The Luna Deception: A Space Opera Thriller (Sol System Renegades Book 4) by Felix R. Savage

Author:Felix R. Savage [Savage, Felix R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: space opera science fiction thriller
Publisher: Knights Hill Publishing
Published: 2019-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

xxi.

Mendoza went home.

His mother welcomed him joyfully. She made fried steak, kakanin butsi, pinoy-style spicy pork, and all the unhealthy desserts he’d loved as a boy. He went with her to Mass and answered people’s questions as politely as he could.

It was mid-summer; the temperature in Manila was stifling. People dashed from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned church to air-conditioned shopping center. Mendoza tried sitting out in his mother’s pocket-sized garden, but the heat drove him indoors. He locked himself in the bathroom to talk to Elfrida.

His mother wanted to know what he had to be so secretive about. When he explained about Elfrida, she burst into tears of joy. Did he think Elfrida was The One? Would they live in Manila? She could evict her subletters to make room for them. John and Elfrida wouldn’t be going back into space, surely, after all they’d been through?

Mendoza forestalled his mother before she actually began to plan the wedding. It was all up in the air, he said.

In fact, Elfrida had seemed worryingly distant ever since they got back to Earth. The Interplanetary Court of Justice had placed her under supervision as a key witness in the case against Derek Lorna. And she was having mother issues, too.

Mendoza lay under the air-conditioner’s tepid breeze, while his mother prayed her three daily rosaries, with the television going, and the subletters yukking it up on the other side of a thin wall. He thought: I had more privacy when I was living on the moon.

★

“So,” Kiyoshi concluded, “we’re coming home.”

He leaned back on the comms couch and bit into one of the donuts he’d bought on the Rocking Horse. Powdered sugar coated his lips.

Twenty-three and a half minutes later, the comms screen burst into light. The silhouette of a shaggy-bearded man said, “No, you’re not.”

“What?” Kiyoshi squawked.

427,000,000 kilometers away, the boss-man continued, “I don’t care about Mendoza and Goto. I mean, they want to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime, fuck ‘em.”

The boss-man did not know that Jun had put Elfrida off out of concern for her spiritual health. Kiyoshi had not told him. He was protecting Jun, as he had all his life.

“But it’s insane to come back all that way with an empty ship. That old truck of yours has plenty of room for cargo. And now you have a decent drive, right? So I want you to pick up some stuff on Midway or wherever. Pharmaceuticals, memory crystals. Basic materials: printer liquid, biostrate, liquid nitrogen. Elements: bromine, phosphorus—we’re having soil issues again. Splart, we always need splart. I’m attaching a shopping list.”

Kiyoshi groaned. He couldn’t go back to Midway! Maybe I’ll make that visit to Tiangong Erhao. Or buy the stuff online and get it delivered. Dronazon ships to deep space, don’t they?

“Also, you may have to pick up another passenger. Unclear on that as yet. Awaiting developments.”

Sparkles caught Kiyoshi’s eye. Must be sugar that had come off his donut.

“So get that shopping out of the way, and enjoy the view of Earth, the home of mankind.

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