StarFlight: The Prism Baronies (Beyond the Outer Rim Book 2)

by Reiter

  Yes, you’re having some problems – you’re supposed to!!! Imagine what it’d be like if life never knocked you on your ass from time to time.

  Losing is something that happens; we ALL get shot out of the sky sooner or later. But when a pilot quits, that’s suicide, because they’ve shot themselves out of the sky! You might buy it in noble flames, woman, but you’ll never do suicide! No way the Shrikes would trust you if you did. So get up, dust yourself off, and find your place in that seat!

  If nothing else, Starblazer, fly for those who can’t!

  Flaps

  “I knew I should have drilled that old bastard the second I saw him,” Jocasta thought, folding the paper and stuffing it into the left leg pocket on her pants.

  “So you just marooned them there?” Jocasta asked, nearly shouting out to Dungias before heading out of the bedroom.

  “They took their respective fighter-crafts, and the lander, to the planet surface. The Xara-Mansura is in geosynchronous orbit above this facility, and the Kulri-Kraythe is, at this time, docked at Black Gate.”

  “If the scout ship is at Black Gate and the crew are in the other ships–”

  “Most of the crew,” Dungias corrected.

  “Right. Then how the hell did you– you sly devil, you took the yacht!”

  “The yacht is still in the hangar being tended to by Satithe and our drones, Captain,” Dungias shared as he looked at the bottle once again. Jocasta gasped as she lifted her brace-com.

  “Satithe?!” she called out excitedly.

  “I am here, Captain,” she replied.

  “Damn, it’s good to hear you, girl! Don’t you leave me with brainless computers again! How are you doing?”

  “I am well, Captain,” Satithe stated with a smile in her voice. “I am ready to get back to work.”

  “Speaking of,” Dungias said, looking at his brace-com. “… sweep and bridge, please.” Scanning lasers were emitted from the brace-com, concentrating on the comm-station room.

  “Before we get into that,” Jocasta said, tossing her bottle in the waste bin. “Get over here!” Dungias walked over to Jocasta and she threw her arms around his shoulders. Dungias closed his eyes, embracing her just as genuinely. “No… no… no… and no!” She looked up into his eyes, shaking her head. “Those are the answers to your next four requests to go on Away Team missions. And yes, that is an order.”

  “Captain!” Dungias protested as they parted.

  “I’m not saying that you can’t work that number down,” Jocasta quickly said. “… but as of this moment, you are barred from missions when I am not a member of the team.”

  “Understood,” Dungias said as he nodded. “I will do my utmost.”

  “It’ll take at least that much,” Jocasta commented. “Llaz catch you up on everything?”

  “I have been made aware of the events both on and off the ship during my absence,” Dungias said. “That includes your progress here at Sky Stone.”

  Jocasta shrugged it off and looked around the room. “You know what, maybe this isn’t–”

  “It is extremely vital that you not finish voicing that thought,” Dungias interrupted.

  “Or?”

  “Or I will suspend myself from the position as your First Mate,” Dungias warned. “I will remind you of my oath. You should know that includes dealing with you in a manner with which you are most familiar… to be sure nothing is lost in translation.”

  “Z, did you just threaten to whip my ass?” Jocasta asked.

  “Your piloting scores are higher than most at this facility have ever seen,” Dungias said as he accessed his brace-com. A virtual three-dimensional display was created over his forearm.

  “Yes they are,” Jocasta agreed, “but around here, the word ‘pilot’ refers to more than just fighters and starships.”

  “Yes, you need to excel at four forms.”

  “Which leave me three forms shy of the mark!”

  “Closer to one,” Dungias said as he swept his hand across the virtual screen.

  “Closer to what?” Jocasta said, nearly dropping her shirt.

  “You have one more day of testing, correct?”

  “Tomorrow is the last day,” Jocasta advised.

  “But there are eighty-six minutes left to today’s testing time,” Dungias noted.

  “Z, I know where you’re going with this, but–”

  “Flight pack,” Dungias said softly.

  “Flight what?”

  “At this particular facility, it is a hybrid of a zero-gravity and jet propulsion unit,” Dungias enlarged the picture. “It is listed under exotics, and mastery in an exotic vehicle counts toward your four necessary forms.”

  “Kick me in the crotch!” Jocasta said, looking at the screen. “Z, I read this thing up and down and–”

  “You read the version loaded to this station,” Dungias explained. “A rather edited version. I accessed the facility database. You could register a complaint in exchange for special consideration.”

  “Hi, my name is JoJo Starblazer,” Jocasta said as she looked at the facility map. “Who are you?

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said quickly grabbing her coat. “I go and do this now. Later, we frag his ass!”

  “As always, Captain, a very good plan,” Dungias remarked.

  “Hey, no more jokes about my planning,” she warned. “Pulled off a major hit with this noggin!”

  “I know, Captain, it was a work of art… on all sides.”

  Jocasta looked at her brace-com for the time. “We’ve got to put a wiggle on it! The testing grounds are a hike away!”

  “Then go out of the window,” Dungias said as he returned to his research. He walked toward the large window and put his hand against the glass. “I will be here, researching the rest of this catalog for your activities upon tomorrow.”

  “And see what you can do about this room!” Jocasta smiled before bolting into a run. She dove through the phased glass and fired her piton to slow her descent. Just before she touched down, she clicked her heels together. Her subsequent bound was nearly three stories high and she landed on a ledge and ran along it before jumping down out of sight.

  Her eyes were wide again, bright again; she pressed her body for more speed. Over heads and rooftops she ran, quickly making her way from the residential section to the proving grounds. The field she sought was in sight when she received a message from Dungias: When you are done with that, see if you have enough time to test out on a sky-bike! Jocasta cackled as she jumped over the wall separating the school from the living quarters.

  Jocasta saw no one in the line the candidates used to wait for trial assignment. Only two of the technicians remained, one of them was checking her watch. She looked at her colleague who was watching Jocasta run. Taking out his communicator, the man moved away from the area where the hopefuls would have to report in and request a test.

  “Hey, JoJo,” the young woman said with a smile. “Back for more?”

  “You better believe it,” Jocasta replied, coming to a stop. “Anything you can kick and get to burn, I’ll use!” The woman looked left and right before leaning in toward the pirate.

  “Just between you and me,” she whispered, “… they assign points to crashes. Your last one wasn’t that bad, so they didn’t tag you with a full crash penalty. You rack up enough, they dock you a day.”

  “Thanks for looking out for me, Trosalda,” Jocasta said, gently placing her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “She remembered my name,” Trosalda thought. “We weren’t even introduced. I just helped Fonri pull her out of that wrecked ground-car.”

  “But I’m good,” Jocasta continued. “I’d like to take a run at a flight pack, if you please.”

  “A flight pack?!” the red-headed woman asked before she looked down at her computer pad. “You go it. Fonri, can you run the Captain over to the exotics field?”

  “No problem,” the man replied as he put away his communicator.
“Right this way.” Running at slightly faster than a jog, the man made his way over to a hover-car. The vehicle started moving as soon as Jocasta had one foot inside.

  “In a bit of a rush?” she asked.

  “I’m not!” Fonri replied with a smile, throttling up the vehicle. “And you might want to hold on.”

  “Kot!” Jocasta gasped as the car came within millimeters of running down two people. “I don’t get penalty points for being in a vehicle that crashes, do I?” Fonri laughed as he continued to drive. “So, were you getting a report into Codges back there?”

  “What?!” he asked, seeming confused, but only momentarily. “Oh, no!” Fonri insisted. “I was making sure to get the word out and get my wager down.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “You’ll know when you land,” the man quickly replied, as the vehicle started to move even faster with the throttle already full ahead. Jocasta looked over at the man, engaging more than her eyes. She was not sure of what she was feeling, but something had changed about the man.

  “Is this your ride?” she asked, putting her hand on the console feeling something change about the hover-car as well..

  “It is while I’m at the controls!”

  “Okay, that wasn’t bravado,” she thought. “He means it. And for the life of me I’d swear the hover-car does too!” Jocasta forced herself to relax as her mind recalled the teachings of Beta-Chiaro. It was amusing how all of her teachers had strayed from their assigned curriculums.

  “The Energies are all around us, Jocasta,” the Light Priest had taught her. “In the course of your life, I’d wager you’ve heard how one surpasses another. Depending upon who you’re listening to, those positions change radically.”

  “So, who’s right?” she had asked.

  “Most of those who believe they have an answer to that question are wrong,” Beta-Chiaro had declared as he started to glow brightly. “Is my light is greater than Beta-Alphexeous’ shadows?”

  “Uh, I’d have to say hell yes!” Jocasta had snorted. She had frowned, questioning whether she actually going to learn something she could use. She had gasped at the sensation of cold, sharp steel resting against the tender flesh of her neck.

  “Uh, I’d have to say wrong!” Beta-Alphexeous had whispered in her ear before he faded out of sight, taking her gun with him.

  “What the nipple-twist was that?!” Jocasta had exclaimed, spinning around, ready to fight someone who was no longer in the room. “How did he do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Beta-Chiaro had answered.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?!”

  “Alphexeous lives in the shadows,” the Light Priest had explained, “… and even my light cannot illuminate all of it. But I think it illustrates my point, Jocasta. It isn’t the Energy that holds any place of supremacy; only the practitioner can approach perfection… the Energies are already there! So appreciate all the Energies, for the potential within any of them is boundless!”

  “So… which of the Energies do we have going on here?” Jocasta pondered, putting her hand to her brace-com. She took a quick scan of the immediate area and her eyes flared wide when the screen showed it had a match in its database. “That does it, Z’s having kids!” The scan determined there were massive amounts of ThoughtWill in the immediate area. Jocasta was slightly disappointed, as she’d thought she might have tripped across something she had never seen before. ThoughtWill was the wheelhouse of the Northern Temple, and was therefore not one of her more favored forms. The brace-com also advised that this particular signature of ThoughtWill was being mirrored at a nearby power source. It was not at Sky Stone, but it was within three hundred and fifty kilometers of her current location. “Z was right. There’s a lot that ThoughtWill can do! Kot-dammit!”

  “And here we are,” Fonri declared as he parked the hover-car. He looked over at Jocasta and nodded. “No, I’m not going to tell you how I bet.”

  “Why not?!” she asked, amazed that he had guessed what she wanted to know. Was he using ThoughtWill to read her mind? And if so, how had he gotten around her choker?

  “Just because there are pebbles along the shore, it doesn’t mean you have to throw them into the pond,” Fonri said.

  “I thought that came in a cookie after the meal,” Jocasta laughed.

  “Sometimes, when you want to see how things work, you leave them alone and let them work,” Fonri translated. “And you’re burning test time.”

  “This isn’t over,” Jocasta said with a smile, pointing at the man. “You and Trosalda both have some explaining to do!”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Fonri returned with a warm smile. He watched as Jocasta ran over to the sign-in station. Without looking away from her, he reached over to the console and keyed up an inquiry as to the vehicle’s surveillance capabilities. He did not look at the screen as he smiled, satisfied with what the hover-car had. He started to record the incident, and sat back in his seat as Jocasta strapped on a flight pack.

  “You do realize that with the flight pack test, it’s more than control and speed that we’ll be looking for,” the technician said as he made the last necessary check to the unit. “You’ll have to navigate an obstacle course, and be careful; these targets are not all stationary, and most of them shoot back.”

  “Then it should keep me awake,” Jocasta said as a man offered her an energy rifle. “I’d prefer two pistols, if that’s allowed.”

  “It is, but some of these targets will be far off,” the technician warned. “You stand a better chance with a rifle.”

  “Life’s not worth living if it isn’t challenging,” Jocasta smiled. The technician nodded and signaled for his colleague to give the woman what she requested.

  “You will be judged on the time it takes you to complete the course, how well you navigate the obstacles, and your accuracy. Here’s your helmet.”

  “Just the headband and goggles please. Unless, of course, I can use my own,” she said, blinking her eyes rapidly. The technician laughed and Jocasta giggled, taking the goggles and putting them on. “Good gods! Seriously! This is what we have to work with here?! I’ve seen cleaner broken urinals.” Jocasta quickly removed the goggles and tossed them back to the technician. “How about your shades?

  “They’re just regular sunglasses,” the man said as he put his hand to his shirt pocket. “… and something of a family treasure.”

  “And after today, you’ll be able to brag that Silverwing wore them,” Jocasta said, leaning in and lifting them out of the man’s pocket. She put them on and fired the engines to test their thrust capacity.

  “Capable, but definitely not Z-engines!” she measured. “And good gods are they loud!”

  The technician wanted to protest, but he looked up to see Fonri seated in the hover-car and the man gave a very slight nod in approval. The technician swallowed hard and went to the control board.

  “You do know those things are actual Old Earth Aviators,” Trosalda mentioned.

  “They sure are,” Fonri replied. “Remember what Calamity said when she walked up to her first testing session?”

  “He said she was too full of herself and that he was going to put her down,” Trosalda recalled.

  Fonri nodded as Jocasta tested her pack a second time. “He never made a link and he was the only one of the three testers who could. By the time he tried to link up, she was on his ass, in a wounded vehicle, and she put him down.”

  “What’s your point, Shuriken?” Trosalda asked.

  “She didn’t seem half as confident then as she does right now,” he said softly.

  “Holy Kot!” Trosalda whispered.

  “And then some.”

  “Tell me you’re recording this!”

  “I don’t have a probe I can launch, but the entire testing field is in my view,” Fonri explained. “It feels like the images will be clear, even at this range.”

  “Stop it!” Trosalda ordered.

  “What?” Fonri asked, tryin
g his best to sound innocent.

  “I don’t care how deep you get into that thing, Swan’s not gonna let you have another hover-car!” Trosalda proclaimed. “You remember what happened last time.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with the worlds today: everybody’s got long memories for the failings of their fellow man!”

  “Shuriken, you were drunk and ran into her fighter!” Trosalda reminded her fellow Corpsman. “You better be glad you’re still pulling air into that skinny body of yours.”

  “I’m telling you, Vivaldi, that car wanted to hit that ship!” Fonri argued. “Not that it matters, she’s about to start.”

  “Well shut up and record then!” Trosalda ordered. “I think I’ve got another trial-runner coming.”

  “I’ve got it covered, partner,” Fonri said as he leaned forward on the wheel.

  “Go!” the technician called out and Jocasta pushed off, getting up to a very impressive run before she reached the limit line. She jumped up and forward, laying out parallel to the ground, and fired up her engine. Her chest was eleven centimeters above the ground when she started to climb.

  “Damn, she almost wrecked it!” a technician cried out.

  “No, she didn’t,” Fonri whispered as he watched the woman approach the testing course. Her onboard systems advised Jocasta that she was going too fast. She called for more speed. Jocasta drew both of her pistols and flew toward the first target. There was a very visible turret on top of the target and it moved to acquire the incoming threat, but it did not fire. The design of the device was called a Fly-Swatter, and it was programmed to fire when an approaching object changed their course. Jocasta crossed her forearms in front of her face and flew through the first target, diving down under the platforms of the second and third targets, blasting them at the same time.

  “Enter the jackals,” Fonri whispered as four drones came from the walls of the pitch. Jocasta barrel-rolled and their first volleys missed as she flew across the fourth target. Two shots missed her, destroying her target instead. Rolling over on her back and sitting up, Jocasta disengaged her thrust and maintained the anti-gravity field. She fired one shot into the wing of the lead drone. It turned directly into the wall just in front of the second drone. The explosion was powerful enough to claim both robots. Jocasta then leveled out and called for more speed. She led the remaining two drones on a chase, but with the speed at which she flew, they were no longer in effective range and could not fire their weapons.