiest cattle, too. Leave the gates open for everything we don’t take. As soon as you’re ready, head southwest towards the badlands. The rest of us will catch up using your dust to cover the vehicles.”

Our best time for breaking down and loading all the equipment needed for a complete relocation had been just under nineteen hours of nonstop, ass-busting work.

I really should’ve had that extra cup of coffee.

I went back inside and copied the most recent inventory file to my reader.

“Esteban, it looks like we’re founding that new spread early,” the Old Man said as he stuffed a few extra items into his go-bag. “Go ahead and load the equipment I’ve been stockpiling for Maria. It’ll save us breaking down some systems here. She won’t mind.”

He said that with a sort of desperate and deliberate assumption that his granddaughter was safe.

Maria was offworld, studying in the Commonwealth’s capital on New Kyoto. She had an eye towards serving Her Majesty’s Due with a stint in the Colonization Bureau rather than with a Commonwealth military or social services term. Maria wasn’t content with inheriting a spread or buying land. She’d been determined to earn enough Imperial Service Credits for a land grant to establish a hacienda of her very own, with Her Majesty’s writ on the wall.

Olives. Maria’d wanted to cultivate olives. She’d been giddy that she could see the Imperial Residence from the roof of her dorm

I nodded and kept my mouth shut, letting the Old Man hang on to the hope he needed to keep going.

No matter how false it probably was.

Hesperides Colony wasn’t strategically located or particularly rich, and we weren’t in disputed territory. If the Mutual Prosperity was hitting us, they had to be striking at the Commonwealth as a whole. New Kyoto was probably the least safe world in known space.

I headed out to start playing logistician. My boots clopped on the tile floor as I moved through the hacienda trying to figure out what crucial detail I was going to forget.

First stop was the kitchens, where I caught Hector flat-footed. The wiry little cook was standing there with half a dozen potted chili plants in his arms, like I’d busted him raiding the Old Man’s personal stash of booze.

“There’s room for these!” Hector shouted, backing away, clutching his chilies protectively.

Hector didn’t just love his chilies; he knew more about crossbreeding and cultivating them than most botanists. I didn’t know if he grew them to win awards with his sauces or made the sauces to get people to try his newest chilies.

I couldn’t have the man melting down right then, so I held my hands out and nodded.

“Easy, Hector,” I said. “You have your people loading supplies, right?” If they weren’t, I was going to beat his ass, meltdown or not.

“Yes! Toby’s on that! He knows the emergency loadouts backwards and forwards,” Hector said. “You said worst case! I’ve already got all my seeds packed, and I’m loading the live plants with the highest nutrient density and hardiness first. Vitamins!”

I had said “worst case,” after all.

Meat on the hoof we had in plenty, but I’d seen what vitamin deficiencies could do when I’d been deployed herding refugees on a failed colony once. Hector knew more about nutrition than I did, so he probably had a point. We couldn’t plan on getting nutrient supplements or imported fruits any time soon.

Besides, chilies could make even emergency rations taste like food instead of plastic compost.

“Okay, Hector,” I said. “Good thinking. After that’s handled, pick over the stuff we had ready to go to market. Pack every last nook and cranny in those wagons with tasajo or beans or whatever else doesn’t need refrigeration. Let anybody with room stuff their go-bags and pockets. And don’t forget to get some pozole on. We’re going to be working through the night, so people will need to eat.”

Hector nodded earnestly. The man looked like I’d just given him permission to put his children on the last lifeboat.

I stepped out the kitchen door and took a look around. Streaks of smoke and fire still rained down in every direction. A glaring blue-white flash outdid the sun for a moment, casting sharp double-shadows before fading. The flash left that anybody looking right at it seeing white and purple blotches.

A capital ship’s drives losing containment.

It’s got to be one of theirs, I prayed. Please let it be one of theirs.

Toby dropped the case of ready-meals he’d been carrying and bolted in blind panic. I snagged him by the collar and spun him around, into a right hook that sent a hot, red jolt through my fist and up my arm.

He fell back on his ass, staring at me. I hauled him to his feet.

“Is that wagon loaded?” I bellowed in his face.

“Wha-wha-wha—” Toby gabbled.

“IS THE GODDAMNED WAGON LOADED?” I spun him and pointed to the wagon he’d been loading with food.

The pain of getting decked kicked in, and anger rode right on its heels of the psychological shock of getting knocked on his ass.

“No, the gawddamned wagon isn’t loaded,” he spluttered, rounding on me.

“Then pick up that food and get that wagon the hell loaded,” I snarled, grabbing Toby by the shoulders again and steering him towards the case of meals, then planted a boot on his ass and shoved him.

I spent a minute or two bellowing, snarling, and cuffing people to get them moving.

It was the oldest trick in the veteran NCO’s book: give scared people something more frightening than explosions to worry about. Few things could scare a civilian or newbie as much as a sergeant who’s pulling the Wrathful God routine, especially if they’ve never seen it before outside a vid.

We had a good number of veterans at the hacienda, and they dropped back into deployment mode without even recognizing the shift in their heads. That was all I needed to jumpstart the reflexes our yearly disaster drills had embedded in everyone.

I spent a minute glaring at everybody in general as they got hustling, shaking my aching hand out behind my back. Once they started moving with a purpose, they moved well enough.

The twice-yearly disaster drills always cost in time, credits, and sweat, but were paying off. The Old Man had always taken emergency procedures seriously; that was one of the reasons I’d signed on with him back in the day. Too many communities did the bare minimum to meet the disaster prep standards laid down in Commonwealth Law and the Hesperides Colonial Charter.

No species comes out of a near-extinction event without learning a few things about how fragile civilizations are, but the centuries had started to dull that appreciation for some folks, and the Old Man didn’t approve. He’d been a teacher once, Pre-Jump history through the Fall of Terra, and he considered the legal minimums to be half measures.

Those semi-annual evacuation and relocation drills were real ball-busters, but they provided some bonuses. The sort of people who’d bitch about getting sweaty and sore weren’t ones who’d last at a working hacienda, anyway, so the exercise served to weed out new hires who’d be better off working at a hobby ranch or something. The drills made for a great excuse for a party when they were finished, too.

Satisfied that I’d gotten things rolling, I headed towards the barn holding Maria’s birthright. It was already open. A young campesino, Sofia Moreno, stood in the doorway, waving her arms and yelling, trying to get someone to bring some wagons over.

Slim, downright tiny, Sofia was tough, but hadn’t been able to cut it as a vaquero. She rode like a sack of potatoes and simply didn’t have the instincts to compensate for her lack of mass when it came to wrangling cattle, much less the colony’s indigenous grazers.

She trained hard, tried out again every fall, broke some bones often as not, and swore she’d make the cut next time. In the meantime, the girl ended up doing general scut-work like checking soil-pH in the orchard and maintaining nutrient mixes in the hydroponics sheds.

Seeing the fire in her eyes, I suspected she’d come into her own, finally.

“Sofia?” I asked as I approached.

“Señor Ramirez,” she said, eyes wide with urgency. “All of this equipment is ready to go! We just—”

“Not your call, Sofia,” I said. “It’s the Old Man’s. You can’t just jump in and start requisitioning people; we might have needed the manpower and wagons elsewhere. But it is the call he made, so you’re half-right, even if you overstepped the chain of command. It’s that chain of command part I can’t let slide. You’re on half-pay today and tomorrow. Plus, you just won yourself a really shitty job, chica.”

Her jaw dropped, and her dark eyes flashed as she tried to decide if she was more confused or pissed, leaning towards pissed, probably.

“You’re now my assistant quartermaster,” I said. “Effective immediately. Grab four bodies and help me inventory this stuff. I’ll teach you some basic load-planning as we go.”

She grinned like a thief and ran off to round up some of the campesinos who looked like they needed something useful to do.

I eyed the rugged space-land shipping containers stacked in the barn and started pulling the manifests. The Old Man hadn’t quite stockpiled a colony-in-a-box, but the core tech was there: a couple modest thorium reactors, with fuel modules ready to load. Spare power cells, water purifiers, medical synthesizers, and the makings of a decent machine-shop, along with a couple small nano-forges.

Combined with the hacienda’s removable equipment, we’d have everything we’d need to build tools and spare parts down the road and even fabricate new systems. That’d be handy if we ended up in the boondocks for any length of time. We could even use the shipping containers as shelters; they were rated for vacuum and had some basic climate control systems.

Three hours saw the inventory complete. Nothing had fallen off the truck.

Then the hard work started. Redistributing crucial equipment between as many vehicles as possible was a pain in the ass. Even though I was overseeing, I still had to pitch in with enough of the heavy lifting that my back and legs were burning by the time we finished.

The sunrise was a glaring smear of vivid reds and oranges too brilliant to seem real when we were finally ready to roll. The only stim I’d taken was coffee. The bill would come for the exertion and sleep-debt, along with some hefty interest, the moment I stopped moving.

At the gate, we paused. The rising sun painted the hacienda a warm, ruddy, gold. The Old Man took down the hacienda’s weathered sign and put it in the back of his retro-style pickup truck. He paused and looked at us.

“No matter what they do to this place,” he called, “they’ll never take Rosenberry’s Pride from us!”

We were all too damn tired and scared to do any real cheering, but the gesture stoked a pitiful little fire in our bellies. He hit the horn, and we started rolling westward towards the dust cloud Kellogg and the herds had kicked up.

It took half the day to catch up with Kellogg and the herds. They’d had to stop for the night, and herds don’t move very fast, but they’d had a head start on us.

“Boss,” she said as I rode up beside her.

“Anything I need to know about?”

“No, Esteban,” she said. “Forage is good, so we won’t lose too much stock unless we really push it. We’re about two hours from sweet water.”

I had a think about how much distance we’d put between ourselves and the hacienda. We were probably pretty low on the Mutual Prosperity’s attentions list, so we’d have time before any occupiers came knocking, assuming the Defense Forces let them keep their beachhead.

“Okay,” I said. “No sense in killing good stock, and the campesinos aren’t used to life on the trail. Now that we’ve got some distance, we can afford to break them in a little more gently.”

I broke off as the Old Man’s pickup rumbled over to us.

“Good work, Jenny,” he said to Kellogg. “I did some thinking. Let’s plan on camping tomorrow night at Witch’s Drift. Good water, and it’s not too far from tonight’s camp. I want to send some outriders to Quigley’s Landing, Fitzroy Station, and the Lazy Star. See if they want to join up with us, tell them they’ll have two days before we head out.”

Kellogg scowled; she’d had to break up a few fights between our people and some Lazy Star cowboys at the district fair last fall. There had been stitches.

“I know, Kellogg. I know,” the Old Man said. “They’re not the most civil bunch, but they’re our neighbors, and they’ve got sand.”

“Besides, it’s not like anybody will have the time or energy to start waving their pricks around,” I said. “We could use more stock, and I’d be happier with more guns beside us.”

“I’ll head to Fitzroy Station myself,” Kellogg said. “I always got along with them. You should probably send Bozeman to the Lazy Star. Their trail boss is a cousin of his. And send Wallace with him, to hold his leash.”

“Good,” the Old Man said. “Once I see what we’ve got to work with, I’ll decide where we should set up a permanent camp.”

Once we settled in for the night, I got swamped by people who thought I was a military expert. They wanted to know how quickly we’d drive the invaders away, how long we’d need to hide in the badlands.

I didn’t have any good answers and got pretty damn sick of having to repeat that. Finally, I hunkered down with a wireless set and started scanning the frequencies to see if I could learn anything, and so everyone would quit pestering me. I had a secret hope that I’d hear something from the colonial government about repelling the invaders, or maybe that reinforcements had arrived.

A single, lonely voice from the darkness overhead shattered that pipedream.

“—Not respond,” the voice said. “Do not respond. This is the Free Trader River of Light. There are still functional Mutual Prosperity artillery drones in orbit, and they are targeting any groundside wireless. The HDF and local fleet broke the attack, but there’s nothing left. The fleet…the yards and habitats…they’re all gone. I’m all that’s left up here, I think.”

She was a civilian. Maybe her tramp freighter was taking on cargo when the attack hit. Young, and way the hell out of her depth. I’d bet a month’s pay that even the ship’s cat would be senior to her. The girl had a faint accent; a fluid lilt that suggested Khalistan Colony, or New Rajasthan, maybe.

Then she delivered the really bad news.

“A volcanic eruption has started…ahhh…on the main continent, just above your fortieth parallel,” she said.

Sounded like the Hephaestus Park Caldera. We were down by the tenth, so I didn’t worry too much. Shows what little I knew about volcanoes.

“It’s huge; I think the asteroid bombardment cracked it loose. Multiple columns on thermal… Another one just opened up. They’re not stopping. They’re not stopping. I think that anybody north of the twentieth parallel needs to go south. Go now. Just go. Walk if you have to in order to reach a sealed facility if the ash isn’t falling where you are yet. That ash will kill you unless you’re in a sealed habitat, and there’s nobody to come and help. I’ll try to do what I can.”

She began calling down ashfall patterns, suggested evacuation routes and promised to drop what supplies she could along them.

“Refugees. We’re gonna get swamped with refugees,” I said as I stared into the firepit. “A lot of mouths to feed.”

I’d spent a tour or two trying to police refugee camps on a failed colony. I knew how desperate and predatory people could become. I tried to calculate how quickly we could start producing crops, how much livestock we could sacrifice while maintaining viable herds.

How many more mouths we’d be able to feed until we just couldn’t feed anyone at all.

“What would your mother say?” Kellogg muttered.

Kellogg wasn’t slapping me down. That ancient catchphrase was a reference to Ainara Masako. Even after eight centuries, we still regarded her as humanity’s mother. She’d had clawed her way to the top of the food chain to unify a broken, refugee humanity. Her first decree was that the survival of the species trumped any old ethnic grudges or historical squabbles over lands that had burned with Terra, anyway. She’d sent folks who disagreed with her to talk the matter over with Darwin in person.

It had been what historians liked to call a “defining moment.”

A cold lump settled into my gut as I finally let myself add up how many millions of people must have died in the orbital bombardment. Most folks had lived in the cities and arcologies…too many eggs in too few baskets. I gradually wrapped my brain around how few humans might be left alive on Hesperides.

We were looking down the barrel of our own defining moment, when what we decided could well determine if our group survived or not, and what type of people we’d be if we did.

“Anybody willing to work can stay,” the Old Man spat. “Anybody too sick to work, we’ll help them ‘til they’re fit to stay or go. Goddamned if I’ll let those sons of bitches in the Prosperity turn us against our neighbors.”

I was glad he didn’t put it to a vote. I didn’t have it in my heart to turn away people I’d dedicated twenty years of my life to protecting. And I didn’t have it in me to see the hacienda’s children, or those of our neighbors, starve. It was a cold, empty place to be left standing in.

“We’ll set up a permanent camp in the canyons,” the Old Man said, thinking out loud. “Shelter and artesian water there. Our hydroponics will barely support the people we’ve got, though. We’ll have to dedicate them to nutrient-dense crops. Won’t leave us much for fodder, and nothing for comfort-food.”

Damn. I was going to miss coffee. Hot coffee, on a chilly morning out on the open range…that was one of the single greatest pleasures in life.

A hand on my arm. Sofia had taken a knee next to where I was hunkered down on the wireless. She wasn’t looking to me for support or reassurance. No, she looked at me with a mixture of confidence and faith, like she did any time she’d brought me a problem or question that she knew I’d have the answer for.

And then I had it: we were vaqueros, damn it. Wranglers, drovers, cowboys…whatever you called it, we brought the food to where it was needed.

“Food won’t be a problem,” I said, standing and raising my voice, feeling an old, forgotten fire kindle in my belly as Sofia’s eyes shone. “Let them all come. Anybody who makes it. Hell, send out scouts and guides, bring us every refugee you can find. When we get settled, dedicate the Terran livestock to milk instead of meat. We brought the livestock gamete banks and all the artificial insemination equipment, so it’ll only take a couple of years to change our production focus. Meantime, I’ll take the vaqueros out and follow the indigenous grazer herds on the plains. They’re edible if you don’t mind the chewing and have some of Hector’s hot sauce. We can take pressure off the base-camp’s—”

“New Petra,” the Old Man said absently.

“Off New Petra’s resources,” I continued. “Come fall, we’ll bring home enough meat on the hoof to feed everyone. Then we’ll head out again in the spring and do it all again. As many times as we need to.”

“Not just the wranglers, Esteban,” Kellogg said. “Some families, too. It’ll let us get more eggs in more baskets. In case…well, you know…”

I nodded. We didn’t know what was happening in the rest of the Terran Commonwealth, much less in the Coreward League that humanity was a partner in. It had to be bad if relief hadn’t arrived yet.

We nicknamed the girl in orbit “Big Mama.” Her broadcasts were the only news had, while they lasted. After a year or so, Big Mama finally went silent. We never found out who she was, or what happened to her. Maybe she just didn’t have anything left to give.

I liked to imagine that she made it planetside and found safe haven someplace warm and bright.

Down in the temperate equatorial plains, we avoided most of the ashfall except for a grimy residue that covered everything and tainted still water. The volcanic winter was another matter.

The sun dimmed into something ruddy and swollen thanks to the sulfur compounds clogging the upper atmosphere, backscattering its light, and letting precious little get to the surface. The Galactic Core became a dingy, tarnished smear instead of a glorious, golden river of light. Regular winter must have become a frozen hell up north as the radiant polar nights became a bleak abyss of unrelenting darkness and killing cold.

For seven years, I watched the sweet grasses wither and die as more water became locked into snow and ice at the higher latitudes. Only the toughest plants and animals survived as the plains became something more like steppe, cold and dry.

So goddamned dry. You’d think that the global cooling would’ve made it a little more bearable. You’d think wrong.

Before the war, it had been a pleasure to ride the ranges, not an ongoing, twilight-nightmare of dust and drudgery. I’d have killed for a bath, for eyes and a nose free of grit and dust.

One cool afternoon in high summer, I let that get to me. I broke trail discipline and pushed harder than was smart to reach a waterhole ahead of schedule. Nobody complained; everyone was eager for a rest and sweet water.

We arrived just before dusk, but the hard drive left us tired and sloppy. I barely had enough presence of mind to make myself walk a circuit around the waterhole. I was just too damned beat to be distracted by the happy ruckus that came with camping at a wet site.

Otherwise, the genejack would have seen me first.

She was watching our camp from behind a rock spill in one of the small arroyos that would feed the waterhole when the rains came.

The woman was big, almost two meters tall, with a powerful, athletic build. Plenty of muscle, but by no means manly. Her hair was black, with a hint of red. Under the grime, her skin was a dark reddish bronze.

I wasn’t tracking so good. For a moment, I thought she was just another refugee who happened to have some Heavy-worlder mods in her parentage, trying to work up the nerve to hail our camp.

Then I spotted the tattered remains of an MPC-issued bodysuit peeking out from the patchwork of rags and hides she wore. A sour mix of hate and fear sloshed through my gut.

She didn’t need the short assegai-style spear lying on the ground next to her to perpetrate some awfulness on me. Kilo for kilo, genejacks were stronger than old Terran primates, and she had a lot more kilos on her than any chimp.

I’m fast. I could maybe have cleared leather and ended her before she got to me.

Maybe.

Assuming the single shot I’d have gotten off actually dropped her before she ran me through or just screwed my melon off.

I was still processing that, trying to figure out how to get out of there alive, when her nostrils flared, and she snapped her head towards me.

Smelled me. All those goddamned grazers crapping and kicking up dust and she goddamned smelled me.

The genejack just looked at me. Didn’t grab for her spear or even change her posture. She glanced at my hand where it hovered over the butt of my pistol, then locked gazes with me. Her expression was cool, neither hostile nor anxious.

Part of me really, really just wanted to try to draw and shoot her. A body learns a powerful sort of hate, seeing their world destroyed.

The old discipline from my years in the HDF and Commonwealth Marines helped me keep that locked down. If she was just a forward observer, then a shot would trigger an all-out attack, and my people were at their most vulnerable while setting up camp.

And to be perfectly honest, I was just too damn worn out to keep a proper hate stoked.

I forced my jaw to unclench and gave her another look-see. There was a unit flash on her shoulder, but the Mutual Prosperity emblem had been methodically defaced.

A deserter, maybe.

I’d never heard of such a thing, but I supposed it was possible. Genejacks were ruthless and loyal to the point of fanaticism, but that was the product of indoctrination, not genetic tinkering. Mindless obedience couldn’t be just bred into troopers without losing the wits and will that win battles.

I forced myself to study her as a person. Her manner hadn’t been that of a scout evaluating our defenses or of a prowling trooper about to corncob us. As we stared at each other, something set the children shrieking with laughter and her gaze flicked for an instant back towards the camp.

Sofia yelled at our daughter to quit throwing mud at her brother.

A faint smile briefly played across the Legionary’s lips. It wasn’t some soppy thing you’d see in one of those trite morality vids. You know, ones with a crèche-raised jugger hearing the laughter of children for the first time and having an epiphany about feelings or whatever.

She was just…well, just a person being a person.

The momentary lapse was too brief for me to have taken advantage of even if I weren’t dog-tired. About the time I realized that I wouldn’t get another chance like that, the genejack returned her attention to me.

She met my eyes again and cocked her head slightly, quirking one eyebrow in a way that wasn’t quite a warning. More like, “You pick the tune, and we’ll dance, but make sure it’s one you know.”

That was new. Things didn’t turn bloody with MPC genejacks. They started bloody. Maybe I could get out of there alive, after all.

Her stomach rumbled and I noticed something else: her skin was tight and drawn; lips cracked and eyes a little sunken. She was bordering on severe dehydration, sitting just meters from the only reliable fresh water for a few hundred kilometers in any direction. We must have arrived just before her.

I let out a breath and slowly lifted my hand away from my gun-belt to unsling my canteen. I took a drink and tossed it to her. The woman plucked the canteen from the air, sniffed it, and allowed herself just three swallows before she tossed it back.

Damn. That was discipline.

She reached into a pouch and produced a pitifully small strip of something brown, ripped a hunk off with her teeth and then tossed the rest to me. It was crudely smoked grazer meat, pounded silly and mixed with fat and wild grains.

I worked a bite loose and returned the dog treat to her. She obviously didn’t have much to spare, but the exchange of hospitality seemed important. Like she had to prove she wasn’t begging, if only to herself.

The genejack nodded and scooched around to where she could watch both me and the camp. I’d been so worried about her spear that I hadn’t noticed that her left hand had been hidden from me.

My stomach did an ugly little flop when I saw that she held a thin, circular alloy gasket. It was maybe twenty centimeters across, and the outer edge looked razor sharp. A homemade chakram. This genejack could have wishboned me with a flick of her wrist from a hundred meters away.

She twitched her lips in an almost-smirk that I read as, “Aren’t you glad you decided to play nice?”

I shook my head, chuckling in spite of myself, and then took a seat in the dust.

She slipped the chakram onto a bit of cord hanging from her harness and I handed her back the canteen. The woman allowed herself three more swallows.

“I’m Esteban Ramirez,” I said. “Trail Boss for Rosenberry’s Pride.”

“Ke-Tre-Dek-Pa-Te-Coh,” she said.

That sounded like maybe just letters and numbers or something. Huh. As far as I knew, Genejacks had names, not just designations.

I spotted a tell, the briefest flicker in her gaze, the smallest twitch of the lips. She was really nervous. I got the feeling that she was clinging to some old military protocol to reassure herself. Like the thought of giving me her name made her feel vulnerable.

The genejack might have been able to take me apart like a roasted bird, but she was a long ways outside of her comfort zone.

She must have seen that realization cross my face. I saw a flash of defiance in her eyes.

Defiance, and something dangerous.

“Kaur. Pax Terra Cohort. Spring Thunder Legion,” she carefully said in Classical Imperial, mangled by the clipped, choppy accent of the Prosperity’s homegrown language they called “Fellowship.”

The penny dropped. Under the grime and dust, this was the same officer I’d seen on the Old Man’s display, a war or so ago.

I thought about what Ke-Dek…about what this Kaur’s masters in the Mutual Prosperity had done to Hesperides, and probably countless other worlds in the Terran Commonwealth. To so many of their fellow humans.

“What would your mother think?” my mouth almost asked, but I managed to keep it locked.

The genejack’s stomach rumbled again, reminding me that her state was even sorrier than mine. I didn’t think Kaur planned on starting any trouble, but I had to be careful. The woman was dangerous and nervous, and that’s never a healthy combination. I needed to put her a little more at ease.

“Your mother was Tanveer Kaur.” I said the name with the respect it deserved.

She nodded.

“My chief wrangler’s a descendant of Warrant Officer Kellogg,” I said. “He was one of Empress Ainara Jingu’s personal guards. Stood on the bridge with her when she took the HMS Pax Terra right down the Shuik battle-line’s throat. Jenny never lets anyone forget it when she’s had a few drinks.”

The genejack nodded, and her expression changed to one of pride and open approval. I saw something that might have been a mix of tenderness and old grief in her eyes for a moment. It was a safe bet she’d had some of Warrant Officer Kellogg’s jug-grown kids in her legion.

Whatever her first name was, she hadn’t seemed comfortable sharing that with me and I decided not to push it. We had the thinnest of threads: shared ancestors who’d fought together in humanity’s defense centuries ago. Still, she really wanted something to hang on to. I got the feeling that she was desperately looking for reasons not to fight. Her shoulders relaxed a little.

It was time to build common ground that was a bit sturdier. I slowly fished out a waxcloth packet of soft goat’s cheese and dried fruit, which I slid it over to her along with a chunk of camp bread that wasn’t quite petrified.

The woman must have been living on those meat strips for a long while, because she took a couple bites of the bread with relish, and actually blissed out for a moment when she tasted the rubbery fruit. She unfolded a small square of hide that held some salt.

Instead of passing the fruit back, she sat it on the ground between us where I could retrieve it if I wanted to, or I could treat it as a meal we were sharing. She really, really wanted more of that fruit, but was too proud to ask.

Curiouser and curiouser, as the Old Man liked to say. Genejacks typically commandeered anything they needed. Whether it was from Prosperity subjects, or the citizens of occupied worlds didn’t matter. Starving civilians were a “necessary sacrifice for the prosperity of all.”

Well, if she’d been living on only dried meat for any period of time, she was probably damn close to winning a case of scurvy.

I dug into my satchel again and pulled out a bundle of leathery chilis. They grew fine in arid climates and retained more nutrients than most fruit when dried right. I broke a pepper open and nibbled a little bit. Next, I held up a cluster of seeds and pointed at the stuff around them and ran through the facial contortions the uninitiated go through the first time they hit the hot parts.

The woman wasn’t impressed until I pulled my lower lip down and pointed at my nice, healthy gums. See? No scurvy here. That got her attention.

She bit into a pepper and made a point of crunching up a seed cluster just to prove how tough she was.

That didn’t work out so good.

I held up the canteen and shook my head, then pointed at the cheese. She quickly took a bite and didn’t bother hiding her relief. When I handed her the canteen again, she took four swallows instead of three and smiled in a “Well, you told me so” sort of way. Then she held up one of the seeds and mimed sticking it into the earth and looked at me expectantly.

“The way we dry them, those seeds’ll grow just fine,” I said with a nod. “And you get used to the heat.”

The genejack looked hard at me for a long moment and came to some sort of decision. She produced a little medical stasis box with some seeds. Apple seeds, maybe. Well, we had a few places where we could probably grow those with a little luck.

She paused and swallowed, then slid it over to me. Her fingers lingered on the case like she was having trouble letting go of it. That discipline kicked in after a moment and she straightened, looking away as I carefully packed the case into my satchel.

The genejack picked up a stick and sketched a rough map of the region in the dusty creek bed and pointed at me. Then she traced the migratory pattern my herd generally took.

That wasn’t a question about where we were headed; she was stating that she already knew. A little breeze kicked up and found its way down the back of my neck to chill the sweat I hadn’t even realized was there.

Next, she thumped her chest and tapped the side of the map south of the waterhole. That was followed by a vague sort of wave southward.

That looked like, “I’ve got places to go, and there’s no reason for us to get in each other’s way, now, is there?”

Well, since I’d already given aid and comfort to the enemy, I might as well negotiate an illegal treaty. I tapped my own chest and pointed at the camp, then held my hand over the map and made a sweeping gesture northward from the waterhole.

Kaur nodded, and then surprised me by taking my hand and cupping it around the northern side of the waterhole. She made a cupping gesture around the southern edge of the waterhole and gently overlapped our hands, interlaced our fingers. The touch startled me. Her hands felt nearly fever-hot—probably something to do with that enhanced metabolism of hers.

She wanted the waterhole to be neutral territory; accessible to both and owned by neither. Or maybe even jointly protected… Her eyes strayed to the small bundle of peppers.

“You can have them,” I said. “I’ll leave a few of some other varieties, and a data flimsy with some illustrated directions for growing them once we break camp.”

The genejack smiled and nodded in understanding, but then shifted uncomfortably and fidgeted instead of taking the peppers. After a moment, she made a “Great Idea Face” and pulled a big, floppy, broad-brimmed hat out of her pack. It’d been cobbled together from some sort of homemade felt. Grazer hair, from the smell of it.

“This on Rosenberry-Pride’s-man-Esteban,” Kaur said as she held it out to me.

I’d left my own hat on a wagon, so I didn’t have an excuse not to put the smelly, ugly thing she gave me on like it was the fanciest, finest damn hat you could imagine.

She grinned at me, happy to be trading instead of begging. Or just taking. This genejack had definitely learned some new ways of thinking. After seven years, it was pretty clear nobody’s nation had survived the war outside our system; we’d have been either relieved or conquered by now.

Maybe that was enough to rock even a genejack’s worldview.

Maybe one day I’d find out.

“I’ll head back to my camp now,” I said as I placed the canteen on the ground next to the uneaten rations. “Once we’ve replenished our water supply, we’ll break camp and be on our way.”

The Galactic Core would be rising soon, golden, and bright, and since the weather was clear, we’d be able to see pretty well. Better than under a full moon on Terra. A few hours of trekking at night wouldn’t be fun or safe, but it’d be safer than risking a fight with Kaur and whatever force she was scouting for.

The woman nodded and turned to watch the camp, indicating that our little visit was over.

I stood up and left, half-expecting to get a chakram in the back of my melon just because I wasn’t used to things going so well.

After about five steps, I got pissed that nobody’d even noticed I’d been missing. I was gonna have to put boot to butts regarding security.

After another five steps, I felt relieved that nobody had stumbled across us and kicked off a fight. Lots of folks had good reason to hate her, but not too many had my ability to compartmentalize. Best feed this to folks slowly.

At the center of the camp, I whistled a couple shrill notes and gestured for everyone to gather around.

“Change of plans, people,” I said. “Get the water barrels filled, get everything watered, but don’t let anything eat too much. We’re breaking camp. Don’t ask, don’t argue, and for God’s sake, don’t leave the camp. Nobody crosses to the other side of the waterhole. You got that? NOBODY.”

Folks knew that I was willing and able to bust some heads when I needed to. They also knew that I wasn’t one to go hard-case without a good reason, so they fell in line and got to work.

Kellogg buttonholed me when she finally came over to report that the teams were hitched, and everything was ready to roll.

Sofia stood at Kellogg’s side, holding her own rifle with that deceptively casual manner of hers. In addition to making one hell of a quartermaster and wagon boss, the little campesino who’d married me had turned out to be a crack shot once she’d had a little training. She could shoulder the gun, sight in on a target, and service it faster than most of my veterans, and she was hell on wheels with long-distance work.

“What’s going on, Boss? You’re scaring the shit out of us,” Kellogg said. “And what’s that godawful thing on your head?”

I thought for a moment. Kellogg was solid; I trusted her more than I did my own right arm. But she’d had family in Equinox City… I decided that I could rely on her to keep it together.

“I had a friendly chat with a genejack back there,” I said. “She’s not interested in any trouble, and I’m not interested in kicking a pile of shit to see how bad it’ll stink. Anybody asks, tell them I thought I saw sign of burn-chigger nests or maybe a creeper pack or something.”

Kellogg’s eyes went wide and then got hard and cold. Her jaw worked and I wondered if I was maybe going to have to shoot her, but she kept it together.

“You’re not sure she’s alone,” Sofia said.

I nodded. “She’s a deserter, but she might be a scout for a larger band. I’m not taking any chances. I told her we’d stay north of the creek and this waterhole from now on. Nothing south of here we need, anyway. After we’re clear and we mix our tracks with those of the wild herds, you and I will take a patrol and circle around to check our back trail.”

Kellogg finally nodded. “I…I’m with you, Jefe.”

When my little patrol doubled back to the waterhole a few days later, I found the bags of peppers I’d left had been replaced with a bundle of ponchos woven from native grazer’s fiber. I got a nasty smile when I saw that they’d left us a few more of those awful hats and I stuffed one onto Kellogg’s head.

“We don’t want to offend them if they’re watching…” I whispered with utter, obvious insincerity. I’d pay for that later.

I checked the southern side of the waterhole for tracks. There were lots of them. Grazers, some wagons, and people. Some barefoot, some in improvised footwear…and several with rugged-looking treads, pressed so deep into the earth that they had to be from somebody wearing heavy assault armor.

I also found where several shallow defensive positions had been dug and later filled back in. I squatted over one and took in the view it would have had. It was just where I’d have put some crew-served weapons to protect my camp if I’d had any.

Kaur had been a scout, all right, and the force behind her had the weight of power that my people wouldn’t have stood a chance against. They’d visited the waterhole, then headed south like she’d promised.

As I skirted the edge of the waterhole to return to my own side, something caught my eye: a crude doll made of fabric scraps, and some more footprints in the mud at the edge of the waterhole.

The footprints were smaller. Much, much, smaller. Kids. Our kids hadn’t had the chance to get to this side of the waterhole before Sofia’d rounded them up. Which meant that troop of genejacks was having their own kids.

I picked the doll up and wiped the mud off, then placed it on the rock where they’d left the trade goods. Kellogg came to stand beside me. She stared at the doll.

Kaur and I had just bumbled our way through our own defining moment, one that would maybe decide the future for both our bands. I took my damned-ugly hat off and scrubbed a hand through my hair, looking south and wondering what’d grow from those little pepper seeds I’d sown.

Also From Raconteur Press

Ghosts of Malta

Knights of Malta

Saints of Malta

Falcons of Malta

Space Cowboys

Space Cowboys 2: Electric Rodeo

Space Cowboys 3: Return of the Bookaroo

Space Cowboys 404: Cow Not Found

Space Marines

Space Marines 2

PinUp Noir

PinUp Noir 2

Your Honor, I Can Explain…

You See, What Happened Was…

He Was Dead When I Got There…

All Will Burn

All Will Burn: Fierce Love

Moggies in Space

Moggies Back in Space

Full Steam Ahead

Giant! Freakin’! Robots!

Call To Action

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Table of Contents

- 1. Foreword
- 2. The Cards on the Table
- 3. Showdown At Dehydrated Gulch
- 4. A Wrangler's Gotta Do…
- 5. Of Bureaucrats and Gulyas
- 6. A Marker In The Dark
- 7. Like Father, Like Son
- 8. Tin Badge for Tima
- 9. The List
- 10. Space Dog and the Runaway Asteroid
- 11. Pride and Peppers
- Also From Raconteur Press
- Call To Action