Read Quaid’s story here, including the first three chapters of his upcoming thriller, Astroplane.
When the sun and visible Earth had exactly 73 window-inches between them, I plunged the hypodermic into the astronaut’s shoulder — right by the clavicle like @durwoodOakJones said.
The man wilted to the tile, his European Space Agency patch facing up.
I spun the airlock hatch dashed into the EVA bay. From here out, everything had to happen fast.
I yanked on the spacesuit and fastened all its catches — a thing you should *not*, as a rule, do fast — and attached myself to the spacecraft tether. Behind me, I saw through the door, Göran was still down.
I pressed the button to release the airlock, followed by a seven-digit keycode. With a *pip*, the doors split … but they were maddeningly slow separating.
*Go, go, go!*
The instant my over-puffed form could fit, I bounded into space.
And wow.
No matter how often I go — to disable Rivard LLC’s doomsday laser, or retrieve jettisoned state secrets, or to impress a date — outer space never disappoints. The stillness. The specks arrayed to infinity. Peace. Void.
Though today, at this precise moment and radian of orbit — it wasn’t a total void.
I squinted vainly to see if I could spot it, but of course my immediate vicinity looked blacker than black.
From the inner pocket of my sportcoat, which I needed to dig through multiple catches of the spacesuit to reach, I pulled the oblong device Durwood and NASA had built together.
I held the knob end as per instructions, then uncapped the top.
Immediately a length of flexible metal telescoped forward into space, unfurling, bucking, seeking.
It was after the molecule: the lone chemical unit that deepspace scans had found life signatures within decades ago, finally passing close to Earth.
The Europeans believed it should be destroyed, lest unwanted genetic (or other) consequences ensued. They’d had a spacecraft in place so it was their ballgame.
Our side thought, *Mmmyes, troubling, but let’s have a look-see first.*
With a *toink*, the metal snapped to a solid reed. Durwood’s device sounded. My knob vibrated.
I twisted the end counterclockwise. The metal began reeling back into its shaft like a wounded politician to his base.
I swam through nothingness, arm over arm back toward the ship. Our future alien overlords, limitless self-replicating nutrition, some 1950s cosmonaut’s spore boomeranging back — whatever it was, I had it.
#thirdChance #microHustle
I caught up with my old flame, the newscaster Cora Inez, outside ABC studios.
“What a lucky coincidence,” I said. “This calls for a drink.”
She returned my cheek-kiss but protested she had no time. Hadn’t I heard she was moderating tomorrow night’s debate?
“No.” I glanced at her satchel bag. “But hey, that’s great. Congrats.”
“I really have to know my questions coming and going, every nugget of background.”
“I’d be happy to help,” I said. “Debating was my forte, you’ll recall — in those days of yore before the scandals.”
“Right.” She winced, crimping those perfect coffee eyes. “Thanks, but obviously I couldn’t share the debate questions in advance. Not with anyone.”
I kept grinning. “Obviously.”
Still, I did talk her around to a drink. There’s a joint just around the corner from the studio called Dornan’s that mixes a knockout prairie fire.
Cora volunteered, “I can’t wait for the debate to be done. We’ve got candidates pre-spinning their performance, pre-whining about our bias…”
I chuckled. “Ridiculous,” I said—though my client was one of them.
I drained my drink and stood, massaging the scoops between her neck and shoulders. She didn’t object. The satchel bag was leaned against her pub stool. In the dark club, I couldn’t read anything inside.
“Which part are you moderating?” I asked. “Foreign policy? Immigration?”
She closed her eyes pleasurably. “Climate and gun control.”
“Ooh,” I said. “That’s sexy.”
Her body rolling toward my touch, she explained the horse-trading that’d taken place between the anchors. Greg Gormann had said he was going first — hell if he cared what questions — but the rest had argued into the early morning over whose past reportage best fit which topic.
A server passed. I caught her eye, then tugged it down — to the satchel. She kept moving.
“Gormann,” I scoffed. “He was at WCVB-Boston when I was governor. I knew his producer — she said they spent twenty minutes every night on his *ears*.”
Cora said, “It’s forty now.”
The server was returning.
Cora asked what I was up to these days. “I heard the most bizarre rumor about you.”
“It’s true, whatever you heard,” I said.
“You’re an … operative? Of some kind?”
Before I could confirm, the server — @mollyMcGill3rd — dropped a silverware setting.
“So sorry,” Molly apologized.
She bent and, with the same swipe that gathered the dropped knife and fork, snatched the papers from Carol Inez’s bag.
Then she scooted off.
Cora opened her eyes. “That was lovely, just like I remember. Thank you.”
I flashed the most gracious smile in my repertoire.
Molly was furiously photocopying the debate questions back at the joint’s bus station, but now I was thinking…
*How do we get those papers back in the satchel?*
#thirdChance #microHustle #flashfiction
We thought she was in the southwest turret. Durwood, keeping one hand on the stick, pointed out the helicopter’s open hatch.
“Meet y’on the Danube?” he said.
I nodded, tugged my chute straps twice, and jumped.
The Bratislavanian night sky felt raw and brisk and live. I stayed in free-fall for just a beat, enough for @durwoodOakJones and the chopper to veer away north, before pulling my cord.
As the chute exploded above, the harness gouged my armpits and neck. I weathered the shock, then sighted Anaïs’s (or what we hoped was Anaïs’s) turret. I leaned into the steering lines, fighting a stiff wind.
The palace was officially a museum, but Anaïs and I — after a months-long deep, *deep* cover job — had discovered the rebel activity. We’d sniffed out their secret doomsday weapon. 48 hours ago my cover blew, but she’d stayed behind and gotten the schematics.
I landed on the turret’s cone, SMACK, a bug against a concrete windshield.
Below me, a guard emerged. He looked left, right, down —
Before he could look up, I jumped him from above. My loafers drove into the crown of his head; down we went in a heap.
A second man came at me. Him I dropped with the pistol Durwood had outfitted me with in prep.
A third man hurled some kind of spinning disk, which cracked my gun hand. The weapon clattered 150 feet to the ground.
“Hey,” I said. “I needed that.”
The rebel glowered at me, crab-stepping, closing the gap between us.
I swelled my chest, making myself bigger like you do with mountain lions on hiking trails.
Except this cat wasn’t buying.
He forced me to the edge of the turret. I felt a stony rail biting into the back of my sportcoat.
I was about to go flying again — this time, without a chute.
A blast rent the night.
The man collapsed.
Standing behind him, aiming a slender six-shooter of her own, was the French operative herself.
Anaïs.
She lowered the gun and approached, hips jutting. “Where is the pickup?”
I inclined my head west. “Durwood’s heading down to the Danube. But first he’ll need to get rid of a helicopter.”
Her thumb edged the collar of my sportcoat. “Helicopters are big. This will take time.”
“I imagine so,” I said, and followed her back inside the turret.
#thirdChance #microHustle
I reach the top of the waterfall and know I have mere seconds before laser sights appear on my chest, my temple—red dots everywhere.
I shake out my sportcoat sleeves in front of me. They’re shredded from rainforest vines and thorns. A gash bisects my cheek to the Adam’s apple.
I look down and am confronted by the sheerest, wettest 600-foot drop imaginable. The mist in my nose is intoxicating beyond anything I’ve know—and that nose is no stranger to toxicating.
The Crimini sisters’ goons are barking orders from the next cliff over.
I pat my breast pocket and feel the bump of the microdrive, with its forty-five minutes of audio in Akkaüharic—the last words of it that’ll ever be spoken if I can’t smuggle this recording out.
Far below, I spot Durwood Oak Jones’s hat. I asked him six nights ago whether—if it came to this—the river was deep enough.
“Long as you clear the rocks,” he’d said.
The only rocks I can make out are jutting up from the cliff face below, angling for me like spits on a chicken roasting contraption. The water itself is nothing but froth.
A red dot spoils the yellow fabric of my sportcoat—on the left shoulder.
I plant my front loafer in the water’s disappearing edge, then jump.
Bullets whiz my ears and trace exploding zigzags in the rock behind me. I fall through space. The force is stupendous. I hold my arms out to either side—for balance or wind resistance or hoping to fly—and my jacket whips off.
The microdrive.
The Crimini sisters just killed the last remaining Akkaüharic speaker, a toothless woman who knew the truth about their geothermal project deep in the heart of the jungle. Four thousand years’ heritage gone. The threats of generals, the pithy sayings of shamans, the tidings of a million mothers—the medium for all these priceless proclamations is on the line.
Wildly I grasp overhead. I catch the cuff of my sportscoat and pull the rest into my chest.
After ten more seconds of knifing, flailing, cartwheeling freefall … *splash*.
I explode into a wholly different bodily distress—aqueous—and fight the churning chop until the arm of Durwood Oak Jones yanks me to the surface.
His steel-gray eyes peer into my blues. He’s holding my sportscoat.
“Breast pocket?” he says.
I nod.
He fishes out the microdrive, sticks it into his bluejeans, and drags me onto the jet ski with him.
#thirdChance #microHustle