Category: Short Fiction

Day 2

“What do you need from the prospec­tors?” Coot­er asked. “They are ready to assist.”

“I need a few aces in the hole. Some­thing that is sure to con­vince the mercs we mean busi­ness,” Del said.

“I’ll ask around to the prospec­tors. But I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Actu­al­ly, it’s one of Nils’s ideas, but it’s a good one and I rec­om­mend we go with it. Though it takes a toll on the sys­tem, we might shut down the radiators.”

“What the hell would that do?”

“What is the tem­per­a­ture out­side?” Asked Cooter.

“About two hun­dred last I checked.”

“Exact­ly. Do I need to explain any further?”

“Shit,” said Del. “That is a hell of an idea.”

“On anoth­er note, Sheryl Car­son asked about the U.S. Mar­shall. Any chance they can be called in?”

“I’d like to. But since no actu­al crime has been com­mit­ted, they aren’t like­ly to respond. Once one does, it will be three days before help will arrive.

*****

Del checked his watch, wait­ing for the call to con­nect. It always took for­ev­er to get a response from Earth. The Luna­dyne cor­po­rate offices in McK­in­ney were even worse than the secu­ri­ty group in Dal­las. They nev­er seemed to have time to take a call from the Moon. Final­ly, some­one answered.

“Del, it is good to hear from you,” said the female voice.

“Becky?” Del iden­ti­fied the voice belong­ing to the human resources rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Lunadyne.

“Yes, Del. Who did you think it was?”

“Sor­ry Becky, the lines seem a bit gar­bled today.”

“What did you need?”

“I need Luna­dyne to hire about fifty min­ers. Their con­tract should have all the pro­vi­sions that they have pro­posed to Coal Co.”

“Oh,” said Becky. “That’s a hell of an ask.”

“Come through on this one if you can.”

“You know this one is going to take an exec­u­tive lev­el deci­sion? I might get shut down before I get up past my manager.”

“Tell them lives will depend upon it,” said Del. “Hope­ful­ly, they will get the hint.”

“You know, I might fail with this one. This is way out­side of my paygrade.”

“It’s out­side of mine too, but I’m all these peo­ple have.”

*****

Del’s phone sig­naled. He noticed it was Alex before he answered.

“Yeah, Alex.”

“Del, I’ve got a dozen min­ers here. I also have anoth­er set of patrons. One of them wants to talk to you.”

“Put him on,” said Del.

“Sher­iff,” said the man.

“Smith?”

“We have spo­ken before, yes. You didn’t take my advice and release Smitter.”

“You haven’t giv­en me a rea­son to,” said Del, leav­ing the jail and head­ing toward the hab con­tain­ing Alex’s bar. “Besides, I’m sure Smit­ter is glad that he won’t be get­ting into the same trou­ble you’re get­ting your­self into.”

“You seem an unrea­son­able man.”

“No, I’m plen­ty reasonable.”

“Let’s set aside the bull for now,” said Smith.

“I’m all ears.”

Del made his way through the con­nect­ing sec­tion, lead­ing him to the bar. He could see two rough-look­ing indi­vid­u­als he took to be one of Cranston’s mer­ce­nar­ies. He noticed one wear­ing a small head­set, not­ing that the indi­vid­ual was in con­tact with others.

“Come on into the bar,” said Smith. “We’ll have a drink.”

Del not­ed the indi­vid­ual waved him through with­out a delay.

Okay, they are talk­ing to each other.

Del entered the bar. He could see that the min­ers were pushed over to one cor­ner of the room sur­round­ed by six indi­vid­u­als obvi­ous­ly car­ry­ing shot­guns. He silent­ly relaxed, real­iz­ing these thugs had some sense about them. Shot guns could cer­tain­ly hurt a per­son, but they would not like­ly pen­e­trate the hull unless fired direct­ly into it. Bul­let holes and space habi­tats did not go well togeth­er. There were anoth­er six thugs scat­tered around the room, along with sev­er­al oth­er patrons who had not evac­u­at­ed the sta­tion. He could see that they looked up ner­vous­ly as Del entered the bar. Alex was seat­ed behind the bar. Smith was lean­ing over the bar nearby.

“Take it easy, folks. This won’t take long,” said Del, try­ing to be as con­fi­dent sound­ing as possible.

“It all depends upon what you’re will­ing to do,” said Smith.

“Exact­ly what would that be?” asked Del.

“As a mea­sure of your good faith,” said Smith. “I want Smit­ter out of your jail.”

“Yeah,” said a woman in her 20’s armed with a shot­gun who was swing­ing it around wildly.

“Shut-up Williams,” said Smith.

“Yeah,” said anoth­er thug, a brutish man, clear­ly in his fifties. “We all agreed that Smith would speak.”

“You too Quaid,” Smith snapped.

“I need you to let these peo­ple go,” said Del. “As a mea­sure of your good faith.”

Smith smiled, toss­ing the phone back to Alex. At last, we are get­ting some­where. Smith walked up, stand­ing a half meter from Del.

“I’ll let you take these three.” He said as he point­ed at the table to his left.

“What about these three over here?” Del asked, hop­ing he didn’t flinch as he point­ed to the oth­er three that were not min­ers. “You don’t need them for what you have in mind.”

“Inter­est­ing,” said Smith, as his eyes nar­rowed. “Big man sher­iff thinks he knows what I have in mind.”

“Seri­ous­ly, you’ve already told me you were con­trac­tors for Coal Co,” said Del. “These peo­ple are tech­ni­cians for Con­rad Sta­tion and hence employ­ees for Luna­dyne. By def­i­n­i­tion, they wouldn’t be part of your contract.”

Smith’s expres­sion did not waver. Del imag­ined that he was weigh­ing the options.

“You’ll still have the min­ers,” said Del. “And me. Besides, what would Cranston say if you fucked this up by get­ting Luna­dyne involved?”

“Very well,” Smith said. “You six get ready to leave. You too bartender.”

“No,” said Alex.

“Go with them Alex,” said Del.

“This is my bar,” said Alex. “I leave when every­one leaves. Not before,”

“Stay if you want bar­tender,” said Smith. “I don’t care. Williams and Quaid, take the sher­iff to go get Smitter.”

“I’ll also make arrange­ments for trans­port­ing these peo­ple off of the sta­tion,” Del said, pre­tend­ing that Williams and Quaid did not flank him.

“Do what you need to, sher­iff,” said Smith. “But Williams will be your new shad­ow, and she isn’t the for­giv­ing sort.”

Day 3

“Have a drink with me, sher­iff” said Smith as he sat down across from Del.

“I don’t drink,” said Del.

“You will today,” said Smith, wav­ing to Alex. “Set up me and the Sher­iff with some Num­ber Eigh­teen. Bring the bottle.”

“That’s rotgut,” said Del. “Get the good stuff Alex. If I’m drink­ing, it might as well be the best.”

“Num­ber Twen­ty-sev­en com­ing right up,” said Alex.

“Fuck, it’s been over twen­ty hours,” said Smit­ter. “What the hell is tak­ing so long?”

“Shut up Smit­ter,” said Smith.

“Yeah,” added Williams, swing­ing around the shot­gun. “Put a sock in it.”

“She’s going to hurt some­one with that,” said Del, see­ing Alex bring­ing the bot­tle and two glasses.

“What do you expect,” said Smith. “She’s a rookie.”

“Rook­ie or no,” said Del. “She shoots some­body. We’ll have more than a minor dis­agree­ment over some dis­or­der­ly conduct.”

“Williams!” shout­ed Smith. “Hol­ster that damn shot­gun before it goes off.”

“Should we do up anoth­er din­ner?” asked Alex. “Or are we expect­ing to get out of here soon?”

“Fuck, let’s just have ice cream,” said Williams. “It’s get­ting so damn hot in here.”

“Hol­ster it!” said Smith again. “Before you shoot somebody.”

“What the fuck is tak­ing so long?” asked Williams, hol­ster­ing her shotgun.

“We’re wait­ing for Coal Co to send the con­tract,” said Smith. “It should have been here first thing this morning.”

“I might have caused that,” said Del, smil­ing. “Set up din­ner Alex.”

“Explain your­self,” said Smith as Alex walked away from the table.

“They aren’t com­ing,” said Del. Damn, I hope this works.

“What do you mean?” said Smith. Del watched as both the min­ers and the thugs exchanged glances.

“I inter­vened,” said Del. “I had some­one else buy out their contracts.”

“What makes you think we’ll let them take the new terms?” said Smith, his jaw shift­ing from side to side.

“First off, it’s up to them,” Del said as he hooked his thumb in the direc­tion of the table of miners.

“What makes you think we’ll take it?” said one of the miners.

“Good ques­tion,” said Del. “It’s not like you’re going to receive any bet­ter offers in the next cou­ple of hours. Espe­cial­ly from Coal Co.”

“How do we know until we’ve seen it? asked anoth­er miner.

“How about an offer that includes every­thing you’ve been ask­ing for?” said Del. “Could you refuse that one?”

“Hold it,” said Smith as sev­er­al of the min­ers began speak­ing at once, fol­lowed by demands for silence from the thugs. “This sounds like a bluff. I don’t think you’ve done any­thing about this sit­u­a­tion. As far as any­one knows, you just made this up.”

“Grant­ed,” said Del. “It could be a bluff. Instead of guess­ing wrong, call your boss. I’m will­ing to bet that your con­tract with Coal Co is now null.”

Smith picked up the phone. Then looked direct­ly at Del. “There will be hell to pay if you are lying to me.”

“Yeah, I get that,” said Del. “Check with your boss. I bet Coal Co is out of the picture.”

*******

“The sit­u­a­tion is now far more com­pli­cat­ed,” said Smith, almost sneering.

“How the fuck are we going to get paid?” insist­ed Williams.

“Shut up Williams,” said Smith.

“What are you going to do?” asked Del.

“I didn’t want hostages,” said Smith.

“That makes no sense,” said Del. “You’ve held this whole sta­tion hostage for hours.”

“We insured they received their con­tract, and the strike was over,” said Smith.

“But it was a con­tract they didn’t want,” said Del.

“That didn’t mat­ter,” said Smith.

“The strike is over,” said Del. “Coal Co is no longer in charge of what hap­pens here. Luna­dyne is.”

“It looks like we have hostages,” said Smith. “Else, we don’t get paid.”

“Let me make you an offer,” said Del.

“What?” asked Smith. The oth­er mer­ce­nar­ies moved clos­er to the table.

“I’ll be your hostage,” said Del.

“You?”

“Yeah,” said Del. “You don’t need any of the rest of the min­ers. You con­trol the sta­tion, Luna­dyne prop­er­ty, and me, a Luna­dyne employee.”

“And then an assault team charges in,” said Smith.  “No thank you.”

“What assault team?” said Del. “I’m it. Every­one else is techs or staff.”

“Yeah, Smith. Let them go,” said Quaid. “It will be eas­i­er than try­ing to keep our eyes on all these people.”

“I’m tired and hot,” said Williams.

“So am I,” said Smitter.

“I’ll stay too,” said Alex.

“Not this time, Alex,” said Del. “I’ve got this one. You check in on Trish, and let Doc know every­thing is all right. All I’ll need to do is make the call like I did last time to get a pick­up for these people.”

“All right,” said Smith. “Make your call and get these peo­ple out of here.”

*******

“Fuck,” said Williams. “I keep turn­ing up the AC in this place and it’s blow­ing hot air.”

“It’s because you are doing it wrong,” said Smit­ter. “You should turn it down.”

“How the hell do you know?” she snapped back.

“Shut up, you two,” Smith said as he turned to Del. “Why is it so hot?”

“You’re ask­ing me?” said Del. “I don’t know. I’m just the sher­iff. They don’t fill me in on how these things work.”

“You’ve got to know how to use the AC,” said Quaid, look­ing skeptical.

“I don’t,” said Del. “It’s one of hun­dreds of sys­tems on this sta­tion that I do not know how to use. Some­thing must be broken.”

“Shut up,” said Smith. “All of you. We’ll just wait until this evening. It should cool off by then.”

“Nev­er been to the Moon before?” asked Del. “Have you? Any of you?”

“What does that have to do with any­thing?” asked Smith.

“You know that night is eight days away,” said Del. “It’s going to be a balmy two hun­dred degrees out­side today.”

“Fix it,” Smith said, tak­ing direct aim with his gun at Del’s chest.

“I can’t,” said Del. “They’ve cut the flow from the radi­a­tors, which are over four kilo­me­ters dis­tant from here.”

“Who has?” asked Smith.

“Trust­ed peo­ple that have every rea­son to stop you and what you rep­re­sent to the peo­ple here.”

“I should kill you where you sit,” said Smith.

“Let me boss,” said Williams. “He’s been a pain in my ass since we got here.”

“I should let her,” said Smith, star­ing direct­ly into Del’s eyes.

Del stared back, hop­ing not to flinch. This was the moment. Del had a strong hand, but not a per­fect one. Smith still had good cards to play, but his anger helped Del.

“No,” said Smith at length, low­er­ing his weapon. He tossed a phone to him. “You’re going to call some­one to fix the AC.”

“I can’t,” said Del again, hop­ing his voice didn’t betray the wild­ly swing­ing emo­tions rag­ing through him. “It will take twen­ty hours to repair the lines once they are cut. By then, it will be too late. We’ll be dead.”

“I see,” said Smith.

“Let me kill him,” said Williams.

“Shut-up Williams,” said Smith. “He dies, so do we all.”

Del sat silent­ly as the mer­ce­nar­ies talked among them­selves. Smith sat across from him, star­ing at him. Smith’s eyes seemed red­dened by the rage that Del had wit­nessed. Del believed Smith was becom­ing dan­ger­ous. It would only be a mat­ter of time before he broke.

“There is an alter­na­tive,” said Del.

“What alter­na­tive,” said Smith after some delay.

“I call for an evac­u­a­tion crawler,” said Del.

“Then what?” asked Smith.

“I’ll take you to Tycho sta­tion and let you go,” said Del. “Or at least you’ll let me free. You can find your way back to Earth or wher­ev­er you are going. The Chi­nese or the British aren’t like­ly to con­sid­er you or wor­ry about you.”

“That’s very astute,” said Smith. “They will look the oth­er way. How do you know we’ll let you go from there?”

“I don’t,” said Del. “But mind you, I’m the only one that is get­ting you out of here. It’s me, or you cook.”

“You cook as well,” said Smith.

“Yes, but I have noth­ing to lose,” Del said. “So, us both get­ting out of here alive is the point. I’d appre­ci­ate a reciprocation.”

“We will see,” said Smith. “But I’ll con­sid­er your offer.”

“Don’t take too long,” said Del. “I doubt Williams can keep cool for too much longer.”

*****

“How much longer,” groaned Williams as the hop­per reached the top of its bal­lis­tic flight.

“Shut-up Williams,” said Smith, seem­ing to suf­fer from the motion. “We’re about half-way through.”

“Yeah,” said Del, also feel­ing the disorientation.

They stuffed the crawler to the gills with the Mer­ce­nar­ies, Del, and its dri­ver, Cooter.

“Don’ y’all wor­ry,” said Coot­er. “Hootie bird has us under her wing to Tycho. Enjoy the ride.”

“Fuck,” said Williams.

“Just don’t shoot any­body,” said Quaid. “Espe­cial­ly the pilot.”

“I’m not,” said Williams. “Smith said stand down. I have.”

“Uh-huh,” said Quaid, his voice betray­ing the motion hit­ting his stom­ach. “If there were any rea­son to shoot, I think this would push towards it.”

“No need for y’all to be shootin’ any­thin’”, said Coot­er. “Y’all be at Tycho in no time.”

Del felt his inner ear go whacko. He hat­ed zero‑G and couldn’t believe he’d agreed to a job on the Moon. But work was work–it paid far bet­ter than any­thing equiv­a­lent on the Earth. Until the past few days, it had been far safer.

“You aren’t plan­ning to come back,” said Del as he turned to Smith.

“No,” Smith said. “We’ve bust­ed out on get­ting paid for this, now that Coal Co has backed out of Moon mining.”

“Good,” said Del. “I seri­ous­ly don’t want to see any of you again.”

“You won’t,” said Smith, laughing.

“What’s fun­ny?” asked Del, irri­tat­ed by the tone of Smith’s laugh.

“You’ve already for­got­ten,” Smith con­tin­ued. “We work for Nin­ja Cranston. There is always a reckoning.”

******

“Del, you’ve got to come home,” said Doc. “You have to hurry.”

“On my way,” Del said to his phone. “Coot­er just refu­eled the Hootie Bird and is about to launch. Eta is…”

“’bout a half-hour,” said Cooter.

“A half-hour,” said Del.

“Bet­ter land close to Gor­denville,” said Doc. “I can’t move Trish now.”

“All good,” said Coot­er. “Repro­gram­ming descent now.”

“What’s going on?” asked Del, wish­ing Coot­er would hurry.

“Tilly called me a lit­tle while ago,” said Doc. “It’s bad.”

The deck of the crawler sud­den­ly pushed against Del’s feet, knock­ing him off bal­ance. Hootie Bird was aloft.

The min­utes count­ed like hours as Del watched the Moon sur­face race by as they lift­ed toward the top of the arc. What had Cranston done? How did she get to Trish?

Day 6

“Set me up again,” said Del, as he knocked over the tubed glass con­tain­ing a frac­tion of his pre­vi­ous drink.

“Take it easy,” said Alex. “You don’t need to go that fast.”

“Set me up,” grum­bled Del. “You serve me, or I’ll have it shipped from Earth.”

“The good stuff?” asked Alex as he reached for the bottle.

“It will do. As long as it makes me numb. This sucked.”

“I want­ed to thank you. This could have been bloody. That was good think­ing to get Luna­dyne to pick up the con­tracts of the min­ers. It left Smith with­out any options, except to let them go. And hav­ing Coot­er and the prospec­tors mess with the radi­a­tors, genius.”

“You don’t get it, Alex. Trish is dead,” said Del. “And Cranston killed her.”

“But, didn’t Doc say it was complications?”

“I know what Doc said, Alex. Smith made the threat, and I ignored it. I should’ve killed all those fuck­ers when I had the chance.”

“Many peo­ple would have been dead,” said Alex. “Includ­ing you.”

“Just keep pour­ing,” said Del.

Shrug­ging, Alex poured another.

The Sol­dier

Y+0

Granger real­ized that the whirl­wind month had end­ed as he head­ed to the Grey­hound bus, hop­ing to see if he could get a trip. Accord­ing to the sergeant in the dis­charge bar­racks, his chances of get­ting a home trip to Wyoming were next to noth­ing. He had the Army trav­el vouch­er and four hun­dred bucks in cash–enough to last maybe two weeks, if his luck held.

In the hazy twi­light, he made note of the lim­ou­sine pulled up along the curb. Two men were shout­ing at each oth­er along its far side. Granger noticed that the larg­er man had some­thing clinched in his fist, threat­en­ing the small­er man. Granger crossed the street quick­ly and dropped his duf­fle-bag on the ground behind the larg­er man. The man turned, hold­ing an eigh­teen-inch sec­tion of two-inch pipe.

“What do you want?” The large man said in a heavy Texas accent. “Mis­ter fan­cy pants was about to give me a ride.”

“I don’t think he was about to do any such thing,” Granger said.

“Please, I was telling the gen­tle­man that my dri­ver will be just–” start­ed the small­er man, in an almost con­de­scend­ing tone.

“Shut your fast-talk­ing mouth,” the larg­er man said, rais­ing the pipe.

“I’ll give you a count of one to drop that pipe,” said Granger, smelling the whisky on the oth­er man’s breath.

The large man con­tin­ued to raise the pipe and stepped toward Granger. Tak­ing a small step for­ward, Granger rolled the man over his shoul­der eas­i­ly and twist­ed his arm, forc­ing the pipe from his grip and drop­ping the large man to the ground.

“Once more chance, Cow­boy,” Granger said. “Take off and pick on some­one else.”

The man spat and reached for the pipe. Granger put his foot on his hand, grind­ing it against the concrete.

“Leave it,” said Granger.

The man stood and then stum­bled off, obvi­ous­ly drunk.

“That was quite impres­sive,” said the short­er man.

“There was noth­ing to it,” said Granger. “I hope your dri­ver will be along in a minute and you can get out of here.”

“You see, that is the trouble.”

“You don’t have a driver.”

“No, not as of an hour ago,” said the man.

“I take it that Cow­boy there wasn’t apply­ing for the job.”

“No, that was an unfor­tu­nate misunderstanding.”

“I can dri­ve it,” said Granger. “But I don’t have a limo license.”

“I’ll take you up on that if I can­not find one at the bus station.”

“Suit your­self.”

Granger picked up the duf­fle bag and the pipe. He tossed the pipe into a garbage bin.

“Can I get your name?” asked the man.

“Granger. Excuse me–Army the past cou­ple of years–Stanley Granger.”

“Mor­ris Mason. Good to meet you–what rank did you say.”

“No rank now, it seems. Yel­low­stone fin­ished that off.”

“Of course, Mis­ter Granger.”

“If I can help you find that dri­ver now, I’m also try­ing to see if there is any way to get to Wyoming.”

“If you need to get to Wyoming, I’ll see that you get there.

“Thank you, sir, but–”

“Non­sense, you’ve already put your­self in my debt. It’s the least I can do,” said Morris.

“Deal­ing with Cow­boy was not any trou­ble. It looked like you need­ed the help.”

“I insist. Let’s go in and see about a dri­ver, Mis­ter Granger.”

***

The clerk looked bored and didn’t seem to notice them walk up. “Busses are now once a week on Friday–the only des­ti­na­tions are Dal­las and Hous­ton,” the woman mut­tered, not even look­ing up.

“I am look­ing for a dri­ver,” Mor­ris said as Granger looked on.

“You’re look­ing at her, but the bus won’t be here until Fri­day morning.”

“I actu­al­ly need the ser­vices of a dri­ver,” con­tin­ued Mor­ris. “Would you be will­ing to dri­ve us to Dallas?”

“Not unless you got a thou­sand bucks.”

“Now there is a deal,” Mor­ris said. “Miss?”

“It’s just Sue,” she said.

“That seems steep,” said Granger.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re pay­ing. Does it?” said Sue.

“Quite per­cep­tive, Sue.” Mor­ris said.

“I was seri­ous, though,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were jok­ing,” said Mor­ris. “In fact, if you are ready to go in five min­utes, I can raise it to three thousand.”

“Okay, what am I dri­ving?” asked Sue, look­ing at Granger.

“The limo out­side,” said Granger.

“Okay,” she said. “What are your names?”

“I’m Stan­ley. This is Morris.”

“Mor­ris, the mon­ey­bags,” she said.

“Mason,” said Morris.

“Like Mason Oil?” she asked.

“None oth­er,” said Morris.

“Real­ly,” said Granger.

“Who did you think?” Mor­ris asked.

“I real­ly nev­er con­sid­ered it,” Granger answered.

“Well, now that we are all equal­ly shocked now after an apoc­a­lypse, can we get going? I’d like to earn the three grand,” said Sue.