He stared at her in disbelief until she killed the lights. “Are you nuts?” Tarzi grabbed at the wheel, but Mags blocked him with one hand.
“Don’t worry, kid. I can see a hell of a lot better than you can at night. Now let me drive!”
He sat back. She had already saved his arse once tonight, he thought. “So you came here to rip off my score, huh?”
She smiled. “Relax, my little pirate. You’re right about this much: I owe you one.”
Patches crawled onto Tarzi’s lap. He cradled the calico cat as Mags navigated curves he could not even see. He closed his eyes and felt Patches purring.
“Hey,” said the smuggler. “Have you ever been off-world?”
And that was how Meteor Mags and Tarzi became friends.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
August 2028: A Moon in the Outer Planets.
“Okay, Tarzi. What’s Rule Number One?”
He sighed. “Auntie, how many times do we have to go over this?”
“As many times as I say so.”
“Fine.” He looked at the distant hills through the visor of his biohazard mask. He could hear her chomping bubble gum through the small speaker in his earpiece. This moon had enough atmosphere for combustion, but it was not conducive to breathing. “The gun is always loaded. Even when you think it isn’t.”
She smiled inside her mask. “Good. Now what’s Rule Number Two?”
“Never, ever, ever point the gun at any living thing you don’t intend to kill.”
“Very good, little man.”
“Yeah, but, what if I just want to scare them?”
“Are you trying to fail this test? You’d better be ready to scare them to fucking death, or shoot them. Don’t make idle threats. I don’t have any patience for that shit.”
“Okay, okay. So can I shoot it already?”
Mags held the TEC-9. “Just look at this beauty,” she said. “This is one of the originals. Pre-ban, open bolt, converted from semi to full automatic. And this,” she continued, presenting the clip to Tarzi, “is one of the original thirty-two-round magazines. Don’t fuck around with it.” She handed the pistol to her nephew.
Just down the beach, towards the mountains on the horizon, Mags had set up several human-shaped targets. She loved to come to this lunar beach to test weapons, even if the sea was utterly toxic. “Nothing but bacteria can live for very long on this rock,” she had told him, “which makes it perfect for blowing up random shit!” Patches chose to stay aboard the Queen Anne, well down the beach in the opposite direction.
“Thirty-two rounds? Why don’t you use it more often?” He loaded the clip and chambered a round.
“Because it jams like a little bitch. Make sure you got the magazine fully inserted, or it will just jam worse. Now see how many rounds you can put into these Thatcherite scum-dogs before we have to un-jam it.”
Tarzi took up the stance Mags had taught him. He fired again and again. From her position behind him and off to the side, she could not see his smile. But in her earpiece, she heard the change in his breathing, and she knew he was enjoying himself. Then the pistol jammed.
“Fuck!” He fumbled with it.
“Okay, cool it, Captain Rapid Fire. I’ll show you the quick way to do this. Butt first!”
He handed her the weapon butt-first. As she un-jammed the pistol, he watched and learned.
“Not bad,” she told him, “but you’re letting the recoil throw your arms too high in the air. You don’t want to pull the pistol towards the ground, but you don’t want to be so limp that it kicks way up in the air with every round, either. Here.” She handed it back to him. “Keep going. You got half a clip left.”
Some of his shots went wild, but several of them shredded the targets. When he was finished, he heard Mags in his earpiece again.
“If you didn’t kill them, you sure scared the shit out of ’em! Let’s go see how you did.” The two of them walked down the beach to inspect the targets. Mags brought her antique M1 semi-automatic rifle with her.
“That’s a beauty, Auntie. It looks ancient.”
“Mama had one just like it. To this day, I’m not sure where she got it.” Mags lovingly ran her gloved fingertips over the wooden stock, remembering. “The US Army started using them in ’36, but by then we were in Barcelona. Who knows? Mama just had a knack for ‘liberating’ things.”
Tarzi paused a moment. Did she just say 1936? He shrugged it off as impossible. “That’s not her original, then?”
“Nah. I don’t have anything of Mama’s anymore. Just my memories.” She sighed. “Memories, and her ring. Mama wasn’t big on collecting stuff. She liked to travel light. Clean socks, fresh ammo, the clothes on her back. Ah, here we are.”
They stood at the targets as the first of several moons began to edge over the horizon. “Damn, dear! You shot this poor bastard in the balls. And here,” she said, tapping another target, “in the elbow. He’ll be wanking with his other hand for a few months.”
Tarzi laughed. “That’ll bloody teach him. Fascist wanker!”
“Now, this here, this has the makings of a decent cluster.” Mags tapped a third target. “Just remember, headshots may look cool in the movies, but don’t try to make them in a firefight. Especially when you have a group of targets close together like this. Just aim for the middle and start mowing them down. Ain’t nobody handing out trophies for marksmanship.”
“So, spray and pray?”
“Something like that! Now if you want marksmanship, this M1 is your tool. Old man Garand made this puppy to be as accurate as the bolt action rifles of his day, but also give the boys on the ground something that could stand up to machine guns. WWI had been a right cunt of a war. Now, watch this.” Mags loaded a blocky eight-round clip. “They call this an ‘en bloc’ clip. Thirty aught six cartridge. Good enough for a Gatling or a Browning, and good enough for your dear old auntie Mags.” She raised the rifle to her shoulder and sighted along the horizon. “See that little series of red targets spread down the beach?”
“Yep.”
“That’s one every twenty-five meters, starting twenty-five from here, all the way up to two hundred.” She fired at the closest target, then seven more times in rapid succession. She took, at most, a second between shots to sight the next target, emptying the clip in less time than it takes to read these words.
Tarzi watched as each target exploded and smoked. “Damn show-off!”
“If I wanted to show off, I’d put one three hundred meters out.”
“So much for not making headshots.”
Mags laughed. “It’s a hell of a lot different when you’re shooting things that don’t shoot back, dear. Or things that move. Any idiot can learn how to kill something that sits still.”
“Can I try it?” He eyed the rifle hopefully.
“You want to fire my baby? Not today, nephew. We’ll start you out on something smaller like a .22. Let you get a feel for accuracy before you have to deal with recoil.”
“Aw, man. A .22? Come on!”
“Fine. I have a nice lever-action .44 you can fuck around with. I hate screwing with a lever in a shoot-out, but it’s a sweet rifle. Hell, I’d give it to you, but can you imagine if your parents found it?”
“I would be so dead. I can’t have anything fun at the house! Fucking assholes.”
“There, there. They seem nice. I mean, I don’t know them, but look how much freedom you have.”
“They’re cool, I guess. Just their peace and love and nonviolence shit really gets on my nerves sometimes.”
Mags laughed. “Don’t be too hard on them. Not everyone’s lucky enough to have cool parents. Or any parents at all, ya know?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I just get so friggin’ bored there.”
“Love ’em while you got ’em, little man. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Mama and wish I could be with her. Not a single fuckin’ day.”
They walked back down the beach towards the Quee
n Anne as they talked. Two more moons had broken the horizon, and the light began to fade.
“Come on, dear. Speaking of boredom, we’ve got places to be! And this rock gets awfully cold at night. Would you like to join me at the club for the evening?”
“Hell yes, I would! But can we watch the moons rise first?”
“Absolutely! Let’s go wake up Patches and put on some tunes.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
October 2028: The Asteroid Belt.
“Who is this Pakistani-looking motherfucker?”
“That’s my nephew,” said Meteor Mags, “and you’ll show him some respect or I’ll kick what’s left of your teeth all the way down your throat.”
“You would, wouldn’t you, Meteor?”
“And I’d enjoy it.” Mags narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze at the miner.
Tarzi stood with his Uzi at the ready and his TEC-9 holstered at his side. This conversation made his blood boil, but Mags had warned him these miners were a rough lot, with even rougher language.
“So what have you got for us?”
“The usual nicotine, valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, and alcohol.” She quoted Queens of the Stone Age for Tarzi’s amusement, then opened the lid of one of the crates.
The miner and his crew could see inside by the sidelights from the Queen Anne and the piercing glow of their jeep-style transport’s headlights. He looked into the crate, nodding his approval without ever taking his finger off the trigger of his laser rifle.
“Damn, Meteor, you’re somethin’ else, ya know that?
“I heard it once or twice. So cough up some cash, Captain Neckbeard! We’re not here for our health.”
“Ain’t you the saucy one? I got half a mind to bend you over that crate and—”
The muzzle of Mag’s M1 pressed into his temple, cutting short his fantasy. Mags could feel every laser rifle in the crew swing up to point at her and the miner. Several of them were still aboard the transport. They reminded Tarzi of pictures he had seen of kangaroo hunters in the outback, brazen men with big vehicles and bright lights out to shoot anything that moved.
“Let us waste the bitch, Donny.”
“Go right a-fuckin’-head, dickbag,” said Mags. “Your brains would look real nice all over the front of your transport.”
Donny smiled ruefully. “Now, now, Meteor.” He raised a hand, palm out. “Can’t ya take a joke? We’re all friends here.”
“If I wanted a joke, I’d pull your pants down. Now let’s see some cash or bloody piss off!”
Donny gestured. One of his crew stepped forward with a box, opening it up so Mags could see inside.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Set it on the ground, and these crates are yours.”
The man set the box on the ground and slowly stepped away. At another gesture from Donny, two men walked up to the crate. They began pushing it on its tiny wheels across the rocky surface of the asteroid, back to their transport. Two more men rolled the second crate behind them.
Just then, Patches’ head appeared in the open doorway of the Queen Anne. She surveyed the scene and let out a small meow.
One of the men pushing the second crate looked back and laughed. “Har har har. Looks like them cats we used to have fun with back on the farm, don’t it?”
“Sure does,” said his mate. “They let out a howl something fierce when you shoot ‘em with a .22! Har har har!”
Mags frowned. “You did what?”
“Easy, Meteor. They’re just kidding around.” Donny scowled.
“Har har har,” the man continued. “Yeah, right.” He rolled his eyes. “We just kiddin’.”
His mate said, “The hell we is! Never seen a cat jump so high in my—”
Mags’ M1 interrupted his sentence. It would be the last thing he ever said, as his brain and bits of his skull exploded into the night.
The shot made Tarzi jump. He immediately sprayed his Uzi in the direction of the transport. “It’s not accurate,” Mags had instructed him earlier, “but it’s loud as fuck! So if I have to shoot any of these bastards, you just spray them with the Uzi, and don’t worry about being accurate.” He now understood why, as the men aboard the transport crouched for cover.
It only bought Mags a second, but that was enough for her to swing the butt of her M1 into the side of Donny’s head and send him to the ground. The men on the transport opened fire on her. Tarzi sprayed them with the Uzi again, feeling more relieved than insulted she was their primary target, and not him.
She dropped behind the second crate for cover, shoving to the ground the other man who had pushed it. He put his hands up, but she shot him in the face anyway. “Bloody cat-killer!”
Laser rounds shredded the opposite side of the crate, quickly destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen cigarettes and other intoxicants. Mags kicked the crate towards the transport. As the men targeted the crate, she quickly gained a line of sight over the top of it. She pumped the remaining seven rounds into their bodies. Combined with the shower of bullets from Tarzi’s Uzi, the barrage made short work of them all.
To one side of a crate, two men had fallen on their faces. They covered their heads with their hands. “We surrender,” one shouted. His cheek pressed into the barren surface of the asteroid. “We bloody surrender!”
Mags pulled a laser pistol from the holster at her waist.
“Please don’t kill us, Miss! We had nothing to do with it!”
Mags held her pistol firmly.
“Love the little kitties, we do,” said the other. “We wouldn’t hurt a hair on their heads! Believe me.”
“I got a little tabby meself back at the barracks!”
“It’s true,” exclaimed his mate. “We’d never do anything to little meow meows!”
Mags spat onto the rock. “Damn right you won’t. Get up!”
They stood.
“Tarzi! Take this box of cash and get inside, now.”
Tarzi hesitantly stepped forward. Letting the Uzi fall to his side on its sling, he picked up the box and walked silently backwards to the Queen Anne.
“Well?” Mags said to the men. “You paid for this stuff. You might as well get it aboard your vehicle.”
They wheeled the mutilated crate to their transport, not daring to look over their shoulders. Mags kept the pistol leveled at them.
“That’s it,” she said. “Go on, now.” As they loaded both the crates, she turned and boarded her ship.
“Bloody hell, Auntie,” said Tarzi as the door closed behind them.
“What?” She feigned innocence.
“You let them insult me, but not Patches?”
Mags laughed, her lips curled into a savage snarl. “Everyone’s got their limits,” she said. “And being mean to cats is mine! Let’s get off this godforsaken rock.”
Patches peeked around the corner from the armory where Mags had left the door open for her in case of emergency. Now she stepped out, rubbed the edge of the doorway with her face, and curled her tail like a question mark.
“Strap in, kitty.” Mags took her seat at the console. “Well, nephew, welcome to the smuggling business!” She loaded Slayer’s version of Violent Pacification onto the ship’s playlist, and together they all took off.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
November 2028.
“No, not like that, dork-ass!” Mags laughed.
“Have we entered the name-calling stage already?” Tarzi pulled himself up from the floor. “Have we, dick butt?”
“Hey!” Mags slugged him lightly on his arm. “You don’t have to get personal!”
He rubbed his shoulder in mock agony. “How am I supposed to learn with all this abuse? Show me one more time, okay? Please?” He lit a stolen cigarette and leaned back on the edge of the table behind him.
“Fine! Get in your trance thing or whatever you do and just watch and listen. It goes heel, toe. Heel, toe. Heel, toe.” Mags glided across the deck of the Queen Anne, right for tw
o meters, and then BAM BAM BAM she kicked out.
Tarzi rolled his eyes.
She slid in the other direction and then BAM BAM BAM. Mags’ steel-toed boot slammed into the table. It shot into the air, sending Patches and their coffee cups flying.
CRASH! “Damn it, Auntie!” He covered his head and ducked.
Patches flew in an arc to land on her chair. “Mroowwwrr!” Coffee cups smacked off the wall and shattered on the floor.
“Gah!” Tarzi covered his eyes. “Mags! That was my favorite mug!”
“Oh my god, it was just one of the white ones. We have a case of them! Patches! Sorry.” Mags walked over to pet her cat behind the ears. “Sorry, dear. I got carried away. But that’s totally how you do it. Heel toe, heel toe, heel toe. The kicks are still heel-toe beats, too. You just gotta get that—” Mags kicked the air three times again.
“Take cover,” said Tarzi. He put his arms over his head and crouched.
“Sorry!” She got some rags and a little broom and started cleaning up the shambles. “We have to try. How are you ever going to get a girlfriend if you can’t even shuffle? You gotta have the moves.”
“Is that what you’re worried about? You’re funny, Auntie.” He bowed like his Broadway show had just finished on opening night. “I thank you, for your sincere concern for my welfare, and also your grace and sensitivity in bringing these matters to my attention.”
She touched the back of her hand to her forehead and faked a swoon. “Such a gentleman!”
“Seriously, don’t worry about me. You had a boyfriend like how many times? Never.”
She sighed. “What would I do with a boyfriend? Who wants some dude hanging out on the ship all the time?”
“Oh, thanks!”
“Settle down. I didn’t mean you.” Mags sat in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I mean, we have a lot of fun. Who wants some tag-along always waiting to play kissy face?”
Patches meowed loudly. She squinted her eyes and laid her ears back. A plaintive mew squeezed out of her.
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 4
