Tortoise Wins. (Otherwise Untitled)
#14 of Short Stories
A tortoise finds herself the victor of a race, and considers what she's won.
~ The tortoise's small spacecraft creaked softly as she put in the autopilot to take her back to the homestead claim on the cold, promising moon. She'd won the race; the hare's ship was debris in the abandoned asteroid mining belt behind her. The comms were silent, no longer kept warm with Vance's prideful boasts. The hare was arrogant, vibrant, and a thief with counterfeit papers to the plot. But he wouldn't resort to violence to get the claim, and had readily accepted the tortoise's invitation to race for the homestead even without without the advantage of her piloting experience.
~ The small craft was so much more alone without his voice, and the flightpath seemed to hold just a bit more of a chill than before. No one else was out here to their own claims, yet. All that was in this moon's vicinity was a tortoise and the exact outcome she expected from the race. She sighed into the sterile air; she couldn't conclude otherwise. That homestead wasn't a place to be taken by a thief, but it was also not any place for a murderer to make their home. The craft moaned in soft protest as the tortoise banked from lunar orbit onto a path towards the nearest gate. She could find another job in a hub. Somewhere to wash her hands.