THE BELTERS’ WAR

by

Christopher Stasheff

Copyright © 2010

 

CHAPTER 10

The green panel lit, and Lucky pushed open the outer hatch of the airlock.  They went tumbling out to see Trick standing there with balled fists, staring after a double sphere that was shrinking as it moved away under full acceleration.  “Stole my asteroid, and my boat with it!”

“Flanagan’s men.”  Charlie added another obscenity to Trick’s collection.  “We’ll get it back.”

Kit was already unlocking her sled from the rack.  She pulled it free, but Trick yanked it away from her.  “Thanks.”  He mounted and shot off into the night, hot after his burro-boat and its hijackers.

“Hey, wait a minute!”  Kit raised a hand in protest, but Trick was already gone, and Jessie after him, the she-wolf and the rest of the drovers after her.

Kit didn’t need a sled to see what happened, though.  Laser beams stitched the night, converging on Trick, but he looped and rolled her sled, avoiding them.

“Enemy incoming!” Charlie called, and the Regulators took cover behind outcrops of rock on First Base, snapping off darts of green light at the sources of the red beams.  Shouts of anger and pain told them they’d hit home—and as they did, Trick's sled drew up level with his burro boat's airlock.  He launched himself up off the sled onto his ship, swearing something about the thieves having blasted the lock as he swung open the hatch.

“Watch out, Bernie’s still in—” Martel shouted, but his yell overlapped a howl of fear.

Then Bernie shot out through the airlock—they could tell by the poker chip pattern on his helmet, still tilted back from his collar and unsealed.  A frost cloud of suddenly-freezing air belched out of his space suit, then Bernie jerked once… and was still.  Kit knew that without air pressure inside the suit, something in him had exploded.

“Bernie!” Martel shouted.  “You buzzard, you killed him!”

“Just threw him out of my ship.”  The burro boat was a hundred meters away, but Trick’s radio voice was as loud and clear as Martel’s.  “Not my fault if he didn’t have his helmet sealed."  Trick slid through the airlock into his burro boat, swinging the hatch closed behind him.  "Where are you, Martel?” Trick demanded as the burro boat turned around and a green beam shot out to scour the nearest floating boulder.  A man shouted in fright and dove away from it.

Trick may be awfully quick to judge and execute, thought Kit, but at least he picked the right targets.

“Back off, stranger,” Martel shouted.  “This ain’t no fight of yours.”

“You made it my fight when you stole my burro-boat!” Trick answered.  The green beam lanced another asteroid, but nobody jumped free or cried out.  “No fleas on that dog.  How 'bout the next one?”  The burro boat spat green fire at another crag.  There was no howl, but a space-suited figure on a sled shot away toward a bigger asteroid.

“Hold off,” Martel shouted.  “Give us half a chance and we’ll get outa your way!”

“Yeah, and call the law on me!”

“Doesn’t matter if he does,” Kit said.  “We have six cameras capturing what happened.”

Martel started cursing.  He knew, as they all did, that stealing a sled or boat was virtual murder; without transport, any Belter outside the dome of a big asteroid would die.

Another green ray shot out from the burro-boat and another crag smoked.  “I’m feeling charitable,” Trick said, “and I didn’t have no quarrel with you until now.  Call it even—my life for his—and I’ll stop shooting long enough to let you take your drovers and get away.”

“What if we don’t?” Martel demanded.

Another green ray shot out from the burro-boat; another of the smaller asteroids smoked—ice instantly turning to steam.

“All right, deal!” Martel shouted.

“Good enough,” Trick said as the burro boat turned around.  “See you in Port Alice—and we’ll start from scratch, those who want to.  Thanks for the hospitality, Regulators.”

The boat started away, gathering speed, and Martel’s voice said, “Regulators?  You call yourselves regulators?"

”Suits us better than ‘the House',” Charlie answered.  “Looks like we’ll have to leave more booby traps next time we go to town—that fellow almost got into First Base on his own.”

“That supposed to be a warning?” Martel asked, voice threatening.

“You can take it that way,” Charlie said.  “Trick ain’t working for us, though—only for himself.”

“We’ll see if he’s for hire.”  Martel’s tone was still ominous.  “And don’t worry about those traps—when I come back, I’ll bring a writ.”

“You mean you don’t have one now?”  Skurly faked amazement.  “Sloppy work, drover!”

“That’s ‘proctor’ to you!”

“Not to me, nor to anybody I know.”

“Suit yourself.  Break the law and I’ll shoot you down legally.  Come on, deputies!”

Lucy’s voice came over the private frequency, in Kit’s left ear.  “Fake deputies for a fake proctor.”

“But the star looks real,” Kit said.

“Yeah.”  Charlie sounded thoughtful.  “Maybe we ought to go back to Port Alice and enlist that Trick before Martel does.  It’d be just like him to hire the man as a deputy and shoot him in the back when nobody’s looking.”

Kit’s heart leaped.  Seeing the stranger again sounded like a good idea.

“Sounds all right to me,” Jessie said, and Agatha nodded with vigor.  So, to be fair, did Lucky and Skurly.

“All right, then, Charlie said.  “Tank up your sleds, fill your bellies, and back to Port Alice we go.”

 

*                       *                       *          

 

They racked their sleds outside the dome and cycled through the airlock.  “First stop the tavern?” Kit asked.

Charlie nodded.  “If Martel and his crew are back in town, they’ll be there.”

“Don’t know why,” Kit grumbled.  “He’s got Flanagan’s store now, and the jail.  What’s he need the tavern for?”

“Booze,” Skurly said.  “Why should he pay for his own drinks?”

Kit looked up in surprise, but Jessie nodded.  “Sounds like Martel.”

“He’ll drink Flora out of business,” Kit protested.

“She’ll be one more on our side, then.”  Jessie’s eyes widened suddenly.  “Who’s that stranger?”

Kit looked and saw a tall, lean man striding out of the barber’s shop, resplendent in a quiet but expensive blazer and slacks, hair cut to the most recent fashion, cheeks clean-shaven and glowing with health.  “Dunno,” she said, but I’ll take…”  She stopped, staring.  “It’s Trick!”

“Beam me if it isn’t,” Jessie said.  “He cleaned up nicely, didn’t he?”

“Hell, I didn’t have any quarrel with him bearded,” Agatha admitted.

Skurly scowled and Lucky frowned, clearly unhappy with the women’s attention to the prospector, but Charlie forced a grin and sauntered over.  “Good to see you again, Trick.”

The prospector looked up, surprised, then returned the grin and came to meet Charlie, hand outstretched.  “Good to see you too, Charlie!”  He looked past the drover to the rest of the Regulators, and his eyes glowed as they rested on Jessie—not quite long enough to be rude—then away to the others.  “And all of you.”  His gaze rested on Kit and his smile broadened.

She stared back, then cursed herself for an innocent fool and tried her best at a sultry smile.  He stepped closer, and his scent enfolded her—no longer rancid, but the finest cologne of Old Earth!  He smiled as his gaze lingered on her.  My word, he’s handsome!  Her face was hot, and she had to force herself to breathe.

“Now I get to thank you all for your hospitality.”  Trick waved at the hotel dome whose nearest doors opened into a restaurant on one side and Flora’s tavern on the other.  “Join me for dinner.”

“All six of us?” said Skurly, wide-eyed.

“That must have been some asteroid, mister!” Agatha said.

“It was—half molybdenum and magnesium, with a few kilos of other rare earths thrown in, and fifteen pounds of gold.”  Trick grinned.  “I think I can afford a few platters.  Let’s go.”

The six gave a cheer and followed him inside.

There weren’t any tables free.  “I could persuade a few people to leave.”  Skurly rubbed his knuckles.

Agatha frowned at him, but Trick said, “Oh, let them be.  I’ll stand us a round of drinks in the tavern.”

The drovers shouted agreement and headed across the vestibule.  Jessie wormed her way closer to Trick and started talking and batting her eyelashes.  Kit sighed and gave up—if Jessie was making up to a guy, he’d never notice Kit.

Inside the tavern, the others ordered whisky or gin, but Kit contented herself with a short beer—she didn’t want to take chances on slow reflexes in any public place where Maguire, or Martel and his deputies, might show up.  While the others clustered around the bar, she took her beer over to the dice table and set about her old game of seeing if she could learn to throw the dice so they’d come up the way she wanted.  She shook the cubes in her fist and let them fly.  They floated in the negligible gravity but bounced off the end-board and came up with a one and a three.  Kit grimaced; good thing she hadn’t placed a bet on that one.  There weren’t any croupiers or dealers at Flora’s—the tables were there for the patrons’ amusement, and if you wanted to bet with each other, that was your affair.  She tossed the dice again and again.

After half a dozen throws, she sensed a presence looming next to her and glanced up out of the corner of her eye.

It was Trick.

She swallowed and suddenly became very intent on her game.

“Who’s winning?” Trick asked.

“Nobody,” Kit said in disgust.  “I can’t even win when I’m playing against myself.”

“Then play against me.”  Trick scooped up the dice.  “What are the stakes?”

“Nothing,” Kit said.  “I don’t have the money to spare for betting.”

“Then we’ll play for points.”  His dice bounced against the end-board and came up with a five and a four.  “Made my point,” he said with satisfaction.  “How’d you do?”

“Well, I made a five on one throw and a two on another.  Can’t get ‘em on the same roll, though.”

“My round, then—but let’s see if I can wrap  it up.”  Trick rattled the dice again and threw.  “Nine,” he said with satisfaction.  He raked in the dice and handed them to Kit.  “Roll a seven.”

Kit shook and rolled—and, to her amazement, came up with a three and a four.

“Seven!” Trick crowed.  “Doing okay, Kit.”

“You must be good luck,” she said, and passed the dice over.

“Come seven, come eleven,” Trick said, “now!”

The dice bounced off the board again and came to rest showing a five and a six.  Trick whooped with delight.

The others came drifting over, but Trick was too caught up in the game to notice.  Kit made her throw, lost, and was awfully glad she had—she didn’t want to be the one who handed Trick a setback.  She watched him closely as he threw again and realized that the man was a genuine, hundred-percent, totally-focused gambler.  She was glad she hadn’t been able to lay any money on the dice.  Trick whooped and hopped with delight as he made his point again.  He seemed to be magic; the dice would do whatever he wanted—the same dice that had given her only snake-eyes and treys.

Then, suddenly, she realized a bet that she couldn’t lose and that he wouldn’t turn down.  Not yet, though—not until she was sure she was ready.

Jessie tugged Trick away to the roulette wheel and he want willingly enough.  Just as well—Kit wasn’t sure she might not have made her bet right then.

Suddenly the room was full; suddenly Flanagan’s foreman Maguire was leaning against the bar watching, and Proctor Martel was there with his deputies, hands on their holsters.  Kit realized the Regulators had been so caught up in the game that they hadn’t kept watch on the door.

Martel was saying, “Our game now.  Clear out.”

The Regulators’ hands dropped to their lasers, but Maguire called out, “You’re talking to the Law.”

“And I’m sure none of us wants to quarrel with it.”  Trick turned from the table to Martel and stared down at his badge.  “Proctor, is it?”

“Proctor is right.”  Martel stepped a little closer to show he wasn’t intimidated by the tall man’s size.  “Who’d you be?”

“Name’s Atticus, but most folks call me ‘Trick’.”  The tall man held out a hand.

Martel scowled at it, but there was no good reason for the proctor not to shake hands with a law-abiding citizen, even if he had just been gaming with Spindrift’s drovers, so he took Trick’s hand and gave it a shake.  “In town on business?”

“Such as it is.  I’m a prospector in to sell my find.”

“Find?”  Maguire frowned.  “That big rock in the Assay Office’s pen?”

“The very one.”  Trick smiled.  “Did well with it, too.”

“Government bought it already, huh?”  Maguire was clearly disappointed; even he had better sense than to try to steal from the Earth Alliance.

“Bought and paid, with most of the pay off to my bank in London.”  Which meant there was no point in trying to rob him.

“Can’t say you’re keeping the best company.”  Maguire nodded at the Regulators, who glared back.  Kit took a step forward, starting to speak, but Trick caught her hand, and the touch took her breath away.  “Good people are where you find ‘em.”

Maguire scowled, trying to puzzle out whether that had been an insult or, worse, a compliment to the Regulators.

“You’re the one that killed Bernie,” Martel said.

“Only threw out a man who was trying to steal my property.”

Martel looked around, but Flora was behind the bar and half a dozen citizens were at the tables—too many witnesses.  “I should arrest you.”

“You could,” Atticus said, “but the question would come up where you were when I was defending my boat.”

Martel glared at him, trying to puzzle out a comeback, but just then the restaurant’s host came into the bar.  “Atticus, party of seven!”

The Regulators grabbed their drinks and started for the restaurant.

Maguire glared.  “You eat with these people?”

“Repaying a debt,” Trick said.  “They spared me a hot shower and some clean clothes on my way in—plus a hot meal.  As I said to the proctor, good people are where you find them.  Good night, then.”  He gave a nod of respect as he turned and sauntered off after his guests.

Behind them, a flurry of talk broke out between Maguire and his henchmen, but Trick sailed blithely on into the restaurant and sat down at the big round table to the side of the room—and Kit noticed that he sat in the corner, where he could see everyone coming in.

“Just say how many people you want to serve,” the host advised.

“All seven of us.”

The host nodded.  “A lucky number.  Service in a minute, sir.”  He stepped back and servers began to bring in food—bowls of potatoes mashed and fried, platters of meat, a roast on another platter, dishes of vegetables.  The Regulators raised the kind of cheer that can only issue from people who have lived on canned rations and vitamin pills for a month or more, and dug in.

When the meal was over, they went back to the tavern for another hour of gambling—strangely, Maguire and his crew had left—and although it was just for points, some money began to change hands.

After that, whenever the Regulators came to Port Alice, if they met Trick, they always settled down for a few hands of cards or some rounds of dice.  It was fun; he was always good company, and seemed to enjoy playing against Kit, even paying more attention to her than to Jessie.  Only trouble was, he seemed to think of her as a little brother; he never really seemed to notice that she was a woman.  She did learn how to roll dice, though.

The next day, Kit was the only one to wake up with a clear head, so she took it on herself to go back to First Base and make sure it was still free of Maguire and his drovers.  Halfway there, though, she developed a headache and a queasy stomach.  Had Charlie and her other friends made her drunk just by breathing their second-hand booze breath?  She knew better than to ride very far without being clear-headed, though, and the hulking shape of Blazer’s smelter loomed up in the distance, so she decided to rest a while.

Some of the loads the prospectors hauled in were too small to bother hauling to Ceres or even a town asteroid like Port Alice, so men like Blazer eked out a living smelting loads of space junk and selling whatever supplies the Belters might need.  He ran a tavern, too, and a bunkroom for drovers who drank so much that they couldn’t be sure of staying on their sleds all the way home.

Kit cut her main rocket and hit the forward braking rockets as she flew up to the huge asteroid.  Blazer’s rock was four hundred feet long, and that was after he'd been mining ice out of it for a dozen years.  His front door was at the bottom of a crater some smaller asteroid had made, striking thousands of years ago at least.  The ring wall seemed to loom over her as she nosed into the sled rack and stopped with a bump too gentle to dent the metal.  She swung off the saddle, locked the sled in, and went through the airlock.

She stepped into light and warmth and laughter.  It felt like waking up in summer, even though there were only three people there—Blazer, his wife, and Blaster Roberts.  The old Ranger heard the airlock chime and turned—then beamed when he saw who it was.  “Why, Ms. Kit!  What brings a pretty young thing like you out this far from a dome?”

“A chance to talk with a handsome old gent like you, Mr. Roberts.”

"Blaster, Blaster,” Roberts admonished, then laughed.  “I might have been a blaster when I was your age, Ms. Kit, but I’ve calmed down some since then.”

“Made a living pointing a blaster, though.”  Kit nodded at the stock and barrel still slung over the old man’s shoulder, admiring the weapon’s three-inch lens.  She knew that a touch of the trigger stud would send a phenomenal gout of plasma out of it, easily enough to vaporize an ice asteroid twice her size.  “Still a pretty fair shot, I’ll bet.”

Roberts reached down to slap the stock.  “Never without it.  Hey, Ms. Kit, I hear some wild talk about you and your buddies getting caught up in a war.”

“Not a war yet, Blaster.”  Kit stepped up to the bar, set a foot on the brass rail, and raised a finger.  Blazer nodded and thumped a shot glass in front of her, then cocked a bottle and filled it.

“Just a handful of young folk out to even a score, huh?”
            Kit shrugged and knocked back the shot of whiskey.  She coughed, then said, “Flanagan’s drovers killed our boss, Blaster.  We can’t let that go by.”

“Yes you can,” Roberts said, “especially when one of those drovers has been appointed proctor.”

“We had a marshal.”

Roberts shook his head sadly.  “Then you get into a game of whose proctor is real, and next thing you know, it don’t matter—nobody respects the law no more, and everybody’s killing everybody else.”

Kit frowned.  “I don’t need sermons, Mr. Roberts.”

“Somebody does,” Roberts said.  “I’ve seen what happens when feuds get started—had to come in and clean up a few of them myself.  Can’t do that now, of course—no badge.  But if folks don’t respect the law, everybody dies.”

“Then how about Flanagan’s gang respect it first?”

“Guess you didn’t hear,” Blazer said.  "Flanagan’s in the hospital on Ceres, and word is they can’t do much for him.”

Kit stared, shocked, then remembered that the man was her enemy.  “Hard to feel sorry for him—but I guess I didn’t really wish him dead.”

The door chime sounded.  Blazer looked down at the screen under the bar.  “Speaking of Maguire’s gang—here they come.”

“Get down, Kit.”  Roberts’ voice was casual, just making a comment.  “If they see you, they’ll shoot you.”

“Not if I shoot them first.”  Kit’s hand was on her laser without her even thinking about it—but Roberts’ hand was on hers, holding the laser in its holster.  “Let’s keep this my day, not yours, okay?  That way, if they decide to pick a fight with me, you can come out and clean up the mess afterwards.”

“I ain’t afraid of those dust balls!”

“I know.”  Roberts kicked her feet out from under her, then brought up a foot to push her down behind the bar.  “Be ready to back me up if I call—but not until.”

Kit let out a squawk of outrage, then surged up as Roberts lifted his foot—but Blazer’s boot took over and held her down.  “I don’t want any blood in my saloon, Ms. Kildare—it’s so hard to scrub out of the floor.  Just lie still, okay?”

Kit subsided—but when his foot relaxed, she slipped her laser out of its holster and lifted the barrel to the door.

The airlock hissed open, and half a dozen people swung in, tilting back their helmets.

The first one was Martel.  “Blazer!  A double whiskey, neat!”  He bounced off a table and shot over to the bar.  “Out of the way, old man.”

“Wait your turn, kid,” Roberts said, tone amiable.  “I like to sip good whisky slow.”

“I won’t tell you twice,” Martel growled.

“Neither will I.”  The blaster swiveled, leveled on Martel.

“Put it down!  I’ve got the badge this time!”

“I don’t count it if I don’t see it,” Roberts said.  “You don’t need to see mine, though—once a Ranger, always a Ranger, and if you were dry behind the ears, you’d know that.”

Martel sprang high, braced himself against the ceiling as he drew his laser—and found himself looking into the tube of Roberts’ blaster again.  He sprang back to the bar, but the blaster tracked him all the way.

One of his crew yelled, and Roberts leaned aside.  A ruby spear skewered the space where he’d been standing; it sliced Roberts’ suit leg, opening a gash in the fabric but melting the edges back together as it filled the room with the stench of burning flesh and charred plastic.  Roberts bellowed in pain and anger, and a ball of fire burst out of his blaster.  Maguire ducked aside, so the fireball caught Martel full in the chest.

Maguire and his drovers shouted with rage and went for their lasers.

The room filled with a cat’s cradle of red light-beams, but Roberts dove under them and caromed off the floor up into the airlock.  The hatch crunched shut and Maguire’s crew bellowed in fury, hammering on the hatch.

“Stop that!”

They whirled about and found themselves staring into the mirror-bright barrel of another blaster with Blazer’s grim face behind it.

 

TO BE CONTINUED...