“Me?!”
Geraldine swallowed hard. A big fat sausage finger pointed at her.
“Me…”
She said again. She took a deep breath.
“Me! Of course!”
The mood swing made everyone in the room nervous, even the Chihuahua, but he had been nervous since the day his new pup lungs first drew breath.
Geraldine cleared her throat and continued:
“Honorable madam, we are here, inside your home (home?) because after nearly a hundred vain attempts to reach you via port-o-fax, we couldn’t wait any longer. You’re the winner!”
Gerraldine’s arms outstretched in congratulations. She paused. Everyone was frozen in anticipation.
“…You’re the winner of…an all-expense paid megavacation aboard the royal Mordonian Hyper Yacht! Swim amongst the warblers in the fizzymist lagoons, lounge on the sweetdeck next to the most beautiful beings this side of Centauri whilst sipping sugarnip coladas, bake and soak in the solar gelatubs and just…enjoy existence!”
Geraldine finished, breathing heavy, hoping the sweat she felt forming on her brow didn’t trickle down and betray her confident performance. The angry block-woman’s skeptical gaze held for a moment...
...and then broke.
“ERMAGERRRD! I KNEWWW IT! I just KNEW I’d land the lux-o-lottery erventuallilly. Oh, gaw bless the Holy Manfather, yes indeed boy HOWDY! YES INDEED!…Hey… Lemme ask yeh something…”
Both Ace and Lucky had been holding their breath, entranced by the show. But it was not quite yet time to exhale.
“…how’d you know where to find me?”
The skeptical glare was back.
“…uh…your address…was on the sweepstakes submission?”
Geraldine was proud her bluff had survived this far, but she was certain this was the end of the charade.
“HA! Gotchya. A course it wuz. I’m just jamming your jugs.”
She delivered a swift punch to Geraldine’s left breast. Geraldine winced hard.
“Name’s Barb by the way. Boy am I suxcited to be a winner, I tell you whut…”
Geraldine fought through the boob pain and tried to accept the friendly gesture with what she hoped was a smile on her face that didn’t look too terrified. The other two started to unclench as well.
Ace cleared his throat, stepped forward, and spoke, “Yea…congratz Barb.”
“Well hey there sweetdick! That’s Ms. Barbwire to you punkin.” She licked her lips and gave Ace a kissy wink. Ace’s insides shuddered but he kept his resolve.
“…we sure are glad we found you, but unfortunately…uh…our ship was badly damaged…”
“Shitfucked, more like.”
“…yes…right…and we must make our way to the cantina in town in order to…*ahem*…confirm your travel arrangements, and such…”
Barb turned and flopped onto a sit sack; micro pellets of viscoelastic squishyfoam coughing out of the seams. She tried to cross her legs and pose seductively. She also tried to casually toss her crewcut back. Both mostly failed.
“Baby…” she said at Ace with another wink “Barb’s gotchew. You’re lookin’ at the semi-bronze medalist of the Seminal Congress Pod Racing Super-circuit. Y’all can hop right in mah trunk and I’ll zip you all the way…to where you…need…to…be.”
In time with her cadence she traced the curves (curve?) of her body downwards, ending “be” with a tap of her enormous rump. She had kept eye contact with Ace the entire time. His mettle was sound, but the blush was at the boiling point.
“Wonderful.” Lucky said, monotone, and in her typical fashion slung her pack on and made for the exit stairwell.
Geraldine, in a compassionate attempt to draw the aggressive flirtation away from Ace, piped up again:
“We are sooo grateful for your assistance! On behalf of the Galactours Megafamily we…”
“Alright. Let’s go. That skinny bitch didn’t look happy, don’t wanna chafe…well…don’t wanna chafe her…knawmsaying Acebaby?”
But Ace was already halfway up the stairs after Lucky.
“Okidokey Ronald, help mamma upsiedaisy, c’mon now.”
The small chihuahuan creature trembled over and gave a single *YIP*.
The large lady made an atrocious sound and lumbered to her feet. She clapped Geraldine on the shoulder and made her way to the door as well.
“Alright birdbitch, next stop Mos Eisley Cantina. You and me are gonna get sauced!”
----------
As Ace climbed the stairs and stepped back into the blinding sunslight, the mission returned to mind.
He knew who hired him to protect the girl. It was her father. But he still couldn’t figure out exactly why she was here…and why she was traveling incognito under the alias “Lucky”.
Lucy Von Schmidt, corporate demi-princess debutante was on shitty, sandy Tatooine fulfilling an engineering contract.
Ace couldn’t grasp why a princess to want to trade the easy life to labor as a moisture tech. And beyond that, to be willing to commute all the way out to a backwater system to this godforsaken sand ball to do the gig.
His docket noted it was a rush job with a healthy added fee for the expedited nature. But even before the fee the contract wasn’t small. The six-figure credit advance was way over market in this economy. And for it to cover a harvester wettability upgrade was pure nonsense–You could buy a new Atmos Hydra Super-twin for half that.
Did Daddy Von Schmidt concoct the contract out of fatherly nepotism? No…that didn’t make sense either. He was angry she had gone. He wouldn’t have sent a bounty hunter after her if he’d arranged the job in the first place.
Furthermore, a direct exchange between a third-rate bounty hunter and the richest man in the sector was another strange pill. Ace’s bounty record had seen him dropped from most inner system guilds. His 3-in-40 record for measly quaternary-tiered mineral smugglers was shameful. On his last botched wrangle his last handler told him “You couldn’t catch a cold if you spaced yourself out an airlock.”
Why did Mister Moon Mine want him?
None of it added up, but Ace couldn’t clear any more of the fog.
Lurking beneath the surface, Ace’s own truth was yet another garbled knot of secrets. He wasn’t really a bad bounty hunter, at least not in terms of skill. He just couldn’t bring himself to care about it. He also couldn’t stop drinking. This was an effective cocktail for professional sabotage.
The apathy and alcoholism both stemmed from the same seed; Ace was ex MMI, Ex Martian Military Intelligence, dishonorably discharged–boy what a joke that was.
Only recently was he able to laugh at the irony (if you can call his spastic bouts of drunken cackling “laughter”. Maybe you can’t call it laughter…the same bouts saw their fair share of sobbing…alcohol is a strange medicine).
The irony came from Ace’s worship of honor. His father was a Martian Marine, and his father before him, and his father before him. A legacy of knights, sworn to defend the cause to the death. Unfortunately for Ace, he was the first in this long line to critically consider this mysterious and mythical “cause”. Instead of the corps, this curiosity led him to join the Martian Intelligence Academy.
Even though curiosity determined his direction, honor still fueled his ambition. He outworked and outperformed his peers year after year. By graduation he stood a head and shoulders above the rest of his class at the academy, and he was immediately recruited in the agency.
Ace was proud of himself, which would have to do because his father had passed just before graduation. The grief was hard to focus through at first. When the waves came strongest, he would recall his grandfather’s wisdom:
“A Martian knight channels whatever force is in his possession for the good of all. Be it fury, joy, or pain, harness these feelings. Enslave them and redirect their energies in the name of those you serve. You feel not for yourself. You feel for Mars.”
Over time he found himself able to grapple with the grief and do just as grandfather advised. Much more difficult to wrestle was the murky mystery surrounding his father’s death. Or rather, he found it difficult to accept the explanation he was given–the explanation the galaxy was given…
According to the forensic reports coming from Lunar investigators, Kirk Dexter was found dead under a pile of rubble after a cave collapse triggered by malfunctioning blast lifter. Along with the bodies of Kirk and an unnamed miner was Wilhelmina Von Schmidt.
Shockwaves reverberated through the nebula. The news headlines read variously:
“Lady Von Schmidt Dead on Luna w/ Bodyguard”
“Von Schmidt Death: Accident or Assassination?”
“Love and Lies on Luna – Corporate Queen and Bodyguard affair goes terribly wrong”
“Profile of Martian Maniac: Kirk Dexter the ‘Queen Killer’ “
Clearly many people were wrong about what really happened. That wasn’t hard to figure out. The questions was, who had it right?
Ace couldn’t believe any of the accounts. He knew his father. He had never known a more virtuous man. He had never lied, even when the truth stung. He never backed down from a fight, even when victory was off the table. And though he hated Mortimer Von Schmidt, he would never let that jeopardize his oath to serve and protect Wilhelmina.
No, no one had it right. The truth had been abducted and was being imprisoned–held somewhere very safe by people who were very powerful.
Off Ace went to find it.
His first year at the agency he buckled down and focused on his career. Whether this was a strategy to earn trust and access, or simply his honor driven ambition he couldn’t be entirely sure. In either case, by his third year he was in high esteem, had sufficiently impressed all the proper people, and acquired the clearance needed to really start meaningfully digging.
But as quickly as he built a case for his father’s innocence, the case against Ace was mounting as well. By year five, on the day of his Analyst credentialing, he was arrested and led out of the building in cuffs. Two full years of investigative activity had been tracked and logged and he had been charged with “misappropriation of agency resources” and numerous power and privacy abuses. He pled guilty to avoid a gulag sentence rock chipping in the Volta and received a dishonorable discharge…for sacrificing his career attempting to defend the honor of his father.
He was so close too. He’d discovered a paper trail of internal Von Schmidt Enterprise correspondence proving prior knowledge of the location and rendezvous plans of Kirk and Wilhelmina. He’d also found a database of files with a very obvious code-name-titling system: i.e. Super Secret Correspondence_Queen & Knight_1342863.
Unfortunately, he was unable to decrypt and transfer this database before the jig was up.
And now he was just another discredited ex-military conspiracist pushing military and corporate collusion theories involving high profile assassinations and coverups. How predictable.
Once the last remaining legal issues had settled Ace decided to try and make a living hunting “bad guys”. He quickly discovered this industry too was more about money than honor. There were no good guys or bad guys, just guys with money who wanted things done (usually to guys who lost their money or took their money).
He felt defeated, so he drank.
Over time he softened his stance. He too began to slowly compromise his values and philosophies in exchange for the almighty credit. When rent came due for his shithole + cot setup, he took a gig without questions and delivered without fuss.
When Mortimer Von Schmidt himself reached out and his credits started talking, even with the petabytes of incriminating evidence from once upon a time implicating a still-obscured involvement in dad’s death, Ace was listening.
“I need her back now. Name your price.”
----------
The sunlight outside hit like a hammer.
Two suns hung overhead, twin white coins burning holes in the sky. The sand reflected it back upward with malicious enthusiasm. Ace squinted hard and muttered, “Jesus.”
Lucky was already halfway across the sand toward a massive rust-colored vehicle that looked like someone had welded three freight containers onto the back of a prehistoric beetle. Barb stomped past them proudly.
“That there’s my ride.”
Ace blinked. “That’s… a trunk?”
“Yup.”
“What’s the front look like?”
Barb turned and pointed.
“That.”
Ace followed her finger. It was the same vehicle.
“…Right,” Ace said quietly. “Of course it is.”
The machine groaned as Barb slapped a panel on the side. A seam split open and a ladder dropped down.
“Hop in, sweetdicks.”
Lucky climbed in without hesitation. Ace followed. Geraldine lingered for a moment at the bottom of the ladder, eyeing the machine like it might suddenly sprout teeth.
“Is this… safe?”
Barb looked genuinely offended. She slapped the metal hull proudly. “Safe?! This baby ran the Seminal Congress Pod Racing Super-Circuit three seasons straight.”
Ace froze halfway up the ladder. “…three seasons?”
“Semifinals twice,” Barb added proudly.
Ace climbed inside.
The interior smelled like engine grease, liquor, and something faintly reptilian. Barb slammed the hatch shut and the engine roared awake with a noise like a dying tractor eating gravel. The vehicle lurched forward.
Outside, the desert blurred. Inside, Geraldine gripped a support bar with white knuckles.
“Are we… flying?”
“Nope,” Barb shouted over the engine.
“Are we… digging?”
“Nope.”
The vehicle slammed down over a dune ridge. Geraldine screamed.
“We’re winning!” Barb shouted happily.