Outpost

by W. Michael Gear

  Trish took a deep breath, shook her head, and sprinted to the base of the ladder. Step by step she crept her way up and peered over the stone wall to the sloped roof.

  Talina was settling herself behind the meter-high stone false front overlooking the main street. She’d taken a kneeling position, left knee up, right out at an angle, ankle under her butt. She pulled the rifle up to her shoulder, left arm supporting, elbow on her knee as she sighted down the barrel.

  On cat feet, Trish topped the roof. The breeze played with her hair, tossing it about. A loose bit of roofing rattled slightly with each gust, covering any sound she might have made.

  Taking a position just behind and to the left, she could just see the street and those passing beneath.

  “Oh, shut up,” Talina said under her breath. “The only thing you and I have left is death. And if I go, you’re gone with me, son of a bitch.”

  Trish made a face. That tone of voice? She was talking to the damn quetzal inside her.

  Or was she just insane? A new Donovanian form of mental illness that needed its own definition in the psychiatric diagnostic manuals.

  “There he is,” Talina told the quetzal. “Thinks I didn’t know.” She settled her cheek to the stock, eye behind the optics.

  Trish took another step forward, the roof squeaking just as she saw Dan Wirth walking happily down the center of the street.

  Talina whirled, the rifle, like a thing alive, centering on Trish’s chest. The cold quivering of guts and ticking of the nerves at her center was instantaneous, almost debilitating.

  “Tal?” her voice wavered. “Don’t shoot. It’s me, for God’s sake!”

  Talina exhaled in relief, lowered the rifle. “Trish, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Came to see who you were going to shoot.”

  “That fucker, Dan Wirth. Heard from Toby Montoya. Wirth and Cap had words. Almost came to a killing. Not even an hour before the siren went off.”

  “What if he didn’t kill Cap?”

  Talina’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been asking around. Talking to Katsuro.”

  “Been seeing a lot of him, haven’t you?”

  “What of it.” She held her hands out, hoping to placate the violence in Tal’s eyes. “Lots of people wanted Cap dead, starting with Supervisor Aguila. Then there’s Lieutenant Spiro and about half of the marines. They’re still trying to figure out if the three missing marines were sent to kill Cap, and he got them first.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “And Tal, there are other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “About half of Port Authority.” Trish felt her gut harden into something that felt like dried leather. “People who knew Cap. Knew you. People who understood that you’d sacrifice yourself to care for an invalid. People who heard Cap beg for death. It wasn’t any secret, except from you. Ask Raya.”

  “Name me some names.”

  Trish laughed. “Inga, me, Step, Yvette, Iji, Cheng, Mellie, Two Spots, Felicity, hell, probably even Shig. You going to kill us all?”

  “So you’re saying this was done for me?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, Tal.” Trish spread her arms, dropped to the extending wall, and felt suddenly exhausted. “Hell, go ahead. Shoot the son of a bitch. One of us is going to have to in the end. Might as well be today, but from what I’ve heard, he may not be the person you’re after.” Her nervous laughter reeked of bitterness. “For all I know it might even have been Raya herself.”

  “Pragmatism has never been Raya’s weak point.” Talina wearily shook her head, resettling herself, back against the wall. “I’m just hurting. Angry. And this fucking thing inside me doesn’t give me any rest. It hates me. Wants me dead. And I’m starting to agree with it.”

  “Don’t, Tal. Please. You’re not alone in this.”

  “I loved him.” Her head drooped and she picked absently at her rifle.

  “So? Living’s a dangerous business. You’re special, Tal. People need you. To be needed like that? Respected and looked up to? That’s remarkable. More so than you’ve ever understood.”

  “Lucky fucking me.”

  “I mean it.” Trish stood. “Well, shit. We talked so long he’s out of sight.” She smiled crookedly. “Buy you a beer? Your stool’s open.”

  Talina gave her a half-lidded stare. “Are you insane?”

  “Hey, I’m not the one with a quetzal inside me. You coming? Or am I drinking alone?”

  Talina’s laughter reeked of bitterness and defeat. She shook her head, lines of fatigue darkening beneath her eyes. “Yeah. If you’re not bullshitting about buying.”

  “Got one of these new coins Shig is striking. A gold five-SDR piece. Should set us up for the whole night.”

  “Well, get your ass down that ladder then. Neither one of us is getting any younger.” Talina flipped the safety on and shouldered the rifle.

  With a relieved smile, Trish led the way.

  80

  Three months had passed since Turalon had spaced. A soft rain was falling when Pete Morgan stomped the mud off his boots and stepped into The Jewel. He tugged the quetzal-hide hat off of his head and gave it a shake to clear the water off.

  As he tramped across the floor, he was feeling pretty good about himself. Thank God he knew how to operate a core drill. He’d signed on with Ollie Throlson when it became apparent that Supervisor Aguila was serious about enforcing contracts. The last place he wanted to be was in town where marines were conscripting people. The Throlson claim lay out west on the other side of the Wind Mountains. Atop a large dome formation, it had originally been recorded as a potential location for hydrocarbons.

  Ollie had managed to snare one of the core drills before Supervisor Aguila could get it recorded on her inventory. Lawson had figured out how to power it with a steam-powered electrical generator.

  Drilling mud hadn’t been a problem given the lubricity of the local clays.

  Now Pete was back, a skip in his walk and joy in his heart. He’d survived for three months in the bush. He’d done what no one had ever done before. His father would be so proud.

  There, in the back, at a poker game, sat Dan Wirth. The guy looked good. Pete recognized the blonde beauty who stood beside his chair as Allison. Word was that she was running the girls who worked in the back. That, for the right money, she’d take a turn herself. And that, assuming a man could afford it, it was the kind of ride he’d never forget.

  Something—a subtle sense of warning—caused Pete to hesitate. An urge filled him to just turn around and walk out.

  “Ah, foolishness.” He started forward again, calling, “Dan, you old scoundrel, how are you doing?”

  Wirth looked up. Took a second. Then smiled. “Pete Morgan. How’s life treating you?”

  “I’ve come to celebrate. Ollie Throlson and I have the first producing oil well on Donovan. It’s just the start. We’ve a ways to go. Have to cobble together a refinery. But it’s a fuel technology that we don’t have to depend on Solar System for.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Dan chuckled, glancing up at Allison. “My dear, this is Pete Morgan. The dire man who swore that Donovan was a disaster. Now look at him. Dressed in quetzal, wearing chamois. And, by damn straight, as they say here, there’s a pistol on his hip.”

  “You don’t work in the bush without one,” Pete told him. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Sure.” Wirth disengaged himself from the game, slapped Pete on the shoulder, and led him over to the bar along the wall. “This one’s on me, Pete.”

  Wirth cocked his head as the drinks were poured. “How long you been in town?”

  “Just got in. Not more than an hour. Figured I’d come see how you’re doing.”

  “You’re a good man. Not everyone comes so quickly to pay their debts?�
��

  “Debts?”

  “The two thousand you owe me.”

  Pete sipped at the whiskey. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, lot’s happened since then, huh?” Wirth reached in his back pocket. Pulled out a little book and started flipping through the pages.

  “Hey, you don’t mean . . . Dan, that was a joke.”

  Wirth’s eyes had taken on a deadly glint when he looked up. “I don’t joke about a debt, Pete. Two thousand yuan, remember? And, surely it couldn’t be my eyes. I’d swear you’re dressed just like a Donovanian.”

  “But I don’t have . . .”

  “First producing oil well? Ah, but you will, won’t you?”

  Feeling sick to his stomach, Pete Morgan nodded. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see Art Maniken watching, a cold promise in his eyes.

  He’d heard about Maniken. Fear sent its icy little fingers through him. “Yeah, you know I’m good for it.”

  “You gotta love Donovan, don’t you?” Wirth slapped him on the back again. “Of course you’re good for it. And we all know that well out there will pay. All I ask is a small part of it.”

  Morgan could only nod.

  EPILOGUE

  Kalico Aguila might have been many things. What she was not was stupid. Shig Mosadek’s words had sunk in with a passion.

  “Oh, to be sure, you’re struggling to surmount a lot of cultural debris clogging your mental pathways, but if you can manage to set that aside, look past who you were back on Transluna, ignore who you wanted to be back then, I think you’re capable of great things on Donovan.”

  That agility of thought and action he’d mentioned had taken only a couple of days to figure out after Turalon spaced. She had a heavy-lift shuttle. Marines with tech. Equipment from Freelander. And a whole world to choose from.

  The outcrop on the southern flank of the Wind Mountains lay just inland from the Gulf, nearly five hundred klicks south of Port Authority. A thick forest of chabacho and the occasional mundo tree had covered a rich outcrop of gold, silver, and palladium intermixed with rare-earth elements. The once-deep deposit had been thrust up at an angle. Above it the slope rose ever higher, finally ending in jagged peaks. Kalico had simply ordered Spiro to scorch the ground with high explosives and incendiaries, just like she would if she were establishing a forward operating base in a hostile combat environment.

  Next Kalico had traded with a miner: his working bulldozer in exchange for a selection of inoperative haulers from Freelander. Within a day her people had bladed away the soil. A week after that they had finished setting up an electrified perimeter fence, materials for which had been found in two sialon containers from Freelander’s hold.

  The great dome that had been stacked on the landing field had been raised in another two days.

  Starting tomorrow, the mining engineers she’d required to fulfill their contracts would begin the first rock fragmentation. Within a week the samples would be flown off to Port Authority for assay.

  On the flat below the outcrop, several kilometers to the north, a second clearing beside the river was being hacked out of the forest. The smelter and farm would be established there.

  To date—as they’d built the compound—they’d only had to bury four men who’d fallen prey to the wildlife. Not a great record, but acceptable by Donovanian standards. The good news was that no one dared to desert. Not with the bush just meters from the perimeter fence.

  That night, an hour before moonrise, she stood beneath the starry sky. Head tilted back, she stared up at the astral patterns and enjoyed the view: a frosting of soft twinkling light laid atop the velvet black.

  Turalon had vanished just there, in front of that constellation, hundreds of thousands of kilometers from where she stood.

  Thank God I’m not on that ship.

  Would there be another? Ever?

  Kalico smiled. Perhaps they’d already figured out the navigational problem back in Solar System. Even if they hadn’t, human curiosity was what it was. It might be five years, or ten, but eventually that terrible need to know would get the better of them.

  It would probably be a small scout and survey ship. Not the sort of thing to waste trillions of SDRs on should it be lost, but eventually it would appear in Donovan’s night sky. That was as inevitable as gravity.

  “And when it does”—she knotted a hard fist—“it will find me here. And this planet will be mine.”

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.