Planetfall Junction ep. 1

A western with space-like characteristics.

Part One: Have Gun, Gotta Travel

The day that Cotton turned 14 was the day his pa gave him his first gun. It wasn't anything fancy, just a blackened steel break-action with a short barrel, so old that Cotton was sure the it weren't made on this world, no sir. Its had once been rubberized, with some traces of the coating still left on the stock and the front grip, worn so thin by the years that you couldn't even see it anymore. His pa had called it a kid's gun and Cotton had used it as a kid would - shooting cans and bottles off fence posts, shooting vermin in the soy fields or firing it off in the air, trying to impress Shadia from the farm on the other side of the creek. He never expected to have to draw it or fire it at another man but here he was.

He had left for town at dawn, when he saw just how bad his ma had gotten overnight. His sister Mul, exhausted after an entire night of tending and treatment, looked even more worn out than their ma did. She stuck an old ratty pouch filled with a handful of dominion silver and the last of their late pa's campaign medals in his knapsack and sent him on his way without a word, like a lady in one of the high drama one-flip novels she was so fond of reading. He took his revolver, a couple old military rations and Gaptooth, his pa's old horse, all older than he was, and rode off into the gathering light. He didn't even notice his old shotgun in the saddle holster until it poked him in the leg, on the rocky trail outside Planetfall.

The place's name was in truth Eliza, after one of the elder prophets in the Bible, but nobody outside the town proper called it that. Instead everybody called it Planetfall Junction, the Junction or something along those lines. There weren't a lot of people that remembered why. No planet had fallen there, nobody had made planet-fall either, hell the place didn't even have a landing field, there wasn't really any reason for it to have one. And there was no junction either, with Planetfall being the dead end last stop on a centuries old roadway crossing the Rikby plains.

Cotton's pa had known why they called it Planetfall, as Cotton's pa was known to do. Just pulled up the strangest pieces of the most esoteric knowledge as if plucking them out of thin air or looking them up on a lex in his head. You just had to tell apart what he knew-knew from what he thought he knew and what he downright lied about. In any case according to him, Planetfall had really been a junction of sorts back in the day, or at least there had been a junction above it in space, a refuelling stop on some great trans void star-watchumacallit route now long since dead. Planetfall itself was just a nice place for the space folks to put their feet up, build themselves a nice home or three down by the creek. One of those nice homes was still around, and it was where sherrif Troben put his feet up now, a concrete building right up on the hill overlooking the town like a mansion. Truth be told, though, some of the newer, wood homes were a lot cozier and more inviting than the squat bunker like thing the Sherrif called both home and office and it looked nothing like the mansions of the plantation owners down south in the river valley. But it had something neither the plantation toffs nor the townie tradesmen with their stores and saloons had - a lex uplink. And that was what Cotton, or more specifically Cotton's ma needed now.

Cotton rode across the cracked tarmac and into town. The outskirts, near the old abandoned roadway, had always been the seedier part of the Junction, with saloons, playhouses and gambling dens catering to the local livestock traders and junk peddlers while the god-fearing folk lived higher up on the hill. Uptown and Downtown was what his pa had called the two places, in some strange joke that only he seemed to understand. Now heading up alone into Uptown, Cotton could see the invisible line between the good and bad part of town. It was, like so many things, a matter of the air getting cleaner and the muck gradually disappearing from the road. Next came the trees and the so-called civic buildings - the school, the town stores, town hall, the church and finally, in a copse of trees at the very top, the Sheriff's house. It was a dull, grey thing, larger than the town hall, though Cotton knew from past visits that it weren't that large on the inside. It had a wide wooden porch that made it look less like a bunker but the alloy doors and slit-like windows didn't help in hiding its martial purpose. The Sheriff's wife had tried, with a kitchen garden round the side and all manner of flowers poking up from the dirt round front but the house was what it was - a fortified relic of a bygone age with some judiciously applied polish to make it look less threatening.

The Sheriff himself was also a fortified relic of the past, polished over the years to something resembling a human being by the efforts of his wife and daughter. Though, if you'd be one bend your ear to gossip, rumor was that the man fortified himself with whiskey of late, by the demi, and that his wife was not in the picture any longer. Still, there was no mistaking the air of danger on Comstock Troben, Sheriff of Planetfall Junction. Even as he stepped out in shorts and a robe, deep dark circles under his eyes and with a steaming mug in his hand to try to wash out the previous night's excesses you could tell that, once, he had seen some action. Though he had been sworn in, almost ten years ago as a Peace Officer by the mayor, Sheriff Troben was not a man of peace, and he had the build, the scars and the replacement bodyparts of someone who had wrestled bears for a living. He smiled at Cotton, a toothy, menacing smile and took a sip of his coffee.

"Cotton" he said, looking away into the distance. "Bit early for visits, ain't it?"

Cotton slid out of the saddle and took off his hat.

"Rather be a bit too early than a bit too late, Sheriff." Cotton said putting on a brave face. "It's my ma." he said quickly, his voice cracking just a tad "She's in a bad way, I need to get on the lex."

The Sheriff sipped some more coffee, staring off into the distance then sighed.

"Why you need to do something as foolish as that?" he said, sitting down on a stool and finally giving him a long calculating look.

"I told you, it's my ma, she's sick real bad. I need to get on the lex to find her help."

The Sheriff scartched his stubbly beard, running a finger along a large scar that spread from his chin to what was left of his right ear. Cotton had always wondered how you could get a scar like that and live to tell the tale, hell, how do you get one and just live.

"Well if it's doctorin' you need, Doc Shand's in town..."

"Doc Shand can't tell his ass from the bottle and you know it as well as I do, if not better." Cotton said looking at the Sheriff's chrome. "My mom's... in a bad way" he stumbled. "I think she has some sort of de-gen."

Troben took a large sip of his coffee and put on a sad attempt at what seemed a sympathetic smile. "Son if she's got any sort of maym-damned de-gen you best say your farewells and..."

"I don't reckon I asked your opinion on the matter Sheriff" Cotton spat out angrily staring daggers through the lawman. People always said he had his pa's temper and, well, they were right. He added in a calmer tone. "Only the use of your lex, respectfully."

The Sheriff grinned again at Cotton finishing his coffee. "Well, well, pup's got bite." He grinned upturning the last drops out of his mug into the flower patch outside of his porch. "But has he got coin too?"

Cotton nodded, jingling the last of his pa's coin.

"Good. The lex only works on coin. Proper dominion silver that is, not our flips or fivers." Troben said, nodding Cotton to come in.

"I got silver." Cotton said gloomily, thinking how much feed or high-yield seeds that silver would buy him elsewhere.

The inside of the Sheriff's office was a strange mix of all sleek concrete and rustic furniture with the occasional grate or overhead light. Two desks lined the walls leading to the welded steel cage in the back that the local constabulary liked to call "the chicken coop." Several local bills and requests for contractors were pinned on a plasteel board on one of the bunker's heavy shutters, with the occasional transparent Dominion wanted poster below them. Cotton stared at the posters trying to make em out and Troben caught his gaze. He grinned.

"You don't have to worry, your daddy ain't up there, Cotton."

Cotton gave him a long blank look and the Sheriff's granite chiseled features softened a bit. "Not anymore, God rest his soul. You gotta understand I had to keep his picture up even after he passed. Dominion droping by unexpectedly and all that. Bad for the town if they reckoned we was harboring a known traitor."

Cotton's eyes shot up angrily at the man. Troben realised his mistake and his arms came up in a gesture of surrender.

"Not that I myself figure him a traitor mind you. Way I see it, Dominion's just about as shit as the Geks. Hell, I fought for the bastards, I should know. But there's always gonna be some people to get agitated at that kinda thing, fighting against your own kind, even if your kind is a bunch of holy nuts. People around here tend to forget your sins if you're a decent man and help with the harvest, like your daddy. But the dominion? They got databases, longer than scripture."

The Sheriff opened the door behind the chicken coop with a long thin key and nodded for Cotton to pass through. Cotton did just that and the lights in the room slowly came alive. There was nothing in the room except for some empty supply crates and the lex, slotted into some sort of central pedestal that seemed to rise out of the floor. It was large, squat, silver cube with holo-projection ports on all sides and a constant dim glow about it and it was hard to think of the silver box as the "font of all knowledge and evil", as his ma used to call it. Cotton had been fascinated by the smaller, dumber lex terminal the schoolhouse used to have, which sometimes ran on the energy generated by a windmill Mrs. Falen, the schoolteacher had installed. It didn't uplink, you couldn't query anything through it, but it had all sorts of knowledge hidden within its dull silver body and it was free to use. But his ma never liked it and, apparently neither did the Dominion, because one day a crawler full of troopers showed up in town, they took the lex terminal and broke it, along with Mrs. Falen's jaw when she protested. Then they tore down the windmill and gave the mayor a stern talking to, a talking to that ended up costing each and every resident three extra silver in tax. Cotton's da was still around back then and, even worse, in town on business with his only son when the Dominion rolled in. Cotton's da took him up to hide and scoped the whole scene from a whorehouse window in Downtown growing angrier by the minute while he, then still a child snuck peeks at the bosoms of the regular inhabitants of those quarters. Cotton remembered laughing when his da called the crawler a "Holy Roller" and its occupants "Christ fucking jackbooted sunofbitches" but he also remembered getting a spanking from his ma when he related the whole scene - bosoms, rollers, sunofbitches and all. Even Cotton's da got told off.

This lex terminal was different. This was a proper interworld network unit, a lex like in the olden days, with the minor alteration that you had to pay for it to work.

Cotton took out three square silver pieces from his pouch and extended them to the Sheriff. The Sheriff pointed at a slot in the terminal pedestal.

” I’m not taking your coin, kid, they are. You’re supposed to put the pieces in there to activate it. Otherwise the damn thing won't connect."

The Sheriff sighed as Cotton inserted his three silver pieces into the square slot. The light around the lex seemed to intensify.

"That'll buy you a spell." Troben said. "Want a drink in the meanwhile?"

Cotton approached the lex, prompting it to hum to life. Several holo interfaces came online, almost enveloping him in transparent light screens. He stared in awe around as the sign of the lex, a pyramid with a glowing eye came online. On the main screen, soon to be replaced by the double cross of the Dominion.

"Bit early for drinks, ain't it, sheriff?" Cotton answered absent mindedly.

"Late enough somewhere. You know how to work that thing, do ya?" Troben answered, pouring some whiskey in the coffee cup.

"Mrs. Falen taught me some, back in school."

"Falen? Oh. I remember her, had to talk some Dominion big shots out of arresting her for spreading impurity or some religious crap like that. Apparently a video of a frog linedancing was man making idols of machines. I asked that bastard to show me the exact line in scripture it said that and he... "

"How do I get off this network?" Cotton inerrupted. "The Dominion one I mean."

The Sheriff blinked. "Well, you can't. They set it up so that you can only search for scripture or contact the comissariat and things like that. You can't get off network, or, I mean I don't know how."

Cotton looked at the Sheriff as he sipped some more of the hooch then down at his feet. He opened the pouch with the silver coins in it and dug around. Beneath the handful of coins and the two large gold medals there Cotton had tucked his father's old military ID, a dull grey oval with Payte inscribed on the front and a series of strange geometric markings on the sides. He pulled it out and examined it. It was thin but heavy and seemingly made out of the same dull grey alloy as the lex. It wasn't Cotton's keen mind that had picked this out, but rather his pa who had pointed it out back when the kinds were learning about the lex and relays and such. He told Cotton as they were coming back to their farm one evening after school that all he ever had to do if he ever needed help was a lex console and the old ID. Cotton did not know back then that his pa was a fugitive or whatever the hell he had been so he thought the man was just in a boasting mood. Later, after they had almost been found by the Dominion goons in the whorehouse his da had come into his and Mul's room before bed and Cotton had once more been shown the badge, and told to use it to seek help on the lex if he ever needed it. The next morning his da had taken him aside and given him the gun, showing him how to load shoot and clean it.

"What you got there?" the Sheriff asked, drawing closer to the lex. Cotton looked at the big man, then back at the projected surfaces all around him.

"Don't rightly know." Cotton said, flipping the ID in his hand. "But I'm fixing to find out, Sheriff Troben." He crefully set the thin plate on top of the lex.

Nothing happened, at least not at first. Cotton looked at the holo screens around him where the Dominion double cross was still spinning in place, awaiting input. Over on the other side of the screen Troben looked at the ID, mug still in his hand.

"What in hell?" he said as the chip started glowing with a bright red light. Almost instantly the blue of the simplified Dominion interface gave way to a red glow, and the holo screens turned various shades of red all at once. Cotton's heart started beating like crazy as he looked at the unfamiliar interface filling his screens.

"The hell did you do kid?" Troben said, coming around on his side of hte console. "The fuck is all this?"

Cotton scanned the screen trying to get his bearings. He could see his pa's name in one corner, alongside what seemed to be a date and time in an unfamiliar format, a series of coordinates and several other strigns of letters and numbers. He felt through the red light field for icons or manipulators but all he could find is one central sphere that he could interact with. He touched it and it opened up.

"God fucking damn it kid, shut this shit off." Troben spat angrily behind him. "What the fuck is this, shut it down."

"Give me a moment, I don't know how to." Cotton said then expanded the central sphere. A more easily intelligible interface opened before him, like slices of a large oval. Words started appearing on each slice - 'records', 'careers', 'intel', 'comms', 'query'. Cotton touched comms and the oval slice expanded into a list of numbers and letters, lines upon lines of them. Only one line had a tag attached to it, and it read 'emergency contact'. Cotton touched it.

There was a screeching noise and Troben turned around, looking up at the ceiling. He stared at Cotton angrily then dashed towards the front porch.

A large ovoid section of the central holo-screen seemed to grow darker and Cotton was shocked to see that a small square section at the bottom now was showing his rather confused face.

"That never happened before." he muttered to himself, trying to remember the lex lessons in school.

"You're goddamn right it never happened before you son of a bitch." the Sheriff screamed, running back inside. "I don't know what you did, with your red screens and goddamn lex spells but the goddamn emitter flipped from local to subpace. You're casting to the void, to sattelites or arrays or some shit. Shut it the fuck down before you get us glassed by the Dominion or the goddamn tin cans or.."

"Hello?"

Troben stopped in the middle of the sentence as the voice came out of the lex. It was an odd accent, what seemed to be a raspy woman's voice that spoke the word as if grinding it through teeth. There was no image on the monitor, none but Cotton's confused look in the corner.

"Uh... hello?" he tried to answer.

"Who are you and where did you get this coding?" the raspy woman's voice ground out through the channel. The voice soulded distorted but whther it was intentional or not was beyond Cotton's frontier school tech savvy.

"This is Payte... Cotton Payte, and i don't rightly know what you mean by coding, ma'am. I was told to reach out if i ever needed help."

The voice paused for a second and the exasperated Sheriff looked at Cotton as if he were cray.

"Payte. You are son of Weapon Specialist Alper Payte, correct?"

Cotton looked at the Sheriff who shook his head vigurously at him and mouthed the word "No".

"Uh, my da's name was Al, yes."

"He is deceased, correct?" the voice continued without a beat.

"Yeah, almost three years now."

"Extend hand to console."

"Wh..what?"

"Put your hand on lexomnicon console. On light."

Cotton noticed a blinking light on the lex console. He looked at Comstock Troben who was still giving him desperate sign to cut off the call then put his hand on the glow. There was a brief flash and a tingling burning sensation on his finger. he pulled his hand back.

"Kid. Shut this shit off. Now. This ain't a joke. You'll get us both killed. You'll get the whole goddamn town killed." the Sheriff whispered, drawing closer.

Coton looked at the man then thought about reaching for his revolver for the faintest instant. It would be the stupidest thing he could do but the Sheriff was not taking no for an answer much longer.

"I have you." the voice returned suddenly. "You match the Weapon Specialist on genetics, Cotton Payte, and there is mention of you made in the records submitted by your father."

"Wait, what records."

"That matters little now. I have your location somewhere in an abandoned installation, this is correct?"

"Aband... no ma'am, this is Planetfall Junction. It's a town, the Sheriff is here with me."

Roben closed his eyes in anger and took a step back, out of the glow of the lex unit, swearing under his breath.

"You are in zealot territory, yes? The whole planet is under True Human Dominion control, yes?"

Cotton looked around thne nodded.

"Yes ma'am."

"And require extraction, yes?"

"Ext... wait, no, ma'am, I need medicine. High World medicine for my ma who is sick."

There was a brief pause at he other end then the main screen flickered from the dull dark grey it had turned to once Cotton had started the call to a series of bright reds. The colours coutoured the face of a woman - bald, focused, with a curved nose and darker in skintone than a farmer in autumn.

"Can she walk?" the voice asked bluntly.

Cotton thought about it. His ma could barely stand up.

"No ma'am".

"Can she be carried?" the question came next.

"Carried where?" Cootton blurted out. The woman looked right at him through the reddish tones of the display.

"Anywhere safe. It will take us at least 300 cycles to get to you. Five and a half of what seem to be your world-days. Meanwhile, presuming they are intercepting at least part of this, the zealots can be there within the cycle." She paused then added, emphatically. 'Can she be carried, Cotton Payte?"

Cotton thought about it for a while then answered.

"I don't think so. But I don't reckon ain't nobody got the whereabouts on my ma and sister. We live outside town/"

"That is good but not sufficient Cotton Payte." the woman said

"Just Cotton."

"What?"

"Call me Cotton, my name sounds weird, way you say it."

The woman sighed then tried to smile.

"Cotton, you should listen to what I will tell you. Take the coding, the Identity document of your father, I mean.Take some weapons, if you have any. Take some form of transportation, preferably off road. Find refuge and wait for us somewhere safe, far from any zealot base. We will arrive to take you and other kin of Alper Payte to safety, insh'Allah. Now, am i right in assuming there is a man behind the screen with you, the sha'rif you mentioned?

"Uh... yes ma'am."

"Summon him please."

Cotton looked at Troben who gritted his teeth and stepped behind the kid, mug still in his hand.

"You are sha'rif?" the woman said

"I am the Sheriff round these parts ma'am, that is correct. Name is Comsto..."

"Listen please, sha’rif." the woman said. "Your name is not of interest to me, nor is my own to you. The name of interest is the Guiding Light, the name of the privateer I am currently captaining. You are familiar with privateer, yes? Private military vessel?"

Cotton could hear the Sheriff gritting his teeth. He opened his mouth to take a sip of hooch but he realised halfway to his mouth he had already emptied the mug.

"Pirates."

The woman smiled. Comstock Troben did not.

"If you wish, I would argue it is not as crude as that but all are free to think and speak their truth. Should I understand you to be an ex military man, mr. sha’rif?"

Troben nodded grimly.

"Good. I too served for the better part of two decades. This place, Planetfall, that you are sha’… sheriff of. Do you have family there, friends, property?"

Cotton felt a chill go up his spine. He stared up at Troben who did not return his gaze, but kept staring at the screen instread. After a few long moments he nodded.

"Good." the woman said. "I am not blessed with either friends nor family."

"Pirates rarely are." Troben mumbled, defiantly. The woman just continued.

"What I do have is much property, in the form of both gold, silver, medicine and other goods of which you might find need on the sector fringe worlds and in the form of fusion missiles and particle cannons of which use may be made to glass your settlement from orbit." There was a long meaningful pause. "I also have a lot of debt, debt to the father of the boy that is there in your presence. I put you in charge of him. Keep him safe until our arival and I will make you a rich man on that world or another. Leave him to be harmed by the zealots and I shall nuke you from orbit, along with anything you might hold dear. Do you understand?"

Troben kept silent, looking the woman in the eyes, across the interplanetary ether.

"I will take that as tacit acknowledgement. We will be there in less than six days. Keep him alive." She then looked at Cotton and smiled, something that seemed almost strenuous for her, as if it were a rare happenstance. "You look like your father young man. I hope to meet you. Stay safe. Keep moving."

The woman gave Troben one final look then the lex suddenly switched off. Cotton could hear the antenna on top of the building realligning. He looked at the Sheriff who still stared blankly into the space where the woman's face had dematerialized.

"Did she say what her name wa...?" Cotton started to ask but his sentence was cut short when the Sheriff punched him square in the ear.