The rusty outpost of Pepper's Gulch had its doom spelled out on fliers stuck to nearly every door in town. Papers flapped, their rustle lost in the dusty wind. The glue on the back swelled as it adhered, bulging out the title, "Evacuate Immediately."
Anyone who could afford to escape Pepper's Gulch was already gone, so the notices only succeeded in distressing the maybe two dozen remnants. Tearing the papers down or shooting dead the sinister bastard putting them up wouldn't save a soul.
Nevertheless, Old Man Fletcher shouldered a door out into the dusty, alien wind to shoot dead a protected employee of Novaris Interstellar. Among would-be murderers, Old Man Fletcher's motives were surprisingly pure. Those papers stole his neighbors' dignity. The fliers were the claw marks of someone drowning in a well. He'd put a stop to it.
"Oh hell," Mrs. Ortega groaned as she heard the cantankerous old coot take to the dusty street. She abandoned her late supper and bustled over to the kitchen window. That lady had seen enough death to recognize its weight in the hunch of his shoulders. The sweet fool had a tighter grip on his rifle than on reality.
She wiped the glass with her damp hand. The move only smeared thick dust—now she couldn't see a thing. She cursed and gave up hope that she was wrong. The town's best shooter was marching to the metal watchtower. If he found his target, his kill would call down a fiery retribution from space. They'd all be punished. Someone had to stop him, and that someone needed better knees than hers and the capacity to breathe out in that wind.
Pepper's Gulch needed a hero.
The best they'd get was Marcus Kingsbury, the galaxy's least profitable liar and one of just two teenagers on the planet. He was cleaning tables after dinner. Without an airlock on the cafeteria, every swing of the double doors drew in fine, electrostatically charged dust that clung to surfaces with the planet's charming malignancy.
The polished floor that gleamed an hour ago now lay beneath dull yellow grit. It coated everything, but the tables were the worst. Dust would stick to his neighbors' clothes, skin, and food. Without routine diligence, every sip and every bite of Mr. and Mrs. Ortega's cooking left a lingering taste of old pennies.
Wiping the dust, the sulfuric regolith, with a damp towel would only smear it. Marcus first shook out baking soda from a can, covering the table like powdered sugar on Sunday waffles. Then, he laid the towel down at the corner. With an even, two-handed push, he drew a stretch of clean surface. Once saturated, the towel quickly stopped cleaning. Marcus spotted the yellow trail in the cloth's wake, stopped, and returned it to the bucket to rinse.
Six times a day, he cleaned these tables, listening to the splash of water as he wrung out his towel. He battled the dust on every bench, though fewer than half were ever used in this soon-to-be ghost town.
The first table he scrubbed shone brighter than the others as it simultaneously benefited from fresh water and towels. Ever since Mr. and Mrs. Ortega took in Marcus and gave him this job, he had washed the same table first—the table where the only other teenager, Lena Bridger, sat. It could be a challenge to read the nuances in her father's predatory glare, but Marcus guessed correctly that the old soldier noticed the extra shine on his family's table.
He fought for that moment, when enough tables were clean that the sulfur gave way to miracles conjured by Mr. Ortega's stovetop. Six times a day, Marcus pushed back the planet's odor, defending one of the few joyful places left in the world.
So, when Mrs. Ortega hurried over, waving for his attention, rushing to explain the calamitous murder in the works, he wasn't surprised.
"Now scoot up that ladder and tell the stubborn old fool that killing Inspector Sutter is gonna do no good. There's leftover bacon in it for both of you if he listens," she concluded.
Marcus knew better than to waste words on Old Man Fletcher, lost in one of his moods. Arguing with Mrs. Ortega didn't strike him as a useful tactic either, especially with extra bacon on the line. So, as a person enjoying a strictly casual relationship with the truth, Marcus agreed to head straight for Old Man Fletcher's watchtower with no such plan.
Scrambling over the cafeteria bench, Marcus fell. The bucket sloshed but managed not to tip. He recovered with an effort at reassuring suaveness that made Mrs. Ortega shake her head. She glanced across the dusty cafeteria tables at her husband, cleaning his cooktop for the night. The man never could hide a smile.
Marcus slapped on his beat-up leather hat and slipped through the double doors of the Ortegas' cafeteria. The moaning wind stirred yellowing soil, making every inhalation burn the throat. The dust stung his eyes. Marcus tugged at the brim of his hat and tried to spot Inspector Sutter among the scattered shacks.
The wind blew in along one side of the main road, whipped around the cliff wall, then right back out along the downhill side of the road. Back against the incoming dust, Marcus squinted up at the watchtower, the only building from this angle framed by a purple sky and not weathered rock.
Old Man Fletcher spent most of his hours up there on dogged lookout. As it was the automated turrets that protected the town from the alien bugs, his purpose up there was psychological more than practical. Still, he kept watch. This evening, however, instead of sweeping the horizon, the glint of a gun barrel pointed downhill to where Marcus would find the inspector.
Off the main road in town, down a tediously curving path by the cliff—that's where the barrel pointed. The gun twisted slowly against the purple sky, as if tracking someone's motion. Marcus ran.
Running meant breathing through the mouth. The dust stretched deep, coating his throat. Gulping sulfuric air at a run, right after dinner, made Marcus's stomach gurgle. No amount of wincing and massaging would settle his gut, but he kept at it anyway as he ran on and made the problem worse.
When he saw a figure, he had to wipe his watering eyes to make sure it was the inspector. Marcus mulled over his next move, his hand lingering about his face.
Old Man Fletcher might hurry now that Marcus had arrived. He glanced over his shoulder at the watchtower. Signaling the old man might have the opposite effect. Well, shit. The only way to stop the murder was to ruin the shot—to stand in the line of fire. He supposed that had been his plan all along, but he had kept that detail even from himself.
Maybe worse than serving his town as a human shield might be having to talk to the snake of a company man. It was then that Marcus realized he had been absently smearing mud about his face.
He blew out a sigh. Best not drag it out. He called, "Good evening," as he moved uncomfortably close to the inspector. Sutter's bushy eyebrows looked like extensions of his bowler hat. Marcus held his arms out, as if frozen in an offer to hug the planet's cruelest man.
One hand held a stack of papers while the other pressed a filter over his mouth to summon the air required to scold this sudden teenager. Marcus, for the first time in his life, saw clean, manicured nails. The inspector's words started before his mask had cleared his face, "—impeding the duties of the Frontier Settlements Authority. You can back down, or I can have you arrested."
Marcus took a deliberate step back, tossing a look over at the watchtower, hoping Old Man Fletcher was too busy cussing to maintain a murderous intent. Nonetheless, Marcus held his breath as he waited to see if Inspector Sutter's head would explode.
It didn't.
"Sir, eviction notices won't help the town improve," Marcus told the Inspector.
"Thank the stars that's not my concern."
"Doesn't a fine company man like you want to see Pepper's Gulch become a profitable outpost again? It's not too late for us."
"It is too late for you." He smacked the papers with his air filter. "These say it's too late for you. Get out of here or die."
"We've got nowhere else to go. It can't be too late," Marcus spoke like he was rattling prison bars.
Sutter's responding insult died in a coughing fit. Once more with the breathing apparatus, then to settle the matter, he said, "Your only refinery was destroyed. A handful of low-tier, uninsured contractors can't hold this world. You're hopeless."
As the facility Sutter mentioned had also been Marcus's home, the reminder was unnecessary.
"Our turrets are holding. The bugs are piled up out there," Marcus gestured to the road out of town, the view of mounded carcasses obscured by dust.
Sutter took another hit of filtered air to escape the burning, wretched dust about him. Normally, a teenager fumbling about the economics of interstellar war could stir a specific hate he could print on his face as clearly as the notices he hung. His watering eyes stymied his refined display of contempt. He grumbled, "infuriating," into his mask.
"But what if we get our refinery back? Repairs are already underway," he lied. "We'll have it ready before," Marcus cocked his head to read the notices in Sutter's claw, "a week?!"
A date had been set.
Marcus licked his lips, wondering who already knew, and tasted the sulfur in the dust. Then, another idea hit him.
"General Pepper!" Marcus pointed in the direction of their town's statue, supposedly in their founder's likeness. The work was a botched amalgam of scrap metal, cracked where it wasn't blemished. Still, invoking his name made Marcus stand straighter. A hero who died in the service of the legendary commander of the Celestial Fleet. "Admiral Aldrich said General Pepper was his friend, that we share the same spirit." Marcus tapped his fist to his chest, reminding the inspector of his material presence in the world.
"Pepper? You morons." Sutter coughed. "General François de Pépérine died on this rock because he blundered into a hive without support. Like you all, the idiot didn't respect numbers. Didn't do paperwork. You're welcome to join your hero in a fitting tribute."
Marcus's next words would have landed him in trouble. Fortunately, at that moment, the twilight sky lit with the cherry light of a meteor.
Swirling about them, the dusty wind glowed orange as the fireball streaked across the sky.
For half a second, both thought the nuclear bombardment had started. Their jaws were left behind tracking the arc above them. The Inspector reassured himself that planetary annihilation required his final approval. He'd be in space when it happened.
Meanwhile, Marcus gripped onto the satisfying thought that, if this was indeed the end, at least the Inspector would be here to embrace the wall of flame along with their little town.
The promised rain of thermonuclear warheads hadn't started. Falling towards Pepper's Gulch was an entirely different sort of weapon.
