by Chris Lowry
Satisfied it was all in working order, he rummaged through the desk and filled a half dozen flasks from one of the older bottles that had “aged” on the floor.
He carried them back to the cockpit, depositing two in the cargo hold in designated areas that only he was aware of.
Then he plopped into the pilot’s seat, checked to make sure he was on course and sat back to enjoy some of his homebrew for the rest of the journey.
It burned going down and he let out a yell, part appreciation, part joy of just being alone in space in his own ship.
He’d been to Mars hundreds of times, and this journey from the last space hub to the planet surface would take several hours.
Enough time to enjoy a couple of drinks and get ready for what was about to happen.
CHAPTER
Humanity was about to happen.
He hated it.
The landing was smooth, at least to his alcohol strained hands and if he scraped the sides of the ship a little bit, it was okay. The NS-17 didn’t have a paint job so a couple of scrapes wouldn’t hurt her.
He connected with the dock master via the wireless and paid his docking fee from the credit chip, then mapped out a plan in his head.
Musk was the first colony on Mars and the largest.
Finding one person in the fifty million people on the planet wasn’t going to be easy.
Lucky for him, he had a place to start.
But before he went to Sue’s retirement villa or whatever she called it, he wanted to visit a pub.
Sure, he’d had a couple of drinks or six on the way down to the Red Planet, but Tinker wanted to make sure he had up to the minute intelligence of who he was going to see.
The Sue that he remembered was a shrewd older woman with a keen eye for detail and a memory like a steel trap.
She would have never let him leave without being satisfied, he muttered, feeling a little sorry for himself that he didn’t get the love time he paid for.
The Sue he remembered, old Sue, was a stickler for customer service, and what was he if he was not a customer? A good customer who paid twice and got nothing for it.
Except party to a murder or two.
That thought sobered him up as he locked up the ship and meandered across the dock toward the magnetic trains.
Musk was built in a giant circle under a dome. The train lines ran like spokes on a wheel out from a central location, each covering dozens of miles as the city expanded.
There was a giant overarching dome that protected the main city of Musk, but hundreds of smaller domes dotted the landscape, some the work of miners and farmers, others like small towns and villages that popped up around a particular piece of lucky ground.
Tinker was headed to the red-light district.
Every place he had been in space had one.
Some more than one. The original space hub had over one hundred different countries represented in the expanse of tubes and metal construction, each with their own version of the vice laden portions of their sections.
He had visited a lot of them.
Musk had a particular smell of its own.
He breathed in the recirculate air as he made his way on one of the floating magnetic train cars and found a seat.
No one stared this time, even though the wrinkled flight suit he had rummaged off the crowded floor had grease stains in the creases and grime on the elbows. It earned a couple of judgmental sniffs, but that was it.
The train whisked him away from the landing pads and toward the center of town. From there, the red-light district was just a short hike away, which gave him time to plan out his next move.
First, he was going to get a drink.
The thing about being in space in your own ship is just how easy it is to get used to being alone.
There were a lot of people in Musk, and Tinker hated it.
I like a different kind of press the flesh, he muttered in his seat as they approached the terminus.
That earned him some of the stares he expected.
But really, what could the good citizens expect of him, he wondered. If they spent as much time in the void as he did, they might talk to themselves too. And it wasn’t because he was drunk either. He hadn’t had a sip this whole trip from the landing pad, had he?
Nope, it was the city that was driving him a little crazy.
Crazier, he grinned.
A mother with a small child got up and moved further away from where he was sitting.
Tinker glanced around to make sure he wasn’t in danger from whatever they were scared of, and was glad to see that the people at his end of the car were starting to thin out.
It would make departing so much easier.
Once the train stopped, he stepped onto the platform and followed his gut toward a pub.
Never pick the first one you come to, he thought. It would be more crowded. The second maybe, depending on the time of day or night. But it was the third one that was usually the sweet spot.
He found it easy enough.
Under a neon sign that said the Sweet Spot.
“If that’s not the Universe talking to me, I don’t know what is,” said Tinker as he pushed through the doors.
CHAPTER
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior.
It wasn't crowded inside.
There were three men at the bar, tough looking rough necks still in their work gear after a shift in the oil fields.
A miniscule female bartender floated on hover skates as she ran a towel through bar glasses, staying busy to remove imaginary dust, but close enough to answer a call for another round if needed.
There were two others at the far end of the bar. One large man with scarred features who watched him as soon as he walked through the door, the other larger still even hunched over a drink with his back to the door.
"What can I get you?" the lady bartender called out in a raspy voice.
"Something cold, darling," Tinker smiled and slid her the credit chip.
"We have a lot cold," she stared at the chip for a second. "Gonna have to be more specific."
He almost ordered whiskey, but decided he was on the clock and needed his wits about him once he made it to Sue's. So, he ordered a beer instead.
The cute little bartender slid a sweating glass of amber brew in front of him and ignored his wink with practiced ease.
Tinker took a sip of the weak concoction, more like flavored water to his taste and turned to study the other occupants of the pub.
The big one was still staring at him, the other still hunched over his glass, and the three workers absorbed in a story designed to impress the barkeeper with theirphysical prowess.
Tinker shifted his glass in a toast to the man giving him serious eyeball and took another sip.
"Help you friend?" the man called out across the room.
That got the roughneck's attention.
"Not today, Gerald," the bartender shouted from the bar.
"It's not me this time, I swear," Gerald stood up. He topped out a head taller than Tinker, with ham sized fists that he slammed into the tabletop.
"This guy won't stop staring at me since he came through the door."
"My eyes were adjusting," Tinker said. "I didn't mean to offend."
"But I was," Gerald grabbed the table and scooted it aside. "You did."
Tinker glanced the bartender with a look that screamed, are you gonna do something about this?
Her look said, you're on your own dead meat.
The rough necks held their drinks and got ready to watch the show, while the guy with his back to the room kept it that way.
"Then let me say I'm sorry," Tinker tried to think of a way to extract himself. Wrong bar. Wrong time. Wrong everything. "Let me buy you another round. Hell, I'll buy everybody another round."
The rough necksmurmured their approval, but Gerald shook his head.
"You think you can bribe me?"
He stalked across t
he room toward Tinker.
"I wasn't trying to bribe you mate, I was buying you a drink."
"You're trying to buy me? Do I look like a slave to you?"
Tinker glanced around again and calculated his chances of making the door. The guy was too close now, within a swipe of those long arms. But if he could just find a distraction, something to take his mind off Tinker for just a moment, he could make a run for it.
"What does a slave look like? Is it even legal? I thought they outlawed slavery when the Authority stopped bringing workers up here to build the rails. What about you fellas? You know anything about slaves?
Tinker tried to bring the oil workers in on the conversation. They shook their heads no.
No help there.
"Are you messing with me?" Gerald got in Tinker's face and belched.
This close, Tinker could see the man was up to his neck in whatever he was drinking. The white of his eyes was a solid mass of red irritation, the pupils blown up to take up almost the whole iris.
Gerald was on a pisser and he was gone.
Didn't make him any less dangerous, Tinker thought. But that explained the overreaction.
But one thing about the big man bothered him.
If the man couldn't hold his liquor, he had no business drinking. Tinker himself was trying to ride a buzz now, coming down from the hooch he made in his captain's quarters, and this interloper was harshing his mellow.
Him and the weak beer they were serving in here.
"What are you freaking looking at?" Gerald's breath hovered over him like a warm fog, full of stench and despair. Tinker was glad he didn't smoke, because they would have gone up in a fireball if that wind washed over an open flame.
Now he was starting to get a little frustrated.
"Why is a bra singular and panties plural?" he asked Gerald.
The big man glared as he tried to work out the riddle in his head.
"What?"
"How bout you love?" Tinker called over his shoulder to the bartender. "You know the answer? Do you wear panties?"
"Leave me out of this," she called back.
"What do you think Mate? Think she's full on commando behind the bar? Want to make a bet?"
Tinker waggled his eyebrows.
A scarlet plume blossomed up Gerald's neck, coloring his cheeks like a temperature gauge.
"That’s! My! Girlfriend!" he bellowed.
"We broke up Gerald!" she yelled back.
Gerald yanked Tinker by the jumpsuit and jerked him up from the bar.
"It's going to be like that?" Tinker decided to yell too.
He smashed the glass against Gerald's temple and readied his feet to catch himself as he landed.
What he couldn't figure out was why he was flying through the air, upside down and what that crashing sound was.
Then it hit him.
Gerald's table smashed underneath the flailing pilot as he crashed to the ground in an explosion ofFormica and splinters.
"Ouch," he groaned and tried to make his feet.
Gerald stalked over, grabbed him by the cloth at the scruff of his neck and bunched around the waist. He sent Tinker reeling across the room in a staggering wild trajectory that bounced his shoulder off the wood underneath the edge of the bar and left him watching starbursts dance in front of his eyes.
Someone kept screaming.
He realized it was him.
And the bartender.
Yelling for Gerald to cool it. To calm down.
"Yeah man, relax," Tinker said as he used the edge of the bar to help himself up.
Gerald sent a punt for his face but lucky for Tinker, vertigo decided to assist first, because as he stood, he kept going and fell sideways.
Gerald's foot slammed into the granite bar with a loud crunch of breaking bones.
He hopped around on one leg, holding his wounded foot and howling.
Tinker tried to get up again, spinning on the floor.
His leg got in Gerald's way and knocked him over sideways. The giant man lost his balance and fell into the cracked edge of the bar his foot had just smashed.
His head bounced off the rock with an echoing thump that left Gerald on the floor in a widening pool of blood.
"Gerald?" the small bartender cried.
Tinker used a stool to get up and hold everything steady while the room stopped spinning.
He watched the three roughnecks kneel around the fallen man to check on him, and decided he needed to sit too. Maybe they would check on him when they were done.
He'd hit the wall pretty hard.
Tinker stumbled backwards and collapsed into a chair opposite of the man hunched over his drink.
"Are you alright?" the man asked in the calmest voice Tinker had ever heard.
He took a sip of beer and set the glass back down.
"He hit pretty hard."
"I think the wall hit you. He just gave you a toss," the mananswered.
"Yeah, guess you're right," Tinker checked the goose egg on the back of his head where he bounced it off the wood under the bar.
"Think he's hurt?"
The man shrugged.
Tinker noticed the uniform as his eyes stopped shivering in his skull and the room came back into focus.
"You some kind of cop?"
"Prison guard," the man said and slid his glass across the table toward Tinker.
He took a drink and passed it back.
"Thanks. I'm a pilot."
"You killed him!" the bartender screamed.
She jumped up from the body on the floor and launched herself at Tinker. One of the roughnecks reached out and grabbed her.
"Are you sure?" Tinker blinked.
"You killed Gerald! You bastard!" she sobbed. "I loved him."
"You said you were broken up," Tinker stared at the body.
"But I didn't want him dead!" she wailed. "You're a murderer."
"It was an accident."
The other two rough neck's spread out to either side of the table to grab Tinker.
"He was a friend of ours," one grumbled.
"More like a drinking buddy, really," the other corrected.
"Yeah, I guess, but we saw him in here a lot. And you upset Meg."
"Who's Meg?" Tinker pressed into the wall, wishing for all of Mars a hole would open up and allow him to escape.
"That's Meg," the right one pointed to the wailing bartender being held by the third man. He was taking advantage of her grief and distraction by running his grimy hands over her back, bottom and hair.
Tinker showed them both hands.
"Look, I was just in here trying to find someone to help me get to someplace, and having a drink. That guy started it."
"You were eyeballing him," the rough necks closed in.
"I couldn't see him," Tinker tried to push further into theunyielding wall. "It was an accident."
The prison guard stood up.
"He was on the floor and the man tripped," said the guard.
"This doesn't concern you," one of the rough necks said.
The prison guard picked up his drink and stepped out of the way.
"I didn't want to spill my drink," he said as he moved to the bar and set the glass down.
"You heard of frontier justice," the man on the left grabbed Tinker and yanked him out of the seat.
"It's an eye for an eye out here," said the other.
Tinker flailed in their arms, but the two men gripped tight and lifted him off the ground.
"What do you want to do with him?"
"String him up?"
"I don't want to be hanged," Tinker whimpered.
"No rope."
"Can't hang him then," the second man argued.
"You could just let me go," Tinker suggested.
"Shoot him?"
"No gun."
"Poison?"
"We could try to make him drink to death."
Meg fought her way out of the third man's roaming hands
"I'
ve got a knife," she screamed and ducked behind the bar.
Tinker fought harder, but the two men just lifted him up a little higher.
"A little help here?" Tinker called out to the guard who stood at the bar watching.
The man shrugged.
Meg jumped out with a paring knife she used to cut up fruit. Lemon juice glistened off the dull tip.
"That's not a knife!" the third rough neck guffawed.
"It's all I've got."
The two holding Tinker glanced at each other again.
"Guess it will have to do. Hold him down."
They dragged the pilot to the bar and laid him on top of it.
"Get his legs," the right one said as Tinker kicked and squealed.
The third man threw himself across the lower part of the pilot's shifting body and held him down.
"Get in there girl," the rough neck told Meg.
She approached with the knife held out in front of her, blade tip pointed at Tinker's throat.
"I've never killed a man before," she gulped.
"It's easy," the rough neck advised. "Just do it quick so you don't think about it."
She stepped closer.
The rough neck slapped a hand over Tinker's mouth to quiet his screams. The pilot bucked even harder.
Meg pointed the blade and leaned in.
"There. Right there, just jab it in."
"I can't," she dropped the knife and backed up.
"Do it for Gerald," the man snapped.
"I can't. I don't want to be a killer too," she sobbed.
"Fine, I'll do it," the third rough neck let go of Tinker's legs and bent over for the knife.
The pilot lashed out with a boot and caught him on the side of the head. The rough neck crashed into his buddy on this side of the bar and they plowed into the prison guard as he took a drink.
Beer sloshed over the side of the glass and spilled down his uniform.
"Get him!" the rough necks screamed as they scrambled to hold Tinker down and finish killing him.
"I just washed this," the prison guard sighed.
Then he moved.
Or at least Tinker thought he did.
One second, the men were struggling to hold him down. The next, there were three heaps of broken mounds quivering on the floor.
The prison guard stood at the bar wiping the front of his shirt with a clean bar towel.