Bloody Knuckles (And Other Tales)

by T. W. Anderson

  He stared at me pointedly. “What do you think the point of this is?” He raised the bottle.

  I chuckled. “Alright, I admit, a good drink can turn the tide for a night or two, but let’s be honest. You’ve been at this for three months straight.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and smoothed his thinning hair back. “As long as I’m sober when I’m on the clock, why does it matter?”

  He had a point there. There was nothing in his contract that said he was bound to any code of conduct outside of his specific duties when that time of the year rolled around. Not like the Tooth Fairy. Poor girl had to stay in character year-round. She called me in five or six times a year anymore. Problem was the Fix wasn’t lasting as long as it used to. Tolerance, I guess. But she had nothing on Jesus. Personally, I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he offered to take all the sins of the world on himself. The Fix didn’t last for more than a day or two for him. But believe me, he knew how to enjoy the time off. I’d probably be sued ten ways from Sunday if I ever showed anyone those spring break photos from Mexico. “I can’t disagree,” I replied. “But there is your wife to consider. And the elves. Not to mention all those little kids out there.

  He grunted his reply and smoked his cigarette in silence. I followed suit and nursed my shot.

  *

  “So you are saying you can’t help him?” She was disappointed. It was written all over her face.

  “Are you familiar with the old saying, ‘you can only help someone as long as they are willing to help themselves’?”

  She nodded her head. The wind was brisk, and cold. Several tendrils of her hair were whipping in the breeze. I pulled the collar of my coat up higher and glanced towards the barn as the sleigh rolled out, several reindeer pulling it. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, ma’am.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not so sure.”

  I took a chance, and reached out to put my hand on her shoulder. I Pushed. “A wise man once said, ‘if it ain’t broke it don’t need fixing’. And he’s not broken, not at all.”

  She nodded. It was a small Fix, but it would help. She didn’t need to know that the whiskey only affected him as long as he wanted to let it, that he could shut off the effects with the flick of a switch, like a light-bulb. Every dog needs his day. I patted her on the shoulder and smiled. “He’ll be here whenever you need him, and that’s what matters most.”

  She smiled slowly. “I suppose so,” she said quietly. “I suppose so.”

  The low creak of leather harnesses and the soft crunch of the runners on snow came up behind us. I turned. He’d showered finally, and put on some more suitable clothing. It wasn’t his seasonal fare, but it was similar enough that anyone who looked closely would have recognized him. Especially with the sleigh. He gave a deep laugh as he looked down at his wife, the twinkle in his eyes lighting up merrily. “Give me a kiss, you sexy thing,” he growled affectionately at her.

  I turned my eyes politely. His hands were going places not meant for my view. I lit a cigarette and tried to ignore her squeals and giggles.

  “Let’s go, lad,” he said to me as he finished. I turned and stepped up into the sleigh, took my seat beside him. He waved to his wife as she stood in the snow. “I’ll be back in a few hours, wife.”

  “You better,” she replied with a smile.

  He shook the reins and we were airborne. Strangely enough there was no breeze despite the obvious speed. I took a drag on my smoke and marveled.

  “Want a drink?” he asked.

  I looked over. There was a grin on his face. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t drink and drive?” I replied.

  He handed me the reins. “Then drive.” He took a large swallow. “Wake me when we get there.”

  “Get where?”

  He belched loudly. “Jesus called. He asked if we could meet him in Milan.”

  I cursed loudly. Never a dull moment.

  Bloody Knuckles: A Bounty Hunter’s Tale

  By T.W. Anderson

  Bloody Knuckles initially started off as a random bounty hunter story, but after I had so much fun working with the Jeffrey Donnivan character in the Richter tale, I decided I wanted to mold it around that character. Which in turn wound up being the start of a love affair which has continued since then; you’ll be seeing more of Donnivan in upcoming anthologies, and perhaps even a novel at some point. This story started in 2008, and sat in my Google Drive until 2018, when I expanded and adapted it for this anthology as part of my Patreon project.

  It was a short, painful breath, one that had my lungs seizing up a millisecond after I tried to inhale. I managed a gasping wheeze before the pain nearly paralyzed me, and the taste of iron and salt filled the back of my throat. There was a moment of clarity then, and the whole room stood still. There was a woman off in the corner with red streaks in her black hair, a smile on her lips that didn’t make it to her eyes as she rested on the arm of the man paying for her drinks for the evening. He couldn’t take his eyes of her breasts, and neither could the three men seated at the table across from them, and from the way she was smiling that was just how she liked it. The rest of the tavern was a blur, but that was mostly because my head was still spinning and they were the last ones my eyes registered after the kick landed in the center of my chest and knocked me back against the wall where I was now crumpled. I spat blood and everything reeled back into place.

  At least two ribs were broken. I could feel them moving as I took another breath, this time slow and careful. The leering bulk who had previously planted foot in chest was looming over me, his boot raised to cave in my jaw, whilst his two friends stood back slightly, grins on their faces. I smiled a blood-stained grin back as I palmed the flasher that was strapped to my right wrist. There was a muffled whuff like the sound of a candle being blown out and Rib Cracker’s chest suddenly had a three-inch wide hole in it and his friends were covered in little bits of his insides, their smiles frozen in shock. I didn’t bother trying to stand. It hurt too damn much to breathe, let alone make an attempt to run. If they still wanted to try, I could probably shoot at least one more of them before they got to me.

  It took a few seconds before the screaming started. I’d heard it more than once, the reactionary wailing that is the evidence of a virgin pair of eyes facing the raw violence of the universe. The right-most of the grinning idiots was trying to find his voice, his mouth gaping open and shut like a fish out of water, and the left one’s face had turned a shade of green that mirrored what came out of his mouth as he doubled over. It was obvious they weren’t going to be of any more issue, so I pushed the flasher back into its forearm holster as Rib Cracker’s body slumped to the floor. I had the sudden urge for a smoke, even though I hadn’t had one in nearly a decade, and I grunted while I pushed myself into a more comfortable position and waited for the authorities to arrive.

  “You do realize that you are supposed to register with our office before collecting bounties planetside.” It was a question, but he phrased it like a statement.

  I risked a short breath. The injection the medic had given me had kicked in, because the movement of bones grating together in my chest that my brain registered, my nerves didn’t feel. I moved my eyes away from what the medic was doing to my chest to focus on the investigator. “Technically I wasn’t here to collect. I just wanted to ask a couple of friendly questions.”

  “Right.” I could tell from his tone that he didn’t believe me, and he didn’t really care. He was just here as a formality, because someone higher up the food chain had told him to put in an appearance. He nudged the body with the toe of his right boot. “Real friendly-like.”

  I started to shrug, then thought better of it. The drugs weren’t that good. “Check the cameras if you like.”

  Technically, I hadn’t come to collect. My initial thought had been to case the place, see if my local contact’s information had panned out regarding the location of the bounty. I hadn’t planned on act
ually bringing him in, not like this. It was a recon run, and like all such runs there was merely the contingency that if the odds were in my favor I’d take the risk of civilians getting caught in the crossfire. The only problem was the mark had made me the moment I walked in the door, and I hadn’t even had the opportunity to take a seat, much less order a drink and blend in, before his foot had met my chest and the rest was what was now lying on the floor.

  He merely grunted. Big fellow, with a jaw like an ox and a frame to match it. I’d seen his type on a hundred backwater planets before, as well as back in the army. Good at taking orders, but not for much else. Rarely anything between the ears, but usually good in a brawl. He carried himself well enough, and the way he had his weapon situated on his hip suggested he had military training. Probably a five year term, then back to his home planet for a working retirement roughing up the locals. Beats shipping out to a hundred planets as a lifer, risking a bullet or laser or worse in the outer rings. His jaw clenched as he stood there, eying the body. Finally he turned back to me, his thumbs tucked into his belt. “I suppose you’ve got the permits.” Another question, framed as a statement.

  I pulled the holo card from my pocket and ran my thumb over the indicator. Green mist gave way to an image of the bounty report with the face of Rib Cracker at the top. Ox Jaw gave it a cursory glance, but it was obvious he didn’t read it. He was just yanking my chain at this point, proving that he was the top dog and I was sniffing around his turf. He didn’t have anything on me and he knew it. Plus, Galex jurisdiction gave me the right of way. Not that I expected any different. It was the same thing on every backwater shithole like this one. Local authority spends a few years being the only one anyone ever reports to or looks up to, and it sort of fades away into the background, that whole chain of command thing. Smarts a little when you are reminded just exactly where you are on the totem pole. I didn’t blame him in the least. It was just the nature of things.

  The world spun with the sharp hiss of the medic injecting me with something else. Ox Jaw frowned as he looked at the bodies, made like he was going to say something, then shut his mouth again. I winced as the medic sprayed curafoam onto my torso; it was freezing cold, and hardened nearly instantly into a thin membrane that covered my skin and kept my innards from moving around too much. “You’ll need to give that a few days,” the medic said, his voice emotionless. He pulled a plastic container out of his bag and tossed it in my lap. “Bone menders mixed with morpha. Take one every twelve hours.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t the first time I’d had a target get uppity on me. Though it was the first one in a long time. I grunted as I pushed myself back up against the wall and pulled my shirt back down. Ox Jaw was still frowning. I could see it in his eyes; he wanted to bust me so bad it likely hurt his balls, but he had nothing on me, and he knew it. I took a deep breath and made it the rest of the way to my feet. “Anything else, officer?”

  He gave me a few seconds of silence before cursing under his breath. “I’ve got my eye on you,” was his only reply. He spat into the gaping hole in Rib Cracker’s chest cavity and turned his back on me.

  It was a long walk back to my ship, longer than I remembered it being, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I stopped more than once to catch my breath. Five times, in fact. The last time it hurt bad enough that I nearly passed out right there in the street. The medic hadn’t specified how long to wait after whatever he had injected me with, so I took one of the menders and swallowed it down. By the time I made the ramp, the world was spinning and there were all sorts of pretty lights across the horizon, and somewhere in the background I could hear a woman’s voice, nagging at me about getting into trouble again. I embraced the mattress, and let the darkness take me.

  *

  “Jeffrey, do you remember that talk we had about getting blood on my upholstery?”

  I instantly regretted letting out a groan as I finally came back to consciousness and leveraged myself into a more comfortable position in my bed. She had obviously been waiting for me to show signs of life. And she had said Jeffrey, not Jeff. Ugh. “It was out of my control, Renée.”

  “Because taking a shower and placing your clothing into the washing machine is so difficult and so obviously out of your control.”

  I groaned again, internally this time, and rubbed my eyes. My entire chest felt like it was on fire, and every breath hurt. I pried my eyelids open and looked around, found the pill bottle on the bedstand. It only took a few moments for the effect to kick in, and the fire died to a dull throb. My skin itched like crazy beneath the curafoam, but I would just have to deal with it until the stuff came off on its own, usually within five to six days. “Is there any way this goes where you don’t act like my mother?”

  She snorted, the lights flickering as she did so. “Perhaps if you acted like an adult, we wouldn’t have to have these conversations.”

  I sighed and gently swung my feet out over the bed. “Your wish is my command,” I replied. I stripped down to my skin, tossed my clothes on the bed, then pulled the bloodstained sheets from the bed.

  “Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind, Jeffrey.”

  I rolled my eyes and hoped her cameras didn’t catch sight as I wadded the sheets and clothes into a ball and placed it into the washer. The machine whirred to life and I made my way to the shower. The water kicked on, steaming hot, before I made it all the way there, and I smiled slightly. She wasn’t completely pissed, then.

  The water burned in all the right places, and the morpha had kicked in completely by the time I finished. The curafoam helped, but I still kept my movements to a minimum drying off with the towel. There was a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs waiting on the table when I entered the kitchen, and the holo screen was already scanning local news sites. I hid my smile behind the mug as I took a sip and sat.

  I was halfway through my eggs when I heard the soft ding that signified an incoming message. “It’s Barry,” came Renée’s voice, and the screen flickered to show his bearded mug.

  I swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “What news?”

  “Are you still on Rios?”

  I nodded. “Bit of a rough day yesterday, so yeah.”

  “Good. Got something in the area that might interest you.” He paused, bent forward slightly to insert a mem chip, followed by a popup asking if I would accept the incoming transmission.

  I pressed yes and the file came through. I whistled as I saw the amount they were offering, and then frowned as I saw who was offering the bounty. My frown deepened as I saw the image of the woman they were hunting. I flicked my finger and the image changed back to Barry’s face, a smirk barely hidden behind his beard. “Nice try, Barry.”

  “What?” His tone was all innocent, and I glared back at him through the vid.

  “She made that choice on her own. Let her deal with the consequences.”

  “Come on. You know she’ll never make it off planet without our help.”

  I snorted. “Clearly you don’t know her as well as you think.”

  “Well to be fair, I wasn’t the one sleeping with her.”

  I continued glaring.

  “Seriously, Jeff. You saw who placed that bounty.”

  I took a drink of my coffee, regretted it instantly as the hot liquid singed my lips and tongue. The Reman Cartel were ruthless. Barry wasn’t wrong about that. On my best days I would think twice about working with them; one wrong step, and you were on their shit list. They had so many sub-clauses in their contracts, it could take a month just for a lawyer to wrap his head around them all.

  So what had she done to make it to their list? I had a sudden image of her face, that sardonic grin, her pearly white teeth, those flashing green eyes against pale skin, framed by those jet-black waves of hair that my fingers used to tangle themselves in. I shook my head, took another sip of coffee, cursed again as I forgot about my burned lips. “Gods dammit, Barry.”

  He grinned. “I knew you’d come around.”r />
  I grunted in reply as I waved the call off and stared into the bowels of my ship, breakfast forgotten.

  “She could get you killed, Jeffrey.” Renée’s voice came out of the silence several minutes later, thick with concern.

  I nodded. With the Reman Cartel involved, that was very much a possibility.

  “You’re in no shape to get involved.”

  I didn’t answer, instead pulling up the file Barry had sent me. It flickered to life on the holo screen. I scanned it again, ignoring those eyes as they looked out from the picture, found what I was looking for towards the bottom of the file. “Renée, set course for Pithe.”

  She sighed. “Fine. But at least take yourself to your bed and let the meds do their work. It’s at least twenty hours until we’re planetside, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  You win some, you lose some. I wolfed down the rest of my eggs, made my way to my chambers, and passed out.

  *

  I woke to the jostling of the ship settling into her berth on Pithe. The bone menders were doing their job, and I no longer felt anything grinding about within my innards when I moved, though it still hurt like hell until the morpha kicked in. The shower was hot, breakfast was toast with goat cheese and strips of medium-rare steak with jet-black coffee, and Renée was back to calling me Jeff. All was right in the world and on my ship.

  Until I opened up the holo and saw Sal’s face plastered across every news stream coming out of Pithe. Something about an assassination roughly five hours ago, and every authority on the planet was out for blood. I sighed and took a drink of my coffee.

  “A diversion, no?”

  I nodded. “She’s not a killer, so yeah. They’re trying to flush her out.”

  A moment of whirs and beeps and hums. “There appear to be seven other ships inbound to this location. I recognize both Derin’s and Mattock’s among them.”