Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier

by Emily Lavin Leverett

  Not Karl's friends, then. Angry, revenge-driven victims I could deal with.

  "Nice to meet you, Jim," I said. "Not too fond of your weapon etiquette, though."

  "You step aside so I can end this murderer, and I’d be happy to mend my ways."

  "Jim, I’ll do that. But listen to me first."

  "Drop the weapon and step aside," he said.

  "Fine," I said, and put the rifle down. "But listen here. Nancy found a vein." I stepped aside.

  Jim didn’t end Karl.

  "She what?" he asked.

  "You heard me right, Jim. A big one, too. Karl told me."

  "And you believed him?"

  "Why else would he kill them all? Karl and his crew have always been bad, but they never killed anyone. Think about it. He needs to stay on planet, so he can stake a claim to your sister’s fortune. If I can get him and this evidence off planet, then we can contest any claim. They get nothing."

  Jim’s kind and chubby face contorted with hate, pain, and hate again.

  "He killed Nancy and the kids!"

  I looked questioningly at Maya behind Jim. She stared with sudden and intense fascination at her own shoes. That gray streak in her hair was starting to bother me.

  "Jim," I said. "You’re right. He has to pay. But if we don't transport him to Cannonade, Karl’s gang keeps it all."

  "I don’t want the money."

  "Okay," I said, stepping forward again, my hands up. "But what’s going to happen when they get rich and own half the planet?"

  Jim looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

  "Jim, don’t let the rest of them get away with it. They all gotta pay."

  Reason seemed to return to his eyes.

  "Put the rifle down, Jim. You’re making me nervous."

  Jim's shoulders slumped. I maneuvered the pointy end away from my forehead, gently pulled the AES-K out of his hand, and set it down.

  "You thought you could get rid of your problem?" I asked Maya.

  "Something like that. Don’t hold it against me."

  Yeah, not liking that gray hair at all. I fantasized about throwing all her things at our love nest onto Main Street and changing the locks on the doors. Probably the fastest mental love affair in Accord history. Nearly ended in a gunfight, too.

  "Don’t hold your breath," I answered. "We’re going to have some company, soon."

  Maya and Jim both looked up at me questioningly.

  "Poncho told Karl’s friends."

  They both deflated again.

  "Jim, Maya, listen. The shuttle leaves at 05:30. All we have to do is bring this murderer alongside the landing pad. It's a long shot, but I've got a plan for the rest."

  It didn’t take much to convince Jim. Turns out Karl convinced Maya. He made the mistake of leering at her one time too many.

  At 05:15, Maya and Jim were already gone. I opened the cell. The sky was starting to lighten with the early signs of dawn.

  "Out," I said. "On your knees."

  I cranked his restraints tighter, picked up my AES-K, and gestured for him to stand. I tapped Maya's datapad, and the car came like a dog to a whistle.

  "Front seat again. Don’t think I won’t take you down if I have to."

  Karl dragged his feet, glancing around, looking for his gang.

  "No one here to come get you. Feeling lonely?" I asked.

  Karl smirked through his blood-browned and broken teeth. He sat down in the front seat. I locked his restraints to the floor. This time I wasn't giving him a chance to attack me. You live, you learn. Or you survive and remember, anyway.

  The car wasn’t armored, but it was faster than walking. I splashed mud on the windows. I bet that Karl’s gang wasn’t willing to shoot it up if they didn't know who was who. Even if they had IR sensors, they still would only know that there were two of us.

  I gave instructions to the nav-system, and we pulled out onto Main Street. The journey down the street was filled with light and sound, but lacked detail. The wind picked up and howled around the vehicle as we passed between the taller buildings.

  One star in the sky grew brighter, the Frontier Schooner’s engines burning in descent. They’d switch to air displacement soon. The street curved slightly. Still pretty far from the landing zone. Normally a five-minute ride, it already felt like an eternity.

  The rumbling of the descending shuttle rose in our ears. The sun was brightening, making the colors more vivid. The green of the trees was bluer than Earth, the sky redder. The street was empty, even with the rare event of the shuttle arriving. Word must have spread through the town.

  We reached the stretch of security wall surrounding the landing pad, the entrance about fifty yards away. The roar of the shuttle was deafening in its crescendo. The trees shook nearly out of their roots. And then, the car stopped with a thunk.

  "Road obstruction," the nav bleeped.

  Karl tilted his head at me and said, "Still time to take the money and run, lawman."

  "What money?" I asked.

  I cracked the wall-side window open and glanced at the wheels. A small boulder was deposited in the muddy wheel divot.

  "Dammit!" I said.

  "My boys are out there, lawman. You know we're not going to lose this stake for anyone or anything. Take the deal."

  "Never actually heard any deal," I answered.

  The rushing air suddenly stopped, whirring of engines fading. I stepped out on the security wall side of the street and kicked at the rock. The front half of the wheel disappeared, vaporized in a flash of plasma. Other loud reports were followed by thuds in the dirt.

  I jumped back and did a mental inventory of the sounds. One plasma rifle. The rest slug throwers. Both could kill me, but one was more definitive. I returned fire, not really aiming, avoiding buildings and the people inside. I shot five times, two kitty-corner to the right of the still-closed shuttle pad gate, two left, one up on the roof straight across. I figured there were five men. The shots I took communicated where they were and numbered them.

  I dove back in the car and pushed Karl against the window toward the shooters. Karl looked a little less fearless with all the blasts. I pressed the AES-K against his ribs.

  "I told you I don't mind killing," I said, my voice sounding calmer than I felt. Then to his gang I yelled, "You shoot and I guarantee Karl Hagen dies!"

  Maybe it was the calm in my voice that convinced him.

  "Everyone stop!" Karl yelled. In the silence left by the engines, his voice was clear as a bell.

  "You okay, boss?" came a voice from the street.

  "Yeah, you got him dead to rights. We just gotta convince him. Make him a present."

  The man who talked to Poncho last night stepped into the street carrying a messenger bag like the one I slung across my shoulder, only bigger and heavier. He swung it like an Olympic hammer thrower and tossed it in front of the vehicle.

  "That’s all for you, lawman. All you gotta do is walk away," Karl said.

  "What’s in it?" I asked.

  "Take a look."

  "Half a dozen men just shot off my car wheel!"

  "Take me with you then. I’m your hostage, right? They won’t shoot you when you got your gun pointed at my kidneys."

  "Prisoner, not hostage," I corrected.

  "Semantics," he said.

  Fifty cent word for a two-bit gangster. My opinion of his education increased. My opinion of him as a human was unchanged.

  "Tell them to come out, where I can see them."

  Karl cracked a smile again. The one that said the price is right. I let him go ahead and think that. I was aiming higher.

  "Everyone out on the street. Point your guns at the mud. I mean everyone!"

  Through the muddy glass, I saw a half dozen apparitions step out onto the street.

  "Guns on the ground," I said.

  Karl looked at me incredulously.

  "You want out of this, you tell your men to put their guns down," I continued.

&nb
sp; "They’ll holster them."

  I paused, thinking about it. Nodded.

  "Holster those guns!" he yelled.

  They did. I reached down to release his tether from the floor, thought about it, and paused.

  "This is a familiar moment, Karl. Last time, you tried to choke me."

  "I feel I’ve grown as a person since then. Just like this budding friendship," Karl said between his wrecked teeth.

  I kept the AES-K against his kidney and released the tether. I backed out first, and then he did. Holding him by the scruff of the neck, I kept him between me and his men.

  "Have them come in from the flanks."

  "Kelly, Bolo. Join Ted. Don’t bunch up," he said.

  They moved in.

  We walked to the overstuffed messenger bag. Karl and I crouched down. He pointed down at the bag and tilted his head back at me, eyebrows raised. I nodded, yes, so he opened it. Inside was about thirty pounds of ore. I'd seen enough to know it was the real thing. A million credits worth. In a pile of mud. In the middle of Main Street. Mine if I wanted it.

  "Pick it up," I said.

  "Now that’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day. Good to see we’ve had a meeting of the minds."

  "We need to get off this street."

  "I tell you what, lawman... Conrad. You just back up to that landing pad entrance behind us. You know, and I know, you can’t bring any weapons in there. They’ll shoot you as dead as charity in the Halo. We back up to the landing pad together. Only you board by yourself. I walk away."

  Karl handed me the bag over his shoulder. We backed up slowly. From the opposite side of the wall, a safety alarm bleeped a warning, and we could hear the shuttle doors opening. The gate slid wide. Karl was having trouble with his leg bindings. Or maybe he was just dragging his feet. We reached the threshold.

  "No guns past here, lawman," he said. "Time to throw that thing away."

  The split second it took for me to toss my weapon to the ground was the longest I ever experienced. As Karl saw the weapon go down, he cried out, "NOW!" and dove face first into the mud. Firearms came up from holsters. Across the street the other AES-K was leveled at me. With Karl in the mud, there was nothing between me and my maker but a prayer and good timing. I tried to follow him into the mud just as a plasma bolt split Bolo in half. A slug took Kelly in the arm.

  Jim Collier called out from up the street, "You going to pay!"

  Jim fired his AES-K again, but Karl’s men were hidden by the buildings. Maya ducked away between a pair of prefab residences with her slug thrower. Her good looks had mysteriously returned in that moment. I took the opportunity they'd created for me to sling the bag of ore, grab Karl by the neck, and haul him across the threshold to the landing pad.

  The weapons fire set the Frontier Schooner into defense mode. Underslung plasma turrets popped out from the shuttle and whirred online.

  "No!" Karl called out and shoved me back. He slipped and fell in the mud. His boys pointed their weapons at me. And the shuttle behind me. Where the spaceship-mounted plasma guns had just whirred up to life.

  The sound was deafening.

  There was nothing left of Karl's gang to identify except DNA embedded in the walls.

  Karl and I were detained, roughly, by shuttle security. They stunned us, beat us, and nearly ripped my shoulder from its socket. Can’t blame them. When they saw my badge, papers, evidence bag, and prisoner, they were very apologetic.

  On the trip to Cannonade, I visited Karl in his cell every day. We even got to talking.

  "You know Karl, I like breaking heads and smashing teeth. It just doesn't keep me up at night when the teeth are yours," I said.

  Karl nodded sagely and asked, "You ever consider taking the money?"

  "Oh, that speaks to how greedy I am, I suppose."

  "You're not that greedy, you mean."

  "Oh no, greedier. I figured I could lay hands on the ore no matter what. This way, I enjoy watching your whole gang vaporized, see you hang, and I get the money. You don't think I'm going to turn this much ore over to the courts, do you?"

  So yeah, I volunteered.

  14

  The Stranger in the Glass

  Dave Beynon

  I retched and spat, trying to cleanse my mouth of a foul taste that was entirely metaphysical.

  “It’s bad,” I said, giving the horses a free rein. They took it, and the wagon rumbled forward, shifting and lurching in the ruts. “I know it’s there in the village. I’m just not sure where.”

  Hale raised his hand and swept it toward the spire of the church.

  “S’over there…Thereabouts, anyway.” He leaned back and pulled the wide brim of his hat over his eyes. “Haven’t got a good fix. Sun’s too high. Too hot. Tonight though…after it cools off a spell…tonight we’ll sniff it out…”

  It was always impossible to tell if Hale was sleeping or just resting his eyes. It didn’t matter. I’d been his apprentice long enough to know not to disturb him. He was gathering his strength for what was to come. Experience had shown me he would need it.

  I coaxed the horses toward the stable. It stood next to the smithy and across the square from the inn. A broad, dark man in a leather apron walked out from the forge to meet me.

  “Good day,” he said. “My name is Lorne. I mind the stable when Vince is away. Are you stabling your horses?”

  “Yes,” I said, fishing around for our coin bag in the box behind the seat. “We will also need a place to set up to ply our trade.”

  Lorne’s bushy eyebrows lowered, and for the first time, he seemed to notice Hale beside me. “Would this be your master then? Is he a dead man?”

  “He is my master, and he’s very much alive. He is resting.”

  “Hmmm. He rests deep, he does. What manner of trade? You needn’t waste your time setting up if it’s a trade we can manage ourselves.”

  I nodded and bowed contritely, just as Hale had taught me. The good will of the locals was paramount for success. “My master Hale is a glassman of great renown.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Lorne. “Glassman? Bottles, jars, and such?”

  “If you like.” I nodded, reaching back into the box. Next to the coin bag, my fingers found what they were looking for. “We also do this.”

  Lorne’s eyes grew wide. He watched the sunlight play across the globe in my hand. Gossamer strands of glass stretching like spun sugar across the span of the inside of the globe danced and glittered, capturing the smith’s eyes. A grudging smile crept across his lips.

  “It might seem unmanly of me,” he said, “but that is a thing of absolute beauty. What my wife would say if I were to bring home such a thing as that.”

  “Perhaps some barter might be in order. I take it we might set up somewhere to practice our trade. You have no artists of glass?”

  “No,” he said, eying the globe. “No one here abouts can do such as that. Set up there, next to my smithy.”

  Hale slept right through the afternoon while I built the three-sectioned kiln from the blocks in our wagon and set up our stands. I stabled the horses, secured a room at the inn, and purchased wood and charcoal from Lorne, promising a glass globe for his wife as part of the bargain. Villagers came and went. Some asked me what I was building and the sort of work we did. Each time I was asked, I walked to the wagon and fished out the globe.

  “This,” I told them, “is what we do.” The more practical side of me always added, “We also make bottles, jars, and the like.”

  Not a one was especially interested in bottles, jars and the like.

  In late afternoon, just as I was unloading the specially shaped bricks that comprised the kiln’s glory hole, the village pastor strode across the square. His robes were wrinkled, his hair disheveled, and his eyes red-rimmed. He held a prayer book in one hand and his holy crook in the other.

  “Young fellow,” he said, waving his hand as if he was harried by gnats. “You have no business here. Whatever you are building, take
it down immediately. We need no strangers in our town. Be gone by sundown. I’ll go have a word with the mayor, so you’d best make ready to depart.”

  I placed my bricks before the kiln.

  “Sir,” I said, starting toward the wagon to retrieve our magic glass ball. “I’ve paid good coin for a room at the inn. I understand that our trade is one no one in this village does. I’m assured that we are taking work from no one. We are glassblowers, sir. We make bottles, jars, and such. We also make these…”

  As I reached into the box behind the wagon’s seat to retrieve the globe, a hard, calloused hand grabbed my wrist. With his other hand, Hale pushed up his hat and nodded to the pastor.

  “G’afternoon,” Hale said. “May the blessings of the day be upon you, Pastor.”

  The pastor looked from me to Hale to the kiln, then back to Hale. “And…to you, good sir. As I was telling your boy—”

  “’Prentice,” said Hale.

  “I…I beg your pardon?”

  “Ain’t my boy, Pastor. He’s my ‘prentice. He’s Tod. My name’s Hale. And you’d be?”

  “Pastor Ranklin. As I was telling your boy…your…apprentice, you simply cannot stay here tonight. The innkeeper will return your coin, and Lorne will help you disassemble that…that thing.”

  Hale rose to his feet and hopped off the wagon. He twisted his neck, and all of us heard the crack of vertebrae lining themselves up like good little soldiers. He took off his hat and bowed his head.

  “Listen here, holy man,” Hale said. “I got a whole lot a respect for a man who dedicates his life to his flock, but when somethin’ goes wrong with one of your sheep, it’s a mistake to run off the only fella who knows how to help.”

  Pastor Ranklin raised his chin. “I have no idea what you’re speaking of, my good man. Now, if you’d just—”

  “It’s a little girl, innit?” Hale said. “It’s almost always a little girl.”

  Pastor Ranklin took a step back.

  “Do you want the globe?” I asked, reaching into the box.

  “Nah,” said Hale. “We’re past trinkets, Tod. This is the part where the good pastor starts to remember somethin’ he heard when he was at the preacher college out east long ago.” I looked at Pastor Ranklin and saw his brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. “You’re recallin’ a little somethin’ you’d all but forgotten, ain’t ya, holy man?”