Tombstoner
The Perilous Circumstances of the
Duke of Death
“A Man of Notoriously Vicious and Intemperate Disposition”
Thaddeustown, Doralee
Wild Space beyond the Sovereignty frontier
The village was a series of shacks of crudely cut wood and sheets of corrugated metal, little better than roofed-over holes in the ground really. The rain had turned the main road from a dusty trail into a muddy gulley through which the superstitious scum that inhabited this miserable place shambled on their way to, well, wherever they were going. The Duke of Death didn't much care for their plight. The worlds of Wild Space were filled to the brim with colonies in one stage of failure or another, although the Duke had to admit to himself that Thaddeustown was really quite spectacular in its miserable breakdown and decay. There was nothing here. No spaceport – the landing field, or what passed for it, had been ruined some months ago by a crashing tramp freighter – no factories, no mines... Not even a saloon, because the locals belonged to some kinda uptight religious cult (the Duke couldn't remember the name) who'd banned not just alcohol but also prostitution, holovids and pretty much everything else that passed for fun and entertainment on the Wild Space frontiers beyond the Pecos Gap and the light of Sovereignty civilization.
Instead of a saloon, or for that matter a brothel, there was just mud, muddy huts, and a ramshackle wooden structure that passed for a muddy church further down the road. The people were muddy too, as well as emaciated and haggard, with hollow eyes that looked fearfully at the imposing leather-clad figure that had taken up position under a tree at the beginning of what passed for Main Street. The Duke pulled his wide-brimmed Stetson down and ignored the pattering sound the rain made on his black duster.
He felt right at home.
Auriga Bob, the Duke of Death, was just contemplating if he should dig out his hip flask of Tsvagna, the acidic Bragulan brew made of distilled alcohol, battery acid and rocket fuel (which incidentally meant the hip flask had to be fashioned out of a highly corrosion-resistant material, in this case bulletproof Bragulan steel) when he saw a familiar figure hurry out of the church.
Amongst the thronging masses of humanity trying to eke out a living in Wild Space, amongst those teeming millions of prospectors and colonists, whores and gentlemen, ranchers and vaqueros, lady aristocrats, wanted men and millionaires-to-be, amongst those dregs and hopefuls there circulated a thousand myths about dozens of legendary outback figures. Wild Bob Khan, Eliza 'March Hare' Hennessy, 'Cancerman' Cuthbert... Famed for apocryphal exploits on dozens of faraway worlds, these men and women filled the roles of archetypical romantic heroes and villains humanity couldn't seem to exist without. The Duke of Death himself was also one of these spurious figures.
Pinkerton McClintock was another.
Also known by his nickname 'The Professor', Pinkerton McClintock had, or so rumor said, once been a man of higher learning in some civilized but faraway place. Some said he'd lived in the Sovereignty, others claimed it was the Holy Empire, the Shinra Republic or even remote Umeria, where he'd been happily married until a powerful gang-boss had his beloved wife and daughter murdered for some unknown transgression. Dissatisfied by the response of the authorities, a grieving Pinkerton McClintock had (or so rumor said) taken the law into his own hands, carving a blood-soaked path of murder through the legions of foes arraigned against him before personally executing the gang boss by, depending on which version of the myth you chose to believe, dropping him from a stratoscraper, throwing him in his own pool of Hiigaran razor-leeches, or knee-capping and handcuffing him before sticking a stick of dynamite on a timer up the gang lord's behind. Now a wanted man himself, Pinkerton fled into Wild Space, where he began a second career as a notorious pistoleer who, unlike the Duke, fought not for a pay-day but for all the good lost causes that came across his path.
The Duke of Death didn't know if any of that was actually true. Hell, people told a lot of rubbish stories about him after all. Maybe Pinkerton McClintock didn't have a tragic past. Maybe he just liked blowin' bad guys away. He was a real good shot though, the Duke knew that much. And he liked playing the good guy, too. That was why he was here. And that was why the Duke was here, too.
Pinkerton McClintock hurried through the downpour toward the Duke, all the while cursing the rain and the mud and Thaddeustown and every living soul in it as he did. The Duke briefly wondered if maybe everybody here was already damned in some way – the mud-soaked environs sure looked like the kind of place you'd consign damned souls to linger in – but then decided to put off philosophizing about such things. Instead, he indifferently watched the Professor struggle against the mud until the man arrived under the same tree that offered the Duke a modicum of shelter from the elements.
“Well,” McClintock finally said. He spoke with that weird drawling accent of his the Duke couldn't quite place. “Looks like we're in the right place after all.” He tried to shake the rain droplets from his elegant dark blue mantle, a futile gesture if ever there was one – the rain just kept pouring on more water every second. The Duke just looked at the thin and wiry pistoleer and patiently waited for the Professor to continue, which he did after a brief moment of silence. “According to the preacherman at the church, we can find our charge just outsida this here fair city.”
The Duke nodded. “And the preacherman?”
Pinkerton McClintock gave the Duke a steely-eyed look. “Why, I shot him of course.”
The Duke of Death twitched one of his eyebrows. “I heard you wasn't into shooting unarmed men.”
“Well, Bob,” the Professor said. McClintock always called him Bob. Never Auriga Bob, or Duke. Always just 'Bob'. “I made an exception just for him.” He smiled ruefully. “It appears my wickedness knows no bounds.”
The Duke shrugged. He'd shot plenty unarmed men, and unarmed women too. As far as the Duke was concerned, it was silly (not to mention potentially quite unhealthy) to let the matter of whether you was going to shoot somebody depend solely on something as arbitrary as them happening to have a weapon in their hands or not. “He had it coming.”
“We all got it coming, Duke,” the Professor shook his head, sending raindrops flying from his feather-topped hat. “Let's go. It don't seem like we got much time.”
Stoically, the Duke stepped out from under the tree and into the pouring rain.
The two gunslingers left the joyless hamlet behind, slogging through the soaking mud and into the surrounding hills that rose through the rainy fog of this miserable little world. Pinkerton McClintock lead the way, his blue mantle blowing in the breeze, revealing the pair of Tokarev heirloom laser revolvers he used as his guns of choice. They were ancient weapons, almost as old as the Duke's own M2411; elegant weapons from a more elegant age, developed a long time ago in the Commune or one of its predecessors.
Mercifully the dispiriting trek across the badland wastes of Doralee didn't take long. The Duke heard the sound of slowly intoned hymns long before he saw anyone, but it gave the two outlaw killers a direction to move in. Minutes later, the congregation of the Dawn Church came into view, assembled in a great circle around a great pile of kindling, thrown together seemingly for a great pyre. Atop the kindling was a great wooden pale. Tied to the pale was a girl, crying hysterically. The congregation seemed not to take notice of her, instead continuing to sing their manic praises to, well, one god or another, the Duke supposed. He never was very good in keeping up with theology.
Either way the congregation was too busy shouting their badly intoned canticles into the cloud-covered heavens to notice the approaching gunslingers, which suited the Duke just fine. He was just beginning to think he should pull out his gun and blow away the entirety of the Dawn Church before they could react and was in fact already calculating how many magazines he'd need to do just that, when the Professor put an end to that any such plan.
“Oh, tell me you folks wasn't about to defile this here purdy knoll with sumkinda human bonfire shenanigans?” McClintock drawled, his left hand resting easy on the ivory grip of his laser revolver. “'Cause if that's so we two, bein' the damsel-extricatin' gentlemen that we are, would really have to object.”
If anybody had been watching, the Duke thought, just about now would be a good time to explain some of the finer 'what came before' kinda details of this here situation. See, there were a lot of tramp freighters in Wild Space. Thousands of dinky little rustbuckets run by mom-and-pop operations were traveling between all kinds of worlds, delivering anything from food rations to medical supplies or farming equipment to needy folks the galaxy over, all the while being maintained by well-meaning amateurs who often kept their ships working with little more than duct tape and prayers.
One of these freighters had been the
Green Bandit. Had been, because some months ago on a run between Shekinah and Doralee the
Green Bandit had burned through its Grav Boot. As a result, the fair ship had crashed quite spectacularly and definitively on the landing field, or what passed for it, just outside of Thaddeustown.
Luckily for the two people aboard the Commissions, where the
Green Bandit had originated almost three centuries earlier, built their ships real sturdy-like, so both of them survived the crash with nothing worse'n a few bumps an' bruises. They'd been Philippe Noguiera, captain and father of a thirteen-year-old girl, and Isabella, thirteen-year-old girl and daughter of Philippe. When they crawled from the wreckage they found themselves stranded in Thaddeustown, a shithole town chock-full of religious insanity with nothing but blind hatred for anything they didn't like, which was pretty much everything to begin with.
That was a pretty bad situation to be in. What made it even worse, though, was that Isabella happened to be a third-generation psion who'd barely starting to grow into her abilities. Now, there were only scant few things the fundamentalist Dawn Church liked less than homosexuals, aliens and Sovereignty authority figures, but psions definitely were one of those scant few things. 'Agents of the devil' was about the friendliest thing the cultists had to say about them, and what dreadful things they claimed they was going to do if they ever got their hands on one wasn't something to be repeated in polite company. Luckily for Philippe and Isabella none of them had actually ever seen a psion before, or for that matter knew how to recognize one when they did, so none of the local yokels drew any conclusions from Isabella's large eyes, rail-thin frame or suspiciously pale skin.
And there was a way out.
More than one ship visited Doralee. In three months, a large cargo freighter from the Sovereignty was scheduled to appear over Thaddeustown, at which point father and daughter could hitch a ride back to proper civilization. Until that time, all they had to do was lay low and wait. Philippe Noguiera told his wife as much from the hypercomm in the ruined shuttle. In the meantime, he'd keep in touch once every week or so.
It was a good plan. Unfortunately, it didn't count on the nightmares of a thirteen-year-old girl psion traumatized by a crash from space. When in the depth of night every piece of glassware in half the town began to psychokinetically rattle that could perhaps be ascribed to a localized earthquake – once, or maybe twice, but that about exhausted that particular explanation. Thanks to Philippe's efforts it had taken some time, but eventually the locals caught on to little Isabella's peculiar nature.
Evidently they hadn't taken it very well.
The chanting had stopped abruptly. The crowd had fallen silent, turning their attention from the pyre-in-being to the two strangers who had appeared so suddenly on the otherwise nearly featureless hilltop. The sudden silence was only accentuated by the sobbing of the little girl tied to the stake. The leader of the congregation made his way through the crowd. He wore a red robe that was frayed at the edges and soaked with rain. Compared to his emaciated flock of followers he was obscenely fat. A single roll of fat hung over the dirty napkin that served as a clerical collar. It only managed to accentuate his utter lack of a neck.
This was Pastor Dick Weissenbuehler, leader of the fundamentalist Dawn Church and, the Duke knew, wanted in the Sovereignty on several counts of tax evasion. Although the Duke wasn't quite sure how he could be wanted for something like that, seeing as how nobody in the Sovereignty had to pay taxes. That was something to be pondered another time though. Auriga Bob turned his attention back to the pastor, who had finished disentangling himself from the garbled mass of his followers. “This is a holy cleansing!” he bellowed, his voice full of self-righteous indignation and fury. His face reddened as he pointed a chubby finger at the two gunslingers. The Duke idly noticed what looked like the faint outline of a weapon (specifically, an Imperial Athena-pattern las-pistol) underneath the red robe. “You cannot think to thwart God's will!”
Pinkerton McClintock smiled grimly. “Y'all see the man in the long black coat over here? That would be the Duke of Death. Now I'm not saying you weren't easy to find. But it was kinda out of our way, and he didn't want to come in the first place. Man's lookin' to kill some folk. So really it's his will y'all should worry about thwarting.”
That was a good point, the Duke thought. He'd come a damned long way without firing a shot; if this continued any longer he'd be out of practice. Of course, he hadn't been hired to come this way to shoot somebody. Instead he'd come here to rescue a little girl. Not by the parents of the girl in question though – Philippe was locked in what passed for a town jail in these parts, and the Duke doubted the mother would want anything to do with a man that had a reputation such as his.
Instead, he'd been hired by someone with a reputation just a shade better than his own: Pinkerton McClintock, also known as the Professor. High-falutin' sharpshooter and professional do-gooder. The Duke had run into the Professor in a space bar on a planet not far from Doralee. For a moment it had seemed like violence might occur, but in the end the two men had settled for drinking. McClintock had told him he'd been hired by Isabella's mother, who'd grown very concerned when she'd heard nothing from Philippe in two weeks. Having gotten off as excellent drinking buddies in the night and early morning (insofar as such things could be said to exist on space way stations), the Professor then offered to share the reward, which he said would be 'ample', if the Duke accompanied him. The Duke, having nothing else to do at that time, had simply nodded. And now, here they were.
Of course if the crazy local cult had acted on their murderous intents right away they would have come far too late. But apparently according to the holy book of the Dawn Church, at some point in the distant past (perhaps, the Duke figured, during the days of Heracules' legendary exploits) an angel had appeared to some kind of prophet in a blazing bushfire. And somehow the bush didn't get burned when this was happening. Based on this strange account the religious leaders of the Dawn Church somehow figured that if they lit little Isabella on fire and she wasn't burned, she'd be proven an angel too. If not, well, then they were clearly correct in burnin' her at the stake, 'cause she'd been proven a heretical creature of evil or somesuch. And the stake burning was to take place at passeaster, which was some kind of religious celebration of the exodus of true believers from Earth during the Great Upheaval many centuries ago.
To the Duke, it all sounded pretty damned crazy. But then he still had no idea what a Jesus was, so what did he know of religious matters? All he knew was that they had gotten here in the nick of time, and that he wasn't paid to let a little girl get burned to death. He fixed his dead, uncaring eyes on the pastor's and coldly spoke three words. “Cut her down.”
Pastor Dick got all red and huffy. “I will not!” he yelled. Behind him some members of the congregation yelled things like 'amen!' and 'sieg hallelujah!' in support of their pastor's defiance. “That girl is unholy and a wicked witch!” The pastor self-righteously complained. “And you are filthy unbelievers not deserving to share in the glorious celebration of our godliness! You shall leave us, immediately, or else-”
Wrong answer.
If someone ever tries to kill you, the Duke had once said to the man who'd written that book about him,
you try to kill 'em right back. That, of course, had been something of an embellishment. In reality the Duke always preferred to kill folks
before they had a chance to try and kill him instead. It was what had made him such a deadly opponent, and it was why he was still alive when so many of the men who'd gotten in his way weren't.
And not to forget, he had a reputation as a man of notoriously cruel and intemperate disposition to maintain.
It was for these two reasons that the Duke's legendary customized M2411 left its holster in a sleek movement that was less like a blur and more like instant teleportation. As far as the baffled zealots of the Dawn Church could tell, one moment the gun was tucked safely in its holster underneath the Duke's black kevleather duster. The next, there was a thunderclap, the pistol was smoking in the Duke's hand, and the lifeless body of Pastor Dick Weissenbuehler collapsed onto the grassy knoll, the back of his skull gone and his brain scattered over the ground and the congregation behind him. For good measure the Duke followed up with a second shot, which hit the powerpack of the hidden laspistol. The resulting explosion tore bloody gibs out of the carcass of Pastor Dick, and set his ruined robe on fire too.
No way he was gettin' back from that, the Duke thought with some satisfaction.
There was screaming. Of course there was. There was always screaming. But to the Duke's surprise (which was to mean, insofar as anything could actually really surprise the Duke), it wasn't the helpless, emasculated screaming of the pitiful terrified. Instead it was the outraged screaming of fanatical religious zealots, incensed and profanated by the sudden gory demise of their ecclesiast. They yelled and hollered, a swelling chorus of violent affrontation that almost managed to drown out the wailing of the little girl on the makeshift pyre.
Almost.
Then the violence began in earnest.
Like almost all populations on the frontiers and in Wild Space the settlers of Rosalee and of Thaddeustown had access to lots of weapons, and the congregation of the Dawn Church was no different. Whatever the Man Jesus might have said about 'turning the other cheek', right then the flock of Pastor Dick wanted nothing of it. Maybe the loss of their preacher-man temporarily blinded them to their divine teachings. Or maybe them divine teachings were full of shit, and so were its adherents. Whatever the reason, weapons were produced. And then the killing started.
Compared to the two gunslingers, there sure were a lot of cultists. At least three dozen men and women had assembled for the ritual witch-burning. All of them had now armed themselves. Some of them carried only knives or clubs, but most had shotguns or rifles or even, in case of some of the richest zealots, antique handguns. Collectively they possessed way more firepower than the two gunslingers. What they didn't possess more of, though, was raw killing experience. Which was something the Pinkerton McClintock and the Duke of Death had in spades. What's more, the cultists had come here for festivities and religious spectacles. Until moments ago they hadn't expected anyone but the little girl on the pyre to die, and they were hesitating to do violence to anyone in person.
Neither McClintock nor the Duke of Death suffered any such hesitation. The Duke and the Professor waded into the midst of the fanatical cultists with guns blazing. The simple black steel of the M2411 was a reassuring weight in the gloved hand of the Duke, who moved with the expert precision of a lethal gunman – he moved into position, pointed his gun at his chosen target, pulled the trigger, confirmed the kill, and immediately moved again, repeating the process as many times as necessary, occasionally taking the time to reload his ancient weapon. But even then the Duke never stopped moving, giving his opponents very little opportunity to hit him.
They said that when confronted by superior numbers, the experienced gunfighter would always fire on the best shot first. The Duke of Death didn't know who 'they' were, but for him it didn't work like that. The Duke simply began shooting and didn't stop until there was no-one left to shoot back. He didn't really know which of the cultists might have been the best shot. He just killed them where they stood, one by one, moving through the crowd like a train conductor checking the tickets of passengers. But instead of checking tickets, he punched them. He punched them real good.
The Professor was different. His gunplay was more graceful, almost elegant to behold in its awful lethality. Pinkerton McClintock held one beautifully engraved laser revolver in each hand and cut through the crowd of people with a series of brilliant flashes of crimson light. Each flash was followed by the clap of superheated air; each flash ended a life or severed a limb. In the end, he was just as deadly as the Duke.
The cultists stood no chance. Out of a flock of three dozen, maybe three or four managed to draw a bead on the Duke. One or two might even have been able to squeeze off a round, only to see their ammunition rebound harmlessly against the bullet-proof coat the Duke was wearing. And McClintock moved so fast he was a blur of posthuman speed on the retinas of baseline borderworld hicks, and utterly impossible to target. The thundering of guns echoed across the hillside. Confusion and deadly chaos reigned for long seconds. The cultists thought they had a Jesus on their side. But the Duke
was a Jesus. A Jesus with a pistol. Whatever a Jesus was. And the Professor... In that moment, the Professor was the wrath of god incarnate. His eyes blazed with unholy fury, and his with each life he ended his lips split progressively wider in a smile of intense, cruel satisfaction.
It was over in seconds; that's how long it took for twenty-six people to become dead or dying.
One last woman threw down the antique rifle she'd been holding and ran down the hill, back toward the village. Watching her go, the Professor hesitated. The Duke of Death didn't. The clap of the gunshot died away just as the pathetic cultist did, her life ended by the expertly aimed uranium slug that turned much of her cranium into a pasty goo scattered over several square meters of muddy hillside.
It was suddenly very silent. The air smelled of cordite and ozone. The Duke began checking the bodies for any not-corpses that might just be playing dead. There weren't any, which was satisfying. The Professor meanwhile bounded up the makeshift pyre to cut down the girl. Mercifully, little Isabella had feinted of terror and exhaustion the moment the noise and the killing started.
The Duke of Death looked up to the skies. It had stopped raining.
The gunslingers came down the hill the same way they had come up. Isabella was curled up in the arms of Pinkerton McClintock. The Professor spared her an occasional worried glance, but the girl seemed physically fine. Mentally though... That was another case.
The scurrying wretches had disappeared. Thaddeustown was silent as the grave when the pair of mercenaries walked down the muddy gully that was Main Street. They broke down the door to the town jail and found no lawmen inside. Perhaps the sheriff had been killed on that hilltop. Perhaps there hadn't been an actual sheriff in Thaddeustown for a long while. They found the dead body of Philippe Noguiera where he had been shot in his cell. The gunslingers exited without another word.
There was movement behind the curtains of the buildings along the street, people peering out of the windows of the ramshackle houses. But no-one of the remaining inhabitants dared show himself to the angels of death that had come to visit Thaddeustown, much less challenge them to another feat of arms.
“There's something I gotta tell you Bob,” the Professor said as they walked out of the seemingly deserted village. McClintock glanced sideways. “You recall when I said there'd be a reward for savin' this girl?”
The Duke nodded. “In spades, you said.”
The Professor furrowed his brow. “I didn't mean like in gold bullion, Bob. Isabella's mother don't have any money. I meant it like rewarded by the satisfaction of doin' somethin' right.”
The Duke of Death was silent for a moment. When he spoke, there was an uncharacteristic softness to his normally flat and emotionless voice. “I know.”
“You-?” Pinkerton McClintock stumbled and nearly dropped the sleeping girl in his arms. He raised an eyebrow at the Duke. “You know? You mean you ain't gonna shoot me fer, like, deceivin' ya?”
“No.”
“'Cause I can, like, pay you myself if you want.”
“Don't bother.”
“Sheesh,” The Professor shook his head. “And here I was thinkin' I had you pegged, Bob. I thought you was a stone-killer, in it just for the cold hard dineros.”
Auriga Bob craned his head and looked at Pinkerton McClintock. For the briefest of moments there was a glimmer of... something, in his lifeless black eyes. “Wrong.” The Duke of Death turned around toward the village and suddenly his voice boomed across the muddy flats, strong as a thunderstorm and just as unavoidable. “All of y'all better behave!” he thundered. “Better not burn, nor otherwise harm no girls... Or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches!”
Then he turned his back to Thaddeustown. Gone was the fire and zeal, just as sudden as it had come. The man who had summoned it had disappeared again, transformed once more into the Duke of Death, remorseless killer of women and children.
The two gunslingers and the little girl disappeared into the wastes, on their way to the stars.
"
- PeZook
