#he takes up the entire data stream in lifeline

[thresholdbb]

Hey

Nice data stream you got there

It's be a real shame if someone were to...

Use up all your com time

[solivar]

WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66

In which there is an unexpected and troubling revelation.

“Team Tokki, report.”

“On station, sorry for the delay.” Hana replied a nerve-wracking ten minutes later. “Took us a minute to get all our cables in order but Kozy Kot Motor Inn Basecamp is now online.”

The topographic holomap hanging over the dining room table rippled gently as she proved it, pulsing their location in the scrubby desert flatlands between Mesa Prieta and the ruins of Albuquerque, turning their basecamp icon electric pink-and-green.

“In an amusing sidenote,” Hana continued on breezily, “You know those MiBs -- the TALON guys? Their base may be in Albuquerque Sunport but they’ve got mobile units all over the place in the immediate vicinity and some kind of stationary observation post up on the mesa itself. So yes this is me formally blaming my tardiness on avoiding the notice of scary goons who may or may not be employees of the federal government.”

“Mesa Prieta is an archaeological preserve -- it has been for decades, the petroglyphs there are thousands of years old.” Ana, seated at the opposite end of the table with stacks of airtight herb containers, a mortar and pestle, and a digital scale, observed carefully, pausing in her work. “Ownership yielded back to the Federated Southwest Tribal Government after the Crisis.”

“Meaning?” Hanzo asked, inclining a questioning brow.

“Meaning,” Ana gave the contents of her pestle another thoughtful turn, “that either the FST is acting in direct cooperation with TALON or else their actual employers kissed considerable quantities of ass to access that site for reasons other than advancing the cause of cultural preservation.”

Hanzo blinked at her. “That feels extraordinarily bad.”

“It is what it is, my young friend. Until we have better intel, we can only take matters as they come.” She spooned the contents of her pestle into a little tin container.

“I’m not so sure I like Team Tokki’s proximity to a potentially hostile unknown quantity,” Hot Vampire Jack’s tone was significantly less philosophical. “Maybe you should relocate?”

“Their base doesn’t directly overlook ours -- it’s on the far northern point of the mesa, closer to the Chamisa Wilderness Area than to us.” Jesse replied, calm and even. “We can set a drone on stealth observation if you want, but hauling off and moving again might get us seen by one of their mobile units. They’re putting up those pylon things they’ve got on the UNM campus all over out here.”

“I tried getting a look at one of those the other day but campus security waved me off.” Hana added, aggrieved.

“Whatever else they are, they’ve got a pretty hefty sensor and communications package on them -- I can see their output on our own passive monitors.” Lucio added, and the map rippled as he pushed data, added clusters of red-white-black pinpricks representing the pylons’ locations, easily a few dozen spread across the desert basin between Albuquerque and the mesa, many of them concentrated just above the Red Line along old Route 40. “I can try hacking one of their transceiver modules and skimming the data to see what they’re monitoring but that might attract some attention if they’ve got any kind of intrusion detection capabilities onboard.”

“No unnecessary risks. The pylons likely aren’t going anywhere and they’re extraneous to our own mission.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe rasped, his voice on the comms a weirdly metallic echo. “We can always try that if we can’t get intelligence from other sources.”

“Speaking of which,” Zenyatta interjected smoothly, “Team Tattoo reporting perimeter secure at Four Daughters Basecamp -- we are about to begin deploying our sensor and visual observation drones and begin transmitting.”

“El Malpais Basecamp likewise secure and ready to begin deployment.” Jamie added. “Team Helicopter Parents on perimeter patrol.”

“God, I hate that name,” Jack muttered.

“Who gave the lecture about appropriate comm discipline last night?” Gabe asked sweetly.

“Oh, shut up.”

Actual comm discipline immediately dissolved in jokes and back-and-forth smacktalk, a release of tension that even Jack recognized as necessary before any real work could get done, especially since they were waiting for Team Tokki to get up to speed. Hanzo, recognizing at as well, went and fetched tea and cakes and fussy little finger sandwiches for himself and Ana and, eventually, Reinhardt when he came in off his own perimeter patrol with the members of the pack left on guard duty. She accepted the cup he poured and the plate he delivered with a gracious smile, setting aside her work for the moment, while in the background nearly everyone they loved pretended not to be afraid.

Four days they’d been in the field -- four days of hunting the monster haunting him, four nights of sleeping rough, fanning out from Cerrillos in a gradually expanding search pattern enabled by Jesse’s practical maintenance of multiple gasoline-powered vehicles and Jamie’s purpose-built technology. Hana had dropped her presentation and then bagged the rest of her classes to assist in the physical construction of the drones, displaying a level of mechanical skill that Hanzo at least had never suspected. (“When I was a kid, my cousins and my friend Dae-hyun and I built hovertech for competition before I got into gaming -- seriously, aniki, it’s like falling off a bike, you never really forget once you know how to do it.”) Genji and Lucio had done likewise with the programming, following Jamie and Roadie’s careful instructions, working late into the night on stress-testing up until the day before their departure. Hanzo, relegated to a support role, had helped prepare the supplies and the vehicles for departure, packing MATILDA and the largest of Jesse’s off-road capable Jeeps with military surplus rations and bottled water, three fully stocked first aid kits, the heavily warded four-season tents and camping gear going with Team Helicopter Parents and Team Tokki, and extra warm clothing for everyone. He forced cardigans and sweatshirts on all of them at breakfast the morning they departed, a meal he crawled out of Jesse’s warm embrace to make for them and to which he returned before he allowed them to leave.

Jesse had taken his face between his hands, his kiss sweet and soft, and Hanzo had exercised enormous restraint by making only a few rude gestures at his brother and friends as they whistled and shouted suggestions and encouragements ranging from the mildly obscene to the outright pornographic. Jesse’s husky laughter had warmed him almost more than the kiss as he drew them together and murmured against his ear, “I’ll bring Hana and Lu back safe and sound, I promise, and Roadie won’t let anything happen to Genji and Zen.”

“I know.” Hanzo replied, soft and low against his shoulder. “I just wish...I wish I could do more.”

“You’ll have plenty to do when we find this thing. For now, you’re our lifeline. Don’t forget that.” Jesse pressed a last kiss to his forehead. “We’ll be back before you know it, darlin’. Never fear.”

But fear he did, despite Jesse’s assurances, despite his knowledge of all their skill and ability and competence, because he also knew the cruelty and viciousness and above all else cunning of the thing that they hunted, a cunning that had concealed what he had become from their entire clan, from the sister raised at his side, from the Dragon of the South Wind himself. That concealed him now, still, even as they found the telltale traces of his passage through the world, marked on the holomap in a particularly vile shade of bilious yellow, twisting tracks that appeared and disappeared without apparent pattern, growing gradually denser as the search teams moved west. Fear moved him to carry an inflatable camping mattress down to the dining room, where the communications nerve center was set up by virtue of adequate work-and-table space, and built a nest where he slept, light and restless, alert to the slightest twitch of sound on the comms, the tiniest hint of distress, which mostly came in the form of bodies shifting in their sleep and a terrifyingly vast assortment of snores.

“Drones airborne and headed to optimal scan radius,” Hana reported. “You want me to send one of our spares up to keep an eye on the MiBs?”

“Couldn’t hurt to gather a little intel at this stage of the proceedings.” Jesse opined.

“It could if your drone is detected.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe pointed out. “If you send one up, I recommend passive visual observation only.”

“Doable. Lu, you wanna handle that while I get these puppies where they need to go?” A clattering of equipment on the line as Hana and Lucio moved about in their working shelter.

“Gotcha. Temporarily disabling the drone’s sensor package just to be on the safe side.” Lucio came on the line for the first time that day. “You want me to stream footage back to HQ?”

Hanzo glanced at Ana who nodded slightly and murmured, “If they can detect our drone sensor data streams, a video stream will hardly make matters worse, and if they cannot, we will have fresh information of our own.”

“True.” Hanzo replied as his stomach tried gamely to twist itself into a Lemarchand cube of pure dread. “Go ahead, Lucio.” He clicked his own comm off and looked back to Ana, meditatively sipping her tea. “If they -- if TALON -- detects our data streams, could they trace them here, to Cerrillos?”

“Theoretically? Yes. In practice, Jack and Gabriel and Jesse have all exerted considerable effort to make this place as difficult to find as possible for outsiders.” Ana smiled dryly. “And, in any case, they may be the least of our concerns at this juncture.”

“Point.” Hanzo muttered and clicked the comm back on, applying himself to his own tea in an effort to wring some calm out of his digestive tract.

“Team Tokki’s drones on station, optimal positioning.” Hana sang.

“Team Helicopter Parents, ready to begin scanning.” Jamie replied.

“Team Tattoo, likewise prepared.” Zen added tranquilly.

All three Basecamp icons flashed and Hanzo set the countdown timer. “Ten second timer.”

At ten, the holomap blossomed as the drones’ sensor packages and associated data streams came online, populating it with a picture of local reality that overlaid and intertwined with the topography in ways that would make a cartographer’s eyes bleed. In the corner, a secondary pane opened with Lucio’s camera drone feed as it climbed out of basecamp, view panning out across the remains of the Kozy Kot Motor Inn and its eight identical “log cabin” cottages plus the motel office, set around an inner courtyard that had once contained picnic tables and grills and now held two four-season tents linked by a vestibule, a camp sanitary structure, and a warmed, weatherproof work tent, where they also ate their meals. As Hanzo watched, Jesse made is way between two of the cottages and looked up, waved for the camera as Lucio panned and zoomed away, over the cracked and crumbling remnants of a paved road, through the remains of the little tourist town that had sprung up around the motel, as fully abandoned as it was, and into the desert beyond.

There the ground was rucked up and rugged, split by arroyos and tumbled spits of dark, jagged stone, blanketed in tough, autumn-browned grasses and scrubby, wind-tortured trees and shrubs, elevation rising steadily until the drone was climbing vertically along the wall of the mesa. The top of the mesa itself was so flat the TALON installation was clearly visible miles off, a crescent of four dun-colored prefab structures clustered together, their communications uplink arrays pointed skyward, the rest of their camp’s perimeter delineated in those pylons, spaced neatly exact distances apart. Lucio dropped the drone to a few inches above the mesa hardpack and brought it in behind the largest of the structures, up the back avoiding the windows, and settled it into place on the edge of structure’s roof, cameras trained down into the camp itself.

Ana moved to join Hanzo, teacup in hand, and settled to watch. Within the relatively compact confines of the camp, technicians in khaki jumpsuits were working with obvious care among the basalt-black rocks, scanning the petroglyphs with handheld devices, taking photographs and video, neither moving nor touching anything if they could avoid it.

“I’ll be damned,” Lucio muttered. “Maybe they are doing archaeological preservation work?”

“You have to admit, we’ve seen stranger things.” Genji remarked dryly.

“But if that’s the case, why are they crawling all over the school? And why’d they interrogate Hanzo about Professor Flakes-a-Lot? And what’s the deal with those pylons? And --” Hana’s stream of questions was cut off by the sound of smashing crockery and Hanzo’s involuntary yelp of pain as Ana gripped his arm with unexpectedly fierce strength.

“Pan back,” Ana snapped over his comm.

Lucio did so and Ana’s grip tightened another degree. “Jack, Gabriel...are you seeing this?”

The pair standing together before one of the largest single petroglyph displays in the camp were not dressed like technicians. One, scrawny and unshaven and bespectacled, dark hair going gray at the temples, wore an honest-to-gods white lab coat over his cable knit sweater and gray cargo pants, hands doing as much talking as his mouth as he conversed with his companion. That companion was a solid two, maybe as much as three, heads shorter, clad in rust red coveralls and heavy hiking boots and more toolbelts and their associated attachments than seemed possible, his hugely muscled  and heavily tattooed shoulders uncovered and most of his face obscured by a genuinely impressive mass of thick blonde beard and mustaches.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jack breathed over the comm, his quiet carrying the relative force of an explosion.

“Torbjörn?” Terrifying Smoke Gabe sounded frankly stunned. “But...he and Ingrid retired years ago.”

“Apparently not,” Jack replied, grimly.

“This...changes the complexion of many things.” Reinhardt said, heavily, from the door and came to lay an enormous hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“It does?” Hanzo asked. “How? Why? What does this mean?”

“Too soon to tell on some of those, kid.” Jack said into the silence that followed. “But as to what it means? That little Viking wrench-slinger there is Torbjörn Lindholm and, once upon a time, he was a member of the same UN-sponsored special ops unit as Gabe and I -- Rein and Ana, Yanaba and Nate, too. Helped us save the world a time or six. And, if he’s involved with this bunch, TALON? That likely means nothing good and we should probably figure out what it is sooner rather than later.”

[zombieheroine]

Stay with me [MegOp, M]

Summary: Optimus has died and been brought back to life again, and thus gets to return to the arms of his conjunx. Megatron is unusually shaken.

Word count: 1742 Tags: Porn with feelings, spark merge

A/N: I was talking about some megop feels with @bonnini last night, and this fic that I wrote like three years ago and never published came up. She wanted to read it, so I dug it up, deemed it salvageable with some editing, and here it is.

I’m not entirely sure anymore if this in the future of TFP, TF Armada or Bayformers, so go ahead, take your pick and have fun. 

*

The night was unusual and full of crackling charge. The air was thick and hot in Megatron and Optimus's make-shift quarters and their berth seemed to swallow them both. Optimus had his legs wrapped around Megatron’s waist so tightly it was impossible to move more than in small rocking motions, but tonight it didn’t matter. Tonight felt like the first time all over again with every single sensor in his net lit, burning up, and sweet pure electricity rushing through his frame, overwhelming his processor. 

His newly alive frame wasn't really any different than before Optimus had died, but everything from his frame to his mind felt different. Even the short period of time in the nothingness with his spark snuffed had left him thirsty for life, as if death had left a mark in him even though he couldn’t remember what it felt like. The first gulp of light had been like a blessing of Primus Themselves, and sensory data being received and processed had felt like a stream of Their light into his system. The sand scratching and grinding in his machinery was just rubbing away the vacuum package of death, and the pain in his battle wounds had been close to euphoric. And now spending the night in Megatron's arms once again was like he was made anew and whole, like a baptism to the living world. But Megatron was different tonight too, and even though it took a while for Optimus to notice this due to his own near intoxicated state, he eventually registered how Megatron's embrace was tighter than usual, his movements less powerful, and making love to him was not the constant passionate wrestle like it usually was. He was barely thrusting, only giving a gentle nudge every now and then, but his trembling servos were tracing every line and curve and dip and seam like attempting to feel every inch of Optimus' frame. But the most noticeable change of them all was how he kissed. Megatron's intake was constantly on Optimus' plating, on his neck cables and shoulders and all over his faceplate, but eventually always returning to his intake and into a deep kiss that felt like he was trying to breathe life into him and drink something vital out of it himself. Optimus enjoyed this, the romantic aspect of the kisses and the arousal prompted by the urgency of them, but finally he tasted a desperate edge on the affection and turned away from it to speak. “Megatron,” he called out quietly. Megatron ignored him by pressing his face against his neck and continuing to kiss him there. He had stopped rocking into him altogether by now, spike buried deep inside but not chasing an overload anymore, his arms wrapped around him and most of his weight pressing Optimus to the berth. Optimus realized this wasn't about interfacing anymore, but about a longing for intimacy and closeness that interfacing wasn't enough to grant. “Megatron,” Optimus whispered again, this time pushing his servos between their frames and bringing them to cradle his partner's helm. “Dearest, look at me. Talk to me,” he urged and slowly coaxed Megatron to raise his helm and turn to face him. The red optics were dimmed and cast down, but eventually readjusted and his gaze met Optimus' soft blue one. “Is something wrong?” Optimus asked while idly caressing his bondmate's face. Megatron looked passive and slightly sad. The emotion looked so strange on him Optimus didn't recognize it right away. “What makes you think something is wrong?” Megatron asked. Optimus sighed. “I know you, Megatron. You're acting...  unusually.” “Really now?” Megatron said with a halfhearted snort, but the amusement disappeared again like with a turn of a switch.   Optimus kept petting and looking at him expectantly. “Yes. Tell me, what's wrong?” “Nothing's wrong,” Megatron insisted. “I want to kiss you, how is that wrong? I want to kiss my bondmate. I want to hold him and take care of him when he's still here with me and – “ “Alive?” Optimus finished the sentence for him. Megatron let his helm fall in the crook of Optimus' neck with a dull clang, hiding his face but letting him feel the heavy nod against him. There was no need for words. Optimus cycled air in a steady rhythm and wrapped his arms tightly around Megatron, keeping his legs where they were and felt the other mech do the same until they were wound together like metal forged that way. “You died,” Megatron rasped. “You just... You were gone all of sudden.” “I'm sorry,” Optimus mumbled against his partner's audio receptor, sensing his sorrow. “Don't apologize for that!” Megatron said with a bit of an edge in his voice, but even that didn't last long, and he returned to the unusual stressed tone. “You endured so much over the years... You survived the war, everything on your path you managed to overcome. You survived even me time after time... I didn't think you could be terminated like that...” “I am not immortal,” Optimus said, drawing circles in Megatron’s back with his palm. “But I suppose you didn't have much time to take my temporary passing in, did you?” “No, and that's worse,” Megatron admitted, his claws digging into Optimus's plating. “We had a mission. We had a battle. I didn't have the time to even start to grieve... And now you're here and I just realized I lost you. You were gone – gone – “ Optimus turned his helm and brought Megatron's intake to his again, and Megatron dived into the kiss like into an ocean and pulled Optimus down under with him. They sank together and the great waves of their EM fields pressed them in deeper, the pressure squeezing them together, and finally Megatron started to move again. Optimus accommodated him by loosening the grip of his knees and reflected the tenderness with the caresses of his servos, slowly joining the tidal rocking of their hips. His servos traveled from around Megatron down to his sides and sneaked between them until he was able to give his chassis a gentle push. Their kiss broke despite the reaching necks and tilted helms. “Lift us up,” Optimus urged, and Megatron did as he told immediately, pushing himself up on his knees and pulling his bondmate up and into his lap. They kissed again, optics offline and only feeling, passing electric pulses between them and tasting each other. “Not enough,” Megatron grunted against Optimus' lipplates. “I know,” came the soothing reply along with digits tracing the heavy panels on his chassis. Optimus was the first to retract the panels securing his spark chamber, as trusting and open as always, and flooded the room with the soft and bright light of his spark – a healthy, living, pure spark. For a moment Megatron could just stare at the glowing life force like a revelation in front of him before he regained the control of himself. Slowly he retracted his own panels, and the pale blue of his spark joined the glow of its pair. The bright blue lights lit up the room, and where they intersected their glow was pure white. “Come here,” Optimus whispered with a smile, already reaching across the distance between them. “I'm yours.” Megatron met him halfway and found his way into the kiss despite being blinded by the blue light, letting his spark surge and gravitate towards its joined one. The sparks met and tore a gasp and a jolt from both mechs, causing a tangle of fumbling limbs and wet intakes searching for a lifeline. A swirl of warmth and satisfaction bloomed in their shared chambers and spread through their frames like the sweetest kind of high-grade. The sensation buzzed in their sensory nets, making energon rush in their tubes and shook some deeper, not completely physical part of them. Optimus was rocking his hips again and coaxed Megatron to move with him. Their joining was far from passionate, it was a slow and sensual ride that didn't aim for an overload or any other goal any more than waves aimed to hit the coast line. Their sparks floated together and phased into each other, forming thousands small ties that waved them together, merging into one and still being two. The bond was easy, deep and strong out of practice and fearless honesty, their shared heat allowing them to assume forms that could be molded and fitted together at will. Optimus reached across the bond with the part of himself he was only aware of when they were joined like this, like a dormant sense had been activated and allowed his thoughts to touch. He touched Megatron like that, finding the traces of grief and yearning that were confused by the sudden miracle and hope, disbelief, and beyond that he found just pure light, light for him. Words grew useless. Megatron released a long but quiet groan that turned into a longing hum.

Together again, together and alive, alive, alive – Like a great wave the overload came and submerged them into its strong current. Holding onto each other they spun with it with their mouths kissing, their sparks merged and every single node and sensor in their frames shining alight. Slowly they resurfaced from the tide of their passion and started to separate connections, the sparks last, and finally sunk down on the berth together. They held on with their servos and stayed so close their chassis were touching and the low tremble of their engines was felt in both frames. Megatron's optics were offline and his venting was cycling down one setting at a time, and Optimus held him through it and still after the whirling of the cooling fans had reached the standard levels. The room was dark and quiet around them, the aroma of electricity floating in the air like after a thunderstorm. The blue glow of Optimus's optics was dim compared to the combined force of their sparks, but the imitation was enough to keep the memory lingering.   “I am tired,” Megatron murmured. He sounded shaken and not just physically. Optimus had rarely seen him like this, defenses down and honestly weak. Megatron had always stood against the waves and broken them, but this one he had let wash over him. Optimus adored the sight and gently pet his bondmate with the backs of his digits. “Then rest,” he said. “I'm here.”

[wineanddinosaur]

The Complicated Impact of Covid-19 on the Craft Beer Industry

Six months into the pandemic and two narratives continue to lead conversations surrounding alcohol sales in the U.S. The first, by all accounts, is that off-premise alcohol sales are up. Most reports suggest that larger brands are mainly benefitting from this trend while craft producers have not seen the same boost.

There’s a significant number of testimonies from market analysts supporting these narratives. But the more we scrutinize the numbers, the more it becomes apparent this is a nuanced conversation — one that’s impossible to sum up with a one-size-fits-all answer. Nowhere is this more true than in craft beer.

While craft beer has seen upticks at retail, those gains have not offset the losses from bar and restaurant closures across the industry. However, to say that the entire craft beer industry is reeling from on-premise closures is also an oversimplification. There are profits being made in beer right now, and not all of those are being banked by macro producers.

To find out exactly how Covid-19 has impacted the craft beer industry, VinePair spoke with industry analysts, producers around the country, and professionals working in sectors that support craft beer. They highlighted the factors that have hit brewers hardest during the pandemic and the business models that have been most impacted, as well as predicting what the pandemic could mean for the future of craft beer.

The Impact of On-Premise Sales Losses

While off-premise sales data seems to paint a positive picture for craft beer versus beer as a whole, industry analysts say these figures don’t tell the whole story. For the 26-week period that ended Sept. 5, beer sales rose 11.2 percent in value, while craft beer sales increased 16.3 percent, according to Nielsen data. But these increases have not canceled out the widespread losses from sales at bars and restaurants.

Prior to the pandemic, many craft brewers placed more emphasis on on-premise sales, because that channel offers greater profit margins. Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, estimates that on-premise sales accounted for 45 percent of craft beer volume sales before Covid-19.

With lengthy on-premise closures and continued capacity restrictions, the loss (or significant reduction) of this vital revenue stream has had a notable impact. “The craft beer category is estimated to be down around 12 to 15 percent in the first half of 2020 versus the same period in 2019,” says Adam Rogers, North American research director for IWSR.

The Challenges of Pivoting to Off-Premise Sales

In order to combat on-premise losses, many brewers have turned to packaging their beer in cans and bottles, and selling to wholesalers or direct to consumers via curbside pickups. While this has presented a vital lifeline during the pandemic, packaging and indeed selling that beer has not come without its challenges.

“Even if you can bottle or can beer, you have to sell it to somebody,” the Brewers Association’s Watson says. Gaining retail placements had become increasingly hard even before the pandemic, he says, and proved to be tougher still within the more competitive Covid landscape. For those brewers who could get their beers on grocery store shelves, that still didn’t guarantee sales — especially during the early stages of the pandemic.

During the “pantry loading” months of March, April, and June, consumer purchasing habits shifted to favor macro brands and their larger packaging formats (12-packs and cases), according to analysts such as the IWSR. Brewers contacted for this piece confirmed this theory and further explained why larger packaging is not a feasible option for smaller producers.

“The problem for us as craft brewers is we’re not as poised as the larger brewers to meet that kind of demand,” says Sam Cruz, co-founder of Against The Grain Brewery in Louisville, Ky. “Another caveat of that is the price factor: Shoppers are looking for value in those larger formats; if we meet that value point, we’re going to lose margins.”

The success of pivoting to canning has also been largely dependent on a brewery’s location, according to Roger Kissling, VP of sales and customer management at Iron Heart Canning Co. Iron Heart operates in 25 states and Kissling confirms demand for his company’s services has increased during the pandemic. But not across the board. Breweries in large urban areas have found success from mobile canning because they’ve been able to take advantage of to-go sales and curbside pickup, Kissling explains. But this has not been the case in more sparsely populated rural markets.

Further complicating matters has been a high-profile aluminum can shortage. This issue existed before the pandemic, but Covid has only exacerbated the growing demand for aluminum cans, explains Jon Beam, marketing manager at can manufacturer Crown Beverage Packaging. With increased at-home consumption of beer and other canned beverages, the pandemic has driven demand for aluminum cans to an “all-time high,” he says,  creating “an unexpected surge” the industry is still working to address. Crown Beverage is among a number of packaging manufacturers now working on plant expansions and line additions to meet the continued demand for aluminum cans.

Self-Distribution Proves to Be a Lifeline

By all accounts, having solid relationships with distributors has been a key factor to surviving the pandemic for craft producers. Another approach that has proven particularly successful during this period has been the flexibility and control offered by self-distribution, as illustrated by the Massachusetts-based Night Shift Brewing and New York’s Other Half Brewing.

Michael Oxton, co-founder of Night Shift Brewing, predicts revenues for his business will be up this year, though overall profits will likely be down compared to 2019. Night Shift has an annual output of around 40,000 barrels, most of which is sold through wholesale channels. Night Shift also operates a separate distribution business, so it has not faced the challenge of creating new distributor relationships nor struggled to gain retail shelf space. “We will likely be down profit-wise just because our taprooms are so profitable and we are seeing a huge downturn in revenues there,” Oxton says.

Other Half Brewing is another example of a brewery that almost entirely self-distributes, though in a different model from Night Shift. Prior to the pandemic, up to 40 percent of Other Half’s production went into kegs, while the remaining 60 percent was packaged in cans and mainly sold at its breweries. “We have stopped packaging beer in draft format altogether,” co-founder Matt Monahan says. “Beforehand it was mostly cans to-go. Now, we are all cans to-go minus a couple of key retail partners.”

Confidence In the Craft Beer Market

Craft beer was already becoming an increasingly competitive space prior to the pandemic, with record numbers of producers and competition from hard seltzers and canned cocktails. Judging the exact impact of Covid-19 on the subcategory is therefore tricky. But certain data sets appear to support the notion that confidence in craft beer remains high, even now.

As of June 30, data from the Brewers Association showed there were 8,217 active craft breweries in the U.S., up from 7,480 during a comparable time frame last year. Watson puts this down to the timeframe involved in opening a brewery — it’s a process that can take years, he says.

A better indication of the current confidence in craft beer may be the number of brewery permit applications submitted to the TTB. Somewhat surprisingly, that total has also grown this year, to the tune of 219 new applications between Q2 and Q3. Given that all of these permit applications were submitted during the pandemic, as Watson pointed out in a recent tweet, this could suggest many still believe they can operate new businesses profitably in craft beer. But it should also be noted this was the slowest growth for new permits in 11 quarters, according to Watson.

The Future of the Craft Beer Industry

Sources contacted for this article said they did not think the pandemic would not weaken the long-term demand for craft beer in the U.S. The overall opinion was instead that the pandemic would change the landscape of who’s meeting that demand.

“A portion of the breweries that had to close recently may have had to close in three to five years due to the increased competition, so the pandemic just condensed their timeline,” says IWSR’s Rogers.

Still, market analysts like the IWSR predict the craft beer industry will return to a “healthy” landscape within two years, and volume losses will also be regained in the coming years. But crucial to the continued health of the industry will be a diversification of revenue streams for brewers. While we shouldn’t doubt that the taproom and draft-focused business model will prevail in the future, when it comes to growing a business, increasing production size, and gaining a multi-state footprint, packaged beer and well-established wholesaler relationships will likely be key.

Within retail channels, consumers can not only expect a reduction in brands on shelves, but also a streamlining of styles. “I think this is really going to cull the selection because stores were already overwhelmed with the amount of variety on offer,” says Night Shift’s Oxton.

One pandemic trend all hope will continue is the manner in which consumers have increasingly supported local businesses. “As long as the quality is there, consumers will also be there,“ IWSR’s Rogers says.

The article The Complicated Impact of Covid-19 on the Craft Beer Industry appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/impact-covid-19-craft-beer-industry/

[johnboothus]

The Complicated Impact of Covid-19 on the Craft Beer Industry

Six months into the pandemic and two narratives continue to lead conversations surrounding alcohol sales in the U.S. The first, by all accounts, is that off-premise alcohol sales are up. Most reports suggest that larger brands are mainly benefitting from this trend while craft producers have not seen the same boost.

There’s a significant number of testimonies from market analysts supporting these narratives. But the more we scrutinize the numbers, the more it becomes apparent this is a nuanced conversation — one that’s impossible to sum up with a one-size-fits-all answer. Nowhere is this more true than in craft beer.

While craft beer has seen upticks at retail, those gains have not offset the losses from bar and restaurant closures across the industry. However, to say that the entire craft beer industry is reeling from on-premise closures is also an oversimplification. There are profits being made in beer right now, and not all of those are being banked by macro producers.

To find out exactly how Covid-19 has impacted the craft beer industry, VinePair spoke with industry analysts, producers around the country, and professionals working in sectors that support craft beer. They highlighted the factors that have hit brewers hardest during the pandemic and the business models that have been most impacted, as well as predicting what the pandemic could mean for the future of craft beer.

The Impact of On-Premise Sales Losses

While off-premise sales data seems to paint a positive picture for craft beer versus beer as a whole, industry analysts say these figures don’t tell the whole story. For the 26-week period that ended Sept. 5, beer sales rose 11.2 percent in value, while craft beer sales increased 16.3 percent, according to Nielsen data. But these increases have not canceled out the widespread losses from sales at bars and restaurants.

Prior to the pandemic, many craft brewers placed more emphasis on on-premise sales, because that channel offers greater profit margins. Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, estimates that on-premise sales accounted for 45 percent of craft beer volume sales before Covid-19.

With lengthy on-premise closures and continued capacity restrictions, the loss (or significant reduction) of this vital revenue stream has had a notable impact. “The craft beer category is estimated to be down around 12 to 15 percent in the first half of 2020 versus the same period in 2019,” says Adam Rogers, North American research director for IWSR.

The Challenges of Pivoting to Off-Premise Sales

In order to combat on-premise losses, many brewers have turned to packaging their beer in cans and bottles, and selling to wholesalers or direct to consumers via curbside pickups. While this has presented a vital lifeline during the pandemic, packaging and indeed selling that beer has not come without its challenges.

“Even if you can bottle or can beer, you have to sell it to somebody,” the Brewers Association’s Watson says. Gaining retail placements had become increasingly hard even before the pandemic, he says, and proved to be tougher still within the more competitive Covid landscape. For those brewers who could get their beers on grocery store shelves, that still didn’t guarantee sales — especially during the early stages of the pandemic.

During the “pantry loading” months of March, April, and June, consumer purchasing habits shifted to favor macro brands and their larger packaging formats (12-packs and cases), according to analysts such as the IWSR. Brewers contacted for this piece confirmed this theory and further explained why larger packaging is not a feasible option for smaller producers.

“The problem for us as craft brewers is we’re not as poised as the larger brewers to meet that kind of demand,” says Sam Cruz, co-founder of Against The Grain Brewery in Louisville, Ky. “Another caveat of that is the price factor: Shoppers are looking for value in those larger formats; if we meet that value point, we’re going to lose margins.”

The success of pivoting to canning has also been largely dependent on a brewery’s location, according to Roger Kissling, VP of sales and customer management at Iron Heart Canning Co. Iron Heart operates in 25 states and Kissling confirms demand for his company’s services has increased during the pandemic. But not across the board. Breweries in large urban areas have found success from mobile canning because they’ve been able to take advantage of to-go sales and curbside pickup, Kissling explains. But this has not been the case in more sparsely populated rural markets.

Further complicating matters has been a high-profile aluminum can shortage. This issue existed before the pandemic, but Covid has only exacerbated the growing demand for aluminum cans, explains Jon Beam, marketing manager at can manufacturer Crown Beverage Packaging. With increased at-home consumption of beer and other canned beverages, the pandemic has driven demand for aluminum cans to an “all-time high,” he says,  creating “an unexpected surge” the industry is still working to address. Crown Beverage is among a number of packaging manufacturers now working on plant expansions and line additions to meet the continued demand for aluminum cans.

Self-Distribution Proves to Be a Lifeline

By all accounts, having solid relationships with distributors has been a key factor to surviving the pandemic for craft producers. Another approach that has proven particularly successful during this period has been the flexibility and control offered by self-distribution, as illustrated by the Massachusetts-based Night Shift Brewing and New York’s Other Half Brewing.

Michael Oxton, co-founder of Night Shift Brewing, predicts revenues for his business will be up this year, though overall profits will likely be down compared to 2019. Night Shift has an annual output of around 40,000 barrels, most of which is sold through wholesale channels. Night Shift also operates a separate distribution business, so it has not faced the challenge of creating new distributor relationships nor struggled to gain retail shelf space. “We will likely be down profit-wise just because our taprooms are so profitable and we are seeing a huge downturn in revenues there,” Oxton says.

Other Half Brewing is another example of a brewery that almost entirely self-distributes, though in a different model from Night Shift. Prior to the pandemic, up to 40 percent of Other Half’s production went into kegs, while the remaining 60 percent was packaged in cans and mainly sold at its breweries. “We have stopped packaging beer in draft format altogether,” co-founder Matt Monahan says. “Beforehand it was mostly cans to-go. Now, we are all cans to-go minus a couple of key retail partners.”

Confidence In the Craft Beer Market

Craft beer was already becoming an increasingly competitive space prior to the pandemic, with record numbers of producers and competition from hard seltzers and canned cocktails. Judging the exact impact of Covid-19 on the subcategory is therefore tricky. But certain data sets appear to support the notion that confidence in craft beer remains high, even now.

As of June 30, data from the Brewers Association showed there were 8,217 active craft breweries in the U.S., up from 7,480 during a comparable time frame last year. Watson puts this down to the timeframe involved in opening a brewery — it’s a process that can take years, he says.

A better indication of the current confidence in craft beer may be the number of brewery permit applications submitted to the TTB. Somewhat surprisingly, that total has also grown this year, to the tune of 219 new applications between Q2 and Q3. Given that all of these permit applications were submitted during the pandemic, as Watson pointed out in a recent tweet, this could suggest many still believe they can operate new businesses profitably in craft beer. But it should also be noted this was the slowest growth for new permits in 11 quarters, according to Watson.

The Future of the Craft Beer Industry

Sources contacted for this article said they did not think the pandemic would not weaken the long-term demand for craft beer in the U.S. The overall opinion was instead that the pandemic would change the landscape of who’s meeting that demand.

“A portion of the breweries that had to close recently may have had to close in three to five years due to the increased competition, so the pandemic just condensed their timeline,” says IWSR’s Rogers.

Still, market analysts like the IWSR predict the craft beer industry will return to a “healthy” landscape within two years, and volume losses will also be regained in the coming years. But crucial to the continued health of the industry will be a diversification of revenue streams for brewers. While we shouldn’t doubt that the taproom and draft-focused business model will prevail in the future, when it comes to growing a business, increasing production size, and gaining a multi-state footprint, packaged beer and well-established wholesaler relationships will likely be key.

Within retail channels, consumers can not only expect a reduction in brands on shelves, but also a streamlining of styles. “I think this is really going to cull the selection because stores were already overwhelmed with the amount of variety on offer,” says Night Shift’s Oxton.

One pandemic trend all hope will continue is the manner in which consumers have increasingly supported local businesses. “As long as the quality is there, consumers will also be there,“ IWSR’s Rogers says.

The article The Complicated Impact of Covid-19 on the Craft Beer Industry appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/impact-covid-19-craft-beer-industry/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-complicated-impact-of-covid-19-on-the-craft-beer-industry

[preciousmetals0]

Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel

Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel:

Confidently Overconfident

It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.

Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.

For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.

“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.

The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.

In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!

Why should you care?

Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.

“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.

Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.

The Takeaway:

“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.

For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…

Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.

For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.

Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.

An arti-what now?

Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.

It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”

Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.

But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?

Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.

Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.

I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.

We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.

Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.

The Good: Amazonian Theatrics

What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?

Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.

According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.

Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.

AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.

The Bad: Down Under Armour

I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).

The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.

For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.

What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.

And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.

The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky

What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?

Nay … profits!

Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.

Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.

Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.

According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.

“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”

Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.

Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.

In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.

If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.

Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.

Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:

Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)

Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.

We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:

We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the ���reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).

Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.

If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).

The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.

So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.

That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!

Until next time, stay Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[goldira01]

Confidently Overconfident

It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.

Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.

For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.

“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.

The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.

In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!

Why should you care?

Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.

“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.

Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.

The Takeaway:

“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.

For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…

Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.

For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.

Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.

An arti-what now?

Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.

It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”

Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.

But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?

Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.

Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.

I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.

We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.

Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.

The Good: Amazonian Theatrics

What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?

Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.

According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.

Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.

AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.

The Bad: Down Under Armour

I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).

The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.

For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.

What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.

And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.

The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky

What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?

Nay … profits!

Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.

Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.

Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.

According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.

“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”

Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.

Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.

In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.

If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.

Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.

Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:

Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)

Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.

We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:

We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the “reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).

Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.

If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).

The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.

So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.

That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!

Until next time, stay Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[iol247]

The brutal impact of South Africa’s economy on small business

A new study by financial services company Retail Capital shows that small businesses in South Africa are buckling – knocked by a low-growth economy, unreliable utilities and rising operating costs.

The study, entitled: Roll With The Punches, found, among other things, that business is only good for 10% of our SMEs, while the other 90% are floundering thanks to the weak economy.

Collectively, SMEs keep 10.8 million people employed, accounting for 66% of all formal jobs, they contribute 20% to the GDP and pay 6% of corporate taxes.

“They are South Africa’s lifeline,” the group said.

Retail Capital conducted the study in October 2019 and surveyed over 700 entrepreneurs using ovatoyou’s online quantitative methodology.

More than half (55%) of respondents say that demand is shrinking and there is less business as people are buying less, while 58% say operating costs are a threat to their business.

47% are being subjected to unreliable resources and services, such as load-shedding, water-shedding and fuel levies;

33% are stymied and held back by red tape, governance and compliance regulations;

15% are affected by strikes and labour laws; and

59% ranked the banks as the least likely to support SMEs

“Small businesses are burning the midnight oil to keep the lights on and our people employed. They’re your local woodworker, craft beer distiller, the face of the shish n’yama, and poultry farmer.

“They get up every day and fight the good fight, to feed their families and bring home the bacon, all the while trying to contribute to our economy. But it’s not easy. Our entrepreneurs are operating in an extremely challenging environment,” said Retail Capital chief executive officer, Karl Westvig.

These hard knocks are taking a toll on our SMEs and they need support to stay afloat. But help is not always at hand, especially from the banks: 58% ranked banks among the least likely to support them, he said.

Technology and rapid digitisation is also affecting our SMEs, with a noteworthy 32% saying that it is a threat to their business. “Many small businesses don’t have the luxury of looking at digitisation, they are focused on sustaining their current businesses,” Westvig said.

“Given the majority of SMEs employ fewer than three people, keeping up with technology is the last thing on their minds. They often don’t have time to work on their business vision, or plan too far ahead as they are tied up in the operational daily grind. Unfortunately missing this trick could affect their sustainability and longevity,” says Anni Wilhelmi from the Women President’s Organisation.

To make ends meet SMEs often self-sacrifice, taking a salary cut before implementing short-time or retrenching (58%).

This as in a small business, “relationships with staff are often more intimate and they are aware that when they retrench an employee, they retrench an entire family,” said Arifa Parkar from the Western Cape Business Opportunities Forum.

Up to 13% also start a side hustle to diversify income streams, or identify a gap in the market where there is demand, often in niche industries. So while 17% of SMEs are in retail, specialist services (15%), construction (9%), hospitality (6%) and owned restaurants (5%), the majority are running small businesses such as own a biscuit brand, sell bags and perfumes, print labels, offer vehicle finance and childcare and even manufacture tutu sets.

More women are also starting their own businesses with 65% of the survey identifying as female, “11 years ago when I started the National Small Business Chamber, only a few members were women. Now they’re dominating the SME sector,” said the chamber’s CEO, Mike Anderson.

“The report’s data provides a sense of how brutally tough it is out there,” said Westvig.

“My advice to small businesses is to dig deep, there are no shortcuts. It’s going to be hard, but put in the time and ride it until you come through on the other side. What happens now doesn’t mean it will happen in six months’ time. I think we have gone to as low as we can go. Once SMEs see hope, they will see through the curve.”

https://businesstech.co.za/news/banking/354939/the-brutal-impact-of-south-africas-economy-on-small-business/

[starcitizenprivateer]

Whisperer in the Dark

Writer’s Note: Published originally in Jump Point 1.1, this story takes place before the events of The Lost Generation.

People complicate things. That’s what they’ve always been good at. Take a look at any functioning civilization and you will see chaos, confusion, and frustration. It could be human, Xi’an, Banu, Vanduul, whoever. We may look different, be built different, but boil us down and you’ll find the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties gnawing.

Tonya Oriel watched the yawning abyss outside the window. Kaceli’s Adagio in 4 gently wafted through the otherwise empty ship. Scanners cycled through their spectrums on the hunt for any flagged anomalies.

The void. It was pure. It was simple. It was permanent.

A calm serenity huddled around Tonya’s shoulders like a blanket, the kind that can only exist when you are the only person for thousands of kilometers. Everyone else can have Terra, Earth, or Titus, with their megacities teeming with people. Never a moment where there wasn’t a person above, beside or below you. Everything was noise. Tonya needed the silence.

Her ship, the Beacon, drifted through that silence. Tonya customized almost every hardpoint and pod with some form of scanner, deep-range comm system, or surveying tech to get her further and further from the noise.

The problem was that the noise kept following.

* * * *

After three weeks on the drift, Tonya couldn’t put it off any longer. She was due for a supply run and to sell off the data and minerals she’d collected. After repairs, new scrubbers, and a spectrum update, she hoped she’d have enough for some food.

The Xenia Shipping Hub in the Baker System had been the closest thing to a home she’d had for the past few years. Tonya set her approach through the shifting entry/exit patterns of ships. The station’s traffic was busier than usual. As soon as the Beacon docked, her screen buzzed with a handful of new messages from the spectrum. She passed them to her mobiGlas and went to the airlock.

Tonya paused by the entry and savored this last moment of solitude as the airlock cycled, then hit the button.

The sound of people swept inside like a wave. She took a second to acclimate, adjusted her bag and crossed into the masses.

Carl ran a small information network out of his bar, the Torchlight Express. An old surveyor for a long-defunct terraforming outfit, Carl traded moving minerals for slinging booze and information. Tonya had known him for years. As far as people went, Carl was a gem.

The Express was dead. Tonya checked local time. It was evening so there was no real reason why it should be like this. A group of prospectors sat at a table in the corner, engaged in a hushed conversation. Carl leaned against the bar, watching a sataball game on the wallscreen. His leathery fingers tapped out a beat to some song in his head.

He brightened up when he saw Tonya.

“Well, well, well, to what do we owe the honor, doctor?” He said with a grin.

“Don’t start, Carl.”

“Sure, sorry, doctor.” He must be bored; he only called her that when he wanted to pick a fight. Tonya slung her bag onto the ground and slid onto a stool.

“Anything interesting?” Tonya pulled her hair back into a tie.

“I’m great, Tonya, thanks for asking. Business is a little slow, but you know how it is.” Carl said sarcastically and slid a drink to her.

“Come on, Carl. I’m not gonna patronize you with small-talk.”

Carl sighed and looked around.

“At this point, I’ll take any patrons I can get.” He poured himself a drink from the dispenser. Tonya swiveled her mobiGlas around and showed him her manifest. He looked it over. “Running kinda light this time, huh?”

“I know. You know any buyers?”

“How much you looking to get?”

“Whatever I can,” Tonya said as she sipped. She could tell Carl was annoyed with the non-answer. “I need the money.”

“I might be able to get you ten.” He said after a long pause.

“I would give you my unborn child for ten.”

“With all the unborn kids you owe me, you better get started.” He said. Tonya smacked his arm.

One of the prospectors drifted over to the bar with empty glasses. He was young, one of those types who cultivated the dirty handsome look. Probably spent an hour perfecting it before going out.

“Another round.”

As Carl poured, the prospector looked at Tonya, giving his looks a chance to work their magic. They failed. Carl set a fresh batch of drinks down. The prospector paid and went back slightly deterred.

“I think someone liked you.” Carl teased.

“Not my type.”

“Living?”

“Exactly.” Tonya watched the prospectors. They were really in an overtly secretive conversation. “Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Of course I do.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Nothing… well, not to me anyway.” Carl pulled an earpiece out and held it out to her. Tonya wiped it off and took a listen. Suddenly she could hear their conversation loud and clear. Tonya looked at Carl, stunned.

“You have mics on your tables?!” She whispered. Carl shushed her.

“I deal in information, honey, so yeah.” Carl said, almost offended that he wouldn’t listen in on his customers.

Tonya took another sip and listened to the prospectors. It only took a little while to catch up. Apparently Cort, the prospector who tried to woo Tonya with his ruggedness, got a tip from his uncle in the UEE Navy. The uncle had been running Search & Rescue drills in the Hades System when their scanners accidentally picked up a deposit of kherium on Hades II. Being the military, of course, they couldn’t do anything, but Cort and his buddies were fixing to sneak in there and harvest it for themselves.

Kherium was a hot commodity. If these prospectors were on the level, they were talking about a tidy little fortune. Certainly enough to patch up the Beacon, maybe even install some upgrades.

Even better, they obviously didn’t know how to find it. Kherium doesn’t show up on a standard metal or rad scan. It takes a specialist to find, much less extract without corrupting it. Fortunately for Tonya, she knew how to do both. “You’ve got that look.” Carl said and refilled her glass. “Good news?”

“I hope so, Carl, for both of us.”

* * * *

Carl offloaded her haul at a discount so she could set out as quick as possible. Last time she checked, the prospectors were still at the Express and from the sound of it, they wouldn’t leave for a couple hours, maybe a day.

Tonya disengaged the Beacon from the dock and was back in her beloved solitude. The engines hummed as they pushed her deeper into space, pushed her toward a lifeline.

The Hades System was a tomb, the final monument of an ancient civil war that obliterated an entire system and the race that inhabited it. Tonya had it on her list of places to study, but every year Hades was besieged by fresh batches of young scientists exploring it for their dissertation or treasure hunters looking for whatever weapon cracked Hades IV in half. So the system became more noise to avoid.

Tonya had to admit that passing Hades IV was always a thrill. It’s not every day you get to see the guts of a planet killed in its prime.

Then there were the whispers that the system was haunted. There was always some pilot who knew a guy who knew someone who had seen something while passing through the system. The stories ranged from unexplained technical malfunctions to full-on sightings of ghost cruisers. It was all nonsense.

There was a loose stream of ships passing through Hades. The general flight lane steered clear of the central planets. Tonya slowed her ship until there was a sizeable gap in the flow of traffic before veering off toward Hades II.

She passed a barrier of dead satellites and descended into Hades II’s churning atmosphere. The Beacon jolted when it hit the clouds. Visual went to nil and suddenly the ship was bathed in noise, screaming air, and pressure. Tonya kept an eye on her scopes and expanded the range on her proximity alerts to make sure she didn’t ram a mountain.

Suddenly the clouds gave way. The Beacon swooped into the light gravity above a pitch-black ocean. Tonya quickly recalibrated her thrusters for atmospheric flight and took a long look at the planet around her.

As was expected, it was a husk. There were signs of intelligent civilization all around but all of it was crumbling, charred, or destroyed. She passed over vast curved cities built atop sweeping arches meant to keep the buildings from ever touching the planet itself.

Tonya maintained a cruising altitude. The roar of her engines echoed through the vast empty landscape. The sun was another casualty of this system’s execution. The cloud systems never abated so the surface never saw sunlight. It was always bathed in a dark greyish green haze.

Tonya studied the topography to plot out a course and set the scanners to look for the unique kherium signature she had programmed. She engaged the auto-pilot and just looked out the window.

Being here now, she kicked herself for not coming sooner. It didn’t matter that this was one of the most scientifically scrutinized locales in the UEE. Seeing the vastness of the devastation with her own eyes, Tonya felt that tug that a good mystery has on the intellect. Who were they? How did they manage to so effectively wipe themselves out? How do we know they actually wiped themselves out?

A few hours passed with no luck. Tonya had a quick snack and ran through her exercise routine. She double-checked the settings on her scans for any errors on the initial input. A couple months ago, she was surveying a planet and found nothing, only to discover on her way back that there had been one setting off that scuttled the whole scan. It still bugged her. It was an amateur mistake.

She brought up some texts on Hades. Halfway through a paper on the exobiology of the Hadesians, her screen pinged. Tonya was over there like a shot.

The scope gave a faint indication of kherium below. She triple-checked the settings before getting her hopes up. They seemed legit. She looked out the front. A small city sat above endless sea of dead trees lay ahead. It looked like an orbital laser or something had hit it excising massively deep craters from buildings and ground.

Tonya took a closer look. The craters went about six hundred feet into the ground, revealing networks of underground tunnels. They looked like some kind of transport system.

Tonya looked for a suitable landing spot with cover from overhead flights. If she was still here when the prospectors showed up, her ship would be a dead giveaway and things would get complicated.

She strapped on her environment suit and respirator. She could check the ship’s scanners through her mobiGlas but threw another handheld scanner/mapper in with her mining gear just in case. Finally, she powered up her transport crate, hoping the anti-gravity buffers would be more than enough to lug the kherium back.

Tonya stepped out onto the surface. The wind whipped around her, furiously kicking up waves of dust. She pushed the crate in front of her through the blasted forest. Gnarled branches clawed at her suit as she passed. The city loomed overhead, black silhouettes against the grey-green clouds.

Her curiosity got the better of her so Tonya decided to take a ramp up to the city streets. She told herself the detour would be easier on the crate’s battery. Smooth streets are easier for the anti-grav compensators to analyze than rough terrain.

Tonya moved through the barren, empty streets in awe. She studied the strange curvature of the architecture; each displayed an utterly alien yet brilliant understanding of pressure and weight dispersal. This whole place seemed at once natural and odd, intellectually fascinating and emotionally draining.

The kherium signature was still weak but there. Tonya maneuvered the crate around destroyed teardrop shaped vehicles. Pit-marks in the buildings and streets led her to suspect that a battle had taken place here however many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The crater closest to the kherium was a perfect hole punched through the middle of the city into the ground. Tonya stood at the edge, looking for the easiest way down. The crate could float down but she would have to climb.

In a matter of minutes she secured a line with safeties for herself and the crate. She stepped over the edge and slowly rappelled down the sheer wall. The crate was making what should be a simple descent a little more complicated. The anti-grav buffers meant that any kind of force could cause the crate to drift away, so Tonya needed to keep a hand on it at all times. To make matters worse, the wind started picking up, flinging small rocks, branches and pieces of debris through the air.

A shrill scream tore through the air. Tonya froze. She heard it again and looked for the source. The screaming was just exposed supports bending in the wind.

Suddenly she realized, the crate had slipped out of her grasp. It slowly drifted further out over the crater, the swirling wind batted it around like a toy. Tonya strained to reach it but the crate floated just out of reach. She kicked off the wall and swung through the churning air. Her fingertips barely snagged the cargo before she slammed back against the wall of the crater.

Her vision blurred and she couldn’t breathe from the impact. The HUD went screwy. Finally she caught her breath. She took a moment or two before continuing down.

The scanner from the Beacon couldn’t isolate the signature any clearer to determine depth so she had to rely on her handheld. The kherium looked like it was situated between two tunnels.

Tonya secured the crate, climbed into the upper tunnel, and tied off her ropes. She checked her suit’s integrity in the debris-storm. The computer was a little fuzzy but gave her an okay.

She turned on a flashlight and activated the external mics on her suit. The tunnel was a perfectly carved tube that sloped into the darkness. Tonya couldn’t see any kind of power or rail system to confirm her transport tube theory. She started walking.

Hours passed in the darkness. Tonya felt a little queasy so she decided to rest for a few minutes. She sipped on the water reserve and double-checked her scanner. She was still above the kherium and it was still showing up as being in front of her. That much hadn’t changed.

She heard something. Very faint. She brought up the audio settings and pumped the gain on the external mics. A sea of white noise filled her ears. She didn’t move until she heard it again. Something being dragged then stopped.

IR and night vision windows appeared in the corners of her HUD. She couldn’t see anything. In the vast stretches of these tunnels, there’s no telling how far that sound had travelled. Still, she went to the crate and pulled the shotgun out. She made sure it was loaded, even tried to remember the last time she had cause to use it.

Tonya started moving a little more cautious. She doubted it was the prospectors. For all she knew it could be some other pirate or smuggler down here. Regardless, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The tunnel started to expand before finally giving way to a vast darkness. Tonya’s night vision couldn’t even see the end. She dug through her supplies and picked out some old flares. She sparked one.

It was a city. A mirror city to be precise. While the one on the surface reached for the sky, this one was carved down into the planet. Walkways connected the various structures built out of the walls on the various levels. She’d never heard of anything like this before. Everyone speculated that it was civil war that destroyed this system. Was this a city of the other side?

She came to an intersection and the first real sign that the fighting had spread here. A barricade of melted vehicles blocked one of the tunnels. The walls were charred from either explosions or laser-blasts. A shadow had even been burned into the wall.

Tonya stood in front of it. The Hadesian seemed to have a roundish bulky main body with multiple thin appendages. A thousand year old stain on a wall is hardly much to go by, but even as a silhouette, it looked terrified.

A cavernous structure was built into the wall nearby. Tonya approached to examine the craftsmanship. It was certainly more ornate than most of the other buildings down here. There weren’t doors down here, just narrow oval portals. There was some kind of tech integrated into the sides.

Tonya decided to take a look. It was a deep bowl with rows of enclosures built into the sides. All of them were angled towards a single point, a marble-like cylinder at the bottom of the bowl. Tonya descended toward it. There was a small item sitting on top. She kept her light and shotgun trained on it. It was made from a similar marble-like stone as the cylinder. Tonya looked around. Was this some kind of church?

She leaned down to get a better look at the item, careful not to disturb anything. It was a small carving. It wasn’t a Hadesian shape. Not one she was familiar with. She weighed whether she should take it.

Tonya’s head suddenly swam. She stumbled back and steadied herself on the enclosures. After a moment or two it passed. A subtle stabbing pain started to ache in her arm. She stretched it, trying to work out the ache. She took a last look at the small carving.

Tonya stepped out of the ornate building and brought up her scanner. The kherium was close. She followed the scanner’s directions into the dark and twisted tunnels. Her eyes stayed locked on the growing glow of the screen. She tripped over something. The scanner clattered across the floor. It echoed for a minute.

Tonya shook her head slightly. This place… She turned her lights back right into the face of a rotted corpse, its mouth open in a silent scream.

“Hell!” she yelled as she scuffled away from it. She looked around. There was another form on the floor about twenty feet away. A strongbox sat between them. The initial shock subsided.

Tonya got up, grabbed her scanner and walked over to the first body. Its skull had been cracked open. There was no weapon though. No club or bar nearby. That was odd. The other one had clearly shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. They were definitely human and based on their clothes; they were probably surveyors or pirates. She didn’t know what kind of elements were in the air here so she couldn’t give an accurate guess how long they’d been dead but suspected months.

She shuffled over to the strongbox and kicked it open. Kherium. Already extracted and carefully wrapped. Sweet relief drifted through the exhaustion.

“Thanks guys.” Tonya gave them a quick salute. “Sorry you aren’t here to share it.” Something flitted across her IR window.

Tonya snatched up her shotgun and aimed. It was gone. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as she waited. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She pumped the gain on the external mics again and scanned the hall. The whole time, telling herself to calm down. Calm down.

Every movement of her suit amplified a hundred times in her ears. She tracked the rifle through the tunnel, looking for whatever was in here with her. Something came through the static. Close.

“Welcome home,” it hissed.

Tonya fired into the dark. She spun behind her. Nothing down there. She racked another round and blasted anyway. The shots blew out the speakers in her helmet.

She grabbed the strongbox and ran.

Ran through the slippery, sloping tunnels of pitch-black, now in total silence. She passed the intersection, where the Hadesian still raised its arms in terror. She kept looking back. She could swear something was there, just beyond the range of the IR, watching from the static.

Tonya sprinted up a rise to see the grim overcast light of the exit, now just a pinhole. Her legs burned. Her arm killed. All she wanted to do was go to sleep but she wasn’t going to stop. If she stopped, she knew she would never leave.

She pulled herself up the rope and pushed through the blasted forest back to the Beacon. Thirty seconds later, the thrusters were scorching earth. One minute later, she broke atmo.

As Hades II drifted away, she tried to steady her nerves. Her environment suit slowly twisted on the hanger in the decontamination chamber. She noticed something.

The respiratory functions on the back were damaged. The fall in the crater must have done it. It bashed up the feeds and she was getting too much oxygen. The headaches, nausea, and fatigue… even that voice. Even though it chilled her still. They were all probably just hallucinations and reactions to oxygen poisoning.

Probably.

Tonya set a course back for the Xenia Shipping Hub in Baker. She had goods to sell, true, but right now, she wanted to be around people.

She wanted to be around the noise.

Back in the decontamination chamber, the tiny Hadesian carving sat on the floor.

THE END

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[inexcon]

RSI Comm-Link: Whisperer in the Dark

Writer’s Note: Published originally in Jump Point 1.1, this story takes place before the events of The Lost Generation.

People complicate things. That’s what they’ve always been good at. Take a look at any functioning civilization and you will see chaos, confusion, and frustration. It could be human, Xi’an, Banu, Vanduul, whoever. We may look different, be built different, but boil us down and you’ll find the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties gnawing.

Tonya Oriel watched the yawning abyss outside the window. Kaceli’s Adagio in 4 gently wafted through the otherwise empty ship. Scanners cycled through their spectrums on the hunt for any flagged anomalies.

The void. It was pure. It was simple. It was permanent.

A calm serenity huddled around Tonya’s shoulders like a blanket, the kind that can only exist when you are the only person for thousands of kilometers. Everyone else can have Terra, Earth, or Titus, with their megacities teeming with people. Never a moment where there wasn’t a person above, beside or below you. Everything was noise. Tonya needed the silence.

Her ship, the Beacon, drifted through that silence. Tonya customized almost every hardpoint and pod with some form of scanner, deep-range comm system, or surveying tech to get her further and further from the noise.

The problem was that the noise kept following.

* * * *

After three weeks on the drift, Tonya couldn’t put it off any longer. She was due for a supply run and to sell off the data and minerals she’d collected. After repairs, new scrubbers, and a spectrum update, she hoped she’d have enough for some food.

The Xenia Shipping Hub in the Baker System had been the closest thing to a home she’d had for the past few years. Tonya set her approach through the shifting entry/exit patterns of ships. The station’s traffic was busier than usual. As soon as the Beacon docked, her screen buzzed with a handful of new messages from the spectrum. She passed them to her mobiGlas and went to the airlock.

Tonya paused by the entry and savored this last moment of solitude as the airlock cycled, then hit the button.

The sound of people swept inside like a wave. She took a second to acclimate, adjusted her bag and crossed into the masses.

Carl ran a small information network out of his bar, the Torchlight Express. An old surveyor for a long-defunct terraforming outfit, Carl traded moving minerals for slinging booze and information. Tonya had known him for years. As far as people went, Carl was a gem.

The Express was dead. Tonya checked local time. It was evening so there was no real reason why it should be like this. A group of prospectors sat at a table in the corner, engaged in a hushed conversation. Carl leaned against the bar, watching a sataball game on the wallscreen. His leathery fingers tapped out a beat to some song in his head.

He brightened up when he saw Tonya.

“Well, well, well, to what do we owe the honor, doctor?” He said with a grin.

“Don’t start, Carl.”

“Sure, sorry, doctor.” He must be bored; he only called her that when he wanted to pick a fight. Tonya slung her bag onto the ground and slid onto a stool.

“Anything interesting?” Tonya pulled her hair back into a tie.

“I’m great, Tonya, thanks for asking. Business is a little slow, but you know how it is.” Carl said sarcastically and slid a drink to her.

“Come on, Carl. I’m not gonna patronize you with small-talk.”

Carl sighed and looked around.

“At this point, I’ll take any patrons I can get.” He poured himself a drink from the dispenser. Tonya swiveled her mobiGlas around and showed him her manifest. He looked it over. “Running kinda light this time, huh?”

“I know. You know any buyers?”

“How much you looking to get?”

“Whatever I can,” Tonya said as she sipped. She could tell Carl was annoyed with the non-answer. “I need the money.”

“I might be able to get you ten.” He said after a long pause.

“I would give you my unborn child for ten.”

“With all the unborn kids you owe me, you better get started.” He said. Tonya smacked his arm.

One of the prospectors drifted over to the bar with empty glasses. He was young, one of those types who cultivated the dirty handsome look. Probably spent an hour perfecting it before going out.

“Another round.”

As Carl poured, the prospector looked at Tonya, giving his looks a chance to work their magic. They failed. Carl set a fresh batch of drinks down. The prospector paid and went back slightly deterred.

“I think someone liked you.” Carl teased.

“Not my type.”

“Living?”

“Exactly.” Tonya watched the prospectors. They were really in an overtly secretive conversation. “Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Of course I do.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Nothing… well, not to me anyway.” Carl pulled an earpiece out and held it out to her. Tonya wiped it off and took a listen. Suddenly she could hear their conversation loud and clear. Tonya looked at Carl, stunned.

“You have mics on your tables?!” She whispered. Carl shushed her.

“I deal in information, honey, so yeah.” Carl said, almost offended that he wouldn’t listen in on his customers.

Tonya took another sip and listened to the prospectors. It only took a little while to catch up. Apparently Cort, the prospector who tried to woo Tonya with his ruggedness, got a tip from his uncle in the UEE Navy. The uncle had been running Search & Rescue drills in the Hades System when their scanners accidentally picked up a deposit of kherium on Hades II. Being the military, of course, they couldn’t do anything, but Cort and his buddies were fixing to sneak in there and harvest it for themselves.

Kherium was a hot commodity. If these prospectors were on the level, they were talking about a tidy little fortune. Certainly enough to patch up the Beacon, maybe even install some upgrades.

Even better, they obviously didn’t know how to find it. Kherium doesn’t show up on a standard metal or rad scan. It takes a specialist to find, much less extract without corrupting it. Fortunately for Tonya, she knew how to do both. “You’ve got that look.” Carl said and refilled her glass. “Good news?”

“I hope so, Carl, for both of us.”

* * * *

Carl offloaded her haul at a discount so she could set out as quick as possible. Last time she checked, the prospectors were still at the Express and from the sound of it, they wouldn’t leave for a couple hours, maybe a day.

Tonya disengaged the Beacon from the dock and was back in her beloved solitude. The engines hummed as they pushed her deeper into space, pushed her toward a lifeline.

The Hades System was a tomb, the final monument of an ancient civil war that obliterated an entire system and the race that inhabited it. Tonya had it on her list of places to study, but every year Hades was besieged by fresh batches of young scientists exploring it for their dissertation or treasure hunters looking for whatever weapon cracked Hades IV in half. So the system became more noise to avoid.

Tonya had to admit that passing Hades IV was always a thrill. It’s not every day you get to see the guts of a planet killed in its prime.

Then there were the whispers that the system was haunted. There was always some pilot who knew a guy who knew someone who had seen something while passing through the system. The stories ranged from unexplained technical malfunctions to full-on sightings of ghost cruisers. It was all nonsense.

There was a loose stream of ships passing through Hades. The general flight lane steered clear of the central planets. Tonya slowed her ship until there was a sizeable gap in the flow of traffic before veering off toward Hades II.

She passed a barrier of dead satellites and descended into Hades II’s churning atmosphere. The Beacon jolted when it hit the clouds. Visual went to nil and suddenly the ship was bathed in noise, screaming air, and pressure. Tonya kept an eye on her scopes and expanded the range on her proximity alerts to make sure she didn’t ram a mountain.

Suddenly the clouds gave way. The Beacon swooped into the light gravity above a pitch-black ocean. Tonya quickly recalibrated her thrusters for atmospheric flight and took a long look at the planet around her.

As was expected, it was a husk. There were signs of intelligent civilization all around but all of it was crumbling, charred, or destroyed. She passed over vast curved cities built atop sweeping arches meant to keep the buildings from ever touching the planet itself.

Tonya maintained a cruising altitude. The roar of her engines echoed through the vast empty landscape. The sun was another casualty of this system’s execution. The cloud systems never abated so the surface never saw sunlight. It was always bathed in a dark greyish green haze.

Tonya studied the topography to plot out a course and set the scanners to look for the unique kherium signature she had programmed. She engaged the auto-pilot and just looked out the window.

Being here now, she kicked herself for not coming sooner. It didn’t matter that this was one of the most scientifically scrutinized locales in the UEE. Seeing the vastness of the devastation with her own eyes, Tonya felt that tug that a good mystery has on the intellect. Who were they? How did they manage to so effectively wipe themselves out? How do we know they actually wiped themselves out?

A few hours passed with no luck. Tonya had a quick snack and ran through her exercise routine. She double-checked the settings on her scans for any errors on the initial input. A couple months ago, she was surveying a planet and found nothing, only to discover on her way back that there had been one setting off that scuttled the whole scan. It still bugged her. It was an amateur mistake.

She brought up some texts on Hades. Halfway through a paper on the exobiology of the Hadesians, her screen pinged. Tonya was over there like a shot.

The scope gave a faint indication of kherium below. She triple-checked the settings before getting her hopes up. They seemed legit. She looked out the front. A small city sat above endless sea of dead trees lay ahead. It looked like an orbital laser or something had hit it excising massively deep craters from buildings and ground.

Tonya took a closer look. The craters went about six hundred feet into the ground, revealing networks of underground tunnels. They looked like some kind of transport system.

Tonya looked for a suitable landing spot with cover from overhead flights. If she was still here when the prospectors showed up, her ship would be a dead giveaway and things would get complicated.

She strapped on her environment suit and respirator. She could check the ship’s scanners through her mobiGlas but threw another handheld scanner/mapper in with her mining gear just in case. Finally, she powered up her transport crate, hoping the anti-gravity buffers would be more than enough to lug the kherium back.

Tonya stepped out onto the surface. The wind whipped around her, furiously kicking up waves of dust. She pushed the crate in front of her through the blasted forest. Gnarled branches clawed at her suit as she passed. The city loomed overhead, black silhouettes against the grey-green clouds.

Her curiosity got the better of her so Tonya decided to take a ramp up to the city streets. She told herself the detour would be easier on the crate’s battery. Smooth streets are easier for the anti-grav compensators to analyze than rough terrain.

Tonya moved through the barren, empty streets in awe. She studied the strange curvature of the architecture; each displayed an utterly alien yet brilliant understanding of pressure and weight dispersal. This whole place seemed at once natural and odd, intellectually fascinating and emotionally draining.

The kherium signature was still weak but there. Tonya maneuvered the crate around destroyed teardrop shaped vehicles. Pit-marks in the buildings and streets led her to suspect that a battle had taken place here however many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The crater closest to the kherium was a perfect hole punched through the middle of the city into the ground. Tonya stood at the edge, looking for the easiest way down. The crate could float down but she would have to climb.

In a matter of minutes she secured a line with safeties for herself and the crate. She stepped over the edge and slowly rappelled down the sheer wall. The crate was making what should be a simple descent a little more complicated. The anti-grav buffers meant that any kind of force could cause the crate to drift away, so Tonya needed to keep a hand on it at all times. To make matters worse, the wind started picking up, flinging small rocks, branches and pieces of debris through the air.

A shrill scream tore through the air. Tonya froze. She heard it again and looked for the source. The screaming was just exposed supports bending in the wind.

Suddenly she realized, the crate had slipped out of her grasp. It slowly drifted further out over the crater, the swirling wind batted it around like a toy. Tonya strained to reach it but the crate floated just out of reach. She kicked off the wall and swung through the churning air. Her fingertips barely snagged the cargo before she slammed back against the wall of the crater.

Her vision blurred and she couldn’t breathe from the impact. The HUD went screwy. Finally she caught her breath. She took a moment or two before continuing down.

The scanner from the Beacon couldn’t isolate the signature any clearer to determine depth so she had to rely on her handheld. The kherium looked like it was situated between two tunnels.

Tonya secured the crate, climbed into the upper tunnel, and tied off her ropes. She checked her suit’s integrity in the debris-storm. The computer was a little fuzzy but gave her an okay.

She turned on a flashlight and activated the external mics on her suit. The tunnel was a perfectly carved tube that sloped into the darkness. Tonya couldn’t see any kind of power or rail system to confirm her transport tube theory. She started walking.

Hours passed in the darkness. Tonya felt a little queasy so she decided to rest for a few minutes. She sipped on the water reserve and double-checked her scanner. She was still above the kherium and it was still showing up as being in front of her. That much hadn’t changed.

She heard something. Very faint. She brought up the audio settings and pumped the gain on the external mics. A sea of white noise filled her ears. She didn’t move until she heard it again. Something being dragged then stopped.

IR and night vision windows appeared in the corners of her HUD. She couldn’t see anything. In the vast stretches of these tunnels, there’s no telling how far that sound had travelled. Still, she went to the crate and pulled the shotgun out. She made sure it was loaded, even tried to remember the last time she had cause to use it.

Tonya started moving a little more cautious. She doubted it was the prospectors. For all she knew it could be some other pirate or smuggler down here. Regardless, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The tunnel started to expand before finally giving way to a vast darkness. Tonya’s night vision couldn’t even see the end. She dug through her supplies and picked out some old flares. She sparked one.

It was a city. A mirror city to be precise. While the one on the surface reached for the sky, this one was carved down into the planet. Walkways connected the various structures built out of the walls on the various levels. She’d never heard of anything like this before. Everyone speculated that it was civil war that destroyed this system. Was this a city of the other side?

She came to an intersection and the first real sign that the fighting had spread here. A barricade of melted vehicles blocked one of the tunnels. The walls were charred from either explosions or laser-blasts. A shadow had even been burned into the wall.

Tonya stood in front of it. The Hadesian seemed to have a roundish bulky main body with multiple thin appendages. A thousand year old stain on a wall is hardly much to go by, but even as a silhouette, it looked terrified.

A cavernous structure was built into the wall nearby. Tonya approached to examine the craftsmanship. It was certainly more ornate than most of the other buildings down here. There weren’t doors down here, just narrow oval portals. There was some kind of tech integrated into the sides.

Tonya decided to take a look. It was a deep bowl with rows of enclosures built into the sides. All of them were angled towards a single point, a marble-like cylinder at the bottom of the bowl. Tonya descended toward it. There was a small item sitting on top. She kept her light and shotgun trained on it. It was made from a similar marble-like stone as the cylinder. Tonya looked around. Was this some kind of church?

She leaned down to get a better look at the item, careful not to disturb anything. It was a small carving. It wasn’t a Hadesian shape. Not one she was familiar with. She weighed whether she should take it.

Tonya’s head suddenly swam. She stumbled back and steadied herself on the enclosures. After a moment or two it passed. A subtle stabbing pain started to ache in her arm. She stretched it, trying to work out the ache. She took a last look at the small carving.

Tonya stepped out of the ornate building and brought up her scanner. The kherium was close. She followed the scanner’s directions into the dark and twisted tunnels. Her eyes stayed locked on the growing glow of the screen. She tripped over something. The scanner clattered across the floor. It echoed for a minute.

Tonya shook her head slightly. This place… She turned her lights back right into the face of a rotted corpse, its mouth open in a silent scream.

“Hell!” she yelled as she scuffled away from it. She looked around. There was another form on the floor about twenty feet away. A strongbox sat between them. The initial shock subsided.

Tonya got up, grabbed her scanner and walked over to the first body. Its skull had been cracked open. There was no weapon though. No club or bar nearby. That was odd. The other one had clearly shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. They were definitely human and based on their clothes; they were probably surveyors or pirates. She didn’t know what kind of elements were in the air here so she couldn’t give an accurate guess how long they’d been dead but suspected months.

She shuffled over to the strongbox and kicked it open. Kherium. Already extracted and carefully wrapped. Sweet relief drifted through the exhaustion.

“Thanks guys.” Tonya gave them a quick salute. “Sorry you aren’t here to share it.” Something flitted across her IR window.

Tonya snatched up her shotgun and aimed. It was gone. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as she waited. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She pumped the gain on the external mics again and scanned the hall. The whole time, telling herself to calm down. Calm down.

Every movement of her suit amplified a hundred times in her ears. She tracked the rifle through the tunnel, looking for whatever was in here with her. Something came through the static. Close.

“Welcome home,” it hissed.

Tonya fired into the dark. She spun behind her. Nothing down there. She racked another round and blasted anyway. The shots blew out the speakers in her helmet.

She grabbed the strongbox and ran.

Ran through the slippery, sloping tunnels of pitch-black, now in total silence. She passed the intersection, where the Hadesian still raised its arms in terror. She kept looking back. She could swear something was there, just beyond the range of the IR, watching from the static.

Tonya sprinted up a rise to see the grim overcast light of the exit, now just a pinhole. Her legs burned. Her arm killed. All she wanted to do was go to sleep but she wasn’t going to stop. If she stopped, she knew she would never leave.

She pulled herself up the rope and pushed through the blasted forest back to the Beacon. Thirty seconds later, the thrusters were scorching earth. One minute later, she broke atmo.

As Hades II drifted away, she tried to steady her nerves. Her environment suit slowly twisted on the hanger in the decontamination chamber. She noticed something.

The respiratory functions on the back were damaged. The fall in the crater must have done it. It bashed up the feeds and she was getting too much oxygen. The headaches, nausea, and fatigue… even that voice. Even though it chilled her still. They were all probably just hallucinations and reactions to oxygen poisoning.

Probably.

Tonya set a course back for the Xenia Shipping Hub in Baker. She had goods to sell, true, but right now, she wanted to be around people.

She wanted to be around the noise.

Back in the decontamination chamber, the tiny Hadesian carving sat on the floor.

THE END

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