Part II – Son of a Gun

This is Part II of the serial space western The Ghosts of Blackmoon Rift. It is also available for download in RTF format here. Or click here for a complete listing of episodes.

            Egan Torr had never been at gunpoint before.  The shiver it sent down his spine was indescribable.  The moment seemed to expand with crystal clarity until he was aware of every sparkling detail – the distant pulsing of the dome’s ventilators, his own reflection in the barrel of the long rifle, and the way the girl’s two small ears were exactly symmetrical. 

The girl jerked the business end of her weapon up towards his face, and his awareness came crashing back down into his body.   “Step back, greenhorn, or you’re gonna be wearing a lead smile.”

 Part II – Son of a Gun

Previously: Newly-minted archaeologist Egan Torr arrives in the rough-and-tumble frontier town of Ander’s Gap on a quest for a lost starship and immediately runs afoul of a local entrepreneur nicknamed Black Dan. Torr is rescued by a cyborg pilot named Maxwell ‘Crash’ Zero, only to be held at gunpoint as the two try to enter a local watering hole.

 

“Kitty Rowland,” said Crash, “A pleasure as always.” The gun barrel swiveled in his direction, but he carried on unruffled, “You should be careful where you point that thing. It might accidentally go off and hurt somebody, and then wouldn’t you feel bad?”

“That’s Miss Kitty to you, fly-boy!” snapped the girl. “Get it through your steel-plated skull that our relationship is strictly business.”

“Have I ever said otherwise?” asked Crash with a wounded air.

“Seems like you’ve been saying otherwise to every warm body in town. Telling folks you and me went out on a date, and who knows what else.”

“You did ask me to dinner.”

“I asked you to lunch!”

“A bit forward of you, but I admire a woman with spark.”

“I was looking to hire a pilot!”

“And instead you found a friend to confide in.”

“I needed an equipment drop.”

“It’s so sad that you feel the need to hide your feelings behind this professional façade of –”

“Gah!” yelled the girl. She cocked the rifle and took a step forward, jamming it against Crash’s chest. He took a step back, suddenly startled.

“I’ll do it, Crash,” she hissed. “I’ll shoot you. I’ve shot men before who’ve come prowling ‘round my land, looking to help themselves to what’s mine. I’ll treat you just like one of them. I’ll put a magnetized rail pellet right where your heart’s supposed to be.”

Crash recovered his equilibrium. He threw his chrome-plated arm up in front of himself.

“Don’t be ridiculous, ma’am,” he said sternly. “Even if you do shoot me, I’ll just block the blast with my reinforced arm!”

Miss Kitty stamped her foot and hissed, “You. Idiot. If I shoot you at this range that shiny robot arm is likely to blow up right in your face! Mess up your fancy hair something fierce.”

Crash paused, considering. “It might not!” he said, defiantly.

They stared at each other for one tense moment. Then the girl shrugged and lowered her gun. She shook her head, disgusted. “Of all the fools on all the worlds, you are the worst, Maxwell Zero.”

Crash bowed. “Thank you, ma’am. And now, if you don’t mind –” in a single, fluid motion, he lunged forward, grabbed the barrel of the rifle, spun it around, and pointed it at her “– I’ll take that. Now,” he said cheerfully, “Since you’ve been so rude to my new friend here, I’d like you to buy him a drink.”

The look on her face would have curled linoleum, but without a word, she turned on one spurred heel and stalked into the bar.

There was a bit of a stir when they marched into The Space Bar with the young lady at gunpoint, but not nearly as much as Egan Torr might have expected. He supposed this sort of thing might not be uncommon in such an establishment. The saloon consisted of a large, smoky room filled full of indeterminate figures nursing mugs at wooden tables, with a shiny bar running the length of the wall nearest them. One bleary-eyed veteran looked up from the bar to say, “Well now Miss Kitty, what have you gotten yourself into this time?”

“None of your business, Doc,” she said, turning to the girl behind the bar. “Barkeep, a bourbon for my friend.” She jabbed her thumb in Egan Torr’s direction. A glass was filled with dark liquid. Miss Kitty dug a hand into her pocket, but before she could come up with anything, Crash laid a bright energy chit on the bar.

“Thanks Mitzi,” he said. “And one for the lady and myself, if you don’t mind.”

Miss Kitty stared at him with stark incomprehension. Crash grinned at her. “Here’s your piece back, by the way,” he said, proffering the rifle to her, butt-first. She yanked it from his hand.

“Ain’t nothing anyway,” she mumbled. “’Weren’t even loaded.”

The trio settled themselves at a table in a dim alcove near the front of the establishment.

“Now I don’t think you two have been properly introduced,” said Crash. “As you may have already gathered, this lovely young lady is Miss Kitty. She’s handier than most grown men with a superconducting lasso. If you’ve got black hole problems out on your back forty, she’s the woman to call. Miss Kitty, this is my friend –” he paused, realizing he didn’t know Torr’s name.

“Dr. Egan Torr,” said Torr, “I’m a professor of Engineer Archaeology.”

“That’s the only kind there is anymore, ain’t it?” asked Miss Kitty confusedly.

“Well, ah, yes, I suppose it is,” said Torr, blinking. He had never thought of it that way.

“I mean, we’re not very likely to find Mayan temples out here at the end of the universe, are we?”

“She’s got you there, Professor,” said Crash. “Haven’t seen many of those, and I’ve been all over.”

“You must be here lookin’ for Engineer ruins or something, right?” asked Kitty, looking at Torr with interest for the first time.

“Well actually, I’m looking for an Engineer artifact,” said Torr.

Crash snorted. “Well you don’t have far to look. We’re sitting on one right now, and I have to navigate around a dozen more just to make it into open space.”

“That’s right,” said Kitty. “Ander’s Gap is an artificial world. Shaped like an icosidodecahedron.”

“That’s a three-dimensional shape with thirty-three sides,” said Crash authoritatively.

“Thirty-two,” Miss Kitty corrected.

“Oh yes, quite fascinating,” said Egan Torr. “The head of my department is actually the leading expert on the amazing large-scale structures that the Engineers have littered space with. But the artifact I’m looking for is significantly smaller than this.” He stamped the permacrete floor for emphasis.

“Is this artifact valuable?” asked Miss Kitty. Both she and Crash leaned in towards the archaeologist, eyes sparkling.

“Oh, quite!” said Crash. “If found, this artifact could completely revolutionize our current understanding of the Engineer Transluminal Topology Derivation, not to mention confirming or denying the Intraentropic Brane Theory (Burke et al, 317)!”

“Well ain’t that something,” said Miss Kitty in a voice that indicated otherwise.

“So where’s this shiny piece of learnin’ supposed to be stashed, Professor?” asked Crash.

Torr removed his glasses and polished them feverishly, as if hoping to scrub off the haze of the smoky saloon. “The references which I have been able to decipher refer to a large-scale artifact known as the Black Moon, whose trajectory took it into the Badlands several centuries ago.”

“Well I’ll be darned,” breathed Miss Kitty softly.

“Miss Kitty, that’s your old stomping grounds!” exclaimed Crash.

“He’s right,” said Miss Kitty. “Daddy raised me and all fourteen of my brothers on a farm he scratched out on that little hunk of rock.”

“You have fourteen brothers?” asked Egan Torr.

“Well, daddy always wanted a little girl, but it was just one boy after another. Guess he and momma kept tryin’ till they got it right. Daddy never had to hire any farmhands, though.”

“Does your father own the Black Moon?” asked Torr excitedly.

“Oh no. He had shares in our little parcel of land, but the Wallace family owns most of that world. If you want to go tramping all over it looking for artifacts, they’re the ones to talk to. Daddy always said Old Mr. Wallace was a hard man, but fair. But he’s been dead a good few years now, and Young Wallace runs the joint. He’s a real quiet one, but I knew him in Sunday School, and he’s an okay sort.”

At that moment, Miss Kitty’s reverie was interrupted by the front door slamming open. A number of men in unkempt blue uniforms burst in, hauling a limp body amongst them. A woman in a long blue coat slipped in behind them and seated herself against the wall.

“Where’s the doctor?” demanded one of the men. “We were told we could find him here. This man’s been shot!”

“Well, I reckon that would be me,” said an unsteady old-timer. Torr recognized him as the man at the bar who had addressed Miss Kitty earlier. “Who did this to him?”

“We’re just in from Blackmoon,” said the man. “It was that maniac Wallace!”

 To Be Continued… 

(Part III is here.)