by Rachel Aukes
The Vantage comet cores were far more effective at mining space objects. Perhaps Vantage Core simply wanted proof that organix were nowhere nearly as advanced as mechanix. Core’s concern was understandable. While Vantage was ambivalent toward other species, organix had proven themselves to be violent without provocation, destroying anything foreign they encountered. A few months earlier, the probe had seen one of its comrades killed in this star system.
The reason for its murder? It existed.
The probe recalled the three drones it’d sent to acquire up-close surveillance of the colony. The drones returned immediately but were delayed due to entering through the probe’s new airlock rather than through the bay doors, because the probe currently carried a passenger that required atmospheric conditions. The probe did not like delays. It still had three more colonies to scan before it completed mapping the Ross system, and every delay was an additional risk of being detected.
As soon as its drones safely returned to their charging stations, the probe entered jump speed. It sent all newly acquired intelligence to Vantage Core before sending a message to the human.
It was time.
Chapter One
The three marshals stood outside the tavern. The decrepit wooden establishment was an eyesore in the middle of a block of decrepit buildings on the seedy side of Belmont, not that the town had a respectable side. They’d already checked seventeen of the town’s eighteen taverns. If they didn’t find what they were looking for in the Widow’s Club, they’d been fed bad intel…again.
They’d been through three other towns in the past three days, and Belmont was easily the worst of them. The town sat deep within Hiraeth’s dust belt on the dayside of the planet. It was too far from the temperate lines that experienced some semblance of day and night. In Belmont, the planet’s sun baked the ground during a never-ending day and pressed down a sweltering heat that was so oppressive that even the cockroaches clung to the shade.
The door to the tavern opened. A man flew through the tavern’s entrance, tumbled down the wooden steps, and landed in a heap not far from where the marshals stood.
“And don’t you come back. You’re banned, Hugo,” a voice came out from the other side of the entrance before the door closed.
Marshal Throttle Reyne cocked her head as she looked down at the drunk.
“He smells bad enough to be a pirate,” Throttle’s partner, Marshal Finn Martin, said.
The man lifted his head, wobbling as he tried to focus on the three people looking at him.
Marshal Punch Durand came down on a knee. “He’s a pirate, all right. He’s from one of the smaller Jader crews.”
The pirate scrunched his eyes as he looked at Punch. “Hey…I know you—hiccup—you’re a marsh—”
Punch struck the pirate with a solid right hook. The man’s head jerked, and he hit the ground with a solid thud, unconscious. Punch tapped his left temple. “Atlas net says this guy’s got an active warrant for piracy and—yep, that’s what I thought—at least two murders. We’ve got ourselves a COLD warrant.”
“Then I guess we’d better bag him and tag him,” Finn said as he pulled out a hand restraint bag from his pocket.
Punch pulled out his photon blaster.
“No,” Throttle said. “He’s unconscious.”
“Then he won’t feel a thing,” Punch said. “We’ve got a COLD warrant. We’re good here.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to kill him,” Throttle said. A COLD warrant was Punch’s favorite kind of warrant, as it tended to make things easier when dealing with the worst of the criminals. The acronym should’ve been CLOD since it stood for Capture: Live Or Dead, but that sounded stupid, and COLD had quickly taken hold as the acronym of choice. One of the first things Throttle had learned as a marshal was that every government organization had a love affair with acronyms.
“No,” Finn added. “It’s one thing killing someone in self-defense. But we don’t kill someone who’s passed out, even if he’s got a COLD warrant issued for him.”
Punch’s brow rose. “We don’t?”
“We don’t,” Throttle answered. “And as long as you’re stuck riding along with Finn and me, you go by our policy.”
The Galactic Peacekeepers, or GP for short, was the organization for which she and her fellow marshals worked, and was the only government-provided protective force across all the systems. While colonies handled their own justice, the GP was the law, the military, and protective oversight wrapped up into a single entity, and it handled anyone and anything that caused problems to multiple colonies.
The GP had issued warrants for all known pirates associated with Jade-8. GP Central preferred pirates to be captured alive, but most marshals would rather see all pirates dead after what they’d done on Free Station.
After a moment, Punch holstered his sidearm. “Have it your way.” He drew the pirate’s wrists together, and Finn slid the gray bag over both hands. The end of the bag was made of a hard plastic-like material. As soon as Finn clicked the bag ends around the man’s wrists, the air seemed to drain from the bag, forming a solid barrier around both his hands and wrists.
Throttle used her Atlas chip implant to transmit the pirate’s information to the local law enforcement office. “All right. I’ve tagged him for the local pickup,” she said.
Punch stood and wiped his hand on his pant leg. “From the looks of our smelly friend here, he won’t be going anywhere before his ride shows up.”
“One less pirate out there to deal with later,” she said.
“Until his buddies bust him out,” Punch said.
“Who cares?” Finn said as he faced the bar. “Let’s head inside. I think this is the place.”
“You’ve said that a dozen times already,” Throttle said.
“Call me an optimist,” Finn replied.
She inhaled a lungful of heavy, humid air before walking to the entrance. Small puffs of dust formed a cloud layer near their feet with every step they took. Not that Throttle had feet that resembled anything humanlike. Rather, sleek prosthetic curved blades stood in for her legs, which had been amputated below her thighs. For each of her steps, a smaller footprint kicked up less dust due to her blades. Still, after nearly twenty hours in Belmont, a thick grime had covered her blades and had settled deep into her clothes. Being soaked with sweat enticed the dust to cling to her like a swarm of famished mosquitos. She was glad Hiraeth had plenty of underground water because she was planning on taking the longest bath of her life after they checked out the last remaining bar of that day’s trip.
She paused when she reached the entrance, glancing at her photon pistol to make sure it still had a full charge. She glanced over her shoulder at the two other marshals with her. “I’ll go first,” she said and pushed open the swinging door.
The door swung hard, the seal around it making a gritty whooshing sound across the floor as she stepped inside. A blast of cool air hit her, but the stink of sweat, booze, and other unpleasant body odors hit her harder. Her eye twitched, and she headed straight for an open table near the door. Once there, she chose a chair that allowed her to sit with her back to the wall. Punch and Finn followed and took the seats to her left and right.
She casually glanced around the sparse crowd. Three men sat on stools at the bar. One of them looked to be passed out. Another looked Throttle up and down, interested until his gaze fell on her prosthetic legs. Then his interest returned to his beer.
A scantily clad woman leaned on the railing at the top of the stairs. The depth of her cleavage and the height of her skirt left no doubt that there were more things than alcohol available for purchase in the Widow’s Club. The woman gave a warm smile to the newcomers but remained at the top of the stairs.
The marshals drew no undue attention. Like most GP marshals, they wore no uniforms but wore their GP badges on either the upper left of their chests or left biceps. This trio all preferred the easier-to-conceal bicep location. On this assignment, all three
marshals wore jackets to conceal their badges as well as their pistols.
The jackets also concealed the small team patch Finn and Throttle wore below their badges. Team patches—this one was a small black sheep—weren’t official by any means, but Peacekeepers who worked together often adopted a team name and patch. Chief Roux, the head of the Peacekeepers in the Ross system, allowed the patches to assist in building team cohesion and pride. Punch wore no team patch since he worked alone…except when he pissed off Chief enough to be saddled with another team for a few months as punishment. He’d been with the Black Sheep for three months. Throttle hoped he returned to solo work soon because he was a pain in the ass, and his idea of being a team player stopped at anything that involved more than himself.
Throttle glanced at the poker game with four players underway in the far corner. A beast of a man seemed to be winning if the smug grin on his face as he examined his cards was any sign. She noticed a tattoo of the number eight in dark green on his inner wrist, which made her suspect every patron in the bar was a pirate from Jade-8. Her fingers itched to wrap around the grip of her pistol.
She focused on the face of every person she could for the full second it required for her Atlas chip implant to conduct a facial-recognition search. She confirmed that two men at the bar and two men at the poker table all had outstanding COLD warrants. The bartender had no arrest record, surprisingly. The prostitute had several arrests for prostitution but no outstanding warrant. The other men in the bar had their faces turned away from the marshals, but Throttle would be sure to scan all the faces before they’d attempt to make a move on anyone.
Her lip curled upward. “If we’re lucky, I think we may be able to close out another warrant or seven today,” she said under her breath.
She’d developed a chip on her shoulder toward the Jaders when pirates stole her colony ship—with the passengers still on board. The chip became a rock when other Jaders tried to steal the Javelin and enslave her and the crew. When the pirates attacked Free Station, the headquarters of the Galactic Peacekeepers in the Ross system, and Throttle’s home, Jader pirates had been declared public enemy number one across the entire system.
Like Punch, she wanted to see the pirates dead. But unlike Punch, she refused to cave in to her desire for vengeance.
A server emerged from a hallway and grabbed a tray of drinks from the bar. The girl was young, no more than ten, and carried a tray of drinks that looked like it weighed half as much as she did. Throttle stiffened but gave away no other signs. “It’s her. Be ready.”
She heard Finn draw in a deep breath.
“It’s about time. I’m tired of miserable weather and even worse beer,” Punch muttered.
The girl, with long black hair pulled up in pigtails, was wearing a dress too short for a girl her age, her employer no doubt trying to feed off any pedophilic fantasies of his patrons. The girl bore bruises the size of thumbprints on her legs. Throttle seethed at seeing children trafficked. It was bad enough with adults, but she’d show no mercy to anyone who abused kids. If the girl’s employer stepped out, she wouldn’t hold Punch back from killing the bastard. No, she took that back. If the owner stepped out, she’d shoot first.
Throttle watched the girl as she served the glasses of beer to the four poker players. Fortunately for them, they were too into their game and paid her no attention. If any of them had groped the girl, Throttle wasn’t sure she could’ve kept her composure.
With an empty tray, the server walked over to the marshals’ table.
She didn’t make eye contact when she arrived. “What’ll you have?” she asked. If the bar noise was any louder, her soft voice would’ve been buried by conversations.
Throttle spoke quietly, to not be overheard by anyone beyond their table. “Sophia Mercier?”
The girl’s gaze shot up, confirming she was the marshals’ target.
“Sophia,” Throttle continued, “we’re marshals like your aunt, Caterine Mercier. We’ve been sent to pick you up.”
The girl’s eyes went wide with hope. “Aunt Cat? She sent you?”
Throttle forced a small smile and nodded rather than telling the girl the truth—that her aunt had been killed three months earlier for being a traitor. Throttle said, “We’re going to take you somewhere safe now, Sophia. Okay?”
Sophia’s adorable smile fell as quickly as it’d risen. She glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to Throttle, shaking her head. “Boss Man will get mad.”
“Don’t worry about him none,” Punch said. “You’ve got three marshals protecting you now.”
Throttle stood, as did Finn and Punch.
Punch smiled at Sophia, took the drink tray and placed it on the table, and held out his hand. “It’s time to go, Sophia. We’ll take you where no one can hurt you.”
The girl cringed away from him. Punch frowned. “I won’t hurt you.”
“But she’s been hurt before,” Throttle said as she walked around the table and held out her hand to the girl. Sophia was hesitant, and it took her a couple of long seconds before she held out tentative, trembling fingers. Throttle gripped her small hand with a gentle confidence.
“How about the COLD warrants?” Finn asked.
“We can come back for them later,” Throttle answered, and she led Sophia toward the door.
“Where are you going?” the bartender called out. “Get back here, girl.”
Throttle kept walking.
“Stop right there!” A shout came along with a flurry of activity. Throttle noticed the poker players all stood and now held guns.
Finn calmly stepped between Sophia and the rest of the patrons, holding his pistol in one hand. “We’re marshals here on official Peacekeeper business. You don’t need to get involved in this.”
The bartender raised a shotgun.
“Looks like those COLD warrants aren’t waiting for us,” Finn said just before he shot the bartender dead center in his chest.
Punch spun around, unholstered both pistols, and fired at the group of poker players.
Throttle wrapped herself around Sophia, knocked over the table, and dove behind it. She held the girl against her while pulling out one of her pistols. The girl whimpered as Throttle shot around the edges of the table.
She saw Finn leap over the bar. Punch tumbled into Throttle, causing them both to grunt. He shot a quick grin at the girl. “You’re doing great, Sophia.” He then went up on his knees and fired nonstop from both pistols.
The table was made of wood, which would absorb the blast of most photon pistols. But the table would do little to block the bullets and shells flying with ear-ringing booms from shotguns and projectile-based pistols. The sounds of weapons discharging were growing, which meant the number of people involved was going up rather than going down as it should’ve been.
Throttle leaned around the edge and shot a man running down the stairs, pulling on his pants with one hand while shooting with the other. He tumbled down the stairs, dead before he hit the floor. At the top of the stairs, three more men stood at the railing, shooting down. A chunk of the table, inches from Throttle’s face, disintegrated from a shotgun blast. Punch threw Throttle a look of surprise before he rolled out from the table and fired upward as he continued to roll across the floor.
Finn had taken out the remaining poker players and the men at the bar from his position and was now creeping to the hallway that disappeared behind the bar.
Throttle kept firing, hitting another man in his kneecap. He went down screaming, but the sound was cut off by a shot from Punch. Finn swung into the hallway and fired several shots, but Throttle couldn’t see who he’d hit.
Punch took down the final man at the top of the stairs, and the bar fell silent.
Finn yelled, “Lay down your guns! If we see anyone with a weapon, we will shoot you. So you’d better decide right now if you want to live or die. For anyone else, stay in your rooms for safety. We’ll be out of here soon enough.”
After a
long moment of silence, Throttle helped Sophia to her feet. The girl clung to Throttle, sobbing.
“Status?” Throttle called out to her partners.
“A round grazed my shoulder. It’s nothing that can’t wait,” Finn said.
“I’m as pretty as ever,” Punch said.
Throttle checked Sophia over. “We’re both good here.”
They’d been lucky. No one was standing except for the three marshals and the little girl. The prostitutes upstairs had the common sense to stay as far from the battle scene as possible. If there were more pirates in the vicinity, Throttle figured they could live another day since they were smart enough to stay out of a gunfight.
Finn and Punch swept the area while Throttle held Sophia against her.
“I’ll tag them. You cover me,” Punch said and went around to each of the bodies, scanning their faces and reporting the kills to the Atlas network. After he’d finished, he returned to the group, chuckling. “There’s eleven more warrants served COLD.”
Throttle’s gaze flitted over the bodies. “There’s thirteen down.”
Punch shrugged. “The bartender was clean, and that poor bloke over there didn’t have a warrant. He was taken out by a shotgun shell, so his death’s not on our conscience, not that it would be.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Throttle said.
“Hold on,” a man called out.
All three marshals swung their pistols toward the well-dressed man taking slow steps down the stairs. He held his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.”
“You shouldn’t be here, friend,” Punch said. “You should get back into whatever hole you crawled out from.”
“You can’t leave these bodies here. What are we supposed to do with them?”
“Anything you want. Burn ’em, bury ’em, cook ’em up and have kabobs, I don’t care,” Punch said.
His jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”
