Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition

by Matthew Howard

  Mags. His mind wandered. Perhaps if he had been paying attention, his night would have gone quite differently. He did not know it, but Plutonian was far from alone on this rock. The mine was no longer abandoned.

  The ship matched the docking bay’s rotational speed and joined to it. It spun fast enough to generate gravity nearly equal to Earth’s. He donned a suit, a mask, and an air supply. The slightly weak gravity suggested to him the rock’s thrusters were running low on propellant, and he had little hope the atmosphere and climate controls worked inside. If the power had run out, he would have to start the slow process of pumping heat into the docking bay and the torus. But he would prefer to take his discovery into one of the inner caverns.

  The ship’s reading gave him hope. Air pressure and temperature in the docking bay were normal. He opened the hatch.

  In the darkness which greeted him, his eyes adjusted to the faint light of an LED strip and a glowing panel on the wall. This panel displayed the temperature, air quality, and pressure of the toroidal structure and the adjoining shaft.

  “That’s odd. Everything’s in Russian.” He recognized the Cyrillic letters on the panel, and many of the words. But he knew the company that built this mine was not Russian at all. “Maybe someone’s been here,” he muttered. “Or maybe a weird glitch.”

  He was suddenly glad he had left his cat Tesla in Celina’s care back at the club. He re-entered his ship. The black box with his unusual discovery rested in the chair at the command console. He loaded the Benelli shotgun Mags had given him. “Better safe than full of holes,” he said to no one. He returned to the docking bay, set the panel to English, and opened the door to the torus.

  Light streamed through the door. He took up a position beside the doorway, giving his eyes time to adjust. “Hello? Anybody there?” He shouted greetings in Russian. “Preevyet! Zdrastvooyte!” Only silence answered him—silence, and a low hum of electric power.

  Okay, he thought. Before I do this, I need to send Mags a message. He walked back to his ship again, slung his shotgun over his shoulder, and picked up his tablet. Opening a message to her, he typed his orbital coordinates and location. Walking back to the torus, he typed what he was up to.

  But once inside the torus, something caught his eye. “What the hell is this?” A poster of Lenin hung on the wall. Beside it hung a tattered poster from the early days of the Soviet space program. Below them, on the floor of the torus, sat several unlit candles and an assortment of helmets and space gear. “It’s a bloody altar,” he whispered. But something about the helmets looked wrong. They were far too small to fit a human head.

  A net struck him, throwing him to the floor. It entangled his limbs. His tablet skittered across the floor. He instinctively tried to bring up his shotgun, but his head struck the ground. Bound, his limbs could not move. He heard maniacal screeching, a sound unlike anything except his worst nightmares and the most experimental German noise rock.

  It sparked an animal fear. He thrashed in the net. Shadows played and stretched across the walls. Tiny hands grabbed him. Something landed on his chest. It bared its teeth and screamed.

  Then he knew his captors were anything but human. They dragged him mercilessly across the floor, into an elevator, and then down, down, down into the asteroid mine.

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  “Slim, do you remember the first time you dyed my hair?”

  “Ha! How could I forget that? Do you remember the second time?”

  Mags relaxed in a salon chair, leaning her head back. Her long white hair flowed into a sink behind her. Slim’s gloved hands massaged red dye into her damp mat of curls. “I remember a heck of a lot more than you give me credit for, you old dog. I recall Alberta like it was two days ago.”

  “It’s hard to forget calling in an airstrike to save the Loch Ness monster.”

  “Nessie, my ass. That lake beast was straight up Canadian! Not Scotch.”

  “Scottish.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You know, I just met a miner from Alberta last week. He tells me the legend of the lake monster is alive and well in those parts.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I had some help from my auntie. She might have even had her clothes on that time.”

  “Hell yes I did! I was freezing my tits off up there in maple syrup land. Goddamn!”

  “Seriously. I loved that lake monster, don’t get me wrong, but I was so happy to get back to—hey, is that you?”

  Her tablet chimed repeatedly. “Wrap me up when we’re done, and I’ll check it. Bloody middle of the night! Who calls at this time?”

  “Old friends who can’t sleep?”

  “Word.” She patted the side of his leg as he worked the dye into her hair. “Thank you, Slim.”

  Eventually, Mags got up and checked her message. “Bleeding goddess.” She scanned the text. “Look at this.” She read it aloud for Patches as they marveled at the message.

  “What’s all this at the end? It’s totally breaking up into gibberish.”

  “Yeah. It’s all normal until right here, and then it’s like some spastic started typing nonsense. Then—what the fuck is this picture?”

  It was a photo, snapped only a second before the message transmitted. They stared in wonder at the fragmented close-up of an utterly inhuman face. Its one visible eye overflowed with rage. Its teeth reflected light like blades.

  “Slim, Patches and I have to go now. Whatever the hell that is, it ain’t good.”

  Patches howled in agreement.

  “At least let me rinse your hair first!”

  “Okay, but hurry!”

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  Hours later, the asteroid filled the view on the bridge of the Queen Anne. Patches tried to doze in Mags’ lap, but her cantankerous friend would not stop fidgeting. She mewed a complaint.

  “Sorry, dear. I love the color, but what do you think? Up? Or down?” Mags adjusted her hair this way and that. “A bun? A ponytail? Ugh.”

  For the first time in her life, Patches expressed an opinion about Mags’ hair.

  “What?! Since when did you care? And there’s no way I have time for a beehive. We’re almost there!”

  Patches sat up, placing her forepaws on the edge of the control console. She watched and learned as Mags talked her through the same docking procedure Plutonian had used.

  But what Mags saw brought an end to the lesson. “Wait. Look at this. He’s already got his ship docked in the only port.” She leaned back in her seat. “Do you feel like a little spacewalk, Patches? It’s either that or trying to land the Queen Anne on a spinning chunk of ice.”

  Patches chattered.

  “Indeed. Right across a frozen wasteland covered in knee-deep sand, where we have to cut our way through a wall as thick as the Queen Anne’s hull before bloody freezing to death, and totally ready to kill anything that pops out at us from inside. Which is probably a screaming homicidal maniac and all of his closest friends.” She sighed. “Remind me again why we do this.”

  “Miao?”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Now strap in and prepare for impact. I’ve got an idea.”

  From the central shaft of the mine, a single armored corridor ran along the asteroid’s surface to a power station. “Plutes could be anywhere in that mine, dear. But it’s not very likely he’s in that little power station. Hang on.” She brought the Queen Anne into an approach on the opposite side of the station from the mine’s central shaft. As the ship neared the planet, its computerized flight system sounded an alarm. “Yeah, yeah. Imminent crash. Pipe down, ya bloody machine!”

  Patches put her paws over her ears.

  “Didn’t I tell you to strap in? Have it your way then, Miss Unbreakable Britches.” Mags pounded on the console. “Enough with the sodding alarms already! Christ on a crutch.” She shut off the computerized flight system. Revving her vessel’s engines to full power, she did her best to reach a speed equal to the asteroid’s rotational ve
locity. “Close enough,” she mused. “But we’ll need a little drag.” She deployed the landing gear. “Here we go!”

  The landing gear smashed into the sandy regolith covering the asteroid’s surface. Metal shook violently and kicked plumes of dust into space.

  They roared along the surface for half a kilometer before Mags punched the reverse thrusters. Patches flew out of her seat and smacked into the window.

  “Watch out!”

  The landing gear succumbed to the friction and tore loose from the ship’s belly. The Queen Anne carved a deep gouge into the asteroid, filling it with sparks. Fire burst out on its underside, then vanished in the vacuum of space. Trailing smoke, the ship slowly ground to a halt. Mags strained against her safety belts.

  The power station loomed in the regolithic clouds which obscured the stars. Mags cranked the ship sideways, hoping to scoop up enough of the loose rock to form a buffer between her and the station. But the momentum forced the ship up over her makeshift berm. It flipped once, bashed its topside into the asteroid, then flipped again.

  “Gaaah!” She wrestled the controls as the ship went into a third flip. A calico blur hurtled past her again, howling. “I told you!”

  The Queen Anne smashed into the power station and came to rest.

  Patches jumped onto the console. She pressed her face to the window and chattered with a wild look in her eyes. The hair on her back and all along her tail stood on end, making her look twice as large.

  “Any landing you can drag your bloody carcass away from by one hand, I guess. Now let’s see if my plasma cutter is worth all the money I didn’t pay for it.”

  Patches ran a paw over her ear and licked it. She considered that Mags might have been right about strapping in this time. She shook it off.

  The smuggler returned from the Queen Anne’s armory with a pressure suit draped over her arm, rolling a plasma cutter alongside her. “This asteroid is old-school, Patches. No bloody atmosphere to speak of, and the only thing giving us gravity right now is its rotation. One wrong move and we could go careening off into space.” She stepped into the pressure suit and pulled it up. “So, when I open up that power station, we’re likely to get hit with a blast of pressurized air. That’s why we’re going to tether ourselves to the ship, okay? Now let me get this harness on you.”

  Patches whined, but she decided to cooperate this time. She let Mags slip the harness over her fuzzy legs and snap it in place across her back. She rolled onto her haunches and bit at the harness.

  “Is it too tight?” Mags slipped a finger between the harness and Patches’ body. “You’re just grumpy. It needs to be snug, dear. Haven’t you learned your lesson about strapping in yet?” Her cat squirmed in protest. “It’s better than getting blasted off this rock into infinite nothing, don’t you think?” She ran a tether from a panel by the exit door and fastened it to the harness. “Okay, now it’s my turn. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do.” Mags fastened the second tether to the sturdy belt around the waist of her suit. “See? I got my own little harness. Now get ready to depressurize.”

  Patches put her ears back and frowned. Air hissed from the vents of the ship and out into the void. She didn’t care for the noise, but the decreasing pressure did not cause her any discomfort. She yawned, drawing a breath from the last remaining air. When she attempted to mew at Mags, her voice made no sound in the airless interior.

  Despite the chaotic landing, Meteor Mags had successfully placed the Queen Anne only a few steps from the power station’s door. “They say this bitch will cut through anything, dear. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.” She made a few adjustments to the plasma cutter. “Alright. Time for a 1993-style home invasion.”

  Patches couldn’t hear, but she watched with feline disinterest. The power station’s door sported multiple locks, circular affairs half a meter wide and set into steel bars fifteen centimeters thick. The plasma cutter rested in her hands like the bastard son of a rifle and a pressure washer, its flexible hose snaking into a box on the floor. Mags wheeled the box to the edge of the doorway.

  A blinding flare of light erupted from the cutter’s tip. Patches averted her eyes from the shower of sparks. Then, curious, she looked up into the burning rain. She batted at the tiny pieces of incandescent metal cascading over her.

  Once upon a time they would have set her on fire. Now, she playfully stomped them with her paws. They skittered along the deck.

  Patches abandoned them to stand in Mags’ way. She poked her nose at the power station door, and her feet sank into the sand.

  The glass in Mags’ helmet had darkened automatically at the light burst. Mags guided the stream of high-powered plasma through the locks, smiling as it sliced through steel with hardly any resistance. The brackets holding the crossbars fell away. They dropped noiselessly into the sand.

  Patches jumped back. Then she crept up to the fallen pieces and pawed at them. With her claws, she carved a “P” into one. There, she thought. She purred at having marked this new territory.

  Mags gently tried to shoo her away but gave up. If anyone in the System took orders worse than her, it was her cat. She cut through the final lock. It fell to the ground, sending up a cloud of regolith. Mags shoved it out of the way with her foot, turned off the cutter, and pushed it back into the ship. Returning to the door, she cranked it open by a circular handle resembling a submarine’s hatch.

  Pressurized air blasted out of the station, flinging open the door. Mags jumped back. Kneeling beside Patches, she watched until the regolith stopped blowing, signaling that the pressure was gone. She scooped up her cat and entered the station.

  Mags found pressure controls in the dim, LED lighting. She unhooked the tethers from Patches’ harness and her suit, tossed them out the door, and sealed it behind them. She set about re-pressurizing the room.

  Mags checked her laser rifle while she waited. Although she had her usual array of personal weapons inside her suit, she had decided to take a laser rifle to avoid ricocheting projectiles inside the mine. Patches might have been bulletproof, but she and Plutonian were not.

  When the pressure normalized, she pulled off her helmet. “Okay, kitten. Get ready for anything.” She stepped to the side of a second door which led from the station into the long corridor to the mine’s central shaft. Holding her rifle ready, she touched the panel and opened the door.

  The corridor was dark except for a few strips of LEDs. Two pairs of feline eyes peered around the edge.

  “Bloody death trap. One way in. One way out.”

  Patches agreed, so she took the lead. It was nice to breathe again, she thought. Not necessary, but comforting, like a big pile of crunchy papers to sprawl on. She crouched low to the ground. The tip of her tail flicked slowly back and forth.

  Keeping close to one of the walls, Mags followed silently behind her. When they made it to the far end of the corridor, she approached the door panel with trepidation. Whatever the hell was holding Plutonian here, she thought, it had to have heard all the noise during the break-in. If it wasn’t here already, it could only be waiting to attack.

  She was not wrong.

  PART TWO: THE CRYSTAL PALACE

  Martian Headquarters of the Port Authority.

  Kaufman looked up from his monitor. “Yes, Rosalia?”

  “Sir, the artwork you ordered just came in. Would you like it brought up now?”

  “Yes, please. Will they unpack it for us?”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll bring them in.”

  He sat back and surveyed the single blank wall left in his office. He sighed with satisfaction. This would be a fine home for The Crystal Palace. It was a pity he would never see it again.

  “Sir? The music?”

  Kaufman snapped back to reality. He clicked the music off. “I’m sorry, Rosalia. These bloody reports. Sometimes I think if I have to listen to one more sample of suspected contraband, it will be the death of me.”

  Her lips drew into
a grim smile, but she broke eye contact and looked at the folders in her hands. “Rather chipper tune, sir.” She raised her head and marched off to fetch the delivery crew.

  Kaufman’s eyes returned to his monitor. There he saw the face of Wayne Hancock and the cover of A-Town Blues, complete with a high-resolution scan of the album’s original liner notes and credits. Had this really been an official report, as he claimed, duty would have required him to authorize a police action.

  Instead, he turned the volume back up and lightly tapped his foot with the Texas swing beat. He enjoyed the yodeling followed by the lazy drawl of a slide guitar. Then he cleared his throat and shut off all audio and video.

  Rosalia rejoined him to stand at his side. She directed two members of the delivery crew. They removed all the protective casing and padding from a framed painting. “Lovely choice, sir. Stunning, really.”

  “Yes. Yes, she is. Quite stunning. Gentlemen, would you leave it resting against the wall there, please? Thank you. No, I haven’t quite decided how high to hang it yet. I thought I knew, but then—” He shrugged. “I changed my mind. Yes, right there is fine. Thank you.”

  After the crew had shuffled out, Rosalia said, “I could have maintenance here to hang it before the day’s over.”

  “No, let’s wait until after my holiday. I have so much to do before I leave. I’d rather sleep on it.”

  “Do enjoy your holiday, sir. You take so few of them.”

  “I’ll have you know I enjoyed a perfectly fun Thursday not three years ago. It was quite a pip.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He waited until the hall was empty and shut his door. He turned the music back up and quietly whistled along. With a razor blade, he sliced open the top of the paper backing on the new frame.