Opening Acts

  *** ***

  Half an hour after they started, Shelley gave the all-clear. By the time the reporters and their cameras had started showing up, most of the bikers were down, gathering near their hangar, checking their equipment. Geoff coasted to a stop and launched himself off his bike. He ached. He could smell his own sour stink, and though slimed in sweat, he was shivering. Dully, he wondered if his climate controls were malfunctioning. He shuffled clumsily over to the crater lip, near where he and Carl had been standing less than an hour before, and leaned over, hands on his thighs.

  When he straightened, the mist in the crater was clearing. The pale sun rose low over the horizon in the southwest, and cast long shadows across the still steaming wreckage. The stars faded from view. The crater floor was covered in a graphite slick, with neatly spaced blocks on top in yellow, red, and an assortment of metallic hues. In the crater's middle was a lump of dirty ice about half the size of what they had had before the delivery. A couple weeks' worth, maybe. No more.

  Amaya came up next to him; he recognized the stickers on her suit sleeve. He could not see her face well. But he knew what she was thinking.

  "There's always other shipments coming Down," he said. "My mom says Commissioner Navio is a genius at making the ice last. We'll get more in soon. It'll be OK."

  "Yeah," she said.

  Shelley alighted next to them, and slapped Geoff and Amaya on the back. "You all saved us. Good work." She bounded off toward the warehouses. By then, Kamal and Ian had found them.

  "Aren't you going to talk to the reporters?" Kamal asked, and Ian said, "You should get over there. This was your idea. You deserve the credit. Not those clowns."

  Geoff shook his head. "Nah. Gotta bounce."

  Kamal and Ian protested, but Amaya said, "Lay off." And to Geoff: "We'll talk to the reporters. Catch you later."

  "Yeah. Later."

  No point in delaying the inevitable. It was time to face his parents, and their disappointment that it was not Carl, but he, who'd survived.

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  About the Author

  Locke is an engineer who provides environmental compliance and sustainability management services, with an information management spin. She also writes science fiction, and her novel, Up Against It, is the first in a hard SF space opera series set several hundred years in the future. Her novelette "True North" appeared in Gordon van Gelder's climate-change anthology, Welcome to the Greenhouse in January, 2011.

  She has also written several science fiction novels as Laura J. Mixon, and assorted short works, including stories for George R.R. Martin's Wild Card series.

  You can visit Locke's blog, Feral Sapient or follow her on Twitter. For more about works written as Laura J. Mixon, check out her alter-ego website LauraMixon.com.