“You ain’t gonna live long enough to spend it anyhow, blood spitter. Better for someone who ain’t got to worry about dropping dead as soon as he sets foot outside this rat trap to enjoy it.”
“I quite agree,” Halladay said. He set his empty glass on the bar. “You know, destiny is a peculiar thing, is it not, Henry? My friend and I were just discussing fate, and her fickle habit of intersecting with each of us in ways we are barely equipped to fathom.”
The barmaid went to refill Halladay’s drink, but he waved her away. McCarty cursed at Halladay and headed for the door, heavy feet operating independently of the rest of him. Halladay watched him turn down the dark labyrinth of alleyways that led back toward the miner’s camp. “Like the rest of us, poor Mr. McCarty fails to realize that when his hour is at hand, it is already too late. That is where I have the distinct advantage, you see? My reason for living died twenty years ago. It is ironic that I’ve been dying of the same disease for two decades and the people dearest to me were cut down in the prime of their existences.” Halladay fixed his hat and lifted his jacket’s collar to conceal his face. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and inform our dear Henry of some rather bad news concerning his immediate future.”
5. The Veteran
At 62 years old, Marshal Jimmy McParlan was the oldest active field agent in the PNDA, the Interplanetary Shipping Federation’s law enforcement agency. He’d spent his adult life protecting convoys and arresting pirates. He swore he’d be the first Marshal to die of old age on the job, if only to keep both of his greedy ex-wives from collecting one cent of his retirement.
The Agency was good to him though. They put him on easier assignments that allowed him to wind out his days in far-off stations where little needed to be done.
He didn’t mind letting the younger agents have the busier sectors. His days of running and gunning were over with. There was a desk drawer full of medals, a body full of synthetic parts and a cybernetic replacement eye on the left side of his face to prove it.
McParlan worked at the Antioch Shipping Station, a small stop over for long-distance haulers to refuel and enjoy all the seedy wonders of a self-contained world. It was a place where no one stuck around long enough to remember anyone else, and had little fear of being held accountable for whatever happened in the meantime. Except for the uniformed Customs Code Enforcement Units that inspected the ships and cargo, the PNDA was the only semblance of law enforcement on Antioch.
McParlan gave less than half of a damn what the Customs geeks did. Those boys seemed to get a kick out of handing out season-ending fines to truckers like they were getting a percentage of the total as a bonus in their pay. He preferred the company of the working stiff haulers to the clean-cut, straight-edged officers, and whenever he got the chance to tip off the haulers about an upcoming inspection, he did.
That morning, McParlan sat at his desk and sipped coffee from a chipped mug that read NUMBER ONE DAD. The print was faded on the mug’s surface from twenty years worth of washing. He kicked his feet up on his desk and picked up the small computer tablet to flip through the PNDA’s daily activity reports in his sector. At the tablet’s activation, the reports synced with the computer inside his artificial eye.
The engineers who periodically made adjustments to the device told him that some of the younger agents were voluntarily having their natural eyes replaced with cybernetic ones. The new units functioned the same as his, but were implants instead of the large mechanical looking box bolted into his skull. McParlan’s eye was just a prototype when they gave it to him, and the casing stuck out of his head an inch like a telescopic monocle. His only regret was that he was ruined from wearing a good pair of sunglasses.
His coffee was finished and he got bored of sitting at his desk. He slid the tablet into a holster on his belt and touched a button on his eye’s frame. The red feed went dark for a moment, then flickered and started to scan the things he looked at.
McParlan walked into the shipping yard. It was full that day, with large freighters capable of hauling mountains of stone and tiny one-man courier vessels barely able to break through the station’s gravitational barrier. McParlan looked them over as he passed, admiring their colorful names. He passed ships with “Hell of a Heap” and “Fat Sally” emblazoned on their sides. Some were decorated with paintings of pinup models.
The registration numbers of each vessel he passed printed out instantly within the red spectrum of his mechanical eye, listing the class, weight, and owner information of each vehicle. Many of them were in violation of some damn code or another. There was a loud buzzing in his eye’s case and the word ALERT flashed onto the screen.
“Come on, not again. Damn loose wires,” McParlan sighed. He tapped his finger on the unit impatiently. The casing vibrated in his skull, distorting his vision. He tried to focus as information flooded his screen. He stopped moving when he saw:
PRIORITY TARGET ALERT PRIORITY TARGET ALERT PRIORITY TARGET.
“Alert acknowledged,” McParlan said.
The next message read PROCEED WITH CAUTION. ARREST IMMEDIATELY. McParlan ducked between two cruisers and removed the tablet from his belt. The mugshot of a slope-browed, simian looking man appeared on the screen.
ELIJAH HARPE—member of the Harpe Gang—wanted for seventeen counts of Rape and Torture. Fifty-three counts of Felony Hijacking. Two hundred and thirty-three incidents of assault by firearm. Four hundred counts of Murder.
Another image flashed of Elijah Harpe standing next to a taller, thinner man labeled as William “Little Willy” Harpe.
McParlan searched for the most recent incident and found a video of Elijah Harpe dragging a woman into a Medical Transport. The woman was screaming and fighting with him but he had his arm around her neck in a chokehold. Laser blasts ricocheted off the hull of the Transport. and Harpe was firing back as he shoved the woman into the ship and shut the door behind him. McParlan punched up a still image of Harpe’s face and studied it. He moved the camera over to the terrified looking woman. The feed read: Wendy Diaz, medical technician. Thirty-three years old, mother of two.
McParlan scrolled through Custom’s list of vehicle registrations that had docked on Antioch and found the same Medical Transport vessel from the video. “What the hell?” he whispered. “How did that make it through?”
He went out into the rows of vehicles in the yard and found it parked between two long-distance haulers. People walked past the transport without noticing the fresh laser marks across its side. McParlan unholstered his Balrog 6K pistol and pointed it at the glass window as he stood on his toes to look inside.
The cockpit was empty. He went to the ship’s side door and typed a special emergency inspection code into the panel, stepping back with his weapon raised as the door whooshed open.
McParlan closed his good eye as he went inside, letting the cybernetic one scan the darkness in infra-red. There was dried blood on the floor in trails that led from the cargo area to a small ladder that rose up into the passenger compartments.
McParlan lifted the tablet close to his lips and kept his gun trained on the dark passenger area. “Field Marshal 717-A to Control,” he whispered.
“Control. Verify your status, 717-A.”
“I’m aboard that vehicle. Confirm directive.”
“That vehicle is associated with an Alpha Level 1 wanted subject. Control authorizes the capture or termination of subject.”
“How the hell did that ship get clearance to land on Antioch? Customs should have flagged it immediately before it docked,” McParlan said.