The luxury cars had retracted their wheels, air-cushioned Hyper-plane (R) express jets rocketed them along the floor of one of the natural amphitheaters of the Badlands. The highway widened here into an old rest area, popular in challenges because of the added maneuvering room. The Olds Nemesis tried for kill position almost immediately. A more experienced driver would have used his BRX rockets first. The opponent was a Caddy Fleetwar stretchie, a luxury limo with all the comforts, including a rotating turret with twin mini-gun .88s and a full wet bar.
The Olds' windshield was reinforced lead-weighted armor-glass with Slapdown (TM) option: shutters of recycled tank armor milled to 3 mm's of protection. It took three-tenths of a second under full turret barrage to shatter the windshield and turn the Nemesis driver into a fine red spray. This was one-tenth too long, but the Caddy gunner was drunk. DWI is an unforgiving offense; GWI was worse. The Olds' driver knew he was dead and triggered his revenge guns. Such guns are illegal but no one prosecutes the dead. In this case, three front-mounted 20mm aircraft cannons were set to fire a mixed-bag of armor-piercing, explosive, and incendiary shells until all 250,000 rounds were spent. About 7 seconds. The Caddy's fuel tank exploded midway into the third second.
Had the Nemesis driver still been alive, the cannon fire would have been unthinkably suicidal; vibration harmonics alone would have destroyed wheel-to-weapon alignment and possibly shattered his axles. Then, of course, there was the recoil. The last 50,000 rounds or so had never been fired--two cannons projected themselves rocket-like through the car, blowing out the back of the ammo-trunk and landing with a clattering metallic peal about seventy feet to leeward. The third weapon, a center-line special over the transmission, pivoted upward on its rear-mount splitting the car from ramming prow to back axle, ending by standing erect, as if excited by its own death, until its gasoline scrotum let go in a final pyroxigenic release blasting it into the next county.
The Traffic Control Agency airship, which had been governing the challenge match, ready to arrest for murder anyone who broke the rules and survived, and to invoke salvage rights, just missed having an inwing motor clipped with a cannon-turned-flying-steel-rod as it went screaming by. In the aft radio shack of the TCA "Junker," the main drawback to revenge weaponry was becoming apparent on the commlink memo board. The friends and heirs of both combatants were inquiring of each others' whereabouts and issuing blanket challenges. Captain Brenner was grinning from ear to ear, and possibly a little beyond.
"Hot damn!" He said it somehow without unclenching his teeth. "We're gonna be rich. Hooker, issue a prize-priority memorandum to all departments for all grudge challenges from this conflict. At 80% of salvage, and 100% for that mess below, we're gonna be ready for retirement."
Hooker issued the standard reserve-of-prize decree and registered the memo on all enforcement bands. It made him sick. This was not why he had joined Traffic Control. Unlike the others on board, including the Captain, he'd been to the main academy, Traffic Central. He had wanted to be a Ranger. Since childhood, he had dreamed of troubleshooting, with extreme prejudice, the Mad Dogs and Wild Packs out on the open road. Just him, a heavy-cruiser--preferrably a Mark VII--and time. He'd wanted to be another Kit MacPhearson, or Butch Kane. Maybe even approach the record of the mighty Kate O, legendary Ranger Katherine O'Callahan.
Then they told him his reflex index was .00028% below minimum RHM (rapid hand movement) and .07 below STA (stimuli to action) on the Dewmont scale. Six months before, they'd been using Landers. He was well into the top 1% Ranger Status Scale using Landers. Hell, most of the greatest Rangers couldn't have passed the Dewmont scale. Kate O herself would have failed. Balo had passed, of course.
Lowest level in all classes but bastard son of an Agency higher-up, Joplin Balo had scored Dewmont big. Balo had barely enough brains to be allowed to even polish the Ranger badge, but now Balo wore one. There were other TCA scions allowed to steal the title "Ranger," but Balo was the worst. "Sorry, Hooker," they'd told him. "You've got the best training record we've ever seen, but Dewmont favors other factors."
Yeah, like genetics.
When they'd tried to muster Hooker out, the mass media had caught the stink up its collective nose and howled. In the end, they couldn't dismiss him, but they wouldn't make him a Ranger. They'd assigned him to a Junker. Balo had loved that. "Bye-bye, Junkman," was the last thing Hooker had heard the bastard say.
Now Hooker was a member of the highest-paid and least-respected branch of Law Enforcement, the only Traffic Control Agents not looked up to as demi-gods by the other cops. The lowest of the low. No, not quite that. His record at the Academy had earned him a first officer position on a prize ship entitled to a full share of salvage money occuring from the techno-scrap cleaned from the road after a match. High-tech scrap could bring astronomical prices. Most Junkers retired young and very wealthy. That was, of course, the idea: TCA Central wanted Hooker rich, retired and distant. His obvious worth as opposed to the current crop of hopeless "Dewmont Rangers" was a constant bloody embarrassment to the establishment. What embarrassed Hooker was that he'd gone along with it. That he'd taken the oath just to be a part of the TCA. It wasn't enough.
"Well, Hooker?" Captain Brenner's teeth were still in the death grip of his grin.
"All correct and recorded, Captain."
As first officer, Hooker didn't have to sit radio duty. His only real responsibility was to supervise away teams loading salvage cargo. But the teams had more experience than Hooker and needed little supervision in any case. Also, his name was unfortunate for a salvage officer. Pickup of techno-scrap was often called "giving it the hook". The various commentaries by the crew's resident half-wits had become tedious. To pass the time, he had taken to sitting radio duty himself, freeing up another crewman for the salvage work. What little direction they from time to time needed, he could call down the commlink.
Captain Brenner still had his lips stretched back from his teeth as he watched the autos below burn via the opscan. He looked like a constipated Chessire Cat. In the dim light from the computer boards only those teeth were really visible. The only way you could find the Captain in the dark, Hooker thought, would be those large teeth and his constant flatulence. Maybe jet-propelled shark was a better image for Brenner than Old Chessire. But to call him a shark belittled the fish unmercifully. And there were no pilotfish cleaning the constant sheen of old oil everpresent on Brenner's skin.
The Captain was a rare bird, a middle-aged career Junker who had lost six small and three very large fortunes as soon as he had made them. Nearing mandatory retirement age, the Captain was still a working Junker, a profession whose average age of retirement was 27. When the crew called Brenner "The Old Man", they were not being affectionately respectful. They would, however, follow their captain into hell if there was a buck to be made. Hooker would book his trip through brimstone for different reasons. He had taken the oath. He might never be a Ranger, but he could live like one.
"All Junkers are crazy," Hooker whispered to himself. "Certifiable."
"Hey, Hook!" Brenner called over, again without moving his teeth. "You talkin' to yerself, boy? That's a sure sign'a insanity, ya know?"
"See what I mean?"
"What?"
"Nothing, Captain. Just thinking about the salvage."
"Yeah. Yeah, that'll make a rock mutter to hisself, alright. Be the biggest hit I e'er made. I'm outta it after this. Way out an' gone. Last kill. What-a-haul!" As Brenner started to laugh, a hoarse, gasping sound, his teeth finally unclenched, half-up, half-down, like the cogs of a machine pulled out of gear.
Hooker was quite suddenly impressed by the feeling, the realization, as Brenner's mouth opened wider and wider that it would indeed be a lovely thing to shove a spanner through that mutant opening the Captain called a mouth and down his ugly throat. Only two things stopped Hooker: his oath and the fact that choking the Captain on a spanner would necessitate his own rise to the Captaincy. Captain of a Junker was a rank he did not want at all.
A red light flashing on top of the memo board interrupted Hooker's revelry. Someone was flagging Brenner's prize.
"Captain!" Staveros called from the opscan. "We got a Ranger comin' in. ETA thirty to thirty-five minutes."
"Positive that, Captain." Hooker knew there was too much glee in his voice, but this was better than a spanner in the teeth. "We've got a prior hold on all challenges. The Olds had a Ranger warrant outstanding."
"What?" Despite his huge grin, Brenner's mouth all but disappeared when he pouted. "What's the claim, Hooker?"
"Driver has to be ID'ed, but if it sticks, he's a runner."
Runners were scofflaws who'd been summonsed and had scarfed out. Killing a runner, as with any felon, is a citizen's service, not a challenge. Therefore, heirs have right of salvage and grudge-return matches are forbidden by statute.
"No salvage, Captain."
"Not necessarily, Hooker." Brenner was grinning again. "He's gotta be ID'ed first. That'll take time; the wrecks are still burning. Staveros, you got the shack. Hook, you're goin' down.
"Down, sir?"
"You're away team leader, ain't you? I gotta idea."
Salvage Bay on a TCA Junker airship, basically a flying chop-shop, was cavernous when empty, dauntingly lonesome when full, but its inbetweening was the state that always disturbed Hooker. There were just enough auto bones and car corpses to make the tremendous space seem coyly haunted. A lighter-than-air, mechanized graveyard. The end effect had the first officer jumping at shadows and turning his thoughts inward.
He followed Brenner through the bay, toward whatever goal the Captain had in mind and let his mind wander over the ship, the idea of the ship. Junkers served the road, just as Rangers did. The roads were necessary. Rangers kept them in line. Junkers kept them open. That! That was it. The roads! That was why he'd taken the oath. The roads were the promise and the dream. They were the tomorrow that had somehow become the yesterday. Somehow the dream had gotten lost to him, to everyone, in the day-to-day grunt work and the bitterness of loss. What had happened not just to him, but to a whole class. How could he forget that? Forget them? Forget the road? He had taken his oath of service for a reason. To try to make of yesterday's promise a new tomorrow.
Hooker hated the Salvage Bay. It made forgetting impossible and failure obvious. This ship looked like a cross between an oversized zeppelin and a giant stealth bomber, but the bombs a Junker dropped were of the mind.
The first officer banged his shin against some wreckage. Pain brought him back to his current situation. The Captain was leading him past the "cruncher", a lovely device with teeth like Brenner's that ate all wreckage stripped of techno-scrap and passed steel turds. One of these droppings, sticking out from its pile, had just smashed his leg.
"No," Hooker thought. "Not it. I! I banged my shin on it. An 'it' can't do anything." For some reason, this made him feel better.
Hooker could see Brenner heading toward a sheet-covered mass in a seldom-used section of the bay. Thinking about it, Hooker remembered seeing several crewmen setting that tarp the day he'd come aboard. It hadn't been removed since.
"You happen to check the weather board while you was up in the shack?" Brenner asked, busying himself with the makeshift tarpaulin.
"Thunderstorms likely," Hooker answered. "To the south."
"Not that far. Not far at all. Thunderstorms screw up radio communications," Brenner tittered.
Hooker didn't see where this was going. "Yes, Captain. That's why we have--"
"I know what we have!" Brenner's voice had gone from whisper to bellow in an instant, echoing in the ship's belly, his needs becoming insane obsessions second by second. "And I know what a cruiser don't have."
Hooker felt his stomach drop. "This ship can't stand up to a Ranger heavy ground cruiser, Captain. Her 'seeker' missiles alone would blow us out of the sky in the first second."
"Maybe. But with the thunderstorms throwing static all over the sky, from the time the Ranger enters the bowl below the ridges here, he'll be dependent on us for outside communication."
"But..."
"He'll be deaf and dumb. That's when you take 'em."
"Sir?"
"In this." Brenner pulled the dust-covered sheets to the floor. Beneath had been hidden a Mark VII-B Vengeance heavy cruiser. Nuclear-powered, superbly armed and armored, built for speed with half the killing ratio of a medium tank. The Vengeance class was the weapon of choice of the long-road Ranger. This one was an albino--no police markings on the silvery finish, its outer shell stark and proud. Private ownership of any Mark VII, but especially the Vengeance class, was a capital offense. Even if Hooker turned them all in now, the best he could hope for was lethal injection rather than hanging. If the cruiser was on this ship, in the eyes of the TCA, the ship was guilty.
"Does the crew know about this, Captain?"
"Who do you think got it aboard?"
"I mean your plan."
Brenner pointed to the surveilance cameras. "We're piped through the ship. I know your training record, Hooker. The whole crew does. It's why I requested your posting when the stink hit the rotors."
"You did."
"Yeah. It's gettin' harder and harder to make a Junker prize pile with this new crop of mercenary Rangers. You're our retirement insurance."
How deep the rot really went, Hooker now knew. "Where did you get this?"
"Remember the Plague War?"
Hooker nodded. A Wild Pack had gotten hold of an army experimental station. The station had been abandoned, but in typical government fashion, its deadly stock had been left intact. With an arsenal of biologicals to back them up, the Wilders had begun raiding towns on the old state highways, absorbing other Wild Packs as they went. The TCA had sent in the Rangers. It was one of the few times in history large numbers of that lonely force had gotten together. A flocking, they called it. The last great Ranger flocking.
"There was only one Ranger casualty."
"That's right," Brenner answered. "A rookie who forgot to turn on his filtration system and caught the plague. Car was fine. But they just left it out in the desert like a bloody, damn monument.
"It's a Ranger tradition."
"It's Ranger bulldicky. Usually, when one of them buys it, whatever gets them gets the reactor, too. Who's gonna touch glow-in-the-dark techno-scrap? Even if it is prime? So they leave a cruiser where it stops like a tomb for the Ranger body which also can't be touched. 'They haunt the road! Still on patrol!' Great claptrap for the masses. But it gets to be habit. Staveros heard about this baby. He clued me in. I told the crew. We went and got it."
"What about the Ranger?"
"Don't worry. We de-conned the crash suit along with the cruiser before we touched 'em. We didn't want plague either."
"You dumped the body on the road?"
"Just so much decayed garbage. Now we got a vehicle that can stand up to Ranger. All scrubbed and clean with no markings."
"A ghost's car."
"Yeah, a silver ghost." Brenner laughed patting the cruiser's albino surface. All his teeth showed bright in reflection on that surface.
"Weapon's no good without a driver."
"I told you, Hook. You're the driver. I am not gonna retire poor."
"No."
"Damn right, no. From your scores, there's maybe five Rangers tops could take you in a fair fight. This'll be an ambush. I want my car back in one piece. Once the Ranger's dead, we'll do the ID even. Negative. You'll send the results from the amphitheater's upper rim, that way it'll still have a cruiser's signature on it. Then the challenges can begin. All correct. All lucrative. We sit back and get rich." He laughed hysterically. "We always lost our best salvage to Ranger warrants lately. But when I heard about this baby, my silver ghost, I said 'Oh, no! Never again.' And the crew backed me up, Hook. You're new. You don't understand the Junkers yet. But you'll learn, Hooker. You'll learn."
"I've got a good teacher," was all he said.
"How's it hanging, Hook?" It was Staveros on the commlink.
"He should have been relieved by now," Hooker thought. "No discipline on that ship." The first officer looked at his home for the past nine months floating overhead like a vulture over its nest. "I'm its egg," he thought.
Thumbing the commlink to tight beam, he answered. "I've got the reactor on line and steady, inboard computer coming up to speed. Captain talk to the Ranger yet?"
"He just cleared the horizon. We're down to line-of-sight." Staveros belched, a sure sign he was getting airsick. "The storms are gettin' closer and rougher than we thought. We may even have to ground. But so far the Captain's plan's a go. I'll have this line open for your computer link to the main memo board. I'll patch the Captain's comm thru your first alternate--keep the send switch off. Let Brenner deal with the Ranger until--"
"Until its my turn."
"Uh... yeah. Staveros out."
Hooker smiled. Staveros liked to belabor the obvious when he thought it could enhance his self-importance. So like the crew from that ship and their Captain.
In the silence after Staveros signed off, the counterfeit Ranger went through his checklist. He'd been surprised just how quickly Brenner had gotten the cruiser down and camouflaged; surprised, too, at the value of the placement as to position and cover. The biggest surprise had been his intimate familiarity with his weapon. He'd driven mock-ups of various Mark VII's in training, but this was his first "hot" run. Why did it feel like habit? From the time the Captain had unveiled this silver ghost cruiser, it had been as if he'd been back at Traffic Central running an active combat exercise for extra credit. His choices had been perfect, just like before. Now, however, there was no one to tell him that it didn't matter or that he wasn't Ranger material because his father wasn't a TCA bureaucrat.
Brenner's plan had been simple: sit, hide, and put a rocket up the sodder's tailpipe. Hooker had been able to finesse some changes by pointing out that a reactor-powered cruiser had no tailpipe. The Captain didn't understand all of the changes but went along with them because Hooker did. It was Hooker's job to understand. And to act.
Checklist complete, Hooker pumped the gain on his alternate receiver.
"... so much horse manure, Ranger." Brenner's voice was loud and clear. "You know what a horse is? Or manure? Cause that's what your mouthin'. I checked for warrants. There weren't any. You backdated the damn thing! There were no warrants."
Hooker checked his recorder. It had been activated by use of a channel. Good. He'd gotten the whole thing so far. Now it all hung on what the Ranger would say.
"There are warrants now, Junkman. Shall we discuss them?"
Hooker started in recognition. He knew that nasal twang. It haunted his nightmares. Balo! This is what they called a Ranger these days. Admitting, at least conversely, on an open channel that he had falsified reports.
The wind was picking up.
"What's more, Junkman, he'll ID positive if I say he will. Got it?"
Hooker got it, even if Brenner didn't. He switched on the targeting computer, pluggng his mains, via Staveros' uplink, with the airship's memo board. He had some backdating of his own to do before the storm arrived.
"What are you, Ranger?" Brenner was shouting. Were his teeth still together? Probably. "Are you some goody-goody who wants the challenge laws repealed? Wants to try patrolling the highway again? Disarm the public?" He made it sound like week-old cow pies on his tongue.
Hooker extended his launch tubes, then dropped a rocket-assisted round into his port railgun. Thunder pealed in the distance.
"God forbid!" Balo answered. "Me? Bring back the dark ages? Never. But I will bring back your salvage."
Hooker began to lock in firing sequences as the rain began to fall.
"For how much?"
Locked and loaded, Hooker primed his triggers. Lightning forked across the sky above the bowl.
"A double share of gross salvage and I drop the warrant."
Hooker called up a dry run on the target imager. It was glorious. The storm was almost centered overhead now.
"I'll give you one and a half shares of net. I got a big crew to feed here."
"Done, Junkman!"
Everything was on line and ready. Hooker severed the umbilical to the memo board. The storm broke full over them. Tagcom went over to infrared.
"Hooker. Fry the bugger."
"Hooker? That reject's on your... What do you mean, 'Fry the...'"
Five "seeker" smart-rockets from Hooker's tubes slammed into the airship, reducing it to powder.
"Hooker? Where are you?"
He switched the toggle from passive receptive to active. "Goodbye, Balo."
The silver Mark VII-B opened up on its opposite number with her port side rail gun, a 90 mm monster whose uranium core shells could burn through even cruiser armor. The first shell hit the reactor squarely, flooding the valley with radiation and turning Balo into a puddle of glowing semi-organic material. Served him right. A real Ranger wouldn't have come down off the ridge with his sensors full down. Balo was--had been--an idiot.
Hooker checked his on-board stats and found his memo board updated as planned. He had arranged the changes to the broadcast from the ship when he had piggy-backed his computer over Staveros' uplink. That update had been broadcast out to every memo board in the state and beyond via the ship's radio shack just before he blew his post to kingdom come.
The update had the ID negative, had the Junker airship down in the storm, had the Junker first officer, one Brian Hooker, himself, taking sick leave via private transportation and logging out just minutes before the crash, had Ranger Joseph Balo reporting himself directly beneath the falling airship before the transmission was ominously, and quite skillfully from Hooker's point of view, cut off, and had tacked to the last few log entries odd reports of a ghostly silver heavy cruiser seen patrolling the Badlands. A second memo, purportedly from Hooker's mythic private transport, claimed full salvage rights for the valley mess, and all outstanding ship's prizes. He was going to need the money for his new hobby. Playing rogue Ranger in this silver ghost -- The Silver Ghost -- would be an expensive undertaking. It would also require a large support group.
As sole survivor of the Junker airship with complete rights and shares of ownership and other salvage priviledges, he was up for instant reassignment. As a first officer who had outlived his captain, he was due command of an airship, Captaincy in the Junker fleet. It was a large, but necessary sacrifice to command such a ship. Tradition allowed him to pick his crew as long as they came off other Junkers or from the civil service lists. There were quite a few on those lists from the Academy. They had all turned down Junker service, but he had a different proposal to make. One that involved oaths taken and given, and the mobility a Junker could give them.
They would accept; he knew it. Eventually, they might pick up another cruiser or two, damaged of course, on the black market. A Junker's chop-shops could be used to rebuild as well as destroy.
At long last, he'd be doing what he'd been born to do.
More or less.
He headed the cruiser over the ridge, crushing several of Brenner's teeth beneath his wheels as he left.
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