Tranquility

Tranquility



We made it to last. It COST. In the half light of low-lamps, huddled beneath inflated crew domes we exchanged high fives, touched fists and made air kisses.
Cost wasn’t measured so much in tonnage, not in materiel or even in human cost, although that was plentiful. It was too long out there. Many of the workers ended up addicted to painkillers, alcohol, neurostims. The usual get out substances. Not a few found God, Allah, Satan or the fucking Supreme Being. The point was that for to many the starscape broke them somewhere. Reduced to a mote for so long they internalised it.
And then they called us back. One last mission for the assorted crew of deep sea habitat engineers, a washed up doctor and one genuine space Marine. Spizer, drummed out from the Peoples Army for political subversion.
Of course none of us said no. A chance to see that starscape once more?
If you could see…


Entry was fast. We’d borrowed a ride from an obsolete beast dragging a probe towards the Kupier belt

‘Sizer. On command. Lock frequencies’

The usual scramble.

‘Team Atried to the left flank, Hark to the right. This is the most expensive beer man has ever produced people. Get on it and think of those palaces and bitches back home’

‘Hey’

‘Stow it and think of the men then! Do this right and we all retire on pensions that would make an oil tycoon blush’

It comes into view. And it’s beautiful. An entire crater filled with growing barley, dead still and almost obscenely large,. Logic tells you to grow low g crops to feed the third world. Logic tells you that beer brewed from lunar barley is just the same as Earth beer but nonetheless fools will buy a round that costs an average months wages for a worker. There is one born every minute. And sometimes, there’s one that dies every minute.

‘Hark 5 what the fuck are you doing?’

‘Just went to look at the ‘scape boss. It’s beautiful…..I’

static. Connection cut she sailed over the dome and into the black. Full burn. We held one hero back from sacrificing himself to follow her in some stupid rescue action. Tranquillity Corp doesn’t give us fuel for recovery missions. Shit we wouldn’t be here in the first place if they could trust the machines.

Hoarse sobs came over the com, I tuned them out and dealt with my own. I’d loved her to. You get that tight on these runs.

Then we were in. Past the brainless chattering protocols of entry and that oh-so-smashable corporate smile on the welcoming screen.

Three drones tend these fields, jealous guardians of humanities most expensive grain crop. These are bleeding edge state of the art. TranqCorp spares no cost when it comes to protecting the moonside crops They hang, wasp-formed and iridescent with sterilising nanoslime. We rude guests are immediately treated to a coating of the same as they race and spray with insectile grace.

Then Jonah. An experiment in cetacean mind mapping fused to human brain architecture. Made during the boom days when TranqCorp had R&D departments to rival the Peoples Rebuplic of China’s military. A dead end. Functionally to far up the autism scale to provide the flexibility demanded in combat roles, exiled up here like the mad old woman locked in the attic
‘Gents’ a hint of wheeze-moan accompanied his every communication. Fully formed as a tank-like structure, tracks and VTOL. He hung back from us respectfully, mindful of our fragility. He eschewed the basic look and pushed a different display through the visual ports. Jonah was quite simply an angel. Dragonfly wings and an elfin body hanging beneath it. His intrusive scans were played like a wand scattering fairydust. It was hard to hate Jonah despite him calling us here, losing us Rachel. There was something altogether tragic about this chained sentience.

‘There is a parasite in the Northern Quarter’

Sizer’s choking splutter filled nobody with courage

‘A fucking what! How in the name of Jesus Shitting Chri..’

‘A boll weevil of some kind. Mutated. Too large for the drones or myself. You are armed yes’

It was not a question. Each of us cradled a small needle rifle. The ammunition broke up after a hundred paces. Even that shit makes people jumpy in a sealed environment. Screw the Suits, breach this dome and we’d kiss bye bye to any pension and riches back on earth.

‘That’s a cotton parasite’ low Texan drawl from Gransc, at my left ‘and what the fuck happened to quarantine procedures?’

‘There’s been cutbacks earthside’ wheezed Jonah

‘You don’t say?’ Spizers sarcasm is wasted on the machine.

Let me tell you what the Sea of Tranquillity looks like. I told you we built it to last. Five ‘scraper sized struts of spun buckycarbon arc over the dome itself, a clutching fist on a dome that should have been the spun hyperdiamond we were promised way back when. Instead the struts support a complex layering of silicates, plastics and a skinny layer of industrial diamond. Each strut is mounted with a point-defense rail gun to keep rocks at bay. It’s the most expensive dome this side of the Mons Olympus hotel. We produce the beer that can bankrupt a small kingdom if the King gets too generous.
It’s not earthside Greenfield flattering. The terraforming is minimal. These plants are obscenely misshapen; no breeze ever stirs them. When Sol isn’t doling out the free energy the huge lamps hanging from the domes supports rain down incandescent actinic light. To the side of it all it the drone processing facility. A squat, black hexagon that receives us with ill grace.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you inform TranCorp before now?’ Sizer is annoyed. I see his point.

‘Protocol states your crew is first. I apologise for my lack of flexibility on corporate issues’

The inflection leaves no doubt as to how sorry Jonah is.

If I could have killed that fucking robot I would have done. We found the boll weevil, a pathetic insect. It’s limbs and basic design had failed to adapt to basic lunar gravity. Grossly over done and dragging it’s spindly, broken limbs behind it. We found it by the trail of slime from its weeping wounds and none of us felt much but mute revulsion for the thing as we emptied needleguns into the head and thorax.

Tranquillity Beer, the most expensive brew in the universe. Drink up.