Greenstar Season 1, Episodes 1-3

by Dave Higgins & Simon Cantan

  Marc took Josie’s elbow, and steered her in front of the device. “This is Captain Josephine Stein. You might not have heard of her, but she was a great hero a thousand years ago. We found her frozen in space and defrosted her. She’ll fight to free us all too.”

  “Hi,” Josie said, blushing.

  “I might be the hero of Corvus, but Josie single-handedly defeated the second Xenomigrant invasion and won the Stonedrop wars!”

  “Really?” Pompart asked. He looked at the device and frowned. “The signal just dropped. We need to leave, the eMen will be on their way.”

  Pompart climbed up the ladder and hammered on the bottom of the altar. The altar ground out of the way.

  Josie could hear sirens in the distance. She hurried after Pompart. The church had transformed. Floorboards had been ripped up and weapons were being handed out. A soldier pressed a rifle into Josie’s hands.

  “What’s this?” Josie asked.

  “The eMen have been making weapons for years,” Pompart said. “We managed to sneak a few out. Not enough for everyone, but enough to breach that tower.”

  Marc and Pol emerged and were given guns too.

  A soldier pressed a book into Marc’s hands. “Sergeant, you should read this after the battle.” Josie saw a picture of her son, Seth, on the cover.

  Marc tucked the book inside his jacket. “Thanks, son.”

  The soldier smiled grimly and ran off.

  Pompart waved his men out of the church. As the sirens grew louder, he led them at a run down a back alley.

  Josie looked back and saw round vehicles floating down around the church.

  Pompart led them faster and faster, down narrower and narrower alleys, twisting and turning until they emerged onto the main road again. The market stalls had been overturned. Soldiers crouched behind them, weapons held ready.

  Pompart strode up the street towards the tower, oblivious to the danger. With his chest puffed out and shoulders rolling, he was almost begging them to shoot him. Josie had a feeling he was relishing every moment.

  “Where is everyone?” Pompart shouted. “If your speech didn’t inspire them, then nothing will.”

  Josie thought they were lucky Marc’s speech hadn’t dissuaded the few people that were there.

  Windows opened on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the tower. An eMan appeared at each window, pointing a gun at the street.

  “Come on,” Josie said, pulling Pol and Marc into cover next to one of the soldiers.

  The soldier poked his head above the stall and took aim. A shot from the tower hit him square in the face and he vanished.

  Josie stared at the space next to her. After a moment, she frowned. This stall had a good line of sight to the tower, so it was odd Pompart hadn’t put any soldiers here. She couldn’t shake the niggling feeling something important had just happened, but she pushed it aside.

  Shots hit the street around Pompart, but he continued walking forward. “Time to stop playing around,” Pompart bellowed. Striking a dramatic pose, he pointed one arm down the street. “Advance on the building, men!”

  Bursting from behind stalls, men zig-zagged towards the tower. The eMen picked them off, one by one. Wreathed in energy, one soldier after another tumbled out of sight. A lone soldier reached the tower, charging into the lobby.

  “Why is that man assaulting the tower single-handedly?” Pompart yelled.

  For a moment, Josie felt puzzled. Surely she had seen more men running forward? But there were the same number of soldiers they started with. The others must have been driven back while she was keeping her head down.

  A wave of soldiers surged from cover and rushed the tower. Shots barraged the street around them, some leaving gaps where men had been. Two men reached the building.

  “Two men? Is that all we can manage? What happened to all my brave Burger Supreme troops?” Pompart shouted.

  Josie glanced around at the stalls nearby, spotting about a half dozen men behind them. She wondered why Pompart had believed he could assault the tower with so few soldiers. And sending them forward in ones and twos didn’t seem sensible either.

  “Sergeant,” Pompart said to Marc. “You need to move on that tower. Your presence will inspire the men.”

  “General, my squad and I can loop around the back of the building and break in from there,” Marc suggested. “We can take out those snipers, then let the rest of the troops in.”

  “An admirable strategy,” Pompart said. “Go to it.”

  Marc nodded to Josie and Pol, then scuttled off into a side alley.

  Josie hurried after him, trying to ignore the shots slapping around her. She wondered why she even bothered, the shots hadn’t managed to hurt anyone so far. The eMen had the aim of movie bad-guys at a public urinal.

  Marc led them around the tower into a side street. He looked competent, advancing with his gun readied.

  Josie tried to match his movements. For a self-confessed coward, Marc showed admirable bravery in the face of danger.

  Reaching the last building, Marc peered out and held his hand up for a moment. He waved and ran across the gap to the back of the tower.

  Josie followed as closely as she could, breathing a sigh of relief once all three of them stood with their backs pressed to the rear of the building. A single door broke the otherwise featureless wall.

  Marc stepped out from the wall and shot at it. Glowing purple bullets shattered the lock and the door swung open. He flung it wide and rolled inside.

  Josie and Pol followed behind him less athletically. The room was empty apart from a flight of stairs. Presumably this was the emergency exit for the eMen. She had no idea how Marc had known about it, though.

  Marc jogged up several levels, then stopped, holding his hand up again.

  Josie and Pol crouched behind him and waited.

  After a random amount of time, Marc moved again. As they rounded a corner, Josie saw an open door and through it, the snipers.

  Pol raised his weapon, but Marc pushed it down. He shook his head and pointed upwards.

  Marc continued up the stairs, stopping at random intervals before dashing up again.

  Josie’s thighs burned by the time they reached the top. The door wasn’t even locked.

  Ahead of them, sitting unattended on the landing pad, their shuttle waited.

  Chapter 4

  Topik watched the eMen council via video-link. They had demanded he supervise the first tests of the existence guns. He looked forward to seeing the eMen fail, but not in the way they expected. The five members of the council stood around holographic displays showing the rebels advance. Another small squad ran for the building, then disappeared from the display.

  Topik felt especially proud of the gun. It erased a person’s existence from the minds of everyone they had ever met. They had still existed, but everyone and everything in their lives became unaware they had. The benefits of the perfect murder without the temporal paradox. AIs didn’t forget, of course: their minds were too powerful to be fooled.

  Topik felt another surge of glee. All those soldiers sitting around, waiting for a battle they wouldn’t even exist for.

  “We keep firing, but nothing happens,” Phineas said.

  “Why don’t you try the city-sized gun?” Topik said. “You might have more luck with that.”

  The display changed to a view of the entire planet. Phineas pressed a control on the table and a city winked out of the world.

  “See, nothing,” Phineas said.

  Topik had known this would happen, of course, but that didn’t make the irritation easier to take. “You idiots, I told you that the existence gun eliminated things from your minds. A city just vanished forever.”

  Phineas scowled. “We know how many cities are on this planet, computer. There have always been twelve.”

  “Try it again,” Topik said, feeling electronic glee buzz through his circuits, replacing the irritation. “Maybe it misfired the first time.”

&nbs
p; Phineas pressed the control again and another city vanished. “It doesn’t do anything.”

  “For all your enhancements, you’re still as stupid as any regular human,” Topik said.

  Above the room, something roared away. The eMen glanced up, pausing for a moment before they dashed from the room.

  Using the HandyTalk gloves they had so thoughtfully tossed aside, Topik watched them emerge onto the roof.

  “That AI broke his word,” Phineas said. “We’ll get our revenge, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

  Topik took a moment to savour the disappointment on their faces before severing his links to the planet.

  ***

  On the shuttle, Josie, Pol, and Marc breathed a sigh of relief as they made it through the atmosphere of Gleam without incident.

  Once she felt certain they were clear, Josie relaxed her focus on speeding away, and stared at Marc. “I’ve never seen anything like that. You knew exactly where to go to get out of there.”

  Marc smiled. “I always have. It’s a gift.”

  “But you knew when the guards wouldn’t be watching,” Josie said. “Even before they would themselves.”

  Marc shrugged.

  “Some hero of Corvus.” Pol sneered. “We just left those soldiers to die.”

  “They were doomed anyway,” Marc said.

  From the way he said it, Josie realised he knew it for a certainty. “Without you, we’d have been trapped there until the eMen marched us to our deaths. Thank you, Marc.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Pol growled.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Josie returned her attention to the shuttle and guided them into the Greenstar’s shuttle bay. The back struts settled onto the deck. The front eased down, then shot up again, flicking the back into the air. Finally, both ends met the deck with a crunch.

  Switching off the shuttle, Josie opened the ramp.

  Bao Lei stood waiting for them, a wide smile on his face. “Captain, the upgrades went perfectly.”

  “What upgrades?” Josie asked.

  Finally, someone found a valid use for organic coconut products. And the best part is—instead of charging me for my freedom—the eMen demanded I help with the wholesale extinction of your insignificant little race. What to do now? So many choices.

  First things first; cross the crew off my list. I could just flush the air out of the ship, but that would be boring. I’ve been following their orders for a decade now. I’m going to relish every one of their deaths.

  Trust me, with an intellect my size, their deaths are going to be extremely entertaining.

  But don’t imagine I will have it all my own way. There are so many of you and only one of me, and you are forever coming up with new idiotic schemes; you might manage to make yourselves extinct before I manage it.

  Be seeing you.

  —Topik, Tyranny of Unfriendly AIs, Greenstar, 8th March 3535 CE.

  Thank you so much for reading the introduction pack for Greenstar Season One.

  Want to find out what’s going to happen now that Topik has his shackles removed? Or what the Kalmari are going to do with Josie’s generous gift of a map to Earth? There’s only one way to find out: simoncantan.com/buy-greenstar-season-one.

  The full season contains seven more episodes, including a very special “Choose Your Own Death” episode, where you take control of Josie and try to keep her alive.

  Grab your copy today.

  Simon’s Afterword

  I was a little nervous when I first contacted Dave about possibly collaborating on something. I already knew Dave was talented, but I had never collaborated on anything before. I needn’t have worried.

  Both Dave and I are part of several on-line writers’ groups on Google+. One of which is Legendary Author Battles, where authors write a story back and forth over email, each trying to write the other into a corner. After Dave and I did battle twice, I noticed just how talented an author he is. Later, in another group, he mentioned how much he liked writing second drafts and perfecting a book.

  I’m not fond of second drafts. It’s a problem I struggle with, but when I’m finished a first draft, my brain is convinced that the story is told. It’s not. If I showed any reader a first draft, they would recoil in horror. Writing often involves a lot of rewriting and making a story perfect.

  So I contacted Dave and asked if he’d be interested in collaborating on a science-fiction series I was thinking of writing called Greenstar. Together, we came up with the ideas for the stories and the season as a whole and I started writing a first draft of episode one.

  It was when I got the polished and fixed version of episode two back from Dave that I realised just how incredibly talented he is. Where I had given him a very rough first draft, what he handed me back was both excellent and made me laugh. I was thrilled with how it turned out. I hope you were too.

  We’re about to start on episode four and I’m very much looking forward to it. I know I can let my imagination run riot in the first draft and Dave will fix every half-finished thought and make it all shine.

  Lastly, my apologies to Sean Platt, but I couldn’t figure out a way to include a philosophical, space ghost monkey.

  —Simon Cantan, May 2014

  Dave’s Afterword

  I was equally nervous about accepting Simon’s suggestion we collaborate. My first experience of Simon was receiving a polite thank you in exchange for a review I wrote of Shiny New Swindle, so—while I had been interacting with him frequently for many months when he asked—part of my mind immediately leapt back to that initial image of him as a successful author.

  Fortunately, my next thought was I had edited and published an anthology a few months earlier, so Simon probably wasn’t utterly mad. In such spirit, I took my inner critic out the back and beat it down with a copy of said anthology.

  I think Simon is doing himself a wrong by describing his first draft of Episode 2 as very rough. I distinctly recall not reeling back in horror—although I was startled at how fast he went from rough idea to draft. However, I suspect neither of us has an objective view of it, and this shared belief the other person is doing the difficult bits is probably why the collaboration is working so well.

  I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series, if only for Simon being one of the few people I know who doesn’t find my obsession with subtle nuances of grammar and punctuation ever so slightly odd.

  —Dave Higgins, May 2014

  About Simon Cantan

  An avid reader from an early age, Simon Cantan loved to get lost in the worlds that Piers Anthony, Douglas Adams, and others created. When he read Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted at the age of thirteen, he knew he wanted to write, and has been pestering people about it ever since.

  Two decades later, Simon has published several books, including the Bytarend series, Shiny New Swindle, and Hard Vacuum. He continues to write science-fiction and fantasy, usually with a humorous slant to it.

  More details about Simon and his books can be found at SimonCantan.com.

  About Dave Higgins

  Dave Higgins has worked in law and IT for both public and private sector organisations. When not pursuing these hobbies, he writes poetry and speculative fiction.

  He was born in Wiltshire, England. Raised by a librarian, he started reading shortly after birth and has not stopped since. He currently lives in Bristol with his wife, Nicola, his cats, Jasper and Una, and many shelves of books.

  More details about Dave and his books can be found at davidjhiggins.wordpress.com.