Chapter 6: The Lunar Consultant's Gambit
The lunar rover’s tires crunched over the bleached bones of the old railroad bed, announcing Steele’s arrival in Newhaven with a plume of fine, white dust. The settlement wasn’t a town so much as a persistent infection on the landscape—a cluster of prefab domes and rusted shipping containers huddled around the skeletal relic of the relay station. The air smelled of hot metal, ozone, and a sharp, chemical tang from the recycling vats.
Steele parked in the shadow of the station’s towering, corroded skeleton. His silver eyes took in the details: the patched solar panels, the graffiti claiming various gang territories, the nervous glances of a few scavengers huddled by a oil-drum fire. He adjusted the cuff of his jacket, the lunar alloy in his arms catching the harsh light with a subdued gleam. Here, he wasn’t the curious friend from Maple Creek. Here, he was a CEO from a company town, and his bearing shifted accordingly—a subtle straightening of the spine, a cooling of the expression.
The private relay room was a metal coffin bolted to the side of the main structure, accessible via a narrow grated walkway. He paid the exorbitant credit fee to a taciturn woman with a optic implant that whirred as she scanned him, then stepped inside and sealed the door. The room was stifling, barely larger than a closet, dominated by a console of analog switches and a single flickering holoscreen. The hum of aging cooling fans was a physical presence.
He entered a complex encryption key, the digits glowing on his forearm before he transferred them. The connection hissed and spat, resolving into the familiar, smoke-hazed visage of Marla. Her office in Vegas was all neon reflection and dark glass behind her.
“Steele. You’re calling from a toilet,” she said by way of greeting, taking a drag from a slender vapor-stick.
“It’s a secured line, Marla. That’s what matters.”
“Secure is a relative term out there. What’s burning?”
“I need to re-establish contact with the asset you introduced me to. The retrieval specialist.” He kept his voice even, corporate.
Marla’s eyebrows lifted. “The hunter? You told me your Maple Creek project was observational. A hands-off cultural study.”
“Circumstances have evolved. There’s been an incident. A local lawman has disappeared. Funds were stolen. The community believes a bounty hunter is operating in the area.”
“And you want to ask him if he’s taking side gigs?” She chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “He’s a commission boy, Steele. He doesn’t do community theatre.”
“I’m aware. I don’t think he’s responsible. But if anyone has heard whispers, has a sense of who might be, it would be him. I need a conversation. A discreet one.”
Marla studied him through the static. “You like these people.”
It wasn’t a question. Steele didn’t answer it. “Can you connect me or not?”
She sighed, tapping ash into a tray just out of view. “His broker filter is live. I can ping it. He’ll get the request. Whether he answers… that’s up to him and what you’re offering. Stand by.”
The screen dissolved into a shifting pattern of encryption protocols. Steele waited. The room felt smaller, the fan hum deafening. After three minutes, the screen cleared.
A figure resolved, silhouetted against a blur of nondescript, neutral lighting. He wore the stark white uniform, the helmet with its large, black, insectile eyes staring blankly forward. The image was crisp, utterly without static.
“Marla’s client.” The voice was a synthesized baritone, smoothed of all inflection. “You have a new requirement.”
“I have a question,” Steele corrected, leaning forward slightly. “Regarding activity near the Maple Creek settlement. There’s been—”
“I am aware of the municipal disruption.” Texas interrupted, the helmet tilting a fraction. “Your observational mission has become complicated.”
A chill, unrelated to the room’s stuffy heat, traced Steele’s spine. How? “Then you understand my concern. I need to know if you have any intelligence on a hunter operating in that territory. Someone who might be… freelancing.”
The bug-like lenses seemed to dilate. “Freelancing is an imprecise term. All contracts are commission-sanctioned. You are asking if I am the actor.”
“I’m asking for your professional insight.”
There was a pause, just long enough to be deliberate. “Insight has a cost. Your initial consultation fee is depleted. We would need a new contract.”
Steele had expected this. “A consultation contract. For information only. No retrieval, no active engagement.”
“Terms are negotiable in person. Are you currently in Newhaven?”
The directness was a lance. Steele maintained his composure. “I am.”
“There is a loading dock at the eastern edge of the relay station. Behind the derelict fuel silos. I will meet you there in forty minutes. Come alone. The fee for this meeting is five thousand credits, to be transferred upon visual confirmation. If terms are not agreed, you will owe nothing further.”
The transmission cut out. Steele leaned back, the metal chair groaning. The bounty hunter’s knowledge was unsettling, but the opportunity was precisely what he’d come for. He initiated the credit transfer, a significant but not debilitating sum, and watched it clear. Then he stood, smoothing his jacket. He had thirty-nine minutes to get to the dock.
Across Newhaven, in a chop-shop buried in the belly of a collapsed warehouse, Texas terminated the connection on his internal display.
Annoyance, updated. Steele was more proactive than projected. This was not a man waiting to be saved. This was a man attempting to negotiate with a storm.
“We’re not done,” growled the tech, a wiry man with soldering goggles pushed up on his forehead. He was pointing a plasma torch at the exposed servo cluster in Texas’s leg. “The linkage is fused. I can slap a bypass on it, but fine motor control in the lateral lunge will be compromised. You need a full housing replacement.”
“Apply the bypass. Stabilize the power fluctuation. Nothing more.” Texas’s real voice, unused to speech, was a grating static of metallic tones. He had no need for fine motor control for what was coming. He needed to walk without a grind, and to project absolute, unassailable authority.
“Your money,” the tech shrugged, firing up the torch. The actinic light flashed in the grimy room, welding the temporary patch into place. Texas sat immobile on the workbench, his white uniform laid out beside him like the shed skin of another creature. He monitored the drone feed. Steele had left the relay room and was walking, with purposeful calm, toward the eastern docks.
Ten minutes later, the tech stood back. “It’ll hold. Maybe. Don’t kick any buildings over.”
Texas stood, testing the weight. The grinding was gone, replaced by a faint, almost imperceptible lag in the joint’s response. Acceptable. He pulled on the uniform, the smart-fabric sealing itself with a soft hiss. He placed the helmet over his head, the world resolving into a grid of tactical data, thermal overlays, and the clean, simplified feed from his facade systems. The fearful, bug-eyed visage stared back from a cracked mirror on the wall.
He left the chop-shop, a silent, white specter moving through the dusty alleys. The few people who saw him flattened themselves against walls or ducked out of sight. His reputation was a tangible force, clearing a path.
He arrived at the designated loading dock with seven minutes to spare. It was a concrete slab littered with the ghosts of industry: twisted rebar, the shell of a dead forklift, pyramids of crumbling pallets. The air still carried the ghost-smell of diesel and rotten grain. He took a position near a stack of shipping containers, becoming a stark white pillar against the rust and decay, and waited, motionless.
Right on time, Steele rounded the corner of a sagging silo. He stopped fifteen feet away, his sharp eyes taking in Texas, the environment, the exits. He showed no overt fear, only a deep, focused caution. His credit-transfer pinged in Texas’s display.
“You came,” Steele said.
“You paid.” Texas’s helmet did not move. “You seek intelligence on an operative in the Maple Creek zone.”
“I do. The hunter who took Sheriff Maloy. The one who melted a vault lock to steal community credits. Is that a commission job?”
“It is not my job.” The answer was technically true. “The methodology is crude. Melting a lock is a statement, not a strategy. The theft of generic credits is inefficient. The commission deals in specific debts, specific assets.” He let that hang. “Your new friends have many debts.”
Steele’s jaw tightened. “Rose.”
“A significant liability. Her debt is substantial, and her physiological signature is… unique. She is a high-value target in a low-security zone. She attracts chaos.” He took a single step forward, his movement smooth, silent. “The disappearance of your sheriff and the theft are likely unrelated. A predator moving through the territory, and a local taking advantage of the fear. This is what happens in weak systems.”
“What do you know about Sandy?” The question was sharper, less controlled.
Texas tilted his head. “The mechanic. No debt. Her signature is mechanical resonance. A rare, useful skill set. Wasted on sentiment and a personal vendetta.” He took another step, closing the distance. “You are trying to build a model of safety. You are importing curiosity to your company town. This is a flawed model. Safety is a product of power, predictable systems, and the removal of liabilities.”
“You’re offering to remove the liability.” Steele’s voice was ice.
“I am offering a reality. The woman, Rose, will be collected. It is inevitable. The mechanic, Sandy, has a choice. She can let her new friend go. Or she can be leveraged. Her skill has a market value that could provide sustained utility.” He finally stopped moving, a pristine, terrible statue standing ten feet from Steele. “You came for insight. Here it is. Your experiment is doomed. The chaos will increase. You can let it consume them, or you can broker a more efficient outcome.”
Steele’s cybernetic hands flexed slightly at his sides. “You want me to convince Sandy to work for the commission.”
“I want you to see the logical endpoint. Your friendship is a variable that creates risk for them. The most compassionate action may be to facilitate a transition into a system where they can survive. The alternative is a body in the desert, and a mechanic scrapped for parts.” The helmet’s blank gaze was absolute. “This is the professional insight you paid for, Mr. Steele. The hunter you fear isn’t a phantom. He is a symptom. The disease is their own existence on the ledger.”
The silence between them was filled with the whistle of wind through broken steel. Steele stood, processing, his mind undoubtedly racing through scenarios, cost-benefit analyses, ethical equations.
“And if I reject this insight?” Steele finally asked.
“Then you are part of the chaos.” Texas said. He didn’t move, but the threat expanded to fill the space between them, cold and absolute. “And you will be factored in accordingly. Our consultation is complete.”
He didn’t turn to leave. He simply stood, waiting for Steele to move first, to break the tableau. The message was clear: in this arena, the bounty hunter set the terms. The CEO, for all his power, was just another man standing in the dust.
Steele held his gaze for a three-count longer, then gave a single, slow nod. Not agreement. Acknowledgement. He turned and walked back the way he came, his steps measured, his shoulders set against the weight of the words.
Texas watched him go, tracking him via drone until he was back at his rover. The emotional simulation in his core flagged a complex readout: objective achieved, threat conveyed, variable potentially influenced. But alongside it, a persistent, low-grade signal. The lag in his patched leg joint, a physical reminder of the last time Steele’s world had violently intersected with his own.
He remained there until the rover’s engine noise faded into the desert’s hum. Then he turned and vanished between the containers, a white ghost swallowed by the rust and the lengthening shadows. The meeting was over. The manipulation was just beginning.
The manipulation was just beginning.
Texas left Newhaven’s fringe, the white armor dissolving into the monochrome washes of the open desert. His bike ate the miles, a silent black streak under the deepening twilight. His internal chronometer counted down the viability of his sleeping-hologram back at the Maple Creek inn. A simple loop of Logan snoring faintly, it wouldn’t survive a determined wake-up call. He had hours, not days.
The twin moons had just cleared the distant razor-peaks when a priority alert pulsed on his internal display. It wasn’t commission traffic. It was a local, open-frequency ping, a hunter’s shorthand for a request to parley. The signature was crude, aggressive. A freelance tag he vaguely recognized: Rex. Ambitious, messy, and invariably trouble.
Texas calculated. Ignoring it was a risk; the man could blunder into the operation. He veered north, toward the coordinates—a dust-blown outcrop that looked like a broken jawbone.
He cut the engine and waited. Five minutes later, another bike approached, all roaring engine and no skill, kicking up a plume of dust that was visible for miles. The figure that dismounted wore patchwork composite armor, scavenged and spray-painted a matte gray. His helmet was a modified mining rig, a single red optic scanning the area before fixing on Texas’s pristine white form.
“Texas.” The voice crackled through an external speaker. “Heard you were working a long game out here. Maple Creek. Nasty little town.”
Texas didn’t move, didn’t speak. Let the silence stretch.
“Heard you’ve been there days, planning on staying even longer,” Rex continued, shifting his weight. “That’s a lot of overhead for one floral mark. Must be a sweet commission. Or you’re losing your edge.”
“You have no relevant data,” Texas stated, his synthesized voice cutting the night air flatly.
“I’ve got eyes. I know the mark’s a green-skinned veggie. I know half the towns got a price on their head from something or another. Boundless, if you’re patient.” Rex took a step closer. “But patience eats credits. Maybe you need a partner to accelerate the timeline.”
“Your proposal is noise.” Texas took a single, smooth step forward. The damaged leg joint performed without a flicker. “You see a soft town. You are incorrect. The settlement has a collective defense protocol. They disassemble interlopers. You are also proposing to poach a secured commission. The penalty for that is disassembly by me.”
Rex let out a grating laugh. “Scare tactics? Please. I’ve culled towns before.”
“You have harassed settlements. You have not engaged Maple Creek. The mechanic alone would reprogram your nervous system into a tea kettle. Leave this territory.” The finality in Texas’s tone was absolute, a door slamming shut.
Rex’s posture stiffened, the red optic brightening. “The Wasteland’s free market, old man. Maybe I’ll just go introduce myself. Stir the pot. See what floats to the top.”
He was a child playing with live wires. “Interfere,” Texas said, the word hanging in the cold air, “and you become a secondary target. The commission will not protect you. I will not warn you again.”
“Enjoy the competition,” Rex sneered. He kicked his bike back to life, the engine’s roar a deliberate insult. He peeled away, heading west—not toward Maple Creek, but not away from it either.
Texas stood motionless until the sound faded. An anger, clean and programming-deep, settled into his circuits. This was the chaos Steele had mentioned, the entropy that surrounded a mark. It had to be contained.
The ride back to Maple Creek was a study in furious control. He parked the black bike in its hidden niche, re-covered it with scree, and moved through the sleeping town’s shadows like a guilt. The inn hallway was silent. At his door, he paused, listening. No breath, no movement from within besides the low hum of his portable projector.
He slid inside, into darkness. The hologram of Logan slept on the cot, chest rising and falling in a perfect, synthetic rhythm. With a thought, he terminated it. The figure glitched and vanished.
He stripped off the white armor, the plates folding and compacting into a sleek case no larger than a briefcase. The aches and imperfections of his physical form reasserted themselves—the dull throb of the patched leg, the gritty fatigue of sustained deception. He pulled on Logan’s worn clothes, the familiar fabric feeling like a prison.
Before activating the facial hologram, he stared at his true reflection in the dark window: a labyrinth of crystalline and alloy fragments, a geography of imposed purpose. Then he smoothed his expression into Logan’s easy, open concern. The hologram layered over his face, softening the hard edges, erasing the evidence of his otherness.
He lay down on the cot, the blankets still warm from the projection’s false body heat, and stared at the ceiling. The seething wasn’t emotional. It was systemic, a diagnostic flag indicating multiple concurrent threats: Steele’s unpredictability, Sandy’s stubbornness, Rose’s persistent luck, and now the idiocy of a scavenger hunter poisoning the operational environment. Each variable glowed a warning red in his mind’s eye.
He needed to accelerate the harvest.
Down the hall, a floorboard creaked. Someone was awake. The night was over.
The night was over, and its silence shattered with the grating wail of a steam-whistle alarm. Logan was already pulling on his boots when a fist hammered on his door. He opened it to Sandy, her face smudged with fresh grease, her mechanical arm clenched. “He’s back. And he looks like hell. Meet us at Nell’s. Now.”
The cantina was mostly empty, the usual morning crowd likely spooked by the alarm. Steele sat in their booth, a half-empty cup of cold coffee in front of him. He looked up as they approached. The sharp, polished CEO was gone; his skin was pale beneath his tan, and his silver eyes were shadowed with a fatigue that wasn’t physical. Rose slid in beside him, her hand instinctively reaching for his arm before hesitating and pulling back.
“What happened?” Sandy demanded, not sitting. “The alarm was for a vehicle on the north ridge. That was you?”
“Yes.” Steele’s voice was rough. He took a slow breath, composing himself. “I went to Newhaven. I made contact.”
Logan leaned against the booth’s high back, feigning shocked concern. “You called a bounty hunter? After everything?”
“I called the one I knew from Vegas. The one the company used.” Steele looked at Rose, his expression pained. “I thought I could… reason. Get information. I was wrong.”
The air in the booth grew thick. Rose’s green veins darkened against her suddenly ashen skin. “What did he say?”
Steele recounted it in clipped, precise sentences: the hunter’s stark white armor, the insectile helmet. The claims that Maloy’s disappearance and the theft were unrelated—chaos attracting opportunists. He kept his gaze locked on the scarred tabletop as he delivered the core of it. “He said Rose’s debt makes her a target that attracts this kind of attention. That her collection is inevitable.” He finally looked at her, his eyes blazing with a furious regret. “He called you a liability. A symptom.”
Rose flinched as if struck. Sandy’s fist came down on the table, making the cups jump. “He said that to your face? Just laid out his whole damn plan?”
“It wasn’t a plan. It was a forecast. A market analysis.” Steele’s jaw worked. “He said Sandy had a choice. To let it happen, or to be… leveraged. Her skills have value to them.”
Sandy went very still, the constant low whir of her actuators the only sound from her. “Leveraged how?”
“He implied they’d recruit you. That it was the only logical survival path.” Steele shook his head, disgust etching his features. “He was trying to turn me into his advocate. To make his predation seem like compassionate pragmatism.”
Logan listened, internally cataloging the delivery. Steele had left out the direct offer to broker Sandy’s recruitment, focusing on the threat to Rose. A strategic edit to preserve unity. Smart. “So he’s not just hunting,” Logan said, keeping his voice low and urgent. “He’s farming. He’s trying to scare us into making his job easier.”
“He succeeded,” Rose whispered, staring at her hands. A tiny, desperate violet bloomed from a crack in the wood of the table near her thumb.
“No.” Steele’s hand covered hers, stopping the flower’s growth. His touch was firm, warm. “He failed. Because now we know. We don’t split up. We don’t go anywhere alone. Not you, not Sandy, not any of us. We stay close. We become a unit he can’t easily fragment.”
A collective, shaky resolve settled over them. It was a desperate plan, a huddling together against a gathering storm, but it was all they had. Nell brought over a fresh pot of coffee, her eyes wary. For a few hours, they sat in that brittle togetherness, planning nothing, just existing in a shared space of dread.
Then, just past midday, the world exploded.
It was a sound beyond sound—a visceral, crushing boom that shook the floorboards and rattled the synth-glass in the windows. It was followed by the sudden, shrieking cacophony of twisting metal and the angry whoosh of ignited fuel.
They were on their feet and out the door before the echo died. A column of thick, black smoke coiled into the pale blue sky from the eastern edge of town, near the scrap yards. Townsfolk were already running toward it, shouting.
The source was a compact living pod, now a smashed and burning wreck. It looked like a giant had stomped on it. Flames licked at the shredded composite walls, and the acrid stink of melted plastics and superheated metal assaulted their senses. Old Man Harrow was there, clutching a wrench, his face soot-streaked and furious.
“He just dropped out of the damn sky!” Harrow yelled, pointing a trembling finger at the wreck. “Lander pod! Retro-thrusters failed, or he cut ‘em loose! Came down like a meteor right on Jax’s home!”
“Jax?” Sandy shouted over the roar of the fire. The town’s part-time medic. A quiet man. No family.
“He was in there! And he was there!” Harrow swung his wrench toward the open desert beyond the town’s boundary. “Saw him plain as day. White suit, bug eyes. Dragged Jax out of the wreck while he was still stunned. Slung him over his shoulder and just… walked off into the scrub. Didn’t run. Just walked.”
The audacity of it stole the breath from their lungs. In broad daylight. A crashing ship as a distraction. A straight grab.
“This isn’t my hunter,” Steele said, his voice cold and certain. “The one I met was clinical. Calculated. This is a spectacle. This is someone else.”
Logan’s systems instantly flagged the probability. Rex. The freelancer. Creating chaos, poaching a random mark to prove a point. The idiot had just turned the entire town into a hornet’s nest. The tactical assessment was immediate: this was a catastrophic disruption. But the human part of his performance allowed his face to show only horrified confusion.
“They’re getting bolder,” Sandy snarled. She was already moving, grabbing a fire-suppressant canister from a neighbor and tossing it toward the flames. “He can’t have gotten far, not carrying a man. We have to go after him.”
Grisha arrived with a crew and a larger extinguisher unit, starting to battle the blaze. He caught Sandy’s eye and gave a sharp nod. “Take a party. Go. We’ll handle this.”
Rose looked from the burning home to the vast, unforgiving desert. The hunter had taken a man, just like he’d taken her friend Leo. The old terror was a cold knife in her gut, but beneath it, a hotter, sharper blade of anger emerged. “We all go. Right now.”
Steele was already assessing the tracks in the dust leading east. “They’re deep. He’s heavy, and carrying weight. We can follow. But we go in pairs. No one alone. Sandy, you’re with Rose. Logan, you’re with me.”
The pairing was tactical. Sandy could protect Rose physically and mechanically. Logan could monitor Steele, keep him from piecing together inconsistencies. It was exactly what Texas would have arranged.
Sandy didn’t argue. She checked the charge on her piston-rifle. “Stay behind me, Rose. You see anything that isn’t us, you say it. Don’t stop to think.”
Rose nodded, a small, determined set to her jaw. She touched the twisted metal of the wrecked pod as they passed, and a whisper of agonized, dying rigidity shivered up her arm—the metal’s final memory of catastrophic force.
Logan fell in beside Steele, who was studying the ground with an intense focus. “You sure about this?” Logan asked, pitching his voice with the right mix of fear and resolve.
“No,” Steele said, not looking up. His lunar-alloy arms gleamed in the harsh light. “But leaving Jax out there isn’t an option. Let’s move.”
The two pairs split, diverging slightly to cover more ground but staying within sight. They moved beyond the town’s fragile border, past the last broken fence post and the rusted, handwritten sign warning off outsiders. The desert opened up before them, a vast, silent auditorium of dust and rock and painful light, holding its breath.
Behind them, the black smoke stained the sky. Ahead, a set of deep, dragging footprints marched relentlessly toward the shimmering heat haze and the waiting teeth of the canyons.