A Friend in Need

by Travis Perry

Jax knelt down beside Ernsto, who was flat on his back on a sandy patch at the bottom of a rocky gully, wincing in pain. “I’m so sorry about last night—I guess I’ve been regulating how much I drink by how much I bring in…I usually run out of cash before I can put down that much ale.”

Ernsto snorted, “So it’s my fault for helpin’ you bring in too big a haul?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. The fault was mine. I’m sorry I led her to you, that Zana lady.”

“Well, don’t expect much from me. I never used to forgive anything from anyone.”

“Used to? Does that mean you forgive now?”

“Well—that angel sure would want me to…” Ernsto’s voice trailed off and his eyes watered.

Jax stared at his new friend and didn’t know what to think. He’d heard Ernsto cry out before, as in for help or in pain—but he’d never seen him cry, not a single tear, not even when he’d set the bone in his arm. There was so much he didn’t know about this guy. What in the world could have affected him so much?

“What angel?” Jax finally asked in a soft voice.

“Never mind about her…I forgive you. God knows I done a lot worse than what you did. To someone a lot better’n me.” A single tear streaked down the side of his face, past his ear into the sand. Ernsto wiped at his face absently, as if he didn’t really care.

“Changing subjects, er…I don’t think I set your bone quite right. Your left arm is shorter than the other.”

“Hmmm. Don’ blame yourself. I think it’s because the bone is shattered in that spot.”

“Ah…doesn’t that mean it will never heal right? I’m not a doctor or anything, but I think that’s the case.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you are correct.”

“Shouldn’t we, ah…do something about that?”

“Got any suggestions? Remember I’m wanted everywhere. And believe me, the man that’s after me is sure to make me disappear forever. If they catch me.”

Jax rubbed his chin, looking upward, Sheba visible low over the east mountain ridge in the dust-orange hued sky. “You know, I think I’ve got an idea…”

Struggle

By Travis Perry - 

Zana’s mechanical left arm grabbed at the right arm of the man, who must have been Mons, who had wrestled her to the ground and had her pinned to her back, his hands pressing down on her shoulders. “You’re a woman!” he exclaimed in a surprise barely audible as the dust storm whooshed around him.

Her only answer was to vice down her hand grip on his arm. He grunted in pain as she squeezed but without hesitation rolled off her to her right, using the torque of his body twist to pull his arm free from her steely grip. She rolled onto her own right side, reaching after him with her left arm. But Mons no sooner tumbled away than he rolled back. With both hands he shoved her left hand into the ground, then her left shoulder, pushing her face down as he rolled himself back over top her body, pinning her under his greater weight.

That made Zana angry. She thrust her left arm behind her back and grabbed the first piece of his body she could reach and squeezed as hard as she could. Her mechanical side had some tactile sense, not as good as her right, but she perceived a bone breaking—which she realized was Mon’s left humerus, the bone of his upper arm. He screamed in her ear, but his credit, made no move away from his dominant position, his weight still pressing her face-down into the ground.

“Leggo!” he managed to shout. And now she could feel a cold steel blade along the right side of her throat. “Leggo, sweetheart! Or I’ll gut you like a fish!”

Zana paused for a moment, something in her wanting to tell him to go screw himself, something in her willing to die for the privilege of defying him. But something else wanted to live, if nothing else because she couldn’t stand the thought that she would die while her father still lived. She let go of the arm, the whirling dust storm surrounding them, the man’s weight crushing her face against the ground. She turned her head left to be able to breathe. The ground pressed back at her fiercely, several fist-sized rocks strewn underneath her—Ernsto was clearly a lot bigger than she was, his weight easily dominating hers.

“Jax, you idiot!” shouted Mons in pain. “Come here!  I need your help.”

The wind suddenly shifted again and seconds later died as it sometimes did, utterly unpredictable. The sky still hid itself behind high clouds but the dust storm was coming to an end nearly as fast as it had begun.

At that moment, she heard Cotton’s feet scrambling over rock. He’d somehow made it up the rock ledge and now his furious barking fast approached.

“Back him off,” growled Mons, pressing his knife a bit harder to her throat.

Zana turned her head right, the direction of the barking—Mons accommodated by backing off the knife a bit. “Sit!” she snapped, “Stay!” Cotton whined, but she could see in the dimness that he obeyed. “Good boy.” Cotton barked in frustration.

“Good move,” said Mons pained voice in her ear. “It’d be hard for me to kill a dog with only one good arm. Don’ get me wrong, I’m sure I’d still kill it. But it’d be messy. Painful—mostly for it.”

“Him!” Zana snapped back.

“Him then,” answered Mons.

“What the hell!” exclaimed Jax’s slightly slurred voice. “There’s a dog and that woman and…what the hell happened?”

“You celebrated your kill too much, that’s what happened!” Mons snapped. “Come over here and help me tie her up. And my arm is broken, I’ll need you to splint it!”

In this short time, a gap had cleared in the sky, greatly increasing the ambient light. Her head turned right, human right side of her face up, she heard Mons gasp as Jax stumbled close to help him. “By the angels,” Ernsto exclaimed, “You’re beautiful!”

“You bastard!” she shouted. She would have spat on him if she could have.

But then the two of them lashed her as she lay on the ground, using a lot of extra rope on her left arm, and then took her rifle and survival gear. Some time passed before Jax finished with Mon’s arm, before the two of them stumbled out of the area. Cotton obediently but frustratedly sat for her the entire time, barking regularly.

“Come here, boy, help me,” she said as soon as she estimated that Mons was out of rifle range from her dog. How dare he call her “beautiful”—she would escape these ropes and hunt down Ernsto Mons if was the last thing she ever did. She hated no one more than him at that moment—not even her own father.

Collision

By Travis Perry - 

Zana mounted the height around the hill in a steady stride, spiraling counterclockwise upward, moving briskly but not so fast she couldn’t hear. Cotton, who’d been well trained, didn’t bark much as a rule and wasn’t barking now. But he whined with an eagerness that told her he smelled or heard someone and it wasn’t easy for him to hold back rushing forward faster than she ever could.

“Good boy,” she said in a sub-vocal tone a dog would hear but a human never would. “Stay with me.”

With a suddenness that Zana had experienced all of her life, the calm night was suddenly and sharply broken by a harsh wind rushing in from the hinterlands. She faced into the wind and saw in the distance a darkness moving forward at a rapid pace, blocking out the stars more each passing second. A dust storm coming in. Soon.

She reached a wall of rock that formed a knob around the very top of this little mountain, a base to a climb that led steeply upward. From above, her ears received a wind-dimmed noise that by its tone had originally been shouts, “Ernsto! Ernsto! Where are you?” The voice she realized was Jax’s.

She glanced down at Cotton, who had his paws on the rock wall, scratching at it with his claws, looking as if he wanted to scramble up the little cliff, growling in a low tone. “He’s up there, is he?” Zana vocalized. Cotton replied with a single sharp bark.

She was taking a risk, but chances were fairly good that Mons would move toward Jax’s voice, giving her the opportunity to come up behind him, if she moved quietly enough. And now was the time to move, while she could still see the handholds in the rock.

Her mechanical left arm pulled her up from handhold to handhold, while she managed to keep the rifle from banging into her too badly as she tried to both help move upward and control it with her right hand. Soon, she’d mounted the little rock wall and found a ledge about a meter wide there. Above her the hill continued up steeply to the top, maybe seventy meters higher. She saw the dark shape of a torso some fifty meters above her, the lower body covered by the curvature of the hill.

She pointed the rifle that way, looking and listening as the wind rushed around her in a whistle. “Ernsto!” shouted the shape above her. “Ernsto! Hey, I brought medicine! Hey, where are you?”

At that moment, Cotton started barking furiously from down below. And the wind changed, now hurling dirt around her, the hillside offering some protection, but not enough to keep her eyes from watering and blinking. But nonetheless she was able to see well enough to notice a flash of movement registering a dark shape—a human shape—hurling itself from behind a boulder less than five meters away on the hill above her, straight down towards her. She raised the rifle to fire, but too late.

A man’s body collided into hers and she fell, losing control of the rife. The man, who had strong arms and who smelled of sweat and bug gall and blood, grappled with her as the winds whipped dust around them and Cotton’s barking transformed into a frenzy…

Equal and Opposite Reaction

by Travis Perry

Zana followed Jax as he climbed up a trail leading into the hills north of the Palmer camp, Cotton padding alongside her. The lesser whalelight and an unusually dust-free fiveday Summer night made visibility much higher than it would normally be at this hour.

There must be somebody else up there she realized. Why else would a hunter with money in his pocket and ale in his belly climb a hillside in the middle of the night? Normally someone like that would rent a locker for his gear and a cot for his backside and sleep in camp for the night…or even the next day or two…

So she scanned the hills very carefully, looking for any warning of danger, her rifle at the low ready. And then she saw it—a glint of light reflecting from what must be some sort of glass. She snapped up her rifle and looked through her scope. The optic brought the glint close but whatever caused it was already moving.

She lowered the rifle for better visibility and ducked into a branch to the left, veering off the trail Jax trudged up, which would put her in a counterclockwise rotation around the hill. If Mons were up there, she’d circle around until she found him…

#

“Looks like Jax’s had a good time,” muttered Ernsto as he looked through Jax’s binos, watching him stumble up the hill. The binos were his new friend’s most expensive piece of gear—so Jax hadn’t wanted to part with them. But he had insisted…

Some instinct told him to scan the area behind Jax. Two shapes moved there, in line with Jax, trailing behind by about one hundred meters. “Damnit! He’s being followed!”

And the larger shape suddenly changed shape. Ernsto saw light reflect of what probably was a rifle optic as it rose. He cursed and rolled over to all fours and scrambled forward, down the hill, scrambling downward in a circle going clockwise around the peak…

Inquiry

Inquiry

By Travis Perry

“You seen this man?” The woman asking had a definite no-nonsense presence—titanium patching on her face, a robotic left arm and left leg. The glossy she held in Jax’s face looked familiar.

“Uh, maybe. I see lots of people.”

“There’s a substantial bounty on this one—the biggest I’ve ever seen. If you know something leading to the arrest of Ernsto Mons, that would be worth five thousand credits to you.”

“Ernsto Mons—that’s the guy in the picture?” Jax looked up at the woman’s face. Her non-robotic parts were actually quite attractive. He felt embarrassed to notice, and it formed a painful reminder of his wife separated from him on Avenir, but in fact he hadn’t seen a lot of women of late—other than Maddie, of course, and some old hag who did cleaning. But the blaze in her eye told him she was even more no-nonsense than his first impression would indicate. Her dog eyed him with a tilted head, as if suspicious.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“About everything—theft, smuggling, murder, human trafficking, insurrection, plotting to assassinate an Avenir government official, plotting to overthrow the Avenir government.”

Jax let out a low whistle. “Whoa. So what’s five thousand credits? Like ten percent?”

The woman nearly smiled at him. The expression sent a chill down his spine. “Why? Are you going to try to haggle for a bigger cut?”

“No—I mean, no, ma’am. Just, er, wondering…” his voice trailed off.

“Look, do you know something or not?”

Jax had already decided what to do. Whatever else he had done, Ernsto had kept a coriander beetle from attacking him from behind while another attacked from the front. Ernsto had also helped move the beetles into the trading camp, yielding a good haul, though he had insisted on staying outside himself. Jax owed him. “Er, sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Hmmm,” she replied, studying him. “Well, if you change your mind, ask for me at the trading post. Everyone knows my name there.”

“Which is?” When her fierce eyes met his own, Jax added, “…er, ma’am…”

“Zana. That’s all you need to know.” And then she turned away.

Bounty

by Travis Perry -

Jax ran after the headless coriander beetle that dragged Ernsto under its body. The spear would not be effective against the thick shell at the rear of the creature, but he thrust it anyway. Perhaps some sort of pain reflex would slow it down…

The beetle’s hindquarters twitched when Jax jabbed, but otherwise the spear point had no effect. A streak of dark human blood flowed behind the dragged human, from Ernsto’s back.

“Help! Help!” Ernsto barked as he helplessly kicked and punched upward. Jax briefly considered pulling his scythegun. It would ruin the value of the kill, but it certainly would stop the beetle’s forward motion. He hesitated, concerned the blast might also injure or kill the human underneath the beetle…

Before he could decide, the beetle’s headless—but still running full speed—thorax pushed into the sandy patch where Ernsto had hidden. In the sand, Jax saw him push hard with arms and legs and disengage himself from the bug’s undercarriage, the softer ground allowing him to succeed in pushing himself down and away. The decapitated beetle kept moving forward until it impacted a boulder on the other side of the sandy patch. Its way blocked, it still tried to move ahead, its legs vainly scratching the rocky ground, the headless torso pressed into the boulder too big for it to budge…

“You all right, pal?” asked Jax, standing over the motionless Ernsto, who had rolled over to his stomach on the sandy ground. Quite a lot of dark venous blood oozed from his back, all over the back—the wounds in fact seemed deeper and more extensive than what he could account for based on the recent scrape along the ground.

“Just give me a minute,” said Ernsto. “I’ll be fine.”

 “We need to get you to a doctor,” Jax replied. “With this bounty of a harvest—three corianders in good condition—we should be able to pay the medics for some treatment.”

“Bounty,” muttered the voice below him, “That’s an interestin’ choice of words…there’s a bounty on my head that’ll make your notion difficult to carry out…”

“Don’t worry. Nobody checks that sort of thing at the Palmer trading camp.”

The man chuckled bitterly. “If only you knew.”

Uncertain Injury

by Travis Perry -

 “Front or back?” demanded Ernsto in a low voice.

For an instant, Jax wondered front or back what? But then his mouth said, “Front,” and he stepped forward with the spear, eyes searching for any bit of rock he could quickly scramble to the top of to lure the beetle coming down the draw into a standing position, exposing its lungs.

A quick glimpse cast backward showed the man he’d just met pull himself out of the sand, moving backward toward the aggressive male coriander on the rock pile behind them, his very large knife gripped in his right hand. Snapped back forward, his eyes registered the beetle from above now charging down the draw, grunting in rage.

Many possible rock formations lay in view—all good, none great. With reaction time running out, Jax charged a fractured boulder to his left and leapt upon it in a single adrenaline-fueled bound. He just managed to raise his hands over his head as the beetle hit the rock. It paused a moment then flipped up to a standing position, the four lower legs on the ground, its pinchers and upper two legs clawing at its higher opponent—Jax.

The edge of the book lung showed itself near the bottom of the beetle, close to the ground, close to the boulder. It would have been relatively easy to miss the target for someone too nervous or plain terrified. But Jax had done this many times before…his pulse pounded and his body trembled with the rush of fight-or-flight chemicals that naturally flooded into his bloodstream, but his mind was focused and clear—the spear flew down in a very short throw, sinking straight into the lung with a psssh of releasing air.

The mortally-wounded bug was not dead yet. It shook, as if with rage, and dropped back down on all sixes and charged up the boulder, pinchers hammering together. Jax lept backward, landing on hands and feet just behind the rock. Before him he witnessed the butt of the spear wedge into a crack of the boulder as the massive beetle plowed forward. Its inertia only drove the spear deeper into its body. It twitched but stopped moving forward, its yardball-sized head advancing no further than just beyond the boulder’s peak.

“Help!” the voice came from to his left. Glancing that way, he saw a headless coriander beetle that clearly had kept charging forward after its decapitation, which must have impacted into Ernsto and knocked him down because now it was dragging him forward, pushing him by the beetle’s undercarriage, its headless neck gushing fluids on the human’s face as it plowed Ernsto forward nearly at full speed, tearing the man’s back across the ground.

This was bad. Jax knew a coriander beetle could live a long time without its head.

Rejoicing In Hope

by Travis Perry

Elsa hauled a wooden bucket of dirty water out of the tavern.  She carried it downhill and poured into a coarse gully leading to the bay.  She planned to next retrieve a clean bucketful from the well and finish her cleaning, when she saw a man walking up toward her.  Not many men came around the tavern in the middle of the day—they were out hunting.

The man was tall and unshaven, gaunt like he hadn’t eaten in a while, with dark hair and eyes, and tattered clothing smelling of seawater.  He stumbled like he’d been wounded in his right leg, while burns plainly showed themselves on his rugged face.

“Young man, are you all right?”

He turned toward her and grimaced.  “I’ve been better.”

She walked to him and put her shoulder under his arm.  “I’m not that bad off,” he said, but he allowed her to help.  She took him to the well sat him on its edge and hauled up water for him to drink.

“Thanks, old lady.”

“I’d do it for anyone.  What’s your name, young man?”

“Ernsto…last name doesn’t matter.”

“Of course,” she answered, offering him an understanding smile.  Many of the new hunters had pasts they didn’t want to talk about.

“Say, old lady, you remind me of my grandma.  Can you help me with something?”

“I’ll do whatever I can.”

He reached inside his left front pants pocket and pulled free a dark sack.  It clicked with movement and she could make out shapes of round hard objects.  As if it were filled with coins.  “Could you take these for me?  They’re gettin’ awful heavy.  You wouldn’t believe what I went through to bring them this far.”

“All of them?  Surely you don’t mean it!”

“Surely I do.”

“May I…look at them?” 

“Why don’ you wait ‘till I leave, Grandma.”

Elsa waited but she was overjoyed.  It was a huge cache of copper coins, maybe fifty or more.  These by themselves might be enough to pay for trip to the orphanage, especially if there were a silver or two hidden among them.  In her mind she praised God and she hummed a happy hymn as she washed Ernsto’s wounds.

He rested with her a half an hour or so, but then arose and started walking inland.  “I’m goin’ huntin’, Elsa.  You take care.”

“God bless you, young man.  And thank you,” she added, rattling the coin bag.

She didn’t open it right away.  Some part of her had begun to fear there must be something wrong—perhaps the metal pieces were cheap tin slugs instead of money…though the bag seemed too heavy for that. 

In the evening, after finishing the tavern floor, in the isolation of the privy, she emptied out the coins.  At first it seemed her fears had come true, the coins were very light colored, like tin.  But then she realized what they really were.  Platinum.

She almost squealed but stopped herself in time.  It wouldn’t do to let everyone know what she had.  People got killed for far less. 

But this would change everything.  She could now afford new hunting gear.  She could return home with her grandchildren and teach them what they needed to know to survive—her family could live on.  In freedom.  In peace.  And most importantly, together.

Her heart poured out into silent song, Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below…

Goodbye

by Travis Perry

The shuttle trailed black smoke as it dropped toward the ocean.  Ernsto struggled with the controls to slow the landing.  Behind them, somewhere, two other vessels were hunting for them in Eclectia’s atmosphere.

He’d originally aimed for Zirconia but he realized it would be impossible to enter the city, not with enforcers chasing him.  They’d surely radio ahead.

At an unknown location on the high sea, somewhere in the Zirconia region, the shuttle hit the water hard.  It bobbed upward due to the air in the hull, but immediately afterward the fractured ship began to slowly sink.

Ernso unstrapped and seized the angel’s pressure tank and shoved it toward the airlock, which he moved to release.  Lock open, ocean water began pouring into the vehicle, hastening its doom.  Ernsto quickly released pressure, unlatched the tank, and hauled the angel out.  He shoved her into the water and plunged in after her.  Seconds later on the surface, coughing cold green water, he scrambled upward, coming to his feet on top the still-sinking shuttle.

Beneath a nearby wave he saw the angel’s glowing white light.  The low pressure at the ocean surface caused her pain, yet she looked past her own agony to project worry about what would happen to him.

“I’ll make it, get out of here!” he shouted.  There was no way for her to save him anyway—she needed to dive to the ocean depths; he could only survive on the surface.

Her mind projected understanding and regret.  She dove deeper.

At that moment it struck Ernsto that he’d never loved anyone the way he’d loved her, not even his grandmother—certainly far more than any woman who’d ever shared his bed.  Her mind had been so beautiful, so kind, so gentle and soothing.  How would he survive without her?  He fell to his knees, astonished that his heart was breaking, astonished that if he could have swum after her, he would have followed her to her underwater world and been her husband if she’d have him. 

Her mind reached out to him in pity.  He could feel her embarrassment at his gushing emotion.  It never had been like that for her.  She’d cared for him…but like a pet…

On his knees, the ocean rising, he buried his hand in his face and wept.  He’d been like a pet, like a savage dog taken in by a gentle woman who believed a little loving kindness would calm its vicious ways.  The love of his life, yet to her only a pet, an animal.  This pain—he knew he’d never overcome it.

His peripheral vision caught a vapor trail of a shuttle overhead.  It turned in a big arc across the ash-gray sky back his way, apparently having spotted him.

Ernsto Mons stood upright on the shuttle hull, water now lapping his ankles.  He pulled the plasma pistol from his belt and aimed it at the incoming shuttle, his mood hardening. 

“Come on,” he rasped.  “Come kill me.”  

Descent

by Travis Perry

The shuttle separated from Avenir, Ernsto’s steady hand guiding the controls. As the vessel pushed away from the station, the commo panel lit red.

“Government shuttle two alpha, this is Avenir Control, please respond.”

Ernsto grimaced before replying. He didn’t know much about spaceship protocols at this level. All his previous experience with Avenir Control had been to the lower cargo levels. “Control, this is two alpha, go ahead.”

“We have no scheduled flight itinerary for your vessel. Please dock at sector four bravo of the station ring until control receives your plan.”

“Sure, sector four bravo. Headed that way.”

He eased the vessel outward to the habitation ring. He actually had no idea where 4B might be relative to where he was, but he had no intention of docking anyway.

“Your current location is sector two,” volunteered control.

Ernsto steered the shuttle to follow the ring clockwise. Soon he passed some one hundred meters over a giant number 3 painted on the gray metal ring encircling the metallic dark shape of Avenir. So four should be next; bravo will be in the middle of the outer edge of the ring.

At 200 kph he hit sector four in less than 30 seconds. He maneuvered the shuttle to the edge of the ring and plunged downward. The alpha docking port at the top of the ring held a cutter with enforcer stripes. The vessel broke free from dock as he passed by and fixed a laser on his ship, a missile-guiding type, flickering spotty red at the rear of his cockpit window.

“Dock now or we will fire!” blared his radio. Ernsto accelerated hard, throwing as much rocket exhaust backward as possible.

Pressed hard into his seat at the four gee acceleration, his back screamed in agony. “Return to dock now or we will fire!” shouted his com system. He shut it off and plunged downward toward the gray skies of Eclectia below.

His anti-collision radar picked up no fewer than four vessels in pursuit, far more than would be expected from a missing flight plan. It seemed Hobson had found him already…

Escape, Part 3

by Travis Perry

In the early morning hours, the holding cell’s lights dim, Ernsto awoke from his thinly padded steel bed to the sound of the cell door opening. He sat up, clutching his single blanket for warmth.

Officer Salzar stood on the other side of the open door, an unknown peacekeeper beside him. “Come on,” said the young officer. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“What…why?”

“I believe Hobson means to kill you. And the angel as well. I don’t think we can keep you safe here, or anywhere else I know of. He’s too well connected and too…powerful.”

As Ernsto stood up and dropped the blanket, he felt the crude bandages on his back sticking to the bright yellow jumpsuit he’d been forced to wear. “I don’t suppose you brought a change of clothes for me?”

“Yes, but not here. We need to move, no talking.”

The two men escorted him out of the Avenir upper brig. For some unknown reason, no other officers were in sight. Through a back corridor they escorted him to a loading dock. A familiar black pressure tank on a robotic wheeled cart waited there. Ah, angel babe, so glad to see you, said his mind. A familiar rush of warmth answered him back.

“On the other side of the airlock is a shuttle, with clothing and some equipment inside,” Salazar said. “You do mean to return the angel to the sea, right?”

“More than anything.”

“Then take her and go.”

“Er…as much as it’s not like me to question good news, won’ this get you in trouble?”

“Possibly. But who knows that the infamous smuggler Ernsto Mons didn’t force his way out? Not that I would ever lie about that. Or anything else. But I hope people draw their own conclusions. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to come back here for trial, after you set the angel free, risk to your life or not?”

“I don’ suppose you’d believe me if I said I would?”

“I don’t believe so,” replied the enforcer with a grin. “Well, don’t think this means I won’t put your face on every enforcer bulletin I can. You’ll be more famous than ever after this—which will make it very tough to sneak anything past anyone ever again. I’d give up smuggling if I were you.”

Before he could answer, the unnamed peacekeeper inserted himself into the conversation. “If it wasn’t for the angel, I wouldn’t do anything for you. If I see you on Avenir again, I’ll shoot you on sight. Understand?” The tall, gray-haired man scrunched his eyebrows together as he spoke, making his menace clear.
“Understood,” he said mildly, some part of his mind surprised that he’d let anyone threaten him without any desire to threaten in return.

Officer Salzar shook his hand before he departed, but the peacekeeper kept glaring at him and warned, “Hobson is still after you. If you don’t keep a low profile, he’ll have you dead within the week.”

“Understood,” he replied again, this time in a whisper.

Within minutes he had changed, astonished to find his coin bag inside his pants pocket. He then powered up the small shuttle, getting ready for the quick flight to Eclectia, the angel in her portable tank behind him.

Escape Part 2

by Travis Perry -

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Hobson. “If the firecrew could proceed on to deal with the blaze internal sensors say is raging in one of my rooms, I’d be most grateful. But as for this man, this Ernsto Mons, please allow me to deal with him myself.”

The firefighters moved toward the second door but the enforcers stood in place, looking confused, as if there was something not quite right with what Hobson had said. After a long moment, one said “Sure” and the lone peacekeeper in the room said, “Sounds reasonable” and then suddenly all of them murmured a chorus of agreement.

All of them except one. “No,” said a young dark-haired man in the uniform of the governor’s personal security detachment. “That’s not normal police procedure. This man needs to be arrested and processed for trial.” Ernsto recognized the young man as Officer Salzar, whom he’d met once by chance. For some reason, more than half of the enforcers in the room wore the uniform of the governor’s security detail—apparently they’d been nearby.

Hobson smiled at Salzar and gazed directly into his eyes. “Young man, I realize you work directly for the governor and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help with my personal crisis here. But I am a high government minister myself and can be completely trusted in this matter. The man is my employee; please allow me to deal with him.”

“No,” said Salzar. And then a battle erupted of sort Ernsto had never seen before. Hobson’s eyes blazed and his voice rang out words. They were not foreign or magical words; Hobson told Salzar in a torrent of words why he should relent, why he should do as he was told, why he was duty-bound to obey, but the rhythm of his speech was hypnotic and Ernsto found he could not retain in his mind anything the wizard was chanting. Salzar balled his hands into fists and stared right back at the wizard. In a low voice the enforcer muttered words Ernsto could not hear, but they reminded him nonetheless of the prayers his grandmother used to make.

He felt the angel reaching out in this fight too, somehow knowing she comforted and helped Salzar. The words from Hobson hammered on with power and Ernsto felt as if he were no longer himself. His whole being, everything about him, turned numb and he dully watched, barely perceiving, as the invisible battle before him raged. It stretched on timeless, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours.

In an instant it was over. Hobson stopped speaking. Sweat poured from the wizard’s brow and he huffed with effort. His eyes lowered to the ground.

Salzar turned to Ernsto. “Let’s go. Take the tank. I’m bringing you into custody.”

The other members of the governor’s detachment followed Salzar and all of them exited Hobson’s quarters as a group. Walking out the door, Ernsto felt an astonished sense of relief. He was still alive, even though going probably going to prison. Still alive, but better yet, free from Hobson…

Escape, Part 1

by Travis Perry -

Each movement brought a spasm of pain to his back and his left ear felt like a hot poker had been shoved inside it. In the angel’s chamber, Ernsto maneuvered the robotic cart carrying the portable pressure tank to the circular lock near the floor, below the transparent wall that physically separated him from the angel.

Two doors entered this room; the one behind him he felt confident was secure—shut tight, its locking mechanism damaged. His left hand held the plasma blaster, covering the door in front of him as his right hand worked the controls to the circular entrance into the angel’s tank.

Waves of comfort and empathetic caring emitted from the angel, reminding him of his grandmother’s touch when he’d been sick as a child, a warm soothing blanket and hot honey tea from her gentle hands, her voice telling him she loved him. The angel’s care probed not only into the suffering of his body, but reached deep into hidden parts of himself, working to soothe the damage he’d done by destroying other men.

The light near the door flickered and he fired on the entryway, a plasma bolt peeling the blue paint on the metal sliding door. Easy, easy, said the warm embrace of the angel’s mind.

He replied, “Babe, the lock’s ready. You needa come out so I can transfer you to this tank, so I can take you back where you came from.” His voice rasped in a whisper, but he knew she understood him. He hadn’t actually needed words at all.

She came out and he physically pulled her from the lock and briefly her body was in his arms, wet and rubbery. Now she suffered the pain of low pressure and his mind clumsily tried to comfort her with it’s okay, it’s okay. But then she was in the portable tank, the lid sealed shut, and the rising water pressure returning her to normal.

At that moment the door snapped open and two enforcers scrambled into the room, plasma pistols raised, shouting, “DROP YOUR WEAPON!” He was ready to kill or die trying—the angel flooded his mind please please please, begging him to stop. His left arm twitched to raise his weapon but he found his hand had let go of it. It dropped to the floor and his heart accepted what the angel wanted. He would allow himself to be captured.

Behind the first enforcers came two others, and then another two. The first pair threw him to the ground and handcuffed his wrists together. They hauled him to his feet and he saw there were now at least ten enforcers in the room and a plainclothes peacekeeper and some firecrew. Among them, in the safety of their numbers, stood Hobson, a triumphant smile on the wizard’s face.

A Personal War, Part 3

by Travis Perry -

Ernsto grabbed the third pipe bomb, its fuse half burnt and still burning. The contents of the first, the one he’d opened, had caught fire, adding to the flames without exploding. He frantically searched for the knife to cut the fuse of the bomb in his hand, his eyes not picking it out among the flaming and shrapnel-pitted carnage of his cubical room.

A glance at the pipe showed the fuse down to only two centimeters. He jammed the end of the pipe between his lips and bit off the fuse with his teeth. Its flaming end singed his tongue.

Spitting it out, he finally glimpsed the knife blade reflecting a yellow glint of fire and snatched it up, pocketing it. Glancing at the damaged metal mattress frame, one of the legs caught Ernsto’s eye. The blast had nearly detached it from the bed.

He wrenched it free, put the pipe bomb under his arm, and charged the door with the bed leg held to his chest like a battering ram. He dove forward and smashed into the concave door curve left by the exploded bomb. The impact of the leg hurt his ribs and pectoral muscle more than the shrapnel wounds in his back had hurt. But the already-damaged metal at the bottom of door split open about ten centimeters.

His ears, still ringing, heard a faint shout from the other side. He spun back and lit the short-fused pipe bomb in the nearest piece of flaming mattress and threw it through the opening in the door. He flinched to the side but didn’t have time to plug his eardrums before the blast. This time, at least, he did not black out.

He stood up, aware that fluid poured down his left earlobe, the side of his face that had been closest to the door. His lungs ached from the smoke but he’d responded without thinking by taking shallow breaths and living without gulping air as long as he could.

The door had split open down the middle from about the height of his chin to the gash he already made near the floor. With the bed leg he pried the gap open and slipped out of his room. Right at the doorway were the fragmented pulpy remains of two cyborgs, who had a mostly intact metallic tank with them of some kind, of the gas they’d been pouring into his room, perhaps nitrous oxide. Apparently one of the cyborgs had shut it down before death, maybe because N2O is an oxidizer—not safe around flames.

Ten meters away, Nasir lay on the couch of this common room that adjoined his sleeping area. His eyes were open and glazed over, a look of surprise permanently pasted onto his dead face. His chest and neck were punctured with shrapnel wounds.

Ernsto took the plasma pistol clutched in Nasir’s still-warm right hand. Hobson, who might have been near his door at one point, was nowhere in sight now.

Deliberately projecting a bloodthirsty determination, he said out loud, “Stay away from the angel, old man. Or I will kill you.”

A Personal War, Part 2

by Travis Perry -

Eyeing his knife, Ernsto Mons’ first thought was to slit his wrists in defiance, choosing his own time of death rather than letting Hobson pick it for him. But then a memory drifted back into his mind, a memory he somehow felt the angel had helped bring back to him.

The wall wasn’t my only hiding place. He glanced at his mattress. The bed in his nearly bare room had been an acceleration couch once on Avenir during the long-ago voyage from Earth. Some of the couch’s panels and braces had been stripped away since then, but it retained the same basic frame. The original mattress, on the other hand, had long since decayed and had been replaced by a hand-crafted type from the surface of Eclectia. This new mattress showed no signs of having been disturbed…except along one edge, near the head of the bed, where the hand stitching looked subtly different from the rest.

Ernsto knifed it open there and tore mattress fabric with his hands. Inside, his hands found three capped titanium pipes with fuses, filled with what he recalled having stuffed inside—an ancient recipe for homemade explosive, ammonium nitrate saturated with liquid hydrocarbon.

What he didn’t have was the flame to ignite the fuse. After seconds of thought that seemed to stretch an eternity, he began to unscrew one of the caps on the threaded pipe. Once open, with his knife edge he pried a hole in the control panel to the door and bared an electrical source wire.

Suddenly, his ears heard a gas hiss into the room from a vent low along the door and his vision blurred. He held his breath, while with as much care as he could muster he scooped a dollop of wet gray pipe filling out from the open tube with his knife, grounded the blade on the edge of the panel, and moved the hot wire close to the knife blade and the small portion of explosive on top of it, which without the power of a blasting cap, should burn rather than blow up. At least I hope so.

The wire sparked but the current bit him, forcing his muscles to contract. His arm jerked away, flicking the flaming yellow onto the mattress, which immediately leapt up and burned bright, so much so that the whole room might burst into flame. That works, thought Ernsto, still shock-dazed.

He seized another pipe bomb, lit its fuse in the mattress flame, rolled it to the bottom of the door, and dove behind the bed—tipping it over as a shield behind his back, jamming his fingers in his ears. The clap of the explosion he barely heard because the overpressure knocked him unconscious.

He regained consciousness, confused, breathing something that made him cough, his ears ringing so loud he could hear nothing else. The mattress, riddled with gaping holes, didn’t burn very bright, suggesting he’d only been out for an instant. The door bent outward at the bottom, about 50 centimeters worth, but the inside of the room clearly had taken the worst of it—its metallic walls were gouged and pitted with shrapnel in the pattern of a misshapen cone. And Ernsto felt the warm of what must be blood flowing down his back.

His eye caught hold of the third pipe bomb. Its fuse had caught fire—with him still trapped inside the room.

A Personal War, Part 1

by Travis Perry -

Rolf reached inside his jacket for his weapon, too late. Ernsto shot the needle gun into his neck, through the carotid. Nasir, much faster than Ersnto suspected, drew his plasma blaster and fired.

Ernsto had already leapt forward into the doorway at the front of Wizard Hobson’s quarters when the hot plasma passed his back. Without looking, he squeezed off five needle shots behind him as he charged toward his room.

Plasma bolts hurled past him and a searing burn engulfed his left shoulder. Normally he would have picked a spot with good cover and held his ground. But he couldn’t, not with Hobson somewhere nearby.

Run, had said the angel into his mind, run, she said, revealing Rolf and Nasir’s thinking—this time, they intended to kill him as he walked past, his usefulness finished, as was hers. But he’d never been the type to run—and there was no way he’d let Hobson have the angel.

He charged past the pressurized aquarium that held her on the way towards his room and its hidden weapons. The angel’s eyes were wide and frightened, her ray-like wings tapped the glass in her distress. No, no, don’t kill, her mind told him.

“Sorry babe,” he shot back as he exited her chamber.

“Ernsto!” The voice belonged to Hobson. Something informed him if he looked back he’d lose his will to fight. Whether it was the angel that told him this or his own mind, he knew not.

He sprinted into his small room and slid shut the door by pressing the yellow button on the right side of the frame. He held his thumb to the pad for his print to lock it. Next he flipped the knife hidden in his right sleeve into his hand and stabbed the control panel, penetrating its thin aluminum face three times, hoping the door servo would never operate again.

His key for the lockbox he jammed into the slot and threw open the box. Within seconds he used the tool to open his hidden panel in the wall, the hiding place for his weapons.

His eyes searched and saw…nothing. He reached his left hand into the gap and felt nothing.

A slow chuckle came in through the room intercom. “Ernsto, my lad, did you really think you could hide a weapons cache from me? In my own private section of Avenir?”

Ernsto didn’t answer. His stomach balled into a knot.

“Now be a good lad and fix whatever you’ve done to the door and come on out. We need to sit down and discuss this rationally, man to man.”

I’d rather die first, he thought, eyeing his sleeve knife and hoping this time the wizard knew exactly what was on his mind.

Inventory

by Travis Perry -

Rolf and Nasir smiled at him as if they shared a secret he didn’t know. Ernsto did not, could not, let himself get annoyed by them.

Days ago he’d figured out that those two doorknobs were not the source of his problem. They were not the ones causing the blanks in his memory. They were not the cause of the angel’s terror.

Hobson was the enemy, of course. The wizard’s friendly confidence gave him away.

Ernsto strolled by the door guards and waved, letting a friendly slowness pass over his face. The guards had both been raised on Avenir…they were predisposed to think someone from “down under” was a simpleton, an ignorant rustic. He let them think that—it served his purpose.

He supposed the insight into these men had come to him from the angel. He found in himself, more and more, that he longed for the information and understanding she gave him.

He entered his cubicle of a bedroom. On his person at all times he carried the only key to a lockbox. The box contained a curved tool and a signal jammer. The signal jammer he turned on, in case there were bugs or unknown video dots in the room; he placed the tool between tight fitting wall panels and cranked to the left. A portion of the aluminum wall sagged forward.

Inside the wall he eyed over his collected inventory. He added to it his latest two acquisitions. A pair of flash-bang stun grenades found their places among homemade explosives, a plasma blaster, tranquilizer gun, projectile pistol, and three razor-sharp knives.

Ernsto sealed the panel and suppressed his emotion of triumph. Soon, old man. Soon ‘nough you’ll know exactly how I’m feelin’.

Experiment

by Travis Perry -

***Today we celebrate our 100th story! Can you believe it? And we're celebrating with an all-new look designed for us by Mike Rogers. Here's to the next 100! And now, on with the story :) ***

In the chamber with the pressurized angel tank, Ernsto shuffled toward Wizard Hobson against his will. The feeling was not so much his legs disobeying his orders as the part of the mind controlling his legs no longer seemed to be a part of him.

Hobson’s eyes were green-blue, he realized as drew close enough to peer into them. And then in a blur he threw his hands against the wizard’s throat.

Hobson gagged and his eyes bulged in surprise, but an instant later Ernsto found the control of his fingers no longer belonged to him. His arms dropped to the side—limp, like they were dead.

The wizard coughed and rubbed his throat. He laughed hard, as if all were a joke, but an angry glint lit his eyes. “You have very quick hands, my boy. And a quick, violent will. I was not able to detect your intent before you struck. If I had, you never would have moved a muscle.”

As if to prove the wizard’s point, his thought to bash the old man’s nose with his forehead left him feeling numb in his neck and back. He couldn’t make any movement at all.

“How?” he uttered. He’d intended to say more, but the paralysis that gripped his body hindered his mouth.

“How do I control you? Simple, my dear friend. Chemical compounds, mind-enhancing compounds which I’ve discovered from my studies of the angel cerebral cortex. This one isn’t my first…not even my first live one, but the other live one I captured, one I took myself when I was a much younger man, I moved into a pen under the sea, isolated, but still connected to the ocean. He called for help, mentally of course—after two days the facility was assaulted by hundreds from his tribe. I barely escaped with my life. But even more importantly than my personal survival, I retained the knowledge I had gleaned, knowledge I’ve been adding to and using it for decades now. All wizards use knowledge derived from angels, but I assure you, with all due modesty, I am the greatest of them all.”

“What…?” rasped Ernsto.

“What do I intend to do with you? Or the angel? Or both? I’m not quite sure what you mean. You see, I should be able to know, since I can enter your mind. But I don’t fully—which simply is further proof that there is more work to do, more discoveries to be made. In spite of all I have learned from the tools provided by the angel brain, in spite of all the corners of the human mind I’ve learned to tap into, I still struggle to do what they do with ease—communicate complete thought to thought. I wondered for a time if perhaps the human brain were simply incompatible with such a form of communication. But you, my boy, you give me hope!”

“Why?”

“Why, because you communicate with the angel. Or better said, she communicates with you. That’s why you enjoy being with her, even though you do not admit to yourself that’s how you feel. It’s because she touches your mind. I think,” Hobson chuckled, “she’s trying to heal your ‘sickness’ of violence…how quaint!”

“Now?”

“Ah, now. Now I get to experiment with the link that has sprung up between the two of you. That’s why I haven’t simply shut your mind down, by the way, or reoriented your will. I need to test you in a more natural state.” Hobson turned to the cyborgs, “Strap him to the table.”

Flat on the table, the two cyborgs finished with Hobson’s command, Ernsto felt his body return to his control. Not that it helped—the straps were tight and strong.

The wizard had opened the box. It contained some sort of advanced drill, with a very fine bit surrounded by thin clear tubes. The bit whirred in the air as the professor pressed a button. “For brain tissue samples,” he explained unbidden. “First you, then the angel.”

No, no! he heard her mind say from the pressurized tank.

As the wizard moved the drill closer to the base of his skull, Ernsto said through gritted teeth, “If you do this, you’d better kill me. Elsewise, as soon as you let me go, you’re a dead man.”

“Oh, I imagine this experiment will last weeks. You and the angel don’t die until after that. But I promise to wipe your memory of this moment. Tomorrow, you won’t even know any of this ever happened. You’ll think it’s just another well-paid day on the job. I’ve already done it to you twice.”

Great, he thought. He set in himself a determination to remember every detail.

I’ll help you, said the angel into his mind.

Delivery

by Travis Perry -

The job the old man gave him to do was ridiculously simple. Pick up some a container of special material, no questions asked. Show the forged papers on the way out of the mail hub and as needed on the way back, delivering the package straight to the angel’s chamber.

It was so simple and trivial Ernsto could barely believe he’d been assigned to the task. Hobson might as well have sent one of the cyborgs for something like this. But a lot of the work he’d done for Wizard Hobson in his weeks on Avenir belonged to that category. Trivial, but well-paid. As if he wants me around, even though he’s got nothin’ for me to do…which made absolutely no sense.

The job went off without a hitch, as expected, except after he rode the stainless steel cargo lift up to the executive level. The governor’s staterooms lay off to the left and other ministers had quarters to the right (Hobson served as Minster of Ethics, of all things). Ernsto showed his papers to the enforcer at the elevator and carried the box made out of processed bugshell toward Hobson’s. Before he’d gotten more than ten paces from the checkpoint, he heard the elevator open again and a young voice behind him.

“You there, do I know you?”

He turned around with deliberate slowness. Behind him stood a fresh-faced enforcer with a crisp new uniform, with the silver emblem on the right side indicating Governor’s Service. His name tag said “Salsar.”

“Don’t think so,” answered Ernsto slowly. Moving slow was always a good way to face a lawman for the first time. It tended to put ‘em at ease…

“Your face looks familiar,” said the enforcer.

“I get a lot of that. I resemble Stensin, governor before last.”

The enforcer squinted at him, visibly wondering if that were the reason. “Your papers, please.”

He showed the forms and studied the face of the young enforcer examining them. This one showed no signs of bullying—a true believer in the occupation of law enforcement. Would almost be a shame to kill him.

“Everything seems correct. Please pardon my interruption, Mr. Jons.”

“No trouble at all, officer,” he answered.

Within moments he’d passed by Nasir and Rolf at the door, who still resented the way the old man treated him better than them. Once past the entry the sense of terror and distress stabbed at him, like knives in his eyes. The angel’s distress pierced him. He barely realized that his pace picked up—he nearly ran into the angel’s chamber.

Hobson, assisted by a pair of cyborgs, used multiple manipulator arms within the pressurized tank to press the angel down to the tank floor, while ratcheting down straps of some kind tight into her flesh.

“Ernsto, dear boy!” The wizard’s smile spread his mouth wide, but his eyes were dead and lifeless. “Bring the package here, my lad.”

Ernsto found himself stepping forward.

Due Wages

by Travis Perry -

Ernsto sat in the darkened room with the angel, counting his stacks of platinum coins. The pay was good, there was no denying that. And it wasn’t as if the work was hard.

She watched him from the tank, her dark eyes glinting with reflected light from her own white bioluminescent body. The tentacles attached to the back of her head hung down almost like hair and her ray-like fins were spread wide, like wings, making her look especially angelic.

“But you’re not an angel really,” muttered Ernsto. “You’re just a big fish, a smart one.” He didn’t feel fully convinced. He fingered a platinum coin, feeling the cold hard weight of it.

Why? floated into the back of his mind. The more time he spent with the angel, the more he could swear he didn’t just know her feelings—he could hear her thoughts. He glanced up at her but didn’t offer any answer to her question.

The door slid open, revealing Wizard Hobson, smiling as broadly as ever. “There you are! You certainly do like spending time here, don’t you, my boy?” The man deliberately ignored the angel recoiling away from the surface of the glass, balling up at the back of the tank.

Eyes fixed on the wizard, he answered, “I like the dark. The quiet is good, too. You got experiments to run?”

“Not at the moment. I just have another job for you, Ernesto.” The wizard mispronounced his name in a way that for some reason made him smile.

He had more platinum and more luxury than he’d ever had in his life. At that instant he decided he’d had enough; the time had come to go back to smuggling. He rose to his feet, a forceful “No” at the back of his throat.

But when Hobson’s eyes met his own, he found his willpower ebbing away. The wizard started speaking and he couldn’t even remember anymore what he had wanted.

Whatever the old man said, he had to do it.