Starfield: Holtzman's Question Part One - The Barrel (Starfield fiction)

Chapter I: The Barrel

We couldn’t feel the rotation, but it was definitely working, otherwise we wouldn’t have been glued to our seats in this booth.

I took the current, tense moment of utter silence to glance down at the atrocity on my plate. Two cubes of vaguely pink, glistening, umami sludge, advertised on the packet as “porkchop”. My eyes were pinned to this unappetizing image, because they were desperately avoiding two distinct other things: One, the giant panel window to my right, which betrayed the illusion that we were sitting in a diner on a planet with its own gravity, rather than whirling around in space at the will of a giant centrifugal rotor-arm attached to a half-destroyed space station; and two, the eyes of the woman across from me, who had just asked a substantially uncomfortable question.

“Are you Emilio Bink?”

There it was again. Shit. Any more silence from me would have been equivalent to a “yes”, so I spoke, still staring down at my putrid little cubes.

“Tell me your name first,” I said.

It came out with far less of the ‘careless, cavalier badass’ tone than I intended. I had forgotten about my voice’s tendency to squeak during high pressure situations— and the general mousy pitch it produced at all other times. I glanced up at her stern mouth lines quickly, just to see if she was laughing or smirking at me. Her thin lips were devoid of any lightness whatsoever. I looked down at the plate again.

Damn these nerves, I thought, You’d think after a handful of jobs like this I would develop some guts. I do well enough with this kind of pressure on land. It's the goddamn vacuum of space. It adds a whole extra layer of uneasiness to things.

I shot a nervous glance to my left, where the rest of the diner patrons sat. This establishment, known as ‘The Barrel’, due to the fact that it was built inside of an emptied, cylindrical helium drum on a once-operational space station, was the perfect place to go for anyone who wished to disappear. It was just out of the United Colonies’ jurisdiction, so if one was carrying contraband aboard their ship, they could dock here and offload it without having to worry about the UC’s scanners. Thus, it was a hotbed for illegal transactions.

“How did you get the scar on your nose?” the woman asked. I could hear in her tone that she already knew the answer to the first question she asked me. She knew I was indeed Emilio Bink, the man sent here to speak with her boss (and only her boss. That was made very clear by my employer) about reaching a deal for the ship-full of illegal merchandise that I currently had docked right outside in port C. Best case, her questions were just part of some routine, preliminary vetting before I could be allowed to meet this boss of hers. Worst case, she had heard about the bounty on my head, and was currently buying time while reinforcements came to help her capture me, to collect me for my bounty along with the deal for said contraband. My employer would likely just accept this as a loss, considering how badly I had flubbed the last deal.

“How did you get that scar under your eye?” I asked her, continuing my pathetic game of simply repeating her questions back at her. With nerves like these, it was all I could do.

Now she did laugh.

“You are too much,” she said, “How the hell did you get hired for a position like this?”

She was enormous by both men and women’s standards, and I was petite by both men and women’s standards. Between us, there must have been a foot and a half difference at least.

“How did you get hired for your position?” I answered. There was some snap in the way I delivered it, because I was beginning to get agitated. The window in my periphery was making me queasy on the count of all the spinning, and I was coming very close to pulling the ripcord on plan A and switching over to plan B, which was to say ‘to hell with this whole exchange,’ and cause a gunfight to break out in the diner. Strangely enough, I knew I would be far less nervous in a gunfight than I was in this booth.

I began glancing around at the weapons on the hips and backs of the other patrons, scanning to see what sort of commotion I would be up against if I went with plan B. Places like these, anonymity being their selling point, were never lacking in shady, trigger-happy characters. The large woman across from me, surprisingly, answered my question:

“I was chosen for this position because of my background in science,” she said. Then, to throw me off even further, she continued, “I assume you’re here for a similar reason, Professor Bink.”

So, not only did she somehow know I was Emilio Bink, she also knew that I had once been a college professor. My stomach dropped. I thought, Who the hell is this woman?

I looked up at her now and held the gaze. She and the cocky grin she was sprouting awaited a reply.

“Actually, I think my employers were just desperate for warm bodies,” I said, “Right place, right time for me.”

The queasiness subsided slightly, focusing on her expressions helped.

“Mm, no,” she said, “I don’t think that’s true. They usually hire a muscle-head for this sort of thing. They wouldn’t send in a brainiac unless they needed someone to inspect the product, ensure the legitimacy of it.”

In truth, all my employer had told me about this exchange was that I wouldn’t be paid in traditional credits. That was pretty standard for transactions like these, however. Payment usually came in the form of rare metals or ship parts, something with predictable resale value, that wouldn’t draw suspicion in Freestar or UC space.

I asked, “What sort of ‘scientific’ cargo could my employer possibly have a use for? He doesn’t have a med guy. He has an engineer on his ship, but he’s entry level at best.”

“Do you remember me?” she asked abruptly.

“I’m sorry?”

Now that I noticed it, she was actually quite pretty, despite her complete disregard to act feminine in any way. She sat with her large fists folded on top of the table, and her knee jutted out from under it, bobbing up and down like my dad’s used to do in diner settings like these. She had blonde hair she didn’t take care of, but it fell nicely over her relatively dainty, albeit scarred, face.

“You probably don’t remember me, but I remember a lot about you,” she said, “You were one of the quirkiest professors I ever learned from.”

“Oh,” I said, finding that I could relax a bit more now, “so you were a student of mine. That’s how you know me.”

“Something like that. I wonder, do you remember how you used to drone on in your lectures about the book, Dune?”

“Great science-fiction novel,” I said, “Helpful reference for teaching interplanetary biology, but I think we should get this transaction moving if you don’t mind. If you tell me where your boss is, I’ll be happy to learn more about the product from him.”

“Do you remember the shields in Dune, how they manipulate subatomic particles to repel fast-moving objects such as bullets?”

“Of course. They use the Holtzman effect. Not a real thing, but again, great science-fiction. Your boss?”

She squinted inquisitively at me for a moment, then said, “Wow. You really don’t know anything about our product,” and again she returned to the question, “How the hell did you get hired for this position?”

“Right place, right time,” I repeated peevishly, “Since you seem eager to tell me about it, just what is this product of yours? You’re selling us a Dune shield?”

A genuine spark of intellectual excitement, which had been present in small flashes a moment ago as well, rekindled in her eyes again.

“Actually, yes!,” she said, dragging her large fists closer together and inward toward her chest on the table as she perked up, “it’s a type of archaea— first of its kind, as far as any of us know— and when you get a colony of it together, it takes on a repellent quality, becoming utterly bulletproof!”

What the hell, I thought, Are we being conned by these people? There’s no way such a thing exists. If it did, UC scientists would be mass producing it for their troops. Is my employer really getting duped into trading a whole year’s worth of supply for this snake oil?

Then, I reminded myself: This isn’t my fight. I’m not the one being conned. My employer is. If he gets a vial of useless bacteria, whatever they plan to give us, I still get paid in real, valuable tender. I just need to see to it that we get our payment and that I don’t get captured for bounty money.

I played along.

“That is incredible!” I said, “You’re telling me these archaea evolved to deflect bullets?”

“Not bullets exactly,” she said, “but very fast moving pieces of metal. You see, they were extracted by a private mining company my boss employed for special extractions. I don’t remember exactly what set his interest on it, but he had been tracking this comet for a number of weeks, sort of obsessing over it. When it passed close enough to Polvo’s orbit, he deployed the mining company there to extract some rare metal from it, and they found the comet riddled with the stuff.”

That seems like the type of bullshit story a con-artist would make up, I thought, it seems like she really believes it though. Maybe her boss is the mastermind— not her.

“What was the comet’s name?” I asked, feigning interest.

My focus had returned mostly to my surroundings. I was subtly eyeing the doors. I couldn’t get too comfortable. This could all be a ruse to keep me here longer. Her reinforcements, if she had in fact sent for them, would likely be arriving soon.

“It was called Kamehameha,” she said, “named after some ancient island god or something. Anyway, we think the archaea originally evolved on a gas giant, and that, when the comet passed near or through it, some of the archaea clung to it and started a colony. I think it's a solid theory. I mean, anything evolving on a gas giant would need to develop some sort of protection from fast moving debris. Ultra-high wind speeds and all that. What do you think, Professor?”

I glanced at her. This was a genuine inquiry. She wore the same grin as before, only now, I didn’t interpret it as ‘cocky’. Her whole comportment had an air of natural self-importance, but the smile came from authentic scientific interest. She was truly enjoying the opportunity to share words with another scientific mind, particularly one she had studied under.

Still, I remained cautious.

“I think it’s a good theory,” I said, “Did you come up with it yourself?”

Some redness came to her cheeks.

“Truthfully? Yes,” she said, and I was shocked to hear the words come out with a hint of bashfulness. I now began to wonder who the hell had hired her for this job. She was supposed to be intimidating me, not having an intellectual chat with me about some theoretical organism. Was she using a clever distraction tactic, or was she truly gullible enough to believe all of this? And why was she blushing?

Stupidly, distractedly, I said, “Do you mind if I ask your name?”

“Rosalyn,” she replied.

“And can I ask how it is you know these archaea can stop bullets?”

“Uh, we shot bullets at them?”

“I see, and how do you suppose they stop these bullets? Electromagnetism?”

“Yes, exactly! Although, I’m not quite sure how they manage to generate such a powerful field of it. I was actually wondering if you had any—”

The entrance to The Barrel hissed open. It was an airlocked door, so there was no way to open it silently. Four large men entered, all adorned with scars, tattoos, and familiar red paint over certain sections of their armored space suits. They trained their eyes immediately on me.

Crimson Fleet, I thought, Shit.

“Shit,” said Rosalyn, “I lost track of time. Don’t worry, Professor Bink. They aren’t going to shoot you or anything…”

I was barely listening to her at this point. The man in the front had a fireman’s rescue axe at his left hip and nothing on his right, the two behind him had pistols at their left hips, but I couldn’t see their right ones because of their single file arrangement, and the one at the far back had a rifle secured to his back.

Rosalyn continued, “I was supposed to ask you a question earlier, but I got carried away with the science talk…”

I ignored her, thinking: The axe one will take the longest to get to me, so I can worry about him last. The two pistol ones, they’re my first concern. Rifle-man will need a second to get that thing off his back, and he’ll likely look for cover first. So, pistol, pistol, rifle, axe.

“They wanted me to ask you if you would join our research efforts,” Rosalyn continued, “We need a more experienced scientist to study the archaea, and I think you would be a great fit…”

Shit, I thought, I forgot Rosalyn. She’s closest to me. She’ll have to be my first concern. So, Rosalyn, pistol, pistol, rifle, axe… Five targets. Shit. That’s a lot. I’ll need to be the one to shoot first. I’ll need that surprise advantage…

“What do you say, Professor? We have a pretty impressive lab on Neebas. Perfect for our purposes, and we haven’t even named the organism yet…”

Shit, is this a code yellow? I think it is. You know what, better safe than sorry. If there’s Crimson Fleet on board, it’s a code yellow.

I allowed the beep sound from my comms device to play, loud enough for Rosalyn to hear it so that she thought I was receiving a call. In actuality, I had been on the line with our engineer, Ron, since before I sat down. He was currently hovering in the central rotor of the space station, his finger poised over the spin control button, ready to halt The Barrel’s artificial gravity on my signal.

With my left hand, I grabbed a little doohickey at my collar, the transmitter for my comms device, and leaned my mouth toward it. With my right hand beneath the table, I drew and aimed my pistol at Rosalyn’s belly.

With all in place, I said to Ron over the comm’s device, as though answering a phone call from him, “‘Yello?”

Ron did his thing, and the rotor arm attached to The Barrel abruptly began slowing its rotation. A severe headrush came to me and all the other patrons as we felt ourselves becoming rapidly lighter.

Looking at the Crimson Fleet guys, I fired two shots into Rosalyn. The force of the recoil in zero gravity caused my body to pinball between the seat-back and table as my rear lifted off the cushion. I had only twelve bullets (well, ten now) in the magazine, and needed to be conservative. The groan I heard from Rosalyn’s side of the table assured me that she was neutralized, and I pivoted.

The diner’s interior started to erupt in a craze as the two pistol-wielding Crimson Fleet members scrambled to draw on me, their feet rising off the ground.

I gripped the singular table leg in the center of the booth with my feet in order to stabilize myself, and fired a shot at each of them.

Both were head-shots, confirmed by the slow-spreading, red mist clouds at each point of contact. The clouds obscured the face of the rifleman standing behind them, which meant I was obscured from him as well, so I decided to go for the axe-man first, who was now hurtling toward me like a zero G torpedo, accelerated by a strong kick off his felled comrade’s chest.

I adjusted my aim to fire on him, but pure instinctual reaction pulled my eye from the pistol’s sight, and over to… Rosalyn!

Floating up from the booth, she swung a knife down at me. It was meant for my jugular, but her upward trajectory made it slice across the bridge of my nose as I leaned away.

Far too close of a call.

Two tiny, spherical globules of blood floated into the foreground of my vision. I lined up my pistol between them and fired again at Rosalyn. The muzzle flash appeared at the end of my pistol… and again it appeared, almost as a reflection, on Rosalyn’s chest, forcing her into a backward somersault. No blood. No piercing of the skin. No damage to her unarmored space suit.

What the hell?

The yell of the incoming axe-man alerted me to his position, and I narrowly ducked beneath the arch of his swing, pulling with my feet to slink my 5’1” frame down under the table. I found myself covered momentarily from the axe-man and super-Rosalyn.

From here, I aimed at the exposed knee of the rifle-man as he ‘swam’ behind the cloud of red, trying to get in front of it. It took me two shots to hit him, and I hit the armored bit, but the force was enough to rotate him and expose his head for a third shot.

That was three down, and other skirmishes were now popping off within The Barrel, making it difficult to hear Rosalyn or the axe-man over all the gunfire. I didn’t have time to math out my ammunition. I simply hoped I had enough.

Kicking off the table leg and out into the throng, I rotated myself to a supine position and aimed my pistol upward. Then, suddenly, as though he were my mirror image, the axe-man emerged from behind the tabletop and drifted above me, face-to-face. It frightened the hell out of me, and I fired twice, point-blank, into his neck, catching the forearm of his axe-hand in my nondominant palm to halt his incoming swing.

I held onto it, and he hovered above me for a second, lifeless, catching two stray bullets in his side from unrelated altercations. I peaked around his shoulder now to find that Rosalyn had completed her somersault, and was now hovering upright above the booth. She was reaching, groping for a stray shotgun that had wandered its way over to her from a dead patron.

I shot once at her forearm. Again, the bullet exploded off her skin as though it were made of titanium. The force from the small bullet had started her spinning in the opposite direction, but the shotgun would be within her reach again in a second.

What the hell is going on, I thought frantically, How is she— Oh shit. Oh shit! The archaea stuff!

She rotated faster now, kicking and paddling along with her momentum to increase her speed. She reached for the shotgun.

That was all true? How was that all true? What the hell can I do against… Wait. Dune! The Holtzman effect. Fast moving objects get deflected, but the slow blade—

There was a powerful blast, and the force from the shotgun pushed the axe-man’s body down into mine.

We bounced off the metal floor, then I pulled his body down and away, ripping the axe from his hand, and using his momentum to shift myself upright. Rosalyn, thrown against the wall by the shotgun’s recoil, was using one hand to steady herself.

An opening.

I launched toward her, axe in grip, shouting like a barbarian with the vocal pitch of Peter Pan as I soared through chunks of the axe-man’s buckshot-grated back. She brought her stabilizing hand to the shotgun’s stock the moment I reached her, aiming it at me, and I swatted the barrel away with the axe blade. The blast was deafening as it exited the muzzle, but I remained clear of the burst. Rosalyn was again sent backward into the wall by its recoil, and I swung the axe sideways, hard, gripping it with both hands, at her stomach.

It met resistance first, a very odd sort of resistance, like two magnets of the same charge attempting to touch. Then I slowed my approach, and the blade sank in. I pressed.

Rosalyn reached her arms outward, groping for the shotgun, or any gun, anything. Then she coughed, and blood bubbled in her mouth.

We were floating upward slowly together now, hovering above the booth. She looked at me with moist eyes. The self-importance still remained in them, unkillable, even as the blood collected at her lower lip and began painting her chin. Looking in her eyes, I felt that I should say some ‘farewell’ to her. Not, “I’m sorry,” or anything like that. We both knew the business we were in. Perhaps I could give her the generic, “you fought well”, but we were no soldiers either. There was no Valhalla for scoundrels.

No, we were scientists. That was what we shared– a common love and respect for the natural world, for chemistry, biology, mathematic—

I heard the familiar blast of my own pistol, and looked down. I had dropped it when I opted to use both hands for the axe. She had been groping for it then, not the shotgun, and she had sure as hell found it.

I saw the blood beginning to pool at my midsection. The shivers came over me very quickly. I looked back at her face.

She died wearing that cocky grin.

I pulled at the doohickey on my collar and leaned my mouth toward it.

“Ron,” I said, “Ron.”

Then I promptly blacked out.