Space Deputy (Interstellar Sheriff Book 1) Read online

“Is she yours?”

  “Is she single?”

  “Are you off the market, Sheriff?”

  No one had a law-related question.

  Thelma tugged at her beret. Perhaps her decision to alter her utility suits, and Lon’s assistance in doing so, were ideas she should have turned down. Her boring gray utility suit was now a deep, dark forest green with silver piping at the front and back yokes, that, along with the newly tailored design, served to show off her figure. The beret was a matching green with a silver deputy badge clipped to the left side. She’d chosen a beret as her version of Max’s Western hat. When she wore it, it would signal to her, and to those who paid attention, that she was on duty and on official business.

  “Deputy Bach, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?”

  The open channel fell absolutely silent as the frontier region that was Max’s territory waited for Thelma’s first words.

  “Hi, everyone. My name is Thelma Bach. I’m originally a Rock Sector citizen. I grew up on an asteroid mining claim, so don’t even think of trying to slide claim jumping or tonnage fraud past me.”

  “Challenge accepted,” a deep male voice chuckled.

  “Shut up, Sam,” a woman replied.

  Lon was flashing up names, but Thelma kept her focus on the camera. Names and identities could come later. For now, she had to lay out her credentials and her own demand for respect. She wasn’t going to hide behind Max.

  “I recently graduated from the Galactic Justice academy.” She waited out the jeers, whistles and catcalls. “I graduated valedictorian and they assigned me to the Saloon Sector.”

  “Rock Sector, you said?” An older man’s voice. He sounded a lot like Harry, rough but not unkind, and not to be hurried. “That’d be right. Show up the core worlders and they’ll exile you.”

  “And inadvertently do me a favor.” Thelma smiled for her audience.

  “Marry me,” two guys moaned.

  “The frontier is a place of opportunity, and I intend to make the most of mine. But you’ll do well to keep in mind three things about me.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “One, I am a Rock Sector citizen who survived seven years of education on Serene and beat the core worlders at their own game. I’m smart. Second, my big brother is a former Star Marine who served with Max, with Sheriff Smith,” she purposely corrected herself. She wanted people to understand her relationship to Max. She wasn’t his girlfriend or toy, but she was someone he’d protect.

  There were a few mutters over the comms as people got the message.

  “Star Marines don’t let their sisters grow up weak. So, I’m tough. Thirdly…” She paused. She was taking a chance with this third point, but it was important to establish her independence from Max as well as from the Galactic Justice service. “I’m single.”

  “Woohoo!”

  “I’m also picky,” she added. “But I’ve had seven years of focusing on my education. Now, it’s time to consider other things.”

  “Darlin’, you can—”

  Max frowned and hit a switch. “Focus, people. Deputy Bach has introduced herself. We’re moving on to claim disputes. Any tensions?”

  She and Max should have anticipated what happened next. Everyone and his space monkey had a question concerning claims, claim jumping, stake bursts and surveyor runs, and they all wanted Thelma to answer them. They were testing her.

  Weeks of diligent study under Lon’s tutoring proved its worth. She answered flawlessly, consulting her comms unit for the occasional finer point of law, but also demonstrating that she knew and accepted the pragmatic enacting of those laws on the frontier.

  “Darlene said she was cute.”

  “Moron. Darlene said she was acute.”

  Thelma laughed.

  The nine hour Open Office Day was both exhausting and endless, and over too fast. There was an adrenaline rush in verbally sparring with the citizens whom she served.

  At the end of it, Max flicked the switch, closing the open comms.

  Thelma slumped backward in the hard office chair. “That was…intense.” She pulled off her beret and dropped it on the desk, over her comms unit. The unit was already blowing up with messages to her deputy account. She’d be responding to the greetings and questions for hours, but not tonight. Tomorrow, she’d be able to log those hours as work time since they were all messages to her official account. Still, she’d separate the messages into those she’d reply to for purposes of generating general goodwill, and those senders who she’d cultivate as contacts suitable for an information broker.

  “A beer, then dinner.” Max had felt the strain of the day, too. He dropped his hat on his vacated chair and strode past her end of the desk. He paused a moment in the doorway. “You did well shutting down any rumors of fraternization between us.”

  His comment caught her mid-yawn. “Uh, yeah.” She gave her shoulders a shake as she straightened from her slouch. “Rumors like that would hurt both our careers.”

  “Out here?” He arched a disbelieving eyebrow. “You’re thinking like a core worlder. The regulations have to be different on the frontier. In an emergency, a sheriff has to be able to deputize his or her family members. There’s nothing on the regs against you and me being involved.” He gave a wry grin. “Now, your brother Joe, he’s a whole different reason against you and me getting together, no matter how much being with you would humanize my reputation. A man doesn’t mess with his friend’s baby sister.”

  She was still coping with that bit of male wisdom when he sauntered off. And what did he mean by humanize his reputation?

  Chapter 10

  Thelma snapped her head back out the reach of her opponent’s flying kick, then ducked in to take out the man’s legs. He’d overcommitted to his attack. He fell and Thelma danced back. Technically, this was a training bout.

  “Get up, Syd.” The mauveinne scoring the bout hissed at his man, spread-eagled on the mat.

  “Why?” the guy asked plaintively. “So she can knock me down again? Also, ow.”

  Thelma grinned. Since her opponent had yielded, she extended a hand and helped him up.

  The mauveinne’s narrow face elongated further in embarrassment. He was the owner of the dojo they stood in. “My cousin said you were good. She’s always been one for understatement.”

  “I enjoy training with your students,” Thelma said, returning courtesy for courtesy, and not divulging that her fighting ability had improved immensely under Harry’s supervision. The mauveinne the dojo master mentioned had been one of Thelma’s sparring partners on the Lazy Days on the journey out from Serene, a journey that seemed far more distant than the few weeks in-between. But those had been busy weeks.

  Max had given Thelma four days’ leave after they’d transferred their bandit prisoners into the care of the city jail guards.

  For three days she’d spent most of her daylight hours, and a fair few of the night ones, planetside. She kept changes of clothes in her broom cupboard office in the Sheriff’s Office at the spacedock, and only returned to the Lonesome to sleep. Parties, training bouts, sight-seeing and a little judicious shopping kept her fully occupied.

  The invitations had poured in after her Open Office introduction to the Zephyr territory. She didn’t take offense when it became obvious that the hosts of the many parties she was invited to saw her as a means of accessing Max.

  She’d come to comprehend why he’d mentioned humanizing his reputation. On Zephyr, Sheriff Max Smith was more legend than man, and the people in his territory liked it that way. With all the uncertainties of life on the frontier, Max had carved himself a position as one of the stable pillars of life. He made people feel safe.

  They were also curious about him. Correction, make that insanely curious about him and his spaceship.

  To all of the questions, Thelma returned a standard apology. “I’m sorry. Max is my boss and my host. I won’t talk about him or his home.” She might have been tempted to dangle a tidbit or two in other cir
cumstances, but with the Lonesome harboring two off-radar AIs whom she thought of as friends, she couldn’t afford to start talking about life aboard the spaceship and inadvertently letting something slip that revealed their existence.

  “Loyalty is all very well,” the governor of Zephyr said to her at the Garden Ball that night. “But there are other people who’d repay your loyalty just as highly as Sheriff Smith. I could talk to Galactic Justice on your behalf…” He trailed a manicured hand down her arm.

  Thelma smiled and reminded herself that breaking the man’s fingers would break her career, both that of deputy and of information broker. It was true that a person’s reputation was as much about the quality of their enemies as their allies, but Governor Rodin was an operator, not a bad man. Which meant his actions didn’t justify outright assault. In his own serpentine way, the man kept the frontier planet of Zephyr balanced and productive. He was a deal-maker rather than a ruler; just as enamored of power as Elder Jakob, but more ambitious, more successful and far more dangerous. “Thank you, Governor, but I’m comfortably settled in as deputy.”

  “I’ve heard rumors that you’re setting yourself up as something more.”

  Looking into his cold brown eyes, she disregarded his fingers trailing suggestively along the soft skin of her inner forearm. Governor Rodin wasn’t a womanizer. He was testing her. Some people were turned on by power, and on Zephyr, he was the pinnacle of it.

  Max’s official role ended at the spacedock.

  “Galactic Justice provided me with an excellent education in diplomacy and other arts. It would be ungrateful of me not to utilize it,” she said prudently.

  He smiled. “I’m glad to hear that you understand gratitude.” His hand dropped away from her arm. “You will find that on the frontier money may rise and fall in value, but a favor remains prized currency.” The unspoken part of that comment was that she’d do well to build her favor account with him.

  She nodded. Being invited to do so was a small win. It meant that she was on Rodin’s radar. If she proved her usefulness, she could trade favors with the governor, in the form of information, to grow her own power and influence. Being assigned as Max’s deputy had raised her profile. What she did with her opportunities was on her. “I’ll remember.”

  “Say hi to Max for me.” Rodin left her by the French doors that opened into the scented flower garden. The night-blooming jasmine and dragon cactus perfumed the air.

  Alone for the moment, she assessed her options. Training bouts at the mauveinne’s dojo were so much easier than this prolonged series of flirtations that were actually about Zephyr’s very important people assessing her, while attempting to subtly interrogate her for inside information concerning Sheriff Smith.

  She was tired of being polite and attempting to be entrancing. And if she was tiring of the game, then she should wrap things up. She couldn’t afford to offend someone vital to her information brokerage so early in her seven years in the Saloon Sector.

  Mentally, she consulted her list of who else she needed to introduce herself to tonight. Tomorrow, she and Max were going on patrol. They’d be away for six weeks, taking an arc route from the Zeph Omega 3 black hole toward the Ammo Belt. Over the last four days she’d put herself in front of half the planet’s movers and shakers, including some of those who preferred to operate in the shadows. In terms of efficiency, there was something to be said for a small pond frontier world.

  Who haven’t I…? Ah, Aubree Tennyson. She was Galactic Justice’s agent on Zephyr, and a woman whose official background was nearly as blank and uninformative as Max’s. That made her interesting. However, the fact that Aubree hadn’t attempted to contact Thelma raised the question of just what flags, hidden to Thelma, were beside her own name in the Galactic Justice database. Not even the lure of the hope of learning more about Max had influenced Aubree to risk contact with his deputy.

  Luckily, the vast majority of Saloon Sector citizens couldn’t give two figs for Galactic Justice’s opinion.

  She resisted the temptation of a solo wander through the night garden and stepped back inside the French doors.

  “Deputy Thelma Bach.” The quiet female voice came from the far side of a marble urn. The woman had been so still, and her dress such an unobtrusive mingling of cream and gray, that Thelma hadn’t noticed her.

  “Agent Tennyson.” Thelma had a split second to think outrageous thoughts about mind-reading and extrasensory perception—it was as if the agent had materialized in response to Thelma’s mental call—before she focused on the woman gliding deeper into the garden. Apparently, Thelma’s name had been an invitation.

  Unlike Aubree’s silent footsteps that, combined with her pale dress, gave her a spectral presence, Thelma’s heels clicked against the stone path. However, the darkly patterned, dramatic reds of her dress blended into the shadows once they reached a secluded bench and sat down.

  Aubree extracted a tiny scrambler from her purse and set it on the stone seat between them. The green light announced that it was active. “Cigarette?” She produced a lighter and paper cigarette from the same purse.

  “No, thanks.”

  Aubree lit up. The sudden flare of light from the flame settled into a glowing red tip. It provided an intriguing contrast: the cigarette that revealed their location and the scrambler that hid their conversation.

  The distinctive scent of utopian tobacco drifted to encompass Thelma. Now, the cigarette made sense. Utopian tobacco counteracted the majority of aerosol hypnotics and mood-boosters. She hadn’t realized that Governor Rodin employed them or that she’d been exposed. She would have to ask Lon about discreet, portable drug detectors and protection.

  The shadows hid much, including the finer details of Aubree’s appearance, but Thelma recalled her research into Zephyr’s assigned Galactic Justice agent.

  Aubree looked mid-twenties thanks to rejuvenation treatments, but was over forty. Her age showed in the cynicism tempered by acceptance in her eyes. She was fit, passably attractive, and forgettable.

  “Max won’t work with me,” Aubree said abruptly. “No reason he should. His duty is to maintain law and order in interstellar space. That gives him a short term focus. I investigate matters with broader horizons, in both space and time.”

  Recalling Max’s dealings with the Pilgrims of Levanter, Thelma thought the line was more blurred than that. Max understood the wider implications of what he did and didn’t do.

  “You’re a smart woman who should have been an agent.”

  A compliment and implied sympathy rolled into one brought Thelma to hyper-alertness as Aubree continued.

  “I receive Max’s official reports. What I want is to know the things that don’t go into them. The things that you were taught to watch for at the academy. Max’s training was as a Star Marine. He can kick ass like a champ. However, the future of the Saloon Sector requires more than ass-kickers.” Aubree exhaled smoke. “You have the right instincts, setting yourself up as an information broker. If I could, I’d have you reassigned to me as an agent, which would suck for you, since agents unlike deputies can’t have second jobs. However, no matter how good your instincts, they’re not worth me sticking myself into that viper’s nest.”

  She stabbed out the cigarette.

  Thelma watched her flick the butt into a shallow dish to the side of the bench. An ash tray. Zephyr really did have different norms to the rest of the Federation. Smoking was catered to here. Perhaps the unpolluted natural air made people yearn for something to clog their lungs? “I’m content to be a deputy, but I’ll remember you if I learn anything that would have the academy instructors frothing with eagerness. A favor for a favor,” she added. It paid to be clear upfront regarding the terms of business. “After what Galactic Justice did sticking me out here because I’m a Rocker, I don’t owe anyone freebies.”

  The tilt of Aubree’s head indicated sudden curiosity. “You think you’re here because of core worlder prejudice?” She gave a bark of laughter.
“You’re not kidding, are you? You really don’t get it.” She relaxed back against the bench. “And there I was mistaking you for clued in. Honey, if the problem was simply you being from the Rock Sector, they’d have dumped you back there. Your exile here, it’s personal. Rudolf Gua. Remember him?”

  Thelma snorted. “Of course. Obnoxious, spoiled—”

  “Came second to you in everything,” Aubree interrupted.

  “What?” Thelma had never looked at their situation that way. Rudy had always had everything he needed and wanted. When he struggled with a lesson, he received extra tutoring. Thelma had had to achieve everything alone. It made her successes all the more meaningful, but she hadn’t forgiven Rudy for how cushioned his ride through the academy had been, nor how rudely he’d treated others, both students and teachers.

  “Senator Gua’s handsome boy,” Aubree drawled the words, humor and a darker layer of resentment weaving through them. “The Senator intends him to exceed her. She’s grooming him for the Federation Presidency.”

  “Rudy?!!”

  Aubree’s disbelief was quieter, but just as genuine. “I can’t believe you didn’t realize. Rudolf Gua was meant to graduate the Galactic Justice academy as valedictorian. The other students got the unwritten memo. They didn’t challenge him. You did.”

  Thelma’s limbs felt like lead jelly tentacles. “So that’s why I was banished. I didn’t even realize…” She shook her head sharply. “He’d be a rotten president.”

  Aubree lit a second cigarette. “Just to clarify your terrifying level of obtuseness as a student…” Thelma winced. “Did Rudy ever make a pass at you?”

  “What? No!” She paused, the years replaying at high speed. “Well, maybe, but he was trying to insult me…”

  Aubree blew a smoke ring. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. With his mom being so powerful, maybe he’s attracted to strong-minded women.”

  “Oh, good grief.”

  Aubree stood. “Something to think on. And as a gesture of goodwill in what I intend will be a productive relationship of information exchange…a fortnight from now, Rudolf Gua and his mother will board a Galactic Justice vessel bound for the Saloon Sector. It’s all very hush-hush. Mining interests, perhaps, and other things. Be sure to tell Max.” She wandered off.