Yes, Ollie hated spacers, but when it came to Tiger, it went way beyond that. It was personal.
He hated Tiger with a seething, burning, obsessive hatred most men reserved only for those they had at least come face-to-face with once in their lifetime. But Ollie had never laid eyes on Tanner Thomas. He wouldn’t know Tiger if he happened to be having drinks on a Saturday night down at the country club. Not that it mattered. He had no desire to come face to face with the man. He had no desire to say anything to him. He had no desire to physically best him in any sort of primitive masculine combat ritual. He wouldn’t lower himself to that level.
He just wanted to kill him.
And no, not in any high noon-style gunfight, squaring off in the middle of the street. Nothing that heroic. Nothing that dramatic. Shit like that didn’t happen in real life. He simply longed to put a surface-to-air pulse round up the rocket-driving redneck’s exhaust nozzle, blowing him to smithereens in midair. However, if he did survive that and crashed to the ground, burning to death trapped in the twisted wreckage of his infernal ship would do just fine too. He wasn’t picky.
Ollie Oglethorpe hadn’t built a seven thousand square-foot mansion for some white trash spacer to pop a thermal pulse on it whenever he felt like it. It was bad enough the bastard had blown every window out of the front of Ollie’s Mediterranean-style villa two years ago, cracking stucco and sheetrock as well, but the accompanying sonic boom had also traumatized poor Churchill. An English Bulldog with a distinguished pedigree, Churchill was a prized and pampered stud and a three-time best-in-show winner. At least, he was before being terrorized by Thomas and his cohorts. Now every time poor ol’ Churchill heard a clap of thunder he pissed the carpet and got diarrhea for days on end. This was compounded by the fact that he had become so frightened that he would no longer go outside on his own … not even to relieve himself. After ruining several rugs, a couple of rooms of carpet, and a thousand-point pair of golf shoes, Ollie’s patience was coming swiftly to an end.
He was fairly certain there wouldn’t be a jury in the Zone that would convict him if he ever got the chance to take out that piece of shit spacer. Justifiable homicide. At least that’s the way he saw it. After all the damage the bastard had done … and then only get a pissy … little … fine! Was there any justice left in this world?
It’s the unions now! People like Thomas get off lightly because they’re protected by the space unions. That’s all they’re good for! Protecting sorry, lazy, no-count, overpaid workers like him who are nothing but troublemakers. Even when Ollie had been informed that Tiger was no longer a member of the Pilot’s Guild, he refused to absolve that organization of its share of the blame. After all, it had created this rebellious environment, where common men and women had the balls to stand up and want a say in how they were paid and have the gall to demand to be treated with respect.
That’s what happens when you start letting the bleeding-heart liberals, socialists and the free-thinkers take over again! We had those vermin virtually wiped out for almost a century. He remembered his grandfather laughing about how back in the “good ol’ days” when this had still been the sovereign State of Alabama, you could ruin a white man’s life simply by calling him … what was that word? Oh yes … a Democrat!
Then we decide to go back to space and everything goes to shit! You got all these Yankees and God knows who else … coming in here to work those damned shipyards floating over our heads. Bringing in all their subversive, godless, heathen ideas. Next thing you know these dumbass rednecks around here that’ve been working all these years for a third of what they’re worth … now they wanna join unions and get paid more. Fucking up everybody’s bottom line! Don’t they know that shit cuts into the profit margins of a company? Don’t they know that’s less dividends for the stockholder? Less bonuses for the executives?
Insensitive, ungrateful, little pricks! Whatever happened to just being thankful you had a job? Wait ‘til the robots start taking their jobs. See how high and mighty they are then! Well, what goes around comes around. They have it coming. Starting with one Tanner B. Thomas!
For the last two years, he’d prepared. He’d became Block Captain of the Neighborhood Watch. He’d obsessively tracked Thomas’ whereabouts, keeping close tabs on him when he was in town. If that redneck wanted trouble, he’d be ready.
Of course, his family had said he was going a little too far when he bought the surplus anti-aircraft defense system and had it installed. He’d told everyone it had been for the intrusive drones, and that hadn’t been a complete untruth. Assholes from the Valley and elsewhere flew them over the mountain to invade the privacy of those who lived there. They hovered over swimming pools full of bikini-clad girls and women, peeked into bedroom windows, and recorded sensitive personal and business conversations. All to be played back on the ultranet, either to embarrass or humiliate, or even worse, sometimes as a tool of blackmail. Ollie had grown tired of the airborne pestering and his ground-to-air pulse cannons were soon making short work of the hovering peeping Toms.
But instead of being hailed a hero and guardian of the sanctity of the neighborhood, most of his neighbors seemed uneasy with the fact that this weird little man owned a military grade weapon system. Were such drastic measures really necessary? Let the ZiPs handle it, they said. He was only asking for more trouble, and it
