Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – The Soldier
Granger is dis­charged with a trav­el vouch­er and four hun­dred dol­lars. The Grey­hound to Wyoming may not run. A lim­ou­sine is already waiting.
Lunar noir hard sci­ence fic­tion: jus­tice is per­son­al, and back­up is three days away.
The duf­fle strap cuts his shoul­der. That is the first fact.
Twi­light sits on the depot like dust. The sergeant in the dis­charge bar­racks already told him the truth: a trav­el vouch­er does not make a bus exist. Wyoming is a direc­tion, not a sched­ule. Four hun­dred dol­lars in his pock­et is two weeks if he does not eat like a man who just got out. The Grey­hound win­dow is still lit. The des­ti­na­tions on the board are few­er than they used to be.
He sees the lim­ou­sine before he sees the fight. It is parked at the curb as if the world still runs on appoint­ments. On the far side, a large man has some­thing in his fist. A small­er man is talk­ing too fast. Granger cross­es the street and sets the duf­fle down behind the big­ger one. The pipe comes around — eigh­teen inch­es of two-inch steel — and the breath on it is whiskey.
One loca­tion. The curb. The pres­sure is sim­ple: walk past and keep the vouch­er, or put a body between a drunk and a man who still thinks a dri­ver is coming.
He counts to one. The drunk does not drop the pipe. Granger takes the step, the roll, the twist. The pipe hits the con­crete. A foot on a hand is enough. The drunk stum­bles off. Granger picks up the pipe and throws it in the bin with the rest of the week’s trash.
The small­er man has a name. Mor­ris Mason. Granger gives the one he has left: Stan­ley Granger, Army the past cou­ple of years, no rank now. Yel­low­stone fin­ished that off.
Mason has no dri­ver. Not as of an hour ago. Granger can dri­ve a vehi­cle. He does not have a limo license. Mason hears Wyoming and says he will see that Granger gets there. Granger says the drunk was not trou­ble. Mason says the debt is already on the books. They go inside.
The clerk does not look up. Bus­es once a week, Fri­day, Dal­las and Hous­ton. She will dri­ve the limo her­self for a thou­sand. Mason makes it three if she is ready in five min­utes. She looks at Granger when she asks what she is dri­ving. He says the car at the curb. She asks for names. Stan­ley. Mor­ris. Mason. Like Mason Oil. None other.
Granger had not con­sid­ered it. He had con­sid­ered a tick­et that might not print and a road that used to go north.
The choice is already made. He crossed the street. He gave the name. He is in the car’s grav­i­ty now — not the Moon’s, not yet. Years lat­er he will stand in an eleventh-floor office and recruit a deputy with a ques­tion about whether she has ever been to the Moon. The method starts here: a vouch­er that will not buy the trip, a man who can, and the qui­et insis­tence that help cre­ates a debt.
The Grey­hound may still leave on Fri­day. Granger will not be on it.
The orig­i­nal story:

The Sol­dier

Fur­ther Reading
The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Stories
Thun­der Moon Tussle
Mask of the Joy­ful Moon
The Joy­ful Moon is still watching…
and the vouch­er may not be enough.
— Torn MacAlester
Still rid­ing the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fab­u­lae Lunae crew

Stories The sto­ries of Torn MacAlester are sci­ence fic­tion, where the sci­ence is well-ground­ed. I inten­tion­al­ly made any devi­a­tions for spec­u­la­tive pur­pos­es. To main­tain max­i­mum real­ism, I restrict the scope of these deviations. Read More

Articles I write arti­cles of sci­ence fact and sci­ence fic­tion. The arti­cles here span the knowl­edge of mod­ern sci­ence and the spec­u­la­tions of fic­tion. I try to caveat every­thing that is an assump­tion. You will find arti­cles about space­flight, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of alien con­tact, and descrip­tions of tech­nol­o­gy used in my stories. Read More

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