by Sam Renner
THUNK
A limb above him crashes to the ground, one end charred and black by the blaster bolt. He doesn’t wait this time. He spins out from behind the tree, blaster firing red hot. The shooter runs higher up the hill. Nixon tries to follow and can’t tell if any of his shots connect. The shooter drops behind another rock, and Nixon finds a spot of his own.
His heart is about to beat through his cloak. He’s struggling to get a good breath. He sneaks a look back up the hill. The setting sun catches something on the shooter's gun, and he sees another flash. This one just before another shot is fired. He curls up and makes himself small. The shot passes just above him.
He uncurls onto his belly and spies the shooter again. They are so close now. The fight feels somehow fair at this point. He can look at the shooter. The shooter can see him. Let the better one win. If for some reason he dies here he’s OK with that. But there’s something, he doesn’t know, shameful about being taken out from a distance. It’s too easy?
The shooter isn’t visible, ducked back behind their rock, he assumes; he hopes. So he aims, and he waits. It doesn’t take long. The shooter pops up, long gun pressed to their shoulder. There’s little more than that visible when Nixon fires.
It’s four shots in rapid succession. Two of them connect.
10
The impact of the blasts spins the shooter back to the ground and behind the rock. Nixon steps out, his own blaster drawn and trained on anything that might step out in front of him.
He takes cautious steps forward. He knows that two of his shots hit the shooter, but he doesn’t know what kind of armor whoever this is might be wearing. Because if they are armored then the blasts will have stunned but not wounded. And that means this battle is paused; it’s not over.
Nixon cuts a wide path around the rock where the shooter is positioned, and that’s when he sees the gun. It’s been blown from the shooter’s hands and up the hill out of immediate reach. It’s a long gun; he knew that. But it’s a gun he knows. It’s one he’s seen before. It’s Laana’s gun.
He’s suddenly back on Umel. He’s standing outside his ship the night she saved him, taking out two goons who’d been hoping for a chance to make him a mess in the street. She’s leaning on the gun, the barrel still warm, and she’s smiling at him. He thanks her, and she tells him it’s not safe for him there. She helped. She was a friend. So why is she here?
He calls out: “Hello?”
Only a moan returns.
Nixon continues to circle the rock. His blaster still drawn, his brain still working out all of the possible outcomes here. That’s Laana’s gun, but is that Laana? Whoever this is, do they have a small blaster, just waiting for enough of him to come into view? If they do, is he fast enough on the trigger to defend himself? Can he shoot someone who’s injured, even when they clearly wanted him dead?
“Hello?” he says again.
Nothing for a moment then “Hey, Trevor.”
It’s her. It’s Laana.
“That your only gun?” he asks, able to see her legs now, stretched out in front of her.
She moans before saying “You know I don’t like those small things.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t have one on you as protection.”
He finally comes around and can see her face. It’s grimaced, but she tries to smile through it. Her hands are empty. She’s leaned her back against the rock, and her whole left side is bloody.
“You got me,” she says and wipes a hand across her shoulder and upper arm. Blood smears and reveals two ragged holes where Nixon’s blaster bolts have blown through her. New blood quickly covers them, and pain wrinkles Laana’s face.
Nixon keeps the blaster aimed, unshaking, at her chest. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at her.
Her breath catches, and she coughs before saying “How have you been?”
Nixon doesn’t laugh.
“I don’t understand.” His finger wants to squeeze the trigger. All the small muscles in his hand want to contract, paint this big rock with Snapsit blood. Leave her slowly dying with a hole in her chest. Just tuck the blaster in his waistband and walk cooly back to his ship. She’s left him with a lot of work to do inside.
He doesn’t though. He fights it, and the urge is gone after a moment. She’s clearly no longer a threat. Still, he takes a few steps to her gun and kicks it so it starts tumbling down the side of the hill. It rolls a few dozen feet before coming to rest against a rock that’s half the size of the one holding Laana up. He turns back to her and she’s staring at her gun, barely visible now in the near dark of another Makurra night.
“I don’t understand,” he says again.
“My bag.” She looks to the sling bag sitting on her chest. “Look inside.”
Nixon begins to bend down then stops.
She sees his hesitation. “It’s just my reader. Pull it out.”
He reaches inside and grabs her reader. The screen is still lit bright. On it is his image. Below it is a number: 100,000 credits.
Wow.
“That number sets me up for life. I quit living in half-finished towers. I quit having to chase bounties. This wasn’t personal.”
Nixon is still looking at the reader. The image is the one he’d seen on the boards, him leaving the spaceport on Exte. Looking behind him. Nice clear shot of his face.
“It’s personal to me.”
He tosses the reader back toward her and it lands on her stomach. She struggles to get it back in her bag.
“How’d you …”
“How’d I find you?”
Nixon nods yes and puts the blaster at his side. In his hand but at his side.
“I’ve been playing this game a while now. I’m not stupid.” She pauses and catches her breath. “I can tell when someone’s an easy mark and when someone’s not. I can tell when to stalk and wait for someone to get more valuable.”
“That’s kind of ruthless.”
“It’s a business. But I could tell by watching you back on Umel that you were going to be tough to bring in. If you could …”
Light bulbs start going off for Nixon. “If I could survive Roland.”
He’s back in the dark alley. The water is crashing against the docks on the other side of the warehouse. He’s looking at a grinning Roland as he sends two mountainous goons toward him, ready to bring him in. Then both of those goons get burned through by a blaster bolt from a gunman he couldn’t see at the time. Roland backs away and somehow he’s safe.
“Yep,” she says and adjusts, pushing herself up with her elbows. “He takes you in then …”
“You lose this opportunity.”
She nods.
They sit in the dark for a moment. The wind comes down the hill and ripples Nixon’s cloak. “I thought you liked me. I thought we were friends. Or friendly.”
“We were. We are. You haven’t shot me yet. Well …” she looks at her shoulder and runs a finger over one of the wounds. She grimaces with the pain. “You haven’t shot me again.”
Nixon raises the blaster again, and once again it takes everything inside of him to keep from squeezing that trigger and walking away from her and from this. But he can’t. So, instead he stands and begins walking a small circle in front of her.
“But how’d you find me?”
“That night when I met you at your ship, I stuck a tracker in one of the engines. I hadn’t planned on seeing you at all, but it took me too long to find a good spot on that dumb ship to place the tracker so you wouldn’t find it when you were trying to get it flight-worthy.”
Nixon slowly nods. That makes sense.
“You’ve been tracking me ever since. And you were the one that followed me into atmo here.”
“But I like you. Part of me is glad I missed.”
Nixon starts walking a slow circle again. The next step is his, and he doesn’t know what to do.
“I should kill you. Right here. Right now.”
He circles in front of her a
gain.
“That’s what I should do. So, why is it so hard to just do it?”
She doesn’t respond. Nixon stops and lifts the blaster. He aims it at the center of her chest. He lets it hang there a moment. She’s not looking at him. She’s looking at his hand, at his finger on the trigger. She isn’t breathing; she’s waiting.
He stares down at the blaster and stands stock still in front of her. He closes his eyes, pinches them shut tight, then drops his hand.
He screams, and it echoes up and down the hillside.
“Why can’t I do this? You want me dead. Why can’t I kill you?”
She gives him a look that says “I don’t know.”
He drops to a knee in front of her.
“So, if I can’t kill you, what should I do?”
She thinks for a moment then says: “Cut me in. Whatever this is that you’re doing, let me help.”
END
Continue Trevor Nixon’s Galaxy-Hopping Adventure in Episode 5
Galaxy Run:
Otanzia
Ever since he started this run across the galaxy, all Trevor Nixon’s wanted is to know what’s in this case he’s been asked to deliver. It cost his best friend his life. It’s nearly cost Nixon his own. What’s inside that can be that important?
Today, he finds out.
GET IT NOW
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Also from Sam Renner
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For most, Transfer Station Zulu is a point on a map, a single stop in a long journey to somewhere else. For Jim Lebbe, Zulu is a snare from which he can't shake free. He’s head of security on this quiet space station at the edge of the galaxy, but all he wants is to get back home and repair the broken relationships that landed him here. But home is 25,000 light years away and he has a contract that says he won’t be going anywhere soon.
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For the pilot of the rogue ship that’s just pinged Zulu, the transfer station is a last hope. If no one answers her call for help she drifts out of the galaxy and into the unknown. If no one answers, her risk-it-all plan will have failed before it can even start.
Enjoy the space-opera adventure of The Expanse but think it can sometimes feel too...expansive? Then you'll love the edge-of-the-galaxy thrills you'll find with Lebbe, Grey, and the rest of the Zulu Universe.
START READING NOW
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