Outpost

by W. Michael Gear

  Pete Morgan caught Dan’s eye as he stepped in from outside, dripping rain. Morgan edged his way around the curve of the back wall, dropping onto the bench beside Dan.

  “What’s wrong?” Dan asked.

  Pete spread his hands, water beading on his fingers. “This whole place. I mean . . . uh, it’s just not what I thought it would be. Not a damn thing like the orientation they showed us back on Transluna. Some of the buildings look the same, but take a gander at this place. It’s the bar. The only bar on the whole stinking world. I mean, this is it!”

  “So far.” Dan shrugged, carefully shuffling his deck of cards. It felt good just to handle them, to reawaken the dexterity in his fingers and wrists. Bottom card? King of hearts. Cut, cut, cut, shuffle, cut. Deal out one, two, three, and yes, there it was, king of hearts. He hadn’t lost that special feel.

  “Dangerous animals get inside the fence?” Morgan muttered. “So the siren goes off, and we all run to our quarters with this thing prowling around? I mean, they were serious! Creatures get inside and hunt us?”

  “Bet it doesn’t happen again. Not with this many people. And there’s more of us to keep watch now.”

  “And did you see that cafeteria?” Morgan moaned. “That’s the restaurant? I’ve been a lot of places: Earth, Transluna, a few of the stations. I mean if someone tried to open a ptomaine trap like that, Health Inspection Service would shut them down so fast their asses would still be spinning when they were thrown in the slammer. I swear! I saw a cockroach. With my own eyes.”

  “Actually, I’ve seen worse.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  A jail in Jakarta. What a sewer. “I’ll tell you some other time.”

  Pete started, gaped. “Did you see that? That guy Allenovich just spat on the floor! On the floor! What kind of . . . ?” He couldn’t finish . . . just shook his head. “Dad told me. Oh man, he said, ‘Son, don’t be a fool. We’ve got plenty of work for you here. In the firm. Enough geology to keep you busy for the rest of your life.’ Man, he’s gonna kill me. Write me out of the will. Especially when Turalon gets back and everyone hears what a shithole this place really is.”

  “Relax. It may not—”

  “May not what?” Pete cried. “And what kind of housing have they provided, huh? A dome with four beds and a toilet? The water comes from a barrel in the back. We’re supposed to drink rain water? People spit on the floor? I tell you, Dan, this is a living nightmare.”

  Pete was studying the backs of his hands, fingers flexed so the veins and tendons stood out. “I graduated at the top of my class at the University of Texas. Now I’m here? Look at them, they’re savages. And now every time that siren goes off, we could be eaten by a quetzal?”

  “That’s why they’re all packing. Wonder when we get our guns.”

  “I never even remember seeing a gun until I came here. Sure, police have them, but even so they only carry disablers when they are out on patrol. I mean, look. Every mother-loving one of them’s got a pistol or a rifle at hand. Think they’re loaded?”

  “Yep.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  Dan shot him a sidelong glance. “Nope. But if it’s bothering you, tell the Supervisor you want to break the contract. They’ll put you right back in your berth on Turalon. In two years, if you don’t vanish like all them missing ships, you’ll be home.”

  “And spend the next twenty years of my life working just to repay my penalty to The Corporation.”

  “So, gut it out. It’s only four years, and by then maybe they’ll have figured out what’s been happening to the ships. You go home with a big check and buy your dad’s firm.”

  Pete shook his head. “It’s this place. Did you know that half the houses have dirt floors? Only a couple of buildings have running water for God’s sake. It’s the twenty-second century, and people are living on dirt floors?”

  “Maybe so.” Dan cut, smiling as the ace of diamonds came up. “But they’re not beholden to The Corporation.”

  “I’m a petroleum engineer. I was told there was a rotary-bit rig waiting for me out in the backcountry somewhere. A seismic team was supposed to have been on Freelander and run a series of vibrasonics on some promising formations west of the mountains. I was hired to interpret the data, supervise the building of a well pad and pit, make hole, log the core, test the cuttings for hydrocarbons, that sort of thing.”

  “So do it.”

  “With what? The jugs, computers, and software were on Freelander. Along with both of the crawlers for vibra-seising. Sure, I could improvise with explosives, but how do I read them?”

  “Guess?”

  “Hydrocarbon extraction is a science. Just like keeping your damn cows happy.”

  “Cows? All dead.”

  “Why am I surprised?” Pete laughed. “Yeah, well, you see, I got to thinking. Supposedly that rotary-bit drill rig was sent to Donovan on the Governor Han Xi.”

  “Which is lost in space along with all the rest.”

  Morgan gestured to the locals where they shouted, laughed, and hung on every word the Skulls exhaled. “Those are scientists? Technical experts? Highly educated specialists? You can find better-dressed vagabonds and beggars living in the sewers of Shanghai.”

  “Another couple of years, maybe you’ll look like them. Big hat, hide coat, chamois pants, and a gun on your hip.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Bet me on that? Two thousand yuan says you look just like them in two years.”

  “Sure.”

  Dan shook his hand, “You know, I take wagers seriously.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  To make his point—and to ensure Pete remembered—Dan slipped his little book from his back pocket. He’d been waiting two years for this. With his pen, he wrote, “Pete Morgan: ¥ 2,000. By 2155 he’ll be dressed as a local.”

  “You bet your life on it, Pete.”

  14

  “Excuse me, that’s my chair,” Talina told the Skull as she shucked the wet slicker off of her shoulders and shook it, much to the Skull’s surprise and irritation.

  She vaguely remembered that he was some sort of vehicle tech. The guy was big, thick-shouldered and dark-skinned, with a prominent straight nose.

  “Your chair?” A hint of challenge lay behind his accented voice. He met her stare for stare.

  “I’d move, Skull,” Inga told him from behind the bar. “You wouldn’t want your unconscious body dragged out of here and left in the rain on your very first night. And recovering from the concussion would be a bitch, let me tell you.”

  The big man glanced uncertainly at Inga, noted the excited anticipation of the locals who were crowded around, and nodded. “Sorry.”

  Talina watched him ease into the crowd, still casting unsure glances behind him. “Just a beer, Inga.”

  “Coming up. How’s it look out there? Everybody where they otta be?”

  “Yeah. Guards are on their posts and the drones are in the air. I double-checked the gates. All locked up tight. As long as nothing climbs the fence, our soft meat ought to be safe and cozy.”

  Inga banged Talina’s beer mug—one of the very first ever cast at the glassworks down the avenue—onto the bar.

  Talina took it, rotated in her tall chair, and braced her elbows on the bar behind her as she studied the throng.

  Damn. How many years had it been since the tavern was this packed with people? The roar of them shouting over each other almost hurt her ears. The Skulls stood out, of course, dressed as they were in washed and clean utility coveralls. Not to mention that their shaved heads gleamed in the light. And so many! Had to be close to the entire four hundred of them swarming around maybe a hundred and fifty of her people.

  So which one of them is going to start the rumble?

  From long experience she knew her troublemakers: Step Allen
ovich, Tyrell Lawson, surly old Thumbs Exman, and Hofer, of course. But she hadn’t a clue about who to keep an eye on when it came to the soft meat.

  Speaking of which, where was . . . Oh, yeah. Dan Wirth. In the back, sitting with another Skull and shuffling a deck of cards, of all things. He might have been talking to his friend, but his whole attention was on the room. She saw him shuffle, and fix on Allison Chomko where she sat with Mellie Nagargina and Felicity Strazinsky, who worked as a nurse and seamstress. The women cupped their drinks as they tried to glance surreptitiously at the crowding Skulls. Talking prospects, no doubt; for the moment Mellie and Allison were both single. Donovan tended to be hard on men. A fact that pretty much limited Betty Able’s income at the brothel. Suddenly, however, the tables were turned. The ratio of men to women coming in on Turalon was three to one.

  “Betty ought to be turning handsprings,” Talina mused. Might be worth stopping by her establishment before turning in, just to ensure that things were in order.

  Yep, Wirth was definitely fixed on Allison, his eyes almost half-lidded, a slight smile on his lips as though in anticipation. Lady-killing fucking asshole with his fuzz of brown hair, those soft, almost vulnerable brown eyes, the full lips, white teeth, and dimpled chin. Talina hated pretty boys—especially the ones who could charm with a shy smile and send a woman’s loins tingling with the mere hint of interest.

  “Going to keep my eye on you, bucko me boy,” Talina promised.

  In many ways, Allison was the most beautiful young woman on Donovan: blonde, with delicately formed features and a body that distracted even the most honorable of men. But she’d always been fragile. A sort of china doll. Her husband Rick had been killed when a hauler he’d been working on had rolled backward and crushed him. At the time Allison had barely been two months pregnant. A month ago that child, a mere year old, had been snatched by a quetzal.

  Allison blamed herself. Needed time to heal. Talina could sympathize. As long as it had been since she had laid Mitch in his grave, she still hadn’t come to grips. Let alone shown interest in seeing another man.

  Wait and see.

  As if he could sense her, Wirth’s gaze shifted, met Talina’s. The man’s challenge was almost physical, stirring a little flame of rage. The thing in her gut that she’d started calling “her quetzal” coiled tighter. A shiver ran along her spine—a sort of anticipation of combat. Like in the dream where she chased the chamois. Even as she thought about it, rainbows swam at the corners of her vision, and the colors around her shifted in a way that reminded her of an infrared scope.

  For the briefest instant, she saw herself walking over, pulling out her pistol, and using it to whip the man half to death.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  She gave the guy a half nod, and watched him flick her a three-fingered salute in return, as if in acknowledgement of their mutual dislike.

  Returning her attention to the room, she caught sight of Shig as he started down the stairs, the lights gleaming on his black slicker. He stopped halfway, squinted in the direction of her chair, and raised a hand in greeting before diving down into the sea of milling humanity.

  Moments later he elbowed his way through the press and studied her through thoughtful brown eyes. “We need to talk.”

  “Hey!” Talina bellowed. “Give us some room.”

  The locals around her end of the bar didn’t even hesitate, dragging the Skulls with them as they opened a hole around Shig and her.

  “Quite the rain out there. Really made a mess of our drill.” Shig greeted, shooting a smile at Inga as she shoved his wineglass across the beaten chabacho-wood bar. Like usual, it was only half-full. In all Talina’s years she’d never seen Shig drink more than a half glass—and even then he only sipped. Somehow he could make that half glass last him an entire night.

  Now he lifted the rim to his lips, barely took a taste, and set it back on the bar.

  “Maybe Turalon brought the storm?” Talina suggested.

  “Oh, you can count on it. What little peace and tranquility we had? Consider the drought of anxiety and worry now to be officially broken.” He looked around at the milling Skulls, barely seeming to note the ones watching them curiously from just beyond the protective ring of locals. “The skies have opened, and we are now awash. Flooded, if you will.”

  “Is all of life a metaphor for you?”

  “You dare to suggest that it’s not?” Shig lifted an eyebrow, expression sublime.

  Talina shook her head, alert eyes on the crowd. Thunder banged, causing the soft meat to shift uneasily and glance, half-panicked, up at the dome overhead. But then, they’d been shrink-wrapped into a ship for two years, and many before that had lived on stations and in cities. For some this was the first thunder they’d ever heard. To them, the novelty of thunder and lightning—especially on an alien world—might have just been one more of Donovan’s many miracles.

  “I hate nights like this.” Talina took a drink of her beer.

  “Quetzals will be out,” Shig agreed. “Bit early in the year for slugs to be running, but you might want to watch where you put your feet.”

  “I love an optimist. If that poison Mgumbe cooked up last fall worked, we should have killed most of the ones around the compound. My skin still crawls each time I think of the Han Chow kid.”

  “Proof that if you don’t watch your step, what’s way down under your skin can also crawl.” A beat. “I take it that everything is operating smoothly and according to plan?”

  “I made the rounds. Told everyone on duty to stay extra sharp. So far there’s no trouble. For the Skulls it’s still all too new, and our folks are trying to make a good impression as they check out the soft meat.”

  “Raya’s unpacking her first crate of supplies. Which prompted me to stroll over here. She casually”—he stressed the word—“mentioned that the Supervisor requested your report on Clemenceau’s untimely demise.”

  Talina’s gut slipped and tightened. “Which of course she delivered.”

  “Raya is as conscientious as anyone on Donovan.”

  “Well . . . we always knew this day would come. You think it’s gonna be trouble?”

  “The Buddha taught that all of existence is dukkha, or suffering. We have no other reality. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “Fuck me, you can be depressing. What’s your inscrutable Zen mind tell you she’s going to do?”

  “You are the one with intensive, top-of-the-line security training, not to mention so many years of hard experience. I am only a humble professor of comparative religion. You tell me.” He beamed in triumph as her expression pinched in irritation. He loved doing that to her.

  Then, just as she was drawing a breath to explode, he added, “I think the Supervisor is desperately struggling to find a way to proceed on her terrible path.”

  “What terrible path?”

  “She has condemned herself to the relentless pursuit of remarkable and uncompromising success. An undamped inferno of ambition fills her breast, goading her to the point that she has staked her entire future on Turalon and Donovan. Risked everything. She has visualized her nirvana: It lies just over the metaphorical horizon. Just there. No more than a decade or so ahead. Only Donovan lies between her consuming ambition and finally slipping herself triumphantly into the Boardroom seat to which she is ultimately dedicated. Donovan is at once her potential opportunity and her potential doom, looming before her as a problem fraught with the high probability that it will destroy her.”

  “Donovan has a habit of ruining plans.”

  “Best not to tell her,” Shig confided. “She has left no room for error. Compromise is unacceptable. Only through unwavering discipline, ruthlessness, and coldly calculated competence can she succeed. No impediment to her progress can be tolerated.”

  “Her funeral.”

  Shig frowned. “How do peo
ple get themselves into such predicaments? She has poured herself into a cast-iron straightjacket, her tunnel vision focused only on a distant light. She will miss so much of life as she hurls herself forward, unable to so much as spread her arms and feel the wind of her passage.”

  “Shit on a shoe, Shig. You sound sorry for her.”

  “I doubt she’s strong enough to burst the crystallizing metal. Let alone free herself. I weep to see such a wasted soul.”

  Meanwhile the sour sensation in Talina’s stomach sucked itself into an uneasy lump. “Getting back to Clemenceau, my guess is that she’ll hold an inquest. That would be according to the Corporate book, given that there was no body.”

  “Expect a summons,” Shig agreed. “Nightmare or not, you did admit to shooting him in the head.”

  She shifted uncomfortably, memories of the pistol in her hand, the almost joy in her heart. After what that scum-sucker had done to people—made Talina party to—she hadn’t had so much as a tremor as she stared over the sights and into his horrified face. She could almost feel the gun buck in recoil.

  Even as she had shot, the sensation of relief had come flooding through her.

  “You could slip away,” Shig suggested. “Go now. No one would remark if you left just before daylight. If you stay, try to fight this thing, Supervisor Aguila will destroy you.”

  “It was a nightmare, Shig.”

  “Clemenceau was a hated man. I am sure that he made copious notes about all of his feelings of frustration and anger when it came to his dealings with you.”

  “Well, what about Yvette, you, and Mitch? You don’t need to be an ambitious Corporate-climbing bitch to find a mutiny in what we did here.” She gulped a swallow of beer. “That is the term for it, Shig. And that’s what my superbly trained in sophisticated security techniques and Corporate law brain tells me. Once Clemenceau and his deputies were out of the way, we took over the fucking colony. Tossed The Corporation’s book of law, rules, and regulations into the recycle bin, and ran this place our way.”