Flash Fiction: Mustang Gemini

I. Cold Morning

Fresh clothing rustled quietly against skin while one side of the bed grew cold in the darkened room.

“You’re riding out already? Not so much as a goodbye?”

A sigh slid out of the darkness. Leather straps snapped against cloth. Buckles clicked and glinted in the gloom.

“It’s always the same with you.”

“Sorry, Darlin’, but there’s a job with my name on it waiting in Sutter’s Gate, and I can’t be late now, can I?”

The sound of a goodbye kiss, a wet peck of familiarity, filled the emptiness of the room.

“Does it always have to be just business between us? Just another stop on the way to a job?”

The soft pleading sound of warm sheets called out to the departing figure.

“Sometimes I reckon I could slow down, Darlin’, and stay awhile, settle down. But I ride where the money takes me. And right now I need to ride on out before ol’ Skinner decides to collect on my tab. Next time we’ll talk about it, I promise.”

Boots hit the floor with a heavy thunk and strode towards the door.

“You’re full of it.”

The door to the little pleasure suite slid open and starlight poured in. Pollux rose blazing over the spinward dock of the habitat, signaling the start of the daylight shift. Somewhere a generator struggled to keep the passageway warm enough for human habitation while the glory of the heavens poured down their light through the huge viewing windows. Katherine stood framed in the celestial glow, her right hand on the icy metal doorjamb.

“Maybe I am, Joe,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “Half of me wants to stay and half of me wants to go, and Space damn it all, but if the one half ain’t just a little bit stronger. See you again next trip.”

She smiled and closed the door. And Joe just sighed and gathered up the cold bed sheets.

--

Katherine Freestar stepped lightly down the brightly-lit corridor, mindful of the saloon’s other patrons just waking for the morning watch. She was less concerned about attracting their attention than with raising the ire of the proprietor. She slipped past the entranceway and pried open one of the decorative windows overlooking the street. Two short microgravity hops and she was outside and on the metal deck of the town proper. She looked up at the morning sky, separated from it by thirty feet of recycled air and twelve inches of transparent polymers. Hefting her string rider pilot’s harness, she stepped around the corner in front of Skinner’s Pleasure Palace.

Kat wasn’t what most men would consider a beauty – no painted saloon dancer or Space-fearing engineer’s daughter. She was lean, lanky, and tall, with a wild shock of short-cropped hair that seemed determined to go whichever way it pleased under anything less than two gees. She had worn it long once, when the sight of those locks had sent lesser opponents reeling for a few deadly seconds, but she got tired of finding brown hair wrapped in the piloting controls. She was wiry and strong, and long passages in cramped quarters had given her a slight slouch – a rolling forward look just shy of a hunch that at times seemed enviably casual, at others threatening.

No, she wasn’t prone to stopping traffic on her own, but by now most of Polluxtown knew her by reputation and by sight (thanks to an unpleasant but exhilarating brawl two nights ago). And true string riders were still rare around these parts, so if she had ever planned to make it to the docks without notice, that was clearly not going to happen now. Early watch traffic stopped and stared as she turned the corner onto main street, and she could tell in an instant that there would be no warm send-off today.

“Kat!”

From out of the crowd to her left ran little Suzie Capricorn, tow-headed apple of her father’s eye and daring adventurer. She was going to be a string rider one day, or so she claimed.

“Hey there, sugar! What are you doing up so early?” Kat reached down and tousled her long blonde hair.

“Daddy said you were leaving today on account of the sheriff wantin’ to stretch your neck, so I gots up early to find you,” she said brightly. Kat grinned.

“Is that a fact? And jus’ how did you know to come right here?”

“She didn’t know I was listenin’, but Mommy said a woman like you’d probably be down at ole’ Mr. Skinner’s place cause before leavin’ you’d want to get one last piece of a-”

“Freestar!” came a bellow from inside the saloon. Kat looked up to see the ornate iris-shaped hatch of the Pleasure Palace slide open. Gunt Skinner himself emerged onto the little porch and instantly caught sight of Kat standing in the middle of the street. Only yards away, he leveled a double-barreled cardio-inhibitor nanocannon at her chest. Most of the crowd, especially those familiar with Skinner’s aim, stepped back.

“You ain’t ridin’ out today ‘less you pay your damn tab, or Space take me, I’ll drop you right here!” Skinner slurred his threat through gold teeth. Kat patted Suzie Capricorn on the head and shooed her back toward the crowd.

“Sweetie, you head on home. Auntie Kat’s got some business to take care of this mornin’.”

NEXT\\\