Story Excerpt
XMas in Derbtown
by M.T. Reiten
Joey pressed against the clear side of his “hamster ball,” a repurposed rescue bubble scrounged from the Conglom’s luxury resort on the far side of the crater. The fine lunar regolith creaked beneath the tread as he moved. His dad steadied the squishy bubble with a strong hand so Joey wouldn’t accidentally roll away down the slope into the debris field below.
With his own eyes, Joey saw blurry plasma colors pinched in magnetic fields shifting against a permanent night sky. Joey recognized what the Weber fields made a kilometer away. A huge, jittery cone-shaped Christmas tree—neon red ornaments and argon green branches and a sodium yellow star on top—pulsated over the resort dome. Seeing it in person made better sense than the round, glowy blob on the satellite feeds on the display at home. “Wow.”
The light show flickered red-green-yellow over the tangled debris field, a maze of junk discarded from the distant resort and casino. No wealthy tourists saw this grungy part of the resort. This was also the furthest Joey had ever been from home, though Dad pulled two or three derbdiving runs out here per week.
“You were a baby the last time we came.” Dad’s voice crackled over the short-range audio link.
“With Mom?” Joey asked quietly. He glanced up at Dad in his patchwork suit. It had been a top-of-the-line Armani-Pirelli when he worked at the Conglom facility years ago, but now it was all orange and yellow patchwork.
Dad kept talking. Not grumpy, for once. “You’ve never seen a real Christmas tree, Joey. The scent of pine needles filled the living room.”
“You had a hydro garden in your living room?”
Dad snorted. “No. We cut down a tree from outside and put it in a pot of water.”
Joey thought about a giant plant in the middle of their shelter without life support. “So it would just die slowly? How is that Christmasy?”
“Okay, it was a different world when I was young.”
A sudden motion to the left caught Joey’s attention. A splash of dust spewed from the edge of the debris field. Joey felt a jolt of panic. Micrometeorite? Other impacts?
No. A sentry drone had sprung from the surface. A flicker of green from the plasma Christmas tree reflected off the drone’s armor. Another splash of dust. The x-shaped drone spurted gas jets and flew up the slope to intercept them. Joey fumed. The greedy Conglom wouldn’t even share looking at their decorations with unwanted Derbtowners.
“Go time is now,” Dad said in his no-fooling-around voice.
Joey spun inside the hamster ball and ran. His life support pack whined annoyingly as it flopped against his back. Dad bounded beside him as they scurried down the outward slope of the crater. They weaved between larger rocks and headed to the tunnel entrance on radio silence. Joey rolled as fast as his legs would go. He scrabbled with his hands to keep up with Dad. Moisture from his breath condensed on the stretchy walls of the hamster ball, making it slippery.
Corporate lunar types called them freeloaders, looters, parasites. Sympathizers on Earth called them economic refugees or upcycle pioneers. Joey took pride in being a Derbtowner no matter what anyone else thought of them. They were the future of humanity in the Solar System.
Then Joey stumbled. He fell facedown inside the hamster ball and was whirled around. Black sky and dirt. Black sky and dirt. Big rock and Joey launched into an unwanted direction.
Dad snagged the whirling hamster ball and scooted it in front of him, swatting the sides to guide it toward the goal. Joey struggled to get his footing on the inside tread, but was too dizzy to do more than hang on. Then they reached the surface hole into the cavern underneath and plunged into the dark.
Dad and Joey fell. Dad’s helmet lights flicked on, the beam slashing on the walls of the ancient lava tube. Joey spread out, holding arms and legs braced, but flexible. Be like springs. Dad snagged the carry handle of Joey’s hamster ball and the dangling rope with his other hand to slow them both.
The drone followed through the skylight opening. Dad dropped Joey to draw and pop his EMP gun. In that instant, Joey saw that nothing happened to the drone. Not even a wobble. Autonomous—biomimetic—instead of direct-controlled. No antennas to pick up the EMP and fry electronics. Prolly hornet based. Those sucked because they held a grudge.
Then the fall became too far and too fast for Joey. The ground met him too soon. The hamster ball hit and rebounded. The sudden pressure change made his ears pop. Joey lost his hold and smacked against the wobbling sides of the bubble. The shock went deep into his bones. His life support pack punched him in the spine. Joey ached from the inside. He wanted to cry but sniffed it in.
The hornet-drone swiveled a beady camera eye to track them. It was only a spotter, no stinger this time.
Dad released the rope and landed next to Joey. He hand-signed. Okay? Joey blinked under the bright helmet lights as the hornet drone descended. Joey pointed behind his dad. The hornet drone had dropped to head height.
Dad didn’t look. That would waste time and let the drone get an image of his face through his visor. Dad drew the rock hammer from his belt, whirled on one foot, and lashed out with a backhanded swing. The hammer struck the drone and knocked it against a wall. It fell and immediately tried to right itself in a flutter of fine regolith. A dent showed bare metal near its forward lens.
Dad immediately gathered the hamster ball and launched it two-handed toward their escape route. Joey bounced from the ground as Dad caught up with loping strides. Dad dribbled Joey’s hamster ball. Each impact made a vibrating thwung-ng-ng. Joey felt like a useless baby.
The drone spurted its jets, bounced, and rose to follow them. Dust swirled in the tunnel. On the surface, the jets blew dust out and away. Down here the dust ricocheted from the curved walls. It billowed like sandstorms on Earth and filled the tunnel, kept aloft by static charge, hiding Joey and Dad from the drone’s camera. But the hornet-drone still chased them, switching to radar as visual failed. Dad rushed ahead of the wall of grit.
Dad gripped the hamster ball as they came to a pile of rock blocking the tunnel. Joey centered his body in the sphere. Dad squeezed Joey through the hidden crack in the piled boulders. The tough plastic squeaked against rock. Retroreflectors on the boulders, painted to match the gray-black tunnel, fooled the drone into thinking it was a solid wall. Joey watched particles swirl through the crack as he imagined the not-too-bright drone confused by their disappearance.
Dad laughed over their short-range comms as he set Joey down and waited for the dust to settle. Then he sighed and withdrew into silence as they trekked home. Joey rolled behind him through the maze of tunnels until they reached the roughing airlock into Derbtown.
As Dad cycled in behind him, Joey checked the resource board at the settlement entry. The red LED countdown showed twenty-three days survival with on-hand volatiles. Joey got nervous when the countdown dipped below thirty days, because Dad would grumble and devote more time to labor for “the common good,” tapping into Conglom storage to provide O2, N2, and H2O for Derbtown. That meant less to eat and more time alone for Joey in the family shelter. The days stretched during the holiday season. Alone they stretched even more.
Once inside, Dad lifted his helmet and popped on his respirator. Misters sprayed from overhead to turn fine lunar dust to slick goo. Joey’s hamster ball picked up the gunk as he trotted beside his dad.
Soon the goo dried and flaked off in clay-chips as they wound through the barriers and entered Derbtown proper. A few folks walked the lane, coming or going to the hidden entrances that led outside or to shelters. Scavenged gear lined the main street, divided into general types. Work tools, survival equipment, secondhand comforts. The big items for trade sat outside the rock-carved shelters. Furniture, storage crates, building materials had been pulled out of the debris fields and dragged underground.
Donna the Shopkeeper scratched paint from dinged up gas cylinders. She paused and saluted them, lifting her hands palm out, index fingers touching at apex and thumbs touching on the bottom. It was the triangle symbol for Derbtown. Reuse, Recycle, Reclaim. Donna called out through her respirator. “Find anything for me, Eric?”
Dad answered, “Only outside taking a looky-look.”
“That’s a waste of O2 if you got nothing to show for it.”
“It’s a bigger waste of oxygen if you don’t know where you’re going next.”
Joey returned the triangular salute and gave a tight-lipped grin. He wanted to tell Donna about the Christmas tree, but Dad wasn’t stopping.
Donna winked at Joey as he rolled by. “Hey, Eric, can’t keep your kid in a bubble forever!”
“He still fits,” Dad replied.
Heat flushed Joey’s face. All the excitement from before was gone in a hot instant. Joey still fit in a little kid’s rescue bubble. Dad thought Joey was still a little kid. Knowing that everyone could see him through the hamster ball and no respirator to hide behind made it worse.
Joey was small for his age. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen in low lunar gee. Joey was supposed to sprout beanstalk tall, stooping in the tunnels and reaching the high shelves for his much shorter parents. Just like the tattered old storybooks. Dad blamed the rad-gas attack by Conglom mercs before Joey was born, but no one had proved it. Head down and feeling small, Joey rolled after Dad down the main passage where the locally produced stuff was traded.
Dad lingered by the domebrew vodka stall outside the shelter for Junknet Enterprises. Joey wished he could get a little bottle for Dad—he seemed to really want it—but they wouldn’t sell to kids, even for a Christmas present. But Dad never did more than look, even when Stench the Chemist pushed hard.
Behind the vodka stall, an animation covered the display wall. It showed a bearded, fat man in a red and white envirosuit. St. Nick, the patron of Derbtown. “Have you been naughty or nice?” asked St. Nick in a speech bubble while holding a forbidden bottle of domebrew.
“I’m nice,” Joey whispered. He was determined to stay on the nice list.
His dad broke free from Stench and led Joey deep into the Derbtown tunnels to home. After shucking out, Joey vacuumed the “dirty room” with one hanging suit, his deflated hamster ball, and an empty hook. Even wearing a household respirator, Joey tasted grit on his teeth. An unpleasant electric tingle on his molars. He checked their dosimetry crystals. Low total exposure for the amount of time on the surface. Maybe he could talk Dad into another trip upside before the Christmas tree was turned off? He plugged the battery packs to charge. Joey felt particularly diligent as he completed his chores and lingered with the new memory of outside. Unbounded space to explore rather than the low-ceiling family shelter. How would he ever do anything if he was trapped inside Derbtown forever?