A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Things Have Changed I

Mountain View, Tarbos – January 2256

Hector Gomp was a man at odds with the world.

For the first time since he had walked into a Confederate Marines recruiting office way back in 2240, he had nothing to do – no one to report to, no one to answer to.  He wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that, so for the time being, he was using his meager savings to do the one peaceable thing he knew he did well:  Drink.

The Grugell War was long over.  His home for the past ten years, the privateer starship Shade Tree, was destroyed – sucked down a singularity caused by a collapsing drive field, taking the pirate ship Vengeance with it.  That incident, as it happened in low orbit over Corinthia well within view of that planet’s primary Skyhook, had cleared the names of Captain Jean Barrett and her crew but left them all unemployed.  And clear names or not, the spotty and sometimes morally questionable post-war record of the Shade Tree wasn’t putting its former crew on any “must hire” lists.  So now Hector Gomp was on the capital planet of the Confederacy, Tarbos, in the capital city, Mountain View, looking to make a living on his own.

Fortunately, there were other ways for a man of Gomp’s training and talent to make a few bucks.  One of those went by the name of Alan Henderson, and he had a $10,000 bounty on his head for numerous acts of computer fraud on Tarbos, New Wichita, Earth and even Forest.  “I didn’t know any of the rednecks on Forest even owned computers,” Gomp had muttered on reading that bit of the bounty notice.

Acting on a hunch, Gomp had arrived at the Old Place bar in Mountain View’s Harbor District in the late afternoon, finding a table at the outside beer garden.  His size and demeanor discouraged anyone looking for trouble; Gomp was well over two meters tall, nearly ninety kilos of hard muscle, close-cropped red hair and an ear that had been partially removed in a brawl several years before.  Gomp refused to have the ear regenerated, as he thought it gave him a dashing air.

The hunch Gomp was acting on was simple:  The Old Place was the only business in the Harbor District with an unsecured wireless network, something that should be very valuable to a computer fraudster.  Sooner or later, Gomp reasoned, Alan Henderson would show up at the Old Place; all Gomp had to do was hang out, keep a low profile, and wait.

Gomp’s idea of ‘keeping a low profile’ consisted of sitting outside at a table in the beer garden area, with a highball glass full of apple juice on ice – passing as whiskey – in front of him, a Harbor District popsy on his lap and another leaning on him from the next chair.  He had one eye locked on the only way into the outdoor venue, that being the doorway to the bar.  Gomp had dressed carefully for the day’s work, the result of which was him looking like he had dressed very carelessly; an ancient, stained shipboard coverall and a baggy old Marine Corps field jacket that neatly concealed his 10mm revolver.

The popsy on his lap turned and smiled.  “Sugar,” she said, her eyes wide and yet somehow still hard and calculating, “…are you sure you don’t want to get out of here?  We could have all kinds of fun somewhere quieter.”

“Maybe later,” Gomp demurred.  Under other circumstances he may have taken the girl up on her offer, but today, he had work to do.

Just then, the work walked in.

Alan Henderson was a little older than the image on the holo provided by the Mountain View Security Department, but it was unmistakably him.  Just to be sure, Gomp picked up his small personal datapad from the table in front of him, tapped the screen, and refreshed his memory.

Yup.  That’s him.

Gomp watched as Henderson chose a table at the edge of the seedy ‘beer garden’, ordered a glass of sparkling water, and produced a large, obviously custom datapad.  Moving his chair so his back was to the room, he extended the pad’s laser keyboard and started tapping away.

“Excuse me, girls,” Gomp said.  “Gotta talk to a man about a horse.”

“A what?”

He stood, making the popsy on his lap slide off.  He dropped a few coins on the table to cover the drinks; the silver rang sweetly on the wood tabletop.  Henderson had made the mistake of keeping his back turned to the patrons, and so Gomp was able to walk right up behind him.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked Henderson.

“Actually, I do,” Henderson protested.  “I’m really very busy…”

“Yeah, I know.  You’re Alan Henderson, and you’re probably setting up your next ripoff, right?”

Henderson’s eyes opened wide.  “What?  Alan Henderson, you say?”

“I say, and you are.  You may be good with working rubes on the internets, bub, but you sure aren’t good at keeping a low profile.”  Gomp pulled a chair up to the table and sat down.  “I mean, you didn’t even wear some dark glasses, much less a fake beard or any of the other crap guys like you generally try to pull off.  I mean, what the hell?”

“What’s all this to you, anyway?”

Gomp produced his small personal ‘pad, brought up the bounty notice, and showed it to Henderson.  “That’s what it is to me,” he said companionably.  “You’re worth ten grand, ten thousand Confederate dollars, paid on delivery to the nearest Security office.  Now, you can come along quietly, or you can be dragged out by your collar.  Pick one, sport.  I ain’t got all night.”

“I don’t think so,” Henderson said.  “You know who I work for?”

“What difference does that make?”

Henderson smirked.  “You know who Bolivar Taliaferro is?”

“Nope.  Don’t give a shit.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.  OK, come on, enough of this.  Stand up.”

“Can I stow my datapad?  You’re supposed to let me bring along personal property, right?”

Gomp nodded and motioned towards the ‘pad.  “Go ahead.”

Henderson powered down his ‘pad, folded it, placed it carefully inside his carrying bag…

…then swept a glass of ice water up from the table, threw it in Gomp’s face, and ran for the exit.

“Dammit.  Why do they always run?”  Gomp knew he could outrun the fraudster, who was dodging between tables, headed for the exit to the alley behind the beer garden, but running wasn’t necessary.  Gomp picked up an empty beer mug, wound up and let fly.

The beer mug hit Henderson squarely on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground.  Gomp walked casually up as the fraudster was lying on the ground, moaning.

“Told you,” Gomp told him.  “You could have come along easy-like.  But no, you had to do it the hard way.

“Fuck you,” Henderson said through gritted teeth.  “When my boss finds out about this… There won’t be any place you can get far enough away that Bolivar Taliaferro won’t be able to track you down.  He looks after his people.  You just landed in a whole bunch of trouble.”

“Shut up, already.”  Gomp kneeled, dragged Henderson’s hands behind his back and fasted on a pair of simple steel handcuffs.  He sensed someone walking up behind him.

“Well,” a feminine voice said.  “You beat me to that one, Gomp.”

Gomp grinned.  He looked over his shoulder at the speaker:  A tall, slim, leggy woman around forty, with a dancer’s grace and some of the hardest eyes Gomp had ever seen.  She wore a dull yellow coverall and had a red jacket tied by the sleeves around her narrow waist.

Gomp smiled at her.  “Sorry, Faye,” he said.  “You snooze, you lose.”

“This time,” the woman named Faye snapped.  “Next time you won’t be so lucky.”  She spun on a spike heel and walked off.

“Come on, sport,” Gomp said.  He stood and dragged Henderson to his feet.  “Let’s get you turned in.  It’s payday.”

“Damn bounty hunters,” Henderson griped.  “You should listen to me, man.  You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Whatever it is,” Gomp told him, “I don’t give a shit.  I’ve seen worse.  Now come on, on your feet.  Let’s go.”

***

A worried man with a worried mind

No one in front of me and nothing behind

There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne

Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes

I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies

I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose

Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

 

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed