Outlaws: Assignment Darklanding Read online

  Outlaws

  Darklanding: Episode 3

  By Scott Moon

  and Craig Martelle

  Copyright © 2017 Craig Martelle

  All rights reserved.

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  ISBN:

  Cover art by Kevin McLaughlin

  Editing services provided by Mia Darien – miadarien.com

  Formatting by James Baldwin jamesosiris.com

  Based on a concept by Diane Velasquez, Dorene Johnson, and Kat Lind who also provide developmental editing for the series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  We’d like to thank the following beta readers who make sure that this story goes to you as error free as humanly possible. They also keep us on track with the stories. What a great group of people we have helping us to tell better stories.

  Micky Cocker

  Kelly O’Donnell

  James Caplan

  Diane Velasquez

  Dorene Johnson

  Scott and I would both like to thank our families for putting up with us as we share the stories in our heads. We type slowly and it takes time to capture the words. Thank you for taking care of us while we’re doing our thing

  CHAPTER ONE: Her Name is Dixie

  Thaddeus Fry saw the stranger before anyone else. Even if he wasn’t the sheriff of Darklanding, he would have noticed the out-of-place man. As the sheriff, the clue phone was ringing off the hook, and he picked it up like a professional sleuth.

  First, the man’s rugged jumpsuit actually fit and had been pressed. Given his size, this was no small endeavor. Thad knew military grade carbon-weave when he saw it. Shined boots, well organized tactical kit, and gloves tucked in his belt—the man had seen real training somewhere. The SagCon Special Investigator stripe was the same color as the smoke-colored jumpsuit.

  Second, the bullnecked man stepped to one side of the door after entering and surveyed the terrain—demonstrating unusually high situational awareness. The stranger narrowed his gaze at a few patrons, possibly making a mental note or perhaps wondering if he had made a mistake coming to the Wilok system. Moments later, just before the people in the room took notice—Thad was learning to predict such moments by the mood in the room or the lull in the conversations—the stranger walked toward Thad.

  “Same as always,” Thad said as he pushed his empty shot glass toward Pierre.

  “Set out another whiskey in ninety-three seconds,” Pierre and Dixie said in unison.

  She shoved Pierre’s arm in frustration for reasons Thad neither understood nor wanted to understand. He took one step away from his barstool. If there was going to be a fight, or something worse like the serving of a class-action lawsuit from his ex-wives, he wanted room to maneuver.

  At the same time, he acted unconcerned—as though he’d been expecting the man from SagCon.

  Dixie took one look at the well-dressed brute and turned away with her chin held high.

  The stranger—thick-jawed, broad-shouldered, and generally massive—stopped and stared at her naked shoulders and tight corset that accentuated her ample hips. He started to say something, then realized he couldn’t speak. A moment later, he was blushing and looking away from Dixie’s hourglass form.

  His thinning hair was dark around the sides of his scalp. Body hair curled up on the other places that showed—neck and knuckles mostly. He smiled as he returned a furtive gaze in Dixie’s direction.

  Thaddeus approached the man. Warily he stood back more than an arm’s length. “Can I help you?” Thaddeus asked.

  “You’re Sheriff Fry?” His voice was as deep as Thad expected and his bluntness reminded Thad of an agricultural worker or a rancher.

  “I am,” Thad said before pointing with a tip of his chin. “And her name is Dixie. “Who might you be?”

  Out of the corner of his vision, Thad saw Ruby start down the stairs, stop, eyes going wide, and then turn back the instant she saw the SagCon stranger. A door slammed upstairs.

  “Special Investigator Michael Hammer. Friends call me Sledge.”

  “I see,” Thaddeus said, cocking his head as he contemplated why an investigator was sent now, when the Company never bothered sending one to investigate the murder of Thad’s predecessor. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is the Company Man in residence? Have to admit, this feels like a wild goose chase or a practical joke. Ha, ha, everyone laugh at the SagCon SI.” His voice rumbled with good-humored confidence. Thad couldn’t help but smile. He’d had the same thoughts.

  “She’s busy. Unless you have an appointment, which you don’t,” Pierre said, wiping down the bar and talking without looking at the SI. “Do you have a place to stay, stranger? I think we might have one room left.”

  Sledge studied Pierre and seemed to ponder the information, then met Thad’s eyes.

  Thad shrugged and raised one eyebrow as he looked at Pierre. He knew there was more than one room remaining, but Pierre would jack the price up for the unwary SagCon employee.

  Sledge put his fists on his hips. “The Company Man is a she?”

  Dixie swiveled her stool around, shoulders back and cleavage aimed at the newcomer like a weapon. “Is there a problem with that? You have something against women?”

  “No, madam. Not at all. Love ‘em, in fact,” Sledge said.

  “But not if they have real power and influence?” Dixie said, clapping her hands together, a movement that had the effect of pushing her breasts together. “You should learn to think before you speak, Special Investigator Michael Hammer.”

  “Call me Sledge.”

  “Humph.” She slid off the stool and walked away, starting to work the tables with cheerful greetings and an extra swing of her hips. She checked on her girls and took drinks from them. “Chelsie, you know my policy on drinking with guests.”

  “But, Dixie…”

  Thad slid onto his stool and reached for the glass Pierre pushed toward him.

  “I sure would like one of those,” Sledge said.

  “You have an expense account with SagCon?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Pierre poured a drink that was probably as sour as his expression and handed it to the big SI. “We have rules here at the Mother Lode.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Sledge said. He tossed back his drink and watched Dixie’s progress around the room.

  Thad nursed his whiskey and curbed his jealousy of the SagCon special investigator and his expense account. Dixie eventually made her way back to her usual place near Pierre at the bar, ignoring Sledge and Thad.

  Ruby never returned from upstairs. She was either hiding or had climbed out a window.

  “None of my business,” Thad said without thinking.

  “Pardon?” Sledge asked.

  “Nothing.” Thad pushed the empty glass back to Pierre, then scanned the chip in his wrist to pay for his drinks. He faced Sledge. “You never told me why you’re here.”

  Sledge rubbed his chin. “Pissed off my boss, I think. My predecessor came this way quite a bit ago, or he turned in travel expenses to that effect. Lot of fugitives in Darklanding.”

  “Dangerous fugitives?” Thad asked curiously. He already knew most of the people in Darklanding and none of them caused him too much concern.

  Special Investigator Michael “Sledge” Hammer laughed. “Not really. I’ll let you know if I need help.”

  He didn’t come across as being arrogant or overconfident, only resigned wit
h a less-than-challenging mission.

  * * *

  The red light of dawn painted the canyons of Ungwilook, driving the shadowy twin moons from the sky and welcoming the industrious activity of desert creatures. Cold morning dew coated fields of wildflowers in the shadows of high cliffs. Shallow rivers, pink in the morning light, twisted across the landscape where animals came to drink. A surprising diversity of birds and other creatures sang to each other.

  A mag-rail train belonging to EMC-S (Exotic Mineral Corporation - SagCon) shot down a steep mountain at fantastic speeds. Four hundred titanium-walled boxcars were pulled by a front engine and pushed by a rear engine. The arrangement was maximized efficiency, relying on gravity to initiate the launch. Both the mines and the spaceport at Darklanding were higher than this desert corridor. Either place could launch or receive the bullet train.

  A sonic boom rippled behind the freight train and water sprayed up from the lazy river, momentarily flattening fields of flowers. Nothing taller than scrub grass grew within a kilometer of the rail system. It moved like a projectile fired from an ancient gun, completely out of control if not for the industrial-strength monorail the cars glided upon. The fore and aft engines were needed only for the brief climb at the end of the journey or to stop in case of emergency—most of their mechanical mass was brakes.

  A pair of airships lifted from the top of the mesa and turned toward the canyon. Heat contrails followed their engines as they accelerated to catch up with their quarry. Neither ship was new, and neither ship bore identifying numbers. Exaggerated white skulls were painted on the nose of the identical craft with the pockmarked damage of small-arms blaster fire decorating the areas around the side doors.

  The two ships reached the end of the train and separated. One crept over the train’s tail, slowly advancing to what looked like a predetermined point. The other airship punched its afterburners and fought to reach the front engine of the EMC-S material transport locomotive. When it arrived, the two ships hovered as though following a plan and then carefully descended until the side doors were only a meter off the top of the train.

  Twelve humanoid shapes wearing armor with magnetic boots and tightly gripping long blasters dropped from each airship. Rather than accelerate, the short-winged craft slowly decreased speed so that each individual was dropped a meter from each other. When all shapes descended, twenty-four in total, the two craft veered away and established a pursuit vector.

  The breaching teams knelt and pressed sticky bundles of explosives on the ceilings of the two engines. Using hand signals, they motioned their teams to back up and form security rings. The heavily-armed raiders formed a perimeter, facing outward with their weapons ready and every sensor on alert. The chances of them being attacked at this point in the operation were nonexistent. Even if a rival or a regulatory enforcement agency wanted to stop them, the train was moving too fast and was impossible to access without highly skilled dropship teams.

  The commander of these operators had to know there was no one else on the planet able to do what they were doing now.

  One of the armored humanoids lost his balance and was nearly carried away by the wind. The strong magnetic force of his boot soles saved him, but looked painful as his knee twisted against the immovable position. The entire team held steady and waited for him to correct himself.

  They could probably communicate through their helmet radios, but didn’t seem to rely on words. Professionals at this level didn’t need to talk. A comparable military squad would have run the drill dozens of times before executing it.

  The breaching charges blew holes in the fore and aft engine cars and the two twelve-man teams descended quickly. What they did inside the engines was difficult to determine from such a great distance.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t take long.

  The teams emerged and were scooped up by the airships.

  The mag-rail train, which had never failed in the history of the mining operation, shuddered and twisted. For a fraction of a second it seemed to accelerate, then twisted violently on the rail and flew apart. Hundreds of the titanium-walled boxcars twisted and collided with each other as they slammed into the floor of the canyon.

  Ryan G. Gulliver stepped back from his telescopic camera in shock. “So much for my postcard business,” he mumbled.

  Thinking quickly, he put one hand over the lens to protect it from multiple shockwaves crossing the high desert terrain. The morning air was cold and it buffeted him, blowing back his slightly long sandy hair and forcing him to widen his stance to avoid being knocked over.

  He looked for the airships but could not find them. He wasn’t even sure where they had come from. He did a quick review of what his camera had captured. The images were shaky and full of debris flying into the air as the train came apart.

  “Amanda, come in,” he said as he held his radio as close to his mouth as possible.

  “Ryan, what are you doing on the channel this early?” a female voice asked. “What’s going on out there? It sounds like there was an earthquake.”

  Ryan struggled to catch his breath. Debris continued to rain from the sky. The entire scene before him was a churning cloud of dust for several kilometers. “There’s been a train derailment. We need to get some teams ready. How many trucks do we have on the up-line?”

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda asked.

  Ryan shook his head in frustration without even feeling ridiculous that no one could see him. “There are exotic and non-exotic minerals scattered all the way across the canyon. We need to start gathering up what we can. This could be the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Amanda laughed softly over the radio channel. “Who do you think’s going to clean this mess up? Everyone knows how valuable it is, but it’s not like this has ever happened before. Do you think there will be looters with the ability to transport the exotics?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”

  CHAPTER TWO: Twist of Fate

  Shaunte sang a medley of her favorite pop songs as she prepared her hair in front of the holo-mirror. The device was the best thing she had purchased for over a year. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to address various angles and layers of her new look with the three-dimensional reflection. If her relative success at the mining collapse had put her in a more confident mood, the glowing report of the SagCon Board of Directors after the labor dispute had taken her straight to cloud nine.

  She had not told them about her secret deal with the local human and Unglok miners, of course.

  The arrangement cost her money, but the return on investment was astounding. She’d never made this kind of profit during her short career as the Company Man of Darklanding. Success was intoxicating. More than one of the board had asked what her secret was, and she had only smiled.

  Hair completed, she finished dressing and strutted across the living room of her apartment. She did a little turn, did a little dance, and laughed in pure delight. Sunlight streamed in through the window of her corner office. She stopped for a second to make sure that her ego wasn’t running away with her. You know what they say, what have you done for me today? It is a new day with new challenges, at least I can be happy for now.

  She crossed to the desk and boldly flipped on her computer display. What she saw didn’t even register for several seconds. The melody on her lips stuttered to a halt and she faced the news in grim silence.

  Images of a mag-rail train plowing into the red sand of the badlands between Darklanding and the upland mines filled the screen. The action sequence repeated in a loop. Numbers scrolled across the bottom of the display. She barely saw them, already having calculated the financial loss in her head.

  Time passed slowly, like a dream. The tears that formed in the corner of her eyes were not for loss of money or company property, but for the obvious loss of life such a wreck must have caused. She bent to her keyboard, not trusting her voice to give commands, and hammered away with lightning precision. Reports pulled up
. The manifest was a cascade of numbers and scientific names for minerals and gases. After several tense moments, she confirmed the train was automated.

  No one had been on it.

  When she had seen the video of the train robbers cutting holes in the fore and aft engines, she had imagined them murdering the crew. Then she imagined everyone dying when the kilometer-long train broke up and slammed into the floor of the desert valley at supersonic speeds.

  No deaths. That was a nice change.

  On the video, multiple dust plumes reached for the sky and that was when she realized how much of Exotic A19 had been on board. One of thirty exotics unobtainable on Earth and similar terrestrial planets, Exotic A19 had the rare quality of being extremely fine dust. Once exposed to atmosphere, it was essentially worthless, turning for all practicable purposes into a gas-like particulate.

  The video quality quickly degraded as the atmosphere in the valley was polluted by A19.

  Wiping her eyes and straightening her blouse and slacks, she powered down the computer and closed the ultra-thin screen. She went to the window and saw the deteriorating air quality of the entire hemisphere with her own eyes.

  Such events were not unknown, but none, to her knowledge, had ever been caused by an act of grand larceny or terrorism. Her mind was moving quickly. She never wanted to feel that kind of shock, but there it was. The mine collapse. An attack on a train.

  For every high there is a comparable low, she thought as she sighed heavily.

  There was no reason for a terror attack on Ungwilook. The motivation had to be theft. Which meant there had to be someone who thought they could salvage the spilled contents of the train and hide them until they could be sold.

  Which was absolutely, completely impossible. The loot was scattered over several kilometers and no ship could fly on this planet without her authority.

  Doubt flickered in the back of her mind. How strict had previous Company Men been? Were there shadow corporations or private armadas in the Wilok system? On the planet?