After two cold showers, three sessions with a magazine, a smoke and an hour of trying to work on ammunition, I was finally no longer thinking about Mindy.
Whatever she had, it went way past normal. It was probably some kind of pheromone, I hadn’t even touched her, and she had relegated my hindbrain inert to all of its other functions. And it had occupied all of it; the longer I had gone, the worse it became until it lightened like I was coming down from a high.
It left me a bit fuzzy, honestly, but after I had detoxed a bit, I got back to making the ammo I needed and messed around with my new gun.
It was like opening a present, breaking the seal for the first time on the table in the kitchen. It was a magical experience after so long without doing it. Hexagonal barrel and tube magazine with its wood furniture that was gorgeously oiled. The exterior metal had a treatment to blue it, which was a misleading name for a black tint to protect the metal. It didn’t have special stuff, no engraving, although the grip did have some checkering.
I lifted it up like it was my child. A gorgeous piece of art and engineering, I honestly felt bad for using it; it was no doubt going to get scratched up, just like Lefty and Righty. I would have to read the manual to figure out how to maintain its insides, but I could blue it again if it got too scratched up. I had the parts, I just needed whatever chemical I would need to protect it.
I had something in the shop, some manual that told me what I needed to do.
I brought it over to the bay, made sure it was clear and safe so I didn’t stub my toe and started working on handling it. I wasn’t particularly proficient with a longer gun, even as short as the carbine was. I could probably land a shot in the controlled environment of a range, but I would need to test it at some point to figure out whatever quirks it had.
I took the manual with me to skim through it.
The Y&I 3097 Repeating Coil Carbine. Handmade by Yuri and Ivy Kinetics Company on Titan, which was a bit out of the way, especially for a recent model, but Titan was where lever actions got made, so I suppose I should have expected that.
I read about fire controls and safety and made myself aware of where they were, drilling a bit to make sure I would remember in a pinch. Then I did elaborate movements, holding the gun in both hands to try and get used to it; the weight of the gun was definitely forward a bit and would only get heavier when loaded. It was a known problem with tube magazines, which threw off aim; the change in balance as I loaded the gun would cause the front to dip, which would be a bit of a problem and as I unloaded it the balance moved back. I could probably compensate with training, though.
I was not used to handling that, or the gun, or a gun that wasn’t held in one hand like my revolvers.
As it turned out, the gun could hold the magic number of shots, which was six. I could get an extra in the chamber, but six in the magazine was the icing on the cake. According to the manual, the barrel was only 18”, so it was definitely more my kind of gun: shorter, lighter and something I could do something dumb with.
I had turned my guns into plasma-launching nightmares; whatever my possibly demented mind came up with for this coil gun, it would be a glorious nightmare.
I had ideas, terrible ideas, ideas that would make the smiths that made the gun want to put in a restraining order against me. My mind knew I could do things with them; the innate knowledge I had in my mind from birth percolated in my head.
I shouldered the gun, checked the sights, ran around with it over my head a bit, and tested loading. The lever pushed open a block at the top, which left the action open. It wasn’t on, so all it did was move around from the magazine up, and I had to slide the round either back or out of the barrel.
I was confused about the action, there was no need to have an open action, no reason to open the action after a shot, but it used a spring and a magnetic hammer to kick the bullet out, which was wild. I looked through the manual and found the line, ‘This was included for pure satisfaction,’ which it was satisfying.
“Ok then, maybe they are just as demented as I am. This is even better than I thought it was… Is this love?”
The longer I read the manual, the more little things I picked up on. The entire thing was a coil gun, but that was picked because it could be fired inside with a rubber-tipped shot on a specific fire mode, so they could fire it in a home without damaging something. They even told you how to make it do that.
They advertised that it could be fired by a child or in close quarters, which was why it was so short, which, I mean, hurt a little, but honestly, with how short I was, I had to accept it.
They had six custom rounds detailed in the manual but a few that might as well have question marks next to them, like ‘grenade’ and ‘buckshot.’
At one point, it almost mentions chemical shots and going off the deep end into things I can’t quite understand, like how the capacitor worked, and something they only referred to as ‘overdrive’ brought up once, and never mentioned what it did.
It was downright psychotic and I loved it.
After emptying the gun and getting in some stretches before I could make my way back to the canteen, I ended up putting the gun back in its box. Plowing through three hours with the gun was time worth spending, even if I didn’t get to fire it.
And I now had a way to fire it, test it out in a way that wouldn’t put a hole in my boat while I was waiting to get to the Throne.
I headed out, sword still on my hip. I checked behind me to make sure I wasn’t going to get stabbed from behind, but I made my way to the bar unharmed, where Frank was still out, and I moseyed on up to an open stool to get a drink.
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The bar was swarming, mostly around Mindy, but also in general. Frank and his buddy behind the bar were overwhelmed by the tide of people.
I decided to keep an eye on Mindy, it was one thing to be swarmed around a bar, but it could quickly become much worse. It was a rough world, and some people decided it was a great idea to do terrible things to people who didn’t deserve it.
Mindy was drawing eyes like flies, so I waited and watched. One eye on Mindy, one on Frank, and the eye I wish I had on the back of my head on the rest of the room.
So, I kept her in my periphery and paid attention to her until Frank made his way over. The bar was packed, and there were two people behind it, and it still took a bit, so I tried to figure out what I would eat in the meantime.
I still couldn’t figure out the food's fancy names on the menu, but after a bit of parsing, I figured you couldn’t go wrong with meat and decided to order something incomprehensible with meat in it.
When Frank came over, I nodded at him.
He looked beat, he had bags under his eyes, and he was sweating a bit.
“Hello again Bandit, it was whiskey, right? Anything else? Food or drink.”
“A whiskey yeh, and ah… However, you pronounce this one.” I told him, pointing at the menu.
He looked down at it, went to write it down, stopped, looked back down at where I was still pointing and squinted.
“You don’t know how to pronounce it do you?” I asked, chuckling a bit at the look on his face.
“No, I do not, number 11 it is.” He said bemusedly.
“You guys have numbers, that’s nice, fancy.”
“Tell me about it, sometimes the classiness is nice, but sometimes it’s a massive pain.” He replied.
“I can feel that. I won’t keep you here talking to little old me, but just so you know, I’m keeping an eye on Mindy.”
He blinked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Thanks for that. I doubt something bad will happen, but honestly, better safe than sorry is something I can get behind. So, thanks for that.”
I tipped my hat to him, “Good people have to look out for each other, and while I might or might not be that, it’s no problem to make sure something bad doesn’t happen. Go on now, do your job in peace, noble barkeep.”
He nodded though he was to tired to smile when he drew back from the counter and got me a small glass of whiskey that I could slip through on my own time.
I sat there and listened to the people and the music, soaking in the feel of the room with its genuine wood and ample atmosphere. There were people, mostly humanoid labour, lounging around, playing games and eating. I kept checking on Mindy then looking over the crowd. She was in the process of getting drinks from six different dudes.
The room smelled like fancy food, beer and sweat. Apparently, a lot of people had right now off. It was full and somewhat rowdy, but not all that bad.
I even spotted the fucking spy off in the corner and couldn’t help but mutter.
“Oh brother.”
“What’s that?” Frank asked.
“I noticed a guy that gives me the creeps.” I said, turning on my seat to look towards him.
“The creeps in what way? Like he’s a sleezy or…”
“Like he’s a fucking spy, he holds himself like he’s a merc, and he’s ready to jump at any moment. Gives me the Heebie jeebies.”
“Really? That is kind of spooky. How the hell did you pick up on it though?” He asked.
He looked honest enough, so I gave him a partial truth.
“I’m a merc obviously, only I’m doing boring stuff while everyone else is finishing up. I finished first and got the great job of doing shuttle work.” I told him, giving him a casual shrug to try and sell it.
He nodded at that instead of calling me on it, which was all well for me, I was getting a boatload of credits to keep my mouth shut, and I wasn’t going to blow that.
“Can I get a refill by the way?”
“Sure, but you might want to wait, were about 8 minutes away from catching the hook.” He told me, leaning down on the bar.
“Seriously? I hadn’t realized I had been here so long. Do we have to do anything? Tie ourselves down or whatever?”
He shook his head, “Nothing in particular, you might feel a jerk when we connect, but that’s generally it. You might need to sit down if you feel like you might fall over, but that’s it.”
“Then I’ll get a second glass please and thank you. I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, waving a hand in disregard.
He nodded and I got to nursing my second cup, slowly and steadily; I didn’t want to get drunk, just a bit tipsy. I tried to pay attention to the ship, but it was so large I didn’t think I could feel the engines, and any acceleration was so small I couldn’t feel it.
I checked Mindy again, but she was fine, I’ll be it a bit tipsy, but she was chugging from a big mug, so that was normal. No one was trying to do anything inappropriate; most of them were practically unconscious, and one of the staff was escorting them out after cutting them off.
The number of shot glasses, normal glasses, and mugs was quite something. A tiny island of glass rested in front of her, carefully stacked up in a pyramid.
She had outdrunk them all, one guy was flagging, and one dude was still going, but the rest were out of an impromptu drinking contest.
It was while I noticed the state of the drinking contests that I noticed a slight movement with the glass. A tiny vibration that I couldn’t feel through my feet.
I checked the clock, four minutes to hook.
I sipped and watched Mindy go to the restroom; no one followed. I started watching the bartenders, Frank serving and talking to others and the other bartender escorting some people who could barely stand to the exit. They stumbled to the exit a hilarious stumbling dance that I couldn’t help but smile at.
Mindy got back just fine and managed to notice me, and I tipped my hat to her. She tipped a non-existent hat back before she started giggling as she got back to her seat and got to finishing her glass.
I could just feel the ship rumbling a bit now, I could imagine it accelerating in the dark. The giant engines rumbling as they spewed propellent to reach the hook that would be swinging at immense speed. Extending from just above the eight of the stations around Gabriel, out to the moons and beyond.
Like how I had caught the hook up to the station, they would be pulling into the big hook now so we could be slingshot to the rest of the inner planets, likely Luna, the moon orbiting the Throne, though it’s possible we might stop at Raphael or Michael.
It wasn’t the glorious way it used to work back during the ‘good old days,’ like you would read about in kid’s books. No more void rails, no solar sails or teleporting, just good old-fashioned thrust from an engine.
We had lost a whole lot, but we would get back there eventually.
Overall, it was relatively calm in the bar. Then we hooked, and the glasses fell over; one of the guys at the bar fell over, and I felt the jerk as we accelerated a bit and I moved as I was pulled, resisting it a bit to not fall off for the moment the jerk lasted.
I heard Mindy disappointedly say, “Shoot, now I’m all soaked.”
I decided that I wasn’t going to look back over, because I had self-control and damnit I was not going to ogle.
My body didn’t get the memo when the jerk ended, and my body turned back around to where it was before.
And that was how my first day ended onboard the Tsarta. Frank got off and left with Mindy after I got my accidental eye full, and I retired to my ship and got to floating in my bag and went to sleep.
The next seven days went by in a blur of similar stuff. Milling, drilling, visiting the canteen and getting drinks and food. Each day, the reality of what I was about to do started to hit, and each day the dread grew worse.
I got my ammunition done, and focused more on the carbine, fixing up a rubber shot to test it for even more training that didn’t ease the tension I felt.
I had taken money to go back down to the most haunted planet in the system and grab something that I had no clue to its nature. It could be alive for all I knew.
Then we decelerated on the eighth day and made our approach, passing Luna as we made our way to the throne.