Sligo sees the light

They have a saying on the backwater colony worlds. 'In some places, any shit will draw a crowd of flies?. And so it was the following morning. Tombstone was in festival mood: makeshift stalls had been set up along main street, selling dubious merchandise and even more dubious foods. Colonists from nearby farmsteads had made the journey in to town, swelling the population by a factor of two, and the atmosphere reeked of a kind of ****, **** gaiety. Children chased each other among the lean-to buildings , converted storage holds and cargo pods. Shouts filled the air, trades were made, deals agreed and broken just as quickly. Betting booths did a brisk business, and although the odds against Calvo were very long, few were betting against Sligo. The town clock moved toward noon, and the anticipation of watching a man die buzzed in the air like electricity.

Of course the term ?town clock? was a grandiose and wholly misleading one. It was merely and old, faded, solar powered digital time display. It was mounted on top of the same crude metal framework that Dragon had recently hung from. Someone had wired it to a siren that had ,at one time, warned when a power loader was reversing. When noon came, the siren would sound. That would be the signal to draw.

Many of the townsfolk thought that fear must have driven Calvo mad. Instead of resting or enjoying his last hours, he was furiously cleaning his home, inside and out, and forcing his slant eyed piece of property to do the same. The old cargo pod was being scraped and scrubbed, the old mattress thrown out, surfaces cleaned and polished. Whenever the little oriental guard-bitch began to tire, Calvo would whip her pert little as cheeks with a thin wooden switch he had cut, screaming at her that he was a citizen of Tombstone now, and that his home should not disgrace the town. People walked away from the scene, shaking their heads and whispering to one another. One or two who had placed small, speculative bets on Calvo began to regret it. Terror had clearly unhinged the man.

?Ready to die, ?hero? ? Where do you want to do this ? ?

Calvo turned. Sligo had arrived, and the crowd had gathered, silent in anticipation, or perhaps in fear of the VIM-stim junkie. He had been so intent on his task that he had not even realised that noon was closing in like a hungry animal, swift and silent. Now Sligo stood, waiting like **** itself, still and cold, his eyes unseen. behind the dark lenses of his Visual Interface Module.

?Here?s as good a place as any. It?ll be a shorter walk home for me when I put you down?

The crowd murmured approval at Calvo?s bravado as he stepped in to the street. Dragon , her pretty features twisted with fear, moved to cower inside his dwelling, peering out from around the ajar door. Ravok stepped to Calvo, silently handing him a gun belt, before backing away in to the crowd. As he tightened it around his hips, Calvo couldn?t help feeling the situation was faintly ridiculous. All that was needed now was an Ennio Morricone score?

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Two seconds. That?s all it was. Two short seconds?and yet so much was packed in to them, failure and success, life and ****. Just before the ?clock? hit noon, Dragon shifted, seeming to want a clearer view, opening the door, little by little, wider and wider. The cold bluish light of Tau-Ceti reflected against the door?s metallic surface, now cleaned and polished to a shine, in to the cold, impassive face of Sligo. Of course Tau-Ceti would scarcely have been bright enough to dazzle him even if the lenses of his VIM had not automatically darkened to compensate. But the extra light was extra energy, a sudden change in ambient light levels: the photoelectric nanotech of the lenses reacted automatically. The VIM directed a pulse of signals directly down Sligo?s optic nerves, to his brain. A serotonin cascade caused him to feel a sudden surge of sheer bliss, an almost orgasmic feeling of peace and joy?.

The siren sounded. A shot rang out.

Sligo looked down at the blood pumping from the ragged hole in his chest, a puzzled smile still on his face. Then, like an uprooted tree, he toppled face first in to the bonded mono-concrete of main street.