April 8: It's Always Something (11 page)

It was a remarkable gift. His mission was accomplished without his own loss. He was still in a position of trust as far as he could tell. He might even still have access to the SOL leaders and be potentially useful in the future. They certainly wouldn't question his loyalty after today, and he might even have opportunity to remove their
next
set of leaders if he was so directed. He had to smile. Wouldn't
that
surprise them?

Before he went to sleep, exhausted, he could hear the rattle of distant gun fire. That didn't surprise him at all. It was going to be bad for awhile. It would even be dangerous to be guarding the Sons leaders if his own people had a chance to take them out from a distance. He had no illusions they'd hold back to spare him. It was simply a risk he had to accept. After all, every day he had after today was an unexpected gift.

* * *

"I found out a little about that newsman, Brett Holland, who caught your eye," Chen reported.

"Good or bad?" Jeff demanded, his brows were furrowed and he looked tired.

"
Different
," Chen evaded. "You'll have to judge for yourself."

"I want to let him interview me, maybe. Not hire him," Jeff replied gruffly. He seemed to be in a bad mood today and Chen said as much.

"Maybe. I've too much to do and I need a couple clones."

"Well that would creep everybody out," Chen said. "I'm pretty sure from the multiple reports that the Chinese have done that, but there isn't any way to make one with all your memories, so what would be the point of it? You'd be adding raising a couple kids to everything else."

"Yeah, that's the big obstacle. They'd probably just argue with me," Jeff decided. "I read the same news reports. The Chinese supposedly tried to clone people with exceptional talents. It apparently didn't work for crap or they'd have been bragging on it."

"Perhaps you can take a mental health day or a tranquilizer," Chen suggested. "If you talk to the man in this frame of mind I can't see it being productive."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yep. I don't sugar coat stuff for you. You look like you are bordering on burn-out," Chen said.

"How much of it can I dump on
you
?" Jeff asked. It didn't appear to be a serious question, just a snarky remark.

"As much as you wish, because
I
can delegate," Chen said, pointedly. "And I would, massively."

Jeff blinked hard, and didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Alright. I will take a day. Maybe two! I'll forward my com to you, since you seem to be volunteering, and I shall relax and see if my lady will allow me to take her to dinner. I haven't been to a club in months."

"Which one of your ladies?" Chen asked, with a droll expression.

"April, because she's on Home. I'd love to see both of them," Jeff said, not evasive with Chen in the least because Chen wasn't critical, just snarky. "Two days isn't time enough for us to go see her, and Heather is impossible to pry away from Central, because..." He stopped and looked stricken. "Because she's just like me," Jeff admitted.

"Ah, glad you know it," Chen said, pleased. "I shall talk to you in a few days and see if you want to contact Mr. Holland. Perhaps I can find out something more."

* * *

Kurt helped survey the moat, and was introduced to the fellows he'd be working with, but there was some sort of holdup on the tunnel boring machine. It was needed to cut a tunnel into all four corners of the moat. The undercut around the base of the monolith would be cut from the tunnels, and the shock absorbers and repositioning machinery, too big to fit down the narrow moat, would go in through the tunnels too.

That was fine, there was more work than there were hands, and he got paid the same no matter to what project he was lent. Kurt got to meet new people and learn more about his new home by being shared around. And he got some hours in out of a suit. Suit work could wear you down. He still wasn't used to lunar gravity. It was in-between all the environments he was used to. Kurt still hadn't got to the point that he felt confident to toss something to a coworker.

Today he'd worked in the cabbage mines, although not any of the active ones with plants. He'd looked through a few ports at those, bright with light of an odd spectrum, optimized for the plants not people, and noted the warning signs that the atmosphere inside was not standard. There were also lots and lots of complicated notices about what measures were necessary to avoid contamination, both entering and exiting. The mushroom tunnels had a full airlock with a wash-down and rinse that included a boot washing station. Others were more concerned with taking contamination
in
.

The new tunnels were sprayed with a sealant and then insulation. They weren't deep enough into the moon for the walls to be warm yet. You could attach things directly to the foam, but eventually it would be damaged or a fastener could go too deep and nick the sealant. They ran a strip along the top center and all the utility lines were supposed to be neatly color coded, sorted and fastened on the strip when possible. They had water and several gas feeds, three kinds of power and data connections as well as emergency lighting and a wireless hub at each end.

Kurt hadn't had the extra weight and resistance of a suit today, but he was still dead tired. At least he enjoyed being able to scratch his nose when he wanted, and go use a real toilet even if it was a portable set up in the main corridor. He'd spent most of the shift on a ladder, stretching his arms overhead, using muscles that didn't see much duty. Off shift finally, he had some supper now and was eating it, but every once in awhile he turned his head and stretched to the side, trying to loosen the stiffening muscles in his shoulders.

The General Tso's chicken was pretty good. It had a little bite to it, not just sweet, and they let you pick how much rice you wanted. If it was from freeze dried he couldn't tell. They had a stir fry of local vegetables on the side too, which was better than mixing them in to force you to take them. It was good though, still crispy, so he was happy to have some. Trying to force people to eat a certain mix just sent some food to the trash, and they couldn't afford to waste it.

A worker wearing inside coveralls, not a suit liner, sat next to Kurt on his left. It wasn't very busy, so it wasn't a matter of there not being other seats, there were even a couple vacant tables, so he wanted to meet. That was fine, Kurt was still getting to know quite a few new people. There wasn't the same tension he felt dealing with new people back on Earth, if only because he wasn't stressed by dealing with
stupid
people every day, city people who couldn't drive a car on manual out in the country where he'd been forced to rent, officials who couldn't fill out their own forms, and kitchen help in restaurants who couldn't read three items on the screen correctly after you'd keyed in your own order.

"Mr. Bowman, I've been meaning to introduce myself. I'm Greg King. My Central com code is 0487. You should commit that to memory."

The way he said it made Kurt realize something was off about this fellow. It came out as an order. His voice was wrong and his manner was abrasive in just those few words. Why did he think his number was so important? Kurt resolved to refuse to work with this fellow if he turned out to be his next boss.

Anyone being pleasant might have offered his own com code, or perhaps even his hand, although spacers weren't as big on shaking hands. But not in this hostile manner. Kurt just looked at him. Being dead tired didn't help him understand why the man was being strange. The fellow was looking down at his own dinner, not even looking over at Kurt. That just wasn't normal. There was something definitely wrong about him, so Kurt scooted his chair back to leave. He wasn't in any mood to deal with a weirdo.

"Stay," the fellow ordered.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are. I don't
stay
, roll over or fetch. If you are any kind of
boss
I'm going to refuse assignment to you. You're doing a good imitation of a mental case, and I don't want to have anything to do with you. I'm going to take my dinner to another table, one with normal people, and your best bet for a pleasant evening is not to follow me," Kurt told him.

"You have no choice. Your country is making some demands on you, Mr. Bowman. I have an assignment for you to gather information for us," Greg said. "I consider you an unlikely tool, a dull knife as it were, but I have
my
orders too. I don't expect you'd have the mentality to know what is useful, so I'll outline exactly what information we need gathered, and how to transmit it."

Kurt was amazed. "I don't intend to go back to Earth. I have no interest in Earth politics, no
attachment
to North America now. No interest in which
faction
you think represents my country now. I haven't formally renounced my citizenship, but I intend to claim Home citizenship as soon as I have residence. So you can
all
go to hell as far as I'm concerned. To my mind North America is a failed state. You're still swirling around the toilet bowl, on the way down, but for sure somebody stupid, likely your masters, pulled the lever a few years back, and it's on its way to the sewer. You don't have any handle on me anymore."

"Are you sure?" Greg asked. "Your sister still lives in North America, doesn't she?"

He could have probably gotten away with the implicit threat, but he had to demonstrate he
enjoyed
making it by turning his face full to Kurt with a smirk painted all over it.

Kurt struck without thinking about it, hand driven by rage that hadn't even reached his face yet to warn Greg. He wasn't even aware what was in his fist. He still had his fork, with a piece of General Tso's chicken on it. It struck Greg beside his Adam's apple and buried itself the length of the tines and a little more, and
crunched
. Kurt couldn't get it back out, so he wildly yanked the handle around trying to free it. Greg by now had both hands on Kurt's wrist, desperately trying to free himself. The stirring motion didn't make matters any better, and he was mute, because his vocal apparatus was destroyed. His grip on Kurt's wrist might as well have been a child's given Kurt's adrenaline rush and fury.

When he finally yanked the fork loose Greg's hands went to his wound and covered it, so Kurt stabbed again like a wild man, to the side of his neck. Greg tried to push him off, ineffectively. He stabbed three times before Greg made a shield of his crossed arms to ward off the blows. There was a lot more blood.

The attack pushed Greg over, still sitting in his chair, with Kurt following him all the way down in the slow lunar gravity stabbing. He was scrambling, trying to get up. All he managed was to push himself away from the table, back flat on the floor. After ruining his neck Kurt jammed the fork straight in the man's eye socket, the support of the floor beneath the man's head lending the thrust authority. When it wouldn't go further he drove it with the palm of his hand so that it bent and folded over. The last action cut his own hand open and injured it.

The pain from his hand finally cut through the berserker haze a little. He was on his knees over Greg, and fell back to a sitting position, holding his hurt hand against his chest, breathing raggedly and suddenly light headed. He had no idea how he looked, the other man's bloody hand-prints on his chest and blood smeared on his face and his right arm almost to the elbow. Kurt wasn't even aware the cafeteria had cleared out. There were plates with food and mugs sittings where people had abandoned them, except for two old veterans against the far wall who'd seen much worse in their day. They exchanged looks and the one went back to his pancakes.

When security came in they weren't nearly so blasé. Both had Air Tasers out, and the younger man was shaking worse than Kurt.

"You are under arrest sir," the older man said. "If you have any weapons, remove them
very
carefully without threatening us. Then roll on your belly and put your hands behind your back for my partner to cuff you."

Kurt nodded his agreement and soon felt the cuffs go on.

"He's bleeding pretty freely from his hand," the young cop said. "If we move him he'll dribble all over the place and it will be a
huge
biohazard cleanup."

"Get a big wad of napkins and shove it in his hand," the older cop ordered.

You – we'll get you to medical, but can you hold the napkins tight to stanch the bleeding?" he asked Kurt.

"Then roll him over and help him sit up," he ordered his partner.

Kurt tested it and found he could grasp the napkins. However, trying to sit made his head swim and he felt sick.

"I don't think I can stand. In fact, I may throw up," Kurt warned them.

The older cop uncapped a small can from his pocket and sprayed a mist on Kurt's face. It was cool, minty and medicinal, not riot spray as Kurt had expected. One deep breath of it went a long way towards settling his stomach.

"You're an outside worker. That's the same crap you can trigger in your suit to keep you from throwing up in your helmet," the old cop said, seeing Kurt's surprise at the spray. "We'll call a cart and we can all ride."