MoonRush (32 page)

The landing was less a landing and more
of
a hop-skip-and-a-jump situation. Once the dust cleared, Cleo did a quick assessment. S
he had s
everal new bruises
—
some of them would be quite colorful
—
but
there were
no broken bones. Considering the state of the ship they came in and the pilot in question,
it was
n
’
t a bad landing.

Rob piped up, “Hey, you’re getting better, Uncle Jare! Nobody’s in a stretcher this time!”

“Har de har har. C’mon, guys…get to your workstations and give me a report.”

Cleo studied the readout. “We’re going to need more oxygen and another carbon dioxide scrubber.”

Buton piggybacked her request with one of his own. “Several more backup fuses would also be in order.”

“Okay,” Jarod responded. “Put together a list, and I’ll head to the supply station.”

Having dealt with Jarod and his attention span more times than she could count made Cleo cautious. Perhaps it was a good time to drill the point home. “Jarod, we really need that oxygen.”

Jarod waved away her concern. “No problem.” Ah, the next step in the Jarod-being-responsible dance. Cleo had drilled the point home. Now she needed to hammer.

“No, I mean we
really
need it. Right now, we can only last a day
—
two at the most.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Drill? Check. Hammer? Double
-
check. Time for the pneumatic jackhammer. “No side trips,
and
no adventures. To the store and back, right?”

“Of course!”

Why, oh why, did Jarod’s response not do anything to
dispel Cleo’s concerns?

* * *

Adjusting to life on the
M
oon present
ed
few difficulties for Dr. Weigner. He found the additional discipline of a low atmosphere and gravity environment were quite similar to pristine laboratory protocols. And the terrain, while a touch monochromatic, was widely varied in terms of terrain and geology. The doctor felt like he was on some kind of incredible grown-up field trip. Even the food was similar. Plentiful and largely horrific.

After settling in to the military
-
issue atmos-tent, Dr. Weigner donned his space
suit and headed over to the main pavilion. He waded his way past the various military personnel attempting to look like the standard miner with varying degrees of success. Weigner located Captain Stavros by heading toward the biggest cluster of human bodies. The captain acknowledged Weigner’s presence with a small nod, to which the doctor responded vocally.

“I will be at the café if you need me.”

The captain started, pushing aside a couple of aides, apparently to make sure he had a clear line of communication. “That’s
un
wise,
D
octor. We can get you some coffee here.”

Weigner sighed. He had anticipated that there might be an adverse reaction to his leaving the base of operations. He spoke slowly and clearly so as not to be misunderstood. “It is not a drink I seek, but information.”

Once more, the military man raised an objection. “My men can do the recon.”

Dr.
Weigner
pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “Captain, with all due respect, your men are not going to understand
—
” Stavros opened his mouth, clearly to protest once more. Weigner spoke over him, a calculated risk in this situation, but establishing his intellectual preeminence was necessary.

“A miner found a fragment of a new type of crystal. Black and brittle. Are your men going to know what that indicates?” He paused for a moment to let that idea sink in. “Could they even comprehend the questions to ask such a miner?”

Captain Stavros bent his neck to one side and then the other, the cracking of his vertebrae audible. His discomfort was palpable. Having his authority challenged so directly was more than likely a singular experience for the captain.

“You’ll have a two-man escort. But keep your head low. Do you understand?”

Weigner was savvy enough in the ways of authority to know when to no longer push. “Fully.”

Much as the doctor had never thought he would say these words, even to himself
, it was time to hit the clubs.

* * *

The bar-slash-café-slash-general store went by the name of Dark Side of the Moon. As might be expected, there was a huge Pink Floyd symbol on the sign outside. What might not be quite so expected was the general condition of the café itself. It looked like someone went to hell and then decided to open up a bar decorated as a cheap knockoff of what they had seen.

It was not pretty.

Paint peel
ed
off the walls, and not in the shabby chic
,
overly distressed kind of way. This was just shabby. The walls themselves looked like the only thing holding them up was the fact that they leaned into one another. This was the kind of place where good taste came to die, or at least receive cut-rate hospice care.

Jarod looked around as he pulled up on his less-than-stylish Mooncycle. Okay, truth be told, the thing was barely functioning. It was clunky and unwieldy and had been thrown in with the ship. The bike fit in quite nicely with the general décor of the Dark Side of the Moon. What did not go quite so well was the gorgeous Harley
-
Davidson Moonhog Jarod pulled up
alongside
. Jarod did what he could to control his envy. That was a nice machine.

As Jarod entered, he had to pause to let his eyes adjust to the low lighting. Many places did that to create ambience. This joint clearly did it to keep their patrons from looking too closely at their environs. Once more
,
Jarod wonder
ed
at the apparent ravages of the
M
oon’s atmosphere. What exactly caused paint to peel in less than two months? The same thing that wore out the carpets in cheap hotel rooms in the same amount of time?

Pink Floyd was playing at full volume, so as Jarod went to check his helmet with the hat
-
check girl, he had to raise his voice several decibels to be heard. “Supplies?” he yelled.

The girl looked up from her outdated
People
magazine and hollered back at him. “The General Store is through the swinging door to the right.”

The girl was cute, in a minimum-wage kind of way. Jarod grinned and winked at her as he replied, “Thanks, hon.”

Without missing a beat, the girl pointed to a staircase off to the side of the hat
-
check area. “Brothel’s on the third floor.” She went back to her magazine without a second glance at Jarod, or his award
-
winning smile.

“Damn, I am losing my touch,” Jarod muttered to himself as he pushed through the swinging doors that led to the General Store. Maybe shopping
would take his mind off of it.

* * *

Inside the
Vanquisher
, Gil stood hunched over Talon’s shoulder, reading the computer terminal display as his henchman pulled up the data. Gil did not like what he was seeing. And when Gil did not like something, heads would often roll. He entertained himself with that image while Talon accessed the next sector’s information.

“Sector 72?” Gil probed.

“Dry.”

“73?”

Talon shook his head in dismissal. Sector after sector was coming up with nothing. No diamonds. Not even a sliver. “74? 75? Anything, anywhere?” Gil didn’t even have to wait for Talon’s negative response
s
to know in his gut what was happening.

“Damn it! Where
are
those diamonds?” He held up a hand to forestall Talon’s explanations.
A
thought percolat
ed
through his brain. Gil didn’t want to lose it in Talon’s sea of excuses. Excuses were the product of a weak mind. A mind like…

There it was. “Where did Jarod land?”

Talon scrolled through his rosters and registers, courtesy of M
oonb
ase. “
As f
ar as we can tell…
h
e didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Talon double
-
checked his notes,
and
then replied. “He did a flyby,
and
then disappeared. He hasn’t registered a new stake yet.”

Gil drummed his fingertips against the console. “That bastard wouldn’t just leave…” He waved his hand at Talon to continue his work at the computer. “Work the angles here. I’m gonna find where our cash cow is staked.”

As Gil started to move out, Talon called his attention back to the northeast sector. “There’s still no word on our new ‘neighbors
.
’ I believe
that
M
oonb
ase is honestly unaware of their presence.”

Gil bared his teeth at his right-hand man. “Can you taste it, Talon? Even with no atmosphere, I can smell blood.” He slapped his hand against his thigh as he headed towar
d the door. “Blood and profit.”

* * *

It took a lot longer than Jarod would
have
liked
,
and it had cost a lot more than he could afford, but he had his supplies. He had not had any idea that this would be the easy part of the excursion. Now he had to get those supplies out the door.

Not as simple as it sounded.

His arms
were
loaded down with everything he and his crew needed, Jarod was now doing some kind of erratic dance through the crowded bar. It wouldn’t be half
as
difficult if it weren’t for the fact that the patrons seemed determined to keep some sort of a fight going at all times. He was so close to the exit
that
he could almost taste it, but every step forward necessitated at least two sideways
—
like some insane version of that game with sliding tiles where you tried to line them all up.

Jarod sidestepped a
vicious
roundhouse swing that had clearly been aimed at someone else. Unfortunately, his sidestep sent him careening into a very large, very muscular woman whose bump back sent Jarod’s packages skittering across the barroom floor. Jarod went to collect his merchandise, only to find patrons snarling over each item like a pack of rabid canines.