Vicky’s face had homicide written all over it, so I quickly stepped in.
“We left early to get breakfast at Ms. Torrentinto’s. We didn’t know how long this was going to take and we wanted to start out on a full stomach.” Which had the advantage of being partly true in case anyone checked on it.
“Dave Clines,” the woman sitting next to Brad Torrey said, eyeing the bluff, loud farmer with the eye of a disapproving mother, “you need to find yourself a wife. You’ve been living on that farm alone for a year and it’s turned you into a braying jackass.”
“He didn’t have far to go,” Vicky said, then shot the woman a smile. “Good afternoon, Kayla. Brad.”
Kayla Gruhl was an odd match for Brad Torrey, homey and domestic and seemingly made for farm life. From what we knew of her, which wasn’t much, she’d grown up on Hermes, and had been happy to leave at the end of the war because the place was “getting too damned crowded,” in her words. She had a plain, open face suited for this world, and her only prepossessing feature was flaming red hair, though I didn’t know if it was natural, affected or genetically selected by her parents.
“Howdy you two,” she said, smiling as she shook our hands, her grip dry and firm as always. “I don’t blame you for getting some grub first. God knows I’m not looking forward to this, whether or not Hellnick decides to show up.”
“How the hell am I gonna find a wife way out here?” Clines asked plaintively, sitting at the other end of the table from Torrey and his wife. “It ain’t like this place has a booming nightlife or anything. I got that one girl I been exchanging videos with over in the Elektra system, but she’s got her own farm and she ain’t gonna give it up to come here.”
“You could always move there,” Torrey suggested, with more than a little malice aforethought, I judged. “I hear Corona has a very nice climate and a settling bonus for anyone who emigrates.”
“Gee, thanks, Captain Torrey,” Clines sneered. “I tell you what, if this shit keeps up with Hellnick, I will give it some fucking thought.”
“Language, Mr. Clines,” Kayla said archly. “This is an official meeting.”
“And it’s almost time to start,” Torrey added, checking his ‘link, then scanning the crowd.
They were a thorough shuffling of the colonist population here, with most of us farmers in work clothes, while the shopkeepers and tradespeople had worn fancier garb since they were closer to home. This wasn’t an economy large or diverse enough to warrant bankers or retail sales, so there were no business suits in evidence, though Torrey had broken out a dress shirt to go with his blue jeans and work boots. I recognized them all, of course, not only because I’d done business with them on a monthly basis over the last year, but also because Torrey liked to have these Board meetings way too often.
“Damn,” Clines murmured, resting his chin on his fist, his elbow on the table. “Guess Hellnick didn’t show up. Who coulda guessed that? Oh yeah, me.”
“I suppose I’ll have to convene things anyway,” Torrey said with a sigh. “I’d give the man more time, but everyone’s got work to do with the harvest and there isn’t time to wait all day for him.”
He strode purposefully toward the central podium and picked up the gavel he’d had fabricated specifically for this purpose.
“I bet he sleeps with it,” Vicky whispered close to my ear and it was all I could do to keep from busting out a sharp laugh.
The flat of the gavel’s head smacked into the wooden circle mounted on the top of the podium and the general buzz in the chamber died down to a low mumble. Torrey nodded, turning back and forth like a sensor dish to meet everyone’s eyes.
“Good afternoon members of the Settlers’ Board of the Hausos Colony,” he intoned with the gravity of a chaplain at a memorial service. Above, the rain finally cut loose and his voice had to compete for attention with the insistent pattering on the sheet-metal roofing. “Welcome to the sixty-first official meeting of the board.”
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe he knew that,” Clines said, sotto voce.
“We are here today to address a problem some of you have already seen first-hand last night. For the rest of you, let me summarize.”
And he did, though Torrey’s idea of a summary took longer than the actual events, and by the end, I was wondering if I had time for a bathroom break. Those who hadn’t actually lived through the incident seemed appropriately worried, though, given the undertone of murmuring in the room, a rainstorm rising from below to rival the one attacking the roof.
“Where’s Hellnick?” I couldn’t see who’d yelled the question, but it sounded as if it had come from the table where the Kim family sat, the owners of one of the two industrial fabricators in Gamma Junction. “Why isn’t he here to answer for this?”
Yeah, it was Grace Kim. She was short and couldn’t have topped fifty kilos soaking wet, but she’d been a Force Recon Marine and you didn’t want to fuck with her. Her husband was a good twenty centimeters taller than her and forty kilos heavier and yet rarely said a word in the company of his wife. The pair had two children, both born since the war, and they were remarkably well-behaved for a toddler and an infant, as if they, too, were scared of Grace Kim.
Someone wasn’t scared of her, though.
“Who the hell are you to demand Klaus Hellnick appear?” The woman was skinny and drawn out, her skin the color and consistency of old leather. Melina Pappas was one of the civilians, the refugees, washed up on this place after the war, not choosing the voluntary exile as we veterans had, but being dropped here because their homes were too badly damaged in the war to make them worth rebuilding. “You think you’re our commander, Brad Torrey, but you only hold the authority we give you!”
“Do you have a motion you’d like to make, Ms. Pappas?” Torrey asked her, strained patience dripping off the words. She responded by shooting him a bird and he grunted a humorless laugh. “In that case….” He turned his attention back to Grace Kim. “I sent a notice to Mr. Hellnick. If he hasn’t shown up, I have to assume he either has chosen to ignore the authority of the Board, or perhaps he’s under duress and this Captain Eld and the Tahni involved have him captive. If that’s the case….”
The double doors slammed open with a sudden spray of cold rain and Klaus Hellnick stepped through.
If a weasel and a lizard jumped into a gene sequencer while a Corporate Council executive was having their offspring designed, Klaus Hellnick is what would have come out of the artificial womb. The man had a face so narrow, I wasn’t sure how there was room for a full set of teeth in those jaws unless they were narrow, lizard teeth, and the fact the man incessantly licked his lips only helped with the image. He wasn’t a tall man, nor overly broad, but he wasn’t a weakling. You didn’t make a living out here on Hausos if you were a weakling, even with the autoharvesters
He didn’t bring any family with him because he didn’t have any. He’d lost his wife and children to the Tahni on Demeter, or so Vicky had heard. Even though the colony there was being rebuilt, he’d felt like he couldn’t stay behind with the memories, so he’d come here at the end of the war, before the Tahni Emperor’s corpse was even cold, becoming one of the first settlers. And yet, his farm didn’t even produce as much as ours and unlike Clines, he didn’t hire workers from town to supplement his own efforts, just sat on his farm all alone. Until now.