Titanium Texicans (33 page)

“Forgive me, please.”

He wanted to forgive her, but thinking was becoming difficult and he would embarrass them both if his erection grew much larger. That was bound to happen with her pressing against his leg. He nodded, “Um … okay. I guess you did … well, okay.”

Bill said, “Good. Kendra, go help you mother get supper on.”

Kendra skipped out of the room. Tasso didn’t know what to think. All of a sudden the room felt both lighter and darker at the same time. He hoped it would take a while before he had to get up, he knew his coveralls couldn’t contain his erection. Tasso sat quietly, still not wanting to talk, still angry at almost everybody, still wanting to walk out and be left alone, but somehow Kendra had stolen his ability to justify walking out because of any righteous indignation at being falsely accused. She’d apologized and he’d accepted. Now he was stuck.

Bill rambled on about how things were going with Aunt Aggie’s attic cleanup. He mentioned how pleased the captain was with the influx of goods, used or not, and how the items were causing a stir around the crew. Apparently, there was a high stakes bidding war going on over a box of old belt buckles, with the majority of bidders wanting to keep the collection intact, but a small and vocal contingent wanting to have the buckles sold piecemeal. He tried to explain that the ship should hold the buckle sales until they made homeport in New Texas, where they would get a bigger profit.

Dinner found Tasso seated between Bill and Kendra at a big table. Kendra sat close enough to him that her leg pressed against his. She didn’t allow his plate or glass to sit empty. Sitting this close to her was confusing, like trying to make a house pet of a jack-o’-lantern! Not that anyone would be tempted to pet Ol’ Ben. She was both dangerous and interesting at the same time. He wanted to reach up and stroke her long black hair. Instead, he reached down and petted the little dog at his feet.

Kendra grinned at him, “You like petting my Chi-Chi?”

Bill sputtered and almost spit out his drink. Señora Rojo laughed heartily along with most of the older children around the table.

Kendra looked innocent, “What? He is petting my little dog Chi-Chi, isn’t he? I just asked if he liked it.”

Tasso looked confused.

Señora Rojo swallowed her laugh and explained, “
Chi-chi
is a Spanish slang word for girls titties.”

Tasso looked at Kendra, he was blushing deep red, causing everyone at the table to laugh even harder. Kendra laughed so hard she cried. Somehow, Tasso didn’t mind being laughed at when she laid her head on his shoulder.

Bill cleared his throat and made a valiant attempt to change the conversation. “So, um … Tasso, how’s your job going at Cherry’s?”

Kendra poked Tasso in the ribs. “Yeah, tell us, Tasso, do you get much chance to help the ladies in the fitting rooms with that frilly lingerie you sell?”

Tasso was still blushing from before. He doubted he was going to get any more embarrassed, so he joked, “Well, it seems I have a knack for estimating cup size, but I don’t get much chance to help in the fitting rooms. No more than a couple of times an hour.”

Bill laughed, “Maybe I should apply for a part time job after work.”

Señora Rojo said, “You do and you better find somewhere else to sleep.”

Tasso said, “Actually, Cherry and Ain are talking about getting some more help if they can find a trainee who might be interested.” He looked at Kendra. “It does pay well. She’s looking for a sales assistant and someone to help run the extruder.”

Kendra got a nod from her father and another nod from her mother. She gave Tasso a quick kiss on the cheek and rushed out of the room to call Cherry.

Bill asked his wife, “Is she going to have time for a job with training, classes, and cheerleading?”

Señora Rojo nodded. “Our oldest has already said she is about done with cheerleading anyway. There are many younger girls coming up who want her spot on the team. This little spat with Anisa may be the straw that camel needs.”

Bill looked at Tasso and said, “Speaking of changes, tomorrow I want you to come to my office. Can you find it? Good. Come by first thing in the morning. We’re making a scheduled stop at a planet called Kesselman. The captain and I have a little project where we believe you can help us. It’s time we moved you out of Aunt Aggie’s attic, anyway.”

Tasso was listening and hearing every word, but his mind was still on Kendra. He could still feel the heat of her leg against his, and he knew he would never get the picture out of his head of her dark eyes staring up at him, except for those precious moments when he pictured her in the wet T-shirt. He hoped his dataport had been set on record for both moments. He wanted to check but not in front of the girl’s father and mother.

Bill continued. “Kesselman is one of the rare planets still growing tobacco as an export cash crop. We believe their tobacco co-operative is pulling the same scam on farmers that the Saronno Produce Lobby Associates is pulling on the chiamra growers on your world.”

That got Tasso’s attention. He didn’t forget about Kendra. He didn’t think he would ever forget about her, not like the other girl, what’s-her-name … Anisa something-or-other. Cheating farmers wasn’t high on his list of things to ignore.

“Through your efforts we have four working agricultural-processing machines. We’re going to throw a wrench into their co-op’s little operation and go directly to the farmers. We’re sure someone is going to object, but we want to try this before we take on Saronno. We want you on our planetary team.”

“Will this get us to Saronno quicker or is this a delay?”

“Our schedule won’t allow us to get to Saronno before your eighteenth birthday. Yes, Kesselman is a delay.” He held up his hand to stop Tasso’s interruption. “I’m sorry. Please understand we do consider your concerns, but we’re committed to this operation on Kesselman. This might have been a quick stop and go picking up cargo, but the agricultural-processing units you found and reconditioned allows us to investigate far greater profits. That’s profit for all of us, not just you.”

All Tasso heard was they wouldn’t get to Saronno in time to save his land.

CHAPTER 35

TASSO DUCKED as the rock sailed toward his head.

“Get off my land,” the man shouted. “You don’t got no right to be here.”

Purser Bill Rojo said, “Sir, we just want to talk.”

“I was awarned that if’n I even talked to you, my crops would rot in the fields. I can’t sell my crop, my family goes hungry.” The farmer grabbed another rock. “You spacemen are only interested in cheating an honest farmer. You have no dirt in your blood.”

Bill held up his hand to stop the man from throwing another rock at Tasso or him. The shuttle pilot and the Rojo’s planetary agent had wisely elected to stay on the shuttle. This was the third farm they had visited and the results were the same at each place. No one would even consider talking to them.

Tasso knew they could convince the man to sell his crops directly to the Red Scorpion if they could get a chance to explain their proposed project. He also knew Grandpa wouldn’t have listened to anyone who showed up uninvited in their little valley. He didn’t think farmers were that much different from each other, no matter what planet they grew crops on. He was only partly paying attention to the farmer and Bill. He couldn’t help but stare at the farm around him. The land was beautiful, but underutilized. Grandpa used every bit of open dirt he could plant. They put in a garden anywhere they could scrape together a flat spot and haul in dirt from anywhere they could find a bucket full. They irrigated anywhere water didn’t naturally flow. Chiamra grew only near the neo-ironwood trees, but subsistence crops were anywhere and everywhere else.

This planet was beautiful, a farmer or rancher’s dream. There were lush green rolling hills with ponds, lakes, and meandering streams flowing everywhere. Stands of native trees grew in groves on the hillsides and in strips along the larger rivers. Even this poor little dirt farm had such abundant fertile ground that they had built their home and barn on tillable soil.

Flying rocks and shouting men, not withstanding, Tasso sat on the ground and pulled off his soft shipboard boots and socks. He didn’t notice the silence around him as he sighed deeply, digging his toes into the soft green grass. He pulled up a handful of sod and took a long smell of the black rich dirt. He could smell the life waiting to spring forth. The soil wasn’t like Kaduna. There the ground was hard-packed clay and blowing dust.

He knew if the man went from throwing rocks to grabbing his nearby shotgun, they’d all be in serious trouble. Newly promoted Security Lieutenant Rodriguez hovered out of sight in a converted shuttle. Its freshly mounted cannon welded to the side. At the first gunshot, the lieutenant would open up with his new toy. It would plow the field with the cannon shot and fertilize the ground with the farmer’s remains. Not that Rodriguez was anxious to kill, but he was under strict orders to avoid letting anything happen to the captain’s brother or her favorite trainee.

Tasso ignored all of the pre-mission briefing instructions and walked away from their shuttle. He walked barefooted for twenty yards past the farmer and stepped into the plowed ground around the tall tobacco plants. He wiggled his toes into the black dirt, feeling the wet muck ooze up between his toes. He doubted his chiamra would grow in soil this rich, but it felt like heaven and smelled like new life. He closed his eyes, raising his face to the sun, and sucking in the thick, moist air. He didn’t know how long he stood still, soaking in the glorious feeling. He could have stood longer since the planet was about ninety percent standard gravity and he felt strangely lighter and oddly stronger. Standing was as relaxing as lying in the grass. He wanted to take all of his clothes off and roll in the dirt. He didn’t even care if the farmer and his wife watched him. However, there wasn’t room between the neat rows of tobacco, and he wouldn’t hurt another man’s crops. Even here, life was hard enough without strangers trampling your plants.

He sighed and opened his eyes. The farmer and his wife were staring back at him. Bill was still standing near the shuttle and the Rojo agent was peering out the shuttle hatch. The shuttle floated a fraction of an inch over the tops of the grass. The pilot was ready to bolt into the safety of the air at the first hint of serious danger. Tasso didn’t care if they left without him.

Tasso knew this stop was supposed to be a test for breaking the strangle hold of the Saronno Product Association Lobby and the planetary government’s grip on spice production. The delay was going to keep him from saving his little valley. He’d begun to like living on the Red Scorpion, but it just wasn’t home. He knew he wasn’t trying to fit in. He refused to speak Spanglish. He’d even given his Texican shirt to his roommate, not that he would have worn anything Anisa had given him, but he didn’t replace the shirt. Instead, he continued to wear shipboard coveralls. He worked hard as that was only right. Even when they shifted him to the planetary detail, he worked hard, although he found out that working hard didn’t always imply sweat. Meetings, briefings, and planning sessions were their own kind of hard.

Standing here on Kesselman with his feet in the mud wasn’t hard. He wondered if he had enough credits to buy land on this planet. This was a farmer’s fantasy. Looking at this farmer, his wife, and at the land, he imagined any crop would grow. The land was wonderful and the man himself didn’t look like a stranger to hard work. His hands were calloused and rough, as were his wife’s. The patches on his pants were at the knees and not in the seat. The couple was thin, maybe due to genetics, but if they were, it would be an unlikely coincidence since skinny men ran the first two farms they’d already visited. Farming wasn’t easy. It never was. It becomes doubly hard when someone is cheating you. The association on Kesselman was supposed to help the farmers by getting the best possible pricing by selling in volume to the highest bidder. It looked like all they were doing was helping themselves. Tobacco was the main cash crop, most of the fields they had flown over were planted in tobacco.

The farmer broke into Tasso’s reverie and asked, “You a farmer, boy?”

Tasso said, “I used to be. I grew up on Saronno and spent my days in the fields.”

“What you grow?”

Tasso said, “Mainly chiamra for spice.”

“I never heard of that place or chiamra.”

Tasso laughed, “Yeah, I’ve been told Saronno is even more out of the way than Kesselman. And there were plenty of days I wished I’d never heard of chiamra, either.”

“If’n this place was more centrally located to space lanes, then your spacemen buddies wouldn’t be overcharging us to ship our tobacco to off-planet buyers and we might make a profit every now an’ again.”

Tasso leaned down and grabbed a handful of dirt. “Sir, even with dirt this good on Saronno, my grandfather and I still wouldn’t have made a profit with our growers association cheating us at every turn.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the shuttle. “I know these folks, now. I didn’t when I was farming. I do know they don’t charge any extra to stop here than they do any other planet. I don’t understand the way spaceships work. I tried to read their engine manuals, but I don’t know enough to understand it. I do know that distances and the size, weight, or mass of the cargo doesn’t matter with the engines they have.”

The farmer looked puzzled, “You sayin’ they don’t charge us any more to stop here than anywhere else?”

Tasso shook his head. “No. They wouldn’t charge you any more even if you lived at the edge of the galaxy. They’d come to whatever planet you lived on if you had a product they could buy from you and make a profit by selling it somewhere else.”

“You don’t look like a liar to me, but how do I know you’re telling the truth.”

Tasso shrugged. “You don’t. You don’t know me or these people with me. Sit down with those folks and let them make you an offer. We sure aren’t going to force you to sell to us directly.”

“You expect to make more by cutting out the Tobacco Growers Co-op?”

Tasso said, “Sure, but we also expect you to make more. If you listen and don’t like what you hear, we’ll leave, and you won’t even have to throw rocks to chase us away.”

The farmer pointed off across the fields. “I ain’t the one going to be throwing rocks. I’d listen, but those men would rather I not.” He looked at his wife and pointed at the house. She grabbed their shotgun and took off running to their house.

Tasso saw a truck hovering across the field loaded with men in the back and running so heavy they were clipping the tops off the tobacco plants in the farmer’s field, throwing clippings and bits of plants in a whirlwind of debris. He smiled. “Will you talk to my buyer if I can convince those men to let you talk to us?”

The farmer smiled back, “That’ll take some serious convincing. I don’t expect they’ll beat me too bad, if’n I don’t fight back. The little woman will get herself locked in the cellar where they won’t get at her.”

“She has to hide from them?”

“They ain’t exactly choirboys. They ain’t never hurt us yet, but I knows families that have been beat something cruel and … well, let’s just say they treated the women with less respect than a man should.”

“Rape?”

The man shrugged, “Harsh word, boy. Some say it’s fitting. Now, I expect that unless you get in your shuttle and leave right smartly, you’re in for a proper pounding. If’n you ain’t going to leave, would you kindly step back into the grass, so they don’t tear up my crops any more than they already have when they’re beating you?”

Tasso stepped out of the field and sat down in the grass to put his socks and shoes back on, ignoring the mud clinging to his feet. Rojo was waving at him to get back in the shuttle, but he ignored him. They’d talked about a confrontation with the Tobacco Grower’s Co-operative, but the senior staff decided it would be better to wait until they had some direct purchase contracts from the farmers before pushing their agenda.

The planetary government on Kesselman was really a non-player. Their constitution didn’t allow any government interference in commerce. Their laws relegated them to little more than an administrative function. They didn’t have any military, just a small police force to investigate and enforce crimes against persons. The government was rabidly laissez faire. Tasso had never heard the term before, but he liked it.

He didn’t wonder why the police didn’t stop this goon squad assault on farmers and their families. Tasso knew the answer. No one would speak up about abuse unless they were strong enough to fight back. Worse, no one could become strong enough to fight back unless they spoke up.

Tasso knew this didn’t look like his fight, and Bill Rojo was urging him to leave. However, he knew every fight he’d ever been in had been his fight. Maybe now was the time to get into a fight for someone else. He smiled knowing it wouldn’t get too bad even with odds of a dozen to four. He didn’t expect the farmer to help. He glanced behind him. Bill was sprinting to the shuttle and their planetary agent was already trying to slide the hatch closed. Tasso shook his head, maybe it would be a dozen against one. He knew it still wouldn’t get too bad since Security was nearby. He might be beaten, but Rodriguez would keep him from being killed … he hoped.

Tasso clamped his jaw shut. The driver of the truck settled it into the tobacco field, crushing the healthy plants. The goons piled out of the truck as soon as it settled to the ground. A couple of the men faced him. The rest circled around the shuttle, not moving, just threatening to beat the titanium-coated shuttle with sticks and rocks.

Tasso wondered if not having guns kept the police at bay. Not that it mattered much since a club could do a lot of damage if properly applied to a human body’s soft parts. Still, he doubted anyone in the shuttle was in danger as long as they kept the hatch shut.

A man from the goon squad walked up to the hatch intercom. He began a conversation with the purser and the planetary agent. Tasso looked at the two men facing him. They didn’t look as if they were interested in a conversation. Both men were of the huge variety, but Tasso could see their hands were soft and their faces were puffy with bags under their eyes. He could smell alcohol oozing from them in stale waves.

His pre-mission briefings told him to expect professional enforcers. These were little more than barroom bullies, maybe even paid as short-time help. Still, they were twice Tasso’s size. It would hurt if either man hit him. Tasso was determined not to get hurt. He glanced behind him as the farmer edged away, obviously ready to run. He knew he could run, too. Neither of these men could run more than a few yards without running out of breath. That might be fun to watch, but Tasso was in no mood to run.

He’d been ducking fights for a while. It hadn’t helped. He was still ready to fight the Lamonts, but they weren’t here and neither was Cruz, Flacco, or Ivan. He was under strict instructions from the captain to avoid violence. He was under strict instructions to let Security handle any violence that did start. He was under strict instructions to follow Purser Rojo’s lead and run away if necessary.

He wanted to ignore his instructions and start a little violence. His back was to the shuttle, so no video could see his face, but their microphones would pick it up if he said anything to start something. He nodded at the men and gave them a half smile. He slowly mouthed the word ‘vacuum’, knowing the word looks similar to ‘fuck you’ when someone was reading lips. He was confident neither of these goons was a professional lip reader and wouldn’t spot the difference, simply assuming the insult. He was right. The big fat man on his left swung a meaty fist at Tasso’s face. Tasso ducked under the man’s punch, burying his fist into the man’s midsection. It felt like punching deep into a pile of pillows, but four hits to the man under his ribcage dropped the bully to his knees. Tasso drove a fist downward into the man’s temple.