When the Fame War reached its peak, just as in any overlong and tiresome conflict, a super weapon was sought. Many ideas were tried and tested by both sides, the Defaming Ray could only effect a small group for a short time and the Death of Art Launcher did nothing but misfire. As the body count climbed ever higher and higher, the need and desperation for a solution welled up as if ready to burst.
Just as the war was looking to be never ending, in a bunker deep beneath the Swiss Alps, the Slow Gun came into existence. The Slow Gun, though no bigger than a microphone, was a weapon so devastating that its single use would put an end to the Fame War once and for all.
The first, and only, time the Slow Gun was used was on a young Michael Neil Smith. Smith had grown up in a small and unremarkable town in New Hampshire and worked in a small and unremarkable office living a small and unremarkable life. He was an Ordinary Man, not a Real Star or a True Artist, he was a complete neutral who had never given the War a second thought.
The Slow Gun’s effect took hold long before the shot had even been fired. The victim was announced in an international lottery with much fanfare and a worldwide audience of billions holding on with bated breath for the ultimate reveal.
The silence that followed the announcement of Smith’s name, though leaden, was barely measurable. It was swiftly shattered by the clamoring for interviews and questions from the True Artists who asked “Why him?” and the Real Stars who asked “Why not me?”
But answers did not come, interviews were not granted, and Smith was immediately hidden away from view until the sentence could be carried out. Suddenly the world’s most famous man was someone nobody knew anything about, an enigma absolute.
Speculation was rife with every pundit and newsmaker giving their baseless predictions about Smith’s life, never realising that this was in no way the important part of his story. Soon it was revealed that this guess making could end and, on a rainy afternoon in early June, Smith was lead out in front of the world the weapons effect was explained to him. The Slow Gun would flash and the projectile would fly towards him with an imperceptible and unsteady speed. Once fired, the bullet would follow him all the days of his life getting closer each day, sometimes felling as though it could strike him down at any second, sometimes not moving at all. The only certainty is that one day, Michael Neil Smith would die.
Smith was asked if he understood and agreed to the method and he responded “Yes.” He was then brought before the Slow Gun, the crowd of thousands invited to witness the event in person, and the billions around the globe watching on billions of screens, and the trigger was pulled and the bullet began its journey. The world gave a collective sigh of relief; surely this was the end of the Fame War.
Smith was the most sought after Man to ever live and during his time in hiding, he had been well trained. He was witty and charming and knew how to work any audience, regardless of culture, size or demographic, which made an instant hit on the Talk Circuits. He told his life story time and again, carving every bland detail into a grand and exciting tale with expertise. And everywhere he went, the bullet followed him.
Some years later, after every minuscule aspect of Michael Neil Smith had been raked over with a fine tooth comb and nothing big or remarkable had been found, people began to question again. “So why him?” and “So why not me?” and eventually the old patterns of the Fame War began to resurface. With most of the world believing the Slow Gun to have failed, Smith returned to his small and unremarkable life and his small and unremarkable job. But still, every day, wherever he went, the bullet followed him.
Years passed and no one payed much attention to the life of Michael Neil Smith. He was happy, he settled down with a family and tried to put the bullet out of his mind. As he had been told on that fateful day long ago, some days were easier than others but ultimately he knew there was nothing he could do to change the situation and no way of knowing when it would come.
And then, one day, as he played with his young grandson in the garden of the family home he had lived in for most of his life, Michael Neil Smith was touched, ever so lightly by the bullet that had followed him for every day for forty years. And with that slightest of touches, Michael Neil Smith died.
When the news of his death broke, the world reeled in shock. The Real Stars and the True Artists finally realised the true weapon behind the Slow Gun: perspective. They finally saw that the most famous man the world had ever seen was someone who came from nothing to great acclaim by pure chance, just as many of them had. But even this man’s fame had waned and they had died forgotten by the world that had loved them. The Fame War was over, Michael Neil Smith had won.
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The revolver’s wooden grip was soft and well worn, moulded over four years of handling to the contours of her hand. It reminded Jessie of her father; it felt like home.
Her father had given her the gun as a gift on her tenth birthday, it was little more than a child’s toy, nothing as powerful as her father’s own weapon, but her mother had protested non the less saying it was no tool for a young girl. It was tradition for the eldest son to be given a weapon when they came of age and Jessie her father must have known it would be two late if they were to wait for her brother William was old enough. Her father had been stern, and he had got his way.
So Jessie had kept the gun and her father had begun to train her in the ways of gunfighting.
She flexed her wrist, the gun shifted slightly in her relaxed grip, its reassuring heft rolling in her palm. She gently thumbed the hammer, feeling the cool metal against her skin, and focused on her target.
Her quarry was a rough scarecrow about fifteen feet away from her in the barren cornfield, the breeze ruffled its ragged clothes around its crooked frame.
the farm was mostly dead now, they still had enough to feed themselves and trade a little in Dodger’s Hollow for anything they needed, but things were getting worse year on year as the poison crept in. This had meant they were never hassled by bandits, there was no use in raiding a farm with nothing to steal, even after Jessie’s father had been called away. Jessie still trained, once the radiation finally claimed the farm they would have to move on and join the other families who travelled the wilderness looking for a new life.
She raised the revolver, pushing back the hammer as she did so, and aimed for the scarecrow’s head, a mutated and irregular pumpkin with a pantomime of a human face carved into its skin. With the gun now square to her target, Jessie squeezed the trigger.
The familiar crack of gunfire rang around the surrounding hills and the pumpkin exploded, revealing its black guts to be filled with maggots which cascaded down the scarecrow’s tattered shirt below.
The rush of firing the weapon died away and Jessie’s heartbeat and breathing calmed. She turned away from the scarecrow and walked slowly over to Horatio, the ageing horse she had adopted when her father had left. As she approached, Jessie noticed something strange and her heart began to race again. In the distance, towards the house, a column of black smoke began to rise.
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A dalliance with deadly rocks…
Jan was determined not to be talked round. He had his feelings on the case of the mysterious Doctor Axi, and that was going to be that. It took Rai over half an hour and several failed arguments, including explaining all the reasons why Doctor Axi had been wrongfully accused, how useful his knowledge of ancient technology would be on Tellos and how he could do things with the ship’s drive that Rai could only dream of, before she settled on an unlikely winner.
“You know he used to work for Mr. Graves, don’t you?”
Jan paused in his preparations of the ship’s navigational systems and sat on the edge of the console looking over at Rai in weary feigned interest. “Go on.” he said flatly.
“After the war, before he joined the university, he was developing tech for Graves’ little empire on Mimas. He says they had a ‘falling out’ over nothing serious and Graves tried to have him killed.”
“So why would he help us, or did you not tell him who was bankrolling this expedition?”
“Come on Jan, we both know you aren’t playing this straight. You’re always working an angle or, at least, looking for one to exploit. Doctor Axi could be it!”
“Fine!” Jan relented, “We’ll go check out his floating rock, but if there’s anything more than just a hint of crazy about him… we’re leaving him behind. You get me?”
“Loud and clear, boss!” Chirped Rai, just on the verge of mocking.
“Enough of that. Back to work.” said Jan, turning back to the console and dropping into his chair with a thump.
It had been a terrible idea. Doctor Axi could see that now, how wonderful hindsight was. He should have seen it coming before he had even started the test but he was just so very tired. He had gone through the procedure hundreds of times before but the sweeps had been getting nearer and he was getting desperate.
He had been developing the latest attempt at a viable fuel for the shell that remained of his ship for nearly three weeks. He had scavenged and removed all he could from the vessel in building his temporary home within the little asteroid. This had given him the advantage of stripping away all of the unnecessary bulk of the ship to something that it would take very little fuel to propel and get him to Earth. The new fuel had been more than sufficient.
The mix had been more potent than he expected and the resulting explosion had torn the asteroid in half and sent the remains of the ship off into the path of another oncoming rock. Doctor Axi ruminated on how lucky he had been not to be on the ship at the time as he clung to the wreckage of the asteroid with only an hour’s oxygen in his ancient emergency suit…
You have to hand it to Graves, thought Jan as the newly named Solomon’s Folly barrelled down through a temporary canyon between asteroids, this ship may be a taped together pile of bolts, but she can move! He yanked back on the steering column as a rock came hurtling across their path and the ship responded with a satisfying, if juddering, turn upwards. Or down, Jan had long lost track of Solar North in the maze of fast moving potential death.
He flicked his gaze away from the shifting path to the nav screen, checking the flashing red dot that he was hoping would lead them to Rai’s mysterious Doctor Axi. Jan noticed another blip appear on the screen a little way further out. He was just watching it to fork out where it was heading when-
“Jan look out!” screamed Rai, Jan looked up just in time to see the rock heading straight for him. He swerved and peeled away into another space as the asteroid thundered past and continued on its journey. Rai was sat in the co-pilot’s chair, Alan had been confined to his quarters for arguing that he should outrank Rai due to his length of service. He had then been confined to the galley after complaining that being denied food was barbaric.
“Thanks.” sighed Jan. He indicated to the nav screen. “Come take a look at this, will you? Something just popped up and I think it might be headed the same way as us.”
Rai moved across the cockpit and stood looking over Jan’s shoulder, her hands grasping the back of his chair to steady herself whenever a sudden move would counteract the ship’s gravity. “It’s big. Looks like a TiSec scout ship. My guess is they’re looking for Doctor Axi too. They won’t be able to get there as fast as us through all these rocks.”
“Unless they blast their way through.” Just as Jan spoke there was the flash up ahead as one of the rocks exploded in two.
“That must be Doctor Axi trying to signal us!” exclaimed Rai.
“I think that was too big for a signal blast. Hold on, I think I can see a way through to him.” said Jan and he gunned the engines towards the blast site.
“What do you mean, ‘It was you.’?” Asked Jan.
Rai desperately tried to put the thoughts in her head back in some kind of order now that things had calmed down a little. “Last night, I was thinking about this ridiculous quest of yours and I remembered, I know someone who might be able to help us.” She looked sheepish, “So… I sent him a message. They must have tracked it.”
“Dammit, Rai. You’ve been hiding out here for years, why would you throw that away now? Couldn’t I have sent the message?”
“Well, like me, he’s a pretty private guy. He doesn’t like getting communications he doesn’t know he can trust.”
“Don’t you think we have enough trust issues in our party already?” Jan asked, glaring at Alan, still holding his neck after his confrontation with Jan.
“But, I told you, it wasn-“
“Not the time!” barked Jan, turning back to Rai. “Who the hell is this guy?”
“Doctor Axi.”
“Doctor Axi, The serial killer?” Jan was incredulous.
“Oh, Jan! I’d expect more form you! You know that wasn’t his fault!”
Jan interrupted, his train of thought barely derailed, “Are you part of some sort of fugitive support group?” He paused, having processed what Rai had said, “What do you mean ‘It wasn’t his fault?’ The guy wiped out an entire species.” Jan turned and began stomping up the stairs to the flight deck. “Let’s just hope we don’t here back from him; we might not survive!”
Asteroid M751 was little more than a floating cave, and not much of a laboratory, but this is what Doctor Michel Axi had found himself reduced to. He had never intended to become a fugitive, an engineer and history professor at one of the largest of the home system’s universities, accused of the murder of an entire intelligent species that should never have existed.
When the accident had forced Doctor Axi to leave the University of Titan he had intended to flee to Earth where there was no longer any extradition to the outer planets where he was considered a pariah and would not be as difficult as getting passage out of the system. His journey towards the system’s core had been more than a little problematic.
Eventually, he made it as far as the asteroid belt before the less than capable ship he had secured for himself had begun to die and thus had found himself stranded on M751 desperately trying to develop a new propulsion system to get him to Earth with TiSec bounty hunters sweeping the belt looking for him.
He spent his days floating around his new home, having salvaged some of the less essential parts of his ship to seal the rock’s interior and create somewhat of a liveable atmosphere within the maze-like tunnels, and running various disappointing and repetitive experiments on minerals from the surrounding boulders.
Communication with the outside world was sparse, he gave information on his whereabouts to the few people he knew he could trust. He was rather surprised when he switched on his comms array, performing his five hundred and thirty-ninth daily check, to find a message awaiting him from a former student. With some great trepidation, Doctor Axi opened the message.
Jan spent the rest of the day sulking and silently preparing the ship to leave Mars. He broke his silence temporarily to order Alan and Sophie to assemble a list of supplies the team would need for the long journey to Tellos and the anticipated expedition across the planet’s surface.
Rai thought it best to keep out from under Jan’s feet so she spent the day in the engine room seeing what she could do to update the ship’s long-out-of-warranty engines and generally tightening any loose bolts she could find.
She had compiled a manifest of parts that she could use to cut down their travel time significantly and headed back to the store when her personal communicator bleeped. Normally this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary; she often had requests sent through to her mailbox from the researchers at the base when they were running low on something, but she had started getting them forwarded directly to the store so Sophie could get used to the banalities of day-to-day shopkeeping.
The message could only have come from one of two other sources, either Jan had decided to apologise for his outburst (extremely unlikely) or by some miracle, Doctor Axi had received her message.
She opened the message and found that it contained a long string of navigation coordinates followed by the words ‘…ou environs’ definitely Doctor Axi. Now it was just a case of convincing Jan and finding him before the TiSec did.
Rai deals with an unwanted interloper…
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