Dead Man's Hammer

Dead Man's Hammer

Imagine, if you will:

A bright yellow star lit the darkness somewhere in deep space, accompanied by its rather dysfunctional family of nine deceptively ordinary-looking planets. During its enormously long lifetime many beings had named it from the far ends of distant telescopes, including it into numerous star clusters and constellations as they were perceived from their vantage points. Once, or maybe twice, creatures simply looked up into their own skies to name it from their own now long dead and deserted worlds. In more recent times, beings from a world that orbited a different sun far away gave it a name too – creatures that called themselves Human, who travelled here and settled on one of its inner planets. The planet they chose to make a new home on? They called that Deanna. They called the star Ramalama.

The reason for the peculiar name could be found in the whimsical sense of humor of the early colonists who arrived on Deanna several decades in the past and found very little at all there to laugh at. Obsidian Crows might seem funny at first, unless you just happened to ride over one with your Jeepo five miles out of town and didn't have a spare tire. Although there was a reasonable expectation of hitting one of these diminutive brutes on the roads, this did not happen nearly as often as you might think.

Deanna was pretty much as boring a lump of rock as could be expected, which had promised the colonists nothing but hardship and lean years at first, until they could get things going properly – and delivered on that promise. And so, with the stoicism and determination of frontiersmen in all manner of times and places, they simply got on with the business at hand – making a life here in the outback, where at first, everything had to come from the supply ships. There was little in the way of entertainment, aside from everyday life – so they looked up into the night sky, saw the two mad little moons in orbit around the planet – and named them Ding and Dong.

Dong had been described most often as 'a huge lump of nothing much, about one kilometer in diameter' while Ding is only about fifty feet around, consists entirely of titanium and is a known navigational hazard to approaching ships. (This is where the popular term 'you've got a Ding in your fender' comes from.) On average, it would usually take about four heavy-duty space tugs to get the spherical lump out of its crater and put it back in orbit where it belonged. There would be the usual administrative delays as the Tourist Office had it polished up again first. Ding had become such a popular feature of Deanna that it had a whole page devoted to it in the Online Galactic Tourist Guide.

By now, half a century or so later, Deanna was still just another third rate colony in the Terran Empire. It was average-sized, with a land-sea ratio of only 35 percent, and with such small moons, hardly any tides or waves to speak of at all – which means that if you're a tourist looking for a great place to surf – then dude, this isn't it. Deanna had only one ocean, the Landlocked Ocean – which was fresh, shallow and – as you could probably tell by its name, landlocked. As a result, there was plenty of arable land which was just as good for farming and building as it was for mining (and in certain cases, snorting).

Which explains where all these people came from. Deanna was a good place to farm, either with crops or livestock, and there was enough Lantillium to last a lifetime or two. Lantillium was a kind of nonferrous, nonmagnetic (apolar) metal used to line warp cores in stardrive engines – and also the inside of blaster emitter barrels. It was a rather valuable commodity.

Seeing as there were no intelligent native species living on the planet, (i.e. any other flags already flying there) the Terran Empire planted its flag on it. Over the following decades, the population grew impressively with the help of new settlers, adding their expertise and skills to the workforce and economy. There were miners, farmers, businessmen, administrative staff and generally, just people. There were generations of them now, using schools, hospitals and shopping malls as if they had always been there. Amazingly enough, for those who may be interested, Deanna was already home to over two million citizens of the Empire.

The passenger liner Ossifar Distana was one of the most luxurious of its kind in space anywhere. It ferried the cream of society across the void in opulence and style. Only the wealthiest could afford an apartment on this ship for a trip of any duration, even a short one around the proverbial block. Even the crew was obliged to pay rent.

On any given day, Ossifar Distana carried around 5000 passengers, the actual figure varying slightly depending on where she was on the vast elliptical cruise that took her around the Terran Empire. When she entered the system she carried 4984 passengers, 500 crew, one dead body and one very puzzled Captain.

Captain Harald Biscay rubbed his graying temples, staring deep in thought at the vast star field showing on the large navigation display on the bridge. It had been a pretty rough few days for him. Of all the things he'd seen in his travels through the universe, not many rated worthy of being remembered. Of the few examples of items Captain Biscay rated that highly, when he was a young man, his uncle would often play the bagpipes at strange hours of the night – shortly before being put in a 'home'. That rated a mention.

On his regular scale of Things That Went Wrong, he rarely had to contend with anything more troubling than being maybe two or three minutes late at a destination or a menu mix-up in the galley. A hefty passenger got stuck in the loo once. No, his career had been pretty much all plain sailing. Biscay had never served in the Imperial Space Fleet, nor seen anything more violent than a chef dropping a live crayfish into boiling water – and he'd been around the same proverbial block a few times. This was a first for him. Something like this was bound to have a negative effect on business.

The corpse, ready for its trip to the surface was being loaded up in shuttle bay two – away from the passengers in shuttle bay one, who were disembarking at the small backwater colony called Deanna – a tiny little blue-brown speck in the dark void, which the ship was currently orbiting. A huge red nine-pointed star on the even more ginormous white tail-fin proclaimed this gargantuan a ship of the Red Star Line, the largest and most successful star liner company in like, ever.

Nothing unusual was noted during the voyage, in fact everything ran smoothly until Security alerted Biscay about the stiff in cabin 407. Nobody heard or saw anything suspicious. None of the passengers were missing or acting suspiciously. No airlock doors were opened or any transports allowed since their last stop four days prior. There were no notorious names on the passenger list, nor any unsavory persons among the ranks of his crew. In fact, the ship's commander had never even seen a dead body in real – um, life before. And yet, almost magically, there it was.

Sumone Yiden Smiff was a businessman of note. Was, past tense. Through years of sweat and swearing and amazingly smart (or lucky) deals he'd built up a mining empire that spanned the sum of known space. At 74 years, he had reached the apex of a career stretching half a century. His companies mined precious commodities like Impervium, Obstinatium and Bitanium. He wasn't really famous, or ostentatious. In fact he only ever made the cover of Fortune One Billion once, twenty-five years ago. He'd never married, had lots of children – light-years apart, apparently.

This was his first trip on the Ossifar Distana, his first real splash in life. Look what it got him. Mister Smiff liked anonymity. He kept a low profile, often traveling under assumed names, claiming to be anything from a banker to a (very) successful life insurance salesman. He'd never broken the law, at least not irreparably. He was quite generous, well liked, sponsoring many charities anonymously – which is why it was so surprising to find him floating face down in the private spa in his apartment, murdered. He had been murdered, unless it was a freak shaving accident. Those old razors weren't called cut-throats for nothing. Yikes.

How and why a man like Smiff had met such an unpleasant end was a mystery – but one thing was clear: it had been planned and executed by someone with an obvious streak of cruelty. And theft was not a motive, since nothing was missing. All right, he considered, nothing seemed to be missing. It's not as though Smiff had a manifest of his belongings or anything. Nobody could tell if anything was taken because, quite simply, if it had, it was missing after the fact – and Smiff wasn't saying much. Pity. Would be nice if he could tell who killed him. Sort of a retro-active solution to the murder. It wasn't even as simple as saying 'the butler did it', if the butler had, since there were 100 butlers on the staff to see to the needs of the wealthiest passengers.

So rich a client having suffered such a messy death was an unsettling embarrassment to Captain Harald Biscay. It was bad for business. He had the murder hushed up immediately, his security staff investigating the matter covertly but thoroughly. Five and a half thousand souls onboard. Five and a half thousand suspects. Three days. So far, nothing. Now it would be taken further by the planetary authorities on the colony world below. A forensic team (cunningly disguised as a cleaning crew) was now rummaging through Smiffs apartment, examining every single particle. He had a feeling -- a strong feeling, about what they were going to find. Somehow, Biscay was of the opinion that this was going to be another contender for the Unsolved Murders show.

* * *

Life had been pretty good lately to Gary Beck, aka Beck the Badfeller, who was on his way to San Fedora to meet with Sheriff O'Donnell about some bounties he could pick up in his area. No, there were no spare Ferrari's or free beach houses to live in, courtesy of an affluent writer – but there were other things. Good things, like the fact that it was a beautiful Saturday morning, that he had a home to go to, a Jeepo to get him there – and a girl who would be waiting for him. When he thought of Mei he would get all warm and fuzzy inside. After seven months he was beginning to realize she was the one. Right now though, there was the job he was going to find out about, and the road to San Fedora.

Apparently some rustlers had been swiping red-horned wildebeest from farms in the San Fedora area and transporting them off-world to other colonies where they would sell them. And these were known repeat offenders. He could make a packet if he got the whole bunch of them the same time. The pickings were kind of slim in Atro City lately and he could use the money. He didn't like feeling like a leech around Cindy-Mei.

Obsidian crows tended to avoid cities, mainly because they didn't enjoy taking a roundabout route to anywhere, having to turn corners or follow a road like humans did. (How was a crow supposed to walk to where it was going if these silly Humans put all these buildings and things in the way?) They preferred to travel in a straight line, which typically ran between where they were and where they wanted to be. This came about because of a) laziness and b) they tended to overbalance when turning corners and would sometimes fall over. These somewhat trivial, if not annoying facts are what occupied Gary Beck's' mind as he angrily slammed the trunk lid of his Jeepo shut. He'd run over the obsidian crow five minutes ago and, as his check confirmed – he had a flat spare wheel in the trunk. (Well, now at least it matched the tire on the front left side of the vehicle.) Predictably, the hard-bodied bird-like creature had merely shaken itself off and squawked at him, before climbing awkwardly out of its shallow crater and resuming its journey.

"Yeah, well yours too!" He shouted after it angrily. He picked up a small stone and threw it. It bounced off the creature's solid head at an angle with a 'tonk' sound – its only effect to make the creature squawk again and shuffle along a fraction faster. So here he stood – at the side of the highway seventeen kilometers outside the outskirts of Atro City as the crow flies – or rather, walks – and not a single vehicle in sight.

He sighed, leaning against the higher side of his immobilized electric vehicle as he seriously considered that perhaps he should get a crowbar fitted after all. Honestly, this was the second time this had happened in as many months!

Beck preferred reliable old fashioned projectile guns to blasters and always had. He carried a ten-mil automatic in a holster at his side. There was just something more real about a good fire-iron in his hands than the light plasti-steel alloy casing of a blaster. He felt inclined to shoot the freakin' crow in the hopes that it would learn from the experience and hopefully wouldn't do it again. 'If the bullets wouldn't actually ricochet off it', he thought.

Ramalama was moving higher in the sky already, the day was getting on. He was going to be late getting to San Fedora for his meeting with the Sheriff. And as a bounty hunter – even a good one with a lot of work, time is money. It seemed today that time was running out for Beck the Badfeller.

* * *

Lupini Street – near the center of Atro City, the largest city on Deanna – was a circular road that ran round a sort of public square, with a large paved area and benches for people to sit on and throw food-related objects at flocks of pigeons. At the center of the square there was a fountain. The statues at the very center of the fountain were intended to commemorate the founding of the colony, and the most prominent of these was a large bronze figure representing Adriano Lupini, the very first colonist to set foot on the surface of the planet. He was a bronze man of course, and he was dressed in bronze dungarees and wore a plain bronze shirt and a worn-looking bronze hat. His bronze face displayed the boldness and determination believed to be typical of the true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool colonist. Mister Lupini was standing on what looked like crabby-grass – or at the very least, a struggling clump of bronze pseudo-grass with little feet and lots of sharp little teeth captured in mid-snap by the very talented sculptor.

Despite the honor of being remembered as the first colonist to set foot on Deanna, he was also credited with discovering crabby-grass, the aforementioned life-form that disliked being stepped on. However, this also led to the unintended consequence that Mr Lupini also set the record for being the first person to actually swear on Deanna. He still lived on Deanna, and attended the Founder's Day Ceremony every year, in safety boots. Not surprisingly, the bronze Lupini didn't look very amused. Beside the representation of Lupini, stood Deanna's national bird. It was supposed to be a symbol of the early colonists' determination to stay and make a success of the colony, but its expression only made it look slightly constipated.

Obsidian crows frequently got run over because quite frankly, they were too damn lazy to get out of the way and anyway, they could just get up and walk off again afterwards. Despite an enduring reputation as a road hazard and a general obstacle to wheeled traffic, obsidian crows were completely harmless otherwise. Obsidian crows were flightless, mainly because they were extremely hard-bodied and far too heavy to fly – unless one fell off a cliff or was launched from a catapult, they were pretty much grounded. Anything will fly if launched from a catapult – just ask the navy.

Behind Lupini and the obsidian crow stood a horse, one of the few domestic Earth animals to travel to the stars with Humankind. Most people would think the artist must have been on something illegal because, when viewed directly from the front, the horse looked a little cross-eyed and seemed to be grinning. Lop-sidedly. And then, as a native of Deanna, you would remember – ah yes of course – the crabby-grass. And then there would be a nagging feeling that would make you watch where you set your feet down... All these figures were arranged around the white marble upper dish, the water cascading over the gilded rim and splashing down into the pool below.

There was, according to Elgar Sondigan – the artist and designer of the monument, another figure present among the others. He said it was the pigeon, the other Earth species to travel to the stars with Humankind. Now, when looking at the fountain from the front, at the group of statues you would see – Lupini, crabby-grass, horse, obsidian crow – check. "– Okay, so where's the pigeon?" You would ask. The artist would just smile and say – "The crabby-grass ate it." And yes, crabby-grass pretty much ate anything if it stood still long enough – and crabby-grass loved pigeons.

People were already up and about, going about their business. Buildings of all kinds surrounded the square, on the opposite side of Lupini Street, rather like gangsters at a Valentine's Day re-enactment. The Governors Palace was one of them, looking grand and regal. The Municipal buildings stood beside it, a little off to one side – looking if anything a little intimidated, if that was the right word. A stout, serious-looking building somewhere to the left was the Court of Justice, with its many pillars and myriad of steps (purportedly designed to cripple lawyers) and on the opposite end, at the corner of Hasselblat Road right where it joined Lupini, was Atro City University, a stately looking complex behind its low walls and ornamental railings. There were stands and small shops in discarded shipping containers dotting the square here and there, surrounded by clusters of benches, tables and umbrellas. They were brightly painted, and one of them was a coffee shop called Albrecht's Takeaways.

Saturday morning had started off rather nicely for Albrecht, who had just recently more-or-less recovered from a nervous breakdown. Albrecht had always been a little highly strung, but the public was fond of him. They liked his hot dogs and cold cats, which he made to an old family recipe (the way his a'Mamma showed him). He tended to exaggerate his quasi-Italian accent quite a bit, because he thought the people liked it when he 'sounded foreign'.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Deannean Tourist Office, the general public didn't care about his accent one way or the other as long as the food was quick and the coffee was good. The survey results showed around 540 for and 120 against, with a few respondents who actually remarked 'what accent?' Mr. Albrecht offered bottomless cups of coffee (and a free doughnut with the 5th cup) but only on Tuesdays and only if drunk while standing up. Then again, who could drink that much coffee and stay sitting down? This was similar to his credit policy. He would give credit to clients only if customers were over 60 and if accompanied by both parents and grandparents – until somebody actually did that. (Hey, this is the future – anything's possible.) Although he was strictly speaking, a small-timer, Albrecht had about twenty small tables surrounding his establishment, some of them already occupied by customers. His popularity made him rather unpopular with several other merchants around the square who could only fill half that much. This led to some healthy, if rather frisky competition.

Pigeons, the winged vermin of the galaxy, were already hungrily scavenging for crumbs and left-overs, and covered the square with their speckled blight. Evidently there wasn't much crabby-grass in the center of town. Cindy-Mei Winter, sitting at one of Albrecht's tables, casually sipped a tall mug of flavored coffee while sheltering from the bright morning Ramalama under a multicolored umbrella. She swiped her index finger over the DNA scanner of the small device he held out to her.

"Graci, thanka you very much, signora." Grinned Albrecht, laying it on thickly and tipping his Venetian gondolier style hat. She smiled back at him, returning her attention to her companion as he left, tray under his arm.

"He seems to have recovered quite well." Said her companion, a young girl with long dark wavy hair. Her name was Danielle Grauffis, and she was enjoying a large cool drink with ice. The liquid in her glass was green, blue, red and yellow. It looked like a tropical bird had dissolved inside it. She'd heard about the disturbance that sent Albrecht on his short trip over the edge and back. Mei giggled.

"All you've got to do is ask for a cup of Hot Stuff Blend, then you'll see what I mean." She joked. "No, don't!" She giggled as Danielle jokingly put her hand up as if to call Albrecht, who was busy serving another customer and fortunately hadn't noticed.

Mei grinned. She was happy on Deanna. She'd made friends here. There was Fred, and now little Danielle, who was just turning 20 and was fast becoming a good friend and understudy. They had met shortly after her arrival on Deanna only seven short months ago and Mei had decided to help her out a little. Danielle's elder sister Jenny was unable to see to her continued education after finishing high school and so Mei stepped in and was sponsoring Danielle's studies at the University.

Then there was Gary, aka Beck the Badfeller – the love of her life and the reason she had stayed behind on this insane little planet. Instead of going right back to her family home on Mars after her gender reassignment procedures several months ago, she decided to treat herself to a holiday while traveling back – and ended up here. In case anybody is hard of reading, Cindy-Mei Winter did start out in life as a male, but decided for personal reasons that she was a she and not a he – and set out to set her true self free. At the age of 30, Agent Winter (Colonial Intelligence Agency) – came out to family, friends and colleagues, only to be ridiculed and ostracized. Life became so unpleasant, she decided to go it alone and resigned – much to the satisfaction of the stuffed shirts at the Agency, and became Cindy-Mei. That was almost three years ago and since then, she'd never looked back.

Life as her true self was like experiencing true freedom and a breath of fresh air for the first time. It was time to start living. Technically Mei was still on holiday. She was independent financially – thanks to some smart (if not slightly unorthodox) investments she made while she still worked for the Agency.

Danielle was enjoying her Saturday morning off with Mei. There were no classes on weekends, and she was having a nice visit with her new friend and benefactor. For an old(er) person, Mei was a lot of fun, and besides – they had a lot in common. You see, Danielle was in the same position as Cindy-Mei when it came to gender disconfuckulation, as she called it. (The appropriate medical term is gender dysphoria.) She couldn't help it. She had always just been Danielle, instead of the alternative – which might have made life a lot easier for both her and her family if being a boy had been something she could have accepted. Both her parents and elder brother had died in incidents related to the greed of the local mining company, and now it was just her and her elder sister Jenny. The Grauffis sisters got on well together, but Jenny had her hands full still trying to run the family ranch – pretty much single-handed – while she, as the family perse', was more interested in being Danielle than in getting her hands dirty like other boys her age. Her final operations were still quite a long way off, but Danielle was every bit as pretty and feminine as any other girl in her classes at the ACU. And not many people, if any, knew her little secret. She and her ex-Colonial Intelligence Agency friend compared it to being under cover. In many ways it was exactly the same thing. Especially if her cover got blown and she got caught out.