Six Guns & Spaceships

By Pro Se Press

The Wild West and The Final Frontier Collide in the latest digest anthology from Pro Se Productions- SIX GUNS & SPACESHIPS!
A new sheriff tries to tame a lawless colony in the middle of an alien blood feud! A group of bandits plan to pull off the greatest train robbery ever! What appears to be a simple salvage job erupts into a desperate battle for an incredible prize! Join Best Selling Author Philip Athans, noted New Pulp Author Joel Jenkins, and writer Robbie Lizhini as they saddle up and fly high with three quick drawing, rocket blasting tales!
"Six Guns and Spaceship is a charming book that puts you right there alongside Doc Holliday, Doc Savage, and Doc Smith." Mike Resnick, Five Time Hugo Award Winner
Featuring an awesome cover by Marc Guerrero, cover design and print formatting by Sean Ali, and ebook formatting by Russ Anderson, SIX GUNS & SPACESHIPS, edited by Morgan Minor and Nikki-Nelson Hicks is a guaranteed wild ride to the stars and beyond! From Pro Se Productions!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2013

Pro Se Press

Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

Book preview

SIX GUNS & SPACESHIPS

Copyright © 2013, Pro Se Productions

Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

The stories in this publication are fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Rendezés copyright © 2013 Phillip Athans

Heist in Hyperspace copyright © 2013 Robbie Lizhini

Shootout in Hanger 2112 copyright © 2013 Joel Jenkins

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RENDEZÉS

by Phillip Athans

HEIST IN HYPERSPACE

by Robbie Lizhini

SHOOTOUT IN HANGAR 2112

by Joel Jenkins

RENDEZÉS

By Phillip Athans

Well, it was hot. That much was sure.

The second the hatch started grinding down, opening the back of the lander, the air hit Dexter Willis in the face as though the ship had opened up onto a blast furnace. Sure, Dex had been on hotter planets before this one, but he couldn’t remember feeling heat like that on his bare skin. He thought about rolling the helmet up from the collar of his smartsuit, but when the descending ramp revealed the bare face of a fellow human, he decided to leave it down. No sense greeting the locals looking like he couldn’t take the heat.

Dex squinted against the brilliant daylight. The surrounding territory didn’t look much different than it had from the windows of the lander as they’d fallen from orbit: bleached tan and white sand, a little scrub here and there, and some dead-brown mountains off in the far distance. The town was a good three clicks off the edge of the landing field—Dex couldn’t bring himself to call it a starport—and from a distance it didn’t really even look like a town. Before Dex could count the buildings, he noticed the casket.

The man waiting for the ship stood next to a box made of dull wood, rough and hastily-constructed.

You’re the new sheriff? the man asked, his voice low and dry and rough.

Dexter Willis, Dex said with a nod. You’re the old sheriff?

The man spat something onto the ground. It left a sickly green-brown stain on the sand-blasted concrete. He looked down at the casket next to him with hooded eyes, and shook his head.

Dex touched his left sleeve and called up the file he’d been given before leaving Hathor Central. Sam Werthingtan, he read. That’s not you?

That’s Samantha in there, the man said, glancing down at the casket again. I’m taking her off this wretched, backwards-ass ball. And if you had half a brain, you wouldn’t walk down that ramp.

Dex swallowed. He didn’t want to put anything in the face of a man who’d lost someone important to him, but his first answer was to walk down the ramp to stand face-to-face with the taller, dirtier, sadder local.

If I ran away from every ball I’ve been warned off of... Dex said, leaving it at that.

The man looked him in the eye, sizing him up. Dex smiled at him.

Suit yourself, the man said finally.

How did she die? Dex asked.

The man cringed, but put a hand on the casket as though to steady himself. What does anybody die of out here that isn’t the heat?

Dex shrugged, then stepped aside as the lander’s crew brushed past him. With the help of a couple old robots they made short work unloading the contents of the lander’s cargo bay. One of the loaders moved to push the casket up the ramp. He paused to look at the man, who stepped back, nodded, and watched as the casket was wheeled into the dark confines of the lander.

A robot placed a duffel bag on the ground next to Dex.

Last chance to reconsider, the man said.

I signed a piece of paper, Mister...

Werthingtan, the man replied.

Dex nodded, frowning, and said, I signed a piece of paper, Mr. Werthingtan. Gotta at least try.

Werthingtan shrugged, reached into a pocket, and took out a little piece of metal. He tossed it to Dex and without another word, followed his wife’s dead body up the ramp and into the lander.

Dex watched him go then looked down at the warm metal in his hand, thin aluminum in the shape of a seven-pointed star. On one side was a pin, the other a single engraved word: SHERIFF. Dex wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it, so he put it in his pocket.

You’ll wanna clear the pad, one of the crewmen said from just inside the lander. We don’t... um... stick around here long.

Dex looked around. He was alone on the landing pad with a stack of shipping crates marked KEEP FROZEN that no one had come to collect, and the single duffel bag that contained everything he owned.

The lander spat out a blast of steam and its engines grumbled and clanked.

Dex grabbed up the bag, slung it over his left shoulder, and walked to the edge of the pad where sat two little wooden shacks. Over the door of one of them was a hand-painted sign that read simply: RENDEZÉS. On the dirty glass of the single window next to the slowly swinging, squeaky wooden door was a sticker with the logo of the Neworld & Black Gulf Company. He walked fast, but even then he was just barely far enough away from the lander that he could stay on his feet as it rose into the blazing blue-green sky amid a tornado of stinging sand and pebbles.

The material the lander kicked up rained back down for a few seconds but by then Dex had slipped into the station shack. A dirty, unshaven man sat with his feet up on the room’s single wooden desk. He had his hands on the back of his head and leisurely chewed a stalk of some kind of rough plant. He looked at Dex with hooded red eyes and drawled, Howdy there, stranger. You must be the new lawman.

Dex nodded and said, That’s me. Can I get a ride into town?

Nope, the station agent replied, his voice revealing only the slightest trace of amusement. You can wait, I guess. Slim’ll be along presently.

How long is ‘presently’?

Well, now, the man replied, that can mean one or two different things to ol’ Slim.

No one’s coming to pick that up? Dex asked, tipping his head in the direction of the stack of cargo containers.

Slim, the man replied. Presently.

Well, then, can I walk there?

Sure, the man replied. I do. When I need to.

Which way?

The man tipped his head a little to the left and said, Only one road in or outta this place.

Dex nodded, forced a smile, and left without another word. He took to the dusty track, and winced at the heat. He couldn’t feel even a trace of breeze. Though his smartsuit kept him cool, he felt the skin on the top of his ears start to burn. The duffel bag was already too heavy, starting to bite into his shoulder where the prosthetic arm had been grafted onto him. It had healed a few weeks ago, but still nagged him a little.

Dex didn’t like to think about how he’d lost the arm, and how he’d had it replaced wasn’t much prettier. But he’d start his new job whole enough for a farming outpost hanging off the ass end of the Neworld Frontier.

As he made his way down the road toward the little town, Dex recognized a few more scattered signs of civilization. On the right side of the road, the gently-rolling brown, tan, white, and gray landscape was dotted with clusters of little poured-concrete domes. On the other side, cubes of stone bricks. Thin wisps of black smoke rose from some of the brick cubes, rising straight up into the sky undisturbed by wind until they just faded away. As still and hot as it was, it felt good to be outside. He smelled sand and dust, and something vaguely loamy that seemed out of place.

Something told him he maybe should have unpacked his weapon, but why bother? This place looked dead, and he’d only been hired to preserve the law in the planet’s single settlement.

After a kilometer or so he’d grown so accustomed to the only sound being his boots scraping across the gravel road that when something chirped behind him, Dex practically jumped out of his skin. He turned and found an ugly little creature crossing the road behind him, apparently as oblivious of his presence as he’d been of its.

The thing walked on two thin legs ending in feet that looked like suction cups. It was covered in wrinkly olive-drab skin dotted with swirling patterns of little bumps. It didn’t have anything like arms or wings and its tiny head was just big enough for two dull black eyes and a mouth at the end of something like a trunk or... Dex had to think a bit for the word: proboscis. It made the queer little chirping sound again, tottering on its way.

Why did the whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is cross the road? Dex whispered to himself.

He turned and started on his way again, hesitating just a step or two in order to allow three more of the little things to cross the road in front of him. Dex could have picked one up and cradled it under his arm.

He had gone maybe another half a kilometer, the little town in front of him revealing a bit more detail, but no traffic or activity of any kind, when a whole flock of the little suction-cup-footed things flooded across the road in front of him, forcing him to stop. None of the animals seemed to note his presence, and there was nothing about them that Dex found the least bit threatening.

The sparse dry scrub that ran through the otherwise desolate landscape like veins also came close to the road at that point, and Dex watched as a few of the animals nibbled at the short needles that dotted the spindly branches.

Dex stepped over one of the things—just then deciding to call them chickenoids—then went to step over another, when something rattled the bushes to his left and scraped against the gravel.