Moonful of silver, p.2
Moonful of Silver, page 2
Benito smiled. “Tranquility’s shielding keeps out as much radiation as Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere. Our temp regulators are the best on the Moon. It gets a little hot about a week into the daylight phase but staying warm through the dark is no problemo. Water isn’t either. Our recyclers are in top condition and we get clean water delivered about once a month. We’re even good on food. Maria has perfected the hydroponics system in the greenhouse, so we have plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.”
Of course she has. Because she’s as perfect as him. They were a storybook couple with a doe-eyed love that made Esteban gag.
He glanced at his brother’s chiseled features and the dark round eyes that turned women into feral moondogs. Was there anything about Captain Benito not graced by angels?
Probably not. He flexed his fingers into a fist, as if ready to punch him. Not just once. Multiple times. Mar that stupidly perfect face of his.
It wasn’t fair. Mother had doted on Benito too much. Her dulce little blessing, she’d always called him. Meanwhile, Esteban’s nickname was Este-billa, a combination of his name and juribilla, a slang word meaning mischievous. So while his big brother received the best of everything, Esteban got stuck with leftovers—including compliments. His whole life was compared to Benito’s. At home, his mother would say, “Your hermano did the same thing when he was your age. Or was he younger?” With his relatives, “Look at you, almost as tall as your brother.” At school, “Oh, Benito played football too. He still holds the record for the most goals kicked in a season.”
It didn’t help that Benito remained ahead in adult life. Finished college. Married a beautiful woman. And now governed one of the most successful colonies on the Moon.
Where was Esteban? Getting rescued by his big brother—the captain—once again. If you call working the mining refinery a rescue.
“Come on,” Benito said. “Let me show you around.”
Esteban kept up the pretense of being interested as his brother led him to the greenhouse. A barrage of green speckled with the vibrant colors of fruit met him inside. Except for two narrow walkways, perfect rows of vegetation took up every bit of space available, the ceiling included. Although moonborne plants tended to be shorter than the ones on Earth, these still looked full and healthy.
If not for the thick air clinging to his throat, he might’ve admired it.
“Es magnifico, no?” Benito asked.
“Where’s Maria?” Esteban stretched his neck, hoping to see something truly magnificent.
“Helping another colony set up their greenhouse. She’ll be back in a week.”
He supposed it was for the best. Seeing all his brother’s glorious possessions at once might send his jealousy into a rage.
Next stop, the gymnasium. An enclosed obstacle court took up one side. Bars, hurdles, moveable walls, balance beams, everything one needed to master maneuverability in low gravity. Top of the line exercise equipment occupied the other half. Stationary bikes, treadmills using bungee cords to keep the runner in place, and weight machines with vacuum cylinders to add resistance.
The colony Esteban used to live in had a gym too, but not nearly in as good condition. The air there smelled of fetid body odor, the equipment was always breaking, and the dim lighting cast a depressing gloom. It was a silthole. Of course he took bribes. What else was he supposed to do when they paid dust for wages?
Wages. They were a trap. With Earth overpopulated, Lunar HQ lured people here with the promise of work. The pay seemed like a godsend until you learned the cost of living. Once here, only an elite few could save enough to return planetside. Even his banishment from a colony didn’t get him sent home. He was stuck here until he died of lung cancer or some other rotten, moon-triggered disease.
Enduring his brother’s perfect life made it worse. He glowered at Benito’s back as he followed him to his communal habitation. The domed building seemed like any other on the outside. The airlock cycled the same, though faster and with fresher air. Inside was another matter. Dirty clothes, empty meal packages, and other junk cluttered in corners. It was cleaner than his previous bunkhouse but he still wrinkled his nose.
“Ay-ya,” Benito said. “Lo siento, hermanito. I can’t set you up in a private room. Might not look good with the crew to give you special treatment, anyway.”
Esteban scoffed, earning a pitying frown from the king of special treatment. “I’m not just your crew. I’m your brother. They’ll get over it.”
Benito glanced down and rubbed the back of his neck. “Come on, Ebbie. I’m doing the best I—”
“¿Me estás jugando conmigo? I’m your brother!”
“Ay-ya!” Benito threw up his hands. “I barely convinced HQ not to send you into the pits! If I don’t put you with the refinery crew, they might start sticking their noses into our operation and take over.” He flicked his hand toward the exit. “Look what we have here. It’s a nice place to raise a family. I can’t lose it.”
Your perfect little colony for your perfect wife, he thought bitterly. “I’m your brother, Bennie.”
Benito clapped his shoulder. “Which is why I’m giving you a job in the refinery rather than the pit. You know how bad it is down there. At least here on the surface you get to enjoy the amenities of the town proper.”
Esteban glowered.
Benito’s eyes tilted as though pleading. “It’ll be great. We can hang out, play moon-soccer in the gym, have a few drinks in the saloon.”
He perked up. “You have a saloon?”
Benito laughed. “Yeah! It has everything—music, card games, beer, and almost twenty types of liquor.”
Well, it wasn’t his own room, but a good whiskey would hold him over until he figured out how to convince his brother to promote him.
After Esteban dropped his rucksack on his flimsy bed, Benito took him to the mining site where he’d work. No training needed. Just about everyone who came to the Moon became a miner. Its metals were valuable but that wasn’t the only reason they did it. Mining was a task taken up by every colony spread over the Moon’s surface.
Although Tranquility V was largely independently run, it still had to answer to Lunar HQ, whose aim was to increase the gravity by mining to the core where they’d build a gravitational device to convert the Moon into a second Earth. LunarCore had already chiseled out the main shaft. Now it was up to the colony to keep it safe.
The worksite came into view as they approached the edge of the buildings. Floodlights illuminated the area, though not penetrating the abyss of the pit. Spider-like drill rigs and other massive machinery dotted the rim. A dozen large-wheeled haulers loaded slag into their beds while a vacuum-type machine sucked up the dust to keep the atmosphere visibly clear. And a section of solar arrays carpeted the ground on the peripherals like obsidian tiles.
Beyond and above the short horizon lay a blanket of black sky bedazzled with trillions of diamond-like stars and galaxies, all surrounding the brilliant blue pendant of Earth. The optics of the shield might have been invisible, but they revealed the stars, at least.
“The refinery, where you’ll be working, is over there.” Benito pointed to the smaller of a set of old buildings with the same modular layout as the town proper. “Just go to that entrance tomorrow when the birdsong sounds.”
Birdsong. That was either a fancy way to describe the blaring noise that sounded every click with special tones to signify Earth-morning, afternoon, and night, or his brother meant it literally. Leave it to Benito to create pretty sound effects for his perfect little life.
“Now for the best part,” Benito said with a gleaming grin. “The saloon.”
Esteban’s mouth watered. You better be buying, you sabueso.
TRANSMISSION
Lunar HQ
LUNAR HQ: Come in, Earth-Base. This is Lunar HQ. Requesting launch confirmation
EARTH-BASE: Launch scheduled. See attached
LUNAR HQ: Itinerary looks good. Please ensure the full catalog of approved food provisions are included. Moonside stockpiles are depleted
. . .
LUNAR HQ: Please confirm supplies will be sent on the next scheduled launch. Repeat: Moonside stockpiles are depleted
. . .
LUNAR HQ: Please confirm launch
. . .
LUNAR HQ: Confirm launch
. . .
LUNAR HQ: We don’t track a vessel on the expected trajectory. Request immediate response
. . .
LUNAR HQ: URGENT—Have you launched? Are provisions in transit or not? Analysis indicates all comms working normally. Please respond
. . .
LUNAR HQ: URGENT. TOP PRIORITY. COME IN, EARTH-BASE. ARE YOU READING US?
NAMELESS
Present
Time stopped in the saloon. The captain’s presence paused every table, snatched every breath as if a moondog had been released from its cage and prowled between the drinkers, and an expectant hush oppressed the air.
The captain approached the stranger, extending a hand. “Captain Esteban Garcia, at your service. Would you care for a drink?” he asked. Although, it didn’t really seem like a question.
The stranger lifted her helmet over her head and reattached it with a metallic clunk and pneumatic hiss.
“I’ll take that as a maybe. Some other time, perhaps?”
She brushed over the sticky metal floor and slipped past the captain. Readings from her helmet flooded across its visor—information scanned from his collar.
Esteban Garcia
Rank: Captain
Heart rate: 65
Blood pressure: 140 / 95
Status: Earthsider, VISA renewal required
Service Record: Lunar HQ; Kepler VII; Kepler II; Copernicus Base; Serenity III, Serenity XI; Serenity Base; Tranquility V
Moonside sponsor: Benito Garcia, brother, deceased
Great. An expired visa, dead sponsor, and a list of colonies longer than an orbit of the sun. How did a guy like that end up being a captain? No wonder they called it the badlands out here.
Not that the stranger needed data to smell there was something off about him. One look at that ridiculously preened mustache could’ve lit up a neon warning sign that read RUN. Anyone who spent enough time out here on the periphery to groom themselves so meticulously warranted a wide berth. Still, it was nice to have her suspicions confirmed. The collars were for more than just paying bar tabs and cycling air.
It had taken plenty of hacking to scratch off the data from her own. Worth it, though.
She exited the saloon and adjusted to the thin gravity of the street that cut the town in two. On one side, the decay of time etched pocks and chips into derelict domes. On the other, the polished veneer of decadent two-story buildings shone. She floated to where she’d left her hover.
The motor chugged as the engine started. She climbed aboard, and hit the throttle, expecting to lurch forward, to hear the pistons fire like a military salute, to scatter dust from the surface where she’d drift to the next colony, and the next saloon. But instead, she felt nothing. No motion. No momentum. No zip across the sand. The motor rumbled, but where was the power?
She flicked her wrist again. Nothing. A black cloud spluttered from the rear, and an acrid burning smell alerted her helmet to the threat of combustion.
She powered down the hover and dismounted. Popped the panel over the engine. Everything appeared to be in order. Well, as ordered as it always was.
“Transport trouble?” A voice from behind her.
She spun, one hand on her scanner.
Captain Garcia stood on the saloon’s porch. “Terrible shame about that. I hate to see a hover break. But you’re lucky you made it here before it gave up. Wouldn’t have done any good to be stranded on the plains.”
How long had she been in the saloon? Long enough for someone to cripple her engine? Careless. That’s what it was—getting into that brawl, no matter how much that drunken lout deserved it. It was careless.
“Still, we’re always glad to have wanderers with us here in Tranquility V. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Say, I hope you don’t mind, but I scanned you in the bar, just to be sure. I’ve never seen a collar blanked like yours. Your service record—so many redactions. Must’ve taken effort to clear all that. Ain’t seen a collarsmith since I was at Lunar HQ. Where’d you learn to scrub your data?”
The stranger ignored him, turned back to her engine and ran her fingers along the cables and pistons, searching for a loose connection. There were only so many ways to sabotage a hover.
At her side, Esteban’s boots planted on the ground, scattering silt. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter where you learned it. None of my business, really. Not unless you intend on making trouble in my town. But you don’t seem the troubling sort. No. You seem more like the sort who can turn their paw to just about anything. Am I right?”
She scanned the engine through her visor. Everything looked in position. What was she missing? What couldn’t she see?
“Helps to have a skill when you’re all the way out here. So far from HQ.” His smile was too sickly to be a comfort, like the sweetness of caramel to conceal the salt underneath. “And trust me, we’re a long, long way from HQ.”
She stepped back from the engine and squared him direct in the eye. He didn’t so much as flinch.
“You’re a woman of few words, ain’t you?”
She could scan him down, here and now. But where would that get her? She’d seen how he commanded that idiot in the saloon—that kind of loyalty kept a person safe. Tempting as it was, wiping the smirk off this captain wasn’t worth the heat. Not yet, at least.
Besides, there were other ways to stop this guy smiling than simply sending him back to the dust. Her silence was doing the job just fine, from the way his cheeks tensed.
Esteban finally coughed, giving him a chance to reset that perma-grin. “You’ll need a mechanic to take a look at that engine, no doubt. We’ve got one here, at the far side of town. Gabriel. Goes by Gabe. Harmless enough. He’ll get you on your way. And in the meantime, if you want the guided tour—maybe make some silver for that blanked collar of yours—I’ll be domed up over there. I’m sure we can find something to do for a wanderer of your . . . talents.” He glanced at the commander’s pistol hanging from her hip. “Don’t be a stranger.” Esteban tipped his hat and glided away to an exquisite, large dome on the rich end of town.
What exactly were her options here? Disassemble the hover and try to piece it back together right here without all the necessary tools, not knowing how many eyes were watching? The captain had hinted at her talents. Well, the last thing she needed was to showcase just how wide her skillset went. Not in a deregulated place like this. It wasn’t like a Lunar Court stretched its jurisdiction out here in anything but name.
No. Stripping the hover herself was out of the question. Which meant her only chance of leaving was to find a mechanic. At least, someone with the right tools.
On the far side of town, he’d said. She hadn’t passed a junkyard on the way in. And it wasn’t like she had many places to look. Tranquility V was a colony with only one street. How hard would it be to find this Gabe guy?
With her helmet secured, she replaced the panel, braced the chassis, and pushed the hover. It edged forward at a pace that didn’t even stir the dust. She passed a mishmash of domes and broken down units on the left, and perfect, salubrious structures on the right. No awards for figuring out which side of the street profited from whatever they did in this place.
Eventually, the street widened—either that or the slum-like domes on the poorer side crumbled to nothing, leaving only junk and scrap piled in heaps. After a while, the heaps became hills, until they parted in an opening that led to a small unit. It was overhung by a shoddy awning that had so many scars, it could’ve been ripped a thousand times and patched together again.
Amidst the chaos of junk piles, a man knelt on hands and knees, oil staining his rags and his helmet buried in the scrap.
“Gabe will find it,” he muttered to himself. “Gabe’s got one. Well, why don’t you go tell Gabe where he put it, if you’re that clever. Come on. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”
The stranger walked the hover to one side and watched the man sift through bolts and screws and nuts and tacks and all kinds of oddments, grumbling to himself as he went.
“Ha!” He jumped up, removed his helmet, and kissed the bolt he found. “Gabe, you old Moonman. You’ve gone and done it! Estrellas santas!” He kissed it again, thick stubble scraping against his lips as he gurgled a laugh. Wrinkles crowded his eyes, especially when he smiled. He turned back to his unit and glanced at the stranger.
He stopped. She stared. His hands quivered, and he pocketed the bolt in the front of his rags.
“Can I . . . help you?” he asked, on the verge of a stutter.
The stranger unlatched her helmet and slid it off.
His eyes widened and his jaw slackened. “Jo,” he whispered, awestruck. “Jo, is that you?”
The stranger frowned.
“No. It can’t be Jo. You’re just seeing things, old man.” He juddered, banishing whatever vision of this Jo character he saw in the stranger’s hardened face. “You got a name?”
The stranger shook her head.
“Nameless, huh? Well. That’ll do. So, Nameless. Welcome to Gabe’s Restitutions and Repairs. Are you lost, or in need of repair?”
Nameless. Huh. Not too bad. Worth trying out for size, at least. Nameless stepped aside and Gabe whistled at the first sight of her hover.
“Is that . . . does it still run?”
She shrugged.
He stepped toward it, stooped to his knees, and scratched his head. “Well, it must have got you here in one piece. I haven’t seen a COLT like this in . . . well, I didn’t think they were making Combi Ore Light Transports anymore. It’s gotta be antique. Let me guess—the throttle’s gone? Right?”
