The New Hero Volume 2

by ed. Robin D. Laws

  “Are you testing me again? Because if you are, it’s starting to irritate me.”

  “What will you do?” Joseph asked again.

  “The right thing.” With that, he put his pistol to the suffering horse’s head and told the outlaw exactly where he was…and also told him the kind of man who was tracking him.

  *

  They both knew it was a trap when they saw the next horse left in the dirt. This one whinnied and tried to toss its head at their approach but the bridle and bit held the horse’s head close to the ground. Eric pulled leather as soon as he saw it and searched the shadows for the outlaw.

  Sounds came from all around Eric. Pebbles thrown to distract him. Adrenaline pushed into him, honing his abilities. He listened for the scrabble of boot heel on rock and the cock of the gun. His eyes searched as he moved in closer to the horse. He was distantly aware of the horse’s struggles to get up and the pain from Joseph’s wounds. None of that was important. What was important was—

  There. The scrape of spur on rock. That was all the warning he had before Daniel opened fire on him from the base of a nearby cholla cactus. Eric dove to the ground, firing two shots at the muzzle flash off to his left as he fell and heard Daniel grunt in pain. The sound of metal hitting the earth told Eric that Daniel dropped his gun. He listened to the man’s moans of pain for a few moments before walking over to where the Daniel lay.

  Daniel Marlin was a slight man. Young, in his early twenties, but had the weather beaten face of a man ten years older. He was curled up on the ground with his hands to his chest. It reminded Eric of Jebadiah’s death pose. He could see the fresh blood, black in the moonlight, staining the front of Daniel’s shirt.

  “Help me. You’ve got to help me,” Daniel wheezed at him. There was a high pitched sound of escaping air coming from the man’s chest.

  “Help you like you helped those people back in town? Helped the banker even after he gave you the money? Helped your own brother?” The righteous anger built up as Eric spoke, softening his words into the threat they were.

  “You got to, lawman. Your… duty.”

  “Don’t got to do anything, Daniel. Not a lawman, just a bounty hunter.” It was the blood on Daniel’s spurs that made him do it. Blood from the horse he ran until it faltered. Then left to die, leg-broke and keening in pain. Only Eric wasn’t going to take that kind of chance with this kin-killing outlaw. He fired twice more: another shot to the chest and one to the head. “I do God’s work.”

  He looked down at Daniel’s limp body and watched the last breath escape already dead lips. Watched as the man’s chest fell and did not rise again. “That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me, hasn’t it, Joseph? I really am a killer. Like you. Like him. Have been for the last year…no matter how much I’ve told myself I wasn’t.”

  “No, Eric. Not like Daniel. He killed for the joy of it. You kill because it is God’s will. You, too, are a Lion of God or you never would’ve been chosen to wield me.”

  “Wield? All I do is sit back and watch you work.”

  “You do more than that and it was time you understood. We are cut from the same cloth.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at your hand, my friend, and see that it is God’s will.”

  Eric looked down at his hand and saw that he had not pulled his normal pistol from the left hand holster. He was holding the God blessed revolver. Its engraved flames danced along the now unmarred barrel of the pistol in the moonlight. To be certain, he raised the pistol up and swung the cylinder out to confirm what he already knew: it was not loaded. The last two shots he made, the ones that had killed the outlaw in cold blood, had been his choice but they had also been God’s will. It was something to think about.

  “Are you well?”

  “By the grace of God, I am now.”

  But not tonight. Tonight was reserved for freeing the trapped horse, recovering the bankroll and backtracking his trail to his own horse. Later, after property was returned and a widow was informed, Eric would think about this revelation. Until then, he would soothe himself with the mundane tasks of being a famous bounty hunter.

  Blood for the King

  Will Hindmarch

  The incoming ships first register as a pair of blips on a holographic display wrapped halfway around an operator’s froglike head. In his native tongue he declares two vessels on his scope. The commander stomps over on pachyderm feet and makes a gesture in the interface. The hologram swells so it fills the flight-control room with bands of bright green light. Two yellow blips move through the air between commander and operator.

  Too fast, the commander thinks. The ships are coming in too fast.

  Out there, miles away from the station, both ships are drifting down out of the flight plane toward the planet’s icy ring system. The ship in front is a slender thing, shaped like a needle with a booster rocket strapped on, big enough for just one or two pilots. The ship behind it has an angled, swollen hull, like something over-inflated, big enough for a dozen crew and pulled along by four forward-mounted, shuddering engines.

  As they descend toward the rings, icy debris explodes in jet wash, sending buried rocks and metals spinning into space. The ship in back draws close to its prey. Magnetic grapplers unfold from a forward hold.

  If they don’t change course, they’ll send debris lurching out of the ring system to rain down on the space station ahead of them, which hangs underneath the rings of ice. The station’s flight-traffic commander adjusts the display goggles on his raised eyes and makes an uncertain sound. With a gesture, he tells the weapons operator to deactivate her safeties. He wants a warning shot to break up this chase.

  Just then, the forward ship jukes toward the planet, kicking up debris from the rings, then swoops back through the debris for cover. The chaser plows ahead through the floating slush and T-bones the needle ship. Engines collide, throwing ribbons of burning fuel into space. Locked together by twisted metal and the magnetic grapplers, both ships tumble into the ice and dust.

  The two yellow blips become a single red blip, drifting deep into the icy ring.

  The commander keys the microphone on his throat and declares an emergency.

  *

  “Here,” says Gwoma, tossing a bag of tortilla chips, “I brought you some human food.”

  Ariam turns the bag over in her hands. “Where’d you get these?”

  “From a salvage captain who found them on a derelict Earth ship. He told me they were ‘edible triangles.’ I thought it had probably been awhile since you ate human food.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say it that way. Makes me think of dog food. Like kibble.”

  “These are no good?”

  “No, these are fine. These are good. I like edible triangles.”

  “They’re from your people, yes?”

  “They’re from humans, yes. Not my people, exactly, but they were, you know, pretty ubiquitous.”

  Gwoma’s frog eyes stare blankly back at her. On a quiruth face, no expression is an expression of emptiness, meaning either contentment or confusion.

  “Ubiquitous,” Ariam says. “They were, you know, all around. They were available almost everywhere.”

  Gwoma’s wide mouth splits his domed head almost in two. The top half bobs up and down once. “Ah.”

  “Thank you for these,” Ariam says, waggling the bag in the air. “I’ll save them.” She looked for a date stamp but found none. “You said these came off a derelict?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” he says. “On the old transport route coming out of your solar system. Still no sign of survivors.”

  Ariam puts the chips into her messenger bag. “No, it’s all right. I didn’t expect… anything like that.” She downs the rest of her bitter tea, gets to her feet, and puts on her messenger bag. After keying a gratuity into the tabletop computer and tapping her card against the reader, she points with her head toward the train station at the end of the crowded plaza. “I’m going home. Walk to
the train?”

  Gwoma shrugs, cranes his short neck in a shallow circle—a quiruth nod—and stomps along next to her.

  The plaza is crowded with quiruths bustling beneath an inverted dome ceiling with narrow, angled slats in the dome revealing more of the space station’s webbed sprawl above, crisscrossing against a white ceiling of still ice, like a snowy upside-down plain.

  From below, the space station resembles three thirds of a spider’s web, stacked on top of each other and fanned out like a hand of cards. The overlapping layers of interconnected branches link to a single core tower running perpendicular to the icy rings above. All this orbits a stormy gas giant the quiruth had officially named with a collection of sigils and numerals that did little but file the place in a chronological database of stellar bodies. In practice, they call it Loyagrammer, after one of their lesser-known gods. The station is called Loyagram—the city of Loyagrammer.

  Ariam and Gwoma cross the plaza. The place is toasty, as the quiruth like it, and loud with their layered murmurs. Shops and kiosks line the plaza, selling hot teas and cold soups, cheap electronics, and downloadable media. Steam carries out of one shop, beeping quiruth electronica drones out of another.

  No major hub in the space station’s urban plan, this neighborhood is just a buildup of shops and services around the train stop. Called Goyamira (a quiruth word for Little Joy), this has been Ariam’s neighborhood since she arrived on Loyagram, just one stop up the train route from her flat. The quiruth here work in the nearby service branches of the space station, like Ariam. These are city workers, mingling after the second watch at local power stations and the nearby hospital.

  Ariam arrived a year ago already. Loyagram admins were waiting for her to formally renew her lease on her flat. It just took a thumbprint. She was two weeks overdue with it.

  “How’s work?” Gwoma asks in the quiruth trade tongue.

  Ariam hasn’t been paying attention. She searches for a quiruth word and, not finding it, replies in the trade tongue with, “Work is work.” She shrugs.

  “Ah,” says Gwoma. “You’re not working tonight, is that right?”

  They stop in a crowd waiting for the next train.

  “I worked the second watch. I’m on again tomorrow.” She pauses, then asks in English: “Is that right? Did that sound right?”

  Gwoma does the quiruth nod. “Very good,” he says in English. Over the sound of the approaching train he adds, “You sound more natural than you did just a few weeks ago. Much, much.”

  Ariam smiles and moves toward the train. “You, too.”

  “Shall we watch movies tonight?”

  “Not tonight,” she says, stepping backwards into a train car amid a crowd of blue-green quiruths. “I’m just going to drink some alcohol, eat some triangles, and get some sleep. Have a good night.”

  Gwoma waves a webbed hand as the train doors whine shut. With a lurch, the cars carry Ariam along one short branch of the station, toward the hotel-like corridors of her residential building, caught in Loyagram’s web.

  Ariam swipes her card, enters her flat, sets down her bag, and feels her phone shudder in her pocket. It’s the hospital texting her the emergency code. She runs her hand over her close-cut hair and looks at the ceiling. The flat’s still dark. Through the kitchen porthole comes a band of light the color of an Earthly sunset, reflected off the planet’s amber storms. She cusses to herself, texts the hospital that she’s on her way, and heads back out to the train.

  *

  On her ID card, Ariam Keown still has the swept-back afro she wore when she came to Loyagram. Now, as she waves the card at an identity scanner at the outer edge of the hospital, her hair is buzzed down close to her scalp. Quiruth don’t like hair.

  She slips on her augment glass as she enters the hospital and immediately receives telemetry from patients on the other side of the security barrier. Signals tell her square monocle the names of patients in nearby rooms, the ambient temperature when she eyeballs a vent, the time—deep into third shift, now—and the name of the quiruth doctor on his way down the corridor toward her: Kybek.

  “What’s the emergency?”

  “We had a collision in space, not far from the station. Our rescue and salvage units are scanning the wreckage, still, but we’ve brought back only two survivors, one from each ship.” Kybek speaks in the trade tongue, for Ariam’s benefit, but he goes a little too fast.

  “How bad is—”

  “One is fine, as near as we can tell. The other is in some danger.”

  “Two patients and you needed me? Where is—”

  “We were expecting more survivors. But we didn’t call you off, because we thought you might want to see this patient.” Kybek is about half Ariam’s height. He pries his goggles off and lets them hang around his neck.

  “You want me to operate?”

  “You’re welcome to weigh in on the injured patient, but it’s the other one, the stable one, you’ll want to meet. He’s human.”

  Ariam turns her head but not her eyes. “Out here? Is he—”

  “We’re still waiting on tests, but he says he’s infected, the same as you.”

  Ariam walks around Kybek, deeper into the white-and-yellow hospital. Kybek hurries to keep up.

  “He’s in Secure Exam One.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “He was being pursued by a ryric crew and until we learn more we’re assuming he’s wanted for a reason.”

  “What does he say?” Kybek starts to answer, but Ariam cuts him off. “Oh. I’m the interpreter.”

  “Right.”

  They walk past the admit desk, where quiruth of various heights mingle and murmur, past scanner suites and exam rooms to the secure ward.

  “He’s sealed?” asks Ariam.

  “Yes.”

  She keys the door with her ID card and enters Secure Exam One. Inside the chamber is a smaller chamber, glass and plastic and metal, with isolated atmosphere and sensor rigs running in through conduits at the ceiling—a high-tech terrarium. The human inside is white, fit, shorter than Ariam, and dressed in a pilot’s kit; his flight suit top tied around his waist, his T-shirt stained with sweat. The shirt reads Hemingway Aerospace in worn-out type. Amid all the signals reaching her monocle—information scrolling by from the isolation chamber systems all around—this human is a weird gap in the data.

  Ariam taps the communications button on the side of the isolation chamber and asks, “You can hear me?”

  The man smiles. He aims his voice toward the ceiling. “Hell yes, I can.”

  Kybek touches Ariam on the arm and she releases the button.

  “He understands,” she says. “Give me a minute.” Then, back into the intercom: “I’m Dr. Keown. I understand you’ve been in an accident. Do you know where you are?”

  The man smiles again. “I’m outside of ryric territory, right? I figure this is quiruth space?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I feel better already.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I wandered into ryric space in pursuit of a derelict human ship. Once it crossed the border, I guess they claimed it for themselves. So, illegal salvage. That’s why I’m running. If you ask them.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Legal salvage. Until I drifted into ryric space, at least. Why? What are they saying?”

  “Haven’t asked them yet. I, also, I have to ask: You’re a carrier right?”

  “Am I infected? Yes, ma’am.”

  “Symptoms?”

  “None yet. Is that what all this is for? I heard quiruth weren’t—”

  “It’s quiruth, like quiet. Like choir. And, no, they’re immune. This was for your benefit. To protect you from me.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah.” Ariam turns to Kybek and switches to the quiruth trade tongue. “He says he’s running from an illegal salvage charge because he drifted into ryric space by accident. He’s infected, he says. So we can let hi
m out of there, unless you want to hold him as a prisoner for the ryric kings.”

  “You believe this man?” asks Kybek.

  “I don’t know. But unless the port masters want to hold him on behalf of these ryric people—”

  “They might. The other patient? Is a Ryr.”

  At first, she thinks he said liar in English. “That’s…”

  “A ryric king, like you said.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  “If that Ryr dies, his people will come looking for vengeance on this man. Right or wrong.”

  “That’s—”

  “Right or wrong.”

  Ariam activates the intercom again. “What’s your name?”

  “Daniel. Lowry.”

  “I need to go check on the other survivors from this crash, Daniel.”

  He makes a commiserative face and nods. She switches off the intercom.

  “Show me this king.”

  *

  The Ryr is in an exam-room terrarium like Lowry’s, with bright lights and a hissing atmospheric regulator. When Ariam walks in, the room is white and clean and spare, but when she lowers her monocle the place comes alive with scrolling data from sensor equipment and transmitters all throughout the room. The Ryr’s data comes scrolling up away from his body in semi-circular arcs where an embedded transmitter monitors his vitals and announces its findings in a ryric script. That signal hiccups and stutters as it struggles to interface with the quiruth instruments in the room.

  The Ryr himself is big, almost twice Ariam’s size, and curled on the bed like a sleeping dog, all four limbs tucked in under him. He’s dressed in a quiruth gown, not unlike Earthly scrubs. He’d look forlorn if not for his face, if not for his eyes, staring out steady and unafraid. He makes Ariam think of a wounded animal, wary and threatening at the same time.

  Kybek waves his webbed hand and activates the patient’s chart in their monocles.

  “He’s suffered some internal injuries and has lost a lot of blood.”

  “Type match?”

  “We’re waiting for the computer to tell us if anything we have on file is compatible.”

  Data passes through the air before Ariam. She holds out a finger and scrolls back through it. “He’ll need surgery to repair those blood vessels.”