Lunar Tales - an anthology

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  I was born planetside – little town called Plain City, Utah – about the time everyone was rushing to get offworld.

  My folks were no different – before I was two years old they’d sold off the family’s land and hopped a shuttle to the old Cheeseball. (That’s what Dad always called Earth’s moon.) We settled in Buzzville, back when it was a lot smaller than it is now.

  Back then, we still had white powder streets and most of the structures were formed from old cargo freighters.

  A lot’s changed since those days.

  Buzzville went through the standard cycle: it boomed, it decayed, it was purchased by Big Name Money and renewed, and it boomed again.

  At its heart lies the “Old Town” – a few “historic buildings” nestled in a district populated mostly by criminals and scavengers. Around that is the former seat of government for Dome One, now the residence of some low-budget start-up businesses and a couple of private prison firms. Beyond that you’ve got the rows and rows of pack-dwellings.

  Then there’s the New Business District with its three-hundred story dome-scrapers, and then, in the radial arms that reach out into the wilds of the dome, you’ve got the more affluent homes with their views and their private ports.

  Twelve million people staring down at the Earth, living the cliché that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

  Dominicus Black had advised me to invest in property in Dome Two or Dome Three. Dome Two was sixty years old mostly undeveloped. Dome Three was thirty years old and mostly suburban, with a handful of big industries contrasted by some Natural Scenic Designated Areas. But neither dome had as good a view of Earth – and besides, I’d already staked my claim a long time ago.

  This is where I was going to spend my best years – a few hundred kilometers from where I’d spent my worst.

  Not that being a bounty hunter was that bad of a job.

  Although based in Buzzville, I got to see plenty of the System, from Asimoon – the giant space station in orbit of Venus – to all of the Outer Planets. A good chase could take me as far out as Neptune, or as deep in as Mercury’s Spa City.

  Whoever thought of putting a vacation spot right on the terminator of Mercury, between freezing cold and scorching hot – was a genius.

  I was half-tempted to spend my last days and the last of my wealth in that little tribute to decadence, but there were just too many people.

  Nope, for me, it was the wide open spaces and lack of any humans whatsoever that drew me to my pastoral piece of Dome One.

  And nobody was going to drive me from it.