I’ve decided to post here an excerpt from overkill. It’s the saloon scene. Now, I’m not much a fan of saloons. When it comes to alcohol, I prefer it at an agreeable price, and I avoid drinking at home.
What I am a fan of is listening to conversations between normal people. Whether I’m rewarded by overhearing some ragged woman talking loudly about wishing to separate from her partner to get back into a casual situationship with an ex because ‘it’s just more fun’ (good luck with that), or some, well, I wouldn’t call him a man, talking loudly about how he’s waiting until the custody battle’s over to get back on the bags, I always hear something worth writing down. And to those I’ve met, like the meth-addled stripper-cum-life coach, or the deadbeat drunken dad, or the plastic salesman with tattooed hair, here’s to being a loud cunt. Thanks for allowing me into the swirling toilet flush of your lives. You’re truly an inspiration.
Read more here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/195327/overkill
He flew over the lower flat, where it seemed like things were returning to some semblance of normal. Nobody was trying to raid any more of the stores. Nobody was wailing in the Hollow. Nobody was panicking, which was good, but they were still afraid. Stationfolk were gathering in huddled groups that kept their heads down and tried not to turn them towards the sky. They kept busy. There was work to be done on the station. It was no use staring into nothing. Shopkeepers were out checking that their structures were sound, that their equipment was working, and that nothing in the landing had damaged any delicate instrument they needed to perform their duties. Panesmen were down in the work-house, coordinating future repairs.
Many panesmen were already filtering out towards their duties at the prism interior. Overhead the Obels turned, their passage through the air making their whooshing thumps a familiar rhythm. Forces were at work to keep the stationfolk settled, and Arran was one of them.
From the looks he was getting, many of them, in their superstition, blamed their predicament solely upon him. None said anything for fear of reprisal from the peacekeeper who’d had his hand returned. The peacekeeper who, as far as they knew, still had the full support of the Mayor’s office.
There it is, he thought. There’s the reason.
The Mayor needed to keep control over the stationfolk, and Arran was how he did it.
‘Arran you fool,’ he said, and sighed.
He landed down on the wide lower deck around the saloon, hitting with a solid thud. A small crowd of familiar faces was already there, drinking their woes away at the senselessness of it all. By one consideration he couldn’t blame them. By another consideration he knew they would be drinking regardless. One or two who saw him land gave Arran sidelong looks. At once they finished their drinks and departed. They knew Arran wasn’t a fan of the saloon at the best of times. The smell of piss and existential disappointment was often overwhelming.
Arran ignored them and pushed through the creaking batwing doors. What merriment existed in the room was sucked out of it by his entrance. Inside, across the panelled floor, folks were gambling to keep themselves occupied, lest their duties about the station interfere with their distraction. One gambler was about to lay down his cards. He spared a glance at Arran and drew a sharp breath, and when he lay them down the table gave no reaction. Their attention was diverted to the peacekeeper.
Arran went to the bar. The bartender was occupied shifting a dirty mop-bucket. ‘Hello Dath,’ he said. ‘Amber mezcal, and for all that is holy make it a double.’ The less time he spent returning for drinks, the better.
‘Right you are,’ Dath said, a strained edge to his voice. He turned his back to grab the bottle from the rack on the wall. He kept his demeanour professional, but Arran could tell he was concerned. His movements were stiffer than usual and as he returned with the bottle his gaze carried a reproachful weight. ‘You’re not here on business, are you?’ He loosened the cap.
Arran shook his head. ‘I didn’t come to see your pretty face,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an announcement to make.’
Dath winced. ‘Here?’ He poured a clean double and set the bottle down.
Arran took the glass. ‘Why not?’
Dath reached to polish a fresh glass. ‘Bad enough day as it is.’
‘It’ll get better.’ Arran drank the glass down in one gulp, set it down, and faced the small crowd.
Arran clapped his hands. ‘Alright, listen up.’
The gambler looked over his shoulder. The rest of the crowd was already paying close attention. Some shuffled in their seats, making wooden creaks that scratched over the quiet. A female voice came spitting at him from aside. ‘Why should we listen to you? Where’s your badge?’ Arran looked over. The short, raggedy, big-haired woman stared him down, whisky fueling her sharp gaze. A woman who’d graduated from bar-maid here to mother and bar-regular, she’d kept the bottle at her side throughout it all. Arran often wondered how she, and others, continued to find the same scene entertaining. It was a small prism, he’d supposed. Not a lot of opportunities, and time dragged on. Many found their way into the trap of drink and loose conversation, even if it did have the tendency to repeat into dullness.
’I don’t know, Meggin, where’s your daughter?’
She left.
Arran watched her storm out the doors, as those around her cast their gaze at their feet. Arran assumed the school was still operating, which, by his clock, would be getting out for the day. She was muttering something to herself. Arran cared not to switch on his augmented hearing to listen. Perhaps she would go accompany her daughter home, for once. Given the crisis, he was not sure why she was here at all. Arran sighed and looked over at the rest of the crowd. ‘I’ve spoken to the flight team. They’ve confirmed my suspicions. We have been swallowed by something.’
The gambler interrupted. ‘By what?’
Another voice spoke up. ’By the dark beast of the shadow Equinox laid upon us by this hell-sent peacekeeper!’
Margarey Kim’s gossip had spread here first, as he’d expected. So he’d come here to control that, if he could.
Arran raised a hand to settle their protest. ‘Please, let me finish. It is some kind of creature, something impossibly large. It ate our sun and devoured Huon too, as we all saw. But I say to you that it is just a creature. Don’t let your imaginations run wild, we don’t need a riot. What we need is to stay calm.’ He felt the alcohol working through him and leaned his elbow back on the bar. ‘Be cool, folks.’
It didn’t help.
‘Huon just… collapsed…’ someone said.
‘Why couldn’t we fly away?’
‘It ate our sun?’
'The Gods have forsaken us!'
‘Please, please,’ he said, trying to settle the rabble. ‘I have a plan.’
Someone snorted. Arran looked over. He recognised the face. His nose was swollen and purpled, his cheeks threaded with burst veins, a face that had been marinating in spirits since before Arran had arrived on the station. The man let out a burp and said, ‘You put us here, lawman. Now you plan to get us out?’
‘I did not put us here, Serge Herbetson. I did nothing of the sort.’
Someone shook a fist. ‘You killed Odelford! I did work for that man. He was a good man! You invited this… this death to us! Only the Gods can rescue us!’
Arran didn’t even know where to begin to address that accusation. He could only remember the great malevolence he’d sensed at the flight facility. His hesitation was enough to set a few back in their seats in disagreeable consideration.
‘We aren’t dead,’ Arran said, finally. ‘Doggett got us out of that. It was by his skill that we are alive and weren’t sucked in after the sun, or struck by it. It’s not by any God’s kindness that we’re still alive, and it won’t be by their mercy that we are saved. It’ll be us. It’ll be me.’
The shaken fist belonged to a drunk panesman who shouldered his way out of his group. ‘How do we know? This place might as well be the last stop in the whole fucking universe! The church has shut its doors and refuses to open up! We are dead!’
‘We aren’t dead because I can kill this creature, and I fucking will! I’ll fucking kill it, I can kill anything!’ There was the liquor in his own voice. Arran shoved off the counter and stared down the drunk. By his approach it looked like the situation was about to spill over into violence.
The man who had shaken his fist stood back, stunned and more than a little afraid. Arran’s aggression worked better than his attempt to reassure them. Judging by the looks he was getting they thought he was crazy. Maybe Jensen was right, and he was gone crazy like him.
A voice piped up from the back of the room. It spoke with a tiredness to it. ‘Just don’t kill all of us while you’re at it, peacekeeper.’
Arran said, ‘Not the first time I’ve heard that today,’ and decided now was time to leave.
Baleful looks followed Arran towards the doors. His footsteps were the only sound in the room. He couldn’t reassure them. He could only do his best. He brushed through the doors. Dath cleared his glass. As it went clinking upside-down onto a rack Arran’s spell on the room broke and some normalcy returned. The gamblers resumed playing. A few others resumed drinking. Seats turned back to face their tables. Someone struck up a chord on the piano.
Arran stood out on the deck and looked over at the church. A gathering of people was praying at its doors. He decided against going over there to try and reassure them. He accepted he wasn’t very good at it. Too much in him wanted to shout at their folly. Maybe he’d leave the churchgoers be.
He was, again, doing it for the widow Graney. That was enough of a reason, he supposed.
Arran looked around and was glad it was dark. It would be easier to sneak a skiff out, and he supposed he was almost ready to go.
It was time to return by John’s store. He’d need to be able to breathe out there.
