The Brimstone Kid (audio story)

The Brimstone Kid was the sixty-eighth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the third story of the Missing Persons series.

Publisher's summary
"Welcome to the White Rabbit. What'll it be?"

"You can start by locking and bolting the doors. Then everyone in here can keep real calm..."

Bernice and Irving were expecting another quiet night at the White Rabbit saloon — their only customers a veteran prospector named Toothless Bob and timid school teacher Miss Hannigan. But the evening takes a sinister turn with the arrival of the Brimstone Kid, a wanted outlaw, and the terrifying bounty hunter Cazador hot on his trail...

Soon, Bernice and Irving find themselves caught up in an adventure involving giant, flightless crows, buried treasure and the galaxy's most ruthless detective agency.

Plot
Mary Hannigan comes to the White Rabbit looking for somewhere to stay and introduces herself to Irving as a missionary for the Ninth-day Celestials, come to Legion City to teach. The Brimstone Kid enters the pub with a gun, has Irving lock the door and commands him, Benny, Miss Hannigan and Toothless Bob to hide him from the bounty hunter Cazador. Irving hides him in the basement. When Cazador arrives looking for Brimstone, the group claim not to have seen him, but he demands that he be shown to the basement.

Whilst Cazador is in the basement, Miss Hannigan leaves. This displeases Cazador, who returns from the basement, takes mouth swabs from everybody to eliminate them from his investigation and goes after Miss Hannigan to do the same. Benny, Irving and Brimstone buy a Land Crow from Crazy Hank and ride to Cosimo Diamond Mine where Brimstone claims he has hidden his money. When Benny and Irving enter the cave, Brimstone reveals that he is Pike Thornton, a bounty hunter, and has come to arrest Irving for the crimes of his other self. Meanwhile, Cazador returns to the White Rabbit and, after finding Brimstone's DNA on a glass, he threatens Bob into telling him where Brimstone has gone.

Miss Hannigan arrives and kills Thornton before he can kill Benny for being surplus to requirements, revealing that she is the real Brimstone Kid, that her real name is Billie Ford and that Cazador is on his way to capture her. Benny, Irving and Ford head to the escape pods that Bob mentioned were in the mine, with Ford telling Irving that she had sent the money that she had stolen to her home, and find crates of octagon detonators on the way. When Cazador arrives and taunts Ford about how he killed her two brothers, Ford decides to stop running and face him whilst Benny and Irving take the pods to safety. She uses one of the detonators to kill herself and Cazador.

In their pods, Benny and Irving are told by the Sharpless Agency that they will be shot down if they do not decelerate. The Agency's spaceship is destroyed by an asteroid, but another ship appears and draws Irving's pod off-course, causing him to lose contact with Benny. She forgets about him and, thinking that she does not have anything to do on Legion, she heads off to another planet.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Irving Braxiatel - Miles Richardson
 * Brimstone - David Menkin
 * Cazador - John Schwab
 * Miss Hannigan - Katharine Mangold
 * Crazy Hank - Peter Sheward
 * Fortune Teller - Ellen Salisbury
 * Toothless Bob - Mac McDonald

Worldbuilding

 * Crazy Hank sells Land Crows.
 * When Miss Hannigan tells Irving that she is a missionary, he says that missionary is an interesting position.
 * Gofax was the first mayor of Legion City. He was six months dead when he was elected.
 * Steve McQueen was in The Cincinnati Kid.
 * Cazador is a Cybersaur. He and Thornton work for the Sharpless Agency.
 * Irving claims to have a phobia of foreign objects being put in his mouth.
 * At the Crater Base, EOIN is giving Irving's land cruiser a look over.
 * Thornton mentions Brimstone, Shoal and Johannem.
 * Masoyushi is the intergalactic law court for Legion's sector.
 * Irving is charged with:
 * one count of petty larceny
 * four counts of theft
 * one count of vandalising a religious icon
 * three counts of assault
 * sixteen counts of fraud
 * two counts of corrupting a member of the clergy
 * five counts of arson
 * twenty-five counts of criminal damage
 * The mine is stocked with octagon detonators.
 * Ford's brothers were Jude and Silas Ford.
 * Irving says that Benny would be surprised how many planets have not heard of socks.

Continuity

 * Benny mentions how she was left alone with nothing but a portentous message from Irving. (AUDIO: Judgement Day)
 * Benny is chastised by Irving in the same way she chastised Peter Summerfield on Moros Prime. (AUDIO: The Revenant's Carnival)
 * Benny mentions riding a Pegasus. (AUDIO: The Kraken's Lament)
 * Thorton mentions the Last Chance Saloon. (TV: The Gunfighters)