Ruthless

by Jonathan Clements

  He caught a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and figured it was just the magazine sliding to a position of rest on a pile of similarly pink-heavy paper. But no, there it was again; it came from one of the monitors.

  Torogone stared in confusion at the image from camera ten, back from the depths of the ship. There was clearly a figure dragging something, and it wasn't Lev. The skin showed up dark in black and white, but the silvery topknot identified the figure as a Betelgeusian. There weren't any aliens on the Sherman crew. Who the hell was that? And what the hell was he dragging behind him?

  Even as Torogone leaned closer, the Betelgeusian wandered out of shot, and he was forced to revert back to camera nine. Torogone saw who the Betelgeusian's human cargo was, and immediately felt relieved. Tuka looked injured, but at least he was alive, and someone had got him back to the ship. Probably someone from the China lander, he guessed. Maybe they had run into trouble on the surface.

  Torogone idly began checking out feeds from the other cameras on the ship. Something wasn't right. In camera seven there was nothing. In camera six, an ugly looking mutant tramped sulkily down the corridor. In camera fifteen, two humans could be seen peering over a cargo pod in one of the holds. And in camera eleven...

  In camera eleven was the twisted corpse of Lev, lying against a bulkhead. Torogone's heart went into double-time. He was in trouble, and he didn't know what to do. Lev was dead, and the ship was full of unknown people. Torogone wasn't used to this. He was used to being the assailant who struck terror in unsuspecting eyes. He had enjoyed taking the Sherman; those few early minutes when the crew didn't know that they were under attack and were unable to do anything about it.

  He looked around the flight deck for some kind of clue, some kind of help. All he saw were the magazines that had helped him waste the last few hours, and some scattered cups of the Sherman's rather good coffee.

  One of Torogone's hands slapped onto another camera-view button, while the other scrabbled amid the bridge detritus for his gun. The ugly mutant was up to camera four now, skulking calmly along the passageway, his forehead glistening occasionally in the overhead lights. But in camera three Torogone saw a giant of a man with a huge hammer on his back, aiming a gun up the corridor towards the bridge, scowling in intense concentration.

  Torogone finally found his own gun, one of the small ceramic pistols favoured by all in Tuka's gang. The feel of the grip in his hand made him feel a little more secure, although he dreaded to think how many rounds he had left. Camera two showed a man with tight curly hair and featureless white eyes, darting out from cover and running at something.

  It took a moment for Torogone to work out the alignments. The cameras counted down towards the bridge, and camera one was focussed on the bridge itself. Which meant...

  Torogone stabbed his finger down on the button that secured the bridge doors, but they were already sliding open. He thrust out his arm and squeezed off a round through the open gap, the ceramic bullet shattering on a bulkhead somewhere beyond the door.

  Someone swore loudly, and a hand holding a Westinghouse snaked around the gap. Torogone stared at the large weapon, the preferred firearm of bounty hunters. It was not something he had ever seen aimed at himself before. He always associated the Westinghouse with high-energy shoot-outs with rival gangs. It was something he had clutched in his hand when he sneaked up on parties of imposter-gangs and other low-life scum. It was a friendly gun to him, not one that he could ever imagine firing at him.

  A finger pulled the Westinghouse trigger, and the attacker fired blind into the bridge, letting off a salvo of rounds. Torogone toppled backwards from his chair and felt something gnaw into his back on the ground. He hated not knowing what the sneck was going on, hated the idea that these men were attacking him and wouldn't even explain why. He didn't want to die without a reason. He didn't deserve to die. He was just doing his job.

  "I surrender!" he shouted, sighting carefully along the rudimentary gauges on his pistol. "Don't kill me. We can talk about this."

  A giant ham of a Viking hand grabbed at the edge of the door and yanked at it heftily. Torogone saw his chance and let off a round at the hand. But the ceramic pistols weren't designed for delicate sniping work. They were simple constructions designed for criminals with the aid of surprise. The sights were off by a mile, and the slug shattered on the door itself.

  "Ow," cried a Viking voice, more out of surprise than pain.

  "That's it," said someone else.

  Torogone saw the man with the curly hair poke his head down low on the door at knee-level. It was the last place Torogone was expecting to see an attacker. Torogone had been aiming up at head height, so he dragged his arms down, willing them to move fast. But today of all days, fast was not enough.

  Torogone stared into the double muzzle of a Westinghouse blaster and started to say something. He opened his mouth, but saw the flash from the gun as it fired at him. There was a second round, but Torogone never saw it. By the time the second bullet had driven into his brain, Torogone was dead. His body would twitch for a few seconds more, and his heart would uselessly pump blood around his system for about the same time. But Torogone was a goner.

  Johnny didn't waste time looking at the last of the bandits. He had other priorities.

  "Blarg," he said. "Get up here. Leave Malcolm and get up here, now."

  Johnny's first salvo had wrecked the comms console, but radio was no use in the Kajaani system anyway. Wulf sat at the console and looked for the easy buttons, the ones that put up the Idiot Screen.

  "I'm firing the attitude jets!" yelled Johnny. He had to squint a little at the screen, but he knew what the screen was saying. Is sir sure sir wants to fire all the attitude jets? If sir does so, the different retro rockets will cancel each other out, and the ship will simply stay on the same course.

  "Sneck off," said Johnny to the machine.

  There was a distant rumble along the ship, not from the sound of the jets, but from the vibrations they caused as they shook the ship in all angles. To an outside observer, the Sherman appeared to suddenly put out flares in all directions. Johnny hit the fire button a second and third time.

  Squid and Blarg arrived, the latter out of breath from running the rest of the length of the ship.

  "Eww," said Blarg, looking at the mess. "Is all this blood his?" he asked, pointing at the dead body on the floor.

  "Don't think so," said Johnny, his finger jabbing the fire button at regular intervals. "Someone tell me if Isaiah is signalling!"

  Wulf and Squid began slapping each other away from the scanner desk as they tried to call up an image of the China.

  "Blarg," said Johnny. "Get us out of here."

  "Anywhere in particular?" asked Blarg, trying to push past Wulf to the Idiot Screen.

  Someone - maybe Wulf, maybe Squid - finally called up the screen display. It wasn't anything quite as spectacular as the observation screen in the lounge in the China. The crew of the Sherman didn't have the time to leisurely watch the skies; they had had a job to do, and the screen reflected that. It was a simple area less than three-metres squared at the front of the ship. It shimmered into life, showing part of the white curve of the ice planet, and beyond it the livid red bulk of Kajaani's sun itself, fuming with wisps of trailing fire. The star really did not look healthy, speckled with sunspots that massed together and broke apart even as the men watched. Chunks of piercing white light appeared among the blackness, rolling away to form more cascades of red and orange. Closer to the planet itself, something small and metallic was twinkling in the reflected glare. Its orbit had taken it on a slightly different course, and the China was barely a speck in the distance, a couple of miles further around the curvature of the planet.

  Suddenly, the far-off speck lit up, plumes of flame heading in all directions.

  "He's firing his jets," said Squid.

  The assembled bounty hunters waited for a moment, watching expectantly. Even Johnny tried to see the scr
een, scowling intensely at what appeared to him to be little more than a blank piece of wall.

  The China's jets fired again, and again, at one-second intervals.

  "He has seen us," said Wulf.

  "Cool," said Johnny. "Blarg, kick in the warp drive."

  "To Mars?" said Blarg, seeing that the easiest course to follow would be the Sherman's original trajectory, still held in the navigation computer's memory.

  "Sounds good to me," said Johnny.

  "And make it quick," added Nigel, arriving at the door, the Boy in tow.

  "Jah," said Wulf. "I am not liking the look of der big red star."

  "Sneck the star," said Nigel. "They've turned off the stasis field. Ruthie's going to wake up in less than two hours."

  "Mars it is," said Johnny with a nod to Blarg. Isaiah was watching now, he would see the Sherman as it charged into warp. He would know what to do.

  "Kicking in," said Blarg, hitting the launch sequence.

  "At last," said Squid, "we're going home."

  "Yeah," said Johnny, not all that enthusiastically.

  The image on the screen shivered and bent as the warp coils extended a field around the Sherman. The China was obscured beneath a whirling hail of static, and then Kajaani and the ice world were gone, replaced by the multicoloured storm of warp transit. Blarg deftly turned off the screen before it drove everyone mad.

  "We're safe?" said the Boy, quietly.

  "With any luck," said Wulf.

  "With any luck," said Johnny, sourly.

  Back in the Kajaani system, the Sherman's disappearance did not go unnoticed. A jubilant Isaiah called down to the passengers that it was time to go. This annoyed them intensely, as they had been enjoying an open bar for five hours, and most of them could barely remember their names, let alone the recent trauma of the attempted hijacking. There was also considerable disappointment that they would not be able to look any more at the boiling mass of Kajaani itself, which was presenting quite a spectacular light show.

  From the bar area, Isaiah heard a few plaintive cries, asking if they could just stay a little bit longer, just another hour or so. But Isaiah was very firm. It was time to leave. Whatever it was that Johnny and his gang wanted to achieve, they had somehow managed. Those people with luggage on the Sherman would not have to fill in insurance paperwork. And for Isaiah, the time would soon come when he would be reunited with Isaiah Junior, who, as much as they bickered and fought, he loved more than anything else in his life.

  Humming a song from Old Earth, Isaiah hit the warp button, and gently faded down the images on the giant observation screens. There were howls of annoyance and disappointment from the passengers, but that was life. Isaiah really wanted to get out of there.

  Had the surviving bandits on the surface of the planet been watching the sky, they would have seen a brief green and purple flash in the sky, as the China sparked out of existence from the Kajaani system. But the men weren't looking. They were feverishly trying to repair their ship. They figured it wouldn't take much longer, and then they would take off, get back into orbit, and wreak furious revenge upon the bounty hunters who had duped them.

  Seventeen seconds later, the sun exploded.

  LOVELESS

  Mars was low-rent. With uncountable worlds among trillions of suns, there were plenty of Earth-like atmospheres to be had. If you didn't mind losing a few creature comforts on the lawless frontier, there was a myriad of worlds to choose from. But as far as the Sol system went, there was the blue-green jewel of Earth itself, and the other rocks in the system never quite made the grade.

  The only people who made a big deal about the Sol system as a whole were tour operators who wanted to milk their marks for as much as they could. "See the rings of Saturn!" they would proclaim, when far more impressive orbital adornments could be found near Spica. "Explore the Jovian moons!" they cried, as if anyone gave a sneck - Sirius Beta had three gas giants with a dozen moons each, many of which had breathable atmospheres. And Mars was even worse. Copywriters struggled to come up with decent slogans to entice the gullible. "Come see the red planet!" they would say, as if there weren't a dozen redder planets elsewhere, and more interesting-looking purple ones. Surprisingly, a few geek tourists were tempted by "Hey, come and laugh at a failed terraforming exercise." but not all that many.

  Mars was cheap. Mars was the place from where ships warped out if they couldn't afford docking fees for Earth. Mars was where the bucket-shop spacelines dumped you if you didn't read the small print about their bargain offers from Sirius to Sol, marooning travellers a few million miles from their planned destination, and forcing them to pony up for a shuttle that cost so much they might as well have flown with Spiral Corp in the first place.

  It was a loveless world. It was Terra's unlucky sister, the plain one, the wallflower; the planet without a real atmosphere or any nice beaches. Lowell City's buildings consisted of a prefab spread of fast-food franchises and gift shops, feeding a lifestyle of late-night arrivals, last-minute souvenir purchases, and sordid encounters. It was where people went to have operations they didn't want to talk about. It had a bunch of banks that held money Terran police would like to ask questions about. For all these reasons and more, it was a place where "stuff" tended to happen.

  Jealous lovers got into fights, bar room brawls broke out between businessmen and gangsters, movie stars checked in for rehab and came out with new noses and tighter chins. Mars was a place to hide, and a place to look for trouble.

  Today, it was also a sight for some very sore eyes.

  The Sherman and the China set down on neighbouring launchpads on the outskirts of town, amid a cluster of outside-broadcast vans.

  Before the red dust had even settled, the Boy was running down the steps and across to the other ship. He pushed past the journalists and waiting ambulances, running through the growing crowd of survivors from the China. All he could hear was the piercing scream of the ship as its motors cycled down into rest mode.

  "Dad," he called, seeing Isaiah's chair being set down at the base of the steps.

  Isaiah chuckled and held out his open arms. The Boy ran to him and engulfed the wizened old man in his embrace, bent almost double to reach him, but happy nonetheless. Neither of them paid much heed to the biting cold, or the thin air that forced them to gasp, exultant, for breath.

  Squid and Blarg were more interested in the waiting journalists who were eager to know the exact story behind the daring passenger action on the China. They carted the unconscious form of Dr Malcolm down the steps, pausing only to flash grins at the cameras. Dr Malcolm added to the entertainment value of the moment by coming woozily to his senses, allowing Blarg to grab him by the scruff of his neck and propel him towards the waiting camera lenses. Since Malcolm was still in his bulky environmental gear, he looked far heavier and menacing than he really was. His glasses had fallen off somewhere inside the ship, and his forehead was clammy with sweat that glared in the lights. Malcolm squinted into the amassed lamps and protruding microphones, trying to turn his face away from the lights.

  "Here he is," beamed Blarg proudly. "Tuka himself. Caught in the act."

  A flurry of questions erupted from the reporters, though Johnny didn't catch any of them from his location.

  "Yes!" shouted Squid at the waiting cameras. "Yes, it was a tough call, but I knew I had to do what I had to do."

  "And so did I," added Blarg, yelling above the noise. Before long, the two bounty hunters were shepherding their press pack away from the landing pad, pulling along a fat, roiling caterpillar of newsmen and camerabots, in search of better sound and a nice background image of the ships. A lone Tammerfortian, highly incongruous this far from home, keened a lone dirge into a camera, reporting the one hundred per cent casualty rate on the China of her fellow bird-people for an audience back home.

  Johnny watched Squid and Blarg disappearing out of the corner of his eye with their arrestee in tow. Police vehicles and MBI cars were already pulling up at
the landing site, ready to hustle Malcolm to the station for questioning. As a suspected leader of the pirates, the bounty on him was going to be high, especially if he really did turn out to be Tuka. But Johnny didn't do press, and he didn't do media. The last thing he needed was his face plastered all over the networks. It would only take one holoheuristic search of "Alpha, Johnny", to reveal that his real identity was that of "Kreelman, John", and that was the last thing he needed. It would have been unwelcome attention both for him and the woman in the stasis booth, who was now going by the name of-

  "Webster!" shouted Nigel to the paramedics. "I'm Nigel Webster. This is her."

  Several ambulances waited by the landing area, bobbing gently as the Martian breeze nudged their gravity fields. Several were already surrounded by knots of confused passengers, eagerly dosing up on cures for shock, trauma, minor cuts and bruises. A fair number had already self-medicated by drinking themselves insensate in the free bar - Johnny saw several popping hangover cures while they huddled in their silver-foil emergency capes.

  Wulf took the lowermost end of the stasis tube. Johnny and Nigel held it at the top of the steps while Wulf carefully edged backwards onto the Lowell City asphalt.

  "Mister Webster," called a paramedic. "So glad you could make it!" He was one of two men in white and matching crew cuts standing close by, eagerly waiting to become useful.

  "What is with der Webster?" hissed Wulf, straining with the effort of handling half the heavy, coffin-like container.

  "This close to Earth," said Nigel, "I'm not a Less."

  "Snecking-A," said Johnny.

  "The Webster passport won't get me offworld again, but it'll get me in," said Nigel. His voice rose suddenly as he was forced to hang onto more of the stasis chamber, Wulf's feet now backing away a little too fast across the flat ground.