by Nick Webb
Wes’s arm shot up, the pistol aligning with the Marbok’s face. It fired before he could even register what was happening. Gantok’s headless body tumbled to the deck. He stared numbly, shocked by the entire event.
“Huh,” the captain said, raising an eyebrow as she stared at the pile of bodies. She rose slowly from cover, walking cautiously in his direction. Tysha actually smiled. “What the nebulas did I just see?”
“Honestly? I have no idea,” Wes said, eyeing his pistols with wonder. “These things are amazing. Clearly they’re more than just guns.”
“Clearly. They’re made from virilium, what the Elderi called starmetal.” Sadie approached cautiously. She stared at one of the pistols, fascinated. “Can I see one?”
“Sure.” Wes offered the weapon to her.
“Ow,” she snapped, dropping it to the deck the moment her fingers closed around it. “It shocked me.”
“This may be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tantor said, looming behind Wes. It was just as terrifying as it had been in the ship, pistols or not. The big man smiled. “I’m betting the weapons are keyed to the kid somehow. We all saw what happened to the amulet. I think our archeologist took the Elderi course on becoming a certified badass.”
Before Wes could respond the pistols grew hot in his hands, then they began to vibrate. There was a bright flash and they simply disappeared. He could feel them inside his body somehow. “Well that’s certainly handy.”
“Yeah, wonderful. Disappearing guns,” Tysha said, all business again. “Here’s the thing. If nobody can touch them, then we can’t sell them. How much are those books worth? Please say a lot, because we don’t quite have enough fuel to make it to the closest station.”
Wes clamped his mouth shut for a moment. Those books were priceless. Beyond priceless. Even if they were copies of existing works, they’d still be immensely valuable. But if they were undiscovered titles? Houses might kill to posses them.
“Not terribly valuable I’m afraid,” Wes said, giving an exaggerated sigh.
“At least we’re alive,” Sadie said, grinning.
“Yeah, but we are, once again, walking away with nothing,” Tysha said, a glower descending. Tantor matched the expression.
“I’m not sure about that, Captain,” Wes said, nudging her in the shoulder. He pointed at the Marbok vessel. “How do you feel about upgrading your ship?”
Tysha met his gaze, and smiled. “I have a feeling your life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Wes said, smiling back. “Shall we?”
Q&A with Chris Fox
What inspired you to become an author?
I did it to impress a girl. We’re getting married so I think it worked. ;)
What’s a typical writing day like?
My writing is usually done by 11 a.m., and I tend to write in 20 minute sprints until I hit my 5,000 word goal.
Who is your favorite author?
Robert Jordan, because he inspired me to want to create my own worlds, then pissed me off enough to actually do it.
Where do you get your ideas?
I find that putting myself in solitude generates all sorts of great questions, and answering them leads to stories. What if there was an advanced culture that we know nothing about? What if aliens landed tomorrow?
You sure have a cool last name.
Yet somehow people still misspell it.
If you need to reach me I can be found at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you!
By day, I am an iPhone developer architecting the app used to scope Stephen Colbert’s ear. By night, I am Batman. Okay... maybe not. One can dream though, right?
I’ve been writing since I was six years old, and started inflicting my work on others at age 18. By age 24 people stopped running away when I approached them with a new story, and shortly thereafter I published my first one in the Rifter.
Wait—you’re still reading?
Ok, the facts I’m supposed to list in a bio. As of this writing I’m 38 years old and live just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the beautiful town of Mill Valley. If you’re unsure how to find it, just follow the smell of self-entitlement. Once you see the teens driving Teslas you’ll know you’re in the right place.
I live in a tiny studio that I can cross in (literally) five steps and don’t own an oven. But you know what? It’s worth it. I love developing iPhone apps and if you want to work in San Francisco you accept that rent for a tiny place costs more than most people’s mortgage.
If you and about 2 million other people start buying my books I promise to move out of Marin to a house in the redwoods up in Guerneville. No pressure. Wait, that’s a lie. Pressure.
Procurement
by Adam Quinn
CAPTAIN JAREYN BROOK swiped through the notes scribbled on her palm-sized personal screen as she walked. “All right, JP, let’s take this from the top—should I say ‘mistakes were made and therefore the ship is not recoverable,’ or ‘the ship is not recoverable because mistakes were made’?”
“Neither.” Her dark-blue-skinned Archavian companion shook his elongated head. “’Mistake’ is a subjective term—one person’s mistake is another person’s tragic inevitability. Once you step into that committee chamber, you are that second person.”
“Got it.” Brook smiled, not least because JP had not responded to her use of his nickname. She had thought herself quite clever when she discovered that the initials of her political liaison officer spelled out the abbreviation for “Justice of the Peace,” a position which JP’s exhaustive knowledge of Meltian Republic law undoubtedly qualified him for. “So, how long is it going to take them to set us up with a replacement for the Kindred Spirit?”
JP had assured her that this was a routine process—talk to some committee here on Meltia, get their rubber stamp, and walk away with a shiny new starship—but every minute this process took was time that her crew was sitting around in some hotel in the Erian solar system instead of traversing the galaxy, saving lives like the Interstellar Emergency Service was supposed to do.
JP looked up at her, spreading his arms in a gesture of uncertainty—though average height for his species, he stood almost half a meter shorter than her. “Not as long as it took to retrieve the Spirit after you got it impounded on Walletarde.”
“Hey, now, if they didn’t want us in that shipyard, they should have posted signs,” Brook said.
“In space?” JP asked.
“Or something like that. Anyway, that was Walletarde; this is Meltia.” Brook waved her arm at the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated one wall of the corridor, affording an exquisite view of the capital city of Telahmir. “As far as I can tell, bureaucracy is this planet’s official sport. And don’t tell me they’ll break the rules for us.”
“Break? No. Bend? Perhaps, if you motivate them to do so.” JP aimed an elongated blue finger at her chest. “Bureaucracy is only obstructive to the uninitiated. To the experienced—including those on this committee—it provides opportunities.”
A half-formed laugh hissed between Brook’s lips as they arrived at the committee’s chamber. “Whatever you say, JP. Just make sure we have all the boxes checked so we can roll—or preferably fly—on out of here after this.” The IES was a popular agency with the Meltian people, so there was no way this committee would deny her request outright, but if they wanted to make her life difficult, the Meltian bureaucracy provided far more “opportunities” to slow things down than to speed them up. That was part of the reason she lobbied the Emergency Service to create the IES in the first place: with a single starship, a small budget, and galactic purview, she could run her little agency without Meltian bureaucrats constantly looking over her shoulder. In fact, she was pretty sure this was her first time on the Republic’s capital world since that initial lobbying tour, four years ago.
On the wall outside the
committee’s chamber, an engraved panel read, “Meltian Republic Legislature Subcommittee on Internal Procurements.” Below it was a screen listing the committee’s docket—she was right on time. She placed her hand on the door, an ancient thing that swung on metal hinges.
“Remember,” JP said, “this committee is not yet aware that the Spirit is no longer operational. As far as they know, we are here to make an ordinary procurement request. Make sure that before you acknowledge that fact—”
“I frame the question in a manner that appeals to their self-interest. I’ve got this, JP.” Brook gave the archaic door a push, and a groaning, creaking noise accompanied its opening. By the time she closed it behind her, the committee chamber was silent, and every pair of eyes in the room—plus the third eye of one non-human representative—was focused on her.
In total, there were nine representatives seated behind a severe semicircular metal desk, each identified by a nameplate and attended to by at least one aide. There was a lectern in the center of the committee’s long desk, so Brook strode toward that, smiling out at her observably unreceptive audience. “Good afternoon! So, how has everyone’s day been so far?”
“Welcome, Captain Brook.” Representative Divar, a human with glossy shoulder-length black hair, sat at the midpoint of the semicircle, so Brook assumed he was the chairman, or whatever Legislature Subcommittees had. “You may begin your appeal.”
Brook winced inwardly as she assumed her position behind the lectern. “Appeal” made it sound like she was some kind of criminal. “Thank you, Mr. Divar. I’m here today to let you all know about an opportunity by which this committee could demonstrate its support for the Interstellar Emergency Service, which, as you all undoubtedly know, is a very popular agency with the Meltian public.”
“Captain Brook,” Representative Divar said, “how was the Kindred Spirit destroyed?”
That stopped Brook cold. She still had almost three minutes of JP-written introduction before she was supposed to so much as hint at the fact that the Kindred Spirit was no longer in service.
“Right,” Brook said. “Funny story, that.”
Divar glared at her.
“Not funny. A very serious story.” Brook scrolled to her notes about the incident itself. “So, the IES has monitoring probes across the galaxy, orbiting stars that are likely to go supernova. They’re pretty dumb probes, just taking sensor readings of their star and slowly changing their orbital inclination so they get the full picture over time. Anyway, one of these probes smacked into a station owned by Griffin Space Technologies.” There was a disclaimer scribbled in the margins of her notes. “Now, for the record, let me note that space is very, very big, and our probes are very, very small, so there is no way this would have happened if they had not been intentionally following our probe, and let me also note that this GST station was completely unregistered and actually used scanner-jamming technology, so there was no way we could have avoided this accident.”
The members of the committee did not seem very impressed. In fact, eight of them still looked downright hostile, while the other—a woman in a light blue cape—just looked confused. Time to turn this around, lest Brook be compelled to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops before she got her new ship.
“But we’re not traffic cops, we’re the Emergency Service.” Brook gave the committee a warm smile. “So when this unregistered station calls up and says they’ve lost their flip drive and thrusters—stranding them in orbit around the maybe-supernova—we swoop in to save the day. Unfortunately, since they were already unsafely close to the star, the probe collision put them on a course to get an unpleasant solar haircut, so we had to get them out fast. We wanted to evacuate them, but they wouldn’t leave their precious space station, and we couldn’t fit it inside our hangars, so we had to basically strap them to the nose of the Spirit and strain our own flip drive to push them away. Unfortunately, the load was too much, and our flip drive... basically exploded. On the bright side, we managed to get everyone—even the GST people—onto lifeboats before we sprayed the Erian system with chunks of Kindred Spirit.”
Perhaps “chunks of Kindred Spirit” was not the most positive image to end on. Brook added, “I think providing for such a popular agency to acquire a new ship...” She glanced at her notes, plucking a few choice words from JP’s introduction. “...is an uncontroversial and pan-partisan objective. Any questions?”
The woman in the blue cape—Representative Arriet—looked like she was about to say something when Divar cut her off. “This committee has everything it needs to deliberate on this appeal.”
What? JP had told her she would spend the majority of her time fielding questions from the representatives.
Divar rested his elbows on the desk, steepling his hands. “With the committee’s assent, we will move to a vote on whether to grant Captain Brook her ship. Those in favor?”
Seven of his colleagues raised their fingers in assent.
Arriet folded her arms. “What are you doing, Divar?”
Divar gave her a confused glance, but then shook his head and turned back to Brook. “This committee is now called to a vote. Captain Brook, you may leave the chamber.”
Now was probably not a good time to upset Divar further. Whatever she had done to upset him in the first place. Brook found JP waiting outside the chamber.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“They knew,” Brook said. “They knew the Spirit was destroyed before I said a word.”
JP’s black eyes narrowed, but before he could respond, an aide opened the door with another calamitous groan. “Captain Brook.”
That didn’t take long.
When Brook followed the aide back inside, she found Arriet giving Divar a distasteful look. Divar seemed to be ignoring his fellow representative.
“Captain Brook,” he said, “this committee has voted to deny your appeal.”
Brook opened her mouth, but she had somehow forgotten to breathe. After sucking in a quick breath, she said, “Mr. Divar, we are the Interstellar Emergency Service. We can’t operate without a ship.”
“That is true,” Divar said. “The IES will be forced to temporarily pause their activities. We will ensure that proper paperwork is delivered to the headquarters of the Meltian Republic Emergency Service here in Telahmir, at which point they will have the option to either absorb current IES employees into their main organization or furlough them.”
Brook maintained her composure even as Divar’s words wrenched open a hole in her gut. Sure, the operation hadn’t gone perfectly, but sacrificing the Spirit enabled her to ensure the safety of hundreds of lives—both those of the GST employees and of her own crew. And as her reward, this committee was taking her command. They were killing the IES, which she had brought to life and nurtured into an organization that did a tremendous amount of good for the Republic and the galaxy.
“Captain Brook, you may leave the chamber.”
“Thank you all for your consideration.” Brook relinquished the lectern and departed the committee’s chambers.
Outside, JP asked, “What happened?”
“Nothing good,” Brook said, but she stopped herself before she gave JP a full rundown of the committee’s verdict. The IES did not need a captain to complain about its problems—it needed one to come up with its solutions. Brook might not have those solutions in hand just yet, but all that meant was that she and JP had their work cut out for them. After all, she had given birth to the IES—she was not about to let it die.
“How long would it take to get the paperwork together to shut down the IES?” Brook asked.
“Two days, if one works efficiently,” JP said.
Brook nodded. “Then that’s how much time we have to find a way around this committee.”
JP’s eyes widened in comprehension. “I see.” Though the IES was never JP’s brainchild, he had been the Emergency Service admini
strator in charge of reviewing her petition to create it, so he was at least a midwife.
Brook clasped her hands behind her back and began to pace. They still had to figure out how to obtain a ship—there were just a few more variables in play now. Beyond the window-dominated wall opposite the committee chamber, Meltia’s star was visible, casting progressively longer shadows as it sank toward the horizon. Any other modern city would be swarmed by hovercars, but Telahmir’s pedestrian culture meant that only a handful flitted across the skyline. The tranquility of the capital’s airspace mocked the intensity of Brook’s thoughts.
JP said, “Their order to shut down the IES will list our lack of a vessel in its preamble as a justification. If we could prove that condition invalid—by acquiring a ship—we could petition the Emergency Service to contest the order, preventing it from taking effect.”
“Makes sense.” In truth, Brook hadn’t realized there was a possibility that the committee’s orders might take effect even if they were to find a ship. But that was why she had JP. “Anyway, I think we need to figure out why they denied us in the first place—I mean, we are a popular organization, right? Yet they all seemed to hate us. Except for... I need to talk to someone.”
Brook abruptly turned back toward the committee’s chambers and was about to push on the door when it swung open from the inside.
Representative Arriet’s eyes were fiery as she closed the door behind her, but Brook immediately got the sense that the representative’s anger was not directed at her.
“We have hundreds of ships,” Arriet said. “Hundreds of inactive vessels in orbit around Meltia, left over from the Order War. We’ve given them to agencies with a tenth of the distinction of the IES. We’ve sold the older ones as scrap metal. You should have gotten one.”