Planetfall Junction Pt. 2

A space opera with grazing rights out on the range.

Comstock Troben never did like Al Payte, nor did he like his shrew of a wife. Sure, he respected the Paytes - a bona fide Great War button man getting himself hitched to a warlike tribeswoman and deciding to raise kids instead of raising hell was something, after all. But he never expected one of those kids to be the death of him one day. Yep, Comstock Troben never did like Al Payte or his wife, but he could goddam strangle their shit-for-brains milksop of a son.

"God dammit, Sheriff" the kid said angrily, holding the side of his head. "What the hel..."

"Shut Up" Troben hissed at him, advancing with one fist, the bio-mod one, raised. He realized he looked ridiculous and just shook his head. "Shut up, I need to think."

The Dominion would have gotten all that. Maybe not the exchange itself, Troben had no idea how the whole lex connect worked and all and whether you could shield calls. That was technician work and he didn't know no tec. But the Dominion had to know that their terminal had been fucked with. They'd ask questions, they'd take the kid away, they'd doom them all to be glassed from orbit by that psychopathic pirate shrew. He couldn't stay there but how long could he stay? Days? Hours? Minutes?

"...told me to stand tall to any man that would step up to me and i intend it"

Comstock Troben heard the boy, as if through some kind of dream, a daze. Where to go? When to go? How to stay in touch. He knew nothing for certain, just had the broadest feeling that he should ride out. He saw the boy's hand now sat on the holster. He sighed and turned to the boy, who was still nursing his ear, reluctantly.

"Kid, i'm gonna tell you this just once. You put your hand on a weapon, you best be prepared to draw it. You draw your weapon at me, well, you're more likely to lie flat than stand tall." He looked at the kid and powered up his augs, growing almost a foot in size. It hurt, it always hurt turning those fuckers on after a long while and it was draining as all hell but the effect was undeniable. The kid took a step back and raised his hands.

"Now, now, Sheriff, I'm just saying we find ourselves here in a marriage of convenience." Cotton managed to say after a few seconds. Troben started to power down, he could already feel getting hurgry and even worse, sober. God damn it all, how he hated the hunger pangs he got from the amps.

"Already married." he said. "Nothing convenient about it." He grinned just long enough for Cotton to return a timid smile then stared at him, murder in his eyes.

He thought about his wife. At least she'd make it if the spacers turned the whole valley to slag. The whole of Planetfall glassed from orbit, a fireball spreading over the outlying hamlets, the agriculture co-op, the freehold farms, even as far as the tribal lands. His wife would hear of it on the news, and maybe she would even feel sad. Or maybe not. Maybe she would feel nothing or not catch the news, just hear about it months later and go "huh".

Troben shuffled to the heavy locker where he kept all the weapons, and unlocked it with his thumb. The boy was eerily silent behind him and he was sobering off fast. While on the subject of maybe nots there was a case to be made for maybe not taking the kid and running. Maybe the Dominion would protect them once he told them the story with some added panache. Maybe they would look away at him not turning in the kid's father for all these years, maybe they had anti-aircraft guns and they'd keep the town from getting glassed. Maybe the Dominion was godly and caring and peaceable as the lord hisself said. He stared at the lined up rifles in front of him then back at Cotton.

"You...pack your shit." he paused for a second "We need to leave. And fast."

The kid seemed relieved and confused all at once. He snuck a quick look at the lex, now shut down but glowing with what seemed like a menacing red glow then turned back to Troben blinking, trying not to aggravate him further.

"Yeah. They'll be coming for you. By air, by land, but they'll be coming and you and I need to be far by then, else this'll be a shorter adventure than either of us want."

Troben grabbed a large shoulder bag from the locker and started to stuff some of his old guns in. Two Scoped rifles, a repeater shotgun, five grenades, ammo for the lot, including a box of flechette shells and, finally, he gently took out the case with his old particle beam rifle. That all but filled the bag.

"Take that backpack" he said to Cotton pointing at the bottom shelf then he headed for the chiller box.

"Now hold on." Cotton answered him not budging an inch. "What about my ma? And Mul? What if we head for the hills and the Dominion comes asking questions?"

"The Dominion don't know about your ma or your goddamn pa, I told you."

"They know his ident was used now, on this here lex. And even if you told em my pa was dead folks in town know where he lived and where my sister and my ma..."

"God damn it all Cotton." Troben screamed. "What do you want from me? I'm thinking of the here and now. Dominion ain't gonna find your kin all up there cross the ridge on the farm. Least they ain't gonna find them fore they find us. That's a chance we got to take. So, take that god damn bag and fill it up with all the bullets and cans of food you can find and bring the horse round back..."

It was unmistakable. A hum, a pressure in the ears and a gentle trembling on the ground. Troben looked at Cotton who stared back at him.

"Fuck" was all the sheriff could say.

They both headed back into the main room with Cotton crouching by one of the larger windows and Troben taking position by the door, staring out the central slit. It was a shuttle, a Dominion transport shuttle of the type they were accustomed to seeing.

"Well, at least it ain't a troop carrier." Troben said grimly.

"There's people getting off it." Cotton said, a twinge of panic in his voice.

"Things don't fly themselves far as I know."

Troben looked around the office. The squat building was built to withstand anything short of heavy rockets or aerial strikes. They could hold off a few Dominion grunts but as he well knew there were always more Dominion grunts somewhere. The plan had to be the same, they needed to run.

"Kid, you have to hide."

"The Lord bless you and hold you and grant upon you the sum of your godly desires." The man said sitting down on the chair, across from Troben. He was a slight man in Dominion preacher garb but there were the markings of a martial character upon him.

He carried himself like a man used to danger his eyes darting from corner to corner as he entered a new room. Or rather his eye. Troben was not a smart man by any stretch of the imagination nor was he particularly astute or observant, but he had seen plenty of skin-grafts and bionic eyes up close in the Dominion Mediclinic to spot that the man had taken a big blow to his right side of the face, blow that had cost him an eye and, likely the better part of his face. Peel his face back and you'd find more polymers than in the rice they served in military rations. Comstock smiled, looking at the man and imagining his past, doing his very best to ignore the two heavily armed troopers standing at attention behind the man.

"God bless, father" Troben finally said.

"Deacon."

"What?"

"Deacon, Sheriff, Deacon Ohriley."

Deacon. That was... some sort of administrative rank, some sort of clergy chip counter or some such.

"Apologies, we don't get much of the Dominion round these parts." Comstock said, eyeing the two troopers once again. "Out of the way. Rank and nomenclature are... a bit fuzzy in my head."

The Deacon smiled and waved his hands in a conciliatory way. His eyes however hever left Troben's. Man seemed like trouble, he could just about tell.

"It is not by rank that God judges us but by faith. Else Eliza would have been a sinner and Moises a traitor to his kin as the bible says."

"Right, right, as the bible says..." Parroted Comstock. It took every fiber of his resolve, tipsy as it was to keep his eyes square with the man before him and not let them drift towards the gun locker in which the boy had been unceremoniously stuck. Barely fit too. He had to speed up the proceedings. "Speeking of the Book, what good deed of the lord brings you to the Junction, Deacon. ...Sir" he added, the taste sour in his mouth. The Deacon's eyebrows arched and his eyes looked believably worried."

"Evil deeds, not righteous ones. And, well, you tell me, Sheriff." The man's eyes drifted toward the Lex room then back to the markers and documents on Troben's desk. Pulling a document slate, the man continued. “Somebody has been dabbling in heresy, through your own Lex unit."

Troben feigned surprise. He did to poorly, even he could tell as much.

"What? The Lex. Hell, I don't even know how to run that thing." he paused, then added. "There was a boy who came up recently, working some and such on the Lex, trying to connect some trinket he found plowing..."

The Deacon smiled and extended a long, bony finger. Comstock stopped, as the two troopers, hands on their gunbelts inched forward. Letting out a yawn the Deacon stood up from the table and looked around the room, intently. "Let me stop you for a second, Sheriff.

I don't like when people talk a lot, myself included so I'll make this brief for both of our sakes. I was flagged by the DSI on my way home after a tough two weeks chastising heathens. Priority zero. Message said there was suspicious lex chatter from this here settlement, a dish hijacked, and the Dominion locked out. Now I'm gonna take a look at that unit, download its memory files you're going to tell me exactly what happened and then someone is coming with me to be questioned by templars- you, this boy you're talking about or whoever else is involved. Otherwise I'll leave you to the auspices of these godly men." he finished by stepping back and putting one hand on each of the two troppers' shoulders. The smug-but-tired smile never left his face.

Comstock smiled back then scratched his beard and tried taking another sip of his coffee. The mug was empty. He sighed and raising his shoulders pointed to the weapons locker behind the troopers.

"All right you got me, the kid is in the locker over there."

***

Cotton could hear the muffled voices of people talking outside but he was more focused on staying still, partly because of his predicament, partly because his shoulder was rubbing against an electric prod. He had seen a belligerent drunk get zapped by one of those prods before and the sight was not pretty. Despite the heat and the cramped conditions he could still hear Comstock say the words loud and clear.

"All right you got me, the kid is in the locker over there."

Rage built within him. He trusted that sonovabitch. Despite his best instincts he had listened to. the goddamn Sheriff, stuck. Himself inside a cramped locker, even gave him his gun. Now the rat bastard was gonna give him up. Never mind his family, his kind, oh god, the town itself, fuison bombed by that woman on the Lex..."

The door opened and he slammed it hard, balling his fists striking out at the first man he saw. Shots rang. His fist connected he saw blood splashing, heard a scream, fell down over someone, punching and punching until his fists were numb.

"Whoa, whoa there kid." he heard Troben chuckle, then felt a tug at the back of the shirt. He lashed out with his fists but only managed to stumble and fall by the desk.

There were three men on the floor. One was choking out in a pool of blood, shot through the neck, another was well past dead, half of his head blown off. The third, a lanky type, his white and black dress smeared with blood was coughing, blood flowing from his mouth and nose. Look like a priest. He blinked. He had punched a priest in the mouth.

Comstock Troben stood grinning over the three, hell, all four of them, counting hisself, shotgun in hand . His gun. The gun his pa had him. He put one boot on the wounded man and aimed the gun at his head.

"Well, you sure came out swinging kid." Troben said signaling for him to get up.

"I heard you, I heard you telling them..."

"Did you hear me shooting two Dominion troopers in the head therefore fucking up my life worse than before? C'mon get up. We ain't got time to waste."

He saw the Sheriff put his shotgun on the desk, then bend down and pick the third man by the scruff or his... robe? Was that the one.. the one he had punched? He looked like Dominion come to think of it, a Dominion priest of some kind. And two Dominion troopers, dead. There would be hell to pay, Troben was right about that.

He grabbed his shotgun as Troben unceremoniously dumped the still living man in the cage that served as jail. He took a knife and some sort of communicator off him then locked him in shaking his head.

"Problem is, Deacon I don't like you. Personally or what you stand for. I don't like the Dominion, even though I fought for you, and I especially don't like being told what to do or threatened. Add to this list of things I don't like which you've done, said or are to the fact that I was already pissed to be threatened and bossed around. Shit, you're lucky to be alive. For now."

The man in. The cage shot Troben an evil look them managed a whisper. The right side of his face seemed strangely bent, it gave Cotton the chills.

"I'll... see you soon... Sheriff." the man said.

Troben stepped on the man's transmitter with the heel of his boot.

"Deacon... for both our sakes... I sure hope not."

"Who was that man?" Cotton asked as the two of them hustled down the side of the hill, away from the bunker and town. The horses clopped behind them, struggling downhill under the weight of the Sheriff's gun bags.

"Trouble." was all Troben answered, his eyes on the shuttle. Cotton followed his gaze. The shuttle looked like a dull silver box, black scorch marks all around it, on the ancient landing pad's cracked asphalt. The Dominion logo was emblazoned in blue on the side but it too seemed faded somehow. Cotton knew nothing about flying machines but it struck him it looked like a relic of better days.

"What about that thing?" Cotton asked. "Can't we take it instead of the horses? Reckon it'll get us further"

"Not for long it won't." the Sheriff replied and pulled his horse forward. "Ships got trackers and autopilots and self destructs. Horses got none of those. So be quiet, mount up and let's ride."

Cotton got on his horse and followed, reluctantly. There was a copse of acacia trees behind the hill, leading down towards the road and the Sheriff seemed intent to take 'em through it. He knew those trees well. When he was younger he used to come down there to try to sneak a peak through field binoculars at the comings and goings of the town. Now it just seemed like sanctuary, trees to block the view of any nosy shopkeepers that might have heard the shots or wonder where the troopers had gone.

Cause Cotton sure as hell had seen where they had gone, they'd been unceremoniously shoved by the Sheriff into the bio-furnace in the old building's backroom. Troben had said that would buy them time but Cotton failed to see how. There was blood on the sheriff's floor and an angry, swollen-faced jackbooted sunovabitch in the jail. And besides, it all seemed a bit ungodly to him. Jackbooted or not, the Dominion men were just as entitled to burial as the next man, burning them without a care or a prayer, it just didn't sit right.

And besides, you could altogether skip the angry priest and the charbroiled henchmen. The shuttle would soon be drawing in gazes and curous prods from all the locals. Sure they were scared of the Dominion, but they were also bored, curious and there ain't a force in the world to stop a bored townie from sticking his nose in what ain't his business. Soon enough the townies would be closing in on the shuttle and the men in the shuttle - were there men left in the shuttle? - those men or their superiors back home would be wondering what in hell happened to a deacon and two jackboots...

He looked at Troben then back at the town vanishing behind them in the bush.

"Where are we going?" he asked, pushing the foliage aside. He waited, carefully maneuvering his colt away from a thorny acacia outgrowth. Troben did not answer.

"Sheriff Comstock..."

"I'm thinking."

Cotton looked at him, confused. The man, so cocksure on the day to day, was now positively bristling with anxiety.

"What are you..."

"I'm thinking which way to head up." he spat out through his teeth. Cotton said nothing more, he just kept his distance and carefully observed the man. He was nervous but not in a scared way, or at least not just in a scared way. He looked anxious but almost... excited? Angry maybe? It was hard to tell with Comstock Troben. The Sheriff pushed a thorny creeper aside with his longarm then stared back at the map printout he had taped to the inside or his cuff. He was thinking all right.

The copse was starting to thin, the bloom-acacias giving way to gentler trees of the non prickly variety. Troben looked back over his shoulder, reins in one hand, rifle in the other. You could just about see the shuttle, on the top of the hill behind them. Troben shook his head then raised the rifle, steadying it on his metal arm. He looked back at the ship, studying it carefully through the cope on his rifle. Cotton just waited nervously for the man to finish.

"Way i see it our best chance is to head away from the hills." Comstock Troben said, finally. The plains are flat and full of low scrub all the way to the county border. If that shuttle comes a-looking it can find us, fry us and be back home before they call for evening prayers. And that's what they'll likely be thinking. That we cut an’ ran for the hills, into Warlike lands."

"But we won't?" Cotton asked hopefully. Say what you will ‘bout Comstock Troben but he was a man with a plan.

"We will" the Sheriff said, cracking a nervous smile. "That's just about our only shot.

But not here." He pulled his horse alongside Cotton's horse and showed him an imaginary trail on the map. "We carry on that way, up until the river. Then we ride alongside the co-op lands, in the shade of the willows there. Chances are they won't spot us. Then we turn and ride through barrow creek and up into the Agro-corp lands. Cut through their orchards, then the corn, cross the road there and break for the Kaluga trail at night."

Sounded like a plan to Cotton. Not a great one but about as solid as two men armed with longarms trying to outrun a fiery death from above could hope for. He nodded and the Sheriff set off without another word.

Cotton took one last look back towards Planetfall Junction. You couldn't see much from down here, just the bunker on the hill, where the angry Deacon awaited his deliverance and the strip of tarmac with the Dominion shuttle and its lasers. But he knew the town was there, behind that hill. Uptown and Downtown, rich and poor, the blessed and the left behind. They were all left behind for him now. Odds are he was never going to lay eyes on the town, on its mud and brick and board again. But that was for another time. Right now he needed to ride hard. He gave old Gaptooth a pat on his side then followed in the Sheriff's tracks.