Manhunt on Tau Ceti 4 (Nick Walker, U.F. Marshal Book 6)

by John Bowers

  Victoria glared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “It’s a standard contract, honey. If you don’t believe me, check with a lawyer.”

  “I am a lawyer! And this is bullshit!”

  Actually it wasn’t—it was a standard contract. Realizing that only made Victoria angrier.

  The woman’s face crinkled in amusement.

  “You’re going to take me to court? Over two hundred terros?”

  “Number one, the ‘room’—and that’s a misnomer in this case—isn’t worth even fifty terros, never mind two hundred. Number two, once I leave, you’ll just rent it to someone else, so you’ll be getting paid twice. At least give me back half my fee.”

  With a weary sigh, the woman turned her chair to face Victoria, pinning her with a flat stare.

  “Number one,” she said, “I won’t rent the room again because nobody ever stops in here for just one night; number two, we don’t do refunds, period. If you want credit on another room in the future, I can arrange that.” She smiled. “When will you be coming through again?”

  “Never!”

  The smile turned sugary.

  “That’s what I thought. Have a nice evening, Miss Cross.”

  Sagan City - Mars

  The sand car was actually a modified version of a standard hovercar. The chassis was sealed to protect the propulsion system from fine grit—hence the term “sand” car—but otherwise the design was almost identical. The main difference was that the hovercars Victoria was used to could soar as high as a hundred feet, but the Mars version had a twenty-foot ceiling; she wasn’t sure why, but it probably had to do with the thin atmosphere—the closer to the ground, the less lift was required, the less fuel wasted. Whatever the case, it skimmed along the surface at a steady clip, but required close attention to avoid the obstacles that littered the Martian landscape.

  She didn’t realize she was tense until they reached their destination and she could finally relax her grip.

  Sagan City was the third largest settlement on Mars, after Bradbury City and Tyson. They saw the domes approaching several miles before they arrived; the city had been built in sections and each was covered by a pressure dome several miles across. Airlocks were situated at strategic points to permit the flow of traffic in and out, and each airlock was like a border crossing on Terra—uniformed police checked IDs and detained anyone who aroused suspicion.

  Victoria nosed the sand car into the airlock and stopped—she couldn’t proceed any farther until the inner door was opened. They waited for the outer door to close and the airlock to pressurize, then the doors from the guard booth opened and two men stepped up to the car, one on either side. Both Nick and Victoria held up their IDs for inspection. The guard on Victoria’s side was an older man, paunchy and grey; the other looked about twenty-five and wore an officious expression, as if impressed by his own authority.

  Victoria’s guard cleared her after a few seconds. Nick wasn’t quite as lucky.

  “Step out of the car, please.”

  Casting Victoria an exasperated glance, Nick did as instructed. The young guard slipped his ID card into a hand-held data reader and studied the screen. His brow wrinkled in three different directions as he studied the results.

  “Hmmm.”

  Nick stretched his arms over his head and twisted his back right and left, popping his spine. Next he cracked his knuckles. The guard was still reading his screen.

  “Nick Walker, huh? Formerly a United Federation Marshal.”

  “Formerly! You mean they really fired me? Those bastards!”

  The guard scowled at him, then looked at the screen again.

  “Looks like you’ve been in a bit of trouble, Mr. Walker. Says here you stood trial two years ago for use of excessive force.”

  “Oh, you can’t believe any of that. They put all sorts of shit into the SolarNet these days.”

  “This is not the SolarNet! I’m looking at a Federation database.”

  “Oh, that. Well.” Nick shrugged, gazing through the heavy glass into the dome as if considering what to have for dinner.

  The guard unplugged the ID card and handed it back.

  “Excessive force, huh? Are you carrying any weapons?”

  “No.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  Nick shrugged and turned to face the car, bent over and spread his legs. The guard started patting him down.

  “No guns or knives?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any illegal drugs?”

  “Nope.”

  “Laser pistols? Hand grenades? Land mines?”

  “Nope.”

  “Plasma weapons, nuclear devices, fissionable materials?”

  Nick’s body went rigid; he didn’t reply.

  “What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

  Nick cleared his throat, sounding a bit uncomfortable.

  “Just the, um…plutonium.”

  “What!” The guard stepped back. “What did you say?”

  “Plutonium. In my left boot.”

  The guard looked skeptical, but his eyes were wide.

  “Why would you carry plutonium in your boot!”

  “Well, normally I wouldn’t, but ever since the shielding cracked—”

  The guard leaped to the door of his booth and reached inside. He slapped a red button and a hideous alarm began to bleat, deafening everyone within fifty yards. When he returned, his laser pistol was practically inside Nick’s nose.

  “On the ground, right now! Harvey, get back in your booth! This fucker is trying to smuggle nuclear material into the dome!”

  Nick stared at him but didn’t move, his hands still raised shoulder high. He nodded at the laser pistol.

  “You better take it easy with that, sir, or one of us might get hurt.”

  “I said on the ground! Right fucking now!” The guard was trembling.

  Nick dropped to his knees, then spread out on the deck beside the car. Victoria, in the pilot’s seat, watched with a mixture of amusement and disbelief, not sure what to do. The young guard ignored her.

  Instead, he moved around to Nick’s feet and began tugging at his left boot. After a moment’s struggle, it came free, revealing only a foot covered by a rather dirty white sock. Before he could do anything else, an electric car with a flashing light bar arrived outside and four uniformed men boiled into the airlock.

  “What’s going on, Graybill?” The ranking officer wore six stripes on his arm and looked like he might actually have a gram of intelligence.

  “I was checking him for weapons, sir, and he said he’s carrying plutonium.”

  The senior man stood over Nick and gazed down at him.

  “Did you find any plutonium?”

  “Not yet, sir, but I’m still searching him.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “The woman in the car, dipshit! Did you check her too?”

  “N-No, but Harvey cleared her.”

  “Did Harvey search her?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I was busy with this one.”

  “Okay, back off a minute. Let me talk to him.”

  Graybill stepped back, his laser pistol still pointed at Nick; the senior officer looked down.

  “Get up.”

  Nick pushed himself up and regained his feet, then raised his hands again. He and the older man were about the same height.

  “Are you carrying plutonium?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you tell Officer Graybill that you were carrying plutonium?”

  “No, sir. I don’t know where he got that idea.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “He asked if I was carrying any nuclear materials and I told him I hadn’t handled that stuff since I was stationed on Pluto.”

  “You were stationed on Pluto? Were you in the military?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nick Walker.�
��

  The senior officer frowned.

  “I know that name…” He snapped his fingers. “U.F. Marshal Nick Walker?”

  “Once upon a time. I don’t carry a badge anymore.”

  “Jee-zus Christ! Graybill, don’t you know who this guy is? He was all over the news a couple of years ago, big legal scandal on Alpha C.”

  Graybill, looking confused and still a bit jittery, stepped forward. He still had his weapon trained on Nick.

  “Put that away!” his boss told him. He nodded at Nick. “And you can put your hands down. Sorry about this whole mess. Some of these new guys get a little jittery sometimes.”

  “So I see.”

  “I don’t know if it means anything at this late date, but I think you got railroaded. Excessive force? What a crock.”

  Nick nodded. “It does mean something. Thank you.”

  Graybill, still wide-eyed, blinked.

  “What did you do, exactly? Kill an innocent person?”

  Nick scowled. “He wasn’t innocent.”

  “No?”

  “He was an asshole with eight kids.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t kill him, I just shot him. He didn’t die, but he won’t have any more kids.”

  Graybill turned pale. “Why did you shoot him?”

  “He wouldn’t shut the fuck up, kept asking me personal questions.”

  Graybill swallowed and stared. His boss clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Open the inner door and let these folks go.”

  He turned back to Nick, a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Have a nice day, Marshal. Don’t forget your boot.”

  Chapter 4

  “Well, that was nice.”

  Victoria guided the sand car through the streets of Sagan City toward the spaceport.

  “When did you become such an asshole?”

  “I’ve always been an asshole.”

  “Mm-mm, not always. You weren’t an asshole when I first met you.”

  “What was I then?”

  She cocked her head.

  “Brash. Cocky. Very sure of yourself…but compassionate. You had a soul.”

  He grimaced. “That was a long time ago.”

  She shook her head. “Two years ago, you still had a soul.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What the hell were you trying to do just now?”

  Nick shrugged. “I just don’t have any patience for fools. Not anymore.”

  He gazed up at the multiple levels of shops and hotels that stretched toward the dome four hundred feet overhead. Hovercars crisscrossed the city and multi-colored lights blazed everywhere. The gravity was somewhat less, but the atmosphere inside the dome was equal to that of Terra. Except for the dome, visible even after dark, the streets of Sagan City felt no more unusual than New York or Tokyo.

  “What about your friends? You don’t have any patience for them, either?”

  “I’m not here to make friends. Friends are a luxury I don’t need.”

  “Really? Even if one of them knows where to find Ken Saracen?”

  He shrugged. “I would’ve found him eventually.”

  “You sure about that? You said you struck out on that score.”

  “There’s time. I’m not dead yet.”

  She sighed. “Whatever.”

  It took them twenty minutes to reach the spaceport, located on the upper level of Dome 2. It didn’t look much like a spaceport because it had no runways or other features normally associated with space traffic, but the terminal looked familiar enough. Victoria turned the sand car in at the rental agency and they took escalators up to the main concourse.

  “You have any money?” she asked as they crossed the wide platform toward the ticket agents.

  “Nope.”

  “How did you finance all those trips around the galaxy? Even if you were still a U.F. Marshal, I don’t think they pay quite that well.”

  “I have an account.”

  “What kind of account?”

  “An expense account.”

  She frowned at him, but he didn’t elaborate.

  “Okay, make me pull it out of you. Who, what, why, where?”

  “What?”

  “Your expense account! How did you get it? Who’s paying for it?”

  His lips compressed as if he didn’t want to answer.

  “Willard Kline.”

  “Willard… Wasn’t he a prosecution witness against you at the hearing?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t hurt me. Godney was a fool to call him.”

  Victoria remembered. She had told prosecutor Brian Godney as much before she quit her job to become Nick’s attorney. Godney hadn’t listened.

  “Willard Kline is paying your bills?”

  “Just my expenses. When I called to tell him about Suzanne’s murder, he told me to get the bastard who did it and spare no expense. He set up the expense account and fed cash into it to pay my way.”

  “Well, that was nice of him. Were he and Suzanne close?”

  “Yeah. Kline knew her since she was a teenager. He’s Kristina’s father.”

  “Suzanne’s daughter? I didn’t know that!”

  Nick nodded. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “How do you pay for it? You said you tracked me all over the place.”

  “A lot of that was electronic. But I have a benefactor, too, like for this trip.”

  “Yeah?” He looked at her. “Who?”

  “The U.F. Marshal’s office. Marshal Bridge wants you back.”

  They reached the ticket counter and Nick turned to her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “From here? Alpha Centauri.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “You said our suspect was on TC 4. Why are we going to Alpha 2?”

  “Because you need your guns, and you can’t legally carry them unless you sign the documents.”

  “What documents?”

  Victoria sighed in frustration.

  “Nick, I’m still your attorney, okay? Just trust me and leave the questions for later!”

  *

  After Nick purchased his ticket, he raised an eyebrow at Victoria.

  “Aren’t you going to get one?”

  “I came here on a round trip.”

  They checked their luggage, including the rifle, and she led him down the concourse toward a large waiting area.

  “Are you hungry? Let’s get something to eat.”

  “We ate at Dugger Dunes.”

  “You call that eating? I want some real food.”

  “Won’t we miss our starship?”

  “It doesn’t leave until tomorrow.”

  The restaurant wasn’t elegant, but after the Redwood Inn it looked like a ten-star eatery. The atmosphere was dim and pleasant, the conversation muted, and soft music drifted across the dining room. They were escorted to a table and settled in. Victoria was tired but—she had come to Mars hoping to entice Nick to come back with her, never for a moment dreaming he would actually do so. Yet here they were.

  “Are you in the mood for wine?” She smiled at him.

  “Not really. Unless we’re celebrating something.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I am celebrating something. I’m celebrating the fact that we’re finally going to run that terrorist bastard down and catch him.”

  “Catch him, hell—I’m going to kill him.”

  “Then I’ll have two glasses of wine.”

  Since Nick didn’t show much interest and probably wasn’t very knowledgeable about it anyway, Victoria ordered the wine, a chilled Chablis vinted locally. For dinner she ordered a pasta salad and Nick a beef tri-tip steak. When the wine came, she poured for both of them, then raised her glass in a toast.

  “To Kenneth Saracen.”

  Nick touched his glass to hers. “His slow and painful death.”

  They drank.


  As the wine warmed her stomach and spread a mild euphoria through her bloodstream, Victoria sat back in her chair and gazed at him. She was still shocked at his appearance, but at least she had found him, he was alive, and she dared to hope that he might actually recover from his self-destructive exile.

  Victoria had known Nick for almost fourteen years; they had met in boot camp when they both joined the Star Marines at age eighteen. Sometime during the sixteen weeks of boot camp she had fallen in love with him; they had shared a brief but torrid romance that ended when they graduated. He had been posted to Luna 1 for Advanced Infantry training and the Star Marines sent her to law school. They planned to renew their love affair when he returned from Luna, but during his absence Victoria had ruined that hope with a single infidelity that she still regretted.

  Nick had never forgiven her. She was quite sure he never would.

  But even after fourteen years, she still loved him.

  “Are you excited?” She smiled again.

  “About what?”

  “Getting Saracen.”

  “No. I don’t get excited about anything these days.”

  “Well, I understand, but that can change.”

  He shrugged. “No reason why it should.”

  He gazed around the restaurant. He needed a shave and probably a shower, because he looked as if he had just walked in off the sands of Mars—which he had—but she wasn’t complaining. The trip to Alpha Centauri would take about a week, and Tau Ceti would take another two. She had at least three weeks with him, and if she was careful, maybe she could breathe some life back into him. After what happened to him two years earlier, it might be a forlorn hope, but she was willing to try.

  She wanted to try.

  “Don’t you think you’ve punished yourself enough?”

  He shrugged again, but didn’t answer. He didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Do you think Suzanne would want to see you like this?”

  His eyes snapped forward and pierced her with an expression she found a little scary.

  “Don’t talk about Suzanne. You don’t get to talk about Suzanne.”

  “Why not? Suzanne and I were friends!”

  “You were not friends! You only knew her a couple of days.”

  “Nick, I liked her. She liked me. Yes, we barely met, but we would have been close friends if…well…”