Storage

This story came to me after hearing a news report about scientists using DNA as a mass storage medium for data. I thought “What if that DNA got into you somehow?” This is another story set in the world of Enjay. If you haven’t read any of the other stories, Enjay (New Jersey) is the name of a mining planet and The Hole is the nickname for the subterranean city of Paramus. The Company is the giant space conglomerate that founded Enjay and then divested it when it wasn’t profitable enough. You can find all the stories here: https://www.jlgoodwin.com/words-pictures/tag/NJ

Callum Shaw rolled his wheeled luggage off the space freighter into the hangar bay on Enjay, emerging from the cramped confines of the freighter into the vast vaulted space made him feel like he had suddenly shrunk. The enormous volume of the room made him gape and swivel his head around as he walked. He suddenly felt a hand grab him roughly by the shoulder and pull him to the left. A loading robot screamed past directly through the space he had been occupying. He turned a bloodless face towards the person who had grabbed him. It was one of the grizzled mining engineers he’d just spent several months with on the ship. Before he could gush his gratitude the engineer yelled over the industrial noise: “Stay inside the fucking yellow lines or you’re going to die before you get to the security desk!” With that he stepped past Callum and down the dirty yellow bordered path that the new arrival hadn’t even perceived until now. Callum swallowed his stomach back to its normal place and then followed the path like he was walking a tightrope over a gorge until he finally reached the emigration hall. It was a comforting human scale room that he was alone in except for a terminal. He stood in front of the terminal for a good five minutes before realizing that it was an ancient one that wouldn’t just remotely scan his DNA and he finally inserted his identity card. He answered the questions on the screen. When he finished, an armored door past the terminal opened and he went through.

A man in a blue coverall that said “Deputy” and “J. Dermody'' on the front stepped towards him and said “Hello Mr. Shaw, I’m Deputy John Dermody and I’ve got some additional questions for you.” Callum looked surprised, but said, “Sure, what do you need to know Deputy?” The deputy took hold of his bag, and said “We can talk on our way to your quarters, I don’t want to hold you up.” He led the way towards a large bank of elevators. He said “So you’ve got a place on level forty five?” Shaw nodded, wondering why the Deputy was so well informed about him. Dermody pressed the down button on the elevator bank and in a moment an elevator arrived. It was about half full of a mix of people, some were obviously miners given their atmosphere suits, tool belts, and such. Others were strangely attired and covered in tattoos, perhaps gang members. The rest were dressed like Callum, in business attire. Everyone ignored everyone else on the elevator. Dermody turned to Callum and said “It’s a little odd for someone with your background to come to Enjay without a specific return date registered...” So that was the problem, Callum thought. He said “The project I’m here to work on is a bit open ended, if things go well I could be here for a few years, if they go badly I could be gone in a few months. We just don’t know, but you’ll understand that the company wants to keep the project confidential in any case.”

The elevator reached the forty fifth level and the doors opened on what looked like a woodland meadow. As they exited the elevator they could see that they were in a clearing in the woods with paths going outward in five directions. A clear blue sky with a yellow sun arched above the clearing. Dermody turned to him and said “Costs a pretty penny to live in a VR level like this...” Callum looked around and marveled, he’d seen VR before, but never in a residence, only in games or special entertainment venues. The deputy led the way down the path to the left. As they went along they saw additional clearings off to either side, each one with a small cottage at the end. Eventually they turned into one and Dermody turned to Callum and said “You need to open the door, it’ll be keyed to you...” Callum stepped up and turned the door handle and the door opened easily and they entered the cottage. The inside of the cottage was designed to look like a country cottage, but it was clear that its dimensions and layout didn’t match the outside of the cottage. The cottage outside had a smaller footprint and was on two levels, the interior was all one level and larger.

Dermody turned towards him and said “I get it that the project is confidential, but you also have a strange background for coming here. You’re not a geologist, chemist, physicist, or mining engineer. You’re a molecular biologist with a concentration in genomics, your latest paper was about storing high volumes of data in DNA strands and then being able to retrieve it efficiently. So, that raised some questions as well...” Callum was amazed that these backwater sheriff’s deputies had such complete information, his paper wasn’t released yet when he’d departed from the inner planets. He said “There are some unique indigenous fungus-like creatures that have been found here on Enjay. They are really incredible creatures, I’ve been studying them remotely, I honestly have been spending my every waking moment since I started my post doc project on them analyzing every scrap of data I could find on them, and I designed a bunch of the equipment that the team here has been using, and now I get to actually see them in person, I’ve never been off-world before, but I’ve read a whole lot about it, but it’s really different than I thought, but I don’t care I just want to see them…” Callum’s explosion of words sputtered to a halt as he realized that he was babbling at a cop. Dermody tilted his head and looked at Shaw and said “So you’re going to study our native mushrooms, be careful, their spores are nasty and if you come in contact with one you’ll basically have to spend the rest of your life here. There’s no known way to get them out once they’re in, and it takes a good fifteen years for the polyps to kill you assuming you don’t do the job yourself.” Callum shrugged, “I’m well aware, I designed all the protocols for handling them in the lab.” Dermody gave him a skeptical look and wheeled his bag into the bedroom of the quarters and then headed towards the exit. He turned and said, “Thanks for talking with me Mr. Shaw.” Shaw said “Not a problem, call me Callum by the way.” Dermody smiled, “You can call me Deputy. Callum.” and he left, closing the door behind him.

The next day Callum woke up and after figuring out the food generator was made to look like an ancient cast iron stove, he ate breakfast, bathed and got dressed. He asked the computer (made to look like a wall mirror) where the company lab was and was informed it was down on level ninety eight in the industrial sector. He grabbed his lab coat and his backpack and made a mental note to figure out how to turn off the excessive VR inside his room. What an incredible waste of money he thought. He left his cottage, and walked through the forest now adjusted to be a forest someplace at 8:00am in the morning and he figured out the knot to press on the tree to summon the elevator. Soon he was deposited on the ninety eight level which was definitely not VR, it was dingy, walls made of some kind of sprayed plastic on a frame, and there was a metal desk opposite the elevators where a woman sat. She looked up from the computer screen and said “Shaw?” Shaw nodded, handing her his company id, she scanned it out of habit, and handed it back to him. “You’re in lab five, through those doors on the right, all the way to the end.” She looked back down at her computer and he went through the doors she’d indicated.

As he entered the lab he recognized all of the familiar equipment, he had specified it after all. Along the far wall were glass containment units, each unit contained one test fungus. He’d never seen them in person, and he was drawn across the room towards them. They were amorphous and yet filled with shifting patterns, the colors were all black, gray, brown, rust and sometimes red. Sometimes tendrils would form, then a globe at the end, coursing with colors and then it would burst. The spoors clattered against the glass, this was one of the many strange things about these creatures. Their spores were like darts of glass, if you were near them unprotected they would penetrate your skin and begin reacting with your DNA instantly. Mostly it found ways to reproduce more fungus, but along the way the mutations would warp the host’s body in horrible ways. But nothing they had found could sequence and edit DNA at the incredible pace that these creatures could, locked inside them was a way to read and write DNA as fast as any electronic random access memory. He found them beautiful and fascinating and it would take years to understand how they did what they did. He noticed that someone had pasted labels on each containment unit each with a name, Ellen, Deirdre, Jane, Bessie… like naming a herd of cows.

“Just like you specified...” a woman’s voice said from behind him, making him jump involuntarily. He turned to see a slender woman with short brown hair looking at him with curiosity and amusement. It was Dr. Chase or Molly, one of the local researchers he’d been corresponding with on the project for over a year. “Molly!” he exclaimed “So cool to meet you in person finally!’ he opened his arms stepping forward for a hug, she offered her hand. He shook her hand and said “They’re beautiful, thank you for collecting them for me.” She shrugged “Well us geologists have to clear them out anyway to get any work done without worrying about getting stung through a weak area in our suit. Usually we just burn them out, so this was a little trickier, but the company said to do it, so we did it...” He pointed at one of the name tags “Did you name them?” Molly laughed and said “Yes, I’ve had to get them the mineral slurry that they feed on so I got to know them and it just seemed like the right thing to do.” She turned towards the containment boxes and said “I can show you the safety procedures for handling them and feeding them.” She stroked the glass on one of the boxes and the blob inside shifted colors and patterns and flowed over the glass roughly matching the pattern of her hand. Callum was startled to see this kind of response from a fungus. He was thinking and apparently said aloud “Why would a fungus that lives in the dark and eats mineral slurry respond to your hand that way?” Molly drew her hand back and looked at him seriously “Why indeed?”

Callum spent the day reading the records about each of the specimens and as mid-day came around an older man in a lab coat came into the lab and approached him. He was short and somewhat round and had a florid face and gray hair, as Callum stood up to greet him he enveloped the young man in a slightly longer than necessary hug. He shouted, “Fucking awesome that you’re here Callum! We’re going to do such incredible shit together!” Callum disentangled himself from the hug, noting that he now smelled faintly of beer and cigarettes. “I can’t thank you enough Dr. Flynn for helping me get funding to come here!” Callum beamed. Flynn waved his hand, “Call me Bill kid, and it was all completely self serving, I’m fucking overwhelmed and you’re one of the few people in the universe qualified to help me.” He gestured to the specimens, “What do you think of my beauties?” Callum paused and said “They were already the most fascinating exo-creatures I’ve studied, but now being here with them I realize that they have an incredible presence, almost a personality. I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s my first impression… Also, I don’t understand many of their adaptations in the context of Enjay…” Flynn smiled and said “Ah, that’s because you’re assuming that Enjay has always been like this, it was quite different before its moon was struck by a giant asteroid and driven into Enjay. These creatures are actually some of the only survivors of what was once a very populous ecosystem.” Callum had been so absorbed by reading the biological and genetic data about the fungus that he hadn’t read the geology or astrophysics reports. 'Ah, well that makes sense, so they’ve somehow adapted to the new environment and a lot of these behaviors are just vestigial from their prior environment!’ Flynn nodded, and said “But it’s lucky for us they survived, for whatever reason these critters can unzip and decode and re-encode DNA faster than anything we know of, on the order of nano-seconds to read and write DNA makes it like any of our most advanced storage devices except at a vast capacity and redundancy increase.” He paused, “Of course they do it for themselves or whatever they get out of it, but it’s our job to understand the mechanism if we’re going to harness it.”

At the end of the day, Callum’s head was so full of information that he left the lab in a haze and found himself back at his living quarters without quite knowing how he’d navigated there. He went in and noticed that the communicator was flashing near the entryway and there was a message. He played the message, Deputy Dermody’s voice said “Hey Callum, I was thinking that I was sort of unwelcoming when we first spoke, all business like, and I just want you to know it was just our procedure here for surprising folks that turn up. In any case, if you’d like some pointers on how to get around in the hole, you could meet me for a drink up at Peggy’s on level twelve, it’s a decent bar that isn’t a bucket of blood every night. I’ll be there around 7pm. Cheers!” It was about 6:45pm, and Callum suddenly felt he could really use a drink. He put on a civilian jacket and headed back to the elevators. On the twelfth level he followed the signs painted on the corridor walls to Peggy’s. The room was filled with people drinking and talking at tables and standing at various bars. He looked around and finally saw Deputy Dermody at a table along the far wall, he waved and beckoned him over.

Dermody stood as he approached and put out his hand. Callum took it and said, “Thanks for the invite Deputy”, Dermody shrugged, “In these clothes I’m John.” and smiled gesturing for Callum to sit down. A waitress came over almost immediately and took his order. John said “So, first tip, do your drinking on level twelve, it’ll help keep your vitals inside you. Avoid most stuff above the ninth, mostly gang run and unless you’re more into violence than I think you are there’s nothing there that you’ll miss.” He paused to drink his beer, “The fancy stuff is considerably further down on level one twenty five, some great restaurants and theaters down there. I hope they pay you a lot though, they’re not cheap on this rock. There is a nice park that’s free down on level one thirty, always a good place to go to get the feel of an open space even if it isn’t really. Of course if you want to see space you can always book an excursion to the surface, but you might have to go there for work anyway and with the radiation, you should limit your monthly exposure.” Callum sipped his drink, it wasn’t bad, and asked “Do you know Molly or Bill that I work with at the lab?” John said “Oh yeah, I know them both, Molly a bit better, she’s from level twenty-two, her dad was a mining geologist. I went to school with her for a while before I decided to be a Deputy. She’s a good kid, I see her at parties and such when school friends get together.”

He gestured for another round, “Bill Flynn has been here about five years, he came when they first figured out that the mushrooms were more than just a nuisance to mining. I don’t see him out that much, but he does like to drink on Friday’s at O’Malley’s on level thirteen, good scotch eggs there, taste like scotch eggs, I have no fucking idea what they’re made of...” They both laughed. Callum said, “Seeing how the fungus moves and reacts to people, it’s very strange for an organism like that. I know they are a nuisance for the miners.” John’s face clouded. “Well, in the early days before we learned how to ‘smoke’ them out, they took a lot of lives. My brother Fred was killed by one that he happened on in a new tunnel, or more precisely the effects of the spores caused him to commit suicide” He took a long pull on his beer. Callum said “I’m sorry...” John shrugged and said “Nah, nevermind, it was a long time ago, nothing about you, and the damn critters have no idea what they’re doing do they? Callum drank some of his whisky and said “No, no they don’t.” They left after another round and Callum went back to his quarters which now looked a lot like the lab with sprayed plastic walls, metal furniture and appliances and a relatively large cot, and ate one of the packaged meals from the fridge and feeling suddenly quite tired he slumped into bed and went immediately to sleep.

Days passed in a similar way, there was a lot of work to do, carefully preparing samples, running a rigorous set of tests to try and detect the active parts of the fungus’ biology that allowed them to process DNA so fast. At the end of the day Callum would spend a few minutes observing the creatures, watching their shape changes and shifting colors. He seemed to always end up looking at the one named Anorah, sometimes resting his hand on the glass watching it fit itself to his hand’s outline and pulse subtly. Sometimes he talked to the creature, really to himself, running down the day’s findings and his own theories about what they meant.

The weekend came and the lab required him to take a two days break. They'd learned that in the skyless, sunless environment of the hole people burned out fast by becoming too obsessed with their work. On Saturday he went down to the “park” and read a mystery novel while sitting by the pond and watching the fake clouds move across the fake sky. On Sunday he went to O’Malley’s on level thirteen and had brunch, Bill showed up about twenty minutes later and he waved him over to sit down. “Hey Bill, how’s your day going?” Bill smiled and said “Probably about like yours, you want to be in the lab figuring stuff out and you have to be here wasting time!” Callum nodded, “I’ve never seen anything like the biology of these creatures, I can honestly say we don’t really know how most of their vital systems work. They breathe the atmosphere out there, and that alone should kill them, but they somehow catalyze it into something safe for their respiration, like the miner’s breathers do. Except they’re piles of goo and those breathers are solar powered chemical processing factories.” Flynn smiled and ordered a Stout and an Irish Breakfast and said “Hah, they’ve hooked you too, glad me and Molly aren’t the only crazy ones anymore.”

Almost on cue, Molly entered the bar and saw them, she came over. “Well, this is fine, meeting behind my back!” she said in mock outrage. They all laughed, and she pulled up a chair, ordered a Tequila Sunrise and another Irish Breakfast. “To Monday and getting back to work!'' She raised her glass and they all toasted. They all ate for a bit and then Molly paused and said “My dad hated going to work, it wore him down risking his life every day down in the deep holes trying to guide them around gas pockets, trapped ice that would vaporize when they dug into it, and of course away from the fungus’ habitats.” She looked away and said “He wanted me to study something more theoretical so I wouldn’t end up down a mine. He got it half right, at least I go down the mines on my own terms.” Callum said, “Is your dad still alive?” Molly smiled wistfully and said “He’s alive, but the radiation and exposure to bad air a number of times has left him weak and suffering from dementia. He lives with my mom, he mostly remembers who I am after we talk about rocks for a while.” Flynn patted her on the shoulder.

Strangely, that was the last thing Callum remembered until his alarm went off on Monday morning. He was quite woozy and felt altogether odd. He didn’t remember drinking a lot or leaving brunch. He figured he must have and vowed to be more conservative about alcohol consumption, he’d never blacked out before and he didn’t want it to become a habit. He found the thought of food repugnant so he just drank some coffee, showered, dressed and headed to the lab. As he entered the elevator he noticed that everyone in the elevator seemed to be surrounded by a distortion field that was gently pulsing, bending the light around them and subtly coloring it. Wow, he thought, what the fuck did I drink? He faced the door to avoid the stomach churning spectacle behind him. When he reached the lab he noticed with horror that Anorah’s containment unit was empty and now unlabeled. He scanned all of the other units but it hadn’t been relocated. He went looking for one of his colleagues but couldn’t find anyone in their offices. The woman at the desk, who had not yet disclosed her name, said they were out on the surface somewhere and went back to whatever was so interesting on her hand terminal.

Callum felt an inexplicable need to find them, to ask them about Anorah, he couldn’t bear waiting. He entered the elevator and pressed the button for the surface. He hadn’t been trained yet for the surface and didn’t know anything about the suits or even where to go when he got there. Strangely, none of that bothered him in the least. He arrived at level zero and found himself in a giant hall lined with locker rooms. Many locker rooms had corporate logos on them, he found the one that had his company’s logo on it and opened the door with his card. Inside he found a locker with his name on it and inside an environment suit and rebreather and helmet. He wrestled the suit on, it took a few tries to get everything hooked up and sealed so that the safeties would stop alarming. He clamped the helmet on last and the heads up display inside showed green. It also showed a surface map and handily it showed the location of his colleagues, they were in an abandoned mining shaft not that far from the entrance.

He waddled out of the locker room and after bumbling around found the arrows pointing to the public airlocks and made it to an empty one. He drew a lot of looks because he had his helmet on, everyone else heading for the airlocks had theirs casually slung on their back or under one arm. Fortunately the airlock was automatic and he just followed the prompts to wait for it to pressurize, to enter, and to confirm his suit was sealed and then to exit onto the surface. There were lines of yellow bollards which he quickly realized were the only thing keeping him from being a messy stain on an automated ore hauler. He followed the path in the direction of the dots representing his colleagues on his heads up display. He came to a mine shaft which was marked “Closed, dangerous, no entry” crisscrossed with plastic panels and metal beams. After a few minutes searching he found a door that was unlocked which covered a lift which was powered up and lighted and clearly recently used by the patterns of boot prints in the dust on the floor of the lift. He went in and pressed the one button on the panel. The door clamped shut with a bang and the lift shot downwards way too fast in his opinion considering it was just covered in some plastic mesh.

The lift slammed to a halt in a place that was pitch black, he could only see some stone floors in the sphere of light cast by the lift’s illumination. It took him several minutes to figure out how to turn on the powerful lights on his suit and light up the space around him and in front of him. He was in a huge cavern with yellow paths radiating from the elevator out to disappear into dark holes in the cavern walls. There were broken and cannibalized ore drillers and loaders everywhere.

Using his map he chose a yellow path that would lead him to Bill and Molly and set off. As he set off he noticed a few yellow lights starting to flash on his heads-up display. He turned off the notifications, that flashing was annoying. He entered one of the dark tunnels in the wall of the cavern, a feeling of calm and well-being came over him. I must be getting over my hangover, he thought. After walking for a while he saw a glow ahead of him in some lighted space at the end of the tunnel. When he reached the end of the tunnel another huge room opened up, this one had new high powered lights deployed all over the domed ceiling which made his helmet lights unnecessary so he shut them off. The room was filled with rows of tables covered with glass containers partially filled with a pink substance covered in a black film. When he looked at them, the distortion field effect shifted to a distinctly gray to black color and pulsed at a much higher rate. He was surprised that this symptom of his hangover hadn't passed yet, but he was getting used to it. The whole thing looked like culture growing labs that he’d been in, but it was all exposed to the planet’s atmosphere which made no sense.

He saw the shape of a person across the huge hall at one of the tables, its back was turned to him, his heads-up display said it was Molly. He walked down and across the aisles toward her. As he walked he realized that he was humming, or rather that he was humming along with the tones he now heard in sync with the pulsing of the distortion fields. It was a nice tune. He reached Molly and said “Hey Molly it’s me Callum…” she didn’t turn around, so he reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. Molly startled violently and spun around hands up. Her face went through a series of expressions from fear to recognition to concern. Callum tried to talk again and she waved her hand at him and reached over and clicked a button on his hemet. Callum then heard her say “Callum, Jesus Christ, what are you doing here! You’re not trained to be outside, this is a compartmentalized company project that you’re not cleared for. You could have died twelve ways just getting here!” Callum didn’t react to her alarm at all, he said “I saw that Anorah was gone, and I wanted to find out what happened?”

Molly visibly boggled at the question and then composed herself. “Anorah died over the weekend, as you know from our reports we’ve had a regular rate of attrition among apparently healthy subjects. We don’t know what causes it. Every so often we come in and one of them will just be crumbly powder on the floor of the containment unit and that’s it. I would have sent you a message but I had to get here early for a busy day and besides you really seemed out of it when we poured you into your cot on Sunday so I thought you might not make it in.” Callum looked at her blankly and even though everything she said was very plausible he realized that her distortion field had shifted distinctly to red during that statement and the pulsing was out of rhythm. It made him feel very uneasy.

He was about to question Molly when he saw her gasp and then start fiddling with the control unit on the front of his suit. She said “Fucking hell, you went out of there with only a quarter charge of catalyst in your rebreather, if you’d had the training you woud have known to always top it up before leaving. You need to get out of here and back through an airlock as fast as you can go.” He made another attempt to speak, she grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round. “Go, I mean it, get out of here now!!!” she yelled at him. Bewildered, and still not really concerned he headed back the way he’d come. He saw some orange lights start to flash on his heads-up unit, he turned them off too… really annoying. He was in the lift room about to enter the lift when the red lights started flashing in his helmet. He couldn’t figure out a way to turn them off and they were very irritating. He unclamped his helmet and took it off. Whew, he thought, that feels better, that helmet was stuffy. He rode the lift up and walked the rest of the way to the airlock with his helmet under his arm. He went through the airlock and didn’t meet anyone before reaching the company locker room. He struggled out of his suit and put his equipment in his locker.

As he was leaving the locker room he happened to look at himself in the bathroom mirror, he noticed that his own distortion field was solid black and was vibrating at an incredible frequency. His skin also looked a little odd, it seemed to be darker, like he had a sun tan, but it was an odd grayish color. He absently rubbed it to see if it would come off. It didn’t. He shrugged and headed to the elevator. He didn’t go back to the lab, he headed to his lodging. When he got there he suddenly felt very tired. I really shouldn’t drink, he thought. After having some water, he flopped down on the cot and went to sleep.

The dream started shortly after Callum went to sleep. His viewpoint was from inside Anorah’s containment unit. He watched as two people in hard shell environment suits, used in the deepest levels of Enjay’s mines where the pressures were very high, entered the lab carrying a man. In a bizarre moment of vertigo he recognized the man as himself, and also that this felt like a memory, and an out of body experience all at the same time. They set him on a table and then approached the containment unit, opened it and grabbed Anorah and carried her towards him. There were shard-like spores pinging off of everything in the room including their hard suits. The shards struck and pierced his skin, they carried Anorah around to expose every part of his exposed flesh to the spores she was desperately firing in every direction. Once they were satisfied with his exposure, they carried Anorah to the incinerator, dumped her in, and pressed the fire button. Suddenly the perspective of the dream shifted and he was looking up from the table at the overhead lights. They carried him out through an access panel in the side of the lab through a rock walled corridor sealed with foam to a maintenance elevator to his lodging level through another access panel in his room. They dumped him on his cot and disappeared through the panel, closing it up behind them.

A loud buzzing noise jarred Callum awake, the buzzing was followed by hammering on his door. He heard a muffled voice yell from beyond the door. “Callum, it’s Deputy Dermody, I need to speak with you. Your suit went outside without the appropriate protocols yesterday and I need you to account for your whereabouts and actions.” He jumped out of the cot and looked wildly around the room. Then, the thought came to him: Just open the door, we can take care of him. He walked over to the door and opened it with his left hand, he felt his right hand swelling and changing. Deputy Dermody came into view and got a look at Callum and without hesitation dove to the right away from the doorway. At almost the same time Callum’s right hand which had formed into a kind of spherical polyp ejected thousands of spore shards towards where the Deputy had been. Callum came out of the door looking back and forth for the Deputy but only hearing the elevator door in the distance, that guy was fast.

Callum was aware of a flood of new “memories,” conversations in front of Anorah’s containment unit between Bill and Molly. “We can’t do this, it’s horrible, it’s unethical, it’s illegal.” Molly said. “Do you want to get you and your dad off this fucking rock or not?” Bill replied “If we wait for the end of the program, we’ll be stuck here another ten years!” Molly looked down at her feet and said “The other company will really pay that much for a live hybrid subject?” Bill smiled and said “Abso-fucking-lutely they will, and your dad can get proper care and you can have a life outside of a mineshaft!” Molly sighed and said in a small voice “Ok, let's do it then…” There were other memories of them choosing him over hundreds of applicants for his DNA profile, bribing the officials to give him funding despite his less than perfect application, feeding him the bonding mRNA each night after the knockout laced drinks.

It only took a few seconds and the thought came to him: We need to erase them and Dermody and leave this place. He entered his lodging, locking the door behind him and then wrenching the access panel off the wall. He was surprised it was so easy, he hadn’t ever worked out. He ran through the foam walled hallways to the service elevator and took it to the lab level, pelting over to the access panel for the lab. He kicked it straight into the lab and jumped through the opening. The prongs of a taser struck him in the chest, a massive jolt of electricity surged through his body and… nothing… He looked across at Bill on the other end of the tether and in two steps closed the distance between them. He felt his mouth extend and extend, flying outward and over Bill’s flailing arms and head, acrid fluids filled his mouth, Bill screamed as they dissolved his flesh. He tasted like beer and cigarettes.

“Please don’t kill me,” Molly said from behind him. Shaking like a leaf in the wind, she held a torch usually used to clear out fungus from new mine shafts. Callum looked at her with no emotion whatsoever and said “If me and Anorah are going to get away, we can’t have anyone who knows what is going on here left alive.” Molly turned on the torch bathing Callum in a huge ball of fire. On fire and now with his clothes burned off Callum leapt through the flames and deftly wrenched Molly’s head from her body. A brief roll on the floor extinguished the flames. Callum found a coverall in one of the closets and put it on, and a vintage baseball cap on someone’s desk and used it to cover his singed and blistered head. He exited the lab via the access panel and headed for the port.

The deputy will be waiting at the port, they thought, we can take care of him on our way out. As they emerged from an access panel inside the port they looked around scanning for the deputy or his colleagues. They didn’t see anyone at all, the robot loaders zipped around moving cargo from here to there but there were no people visible. They walked down the yellow path towards a ship that was listed on the departures board as leaving in the next twenty minutes. “Callum Shaw, stop right there and give yourself up, we’re not going to allow you to leave this planet.” a voice boomed out of the PA system. Callum pointedly didn’t stop and continued towards the ship. The next sound was a sharp crack and then another and another. Projectiles passed through Callum’s body, he noticed them but he didn’t stop, the holes they made closed up like water closing over a thrown rock.

Callum saw the deputy step out from behind a ship to his left, he was wearing a hard suit and had his hands raised. “Callum, please stop, you don’t want to do this. Let us help you. If you leave here with that creature bound to you it is only going to hurt lots more people. Do you really want that?” Callum turned towards him and began to advance “We think we can probably crack that helmet or at least rupture a seal and get at you. So, I guess we’re going to hurt at least one more person.” The deputy put his hands down, and at that moment the engine that was next to him roared to life, a huge plume of plasma shot out and completely obliterated Callum Shaw and Anorah. We don’t know much about spaceships they thought and then their perspective shifted to a very dark deep crack in the planet with a stream of mineral slurry running through it. They were home again, for now.

Family

This story was inspired by some genealogical research I have been doing. Reading newspaper reports, letters and personal documents made the people vivid and real to me. If you haven’t read any of the other stories, Enjay (New Jersey) is the name of a mining planet and The Hole is the nickname for the subterranean city of Paramus. The Company is the giant space conglomerate that founded Enjay and then divested it when it wasn’t profitable enough. 

John Dermody sat at the dirty kitchen table in the quarters on level two where he’d grown up, his blue Deputy’s jumpsuit a stark contrast to the miner’s work clothes of everyone else in the room. He was tall and slender, with dark hair like his late mother. Across from him sat his father William, still wearing his miner’s overalls even though he hadn’t been down a mine in twenty years. Behind William stood Michael, his younger brother, blond and fair, wearing clean new overalls of a geologist who had never gone into a mine. Standing across the room scowling was his brother William, the eldest, a younger duplicate of his father, head shaved clean, in the beat up overalls of a mine shift manager. His face was creased and marked by working in an aging atmosphere suit for ten hours a day down a dangerous mine for twenty five years. The other man in the room sat beside his father, he was Marty Riley, a small dark fidgety man with the mannerisms of a rat. He was the miners’ “lawyer” who, not an actual lawyer, took care of things like wills for them.

William Sr. was approaching eighty years old, he was bent from age and too much manual labor. His face was a permanent scowl, lined and scarred from a harsh life. He’d been on Enjay working in The Hole since he was seventeen. When he started, The Company was still running The Hole, and he’d been lured there with an offer of a share in the Loughrea Mine. He’d married Katherine Jordan after his new prosperity and they raised eight children. He’d kept buying options in the mine his whole career and his sons John and William had followed him down the mine. His son Laurence was the first one to find a way off world, followed by his daughters Ellen, Honoria, Delia and Catherine. They managed to escape Enjay and the sad ends it put most men and women to. William Sr. spat when he said their names, if he mentioned them at all. His wife Katherine had a breakdown ten years ago and had killed herself by jumping into a mass air shaft and falling thousands of feet to the bottom of The Hole. Filthy and cluttered, his quarters hadn’t been cleaned properly in a decade. Michael, the youngest was the apple of William Sr’s eye, his new hope born after his other children had disappointed him. Michael had never actually gone down into the mine, he’d managed to sample online geology schools flunking and transferring until he patched together a barely credible degree. His father had used his seniority, belligerence, and cronies to get him an office job at the mine. Michael’s actual occupation was junkie and party boy, even now he swayed gently behind his father, a slightly unfocused expression on his unmarked face. 

William Sr. spoke “Read the fucking thing Marty, so we can get this done with.” Marty shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shooting a look at William Jr. and then he read “I William Dermody being of sound mind and body, do make the following bequests upon my death: To my son John I give a sum of five credits. To my son William I give a sum of one hundred credits to reimburse him for mining equipment he purchased for me. To my son Michael I give all my shares in Loughrea Mine and all remaining property and assets.” John saw his brother William tensing as Marty was reading and he jumped to his feet and placed himself between his father and William bringing William up short as he lunged. “What the fuck! What did I ever do to you old man that you fuck me over now?” William shouted. “You never did what I asked, you always had your way, your own ideas! Well fuck you now! My son Michael is the new man of the house and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it!” William Sr. roared, spit flying from his lips. “And as for you John, you’ve got your precious Deputy’s pension to take care of you, so you’ll be just fine won’t you ?” he said sarcastically, punctuating his words by spitting on the filthy floor at John’s feet.

William Sr. grabbed the paper, scrawled his signature in the middle of the page, and then scowling at Marty said “Fucking witness it.” and Marty signed and dated the paper. William Jr. shoved John aside and stormed out of the room. Michael had barely reacted, he just smiled a bit. John said “Dad, you’ve always been a miserable fucker, but begrudging your own blood... especially William who worked like a dog in that fucking mine… What a disgusting legacy, I’m glad Ma isn’t here to see this shit.” With the mention of his wife William Sr. rose suddenly from his chair, but immediately gasped and clutched himself and sank back breathing heavily. John shook his head and left his father’s quarters.

John went to the lifts at the end of the tunnel on level two where his father’s quarters were. He pressed the down button, he knew where his brother was headed and he wanted to try to help calm him down. As the lift descended towards the eighth level, the location of the nastier drinking establishments in The Hole, he thought about his own parting of ways from his father. It had happened fifteen years ago, he’d been working in the mine for five years at that point. He sucked as a miner, the instincts weren’t there, he’d been nearly killed a couple of times, the other miners hated being on his crew. He knew at the time it was just a matter of time before he got himself and perhaps some of them killed or injured. The recruiting push by the Deputies seemed like the answer, and Sheriff Ditson seemed like a good man who didn’t seem to care he was a miner or Irish or a Dermody. When he told his father about joining the Deputies his father had punched him in the face with no warning, no words, knocking him to the ground. William Sr. was still strong as an ox then, and he had stood over his son, shaking with rage. He said “You do this boy, and you are dead to me. Join the fucking company’s gang of thugs! Are you out of your mind?” John had tried to speak and tell his father they weren’t like that anymore, but William Sr. just came after him swinging and he fled.

The door opened on the eighth floor and he walked down the graffitied hallway until he reached “Rock’s” which was a mining gallery converted into a drinking establishment. He walked in and scanned the smoke filled room for his brother. He caught sight of him across the room, recognizing his shaved head and his broad tattooed shoulders visible now that he’d taken off his work jacket and sat at the bar in his t-shirt and overalls. A woman in a suit was resting her hand on the back of his neck, leaning in, speaking into his ear. She glanced his way as if she could feel him looking. It was Bridget Leetch, head of the geology department at the Loughrea Mine. She said something to William and he turned to look too, his face still showing his rage. She turned and headed for one of the other doors. John walked over to his brother.

“What’s Bridget doing in a place like this ?” John asked. “She’s a friend, we’ve been working together for a long time. She was telling me, what you’re probably going to tell me. That killing that old fucker won’t fix anything.” Bill replied. His voice was so cold saying the words that John shuddered. “Look, Bill, he’s a broken old man and he’s flailing around to take out his anger and disappointment on everyone in range. The truth is those shares aren’t worth shit, and he’s handing Michael a big pile of nothing.” His brother sneered, and took a drink of vodka from his glass. “Yeah, I know. I just wish I hadn’t listened to him, have those years back, got off this rock. I wish a lot of things…” His voice trailed off. John ordered a drink and sat down next to his brother and put his hand on his shoulder. They drank in silence for a while and then by some unspoken agreement they decided it was time to go, they embraced briefly, and left in different directions.

A few weeks later John had just returned from a reconnaissance patrol in the wasteland when he got a call from Sheriff Ditson. “John, I have some bad news. Your father was found dead yesterday morning in his quarters. His friend Paulie found him when he brought his meals for the day. He was sitting at the table, he’d had a heart attack sometime the night before. We tried to get you, but there was too much radiation interference yesterday. We haven’t told any of your family, we figured you would want to handle it.” John processed the news, he couldn’t find a word for how he felt. “Thanks for letting me know boss, I’ll let the rest of the family know.” Sheriff Ditson said “My condolences John, feel free to take a couple of days to get things arranged, I’ll get someone to cover for you.” John said “Thanks sir, I appreciate it.” He composed a brief message to his off world siblings on his portable com unit, as he sent it he doubted they would come back for the services. He checked the time, his brother William would be down the mine now, it wouldn’t be good to tell him until he got off his shift. He decided to go find Michael, he should be at his desk in the mine offices on level thirty. 

When the lift doors opened on level thirty, you would have thought you were entering the lobby of some sky scraper on a sunny blue skied earth like planet. It was all an illusion produced by imaging panels lining the lobby walls and ceiling, but it was convincing, so much so it gave him vertigo every time he came down here. He walked to the reception desk and asked for a pass to visit Michael in the Loughrea Mine’s labs, he showed his identification, said it was urgent family business. The receptionist called the mine labs main number and spoke with them briefly. She hung up and said “Michael didn’t come in this morning, he called in sick last night, he said he was going to stay in his quarters.” John sighed, and thanked her and headed to the twenty-second level where Michael lived. As he was leaving, he saw Bridget Leetch looking at him through the glass walls of the lab office.

He reached Michael’s quarters on the twenty-second level, a trendy level with many fancy quarters, his was done up in an industrial style, the door was an old mine bulkhead door. The irony was not lost on John. He rang the bell and waited. Nobody came to the door. Several more tries and he was getting pissed off. He called Seath Holman in the central Sheriff’s office. “Hey Seath, I know we’re not supposed to do it for personal stuff, but could you look in my brother’s quarters and see if he’s in there? I need to talk to him.” Seath hesitated and then said “Sure, I guess this qualifies for an exception, sorry for your loss by the way.” John waited while Seath enabled surveillance inside the quarters. She came back almost immediately, her voice tight “John, I’m going to pop the door, he’s in there, but he’s laying on the bathroom floor not moving looks like he’s vomited. There’s nobody else in there.” The door popped open and John rushed inside and through the stylized mine workroom interior to the steel and stone clad bathroom. His brother was sprawled naked on the floor in a pool of puke. John felt his neck and detected a weak pulse. Michael’s breathing was either stopped or seriously impeded. He did everything he’d been trained to do to clear his brother’s airway and to get him breathing normally again. A few moments later the MEDEVAC robots arrived and he had to step back as they inserted breathing tubes and attached sensors and picked Michael up to transport him.

Three hours later John was standing next to Michael’s hospital bed, looking at his brother at the center of a mass of wires and tubes. His chest rose and fell, but it probably wouldn’t if they turned off the machines. His brother William came into the room, still in his work clothes straight from his shift. He looked at Michael and then at John and said “What the hell happened ?” John said “From the surveillance that we have, he was down on eight in a party room with a bunch of girls until about midnight. I can see him taking all kinds of shit and drinking all kinds of shit, hard to tell exactly what. He comes home with a girl around four in the morning, they fuck for a while, she leaves. He watches TV, goes to bed and sleeps for a while. About an hour before I found him he sat straight up in bed obviously in distress, runs to the bathroom, pukes for a while and then finally collapses. He was down for about twenty minutes before I found him…” John paused “The doctors say his brain might not have been getting enough oxygen during that time, probably not, so if he wakes up, he’s likely going to have brain damage. They can’t say how bad.” William walked over and took his younger brother’s hand in his. He squeezed his hand, and he started crying, saying “Why, why did you have to fuck around with all these drugs? Why take that risk for a rush and some pussy ?” He collapsed to his knees, his head resting on the edge of the bed, his back heaving with sobs.

The funeral for his father was the next day, it was a sparsely attended event, William Sr. had been a difficult man to be any type of friend or kin to. John was there in his best formal uniform, William in his only suit, people filed through. A sequence of faces and words that didn’t register. Then towards the end, Bridget Leetch came in, she went to William and embraced him and stroked his face, speaking softly to him. She turned to John and offered him her hand “I’m so sorry for your loss John, and for the trouble with Michael.” He took her soft, perfectly manicured hand and he realized she and his brother were in a relationship. As he looked into her eyes, he had an awful feeling that something wasn’t right about her. It wasn’t a miner feeling, or a brother feeling, it was a cop feeling. She went to the casket and knelt down. “How long have you guys been together Bill ?” he asked. His brother tensed and then shrugged, “We keep it quiet, the mine management doesn’t like fraternizing across roles, but it’s been weeks now. We met on an ore regrading project and just hit it off. We’re thinking of getting hitched when I retire next year.” John said “Congratulations, I’m happy for you.” He looked at Bridget getting up from beside the casket, he couldn’t shake the bad cop feelings. 

Later that day, John knocked on Sheriff Ditson’s office door in the central Sheriff’s office. Ditson said “Come in.” then “Hey John, what can I do for  you ?” John hesitated, then he said “I think something is going on with my brother Michael’s ‘accident.’ I have a bad feeling it wasn’t an accident.” The Sheriff looked puzzled saying “But I think we have full surveillance of that night, we know what happened ?” John said “I think we didn’t go back far enough in his day, I think we only looked at what we needed to see to fit the ‘junkie O.D.’s and kills himself’ narrative.” Ditson said “Why do you think there is some other cause ?” John said “I think it involves my father’s death, shares in the mine that Michael would inherit, and somebody close to my brother Bill. Bill’s been seeing Bridget Leetch head of the mine lab, since around the time my father made a will. I found out at the wake that they’re planning to marry. Bridget would know if my father’s mine shares were worth anything different for some reason.” The Sheriff stood up and said “We can find out that answer pretty fast, I know Michael Loughlin, the President of Lochrea Mine, he’d know if there were any developments like that. But I’d assume he’d have told the shareholders if there were. Let's go talk to him, if something is going on we can pick up Bridget as well.” He strapped on his blaster, and they left for the mine offices.

A short time later they were in Loughlin’s opulent office with it’s simulated view of trees and mountains out the window. It was snowing today. Sheriff Ditson explained what they were interested in, and before he’d even finished Loughlin raised his hand and said “Sheriff, I can tell you right now that there has been a development with the mine. I’m excited about it! There was a regrading effort a while ago and in the process of doing the analysis we found significant amounts of a rare earth they’ve started using in hyperdrives. We never looked for it before so it wasn’t one of the things we extract for. Turns out we’ve got a significant amount, and even better our spoil heap is filled with it. Our value has gone up so much that we have just signed a deal with The Company to be reacquired at a significant premium.” He smiled and looked back and forth between them. “We sent an information packet to all the shareholders just yesterday, it’s not a secret.” John and the Sheriff looked at each other and John asked “Who sent out the information packet ?” Loughlin said “The labs division sent them out, Bridget and her team have been working on the data for the valuations since the find.”

The two officers walked down the aisles of lab tables and cubicles towards Bridget’s office, as they approached they saw that her desk was vacant. Sheriff Ditson called Deputy Holman at the central office, and asked for a location on Bridget Leetch. After a short pause, Seath replied “She’s not in The Hole, she exited to the surface in a mine hauler about ten minutes ago. I assume she’s going to the Loughrea Mine location.” Ditson said “We’re going to go out to the mine, please start reviewing the whole day before Michael Dermody’s O.D. and pull out any interactions with Bridget. I want to know if she could have drugged him.” Seath said “I’m on it.” 
A short time later John and the Sheriff were in atmosphere suits in a Sheriff’s department transport vehicle rolling over the mine roads towards the Loughrea Mine. As they arrived at the mine they saw people spilling out of the mine entrance, running. Miners were usually deliberate in their movements, a wrong move could kill you numerous ways. Running was not good. They intercepted a miner and made him stop, pressing their helmets against his to speak. “What is happening, why are you running ?” the man struggled with them and said “Let me go dammit! Bill Dermody has gone nuts and he’s going to blow up the whole fucking mine, which we’re standing on top of, we need to get at least a half a mile away from here to be safe!” He wrenched himself loose and ran away down the mining road.

Sheriff Ditson and John shoved their way past the last of the fleeing miners and descended into the mine, John knew what level his brother was working on so they headed there. As they reached the fresh gallery where the most recent mining had been going on, they saw a body sprawled against one wall. It was smaller than any miner, and the suit was newer and cleaner than any miner, it was Bridget. She was sitting against the rough wall, her helmet was filled with blood so that her face was half obscured, the back of the helmet was transfixed by a piece of reinforcing steel that stuck out of the wall. She was dead. They heard the sound of drilling nearby, and they walked around the gallery to where the main ore extraction shaft came down. There was Bill, identifiable by his name stenciled on his atmosphere suit’s back and the large shamrock emblazoned on his helmet. There was a whole explosives locker next to him, the door wrenched off with a loader or something. He was wiring and shoving indiscriminate amounts of explosives into drill holes as fast as his skilled hands could go.

John stepped forward and yelled “Bill, stop! Stop! Put down the explosives!” His brother turned to look and his eyes were wild with rage, tears streaming down his face. “No John! I need to kill this fucking mine, it killed my mother, my father, my brother, me…” John said “Michael’s not dead, you’re not dead, we don’t know what’s going to happen... “ Bill waved his hand angrily yelling “He’s a fucking vegetable, because of me, because of this mine… she thought I’d be happy, to be fucking rich… with my little brother brain dead hooked up to a fucking machine…” with a wracking sob he turned and grabbed another bundle of explosives and started wiring it. He’d worked in the dark and in every conceivable unpleasant condition that the mine could generate, so his hands did the work even though his tears blinded him. While Bill was focused on John, Sheriff Ditson moved to where the detonation board was located, he saw that Bill was wiring the explosives in series to a live board. One mistake and they would be killed in the blast, and because of the location, buried under a half a mile of planet as the mine pancaked down. He yanked first one and then the other blast wire out of the detonation board. He signaled to John, and they both grabbed Bill from behind and pinned him struggling to the ground. John put detention clamps on his brother and paralyzed him.

Because the mine had been reacquired by The Company, it was considered their jurisdiction during the incident. So Bill finally finally made it off planet to be tried at a Company facility, and then locked up for life in a Company prison.  A converted mine.  Michael never woke up and he was disconnected from life support, he passed away in a matter of hours. Seath had found surveillance footage earlier in the day of Michael’s O.D. of Bridget and Michael snorting lines of a white powder in her office, celebrating the report. She’d prepared the lines from two different containers. Bridget had learned of William Sr’s will and his death from Paulie via her cronies in the mine. John Dermody inherited his father’s shares in the Loughrea Mine, a considerable sum. He split it up evenly between him and his off world siblings. He gave his share to an organization that tried to help miners with substance abuse problems. He went back to work at the Sheriff’s office, after all he had to earn his pension.

Camping

This story came to me when I was thinking about how the Sheriffs would punish people on Enjay. The Hole is not that different from a prison, and sending them off world would be just what people would want and too expensive in any case. So the idea of camping came to me as a cost effective solution short of just executing people.

A kind of autopilot guided Charlie Ross’ erratic steps through the twisting hallways of level one of The Hole, an enclosed city protruding from the side of a giant open pit mine on the planet Enjay. It had to be autopilot because Charlie was so drunk he would probably fail the “What is your name?” part of the sobriety test. This wasn’t unusual, he had been pretty solidly drunk whenever he wasn’t working for the last five years. His Sheriff’s Deputy blue coveralls were filthy and had holes from stabbings and some from blaster bolts. He was comfortable in them though so he let them be, and fuck anyone else. He still lived on level one, the oldest and some would say the nastiest level of The Hole. Closest to the surface the temperature was all over the place, and it was so old many of the corridors were just sprayed polymer and concrete over rock. It had some perks, many of the living quarters there were larger than anywhere else because they were actually converted mining galleries from the first mining operation.

Charlie turned the corner where his quarters were, dragging his shoulder along the wall until his course corrected and he aimed for the door. He mindlessly palmed the lock and it opened and he veered into the large irregular chamber where he slept off his binges. Like any good habitual drunk he’d arranged the mattress that he slept on so that it was pretty much where he usually passed out upon making the journey back from the still rooms on level eight. And so it was now that he keeled over onto the mattress only bouncing his head off the floor a little on account of being a slightly off track when he started to fall. Charlie wasn’t a big man, he was about 5’ 11” and a wiry 150 lbs, but he was tough and wrinkled and dark as the root of an ancient tree. His long grey beard was streaked with tobacco juice stains from a pretty much continuous chew habit. Now he lay there snoring, dead to the world.

The mattress was the center of a circular cluster of empty bottles, clothes, food containers and other assorted debris. Outside that circle however was an apartment, dusty but organized, with evidence of a couple living there. There were pictures of a smiling clean shaven Charlie with a red haired woman slightly taller than him, always gazing at him like he was a holy man. If you looked down on the scene from above it seemed like current day Charlie had tunneled into this apartment and decided to be a squatter in the livingroom. As the night wore on, the dreams started to claw their way past the liquor and Charlie would yell “Winifred!” or “No!” or “Please!” and then sleep garbled gibberish. Finally, in the early morning, or what the city’s programming simulated as a morning, he lurched up from the mattress, rushed to the bathroom, the only other part of the apartment apparently in use, and threw up.

Charlie got himself together, shaking a bit from the paroxysm of vomiting and stripped off his clothes and took a shower. He steadily reduced the temperature of the shower, numbing himself and driving off the remaining intoxication. He pulled some shorts and a t-shirt out of the mostly clean pile, put them on followed by his jumpsuit, gun belt and boots. He was working today, so he’d need coffee and actual food so he left his quarters and headed for the greasy spoon that was two hallways over. He always caused a slight ripple when he went into the place, it was frequented by people who were technically criminals. However in The Hole there weren’t technically any laws, just a sort of balance. He sat at the counter and Drew the owner came over and poured him some coffee and then gestured to the cook to make the usual. Charlie didn’t have to speak in this joint. The ripple in the room died away, Charlie wasn’t after anyone. He drank his coffee and scanned the messages on his communications device, nothing of interest. Which sucked. It meant a whole day trying to dodge his thoughts and his memories and the images from his dreams. He drank his coffee and ate his eggs, pseudo-bacon, and fake-potatoes.

After breakfast he boarded a lift down to the twentieth level where the Sheriff’s command center was. He was away in his thoughts and hadn’t yet consumed enough coffee, this is why it didn’t strike him as odd that the lift was empty except for him. By the time it started to occur to him, the doors opened on level twelve and two men with knives leapt through the opening and onto him. He was fast and he’d drawn his blaster, but one of the men’s knives transfixed his gun hand wrist and his blaster dropped to the floor as his hand involuntarily opened. He screamed with pain reaching with his other hand for his blade, but the other guy clamped an immobility cuff onto his wrist and that took out that whole side of his body. He fell under their combined weight and they pummeled him until he blacked out.

Charlie woke up feeling beat up and sick for the second time that day and the bad feeling he usually had about not recognizing where he was didn’t go away this time. He was laying on his side in immobility cuffs, his blaster, knife, gun belt were gone. He was in a nondescript living quarters someplace in the teens, hard to tell because they all looked the same down there. He realized that there was someone behind him, silently watching him. He painfully jerked his shoulders around to get a look. He recognized the man, in his late twenties, sandy hair, nose broken and healed a few times, one cheek bone a little more pronounced than the other, ears that looked like growths rather than normal ears. Jonnie Crispe was a bare knuckle fighter, a pretty successful one, meaning he wasn’t dead yet. “The fuck you doing Jonnie Crispe? Sheriff’s going to turn you inside out…” Crispe didn’t let him finish, and prodded him with a stick which turned out to be a shock baton. Charlie convulsed and nearly bit his tongue off. 

“Hey Charlie, no need to fill me in on the consequences of my actions. I’m not planning on hanging around after we’re done. I was going to move on anyway but I wanted to take care of this before I went, or actually on the way.” Charlie was still paralyzed by the shock and could only spit and cough in response. “You probably didn’t know that Bill Mansel was my dad, not many people did, we didn’t spend a lot of time together since he was a busy smuggler. In any case, he was, and I loved my dad.” Charlie’s eyes bulged and he managed to stutter “I tried to give Bill a chance, he was smuggling in counterfeit drugs, killing people, he wouldn't stop! Anyone else would have…” Jonnie shocked him again, Charlie’s head slammed back into the floor a trickle of blood flowed from his nose and ears. “What you did was send him ‘camping’. You boys think it’s funny to call putting a man in a survival tent in the middle of nowhere for a week with no suit and barely enough O2 and food and water to survive ‘camping’. About a 50/50 shot at survival as it turns out, most folks here only have cursory outside survival training. I was told that camping referred to a leisure activity that people did with their kids in the old days, a tent out in the forest whatever that is.” His eyes welled up “Painful irony for me.”

“So, perhaps by now you’ll have figured out where this is going…” Charlie tried to bring himself to his feet, but Jonnie shocked him until he fell unconscious. The men worked quickly to put Charlie into an emergency atmosphere protection bag, used to rescue people who were injured outside. They looked at Jonnie and he said “Ok, when I trigger the electro-magnetic pulse we’re going to winch down lift shaft number five all the way to the bottom and go out the mine tractor exit. Suit up, the shielding on the suits will keep them working through the EMP.” He went over to a box under the sink and pulled it away to reveal a spiral device with glowing super capacitor that had been quietly building up charge for six months, so slow none of the security systems detected it. Once they had their suits on, he pressed the black button on the top of the device and there was a brilliant flash which fortunately their suit’s sun shield blocked or they’d have been blinded permanently. Everything around them shut down, air, light, monitors, door locks. They picked Charlie up in the bag and left.

Outside the tractor entrance they carried Charlie to a ravine where Crispe had hidden horses for them. Horses were four legged walking robots that were used for transportation on the surface. They were better than wheeled vehicles because they were able to clamber over the cracked and broken surface with ease. They threw Charlie over the back of one of them, activating the O2 in the bag and seeing him gasp and then mounted up and started riding out into the giant wasteland that was the bottom of the Paramus mine. The total area was about a thousand square miles, give or take. The land was cross hatched with mining roads but there was nothing out there except for mining waste and the deep dark holes of abandoned shafts. They rode for several hours before Charlie started to come around.

Charlie knew where he was and why, and for some reason it really didn’t bother him too much. He hung over the horse, his wrist was throbbing as were the injuries from the shocks and beating. He looked around but from the angle he was at, all he could see was the back legs of the horse and the road surface, not very helpful. ‘Hey Winifred, Looks like this is it, I’m just about done, maybe if the religious fuckers are right I’ll get to see you again, that’d be cool. But more likely it’s just going to suck for a while and then it’ll be lights out. Easier than you had it.’ he thought. He tried to think about the happy times. He’d married Winifred Hastings after meeting her at the Lawman’s Ball fundraising dance when he was a rookie. They’d latched onto each other like it was just the obvious thing to do. They were very different people, she was a Phd. geologist, scholarly, well read, driven and intellectual. He was a cop, he came from a cop family, he loved being a cop, he loved his fellow deputies almost as much as he loved her. They turned out to share a lot of interests in between and were a great complement for each other.

The next thing he knew, Charlie was being thrown violently down off the horse, landing on the ground in the atmosphere bag, which he hoped didn’t rip. Crispe got down from his horse and came over and pressed his helmet against the window in the front of the bag so Charlie could hear him. “I don’t know how long these survival bags are supposed to be good for. My dad was supposed to have enough in his shelter for a week and then they’d come back retrieve him. He lost his mind from the stress around the third day and tried to run back to The Hole without a suit. The atmosphere stopped his running after about a half a mile and then killed him by burning his lungs out in about an hour. So, if you can keep it together you’ve got the better option of just suffocating.” He stood up, mounted his horse and all of them rode off out of Charlie’s field of vision.

As Charlie lay there looking up at the sky, the two suns marching along in their daily path he couldn’t help but think about when everything went bad. He’d come home one morning after an all night shift and found Winifred still home, sitting at the table, drinking bourbon. She looked at him her eyes red from crying and said “I had my physical last night at the end of my shift, I’ve got Tarbell’s syndrome.” Charlie had heard of Tarbell’s syndrome, a few people in The Hole had been diagnosed with it. He knew that it meant certain death with no hope of a cure. He knelt in front of her and hugged her to him and and wept. The progress of the disease was relentless and excruciatingly slow, she had digestive problems, liver problems, kidney problems. All the doctors could do was try and manage the symptoms and the pain. This went on for two hard years. One evening he came home and she was asleep. He took off his blaster and put it on the night table. He turned around to take off his coveralls and he heard her yell from behind him “Who the fuck are you ? Why are you in my bedroom? If you move I’m going to shoot you!” He turned to look and saw she’d grabbed his blaster right before she pulled the trigger in panic without aiming. The bolt went through the back of his leg. He managed to disarm her and restrain her. He showed her pictures of them together, he told her who he was, told her about her disease. She wept with frustration, he wept with horror and loss. She was hospitalized for a few days, but then she became catatonic and remained that way until she died a month later. His life had been a tunnel of work and drunkenness since then. He’d been half hoping that someone would finally take him out for a long time.

Both of the suns had set and the brief night on Enjay had come, the stars were very pretty, the tiny moons sped across the sky. It was sorta peaceful, and Charlie was feeling light headed. It was either from lack of oxygen because the survival bag had been depleted already, or from the blood loss from the stab wound in his wrist. Charlie smiled, and tears streamed down his face. “Winifred, I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you, I would have given anything, done anything…” his voice trailed away. Just then a light shone down through the window of the survival bag and Tom Ditson’s helmet came into view as he pressed it to the glass. “Who are you talking to Charlie?” Ditson asked. “Winifred, Tom I was talking to Winifred…” Charlie said. Sheriff Tom Ditson nodded and then connected another O2 tank to the survival bag. He said “We were on to Jonnie as soon as your blaster left your possession and your location sensor said you were horizontal and not in a place for that. The EMP slowed us down a bit, the office is shielded so all our stuff stayed up. However, we had to use the emergency mechanical lift to get out. That thing is really slow. Seath is managing the restarts on all the other levels. Fortunately people in The Hole are so used to shit breaking all the time, there really isn’t any panic. Anyway, sorry it took so long, we’ve got you.” He and Deputy Longley hauled Charlie up onto the back of a horse and headed back to The Hole.

A few days later Charlie was back at work in the Sheriff’s office and Sheriff Ditson called him into his office. “They got Jonnie Crispe and the other two over at The Stink, they’ve been dealt with.” Charlie looked pained and started to say something but Ditson cut him off “This isn’t about you and them Charlie, it isn’t about his daddy, it’s that we’re the only law here at all and we can’t have anyone in any of the cities getting the idea it’s ok to come after us.” Charlie nodded. Ditson looked at him and squinted, “Is that a new coverall Charlie ?” Charlie spit tobacco juice into Ditson’s waste basket, an action that Ditson had repeatedly tried to discourage in the past. “So what if it is? You trying to sexually harass me now Ditson?” Sheriff Ditson smiled, “Get the fuck out of here Charlie… go do some lawman shit.”

Summer

This story got started because I was tired of summer and was impatient for fall to come. Also, in my previous story “Cowboys” Seath didn’t have much of a role, it just worked out that way, so I started with her in this one.

Seath Holman sat straight up in her cot, suddenly awake, her blaster in her hand, her dark hair plastered to the side of her face by sweat, not at all sure what had awakened her. Her quarters were one room away from the sheriff's office monitoring center, she was never far from the pulse of life in Paramus ( AKA The Hole) on planet Enjay. After establishing that there was no threat in her quarters, she got up from her bunk, dragged her hair back into a ponytail, laced on her boots and put on her gun belt over her shorts and tank top and holstered her blaster. Normally she’d be wearing the blue coveralls of a Deputy Sheriff, but it was “Summer” in the Hole, an ironic reference to seasons on a planet that really only had one season, shitty. Summer in the Hole was actually the six to eight weeks a year that each of the secondary air processing systems was taken offline to be rebuilt in sequence. If they weren’t rebuilt every year a failure at the wrong time in the planet’s orbit would cook them all. Temperatures would go up an average of twenty degrees at peak when the two suns were shining on the face of The Hole that showed out of the side of the mostly defunct open pit mine it was named for.

Seath left her quarters and headed down the hallway towards the monitoring center passing a few similarly atired colleagues and grabbing an iced coffee from the break room on the way. In the monitoring center she dropped into the seat next to her boss Tom Ditson. He looked away from the monitors, surprised to see her. “What’s up Seath ?” he asked. “I don’t know, but something kicked me awake and I almost blastered my quarters, so I figured I’d have a look…” she said. Ditson knew that Seath’s intuition about the city and it’s inhabitants was finely tuned and very accurate so he just pushed the control panel over to her and leaned back. Seath’s fingers flowed over the control panel, bringing up dozens of displays spreading themselves across the enormous display surface. Soon she started to eliminate displays and combine others, working so fast Tom had no idea what she was reacting to in order to decide which ones were significant.

“I’ve got an idea.“ she said, pulling two cross sections of different levels in The Hole together in the center of the display area. She pointed at the temperature readouts. “Look at level nine, it is almost a degree higher in temperature than level eight and level seven.” Sheriff Ditson shrugged and and said “So what, there are temperature fluctuations all the time?” Seath brought up a historical graph of the temperature over the last few days and said “This isn’t a fluctuation, it’s been trending up for several hours, and that should be impossible, all of the levels should have equalized and absorbed any fluctuation in minutes.” Ditson’s eyes widened in recognition, and he said “The Crazy 8’s are at it again… fuck…” She zoomed in on a section of quarters on the eighth level and then overrode the privacy lockouts and looked inside. In most rooms families were asleep, in a couple of rooms illegal and officially ignored drinking clubs were supplying the hard core drinkers with their cheap product, and then there were four rooms in a group that remained black. “Super, I’m going to have to go down there.” Seath said, looking back in the footage to when the surveillance had been blocked, only few hours ago, that was why the alarms hadn’t triggered yet.

Tom Ditson stood up from the console and said, “Yes, but you should take Charlie with you. If he’s sober enough.” Seath frowned and said “I’d rather take Mark, Charlie would certainly get to the bottom of this fast, but then we’d have another problem that might take weeks to settle out. I think Mark can restrain himself from putting holes in everyone he meets.” Ditson nodded, “OK, but remember Mark’s new and he doesn’t know the Crazy 8’s and the Niners like you and Charlie do, so keep an eye on him” Seath paged Mark Longley and while she waited she reviewed the last few hours of surveillance from levels eight and nine. 

Longley arrived a few minutes later and she and the Sheriff brought him up to speed. Then Seath said, “There are some interesting things in recorded surveillance, I’ve been looking in particular at the mass air returns on level eight, check this out.” She showed them a video of a man with a bald head tattooed with a large eight ball with a face and a screaming mouth full of teeth walking past the mass air return. The man passed it once then a second time in the same hour and then the third time he gave a jerk as he went by, a blur of something flying up into the air return was briefly visible but mostly blocked from surveillance by his large tattooed body. Mark said “What was that ? Did he throw something into the mass air return ? Why didn’t it just fall back out ?” Ditson scowled and said “It was an emergency atmosphere seal, it looks like a grenade, you arm it and then there’s a delay so you can toss it into a hallway or a room and it explodes deploying a fast hardening polymer shield that seals against atmosphere.” Seath continued “They’re in emergency kits all over the city, supposedly tamper proof and alarmed, apparently not.”

Longley looked back and forth between Seath and Ditson in mild confusion “Ok, so I get it that the Crazy 8’s and the Niners are rival gangs, and that they hate each other, but why would the 8’s do something that they know will imbalance the air system and hurt them too ?” Tom Ditson sighed and said, “Because this isn’t about the gangs, it's about something else, the 8’s want us to focus on this because it affects the whole city while they do whatever it is they’re doing. You two need to go up there and figure out what it is and shut it down. I’ll see if I can keep a lid on the Niners.” Seath and Mark went into the next room and started putting on their body armour and their blues, they were going to roast especially on the upper levels, but being cool wasn’t worth having no protection at all from knives and blaster bolts.

Soon, the two Deputies were sweating profusely as their lift rose from level twenty up to the lower numbered levels closer to the surface. The lower numbered levels were the oldest ones, built during the boom times of the mine, thrown together rapidly, without safety and comfort in mind. The communities there were the descendants of those original mine workers, used to hard work, hard drinking and sudden death. Now that the mining operation had shrunk to a precision operation extracting only very expensive, very rare elements from The Hole, a new economy had sprung up to support the unemployed miners. Most of them couldn’t leave, they didn’t have the money to pay for a jump ship, and they were too old and beaten for the company to bother with moving them. So they turned to gambling, whoring, bare knuckle fights, and drugs for their amusement and employment. None of these things was strictly illegal in The Hole, but excessive violence or acts endangering public health and safety in their pursuit was kept under control by the Sheriff and his Deputies.

“I was born on seven, not much better a place than eight or nine. My parents sold clothes made from recycled material, they were good at staying out of the way of the gangs. They managed to make enough money to keep me from having to become a sex worker like most girls on seven.” Seath said “I grew up around the Crazy 8’s and Niners and they didn’t like it much when I joined the Sheriff’s department. I always wondered if they had something to do with my husband’s killing.” Mark couldn’t think of what to say in response to this, so he just nodded. The doors of the lift opened on level eight and a wave of humid air smelling of human funk, drug smoke, and things best not discussed rushed over Mark and Seath. Mark almost gagged as he tried to draw a breath in the heavy air. Seath scanned the entryway before stepping off the lift, she beckoned for Mark to follow her as she headed down a wide corridor whose walls were emblazoned with screaming 8 balls. People glared at them as the passed, most of them partially clothed displaying their gang ink, selling things out of the doors to their quarters. Seath led the way towards the rooms that she’d seen blacked out, stepping over drugged out people laying against the walls and dodging naked children that pelted after each other fighting and playing in the hallway.

The Deputies’ communication units chimed and Mark said “Go ahead command center.” Tom Ditson responded “I had a word with the Markus the leader of the Niners. He had already noticed the rise in temperature and had sent someone to talk to the 8’s about it. They beat up his messenger and sent him back, so now Markus is thinking of sending a larger group with a different mission. I told him that the 8’s were trying to provoke him and that I didn’t know why yet. I asked him to give us a day to get to the bottom of this. He said he’d give us four hours, which he really isn’t giving us, his head tactical guy is on his way back from Newark and won’t be back for four hours.” Seath said “Understood, we’ll try and get this over with quick, we don’t want to be in the crossfire if they come down here.” Ditson continued “Another thing, the computer has been looking at the temperature increase, according to its simulation just blocking the air returns doesn’t explain it. Something on eight is generating a bunch of heat, and the source seems to be close to the blacked out rooms you found.” Seath and Mark looked at each other, Seath said “Acknowledged, we’re almost there, I’ll leave comms open.”

They reached the block they were looking for and noticed that unlike the blocks around it all of the doors on both branching hallways were closed. People across from them, upon noticing the Deputies, pulled their wares inside their quarters and closed their doors as well. “I don’t like that at all.” said Mark, flipping off the safety on his blaster and making sure it was free in it’s holster. Seath yelled “Ok you fucking gang bangers, if you think I’m going to kick in your door so you can blow me the fuck up with some booby trap you are out of your fucking minds!” Her voice rang down the silent hallways, and then she yelled “Here’s how it’s going to go, you are going to open up your doors nice and slow and come out here to answer my questions!” She pulled out a remote console, “If you do not come out here, I’m going to retreat to a safe distance and then I will fill those four rooms completely with sewage. I will begin counting down!” She backed out of the junction of hallways shouting “5”...”4”...”3”...”2”... and the door nearest the junction on the right side opened and a man stepped out.

“Hey shitbag!” Seath said, “Shouldn’t you be more polite? They came out...” Mark whispered, both Seath and Shitbag looked amused, “His name is Shitbag, his momma calls him that… I’ve known him for 20 years, isn’t that right Shitbag?” “Heh, heh, heh yep that’s right Deputy, my momma had a sense of humor she did.” Shitbag said through some of the worst teeth Mark had ever seen, his face was tattooed to look like the the screaming 8 ball and his mouth was a pretty good rendering of the scary teeth on the logo. “What do you deputies want ?” Seath put away the remote console and rested her hand on her blaster. “Surveillance is blind in these four units, that’s not allowed, we need it back on, and I need to see what’s going on in there.” Shitbag did something with his mouth that Mark decided to interpret as smiling “Sure thing deputy, come right in, I’ll show you around…” Seath drew her blaster and it’s targeting laser painted a red dot on Shitbag’s forehead right on the number eight. “No thanks, you have them open all the doors come out here with their hands where I can see them and stand facing the wall and then we’ll take a peek.”

Shitbag nodded and then he waved his left hand, Mark’s blaster was out now as well, but almost at the same time the doors had opened and a dozen 8’s spilled out and were now pointing their blasters at the deputies. “I’m sorry, we require privacy, so you two should go back where you came from, unless you want to get your ink and join us?” Shitbag said, and then made noises that were probably laughing. Seath said “OK, have it your way…” but instead of backing away, she stepped forward and shot Shitbag in the forehead, there was a rattle of triggers being pulled, but no blaster fire tore Seath to pieces. “All of you get on the floor, now, anyone hesitates I will put you down!” they all hit the deck assuming the approved position. Mark’s gun hand was trembling slightly, and once he’d composed himself he said “Why aren’t we dead ?” Seath leaned in and whispered in his ear “We intercept all of the blasters that get into this place and we make sure they all have a remote deactivate, that was what I was doing with the control pad. Be careful, can’t remote deactivate a machete.”

They put demobilization cuffs on the gang members in the hallway keeping watch on the open doors while they did it. Detention robots tracked to the cuffs came and removed the criminals and Shitbag’s cuffed corpse. Then they went in the nearest unit, Seath first, followed by Mark. The unit wasn’t set up as a living space anymore, it was filled with the heavy boxes that ore was shipped out of the mine in. Mark examined the box nearest him checking it with a scanner for explosives and trigger circuitry, the scan was clean so he lifted the top of the box. A gentle red glow emanated from the box and their radiation detector alarms went off, Mark dropped the lid and the alarms shut off. He looked at the reading and then at Seath “Whatever it is, that stuff is extremely hot, we’re probably going to need decontamination when we get out of here.” Seath said “There’s no radioactive ore on this planet, if there were the company would be here mining it” Mark replied “Well, we’ve found our heat source, this stuff is still reacting. Let's check the other units.”

Two of the other units were exactly the same, filled with ore boxes. It turned out that the 8’s had cut through the walls of the units, connecting them and the final room which was different. It had a big tunnel going out the back, the cut away wall section was propped next to it, to allow it to be plugged up again. The other openings were the same way. As they entered the room, an ore box hauler could be seen coming down the tunnel, they ducked behind an ore box and watched as the driver connected the hauler to another ore box and turned around in the cab of the hauler and drove back into the tunnel. “What the fuck is going on ?” Mark hissed, “They’re taking the ore into a tunnel ? I’m no miner but that seems like the wrong way.” Seath grinned and said “We need to wait for them to get done with their work.” She led him to a closet that was too small for an ore box and they pulled the door mostly closed. They watched the ore haulers clear out the rooms and then the drivers came out of the tunnel and levered the wall section back into place and sprayed a masking sealant over it hiding the seam. They did the same for the openings between the rooms. Then they pulled out a black market control pad and turned the surveillance back on and left.

Seath and Mark emerged from their closet and crossed to where the tunnel opening had been. Seath pulled a prybar out of her belt and levered the wall section back out and they shoved it aside together. They turned on the flashlights mounted on their blasters and headed into the tunnel. After about 100 meters the tunnel opened into a huge gallery, the walls were rough but covered with wire mesh and concrete, anchor bolts protruded everywhere. Their atmosphere warning started to chime, the air in this space was mixed with the planet’s atmosphere. It wouldn’t kill them right away, but more than a few hours and they’d be in serious trouble. 

Seath went over to where there was a huge stack of ore containers and she rubbed the label on one of the containers so she could read it and it came off in her hand revealing another label. “It’s not an ore container, it’s a waste container and this is radioactive waste from someone’s illegal reactor. People needing power for unsanctioned businesses often use dirty reactors, but then they have a problem of an ever growing radioactive signature pointing right at them for any patrolling company cruiser to see. These knuckleheads have gone into business storing radioactive waste in the construction space around the enclosed city that they live in.” Mark shook his head “That is the fucking stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. But wait, how are they getting the stuff in here to start with? Only company ships come here, we get manifests from all of them.” Mark’s face showed dawning realization as he continued answering his own question “Empties, we don’t weigh the empties coming back from the processing plant.” Seath nodded, she’d gotten there a while ago. “And the cleaning and repair plant for empties is on the eighth level, so people moving empties around on this level isn’t strange at all.”

Just then there was a loud rumbling noise and a shockwave pushing a wall of dust threw them both to the ground. Once the dust settled a bit, they could see that the tunnel they had come in was gone. Seath tried to contact the Sheriff on her communications unit, but it wasn’t working in this space so close to a big pile of nuclear waste. She said “Don’t worry, Tom’s been watching us since they put the surveillance back on, he knows where we are, he’ll get us out.” Mark looked at the huge gallery they were in and it felt very small all of a sudden. They got as far from the stack of waste boxes as they could and sat down against the wall. After an hour or so, they heard a noise from above them and they saw a big plate in the top of the gallery slide away with a grinding noise. Charlie, unmistakeable in his nasty blueish coveralls in a harness descended from the opening on a cable. “Hey fuckwits, I got sent to get you out of here!” he yelled.

After more abuse, he put the harness on each of them in turn and winched them out of the pit and then himself. He used a rusty old lever mechanism to shove the plate back into place. “What is this place ?” Mark asked looking around at the dusty lockers and showers. “It’s the main entrance for the workers who built the city, there used to be an elevator that went down to the bottom of that gallery, they removed it a long time ago.” Charlie growled, “Tom’s rounding up the rest of the 8’s idiot leadership and he’s alerted the company assholes to trace the loads back and close down the source. If you two kids are ok, our next task is to reopen the bulk air returns and then we have to guard a bunch of ore haulers so they can take this shit out of there and ship it to a proper fucking disposal site.”

Later that night they were all in a bar back in their own domain on level twenty. Tom said “Bullet Head, the 8’s warlord, was under the mistaken impression that a) the waste was inert, wrong it was still reacting and generating a lot of heat, so that would have created a nice little nuclear pile and b) that the back wall of The Hole was shielded from radiation just like the front, wrong again, the company was too cheap to shield the back of the city as the rock behind it is plenty of protection from the Sun's radiation. So If we’d missed this little operation for any longer, it would have irradiated several levels of the city and then melted down and probably opened up the whole side of city making it uninhabitable. We’ve put in scales and radiation scanners in the empties return bay to prevent this stupid idea from reoccurring. ” He paused raising his glass of bourbon “Here’s to Seath and her weird senses!” Everyone drank to that. Seath said “Actually I don’t think it’s that weird, I realized that what woke me up was the backdraft caused by closing up the bulk air returns.” Everyone looked around the table and nervous laughter broke out, then another round was ordered and they got back to bitching about the heat.

Cowboys

This story just came from the first line which, for years, came to me every time I would think about writing a short story. Apparently this is what comes after that line...

The three men sat on their horses atop the towering mesa, looking out over the huge empty valley. Empty except for the thin column of dust trailing behind tiny figures in the distance, moving towards them. The oldest man in the group, slightly stooped with age, sighed and said “Well, they’re coming, just like I said…” he spat into the scupper that ringed the inside of his helmet, a red noxious mixture of tobacco juice, phlegm, and blood “...this is going to fucking suck.” He turned to look at the young man beside him, a tall thin guy, with a relatively new atmosphere suit, helmet still shiny and not hardly pockmarked, unlike his own. The young guy looked at him nervously, shifting in the saddle of his horse. “Horse” was local slang for the all-terrain walking robots that they rode on, the atmosphere on the planet would burn the lungs out of a horse and it’s rider in a matter of hours. “Enjay” was the name of the planet derived from the name assigned to it by a humorist in the first wave of settlers, short for “New Jersey.” In fact the mesa that they were atop was the opening of a giant open pit mine, now abandoned, the city of Paramus was dug into its wall below them, safe from the scouring storms and blasting solar radiation. Nobody called the city by its name they just called it “The Dry Hole” or just “The Hole.”

The third man looked at the old guy and the kid and shook his head, he was wearing a weathered  helmet that one could just distinguish a star pattern inside a circle on the back and the letters “SHER” and “DITSON.” He said “I’d rather deal with them before they get to the city, last time they made a mess and lots of civilians got caught up in it and hurt.” The older guy whose damaged and heavily modified helmet was labeled “ROSS” said “Jesus Christ Tom, what the fuck are we going to do with them out in the wasteland, they fucking live there, they’re armed to the teeth and you’ve got an old man and a fucking infant on your side…” he jerked his thumb at the kid who’s helmet plainly read “LONGLEY.” Mark Longley shot him an irritated look. He’d been taking crap from Charlie Ross for weeks now since he’d arrived to be the newest deputy working in The Hole. He wondered what he’d done in his life to merit this kind of punishment.

Sheriff Thomas Ditson looked up to the sky as if an answer was going to be written there, he didn’t see one, instead he noted that the second sun was rising. The radiation meters on their horses started to ping quietly. Without speaking they all grabbed the handles that protruded from the backs of the horses, kicked them into motion and turned towards the descending ramp that led into the city and its radiation shielding, their suits provided protection, but nobody put them to the test unessesarily.

A short time later the three of them attired in matching jumpsuits colored “I’m a cop blue” cinched at the waist with a belt holding blaster/stun gun, cuffs, first aid kit, radio, and extra power modules walked into the Sheriff’s Office on the middle level of The Hole. Charlie’s jumpsuit looked like it had never been cleaned, it had spatters of his and other’s blood, maybe other fluids, and a couple of holes where blaster bolts had burned their way through it and him. People had tried mentioning that he should wash or better yet burn the uniform, on good days they were answered with a “fuck yourself” on bad days with gunfire. In the office was the other deputy, Seath Holman a short dark haired woman wearing the same jumpsuit and equipment. Seath looked up from her desk and saw all she needed to know in their faces, she muttered “Fuck me…” under her breath.

Everyone got to work packing gear for the trek across the plains to meet the cowboys. They were called cowboys because they were herders, of people, not cows. They would come to a city and abduct people and transport them to other cities and sell them to employers who needed workers. It wasn’t strictly illegal on Enjay, because they weren’t enslaved, they just had to raise enough money to afford to get back home, so they had to work. It was just the most aggressive sort of recruiting… The problems came because inevitably people resisted being “recruited” and violence ensued. Seath said “I suppose I’m left policing the entire goddamn city again…” Tom flinched like something had hit him in the back… “I’m afraid so, you’re the best qualified with all of the comms equipment and you have the contacts on the company ships to call in reinforcements…” his voice petered out at that point seeing the fury in Seath’s face… “I hope they get here, I will absolutely fuck them up if they do…” she said, and returned to packing.

Tom Ditson was a tall thin man in his forties, he had short grey hair and usually a day or so of stubble, and intense brown eyes that conveyed his authority. He’d been Sheriff in The Hole for 15 years, he was a deputy for 10 more when his father Hugh Ditson was Sheriff. Originally the position was appointed by the company that had colonized Enjay for the purpose of extracting the rare earths. Once the yield of the mines dropped below their goal the company backed away. After that the role became hereditary, most of the inhabitants of the planet had fled democracy and didn’t think much of government and laws in general. The Sheriff and his deputies provided both policing and adjudication of conflicts of all kinds that hadn’t already been sorted out some other way, mainly trying to avoid escalations that would impact orderly business continuing. 

Ditson left the others to their work and walked into the control center where a wall of monitors showed a constantly changing array of views of the city, the computer chose what to show based on sophisticated pattern recognition. He zoomed in on a few interesting views, checking to see if they needed attention, this was normally Seath’s job, she was incredibly skilled with the system as well as being a savant at recognizing situations that were going to escalate. This was how a small force of four people were able to keep a lid on a city of more than 50,000 inhabitants. Nothing interesting was going on but he continued to poke around, looking for some of the people he had known to work with the cowboys in previous years, steering them to skilled workers they had bounty for. He wanted some clue as to where in the city they were planning to enter, and who they were after in case things got back to The Hole.

He found one of them, Elizabeth Sparrow, packing outdoor gear, just like his deputies, including an extra long range blaster. He told the computer to track her and her known associates. Given her location down on Level 1, South East, Block 23 he was able to have the computer identify the likely targets and start tracking them. She was probably going out to meet the cowboys so following her would be a good way to ambush them. It occurred to Ditson that she wasn’t trying too hard to avoid surveillance that everyone knew was there, so he had the computer start looking for someone on the cowboy watch list that it couldn’t locate. It turned up Ebenezer Thompson who had disappeared from surveillance two days ago, in Level 1, North West, Block 101. Ebenezer was the cousin of the cowboy’s leader, Roy Thompson, he’d been jailed after the cowboy’s last trip to The Hole for beating one of the resisters to death. Looking through his quarters it became clear that the only outdoor gear in there was old and worn out, he was probably already outside. The Sheriff set the computer to scanning all the exit footage from the last three days to look for people meeting Ebenezer’s form factor and gait leaving, it’d take a few hours. He also sent a requisition to the satellite network for updates on the approaching cowboys and to try to find someone exiting the North West side of the city matching Thompson’s description.

Mark Longley was cleaning and running diagnostics on his favorite gun, a long range blaster that was built to be able to hit a target the size of a grapefruit  four kilometers away, while hiding it’s own energy signature. The sensors and display were super high resolution and Longley’s scores in sniper school were extremely high. It wasn’t punishment that had gotten him to The Hole, it was Sheriff Ditson’s request for the best sniper in the company’s most recent graduating class in the security division. Ditson had been required to pay the company for the recruit since they no longer funded any services on Enjay, it wasn’t hard to drum up the funds from the city’s employers. For his own part Longley was young, but he’d already done a tour for the company performing ILR (Intelligent Life Removal) missions on other planets the company wanted to mine, so he knew for sure he’d seen and done a few things that Charlie had never imagined. He knew he had to take his lumps here until he earned his place, but he hoped this mission would be a big step forward.

Charlie Ross was in his 70’s, he limped from a blaster wound that had removed part of his leg muscle, he hunched a bit from a slash from a blade. His beard was grey and splotched with tobacco stains, his gums were bleeding from decades of too much radiation, his liver was enlarged from many years of drinking. His eyes used to be blue, now they were more dominantly yellow and bloodshot. The only thing in perfect condition on Charlie was his blaster and his blade, both more than 25 years old, both looked like they’d been manufactured yesterday. He hummed tunelessly as he put his gear together for the mission, pausing to spit tobacco juice from his wad into a can nearby. Charlie had a fatalistic view of the job, he figured he’d already lived too long, so this was all extra time. He didn’t hold back with his opinion or his blaster fire, and there were very few people in The Hole that weren’t afraid of him. He did hate going out of the city into the wasteland, he had done it a lot when he was younger and he had developed a loathing for the pocked terrain filled with structurally unsound mining tunnels, multi-legged scorpion like bugs with worse stings, searing radiation, and chemical dust storms. “Motherfuckers…” he growled as he put a molecular fine edge on his knife.

Seath Holman tried hard to not be downwind of Charlie, as she put the Sheriff’s kit together for him. She’d been working in the office for 20 years since her husband the prior deputy had been killed by a tweaked up miner with a laser torch. In those years she’d developed an intimate knowledge of who was who and what they were up to in The Hole. She’d also had plenty of field work in those years including getting the opportunity to put a number of blaster holes in the miner that’d killed her husband. She didn’t like the cowboys at all, in no small part because they liked to take women of all professions and sell them as sex workers in the other cities. Part of the reason the Sheriff didn’t want her to come on the mission was that he needed to try and dissuade the cowboys from their mission and not create a reason for the cities that hired them to send a strike team with the next bunch. He knew that Seath would castrate the whole bunch of them without any talking at all. She grinned as she put some HE grenades into his pack along side the non-lethal stun grenades, of course the Sheriff would look at a grenade before he used it.

The next morning they all met at the stable where the horses were refueled and the reagents that converted the atmosphere into breathable air were replenished in their suit packs. Everyone looked a bit under the weather, Charlie possibly the worst of the bunch. They grimly loaded the equipment onto the horses and suited up, testing the life support and shielding systems one last time before they left. Overnight the computer had figured out where Ebenezer had exited the city and the satellites had located him, several miles out on an intercept course with the cowboys. Ms. Sparrow had also left the city, officially bound for Newark aka The Stink. They kept a track on her with the satellites. They headed out on Ebenezer’s trail, their horses bounding over the broken terrain while keeping them relatively stable on their backs. The pinging of the radiation meters was continuous.

The good news for them was that their horses were much faster than the ones allowed to civilians, even with the illegal mods that most people applied, so they gained steadily on Ebenezer. The bad news was the satellite reports that Sparrow had turned in their direction and was headed to intercept. After they had been riding for several hours the Sheriff pulled along side Longley and leaned over pressing his helmet against Longley’s for several minutes having a private conversation. Charlie grumbled openly on the comm channel, “You fuckers dating now you gotta cuddle out here on the fucking trail ?” Ditson broke away and said “Don’’t be jealous Charlie, I love you too.” Charlie spat saying “Great! I feel so good now, cocksuckers!” 

A few more hours passed and as the second sun was setting they overtook Ebenezer. He was stopping to set up a shelter and rest for the night. They were in a good position, behind a huge mining waste pile where he couldn’t detect them. They waited for Ebenezer to inflate his shelter and anchor it to the rock and crawl inside, then they approached him from three sides. Ebenezer awoke from his brief sleep to Charlie straddling him and suddenly grasping his long beard and jerking his head back to press his blade to Ebenezer’s throat. “Hey fuckwit…” Charlie snarled “You give me any trouble I will decapitate you.” Ebenezer knew better than to resist and instead went limp and said “What is the problem Charlie, can’t a guy travel without interference anymore?” Charlie laughed “Gimme a break Eb, we know that Roy’s coming, and we know you’re going to meet him to tell him where to find the people he’s contracted to fetch. So quit fucking around and tell me everything you know about what he’s doing and I won’t start skinning you face first!” He shaved a thin layer of skin off of Ebenezer’s nose with his blade for emphasis. 

Ditson and Longley stood outside the shelter monitoring Sparrow’s approach on satellite, “He’s not going to kill him before we get any information is he?” Longley asked glancing at the shelter “Nope, Charlie knows what he has to do, it’ll be fine…” Ditson said as a loud scream emanated from the plastic and foil tent. A few minutes later Charlie emerged, his atmosphere suit sprayed with blood, he didn’t bother to close the airlock on the tent. He said “They’re coming for senior geo-engineers, no women, no grunts, special mission for The Stink, they had a mine accident killed all of their senior guys. They don’t have the cash to get anyone to come to The Stink, so they’re looking at our guys.” Ditson looked at his shoes, he didn’t have the money to get multiple senior geo-engineers either, best he could do now is redirect them to another city. He looked at the tent, “Ebenezer has been a pain it the ass too long, I took preventative measures…” Charlie said heading towards his horse.

They rode onward getting closer to Roy Thompson’s group coming towards them through the night. Just before first sunrise they pitched a camp and slept for a couple of hours. After they’d eaten some rations and popped a couple of stims, they packed up and continued. Sparrow was now only a few miles off their track and they would encounter Thompson in a matter of hours. It was at that point that Charlie turned to check their six and he realized that Longley was gone, his horse was trundling along but he was gone, gun, pack and all. Charlie realized he had no idea when he’d left. He saw Tom looking at him and the empty horse and realized he shouldn’t ask. They came upon the cowboys in the open, and rode up to them. “Hey Roy…” the Sheriff said “Hey Tom…” Thompson said, his hand resting on his blaster. “Look Roy, I can’t have you making a mess in The Hole again. I’m here to try and see if you can go to The Gulch or The Pit and leave us alone, I can pay…” Thompson waved his hand “I don’t have time, The Stink is down, not operating, The Hole is closest, best I can do is leave you one guy to get by.” The Sheriff raised both his hands “I can give you 100,000 units to just turn aside…” Thompson drew his blaster pointing it at Ditson “Why do you have your hands in the air ?” he said as a blaster bolt went right through Ditson’s right hand. Everyone freaked out, Ditson clutched his wounded hand under his arm, plugging smoking hole in his suit, reaching for a sealant tube on his belt to close it up and also stop any bleeding. A few seconds later they heard a woman scream on the common comm channel. Three of Thomson’s men dropped from their horses, smoking holes in their heads. “Turn aside, take the money Roy…” Ditson gasped against the pain. By now Charlie had drawn and was pointing his gun at others in Thompson’s band. 

Charlie and Tom rode back towards the city, the satellites confirmed that Roy was headed towards The Pit, 100,000 credits richer and a few guys short. They came upon Mark sitting on a rock with his gun, his suit had an arc of blood across it. Charlie dismounted and helped him stow his stuff on the horse and get aboard. Charlie grunted “Ok, so you’re good for something… fucker.”