Chapter 48 #2
Mirth. If you’re reading this, I’m gone, and you’ve come to Moone’s Landing after all.
I’m sorry for everything. I’ve left just enough in the station’s account to keep things running.
I know they’re stealing from me. Can’t prove it, but I hid the rest with the only one I trust completely.
Bean will keep it safe. He’s the only one who never left.
Andrew shook his head. “He left his currency units to the dog?”
“Um.” Holly looked down at Bean as he let out a loud snore. The beagle looked up at her as if to say, what? “Let me check…”
Her fingers found the charm she’d touched a hundred times. Every walk, every scratch behind his ears, every time she clipped and unclipped the leash. It sat there, small and round and unremarkable, on the collar of a dog that Charles Moone had walked twice daily.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Alyce muttered, running a hand over her face.
“Let me see about this.” Holly unsnapped the charm from Bean’s collar and ran her thumb over it, feeling the surface. Everyone leaned in close. Rasker wandered over and peered down. Holly let out a little gasp as she felt it: a hairline seam, nearly invisible, running around the circumference.
Her hands shook. She steadied them, pressed her fingernail into the seam, and pried.
The charm split open like a locket. Nestled inside, embedded in a tiny foam cradle, was a currency chip. It was black, the size of a pinkie nail, and there was absolutely nothing else it could be.
Holly stared at it.
“Is that what I think it is?” her father asked, half out of his chair.
Holly plucked the chip from its cradle and held it up. “Mom. Give me your wrist comm.”
Mirth held out her wrist with the comm around it. Holly pressed the chip to the reader on the device’s surface. The screen lit up, processed for a moment, and displayed a number.
250,000 nits.
The room went silent.
Holly read the number again. Then a third time. It didn’t change. Two hundred fifty thousand currency units, hidden in a charm on a dog’s collar, waiting for the person Charles Moone had hoped would come home.
Alyce sat down hard on the dining chair. The composed, unflappable woman who had held the station together through years of neglect and crisis dropped into the seat as if her legs had simply decided they were finished.
“Well, look at that,” she said, after a moment. “I can still be surprised.”
Holly looked at the number on the screen.
She looked at Bean, blinking at her from her lap, looking a little confused by everyone’s sudden shift of mood.
He yawned, as if bored by the fortune that had been hanging from his neck for years.
Holly looked at her mother, who pressed both hands to her face.
Her shoulders shook with what might have been laughter or tears or both.
She looked at her father, who was grinning so wide it looked like his face might split, then at Rasker, who shook his head in an expression of quiet, profound relief.
Luv’s optical sensors were cycling through every color the robot possessed.
“This changes things,” Holly said.
“It certainly does,” Alyce replied, composing herself with visible effort. She straightened in the chair and met Holly’s gaze with those steady gold eyes. “So. What do you plan to do with this unexpected windfall?”
Holly looked at the currency chip in her palm.
Small and black and worth more than everything she had earned in twelve years at Sol-Arc Industries.
Enough to pay off the loan. Enough to repair every broken system on the station.
Enough to replace the lighting relay and drain the caverns and fix the water main and restore the gardens and bring Moone’s Landing back to what Oliver Moone had envisioned when he sank his fortune into a dome on a small moon in deep space.
She reached out, took Alyce’s hand, and placed it in the astonished woman’s palm.
“It’s going into the station account,” Holly said. “Every nit. We pay off the loan first, then we start repairs, and you and Sam get paid a good salary for once.” She paused, and a decision settled in her chest. “And there are going to be some changes around here.”
Alyce’s brows rose. “What kind of changes?”
Holly looked at her. At this woman who had carried Moone’s Landing on her back for years, who had run the hotel before Holly showed up, who had been at Holly’s door every single day she’d been in bed, who had found Charles’ d-pad and figured out how to open it.
She thought of the others who weren’t here, Sam, Harry, Mish, Tyer, Orba and Sula, and she looked at the man standing by the window who had given up his commission to save her home.
“I have an idea that will make this station stronger,” Holly said with a wave of her hand. “But I need to work out some details before I share it.”
She didn’t elaborate. She wasn’t ready to, not yet. The idea was still taking shape, but it was solid and clear, and felt right. It was a plan she imagined would have made Oliver Moone proud.
“Mom, do you think we can get Mr. Binn to come out here?”