Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge: a space opera anthology

by Nick Webb

  Wait. By “help her out,” she meant that he had sprung her from jail‌—‌whether he liked that terminology or not‌—‌a feat that she would not have thought possible until he did it. A feat that would have been impossible for her, whether she followed the law in the traditional manner or cast it aside, and which was only possible for JP because of his ability to manipulate that law to his advantage.

  “JP, wait!” Brook smiled bitterly‌—‌how ironic that JP was the one to walk away when he was the one with the gift they needed to fix this mess. A gift that she only now recognized the value of.

  JP stopped, then turned slowly. “If you wish to involve me in another illegal scheme‌—‌”

  “No. I was wrong not to listen to you the first time.” That got his attention. “You got me out of jail despite the fact that I actually committed the offense. Surely we can find an... opportunity to thwart an order based on a bunch of lies.”

  “The two situations are not identical,” JP said.

  “I know, but...” All they had to do was obtain a starship‌—‌how hard could that be? The IES had acquired a wide variety of vehicles throughout its four-year life, though most of those had been temporarily commandeered to respond to a crisis, and either the vehicles themselves‌—‌or, occasionally, compensation for them‌—‌had to be returned afterward.

  But who was going to bother them to return one of the hundreds of inactive vessels Arriet claimed were in orbit?

  “JP,” Brook said. “The IES can legally commandeer ships, right?”

  JP inclined his head. “In times of emergency, that is correct, yes.”

  Brook flicked a look back toward the detention center. On the roof was a police transport shuttle. “I’d say the dismantlement of the IES is a pretty serious emergency.”

  JP looked uncertain. Could he be warming up to the idea? “That is an... unusual, but plausible interpretation, Captain.” His gaze followed hers. “In any case, we would only be able to petition the Emergency Service to contest the order if we acquired a ship large enough to allow us to continue our interstellar operations.”

  “Well,” Brook said, “I have it on good authority that there are ‘hundreds’ of those ships in orbit around Meltia. I could get there‌—‌if only I had someone to handle the paperwork.”

  She spread her arms to indicate that she had nothing to hide. This plan was audacious‌—‌but ultimately completely legal. If JP was willing to rethink his departure.

  “I believe,” JP said, “that such a task would fall under the purview of your political liaison officer.”

  Brook grinned. “Then you’d better tell him that we don’t have all day.”

  She dashed back to the glass doors of the detention center, throwing one open with her left hand while she grabbed her IES transceiver with her right.

  “We’re with the IES,” she said to the nearest police officer as she sent a query to Arriet. “We’re going to need to borrow your ship.”

  The officer gave her a confused look. “Didn’t you just‌—‌”

  JP produced his IES identification. “Sir, under section one of the Emergency Services Act, personnel of the Meltian Republic Emergency Service, or any sub-organization thereof‌—‌”

  “Okay, okay!” The officer raised his arms. “Follow me.”

  The three of them stomped up a staircase to arrive on the roof of the detention center, where the officer unlocked the transit shuttle and beckoned them inside. He made a move to enter the cockpit of the vehicle, but Brook held up a hand. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Of course, Ma’am. Good luck.” The police officer departed.

  At the same time, Arriet picked up Brook’s query, so she tossed the transceiver to JP as she strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. “Put it on the ship’s sound system.”

  Brook was no pilot‌—‌her job was to give orders to the people who actually flew the Kindred Spirit‌—‌but the transport was designed for non-pilot police officers, with a standard throttle-and-stick setup, so she was quickly able to ease it off the ground.

  “Captain?” Representative Arriet’s voice came out of the transport’s consoles.

  “Representative.” Brook angled the transport’s nose upward and pushed the throttle forward. “About those ships you mentioned: where can we find them?”

  “I was referring to the Boneyard,” Arriet said.

  “Right.” The name conjured images of Interplanetary Network broadcasts from just after the Order War, showing thousands of no longer needed vessels being clustered into a massive orbital shipyard over Meltia for storage. “JP can you get me coordinates on that?”

  “Likely,” he said.

  “Captain, I don’t know what you’re planning, but you’ll need to do it quickly. We drafted the order to dismantle the IES this morning and submitted it to our administrative staff for documentation and distribution. It could be delivered to the headquarters of the Emergency Service at any minute.”

  “I know,” Brook said. “JP told me. Is there any way we could stop the order after it’s been delivered?”

  “What do you mean, ‘stop’ it?” Arriet’s tone was suspicious, almost as if Brook had just been arrested for something similar.

  Luckily, JP leaned into the cramped cockpit at that moment. “Representative, once we acquire a vessel from the Boneyard, we plan to petition the Emergency Service to contest the dismantlement order on the basis of its counterfactual statement that we have no ship. To the captain’s question, that option is removed as soon as the Emergency Service signs off on the order.” JP tapped one of the readouts that surrounded Brook, and a neon green waypoint appeared on the ship’s viewport. “Your coordinates, Captain.”

  “Thanks, JP.” Brook adjusted the orientation of the shuttle. They quickly left behind Meltia’s atmosphere for the blackness of space. “Arriet, can you keep an eye on that order for us?”

  “Certainly,” Arriet said.

  Brook did not realize they were approaching the Boneyard until its darkened, inactive vessels began to blot out the stars. She switched the viewport to a sensor-augmented display, and almost jumped as hundreds upon hundreds of blue-wireframe starships popped out of the void. She did not have much time to admire the scale of the place, though, as a fully operational Meltian Guard command frigate cut between them and the ghostly armada.

  “JP?” Brook asked.

  “I have a communications channel open with them,” he said. “They want us to come aboard.”

  “Did you tell them it’s an emergency?” Brook asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let’s try to make this quick.”

  The command frigate opened one of its hangar bay doors, and Brook maneuvered the police shuttle inside. Once it was landed, she unstrapped herself and joined JP in walking down the gangway. A female Rosarian in a Meltian Guard officer’s uniform met them at the bottom, carrying a clipboard-sized personal screen.

  “Captain Brook.” The Rosarian saluted her.

  Brook made a quick guess based on the Rosarian’s uniform as she returned the gesture. “Lieutenant Commander?”

  If she was wrong, the Rosarian did not correct her. “I understand you have need of one of our ships, Captain?”

  “Yes,” Brook said, “for the Interstellar Emergency Service. Preferably quickly.”

  The Rosarian frowned, consulting her personal screen. “What does that entail?”

  “Well, our old one had these big fins coming off the side.” Brook illustrated the shape with her hands. “And a pointy‌—‌”

  “We need a large interior microgravity receiving bay and capacity for at least two hundred crew members,” JP said.

  “That too,” Brook said.

  The Rosarian entered a command into her personal screen and then turned it to face Brook and JP. “No fins, but it should work.” The screen displayed a ship with a long, boxy body that opened at the front‌—‌their microgravity receiving bay‌—‌and a skinny pro
trusion poking out from the bottom side like the grip of an ill-proportioned gun.

  “Perfect,” Brook said.

  JP produced a small cube from a pocket‌—‌Brook recognized it as a biological signature, or biosig cube. “For legal purposes, we will just need you to officially sign over the vessel to us.”

  The lieutenant commander gave JP a skeptical look but accepted the biosig cube.

  “Captain Brook!” Arriet’s voice emanated from the interior of the police shuttle. “The order has been dispatched.”

  Brook smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure JP’s got us almost squared away.”

  “Unfortunately, Captain,” JP said, “just as the dismantlement order must be delivered in person, so too must our petition to contest it.”

  Brook blinked. “Meltia. What is it with Meltia and doing things in person?”

  JP began, “Meltian political culture‌—‌”

  “Never mind!” Brook held up a hand. “How are we going to get back to Meltia, fast?”

  “My ship and my crew stand ready to assist you, Captain,” the Rosarian said. “Though I am still not sure what the nature of your emergency is.”

  “Warm up your flip drive, then,” Brook said. “Take us as close as you can to Telahmir.”

  The lieutenant commander departed quickly, but Brook knew it would not be enough. The frigate’s flip drive could only take them to the fringes of Meltia’s atmosphere. They would have to make the descent to the surface in the shuttle, which would still take a lot longer than flying a hovercar from the Legislature to the Emergency Service.

  If the courier was able to use a hovercar.

  Brook sprinted back into the shuttle, leaving JP scribbling something on a personal screen. She quickly found her transceiver, linked to the ship’s computer, and removed it.

  “Later, Arriet.” She closed that communications channel and opened another to the Telahmir Security Command Center. TeSeComm was responsible for a range of duties centered on keeping the capital of the Meltian Republic safe.

  Including restricting air traffic.

  “TeSeComm, this is Jareyn Brook, Captain of the Interstellar Emergency Service,” she said as soon as they picked up her query. “We have an emergency situation, and I need to ground all non-military, non-Emergency-Service air traffic over Telahmir.”

  “Yes, Captain,” came the reply. “Should we take additional precautionary measures?”

  “Not at the moment.” Brook cut the communications channel and returned to the hangar. In another city, this move might have halted the delivery of the order completely, but in Telahmir, with its famous pedestrian culture, the grounding would just slow the courier down.

  When she stepped out of the shuttle, Brook saw through the Airshell field that protected the hangar that Meltia had grown a thousand times closer, its red-brown surface now taking up her entire field of view. The lieutenant commander must have activated the ship’s flip drive while Brook was inside, shifting the vessel superluminally across space.

  JP thrust his personal screen into her hands, and Brook looked down to find their fully filled out contest petition. “Good wo...”

  “Captain?” JP asked.

  Brook’s eyes had wandered to a Meltian Guard interceptor that was sitting next to their police shuttle. “We do still need to get down to Telahmir quickly, right?”

  “Likely.” JP turned, following her line of sight. “Captain, with all due respect, you can’t fly an interceptor.”

  “That was a Foonyan interceptor,” Brook said, “and the weather was atrocious. This one’s Meltian, so it’s got a standard throttle-and-stick setup‌—‌it’s basically just a really fast hovercar. Hey! You!”

  The pilot Brook yelled at turned around.

  “Can we borrow this?”

  “Under standard operating procedure, absolutely not,” the pilot said, “but this is an emergency, and the CO did say we should help you...”

  Brook shot a sideways glance at JP. “Is that a plausible interpretation of his commanding officer’s words?”

  “I’d say so,” JP said.

  “Great.” Brook clambered into the interceptor.

  “All you have to do is bring that petition to the front desk,” JP said. “Or anyone in the organization. So long as you beat the Legislature’s courier there, you’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks.” Brook wedged the personal screen between her legs as she warmed up the interceptor. Realizing that if this stunt went wrong, these words might be her last to JP, she added, “For everything.”

  Brook sealed the interceptor’s cockpit. The control scheme was indeed centered on the universal throttle-and-stick system, albeit surrounded by a plethora of controls she did not recognize, so she was able to gingerly lift the craft off the hangar floor and out of the command frigate.

  Nose pointed down at Telahmir, Brook shoved the throttle forward. The surface of the planet leaped up toward her. Judging by the rate at which isolated clouds were blurring past her, Brook knew that without the normalizing force of the interceptor’s artificial gravity, she would be unconscious if not dead. Still, she kept the throttle at the interceptor’s maximum velocity until the spires of Telahmir spread out below her. She then pulled it all the way back, firing full retrograde.

  Her descent slowed noticeably‌—‌but not as much as she had hoped. The spires continued to rise up, like spikes coming to impale her tiny ship. Brook was confident that no civilian craft would be allowed to go this fast this low over Telahmir, but she was in a Meltian Guard interceptor, so ostensibly she knew what she was doing. Brook spotted the Emergency Service’s headquarters‌—‌three boxy buildings in a U-shape around a marble-rimmed pond‌—‌and adjusted her course to come down in the middle of it. Not that doing so helped her with her velocity problem.

  Brook knew real interceptor pilots executed insanely-high-acceleration turns routinely during combat, but she was not getting anywhere near that kind of thrust‌—‌because she was using her retrograde thrusters.

  Brook flipped the interceptor around, pointing its nose and tiny retrograde thrusters toward the sky while firing her powerful main thruster to push her away from the ground.

  Her descent slowed considerably. She was falling past the Emergency Service’s building‌—‌there were meters left until the ground. Then a white gas flowed up and over her interceptor.

  Thud.

  Brook shut off the interceptor’s thrusters as the ship settled, butt-first, against the ground. She unsealed the cockpit and swung herself out of the interceptor as the white gas dissipated.

  Not white gas‌—‌steam. Brook had landed in the center of the Emergency Service’s pond, vaporizing it with her thrusters in the process.

  A Meltian man in a suit‌—‌the courier from the Legislature‌—‌was gawking at her from behind the low stone wall that had been the rim of the water feature a few seconds ago. The decorative barrier must have protected him from the worst of the steam.

  “Good morning, sir.” Brook retrieved JP’s personal screen from the interceptor and clambered out of the former pond, heading for the front door to the central Emergency Service building.

  As if suddenly remembering his job, the courier stumbled after her. Inside, the Emergency Service receptionist‌—‌a male Archavian like JP‌—‌was just as speechless as the Legislature man.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Brook said.

  The courier produced a small personal screen from his pocket. “I have an order from the Meltian Republic Legislature Subcommittee on‌—‌”

  “And I have a petition to contest that order.” Brook set JP’s screen on the receptionist’s desk.

  The receptionist looked from one screen to the other. “Uh‌—‌”

  “Is everything in order?” Brook asked. If this document went through, she could fly back up to the Boneyard, start up their new ship, and flip over to the Erian solar system to pick up the rest of her crew‌—‌she trusted JP to clean up any legal
aftermath. Unless Griffin was willing to physically come after them‌—‌which Brook highly doubted‌—‌they would be free of his influence.

  The receptionist took JP’s screen gingerly and scrolled through the document it presented. After a minute, he said, “Everything... except on this document, where you receive ownership of the vessel from the Boneyard, you, ah, you need to give it a name.”

  “Oh,” Brook said.

  “Of course,” the receptionist said, “if your chosen name differs from the name of your previous vessel, you’ll need to apply for a new registration.”

  Even if there was not the danger of giving Griffin another chance to thwart them, Brook had dealt with enough Meltian red tape for a lifetime. “Just go ahead and put it down as the ‘MRS Kindred Spirit.’”

  Q&A with Adam Quinn

  How similar is this story to the rest of your work?

  Very! In fact, “Procurement” is in the same universe as my main series, the Drive Maker Trilogy. Flashpoint, the first book in that trilogy, takes place about six years after the events of “Procurement,” and features Brook, JP, Arriet, and Charles Griffin, as well as the new Kindred Spirit.

  So that means that Brook goes six full years without needing a new ship?

  A fact for which I am sure Brook and JP are both grateful.

  What about Roth the elevator guard? He was my favorite character! Does he‌—‌

  He dies.

  What?!

  Hit by a hovercar. Very sad. Just two days away from retirement.

  Are you serious?

  No.

  Oh. I guess I should read those other Drive Maker Trilogy books, then‌—‌how can I get them?

  Glad you asked; Flashpoint is available right now on Amazon. For information on my existing titles, you can visit my website at adamquinnauthor.com. To make sure you’re the first to know when new titles come out, you can sign up for my newsletter at smarturl.it/AQNewsletter.