Absolution

by Rick Partlow

  “Is there anything you need from your truck before we go?” I asked, pulling her gently but steadily back toward my rental. “Anyone you want to leave a message for?”

  She laughed softly, and bitterness hardened the brittle edges of her face.

  “I’ve lived here a year and I don’t think there’s anyone I’ve met who would realize I was gone except the feed company. Their truck has a transponder. They’ll know where to find it.”

  Now that sort of reaction I was more used to. I walked her to the passenger door of my car, Dog circling wide, patrolling the parking lot for threats. When he barked, my head snapped around and my blaster came halfway out of its holster before I saw who was approaching from the other side of the lot, across the street from the restaurant.

  “Lovely evening, Constable Edlund,” I said, letting my blaster slide back into place. Her pistol was in her hand, held at low ready as she stepped toward me, squared off. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “I thought I told you to consult with me before you made an apprehension, bounty hunter.” Her voice was flat, unamused, unhappy.

  “I happened upon Ms. Beckett while I was here for a drink,” I explained. “I was going to head right over to your office and inform you immediately, I swear.”

  Yeah, it was a pretty transparent lie, but it covered my ass and she couldn’t prove I was lying. I don’t like dealing with colonial law enforcement. All too often, they get the job because no one else wants it, and keep it because they wind up in someone’s pocket. Even the honest ones don’t give a damn about a federal warrant and especially aren’t keen on the idea of lining a bounty hunter’s pockets. So yeah, I might bend the requirements sometimes about keeping them informed.

  “You’re not taking this woman anywhere, Masterson,” Edlund declared. “I have nothing but your word she’s even the same person in your warrant and your word don’t mean shit to me.” She raised her handgun, the muzzle level with my chest, and nodded sharply at Beckett. “Set Ms. Mitchell free, then turn around and put your hands on the car.”

  Ms. Mitchell. So, she’d known exactly who Beckett was, and who she was pretending to be. But according to Beckett, she had no friends here to contact, so Edlund wasn’t doing this for personal reasons.

  Dog growled low in his throat from somewhere off to my right and Edlund’s muzzle swept briefly in that direction, her eyes widening.

  “Call off your dog, Masterson,” she snapped at me.

  “What’s that hogleg you’re carrying, Constable?” I asked her, my tone casual, friendly, as if she weren’t trying to arrest me. “Not a blaster, not out on Morrigan. Not with the budget of a cow town constabulary. Is it an old-time slug shooter? Gunpowder maybe, with metal bullets, maybe even brass cartridge casings way out here?”

  “It’s enough to put a damned hole in you if you don’t call off your dog, Masterson.” She tried to sound intimidating, but it was coming across scared.

  “He’s not a dog, Constable Edlund,” I reminded her. “He’s a robot. Night vision. Sonar. Runs about fifty kilometers an hour and got really wicket metal teeth. More like a shark’s than a real dog.” Okay, that part was a lie. “And your slug shooter, even if it’s a big-ass slug, 10mm, 12mm…well, unless you get really lucky here in the dark, it’s just gonna bounce right off his endoskeleton, you know?”

  Another growl, much further away than the first one, and on the other side of the constable. Her jaw clenched, teeth bared to the night, reflecting the light from the bar’s windows.

  “Constable Edlund,” Delia Beckett said, loud and clear, cutting through the hiss of the wind. “I am Delia Beckett and I am a wanted fugitive. Wanted for treason and theft of sensitive military goods. I am the woman he’s looking for. Please don’t put yourself at risk for me.” Her voice became small. “I’m not worth it.”

  I squinted back at the woman, even more confused now. I’d never had a prisoner talk like that. I shook the thoughts away. More immediate business.

  If looks could kill, I’d have been dead on the ground from Edlund’s glare, but she holstered her weapon.

  “Get your ass out of my town this second, Masterson. I don’t want to see you in this place again. I don’t care what it is, I’ll find a reason to stick you in a holding cell until even your own mother forgets what you look like.”

  I nodded, opening the back door of the car and guiding Beckett into the rear seat, fastening the restraints across her. With her hands cuffed in back, she couldn’t release them. Then I opened the front door.

  “Dog.”

  I didn’t have to yell. I hadn’t been lying about his hearing. Or his speed. He shot out of the night like a bullet, just a blur until he jumped into the seat and grinned open-mouthed back at Edlund, exposing my exaggeration about his teeth. I shut the door and he was still grinning through the window, his eyes focused on the Constable, just in case.

  I didn’t look back at her, just climbed behind the wheel and began backing out of the space.

  “Thanks for speaking up,” I told Beckett. “That could have been awkward for everyone.”

  “No one else needs to get hurt because of me,” she said, eyes fixed on the back of the seat in front of her, voice dull and lifeless. “I should have just let them kill me.”

  “That’s between you and a Union military court,” I said, pulling out onto the road. “I’m just doing a job.”

  No response, but I hadn’t expected one. Dog cocked an eye at me, curious, whining slightly and giving me one of those looks that said he thought something smelled wrong. Metaphorically.

  “Shut up,” I told him. “I’m driving here.”

  Chapter Five

  Beckett didn’t say a word on the drive back to Philyra, and I was beginning to think this would be the easiest bounty I’d ever brought in…if I didn’t get in a fatal car accident along the way. The road was lonely and dark and the rental didn’t have auto-drive, didn’t even have the night vision heads-up display you found on most ground vehicles, just regular headlights like we were in the damned middle ages or something.

  Even Dog was quiet, for a wonder, and I worried about falling asleep at the wheel, but finally the lights of the city shown in the distance, fading out the stars.

  “For a small, colony town,” I said to Dog, trying to keep myself awake, “Philyra has quite the light pollution problem, doesn’t it?”

  “It won’t last.” Beckett had answered instead of Dog, and I risked a look back at her, eyebrows raising, inviting her to go on. She was staring at the town beneath hooded eyes, something dark in her expression. “If there’s a profit to be made from people being here, eventually, the big corporations will move in and buy out the smallholders in places like this. And with the corporations will come their workers and executives, and they’ll vote in their own representatives and make their own laws and regulations and there’ll be no more light pollution, no target practice in the desert, no riding off-road vehicles, no internal combustion engines, no harvesting local wood and everything will be made from imported plastic.”

  “You don’t like regulations, Ms. Beckett?” I asked her. I usually didn’t encourage small-talk from folks I was bringing in, but I have to admit, she intrigued me.

  “I suppose some of it is necessary when you have more people living close by each other,” she allowed, not sounding happy about the admission, “but there should be someplace a person can go and not have everything close up around them.”

  “I live out of a ship,” I told her. “Things get too crowded, hyperspace goes in every direction.”

  “If I’d actually committed the crimes I’m being accused of,” she said so quietly I almost didn’t hear it, “I’d have bought a ship and found somewhere I didn’t have to live around other people.”

  “Jean-Paul Sartre said ‘hell is other people,’” Dog commented. “Being non-human, I definitely agree.”

  “Dog!” I snapped, glaring at him. “For God’s sake!”

  “Did your r
obot just quote philosophy at me?” Beckett asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

  “It’s just an automated response system,” I ad-libbed quickly. “I keep meaning to shut it off…”

  “Oh, get over yourself, Masterson,” Dog scoffed. “Who’s she gonna tell?”

  “Holy shit,” Beckett gasped. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw her gaping at me. “He’s AI, isn’t he? How the hell did you get your hands on an AI-equipped robot?”

  “It’s a long story.” It wasn’t. I was lying. It was a short story involving a lot of money changing hands between me and bad people I would have arrested if I was still a Marshal, but she didn’t need to know that any more than she needed to know Dog was an AI. “And sometimes I think he’s more of an Artificial Stupid than an Artificial Intelligence.”

  Dog laughed.

  “But how…,” Beckett persisted.

  “We’re at the spaceport,” I interrupted, nodding ahead to the fences separating the business offices from the landing field. “If you promise to stay quiet and not cause any trouble, I’ll keep you with me while I turn in the rental car instead of locking you in the spare cabin on the ship with no air conditioning.”

  It wasn’t particularly hot at night, but it did get stuffy on the ship, so I was hoping she wouldn’t make me walk her all the way out to the Charietto and then all the way back to the rental office.

  “Sure,” she assented, shrugging her disinterest, the temporary fascination at Dog’s computer systems seeming to have faded. “What difference does it make?”

  The rental office was still open, which was a wonder. Most of them close down at sunset in towns like Philyra, leaving you to an automated kiosk to finish your business, but maybe they figured keeping the employees around was cheaper than maintaining the computer systems. The lights were dim and the middle-aged man behind the counter looked as if he’d rather be having dental surgery than working the desk after dark. He didn’t even seem to notice the restraints on Beckett, didn’t mention Dog standing next to me, just took my key cards for the rental and tapped the pertinent data into the terminal with an expression of perfect boredom. The name tag on his chest read “Chad.”

  “It’ll be charged to your account,” Chad recited to me, reading off a company script. “The receipt will show up in your messages. Colony Rental Services hopes you had a positive experience and will do business with us again.”

  “I’m certain of it,” I assured him, checking my ‘link to make sure they hadn’t overcharged me.

  “Masterson!” Dog said, coming to an alert stance, his whole body pointing out toward the exit.

  “For God’s sake, why do you have to keep talking?” I exploded before the significance of his posture actually dawned on me. “What?”

  “Military-grade Bartoli crystals,” he said, his tone clipped and businesslike. “Heading this way.”

  I grabbed Beckett by the arm and pulled her back toward the counter, shoving the startled clerk in front of us.

  “Back entrance, Dog!” I told him. “Find it!”

  “What the hell is going on?” Beckett demanded, but I didn’t bother to answer just yet.

  Military-grade Bartoli crystals were only used for one thing: weapons, heavy weapons. Someone was bringing heavy blasters in through the rental return parking lot, and I didn’t think it was because they had a negative experience with their Colonial Rental Services vehicle. It could have been the military. The thought pinballed through my head while I was pushing Delia Beckett and the rental clerk down the narrow hallway from the reception area into the tiny employee section of the office, and I supposed it was barely possible. The Navy might have caught wind of Beckett’s location from my inquiries and maybe some hard charger in Naval Criminal Investigation Services had sent a contingent of MPs after her.

  But I wasn’t about to gamble all of our lives on the likelihood someone in the military had suddenly decided to get efficient. Dog led me to a rear exit and the clerk was about to grab the handle and open it when Dog snapped at his wrist, growling and baring his teeth.

  Now he gets in character, after everyone and his brother hears him talk.

  “What is it?” I asked him, taking a moment to draw my blaster. The clerk’s eyes went wide at the sight of the gun.

  “They have someone out back,” Dog told me. “Two someones unless it’s one big fucker carrying two military assault guns.”

  “Need to work on your language, Dog,” I said with a disappointed tsk. I nudged the clerk with my elbow to bring his eyes away from the muzzle of my blaster and up to my face. “Any other exits?”

  He shook his head, a jerky motion that sent sweat spattering in every direction. I scowled when I felt a drop hit me in the face.

  “Then I guess one of us is about to have a very bad day.” I nodded to Dog. “Where?”

  “At your two o’clock and eleven, about two meters away.”

  “Why is the dog talking?” the clerk wondered, fear warring with fascination in his expression.

  “Because I can’t get him to shut up.”

  I shoved the door open and threw myself into a shoulder roll, a kaleidoscope of color and neon light and dark sky flashing across my vision, but my focus on the two spots where I knew the people were waiting with guns to try to kill me. I had just the briefest flash of an image, shadowed figures wearing dark, civilian clothing, work coveralls, inobtrusive, designed to blend in. The big-assed assault blasters not so much.

  They fired reflexively at the opening of the door and the flare of the military-grade blasters was blinding, ripping apart the night before smashing gaping, blackened craters in the side of the building, nearly penetrating walls built thick enough to hold off the seasonal dust storms. What they would do to me didn’t bear consideration and I wasn’t going to give them a chance to aim. I didn’t much like killing people. Not that some people don’t deserve to die, particularly those doing their best to kill me, but it’s something you can’t take back and I try to avoid it those times I can.

  This was not one of those times. Hitting two targets seventy degrees apart from my back at night was tough enough without trying anything trickier than center mass. The blaster was a blunt instrument, a hammer-blow of plasma, one shot each to the chest. Military-grade hard body armor might have stopped the shots, but that would have been conspicuous and these boys had been going for covert until the time had come to break out the big guns. If they wore anything beneath their coveralls, it wasn’t enough. They dropped like puppets with their strings cut, the distinctive smell of burned skin and burning clothes wafting through the air along with the dust. I considered grabbing one of their weapons, rejected it just as quickly. They might be biometrically locked and I wouldn’t have time to let Dog work his magic on them.

  “Bring her,” I rasped quietly, trusting Dog to hear me.

  I’d formed a picture of the back of the office in my head before I made my move and I knew exactly where we were going. We could make it quick and quiet, and maybe the guys out front wouldn’t even know where we’d gone, if we were lucky…

  “Oh, my fucking God! You killed them! You killed them! Oh, Jesus!”

  I’d forgotten about Chad.

  “Go!” I yelled, sprinting for the rental car storage lot. “Get us into one of them, Dog!”

  Delia Beckett stumbled into me, nearly losing her footing when Dog let her sleeve loose from his teeth and dashed ahead of us, a barely visible streak of tan fur. I grabbed her around the shoulders and kept both of us on our feet and running across the pavement, half lifting her off the ground when we jumped over the decorative anchor-chain fence between the employee lot and the rentals.

  “Untie my damned hands!” she yelled in my ear.

  Sure, let me just stop right here in the middle of the lot and let them shoot us while I do that.

  I said nothing, just aimed straight where I’d seen Dog running, hoping he wasn’t going to be too picky when it came to finding a vehicle to break into. Blast
er-fire sounded behind us, high, whining snap-cracks echoing in the halls of the rental office and I hoped Chad had enough sense to run. I couldn’t take responsibility for every dumbass who lacks the sense to come in out of the rain, but these guys were here for me, not him.

  The interior lights came on in a boxy utility vehicle two rows away from us, past a line of low-slung sportsters. I dragged Beckett with me, squeezing between the rows and yanking the passenger’s side rear door open, pushing her inside and ducking around the back of the vehicle and trying to climb into the driver’s seat. Dog was sitting there, one paw resting on the security plate.

  “Move over!” I urged him, feeling an itch between my shoulder blades where I expected the blaster bolt to hit.

  “No can do,” he insisted. “I can only keep this thing going by maintaining a direct connection to the security plate.” He jerked his head toward the passenger’s seat. “Get in. I’ll drive.”

  “I’m never gonna live this down,” I muttered, scrambling around the front of the car this time and jumping in just as the vehicle peeled out of the parking spot, barely getting my door closed in time to avoid hitting the rover parked next to us.

  “The dog is driving?” Beckett asked. I twisted around to look back at the rental car office and saw three men piling out of the back door.

  “Get down!” I yelled at Beckett, shoving her sideways in the seat just before a stuttering line of incandescent flashes streaked out from the rear door and chewed through the rear right corner of the boxy utility vehicle.

  Burning plastic and metal spewed across the cabin and I threw up a hand and ducked down, cursing as a spark scored my right cheek. The car was fishtailing hard, the engine revving with effort, and the skewing motion threw me into the door shoulder-first, jostling the blaster from my hand, sending it clattering to the floorboards.

  “You might want to strap in,” Dog suggested, his tone maddeningly calm.

  “You drive more like a dog than a robot.” I yanked the safety harness across my chest and buckled it tight, then thought of Beckett and yelled over my shoulder. “Stay on the floor and keep your head down.”