The Far Side of Promise by Matthew S. Cox

Author:Matthew S. Cox [Cox, Matthew S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Collections & Anthologies, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781949174649
Google: vHShDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07GTGHCRT
Goodreads: 55968703
Publisher: Division Zero Press
Published: 2016-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

A Six-Six was an open-topped rover vehicle with six giant tires and six seats, arranged in three pairs. Its actual designation consisted of a jumble of numbers and an overstuffed mythological name like Basilisk some cheesedick in a lab coat back on Earth thought sounded intimidating. The only thing threatened by a Six-Six was the unlucky ass planted in those unforgiving seats for more than twenty minutes at a shot.

We’d gotten out of there fast, before Terrence could change his mind. Since I had the idea to take this crazy chance, I wound up driving with Kara in the passenger seat and Jon catching up on lost sleep in the middle row. Kara was a beat-you-at-arm-wrestling, chug-beer-and-fart kind of girl—and smart too. She had the rover’s onboard navigation computer up and running in four minutes, and patched into the outpost system in six, a feat not supposed to be possible. After seven minutes, a map appeared on the wire-gridded glass console.

“Damn, that’s a neat trick.” I leaned over.

“I’m not just a pretty face.”

I couldn’t tell if she tried to be sarcastic. We teased her about her femininity, but from the neck up, she looked fine. Neck down, solid as an ore collector. All muscle. Somehow, the tiny bit of static at the end as the comm cut off made her sound cute. I guess I had been on this rock too long. Maybe the faint blur caused by the dark amber helmet visor made her look good, or maybe she seemed more attractive because she left the spanner back in the locker room.

I made a course correction, heading a little bit farther to the right. “Well, that bettered our odds.”

There’s something to be said for driving over an endless field of dark grey rock with nothing but the emptiness of space above you that can put everything in perspective. The operations manual of the Six-Six cautioned against doing more than 54 MPH on a planetoid with .32 Earth gravity. One poorly placed rock could turn the land vehicle into an unsteerable spacecraft. Yeah, screw that. Forty is just fine.

The readout on the arm of my e-suit showed at least 61 hours of air left. “It’s a damn miracle.”

Kara held on as I struggled to keep it in a straight line over some ripples in the planet surface. “What is? That Terrence gave us the okay?”

“That too.” I started to laugh, but grunted as we hit some rough terrain. “No, that the e-suits work. NHM is so damn cheap.”

Jon chuckled over the comm, not bothering to sit up. “They are cheap. The collectors are sealed, but you know all the maintenance tasks send us EVO. If they didn’t give us decent suits, they’d get less Mithrinium out of us. Suits cost less than full-service bays or delicate remote optics.”

I couldn’t argue. “You’ve got a point.”

A rough bump shot straight up into my tailbone, knocking my spine into my skull. Kara bounced out of her seat, clinging to the overhead bar. The irony was, I bet she could have lifted the Six-Six, at least in .

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