Prologue.
It was a long and arduous trip from the man made beaches of New California to the dusty slopes of Headwood. Iron had been found however in those slopes and the desert beyond held uranium. Under their rocky windswept surface lay the future of the human race. Nothing said progress on Titan, 3rd moon of Saturn like iron ore however. And nothing said hard labor like mining. The Affiliation valued Titan strongly. They did not value their colonies comfort at the expense of the vast expanse of minerals below the surface. Terraforming beyond basic hospitable atmosphere and the basics of flora and fauna had to suffice. This was enough for some to thrive and for others to strive. To mine Titan of its iron ore was to enable more space ships, more colonies and more mining of asteroids, moons and one day planets. The future of the human race was at stake: an expanding populace needing ever expanding resources. Space. The final frontier? Not when money was concerned. Hard work and dirty money: age old comrades shining in a new ball game. The Affiliation was set to make a fortune, a fortune borne on the backs of others. But how long could those backs hold out?
Chapter 1.
When he returned to the town of his birth, the town owned by his family, he did not act on instinct. He played no games and sought no trouble. He was there for his uncle's funeral. In hindsight though, his instincts had never steered him wrong. It was only when he began to think too much that trouble always came. Back for his uncles funeral after being offworld for 12 years; Zeke Del Ray was in for a world of trouble. Trouble of the womanly kind.
The rain fell hard in front of the church. The sheriff's men had blocked all traffic through Main Street, except that that was on foot. The street itself was wet and muddy yet still folk walked its path. The mud strewn sidewalk and the stone steps leading to the main entrance to the church were full to bursting with mourners. Professional men, business acquaintances, even war correspondents sent down from the front and of course the morbidly curious that always find their way to tragedy like maggots in a rotting corpse.
The church inside was filled with more important mourners. Some dressed to the hilt in the supple layers of quality black lace and linen. Others still in simple cotton, threadbare but serviceable. Their division may have been visible, but they all gazed toward the front of the church with its beautifully carved oak altar and golden coffin shining. A neat wreath of flowers with a single ace of spades crowned the black king of Headwood's final bed. There was a faint hush, a humid tension as they waited for the funeral service to begin. For the religious fawning of Fat Doc Layerman to begin. Priest and doctor, teacher and lecher to them all. They all wanted to hear him, but they hated him. And they knew that Fat Doc and the Black King had hated each other.
I was leaning back in my seat in the aisle of pews reserved for family of the deceased. I watched that golden coffin, open to my eyes. My uncle looked tanned. Tanned and relaxed. Shit, he looked better laying there in that golden coffin and his elaborate floral suit then he ever had in his sweat soaked life. The stress of being the Black King of Headwood had finally eased for him by his dying.
There were more members of our family sitting near me then I ever remembered having. I'm sure most of them I'd fucked royally at one time or another through the course of my life. My pretty cousin Katherine almost literally in that drunken time of her sisters coming of age party. That older sister Mossy sat next to her and she in turn sat next to my uncle's wife, my aunt Maddrey. Sister to my own father and to my uncle as well. Her other daughters and sons and their husbands and wives sat on the other side of their mother. I was having trouble remembering which ones were her sons and which were son-in-laws. There were so many of the mangy rabbits and for many years we hadn't seen hide nor hair of each other. Shoot, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of Headwood. Lawd, don't ask me about their children. At least I could be fairly sure that none of them were mine. At least none of the direct relations. I'd done a lot of dirty things to some damn fine women over the years but cousin-fucking was surely not one of them. Although looking now at spritely Katherine and her long dark brown, almost black hair that was too unruly for its own good; her skin, too pale to be considered beautiful in these parts but starkly enticing to some; her dark blue eyes, which were too large for her heart shaped face. She had been tall for a girl back then and just a little overweight. In all the wrong places. Now she was older and the harder working world of a frontier town had stripped her of her puppy fat. Her wide hips and large thighs no doubt were long gone and as I gazed at her reminiscing I wondered how her cute bubble butt had fared over the years. Hardly cousinly thoughts.
Before I could turn away she turned and looked at me, staring straight into my eyes. She tipped her head slightly in my direction with the hint of a smile. "Welcome back" she mouthed. I winked lasviously at her, just to remind her of my reputation and to remind her that I may have been gone for a good ten years but I was still the same laidback, cheeky and manipulative devil I had always been in our youth. She tilted her head back and laughed, her unruly hair not the only thing shaking in the sweaty confines of this pine box of a church. Her mother, my aunt Maddrey, turned to her sharply and in quick, stricken tones whispered something that surely put her in her place. I had raised one eyebrow at her display - maybe she too was the same mad woman of our youth, I could be in for some interesting times back here in Headwood. I was still no low life cousin fucker but that didn't mean I couldn't have a little fun and usually fun girls had fun girlfriends.
I left my cousin alone; there would be plenty of time to catch up later. Plenty of time, no doubt, to hatch plans of devilry. I cast my gaze from our pews and across the aisle to the other set of pews. I didn't know too much about weddings but I amused myself by imagining we were the grooms side of the ceremony and on the other side of the aisle was the bride's family. This was no wedding however and I'd had my plenty of funerals. In the front pew where the bride's parents should have sat there sat a surprising concoction of my uncle's friends. In a town where everyone tried to canoodle favour with the Black King, a real friend would be hard to come by you'd imagine. Yet my uncle must have had his fair share of real friends in high places and especially in low. You don't get to be the unofficial, undisputed boss of an entire mining town on the far outskirts of civilised society on an alien moon if you don't have some real social management skills. You might expect a role like that to come under fire, be a high risk proposition with a short tenure. Not my uncle though. He'd been the Black King of Headwood since I was a teen. And he'd been a serious power player for long before that.
And the bastard died in his sleep with his wife by his side.
I didn't recognise all those folk in that front pew, but I knew some and some others I could guess by reputation. There was no shame in Headwood in being seen in that front pew.
My uncle was respected.
The whole mass took less than ten minutes. Fat Doc rushed it. To his credit, it didn't look too rushed. But it was rushed just enough to let everyone know that even in death the Black King held no sway over men of the cloth. Fat Doc made a hasty sign of the cross over the coffin then turned his back.
