Free Beacon 23: The Complete Novel by Hugh Howey

run from floor to ceiling. There’s an animal in one of the pens, drinking out of a toilet.
    “Cricket, stop that. No. Bad girl.”
    The animal pulls its head out and turns to look at its master, water dribbling from its jowls. Looks like a cross between a dog and a leopard. Probably not even a little bit of either. Definitely alien. The animal goes back to slurping.
    “Hardened criminal?” I ask, jabbing my thumb at the cell.
    O’Shea laughs. “Cricket? Naw, I just put her away so she don’t maul you.”
    I look back at the animal. She’s the size of the cougars we’d see now and then in the backwoods of Tennessee. Might be deadly, but I doubt it. Seems like a pushover, drinking out of that toilet and looking at us with that blank expression.
    I follow O’Shea through a narrow hall. There’s an open door to a bunkroom with an unmade bed; just beyond that are some grated lockers with guns inside and big padlocks on the latches. We squeeze past these into the tight cockpit, and O’Shea pulls up his system scanner. I peer out the porthole to see another dark-hulled ship approaching the beacon.
    “Goddamn,” O’Shea says.
    “You got an ID on that?” I ask. The ship looks vaguely military. I don’t like things that look vaguely military. I hate the things that look really military. With me, it’s like a sliding scale of hate versus appearance with some direct correlation.
    “Don’t need an ID,” he says, disgust dripping from his voice. He reaches across me for the HF mic. Squeezing the transmit button, he glares plasma rounds up through the canopy. “You know putting hull trackers on a bounty ship is a federal violation, right, asshole?”
    The radio hisses a response: “You think I need a hull tracker to sniff you down, you filthy runt of a raped pig?”
    I’m beginning to suspect these two know each other. I watch this new ship expel little volcano blasts of air as it orients itself to face us.
    “He’s not going to shoot us, is he?” I ask.
    “Nah, Vlad here is a chickenshit .”
    I notice O’Shea squeezes the mic and raises his voice as he says this last bit.
    “What did he mean by a ‘raped pig’?” I ask.
    O’Shea shrugs. “He’s not so bright. Stay away from him.”
    I look Mitch O’Shea up and down and consider what it might mean for this guy to label someone else “not bright.” Thoughts of black holes come to mind.
    The HF squawks again. I adjust the squelch, since Mitch doesn’t seem to care to. Or maybe doesn’t know how. “Beacon 23, this is Vladimir Bostokov on federal marshal duty. Requesting docking procedures. I have a warrant. Over.”
    “Fuck him,” Mitch says, with all the disgust of a man with a shitload of debt who feels very close to a large pile of credits and sees another man eyeing that same pile.
    “I’ve got to let him,” I say, waving Mitch for the mic.
    “You could claim a section 12b, extenuating circumstances related to injury in the line of duty.” He nods at my sling, all the bandages over my little cuts and scrapes, and the array of purple splotches.
    “ Now you tell me,” I say. I key the mic to radio this Vlad character. “This is the operator of beacon 23. Locking collar Bravo. I’m under quarantine, so please stay aboard. Over.”
    “Copy,” Vlad says.
    And beside me, Mitch O’Shea rattles in annoyance.
     
     

• 13 •
     
    “Look, I don’t really want either of you on my beacon,” I tell O’Shea as we wait by airlock Bravo. “You’ve both got warrants for scans, so you’ll both get them. Then you’ll get the hell off my station.”
    “I’m telling you, this guy’s an asshole,” O’Shea warns.
    The light above the airlock goes green, signaling the second bounty hunter’s ship has a good magnetic seal and that the atmo on the other side is clean. I didn’t even hear the hull make contact, the landing was so soft. I glance at O’Shea, but he’s fuming and oblivious. Vlad might be an asshole, I want to say, but he’s