A Beautiful Friendship

by David Weber

  She shook her head, and Richard touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  “I know exactly what you’re saying,” he said, “and I’m pretty sure Stephanie understands, too.” He smiled at their daughter, who was wise enough to recognize that this was not a time to insist she was all grown up. “For that matter, I think Scott was a bit hesitant about . . . pushing the idea. But you saw how he and Stephanie got on. He’s genuinely worried about her, and to be honest, he’s right. I think we’ve been guilty of a serious blindspot in not considering this ourselves, Marge. Especially after we already almost lost her to a hexapuma once.”

  His voice was much more somber with the final sentence, and Marjorie’s facial muscles tightened as she remembered that terrible night.

  “Scott says Irina’s nephew, Karl, would be willing to help, too,” he continued. “He’s about fifteen, only a year or so older than Steph is. Scott thinks—and I think he’s right about this, too—that having someone closer to her own age involved would probably help. Besides,” he grinned, “I gather young Karl thinks Fisher is a marvelous invention. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if part of what he has in mind is, um, inveigling our Stephanie into eventually introducing him to the rest of Lionheart’s family.”

  “Oh, I see,” Marjorie murmured with a smile of her own.

  “Anyway, that’s what he called about,” Richard said.

  Marjorie nodded, then frowned in pensive silence while her flashing knife finished sectioning carrots and slicing tomato wedges. She paused to hand a celery stalk to Lionheart before she began cutting the rest of the head of celery into neat lengths. In fact, she cut considerably more than even two humans and a treecat were likely to polish off. Finally, though, she finished the celery, inhaled deeply, turned to face Stephanie, and put her hands on her hips.

  “I suppose you think this would be a marvelous idea, don’t you?” Her tone was severe, yet she also smiled—slightly, and reluctantly, but smiled.

  “I don’t know if I’d say it was a ‘marvelous’ idea,” Stephanie replied cautiously. “I do think it makes sense, though. And I would like to learn to shoot. For that matter, you know you and Dad promised I could start the junior marksmanship program in Twin Forks next year.”

  “We promised you you could do that when you turned fifteen,” her mother corrected gently but firmly, and Stephanie wiggled slightly. “Still,” her mother continued, “you’re right that we did agree you could learn to shoot, at least eventually. And even though I’m not real crazy about the thought of killing anything myself, I have to say Scott probably does have a point about you and me learning to shoot, too, Richard,” she admitted, glancing at her husband.

  Stephanie contented herself with a gravely thoughtful expression experience, having taught herself this would not be a moment to rush in enthusiastically.

  “If—and I said if, Stephanie—we agree to this, I want your word you’ll do exactly what Ranger Lethbridge tells you to do. I know you probably would anyway, but we’re talking about weapons powerful enough to stop a hexapuma. Those aren’t toys, and if they can stop hexapumas, they can do a lot of damage to anything else they hit . . . and it won’t make any difference to the target if what they hit gets hit on purpose or by accident.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stephanie replied very soberly.

  “All right.” Her mother drew another deep breath. “Your father and I will think about this. I promise we’ll make our minds up as quickly as possible, and we’ll be as fair about it as we can. But I expect you to accept our decision, whatever it is. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Stephanie said firmly.

  She managed to keep any glee out of her voice or her expression, but she knew that tone. It might not already be in the bag, but it was looking good, she thought. Looking very good.

  * * *

  “All right!” Karl Zivonik said, peering through the spotting scope at the target. “Five for five in the ten-ring with that group, Steph! Looks like one big hole from here. Good shooting!”

  Stephanie grinned hugely, then made sure the bolt had locked back the way it was supposed to, laid the rifle in the rack with its muzzle pointed downrange the way she’d been taught, and removed her ear protectors. The old-fashioned, muff-style protectors covered her entire ear (which was why Frank Lethbridge liked them so much) but were fitted with microphones which let her hear normal sounds even though they protected her hearing from the high-decibel sound of gunshots. Despite that, she still didn’t like the way they seemed to . . . close in on her. Of course, if there’d been anyone else on the shooting line, she would have left them in place anyway. The one time she’d started to take them off when she hadn’t noticed another shooter’s arrival, Ranger Lethbridge had peeled a strip right off her. She’d wanted to die on the spot as he relentlessly dissected the earthworm-level IQ involved in doing something like that. Even more effectively, he’d banned her from the range for two full days.

  Somewhat to her surprise, Stephanie had discovered she was a natural shot. So was her mother—which had surprised Marjorie even more. Her father, alas, was not. He was turning into what Ranger Lethbridge called a ‘competent’ rifleman, but he was never going to be his daughter’s or his wife’s equal as a marksman, and pistols clearly were not his forte. Fortunately, his ego seemed sufficiently robust to survive that shattering disappointment.

  “Give me!” Stephanie commanded now, pointing at the powerful spotting scope Karl had been peering through. He turned his head and grinned at her, putting one hand possessively on the instrument.

  “That,” he pointed out, “wasn’t exactly the polite way to ask. I think you left a word out, didn’t you?”

  Stephanie returned his grin. Scott MacDallan hadn’t mentioned that Irina’s nephew had been present for her confrontation with Trudy Franchitti and Stan Chang, but she’d recognized him instantly. Apparently he’d seen and heard even more of it than she’d realized, too, and his opinion of Trudy was (if possible) even lower than Stephanie’s. She found that very satisfying, and if part of that was because he was so unimpressed by how . . . well-endowed Trudy was, that could just be her little secret.

  Karl was also a woodsman and a hunter. In fact, it was already obvious to Stephanie that he was much better at both than Ralph Franchitti or his father would ever be. And unlike either of them, he wasn’t interested in impressive trophies. He loved Sphinx’s forests as much as Stephanie had come to love them, and he was fiercely protective where they were concerned. That was why Frank Lethbridge had arranged his visit to the Forestry Service HQ in the first place. In another couple of T-years, Karl was going to meet the Forestry Service age requirements, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

  He was also tall for his age—taller than Scott MacDallan already, and closing in on her own father’s height. The fact that his family’s muscles hadn’t been genetically modified for a heavy-gravity environment gave him an impressive muscle mass to go with that tall, strong-boned frame, but he didn’t try to tower over Stephanie the way some guys did. There were times when he got a little quiet, when his eyes got a little . . . distant, or maybe the word she was looking for was “sad.” She didn’t know where that inner touch of darkness came from, but the quiet moments seldom lasted long and he never let them linger or spill over onto anybody else.

  He also didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact that she was “only a kid,” either. Of course, she was only one T-year—well, all right, one and a half T-years, since he was almost sixteen—younger than he was. He appeared to be pleasantly unaware of that differential, though. He had a working brain, too, and he didn’t talk down to her because she was younger. He didn’t appear to feel especially threatened when it turned out she knew more about something than he did, either.

  Besides, he had a sense of humor.

  “You’re right,” she said now, her expression thoughtful. “I did leave a word out, didn’t I?” She smiled sweetly. “What I meant to say, Karl, was give me the spotting
scope now.”

  “I thought that was it,” he said with an answering grin, and moved so she could settle behind the scope and peer downrange herself.

  The old-fashioned optical telescope was more powerful even than the telescopic sight fitted to the rifle she’d just been firing, and she felt a glow of pleasure as she looked at the target. Karl was right. She’d put all five rounds into the ten-ring at a range of a hundred and fifty meters. She’d been firing prone, off the sandbags, of course, but it looked to her as if all five holes could have been covered with a Manticoran quarter.

  “Not too bad, I guess,” she allowed.

  “Hey, you’re not going to goad me into telling you how great you are, so don’t even go there,” Karl replied, and she snorted.

  “Can’t blame me for trying, though,” she pointed out.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised you tried, at least,” he responded, and pressed the button to bring the standard bull’s-eye target back to their shooting position.

  Stephanie smiled at him and started policing up her brass. The gray-toned cartridge cases were actually made of a composite far stronger and tougher than any metallic alloy, but they were still called “brass” by a purist like Karl. It seemed pretty silly to Stephanie, but she’d come to the conclusion that there was something inherently anachronistic at the heart of those purists.

  The cases were still warm, but the composite cooled quickly enough for her to handle without discomfort, and most shooters on Sphinx were thrifty souls. They reloaded their spent cases (“brass,” she reminded herself with a mental grin)—or had someone else reload them—as a matter of course. Besides, leaving the range as clean as they’d found it was only good shooting etiquette.

  “Well, I think we can pretty much take it as given that Frank—I mean, Ranger Lethbridge—is going to sign off on the rifle course when you shoot your qualification tomorrow,” Karl said as he finished running a finger over the bullet holes. The holes vanished as the activated smart-paper regenerated itself, and he studied it critically for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction before he looked back up at Stephanie. “Want to go and shoot a few practice courses with the eleven-millimeter before we start cleaning guns?”

  “As a matter of fact, I would.” Stephanie’s eyes lit, and Karl laughed.

  “All right,” he said. “Come on.”

  The two of them strolled across to the pistol range, carrying their ear protectors. One thing there was lots of on Sphinx was open space, and the handgun range had been set up for shooting out to fifty meters, which was a long range for any pistol shot. The qualification shoot for handgun wouldn’t require Stephanie to shoot at any range in excess of twenty-five meters, but she’d discovered she liked to push herself at the longer ranges, as well.

  She put her ear protectors back on while Karl hooked a silhouette target to the carrier and ran it out to seven meters. She waited patiently until he finished doing that, then stepped back and donned his own protectors.

  “Present,” he said in a much more sober and official tone, and she drew the heavy pistol from its holster.

  The handgun Scott MacDallan and Frank Lethbridge had chosen for her was almost as long as her own forearm: a semi-automatic, chemical-propellant weapon directly descended from the firearms mankind had taken with him from Old Earth. Someone from those pre-Diaspora days would have called it an 11-millimeter magnum, and they probably would have been surprised that such weapons were still in common use. When it came down to it, though, any projectile weapon still depended on accelerating a bullet to high velocities very, very quickly, and chemical propellants (which had become even more efficient over the ensuing sixteen centuries) were still the easiest, cheapest, and most reliable way to do just that. More sophisticated weapons had been developed for specialized military and police uses, but old-fashioned firearms like Stephanie’s pistol worked just fine for most civilian requirements, and you never had to worry about whether or not their power packs were charged.

  They did tend to be good-sized, though, and some people might have been astonished that her mentors had chosen such a cannon for someone as small as Stephanie to pack about with her.

  Well, they probably would have chosen a lighter weapon if their primary worry hadn’t been stopping something like a hexapuma. As Ranger Lethbridge had pointed out, however, she could always use a heavier weapon to stop something smaller than a hexapuma, but a popgun wouldn’t be much use if she and Lionheart found themselves reprising their original performance without the rest of his clan in attendance.

  On the plus side, someone with Stephanie’s genetic modifications was much stronger than an unmodified human of her size. Her bones were denser, as well, and her slender wrists were much more powerful than they looked. In addition, the heavy springs in the automatic’s action soaked up a fair amount of recoil, and Lethbridge had fitted the massive handgun with a ported muzzle brake which reduced felt recoil by another thirty percent or so. Its sheer weight also helped to absorb recoil forces—Lethbridge carried a 13.5-millimeter weapon built on the same frame—and it actually hadn’t taken Stephanie long to get past her original discomfort with it.

  Now, her expression as serious as Karl’s, she drew the pistol, pulled back the slide until the action locked open to demonstrate that it was unloaded, and drew a magazine of fat, 11-millimeter rounds from the carrier on her belt.

  “Ready,” she said, holding the magazine in her left hand.

  “Load,” he told her, and she slid the magazine into place briskly enough to make sure it locked.

  Karl watched her, then turned his head to survey the range. They were alone on it, but range procedure had been drilled into both of them.

  “Ready on the right!” he announced. “Ready on the left!”

  There was no response, since there was no one to respond, but he paused for a moment, anyway. Then he stepped back, putting himself well behind Stephanie.

  “Range is ready,” he told her, and she pressed the slide release.

  The heavy slide slammed forward, stripping off and chambering the top round, and she settled into the shooting stance Lethbridge and Karl had taught her. It was something Lethbridge said had once been called a “Weaver stance,” although he didn’t know why. Stephanie didn’t know, either, but she’d found it surprisingly comfortable once she’d actually adjusted to it, and the pistol leveled in her hands. The sight picture formed itself automatically, almost instinctually after so many hours on the range, and she squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  Scott MacDallan stood on the upper-level deck outside Frank Lethbridge’s Forestry Service office. They were far enough from the range that even the bellow of Stephanie’s magnum was little more than a distant popping, and he shook his head with a smile. He’d expected Stephanie to enjoy herself, yet he’d been taken more than a little aback by how much she’d enjoyed the firearms training. She’d taken to it on an almost genetic level, and it hadn’t hurt a bit for her and Lionheart to get so well acquainted with Frank and Ainsley Jedrusinski. Having two Forestry Service rangers—especially partners with Lethbridge and Jedrusinski’s seniority—as friends and allies couldn’t hurt.

  “I didn’t think she was going to be moving in here when you volunteered to teach her to shoot, Frank,” he said wryly over his shoulder.

  “Well, that’s not exactly what happened, either,” Lethbridge pointed out. “Unless I’m mistaken, she’s actually been staying with Irina this week.”

  “In point of fact, she’s been spending a lot of her time over at Aleksandr’s and Evelina’s,” MacDallan corrected.

  “Ah? Getting a little additional coaching from Karl, is she?” Lethbridge inquired with a smile.

  “I would suspect so,” MacDallan agreed. “Mind you, I don’t think anything especially romantic has occurred to her at the moment, and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t occurred to Karl, either. I could be wrong about that, but I doubt it.” His expression saddened. “He’s still hurting too much over Sumiko t
o be thinking that way about another girl yet. Especially one so much younger than he is.”

  The two men looked at one another, and Lethbridge nodded in silent understanding. The Uchida family’s freehold shared a border with the Zinoviks . . . and Sumiko Uchida had been the only survivor when the last wave of the Plague swept over Sphinx and killed her parents and both of her older brothers. The loss had been especially bitter because it had been the last, unexpected wave of death—the same one which had claimed Irina Kasievna’s husband, in fact—and the Uchidas and the Zinoviks had been close friends. There’d never been any question about who was going to adopt Sumiko when her family died.

  She’d also been almost exactly Karl’s age, not to mention smart and exotically pretty, and the two had been close even before her family’s death. After it, they’d become almost inseparable, and no one had doubted that, in the fullness of time, Karl and she would marry and take over her parents’ freehold. Things could still have changed, but people tended to marry young on frontier worlds like Sphinx, and the strength of their relationship had been obvious.

  And then a crown oak branch, as big as a red spruce in its own right but weakened by a winter storm, had come crashing down from over a hundred meters in the air while Karl and Sumiko were keeping an eye on the younger Zinovik kids on a sledding expedition. Sumiko must have seen the branch splitting loose before it actually fell, because she’d flung herself forward and snatched Larisa, the youngest of the Zinovik girls, out of its path. She’d flung the younger girl to safety . . . only to be caught herself under two or three thousand kilos of plunging deadwood in a gravity well thirty-five percent higher than Old Terra’s.

  The fact that she’d been killed instantly had been no comfort at all, and her death had devastated Karl. It had seemed so totally unfair, so senseless, for her to die that way after all the death and dying they’d survived during the Plague Years, and it had taken the better part of six T-months for him to learn to smile again.

  “You’re probably right,” Lethbridge agreed quietly. “Damned shame, but you’re probably right.”