BACKGROUND SHORT STORY
For Upcoming Release of Rattz on the Prowl, Book One in The Chronicles of Sludge Dragoon series.
Letters from Grandma
Hyper Space Plain Text Transmission (HSPTT)
Source: Mars, Deep Mine Six, M. Dragoon
Destination: Twelfth Fleet, Forward Campaign, Advance Marine Platoon Alpha, Corporal C.M. Dragoon
Date: Day 261, 2990
This is your Grandma. How’s my little goofball? Decapitating the avian scourge?
Sorry to hear about Blasthead’s ear. Tell him, he should have that little greenling fry in the plasma inferno. Would serve the newbie right for sticking his head up during a fire fight. Glad Blasthead’s hair will grow back. Not that anyone would notice the way you boys buzz-cut everything that grows.
Crap, I’ve got to go. I’m getting a call. A mining rig is down again. Seems those know-it-alls with the institute degrees, can’t fix a bloody thing without yours truly. Let your grandma know how you’re doing . . . unless your dead.
– End Transmission.
Hyper Space Plain Text Transmission (HSPTT)
Source: Twelfth Fleet, Forward Campaign, Advance Marine Platoon Alpha, Corporal C.M. Dragoon
Destination: Mars, Deep Mine Six, M. Dragoon
Date: Day 267, 2990
Howdie Grandma,
I’m still kicking, but not my CO, ha!
Blasthead sends his best. He wanted to send you a picture of his face, but decided against it. He didn’t want to rattle your old bones. Yeah-yeah. I know what you’re going to say, you could face him anytime, and in any condition. There’s nothing you haven’t seen.
I’m glad you’re showing those corporate thinkers what it takes to run a mine on Mars. Don’t give away your trade secrets.
The war is the war. The fighting has been hard. Even those of us with Beta ratings are in the thick of it. I can’t reveal where we are, but there’s lots of tunnels. I hope this gets through the censors. My sergeant is Jawbreaker, and he does knock our CO around. You won’t see the sergeant in the brig; he’s too valuable in the field.
Tell me about that three-legged mutt of yours . . . Sparky. Does he still have that skull-and-cross-bones patch over his missing eye?
Got to go. Blasthead and me are going to the bar before we hit the front lines again.
Keep kicking!
– End Transmission.
###
By the entrance into the mine on Mars, the new foreman rushes up to Grandma Dragoon when he sees her, just before she enters the elevator, a white silo that leads to the primary excavation site three kilometers below the surface. A brown Chihuahua with three legs and a black eye patch trails her.
“Ms. Dragoon. I’m Utterdunk, the relief foreman,” stutters a spindly man. His choppy speech is common for new arrivals still adjusting to the Martian atmosphere. “Molly, so glad you’re here. The whole operation is on hold. Something about a pig in the primary digger.”
Grandma sneers at him with a stoic face, a dead pan rigidity as though something Utterdunk has said has boiled her blood. Sparky follows her cue and snarls.
“Sparky doesn’t like it when someone uses my given name,” scolds Grandma.
Utterdunk peers down. He laughs at the spectacle of the yipping creature, which remains remarkably balanced for a canine missing his right rear leg. Grandma’s little companion is an impatient sort and won’t wait for the fledging foreman to apologize for the transgression against his human. Maybe it’s the Martian gravity, or Sparky’s impeccable strength, but he lunges, surprising his prey and landing his teeth directly in the man’s neck, demonstrating pretty good aim for a one-eyed mutt.
“Yow,” is all the hapless foreman says before he snaps his head back and forth trying to dislodge Sparky.
Grandma reaches out and stills the man. “Sparky, release.” The dog complies. As he drops to the ground, he lands awkwardly, tumbling in the red-brown dirt. Within moments he stabilizes and begins to spring up and down before Grandma. “Good dog.” She reaches in her pocket and tosses him a treat. “His teeth aren’t long enough to do any real damage.”
Utterdunk rubs his neck. “Ah, how should I address you?”
“Around these parts, people call me Hammerhead.” She activates the elevator and it hums. While she waits for the door to open, she scans the foreman with her eyes. “I’ll call you Dunk.”
The foreman, a quick learner, simply nods.
The elevator is a mesh cage of worn and oxidized metal, large enough to accommodate a dozen workers. Dunk presses the descent button. “I’ll brief you on the way.” After a quick jerk, the compartment drops like it’s in freefall. The foreman clutches the wire wall. Grandma stands comfortably, holding Sparky with her left arm while he licks her cheek.
“Oh, by the way, we drop near freefall because the hole is so deep. Otherwise we’d lose a half day waiting to get to the tunnels. First run is worse. You’ll be a pro by tomorrow.”
“Good to know,” says Dunk. Like a new born monkey clinging to its mother, the foreman clutches the wire mesh. He utters no briefing like he promised and does all he can to prevent vomiting.
When the descent is over, Grandma steps over Dunk, who is now planted on all fours, heaving his breakfast on the cage bottom. His goo drips through the iron grate. “Ah, the pigs will like you. Come on, Dunk. We have a long walk to the rig, and we have to get operations moving.” She enters the primary staging base, a bright cavern ten meters high, a hundred meters across, with mauve walls of smoothly carved rock. The cavern is shaped like a giant sphere. Five tunnels lead out to the mining areas.
As Dunk struggles to his feet and hobbles behind Grandma, the shift supervisor Braunhower, a stocky woman with straight hair which protrudes from her hard hat like black straw, waves her hand.
“Hammerhead, you’re here. We sure need you on this one.” She glances at the dog. “Hey, boy.”
“Grrr,” says Sparks.
“Oh, you’re in a good mood.”
“It’s the new foreman,” says Grandma. He is standing right behind her. “Isn’t that right, Dunk?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Call me, Hammerhead.”
“Right.” Dunk pauses. “Hammerhead.” He scans the base area and addresses Braunhower. “Give us a status, please.”
“Yes, sir. We were running the grinder in Tunnel Three, when Vardis heard a big squeal. Damn pig worked its way ahead of the rig. Being a good operator, he cut the motor immediately.”
“For a pig?” asks Dunk.
Braunhower bounces back a bit. An expression of surprise erupts across her face.
“Dunk, pigs are key partners in operations down here. Being from Earth, you probably don’t know that,” says Grandma.
The foreman shakes his head. “No, it seems quite unusual. How do they live down here? And why?”
“Safety, of course,” snaps Braunhower. “If the CO2 scrubbers or ventilation fail, the pigs catch it first.”
“What do they do?” asks Dunk, glancing around with a sour face as a few pigs parade by him.
The answer is so obvious to Braunhower that she pauses, shocked that Dunk would ask such a stupid question. “They squeal!” Braunhower declares, “like a pig.”
Grandma bends over laughing. After she composes herself, she pokes a finger against Dunk’s shoulder. “We don’t have those fancy air quality tech gadgets you’re used to. No one bothered to calibrate them for Mars.”
“I’m sure it’s an oversight,” says the foreman.
Grandma crosses her arms and plasters Dunk with a skeptical sneer. “Sparky?”
“Grrr,” says the dog.
“As I was saying, sometimes toxic gases build up between shifts after a new cut,” says Braunhower. “Sometimes, they don’t make it.”
“Better a pig, than me,” says Grandma.
“You bring them food then?”
“Oh yah, there’s plenty of slop from the cook that’s not fit for a miner to eat,” Grandma says, letting Sparky down. He skitters over to an idle rig and pees on the tire.
Dunk’s face sours at the sight of the three legged dog upright on his back legs, pissing like a man in a floor urinal. He focuses on the pigs. “Where do they do their business?”
Grandma and Braunhower smile at each other. Grandma answers. “Right now, tunnel two is closed. Don’t go down there. It’s the pig toilet.”
Braunhower snorts. “You’re sure to catch a whiff while you’re down here.”
“What do you do about the methane?” asks Dunk.
“Our scrubbers capture it. We power sixty percent of our operation with our bacon-poopers,” says Grandma.
A trio of pink and black pigs exit tunnel two and run along the wall, grunting and wailing. Sparky finishes his business and scampers across the base, barking. He returns to Grandma’s side when they duck into Tunnel Three.
“Mayhem,” squeaks Dunk. “So what’s holding up the digging. I assume the pig is dead.”
Braunhower shakes her head. “No, not at all. They’re fast as lightening. It lost half a leg but the damn thing took off. It’s become aggressive and attacked Vardis when he checked on the critter. It’s still down there and won’t let us near it. Can’t start the rig until we get it out.”
“Nothing worse than a wounded pig,” says Grandma. “Being three legged will give it a terrible disposition.” She looks at Sparky. “No offense, boy.”
“Grrr,” says the Chihuahua.
“So what do we do?” asks Dunk.
“We wrangle it,” Grandma snorts.
“Hammerhead is the best pig wrangler in the mine . . . next to me,” boasts Braunhower.
Dunk scratches his head. “It’s too bad canaries are extinct.”
###
Hyper Space Plain Text Transmission (HSPTT)
Source: Mars, Deep Mine Six, M. Dragoon
Destination: Twelfth Fleet, Forward Campaign, Advance Marine Platoon Alpha, Corporal C.M. Dragoon
Date: Day 269, 2990
You’re right about Blasthead. Tell him if I could make the distance, I’d go there and box the one ear he has left. At 93, I’m not about to waste a few years in hyper-sleep to do it. Lucky for him.
Thanks for asking about Sparky. He’s as scrappy as ever. He tried to take a chunk out of the neck of one of those corporate Earth boys telling us how to run our mines. Too bad he’s too small to do any damage.
We solved our mine delay. I wrangled a discontented pig. Reminded me why I like mining on Mars. I have seven years before mandatory retirement. That’s seven years to plan how I’m going to tell the big wigs on Earth to shove it.
I hope when you went into battle you weren’t drunk. That’s how people get killed. Don’t be stupid and listen to your Grandma. Be smart.
Got to go, Grandma . . . Hammerhead.
– End Transmission.
Hyper Space Plain Text Transmission (HSPTT)
Source: Twelfth Fleet, Forward Campaign, Advance Marine Platoon Alpha, Corporal C.M. Dragoon
Destination: Mars, Deep Mine Six, M. Dragoon
Date: Day 274, 2990
Don’t worry Hammerhead, we always stay frosty.
Had some heavy action. Every Company took heavy losses. Our squad was the only one that lost nobody. I guess that’s why everybody wants to transfer to our surly group, even the Alphas.
I bet if we had a dog like Sparky out here, we would be winning this war.
There’s rumors that something is happening with the enemy, stories about massive retreats. We wouldn’t know it by the last fire fight, but I’ll keep you posted.
I bet you’ll still be mining when your 120.
Fondly, Sludge.
– End Transmission.
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