by Scott Moon
The dog-thing snorted as it rose to its feet and turned around. Backside to Thad, it settled down for a nap.
“Good. Very good,” Mast said, already aiming the weapon away from Thad. “Are you going to punish that tire now?”
“I’m going to smash it like it owes me money,” Thad said right before he flipped it the first time. A half-hour later, he started running the perimeter of the vacant lot while Mast practiced drawing and aiming his blaster—grunting and saying things in the Unglok language that sounded both angry and juvenile.
Thad walked the last lap, sweating down the back of his old jumpsuit, breathing hard with his hands on his hips. One side of the lot bordered the street, across which was an abandoned building with a tall loading dock where a young girl sat in off-world clothing. The khaki pants and white shirt made him think of safari gear. Her boots were the civilian version of combat boots, probably custom-made. Auburn-haired and blue-eyed, there was something about her he couldn’t describe.
“Nice pig,” the girl said, casting her voice toward him.
The unnamed creature ambled toward them and stopped at a safe distance, sitting and watching the scene with its tongue lolling.
“It’s a dog.” Thad strapped on his gun-belt, suddenly protective of the animal. “I shall call him Maximus.”
The creature panted at him, then snorted.
Thaddeus turned slightly so the girl couldn't eavesdrop. “Maximus?”
The dog-thing didn't look away.
“I take that as a yes.” Thaddeus turned back.
The girl hopped down, smiling as she crossed the street. “Pigs are smarter than dogs.” She stopped on the sidewalk and cocked her head sideways as though studying a fascinating new lifeform. Her blue eyes held Thad’s gaze with youthful confidence.
“You’re a pig expert?”
“No. Never actually seen one. My brother had a dog. Stupid creature, but we loved it. What do you have against tractor tires?” she asked.
“Long story,” he said.
Mast stopped drawing and aiming his blaster. “Hello, Ruby Miranda. Very muchly good day to you.”
She curtsied to Mast, then stepped within arm’s reach of Thad. “Dixie won’t stop talking about you. I thought I’d see what she was fussing about. Darklanding is an interesting place. A lot of money to be made. A lot of things to go wrong.”
“Shouldn’t you be on holiday with your parents?” Thaddeus asked.
Ruby’s face went cold, smile disappearing as though it had never been there. “I’m old enough to make my own way. It’s something of a tradition in our family.” She turned to walk away before looking back over her shoulder. “Have a nice day, Sheriff Fry.”
Something tickled Thad’s memory as he watched her leave. The girl was part of a story he’d heard before, somewhere far away from here.
“Mast, head back to the Mother Lode. Notify me immediately if you see Ike or his crew.” He kept his eyes on Ruby.
“I can most surely achieve that objective,” Mast said. “Are you going to follow her?”
Thad yanked his gaze toward the Unglok. “Yeah, I was. Is there a problem?”
Mast rolled his eyes up and made a rhythmic coughing sound from deep in his chest, holding his stomach with both hands.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Mast caught his breath. “I tried to very perfectly surveil her without success. How could you do better without knowing Darklanding as I do?”
“Do your job, Deputy. Don’t worry about me,” Thaddeus said.
“Yes, yes. I will return to the Mother Lode and watch for Ike.”
Thaddeus set out after the girl who claimed her name was Ruby Miranda.
Darklanding was like most purpose-built industrial towns, frantically busy in places and nearly abandoned in others. Thaddeus turned the corner to find a sea of humans and Ungloks moving to and from work stations. Ruby’s small form disappeared between miners, dock hands, and miscellaneous workers carrying lunchboxes and talking over the noise.
The street was a cheap composite, like asphalt made of local materials. There shouldn’t have been dust or mud but it hadn’t been resurfaced or swept for a while. Smog from the spaceport and the distant processing plant was particularly thick today. One of the local warehouses had its doors open to hundreds of loading bays. Rock and roll music blared from a shop speaker. On the other side of the street, a repair shop blasted classical music.
Street vendors hawked cheap food and digital news cards, mostly scandal magazines, romance novels, and pornography. There were rarely enough women on frontier worlds. It always amused Thaddeus how the men devoured romance novels despite their rough exteriors and tough talk.
Ruby turned a corner.
Thad sprinted through the crowd to close the gap, slowing when he reached the corner. Stepping onto the next street as casually as possible, he spotted her easily and smiled to himself. “See there, Fry man, you’ve got this.”
Two men and five robot drones herded hundreds of pigs down the street, corralling them into a large paddock nearly the size of the warehouse on the previous street. Ruby walked through the ocean of animals, easily parting the tide of snorting livestock.
Thad’s heart skipped a beat. Domestic pigs weren’t aggressive, but they were omnivorous. His mother had warned him to stay away from the animals. The scent of blood would send them into a feeding frenzy, transforming them into feral beasts in a heartbeat.
Speakers on the drones amplified the voices of the pig herders as they moved them with brisk efficiency.
Ruby reached the next corner and turned.
Thaddeus made his way down the raised sidewalk, staying clear of the animals and their masters. He reached the corner and thought he saw Ruby step into an alley a hundred yards ahead of him. There were fewer people here, most of them Ungloks. A ship heavy with cargo roared overhead, climbing for altitude.
He reached the alley and saw it was short, only about ten meters long before ending in a solid steel wall with no doors. Ruby Miranda was nowhere to be seen.
“Is that a pig? Oh, I’ve never seen a real pig,” Thaddeus muttered. “Does Dixie know where you’re at, Ruby?”
No one answered. Thad took the long way back to the Mother Lode. He’d had enough of crowds and livestock for one day.
CHAPTER TEN: Money
Shaunte closed her computer with images of spreadsheets and loss statements burned into her eyes. Grabbing a stylish jacket from the rack near the door of her office, she headed to the workman pickup area where her presence was apparently needed. As soon as she recovered from paying the extra overtime to handle the mine collapse, she was going to hire a good assistant. It had been her goal for months.
She stopped for a half-sandwich and a child-sized carton of imitation juice, then placed each into a separate pocket of the slim jacket. Near the bar of the Mother Lode, Dixie chastised the new girl about her khaki pants and boring white blouse.
Shaunte did a double-take when she saw the custom safari boots the girl was wearing. Frowning, she left the building and thought not for the first time she needed to move her office someplace more respectable. And hire an assistant. And stop paying overtime out of her own paycheck to keep the operation running. And get a massage and a manicure.
Outside, the smog had cleared. The sun was unusually bright. She squinted and shielded her eyes with one hand as she walked to the pickup area down the street. Several transport buses waited for men to get on when normally they would have been halfway to the mines by now. Cold dread filled her gut.
She looked around for Ike but didn’t see the man. None of the men who caused Thaddeus Fry so many problems were present. She had seen these workers before and given them compliments on their work performance. These were the type of men who came early and stayed late, always trying to prove their worth.
None of them looked happy. They milled about, watching her nervously. One of them was nudged forward to be their spokesperson.
He pulled off his helmet and held it in his hands in front of his body. “I’m Jimmy Goodman,” the man said not making eye contact. He fidgeted nervously. “Wanted to send one of us down to your office to make a petition, but none of my friends or me can afford to miss a day at work and was not sure who should do the talking.”
Shaunte moved out of the street and onto the sidewalk. She took a breath and tried to appear patient. “Say what you have to say, Jimmy.”
The man nodded awkwardly and took another step forward, seeming a bit more confident. “We all know that you do your best for us with overtime and such. We still have to ask for more pay but we can wait for the regular negotiations. I mean we have to, right? Thing is, that’s not all that matters. The Gloks stay up late at night, don’t think they ever really sleep. Their food smells and they’re just weird.”
Unsure of how to respond, Shaunte clasped her hands in front of her and waited.
Jimmy did the same.
“What are you asking for, Jimmy? Separate living quarters? I wasn’t aware that humans and Ungloks shared the same apartment buildings,” she said.
Jimmy nodded emphatically. “Different buildings, but same neighborhood. We can’t even walk to work without running into a big cluster of them. They dig basements under temporary housing trailers. Why the hell do they do that? Why can’t they just go live in their caves?”
“So what do you want?” she asked, quickly growing frustrated. “I need them where they can do the most work.”
Jimmy looked back at his companions, nervously twisting his helmet. “We’d like a different section for our trailers. Maybe a wall between us and the Glok domicile.”
Shaunte’s stomach tightened into a knot. This quarter was turning into a disaster. First there’d been the collapse at the mine, lost production during reconstruction, medical expenses, three funerals, and a bunch of drunken disturbances during the last week that resulted in several employees not coming to work.
A couple of late nights after payday was to be expected. People had alcohol flu once in a while. The trend now was becoming more problematic than it should have been.
Now they wanted her to build an entire new settlement or wall off the existing settlements from each other. She couldn’t begin to imagine the expense. “Well, Jimmy, I will take that under advisement.”
“That’s probably not gonna be enough.” Jimmy looked her in the eye, almost apologetically. “I like you and so does my crew. I’m just saying that you should be careful. This is real serious.”
“I know it is, Jimmy. For now, I need you and your friends to get to work. I can’t provide anything for you if the company goes bankrupt.”
Jimmy nodded and backed away. Some of the group grumbled, but they shuffled toward the transport buses and headed for the mines.
Shaunte made her way to the market, hoping to find something to improve her mood. Shopping at Darklanding was not the same experience as it was back home. At this point, she was ready to buy anything that looked like women’s clothing regardless of style or size. She just couldn’t understand how this housing crisis had come out of left field. Neither humans nor Ungloks had ever complained before. They avoided each other and that was that.
She walked to her office, thinking of simpler times. Nothing had been easy since the new sheriff arrived. The day was unseasonably warm. She pulled at the collar of her blouse to get some air. The breeze caught her in the face and smelled like a pig farm. She hated the livestock transport days. Next time, she would mark her calendar and stay inside.
A crowd of the new workers that had been causing so much trouble gathered near the bar and bought drink after drink. She wanted to call Sheriff Fry, but was annoyed with him for reasons that didn’t make sense even to her. Ike, mercifully, hadn’t arrived yet. She knew he would be here sooner or later because he was another problem on her long list of problems.
The new girl sat at the bar, now properly dressed in a short skirt and tight top that revealed her shoulders and midsection. Shaunte wasn’t a fan of the establishment. Even if she could bring herself to get along with Dixie, she found the whole idea of the brothel to be repulsive. Pierre convinced her that getting rid of the place would be a mistake, and that previous managers had tried that and nearly shut down the entire operation, mines and spaceport included.
The delicate, innocent face of the new girl grated on her sense of morality, such as it was. To Shaunte’s educated eye, the youth was not as innocent as she pretended to be. Shaunte expected the young woman was from a life of privilege.
She was probably a spy from a rival family. Shaunte ignored her and went to her office.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Big Trouble
Thaddeus leaned as far back as he could in his chair, feet propped up on his desk. Scorched around the edges, the chair was sturdy.
Kind of like Sheriff Thaddeus Fry.
He flipped the pages of a novel he had found among a stack of others in one of the nightstands—something about vampires in space. Whoever lived here before him wasn’t very selective. The pages were worn and dog-eared, and the cover was half ripped off. The events of the last few days seemed less urgent. For the first time in a long time, he felt his perspective had improved, and he was ready for anything.
His data pad chimed in the pocket of his duster where it hung with his hat on a hook near the door. He crossed his tiny hotel room office and answered it. His features froze for an instant, and then he was galvanized into action.
“Calm down, Mast,” he said, reaching for his gun-belt. A moment later, he rushed down the stairs, out the door, and headed for the loading docks without buttoning his shirt or grabbing his coat.
Miners and dock workers arrayed themselves across the street leading to the first landing and takeoff area of the spaceport. A hundred meters beyond the scene, sitting in the background like a harbinger of doom, was the ship that never took on cargo or passengers.
Thaddeus’s first thought was of Roman soldiers in a shield wall. The image faded as the mass of men, mostly, ebbed and flowed like an angry wave. A few of them had crude signs. Most simply pumped their fists in the air.
“Better pay! Separate and safe!”
Thaddeus found Mast, who had been smart enough to stay in the shadows of the ugly scene.
“I understand the first part. What are they talking about, separate and safe?” Thaddeus asked.
The emerald green eyes of his Ungwilook deputy glimmered sadly. “They do not wish to live near my people. This is a thing that should make me happy but does not.”
“How the hell are they going to do that? Build a new town?” Thad exclaimed.
Mast shook his head and looked at his feet. “I went among my people and told them to go underground, stay inside, be quiet.”
“Good call, Mast.” Thad hung his head for an instant before looking up, determined to finish this.
He counted the crowd and looked for Ike and his cronies, then put his hand on Mast’s arm. “Labor problems always happen. The job is too hard and the pay never seems like enough. Humans want social hierarchy even when they say they don’t. Hard times seem easier to some people when they know someone has it worse off. We’re hypocrites, Mast Jotham.”
“As we are very muchly sometimes,” Mast said.
Thaddeus reached for the pocket of his duster and realized he’d left it behind. Wind from beyond the edge of Darklanding, musty and warm for the season, but still cold and cut through the streets, sending a chill to his bones while kicking up dust. He found his data pad in his pocket. The old thing had a perfect signal. He dialed Shaunte’s number but didn’t send it.
“Have you seen Ike or anyone familiar?” Thaddeus asked.
“All of the people of Darklanding are familiar to me. Memory of faces is muchly like the mathematics of my people. Easy and simple. Many of these workers are known to me,” Mast said.
“He’ll be here.” Thaddeus watched the crowd, listened to the chants, and looked for trouble.
He didn’t have to wait long. A small cadre of older miners and dockworkers marched in a double column toward the work buses. They looked like hard men, unhappy with the circumstance but determined to get paid.
The crowd parted before them to reveal Ike. Grim as his scarred face and bare-chested, he stood with his feet shoulder width apart and brass knuckles covering each fist. Scars crisscrossed the muscles of his chest and upper arms. He smiled wickedly to reveal his missing front tooth.
“You don’t want to work today,” he said. A line of men meandered from the mystery cargo ship, their eyes never leaving the group attempting to cross the picket line. They gathered behind Ike. Some were bare to the waist to show scars and prison tattoos. Others wore their jumpsuits with the precision of former soldiers. They were men who appeared bored yet ready for anything.
Thad put a hand on Mast’s shoulder. The Unglok looked at him questioningly.
“Ike’s brought a company of professional tough-guys. And there’s way too many people in that crowd looking for an excuse to spin out of control.” Thaddeus stepped out of the shadows but did not draw attention to himself on his section of the loading dock. Most of the action was happening on the platform across the sea of humanity. He searched for Shaunte or any of her direct employees and prayed that she had stayed home.
“Don’t you people realize how bad they need us?” Ike asked.
The leader of the men crossing the picket line lifted one hand and the column behind him stopped. He spoke to Ike. “Everyone knows that. It’s all we talk about in our cups. I also know I need to send money home to my family. One way or another, this is going to end with us working and getting paid. Your problem with SagCon is not my problem.”
Ike held his hands to his chest in surprise. “It’s not my problem. I have an intergalactic work visa. I’m not stuck on this back-system planet. Can’t say that about everybody here, though.” Ike looked around to drive a wedge between the people, create the conditions favorable to his brand of negotiation.