Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Children of the Pebble ❯ Honor Among Thieves ( Chapter 10 )

Children of the Pebble

By “Clinesterton Beademung”, with all of love.

 

Disclaimer: “Trigun” © its respective creators and owners. I do this for fun, not profit. So there.

Comments and criticism welcome.

 

Chapter 10 - Honor Among Thieves

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In the Saint Helens Valley north of New Oregon, Brilliant Dynamites Neon reached out to hold a star between his fingers.

“Hey, Beremy,” he said.

“Yeah, boss?”

“What's the time?”

“23:51.”

“Okay.” Brilliant Dynamites Neon lit a cigarette. The tip glowed, subsided as he absorbed what nicotine was left in the stale tobacco. His exhaled smoke caught the light of the four full moons and was lost on the wind. Too bad he didn't have his special brand, the sparkly cigarettes his explosives expert Ed Zimm always made for him. Crazy Ed had bought it on the Astoria job, the careless fuck.

When the cigarette was consumed Brilliant Dynamites Neon pinched its dying embers between his fingers and tossed the butt aside. A boarding vehicle had developed a gas leak an hour out of their new hideout, and a bandit couldn't be too careful. Not anymore, he thought, disgusted.

The Bad Lads had fallen on hard times and harder luck since their evacuation from Lottenberg Canyon. The protection money started drying up after the Flourish job hit the papers. Then two months ago a routine raid on a column of disabled Cayzen Family tanker-steamers out of JP Town had become an ugly spectacle of tables turned. What his scouts had identified as a small group of mercenary support vehicles became a full platoon of heavily armed and armored assault vehicles no Bad Lad had ever seen before, filled with men who shot too accurately and killed too efficiently for mercs.

Since then he and the Lads had struggled to stay in food, fuel and spare parts, picking off buses and delivery trucks with no time for more profitable ventures. Hell, some of his boys had resorted to wearing plain ugly civvies to pick pockets in New Oregon for cash to buy used tires that weren't worth a shit to begin with. Tonight a chase car caught a flat and had to be left behind for lack of a spare.

Not beautiful. That bitch of a chancellor was squeezing the cojones of every bandit gang south of the equator. And loving it too, the whore.

“Yo,” Beremy said, and pointed. “We got headlamps, boss, nor-nor-west, three steamers running single file, no mercenary cover, about twenty iles away.”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon grunted acknowledgement, slumped back into his seat. There'd be no one on the inside to take down the heavy gun crews this time and they'd be taking fire on the approach. Lose two, maybe three chasers, easy. Tough luck, rejects. No one joined the Bad Lads for the generous insurance and health benefits. Damn that punk Kaite, anyway. He'd have made a real man of the boy, given the chance, just as Neon's old man had made of him. Then again, when he was Kaite's age he'd cut his own father's throat in his sleep with a broken beer bottle. From ear to ear. The whores Pop brought home always said he had a beautiful smile.

“Hey, boss,” Beremy said, “what's so funny?”

“Nothing,” he snarled. “Just shut your mouth and keep your eyes open.”

“Whatever you say, boss. Fifteen iles now, heading due south. Ten minutes to go-no go point.”

“Okay.” Yeah, he and Kaite were probably better off this way. He reached into his pocket for another cigarette. The box was empty. Cellophane crackled as he drew the carton out, crushed it, and threw it behind him. Running out of coffin nails before a job. That definitely wasn't beautiful. That waste of skin he'd sent to pinch some had been caught in the act and was cooling his heels in a Kasted City jail. He could see the headlines now: BAD LAD BUSTED FOR SHOPLIFTING. Shit, another two months of this and his gang would be the joke of the territory. Maybe he should just shoot all these dumbasses and start over—

“Uh, boss?”

“What?” Brilliant Dynamites Neon scanned the identical metal faces of his gang. A man in the back held up a gloved hand. “Who the hell are you?”

“Harlin Backintosh, boss,” the man said. “I just joined up three weeks ago.”

Harlin Backintosh, he thought. Backintosh, Backintosh—oh, yeah. One attempted armed robbery that got him laughed out of New Oregon and an attempted rape in Kasted City that earned him a brutal ass-kicking courtesy of his intended victim, a thirteen-year-old girl. The bandit pickings were getting slim around here.

“Well now, ain't that just gorgeous,” Brilliant Dynamites Neon said. “Welcome to our little party. Now what's so goddamn important you gotta interrupt me when I'm thinking?”

Backintosh cringed. “Well, sir, it's just—that is, I've been hearing things, sir.”

“You don't say. In that case, I suggest you see a doctor. In the meantime shut your friggin yap.”

“No, sir—I mean, yes, but what I've been hearing is a rumor, sir.”

“Huh. And what kind of rumor might that be?”

“Well, boss,” Backintosh said, “it's like this. Two days ago I got a letter from my mother in New Botany Bay. She says the word on the cellblock is that the Feds aren't after the slaver and bandit gangs. She says the chancellor's after Vash the Stampede.”

“So the hell what?” Brilliant Dynamites Neon said. “Beremy's ma was in July when it went up. She'd cut his heart out for a double nickel, ain't that right, Beremy?”

“Hell, yeah,” Beremy said. “Five minutes, by the way.”

“Okay. So now that we've established that even the queen bitch of the stinking world wants the Humanoid Typhoon dead, what's this thomas-shit rumor got to do with me?”

“In her letter Mama said the chancellor was gonna set a trap for him.” Backintosh shuffled his feet. “In New Oregon, boss. Maybe.”

“New Oregon. Maybe.” Brilliant Dynamites Neon rubbed his chin. That Polo Family pesthole was a trap, all right, but for dumbass tourists and wannabe gamblers. Why the hell would the Stampede want to go there, unless…

He turned to look southwest. A hundred iles away, a red beacon blinked at the very peak of a gray mountain of metal.

“I heard they was after the satellite station,” said a Bad Lad. “That they was gonna take it from the Polos and send a call for help to Earth.”

“No way, man,” said another. “It's that big-ass Ship the Feds want. The salvage rights alone are probably worth billions.”

“Four minutes,” Beremy said.

Brilliant Dynamites Neon laughed. “Look up there, dumbshits.” He pointed at the ominous eye of the Fifth Moon. “If the chancellor thinks she can trap the bastard who did that she's got another thing coming.”

“I ain't saying it's a great idea, boss,” Backintosh said. “I'm just saying if I were going after the Stampede I'd have the biggest guns I could find and as many of them as I could carry. Remember that ambush back in Astoria Town? The law may be after the Humanoid Typhoon but that doesn't mean they can't and won't kick the shit out of us!”

“All right, all right,” Brilliant Dynamites Neon said. “Just shut up a minute.” All this yapping was giving him a headache. Astoria. Damn, what a fucking mess. He and the Bad Lads had linked up with the last pathetic remnants of the Roderick Thieves to pull off another big steamer heist in Lottenberg. The Bad Lads were to take the money and jewels. The Rodericks, the women and children.

It was a bloodbath. The steamer column split and maneuvered the Bad Lads in between. Whoever didn't escape the pincer was blown to pieces by artillery fire, a full quarter of his gang.

A few days after the evacuation from Lottenberg he'd sent a maggot out for an Inepril newspaper. The picture on the front page was worth a thousand words: body bags full of Rodericks, surrounded by smiling, posing cavalrymen carrying heavy weapons.

“—gonna do, boss?”

“Screw this shit. I say we let the Feds have the Stampede—”

“—outta the way, let `em kill each other—”

“Three minutes,” Beremy said.

“Shut up!”

“Sorry, boss.”

“No, not you, Beremy.” Brilliant Dynamites Neon rubbed his eyes. Things were getting confusing.

“Boss,” Backintosh said, “all I'm saying is what we're after could be three steamers full of rich tourists or three regiments of cavalry. I'm just asking if it's worth our skins to find out.”

The boss of the Bad Lads watched the empty metal faces of his gang. One looked at another, he at a third. Doubt jumped from glance to glance.

“Two minutes,” Beremy said.

“Harlin's got a point, boss,” said the first Bad Lad. “We ain't what we was a year ago. What say we call it a night, and stick to hijacking buses for a while, till things cool off. What do you say?”

“I agree with you, man,” said the second. “Leave the Ship to the Feds and chill out for a while. What do you say, boss?”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon heard a soft click behind him. Beremy had flicked off the safety on his assault rifle.

Damn, Brilliant Dynamites Neon thought. Things were bad if he'd let the situation get this far. Even Beremy was getting nervous. The stink of it was they might be right. Maybe he and the Lads should lay low for a few months. Sure, and if the cavalry got lucky they might find the Stampede and put that fucking monster down for good. Or, even better, the Humanoid Typhoon might do to those glorified thomas jockeys what he'd done to Augusta and the Fifth Moon. Then he and the Lads would be back in business.

In the meantime, no big jobs, no greenbacks or jewels, no headlines. Just hiding in caves, twiddling their thumbs, getting drunk and killing each other out of sheer boredom.

Not beautiful. Not beautiful at all.

Brilliant Dynamites Neon ordered Backintosh and the two others who spoke to stand in front of him.

“What do I say?” he said. “I say you've got guts, standing up to me like that. And you know what?” He drew his pistol. “You'll never be more beautiful than you are now.”

Backintosh dropped his weapon, held up his hands. “Now wait, boss, come on, I was only trying to he—” The green glass hemisphere over his right eye exploded. He fell, as did his two compatriots two shots later. The remaining Bad Lads backed away from their bodies.

“Anybody else wanna put in his two cecents?” Brilliant Dynamites Neon glared down the sights of his pistol at his gang. “I didn't think so.” He holstered his sidearm. “All right, maggots, you know the drill. Three Dolphin-class steamers, fast but lightly armed. We let `em enter the valley, then we slip in under what few heavy guns they have. Should be no one but the usual mercs inside, so once we get past the artillery we've got nothin to worry about.” Brilliant Dynamites Neon leaned over his gang like a cobra over a crippled mouse. “Any of you scumbags feel like getting rich tonight?”

“Yeah!”

“Then lock and load!”

“Yeah!”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon slumped back into his seat, pleased by the sweet music of gun bolts, ammo clips, and his gang's renewed enthusiasm. No leadership crisis in the world a little hot lead persuasion wouldn't cure.

“One minute, boss,” Beremy said.

“All right, leeches, let's light `em up!” Electricity crackled, and the trademark lights of the Bad Lad Thieves hummed to neon life. Through the glare he could see the sweeping headlamps of the oncoming steamer convoy.

Parade time. Brilliant Dynamites Neon raised his arm, swept it down. The Bad Lads surged forward.

Brilliant Dynamites Neon kept a tight grip on his seat as his driver guided the vehicle into the desolate bowl of the valley. The neon tubes adorning his vehicle flickered when the wheels made contact with the packed earth of the valley floor. His driver stomped the accelerator, and he exulted in the rush of raw speed. His braided hair stopped drumming his back and floated behind him on the wind. The taste of dust was on his bared teeth.

Like old times, he thought, though most of his memories were too ugly for casual nostalgia. When Pop wasn't slapping him around or dragging him from saloon to saloon he was standing on street corners with a tin cup begging for spare change, and if he didn't come back with enough his old man would beat the shit out of him. Sometimes Pop would sober up enough to look for real work, and his only son would spend his free hours exploring the wastes beyond the yard, looking for dropped coins or lost jewels. What he found most of the time was broken beer bottles and scrap metal not worth the effort to salvage.

In the heat of the day he'd watch the horizon and pretend the fool's water mirage was real, and wonder what he'd do with all that wealth. At night, while Pop was humping Sleazy Sadie or Easy Edith, he'd sneak outside, and if the ground were still hot enough, the fool's water would reflect the stars.

Like old times. Brilliant Dynamites Neon reached for the sky, curled his hand around a flickering white diamond, half expecting to feel a burn on his palm when he closed his fingers around it. The chancellor was after Vash the Stampede, was she? That made sense. The Feds would be sixty billion in the hole to anyone who took him down, but not if the Feds got him first. After the Lottenberg job he'd considered going after the Stampede full time, but after the Fifth Moon Incident he'd taken a long look at his career as an outlaw. Bigger and bigger heists, more dough, better equipment and weapons, to be used for—what? To steal more money and trinkets? To buy—what?

Even if he and the Bad Lads could kill the Humanoid Typhoon—and that, he had to admit, was a possibility remote as the stars—what the hell on this planet was worth sixty billion double dollars?

Brilliant Dynamites Neon lowered his hand, held the distant red beacon between thumb and forefinger. Be nice if that derelict Ship could be fixed, somehow. That would be worth buying. He and the Lads would go to the stars, and all the splendor of the universe would be his for the stealing.

His hand became a fist. Barring that, he'd settle for taking these steamers, packing them full of dynamite, and driving them straight up the chancellor's tight ass.

A half-ile ahead the steamers braked hard and slewed into a tight turn. They were circling the wagons, just like they did in the movies. How cute. The steamers continued their rapid revolution. Clouds of dust covered the wheels, billowed over their bodies until they were completely obscured. The headlamps shut off.

Smoke screen. He hadn't seen it done like that before. Brilliant Dynamites Neon ordered the Bad Lads to slow down. Nothing too dangerous was coming out of there, according to his information, but a bandit couldn't be too careful.

The Bad Lads approached on line, weapons at the ready, wary and watchful for any movement within the dust cloud. A shout went up from a forward vehicle. Brilliant Dynamites Neon squinted into the miasma.

There it is, he thought as the low shapes formed at the cloud's edge. A reception committee, probably mercs, slower vehicles that couldn't keep pace with the fastest of all steamer types. But why stop? For all their camouflage the steamers were sitting ducks now, after he and the Lads blew away their pathetic escort. Whatever they were, they weren't fast. Which meant they were pretty heavy…

Which meant they were armored. Cavalry again. Backintosh was right.

Brilliant Dynamites Neon shouted into his mike, ordering the Bad Lads to concentrate their fire on the center of the oncoming line. If they could break through, board the steamers and take the bridge crew hostage, he'd order them to take their beautiful steamers and crush these thomas-humping bastards like beer cans.

The tank in the center of the line came alive with ricochet sparks. A mortar shell fired from “Whack-job” Winfield's hand-held launcher rocked the target but didn't slow it down. Amidst the fire and flash of the onslaught, Brilliant Dynamites Neon caught a glimpse of the regimental standard protruding from the tank's turret.

The Seventh December. These boys were a long way from home. Too bad they'd never see it again.

Orange flame erupted from the tank guns. Brilliant Dynamites Neon watched the radiator of the adjacent car disintegrate at the same moment the trunk, and the spare gas tanks, erupted in a spray of fuel. The mixture ignited, and his raider, as well as the maggots on board, became balls of flame. The same fate met every third raider on the front rank, and the fire of burning, dying Bad Lads lighted the desert.

The tanks fired a second volley. Fire, sand, and the cries of wounded men exploded up from the deep desert. A quick assessment of the tactical situation told Brilliant Dynamites Neon there'd be no getting rich tonight.

He climbed down and slapped his driver's shoulder. “Get on the radio and tell everybody to get back to the hideout. Every man for himself!” The driver nodded, spoke into his mike as he wrenched the wheel with one hand. The raider tottered on two wheels, then slammed back onto the desert floor.

Shit, Brilliant Dynamites Neon thought. Half his maggots gone already. Maybe if he could draw the tanks away from the steamers he and the Lads could mount a counterattack—

The ground shook when the main artillery on the steamer guns opened fire. Chunks of the wasteland ahead of them became columns of dust and flame, consuming and scattering his Bad Lads like miniature typhoons. If at least he and Beremy could make it back to the hideout he'd have the makings of a new gang, but the fire was so hot and accurate it was only a matter of time before they both bought the ranch.

Perhaps it was time to reconsider the neon lights, he thought, as a whirlwind of noise and fire lifted him into the air. He landed hard. The lights on his outfit flickered and died. His ears were ringing and his car was a gas-fueled inferno. What was left of his driver burned like thomas tallow in a battered lantern.

“Beremy…” he rasped in a throat full of dust. He coughed and spat. “Beremy, you okay?” He clambered to his feet. “Goddamnit, Beremy, where the hell are you?”

“Boss…here…”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon followed the sound of his second-in-command's voice to his wounded body. The front of Beremy's armor near his stomach bore a gaping hole, and his left leg was twisted in a direction nature hadn't intended.

“Sorry, boss,” Beremy said between deep gasps. “Really fucked up…this time…”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon glanced toward the steamers. The tanks were slow, but they were still on the advance.

“Don't sweat it,” he said. “The Feds just screwed us over real good this time, that's all.” He grabbed Beremy's armor at the waist and lifted him like a piece of luggage. He headed for the ridge.

“Hit in the gut…bleeding's pretty bad…”

“And that means what to me, exactly?”

“Nothing…nothing, boss…”

“Right. So just suck it up and quit your bellyaching.”

“Not gonna…make it…” Beremy said. “Leave me…”

“You want to be a hero, sacrifice yourself and take all the glory? Fuck you, Beremy. Nobody outshines Brilliant Dynamites Neon, you get me?”

“Get you…boss…”

“That's better. Now do you wanna get rich, or do you wanna piss and moan?”

“Get…rich…”

“That's what I thought. Now shut up and let me think.” This was downright ugly. Without a vehicle there was no way they'd outrun those tanks. The moons were as bright as ever, which meant he and Beremy stood out on the desert like two ants on a tablecloth. Their pursuers didn't seem in too big of a hurry. Probably just waiting for them to drop from exhaustion. Thomas-fuckers.

“Getting…cold…”

Brilliant Dynamites Neon lifted Beremy as if he were a small child, held him in front of his face. He stared daggers into the blank green hemispheres.

“Don't you dare fucking die on me, Beremy,” he said. “Your ma would never let me hear the end of it.” Not to mention gut him with a knitting needle and let his skin hang out to dry. Beremy's ma was one scary old broad, almost as scary as that fucking monster Vash the Stampede…

“S'okay…boss…” Beremy said. “Y'did right…by me…got no…complaints…”

“Goddamnit, Beremy, you are not getting the last word!” Brilliant Dynamites Neon paused on the slope of the ridge for a few deep breaths. Time to quit smoking too, maybe. “If you keep talking like that I am gonna kick your ass off this fucking dirtball, but good!”

At the crest of the ridge, Brilliant Dynamites Neon knew there was no going further, for him or for Beremy. A semicircle of tanks awaited him. He lowered Beremy's body to the ground.

You did right by me, too, Beremy, he thought. Got no complaints, either. The turrets rotated until Brilliant Dynamites Neon was the center of an unwanted and fatal attention.

He'd die in prison, that much was certain, either as an old man or as a victim of circumstances the Feds would only be too happy to arrange. Without his gang, without his guns, he would be no more significant than the number on his black and white jumpsuit. He'd be a nobody. He'd live as a nobody, die as a nobody.

What beautiful irony, Brilliant Dynamites Neon thought as he laughed. So often he'd offered this violent alternative to those who came between him and what he wanted, wondering, if not hoping, it might be of some comfort to them as they departed this world. Yet as he stared death in the eye, looking down the gun barrels as if he could see the Reaper and his minions behind the controls, it seemed a fine path to take.

After all, he thought, if you don't go out in high style, in a blaze of glory, what's the point?

Brilliant Dynamites Neon let his dynamo guns fall into his hands. He depressed the triggers, and the sparks lead made on steel were like exploding stars.

Beautiful—

 

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The satellite station fell quickly, without much fuss.

On the Ship Doctor Samuel Fujiwara lowered his binoculars, and sighed. While he didn't object to the uplink station being in less violent hands, and while it was fortunate so few had died, given the quantity and power of the armaments brought to bear, he hated to see anyone suffer and die for a cause so futile. The chancellor's plan for the dish was going to fail. At the appropriate time, he'd have to explain why.

Doc turned his binoculars to the city and the desert floor three kilometers below. The tanks poured from the city like ants from their hill and formed a perimeter around the Ship.

Time to call Max. Doc let his binoculars hang around his neck, drew the hood of his parka over his bald head. These violent, greedy groundlings weren't going to steal his Ship just yet.

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Author's Afterword

Um…sorry about the long delay, yet again. I was hampered by the fact that I lost the original rough draft of this chapter after I decided to delete it, then had to start from scratch when I decided to keep it after all. Let my consternation serve as a lesson: Keep everything you write.

Next: Meryl's life gets busier, Elizabeth and Vash get down to business, and Maryanne gets “curiouser and curiouser” about her little town's secrets. See you soon!