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Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The selection of drinks was not much to Sayeeda's liking. She sipped at an earthen mug of apple juice without enthusiasm. Apparently the local definition of cider did not include alcohol. Gerome smiled somewhat sheepishly at her obvious disappointment.

"We consider the consumption of alcohol to be sinful," he admitted. A number of the younger men scowled disapprovingly at the very suggestion. There was clearly something of a disconnect between the younger generation who had been raised in pious seclusion and the oldsters who had direct experience of the galaxy beyond.

"I guess I can keep my sinning in check until I get back to my ship," Sayeeda replied, before winking at Neil.

"Mostly at any rate," she amended, earning herself even darker glares from the fresh faced zealots. Gerome cleared his throat nervously but was spared from comment by the shimmering ring of an electronic chime. He stood and clapped his hands together.

"Brethren!" he called in a clear carrying voice which spoke to a background as an orator of some kind.

"Let us give thanks for the rejuvenation of our world and of our faith! Let us celebrate what God has given us and the blessing he has bestowed upon us. Remember what we have sacrificed, and what we must continue to sacrifice to attain the Grace our Creator has stored up for us. In his blessed name, Amen!"

"Amen," the congregation echoed and then devolved into cheers and shouts. Dancing broke out seemingly simultaneously and young men and women in white linens began to circulate among the crowds, uncovering foods and pouring drinks. Sayeeda smiled and stood up, taking Neil by the hand and leading him towards an open green where couples were beginning to dance. By chance her eyes fell on Gerome, who alone of the celebrants appeared to look troubled.

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Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

To the confusion of the colonists, and the amusement of his shipmates, Saxon elected to remain aboard the Highlander as the group set off down the shallow cut roadway into the valley below. Sanctity was one of three villages the colonists had constructed along the length of the valley. The valley itself had once been an allevial flood plain, but a clever system of dykes and berms had tamed the river that cut through the center of it so that the fields could be flooded in the spring to replenish the soil with silt from upstream, without washing away the dwellings. The tradeoff was that a starship as heavy as the Highlander couldn't land on the soft, loamy soil of the village without sinking its struts to the hull. The rocky shoulder of the valley was a better landing, and probably helped to keep curious villagers far from the corrupting influence of their infrequent interstellar visitors. The system of ditches and banks reminded Sayeeda of the native hillforts on Kashkeesh in a way that made her skin crawl. Sanctity itself was a small place two dozen small stone and timber houses with sod covered roofs which doubled as additional gardens. Its dominant feature was a great cathedral in the center of town. At first it boggled Sayeeda's mind that so few people could have constructed the fifty meter long four story structure, but as she pulled down her googles to get a closer look she realized the truth. The cathedral wasn't something the colonists had built. It was the original colony ship itself grounded forever where it had touched down and then lovingly facaded to look like a church.

"The Light of Hope," Gerome said proudly as he feel into step beside her, frowning with slight disapproval at her goggles. Sayeeda ignored the look.

"The original colony ship I assume," Sayeeda said, more for something to say than because she had any real doubt. Gerome nodded.

"We felt it might deter pirates if she were obviously non-flyable," Gerome expounded with a wave to the ship/cathedral. Sayeeda had no doubt that the ship would never lift again, half sunk into the soil and burdened with stone besides. She was less certain that the fact the ship couldn't lift would deter those set on loot and the joy of indiscriminate destruction. Sayeeda was not a religious person. On Celandine it was conventional to pray to The God and Goddess at seasonal festivals, but it was tacitly understood to be symbolic by most. That early faith was kept alive only in occasional curses. Sayeeda had seen the random hand of death too often to believe the universe had a plan, though some part of her mind stubbornly clung to the notion that things would work out for her personally, even though she had nothing to base such an absurd notion upon.

"You have seen much violence in your life I think," Gerome said in a quiet voice he probably meant to be compassionate. Sayeeda glanced at him sidelong and arched an eyebrow. The skin on her arms and hands was speckled with the slight mismatch of synthetic skin sealant which had been used to treat a variety of burn and cuts over the course of her career. Did this man recognize that, or place her tattoos. She shook her head. A lamb could probably recognize a wolf when it saw one, even if that wolf were currently selling coffee. Or maybe it was simpler than that, the captain of a heavily armed freighter out in the back of beyond could be expected to have stomped a head or two in her time.

"Sure," Sayeeda responded noncommittally.

"There is peace to be found here, even if only for a little while," he said gently.

"I'll try to keep my insatiable bloodlust in check," Junebug replied as they reached the outskirts of the village. A few of the colonists stood watching. Some open mouthed and hiding the eyes of their children. So many children. Every matronly mother seemed to have a brood of five or more of the brats running around, with older siblings obviously helping with the work of their large tracts of farm land. Sayeeda was no agriculturalist, but she could recognise corn, potatoes, zaphroot and half a dozen other galactic staples growing in neat rows. Cows and horses were also much in evidence, walled away behind fences of woven mono crystal wire wrapped around posts of local wood.

"The act of killing damages..."

"Gerry, lets just take it as a given that I know more about the 'act of killing' than the whole population of this planet combined right?" she snapped, her irritation sharper than it might have been if she hadn't spent the past 11 days in the RIP.

"You're right, occupational hazard I'm afraid," he said with a good natured laugh.

"Yeah well some occupations are more hazardous than others," Junebug responded. As predicted women's clothing on Ateran was of a conservative cut, high collars and long skirts of greyish homespun. There was something of an irony that they produced beautiful shimmercloth textiles and insisted on clothing themselves in bland monotonous grey. That wasn't to say that shimmer cloth wasn't in evidence. Whatever Rejuvenation Day was it obviously involved alot of decoration. Ribbons of glittering fabric seemed to hang from every house, netting the roofs together in a complex spiderwebs that gave the streets a kind of canopy. The effect grew more pronounced nearer the cathedral where spiral designs and been created by wrapping the shimmercloth around frames of wire and some kind of native bamboo. Long tables were laid out and pilled with food that had been covered with gauzy cloth to keep insects away from it, and fires were prepared if not yet lit at every intersection. Mothers gave Sayeeda and Taya reproachful glances, obviously disapproving of the baring of so much skin. Taya more diplomatic than Junebug uncoiled the scarf from her hair and draped it over her shoulders. A number of young men, dressed in bleached tunics and brown homespun pants gave them looks that weren't quite so reproachful, but liable to be more trouble. A number of the younger women cast similar looks at Neil, whispering behind their hands to one and other and giggling.

"Well be at peace among us, perhaps the Light will reveal to you that you have found a home," Gerome said with an avuncular grin.

Searching for Charlie Henshaw's Treasure (Treasure Hunters - Historical Fiction)

Sahara is one of my favorite modern adventure movies. Also I'm a huge sucker for wreck hunting...

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Two Weeks Later

"I cannot believe..." Neil huffed as he pitched one of the sacks of coffee onto the waiting cart. "That you actually sold this." The cart, a simple wooden affair that wouldn't have been out of place on Old Terra, was even drawn by two honest to god horses. They both whickered nervously as Saxon marched passed and tossed four sacks onto the back of the creaking wagon. It probably wasn't a real concern that Saxon would eat the beasts, but they were clearly not in a mood to take chances. Junebug pitched her own sack onto the growing pile with a puff of coffee dust. She wasn't sweating yet, enhanced biology and all, but she could feel the strain.

"Technically," she said, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. "I only traded it." The freeze dried instant coffee had been old when Sayeeda had purchased it and had sat in the back of the hold for well over a year as they tripped from crisis to crisis before Ateran, finally, provided a market.

Ateran was a backwater at the backend of a backwater. Far from the trade lanes and the commerce of the galaxy, isolated by notoriously unfavorable and unreliable RIP currents. If past navigational patterns held, never a certainty, it would only be a functional shortcut for a few weeks before the currents shifted and left it isolated. While it held though, it provided the perfect way to cut across the Sigma Arm and back towards Taya's home. On average Ateran was a cold world. Large icecaps covered nearly a quarter of the planet, with only a narrow band of temperate land around the equator. The upside was that due to minimal axial tilt, there wasn't much of a winter, with a gentle alternation between balmy summer and fall without much of a winter. It boasted little accessible mineral wealth, although orbital scans suggested considerable deposits deep beneath the polar ice, to expensive to be easily accessed in a world where asteroid mining was the norm. Atrean was the kind of place that attracted a particular kind of settler. The colonists on Ateran were a religious community who were interested in living a simple life. The Fellowship of Man, as they styled themselves had come from civilized planets deeper into the core of human space. They had scraped together their credits and purchased a clapped out bulk freighter for a one way trip to the holy land. It wasn't such an uncommon tale, though it more frequently ended in capture by pirates or simply vanishing into the RIP on a ship that should have been scrapped years ago. Even those that made it were rarely successful, religious communes were usually short on construction experience, agricultural expertise, medical training and just about everything else needed to make a colony thrive. The Fellowship of Man had beaten those odds however. Partly that was because Ateran, though unpromising by conventional standards, was ideal for the kind of pastoral life the colonists pined for. The second factor was that the Fellowship had been willing to keep their luddite tendencies in check for a few decades, making use of construction equipment, sophisticated agritech and gene modding to lay the foundations of their new Eden. Once established they had let the skills fade. Now only a few of the original colonists remained, retired to rural life surrounded by their pious progeny.

"What do these cretins trade," Saxon hissed, pitching another two hundred pounds of coffee into the back of the wagon.

"Cotton they grow here produces a biolumincent pigment," Sayeeda explained, holding up a hand to stop the loading. THe cart, sturdy as it was, couldn't take much more.

"They weave it into a textile they call shimmercloth, which they are happy to trade for coffee, and which we can turn around back in the civilized galaxy for a big pay out."

"I guess they aren't taking the drugs we..." Neil began but cut off as Junebug signaled furiously. It was unlikely that a religious community was going to react favorably to an offer of hundreds of kilos of high grade narcotics.

“Peace be upon you,” Brother Gerome said with a smile as he walked around the cart leading a dozen young men each carrying a bolt of cloth over a shoulder. The faintly glowing cloth clashed oddly with the simple homespun woolens that seemed to be the local garb. Gerome seemed to be the leader of the community here at Keshner’s Hollow. He was a boney man with a broad smile and face beaten bronze by long exposure to Ateran’s slightly whitish star. The laborers could have all been related to him for the resemblance they bore. Their smiles were less broad perhaps, having never been off world, they were less comfortable with outsiders or perhaps, like the horses, they weren't sure Saxon wasn’t about to eat them. Nervous they might be, but that didn’t stop them from surreptitiously eyeing the newcomers, particularly Sayeeda and Taya. Junebug was dressed in a white tank top which bared the tattoo on her shoulder. The tan on cream fabric of her combat pants and black assault boots were probably beyond their experience. Women’s clothing on Ateran was conservative and it was likely they were in breach of any number of local taboos.

“An exchange well made is a glory to the Lord,” Brother Gerome declared, eying the coffee approvingly. It was probable that even bad coffee would be a welcome reminder of old times to the original colonists, no matter how devout they might be.

“Saxon was just saying that,” Sayeeda replied blithely. Taya covered a snicker with her hand but Neil snorted less delicately. Gerome chuckled but several of the younger men stiffened indignantly. Nervousness transmuted to belligerence easily enough especially for men.

“Heresy aside, perhaps you would care to join us. It is Rejuvenation Day tomorrow and we have prepared a feast. Seems fortuitous that you and your crew should arrive on such a day Captain Cyckali. We would be honored if you would join us.” Junebug cast a quick look around the others gauging their opinions. After nearly eleven straight days in the RIP they were all a little frayed. A free meal that didn’t come out of a ration tin might do them all some good.

“Sounds good,” she admitted, brushing at the fine sheen of coffee dust on her tank top.

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The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

Most HR departments frowned on the discussion of religion. By necessity the Sunday Group maintained a fairly hands off policy in such matters. It was always a little difficult to police such thing when any number of nameless cults might be involved. Eleanor had seen any number of deities invoked over the years, from the ineffectual "please god help me" variety to the sacrifice the virgin to the eldritch abomination with profane chanting. Often enough the first was a direct response to the second.

"The particulars of Magus Yesha aside..." Eleanor began and then took a deep breath.

"I believe Clive is right," she paused for a moment, relieved that reality did not choose that moment to collapse in on itself.

"I think we might have learned all we can here, for now anyway," she continued, pulling her grisly morticians robe off over her shoulders and tossing it into the sanitary bin with a wet plop.

"Lets take a look around the site the body was found."

_______

Eleanor nibbled on her donut. The black raspberry filling squelched between her teeth, reminding her unpleasantly of the ink that had suffused the body she had so recently disected. Likely this was Clive's idea of humor and she determinedly chewed on rather than give him the satisfaction. They had pulled up in front of a four story brick building that had been converted from a stately home to an interior design studio. Pleasant trees spread out over a road that was remarkably quiet for being only a couple of blocks from the lake shore in one direction and the University of Chicago in the other. An extended gravel parking area and a sign which declared the building to be 'Hyde Park Interiors' was all that set it off from its more clearly residential neighbors. There was no police tape or homicide investigators on the site. The only thing that marked it out as the place a body had been found was a trail of ink and a discolored patch of gravel. Chicago PD either hadn't gotten involved, or had been somehow pulled of the case by the Sunday Groups mysterious connections. Eleanor wondered if somewhere a clerk was filling this as a piece of performance art or some other innocuous non-incident. Unconsciously Eleanor cast a look to the west, wondering if Emmaline were lecturing on the transformative properties of the Mandlebrot set or some other equally arcane mathematics.

"Well," she said after a moment, "What do we think?"

The Crime Scene

Synopis

We move to the crime scene between the University and the Waterfront