by Scott Moon
Men watched from the doorways of businesses and workshops. She noticed with satisfaction that some of them made excuses to head out onto the street and intercept her. Some were polite, some were vulgar, but they all flattered her with compliments and propositions. She kept her chin high and waved them off as she passed without slowing down.
There were no alleyways in this part of Darklanding, only streets that were narrower and less busy. It was necessary to take a circuitous route to the greenhouse where her peaches grew, which was near the edge of the Unglok old town area. She found that walking among the indoor peach trees calmed her and gave her perspective on what she was doing here in Darklanding.
She turned down a final street and proceeded halfway to the end before she realized she was almost surrounded by Ungloks. They towered over her, shabby jumpsuits and nearly human faces causing them to seem more alien rather than less. She'd often thought they should have their own style of wardrobe and not have to force themselves into jumpsuits provided by SagCon. Maybe, if things went well, she could design a line of clothing and market it to them.
Fashion was the last thing on her mind now, however. There were at least ten of them, in a tight circle around her as though the maneuver had been planned.
"You stay. Human woman. No run," said one that looked older than the others. His hair was gray and unevenly trimmed. His eyes were almost violet, which she thought was unusual.
Dixie turned slowly, wishing she had been on her way home from the greenhouse so that she could throw peaches at them and run when they tried to pick them up. She looked them over again, wondering if they liked peaches. It was a question she had never asked herself. Until now, she had only sold the black-market fruit to human vendors.
"I have a blaster. You better stay back," she said, reaching into her handbag.
The crowd of Ungloks retreated and raised their hands to calm her. It was a human gesture that they had not mastered. The effect startled her, and she realized she had been holding her breath.
"No, no," the leader said. "No blaster. Peaches for Tigi. Peaches for Tigi.”
The other Ungloks took up the chant. "Peaches for Tigi. Peaches for Tigi. Peaches for Tigi.”
"Stop! I don't even know who Tigi is!" Dixie yelled in frustration. They seem to be moving closer and she couldn't breathe.
“Stop! Ummak says stop! Human woman screams at you,” the leader said.
The younger Ungloks looked at each other and pointed fingers as they repeated variations of the phrase “Human woman scream at you! Bad Unglok! No Tigi for you!"
Dixie saw spots in her vision and realized she was breathing so hard, she was about to come out of her blouse. Holding her handbag to her chest, she moved closer to a gap between two of the most distracted Ungloks. It irked her that she did not know how fast they could run. She never really paid attention to them except to make sure they stayed away from her girls in the Mother Lode.
She didn’t think they would hurt any of her girls, but understood from experience that once a brothel was labeled as catering to aliens, the human clientele boycotted the place. It didn't seem they were interested in her girls, but she watched them all the same. Now she wondered if they were more dangerous than she had assumed.
One of the Ungloks moved to cut off her escape. He looked angrier than the rest.
"Well, I'm afraid I don't know Tigi. And if I did, I would tell her you are all very rude," she said.
The older Unglok—their apparent leader—pointed at himself. “Ummak.”
"Forgive me if I don't shake hands," Dixie said.
“Tigi not girl. Tigi is muchly like whiskey. Whiskey with peaches," Ummak said.
“Oh gawd, peach whiskey? That has to be illegal," she said.
This agitated the Ungloks, but she knew what they wanted. She blushed at her own foolishness. Unable to keep from giggling, she spoke to the leader. "You want peaches? So you can make a drink called Tigi?”
The entire cluster of Ungloks nodded frantically.
"Well, then I'm your girl," she said.
The perimeter of Ungloks jumped back, waving their hands in denial of this statement. Ummak spoke the loudest. “No, no! Not our girl! Ummak no want girls! Only Tigi.”
Dixie laughed and took a moment to catch her breath. "I can sell you peaches. But not today. I am too upset from being accosted in the street.”
The Ungloks stared at her blankly.
"Never mind," she said. “Ummak, you may come to the Mother Lode and tell Pierre you would like a job sweeping the pantry. He will know what that means.”
“Ummak does not know what this means,” Ummak said.
"It means that I will talk to you then about peaches."
***
Dixie waited until the Ungloks left, then went to check on her peaches. The greenhouse was in good order and she anticipated a decent harvest. She took a tram back to the Mother Lode, not wanting to repeat the incident with the Tigi-obsessed Ungloks.
Inside the saloon, human miners stamped their feet in rhythm with music from the digital piano and three of her girls who actually knew how to sing. The others were doing a line dance on the bar. Pierre stood at one end with his arms crossed, clearly not amused or healthy. His bloodshot eyes leaked, and his skin possessed an unhealthy pallor.
Dixie walked in, clapped her hands three times, and glared at the entire scene. Back in her prime, this would've silenced the room. She settled for a dramatic lessening in volume. Her girls looked at her, and she waved for them to take it down a notch. Pierre reached up to each of the bar-dancing girls and helped them down one at a time.
She wanted to circulate the room and chastise some of the troublemakers who were always trying to get too rowdy or too friendly with the patrons. Unfortunately, there was no time. She needed to talk to Shaunte.
Trotting up the stairs as quickly as she could while still taking them one at a time to appear more ladylike, she reached the main hallway to Shaunte's level. She started forward, intent on having her say with the Company Man. She wanted to know why she had not been told about something that was clearly valuable. If she had known Tigi was a thing, she might have developed a marketing plan for it and made considerably more profit with her harvests.
At the end of the hall, she pounded on Shaunte's door. The heavy imitation wood door swung open just enough for her to see inside. Her mouth formed a large “O” as she saw Shaunte’s secret.
The woman stood there, looking as perfect as always in her black dress with blonde hair cascading over her curves, with the door to the company safe open. She was in the process of closing it after what appeared to have been a long session of staring into emptiness.
The safe, which was large enough to hide a body, was completely empty. Dixie had been there during the previous Company Man's tenure. She'd been in this office and saw that safe stacked with all manner of valuable currency and priceless contracts.
Carefully, as slowly as she could manage, she backed away and went to her own room to contemplate her discovery.
CHAPTER THREE: Boss Man
P. C. Dickles drove the push-dozer until his forearms, arms, and shoulders went to sleep from the vibrations. His back ached. Blisters grew on top of blisters between his toes.
He hadn’t been this content in weeks.
The blade was too heavy to move unassisted. A small but powerful motor helped propel the steel wedge—spewing exhaust fumes like rank stardust. There had been days when he pondered the details of the simple machine, especially the relative softness of the blade compared to some of the exotic ores he sought in this mine. Right now, despite the miserable exhaustion he was pushing himself toward, he could only focus on two things: the lack of exotic ore to dent and scrape the push-dozer blade, and rumors of an Unglok murder in Darklanding.
The push-dozer cracked rocks that couldn't be shoved aside, bits of debris flying into the air. His safety goggles deflected the spray of newly-made gravel. Dust coated his teeth and gums when he parted
his lips to growl and curse his dilemma. Where were the exotics? Why was this dig empty? His mind filled with a hundred distractions.
Who would murder an Unglok?
Dickles had never heard of an Unglok murder. He'd seen them fight each other, of course, but in general, they pretended to be pacifists when humans were around to observe them. Or that was what he thought anyway.
The handgrips bucked, nearly slipping from his fingers.
He continued until the passageway widened. With his thumb, he flicked the off-switch and the motor chugged and choked its way toward silence. Dust settled as he stared straight ahead, allowing his breathing to normalize and his heart rate to slow. It wasn't good to be this angry. That was what his mother always told him.
Turning around, he walked back to his crew and told Jacob, one of his best foreman, to continue but to log the details of each new section they breached. "We’re down deeper than I would like to be. We may have to start going horizontal at some point.”
Jacob shook his head.
"I know what you're thinking," Dickles said.
"No use in going horizontal if we ain't hit nothing yet," Jacob said.
Dickles patted him on the shoulder as he walked toward the rest area that surrounded the lift. The amenities worked great, and the only thing that separated human crews from Unglok crews was about ten feet of empty space. The natives had been waiting for their turn, and were closest to the access shaft leading to the new dig site. He walked through them, picking up more of their conversation than he could have a year ago. He wasn’t trying to learn their language, but some of it just stuck with him.
He stopped dead in his tracks when someone in the center of the conversation said the word ‘murder.’ All they talked about lately was a murder in Darklanding. No one argued with him, but they all seemed nervous and unsure. Body language was important in their culture, which was why they always acted so reserved around humans. The natives always tried to hide their true intent from humans. He wasn't sure he blamed them. There were days he felt more like an invader than a blue-collar worker.
The Ungloks knew how to get around in the mines, and he respected them for that. If he was being perfectly honest, they understood him better than most humans. Mining was his calling, his passion, something more than a job. It was the only thing he was good at and all he wanted to do. So why did he have to deal with the other drama?
Sometimes, they would stare at him and politely back away. Maybe the leader of this group would approach him and try to distract him with requests about the day's assignment or some minor complaint. To his surprise, they completely ignored him. The pause had only been a second and he started moving again before it became an issue.
Now it was time to face his men. They were looking at him and already knew what he was going to say. So why did he have to say it?
"Not a damn thing, pardon my language."
The last part normally drew a laugh from them or some type of sarcastic comment about how miners talked. His best men, his hardest workers, the crew that had been with him the longest and survived more than one collapse, just stared at him. Everyone was tired and discouraged. What made the issue worse was the contrast of the extremely good fortune up until recently. He'd sent back reports to Shaunte promising some of the best yields they'd seen since opening the mines.
“Are we done yet?” Jerry Redman, his secondary foreman, asked. “Or do you want me to take a fresh crew up there since you’re done messing around?”
"Just give me a minute," Dickles snapped. He sat on a rock and looked around as he pulled off some of his gear. One of the men handed him a water bottle and he sipped greedily through the straw, wishing he had some way to clean his face. A bath or shower would be a luxury, but he would settle for one of the antibacterial towelettes SagCon issued as part of their normal kit.
He coughed up phlegm and spat it into a dark corner, then looked at Jacob. "Go ahead. Get up there and see what you can do. But not for too long. The Gloks need their chance.”
"They seem to think it's their turn," Jerry said.
"It is their turn, but I want you up there with Jacob’s boys right now. We've got to get something going here," Dickles said. He watched Jerry and four men walk past the Ungloks without one of the Ungwilook natives noticing them.
He shook his head and finished drinking his water. There was no reason to go topside to report to Shaunte that he hadn't found anything. There just wasn’t.
CHAPTER FOUR: Cold Storage
Thaddeus thought about the Unglok settlement and the body lying face-up in the sleeping area of the double-wide trailer that had been placed on top of a warren of storage cellars. Humans tended to die face-down, sheltering from threats real or imagined.
He'd seen a lot of bodies during his career. The Unglok had seemed peaceful by comparison. Dying in battle and dying in your bedroom were two different things. He wasn't quite sure how to investigate the incident. Mast had talked to the family and many people in the neighborhood. He’d been unable to get clear answers. Thad still didn't know if the death was natural, an accident, or something more nefarious.
No one had seen anything. No one believed Trankot had enemies that would want him dead. According to the locals, everything was just fine in the Unglok slum. Not even the family of Trankot could muster a decent witness statement. They’d all been in the kitchen, or the toilet, or the cellar. All day and all night apparently. Never needing to sleep and never asking Trankot if he wanted to stand assholes to elbows in the kitchen with the ten to fifteen family members and friends needed to cook one meal.
“You must have been a real jerk, Trankot,” Thad muttered as he walked.
His deputy had stayed in the Unglok neighborhood speaking to important members of the community. Transporting the body had occurred without fuss, which surprised Thad. He kept expecting there to be some sort of emotional outburst or argument between family members. For his part, he tried to be invisible, avoiding any possible insult to their customs or traditions.
Now he was standing next to a scrap of mangled pavement that should have been his headquarters. When he arrived at Darklanding, there had at least been part of a building. He had salvaged a chair on the first day he was here. Later, he’d had a temporary structure placed on one half of the lot, which had included a jail that he believed secure. Now it was just a bunch of tracks scraped into the asphalt where the blast-proof temporary building had been dragged away.
"I think this is a lost cause, Fry-man," he said. The words sounded strange and he wasn't sure if he was talking about his headquarters or his assignment in general.
He checked the coordinates of the cold storage facility on his tablet and followed them, hoping to catch up with the transport crew he'd hired. They were a mix of Ungloks and humans, necessary for moving between two cultures to collect the dead. None of them had been happy with the arrangement. Putting bodies in a freezer wasn't normally done on Darklanding, or so they said.
There was no reason to keep coming back to his nonexistent headquarters. It was merely on the way to the Mother Lode. Today, after the exhausting business with the Ungloks, he stared at the burnt, smashed vacant lot. A sense of deep inner fatigue and dread filled him, but an epiphany flashed into his mind and heart. He wasn't meant to be here. Darklanding had no use for the law.
His route to the Mother Lode took him through several groups of human and Unglok workers. They parted before him. The perverse satisfaction of being feared quickened his stride and he wasn't sure it was a good thing. Forget about it, Fry-man. Everyone's entitled to a bad day.
He crossed the tracks of a trolley without looking to see how close it was. The crowded transport loomed closer. It would miss him, probably. The conductor of the conveyance didn't agree with his assessment. He blared the horn repeatedly, and the Ungloks riding on the inside and outside of the trolley yelled and waved their hands excitedly.
Sheriff Thaddeus Fry, the most feared man in Darklanding, waved off their c
oncerns without looking at them.
He stopped to look at his workout area and felt no desire to participate in strenuous physical activity. The collection of improvised fitness equipment he had collected since his arrival was impressive. In the beginning, there had been a few tractor tires. Now he had ropes, sleds, and the large handled weights that the Ungloks used to weigh and measure the goods they sold from their fields and the mines. He convinced a local metalsmith to forge a set of dumbbells that he hadn't tried yet. The last and simplest tool he had used since losing all his motivation was a heavy rucksack.
About a week ago, he had taken to long solitary road marches to the edge of the mesa and back. Mast had accompanied him the first time, probably assuming they were actually going somewhere.
He continued to the back of the Mother Lode and paused. There was no reason to hesitate. His time in Ground Forces had made him intimately familiar with death. Memories of Centauri Prime would never leave him, and that wasn't all bad. Despite the soul-wrenching misery of losing men and women he cared about, at least he could remember them. The worst thing would be to forget completely. He'd heard that the generals and the political elite who hired them had put the kibosh on a memorial satellite over Melborn. They had their own name for the campaign. They called it the CPF, the Centauri Prime Fiasco.
Thaddeus wasn't surprised. It probably seemed like a fiasco on paper. At the frontlines, it felt a lot more like a massacre.
He opened the back door to the Mother Lode and went down into the cellar where the backup freezer was located. To his surprise, it was stocked near to overflowing. "Not sure why Pierre calls it a backup if he uses it this much."
He pulled out his tablet radio and called Mast. “Fry to Mast, come in.”
“I am here, listening to you very muchly,” Mast said.
“How did Pierre take our cold storage arrangements?"
Silence.
"Mast?"
“We were not exactly able to contact him. He has been sick and not answering his calls,” Mast said.