M

  II

  M

  II

  Knife Fight at Olathe-5

  Prequel Short-Story to the Star Lawyers Series

  by

  Tom Shepherd

  Olathe-5 Mining Colony

  7,267 light years from Terra

  Saturday, 8 November 3102 C.E.

  “Which one of you sons-of-bitches is Tyler Noah Matthews?”

  The cantina hushed and every face turned to the burly figure who blocked the street door. His Matthews Interstellar Industries coveralls were dark gray, the style and color typically worn by asteroid miners. The Company logo—capital M resting atop two capital I’s—was stitched across the breast pocket. A large, sheathed knife hung by his side. Miners carried the deadly tool for shipboard chores, to trim canvas bracings that separated layers of rubble suspended in anti-grav nets, or to kill alien vermin that slipped aboard during ore scoops and escaped detection by the bio-filters.

  “I heard Tyler Noah Matthews is in town.” His blue eyes swept the chairs and tables, fists balled at his side. “Is he in here?”

  Ivan the Russian bartender looked up from pulling a wood tap to fill a frosty mug with beer but said nothing.

  A lanky young man with sun bleached hair swiveled his barstool. “Does he owe you money?”

  “You cain’t be Tyler Noah Matthews. You’re too young.”

  “Depends. Are you looking for my father, or me?”

  “You’re a smartass, Mr. Matthews.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Tyler said with a little smile.

  At the adjacent barstool, J.B. Matthews rotated toward the big man. The elder Matthews brother had dark brown hair and was a head shorter than Tyler. They were seldom identified as siblings by anyone who didn’t recognize them from Company publications.

  Tyler attempted to cool the confrontation. “What can I do for you, Mister…?”

  “Winther,” Ivan called from the forest of beer taps. “Bertie Winther.”

  “Mr. Winther, I see you work for M-double-I,” Tyler continued pleasantly. “And I get the feeling you’re not a happy employee. I’m a Company attorney. If you have a legitimate grievance, I’ll pass it along to the right people.”

  Bertie spoke through clenched teeth. “You damned lawyers. Talk, talk, talk. Don’t do nothin’ for nobody.”

  “You’re talking. I’m listening.” Tyler slipped off the stool and leaned backward, propping both elbows on the bar.

  “I left a wife and baby back on Terra. Come out here to the Olathe system to work a mining frigate. They told me, ‘Six months laser-drilling the ‘roids for rare metals at the edge of Terran space, an’ you’ll be rich.’ Total bullshit.” Bertie’s eyes narrowed. “That was five years ago. I ain’t rich.”

  “So, why do you stay?” Tyler regretted the question immediately and cursed himself for falling into cross-examination mode. This isn’t the courtroom. Keep it up, that guy will hit you with something harder than a contempt citation.

  “You think I want to stay?”

  “No, sir,” J.B. said soothingly. “I’m sure my younger brother knows you want to get home to your wife and child. Anybody would.”

  “Why’d you hafta come out here?” Bertie’s voice broke with emotion. “Ain’t we sufferin’ enough? Didja wanna to report us to Daddy?”

  “I’m Jeremiah Matthews. We caught a ride to Olathe-5 on the C. C. Wollongong. Company legal business, nothing more.”

  “Mining contracts. Boring stuff.” Tyler took a cautious step toward the troubled giant. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy.”

  “Unhappy?” the big man sneered. “Your Company works me like a slave, but I ain’t never earned enough to pay off my outbound passage to this damned rock-farm star system, let alone go home. Everything I buy is shipped here from Terra. It’s expensive. I owe the Company most of my pay before it’s in my hands. Hell, yes, I’m unhappy.”

  “Zatk’nis,” the Russian bartender snorted. “You drank your leftover pay, Bertie.”

  “You shut up, Ivan!” He turned sharply to Tyler. “I gotta get back to Terra. So, I stole this little ship—”

  “Stop there.” J.B. hopped off his barstool. “As an attorney, I caution you against public confessions of guilt.”

  Bertie drew the long, glinting knife at his hip, and the blade hissed as it slid from the scabbard. “I didn’t come here to confess.” He took a step toward the younger Matthews brother.

  Tyler swallowed, hard. He was nearly as tall as the angry man but had no weapon, and his lanky frame was no match against a beefy brute with a wicked knife. He felt like an unarmed matador facing a tormented bull. A single kinetic round would drop the threat in place, but frontier towns in the Terran Commonwealth had those pesky “no blasters” policies to save lives in situations exactly like his. Except Winther found the loophole, a killing tool that was part of his workaday equipment.

  “Look, Bertie—may I call you Bertie?” Tyler backed away from the approaching steel point until he bumped into the bar. “Why don’t we sit down, have a few drinks, discuss your options?”

  “I don’t have no options, Mister Matthews. I’m gonna die on this empty planet. And so are you.”

  Bertie lunged for Tyler, but J.B. struck the outstretched arm at the elbow joint with a vicious chop. The blade clattered across the stone floor. Bertie screamed and grasped his shattered limb. Tyler side-stepped down the bar, away from the howling giant, amazed at how quickly his brother delivered the counter-blow.

  J.B. was ordinarily a gentle soul, a former student for the Catholic priesthood and Trappist monk. He also studied Asian martial arts, and had thick, powerful arms and a bodybuilder’s torso. And, like all Matthews kinfolk, he became intensely protective when someone threatened the Family.

  Local police burst into the cantina and roughly took the injured man into custody. Bertie wept from the pain, but the constables ignored his agony. Tyler suspected the Colony cops recognized them as sons of the wealthiest and most powerful man in the Terran Commonwealth, members of the Family who owned most of this star system.

  “Are you gentlemen injured in any way?” the senior policeman said.

  “We’re fine, Lieutenant Kleiza.” J.B. read the name and rank from the gold tag on his sand colored uniform. “Be careful with Mr. Winther. I had to break his arm.”

  Kleiza smirked. “He’s already on work-release, pending trial for grand theft. What did you do this time, Bertie?”

  “I didn’t do nothin.”

  Tyler raised a hand. “My client refuses to answer any questions, Lieutenant.”

  J.B. gawked. “Your client?”

  “Well, now I’m confused,” Kleiza said. “I’m hovering down the street in the skimmer, checking how my officers are handling the usual rowdy customers, when the cantina security system alerts me that Bertie—”

  “Mr. Winther,” Tyler corrected.

  “Excuse me. When I learn his royal pain-in-the-ass Mr. Winther has triggered a two-alarm 10-31 with weapon engaged. I have the video. Now, Bertie, do you still deny you were trying to kill young Mr. Matthews?”

  “I repeat,” Tyler said, “Mr. Winther is not answering questions. Nor will we be pressing charges.”

  J.B. put a hand on Tyler’s shoulder. “We won’t?”

  “Roll with me, Bro.”

  “Well, you’re a better man than I am,” Lieutenant Kleiza said. “But, under Olathe Colony law, I don’t need you to press charges. Acts of violence or attempted violence, coupled with evidentiary support, conveys the authority to arrest and prosecute. So, Bertie Winther, you are under arrest for attempted murder. We’ll add that to your previous offense, theft of a starship.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Bertie, shut up,” Tyler said. “If you want to see your wife and kid sometime before the Universe burns out, let me do the talking. Answer no questions.”

  “Yes, sir.” The big man lowered his head, avoiding Tyler’s eyes. “Sorry, sir.”

  J.B. shrugged and joined the home team. “Lieutenant, can we assume you’ll take our client to a hospital and have the arm mended before we see him again?”

  “Like most miners, Bertie doesn’t have insurance. He’ll have to wait for the free clinic tomorrow morning.”

  “Take him to the Matthews Medical Center,” Tyler said. “Tell them my father will pay all bills. I want the finest doctor in the Colony.”

  “Sir, it’s after midnight. All the good doctors are in bed.”

  “They work for us. Wake them up.”

  “I’ll pass along your request,” Kleiza said.

  “You aren’t hearing me, Lieutenant,” Tyler said. “That wasn’t a request.”

  “Of course. Understood, sir.” Kleiza ordered his officers to place Bertie gently in a police skimmer and take the injured prisoner to Matthews Medical on the sunrise side of the city.

  Tyler asked the Lieutenant to stay a moment and told Ivan to clear the bar of customers and retire to the back room. When they were alone, Tyler addressed the Colonial constable. “Can you disengage all recording devices for a private consultation?”

  “Certainly. Your client has Terran rights to privacy.” He touched the bracer pad on his lower arm.

  “Are we offline?”

  “Yes, sir. Completely detached from the net.”

  “Okay, friend. What will it take to make this go away?”

  J.B.’s face drained of color. “Lieutenant, may I have a moment to confer with my co-counsel?”



  “Of course.”

  J.B. dragged Tyler away from the bar to the farthest corner of the cantina. He spoke softly. “Tyler, I don’t think we should go down this road.”

  “They taught me at law school,” Tyler said, “it’s important to explore every possible avenue to settle disputes out of court.”

  “Settlement for a reasonable figure is optimal in a civil suit. But this is a criminal offense,” J.B. said. “When you make a cash offer to ‘settle’ criminal matters out of court, they call it a bribe.”

  “I must’ve missed that lecture. Do you have another suggestion?”

  “How about the rule of law? We go to court and get this thrown out.”

  “How about we turn ourselves into unicorns and fly away to rainbow land?” Tyler said dryly. “They have him threatening and attacking me on admissible recordings. We go to court, he goes to jail for at least ten years. Next, he finds a non-Company attorney to sue you for breaking his arm. M-double-I will settle—we always settle. His wife gets a fat paycheck and eventually finds another husband, while Bertie rots in a cell, seven thousand light years from his ex-wife and child. Your witness.”

  J.B. sighed. “Life is a vale of sorrows.”

  “Stop quoting your monastery training. You hated it.”

  “Tyler, think about this,” J.B. said. “Erasing a felony by committing enough crimes to get us mind-wiped?”

  “Bertie got screwed by our Company. The least we can do is spring him and send him home.”

  “But if Father finds out—”

  “Dad’s lucky I don’t sue his ass for violations of the Fair Treatment and Compensation Act.”

  J.B. mumbled the “Hail Mary” in Latin.

  Tyler laughed. “You’re a tough rascal, Bro. I’ve seen you in action. Let’s get back to the bar and corrupt the nice policeman.”

  J.B. hurried after him. “The Lieutenant is a law enforcement professional. I really don’t think—”

  “How much, Kleiza?” Tyler repeated.

  The Lieutenant cleared his throat. “I think two hundred thousand Galactic Credits, Central Bank of Rahjen, should cover any incidental expenses which the Colonial Police may have incurred during this unfortunate misunderstanding.”

  J.B.’s mouth dropped open. “There is no way we could—”

  “One hundred thousand,” Tyler countered. “And I won’t tell my father about our… transaction.”

  “One fifty, and I’ll throw in the jacked-up scout ship your new friend confiscated from the wrecking yard. If she disappears, the other case against Bertie is a nonstarter.”

  “Scout ship?” Tyler smiled broadly.

  “Two-seater. Somebody parked her at the small craft starport about four years ago and never came back. No registration found. Scheduled for cannibalization and scrapping until Bertie loaded her aboard his Company mining barge. Hell, for all I know, she might even fly.”

  “I’ve wanted a small ship to do a little weekend exploring.” My asshole father refused. But the cops don’t need that information.

  Lieutenant Kleiza shrugged. “Do we have an agreement?”

  “Yep,” Tyler extended a hand. “We’ll put the one-fifty on Dad’s expense account, and this conversation never happened.”

  “Agreed.” The policeman shook Tyler’s hand. “I’ll cut Bertie loose and send you the paperwork for the Sioux City.”

  Tyler frowned. “The what?”

  “According to a brass plate inside the rear ramp, that’s the name of your junkyard scout ship. You can call it Macaroni, for all I care.”

  “No, I’m a lawyer. The Sioux City will do fine.”

  Kleiza laughed. “Cute. Hope she flies. You’ll need to find a new computer system. It’s been cannibalized.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. M-double-I owns plenty of maintenance facilities. She’ll fly.”

  They discussed the details briefly, including passage back to Terra for Bertie when the mammoth Wollongong departed for home port. A few minutes later the Lieutenant’s hovercar drifted down the street as Kleiza returned to patrol duty. Ivan reopened the cantina and customers trickled in to drink after midnight shift. J.B. went to the bar and ordered cold beer.

  “Ty, explain to me why we just spent so much Company money to save somebody who tried to kill you?”

  “The Family business screwed him. Recruiters know how hard it is to find good workers for asteroid mining in deep space, so they lie about big profits after short tours on frontier worlds. Bertie had a right to be pissed. We owe him a trip home.”

  J.B. shook his head. “He attacked you with a blade the size of a machete.”

  “Hey, you’re the religious,” Tyler said. “Isn’t there still something in Catholicism about forgiving your neighbor?”

  “In the heart, yes. But I’m not sure Jesus would have bribed Pontius Pilate.”

  “Probably not.” Tyler laughed. “People used to say the Jews killed Jesus, but look at the evidence. It was the Italians.”

  “Now you’re the biblical scholar?”

  “No, but if I’d been the Lord’s attorney, I could’ve gotten his case reduced to misdemeanor disturbing the peace and time served.”

  “Don’t you think that might have thwarted God’s plans?”

  Tyler smiled. “I’m always ready to resist the tyranny of Daddy. Maybe Jesus would’ve hired me to sue the Man Upstairs.”

  “Sigmund Freud wrote a shelf of books about you, Ty.”

  “Let’s have another round. Then I want to see my new piece of junk scout ship, the Sioux City. Maybe I’ll call her Suzie.”

 

 

  Tom Shepherd, Knife Fight at Olathe-5

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