“My goodness, Marshal. I cannot believe you just murdered a hard-working , fellow officer of the law, in such cold blood. Very disheartening, sir. Don’t he look young just laying there? Like a sweet little angel that you sent to heaven.”
“Shut your filthy mouth before I put a bullet in you too, you son of a bitch. You turned that boy and he was dead the second he got in cahoots with you.” McParlan shoved Harpe at the chapel door. Harpe’s hands were still bound behind his back, and his face made a satisfying thump against the wood before the door swung open.
McParlan looked around the shipyard, inventorying the things that he knew. He knew he’d killed a uniformed customs officer on a space station inhabited by a hundred of his fellow officers. He knew his nearest PNDA backup was three days away. If this were a standard arrest, McParlan would escort the prisoner back to his office and notify Customs, who would agree to house the prisoner until a PNDA wagon came by. A heavily-armed uniformed Customs Officer was standing in the center of the shipyard, looking over the ships. McParlan saw the same blinking device on that officer’s shoulder, and pulled Harpe back into the shadows. “Time for Plan B,” he whispered.
McParlan found a small, beat-up messenger craft whose landing gear consisted of three good struts and one that buckled. He held Harpe by the elbow and banged on the port-side door.
A pimply-faced youth pulled the door open and stared at the gold badge in McParlan’s hand. The distinct odor of illegal mohaderat gas escaped from within. “Uh, wow, hello, sir. Can I help you?”
McParlan scanned the ship’s registration plate and said, “This ship is registered to Franklin Carlisle. Are you him?”
“Maybe, but this isn’t my stuff. I just found it.”
McParlan pushed Carlisle back inside the ship. “I don’t have time for games, boy. I’m commandeering this vessel, and we need to leave immediately.”
McParlan’s cybernetic eye clicked and whirred uncontrollably, unable to focus on anything until he tightened the casing into his skull. He waited for the red lens to stabilize. The image was fuzzy and crackled with interference from the onboard computers.
The ship jerked to one side, and McParlan crashed into the opposite wall of the narrow corridor. “Goddamn it, Carlisle. Can you fly this bucket of junk or not?”
Franklin Carlisle looked back at him from the cockpit and said, “I thought someone was on us.”
“There hasn’t been anyone on the radar for half a parsec, you idiot. That gas you’ve been sniffing is making you paranoid. That’s why it’s illegal,” McParlan shouted. He reached the storage compartment’s door and opened it. Elijah Harpe was chained to a pylon with his hands behind his back. “You got any food, Marshal?”
“We should be back at Headquarters by morning as long as we can keep up this speed. Guess you should’ve eaten before you did all that praying, huh?”
Harpe’s face twisted like a balled-up fist, “I wasn’t supposed to be alive at all, heathen. My Lord is calling me to him. Ain’t nothing left for me here.”
“I beg to differ,” McParlan said. “There’s a date with the death chamber for you.”
Harpe shrugged. “We’ll see what Little Willy has to say about that. Chances are, he’s gonna put a spike in your wheel before you get me anywhere close to that compound.” Harpe leaned forward, “When he gets here, we’re gonna have us a real good time, Marshal. Believe that.”
The ship shook again, and McParlan placed his hand against the wall to brace himself. “Well, I love a good time, Elijah. Let me ask you a question, why did you boys attack that medical supply ship?”
“We were gonna give some much-needed relief to the poor and unfortunate, Marshal. The folks your kind don’t give a squirt about.”
“That’s real, real noble, Elijah. But I don’t believe a lick of it. We both know there’s no medical supply ships with the kind of firepower that they turned on you when you took that girl. What was really on board?”
Harpe just smiled and shook his head. “You think that little boy you got flying this heap will hold up, Marshal? You already killed one youth today. How many more got to die?”
“You killed that boy,” McParlan said. “Not me.”
Harpe shrugged, “Don’t matter. Hey, you got a wife? How about daughters? Some real pretty ones, I bet.”
“Nope,” McParlan replied. “It’s just me and you, Elijah.”
Harpe smiled. “We gonna see about that. Me and my brother, we got all sorts of friends in all sort of places, Marshal. They can tell us just about anything about anyone. We’re gonna find her. And when I do, phew, it’s gonna be slow and sexy. Tell you what. You drop me off at the nearest base and we’ll forget all about this.”
McParlan opened his mouth to respond but his voice was drowned out by roaring engines and grinding mechanical parts. The ship dropped suddenly and McParlan slammed the door shut on Harpe. He turned toward the cockpit and shouted, “Are we hit?”
Carlisle was standing up, yanking on the steering column as far as it would go. “I told you this ship wasn’t equipped to maintain high speeds. The computers are fried and I can’t get it to recalibrate manually!”
McParlan hurried down the hall and strapped himself into the co-pilot’s chair. He grabbed the emergency controls and punched keys on the grid but the board was dark. The engines started screeching. “Where’s the backup system?”
“I don’t have a backup system, Marshal! I told you I couldn’t do this. I begged you to find somebody else, but no, you just had to have this ship.”
“Just point this bucket of shit at the nearest solid object and throw us toward it!”
The ship lurched sideways and began to spiral.
6. Hellbillies
“Where’s my brother?”
Hank Raddiger backed away from the small black box sitting at Little Willy Harpe’s feet. The box rattled, and Hank swallowed hard. “He took off with that lady who was piloting the Medical Transport. The one with the real pretty hair.”
Little Willy smirked . “Damn, Elijah. Always was a ladies’ man. How about you, Hank? You a ladies’ man?”
“Naw,” Hank snorted.
Little Willy looked down at the box and ran his hand over its smooth lid affectionately. “You will be. They’ll come running to you like dogs to the heel of their master, if that’s what you want.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
Willy grinned. “The pleasures of the spirit dwarf the pleasures of the flesh, my friend. Do you know what’s in this box?”
Hank shook his head no, and Little Willy tapped his fingers on its shining surface. “Guess.”
“I know it ain’t medical supplies,” Hank said. He picked at the dried blood stuck under his fingernails. “I know them soldiers hidden in that ship was armed to the teeth, and they fought like the dickens to protect it.”
“That they did,” Willy smiled. He licked the file-sharpened tips of his teeth, playing with strings of meat that dangled from them. There was a small finger bone on the ground within his reach. He picked it up and stuck its tip into his mouth, digging out the loose strands. “You get enough to eat?”
“I sure did,” Hank said. He rubbed his stomach and said, “Stuffed.”
Willy shook his head. “I been watching you, Hank. You still don’t fully indulge in the spoils of war.”
Hank dropped his gaze to the ground. “A few were still squirming when you started biting into them. I cooked up a little of what I found lying around, like you said. You told me I could start off slow.”
“Yes, I recall,” Willy said. He tossed the finger bone into a pile of scattered ribs, femurs, and pelvises. All of them had been stripped of meat and thoroughly cleaned. Willy got down on his hands and knees and pressed the side of his face against the box. He smiled as he rubbed himself on it like a cat. He whispered and cooed and pressed his lips against the lid, leaving it smeared.