Opening Passages IV: Hunter's Moon

This is the beginning of a short story. I know whodunnit and how. I just don't know how Mickey figures it out.

 

 

Hunter’s Moon
by Michael F Flynn

As nearly as anyone could reconstruct matters afterward, it happened like this.

Zdravko Sirajov was standing on the peak of Mt. Hadley watching the Meteors Nouvelle. It was the best seat, if he had been sitting and, as it turned out, would have been better for him if he had been. The view was stunning – over 100 klicks in every direction. You could gaze northwest across Putrid Marsh all the way to the rimwall of Great Archimedes and eastward across the lesser Apennines to the broad plains of Serenity. But the little group had come up to look at Earth, not their own neighborhood.

Detlef Streicher stood in front of Sirajov, but a little below the crest so as not to block Sirajov’s view of the Earth. Maria Pereira, a bone of contention between the two men, remained behind on the Moon buggy with Klement Chou, the driver, while Pete Hendaye had placed himself off to the side, as if to detach himself from the whole business.

Streicher and Sirajov had been sniffing around Maria almost from the time she had made her “one small step” and learned of the severe sexual imbalance in the Moon. Each man had schemed after ways to be alone with her or at least to exclude the other and had come to blows over the matter on two earlier occasions. It was hard to say to what extent Maria was oblivious to the struggle around her and to what extent she may have encouraged it.

Earth was in half phase that day, and its night side blinked with fireflies as the rubble of the asteroid burned up in her atmosphere. Everyone oohed and aahed as they always do when watching meteor showers, even from the other side of the sky; though Klement griped to Maria that the previous year had been more spectacular.

Below them, at the foot of the mountain, nestled the tidy settlement of Falcon’s Landing and Pete remembered afterward thinking how much more comfortable it would have been to watch on the big screen from inside the dome. Or not watch at all. He thought the whole thing was a big bore.

Sirajov had grown tired of the display and had turned to go down the backside of the hill, likely to sit beside Maria on the buggy, but Streicher checked his chronometer and said, “Wait, the best part is coming.”

“It better be a damn sight more spectacular than up to now.”

It was.

Something hard and fast smashed Sirajov’s polycarbonate faceplate and opened the oxygen regenerator behind his head with an exit hole like a blossoming flower. Blood and brains splashed out in a flash-frozen mist.

Maria screamed all the way down to Falcon’s Landing.

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 (c) 2022. Michael F Flynn