Drifter's Run

by William C. Dietz

  Looking around, Lando saw that the settlers wore similar clothes. Their favorite combination consisted of synthetic trousers, some sort of long-sleeved shirt, and a leather jerkin.

  Lando noticed that most of the settlers wore side arms. Not the silly ones that look like jewelry, but real weapons, shiny with use and carefully maintained. Did they use them on each other or the local wildlife? Either way they made a tough-looking crowd and Lando decided to watch his step.

  At first Lando had refused to come, pleading poverty and pretending little interest. The truth was that he was secretly afraid of the bounty hunters who might be waiting for him on Dista's surface.

  But five boring days spent searching the asteroid belt for a ghost ship had left Lando yearning for some bright lights. Or even some dim ones. That, plus Melissa, had finally changed his mind.

  The campaign started soon after Cap announced Dista as their next port of call. Almost immediately Melissa began to tell Lando stories about how pretty Dista was, how friendly the settlers were, and what a good time he'd have dirtside.

  Melissa put lots of energy into her arguments, looked very sincere, and didn't fool Lando for a moment. It wasn't him she wanted, it was any adult.

  Melissa was afraid that once on the surface her father would get falling down drunk, pass out, and need help. More help than she could give. And seeing her fear Lando agreed to come.

  A row of shacks had sprung into existence to either side of the road, and up ahead more substantial buildings could be seen, their solid log walls ready to repel anything short of a force ten hurricane.

  Lando smiled when he saw the sign that identified the muddy path as Port Town's "Main Street," but the smile faded when he saw the boardwalks and the people who lined them.

  They were predators looking for prey. As different from the townspeople who moved around them as night is from day. There were con artists looking for marks, pimps looking for Johns, gamblers looking for suckers, and, yes, bounty hunters looking for him. Well, not him specifically, but anyone with a price on his head.

  They sat on rickety chairs, lounged against walls, and engaged each other in desultory conversation. But Lando noticed their eyes were everywhere, checking, comparing, and evaluating potential prey.

  Lando turned away and started a one-sided conversation with Cap. Cap's mind was elsewhere, so he answered with a series of semi-articulate grunts and seemed annoyed.

  Melissa was everywhere, running circles around them and asking all sorts of questions.

  Meanwhile Lando could sense memprinted images of his face flashing into the surrounding minds, could feel blasters lining up on his back, could hear a voice shouting, "Hey you! Pik Lando! Stop or die!"

  But the shout never came, and a few minutes later they had entered another part of town, a section where the feel was entirely different. Here huge warehouses lined both sides of the street, the mud was even deeper, and heavy equipment growled about.

  "Here it is," Cap said, coming to a sudden stop next to some wooden stairs.

  A somewhat faded sign announced, "Lois Joleen, Shipping Agent."

  Cap shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Here's hoping she's got some work for us. You two have a good time."

  "We'll see you at the port?" Melissa said hopefully.

  Lando saw the look in her eyes and knew what she was thinking. If her father met them at the spaceport, there was less chance that he'd show up drunk.

  "Naw," Cap answered carelessly. "Town would be more convenient. That way we can walk back together. Let's meet across from the Port City Mercantile at 1600 hours. Don't be late."

  Melissa smiled, apparently reassured. "We won't. Come on, Pik! I'll race you to the vidplex!"

  The two men exchanged a smile, and Cap watched for a moment as Lando followed Melissa toward the center of town. The pilot seemed like a nice sort, Mel certainly took to him, and that was good.

  Cap felt a stab of guilt. He should spend more time with her. Give her some sort of normal life where she could play with other children. Sell Junk and settle down. But that would mean becoming a ground pounder, giving up the one thing he did right, and abandoning all hope of finding the Star of Empire.

  The thoughts weighed heavily as Cap climbed the muddy stairs and paused to clean his boots.

  A section of metal grating had been installed in the middle of the top landing, along with a raised metal bar and a short section of hose. By alternately scraping his boots on the bar, and squirting them with the hose, Cap removed the worst of the mud.

  A wooden mallet hung by a length of chain from the wall. Cap used it to hit the heavy wooden door three times.

  He had no idea why Lois Joleen chose this particular kind of door knocker. It was just one of her many eccentricities, and compared to the rest, hardly worth mention.

  There was a loud click as the door lock was released. Cap gave the door a gentle push and it swung open. There was no one there to greet him nor had he expected anyone. Joleen worked alone, or Cap assumed that she did, because in all the times that he'd come to visit he'd never seen anyone else.

  Her office was full of junk, all kinds, without apparent rhyme or reason. A sort of trail led back toward Joleen's office. As Cap followed it he saw oxygen tanks, robo parts, a portable generator, coils of high-tension cable, boxes of dried fruit, hand tools, and much, much more. Did she sell it? Collect it? Cap had no idea.

  Joleen's office was a semi-open area in the sea of junk. Light was provided by an expensive lamp with a built-in antigrav unit. By way of contrast her desk was made from planks of wood laid across a couple of sawhorses and held together with a few sloppily driven nails.

  There was nothing sloppy about the computer that sat on it, however. It was a Nigunda 4001, with built-in com center and enough processing power to run the whole planet. Which, Cap reflected, she probably did, though indirectly.

  Joleen looked up at Cap's approach. She had a long, narrow face. Her bushy black eyebrows, large nose, and hard, straight mouth gave her a hard, aggressive look.

  "So, looking for some work, eh?"

  Cap gave her a twisted smile. "Maybe. Or maybe I came to see you."

  Joleen gave a snort of derision. "That'll be the day! Plop your butt down and have a drink. You still drink, don't you?" Her eyes had a hard, challenging look that Cap managed to avoid.

  "Don't mind if I do." Cap sat down on a hard stool, accepted a half-empty bottle of Dista Mist, and poured the amber fluid into a dirty glass. The whiskey went down smooth as silk and made a warm pool in Cap's stomach. He poured another glass. "So how's business?"

  Joleen shrugged and rested her chin on large, rough hands. "I can't complain. How'd the run into the belt go?"

  Cap downed the second drink and noticed that the bottle had disappeared. "Fine. We ran into some trouble going in. Rock pirates. We got through though."

  Joleen nodded. "I heard. It sounds like you've got a hot pilot."

  Cap looked at her suspiciously but it did him little good. Joleen's face was a mask. How did she know about Lando? Did she have spies among the pirates? Among the miners on Keeber's Knob? With Joleen anything was possible.

  "Yeah, he's good all right, better than we deserve. So what's up? You have anything for us?"

  Joleen stood up. She was about six-two, long and skinny, dressed frontier style in pants and jerkin. Two steps carried her to a side table. It was piled high with printouts, fire extinguishers, and reels of brightly colored wire. Joleen rummaged around for a moment, located what she was looking for, and returned.

  Cap accepted the printout, opened it up, and found himself looking at an orbital schematic for Pylax. Thanks to its rich mineral deposits Pylax had been settled before Dista and was more industrialized.

  Cap searched the schematic for some sort of meaning and came up empty. "So?"

  "So look again," Joleen said patiently. "Look at the plot points for orbital junk. You'll see quite a few."

  Cap did as he was told and f
ound she was right. Most planets had at least some junk in orbit, worn-out satellites, abandoned habitats, fuel tanks, cargo modules, wrecks, you name it. But scanning the schematic Cap saw that Pylax had more than its fair share.

  Each piece of debris was marked with a dot, an orbit designator such as OL-23, and a serial number that set it off from functional satellites, habitats, and ships. The serial numbers were consecutive but scattered all around the globe. The highest one that Cap saw was D-1,247. That meant there were at least 1,247 pieces of junk in orbit around Pylax and maybe more. More than enough to be a hazard to navigation and justify the cost of a cleanup.

  Cap saw where Joleen was headed. He looked her in the eye. "Come on, Lois… there's got to be something better than this. A tow, a salvage job, something."

  Joleen shook her head. "I'm sorry, Cap, I really am, but you know how it is. The big companies like Stellar Tug & Salvage get the really lucrative jobs. They have lots of clout and pay heavy-duty kickbacks. It stinks, but that's how the system works. Still, I wouldn't turn my nose up at the Pylax job, it pays pretty well."

  "How well is 'pretty well'?"

  "Fifty thousand credits, minus my ten percent, makes it worth forty-five. That, plus salvage rights to anything worth the trouble."

  Cap brightened a little. Most of the stuff would be close to worthless, but somewhere among those 1,247 pieces of junk there had to be a valuable nugget or two, and that could make all the difference. Some quick mental arithmetic informed him that the forty-five was just enough to pay off current debts, fuel the ship, and operate for the next two months. It wasn't great, but that's all there was.

  "Okay, I'll take it."

  "Good," Joleen said evenly. "Half up front and half on completion."

  "No way," Cap countered. "I've got expenses. Seventy-five percent up front, and twenty-five on completion."

  "You're out of your mind," Joleen responded pleasantly. "Two-thirds up front, with a third on completion."

  "Deal," Cap said, and stuck out his hand.

  Joleen pumped it once and offered a rare smile. "You drive a hard bargain, Cap, but not as hard as Mel. She'd have held out for the full seventy-five."

  Della Dee stepped into the saloon and looked around. It was one big open room, with a wooden bar that ran the length of one wall and a huge fireplace. The air smelled of peat, tobacco, and the sweet reek of dope sticks. Two dozen pairs of eyes swiveled around to look her over. Those that were male liked what they saw and took another look.

  Dee was about five-ten, shapely, and dressed in a blue one-piece ship-suit. She also wore the top half of some flat-black ceramic body armor, a slug gun in a cross-draw holster, and knee-high boots.

  But none of these things accounted for the interested looks. Those resulted from her flaming red hair. It surrounded her face like a frame, shining waves of red, which fell gently to her shoulders. That plus bright green eyes set in flawless white skin caught and held their gaze.

  Careful to avoid eye contact Dee scanned the faces and found nothing but the usual mix of barroom scum. Not too surprising all things considered.

  Dee moved and most of the eyes broke away. But a few followed, and as Dee headed toward an empty corner, she felt them running up and down her body.

  There was a small table and two chairs. Dee chose the one that would put her back to the corner. Then she waited for the first one to arrive. It didn't take long.

  He was tall and fairly good-looking, the kind that did well with women, and expected easy pickings. He had a glass of Dista Mist in each hand and put them down without asking her permission.

  "Name's Brodie… thought I'd buy you a drink."

  Dee sighed. It was always the same. The red hair was like a magnet. Or better yet a flame, a flame that attracted every insect around. "The name's Dee… and I don't want it."

  Brodie sat down. "Sure you do. It's prime stuff. Try it."

  Dee smiled. "Do you feel something touching your crotch?"

  The man frowned. "Yeah… but it doesn't feel like your hand."

  Dee nodded her agreement. "That's right, bozo. Now listen carefully. I don't want your drink. I don't want you. Go tell your friends a lie. Tell 'em I'm meeting you later, tell 'em I'm a guy in drag, tell 'em anything you want. But do it now… or I'll blow your balls off."

  Brodie gulped, turned suddenly white, and stood up. For a moment he considered some bluster, a statement to salve his wounded ego, but something about the expression on Dee's face froze the words in his throat. As he turned and walked away Brodie was organizing a story for his friends.

  The two glasses of Dista Mist were still where Brodie had left them. Not wishing to see such a valuable substance go to waste, Dee tossed one off and nursed the other.

  She gave the room one more scan, hoping to see a face that matched her memory, knowing it was unlikely. Still, a bounty hunter's work is never done, and you never know when a piece of crud will float to the surface right in front of you. The place was full of creeps but none with a price on their heads. Dee would wait.

  Waiting was something she knew how to do. As a little girl she'd waited for someone to show up at the state-run orphanage and take her home. As a marine she'd waited for a purpose that never came. As a woman she'd waited for a man who never showed up. So what the hell, she had all day, and could wait a little longer.

  Lando had expected something primitive, something in keeping with Dista's undeveloped landscape, but the vidplex was quite sophisticated. It seemed that the settlers, and especially their children, were hungry for the pleasures left behind.

  Sensing an opportunity to cash in on that hunger, a local entrepreneur had put together a full-scale entertainment center, complete with neurogames, holodramas, and compuplays.

  The compuplays were Melissa's favorite. They took place in a large open space. For a fee, each participant received an audio compulink, a costume, and a starting position somewhere in the room.

  Then, when sufficient players had been signed up, the computer would take them through a play. Sometimes it was a classic, sometimes contemporary, and sometimes entirely ad lib.

  As the young actors and actresses were prompted through their parts by the computer, holo-projected scenery appeared and disappeared, and a partisan audience clapped their approval.

  The bolder and more experienced players often made up lines of their own, and hearing this, the computer would juggle the others to match. The result was a play in which the actors could lean on the computer or use their own imaginations.

  A rather involved romantic comedy had just come to a hilarious end, and Melissa, who'd played the part of the female lead's best friend, had just rushed into the viewing stands. Lando smiled at her frenzied approach. She still wore her costume and was beaming from ear to ear. The long-flowing party dress made a swishing noise as she moved.

  "Wasn't it funny? Didn't Lisa do a nice job as Margaret? Oh, Pik, I had so much fun! I wish Daddy were here." She put a hand to her ear. "The computer says there's a mystery coming up next… can I please?"

  Lando looked at his wrist term and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Melissa. We promised to meet your father at 1600 hours and it's 1545 right now. Lose the costume and let's go."

  She tried an exaggerated pout. "Please?"

  "Nope."

  Melissa laughed. "Okay, I'll change and be right back."

  Fifteen minutes later they were ankle deep in mud out front of Port City Mercantile. There were people and shaggy-looking Dibs all over the place but no Cap. Lando looked at his wrist term. "We're only five minutes late. He'd wait for us wouldn't he?"

  Melissa frowned and looked across the street. Lando followed her gaze. The sign said, "Hizo's Saloon, The Home of Dista Mist." "Chances are he's waiting in there."

  Lando wanted to say something, to comfort Melissa, but she avoided his eyes. They were halfway across the street when the cheap glass in the saloon's front window shattered and a body came flying out.

  Dee had seen it all a
thousand times before. People get drunk, the strong pick on the weak, and fueled by liquid courage, the weak fight back. Such was the case right now.

  The whole thing had started with the arrival of a huge chrome-plated cyborg. A weird-looking thing with a human head and a sculpted body. It and a couple of ugly-looking sidekicks had taken up residence at a large table and proceeded to be as obnoxious as possible.

  This took the form of drinking, laughing, and poking fun at other customers. Though normally not a healthy thing to do, the cyborg was more than a little intimidating, and no one had chosen to take offense.

  And then a strange thing occurred. A tall, skinny man with the look of a ship's officer had entered the saloon, peered around, and taken a seat at the bar.

  Dee had given him an automatic scan, dismissed him as a law-abiding citizen, and turned her attention elsewhere. That's when the ruckus began. She missed the start of it, but heard someone shout "Watch out!" and looked over just in time to see the tall, skinny man break a bar stool over the cyborg's head.

  While this action would have killed a lesser creature, it didn't even mess the cyborg's blond hair, and he gave a roar of outrage. He charged, the man sidestepped, and all hell broke loose.

  Dee wasn't sure how or why, but within seconds the fight had spread to the rest of the bar, and she found herself on the edge of a melee. Having no desire to get beat up, especially for free, Dee stayed in her corner. That's when the face entered the saloon.

  Dee thought of him as "the face," because she couldn't remember his name, but remembered his face and knew he was wanted. The only problem was that he was on the far side of a really vicious barroom fight. Not only that, but he had a little girl with him, and that could complicate matters. Dee had done lots of things during her life… but greasing children wasn't one of them.

  Dee was on her feet and searching for a safe way across the room when the face yelled something and charged into the crowd. The little girl followed and the two of them were soon lost from sight.

  A full five minutes of confusion followed during which Dee fought her way across the room, hitting and kicking, careful to avoid the larger, more powerful combatants. And she was more than halfway there when a momentary lull in the fighting gave her a glimpse of her quarry.