Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition

by Matthew Howard

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “Kaufman, children are not sexualized here. Period. And if you think any of my girls will violate your son’s privacy, you don’t understand this place at all. Privacy is a fundamental part of feeling normal. It’s having a place where you can feel safe and shut out the world for a while. Nobody knows that better than we do. A lot of these girls had their privacy violated in serious ways before they got here.”

  “And your solution is teaching them to dance naked for money?” As the words left his lips, he regretted their sharp tone. He was, after all, a guest. “I mean—”

  Mags stopped at the door to the room Sarah shared with Kala. She folded her arms across her chest and faced him sternly. “My solution is teaching young women to kick ass and take names, whether they have their clothes on or not. My solution is teaching them how to keep control of their bodies no matter what situation they’re in. Besides, there’s an age for these things.”

  She unfolded her arms to count her points on her fingers. “For one, nobody under 17 can perform any kind of erotic work at this club, unless we’re closed and it’s a project they’re doing with friends. And second, no one under 19 can work at Below the Belt, and I am that club’s sole supplier of dancers. If I don’t think someone can handle that joint, I won’t send them, and they can’t get in without my okay. They start here, where Celina and I can watch out for them.

  “Sure, we have people of all ages living here. We’ve taken in straight-up refugees, Kaufman—girls who were forced into prostitution, girls whose parents were murdered before their eyes in civil wars, girls from abusive families. But we’re their new family.

  “For the ones who go on to dance, it can be a stepping stone to finding their own thing. Last year, Tinta quit Slim’s and opened up her own tattoo shop on Ceres. She’s her own boss, she loves her work, and she’s doing quite well.

  “In the meantime, they get an education and—oh, here comes Sarah now. You can ask her yourself. Ahoy, Sarah!”

  “Mags!” Sarah dashed through the hall to throw her arms around the pirate.

  Mags hugged her. “What did you learn this morning, dear?”

  “I learned what a variable is!”

  “You did? What is it?”

  “It’s a letter that stands for something when you don’t know how much you have!”

  “That’s right, beautiful. An unknown quantity. Speaking of unknowns, I have to go on a mission. Will you do something for me while I’m gone?”

  Sarah looked up expectantly. “Anything.”

  “Then say hello to Anton. His daddy’s my friend, and he doesn’t have a place to stay right now. Will you show him around and make sure he has what he needs?”

  Sarah felt a swell of pride at being trusted. “Of course.” She stepped away from Mags and held out her hand. “Hi, Anton.”

  “Hi, Sarah.” He shook her hand with all the grace his father had taught him. “I won’t be any trouble. I just need a place to sleep.”

  “Oh, you can sleep in Plutonian’s room,” said Mags. “He’ll get a spare cot or a bunk for you. I just thought you might like to have someone your own age to pal around with. Sarah’s my little angel. She’ll get you sorted.”

  Sarah beamed at being called an angel. She opened the door to her room.

  Looking inside, Anton asked, “Is that your keyboard?”

  “Mags gave it to me. I’m trying to learn.”

  “It’s very pretty.”

  “It’s got more than good looks,” said Mags. “This baby’s got touch-sensitive keys, just like a real piano. Here. Let me show you.” She sat on the edge of Sarah’s bed, and the keyboard was already on. “You ever hear of Arsenal?”

  “Like a bunch of guns?”

  “Just like that. But it’s a band. Anyway, this keyboard can take a bashing, but you get a lot of mileage out of it with a light touch, too.” Her fingertips spun delicate arpeggios. “This is the guitar part from Diggin’ a Hole. Transcribed it for piano ages ago.”

  Kaufman had played him the Psycho 78s album many times, so Anton assumed all her music was filled with rage, like a hail of sonic bullets. But when she closed her eyes and sang, he heard something else entirely.

  Anton thought of his mother. She had died when he was nine, in 2025, and her final year had been one of worsening disease and wasting away. He had memories of her before that, but he had been very young, and the memories felt broken, disjointed, like a few fragments of sunlight finding their way into a cave. They found him now.

  He remembered his mother played lullabies before his bedtime. Moments they shared in their home on Mars returned to him: how she taught him to pick out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when he was only five; the way she would sometimes play in the other room when his father was reading; how his father would set down his work and lean back in his favorite chair, lift his chin in a subtle sign of attention, and close his eyes to let his wife’s melodies carry him like a baby in her arms.

  Anton would have been surprised to know Mags also thought of her mother when she played this tune. She sang about sunlight, and no light, and wanting to be just like someone. She sang about wanting to count on someone.

  Kaufman blinked back the saltwater that blurred his vision. He loved her solo piano album, but it was far harsher material than this. Could the woman before him truly be the murderous rogue who led the Psycho 78s at their 2027 Ceres concert? Could the hands so artfully gracing the keyboard now be the same hands that delivered beatings and bullets throughout the Belt?

  Sarah had never heard the song before, but when Mags sang, everything made sense. Sarah wanted to sing just like her someday. She wanted to sing a song that made people feel like she could see right into their hearts and hold them.

  Mags finished the final lyric. She faded the piano and opened her eyes. With a little swagger, she said, “Now that’s how a proper keyboard sounds. Love this thing.”

  Anton asked, “Did you write that?”

  Mags laughed. Had Anton ever seen an ocean, he would have thought he heard waves crashing on a beach in that laugh. “No, dear. It’s an Arsenal tune. With my favorite singer, John Garcia. What that man’s voice does to me, I can’t even tell you.”

  Sarah clapped her hands. “Will you teach me how to play that?”

  “Of course I will.” She stood. “Now, you take care of our friend Anton while I’m gone, okay?”

  Sarah threw her arms around the smuggler and looked up. “You can count on me.”

  Mags ran her hand over the young woman’s hair. “I know I can, Sarah. I know I can.” Sending Kaufman back the way he came once father and son had said goodbye, she set off to find Patches.

  PART TWO: THE BAND

  The smuggler rolled a crate through the front door of Club Assteroid and out to where the rest of her crew waited.

  Patches stretched leisurely on top of it. She had been having fun with her feline friend Tesla at the clean-up site and had taken quite some time to calm down. She looked all around as the interior light gave way to a deep black sky salted with infinite stars. Even in the sunlight of Vesta’s five-hour days, the stars never left the heavens. The artificial atmosphere was not so thick as Earth’s to block their light.

  Kaufman stood near his ship. Its triangular profile resembled a fallen obelisk, with a pointed nose expanding to a flat rear end that boasted directional thrusters. A pointed fin rose from its back, and two similar shapes grew from its side as wings. It sat above two sturdy feet shaped like wide skis held in place by struts a meter and a half tall. The interior was compact, hardly larger than Kaufman’s dining room on Mars.

  He looked askance at the lazy calico enjoying her ride. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring a cat on this mission?”

  Fuzzlow, Donny, and Celina stood nearby, puffing cigarettes. Kaufman’s naïve question earned him raised eyebrows and bemused smiles from the crew.

  “Listen,” said Mags. “You don’t know shit about what happened t
o Patches this summer. But I promise you, she’s the most able-bodied seaman on this ill-advised adventure.”

  “Sea-cat,” Donny interjected. “We jumpstarted her two days ago.”

  “You did what?” Kaufman asked.

  “We jumpstarted her,” said Donny. “We thought she died, but she just needed the juice turned back on.”

  “Are you making some kind of a joke?”

  Donny shook his head, pursing his lips. “Nope. Damn cat’s practically indestructible. And she’s got zero fucks to give about anything but hanging out with Mags.”

  “That’s right, dear. Patches sails with me. End of discussion. Now, can we load this crate of weapons, or do we want to stand around debating who else is and is not on this crew?”

  Kaufman obligingly lowered the rear hatch door so Mags could wheel the crate aboard. Far smaller than the Queen Anne, his vessel had enough volume to seat all of them and their supplies, but not much more.

  Patches jumped from the crate and made her way forward to the seats behind the bridge. Kaufman joined her inside and took his seat in the pilot’s chair. He raised no objection when Mags chose the copilot’s chair beside him.

  The rest of the crew stomped out cigarettes on Vesta 4.

  Mags yelled at them from inside, “Use the bloody ashtray!”

  Donny sighed. He picked up the butts and tossed them in the ashtray by the club’s door. “She’s getting grouchy in her old age.”

  The crew clambered into the tiny interior.

  Fuzzlow ducked his head to avoid smacking it on the machinery lining the cabin walls and ceiling. “K-man,” he said, “do you got any tunes on this thing?”

  “I’ve been listening to a lot of the Sterile Skins lately. You ever hear of them?”

  “Hear of them?” Celina asked. “We fuckin’ love that band!”

  “Hell yeah,” Fuzzlow agreed. “Long live the ska resistance!”

  “Yo,” said Mags. “You got anything heavier?”

  Kaufman adjusted the music. “And for you, Mags, I have the complete WhaleRider album from 2014. Thanatos.”

  Fuzzlow whistled softly. “I didn’t think anybody but our DJ had a copy of that anymore.”

  “I have my sources,” said Kaufman, turning up the volume.

  “You know what, K-man? You’re alright in my book.” Fuzzlow patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry about jumping all over your shit earlier.”

  Celina made herself comfortable and said, “Look at the boys getting along now.”

  Soon, they lifted off the asteroid and shot into space.

  “Not to carry on the Patches debate or anything,” said Celina, “but did you ever wonder if she could get pregnant?”

  “What do you mean?” Mags asked.

  “When a sperm meets an egg, it breaks through the outer barrier of the cell, right? If Patches is invulnerable, then how could her cell membranes be broken by sperm? Or anything? Does she even absorb nutrients from her food?”

  Fuzzlow said, “She poops, right?””

  “Christalmighty,” said Mags. “Does she ever.”

  “Is her poop indestructible?”

  Donny snorted. He pulled a bottle of beer from his cooler and cracked it open.

  “Actually,” said Mags, “I think it is. I’ve been burying it in a hole out behind the club because it doesn’t seem to break down. Fuck knows what it would do to our septic system.”

  “And the hair?” Celina added. “Totally invulnerable to cutting, or burning, or anything else Tarzi and I could think of.”

  “If it means anything to you,” said Mags, “I know she was never spayed. I’ve been inside her mind, and there was no memory of it. But I can tell you, when she goes into heat, she’s fuckin’ inconsolable. I can hardly sleep for days with the racket she kicks up.”

  “You guys are putting me on,” said Kaufman.

  “First of all, Celina and me are not guys. And second of all, it’s totally true! Patches almost died this summer, and Tarzi and me put her in this machine on a dead moon that we ended up totally destroying, and she’s been badder than bad ever since. Plus, we had our minds merged by a giant octopus.”

  Kaufman looked up from the console. The ship had taken the coordinates for Ceres and had little need for him to pilot now. “You put her in a machine?”

  Fuzzlow nodded. “And she’s been crapping out indestructible turds ever since.”

  Donny spat beer across the cabin.

  “Donald!” Mags exclaimed. “For shit’s sake, we can’t take you anywhere. But seriously, can we talk about something else besides my cat’s turds for the rest of this trip?”

  Donny hunted for a rag to mop up the sprayed beer. “Okay. Subject change. So, what really happened to your first sax player?”

  “Mr. Blistr?” The pirate sighed. “We lost him in a Cuisinart accident.”

  “A what?”

  “Don’t make me relive the horror. You know, I still remember getting together with Fuzz and Batalla for the first time.” Mags spun her seat around to face her crew. She locked her arms behind her head and leaned back. “It’s the whole reason we started the Two Black Roses record label. They had a great duet, and I thought they should be at our club. We put out a record for them under the name Two Black Roses, and BAM!

  “They were on their little tour, and they ran into Mr. Blistr and vibed with him big time. We sealed off a room of the Assteroid for a week and recorded the Psycho 78s album. I get production credits, but mostly what I did was ‘liberate’ products we needed to put out an album. Pedals. Packaging. Rum. Tobacco. The usual stuff.”

  “We should totally do another tour,” said Donny. “I love playing at the Club, but the 78s tour with Blistr is legend.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Mags. “The parties made the news. And the riots. But we had a whole other thing on the side where we really made our money. We didn’t just tour. We raided and plundered!”

  Kaufman thought fondly of the promotional poster he had recently acquired, the one with Mags and her whip and the date of the now-legendary Ceres gig. He stole a glance at her. Something about the way the top of her skirt didn’t quite reach her garters, or the lace stockings she wore like she was about to go on stage instead of straight into battle. Then he looked away.

  “Hey,” said Donny. “I might have been slaving in the mines back then, but the word was out that if you needed to hook up with anything, the Psycho 78s show was the place to do it.”

  Fuzzlow took a beer from him and clinked the bottlenecks together. “And people did, too. On Ceres, we made more cash than on Mars or anywhere else. That place turned into a major market.”

  “What do you do with it all, Mags?” Donny looked up at her from the beer cooler where his hand rested on the next bottle. “I mean, you’ve been looting the Belt for years, and bringing in stuff we can’t get from Earth any other way. Are you saving up for retirement, or what?”

  Kaufman arched his eyebrows, curious to hear the answer. He accepted a beer from Donny.

  A strange fire filled the smuggler’s eyes, and she lowered her chin to peer over her glasses. “Donny, when you’re going to be alive as long as I am, planning for retirement is way too short-term. The Belt is the future. I helped make it possible, and I will live to see it flourish.

  “But I’ll be damned if I see it go to hell the way Earth has. The shit on Earth goes back thousands of years. It’s got too much inertia. But out here, we can shape it from the beginning. We can make something better than what came before. And that doesn’t happen on its own. We need power. A hell of a lot of power.”

  “Oh, I get it,” he said. “You’re becoming a major financial player out here. Building up a cash reserve to—”

  “No. Not cash power. Electromagnetic power. Enough power to light up an entire planet. And all of it free. Free to anyone who can drive a rod into the ground. Imagine that! Now, imagine it all over the System.”

  “Are you talking about unlimited wireles
s?”

  “You make it sound like an old phone plan! But, yes. I am. And you can’t build something like that without cash—to answer your original question.”

  “My original question was what happened to Mr. Blistr.”

  “And I was going to tell you. Pass me that swill you call beer, and I’ll fill you in.”

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  2026.

  Fuzzlow ran his eyes skeptically over the scrap of paper. He saw line after line of Meteor Mags’ ragged handwriting.

  Nowhere to go, baby

  Nothin’ to lose

  You got ‘em bad, baby

  Blind alley blues

  Don’t go away, baby

  Don’t go alone, dear

  Don’t go away, baby

  We need you right here

  He shrugged. “It’s kind of basic. And you say ‘baby’ like every other line. Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. It’s an abortion.”

  Mags threw her hands in the air. “I never said I was a great lyricist!”

  Smoothing his dreadlocks into place, he said, “How’s it sound?”

  “There’s kind of a sonata for an intro, but we’ll skip all that.” She settled onto the piano bench. “Here’s the part with all the goddamn babies you don’t like.”

  With her left hand, Mags pounded a D-flat power chord like she was trying to break the strings. On the count of four, she raged into her verse. Her right hand followed her minor-key melody and embellished it.

  A bolt of fear struck Fuzzlow, and then he got the groove.

  She halted the song without ceremony. Her eyes twinkled, and a smile of sinister satisfaction blossomed on her lips.

  “We’ve gotta record that,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m saying! I need an engineer, Fuzznuts. Someone who can appreciate an acoustic instrument but hasn’t lost the will to rock. I thought it might be you.”

  “What else you got?”

  “There’s this idea I have for a big finish called 88 Bullets. We set the piano on fire while I keep playing. We’ll need protective gear for that. But the rest of the numbers are pretty straightforward. Think—I don’t know—Five Horse Johnson meets Swans?”