Angry Jasper-Two

The door swung open, banging loudly against the wall. Daylight splashed across the filthy floor. The stranger stopped just inside, his footfalls falling like two hollow exclamation points. The only thing missing was the clang of spurs, or someone playing an upright piano in the corner, some cowpokes backing anxiously away from the bar and a rabble of done-up dancehall girls in low cut tops and frilly dresses. Cliché, indeed!

The sound startled the proprietor, half dozing behind the bar, sort of leaning back against the cracked mirror, his arms folded tightly at his chest. He was a sturdy soul, with more neck than shoulders, scratching out credits from dregs in a place not fit for the living. Hell, this place would have been sacrilegious for the dead too. The bar keep’s white button shirt was stained in spots with rust-red blood from ancient dozen scrapes. It was thread-bare and a shade too tight. All the blood was somebody else’s. A black apron was tight below the bowl of his belly. The telltale contours of a set of brass knuckles was conspicuous in one of the apron pockets.

The barkeep was up in an instant, a well-used aluminum baseball bat raised in the air, as if both actions were second nature, the way most folks might wake with a yawn. Several thick blood-matted hairs curled from places at the end of the bat. It wasn’t much of a way to welcome customers, but by the looks of things the stranger wasn’t there for the hospitality. Besides, earth was no longer a place for useless courtesies. If a body wanted to be pampered and gushed over there were plenty of those snooty-type digs scattered across the solar system.

His eyes narrowed on the stranger, whose tattered cape and dusty garments were whipped by the broiling Texas wind. It was a man. That much he could tell, the stranger’s face partly hidden by a scarf and dark goggles. One arm and black-gloved hand was still outstretched from shoving open the door. The other arm remained beneath the cape, no doubt resting on a weapon. Behind him, at the end of the desolate and steadily darkening street, a small gray ship wavered unsteadily like a drunkard a few feet off the ground,. There were odd mechanical banging and clunking sounds that coincided with the ship’s errant dips and sways.

The stranger tugged the scarf and goggles down under a square jaw. Ragged scars concentrated around the man’s left eye. That eye was all together different from the right. It was a cheap mechanical implant, no doubt the consequence of a botched procedure or some godforsaken Jovian clinic, veritable meat factories for freighter trash or the rough-necked sods working Helium and Methane farms. The mechanism behind the eye whirred annoyingly, though only the stranger could hear it. The sound reverberated in his skull and gave him the most awful migraines. At the moment it merely pissed him off.

The fugitive at the end of the bar looked up slowly. A line of drool oozed from his lip and pooled beside the empty vodka bottle. If there was murder in his eyes before, there was hunger for it now. He had dined on the liver of one bounty hunter, and incinerated two more. One poor schmuck he had pulled the fingers and toes from one by one. That done he moved on to various other appendages until there was nothing left to remove. He took another swig of booze and slamming the bottle down hard on the bar, banging like a gunshot as he did.

The gnarled bartender was already sweating bullets between them. He lowered the bat and sighed heavily. There wasn’t much chance this would turn out good. He did the only thing he could at that moment and poured three shots of bourbon. He downed the first one and gave another to the fugitive. The fugitive gave him a curious look.

“Go ahead,” said the bartender, setting down the last shot in front of the stranger, who was now standing at the bar.. “Probably gonna be your last.”

The stranger slammed the shot without taking his eyes off the fugitive. He sort of shivered as the bitter spirits ran through him from head to toe.

“Martian,” he said low, recognizing the origin of the rot gut instantly. He’d lost count of the number of hangovers inflicted by cheap Martian Bourbon, each the consequence of a busted heart.

“Imported,” the bartender said.

“My favorite,” he smirked dryly.

“Rot gut,” snorted the fugitive.

“I ain’t pretentious.”

“Gonna trash the place, ain’t ya?” The barkeep almost seemed to take it in stride. Not happily, but in stride.

The stranger nodded respectfully to the fugitive. “Depends on him.”

“In case you’re wrong, got a name so I know where to send the body? Or what’s left of it?”

The stranger started to answer, then smiled and said. “Jasper. Angry jasper. And just save my shootin’ hand. The only part of me that’s worth a damn.”

And that was stretching things. There wasn’t a part of Jasper worth a damn without her, and God only knew where the hell in the solar system she was, not to mention with whom. She was the cause of his busted heart, well, from Jasper’s perspective anyway. Not that any of that mattered much now. Which wasn’t to say he was looking forward to getting bent in two or pounded like a rusty nail by the fugitive. Wasn’t open to question any longer that there would be a fight, only what the outcome would be.

Jasper had a twisting feeling in his gut that this would, like the bartender said, turn out good. Seemed a damn shame he might die in some crappy bar, in a crappy Texas town on a crappy little planet without seeing her one last time. He looked past the bartender and straight in the dark and dangerous eyes of the fugitive.

“Friends call me Jazz. You can call me Angry.”

Jazz’ eyes narrowed on the monster across the bar. Didn’t matter a wit what he was wanted for, only that he was wanted by someone willing to pay good money. This time it was the Corporation, but it might as well have been anyone willing to pay the right number of credits. Jazz had worked for some pretty unsavory types over the years, tracking crooked business associates, two-timing tramps, punks skipping out on mob debts and all manner of scum all across the solar system. Wasn’t a place he wouldn’t go and a man he would fight. Didn’t make Jazz the most loved guy, but it made him one of the most sought after. Staring down the slack-jawed mope across the bar, Jazz looked at it like he was hunting a rabid predator, nothing more and nothing less.

“Welp,” Jasper licked his chops, tasting the bourbon again. “Best not to put this off any longer.”

Truth of it was Jasper didn’t have to do this in the bar. He could have just as easily waited the guy out, He could have waited till the fugitive stumbled out or got tossed into the street by the bartender, which by the size of him seemed like the least likely possibility. That would have been the easy way, and that just wasn’t Jazz. He was a Twenty-second Century man in a Twenty-fourth Century world. Out of date, some folks would say, but Jasper called himself traditional. Better folks would call him freighter trash, the son of a Grinder mechanic, those behemoths pushing asteroids and comets from planet to planet.

He looked around the bar, sort of taking in the arena of battle, as it were. Jasper was asking for a whole lot of pain picking a fight in here. There wasn’t much room to maneuver. He’d need every bit of space he could get to take this pug down. Even then he was sure to take a good pounding. Not that he cared. A healthy dose of physical hurt would go a long way to soothing the pain in his heart. Bitch!

“Come a long way, Bounty hunter,” drooled the fugitive. He grabbed the bottle and squeezed it in those mighty hands. It shattered there with a muffled crack. A thin line of blood ran from the enclosed palm, mixing with the drool and the vodka and the cigarette butts. He grinned a filthy grin, unconcerned by the ragged lacerations to his palm.

“Drug me a long ways, you sad sack son-bitch,” Jasper moved away from the bar, stepping aside near the middle of the room.

The fugitive spit. It was a massive amount of brownih liquid that made an audible splat on the floor near Jazz’ feet. He curiously eyed the blood now pouring from a dozen deep cuts in his palm. It was like he was looking at someone else’s hand, not his own. He chuckled and smeared the mess down the front of his shirt.

“Bout five minutes they’re gonna drag you away by your heels, bounty hunter, that is if there's anything left worth dragging away.”

As the mutt stood Jasper’s nuts sort of recoiled into his body. The guy wasn’t just huge, he was a freakin’ monster! That misshapen, oversized gourd he called a head nearly touched the ceiling. It would have been a step forward in the evolutionary chain to call the guy a mutant- a hybrid!

“Ain’t armed,” he said, swinging his head from side to side. Sort of the same motion an angry elephant makes before charging. “I ain’t going quietly either.”

Jasper drew the weapon from beneath his cape. It was an ARP-21, and looked rather like one of those revolvers from the Old West. But it was a lot bigger and a hell of a lot more powerful. The Arrayed Resistance Pulse-21 pistol fired a mercury-encased plasma round that changed shape and density depending on the target. The power meter, just behind the barrel, came on bright and strong. If there was one detail he attended to religiously, it was maintaining his weapon. As for the rest of his life, eh, that was another story.

Jazz pointed the ARP squarely at the fugitive’s broad-as-a-barn chest. He knew it was going to take a clean shot to the heart or head to bring the guy down. Anything less gave the hybrid a fighting chance of tearing Jazz limb from limb. Of course, a head shot was out of the question. That is if Jazz intended to get paid. The guy snorted, staring down the barrel of the ARP. He was completely un-phased. Jasper even thought he saw a grin crease the guy’s slimy lips.