by M. D. Cooper
“It hasn’t been that long,” Reece said.
“Not you.” Marky’s eyes skimmed right over her. “I meant him.”
Marky was not one of the people who objected to Trey. In fact, Reece sometimes wondered if Marky had started to prefer him to her. Reece had never gambled a great deal, enjoying the general experience, soaking in the sounds and ambience of the betting lounge more than anything else. She enjoyed a good flipper game, and occasionally played a hand of rummy, but that was about it.
“I wanted to give you time to miss me,” Trey said flirtatiously.
Marky gave him her most dazzling smile, which was wildly dazzling indeed. Her short, spiky blond hair and delicate features made it impossible to look away from her.
It probably helped her win at cards.
“What have you been up to?” Marky asked.
“Oh, you know.” Trey shrugged. “Working out. Shooting things. Manly stuff.”
“I did those things, too,” Reece muttered. “They did not feel the least bit manly to me.”
Neither of them paid her any attention.
“Sounds exhausting. You should come relax with a game of cards.” Marky gazed up at him her eyes daring him to deny her.
“That’s perfect. Reece was telling me how hard she was going to beat me at a game of eight-card rummy.”
Marky’s expression dimmed regretfully. “Ah, but we’re playing Jack Takes All. Do you know it?”
“Maybe you could show me?” Trey suggested.
Reece laughed to herself as they turned toward Marky’s table in the back of the gambling hall. Maybe Trey could do a hustle twice, after all. Though Marky would be on her guard now. Reece wasn’t sure which of them to warn about the other.
Nah. They can figure it out for themselves.
“Coming?” Marky looked back over her shoulder at Reece.
“I’ve never liked Jack Takes All. I’ll go play the flipper games.”
Marky nodded, and the pair of them disappeared to the back.
* * * * *
After two hours of enjoying the bleeps and jingles, flashing lights and jolly little sims, Reece said her goodbyes and left. Marky and Trey, deeply entrenched in their game, barely gave her a brief wave each.
Rather than feeling neglected, she was glad that Trey had found a place he could hang out. If anyone said anything sideways to him, Marky’s foul temper would unleash. Trey wouldn’t be at risk of being drawn into an altercation.
If that did happen, things could go wrong for him. Though he had the benefit of Rexcare’s backing, Trey was an augmented offworlder. That could lessen even Rexcare’s influence.
After a stop at the Ringtoad to enjoy some Hatchet and Pipe Akonwaran whiskey and Kippy’s company, Reece went home early, glad for a bit of cloud-cover to lessen the blaze of the two stars in Akonwara’s skies. It was stew night, and she never stayed out late when Aunt Ruth made her famous stew.
No doubt Kippy would come around tomorrow looking for leftovers.
After dinner, she watched one of Aunt Ruth’s game shows with her, then went to bed early.
She’d gotten to do all her favorite things—shooting, exercising, fighting, and visiting friends—and got to get a good night’s sleep with a bellyful of stew.
Life didn’t get any better than that.
HATCHET AND PIPE
DATE: 05.03.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
Only halfway through the night, Reece’s perfect day ended. Rather than get a full night’s sleep, her overlays woke her with flashing lights. Groaning, she accessed the news alert. When she saw the headline, she leapt out of bed.
The Hatchet and Pipe distillery had blown up.
Oh, hell no. Not her favorite whiskey.
Her happy glow from the day before disappeared into a black hole of endless boring evenings and substandard whiskey.
Not if she had anything to do with it.
She dressed as fast as she ever had in her life and then braided her hair. Whiskey was flammable, and there might be fires still burning when she got there. Best not to burn her hair, since it was the one thing that she felt vain about.
Well, that and her clothes.
She tiptoed down the stairs, only to notice the sound of a game show. Coming into the living room, she saw Aunt Ruth, absorbed in some game that appeared to feature people dressed in animal suits, competing for prizes.
“You’re still up?” Reece asked.
“Oh, yes, I got caught up in a marathon. What are you doing up? Did you get a call from work?”
That would certainly make more sense than her charging out into the well-lit perihelion conjunction year ‘night’ to defend her favorite booze. She didn’t normally lie to Aunt Ruth, but in this case, it would be for her aunt’s benefit, so she wouldn’t worry. Reece would tell her the truth later.
“Yeah. Got to go see about something.”
Aunt Ruth nodded. “Well, be careful, sweetie. Make sure you take your guns so you can paste anyone who gets in your way.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that, but okay.” Reece slipped out the door and hurried to the Metro.
* * * * *
The Metro had just started to roll when Schramm Matthews called. Since several other travelers surrounded her, and she couldn’t help but move her lips when she subvocalized, Reece opted for an audio-only relay from Schramm and then texted her responses.
“Reece. Where are you?”
He sounded relieved. “This is why you’re my favorite employee. I didn’t even know you realized Hatchet and Pipe was one of our subsidiaries.”
Really? Rexcare had some sort of ownership over her favorite whiskey? Small world.
She played it cool, though.
It wasn’t a lie, in the case of Hatchet and Pipe.
Schramm continued, “I don’t have much information to give you. We’re not aware of any problems in the area and the distillery is kept up to exacting standards. It’s a pristine operation. We could be looking at some accident due to equipment failure, or sabotage. Be ready for anything.”
“Good. Keep me informed and be careful. Have you talked to Trey?”
That time, it was a lie.
“Don’t worry about it. Since you’re out in public, I’ll handle that, and have him meet you.”
“I know you will. Truth is, you’re my most valued employee—even if you do bend me over a barrel from time to time.”
The connection ended, and Reece felt a little bad about misleading her boss. Very little. Almost none at all, actually.
Nah, it’s fine.
She had time to spend with her own thoughts on the ride out to Agriculture Sector Six where Hatchet and Pipe—known affectionately by its devotees as H&P—grew its very own barley. She tried to imagine whether the crop would have been damaged, or just the distillery, and how great the damage might be. The youngest whiskey they sold were aged in barrels for eight years. The idea of all that time and whiskey wasted made Reece feel both depressed and murderous.
She’d probably be better served to check into Rexcare’s connection to H&P.
An initial dive into H&P’s company information didn’t reveal an affiliation to Rexcare. Interesting.
She went at it from the other direction instead, logging herself into Rexcare’s database and searching for H&P.
Still nothing. Strange.
Intrigued now, she dug into a subset of Rexcare’s holdings that involved non-medicinal companies. Usually those were tangentially related to the medical industry, like an algae farm that created a substance used for gel coatings used on nutritional supplements. Occasionally, Rexcare acquired a com
pany that encompassed additional holdings that didn’t interest Rexcare as a whole. The conglomerate usually sold off those individual bits piecemeal.
But she had no luck there, either.
She chewed on her lip, wondering what to try next. It had to be in there somewhere.
Then it hit her. Contracts.
From the bottle’s label, she knew that the owner of Hatchet and Pipe was a woman named Nizhoni. Over the course of her drinking years, Reece had stared at the pretty black and white label for what amounted to many hours. The H&P logo had a looping swirl design that encircled a pair of hatchets. The swirls became more and more fascinating the drunker a person grew. Reece knew this firsthand.
The bottle also inspired a drunk person to ask why the label showed two hatchets, rather than a hatchet and a pipe, and was it some existential commentary on modern life. But by then, the bartender had usually declared that the drinker had had all she was going to.
Reece had never met Nizhoni, or ever thought to, either. But she’d seen that name over and over in her life.
She searched the Rexcare contracts database. Not the highly confidential ones, of course—that had all kinds of nondisclosure under-threat-of-a-grisly-death kind of clauses.
She found it almost immediately. An agreement between Nizhoni and Rexcare that allowed Rexcare to option up to ten percent of a year’s production of raw barley; of saleable whiskey, or both. In the event that Rexcare chose not to take delivery of that ten percent, Nizhoni could use or sell that inventory as she would any other, while keeping all profits as well as the yearly fee paid by Rexcare toward operating costs.
What a strange agreement. Reece had never seen one like it.
She began to research the barley H&P used, which was some sort of particular species. Just as she started, the Metro arrived at its destination.
* * * * *
An autotaxi awaited Reece when she emerged from her metro stop. She liked that rural areas permitted the use of automated cars. She appreciated the privacy of not having a driver while being able to do other things during the drive. As a corporate employee, she had the option of erasing the taxi’s memory of her use of it. She’d employ that, of course. Rexcare didn’t like anyone keeping tabs on its activities.
She settled into her seat and closed her eyes as the taxi glided forward. Too bad these driverless cars weren’t legal in the urban sectors. All players involved with preventing it pointed the finger at someone else, of course, but a combination of privacy laws, lack of safety from tampering, and service union interests, had intermingled to create an insurmountable obstacle.
A shame. Reece liked not having a driver along to note her stops or require her to engage in things like eye contact and casual greetings.
Sometimes she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts.
The landscape in the agricultural sector was pretty. Paved roadways and plascrete buildings had been replaced with narrow lanes and bright color—especially shades of green. Even the hot season during the hottest part of the planet’s ten-year solar cycle couldn’t burn off the vibrant plant life of Akon. In fact, a couple dozen species of plants had developed their own ten-year cycles and thrived during a perihelion year.
Most trees had gone dormant due to the increased heat, but a couple varieties bloomed bright with life. Wide fields burst with vibrant colors, growing everything from cotton to coffee.
And barley. She’d spent part of the ride researching the mechanics of a distillery and the whiskey-creation process, and she recognized the nearly waist-high field of blond grasses, the ends heavy with floret spikes that drooped under their own weight.
Reece sat up straighter, looking for the distillery. The car turned down an unsurfaced lane that looked well-traveled. It ran between two fields of barley and looked just about wide enough to allow distribution trucks and harvesting equipment to pass.
Finally, the fields ended, the taxi passed a row of trees, and the distillery came into view. It was smaller than she’d expected, for the planet’s premiere supplier of high-end whiskey. The building was square and industrial-looking in a somewhat rustic way. It certainly didn’t appear to be cutting-edge, but it didn’t need to. Whiskey-making was many centuries old, and technology hadn’t done a great deal to improve the process.
From inside the car, she saw no damage to the building’s exterior. So much for the news story’s hyperbole of ‘Blown Up’.
“Take me around to the side,” she told the car.
It made a soft sound in response to her directive and continued around the building.
Aha. There was the damage.
As the car rounded the corner, Reece saw debris on the ground. Then the side wall of the distillery came into view. A sizeable hole, just about big enough for her to duck through, had been blasted out right at ground level.
“All stop,” she said. As she opened the door, she added, “Remain here unless authorities require you to move. In that case, notify me and stay at the closest permitted location.”
The taxi made a soft sound of acknowledgement.
Reece liked that. No need to be pleasant to a person when she could just tell the car itself what to do.
The heat of the day bore into her as soon as she exited the car. The waves of sunlight almost felt like a physical weight against her body.
Cautiously, Reece moved around the car and approached the opening in the wall. Tire tracks on the uneven ground suggested that first responder vehicles had arrived and left already.
She turned on the recording feature in her overlays, focusing her gaze on each item she wanted to document. Rexcare would want proof of the damage, and Reece would be able to use the images to investigate further, if she needed to.
She approached the hole in the wall cautiously. Since officials had already visited the scene, they’d have ensured there was no further danger. But Reece didn’t like to presume, especially if her life depended on it.
“What do you want?” A harsh voice came from behind her, and Reece turned to see a woman standing in front of a cart that held something that looked like an a-grav field generator.
Reece faced the woman. She appeared to be several years older than Reece—probably thirty-five or so. She had a lean, muscular build and wore a tank top that left her well-defined biceps bare. She also wore a pair of stained shorts and her hair in a long, dark ponytail.
Most importantly, she wore a distinctly I’m not in the mood for any shit expression.
As she looked at Reece, that expression hardened even more.
“I don’t need any corporate spooks here making things harder. What do you want?”
In spite of the hostile greeting, Reece was glad the woman had recognized her as corporate. She was less likely to try anything foolish.
“I’m Reece. I work for Rexcare. They wanted me to check out what’s happened. So, what’s happened?”
“Rexcare.” The woman mumbled something that Reece suspected to be a curse. “At least it isn’t one of the others. I guess you were alerted about the explosion?”
“Of course. Rexcare cares about its subsidiaries.”
A harsh laugh rang out. “Right. They pay me a yearly fee that they’ve never collected on. That clearly makes me a subsidiary. Like they care about how hard I have to work my ass off to get a decent crop during a perihelion conjunction. Like they’re going to help me fix this gaping hole. Subsidiary, my ass.”
Reece felt like she was getting off on the wrong foot. “What can I do to help?”
The woman tilted her head toward the cart. “Since you’re here, help me get this field generator set up to block the hole. Then help me get the other one. Then help me cross-connect them to keep this damn heat from destroying my entire warehouse.”
Destroy all the whiskey? Not on Reece’s life. She wasn’t one to willingly do physical labor outside in this heat, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
She shrugged her jacket off, laid it across the autotaxi, and nodded.
“Let’s go.”
The woman’s expression softened slightly when Reece took up a position behind the cart to help push it. “I’m Nizhoni, by the way.”
“I figured,” Reece said through gritted teeth as she pushed. The generator was heavy as hell, even loaded onto a hovercart. “You make some damn good whiskey. Let’s make sure we save it.”
* * * * *
“There.” Nizhoni sighed with relief. “It’s working. That will hold until I can get the wall repaired.”
“How’s the temperature inside?” Reece asked.
“It rose a degree and a half, in spite of maximum cooling and circulation efforts. This heat is one fuck of a fucker.”
Reece paused, surprised by the gratuitous swearing. She usually didn’t hear that kind of talk outside of a betting lounge.
Apparently, Nizhoni was a salty, salty woman.
That boded well for their relationship.
“I need to get in there and do a physical check.” Nizhoni stood and began pulling the cart back around the building.
“Your automation isn’t complete?” Reece asked.
“It’s complete. But whiskey is part science, part art. There are nuances of smell, of taste, of mouthfeel, of…well, everything. Machinery can’t discern half that stuff.”
“Okay.” Reece didn’t get it, but if this was what it took to turn out a good bottle of H&P, she’d get on board with it anyway. “Can I get a look at the inside?”
Nizhoni shrugged. “You probably won’t leave me alone until you do, so whatever. Just don’t get in my way.” She tilted her head. “What’s that?”
“What?” Reece looked around, straining her ears.
“An autotaxi’s coming.”
“You can hear that?” Reece could barely hear one when she was riding in it.
“When the barley’s high, I can hear a bat sneeze from the other side of the field. You bet I can hear an autotaxi.” Nizhoni continued on her way and Reece followed. After they’d gotten the cart inside, they stood at the entrance, watching to see who pulled up.