by Scott Moon
Several doors closed when she reached the top of the stairs. No doubt the slackers had heard her coming. Sure enough, she heard a pathetic cough at the first door. At the next was theatrical moaning about throwing up. Others remained suspiciously quiet as though no one was inside.
Ruby’s door was locked. Dixie knocked three times.
“Come in, Miss Dixie,” Ruby said. Dixie wasn’t surprised that Ruby knew she was coming.
Dixie entered and closed the door behind her. Her eyes skimmed the room looking for any of the usual contraband—alcohol, narcotics, unauthorized food, or reading material not appropriate to their calling. The room was meticulously arranged, almost as though Ruby Miranda had a personal assistant to put things in order.
The girl sat at her three-mirrored makeup bureau braiding her hair. She wore the spaghetti string nighty that accentuated her shoulders and her slim physique. She possessed the lean muscularity of a gymnast. Dixie wasn’t sure why, but this bothered her more than any other mysterious fact about the young runaway.
“Are you going somewhere?” Dixie asked.
Ruby finished her braid and then turned on the swivel chair. “Why would you ask that?”
Her face was so innocent it almost fooled Dixie. But then she realized the act was too much. She wasn’t so young and innocent. The overgrown child probably stood to inherit more of a fortune than Miss Shaunte Plastes did. It made sense. Shaunte was working for a living while this girl was out gallivanting around the galaxy on some ill-conceived adventure.
“Drop the helpless street rat act. We both know you’re from money. If you’re not sick, you need to be working as a hostess downstairs. I’m already short three girls.”
“Would you like to check my temperature? It’s over a hundred.”
Dixie sighed with exasperation and looked around the room for some place to vent her frustration.
“I was braiding my hair so it wouldn’t get in the toilet when I needed to throw up,” Ruby said, not sounding sick.
Dixie crossed her arms and stared at the girl.
Ruby’s demeanor changed as she finished the braid. She seemed hesitant. Once, she glanced over her shoulder, but it was a shadow of movement, something most people would not notice. Dixie noticed.
“You better tell me straight, girl,” she said.
Ruby turned around on the chair with the sort of dignified grace that only came from high society charm school. She clasped her hands in her lap and met Dixie’s gaze. “There is a large, brutish man in the Mother Lode. I saw him from the top of the stairs. I can’t go down there.”
Dixie snorted a laugh. “The room is full of brutish men.”
Ruby held the silence just long enough to emphasize what she said next. “I think you know what I mean.”
Dixie dropped her arms and let out a long sigh, part exasperation and part relief. “I knew it. You’re in trouble. Big trouble. Darklanding is full of castoffs and runaways and fugitives, but no one gets a SagCon special investigator sent to round them up. What did you do?”
Ruby stood, back straight as a queen, and seemed to tower over Dixie even though she was much shorter. “There is a tradition in my family, established by my great grandfather. He was the blackest of black sheep, and disowned from all of our fortunes before he returned and took over everything. He spent most of his life doing the wrong things, and making the wrong people angry. He went on every possible adventure and took risks no sane person would even consider.”
Dixie backed away, stopping only when she felt the wall behind her. She put her palms on the paneling and took several deep breaths as she continued to watch the girl.
“I didn’t think your family was that rich, or was that family,” Dixie muttered.
Ruby was still talking, but Dixie could barely understand the words. As the madam of the Mother Lode, she’d seen a lot of people come through Darklanding, most of them dangerous. Yet, for the first time in her career, she was truly afraid.
Ruby stopped talking and considered Dixie for a moment. She walked forward with the smooth grace of a cat and stood very close. “I hope my secrets will not change anything between us.”
Dixie held her breath to control her galloping heartbeat and immediately realized that was the wrong way to get control of her body. When she spoke, she felt like a child addressing an adult. “No, Ruby. I don’t see how anyone should know about this.”
Ruby smiled, then reached up and put her small hand on Dixie’s cheek like they were the dearest of friends. “I suspect you will mostly forget about this conversation.”
* * *
Special Investigator Michael “Sledge” Hammer had other places to be, other leads to track down, but could not bring himself to walk away from the Mother Lode. The other patrons ignored him, but he figured they respected his size and obvious readiness to do violence. No one bothered him, and a few even told him jokes.
He learned quite a bit about the new sheriff and recent events during his time at one of the card tables. Sheriff Thaddeus Fry didn’t seem to be a normal lawman. One of the first things he’d done in Darklanding was round up a bunch of miners and rush into a collapse to save people. Sledge wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain that that was outside the normal job description for a town sheriff.
Sledge had done the job on other worlds before SagCon discovered his talent, and he found it tolerable work. People had mostly respected him, and he only had to crack heads once in a while. But that had been a long time ago.
He knew why he was loitering. His SI partner, before he ditched her, had been too full of energy and had always rushed about. He was a big man, like a mastiff or a draft horse. Big creatures like him had to conserve energy. His behavior looked a lot like patience or sloth, depending on who was making the judgement.
So he waited until he saw her at the top of the stairs. She wasn’t who he came for, he knew that. His job was of the highest priority and more dangerous than anything he’d done, and he knew that as well. But he was still a man, with a man’s needs, or so he reasoned.
Dixie was all aflutter with some sort of consternation. He wondered what had caused her to mess up her blonde hair and for her clothing to be in disarray. He spent some time looking at that clothing. Tight as it was, it pushed her curves in the right directions. Even though he’d only been there a short time, he considered himself an expert in the way she walked.
Something was different when she came down the stairs, and his protective instincts flared. He shoved them down, wondering why he would think she was in danger. She wasn’t the type to be bullied or manipulated. That was what he liked about her.
He waited until she was down the stairs and had done one full circuit of the room checking on her girls. Then he moved in, reaching the bar where she normally sat just as she lowered her perfect backside and crossed one leg over her knee and arched her spine.
“Buy you a drink?”
“No.”
Sledge pulled back an inch and looked at her again. “Why, Dixie, you wound me.”
She jerked her head at him, leading with her chin, and stared him down with her beautiful blue eyes. “Don’t act fancy.”
“Now that’s more like it. I’ve been trying for two days to get you to look at me.” He leaned on the bar, slightly flexing his bicep and chest as he did so.
“Not much to look at.” Dixie motioned for Pierre to bring a drink. The annoying man with his pencil-thin mustache stared at Sledge for several seconds before he went to fill the order. When he came back, he served it to Dixie without a word and did not inquire of Sledge’s needs.
I can wait her out, Sledge thought once he secured a drink from the passive-aggressive barkeep. He watched the crowd, listened to the music, and said nothing to Dixie despite the powerful attraction radiating from her.
A fight broke out. Sledge leaned back and held his drink a bit higher as the combatants crashed by him.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Dixie asked.
S
ledge shrugged. “I’m not the bouncer or the sheriff.”
“Well, that’s for certain,” she said.
The fight grew into a barroom brawl until Pierre pulled a large stun-gun from under the bar and aimed at the troublemakers. “Fight’s over. Settle down or get out before I call the sheriff.”
Sledge marveled at the sudden compliance to Pierre’s ultimatum. He sipped the watered-down whiskey Pierre had served him before the fight started.
“Why are you here?” Dixie asked.
Sledge turned toward her, leaning one massive forearm on the bar as he smiled his best smile. “Well, I am looking for a runaway. You might have seen her. She’s small, very fit, and stuck up like most ultra-rich brats.”
Dixie arched one eyebrow. “So you’re really just a babysitter.”
“Something like that,” Sledge said. “The job has some nice benefits.”
“Oh really?”
“I get to look at you,” Sledge said.
“Please, Mister Hammer. Don’t embarrass yourself further. That is the worst pick-up line I have heard in years,” she said.
“Point taken.” He faced the crowd, leaning on the bar behind him with both elbows. “If you see this girl, let me know. She’s a pathological liar and a master manipulator.”
“We have plenty of those in my profession,” Dixie said.
“She’s also wanted for murder.” Sledge noticed that Dixie went as pale as a tipped-over wedding cake.
CHAPTER FIVE: Above Ground
“Because I’m the foreman,” P.C. Dickles stated. He looked to the elevator he’d recently emerged from. With his left hand, he pulled a rag from the back pocket of his jumpsuit and wiped his face. The worn-out fabric came back filthy and greasy. For the first time in days, he was aware of his own body odor.
Every man and woman on his crew, and even the Ungloks, had reason to be proud. There had never been so many exotic materials pulled from this hole in the ground.
It was long past the end of his shift, but that didn’t mean he felt comfortable being above ground. There was work to be done and few people could motivate the men as he could. He even let them make fun of his name.
With a sigh, he faced the man on the other side of the window. “You do realize your office looks like a security booth, right? Forget I brought it up. I wouldn’t want you to come out here and get dirty.”
The man inside sat a little straighter behind his desk. “Well, thank you, that is very reasonable.”
“But when I tell you to send a message to the Company Man, I mean send it. We’ve been busting our humps to dig out ten times the ore extracted during the last quarter and now you’re telling me it has to sit there on the loading docks? Does the Company Man know? Is that why you won’t send my inquiry?”
A thin, reedy voice cut into the conversation. “P.C. Dickles, leave him alone. It’s not his fault.”
P.C. turned slowly, not because he was stiff, though he was, but because he despised dealing with Phango Kutter. No one on the planet liked the assayer. “Shouldn’t you be counting beans or something?”
Kutter was a short, thin, weaselly man with wire-rimmed glasses that had columns of green numbers running around inside the lenses. His jumpsuit had three stripes on his sleeves because he was service-class management. “You should be more respectful. Without me, all of your hard work would be meaningless. So congratulations, by the way. I have rarely seen this much ore come out of the mine, and the quality is exceptional. The amount of A19 is both impressive and disturbing.”
P.C. stared at him. “Thanks for the compliment. Now stay out of my business. I need to talk to the Company Man and find out why there are no trains to move this material. I don’t need your interference. Keep in mind you’re not the only assayer on the planet.”
“Incorrect,” Kutter said.
P.C., on the verge of turning his back to the man, froze. “What do you mean?”
Kutter looked around, smiling theatrically and enjoying the moment. Several of the other miners coming off shift were watching now. The clerk behind the window was positively horrified. “You know I could’ve been on that last shipment. You might be nicer to me if you realized how dangerous my job really is.”
P.C. wanted to punch the man in the face. “The transports are always sent supersonic, nearly twice supersonic. You’ll never ride a transport. The Company Man will never authorize a slow train. Slow trains get robbed. Why are you wasting my time with asinine nonsense? You want to see dangerous, come down into the mine and work for a day.”
“Calm down, Dickles. I’m not saying your job isn’t dangerous. My cousin over in insurance thinks you inflate things quite a bit, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. The reason we have mountains of ore and other common materials filling up the warehouse and loading bays is because there are no trains to move them. Well, technically there are, but it can’t get past the destruction of the first train. There’s been an accident, and an entire shipment was lost in the middle of Transport Canyon.”
P.C. stared at him dumbfounded. He shook off his surprise. “That’s the kind of talk that starts rumors. There hasn’t been a train derailment since…since ever.”
Kutter nodded with exaggerated solemnity. “I know. What if I had been on that one?”
P.C. blinked, then shook his head to clear the momentary confusion. He felt anger boiling inside of him, and almost welcomed it. With a quick step forward, he grabbed Kutter by the front of the shirt.
“You think this is funny? We’re dying down there to get these exotics out of the ground and now you’re playing games telling me that it all ended up dumped in the canyon,” P.C. growled.
“That’s not what I meant,” Kutter said. “I am only explaining why the other assayers are gone from Ungwilook. Or at least that is why I think they are gone. This place is too dangerous. I’ve always been more rugged than my peers.”
P.C. let him go with a slight shove and brushed past him. He rushed across the transition area into a staging area covered with packed gravel. At first, it was only walking quickly, then jogging, then sprinting toward the plateau to the overlook.
He stopped with his toes on a ledge that dropped thousands of meters to the valley floor. Wind pulled at his filthy jumpsuit. His sweaty hair suddenly felt like ice and a shiver went down his spine.
There had been a few times he let himself relax and socialize with his peers. They had occasionally come here and sat with their feet dangling over the edge as they drank cheap beer.
He knew what the canyon should look like, twisting rivers and towering mesas above a highland desert landscape. He had always marveled that it was colder down there than it seemed.
The view of Transport Canyon was different today. A ghostly pallor hung over the area. Visibility was inconsistent at best and he knew exactly why.
He saw fragments of the massive titanium freight cars scattered for kilometers. Some were buried in the sides of rock formations; others had plowed deep furrows in pebbled riverbeds. Many looked as though they had suffered artillery strikes. But more than anything, the sky was filled with dust.
Something tightened in his gut. There had been a lot of A19 on those cars. The mineral was primarily used in extraterrestrial industries. It didn’t like interaction with oxygen. For humans, it was essentially harmless and useless when exposed to breathable air. For the Ungloks, it could be deadly.
His first thought, completely random and strange, was that someone wanted to keep the Ungloks out of the canyon.
He shook his head to clear the thought, then went back to the communication booth. “Send a new message to the Company Man. We need a security guard for the loading docks.”
The clerk nodded. “Lot of loot piled up until we get transportation figured out. Shall I ask her if she wants the mining stopped?”
“No. My crew needs their paychecks. We’re doing our jobs. You do yours,” P.C. added, frowning at the man.
CHAPTER SIX: A Man and His Dog
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Thaddeus Fry, Sheriff of Darklanding, knew how to fly an airship. He had almost gone into the Air Force before choosing Ground Force. As much as he loved soaring above the surface of a planet, that wasn’t where the action was and wasn’t where he was needed. He compromised by getting cross-trained in terrestrial base vehicles. He thought he could fly a space vessel in a pinch, but would not want to take it very far.
The shuttle he’d commandeered was small and rickety. He was pretty sure there was original paint on it, but wouldn’t bet money on his ability to identify the rogue patches of color. It felt solid and all of the system checks were on the money. The engines started with some difficulty, but they started. The biggest problem, and also its greatest strength, was the small size of the cockpit. There wasn’t much room for anyone but him. He wasn’t feeling sociable and hadn’t invited anyone to join him. He didn’t want the company or the inane questions.
Maximus didn’t really count. He wasn’t in a chair, which was a huge safety violation. The dog-thing-pig wedged itself between his chair and the left wall. The electronics behind the panels seemed to be overheating half the time, which suited the beast just fine.
“You’re not much of a copilot, animal,” Thad said.
He had heard about the stunning beauty of the badlands, and been warned the beauty was deceiving. He maintained altitude for a while, looking down on the geographical dynamic between Darklanding and the mines. The only time he had made the trip had been on a direct trolley full of miners ready to earn overtime and save their friends from a collapse. Personnel were never moved through Transport Canyon. The high road trolley system was much more direct, but couldn’t move large loads.
There been no need to take an airship any place, and they were hard to find. No one wanted to take him up for free just because he was the sheriff. In this particular case, he hadn’t really asked. Shaunte would be even angrier with him, but he didn’t care. She was wrong, and she had to know she was wrong. And if she didn’t know, then he wouldn’t tell her.