Rock Killer

Rock Killer

By

S. Evan Townsend

World Castle Publishing

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

World Castle Publishing

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © by S. Evan Townsend 2012

ISBN: 9781937593469

First Edition World Castle Publishing March 1, 2012

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photos: Shutterstock

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

Dedication

Dedicated to Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, and Larry Niven, with thanks.

Chapter One

“…someone in this room will be dead.”

Charlene Jones sat in a high-sided bathtub, trying to calm down. She was angry: angry with Frank, angry at Space Resources Incorporated, and angry with herself for being angry. She’d planned for a special night with Frank, but he suddenly had to work late. She’d wasted her bath. About once a month, she could afford to take a bath instead of a quick shower; and she was wasting the luxury she’d normally allow to envelop her by being angry.

She sloshed around in the water, which, in the moon’s gravity, moved like viscous oil but still managed to almost slop over the tub’s tall sides. The way water moved on the Moon fascinated her and she spent some time doing amateur fluid dynamics experiments playing in the bath as she did as a child. She soaped up a washcloth and rubbed it over her dark skin; Frank called it chocolate-cheesecake colored. Charlie’s maternal grandmother was as black as the lunar sky and Charlie had benefited from having such a grandmother in more ways than one. A soap bubble escaped from the washcloth, enjoying its freedom for a brief second before imploding. Charlie wondered what a bubble bath would be like. Maybe she’d have to bring some back from Earth next time. That amused her: bubbles on the Moon should last forever, taking six times as long to fall to the floor; or, actually, because of terminal velocity, longer even than that.
If I used some soap between my fingers and blew
, she thought, remembering how she’d made bubbles in the bath as a kid. She was watching a bubble’s ponderous fall when the computer beeped obnoxiously, signaling it was receiving a communication. “On, no video,” Charlie ordered, annoyed at having her fun interrupted. She had almost forgotten her anger.

The computer screen was behind her and she couldn’t see the face that appeared. “This better be good,” Charlie growled, not masking her annoyance. The answer didn’t come for a few seconds, annoying her further.

“It is,” an all too familiar voice said.

Charlie almost jumped out of the water. “Mitch?”

Two seconds later. “Yes.”

Charlie turned in the tub to look at the computer screen. Space Resources Incorporated’s Head of Security Mitchel’s face stared back at her. “Oh, it’s you, Mitch,” she said, “Computer, video on.”

If Mitchel responded to seeing Charlie in the tub, his face didn’t show it. “Is Frank handy?” he asked after the light-speed delay. Charlie had forgotten how that almost two second light-speed delay grew interminably long during conversations with persons on Earth.

“No,” Charlie answered. “He’s working late. He’s in the conference room giving the newbie briefing. A new batch arrived unexpectedly and you know he won’t put off the initial briefing.” She heard a little anger seep into her voice.

Two seconds later Mitch frowned. “Hmmmm. I can’t interrupt that. I’ll call in the morning–your morning.”

“Is it important?” Charlie asked.

Mitch shrugged. “Somewhat, but I have to talk to him personally.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him you called.”

“Thanks, Charlie,” Mitch said. “And Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t be too mad at him.”

Charlie smiled. “I won’t.”

“Oh, by the way,” he mentioned. “The next asteroid–” he looked off screen, “nineteen sixty-one– its tender will be leaving in a few weeks. Director Alex Chun—he’s a good man—and Security Chief Bill Thorne. He could use a second. He’s good, too.”

“I know, Mitch. Frank’s told me about both of them.”

“You want to go? I could pull some strings. Thorne and Chun both owe me favors. It’d be a good career move.”

Charlie frowned. “I don’t know. I’d like to stay here with Frank.”

“Charlie,” Mitchel admonished, “you know there are people here that don’t consider anything inside the orbit of the Moon to be ‘space.’ If you don’t get some trans-lunar experience–”

“I know, Mitch,” she cut him off. “But,” she hesitated, biting her lower lip. “I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it, okay?”

“I will. Bye, Mitch.”

“Good-bye, Charlie.” The screen went blank.

Charlie shook her head. A computer call from Earth to the Moon was about the most expensive long-distance call possible—one of the few long-distance calls that cost anything—and Mitch had used time to berate her about her career. Although Mitchel was the number one security man in the company, it wasn’t he that would be making decisions about her future. He’d already helped her by getting her away from guarding the warehouse at the Esmeraldas space facility in Ecuador.

Maybe she shouldn’t be so mad, she decided. Frank was security chief for SRI’s lunar facility, located in Nippon/European Space Agency Lunar Facility One. Frank had also helped her by giving her more responsibility than he normally would give someone with her few years in SRI, based on how well he knew her. And, when she needed it, he was ready with advice and help. Between Frank and Mitch, it seemed someone was always helping her. She didn’t know whether to resent it or be thankful.

SRI didn’t mind that Frank was living with one of his subordinates as long as there wasn’t the faintest hint of favoritism, which meant Charlie got more than her share of shit assignments. Small price to pay, though–Frank was medium height and had a strong build with dark curly hair, and the blackest eyes that had penetrated her to the soul when she first saw them.

And maybe, she wondered, I don’t stay here because I want to stay with Frank. Maybe I stay here because I want to stay where I’m comfortable.

She settled back down into the tub and was working on another bubble when the claxon sounded. This time Charlie did jump out of the tub. The water stuck to her, flowing slowly down her lithe body. The claxon was reserved for dire emergencies: wall breaches, life support shutting down, incoming meteoroids. Charlie had never heard it before except in drills. “Warning,” the computer droned as if announcing the weather, “intruders in access tunnel one.”

***

While she was in the bathtub, Charlie’s lover, Frank DeWite, was pacing at the front of the briefing room moving with practiced ease in the low gravity. He looked at the newbies, fresh from training at the SRI Low Earth Orbit Facility. Seven male and five female sets of wide eyes watched his every move. “Before six months are over, someone in this room will be dead,” DeWite said. He waited while they almost unconsciously looked around. W
ho will it be
? they were obviously thinking.

“It could be you,” DeWite said. “And do you know what will kill him?” He looked at a female. “Or her?”

No one responded.

“Stupidity will kill them,” DeWite said. “You don’t have to die. ‘Stay alert, stay alive.’ They used to say that in war. We’re not at war but we do have an enemy. The Moon will kill you if she can. Space will kill you. Don’t let it. Don’t hurry through your suit inspection, don’t move too fast and rip your suit on a sharp rock or crack your faceplate. Remember, you may weigh one sixth less but you retain your mass and therefore momentum. It’s very easy to get going too fast to stop.”

Again he looked over the room. “Sure, you’ve all heard it a hundred times. But one of you will still get stupid, and he, or she, will die and I’ll have to write a letter. If you know you’re stupid, let me know now and give me your next of kin’s address. I’ll get started on the letter.

“Oh,” he continued, “one thing I always have to put in the letter is that there won’t be an open casket funeral. Have you ever seen a body dead from vacuum exposure?”

Of course they hadn’t.

“I remember my first time,” DeWite said. “A young kid about your age named Joey Hernandez; died when he was murdered by someone who cut his suit open with a knife.

“And that brings me to our other enemy. We’re SRI Security. We’re the first line of defense between SRI and those who would steal from the company, both tangibles and information. We’re the law off Earth where there is no law. Here on the Moon we’re under the jurisdiction of the NESA Alliance.” He pronounced it “nee-sa.”

“But,” he continued, “in the asteroid belt or Jupiter—” Claxons sounding interrupted DeWite. A computer-generated voice was heard: “Warning, intruders in access tunnel one.” The computer droned the same message over and over and over.

***

The computer repeated the message as Charlie used her hands to scrape the water off herself.

“Computer, quiet.”

The claxon and message stopped.

As she reached for a towel a muffled explosion vibrated the floor. She used the towel to do a superficial drying job then pulled on her red security uniform. The jumpsuit stuck indecently to her damp skin. Underwear would have helped but that luxury was for non-emergencies. She ran to the closet, pulled out her pressure suit and, throwing it over her shoulder (the helmet painfully smacked her in the back; she ignored it), ran to the door in the loping gait one used on the Moon. As she pulled it open, she thought about putting on the suit but decided against it. The SRI facility was so compartmentalized that unless the immediate area one was in depressurized, it was safe not to wear the suit. Also, wearing a pressure suit in pressure was just a little less restrictive than a straitjacket in dealing with intruders that could be more dangerous that the possibility of decompression.

Other off-duty personnel were forming a confused cluster in the corridor.