Pew! Pew! - Sex, Guns, Spaceships... Oh My!

by M. D. Cooper

  “I thought I was strong enough to endure all this time alone.”

  “I understand, Ben. It’s been a long journey.”

  Ben let his gaze fall, uncomfortable with how vulnerable he was feeling. This isn’t who I am, he thought. “I don’t—”

  “I’m here if you need me,” Chip said, interrupting the silence left by Ben’s incomplete thought.

  They looked at one another for a long, quiet moment; man and machine, man and friend.

  Ben finally shrugged and rose from his seat on the couch. Looking down at Chip he said the only two words that he could bring himself to say.

  “Fark it.”

  THE END

  — — —

  Want to read more by Drew Avera?

  If you are a fan of space opera like The Expanse, Dark Matter, and Firefly, then be sure to check out Drew’s bestselling series, The Alorian Wars. http://smarturl.it/AlorianWars

  About the Author

  Drew Avera is an active duty Navy veteran and science fiction author of the bestselling series, The Alorian Wars. Growing up in Mississippi, Drew often dreamed of visiting faraway places. In the Navy, he has visited a dozen foreign countries and has traveled thousands of miles on the open sea. Drew enjoys his free time by reading, writing, and playing guitar.

  To stay up to date with Drew’s ever-expanding world, sign up for his mailing list by clicking here:

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  Bat Johnson, the Mad Mortician of Mars

  by Rachel Aukes

  A tale of space colonization, alien invasions, and lactose intolerance.

  The Mars Bionet is a desolate place. Only the toughest survive there. Those who don't end up on Bat's table. When business suddenly picks up, he discovers that humans aren't the only Martians, and the real ones are tiny, cute, and really ticked off. When no one believes his story, Bat alone must take on an alien army to save Mars and--hopefully--get a little peace and quiet.

  Becoming Martian

  Bat Johnson had estimated the probability of Mars being a miserable, depressing place to be eighty-seven percent, but that hadn’t stopped him from selling everything he owned to buy a ride on the next cargo ship to the red planet. He could certainly attest that the ninety-seven-day trip to Mars was both miserable and depressing.

  The trip was miserable because Bat was confined to a very small space with his sixteen fellow passengers, since the bulk of the cargo hold was taken up by a giant drill quite appropriately nicknamed Big Bertha. Due to the mammoth on board, the passengers had been restricted to a third of the normal size restrictions for luggage. To make matters worse, within a week, no one could tell who smelled the worst since they all smelled equally awful.

  The trip was depressing because the passengers conjectured endlessly about all the great things they’d do on Mars. All the others were doctors of one line or another. Bat had just finished a two-year program. He already knew his job would bring him no recognition, even though he was necessary. He was about to become the first mortician to the growing Mars colony. That would make him the best mortician on the planet—if only by default.

  When he’d heard about the opening for a mortician posted on his school’s job board, he’d applied as soon as he saw it was on Mars. He didn’t care that it paid the lowest salary ever seen in his career. He later learned that he had been the only applicant, but he liked to think he would’ve gotten the job, anyway.

  Mars was a dream come true for Bat, where he’d be his own boss and have more than a little time for peace and quiet. He didn’t especially care for people, and he cared for adventure even less. Sure, the trip to Mars could be considered an adventure, but once he landed, he expected to be the least busy mortician in the solar system.

  He spent the ninety-seven-day trip nestled in between two crates, planning his new mortuary business, though he had little idea as to what his real estate space within the Bionet would look like. Until he landed, he’d have to guess, which is exactly what he did. Between those two crates, he planned his new business, making lists on spreadsheets, and drawing diagrams of where he’d store all his tools and chemicals. The other passengers thought him a bit odd, but then they remembered he was a mortician, and morticians were generally thought to be a bit odd.

  When he wasn’t planning his mortuary, he was researching the Bionet. He learned things such as no one called the Mars Bionet the Mars Bionet. They simply call it MB for short, because any place that had some modicum of fame had its own acronym (an acrostic, to be more precise). By the time they landed on Mars, Bat had the entire MB layout memorized, and had worked out every single detail of his business.

  After the ship docked at the MB, Bat was the first one off the ship. He froze, and nearly dropped his giant duffel bag. The MB housed 2,493 colonists, and every last one of them seemed to be crammed onto the dock. Bat had never been good around people, at leaving the living ones. He swallowed, realizing they were no doubt there to welcome each of the newest residents as they entered the MB. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.

  “Hello,” Bat said, with an awkward wave.

  “Is Big Bertha on board?” someone asked.

  “The drill? Yes,” Bat answered. “It’s a beast of a thing.”

  People cheered, and began chanting, “Big Bertha! Big Bertha!”

  A tinge of disappointment niggled Bat, but he also felt relief at not having to meet the colonists. In a rush, he pushed his way through the crowd and to the welcome desk, where a rather fit young man sat.

  He set down his bag.

  The clerk eyed Bat. “Name and occupation?”

  “Bat Johnson,” Bat promptly replied. “I’m the mortician.”

  “The more what?”

  Bat winced. “I’m the undertaker. Don’t you know what a mortician is?”

  “Don’t look at me. I was born here. Never had one of you guys before. The government says we have to use you.” He scrolled through his screen. “There you are. You’ve been assigned pod E6B. That’s on this level. You can move in anytime. Maps are on every level by the stairs. And, here’s your key card. It’ll gain you entry to everywhere you have access, as well as to all the screens. If it doesn’t work on a door, you don’t have access. The Martian Handbook is available on the screens. Orientation is at 2800 in the Commons—that’s on the main level. Any questions?”

  Bat blinked twice. “Uh, I don’t believe so?”

  “Welcome to Mars,” the clerk said without any hint of congeniality, and motioned to the passenger standing behind Bat. “Next.”

  The next man stepped up to the counter next to Bat. “Dr. Michael Gundersten. Scientist.”

  The clerk grinned. “Dr. Gundersten! The whole MB’s been talking about your arrival. It’s an honor, sir. I have a goodie bag here for you. Let me page an assistant to show you around.”

  “Well, it seems you get the full welcome mat rolled out,” Bat said drily, but the doctor ignored him. Not that Bat was surprised, since the doctor had said only five words to Bat on the entire trip. Bat remembered them. They were, “What do you do?” followed shortly by an, “Oh.” After that, none of the passengers had much to say to Bat. It was the first time he discovered that people tended to feel uncomfortable around morticians, as though anyone in that profession had cooties. Bat surmised that morticians reminded people of their own mortality, a concept Bat always found odd since people were, by nature, mortal. He had to admit that humans were an odd species.

  Bat stepped away from the counter and lugged all his life’s possessions toward the stairs. Even though he had the MB’s floorplans memorized, being here in the flesh was more than a little intimidating. Gray plastic walls and rilon beams protected the MB from the Martian elements outside. With no windows, it was impossible to tell if it was daylight or nighttime, though the MB followed its own 30-hour daily schedule anyway.

  The MB was a seven-level structure, with six levels below the planet’s harsh surface. No human could survive more than
a few seconds outside, which meant that the MB was the colonists’ entire world for all practical purposes.

  As Bat made his way through the narrow hallway, it came as no surprise why the Mars entry exam asked about claustrophobia. Bat handled tight spaces admirably. What he couldn’t handle was lactose. He had a terrible intolerance to the stuff. Fortunately, there were no cows on Mars. Or goats, for that matter. So he was expecting his gastric life to be much easier now that he was thirty-plus million miles from lactose-producing creatures.

  He had a minor intolerance to people, especially the irrational ones (which was nearly everybody). While he had a strong desire to help others, he never had the aptitude for the most simple of conversations, and he most definitely never had a knack for talking with the opposite sex. Eventually, he’d realized that people were much easier to get along with when they were already dead.

  Bat pushed his way against the colonists still arriving at the dock. As he entered an even smaller hallway, traffic lightened and he could breathe more easily. He found pod E6B as the last door in a dimly lit hallway of storage closets and warehousing. The only level that had outer walls exposed to the Martian elements and cosmic radiation, the ground level faced the most risk, and therefore only the residents with free housing lived here. Bat wondered who else lived on this floor.

  On the bright side, his may be one of the few pods with a window. He excitedly fumbled with his key card, scanned it over the lock, and the light turned from red to green.

  He stepped inside and dropped his bag. The door automatically closed behind him. The pale gray pod was so cold he could see his breath. Before him, in the middle of what should’ve been his tiny living room, stood a large plastic slab on wheels for processing cadavers.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding, relaxed, and chuckled. “For a second, I thought this was my housing pod.”

  He casually walked around the tiny workroom and admired clean shelves. “This will do nicely.” He noticed a door in the wall and cocked his head, imagining the office that must be on the other side. He opened the door, and his frown returned. He then rushed through the unit’s adjacent—and much warmer—studio apartment. He collapsed on the seat at his kitchen table-slash-desk.

  He no longer cared that he had no window. He was far more disappointed in having a combined mortuary and studio that made a twenty-second-century New York apartment look like a mansion. “Free housing,” he muttered. “I should’ve known better.”

  He stood and looked through the open doorway. At least they had the decency to put a door between the two rooms. Then, he shut the door and went to bed, though the constant hum of the MB’s heaters kept him from getting any respectable sleep.

  The next day, Bat was tired, but his excitement had returned. By the time he finished unpacking, the sign-maker had arrived.

  “How do you spell it again?” the sign-maker asked.

  “M-O-R-T-I-C-I-A-N,” Bat said for the third time.

  “Why not put ‘undertaker’ on the door. People know that word better.”

  “Because I prefer ‘mortician’.” Actually, it was because “mortician” was one fewer letter than “undertaker”, the sign-maker charged by the letter, and Bat was flat broke.

  The sign-maker seemed confused for a moment before shrugging. “Whatever you say.” And he went to work.

  An hour later, Bat stood in front of his door, scowling. “Oh, for God’s sake. You spelled it wrong.”

  The sign-maker looked at the sign, and then shrugged. “No, I didn’t. I spelled it exactly how you told me.”

  “No, you spelled it wrong. I’m only paying you for nine letters.”

  The sign-maker took a step closer. He was several inches taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than Bat.

  Bat swallowed and held out his key card. “Or, I could just pay for the full ten.”

  The man nodded, took the card, and swiped it on his tablet. He handed back the card. “It was nice doing business with you.”

  Bat didn’t watch him leave. Instead, he stared at his door, which read: MORETICIAN.

  After a long moment, he gave a small nod. “Other than the letters, he did a rather nice job.”

  He headed back in to finish organizing his mortuary. While being a mortician is unequivocally not right for everyone, Bat rather enjoyed his vocation. He was his own boss. And, there was something about each project having full closure that felt right to him. No such things as unfinished business; not when it came to death.

  Until Bat arrived, volunteers had performed the role of undertaker. Everything went fine until the administration back on Earth learned that one of the volunteers was doing the job only to get access to the key cards—and any other possessions on the deceased when they died—so they could get into their pods and steal what they could discreetly take before Security itemized everything. Earth had decided that Mars needed a mortician, and here Bat was.

  He glanced at his clock and stiffened. “I’d better get going.” He shut off the lights, locked his pod, and strode through the hallways—which were much quieter than this time the day before. He arrived at the commons fifteen minutes before orientation was scheduled to begin.

  Bat was the first of his shipmates to arrive. After taking a seat at a large round table, he looked around the commons. The room was the largest in the MB, built for all the early colonists to eat meals together. Now, the MB had grown a hundredfold a couple times over, and residents ate whenever they wanted.

  He watched the large screen on the wall, where news of Big Bertha had been playing constantly. Evidently, they had unloaded the drill, moved it all the way down to Level Seven, assembled it, and had it up and running in twenty hours. In the first hour, the drill had already broken through a strange, incredibly hard bedrock that had stopped all expansion plans. Thanks to Big Bertha, expanding the MB was back on track as the colony’s priority, which meant the colony would continue to be funded by Earth.

  Bat sniffed the air. He walked over to the front of the cafeteria as a cook set out fresh-baked bars. He realized for the first time that he hadn’t eaten since he’d arrived. Even though they were an ugly brownish green, his mouth watered, and he looked up at the cook.

  “It’s a desert-flavored Mars bar,” the cook said.

  “I’ll take one.”

  “Sure thing.” The cook wrapped a bar and handed it to him.

  Bat didn’t bother sitting down. He unwrapped the bar and took a bite. It was vanilla flavored with plenty of sweetness that had quite an artificial taste and a bitter aftertaste, but it was still better than anything Bat had eaten during the trip to Mars. He took another quick bite. “This isn’t half bad,” he said with a full mouth.

  “Glad you like it,” the cook replied. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  After he finished, he tucked the wrapper neatly into his pocket, and wiped his fingers on his pants. He held out his hand. “I’m Bat Johnson, the new mortician at your service.”

  “The more what?”

  Bat sighed. “I’m the undertaker.”

  “Ah, of course.” The cook analyzed him for a moment. “Yeah, I could see that.” Then, he shook Bat’s hand. “I’m Hank Strafford. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Bat smiled, feeling as though he’d just made his first friend on Mars. He remembered what he was doing there in first place, and looked at the large clock on the wall. He turned back to Hank. “I’m here for orientation. It should’ve started two minutes ago. Yet, no one’s here yet. Do you know if they changed the meeting location?”

  Hank’s brows rose. “Orientation was last night, buddy.”

  Bat’s jaw slackened, then he shook his head. “No. The fellow at the welcome desk said 2800. I distinctly remember him saying, ‘2800 in the Commons’.”

  “It was 2800. Last night. I was working. I know.”

  Bat began to grumble something, but his card vibrated, startling him. He pulled it out to see a message flashing. He cocked his
head. “It seems that my first customer has arrived.”

  “Someone croaked?” Hank asked. “Who was it?”

  Bat shrugged. “It doesn’t say.” He looked up. “I suppose I’d better get going. You have a nice night, Hank.”

  “You, too, Bat.”

  As he turned to walk away, his stomach rumbled long and loud. Bat froze, then turned slowly back to Hank. “By any chance, Mars bars wouldn’t happen to have lactose in it?”

  “Of course,” Hank replied. “Artificial powdered milk. We use it in damn near everything around here. With the lower gravity, we need to take in extra calcium for our bones.”

  “Oh. Just great,” Bat said on a sigh and trudged back to his pod. About halfway back, he was running. The only thing he could think as he sprinted was how his life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  The Martians are dying!

  M. Schumacher—or Poor Schmuck, as Bat called him—died from a run-of-the-mill cardiac arrest. Not the most common cause of death on Mars. That would be mining accidents. And definitely not the most common cause of death for a twenty-five-year-old in peak health.

  Like most miners, Poor Schmuck had listed no visitation service in his will. It was straight to the crematorium for him. The streamlined service made it easier for Bat, which was a good thing since it took him several hours to recuperate from his lactose episode. Unfortunately, streamlined service also brought less money.

  Bat stood over Poor Schmuck, still wondering what had caused the man’s demise. Cardiac arrest made no sense. Every colonist had comprehensive annual exams each year. He had scrutinized the body and done everything up to a full autopsy, but hadn’t found what could’ve caused the victim’s heart to fail.

  The door chimed, and Bat started. He looked up from the corpse to see Dr. Gould’s image on the wall screen.

  “Enter,” he said.

  She stepped inside. Dr. Gould was the elected governor of Mars, and seemed to be on every MB committee that existed. Not only was she governor; she was the colony’s chief physician. That she and Bat didn’t hit it off from the beginning wasn’t a good sign.