Snippet the LAST, CALL OF THE MOON-BEASTS.

17,852 damned words. And it’s OVER.

…

Tobias eyed the bottle. He doubted that smashing it over Grabinski’s head would do anything useful, but maybe it would make him feel better? “What’s in it for you?” he asked, instead. “If you’re coming, you’ll win. What we have is all we have, and you must have more than us. Why make a deal?”

“This situation is unusual,” Grabinski told him. Was there the faintest hiss of static in his voice? Possibly. “Put bluntly, we do not know why you are where you are, and that makes you dangerous. Dangerous things get the courtesy of negotiation.”
Tobias smiled, consciously avoiding teeth. “You mean, why are we on the moon? Why, that’s the easiest thing in the world. As long as you know things like ‘orbital mechanics.’” He noted Grabinski’s involuntary frown. “Or ‘computational fluid dynamics.’” More confusion, and now Grabinski was flickering slightly. Well, Tobias noted to himself, this is a dream. “‘Avionics?’ ‘Cybernetics?’ ‘Electronics?’ ‘Materials science?’ Good God, ‘Physics’ and ‘Chemistry?’”

“Yes, yes, you know something of the mechanical arts,” Grabinski ground out. “Gears and levers and scratching out lines in the dirt. The diversions of slav— servants. But whatever brought you here,” he went on, the flickering increasing, “it is clearly not enough to sustain you. We can manage that.”

“For a price.”

“For a price paid by others,” Grabinski told him. “We keep the bargains we made.”

Patreon!