Stellar Ranger

by Steve Perry

  “Would Wanita Meritja be one of the people?”

  He shrugged. “Could be.”

  “You want to be careful around her.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  She glanced at the ground. “Well, her brother, you know, he’s the leader of the raj. You might not want to get too close to her, she tells him stuff. Plus her reputation and all.”

  “Reputation?”

  She found something fascinating under the roof of the range building and stared at it. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. Never mind.”

  “Okay.” He was willing to let it drop.

  “It’s just that, well, you know, she is considered, ah, somewhat ... loose.”

  Now he did chuckle. Loose? He hadn’t heard that term in a long time. For some reason he did not understand, frontier-world morality was very often straitlaced. On civilized planets, sexual mores were up to the players. Very little was considered immoral, less was illegal, between consenting adults. There were laws protecting children and against deadly violence, of course, but what you did in private–or sometimes publicly–was pretty much your own business. Cinch had been in communes of two hundred people where everybody had engaged in sex with everybody else, sometimes by the busload at once, and nobody thought anything of it. On some of the outplanets, if a man or woman had more than one lover or they weren’t legally contracted, they were considered wanton sluts. Amazing.

  What she thought of his amusement Cinch didn’t know, but she appeared to be angered by it. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Wanita, but there are some in town who call her ‘lidah mulut.’ ”

  Cinch raised an eyebrow. Must have missed that term in his language lessons.

  “It means ‘magic mouth,’ ” she said. She blushed as she spoke.

  Cinch’s grin was altogether too wide to be polite. Well, well. Now that was interesting news. Wanita was, as far as he could tell, an adult.

  “I’ll be very careful,” he said, still smiling.

  She wasn’t dull, just inexperienced. “You’re laughing at me,” she said.

  “I’m a grown man,” he said. “A trained and experienced ranger. I can take care of myself.”

  “I bet,” she said, still miffed,

  Which was pretty much the end of that conversation.

  BEFORE HE left for town Cinch stopped to speak to Kohl. The older man was in his office, scanning computer data on a holoprojection. He looked up at Cinch through the ghostly, transluscent heads-up display,

  “Okay if I borrow your car again?”

  “Go ahead. You clear this up, you can have the car and five more like it. No bribe intended.”

  “None accepted.”

  Kohl chewed on his lip and looked thoughtful. He cycled the computer off-line and leaned back, but did not speak.

  “Something?”

  The older man nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know quite how to put this, son. Baji is, well, taken with you.”

  “She seems to be a good kid.”

  “Uh huh, that she is. And legally a grown woman, too, so it ain’t my bidness how she chooses to spend most of her time, outside of I feel responsible for her personal safety and all. I don’t choose her friends, she don’t pay much attention to my warnings about who she should run with anyhow. She danced past here a minute ago like she was going out on her first date.”

  He paused, as if trying to figure a way to say something. The beginnings of a frown formed.

  Cinch saw where Kohl was going. “If I’d started a family when I was her age, your great-grandfather would be just about old enough to be my granddaughter, M. Kohl. She might be of legal age but: we both know she’s still not much more than a baby.”

  Kohl’s expression cleared. “Thanks, son. I appreciate that. I know I’m just a meddling old fart, but I surely don’t want anything bad to happen to her. No matter how good you might be in the short run, you’d be moving on soon and it would break her heart.”

  “I’ll tell her she reminds me of my sister,” Cinch said.

  “She’ll hate that. But thanks again.”

  “No problem, M. Kohl.”

  “Call me Gus, son.”

  The two men nodded at each other.

  * * *

  As Cinch walked through the dusty heat and cooked-dirt smell toward the garage, he nodded to himself. That wasn’t so bad. If Baji had been thirty or forty, it might have been different. He could have ignored Gus’s thinly veiled warning and felt perfectly comfortable about it. There was nothing wrong with his sex drive and it had been awhile since he’d taken it out for a spin. But Baji was just a child, her hormones and body notwithstanding. If she’d grown up in, say, the commune on Altius, she’d have been to bed with a whole lot more lovers than Cinch by her age, and maybe he’d have thought about it even as young as she was. But here? The old man hadn’t needed to say anything and Cinch’s noble capitulation didn’t hurt him. A big part of rangering consisted of making good local connections, and he was pretty sure he had one in Gustav Kohl now. And cradle-robbing wasn’t his style.

  There was work to be done, though, and he couldn’t spend too much time patting himself on the back just yet.

  * * *

  Lobang waved a powerful hand at the entrance reader to Tukul’s office and the chime sounded.

  Tukul had already seen the man. “What?”

  “The ranger, he’s heading into town. In one of Kohl’s cars.”

  “Go get the limo. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Lobang turned and thudded his way down the hall. Tuluk shook his head. Lobang was supposed to be an expert in tindju, a fighting art that stressed balance and power. You’d think he could walk a little quieter.

  Tuluk stood. He was a tall man, his skin kept pale by strict use of sunblock spray, his frame still as thin as he’d been forty years ago. He didn’t exercise much but his metabolic rate was naturally high and when it began to drop a bit a few years back, he’d had it augmented with hypothalmic implants. He didn’t want to sweat over it, but it was a point of personal pride that he was not fat.

  He pulled his tangIer from the desk and slipped the device into his pants pocket. The weapon was small, a long and narrow rectangle of smooth black aluminum two fingers wide by fifteen or sixteen centimeters long, a double-button firing stud on the opposite sides. TangIers were short-range weapons. Outside of ten meters you might as well throw one as use it, and the narrow beam it spat meant you had to aim at the target or miss. Inside its range and more or less lined up, the tangIer would scramble the neurons in a complex brain enough so the resulting short circuit would fry the organ pretty much beyond repair, save by a neurosurgeon with a hot hand and a full bank of regen gear backing him. Unless the target wore a faraday-net, the tangIer was as deadly a close-range weapon as you would need. It was quiet, held three charges, and was as illegal as hell, even on this planet. It always smelled like baked walnuts when you fired it.

  Tuluk didn’t like guns, even air guns. They were too noisy and bulky, and the mark of somebody without finesse. A tangler was more subtle. It showed class. He didn’t expect to use it; that’s what he had dogmuscle like Lobang for, but one never knew. A careful man always kept as many options open as possible regarding his personal safety.

  He moved toward the house’s entrance. Even though he planned to keep things quiet when it came to the ranger, he needed to see the man and get a feel for who he was. Too many assumptions usually came up with at least one bad one and he hadn’t gotten where he was by being wrong that often.

  * * *

  There was a big man in freight handlers’s coveralls sitting in the corner mumbling to himself when Cinch ambled into Wanita’s pub. The ranger noted a few faces he had seen the time before, a few new ones he didn’t recognize. He walked to the bar where the black woman met him and flashed her slightly impe
rfect smile. “Cinch,” she said. “What can I get you?”

  “Hitch will do it.” He tendered his credit wafer. Wanita took it, ran it over the scanner, passed it back.

  He sipped the beer. The sharp taste with a hint of bitterness tickled his mouth. There was a faint scent of yeast in the beer.

  “Getting any work done?”

  He looked at Wanita, “Some. You hear anything from your brother lately?”

  She shrugged. “He calls now and then. He’s not part of your problem.”

  “Didn’t say he was. I just like to know who the players are when I join a new game. I might want to have a word with him if he’s available.”

  “He might not be disposed to get too close to a stellar ranger, given his situation.”

  “Could be a peace-seal meeting. He walks after it’s over.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The man in the corner mumbled a little louder, talking to himself or some unseen companion in a tight, angry voice.

  “That’s Muatan,” Wanita said. “Goes by ‘Mutt.’ He loads cargo at the mag-lev trainyard. His battery charge is always a little low, if you know what I mean.”

  Cinch looked at the big man.

  She answered his unasked question. “Mutt doesn’t like medics. So he treats himself with his own combination of chern. Bourbon and sloweed, mostly, a little hup for balance. When he gets the proportions right, he’s harmless.”

  “And when he gets the proportions wrong?”

  “He usually puts four or five people in the mediplex for a week-long overhaul and spends the next month or two in the constable’s lockup for assault.”

  Cinch nodded, sipped at his beer. Frontier worlds attracted a lot of loose nuts and bolts. “Mind your own business. I’ll rnind mine” was a strong ethic on most outback planets. If you knew somebody was a mean drunk or a slip-psych, you stayed out of their way,

  The sliding door grated open and Lobang stepped inside, followed by a slightly smaller version of himself. A third man entered, tall, pale, older, dressed in expensive green silks and custom orthocast boots. Despite the heat that wafted in through the closing door, the man looked cool and in control. A faint smell of body cologne rode the warm air, something like peaches.

  Cinch didn’t need to be told who the tall man was.

  Like bodyguards for a planetary president, Lobang and the other man moved into the room, searching for danger. They walked to a table with the tall mall bracketed between them. The tall man all sat. Lobang and his partner remained standing. Lobang kept his hand thumb-hooked in his belt, near his pistol butt.

  “That’s–” Wanita began.

  “–TuIuk,” Cinch finished.

  “You’ve met?”

  “Not yet.” He sipped his beer and turned most of his attention on Wanita. He could see the newly arrived trio easily enough in the mirror behind the black woman.

  “Brilly–that’s the other thug–he’ll be coming to get Tuluk’s drink in a second,” she said. “Single-malt scotch. I always keep a couple of bottles for him in the cooler, his personal stock.”

  “Can’t make much of a profit that way, can you?”

  “He pays a corkage fee. As much as if I sold him some of my own cheap stuff.”

  Brilly moved toward the bar. Wanita pulled a whiskey glass from the bin, added two ice cubes, and had begun pouring the liquor by the time the bodyguard arrived. Cinch caught the smoky scent of the liquid as it splashed over the ice. The tender put a napkin under the glass and pushed it toward Brilly. He didn’t smile or nod or otherwise acknowledge her, save to pick up the glass and napkin and return to the table where Tuluk sat waiting. He put the glass down carefully. Tuluk didn’t look at it.

  “–damn toejam sucker!” Mutt’s voice climbed up a couple of notches and burned with anger.

  Lobang flicked a glance at Mutt, then looked back at the ranger.

  “Mutt gave Lobang all he could handle once,” Wanita said. She wiped at the bar’s top with a rag. “Shook the whole building when they slammed into the walls. Lobang beat him, but just barely. There hadn’t been a whole room full of witnesses, I expect Lobang would have shot him–Mutt broke Lobang’s nose and knocked out a couple of expensive teeth implants he had to have replaced.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s the only time anybody hereabouts held their own with Lobang. He’s faster than a spit-spider and those muscles aren’t just for show. And he knows some fighting dances, he can break bricks and stuff with his hands.”

  Cinch smiled.

  “Something funny?”

  “That’d come in handy if a building sneaks up and tries to fall on him.”

  She chuckled.

  Mutt stood suddenly and slapped his chair away. The lightweight plastic flew halfway across the room and bounced from a table where two women and two men were playing stack coin for demicreds. The chair knocked the small coin blocks every which way and upended four drinks.

  “Jesus, Mutt! What the hell is the matter with you?” A short man stood and wiped at his lap where his drink had drenched him.

  Wanita reached under the bar.

  Cinch raised an eyebrow.

  “Buzcom to Maling’s office,” she said. “If he’s there, he’ll come running with his trank gun in, oh, thirty or forty minutes. If we’re lucky.”

  Mutt turned to face the small man who’d spoken. Mutt smiled. It was not a happy expression. He started toward the smaller man.

  Cinch saw the crazed look on Mutt’s face and shook his head. It was a local problem, it wasn’t his business; still, he was a ranger and he hated to see an innocent man get his ass kicked. Besides, he might as well let Lobang and his boss know what they were dealing with. Time to flash the flash.

  “Hey,” Cinch said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried well enough for Mutt to hear. The big man turned his unblinking stare on the ranger.

  “You don’t want to hurt anybody,” Cinch said.

  “I believe I do,” Mutt said. His voice belonged to a much smaller person. It was high, delicate, almost feminine. “I believe I want to smash some toejam sucker’s head against the wall. Really. That’s what I believe.”

  Cinch stepped away from the wall. “I don’t think you ought to do that.”

  Mutt’s grin grew even wider. “I believe it might be your head. How would you like that?”

  “I wouldn’t much like it,” Cinch admitted. “Then again, I don’t much think it’s going to happen, either.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, you got a gun.”

  “It stays in the holster.”

  Mutt nodded. “Call on your god, pal.” He moved for Cinch.

  Cinch stood still until the big man got within two metel’s. Mutt was big and Mutt was strong and he reached for Cinch with hands spread wide to grab ...

  It is relatively easy to best somebody in hand-to-hand combat if you are well trained and practiced and you see them coming. A single punch or kick delivered properly will kill or maim an attacker, ending the fight almost instantly, What is harder to do, what is much riskier, is to control somebody without really damaging them. Cinch had studied fighting styles for years before he ever considered becoming a Stellar Ranger. He had been fortunate enough to happen across a legitimate Master of an ancient martial art seldom seen any more in the galaxy. It was called denku-te–the name meant “lightning hands”–and as practiced by an expert the style offered a player a great deal of personal protection. Perhaps only a sumito dancer familiar with the entire pattern of the Ninety-Seven Steps could defeat a denku-te expert of equal rank in a one-on-one.

  Cinch was no expert, not in the same class as Master Sissu or even Marie Lu, Sissu’s top student, but he knew a few moves.

  Cinch stepped under the grasping hands and stole Mutt’s breath with a twin-knuckle strike to his solar p
lexus.

  Mutt grunted, now unable to breathe.

  The ranger stepped to one side and jerked Mutt backward and down with a hair lock. Even as Mutt fell, Cinch spun and dropped into seiza. Mutt hit the floor on his back, hard, as Cinch’s knees came to rest on both sides of the big man’s head, next to Mutt’s ears. He knelt like a massage tech about to lean into the upper pectorals of a patient.

  Unable to breathe and sprawled on the floor, Mutt started to struggle up–until he felt Cinch’s thumbs dig in at the corners of his eyes.

  “You move and I’ll pop your eyeballs out and step on them.”

  Mutt froze. Whatever chemical inbalance he felt wasn’t strong enough to keep him fighting against that particular threat.

  “Now, I’m going to get up and when I do, you can come to your feet. Take yourself over to the mediplex and let them look at you. If you don’t, I will put you back down and out cold, and then I will haul your ass there over my shoulder. You understand?”

  Mutt managed to nod.

  “Okay. Get up.”

  Cinch snapped from the kneeling position to his feet, ready to move.

  Mutt was done fighting. He stared at Cinch, rubbed at his mouth, sipped the air he wanted so much to reclaim. He turned away and walked toward the exit.

  “Fuck,” Brilly said, staring at Mutt. “Did you see that?”

  Lobang glared at Brilly. “It was a trick. He suckered him.”

  Cinch wasn’t breathing hard. He looked at the trio.

  Tuluk smiled. “Would you care to join me?” he said.

  Cinch nodded. He walked toward the table.

  “WOULD YOU like another drink?”

  Cinch shook his head. “No, thanks. One is my limit while I’m working.”

  “Smart, I like that. And your handling of Mutt was also very impressive.” Tuluk sipped at his scotch, watching Cinch over the rim of the glass. He swallowed the liquid. “What brings you to Roget, M. Carsten?” Tuluk made no attempt to pretend he didn’t know who Cinch was.