The sun in the pale Texarcana sky burned hot and white.
It was a usual boring day in the town of Buelle. Gordi and six other children were in a clearing near the edge of town, gathered around a blue plastic crate dragged from inside one of the nearby warehouses. The entire sprawling warehouse complex, along with all the other nearby buildings, was abandoned.
Before the war, this part of town was bustling. There has even been a dock for lev-trains here, to unload cargo shipped in from Ezren Field, the local spaceport. The buildings had been stocked with goods to be shipped to every part of Texarcana.
Since the Alliance bombs, the only thing here was dust and weeds and nasty little critters.
Sometimes there were choking dust storms in these back lots, but not today. The air was queerly still, like they had entered an actual ghost town.
It felt like the 'Verse was waiting for something to happen.
It had taken them all morning to find gather the feral rats from the abandoned structures. They must have found over twenty of them, a couple of them the size of tomcats.
Gordi heard them scurrying inside the crate. He put ear to against the crate and listened, trying to figure out what they were doing without opening the lid. It sounded like they were looking for a way out.
"Are they fightin' each other?" his sister Ginny asked, standing nearby. She was seven, four years younger than him. She wore a sunbonnet and mismatched ragged clothing. She was hillfolk, like everyone else in Buelle.
"No. Of course not. Rats stick together, don't ya know anything?"
She stuck out her tongue but Gordi ignored her and listened.
He thought about the crate, how it said Sihnon Transport on the side in faded letters. It was junk now, but it had come from somewhere far away.
Joel appeared from the open loading door of a nearby building, carrying a brown cloth sack in his left hand. On his right was a elbow-length metalweave glove. The glove was a treasure found in the surrounding buildings. It was magic. It let you handle anything, a burning log, splinters of sharp glass, even a rusty powercell leaking acid.
Joel approached. Gordi stood.
Joel reached into the sack with his gloved hand a pulled out a writhing dung spider. The thing was a ball of nasty brown fur and grasping legs. It had terrible black eyes and cruel little pincers.
Joel shoved it in Gordi's face. He jumped back in surprise.
"Get that bugger away from me!"
"Haha! You're scared of spiders!" Joel waved the spider at Ginny as he walked toward her. "Ginny! Ginny! He wants to dance on your bonnet!"
She ran, screaming. As Joel returned the spider to the sack, she began crying, standing a few yard away.
"Open the crate!"
Two of the boys moved quickly, opening the lid of the plastic box. Joel opened the sack and poured its contents in.
Five dung spiders fell into the dirt at the bottom of the crate. Like cats, they landed on their feet. The twenty plus rats reacted instantly, jumping away then turning toward the spiders, bearing teeth, hair going up, ready to fight.
The spiders were surrounded. They moved slowly, almost lazily, but Gordi knew they moved with a sudden burst of speed when something was close enough to bite.
Gordi was betting on the spiders.
Dung spiders, actually called Carrion Spiders, according to a snotty girl in his class, were dangerous loners. They had poison in their fangs. If left alone they just ate dung beetles and relaxed in the hot sun. If bothered, they got mad and looked to bite you good.
They didn't like to be meddled with.
Rats were just plain nasty, in a common sort of way.
The five spiders were surrounded. The children waited for one side or the other to make a move, wondering who would attack first.
Ginny scampered back to the crate. Her eyes were red, her face was still wet from snot and tears, but she didn't want to be left out. She stood on her toes and peeked in.
Gordi glanced up and saw an adult walk into the clearing.
A girl cop, and not a local Constable, but an Alliance Police Officer. An AP from the garrison. She was tall for a woman, thin, but maybe even taller than his Pa. Her uniform was dark blue and black. She wore an armored vest and web belt festooned with police-issue gear. A blue cap hid her hair. Sungoggles hid her eyes. She had a rifle slung on her back, a mean looking black repeater.
The Constables like to bust your boots. They were always chasing kids away from the abandoned part of town. If they were bored they'd drag you down to the station and buzz your parents. Gordi knew he'd get his hide tanned good if the cops told Pa he was loitering again.
The spiders and rats were forgotten.
He had heard the APs were worse than Constables. On a whim, they could make you gone. Gordi imagined the Texarcana penal camp, or being sold to slavers, breaking rocks, breathing with a respirator on some Godforsaken moon.
He wanted to yell a warning. To run. But his voice was caught in his throat. The APs were allowed to kill at will. He couldn't tear his eyes from the black rifle.
Another AP appeared behind her, squeezing himself through a slash in the rusted mesh-link fence a dozen yard away. He was taller than the lady, bigger, with dark brown skin and strands of black hair hanging over his sungoggles. Most people on Texarcana were Anglo, light skinned. The lucky ones tanned while the rest sunburned easily. This guy was wasn't Anglo or Mandarin. The weapon he carried was even bigger than the lady's, some sort of heavy repeater, and he had a fancy shotgun slung on his back.
Gordi realized it was one of the few times he had been this close to off-worlders.
The lady looked at them. She smirked and nodded her head. The big guy waved, smiling broadly. More APs came through the hole in the fence, their faces hidden by the black faceplates of their helmets.
The kids were torn between the battle in the crate and the Alliance cops, glancing up and down.
Gordi was focused on the cops. They walked by, ignoring the kids, on the way to some deadly business. He though someone might suggest they follow the cops, to see what was going down, but not even crazy Joel opened his mouth.
Ginny took his hand. He had not noticed her walk beside him. Somehow all of them knew.
The cops were like the spiders. Dangerous. And Gordi did not have a magic glove to hold them.
With Deadeye Jill Bishop in the lead, the five blue clad figures walked from the shade of the alley into the bright noon of Main Street, Buelle.
Her sungoggles turned midday into something like a blue overcast day on another, cloudier, planet. Buelle was a row of squat crete and wood buildings, dust, holos and neon that were shut down when the sun came up.
Like most small towns on Texarcana, there were more tethered horses and parked wagons on each side road than modern vehicles, and most of those were battered old drags, trucks that rolled on wheels. A single hovermule was parked across the street, in front of a four-level building, an Inn called Calamity.
Main Street was nearly deserted. Some of the local hillfolk were here and there, walking through town on personal business. Anyone sane was hiding from the heat of the sun. She watched a couple waiting to cross the street; they waited for the single stoplight in the center of town to turn red.
She snickered. It was a quiet day, no traffic, not a single vehicle could be heard running. Buelle didn't even need a stoplight.
Everyone on Main Street noticed them and averted their eyes, intimidated by the uniforms and the guns. Standard operating procedure. No one messed with the APs.
Jill was surprised to see a man across the street giving her hard eyes as he lounged against the side of a dusty combooth. He wore a large pistol on his hip, unhidden. His yellow silk shirt, which probably cost more than most of the drags parked in town, was open, revealing the tattoos covering his chest.
He spat on the ground, took a swig from the bottle he was holding, and continued to glare. He looked vaguely Mandarin. His small-brimmed hat was pulled low over his eyes. She read him as a local Tong member.
Jill glanced over her shoulder at Che Bandarez. He shook his head, frowning. Carrying a gun on Texarcana was legal. Carrying one, drunk, in town, must violate some local law. She did not know exactly which one, but it only made sense. They had more important things to do today then ruff up a drunk Tong, but she had a bad feeling about him.
They continued to walk. A bottle crashed behind them.
She glanced back again. The Tong was shouting at them, curses, Mandarin she didn't know. Shin, the last one of her bunch, was facing the Tong, hands resting on his two holstered pistols.
"Shin. It's not the time. This is too important."
"But Jilly…" Shin said. His voice was muffled behind his visor.
"You wanna be in charge?" Jill said, her voice low and even.
"That's not it. I think this one's gonna start trouble."
"The lady's in charge, ain't she comrade?" Che said. The Tong kept yelling.
"Shin, you're an AP. That toy Tong wouldn't dare. C'mon."
The bunch crossed Sage Street. A horse drawn carriage clacked by behind them, kicking up dust. Jill was sweating inside her armored uniform.
Jill saw a commotion at the other end of town, way down Main Street. A mob of people. They waved flags and held banners. Music and crowd noise drifted to her. The mob was advancing.
"Che, is that a parade? What ruttin' holiday is this?"
"God only knows. Probably some hillfolk celebration, is all. Sister and wife day."
As Jill neared the of The First Bank of Buelle, she noticed people standing outside, three of them. Two looked like bank employees. The other was uniformed security.
"These gosh darn viddy pickups are offline again. Ah never seen both of them go on the blink like this," one of the workers was saying.
That meant everything going smoothly. Rio was two kilometers away, inside the windfarm near town. The rows of windmills provided running water and power for Buelle. From the top of windmill 7A, Rio had a clear view of the Bank. Her laser rifle was not powerful, but it was enough to blind the cameras in front of the bank. Its shots were silent and invisible.
Jill noticed the smoking commo wires hanging from a nearby wirepole. Rio had severed them with her long-range marksmanship as well. Rio should see them in their AP uniform now through her scope. She would be triggering the directional jammer on top of the windmill with her, showering Buelle with broadwave trash, making wireless com useless.
"I see you are having some problems with your equipment. Let's step inside and talk about it," Jill said to the three men. They turned to face her.
"I'm certified by the Constable Office. I have this under control. This isn't the Core, you can't tell me what's what." The security officer said, annoyed.
Jill had a Alliance issue B9 pistol holstered on her left hip, but it was just part of the costume. Her right was her gun hand. She pulled her Browning-pattern 9mm out of her waistband and aimed from the hip.
"Keep it cool and shiny, gentlemen. Bullets hurt."
The men stared in shock. Che stepped up to the security officer, took his sidearm and cuffed him.
As the parade came closer, Jill and her gang quickly herded the workers inside. Bunny, Boris, and Shin had helmets with dark visors to hide their faces. As Jill and Che entered the bank, they both pulled red scarves out of their collars and up over their noses.
Jill and Che both hated helmets for different reasons.
"Citizens of Texarcana and employees of The First Bank of Buelle, we are here from the Alliance to make a withdrawal. Hand in the air!" Jill yelled, pulling the B9 with her left hand to help cover the whole lobby.
The others were fanning out, talking control of the main lobby and other interconnected rooms. Bunny began to use a small welding laser to kill the viddies mounted on the walls. Shin covered the front door.
Like a typical small town bank, one side of the main room was a long counter for tellers, dealing in cashy money, and the other side was a row of Cortex terminals. There were small cubicles in the back.
Boris headed through a door to the left, to clear out the private offices.
Jill spoke again.
"Any one of these ruttin' bastards tries to make a move, kill'em!"
Wild Dogs
The second fanfic by JP Richardson
Jill holstered the B9.
It had taken ninety seconds to get everyone under control. This bank was a cinch. Some of them had armor glass walls protecting the tellers. This place didn't. Some had and stun fields and all sorts of shiny defense systems.
Its like this place never thought they'd be getting robbed.
Jill slapped a note down in front of the head teller behind the counter. The petit brunette kept her hands in the air. She looked rather calm.
"This is the account code and the amount of credits I need transferred over to it. I need expedited service. Please." This part was a smokescreen. They were here for cashy money. The credit transfer, from a local Tong account, to an actual Alliance account, was just to throw the law off.
"There is no way you can get away with this. Even if you're Alliance." That took Jill off-guard. She didn't show it.
"It doesn't matter if I'm with the Londium all-girls ruttin' choir, I've got this gun and you're making me nervous. When I am nervous, my gorram trigger finger starts to itch."
The teller took the note and began to punch up the transaction. She seemed calm, too calm.
Outside, the parade had stopped in front of the bank.
Through the small tinted windows of the bank, she could see the crowd. The First Bank of Buelle was built like a fortress, with thick walls and narrow windows like firing slits. It had been built to repulse a siege, but with the lax security inside, it only repulsed the noonday heat. Someone outside was speaking to the crowd with a loudhorn. The sound was muffled by the thick door and windows.
"C'mon sister, I'm in a hurry. I'm used to Corebank. If the teller takes more than thirty secs for a trans, you get a free gift." Jill was running her mouth to vent. Most of customers looked rightly scared, shaking with their hands in the air, but a few seemed dead calm. That, and the festival outside, was making her nervous.
"You credits have been transferred, miss."
"Thank you, now I am going to need the contents of these safe boxes." Jill put another note on the counter. All the boxes were loaded with Tong platinum. For the most part, she didn't steal from people who didn't deserve it.
The teller read the note. She wrinkled her nose, contemplating.
"I am not authorized to open these box numbers. It won't be possible."
"Won't be-" A chain of deep gunblasts cut Jill off, echoing from the private offices. Boris firing, the unmistakable sound of his Burke 7.7 repeater. It broke her concentration.
"Che, cover the head teller." Che shifted his aim as Jill ran to the office entrance. She went in.
It was a waiting room. Boris had cleared out the little offices and lined everyone up against one wall. Now they were cowering, and three were laying on the floor bleeding, dead or dying.
"Boris, Sweet Buddha, what did you do?"
"Making sure these jokers listen. They need to understand I'm serious." Boris had his helmet on, but the visor was flipped up.
"This is a robbery, not massacre you stupid son of a streetwalker. Put the shooter down."
"Are you getting in character? That AP uniform going to your head? The way I see it, you ain't my Alliance captain and you ain't the boss of me."
"Then you're on your ruttin' own. Get out of here."
"Burn in hell you rotten bastard!" A lady hostage screamed. She was on her knees, crouched over an older man laying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Boris shifted, aiming at the hostage. Jill reacted.
At this range she didn't use sights. She pointed the Browning like a finger, putting the bullet exactly where she wanted.
Her gun banged. The nine-millimeter bullet struck Boris' right wrist, shattering it. He dropped the repeater, grunting in pain.
"Get out of here! If you father wasn't such a good man, I'd put you down like a dog!"
Boris clawed at his holstered B9. Jill shot him in the left eye. He dropped like a nerveless sack of dung.
Jill quickly retrieved his B9 and repeater, holding the pistol, hooking her left arm trough the heavy autogun's sling.
"You people are animal! Rabid dogs!" The woman cried, burying her face against the dying old man's bloody chest.
Jill said nothing. There was no time to reflect on human nature.