As far as his sons went, the rotten apples didn’t fall far from the diseased tree. Both had come from different mothers, with both women supposedly ‘beam addicts. Rumor even had it that Gideon had pimped Junior’s mom out right up until her eighth month of pregnancy. The joke around town was that the dimple in Junior’s chin was really a permanent dent from him getting hit in the face by too many peters while he was still in the womb. Of course, nobody dared tell that joke around a Tuttle.
Both sons were functionally illiterate. They knew just enough reading and writing to operate a PDC for their illegal business dealings. Surprisingly, they were quite savvy in the ways of making a crooked point. Both were known to be violent men, but Rayford was an especially hard case. He was a notorious bully, cruel and ruthless, a sadistic man who took pleasure in hurting others.
In this part of the county, the Tuttle name was well known among law enforcement circles. Gideon and his boys had their hands in everything from drug dealing, bootlegging, and larceny to poaching and extortion. They were in and out of jail, and both sons had done at least one stint in zone prison. They were dangerous men who had no comprehension of the concept of compassion or mercy. Folks in these parts, who knew them, knew better than to cross them. They were a vindictive, vengeful lot, who seldom forgave and never forgot.
The three sat in the cab of their old ground-bound four-wheel drive internal-combustion-propulsion pickup. They had no use for hovercars, as Gideon was one of the small percentage of the population that floating on a cushion of air at high speeds made nauseous. They’d just finished checking some trotlines they’d put out downriver and had decided to stop in for a few drinks while they waited for it to get dark enough to spotlight deer on some secluded riverfront spaceport property.
“Think it might be worth somethin’?” Rayford asked, never taking his eyes off the vehicle. In his mind, honed sharp from years of criminal enterprising, he was already scheming what it would take to get inside.
“If’n it needs two armed guards, it’s probably worth somethin’, I reckon,” Gideon mused.
“Only one way to find out.” Rayford scratched the stubble on his jaw, looking to his father and then to his brother. Without saying another word, he opened the door and they all began climbing out.
***
The interior of the Blackwater was a homage to lost causes and tragic outlaws. On one wall, a giant Confederate battle flag hung. It might have been outlawed a century ago, but no one was going to try to take this particular one down; at least no one who was expecting to get out the door alive. The usual Confederate generals hung along either side of it, Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and of course Joe Wheeler, the local rebel patron saint. A portrait of Jesse James hung close by. Near the pool tables hung a life-size rendition of the famous photo of Alabama train robber Rube Burrow lying in his coffin, his Winchester and six-shooters on display with him. There was James Dean, Burt Reynolds as the Bandit, Skynyrd, and of course, the Man in Black, Johnny Cash.
A couple of recent additions to the walls had been the black flag with the interlocking silver five and golden three, a half-moon crescent forming where the two numbers merged. Most governments, on earth and off, had banned the flag of the Free and Independent Colonies of Lunar Five and Three. As such, it had become a symbol of defiance and rebellion among the outlaw, the demonstrator, and the disenfranchised.
Beside the flag, hung a picture of Commander Cody, the commanding general of the colonies’ unified militia forces during those brutal three weeks. It was probably the only picture in existence of the man. At least, the only one left. At one time, there might have been hundreds more of him, as a family man or husband, playing with his kids or enjoying a beer with his wife and friends. If they hadn’t been vaporized, they were now floating around space somewhere.
Nobody ever really knew his real name. His body was never recovered to identify. He was blasted into oblivion along with thousands of others, in revenge for his desperate decision to take the fight to Earth. The winners of wars write history, and the man would forever be vilified in official archive databanks as a heinous lunatic, mass murderer, and war criminal. But to people like the ones who frequented the Blackwater Bar, he was regarded in a much different light. He was a man who went down swinging, taking as many of his enemies with him as he could. In their opinion, if the governments of Earth had reigned in their hated and reviled agency, the Space Authority, he wouldn’t have had to resort to such desperate measures. To them, he was a man worthy of respect.
Besides, it was only Cleveland. It wasn’t as if he’d nuked Nashville.
It was just after dark when Tiger sauntered in. The DJ was playing Hank XIV’s latest hit, “All My Rowdy Kin are Dead and Gone.” Carina, the dancer on stage recognized him as he made his way past and blew him a kiss. She was one of the few dancers at the Blackwater who still had all her teeth and was actually quite an attractive young woman. The descendant of immigrants who’d fled Moscow during the Mafia Wars of the twenty-first
