Grown Men (2011) Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  About Grown Men

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Also by Damon Suede

  About the Author

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 6652

  Hillsborough, NJ 08844

  http://www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Grown Men

  Copyright © 2011 by Damon Suede

  Cover Art by Roberto Quintero, http://elguaricho.deviantart.com/

  Cover Design by L.C. Chase

  Editor: Emily Stone

  Layout: L.C. Chase

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-19-37551-10-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  October, 2011

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  Every future has dirty roots.

  Marooned in the galactic backwaters of the HardCell company, colonist Runt struggles to eke out an existence on a newly-terraformed tropical planetoid. Since his clone-wife died on entry, he’s been doing the work of two on his failing protein farm. Overworked and undersized, Runt’s dwindling hope of earning corporate citizenship has turned to fear of violent “retirement.”

  When an overdue crate of provisions crashes on his beach, Runt searches frantically for a replacement wife among the tools and food. Instead he gets Ox, a mute hulk who seems more like a corporate assassin than a simple offworld farmer.

  Shackwacky and near-starving, Runt has no choice but to work with his silent partner despite his mounting paranoia and the unsettling appeal of Ox’s genetically altered pheromones. Ox plays the part of the gentle giant well, but Runt’s still not convinced he hasn’t arrived with murder in mind.

  Between brutal desire and the seeds of a relationship, Runt’s fears and Ox’s inhuman past collide on a fertile world where hope and love just might have room to grow.

  For the Goodreads M/M crew who cleared the Soil.

  For Poppy who planted the Seed.

  For Brita who held back the Thorns.

  For Emily who plucked the Bloom.

  Transport delivered his murderer at sundown.

  Runt had been semi-starving for three weeks when he returned to his habitat and found the huge cargo container in a shallow crater in the sand.

  Hallelujah!

  He might have missed it ’til morning, but coming back from the eelbeds, he almost stepped on a bold crab scuttling toward the turquoise water and dragging a shiny mealpak in its claw. Runt gave a whoop of relief and rescued the food from the startled, spiny thief.

  Without even rinsing off the day’s grit, Runt popped the recovered mealpak and sucked the nutrient paste. Wasn’t like anyone could see him out here except the eels offshore and the insects yattering in the palm trees. Facing the broiling suns on the horizon, he turned to jog up the beach in search of the fresh provisions.

  Runt’s prefab habitat sat tucked under a steep rock wall in view of the cove that provided some windbreak; the cargo had been dumped about twelve meters away on the slope down to the cove. The long crater around the container indicated the drop-ship hadn’t even slowed as it passed.

  “Thank you!” His shout echoed off the pumice cliff. Knobjobs.

  The container itself had split at one corner, but the contents remained intact thanks to the impact-foam. Runt had gone hungry too many weeks to complain. If he couldn’t get this bitch open any other way, he’d hack in with the submachete.

  Food. Real food and gear. Runt almost passed out in relief.

  At least he’d brought an industrial weapon with him. He stabbed the sand with the submachete and left the blade there, freeing his hands to dig out the treasure buried inside this overdue shipment. And her?

  Runt bent over the keypad on the undamaged end of the cargo, and with a calloused finger, he tapped in his farm code. Hisssss—a meter-long panel sighed open on the container’s side and fell into the hot sand.

  Please let her be pleasant to look at.

  Dispatch had wedged mealpaks and canisters and paraphernalia into every centimeter of the container and braced them in impact-foam for interstellar transport.

  Hands shaking, Runt dug his calloused fingers into the dense padding and peeled off a thick strip. Reaching inside, he grabbed a handle and hefted out a tank of phytoplankton.

  I’m saved. She saved me.

  At a meter and a half high, the container stood almost as tall as he did and so jam-packed Runt had to haul out a few crates to gauge the contents. Atop a barrel of acid, a folded smart-net sat ready for action. Throw that in the ocean and it would go find dinner for him! So much cargo . . . Since when did the HardCell suits take pity on anyone?

  He tunneled back through padding and packages with hope in his heart. His stomach hummed pleasantly around the rich meal after being empty so long, but food wasn’t what he was looking for.

  C’mon, c’mon! Where is she?

  Dispatch always tossed in a few pretend-we-give-a-shit extras: candy and dice and lubricant, shiny gewgaws to keep the terraformers from getting shackwacky.

  Something glowed faintly and he barked in relief, wrenching fistfuls of transport foam free to expose a tray of specimen tubes that just might save his ass.

  Bee-moths! The new design!

  His heart hammered. These little beauties had made it all the way to this crappy system in Andromeda from HardCell’s labs. The biodesigners spliced moths with bumblebee DNA to groom and pollinate vegetation, but rarely replaced them. Freed of the packing and woken by the tropical warmth, striped caterpillars glowed pale lavender in the shadows of the container. His crops would be saved in time!

  As if handling lace coral, Runt extracted the tube trays in slow motion and set them in the shade until he could take them to the hive for hatching by the digital queen.

  He knew it was foolish, but the fresh moths planted hope in him. Again he tunneled into the provisions looking for the woman and found more mealpaks, food tanks.

  He shook his head in wonder. All this had to be a mistake at the depot. Schmuck’s luck. At least he wouldn’t starve this se
ason.

  Runt peeled away the cushion of impact-foam that had cradled the phosphorescent grubs and a tub of biotic lotion. Beneath, he found a bigger surprise from Dispatch: an old oversized life-support duffel big enough to hold a cow. For one moment he expected to discover his new mate, but when he unzipped the case a few centimeters, he found a lumpy four-meter roll of mirror-bright flex-canvas to wrap his habitat against tsunami and scavengers. Help had finally arrived.

  Hope made him stupid. He should have unpacked and unrolled it first thing, but in his eagerness he skipped it. HardCell must’ve sent the tarp as a wedding present.

  Maybe someone loves me. Maybe this is a dowry.

  HardCell, the conglomerate that owned Runt’s contract, had marooned him here in the middle of an alien ocean a year and a bit ago, long enough that his bare feet had leather soles, and his skin didn’t burn anymore. His bosses had shipped him to terraform remote planetoid HD10307-E in Andromeda almost as soon as they’d extracted their seismologists and genetic engineers. They’d altered its orbit to increase daylight, melted its ice into freshwater oceans, and dumped a few patented life forms into them to fight and fuck.

  Like the ads blared: HardCell means business!

  Runt’s farmstead covered a small patch of a hundred-acre volcanic landmass that looked like a disk with a wide bite taken out of it. Almost a month ago, a storm had ravaged the island’s little cove, and he still hadn’t finished repairing the devastation. A fuck-awful night, that: ground lightning striking the curdled sky and his walls split in two places.

  Worse, the sky had thrown back a bolt of charged ions and obliterated Runt’s hive-shed; for two nights after the tempest, thousands of bright bee-moths drifted on the tides as they tried and failed to fight their way back to the farmstead. The air had smelled like burnt ozone for a week.

  Some genius goofs, grunts pay the price. Business as usual.

  Once HardCell finished fine-tuning the climate, the storms would cease and the planetoid would stabilize like every other corporate combine: islands of fertile dirt and brackish oceans, perfect for eel-ranching and irrigation. In the meantime, Runt had patched his habitat as best he could and hunkered down. Losing the moths had ruined his meager harvest and he’d started rationing to be safe.

  Then—blam—this loaded container: twelve cubic meters of salvation. With his shitty harvest stats, Runt knew he should feel grateful, and yet . . . Stepping over that big rolled tarp, he cleared a path through the supplies to the back of the container.

  A few of his requests were missing like always, but he’d gotten his essentials and more: eight crates of spirulina pellets, six barrels of desiccated vegetable cubes, clean worksuits, a case of bright pink Soyshimi, fresh medkits, new tools, two pairs of sea boots twice his size, even some fresh holo-porn from the company’s sex resorts.

  Thank fuck.

  HardCell hadn’t supplied this much when they’d hired him. In his head, he logged the contents quickly as he shuttled packages onto the warm beach.

  That silvery weatherproofing for his habitat would change his life. With luck, this one would be reflective enough to cover the entire habitat against the blinding double daylight and drop the temperature inside by at least thirty degrees.

  Still no wife. Yet.

  His stomach growled at the nearness of all those nutrients. For the first time in his life, saliva pooled in his mouth at the thought of the “tasty” mealpak paste. Hunched inside the cool darkness of the transport container, he devoured another two mealpaks, forcing himself to go slowly and licking even the odor off his stiff mustache.

  With a beggar’s wisdom, he chose textures and entrees he loathed (curry and pickled tongue) to save the good stuff. His taste buds exploded. In seconds, he had new favorite cuisines and let himself lick the wrapper to get at every speck.

  Now sated, Runt climbed out, blinking at the sudden brightness, and shuffled the supplies into piles: edibles for his habitat cook-space and the meds, new blades, and lotion for the wash-space and auto-privy. Hammergun and seed to the greenhouse, pipe and plasticrete and cubes of krill to the shed, the stasis canisters of eel pups to the brood tanks. He continued to pluck the massive supply container clean, not wanting to waste anything Dispatch might have sent to help him not die out here. Even the packing would prove useful.

  Terraforming was lonely work, but at the end of a seven-year tour, Runt’d own a stake in the farm he’d built here on the edge of nowhere and become a voting HardCell shareholder. Building a planet gave you a head start on the other knobjobs.

  They were building paradise. Or he was.

  What Runt really needed was his new clone bride. Odd’s Gods! Eighteen months of masturbation didn’t breed too many brats to help at harvest. Even if it primed the pump.

  Far as Runt knew, assigned mates were one of the only perks of terraforming. Runt knew he was too small and too rough to court a real civilized bride, but he’d be able to charm whatever fertile female they cooked up for him, no matter how ugly or ill-tempered. Clone spouses were engineered for compatibility.

  No wife yet. Still, the lavish provisions eased his let-down.

  Runt cracked his neck and decided to store the crates of food first. Thankfully, the past year had packed so much sinew onto his compact frame that he could manage alone. It was grunting, sweaty work, even with the suns throwing long, low shadows.

  This was three times the produce the transport pricks had dropped last time. Odd. He’d almost starved last season. As he hauled a hundred kilos of mealpaks and food tanks from the shore and into the habitat cook-space, he moved at the rhythm set by his heart thumping in his ears. Silent work came easily now. He had stopped talking to himself after about six months because it made him feel even crazier.

  HardCell always placed cofarmers in mated pairs for safety and entertainment, but Runt’s original partner had died on entry. She had vaporized inside the cheap delivery pods used by space freighters for dropping non-sentient cargo. Some blind date, huh? From lifemate to hot dust before he’d even laid eyes on her. Just his fucking luck. And just hers, apparently.

  Trouble was, no replacement wife (or explanation) had arrived. Runt hadn’t seen another sentient being in months. There were terraformers posted on other islands, of course, but in a year and a half he’d not met one.

  The geologists had scattered landmasses carefully across these roiling seas; HardCell Corporation discouraged any kind of contact or conversation that might lead to discontent or unionization. Planetoid HD10307-E was to be an agricultural combine harvesting high-yield produce and protein that would feed HardCell employees as far away as Algol.

  The cooler air inside his Spartan habitat made sorting easier. With work-numb arms, Runt hummed tunelessly to himself as he slid canisters and paks into the bare cook-space shelves. The pearly overhead lights made the candy-bright packaging shimmer in his dirty hands.

  Little by little, the heap of provisions on the habitat floor vanished into orderly rows in the cook-space. Runt vibrated with bone-deep relief at seeing his molded shelves full of nutrients again.

  The bee-moths! Shit.

  Twilight had become a double sunset while he was indoors. Bathed in the salmon glow, he jogged to the cracked container and rescued the shimmering caterpillars for safekeeping indoors.

  Until he rebuilt the hive, their tubes went in his sleep-space, the only one that hadn’t sustained storm damage. He’d have to rig a new hatchery first. Until then, best to be cautious. Feeling wise, he rewarded himself with a quick mouthful of dry tofu-bacon, chewing as he stepped back under the smoldering suns to tackle the gear. His sweat rinsed the dust off him. It took him an hour to sort and snack until his belly was full, the beach clear, and the transport container nearly scooped clean.

  A meter from the crate, the creamy heap of foam shreds shrank as wildlife swiped it to line nests. By morning it would be gone. Frankly, Runt appreciated the cleanup, and the biodegradable padding would only help the island’s ecosyste
m.

  Finally, only the architectural tarp remained inside the container, probably three meters long across its floor. Runt grabbed the handle at one end of the sack with a rough hand and dragged the dense silvery roll onto the sand.

  Chance’s pants, it was heavy! Starvation had withered some of his muscle.

  The smaller sun was coming down and night bugs were chittering in the brush. He decided to leave the fabric for daylight so he could check it for parasites. If rats or millipedes had hidden in its folds, he didn’t want them catching him barehanded.

  Runt had almost turned toward the habitat when the huge bundle jerked and curled like a monstrous metallic worm.

  “Fuck!”

  Runt’s shout sent a few surviving moths fluttering from the bluish palm trees. He fell to the ground and scrabbled back on his ass toward the heavy-duty submachete still planted nearby. Noisy, but the only accessible weapon.

  The resurfacing tarp moved again, a wriggle all along its length, something packed alongside the fabric.

  Alive.

  Something alive stuffed inside the sack.

  What the hell could be that big?

  Hogs, dogs, humans . . .

  I’m dead.

  His recruiter had warned him that, if he didn’t meet their terraform schedule, forcible termination was likely. Fuck. His numbers were shit and he was behind schedule.

  I’m a dead man.

  After a scant eighteen months, they’d finally sent his retirement plan in a corporate Trojan Horse, the cracked container packed with nibbles, and he’d fallen for it like a hungry idiot.

  HardCell means business.

  Runt realized HardCell had sent a new pair of terraformers stashed in foam to retire and replace him. Duh. Runt was undersized and had been trapped working solo.

  All that’s their food.

  Legs braced to pounce, Runt gripped the whirring submachete and circled the enormous squirming life-support duffel. He could see big angled bumps like limbs inside straining hard at the closure.