Galaxy Man Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by MWM

  Copyright Page

  Galaxy Man

  Mark Wayne McGinnis

  Preface

  March — 2117 — Alpha Centauri, Lorianne B. Commuter Station 9552.

  John Gallic was the last one to hurry into the departing commuter shuttle before the outer doors quietly swooshed together. The old silver-haired steward irritably rammed the security latch into place.

  He gave Gallic a wary look. “This is the last time I’ll hold up departure for you, John. I don’t care that you’re a cop.”

  “Understood. Won’t happen again . . .”

  The steward had to crane his neck somewhat to look up at him. “You’ll find an empty seat back in aisle Y4,” he said, pointing aft.

  “Thanks, Max.” Gallic said still catching his breath and moving along the packed in rows of commuter passengers.

  Midway down the aisle, Gallic wedged himself into the only seat still available—between a middle-aged woman, reading a chest-high projected novel; and a construction worker still wearing his hard hat and smelling of sawdust and sour body odor. Both the woman and the construction worker had to shift in their seats to make room for Gallic’s not insubstantial frame.

  He checked the time on his wrist. Midnight—he’d barely made the last shuttle heading back to the Sol System tonight. He relaxed into the seat, exhaustion beginning to engulf him.

  Something has to change, he thought. His impossible schedule was screwing up every relationship in his life. The weekly five days on, two days off, bullshit had been going on for the better part of two years now. Gallic knew it wasn’t only affecting him. Portsmouth, Southerland, Stone—all DI’s—were on the same rigorous departmental merry-go-round. For Stone, it had led to a divorce—six months ago. Poor guy was still a soppy mess. Reeked of desperation—always lurking around the station—no life. Gallic didn’t want that. He’d rather quit than face that wrecking-ball. His thoughts turned to Clair. Was she, too, ready to tell him to shove off? Had she had enough of this absentee-husband bullshit? One who, even when he was around, was so mentally and emotionally spent, he seemed simply to be going through the motions—acting the part of the normal devoted husband and attentive father—while in reality felt more akin to a jacked around robot on autopilot? Christ! Who, in their right mind, would want to marry a Detective Chief Inspector? Worse . . . one who worked three and a half light years away from Earth? But he knew the answer—Clair would. And she’d never complained . . . not once. The thought made him smile. And then there was Mandy—three-years-old, going on thirty. Hey . . . never experiencing a different type lifestyle, she probably figured all daddies were gone half the time. That was one plus, right?

  Somewhere, behind and below him, the shuttle’s big engines stuttered, then fully caught and then engaged. Already moving off into deep space, he knew well it would take about eight hours before they’d hit Sol system—get into Earth’s upper orbit. He needed to grab a few hours of sleep first, before reviewing several case files. He purposely avoided thinking about his numerous unsolves: two murders; three missing persons that were undoubtedly murders; plus, some cold cases he also should be attending to but didn’t have the resources for. For now, though—rest. He loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt; he closed his eyes and thought about Mandy . . . she wanted a puppy. Was she ready for that kind of responsibility? Was he? Before an answer could present itself, sleep washed over him.

  * * *

  Six hours and ten minutes later, his arm began to vibrate. Rousted from sleep, Gallic glanced down at his wrist—at his ComsBand. Blurry-eyed and groggy, it took him a moment to comprehend what was being projected—the repeating, flashing blue words there before him:

  EMERGENCY ALERT – HOME BREACH! . . . EMERGENCY ALERT – HOME BREACH! . . . EMERGENCY ALERT – HOME BREACH!

  Gallic sat up in his seat and tapped at the communications device. He said, “Call home,” in a constricted voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else. Instantly, the ComsBand displayed the projected words, Calling Home.

  He barely registered the startled, sideways glances, from both the construction worker and the book-reading lady, sitting alongside him. Gallic’s full attention was focused on listening to Clair’s unanswered ComsBand, which continued to ring.

  “Come on, answer the damn thing!” he said, speaking loud enough for other commuters in the periphery around him to take notice.

  He heard a decisive click, then Clair’s voice—screaming something, but he could only catch the last part of it.

  “. . . in the house . . . oh my god . . . oh my god . . . John!”

  Gallic, up on his feet now, yelled back just as loudly, “Who’s there, Clair? Who’s in the house? Tell me what’s happening? What’s going on?”

  All those in the shuttle compartment had turned toward him now, staring at him, fear mirrored across each face.

  “. . . broken into the back of the house!” Clair said.

  He heard her quick breaths and the soft echoes of socked feet running. He heard, too, the old grandfather clock chiming away in the background. They were in the downstairs hallway—probably coming out from the family room, going into the front foyer.

  Clair said, “Shhhh . . . take my hand, sweetie! Hurry!” She was shushing Mandy.

  He heard them padding up the stairs. Gallic’s heart was in his throat. He looked around the confined shuttle, millions of miles away from where he needed to be.

  “What’s he doing here, Mommy?”

  “I don’t know, baby . . .”

  The old steward, Max, was rushing down the aisle toward Gallic on spindly legs, motioning for those who had also risen to their feet to sit back down. He glanced at Gallic, with some trepidation. “You must take your seat while . . .”

  “Clair . . . lock yourself in your bedroom. I’m calling the local police. Stay on the line. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. He heard the desperation in her voice. “Hurry, John . . . oh god . . . I think he’s coming . . .”

  Gallic thought he heard distant, heavy footfalls coming up the stairs.

  Chapter 1

  July 2120 — Frontier Planet, Muleshoe.

  Three years and four months later . . .

  Gallic was in a particularly surly mood. Not about anything in particular, but then it never was. Another year had come and gone. Another year s
pent without his wife and child.

  He squinted into the buffeting wind. Constant gusts that were heavy with fine gritty particles—soil pulled up from hundreds of miles of open planes. He pulled the collar of his leather coat in closer around his neck. A gamey smell of livestock and manure, and also hay and other aromas he wasn’t so sure about, permeated his nostrils. Gazing off to his left, into the Cimmerian veil of purples and pinks, he noted groupings of cattle, mere blots on the landscape at this late hour and from such a long distance away.

  Muleshoe was a relatively small planet, colonized twenty-seven years earlier, for one intended purpose—producing beef; hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef annually. John Gallic appreciated the sight, even the odors. Familiar sights and smells that were, some twenty years in the past, now removed from Earth’s slowly repairing eco-environ.

  Gallic was running late. Being late adversely affected his earnings, something he couldn’t let happen. Not with what was at stake. He mentally calculated how quickly he could grab the vehicle, load it into the Hound, and be back up in space. It’s going to be tight. He thought about the irony. Here he was, about to repo a guy’s high-end spacecraft for delinquency, when he was two months late making his own payments on the Hound.

  Up ahead, partially obscured within the churning sand-cloud, he saw neon-colored lights: Muted reds, blues, and greens, plus multi-variations of those. The wind had picked up noticeably since he’d left his ship. Ignoring it, he fixed his attention on the suspended sign, hanging off angle thirty feet above the bar. The name on the sign, Renegade’s Haven, blinked on and off; a staccato rhythm meant to attract visitors from miles away. For Gallic, it induced no reaction at all.

  He approached the front of the bar, where he heard loud music escaping out through the rundown establishment’s countless open gaps—between old and bowed timber planks and from three, small, ill-fitting, grease-smeared windows. The front door, though faded red with time, was a sturdy, stout affair—now wedged partially closed against the pounding wind by what looked to be an old, cast-iron anvil.

  Seeing the parking lot completely full, the place must be hopping, he figured. Gallic surveyed the lot, more than a few of the closer-in vehicles were open-bed hovercrafts, holding long-handled tools strewn atop errant scatterings of dirt and straw. The vehicles, most likely owned by local field hands who worked hard doing whatever needed doing—perhaps helping to move herds from one location to another or delivering bales of hay; or escorting cattle to a sectioned-off area where they’d be put down, then readied for processing. Although Gallic didn’t know much about either cattle or ranching, he did know a good deal about other things; such as determining the origins of physical, or trace evidence at a homicide scene. Or the best methods to use when interviewing a potential witness; or guesstimating the caliber of a bullet while studying an entry wound in the middle of a vic’s forehead. But none of those capabilities would be needed for tonight’s gig.

  Gallic walked between various-sized spacecraft, the ones parked farther out in the lot. Though some were small, and some large, there were certain similarities between them, and even while some were older, looking ready to be replaced—others looked brand new and expensive—right off the dealer’s lot. Here were the personal spacecrafts of wealthy businessmen, wealthy ranch owners, or their sons and daughters. Most of the vessels possessed approximately 800 to 1,200 cubic feet of inside volume capacity—perhaps about the size of an old school bus, during the turn of the twenty-first century on Earth. But any similarity stopped there. Here were sleek—precision-made—spacecraft. Most had exotic matter drives, capable of FTL, as well as being integrated with the latest highly complex AI brains. Undoubtedly, these designer rides were too smart for their own good and definitely far too smart for their current owners. At high, present-day costs, each individual ship, Gallic guessed, could be worth a cool half-billion dollars . . . maybe more. Gazing across the nearly full landing lot—in front of Renegade’s Haven—he knew he was looking at, with the ever-increasing high rate of inflation, roughly fifty billion dollars’ worth of fancy, high-priced, space transportation.

  Hurrying up, it took Gallic another five minutes to pinpoint and find the specific craft he was searching for—one of the newer ships, a Hausenbach L35T. Built within the German manufacturing territories, close to a light-year’s distance away, across a vast open space. A fine machine—very expensive—and the owner was three months’ delinquent in making payments. Gallic, on site to repo the vehicle—mentally appraised the fine ship. It would fetch a nice percentage. Perhaps even enough to get him current with the Hound.

  As he moved around the taxium-glass hull, a polished-chrome appearance craft, he slid his palm across the slick surface. Both the ingress and egress for a new L35T was completely AI-controlled. No seams—no hairline gaps—which would allow Gallic to use the tools of his trade to penetrate a hatchway. Of German-design origin, the AI, probably made by Spincher & Cowl, was a crazy smart artificial-intelligence unit. And, undoubtedly, it was watching him at that very moment—had already tapped into the CoreNet and knew who he was and what he did for a living. Also, what he’d been another lifetime ago. Because this newer breed of AI was so thorough, so tenacious, it would have, by now, delved far deeper into his past—into every aspect of his life. But Gallic didn’t really care what it had uncovered. It didn’t change the fact that this very vehicle needed to be loaded onto the Hound then returned to the selling dealership, preferably tonight—tomorrow morning, at the latest.

  He gave the craft an affectionate pat then headed off in the direction of the blinking blue, red, and green neon lights. Time to do things the old-fashioned way, he mused.

  * * *

  John Gallic entered the seedy watering hole through the faded-red door, knowing exactly what to expect inside. He’d been there before; had conducted business there. Had been there to drink and sometimes not to drink. The proprietor knew enough about him to know that disturbing him would be a bad idea.

  John was well aware of the impact his presence made. He looked at the tightly packed-in patrons, those who usually came and went from Renegade’s Haven, for the most part, unnoticed. But at six-foot-six, and close to two hundred forty pounds, he was an imposing figure. He pictured himself through their eyes—seeing the leather Stetson, worn low over his eyes; the dark-brown trousers and heavy black boots. Wearing a long, well-worn leather duster, supported by shoulders that just about spanned the open door’s threshold, he watched as curious eyes moved in their sockets, seeing who, or what, had so obtrusively entered their space.

  The music was loud and the smoky haze from cigarettes, cigars, and a few pipes, gave the place a far more mysterious ambiance than it deserved. The combined hum of chattering voices decreased several decibels as more heads turned around to face him. He continued to survey the room—taking in as much detail as he could. Good with details, he was trained to notice things the average person would disregard. Training that took place in another lifetime, when he was a different person—the DCI—the Chief Inspector for the Colonial Police, Space District 22.

  But that life was ancient history, one that belonged in the past. For the last three years, Gallic was officially known as a Territory Abettor, more commonly referred to as a Frontier Marshal. Frontier Marshals were independent contractors that provided a handful of—and not always the most respected—services. Earth’s distant spatial territories, lacking much in the way of institutional policing, engaged Frontier Marshals to fill in the gap. Covering everything, especially those that had high-end stakes, like investigating murders—of which there’d been a good number—Gallic was good at closing most cases on the Frontier Worlds. His previous years, spent as a DCI, had come in handy. He’d built a solid reputation in the Frontier Worlds for being relentless—a bulldog—said to always get his man. Or woman, if that was the case. Although not a hundred percent true, Gallic was fine with that general assumption. On the low end of marshaling, Gallic’s duties included the erran
t breaking-up of bar brawls, petty crimes, even the repossessing of spacecraft; finding such side repo work paid surprisingly well. It also kept him busy—too busy to think; too busy to remember . . .

  He made his way over to the bar and squeezed between two seated, conversing, elderly men. Forced off their bar stools, they grumbled something unintelligible. The pair leaned forward, peering around him, and resumed their conversation while drinking their house-brand whiskeys.

  Gallic caught the proprietor’s attention. He looked pretty much the same as the three other busy bartenders catering to needy patrons. Wearing a stained white apron, the medium-sized man with a receding hairline, wiped his hands on a dishtowel and made his way down the bar to where Gallic stood waiting. He asked, “Usual?”

  “Not tonight, Randy.” Leaning forward, Gallic spoke just loud enough for him to hear. “I’m looking for a guy . . . name’s Larz Cugan.”

  The barkeep looked hesitant. “Don’t bust up the place, Gallic. No trouble here tonight . . . okay?”

  “Uh huh. Just point him out to me.”

  The proprietor gestured with his chin toward a large group, which had pulled three tables together. An eruption of laughter followed by arms raised high, the clinking of shot glasses; a rowdy, happy group.

  “He’s the one at the far head of the table. He’s the one with that . . . thing . . . around his neck. Not sure what those things are called,” Randy said.

  “It’s called an ascot.”

  “Looks pretty silly to me,” Randy added.

  Gallic said, “Anyway . . . thanks. Go ahead and ping my account for a double shot; either drink it yourself or give it away.” He turned and made his way through the packed-sea of patrons, needing to shuffle between chairs and tables. Several times, he had to turn sideways, in order to maneuver his way toward the seated boisterous partygoers.

  No less than twelve, they were mostly in their twenties, Gallic surmised. Dressed to the nines—designer clothes, meant to impress each other, and everyone else. The women were bare-shouldered, tanned, and wore an abundance of conflicting fragrant perfumes. The men, equal in number, wore suits with bolo ties and leather cowboy boots—etched with elaborate design work.