"I shit you not. Independent villages all up and down a big river. I looked it up. They have a special contract, been there for years. That guy, he is a guide for a bigger company that books fishing holidays and rustic relaxation tours. There are rules about going there, no weapons sharper than a small gutting knife allowed. "
"Why is that guy here, in this part of Green, if he works for a decent outfit?"
"Tours only run twice a year. But some of those folk out there, they still have a taste and need for fine city things that are forbidden. Guy does a little harmless smuggling on the side,” Ruck answered. Mild-mannered, Ruck's favorite thing was gathering information and plotting paths. Should have been something better, but amped up on the high of battle, he transformed into a brutal berserker. Trenneth Corp’s drugging made it worse. Any chance Ruck had of being recruited to something better like intelligence work was ruled out that first time he used blood and bone to write some crappy poetry on a wall.
"We gonna make him smuggle us? You think he will?"
"That mountain route is only safe for big groups during the hottest part of summer, months away. But, I've checked the maps. It is actually faster to go straight over land. Faster. Closer. They call it 'Original Treaty Territory.' A no-go zone, I guess there are dangerous critters. Gonna need to do some digging and find out why people just don't go that way. Looks like it would only take a day by air, but it's labeled a no-fly zone too."
"You said Dorsus was safe for humanoids," Boss remembered.
"Best match in the whole system. But there are only six cities on the planet." Runk whistled through the gap in his teeth.
"Only six?"
"Yeah, six. The oceans are big. And yeah, there is that volcano activity, but still. Lots of land and much of it marked off-limits. I asked a couple of people. They looked at me like I was an idiot."
"They know something everyone knows, but no one talks about. Find out. We can't live like this. Iwon'tlive like this."
"There has to be something in the Original territory that keeps people out."
Boss glanced over at the other man before turning to glare at a grifter weaving through the other people in Fifth Square, sizing them as potential prey for the last ten minutes. Sometimes those types worked in pairs, out to take what they could get with a game or a deal. Not that it would work. Boss kept his credit taped down, and his patience on a short leash. The boy had no chance of getting anything off him today. Eyeing him, Boss said slowly, "If it is something we can kill, we kill it."
"Yeah, Boss."
The boy got the message and moved on. Boss asked Ruck, "Remember those bugs in the asteroid mines? What can be as bad as that? Just need firepower. Weapons we have, ammunition and power packs we are low on."
Ruck nodded.
Boss let his hope hang out a little more. After he'd bought his gunboat, he'd stood at the helm high on power and freedom to do as he pleased. The sensation was a craving now. He'd chase it till he died. "We just need a goal. Taking over some helpless little township and living like kings in wine and women and off someone else's hard work sounds like a goal. We can spend a winter there, find all their good credit, and come back in the spring with enough to buy a ship back to the stars."
"That sounds amazing," Ruck said.
"It does, doesn't it? You get the information. Find out what we need to do to get to those independent villages. I'm ready to leave these steel cities behind."
Chapter 1
Everyone Knows
There once was a farmer, the father of six sons and a daughter, who went outside on the night of a double red moon. His big sow, Peg, broke out of her pen to get into the garden. Every woman in the township boundaries of Righteous Way knew the rule about going outside under an angry Mother and Father moon, but the men, stubborn in their ways, refused to believe the truth of things. The farmer included.
A stern man, the farmer had a soft spot for his daughter. Many a dawn found them with their heads pressed together, whispering the stories of the Orki Originals and how their family came to settle the village of Righteous Way. Men and women who paid the price to come down through the mountain pass and to live the 'humble life,' on the edges of the longest freshwater river on the planet.
Since the first day she could walk, father and daughter toasted bread, cheese, and honey in the early hours of dawn in front of the day's first hearth flames.
On the day of the two red moons, the farmer was not in his customary place at the table slicing bread when his youngest child, Annabell Roe, who left her bed and went to find him. This was not too strange. Their working farm often called him outside into the dark to take care of trouble.
When Annabell Roe opened the back door to go to the barn, a black sky with red eyes and a mountain range mustache greeted her. She bit her lip to see the Mother and Father moons low on the horizon. Their faces red and displeased, she hesitated on the step. The air thickened with omen, and she felt a shiver down her spine. But then, the seven-year-old heard a pained moan that sounded like an achy wind, and she ran to find her father, looking for comfort.
There was no comfort to be found. She discovered the sow loose in the carrot patch and a broken fence behind her. Holding his hands to his head, trying to keep the blood in, her father leaned, crumpled and pale, against the paddock fence.
By the time the glowing moons faded from red to peach, but before the Child bright sun could be clearly seen, the farmer had fallen asleep, never to wake again.
With blood on Annabell’s hands from hugging him, as if the celestial spheres reached out and stained her up good with their anger, Mama put her right into the bath. Testing the water, Mama said,"Are you poisoned by the creeping dark? Are you stained? Who, that is human, would refuse clean, when a little water does redeem?"
Later, in the arms of a friend, Annabell's mother wept over the thought of her seven-year-old, seventh daughter of the seventh son, discovering her father a few hours from his last breath, and the greedy pregnant sow eating up the carrot patch.
And it was the well-meaning friend who saw the plight of the poor, poor daughter and her beloved father. Farmer, a well-liked councilman, never heeded the red in the sky, the same as every stubborn man. And now, no one could say what would become of their family.
