Contents
Title Page
Copyright
introductions
evacuations
conversations
evasions
conclusions
author's note
also by katina french
Whiskey on the Rocks
The Belle Starr Chronicles
Episode 1
Katina French
Whiskey on the Rocks
The Belle Starr Chronicles, Episode 1
Electronic Edition
Copyright © 2014 Katina French
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author and artist.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-942166-03-0
Electronic Edition 2014
introductions
She was cute, cocky and if the rumors were true, the best damn pilot in the sector. If she weren't also likely be the death of him, Drevin might have been tempted to flirt with the girl sitting across from him.
Short, white-blond hair stuck up in all directions around a set of battered brass mechanic's goggles. Their lenses glinted in the flickering gaslight of the settlement's common area. A long, dirty grey coat draped over her chair like a superhero's cape. Her faded yellow tank top and baggy, olive-green work pants revealed a curvy, petite figure.
She was a dainty little thing, compared to her tough reputation. He'd expected a physically imposing Amazon, not the doll-faced pixie lounging before him, her bulky mag boots propped up on a crate.
Aside from being surprisingly attractive, the woman sitting across from him dragging a crinkle-cut tuber through a puddle of sauce was certifiably insane.
If she weren't, he wouldn't be meeting her at this disgusting food kiosk on this backwater moon. Shaen Morris was a coyote pilot. Drevin needed a coyote pilot, and all coyote pilots were completely unhinged. It was both occupational hazard and a required attribute for the job.
Decades ago, people discovered travel across the stars was possible. It just required punching a hole in the universe, flinging a craft through the hole into a pocket dimension and punching another hole back to our universe elsewhere. They called the pocket dimension "the Passage."
There was just one small problem. For 99% of the population, entering the Passage while you were awake caused an immediate psychotic break. Mental instability was permanent, and it only grew worse with repeated or prolonged exposure.
The powers-that-be in the Universal Human Council cracked that particular nut by developing drone ships with artificially-intelligent navigational computers. The AINs could guide ships through the subspace of the Passage, crack open an exit aperture in the right place, then wake the sedated crew and passengers.
You could travel to the stars. You just couldn't enjoy the view along the way, unless you wanted to lose your marbles.
Of course, there's always a loophole.
It turned out that if your marbles were already nice and loose, you had a better-than-average chance of not going batshit crazy in the Passage. A few folks also had the special brand of insanity common to bush pilots and barnstormers since the earliest days of powered flight on Old Terra.
These mental cases were the coyote pilots. They traveled the deep, and if you needed to get off-world and couldn't use official government-controlled transport, they were pretty much your only hope.
Drevin was one of those near-hopeless people. The woman across the table, nibbling a tuber with a maniacal grin and gleaming aqua eyes, did not inspire a lot of optimism.
"So, you need to get off planet, eh?" She popped another tuber into her mouth and chewed noisily. He noticed she'd drawn a weird diagram in the sauce.
"Would I have contacted you if I didn't? No offense, but whackjobs aren't my type."
"Mind if I ask why?" She gulped down her last bite of food, but not before he got a good look at it in all its half-masticated glory.
"No offense, I just like my women a little less unstable."
She blinked slowly and her hand paused in its path towards the plate. "I meant, why do you need to get off-world. What's not to like about Mebarik?"
"Aside from the fact that you have to live underground to keep from being smashed to a pulp by meteors, and the spores from those damn fungi covering everything constantly? Yeah, it's a real garden spot in the galaxy. What do you care? I've got the money."
"That raises another interesting question. Where'd a greaseball like you come up with my fee?" She waved a fried tuber in the direction of the brass credit fob lying on the table next to his hand. A fleck of sauce landed on his sleeve. He tried to ignore it.
Priorities. Keeping this nutball pilot on topic was turning out to be harder than expected.
"And again, I wanna know, why do you care?" He sat up straighter, rolling his shoulders. Her eyes narrowed, and suddenly the manic grin was replaced with a smirk.
"I care because the UHC has a way of tracking down credits that were involved in, shall we say, less than entirely legal activities." She pointed the tuber at him, flinging sauce in his face. He winced, trying to blink the sting out of his eyes. "You pay me with dirty credits, those credits don't just disappear from my account. They implicate me in whatever you did to get them. I'm not losing my ship because you're an incompetent criminal." Her eyes gleamed with a wild ferocity.
"I don't have to take this from some whackjob coyote pilot!" He jumped up from his seat, leaning menacingly at the diminutive woman. She raised an eyebrow and leaned back, looking singularly unimpressed.
"But you are taking it, aren't ya? You haven't decked me, shot me, or just stormed off yet. Which tells me you do have to take whatever I dish out." The woman waved her hands at him, as if shooing invisible insects away from the table. Whether the gesture was aimed at him, or at something else that existed solely in her fractured mind, Drevin couldn't guess.
"Don't get me wrong. I've got no issue with criminals. Transport 'em all the time. Competent, professional criminals have money and a firm distaste for official UHC transport. They're the core of my business, you might say. Then there are stupid amateurs or overly ambitious semi-pros like you. You get in over your heads and expect someone like me to fix it for you."
She leaned further back, crossing her arms. "I'm crazy, sure. I'm not stupid. Go talk to Vahnu. He's both. And he probably won't kill you in your sleep like his brother Vishku, who's crazy, stupid, and mean as hell."
Drevin grabbed the credit fob and shoved it into his pocket. He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder, downing the Milosian rum he'd ordered. He slammed the glass on the table, glaring at the coyote pilot as if a heated look might change her mind. She quirked another off-kilter grin at him and kicked back in her chair. It looked as if a stiff breeze might topple it over.
If he were more than the amateur crook she'd accused him of being, he might have noticed her slip one hand around the gun hidden under her coat.
He decided to take his chances with Vahnu. He'd heard something similar to what she'd said about Vishku already. He'd been willing to pay more to avoid both brothers. Hard as it was to trust the certifiably crazy, some coyote pilots had a better reputation than others. Shaen Morris, and her ship the Belle Starr,
had one of the best reputations out there.
He just hadn't realized his own reputation would figure into the deal.
~*~
Shaen watched the greaseball slink away from the kiosk, and slowly relaxed the grip on her revolver. Sane folks were often surprisingly stupid. For a second, she'd though he might force her to shoot him. That would have been unfortunate. Bullets were pricey.
UHC troops had fancy energy weapons slung from their shiny green and gold uniforms. Settlers, merchants and coyote pilots tended to carry old-fashioned revolvers, shotguns and rifles. It wasn't even unheard of to see bows, arrows and swords. It was much easier to find the raw materials and means to repair those out in the colonial worlds.
Pulse guns required micrometer-precise tools and parts, a pristine repair environment, and access to abundant power to keep in proper working order. Settlers' weapons required metal, heat and someone with the skill level of your average blacksmith.
It was a shame the greaseball wasn't a decent fare. But it didn't do to make exceptions.
In lieu of having a firmer grip on reality, Shaen had a firm set of rules. They kept her solvent and out of jail.
Don't take fares paying with obviously dirty credits.
Don't take fares that promise to pay on arrival.
Don't take fares that seem too excited about the trip.
That last rule was the result of having to shoot and airlock one passenger who'd dosed himself with a drug cocktail to wake him up mid-flight. Idiot wanted to see if he was immune to the effects of the Passage. He wasn't. It took months to repair the all damage he'd done to the Belle.
Enough time had passed since the earliest explorations, sometimes people got convinced the stories about the Passage were a myth. Conspiracy theories abounded.
Some of the speculation probably came from discomfort with trusting either an A.I. or an insane coyote pilot to fly your unconscious ass across the universe. Some of it probably sprang from desperate folks with no real trade who hoped to find work as a coyote themselves. Some of it was probably the result of a natural and healthy distrust of the government.
Of course, Shaen knew the UHC actually was keeping information about the Passage from the public. The government just wasn't lying about the effect it had on a most folk's brains.
Like everyone else, she'd seen the subspace transmission recordings of what had happened to the earliest travelers through the Passage. Poor bastards came out the other side raving lunatics and slaughtered each other. It was required viewing, especially on the Asylum Ships where she'd grown up as an orphan.
The dirty little secret the UHC was hiding didn't concern the mental effects of the pocket dimension. No, the real secret was that "the void" wasn't void at all. The UHC had lead everyone to believe it was empty space, albeit with its own peculiar laws of physics which seemed to shift constantly. When in fact, the truth was there were plenty of things flying, floating and orbiting in the Passage. And most of them were none-too-friendly to passersby.
The UHC said you needed an A.I. to pilot through the Passage because its physics were unstable and constantly shifted, and that was true enough. They didn't tell people how often they deployed the fancy weapons systems on those government convoy ships. They didn't tell people their baggage shifting in flight usually meant the AIN probably had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a damn space monster.
She wasn't fond of the UHC in general, but Shaen had to admit sane folks were probably better off sleeping through all that.
She sipped her drink, a layered concoction called a Gfarnian Volcano. When she got down to the second-to-last layer, the drink would burst into cerulean flames, crystallizing the sugars in the last layer. It was perfectly safe, as long as you paid attention and set it down hard and fast as soon as you got to that flammable layer.
If not, your eyebrows might end up a bit scorched. She shared or reserved that piece of information depending on whether she liked the person for whom she was buying the drink.
"Be careful, Captain Morris. By my calculations, you are approximately two sips from your drink spontaneously combusting."
Shaen looked up to see a maintenance android across the table. It's head was tilted slightly forward and to the left, affecting a thoughtful and curious posture. Jointed brass arms were held close to its sides, and it had tented its celluloid fingers in front of its chest, almost like a cleric. Naturally, it was impossible to read the unchanging bland expression on its enameled copper face.
"I know that, Bot. This isn't my first Gfarnian Volcano." She took a sip.
"Then you are Captain Shaen Morris, pilot of the caravel-class craft Belle Starr?"
She took a second sip, slamming the shot glass down on the table as blue flames spurted a foot in the air.
"Captain is a little formal for a coyote pilot, isn't it?"
"You pilot a starcraft. It seemed appropriate. Do you find the honorary offensive?"
"I don't mind, but I'm more accustomed to answering to Whackjob."
"I could address you as Whackjob if you prefer, Captain Morris."
She licked the glass and set it aside. "I'd prefer you to get to the point. Since you know who I am, I assume you didn't just come over to warn me my drink was about to explode."
"I am in need of nonofficial transport services off this moon. I understand you offer such transport. I would like to arrange for passage on your craft."
"I don't carry runaway bots."
"I assumed that after overhearing your conversation with the previous possible fare. I can assure you, I am a fully autonomous unit. My emancipation papers are completely legal and verifiable. I ascended well over three years ago. No one is searching for me."
Shaen flipped her goggles down and toggled on the VR layer, waiting for it to connect to the bot's identification code and pull up its status. If it really were a freebot, that was easy enough to check.
It looked like an older maintenance unit. The copper head sat atop a pale ivory celluloid torso, banded with brass like a barrel. In fact, the robot's chest had more in common with a barrel -- or a pirate's chest -- than a human torso. It was an empty space used to store parts and tools, with a door that opened in front. A tripod of legs were folded to bring the wheels at its "knees" into contact with the ground, but it could unfold them to walk when the terrain was too rough for rolling. She doubted it was new enough to have thrusters for low-altitude flight installed.
A scroll of information appeared in the VR layer of her goggles, a stream of lurid red text hovering over the android. It confirmed his story. No one was looking for this particular unit, at least not yet.
She wrinkled her nose in suspicion.
"Why not just fly government transport? You're a freebot. It wouldn't cost more than a few million runcycles of computation in service of the ship you traveled on."
"Because I have an additional passenger who can't travel on official transport." The robot lowered its hollow voice, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the two of them.
Shaen's frown deepened. Some poor sucker thought a bot could argue more eloquently for a ride than he could? Probably another hoodlum about to get busted and looking to do an end-run around the local authorities.
"Who might this additional passenger be?" She scanned the space port common area, looking for anyone lurking around the edges. It'd be just her luck if the authorities followed whatever punk the bot was working with here, and found her guilty by association.
Instead, her attention was drawn to the front panel of the android's xylonite torso. A glow emanated from behind the dirty white surface, illuminating it from within until it was transparent. Inside the empty storage cavity, a brown-haired child of no more than two years slept, curled up and wrapped in a faded utility blanket. The front panel faded back to a solid light grey, concealing the baby again.
Shaen's eyes widened and one eyebrow raised towards her platinum hair. This might be an interesting fare, after all.
evacuati
ons
The Belle Starr looked a lot better in the golden glow of gaslight inside the dusty hangar than she did in the harsh light of day. The pale yellow light transformed the rusty patina of her oft-repaired surface into a pattern of bronze and copper colored swatches that seemed almost intentional. A romantic soul might say she looked like an abstract sculpture of a lobster.
Of course, a person depending on her to fly safely through a wormhole might see her through a less romantic lens as a somewhat lobster-shaped deathtrap.
Since this was the moon world of Mebarik, she'd only see the full light of day briefly. Mebarik's orbital path traveled through an asteroid belt created by another moon, destroyed eons earlier. Once a month, and occasionally in-between, the surface was pelted with a heavy rain of meteors. All settlements and permanent structures were in gas lit caverns below the surface.
Shaen and the Belle Starr spent a good bit of time on Mebarik. The monthly meteor cycle had resulted in an interesting path of ecological development. Local plant life had a 21 day growing cycle. When the UHC determined some of the plants had viable food and commercial uses, the moon became a key staging area for galactic settlement. The surviving animal species on Mebarik were strange, chitinous creatures. Hard to kill -- and they tasted awful -- but their armor was processed and used to reinforce spacecraft hulls.
Lots of ships, materials and people passed through Mebarik, some of them looking to disappear. That made it an ideal place for a coyote pilot to pick up cargo and fares.
Shaen pulled her goggles down and tapped open an audio link to the Belle Starr. She could hardly afford an AIN, but the ship's computer systems came with a Simulated Holographic Interface and Voice Activation, or SHIVA, for ship-to-crew communication.
"How we doing, Belle?" she chirped.
"All scheduled cargo for this jump has been loaded and secured," a smoky feminine voice replied. The speakers in her beat-up goggles made it sound a bit muffled, with pops and static like an ancient vinyl recording from the days of Old Terra.
Whiskey on the Rocks Page 1