The alarms sounded loud and clear in the building, with gendarmes too short, young or poorly dressed to be seen as anything other than rank amateurs running back and forth in an effort to regain order.

Bill sat in the driver’s seat of his ‘horse, his body facing forward. The long barrel of his rifle reached across the front seat and rested on the frame of the open passenger window. His left eye was shut, and a small monocular was strapped to his right eye, with a thin black wire linking the gadget to the scope on the rifle. “This little piggy went to market…” he said to himself, his voice barely above a whisper. As he spoke the ‘t’ in ‘market,’ a slight creak sounded from the upholstery of the seat as he squeezed the trigger, and his rifle gave the briefest of twitches as it launched its projectile.

A large chunk of the wall on the side of the building exploded, leaving a cratered hole the size of an adult man’s chest behind as vaporized plascrete disappeared in a dusty cloud.

The cloud faded in the usual two-point-five seconds that the proj’s manufacturers had promised it would in their screensheet ad, leaving another five similar craters visible on the side of the wall.

The gendarmes were running back and forth, pistols in one hand and useless, malfunctioning scanners in the other as they fruitlessly tried to locate the source of their assailant. Bill smiled; the scrambler on the dashboard of his vehicle had a wide enough reach and enough ‘lectrons-per-cubic-foot being beamed at the station that it was just shy of being illegal and just a hair’s breadth more effective than any scanner a rookie gendarme was capable of acquiring or operating. Chief Inspector Kai had instructed them well at the briefing, right after he’d resigned when Moreded had assumed command.

“This little piggy stayed home…” after he spoke the ‘m’ in ‘home,’ Bill squeezed the trigger again, causing yet another explosion and crater to appear in the wall, harmlessly frightening every scurrying gendarme into ducking and squat-crawling to the nearest cover.

“C’mon, Theo,” Bill mumbled under his breath, his upper body looking just like a civvy waiting in the front seat of his ‘horse as he lined up another scare-shot. “C’mon, been waiting for you, an’ it’s gettin’ like waitin’ fer molasses t’go uphill in January!”

Then, in the darkness, a human figure emerged from a doorway and began making its way across the compound. Unlike the inexperienced gendarmes, this figure’s shoulders had no visible pads, his head devoid of the enlarged silhouette of a helmet, no greaves on its forearms or calves, and a briefcase in place of an oversized rifle.

“There’s mah boy,” Bill said, as the figure ran and dodged from cover to cover spot, behind barricades and a wrecked vehicle and finally, sprinting across the street to Bill’s car.

Bill had already withdrawn his rifle, and with the timing of a professional who’d done this many times before, he hit a button on his steering column and the passenger door opened, wide enough for Theo to jump in and slam the door by the time he reached the ‘horse.

Bill hit the accelerator and the horse leaped forward, staying just an inch above the ground.

“You doin’ good, pard?” Bill said, over Theo’s heavy breathing.

“Ayup,” Theo said, gulping air from his run.

“Enny trouble?”

“Little,” Theo said.

“Guard or ‘bot?”

“Guard,” Theo said.

“Handled?” Bill said, as the lights went out on the building behind them.

Theo didn’t answer that one, only nodded his head. Then with his left hand, he made a sudden, upthrusting gesture with his index finger and thumb outstretched in a V-shape, followed by his right hand pushing up the heel of his palm.

Bill looked over, his brow furrowed. “Yuh just gave ‘im the throat an’ nose job? Not th’eyes?”

“He was justa kid, Bill,” Theo wheezed as the lights kept going out behind him, the blackout spreading out in a darkening circle in the city with the building they’d just left at its center. “He was wearin’ his visor, an’ more scart than a gator in a handbag factory. If’n I’d hit the kid’s eyes, I mighta blinded ‘im with pieces o’ his visor.”

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“So?”

“So? Bill, the whole blamed place is staffed by kids right now, kids too scared to wipe their butts without Moreded’s sayso. Their ah ‘commander?’ kid couldn’t be more’n twenny. I walked right past ‘em real easy like, plugged in the’ drive an’ then you started shootin.’ ”

“Well, leastaways we got th’ job done. Zeke an’ Joe’ll be happy. And…hey, take Charlene apart for me, willya? An’ turn on the news.”

Theo, who’d by now caught his breath, looked at Bill with an odd expression. “Yuh want me to touch Charlene?”

“I’m a little older now ‘n when we were fightin’ Corporates, Theo. Take mah sniper rifle apart, an’ turn on th’ news afore the durned signal gets whupped like everything else.”

“Fine by me,” Theo said, tapping a button on the panel and quickly disassembling the rifle after taking it out of Bill’s lap.

“...just in,” said a frantic woman’s voice as the radio caught the signal, “the new base of Lord Moreded’s New Government at the New Avalon power station has been attacked by insurgents, and- we’re getting reports of widespread power failures throughout the colony! Habs, streetlights, cameras, scanners, anything attached to the recently renamed Moreded power facility has suddenly had their power, ah, cut! Power’s out, Jeff! Fortunately the , uh, hospitals, our media station and other, essential services continue to function on independent generators, but…”

Bill smiled, gaining altitude in the ‘horse as the wave of dimming street and hab lights overtook them and spread throughout the city.

#

“Comms, tanjit! Get me comms and get them now! Yesterday!”

Gareth had been told once in a quasi-drunken lecture from one of his alleged superiors that the Executive Officer in a vessel, or the XO for short, was really supposed to be the mother of the commander. “See,” the lieutenant had slurred as the rigellian blue wine loosened his tongue and already began giving him a hangover that would last the better part of three days, “Th’ XO ain’t the daddy, ‘cause the daddy tells you to shut-it-up,buttercup when things git rough. Naw, the XO’s gotta help the commander through alla rough spots when they first start, give ‘em options when things go crazy an’ no one can think straight, and tell the cap’n that they’re gonna be jest faine, if’n they keep their head on straight an’ don’t lose their nerve.”

But what if I can’t talk to the commander? Gareth thought. What then? What’s Dallas going to do, now that there’s a comm blackout?

“XO?” said the man at the comm station [Gareth had long since given up trying to call them the ‘comms officer;’ the man was missing five teeth, wore patchy, third-and-fouth hand tunics and proudly stated he hadn’t combed his hair in the last year], “ah’d love to oblige you, really ah would. But the cloud cover’s got something innit that blocks rads, including our comm waves.”

“Do we have anything that can get through? Give me good news, Brunor.”

“Well, bad news is we ain’t got the funds to get the equipment that could break through dat. So, we ain’t gonna get a radio line through ‘til the clouds break, and ah gots no idee how the weather works ‘ere.”

“I said good news, Brunor.”

“Good news, XO? Well…no chance of ‘em gettin’ sunburned!”

Gareth put his head in his hands and sighed. “Fine, let’s take a chance and assume they’ve won.”

“Salvage?”

“Rodeo, Brunor,” said Gareth.

“Sorry, XO?”

“Ah- it’s a term they use on New Avalon. It used to be a series of skill contests with men versus wildish animals called horses. Today rodeo means, um- it means that’s all a good thing, and we’re ready to proceed.”

“Huh. Ro-dee-oh. Ah likes it!”

“Assemble a salvage team. And get whatever lunkheads you’ve got on this boat that serves as the med-team together, too. Just in case.”

#

TO BE CONTINUED...