THE BELTERS’ WAR
by
Christopher Stasheff
Copyright 2010
CHAPTER 8
They came up to the tavern, where Caleb halted them and said, “Count off by twos.” He pointed at Charlie. “One.”
“Uh… yeah, one,” Charlie said. “Why?”
“Because, as you go through the door, ones go to the left along the wall,” Caleb said, “and twos go to the right. Keep going until you have them surrounded. Then, if they’re smart and hold up their hands, all we have to do is go in and take their lasers.”
“Very good,” Charlie said slowly.
“Experience,” Caleb said, and pointed to Kit. “Two.”
“Yeah, two.” She smiled.
“One,” said Agatha.
When they’d all chosen sides, Skurly said, “What if they go for their lasers?”
“Then,” Caleb said, “you shoot them.”
The Regulators stared at him for a minute. Then they began to grin.
“Okay, let’s go.” Caleb stepped into the tavern.
The Regulators followed him, spreading out to left and right.
The place was half-full, the usual noise of an after-work bar, juke music and loud talk. The miners sat in their space suits with their helmets tilted back, swapping lies. Flanagan’s House hands were gathered at a table in the center, growling at one another and glaring at any of the other customers who, one by one, were getting up and going out. Martel, the shortest of Flanagan’s men, looked up to glare at another customer and saw the Regulators spread out at the sides. “War!” He reached for his laser.
“Hold it right there!” Caleb’s voice sliced through the noise. “These drovers are my deputies now. You can tell ’em by the patches on their chests.”
“Nice targets,” one of the House drovers said.
Another shouted in outrage. “Murderers turned lawmen? Who do you think you’re fooling, Marshal?”
“They’ve been judged innocent,” Caleb said, “so they’re as eligible to be deputies as anybody else. Lay your lasers on the floor and slide them away from you. If you work for Flanagan, you’re hereby detained as a witness. Anybody accused of going along to kill Spindrift is under arrest, by authority of the Sector—and that’s all of you. Take your lasers out and lay them on the floor by your chairs.”
The House shooters sat frozen, looking directly across at the lenses pointed at them from each side, in the hands of drovers they knew would like nothing better than to kill them all. “You murdering bastards,” Martel said, but he laid his laser on the floor.
Slowly, the others followed suit.
“Good,” Caleb said. “Now shove them away with your feet. Don’t kick too hard—I don’t want anything broken.”
Martel grunted and shoved his laser spinning away across the floor until it bumped into a chair leg six feet away. The other drovers followed his example.
“There ain’t no justice in this, Marshall,” Martel said.
“They had to stand trial,” Caleb said. “So do you.”
“They had no business stealing our asteroids.”
“Us, stealing?” Kit started to curse.
Caleb waved her to silence. “One charge at a time,” he said. “We’ll start with murder and work our way back to theft. Cinch your helmets and keep your gloves on top of them as you walk over to the jail—and don’t get cute. The drovers following you would love to save the taxpayers the cost of a dozen trials.”
“Drovers?” Martel bleated. “You mean murderers!”
“Then don’t give them a chance to do it legally.”
Martel started to answer, but Kit moved into his line of sight and he saw the look on her face. He closed his mouth and reached up to tilt his helmet down and seal it. Then he folded his hands on top of it and started toward the door.
One by one, the rest of the House did the same.
Kit held her aim steady but turned so that she could see Caleb out of the corner of her eye. Martel took it as a sign of distraction and dove after his laser.
Caleb shouted in anger as the other House drovers leaped after their weapons. He couldn’t shoot, because the few customers left hit the floor, too, and he didn't want to risk firing on the wrong person.
Frank Matthews scooped up his laser and leveled it at Caleb, but Charlie stepped in from the side and kicked it out of his hand. Matthews yelled in pain, grabbing the injured hand, and Dolly Barker loosed a shot at Charlie just as the Regulator turned to check on Caleb. The beam crackled behind his back.
Martel reached out for his weapon, but Kit pressed the stud and her emerald lance drilled the floor six inches from Martel’s laser. He flinched back and she panned her beam over to singe the floor around him.
“Enough!” Caleb shouted. “Now you’re all under arrest for resisting arrest and assaulting officers of the law, too!”
Martel forced a laugh. “These slag-sackers lawmen? Tell me another one, Caleb.”
“They’re my official deputies. Didn’t you listen when I told you that? On your feet now, with your hands on your helmets, and out the airlock. Charlie and Skurly, go first to welcome them.”
The House drovers glared at the Regulators, but they saw the cold, implacable hunger in their faces. Martel snarled and turned away, putting his hands on top of his helmet.
One by one, the others followed.
* * *
August set the trial for the next day, and the assay office was busy again. Anybody who was on the street when Buckley came out remembered sudden business and hurried away. The tavern was as busy as usual, though, so the temporary bailiff recruited a jury in varying stages of sobriety. They filed in and took their seats, none looking happy about it. Flanagan and his thugs were back in their places, looking as though they’d never left, but Buckley told Caleb, “Spread out.”
Caleb looked up in surprise. “Expecting trouble?”
“I want to make sure your deputies don’t start it,” Buckley said. “Spread ’em out.”
So the trial started with all six Regulators posted equally distant all around the courtroom. Martel looked up to glare at Charlie, who only grinned back. Kit rested her hand on her laser.
“The parcel court of Port Alice is now in session,” Buckley called out. “All rise for the judge.”
Everybody stood up, Flanagan’s men slowly, making their disrespect clear as August walked in, complete with robe. He sat down and said, “Be seated.”
Everyone sat, Flanagan’s riders again a little slow.
August said, “Mr. Prosecutor, present your case.”
The prosecutor did, explaining to the jury that Pepper and his riders were accused of having ambushed Spindrift and killed him, that Pepper himself might be dead and beyond reach of the law but that his henchmen, led by Martel, were still available for trial. He called Martel and questioned him, establishing that Martel had been drinking and playing cards with his fellow drovers when Spindrift was killed, but that the only ones who could confirm his alibi were those very same riders.
Swayne had no cross-examination at the time, but reserved the right to recall Martel.
Kit came over to Charlie and whispered, “Why’s he letting Martel off?”
“Giving him enough rope to hang himself,” Charlie explained.
Kit stared, then gave him a slow grin.
The prosecutor called Flanagan’s drovers up, one by one, and asked them the same questions, gaining the same answers. They had all been playing cards and drinking in the bunkhouse, and they could all vouch for each other. The prosecutor rested his case.
Swayne rose. “Your honor, may I speak as a friend of the court?”
“You may, Mr. Swayne,” August answered, and for the benefit of the voice recorder, added, “The court recognizes Mr. Swayne.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” To the jury, he said, “I acted as attorney for Mr. Spindrift and his associates.”
The members of the jury nodded impatiently, as though to say, “Get on with it.”
Swayne did. He turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, I would like to show the court a recording of the incident, retrieved from the rocket sled of Kit Kildare, one of the Spindrift drovers, when it brought her into Port Alice unconscious.”
The room erupted in loud exclamations, some of disbelief, some of anger, some of vindication. The prosecutor sat in stony silence, of course—he’d known this was coming.
August pounded his gavel until they quieted down. Then he asked Swayne, “Why don’t you tell the jury why this piece of evidence hasn’t been mentioned before?”
“Because Ms. Kildare was in a coma when her rocket sled was found,” Swayne explained. “It took more than a week for her to remember that her rocket sled had the automatic video recorder that Mr. Trail had installed on all his vehicles.”
“But Marshal Caleb must have realized it,” August said, “or did you get there first?”
“I did, your honor, and as the agent of the owner, I sequestered the rocket sled until Ms. Kildare was capable of giving permission to access the recorder.”
Judge Clovis stood. “Permission to speak, Your Honor?”
August nodded. “Yes, Judge.”
“The defendants don’t have a lawyer,” Clovis said. “As the only other one here with legal training, I ask to represent them.”
August hesitated. “This is highly irregular.”
“This whole trial’s blasted irregular!”
“They could be coming up before you on appeal.”
“Then I’ll have to recuse myself and call for a judge from Ceres.”
August hesitated. He knew that the judge from Ceres would probably be one of Flanagan’s cronies.
“They do have a right to representation,” Clovis said.
August sighed. “That they do. All right, Judge—I mean, Counselor. You may speak for the defendants.”
“I thank Your Honor.” Clovis stepped up to the defense’s table and said, “Your Honor, I object to the viewing of this recording. It’s highly prejudicial.”
“You bet it is,” said August. “It also shows the facts. Let’s see it.”
The mirror behind the bar turned cloudy, then cleared to show pinpoints of light, one of which swelled to become a recognizable burro-boat bumbling toward the screen.
“The viewpoint from which we’re looking is, of course, that of Ms. Kildare’s rocket sled, Your Honor,” Swayne explained.
“Yes, I remember you saying something to that effect,” August grumbled.
So Kit had to watch it all again, the horrifying sight of the laser-cannon beams shredding her true love and his sled as it swung around and around in a tight circle, then turned to a bright expanding ball of gas and debris. She felt the same sick sense of loss, of helplessness, of weakness, and under it all, the certainty that her life had lost its purpose. Maybe not, she told herself. Maybe Caleb…
She glanced at him, compact and sturdy but no glamour boy, competent and capable but not a bit romantic, and knew that there could never be another Spindrift.
“Reverse the video, please,” Swayne said.
“Objection!” Clovis snapped.
“Noted,” August said, “and overruled. The court recorder may replay the sequence.”
The assay clerk, doubling as court recorder with the transcriber, frowned and reversed the picture. Kit watched the scene implode, the egg of the burro boat and rider swallowing back all the gas and light, and wished with all her being that it could really happen, that the burro-boat could be whole again and Spindrift alive—but it couldn’t.
Just before the first flare of the laser cannon disappeared, Swayne said, “There.”
The image froze.
“Enlarge it, please.”
The dot of light swelled until it went past the upper corner of the screen—and its glow revealed two figures hunched over a laser cannon, one with the plaid of the Farlands, the other with the green leaves and red bulbs of Pepper.
“The murderers,” Swayne said.
“And Pepper’s dead.” August turned to Farland. “Looks like you take the verdict by yourself.”
“Not a bit!” Farland leaped to his feet. “Flanagan ordered it!”
“Shut up, you fool!” Martel snapped.
“How would you know?” August asked in a tone too reasonable. “Flanagan was a hundred thousand miles away on Ceres.”
“Martel told me!” Farland pointed at the new foreman.
“Nonsense!” Martel snapped. “That wasn’t Farland—just somebody wearing his helmet.”
Muffled grunts of indignation came from the jury. They all knew that a drover would no more be parted from his helmet than from his rocket sled or his work laser. They all meant survival in a place far more deadly than any desert on old Earth.
August knew it, too. “Consider yourself under arrest, Martel. Marshal, relieve him of his weapon.”
Caleb started toward him, but Martel’s laser was in his hand and aimed.
Caleb kept coming, and all the Regulators strained forward, hands a quarter inch from their lasers.
So were the House’s.
August knew what was coming as well as Caleb. He drew a blaster from under the counter and braced it against his shoulder. “Order in the court! By thunder, I’ll blow the first one who shoots into plasma!”
The room was quiet for a minute. Then Martel said, “Judges ain’t supposed to be packin’—Your Honor.”
“Judges ain’t supposed to have to pack,” August snapped. “Their bailiffs are supposed to do it for them—and if you’ll take a look over at Mr. Buckley, you’ll see he’s as ready to vaporize you as I am.”
All the drovers stood frozen. Then they glanced at the bailiff and saw him holding a plasma blaster, only waist-high, but pointed right between the two groups. “The judge called for order in the court!”
There was more silence, but the jury could feel resolution slipping. Then Martel said, “Tomorrow you’ll just be a clerk at this assay office again, Buckley, and the law won’t protect you any more than it does me.”
“No,” August said, “but everyone here just heard you say that, and if anything happens to Buckley, we’ll know who did it.”
Martel stood still a minute longer, then jammed his laser into its holster with a snarl.
“Thank you, Mr. Martel,” August said. “Mr. Marshal, take Mr. Martel and Mr. Farland into custody.”
“You can’t arrest me just on his say-so!” Martel blustered.
“Watch me.” Caleb stepped up to him with his laser leveled. “Hand over that hog’s leg, Martel.”
Martel glared at him, but Caleb stared right back. Martel glanced around the room and saw all the deputies with lasers aimed at him—and so were the judge’s and Buckley’s blasters. With a snarl, he peeled off the holster and rammed it at Caleb, who caught it before it could hit him.
“Thank you, Mr. Martel,” August said. “Take them into the room over the tavern, if you will, and we’ll hear closing statements.”
They did, and Kit had to admit the prosecutor did a good job of making it sound as though nobody could know for sure what happened on the way to Ceres. Of course, everybody already did, and the recording from her sled had made it really solid, but he did a good job anyway. Clovis caught him on every point, making it clear that Flanagan and his drovers were a bunch of psychotic murderers—which they were, of course. Everybody knew that, too.
Swayne sat down, and August said, “Thank you, gentlefolk. We’ll just leave the jury here to deliberate while we wait over in the hotel dining room. Mr. Marshal, please see to guarding them.” He stood up. Buckley called, “All rise,” and they all stood as August left the room.
The spectators went down to the tavern to wait. Kit saw Trail sitting at a table and felt a surge of elation that surprised her—but as she came closer, she saw how pale and weary he looked. “You still sick, Mr. Trail?”
Her former boss looked up at her and managed a smile. “Hello there, Kit.”
“You are still sick! You should be home in bed.”
Trail shook his head. “Had to be here. Had to hear the verdict. Least I could do for young Spindrift.”
Kit felt a twinge of sadness, but she didn’t want to lose a second friend. “Soon as you hear it, you go home, okay?”
Trail shook his head. “Gotta keep an eye on things.” He nodded toward a table in a back corner. Kit looked up and saw Flanagan seated with a well-dressed stranger, so well-dressed that his clothes would probably have cost her a month’s wages. “So he brought us a present back from Ceres. Who is it?”
“Investigator for the governor,” Trail said. “He’s staying at Flanagan’s house.”
Kit felt her stomach sink. She was sure Flanagan was feeding the man the best food and the finest whiskey—and his side of the story. And through him, the governor. “Can he do anything?”
“He can tell the governor what Flanagan wants him to hear, and the governor can put Flanagan’s people in as proctor and judge.”
Kit stared. “Good thing we got the trial in today.”
“Yes,” Trail said quietly, “a very good thing.”
It only took the jury an hour to return a verdict of guilty, but Kit was surprised it took that long. August thanked them and pronounced a life sentence at hard labor. Scandalized, Kit turned to Charlie. “That’s just what they’re doing now!”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “but we all hope to get out of it someday, start our own ranch so the hard labor makes money that goes to us. They won’t have that chance now.”
“But all they have to do is get on a sled and shoot away!”
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe they’ll put them to work in the smelter.”
Kit turned to Trail. “Mr. Trail, that just isn’t right!”
“It’s the law, Kit,” Trail said as though the words tasted bad. “We may not like it, but without the law, we’d all be fighting each other to the death. Besides, why not get some use out of these hyenas instead of letting them rot in cages on the taxpayer’s dime?”
Kit turned to glare at the House drovers, but Caleb beckoned her over. “Let’s get ’em into the jail.”
Disgusted, Kit came along. Martel glared at her.
“Don’t take it so hard, Martel,” Kit said. “You could be next.”
Martel sneered. “Next for what?”
“Next in line.” Kit shoved his shoulder, turning him to face forward, other hand on her laser. “Better get used to it. You start the chain gang tomorrow.”
“No we don’t.” Martel grinned. “Our lawyer’s filing our appeal.”
Judge Clovis did indeed file the appeal—with himself. He did not recuse himself, as he’d said he would. Instead, he discarded the verdict on the grounds that the evidence had been prejudicial, as the defense attorney (himself) had noted at the time, and ordered a re-trial. Worse, he released the prisoners on bail pending the court date.
“We may not like it,” Trail told his drovers, “but we have to abide by it. Mr. Swayne will appeal the decision to the Sector Court on Ceres. That doesn’t say we can’t stick together while we wait, and carry our welding lasers.”
“And drill any of the bastards we come across,” Jessie said.
“That we can’t do,” Trail said, “unless they shoot at us first.”
The drovers all shouted protest. Trail waited it out, then said, “You’ve all seen what happens when the law’s twisted so badly it’s almost not there. If it goes completely, we’ll all be demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, like the Bible says—and wind up toothless and blind, like that other fellow said. We’ll end up with half the people here dead and the other half gone someplace safe. That’s why we have to follow the law and straighten it out.”
“If we do,” said Kit, “we’ll all be dead anyway. They’ll shoot us in the backs first chance they get.”
“Then we’ll have to watch each other’s backs,” Trail said, “and stay at Home Bend now.”
Muttering mutiny, the drovers followed him toward the door—but Kit dug in her heels and stayed put. “We’re just going to let him take Mr. Spindrift’s house and rock?”
“No,” Trail said. “Mr. Swayne and I will be working at getting them back through the courts.”
“But till then?”
“Till then, if the proctor comes with a writ of attachment, we have to let him take it.”
“That isn’t right!”
“No, it’s not,” Trail agreed, “so we have to find a legal way to make it right. The law gives us a lot of tools, Ms. Kildare. We just have to figure out how to use them.”
Kit glared at him, but Trail just smiled at her—fondly, and Kit’s glare melted into surprise.
“Give the law another chance, Ms. Kildare,” Swayne said. “August decided in our favor. Could be the sector court will, too.”
Kit didn’t think it very likely, but she followed the lawyer and her former boss as they went out.
“Don’t think you’ve won, Trail.”
Kit looked up in surprise and saw Martel facing up to Trail, legs wide apart and hand near his laser.
“Only the second round, Martel,” Trail said easily. “The prosecutor’s made it pretty clear he intends to appeal.”
“Oh, he will—and until that appeal is done, my drovers are still deputies.”
Trail frowned, still relaxed. “Not if the proctor who appointed them is dead—and judged a murderer on top of it.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Martel chopped sideways with a flat hand. “Deputies they were and deputies they are, until someone says otherwise.”
“Good.” Trail smiled. “That means they’ll uphold the law.”
“Oh, they will—but the law’s what I tell them it is.”
“I think we’ve just heard a judge say otherwise.”
“You can think what you want. Just keep your head down. They’re Guardians of the Peace—my peace.” Martel turned and swaggered away, his drovers behind him. One turned back and spat at Kit’s feet. She reddened and reached for her laser.
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