Inflow ✔️

2 - Warning Shots

"No, no, no. This ends, now, Wyatt."

Ellison Cooper. One in a long line of the Cooper family to find himself working the plant, hoping one day he'd climb up those rungs and wrestle his way onto the board. A Kembhavi hadn't sat in one of those chairs since the Blue Terra buyout of '36, but the Cooper family was tenacious. They clung to every share they could to ensure that they always had a seat at the table. It wasn't a controlling share, but it had kept the family in the decision-making process, and they always believed that the tides could turn. The phrase made little sense on Mars, but the older families, the ones that still celebrated their Earth heritage, they held tightly to such seemingly vestigial plays on words.

Cooper rubbed at his eyes, still trying to press out the last hints of sleep, while he stumbled through the vehicle bay. As he did, he reached with his other hand for Wyatt, lightly grasping his shoulder.

"Don't." Wyatt brushed Ellison's hand aside and glared at Kelly. "Why'd you wake this piss ant?"

"Balls." Kelly deflated. No more needed to be said. She knew the storm Wyatt had just stirred.

"I am a GD Cooper, you lowly blue-handed, ditch digger." Ellison brimmed over, all of 160 centimeters of pathetic rage.

"Seriously," Wyatt said. "What part of that do you want to me to pick apart first? Let's start with GD. What are you trying to say there? Gosh Darn? I mean, golly gee, Ellison, if you're going to try to play the big man, why don't we try some big boy words?"

"Do you want to be fired? Cause I can make that happen like this." Ellison snapped his fingers as if the gesture somehow conveyed the sincerity and power of his threat.

Wyatt laughed, thoroughly unimpressed. "You're an intern. Your family name gives you no weight here over anyone. The only power you have is to call granddaddy Cooper and play tattle tale. That always impresses."

Wyatt was right. Coopers always clawed for a seat on the board, but it was only the most desperate ones, the most unqualified that found themselves working shifts at the plant in hopes to win over Old Man Cooper's respect, which they rarely did.

Wyatt turned to Kelly before Ellison could respond. "You still didn't answer my question, Kells."

"I'm on shift. I make my calls."

"Yeah, to this shriveling legacy."

"Because the Coopers still hold weight. They'd want to know what we're doing here."

"Great. Tell them. But don't inflate Ellison's ego. We don't want him having delusions of grandeur."

"Tone it down a notch," Kelly started. "I know he's not in charge, but damn it–"

Ellison erupted, cutting Kelly off. "You blue-handed asshole. You're done."

"Good job on the grownup vocabulary, Ell, but you can cut that blue-handed nonsense. I get my hands wet. I work the water. We all do here, whether you're wading in the muck with me or not. And you better get it out of your mind that this job is some bottom rung stepping stone. Making sure these lines run, we are the lifeblood of Mars. We grind to a halt, we make a mistake, and colonists die. It may not be a fucking Cooper losing his ration, but the workers of Hoover, Franklin, New Charlotte, all of Curiosity Colony, half of North Gale, not to mention Yuegang, Nair, and Redknife colonies on the Planum, we stop the water, they lose theirs. And don't you think their onsite extractors can make up for that loss, because that home-extracted water, that doesn't trickle down."