✪
Prescott, Arizona
The next morning . . .
NATHAN AWOKE to Shadow panting in his face.
Shadow was a smart dog, a big Doberman-Shepherd mix, genetically enhanced and specifically bred to be a working dog. He always woke somebody if he had to go. Looking at his watch, Nathan realized it was barely six in the morning. “Can’t you hold it?”
Shadow whined.
Guess not. “Ben!” he said, loudly. Ben’s cot was on the other side of the room. “Ben, wake up!”
Ben stirred in the dim morning light. “What’s wrong?”
“Shadow needs to go out.”
He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Seriously?”
Nathan looked at the dog. “Shadow, go get Ben. He’ll take you out.”
Shadow understood at least some of that. He skittered across the room and jumped on Ben’s cot, trampling the boy while he licked his face. His tail was wagging.
“Okay, okay!” Ben said, sputtering. “Yuck. Get down, Lug, I’ll take you outside!”
Shadow jumped down from Ben’s cot and trotted to the door, pausing to make sure Ben was following him.
“That was a dirty trick,” Ben said, shuffling toward the door.
“I’ll get us some breakfast,” Nathan said, sitting up. As the boy and the dog left, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to get his heart to slow down. He had that dream again. He was dragging his gunner out of his tank. His driver was in pieces, his tank on fire. The sun was bloodred through the smoke. There was so much smoke it was like a forest fire. The alien mech, the one that had killed his crew, was in a smoking heap a hundred meters away. Thick blue fluid poured out of where a 150mm APFSDS round had punched through it, going right through the meaty parts. The brain-shot usually killed them instantly, but it was a tough shot to make when they were moving.
Nathan thought he could smell the smoke, the acrid stink of burning metal, even in the dream. He had heard the strange, electronic hooting noises the biomechanical synths made. He could feel the pain from where he’d been burned even though the wounds had long since healed. The dream usually ended the moment he realized that his gunner, SP5 Cole Jackson, was dead.
It had been eight years and he still had the dream every so often. They eventually found enough of his driver, PFC Jake Guthrie, and his loader, SP4 Greg Rasmussen, to bury. Nathan still didn’t know how in the hell he managed to survive a catastrophic kill to his tank that had claimed the lives of his crew. It had been luck, nothing but dumb luck. It seemed so unfair.
“Uncle Nate?”
Surprised, Nathan looked up. It was Ben. “Oh. Hey. I didn’t hear you come back in.”
“Everything okay? You were, like, zoned out there for a minute.”
“Yeah,” Nathan lied. “I just need some coffee.” That part, at least, was true. “What do you want for breakfast?”
Nathan and Ben had spent the night at the shop. Carter Reid was locked up in the holding cell down in the basement, and technically someone had to be on the premises constantly while they had a prisoner in custody. Nathan’s partner, Stella, had contacted Homeland Security immediately after receiving notification that the fugitive was in custody, but sometimes it took them a couple of days to show up. Eventually they’d come get him, but until then, he couldn’t be left alone in the building, even though there was almost no chance he could escape.
“Stella’s here,” Ben said. “She brought food.”
“She’s here already?”
“Yeah, she got here while Shadow was pottying. I guess she went to Ranchero’s on the way here.”
Nathan’s stomach growled. “That sounds pretty good. Go eat, tell her I’ll be out there in a minute.” He needed to take a leak and get dressed.
Stella Rickles was already at her desk when Nathan stepped into the main office. She was typing away on her computer, probably filling out the paperwork on Carter Reid. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said, smiling at him. She was pretty, in a girl-next-door kind of way. Late thirties, auburn hair, and a curvy figure. Even though they didn’t have a dress code, she always looked nice when she came into the office. Today she was wearing a business skirt and heels, which, when paired with her glasses, made her look like a librarian. “You sleep okay?”
Nathan was still sore. Between getting clocked the night before and sleeping on a surplus cot, he felt pretty rough. “Oh yeah. Slept like a baby.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Liar. You know, we can get real beds in here instead of those god-awful cots.”
“Hey! I like my cot!” He chuckled. “The boy said you brought food?”
She had a half-eaten breakfast burrito on her desk. “There’s a steak-and-egg burrito for you. It’s in the break room. I put a pot of coffee on, too.”
“I could not do this job without you,” Nathan said, smiling. “You’re the best.”
“And don’t you forget it,” she said, returning to her typing. “Don’t forget to feed the prisoner. I didn’t bring him a burrito.”
Nathan nodded. “Oh, right. Yeah. I’ll toss him a can of Spam or something after I eat.” He turned and left the office, heading into the break room. He hadn’t been joking when he told Stella that he couldn’t do the job without her. There was a lot of administrative stuff that went along with bounty hunting. It wasn’t so bad for the state jobs, but the federal stuff came with a lot of paperwork. The Department of Homeland Security was the agency that processed claims for alien collaborators, traitors, and war criminals. The rewards were usually bigger, but getting them processed was like filing your taxes or going to the VA. Stella handled all that for him.
He’d originally hired her to handle the admin work. After a year of keeping him from violating government regulations (which came with stiff fines), she asked for a raise. Instead he made her a full partner in the business and had never regretted it. Stella had been a counterintelligence agent for Homeland Security during the war. She’d once confided in Nathan that she could be making a lot more money back east, or working for the government still, but she’d gotten sick of that world. At first she thought of returning home to West Virginia, but her maternal grandmother had settled in Arizona before the war. After she passed away, she left her house in Prescott to Stella, giving her a paid-for place to live. There just wasn’t much call for Stella’s area of expertise there, except for recovery work.
Ben was in the break room, eating his own burrito. His laptop computer was set up in front of him, and he scrolled the internet as he ate. Shadow sat next to him, looking pitiful. It was kind of funny, Nathan thought, watching a huge, genetically engineered working dog beg for table scraps.
“Hey, Uncle Nate,” Ben said, talking while chewing. “That guy we snagged last night? Stella told me the reward for him is fifty grand.”
“That’s right,” Nathan said, before taking a bite from his burrito. He continued after swallowing. “A prison camp administrator like our boy downstairs has a lot to answer for.”
Ben looked thoughtful for a moment. “How come we do this?”
“Huh? Because they’re paying us fifty thousand dollars, that’s why.”
“No, I mean, how come the government pays us to do this? I read that before the war, the police or federal agents did this kind of stuff, not bounty hunters.”
Nathan set his burrito down. “You’re right, it was a different world back then. Sometimes I forget how young you are.” Ben had been born during the war and was all of six years old when it had ended. He didn’t remember the world as it had been before. “I guess I’ve never explained this to you, huh? Before the war, federal laws were enforced by dozens of alphabet agencies from several different government departments. They often had redundant and overlapping areas of responsibility, and didn’t always work together well. Turf wars and battles for budget share were common. Being official apparatuses of the government, they had what they called qualified immunity. It meant that they usually couldn’t be sued for misconduct or mistakes. The federal bureaucracy made it nearly impossible to fire people for cause, leaving agencies with little choice but to transfer poor performers or just learn to live with them. Oversight was lacking and there wasn’t nearly enough accountability, at least not in my opinion.”
Ben ate his burrito as he listened to his uncle.
“Millions of Americans had willingly sided with the Greys, too,” Nate continued, using the derisive nickname for the extraterrestrial Visitors. “Hell, a bunch of people defected to their territory before the war started, and some even went over afterward. People were scared, thought there were traitors everywhere.”
“There were traitors everywhere,” Ben said, through a mouthful of his breakfast. He swallowed. “That’s why we’re so busy now.”
“It was worse than that. People became paranoid. The government basically turned all those federal agencies loose, gave them free rein to do whatever they thought they needed to do. Before the war they tracked and monitored alien sympathizers, harassed troublemakers, shut down pro-alien propaganda outlets. They spied on people without warrants and arrested them without probable cause. All it did was drive people over to the Greys, make the aliens seem more sympathetic. People were fed up. They were about to revolt.”
“What changed?” Ben asked.
“The Greys dropped the rock on Phoenix,” Nathan said, staring off into the distance. He looked at his nephew. “A million or so people died in an instant. Then the nukes started flying, and . . .” He trailed off. “That part of the war only lasted a couple months. It got a lot more conventional after that . . . as conventional as a war with aliens can be, I guess. In any case they stopped the orbital bombardment and we quit launching nukes at them.” He sighed. “Nobody cared much about their rights when they were worried about being exterminated. The Constitution was all but suspended during the war. All those federal agencies were used to police the population. People were rounded up and put in camps if they made trouble or protested. It was wrong, it was all wrong.”
“But we won,” Ben suggested. “We won the war.”
“We did, against all odds. That doesn’t make it right, though. The ends don’t always justify the means, and besides, I’m not convinced shredding the Constitution helped us win. It damn near tore the country apart, though, and after the war, things got worse.” Nathan paused to take another bite from his burrito. “When it was all over, after so much death and destruction, people were angry. They wanted revenge. They got it.”
“What does that mean?”
Nathan hesitated. Ben was too young to remember most of this stuff, and some of it Nathan preferred not to think about. Even still, he needed to know why they did what they did. “A lot of the collaborators were just rounded up and shot. People turned against each other. People suspected of being collaborators were strung up by mobs. There were riots in some cities. The Feds still had tens of thousands of people in internment camps, and most of ’em had never gotten a trial or a lawyer or anything. The government had said that the extraordinary measures needed during the war were temporary, but after the war, they didn’t give up their emergency powers. Not at first.”
“But they did eventually.”
“They did, but it took violence and the threat of an open revolt. A lot of vets came home from the war and didn’t like being spied on and not being able to speak their minds. You couldn’t travel on the freeway half the time without running into a Homeland Security checkpoint. That isn’t what we fought for. Things got pretty tense for a few months there, especially after President Kirkpatrick was assassinated. A lot of us thought there’d be a civil war.”
“That’s when they called the Constitutional Convention,” Ben said.
“That’s right. It was a smart move. It brought everybody to the table and allowed us to work things out. They passed four or five amendments, I don’t remember.”
“It was six,” Ben corrected.
Nathan grinned. “How come you’re asking me all this? Seems like you know history better than I do.”
“You were there. It’s different from reading it.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, things changed after that. They gutted federal law enforcement, and most of those agencies got disbanded. There was still the problem of all of the collaborators, though. When the war ended, the aliens left their human flunkies behind, and a whole bunch of their own kind as well. The aliens are easy enough to deal with, since the law treats them the same as enemy combatants. People wanted the collaborators brought to justice, though, and they didn’t trust the Feds with the power to do it. That’s where we come in.” Nathan smiled, and spread his hands. “The grand compromise that saved the country.”
Stella walked in then, her heels clicking on the cement floor. “The processing for Mr. Reid is done. The computer is ninety-plus percent confident, based on biometrics, that he is who we think he is. DHS will be sending a transport to pick him up today.”
“Wow,” Nathan said. “That was fast.”
“Yeah. I guess he’s got a bunch of indictments waiting for him—treason, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, war crimes. The usual.”
“The usual,” Nathan agreed. “Anything else on your radar?” The bounty on Carter Reid was $50,000. That was a pretty good chunk of change, but after taxes they’d only get $35,000 of that. The agency also had expenses to cover.
“I have a couple of leads,” Stella said, “Department of Justice and Homeland Security both.” She had built up an impressive network of contacts and informants in the time they’d been working together. She handed Nathan a few pieces of paper. Each was essentially a detailed wanted poster, with a photo of the wanted man, a description, a list of his crimes, and other pertinent information.
“Luis Santiago,” Nathan read. “Wanted for the murder of a judge in El Paso. Thirty-five-thousand-dollar reward, dead or alive.” Texas doesn’t fuck around, he thought. He flipped to the next one. “Erik Landers . . . twenty-thousand-dollar reward . . . arms trafficking?”
Stella leaned on the wall by the door. “He’s suspected of running guns to ex-UEA militant groups.”
Nathan shook his head. “They just can’t accept that their masters left them, can they?”
Stella shrugged. “There’s about an even chance the part about the militants is bullshit. You know how it is. They convince a judge that the alleged crime is covered by the Thirty-first Amendment and boom, instant nationwide bounty.”
“With federal preemption,” Nathan added.
“Exactly. Anyway, a little birdie chirped in my ear that this guy is staying at a motel in Tuba City.”
Nathan looked over at Ben. “He’s in Tuba City. What do you think?”
His nephew looked thoughtful for a moment. “That’s the Navajo Nation. It would be a good place to lay low until the heat’s off.”
“And why is that?”
The boy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Under the Treaty of Window Rock, Federal Recovery Agents are required to notify the tribal government that they will be operating under their territory, and the Navajo Nation can refuse them if they want.”
Stella beamed. “Very good, Ben!” She was the one who educated Ben on the legal aspects of the business.
“What happens if they say no?”
“In that case,” Stella replied, “we’re supposed to notify the Department of Justice, and they can dispatch US Marshals to arrest the person we’re looking for. In practice, they’re not always willing to send out the Marshals based on the say-so of Recovery Agents. It depends on how convincing the information is.”
“Take a look at the tasking sheet, Ben, and see what else you can tell from it.”
Ben took the piece of paper and studied it for a moment, reading it carefully. “It says wanted alive. That means we don’t get paid if he dies, right?”
Nathan shook his head. “Not exactly. For certain crimes they’ll specify that the bounty is wanted dead or alive. That means he’s just as valuable to us dead as he is if we bring him in breathing. Those are pretty rare, though, and are usually only issued for the most serious crimes. Like this,” he said, showing Ben the wanted poster for Luis Santiago. “This asshole murdered a judge in Texas. They’ll take him alive or as a corpse.”
“Why do they do that?”
“It’s a balancing act,” Nathan explained. “Dead men can’t stand trial, and even collaborators still have a right to presumption of innocence. They don’t want to give Recovery Agents the financial incentive to just shoot their targets.”
“On the other hand,” Stella said, “for certain serious crimes, they want to incentivize dangerous criminals to surrender. Knowing that the Recovery Agent will get paid just as much if he brings you in dead might convince you to cooperate.”
“But when we arrest a collaborator,” Ben said, “we read them their Thirty-first Amendment rights, and we always say that we can use lethal force without further warning.”
Stella nodded. “That’s right. Thirty-first Amendment taskings are special. If your case is covered under the Thirty-first Amendment, it means that you’re materially supporting a hostile power attempting to destroy the United States. Lethal force is always an option to protect the country, or so the logic goes. Remember, these amendments were passed right after the war.”
Nathan leaned in a little. “Long story short, if I do have to shoot this asshole, we’ll still get paid, but it’ll take a lot longer and involve a lot more paperwork. If a Recovery Agent uses deadly force enough that he draws the attention of the Federal Recovery Bureau, they’ll suspend his license and launch an audit.”
“That’s something you never want to happen,” Stella said. “It can take weeks or months and we’re not allowed to work while the audit is in progress. They’ll send people down here to inspect our facilities and our records, and if every bit of paperwork isn’t filled out correctly, we can face large fines, revocation of our operating license, even criminal prosecution.”
“Holy crap,” Ben said.
“Always remember,” Nathan said, “a Recovery Agent is responsible, legally and morally, for everything he does. We operate under the color of law, but the law only gives us so much protection. We get into a gun battle with a wanted man, we are personally responsible for every bullet we send downrange. One of our shots misses a target and kills a bystander, we can end up in prison for it. One of those bullets damages someone’s property, they can sue us for recompense, and the damages will come out of our pocket.”
Ben looked bewildered. “Why does anyone do this?”
“Because it’s good money,” Nathan said. “Look at this Erik Landers guy. We drive a couple hours north and pick him up, we’ll make twenty grand for a day’s work. That’s hard to beat these days.”
“Does that mean you’re going after Erik Landers?” Stella asked.
Nathan nodded. “He’s close by and you have a good lead. It’s too good to pass up. Does he have any known associates up there?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but my little birdie works at a motel there. I can send you to her for more information. I’ll give John Yazzie a call and let him know you’re coming.”
John Yazzie was a lieutenant in the Navajo Nation Territorial Police. He’d served with Nathan during the war, and the two men were friends. “Thank you,” Nathan said. “I’m gonna swing by Jesse’s place to pick up some equipment, then we’ll roll out.”
Stella smiled. “Be safe. I’ll see you boys later.”
THE WEATHER IN PRESCOTT WAS NICE IN THE FALL. Being both farther south and at a lower elevation, it wasn’t nearly so cold and windy as Flagstaff was in the winter, and in the summer, it didn’t get as hot as it did in desert around the Phoenix Crater. It was a pleasant morning and Whiskey Row had its share of locals and travelers, even if the bars and brothels weren’t open yet.
Traffic was light. Gasoline and diesel weren’t rationed anymore but were still expensive. Many people walked or rode bicycles to get around, especially on such a nice day. There were even a few folks going about their business on horseback, just like they would have done a hundred years earlier.
Nathan and Ben, riding in their up-armored diesel truck, came to a stop at a traffic light near the old courthouse. “Give Jesse a call,” Nathan said, pointing at his phone. “Tell him we’re on our way over. I don’t want to drop in unannounced.”
“You got it!” Ben said. The phone was plugged into the truck’s docking station and connected to its main screen. The screen was in a fixed position, but the camera could be pointed at either the driver or the passenger. Ben turned the camera toward himself, dialed Jesse’s number, and waited. The screen was black for a few moments, with connecting . . . appearing on it, until Jesse picked up.
Jesse was an affable-looking guy with a goatee and curly hair. “Larimer Technologies,” he said, his voice sounding over the truck’s speakers. He wasn’t looking at the camera, and appeared to be soldering something. “What can I do for—ow! Damn it!”
“Hey, Jesse!” Ben said. “Is this a bad time?”
“What? Oh,” he said, putting his finger between his lips where he’d burned it. “How’re you doing, Ben? Hi, Nate! I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”
“Are you busy?” Nathan asked. “I’m gonna drop by in a little while.”
“No, come on by. What do you need?”
Nathan reached over and pointed the camera at himself. “I’ll talk to you when I get there.”
“Okay. I’ve got some cool stuff I want to show you, too. See you in a bit.” Without saying goodbye, he terminated the connection, and the screen went blank.
Nathan had known Jesse since high school. The Larimers had been a fixture in Prescott for over a hundred years. Jesse was the last scion of a long line of notable eccentrics, and he loved regaling people with tales of his family’s colorful history. Jessup Beauregard Larimer settled in town in 1888 and got rich after discovering gold. He also claimed to be able to alter the weather; using smoke pots atop wooden towers, he was reportedly able to make it rain, though his formula was lost when he died in 1896 of wounds sustained in a duel (historians questioned the authenticity of the accounts).
Hamilton Larimer, Jessup’s son, was an Army Air Service airship pilot in the years following the Great War. He was said to have been the first man to have ever shot and killed a bear from an aloft dirigible (though the Germans disputed the claim). His son, John Larimer, had a long and distinguished career as an Air Force pilot.
In as much as such an eccentric family could even have a black sheep, Jesse was the black sheep of the family. He had dropped out of Arizona Tech’s College of Engineering after only two years, and instead took to rally racing and working as a handyman to make ends meet. Like many people, he’d been drafted during the war. He lost his parents in the destruction of Phoenix and his older sister, an Air Force fighter pilot, was killed in action a year later. Jesse became the sole inheritor of what was left of the family fortune. He lived with his son at his ancestral home on the outskirts of town.
It took Ben and Nathan about fifteen minutes to get to Jesse’s residence. Nathan pulled his truck into the drive and parked next to Jesse’s off-road 4x4 and motorcycle. Off to the side, under a tarp, was an old Potomac Motors Galaxy, a classic muscle car that Jesse was slowly rebuilding. There was a goat standing on top of the car, looking down at them smugly, as Nathan and Ben got out of the truck.
“Hey, get down from there, Duke!” Ben said, waving his arms at it. With an obnoxious bleat, the goat jumped down and approached the boy, thinking he had food. Daisy, the female, came running from behind the house, the bell on her collar clanging as she went.
“Ben, would you try and get the goats back in the pen, please? Let Shadow out, he’ll herd them for you. I’m gonna go inside and talk to Jesse.”
“Sure thing, Uncle Nate,” Ben said, opening the back of the truck. “Come on, buddy!” The huge black dog excitedly jumped from the back of the truck, his tail wagging enthusiastically. The goats, seeing their old nemesis, turned and ran, with Shadow in hot pursuit. Ben took off after them. Chuckling, Nathan made his way to the house’s armored security door and rang the buzzer.
A small screen next to the door lit up, with Jesse’s face appearing on it. “Hey, Nate.” He hit a button on his desk, and the door loudly clicked. “It’s open. C’mon in, I’m back in the shop.”
“Your goats got out again. One of them was on your Galaxy.”
“Damn it! They’re little escape artists, I swear.”
“Ben and Shadow are getting them back into the pen for you. Again.”
Jesse grinned. “You know, this is a perfect opportunity to test out my new thing. Change of plan, meet me around back by the goat pen.”
“Uh, sure, Jess,” Nathan said. “See you in a minute.”
Jesse was waiting for him behind the house, with Ben and Shadow. Over his shoulder was a stubby, tubular device with a pistol grip and a shoulder pad, like a sawn-off rocket launcher. Where the rocket would be, however, there were instead four padded prongs, each eight inches long, angling outward.
“You’re not going to blow the goats up, are you?” Nathan asked.
“No, no,” Jesse said, letting himself into the pen. “Watch this.”
Shadow watched intently as Jesse entered the enclosure, daring the goats to try and escape again. Daisy hid in their little shelter while Duke defiantly stood on top of a barrel, warily looking down at the dog. They had played this game many times before.
“See,” Jesse continued, “I got to thinking about your business. Sometimes you have to chase people, right?”
“Shadow does most of the chasing these days, but it does come up.”
“Exactly. It’s exhausting and a waste of energy. I thought to myself, there’s got to be a better way.” He shouldered his contraption and pointed at the goat, who was still haplessly perched atop the barrel. “Turns out there is.”
BOOM! The device fired with a deep, hollow bang and a puff of smoke. In an instant, the barrel was lying on the ground, knocked over. Duke was lying next to it, ensnared in a net, bleating his unhappiness about the situation. Jesse looked up at Nathan, grinning ear to ear. “What do you think?”
Nathan had doubled over laughing.
Ben ran to the fence. “Duke! Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” Jesse said, looking down the prostrate goat. “It’s not electrified or anything. I’m still working on that part.” After a few moments, Duke had given up struggling and just laid there, breathing heavily.
Ben walked over to the gate. “I’ll get him out!”
“Put gloves on first,” Nathan advised.
Jesse raised an eyebrow. “The wires aren’t sharp or anything.”
“No, I just don’t want him smelling like goat piss.”
Jesse stopped and sniffed his fingers. “Yeah, he is a little rank.” He left the pen as Ben entered. The boy got to work trying to untangle the confused goat. “I got the idea from the net launchers they use to catch wildlife. They work okay for wild animals, but they’re not designed for people. This one is. It’s actuated by blank cartridges. The net has little hooks all over it.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “To dig into the flesh? I might come under some scrutiny if I bring my customers in all tore up.”
“No, not like that. The hooks aren’t sharp enough to puncture the skin. They allow the net to hook to itself as it wraps around the target. Let me tell you, you’re not going to be able to just pull it off. It takes forever to get out of. If you try to run it’ll tangle around your legs and you’ll trip.”
“Huh. That’s kind of clever.”
“Out to about twenty feet, it’s pretty much guaranteed to fully entangle a grown man. After that, you might only get a partial catch, but it could either trip them up or immobilize the arms. The net itself is a nylon composite weave. Each strand has over a hundred pounds of tensile strength, and multiple strands are braided together to make the net. I had to balance making it strong with making it light enough to get launched. I don’t think even a big, strong guy will be able to tear his way out of it.”
“This must have taken a lot of work.”
“Yeah, I started playing around with it last year, but kind of forgot about it for a while. It took a lot of testing but I think I’ve got it down.”
“Holy hell, how many times did you shoot that poor goat?”
“What?” Jesse seemed genuinely distressed that Nathan thought he was mistreating his goats. “It’s not like that. I tested this thing on myself. I had Tycho shoot me with it a bunch of times. It’s as safe as I can get it while still being effective.”
Nathan chuckled. “I bet he thought that was a hoot. Say, where is your boy, anyway? He’s usually real excited to see Ben.”
“Huh? Tycho’s in school. It’s Tuesday morning.”
“Oh, right. I guess I forgot.”
“Hey, how’s Ben doing, anyway?” he asked, quietly, so that the boy couldn’t hear. “Does he have friends or anything?”
Nathan sighed. “Not really. Truth be told, he’s really shy. I wish I could socialize him more, but I don’t really hang out with a lot of other fourteen-year-olds, you know? He’s got friends on the internet.”
Jesse frowned. “Have you thought about putting him in school?”
“Can’t. He tested out. Got his GED already.”
“Really? Holy crap.”
“Yeah, he’s real smart. Takes after his mom.”
“This life can’t be good for him,” Jesse said, delicately.
Nathan frowned. Jesse wasn’t wrong; Ben had spent the night with him at the office, guarding Carson Reid. When other kids were in school, or hanging out with their friends, his nephew was chasing criminals and traitors. “It’s the only life I’ve got,” he said with a shrug. “He’s got no other family. Even if I wanted to put him in foster care, the system is still overwhelmed with all the orphans from the war. If I gave him up, odds are he’d end up in some kind of government institution. Way I see it, this is better than that, even with the risks.”
Jesse nodded solemnly. He was one of the few people who knew about what Ben had been through and what had happened to his mom. “It just seems so unfair to the kid.”
“You ain’t wrong. Hell, what happened to the whole goddamn world was unfair, but it is what it is. Now, what else did you want to show me?”
“Oh! Right! I forgot. Come on into the shop.”
Jesse’s shop looked cluttered and chaotic, but he seemed to know right where everything was. The centerpiece of it was a CNC mill and a lathe. Electronics projects cluttered one workbench, while firearms projects took up another. A faded Arizona flag hung on one wall, as did a prewar, fifty-star US flag. Next to them was a pair of posters. Remember Phoenix, one declared, while the other proclaimed Keep Watching the Skies! Below those, framed, was his certificate of his completing the Arizona Ranger training course and a photo of his swearing-in ceremony. Leading Nathan to his gun-bench, Jesse picked up a large pistol and proudly handed it to his friend.
“What’s this?” Nathan asked, examining the gun in his hand. It wasn’t anything he’d seen before, and he knew his way around a gun. “Did you make this?”
“I did,” Jesse said, beaming. “That’s my third prototype. It’s ready for field testing.”
The gun was a hefty semiautomatic, but the magazine well was located in front of the trigger guard. Nathan locked back the slide, verifying that the weapon was unloaded, and looked at the markings. “.45 Win Mag?”
Jesse grinned. “Yup! The problem with most magnum semiautos is that they’re huge, right? It’s because they’re trying to cram a revolver-length, rimmed cartridge into a pistol grip. You end up with a grip like a two-by-four. I solved that by moving the magazine well out of the grip.”
“Like a Broomhandle Mauser,” Nathan said.
“Only in overall layout. This gun is striker-fired. It’s roller-delayed, recoil-operated, like the Kraut STG-88 assault rifle. Try the trigger!”
Nathan released the slide and squeezed the trigger. With only a little bit of take-up, it felt like a thin glass rod breaking. “Damn.”
“Three and a half pounds’ pull weight on that, and it doesn’t feel mushy. I added a thumb safety because the trigger pull is so light, and to make it extra drop safe. I tossed my second prototype off the roof, onto the driveway, over and over again, trying to get it to discharge, and the safety held. Anyway, the barrel is fixed, so it’s real accurate. For the next prototype, I’m working on a user-serviceable quick-change barrel system. You’ll be able to swap from the five-inch service barrel, like on this one, to a longer, heavier target barrel, and even a short snub barrel. I figure I can machine a scope mount into the heavy barrel, so it’ll be good for handgun hunters. I may be able to figure out a caliber conversion system, eventually, too.”
“This is really nice, Jesse,” Nathan said, aiming the pistol at an antelope head mounted on the wall.
“The magazine holds ten rounds. I’m working on a twenty-rounder, but I haven’t put it together yet. Even still, that’s four extra shots over a typical police revolver, it’s more powerful, and it reloads quicker.”
“I’m impressed, Jesse. Very nicely done. You gonna put these into production?”
“Eh, I really can’t. I’m a one-man outfit. I don’t have the capability to mass-produce a gun and making these as one-offs would make them too expensive. Once I get the design finalized, I’m going to try and sell the manufacturing rights.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Nathan flipped the gun around in his hand and offered it to Jesse butt-first. “You gonna pack this beast on your next Ranger call-up?”
“You know, I might. We don’t really have any formal requirements as to what sidearms we’re supposed to carry. A lot of guys pack single-action revolvers just for the aesthetics.” Jesse took the gun back. “I’ve taken a bunch of javelina with this. I even shot down a leatherwing with it.”
“You shot down a leatherwing,” Nathan repeated. “Bullshit.” The alien creatures, superficially resembling pterosaurs, had been hybridized to flourish in the Earth’s atmosphere. Having no natural predators, they were a menace to livestock and unwary people alike.
“No, I did! I was out by Thumb Butte. It wasn’t a big one. He was circling overhead and decided to swoop down on me. I nailed him as he came in. The damned thing crashed into me, knocked me on my ass, and coughed up a bunch of slime on me. I had to burn those clothes, it stunk so bad.”
Nathan laughed. It was just crazy enough to have actually happened. “That reminds me.” He reached into his waistband and pulled the revolver he’d recovered off of Carson Reid. He handed it to his friend.
“What’s this?” Jesse asked, taking the gun. Depressing the release lever with his thumb, he opened the top-break revolver and verified that it was unloaded.
“It belonged to my last bounty.”
Jesse looked closely at the markings. “It’s Canadian. See, it’s got the little maple-leaf marking on the side of the frame. It’s a Northstar Ordnance Mk.VI, .38 Special, made in Halifax, Nova Scotia.” He looked up at Nathan. “Nova Scotia is a Canadian province.”
“Man, I know where Nova Scotia is!”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, a lot of Canadian cops used these until they started switching to 9mm semiautos. This one has the compact grip and the shorter, 83mm barrel.” He paused for a moment. “That’s about three and a quarter inches.”
Nathan just glared at him.
Jesse didn’t seem to notice. “This was probably an off-duty carry, or detective’s gun. Bunch of these got imported as surplus after the war, when Canada’s economy collapsed. They’re good guns, though, well-made and reliable.”
“I’m thinking about giving it to Ben. Is it in working condition?”
Jesse opened and closed the action a few times. He pulled the trigger, cycling the cylinder through all six chambers, and inspected the bore. “Yeah, I’d say so. The finish is a little worn, but I don’t think it’s been used much. I can clean it up for you if you want.”
“I’d appreciate it. I’ll need some .38 then, too. Target loads and some hollow-points.”
“You guys going on a job?” Jesse asked. “Another collaborator?”
“Gun runner.” Retrieving his PDA from his pocket, he flipped open the folding screen, pulled up the tasking info on Erik Landers, and showed it to Jesse.
Jesse whistled. “Damn. Twenty grand? You make some bucks doing this, hey?”
“The money’s good but the work can be sporadic. Getting two bounties in a row like this is rare. Hell, we just got back from a job last night! Also, the government takes anywhere from a fifth to a third of your bounty earnings in taxes, so you have to take that into account. But,” he said, before Jesse went into another rant about how taxation was government-sanctioned theft, “it can be lucrative if you don’t mind the risk.”
“Hmm,” Jesse said, rubbing his chin. “Maybe I should get into this line of work.”
“Really? You don’t get enough excitement in the Rangers?” The Arizona Rangers had been reconstituted during the war. Originally made up of old guys and others who couldn’t pass the physical requirements for the military, the Rangers served as a volunteer civil reserve militia. Their funding was limited and individual members had to supply their own equipment, but they could be mustered faster than the National Guard.
“Not like that. These days we mostly get called up for search-and-rescue missions, controlling extraterrestrial wildlife, and helping fight wildfires.”
“Well, I could use a hand sometimes. If you get yourself licensed I can hire you as a contractor. Getting licensed is a process, though. First you’ve got to apply, and just getting that processed can take a while. Once that’s done, the FBI does a background check on you, and that takes a while, too. You can download the study materials for the written exam off the internet, but you have to actually go to a federal building to take the test. If you pass, you’ll be interviewed by a board from the Federal Recovery Bureau, and they decide whether or not to certify you. If you’re declined, you can appeal it, but with your background I don’t see that being an issue. The process takes months sometimes, and there are a lot of fees up front. You also need to get liability insurance, and it’s a mistake to go with the bare minimum on that. You want the full coverage, trust me. It’s also a good idea to have an attorney on retainer, one who specializes in use-of-force cases.”
“Holy crap. Has Ben done all that?”
“No, he’s still a minor. I can’t even claim him as an apprentice until he’s sixteen. He’s not officially on the job, and isn’t allowed to apprehend people or anything.”
Jesse snapped his fingers. “I forgot to ask! You said you needed some equipment?”
“Yeah, I wanted to get Ben fitted for body armor.”
“I think I’ve got something that might work. I bought a big box of surplus police vests, and some of them are pretty small. Go get him and I’ll dig them out for him to try on. You want the net launcher, too?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Great! Let me know how it does, and if you think of any way it can be improved. I don’t have any .38 on hand, but I’ll be able to get some by the time I get the gun cleaned up for you. You don’t need it today, do you?”
“No, take your time. I’m not handing a teenager a firearm without teaching him how to use it first, and we’re heading out as soon as we leave here.”
“Got it. Okay, let’s go see if I have a vest that’ll fit him.”