Lore & Secrets – Ninja Cranston
The name that turns a strike into something Coal Co hired mercenaries to break.
Lunar prospector science fiction: claims, volatiles, and the people who work the surface.
Sheriff Del Anderson does not meet her first. He meets a contractor who will not give a real name, tattoos from the Central Asian jobs, a Coal Co crawler logged as John Smith, and a demand to let Smitter out of the tank. Smitter got drunk and tried to open a hatch to vacuum. Del will not make an exception. On the way out, the man leaves a name Del is supposed to worry about: Lina Cranston.
Del’s thought is not Lina. Damn, not Ninja Cranston. I thought she was in prison.
What Is Known
Coal Co. used to hold Lunadyne’s mining contract. Miners prepared to strike. They used Alex’s Bar. Joe Dubcek said they were not leaving. Lunadyne bought the contract and renegotiated it. In the meantime, Coal Co hired mercenaries to break the strike before it happened. The mercenaries did not stand down. They took most of the habitats. That chain is in The Lunadyne Incident and still in the later books as the reason Conrad has a drunken sheriff, a new deputy, and a three-day lag that will not send a second force.
Ninja Cranston is the name that makes the hire specific. Cooter knows it without a briefing: one of the worst, arrested after a war crime in Central Asia, key thrown away. Del knows why the key did not hold. After the West Coast seceded, the federal penitentiary emptied. Prisoners dumped into Nevada. He was in the U.S. Marshals. Five hundred marshals in Vegas alone. He quit. Trish said the Moon would be better. Cranston was never on the watch list. He figured Pacifica had the sense to keep her in the cage.
Hearing she is out, Del says, can make the situation a hell of a lot more dangerous. Coal Co has doubled down. The station is about to get boiling. Civilians to Gordonville. An ace in the hole, if they can find one.
The public story is a contract violation and safety of the people. The useful story is a mercenary commander whose reputation is enough to empty a clinic conversation.
What Is Still Unpaid
Whether Lina and Ninja are the same person on paper is less important than the fact that Del treats them as one. The contractor needed Del to worry. The name did the work.
What Coal Co thought it was buying is still unpaid. Strike-breakers. What it got was habitats taken and a station that never quite went back to being a mining camp with a bar. Granger will later recite the same chain to Gen in Morris’s office: mercenaries, habitats, Lunadyne blaming Coal Co. The Mason war sits on top of that unpaid file. It does not replace it.
Smitter in the tank is the small version. A drunk at a hatch. Cranston is the large version. Same vacuum. Different payroll.
Why Conrad Remains Useful
Conrad remains useful to people who never have to live there because a strike at a lunar hub is not only labor. It is airlocks, water, and who holds the corridors when backup is three days away. Hiring Ninja Cranston is how an Earth-side contractor turns a labor problem into a security problem the sheriff cannot file as a drunk in the tank.
Gordonville is the civilian answer. The later deputy is the corporate one. The name still sits under both: the worst of the Earth wars, dumped out of a prison that no longer existed, available for a Moon that thought it was through with that bullshit.
It was not through. Not by a long shot.
Further Reading
- The Lunadyne Incident and Other Stories — “The Lunadyne Incident”
- Character Spotlight – Jim Ross (Cooter)
- Character Spotlight – Sheriff Del Anderson
- Frontier Foundations – Gordonville
- Lore & Secrets – The Mason War
- Thunder Moon Tussle
- Mask of the Joyful Moon
The Joyful Moon is still watching…
and some questions stay unpaid.
— Torn MacAlester
Still riding the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fabulae Lunae crew
🚀🌕
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StoriesThe 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. |
ArticlesI 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. |
