The rusty outpost of Pepper's Gulch had its doom spelled out on fliers stuck to nearly every door in town. The glue on the papers swelled after application. Frontier homes ranged from wood scraps to space-rated carbon fiber. Tape wasn't an option with all the grit swirling in the air. A permanent seal in Pepper's Gulch was no small chemical feat. The puffed tops of these fliers caused an eerie embossing to the bold title, "Evacuate Immediately."
Anyone who could afford to escape was already gone. The notices succeeded only in distressing the few dozen remnants. Tearing the papers down or shooting dead the sinister bastard putting them up wouldn't save a soul. Sure, the fluttering part could be ripped off, but that'd still leave the permanently sealed "Evacuate Immediately." Murder would produce worse results.
Nevertheless, Old Man Fletcher shouldered a door out into the dusty, alien wind to shoot dead a protected employee of Novaris Interstellar. For someone with an intent to kill, Old Man Fletcher's motives were surprisingly pure. Those papers were robbing his neighbors of their dignity. The fliers were the claw marks of someone drowning in a well. He'd put a stop to it.
Mrs. Ortega spotted the cantankerous sonofabitch when he took to the dusty street, his grip on his rifle tighter than on reality. She abandoned her late supper and rushed over to the kitchen window to confirm her suspicions. Wiping the glass with her damp hand only smeared thick dust—she couldn't see a thing. She cursed. Mrs. Ortega didn't really need to look again, anyway. The hunch in that man's shoulders as he fought the wind spelled out his intent. 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. 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 task was about to fall on 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 devil's own fury.
The polished floor that gleamed an hour ago now hid beneath a 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 this dust with a damp towel would only smear the sulfuric regolith. 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 needed in this ghost town.
The first table would shine 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 has washed the same table first. No surprise, but that table is where the only other teenager, Lena Bridger, sat. It could be a challenge to read the nuances in Mr. Bridger's predatory glare, but Marcus guessed correctly that the old soldier noticed the extra shine on his table.
A quarter of the tables cleaned was all it took for the miracles conjured by Mr. Ortega's stovetop to retake the room—even after a meal. Six times a day, Marcus pushed back the planet's odor, defending one of the few joyful places left in the world. As Mrs. Otega bustled over and ordered him out to save the town, preventing a catastrophe seemed like an extension of his current work.
"Now scoot up that ladder and tell the old man that killing Inspector Sutter's 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 habitual liar, Marcus simply agreed to head straight for Old Man Fletcher's watchtower with no such plan.
