by John Bowers
Showdown
Someone had died here.
The partially congealed blood pool stretched completely across the corridor. Nick felt thunder in his head when he saw the closet door, and braced himself—was Victoria in there?
He rested the rifle against the wall and, with his left hand, reached for the closet door. His right hand held the .44 steady as he pulled it open.
The closet was not lit, but even the gloom couldn’t completely cloak the pale white form he saw curled up inside. She was lying on her left side, soaked in blood, her face turned upward. He leaned in for a close look and felt his heart start beating again.
It wasn’t Victoria.
He didn’t know the girl, had never seen her before, but her hair and manner of dress were consistent with Saracen’s followers. He stood slowly and let his breath out in a sigh of relief. This had to be Victoria’s work. Saracen wouldn’t kill one of his own girls, at least not like this, in a deserted corridor. His best guess was that Victoria had been held overnight in the closet and, somehow, managed to turn the tables on her captor.
But where was she now?
He closed the closet door, picked up his rifle, and stepped across the blood pool. He could only guess which way Victoria had gone, but it seemed likely she would avoid the front of the castle. She was either looking for a way out, a place to hide until he arrived, or…she was going after Saracen.
He had to find her. She might be a Star Marine—or think she was—but she had never been in battle, and Saracen was far more wily than she could ever imagine. He had to find her before she—
“Hey!”
Nick froze. The voice had come from behind him. He turned. A man in his late twenties was approaching, pistol in hand.
“Have you seen Brandy? She isn’t answering her…hey, who are you? What—”
Nick swung to face him and drew a bead with the .44.
“Get down! On your face, right now!”
The other man stared at him in shock, recognition kicking in. Instead of an answer, he swung his pistol up and fired. It was a hasty shot and the bullet snapped past two feet from Nick’s head. Nick fired twice—
—and wished he hadn’t.
Don’t miss these great books by John Bowers
Published by AKW Books and FTL Press
NICK WALKER, U.F. MARSHAL
Asteroid Outpost
Sirian Summer
Rebel Guns of Alpha Centauri
Bounty Hunter at Binary Flats [FTL Press]
Gunfight on the Alpha Centauri Express [FTL Press]
Manhunt on Tau Ceti 4 [FTL Press]
Assassin at Periscope Harbor (coming in 2017)
STARPORT SERIES
Starport
Guerrilla Girl
Famine Planet
Prisoners of Eroak
Occupy Eroak! [FTL Press]
THE FIGHTER QUEEN SAGA
The Fighter King
A Vow to Sophia
The Fighter Queen
Star Marine!
The Sword of Sophia
Nick Walker, United Federation Marshal
Manhunt on Tau Ceti 4
by
John Bowers
A Faster Than Light eBook
Published by John Bowers
Copyright 2016 by John Bowers
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by John Bowers
You are granted a non-exclusive license to this work. You may make copies or reformat it for YOUR OWN USE ONLY. You may not resell, trade, nor give this work away.
Created in the United States of America
First Publication: July 2016
Cover by Duncan Long
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters are a product of the imagination of the author and any resemblance to any real person, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Mary Elizabeth Fricke and Allan Kalar for their input and suggestions. Without extra eyes, mistakes are hard to find.
Dedication
For Clarence Unruh, who introduced me to the dream when we were both in seventh grade.
Chapter 1
Dugger Dunes - Mars Tuesday, August 27, 0447 (Colonial Calendar)
It looked like the perfect place for a murder.
As she piloted her rented sand car across the endless Martian plain, Victoria Cross wondered how many bodies might be scattered under the red sands that stretched off to the horizon. From everything she had heard, this was lawless country, the Badlands of Mars; civilization had ended a hundred miles back, and no one knew or cared much what happened beyond that imaginary border. According to the rumors, if the Federation Marshals really wanted to put a stop to crime in this region, all they had to do was come down here and arrest everyone in sight. That simple act alone would probably solve half the open cases on the planet.
But Victoria wasn’t a U.F. Marshal, and wasn’t much afraid of the denizens who inhabited this region. She was here on a mission and if anyone wanted to stop her, they were welcome to try.
She came upon the settlement almost before she saw it, a dozen or so half-buried domes with antennae sprouting out of them. There was no warning, no signage, no indication that life was anywhere near. There wasn’t even a road.
She overshot the settlement, but hauled back on her thrusters and swung around like a fighter plane circling a carrier deck. On her second pass she flared her jets and settled the sand car twenty yards from the nearest dome. She sat there a moment and studied the layout, discovering that the place did have a pattern of sorts. The domes were arranged in two rows about thirty yards apart. The lane down the middle, though nothing more than pulverized red dust, might be considered a street.
With a deep breath to dissipate her adrenaline, she popped the clamshell and stepped out, reached back inside for her weapon, and sealed the car. She adjusted her goggles and snapped the respirator across her mouth—terraforming had been underway for close to a century, but still had a ways to go. The atmosphere was thicker than when the first settlers arrived, but the planet was still in a primitive state. Cities were still domed and outlying settlements were largely underground. Terraforming wouldn’t be complete for another fifty years.
She rested the rifle on her shoulder and walked with a confident stride toward the nearest dome. Up close she saw a sign on the door and wasn’t surprised to discover that it was the local watering hole. No matter where you went, if humans lived there, you might or might not find a church, but you would always find a saloon.
Without hesitation, Victoria punched the power button and the door slid open, revealing a narrow airlock about eight feet long. She stepped inside, pushed the green button, and waited for the pressure to equalize; the inner door opened. She followed the steps down ten feet to the main floor and stopped, scanning the room with her eyes. At least a dozen men sat slumped at tables around the oblong room, most of them drunk or asleep; two tables along the far wall sat in darkness.
She didn’t care for the music that thumped from hidden outputs, but it at least had a beat. As she took a few steps into the room and pulled the respirator off her mouth, heads began to pop up.
She was the only woman in the place.
By the time she reached the middle of the room, every man in sight was staring at her. She could almost feel their radar penetrating her body. It took thirty seconds for the nearest man, a sloppy drunk whose best days were only a distant memory, to speak up.
“Hey, there, baby doll! What are you drinkin’?”
Victoria gazed at him but didn’t smile. She was a beautiful woman and frequently had to deflect unwanted male attention, but at the moment was less concerned about that than the mission that brought her here. She swung the rifle off her shoulder and gripped it with both hands, as if ready to start blazing away.
“I’m hunting a man,” she said.
The denizen grinned.
“You found one. Have a seat. Have a drink wi’ me.”
“You’re not the man I’m looking for.”
“Hell, a man is a man is a man, my mama used to say.”
“Your mama said that, huh?”
He laughed and picked up a bottle, thrusting it toward her.
“Come on, swee’ cakes, have a drink.”
She pumped the rifle, jacking a cartridge into the chamber. The drunk’s eyes widened a fraction and he set the bottle down.
“Easy there, swee’ cakes! If you fire that thing in here, you’ll blow this habitat all to hell.”
“If I fire this thing in here, that will be the general idea. Now, if you’re finished with your cheap seduction routine, I need information.”
“Okay, okay. Who are you looking for?”
“His name is Walker. Have you seen him?”
The dusty man sat up a little straighter, his eyes fixed on the rifle.
“Walker? That don’t ring a bell. What do you want him for? You ain’t gonna kill him, are you?”
“Whether I am or not isn’t your concern. Crawl back into your bottle.”
She turned in a slow circle, eyeing each man in turn.
“I’m looking for Nick Walker. Anybody here know him?”
No one spoke.
“Anybody?”
Two or three men shook their heads.
She turned and walked across the room to survey the tables that sat in darkness. One was empty, but at the other sat a solitary figure wearing a cowboy hat, head slightly lowered as he nursed a drink from a shot glass. Victoria felt her pulse quicken.
She tapped the tabletop with her rifle barrel, rattling the shot glass. The man didn’t bother to look up.
“What’s your name?”
He didn’t reply, but picked up the glass and took another swallow.
She tapped the table again, harder.
“Your name, asshole! What’s your name?”
He raised his head an inch, but his face remained in shadow.
“Jones,” he said quietly. “Nick Jones.”
Victoria’s heart fluttered; for a second she almost misted up. She pulled off her goggles, glanced back over her shoulder to make sure no one was paying attention, and settled into the chair opposite Nick Jones. She laid her rifle sideways across the table.
She lowered her voice.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you for over a year!”
Nick Jones lifted his chin and gazed at her, no expression on his face. She reached across and pulled off his hat, dropping it onto the table. What she saw was shocking—the lines in his face had deepened; he looked faded, washed-out, and the light was gone from his eyes. The bullet wound in his cheek had left a hideous scar through his beard, like a meteorite strike in a forest.
He was only thirty-one, but looked fifty. He looked old.
She reached across the table and laid her hand over his.
“Nick, for the love of God! Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Around.”
“Why didn’t you ever contact me?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I—” Her mouth snapped shut. “You know why.”
He shrugged and poured himself another drink. He downed it in a single gulp.
“Go home, Victoria. There’s nothing for you here.”
“Oh, really? What’s here for you?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing here for anybody. This place is the asshole of the Solar System.”
She glanced around in disgust.
“I can believe that.” She squeezed his hand. “Nick, come back with me. We can talk this out.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Yes, there is. People need you.”
He snorted. “Yeah. Right.”
“It’s true, dammit! You’re a United Feder—”
His left hand jerked up like a stop sign and the words froze in her throat. The look in his eyes was intense, dangerous.
“Nobody,” he corrected. “I’m nobody! Do you understand?”
She blinked, her heart racing. She had almost outed him as a lawman, and in this place that probably wasn’t a grand idea.
“I’m sorry, I—I didn’t think.”
“No, you didn’t think. You didn’t think before you came here, and now it’s time for you to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes you are. I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t care! Goddamn you, Nick, I am not leaving here without you!”
“Then you better rent yourself a hole to sleep in. Looks like you’ll be hanging around for a while.”
Victoria stared at him without a word for thirty seconds. Suddenly she stood up, jaw clenched, and picked up her rifle. Without a word she turned and started across the room for the airlock. The dusty drunk cast her a cautious smile.
“Did you find the man you were looking for?”
Victoria looked back at the dark table against the far wall. She shook her head.
“No. Looks like the man I’m looking for doesn’t exist anymore.”
Chapter 2
When she stepped outside the habitat, the wind had come up, a thin gale that whistled around the domes and carried a fine powder of red dust. Victoria wondered if Mars would ever be truly habitable; it was a small planet, and without sufficient gravity a heavy, Terra-like atmosphere could not be sustained. If anyone had ever asked her she would have told them that terraforming was a waste of time.
Of course the decision to terraform had been made a century before she was born.
The air was actually breathable, but still very thin. By Martian law, anyone who ventured outside the cities was required to carry a respirator, and now she put hers on again. She looked around. She saw twenty domes, all of similar construction, lining the narrow strip of sand that separated them. Some were bigger than others, and she had no idea what any of them were for. She had found the saloon by pure chance.
Nick had intimated that she could find a “hole” to rent for the night, but she had no idea which dome might supply such a hole. The only way to find out was to check them all, so after retrieving her luggage, she started walking.
Each dome had a small sign on the airlock door. When she got to the fourth one, the sign, in small engraved letters, declared it to be the Dugger Inn. She pushed the airlock button and stepped inside. A moment later, after the airlock cycled, she was admitted into a narrow lobby in front of a metal desk. A middle-aged woman, whose face looked somewhat sandblasted, peered at her from behind the desk. Her eyes settled on the rifle over Victoria’s shoulder.
“Honey, there ain’t nothin’ here to steal and no place to spend it even if there was. Just so we’re clear.”
Victoria pulled off her respirator and brushed dirt off her face.
“I’m looking for a room.”
“A room? Does this look like a hotel to you?”
“Not really.” Victoria scanned the interior with distaste. “The sign on the door said this was an inn.”
“Gotta call it somethin’, so ‘inn’ is close enough. Actually it’s more like a boarding house.”
“Well, I need a place to sleep. For one night, anyway.”
The woman eyed her with suspicion, then peered at a faded computer screen that looked like a museum piece.
“I got a couple of sleepers available, but they’re not fancy.”
“If I wanted fancy, I would have stayed in Sagan City. How much?”
/> “Two hundred terros a night.”
Victoria’s eyes widened. “Two hundred? I thought you said there was nothing to steal?”
“There isn’t.”
“You’re sure as hell picking my pocket.”
“Take it or leave it, sweetheart. We don’t usually rent for a single night, so I’m doing you a favor by renting to you at all.”
Victoria sighed and stepped up to the desk. “Do you need cash, or can I use my thumbprint?”
“We might look like sandbillies to you, but we’re as modern as we need to be. We have electricity and everything.”
Victoria pressed her thumb against the debit screen and took a step back. A moment later the woman printed her a receipt.
“There you go. Your room is straight down that hall about thirty yards. Number 31.” She handed her a key.
“Thanks. Do you serve meals here, too?”
“No, that would be the Redwood Inn across the street.”
“The Redwood Inn.”
“Yup. No need to mock the name, it’s as good as any around here.”
“What do people here do for a living? Is there some kind of industry or something? A pipeline, maybe?”
“Nobody asks and nobody tells. Best not to open that container.”
Victoria nodded. It was a thieves’ den, a hideout from law and order, just as she had suspected. Wonderful.
The hall, of course, was underground. Everything here was underground except for the domes, which were the only indication at all of habitation. Victoria entered the hallway with the rifle still on her shoulder and strode confidently toward the far end. It was narrow and dim, with barely enough light to illuminate the floor. Rooms to her right and left were marked only by doors that looked more like the hatches in a starship; she suspected each room was also airtight, in case of decompression.
Number 31 was the last door on her left; the four-foot hatch was open an inch and she pulled it wide to look inside. What she saw pretty much fit the description Nick had given—a hole. Actually it was more like a prison cell, a single space about fifteen feet deep and ten wide. A bunk, a sink, a toilet, and a narrow metal table for her luggage.
