“The Ticket”

I know I have some work yet to do on it before I’ll call it “finished,” but here’s a tease anyway.

THE TICKET

Burns Flat, Oklahoma
July 2, 2116, 7:45pm, CST – 43hrs, 51 mins until Chance Departure

He didn’t want to die.

That’s what he thought as he sat on his bike, fingers hooked through a rusty chain-link fence, staring past a red dirt moat full of laser mines and another row of razor-wire topped fence. The only hope in Hem’s world were the two RLVs sitting on the spaceport tarmac maybe a couple hundred meters away.

Crawlers scoured the crafts’ surfaces, fixing imperfections. No one could afford for either of the two to become inoperable; time was short. In two days, the world killer was coming.

“Too inconsiderate to wait for the fireworks,” Hem said to no one.

Of the two craft, one was military/NASA, the Fortune, its coat dull grays and matte blacks, lines sleek and aggressive. The second RLV, Chance, sat apart from the other, its bright blue hull a beacon on the otherwise uniform gray spaceport. There had been a third two days ago, until a SpecOps team decided they needed off the rock more than everyone else. Charred bits of the Imperator lie scattered across the grounds.

These were third or fourth generation RLVs, much larger than early models rolled out by SpaceX and Lockheed Martin. At one time, Hem could’ve quoted you the weight tolerances and the amount of fuel needed to achieve orbit with a full roster of astronauts. People quit paying attention to the specs a long time ago. All anyone cared about was whether or not they had a reserved seat.

It’s not that they couldn’t make more trips. It’s that the habitats, the Arks, were allegedly at capacity. You didn’t get a ride if you didn’t have anything to offer the human race.

The thought made him queasy.

The messenger bag dug into his shoulder, the spot chafed and angry from the afternoon’s riding. Sweat cascaded down his back and into the band of his pants. He took a sip of stale water from his green Coleman flask, lowered it and swished the last shot around the bottom.

His watched buzzed against his wrist. He rubbed the bezel with his thumb and Anya’s text floated in the air, three feet past the fence.

YOU ALMOST HOME?

“Yes,” he said, then waited for the reply.

YOU DIDN’T FORGET DID YOU? WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE IN 45 MINUTES.

“No.”

GOOD. HURRY.

“I will.”

LOVE YOU.

The words hung between the RLVs and himself, pulsed three times, then faded. He blinked the display off, gave the Chance a last longing, then kicked off and pedaled away from the fence.

***