A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six Do You Want More Quincy & Floyd?

  Also by Paul Tomlinson

  About the Author

  A Fistful of Trouble

  Copyright © 2019 by Paul Tomlinson

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, or used in any manner whatsoever, without the express permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in the context of a book review.

  A Fistful of Trouble is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental.

  First published April 2021

  Publisher: Paul Tomlinson

  www.paultomlinson.org/outlaws

  Cover image and design © 2021 by Paul Tomlinson

  Dedication: For Michael & Leonia

  Chapter One

  The big blue robot ran through the desert. It had once been red, but that made the robot too easy to identify, so it got itself a nice new paint job. But running through the desert scratched the blue paint and made it look old and weathered. The robot had been running a lot recently. It had to run because someone was chasing it.

  My name is Quin Randall and I am the robot hunter. If I catch this one and turn it in for scrap, I can get two hundred dollars. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a thousand dollars by selling it to someone who needs a big ugly robot. I don’t think the robot is keen on being sold. But a thousand dollars would get me another step closer to buying a ticket off this squit-hole planet. I chase the robot. The robot tries to get away. That’s the game.

  The robot is a machine that doesn’t feel pain and never gets tired. I’m human. You have to even the odds somehow. That’s why I chase the robot in a Trekker – an all-terrain vehicle with chunky tyres. I also have a big gun. I stole the robot’s weapons and hid them. Its gun was bigger than mine.

  There’s not much cover in the desert. Just sand, an occasional outcropping of rock, and scrack-all else. The robot was a mile or more ahead of me but I could still see it plainly. Until it disappeared. It literally dropped out of sight.

  “Scrack!”

  I jammed my foot down on the pedal and the big electric motors whined. The acceleration threw me back in the seat. The ground here was uneven, peppered with lumps of reddish rock. The big springs in the suspension creaked and bounced me around and the tyres kicked up red dust.

  The Trekker skidded to a halt. There was a fissure in the ground – not large enough to be a canyon but big for a gulch. Sloping down into it was some rough-looking scree. It was steep – forty-five degrees or worse – and the robot was almost at the bottom of it.

  I dropped the Trekker into hill descent mode. The lower gear might help, but there was still a good chance I’d flip ass over teakettle and the Trekker would slide down on its roof. I could survive that – as long as a sudden jolt didn’t snap my neck. I crept forward slowly and tried to hang on to my breakfast burrito when the front wheels went over the edge.

  I tried steering but soon realised I wasn’t achieving anything useful. The Trekker’s system selectively locked and unlocked the wheels, trying to keep us upright and in a nose-first controlled slide. My butt cheeks were clenched all the way down – I was down to my last pair of clean underpants and didn’t want to stain them. I didn’t relax until the front wheels scrabbled for grip at the bottom.

  I turned to follow the escaping robot and pushed the selector into high gear. I needed to make up ground – and quickly. There was a dirt road in the bottom of the gulch so that made progress smoother. A little.

  At the far end of the valley, where it opened out, I could see what the robot was heading towards. A small desert town that had grown up around some sort of mining operation. I wasn’t sure what they mined in this part of Saphira, but judging from the state of the town it didn’t pay well.

  The robot had known the town was there, of course. The buildings would offer it all sorts of hiding places – and opportunities to lie in ambush and attack its pursuer. I had to catch up with it before it could conceal itself. It was part of the game. The robot might be smarter than me, but luckily I was quicker. Or the Trekker was.

  The stratified rock of the gulch walls did weird things with sound, sending back and amplifying echoes. I could hear the thudding of the robot’s feet over the whine of the Trekker’s motor – but I decided these footsteps weren’t loud enough. I punched the button on the dashboard that would fire up the fake engine sound and I turned it up loud. I wanted the townspeople to hear us coming. They needed to be warned. I could just have easily cranked up the William Tell Overture or something, but I’d blown out a speaker the last time I tried that.

  As we approached the town, I saw people start to appear. They all took one look at the big blue robot thundering towards them and ducked back to watch from safe hiding places.

  I closed the gap and was almost on top of the robot when we passed the sign that said Welcome to Vulture’s End. A few more seconds and the robot would be running down the main street.

  I stomped on the brake and the Trekker skidded to a stop. I drew the big gun from its holster behind the seat and threw open the door. Learning on top of the door frame, I took aim at the centre of the fleeing robot’s back.

  It was a zap gun and it had quite a kick to it. Electricity streamed from the barrel and snaked towards the robot, fizzing loudly and making that ozone smell. The blast hit the robot between the shoulder blades and for a moment the two of us were joined by that umbilical of lightning. Then the light show ended and the robot pitched forward onto its face.

  I kept the zap gun ready as the Trekker crunched towards the knocked-out robot, but the big blue meanie didn’t even twitch. I looped a chain around its ankles and dragged it into town behind the Trekker, scratching its paintwork some more.

  People came out of hiding as I rolled down the main street. I was expecting at least a smattering of applause, but I was disappointed. The townsfolk just gawked at the fallen robot. I guess they’d never seen one quite that ugly.

  Sheriff Henry T. Maddox had an impressive set of side-whiskers that he must have cultivated to draw attention away from his characterless face and weak chin. I’m sure he envisioned himself as a big, tough-talking sheriff and he was working on a paunch so he could look the part. But his genes had made him tall and pale and skinny. With those whiskers and no clothes, he probably looked like a toilet br
ush. It was not an attractive mental image. He was the local scrap merchant as well as the sheriff. It was a small town.

  He was staring into a cash box. “I can offer you two hundred Alliance dollars,” he said, putting emphasis on ‘Alliance’ like most of the folk on the planet Saphira did.

  I’d been offered less, but only once. A kid had offered me all of his savings. A whole five dollars. Sheriff Maddox could tell I was disappointed with his offer.

  “You’re pretty handy with that thing,” the sheriff said. He was pointing to the zap gun slung over my shoulder. “There’s some local outlaws you might want to go after. You get more for them than you do for scrap metal.”

  There was a display of wanted posters pinned to the wall behind his desk. The faces were smudgy blow-ups from bank surveillance cameras or sketches that looked like they’d been drawn left-handed by a right-handed child.

  “I don’t hunt people,” I said. “Two hundred’s your best offer?”

  “I won’t make much more than that selling it for parts,” he said. “It’ll be dismantled in the morning as soon as Scooter gets here,” the sheriff said.

  “Now let’s not be too hasty about that,” said a voice from outside. “It’d be a shame to break up such a splendid machine.” The doorway was then filled with a big, greasy pork roast of a man in a wrinkled white suit. He wore a broad-brimmed hat with a paisley silk band and was mopping his face with a matching handkerchief.

  “Who’s the balloon man?” I whispered, turning to the sheriff.

  “That’s the mayor. You should be nice to him. He’s a big man in this county.”

  He’d be a big man in any county.

  “He’s the boss?” I asked. Sheriff Maddox nodded. “Then why am I talking to you?” I turned my back on him and walked towards the hog in the linen suit.

  “You’re the robot hunter?” the mayor asked.

  “Quin Randall,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Beauregard S. Bacon,” he said. I heard his middle initial as ‘eff’ but I think he’d said ‘eth’. He had a slight lisp and a tendency to thpit when he thpoke. “I don’t like to brag,” he said, “but I’m...”

  “A big thing in Vulture’s End,” I said. His hand was plump and damp when I shook it.

  A smile spread across his face. It took a while for it to cover the whole distance.

  “You’ve heard of me already? That’s flatterin’. Mighty flatterin’.”

  “Sheriff Maddox speaks very highly of you.”

  “Well, of course he does. Of course he does.” He mopped his face with the handkerchief. “It’s hot in here – lets you and me step outside, shall we?”

  I indicated that he should lead the way. I had no choice, he was blocking the exit. He had to come into the office so he could turn round and go out again. The sheriff followed us outside.

  In the unpaved street, a small crowd of rubberneckers had gathered around the fallen robot. Sheriff Henry T. Maddox shooed them back so he could examine the metal monster more closely himself.

  “You were expressing an interest in the robot,” I said.

  “Yes, indeed,” Mayor Bacon-Burger said. “A fine specimen. Very fine. I’m what you might call a private collector. Of militaria.”

  “What might a collector of militaria pay for a robot like this?” I asked.

  “I might go as high as a thousand dollars,” he said. “If it’s in working order.”

  “Boot him up and he’ll be fine,” I said. “And he’s worth at least three thousand.”

  “I’ll meet you half way,” he said. “Fifteen hundred.”

  “That’s half, not halfway,” I said.

  “It is?”

  “Two thousand dollars,” I said. “Alliance dollars.”

  He had the look of a man who would agree on a price and then try to pay in local currency. I could see that the price pained him, but I could also tell from his face that he really wanted the robot.

  “Perhaps I’ll have better luck in the next town,” I said.

  “Sold!” Mayor Bacon said, seizing my hand and shaking it. “Two thousand dollars.”

  He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a stack of worn banknotes. He began counting them. A couple of the sheriff’s deputies unhooked the chain from the back of the Trekker and dragged the robot off the road. It took three of them to move it.

  “It certainly is a fascinating item,” the Mayor said. Handing over the cash.

  “And a very dangerous one,” I said. I counted the bills. “Much obliged.” I tucked them into my jacket pocket and buttoned it tight. “You should have someone check that thing has been deactivated properly.”

  “The sheriff knows what he’s doing. I have every faith in him.” The mayor thought about this statement for a second and then yelled over his shoulder. “Hank! You have Scooter check that thing before you lock it up!”

  “Yes, boss!”

  The mayor took off his hat and dabbed his head with the handkerchief, disturbing the comb-over. “You come across anything else like that robot on your travels,” the mayor said, “I’d be obliged if you’d let me have first refusal. I’d be happy to pay a finder’s fee on top of its actual value. Cover your expenses in bringing it here, so to speak.”

  “I will be sure and bear that in mind, Mr. Bacon,” I said. I had no intention of ever setting foot in Vulture’s End again, but he didn’t need to know that. “And I meant what I said about being careful with that robot. You can’t trust them. You think you can control them, but then they go feral and you have to put them down.”

  “Quin, my boy, it sounds very much like you’re speaking from personal experience.”

  “I am. That thing tried to kill me – more than once.” I wasn’t lying when I said that.

  “Don’t you worry about us, sir. He’ll be powered down and then dragged off to the jail we got built behind the sheriff’s office. Stone walls three feet thick, no windows, and a big steel door. We use it for the local outlaws and ain’t one of ‘em ever escaped from it.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got everything covered,” I said, “so I’ll bid you adieu.”

  “You’re not staying the night?” the mayor asked. “We have a very fine hotel which I can vouch for on account of being part-owner. I’ll give you a very good rate...” He raised his eyebrows. They were like two bloated hairy caterpillars.

  “That’s mighty hospitable, Mayor Bacon, mighty hospitable. But I prefer to travel at night when it’s a little cooler,” I said.

  “I’m disappointed you won’t stay, I won’t pretend I’m not. But I understand what you mean about the darned heat.” He mopped his cheeks with the soggy handkerchief.

  I turned and gave the sheriff a snappy salute then walked back to my Trekker.

  *

  There was trouble in Vulture’s End that night. I stood in the shadows and watched it unfold.

  “Sheriff! Sheriff!” The youth came flying down the main street holding his hat on with one hand, heading for the sheriff’s office.

  Sheriff Maddox stepped out of the saloon, a whiskey glass in his hand. “Over here, Jeb. What’s all this ruckus about?”

  The youth skidded to a stop. “It’s the robot, sheriff,” he said between gasps. “It’s waking up!”

  The sheriff frowned. That shouldn’t be happening – he’d watched the local mechanic Scooter McSwain power the robot down and pull out some sort of fuse thing.

  “Don’t go making such a fuss, boy. Even if it does wake up, that jail is strong enough to hold it until morning.”

  “You sure about that, sheriff?” the youth asked. “That’s one big-ass robot in there.”

  The sheriff opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. He glanced over to where the robot had lain in the street earlier. He tossed back his drink and set the glass down. Squaring his shoulders, the sheriff crossed the street and opened up his office. I saw the light go on inside and through the window watched him unlock the gun locker. I couldn’
t see what it was he took out, but it looked big.

  Sheriff Henry T. Maddox stood in the doorway of his office and hit the button to power up his weapon. I could hear the whine it made from my hiding place across the street. It was a big old zap gun, twice the size of the one I carried. The rifle was old, but it looked like it carried a serious charge.

  “Will that stop the robot, sheriff?” the wide-eyed youth asked.

  “Jeb, this thing will stop a tank dead in its tracks. Come on.”

  The sheriff marched off around the corner and Jeb scampered after him. Of course I followed, I didn’t want to miss this show.

  The jail had been built behind the sheriff’s office and was separate from it. It was squat and round, maybe thirty feet in diameter, constructed from local stone and with a concrete slab for a roof. There was a big steel door studded with bolt heads and it had a little grilled window. It looked pitch black inside, but you didn’t need to see in to know that the robot was moving around. You could clearly hear the loud crashing and feel the vibrations through the soles of your boots. That jail might have been enough to hold local outlaws, but I doubted it was going to contain the robot for long.

  The sheriff’s vehicle, a shiny year-old Charger with a big star-shaped badge on the door, was parked behind his office. The sheriff took up a position behind it, resting his elbows on the hood and aiming the zap gun towards the steel door of the jail. Jeb hunkered down beside him.

  Like them, I thought the door would be the weak spot, but we were all wrong. A crack in the wall and a puff of white dust showed where the robot was pounding on the inside. The split widened under the barrage of blows and a stone was knocked loose, clattering to the ground. Another stone fell and there was a hole about a foot across in the thick wall. More cracks appeared. The wall seemed to explode outwards as metal fists and feet assaulted it. Stones the size of a man’s head flew outwards and rained down. A big cloud of dust swelled outwards. Something moved inside the cloud – coming out of the hole in the jail wall.

  The robot stood just outside the jail, fists clenched at its sides, body hunched like a fighter in the ring. The red eyes were a nice touch. Spotting the sheriff behind the Charger, the robot raised its fists high above its head and let out a deafening mechanical roar I’d never heard before. This really was a five-star performance. Though if it started pounding its chest, I’d have to knock off a point for over-acting.