by M H Questus
That got a polite chuckle out of the two of them.
“That building is the Hussein & Co head office. Big weapon manufacturers locally. Make half-decent urban assault weapons, shotguns and the like, but unreliable longarms. That one over there, Minamai Inc, builds transport ships. Mostly interplanetary trawlers. That’s Pitseolaok Ashoona Park. Has an ice rink on the weekends and some great jogging paths.”
The park was filled with people, small crowds and individuals that could be seen walking and jogging along gravel pathways that wove through carefully manicured lawns and trees. A pack of children, covered in grass stains and dirt, chased a drone around a wide circle. Morcos smiled to herself and watched the park until it disappeared around the curvature of the station, St. Clair’s voice fading into the background.
“And here we are,” he said happily, and Morcos startled herself back to attention.
The hover set down with a gentle bump, and St. Clair let the two officers file out first before he followed them. The three were standing in the drydocks area of the starbase, the standard holdover name for the atmosphere-filled region of starship assembly and repair facilities. A dozen ships, from little short-distance shuttles to a massive luxury starliner, were crammed in the expansive facility, and bright pinpricks of plasma torch light flickered over the hulls of the ships.
Their destination was at the far left side of the facility, and St. Clair gestured for the two marshals to follow him as he strode in that direction. He stroked his goatee with his right hand as he talked.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, having the two of you here is a massive boost to the morale of all the marshals currently working throughout the sector. Standard operating procedure is for you to be issued new starships and full crews as quickly as possible, but as per usual the file-jockeys in Alpha are taking their sweet time getting everything together.” St. Clair sighed. “As a result, I only had one new ship getting the final touches of paint on her as you two jumped into the system. She’ll be ready within the next hour. As for the other one, I pulled a few strings and got one of our old mothballed ships pulled out of storage. She’s being overhauled to update some of the equipment, bring her back up to specs, but she’s an old warhorse.”
Smith scowled. “I’m guessing I know which of the two of us is getting the ancient relic…”
Morcos let out a squeal, and quickly clamped both hands over her mouth. “Is that her!?” She pointed at the last ship in the drydock.
The two starships were sitting side-by-side on their moorings. The brand new ship, shaped with elegant, curving lines and a tapered nose, was painted in navy blue and silver and gleamed under the bright overhead lamps. It had tail-fins and stubby wings by the nose, enabling it to fly in and out of atmospheres, although while in the thick air surrounding a planet it would have only minimal manoeuvring capability. She looked like a sleek interplanetary hunter, a cross between a shark and a massive starfighter.
The ship next to it was night and day to the first. She was shaped almost like an atmospheric vessel with square wings, two engines mounted under each wing, and countless maneuvering thrusters speckled over the entire length of the ship. The metal was dull, the paint chipping or absent in large swathes of the ship, showing the flat grey armour plating beneath. The weapon ports all had fresh paint surrounding them, and the thrusters strapped to the wings looked new and shiny relative to the flat and dull hull of the rest of the ship.
But the look on Morcos’s face as she observed the old vessel was nothing shy of beaming.
“A Mustang MkIII!” she gasped breathlessly. “The same model that Marshals Xiangxi and McKendricks used to track down the Belt Bandits in ‘49! And the Gershwin Standoff!”
St. Clair grinned, but Smith just looked dumbfounded. “Doesn’t that just mean it’s really old?”
“Old!?” Both St. Clair and Morcos swiveled their heads to face Smith, but Morcos spoke faster. “It’s not old! It’s a classic! It’s a piece of history, more reliable and sturdy than any ship before! These are the ships that made the Marshal Service! The ships that won the frontier!”
St. Clair chuckled. “You read about the Serpentis firefight? Only 3 marshals flew out of that scrum alive.”
Morcos nodded energetically, once again staring at the old ship in awe. “Two Mustang MkIIs, and the first Mustang MkIII. Oh, she’s a beauty, sir… can I have her?”
St. Clair smiled and tilted his head at Smith. “Take it up with your colleague.”
“Okay, how many loads of laundry am I going to have to do in order for you to give me this ship?” Morcos asked, smiling at her counterpart. “It would mean so much to me.”
Smith blinked a few times. She broke into a grin and theatrically sighed. “Fine. If you insist, I’ll take the shiny, brand new, far-superior-in-every-way starship, and I suppose I can let you fly around in that apparently-not-old-but-classic beaten up thing.”
Morcos, either immune to the sarcasm or ignoring it, hugged Smith tightly. Smith laughed and patted the younger marshal on the back a few times.
“Stop, you’re going to get me thinking I did you a favour by unloaded that relic on you.” Smith said.
“Oh, but you did!” Morcos turned again to face the old ship. “She have a name?”
St. Clair shook his head. “She did, but that was a long time ago and I’m sure her old captain would want you to give her a new one.”
“I’d still like to know, sir. Ship like this has to have some history on her.” Morcos put her hands on her hips.
“Her name was Myrmidon, for her loyalty.” St. Clair’s smile grew sad. He turned and saluted the two marshals, who stood at attention and saluted back. “Pick good names for them. I’ll have your crews meet you here in a few minutes.”
“Thank you, sir!” echoed both officers. St. Clair nodded and headed back towards the exit.
Morcos waited until he had left the drydock and then gave a wry smile to Smith. “You know this used to be his ship, right?”
Smith sighed again, still smiling. “I picked up on it too slowly, but yeah. Thanks for the save. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want, ya know. You deserve the new one.”
Morcos laughed lightly and leaned back on the railing near the ships. “Nah, thanks, but I really am happy with this old clunker. My mom used to fly a MkIII. Heck, it has hydraulic backups on top of the two electrical systems for just about everything. As long as they upgrade the weapons and shielding a bit, she’s as safe as anything else we’d be flying out there.”
Smith and Morcos stood quietly for a few minutes, the air filled with the background clamor of repairs, welding torches, and swivelling robotic arms.
“Enjoying the sights, marshals?” Kobayashi saluted to the two marshals, who smiled back at him in return. “I’ve always found the drydocks to be a surprisingly calm area of the station.”
Five other deputies marched forward with Kobayashi, all dressed in their full formal uniforms, complete with caps and gloves and datapads clutched in hand.
Smith’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are the rest of the deputies on their way?”
A darkly tanned woman with brown hair blushed and cleared her throat, stepping up to stand next to Kobayashi. “I’m afraid we’re it, marshal. Resources have been stretched a bit thin lately. The Vice-Senior Marshal assured us that he’ll send additional personnel as they become available, either rotating them over from other ships or new recruits, but he decided it was more important to get you in the air than to wait.”
Smith scowled darkly for a moment. “No wonder he beat such a hasty retreat.”
Morcos smiled, despite the continued nervous knot in her stomach. “Oh, I think it’s wonderful! Proves how highly he thinks of both us and his deputies that we don’t need to wait for a couple extra stragglers!”
There were smiles and looks of relief at Morcos’s words, and even Smith smiled. “Excellent point, Marshal Morcos. Very well! Which three of you are with me?”
A pale
Martian, a dark-skinned man, and a reed-thin woman saluted and stepped to the left, standing before Smith.
“Deputies Hendor, Njenga, and Haley, reporting for duty!” said the pale Martian without a hint of the usual Martian lisp. Kristen nodded, accepting the files sent from their datapads.
“Deputies Kobayashi, Di Mercurio, and Chatterji,” Kobayashi chimed as the three officers flicked their files onto Morcos’s datapad. Morcos nodded to the tall man, a petite purple-haired woman, and the tanned brunette that had spoken up earlier.
“Welcome to… the still unnamed ship I’m commanding.” Morcos smiled at the round of chuckles.
“Right!” Smith drew herself up straight, and the deputies all instinctively stood at attention. “From this moment forward, I’m making one thing clear! Those four people standing over there,” Smith pointed at the group of Morcos and her deputies, “are officially our rivals! It’s my job, and all of your responsibilities, to ensure nothing short of outperforming each and every one of them! I will settle for nothing less than complete and utter domination of their arrest rate, cases solved, kilotons of contraband seized, and amount of alcohol consumed in a celebratory manner!”
“Sir, yes sir!” responded the three smiling deputies.
“Excellent!” Smith saluted again. “Deputies, pack your gear and report back here in three hours! Dismissed!”
The deputies returned the salute, turned smartly on their heels, and marched away, still smiling.
Smith turned to face Morcos, her eyes narrowed and a wry smile on her face. “Sorry Caitlyn, but your string of luck is now over. Consider this a formal declaration of war. I’ll see you in the number 2 position by the end of the month.”
Morcos, trying her best to maintain a somber appearance, nodded. “Very well. I hate to have to humiliate you after graduating, but you leave me no choice. May the best marshal win… again.”
Smith rolled her eyes with a smile and walked off.
“Alright crew.” Morcos turned to face the smiles of her deputies. “I’m not going to tell you that we’re going to outperform those guys, because, let’s be honest, we’re going to do that no matter what. I ask only that you do your jobs, trust in my leadership, and in each other. Delta needs our help, and by the Nines, we’re going to help. I want your gear stored and ready to fly earlier than those guys, so be ready and back here in two hours and 45 minutes!”
A round of polite laughter met her declaration.
“Dismissed!”
Morcos smiled at the back of her crew until they disappeared out the doors of the drydock. Left alone with only the automated repair systems constantly working in the background, she leaned up against the railing and let her shoulders slump. She took a deep breath, and cast another look at the old ship that was now hers.
Chapter 5: Short Nights and Long Drinks
Morcos ran a hand through her hair nervously, the lack of cap grating lightly against her already frazzled nerves.
She stood at the foot of Smith’s ship, feeling quite silly, all things considered. The airlock door in front of her remained shut, the same way it had for the last several minutes, the sounds of the drydock around her fading into the background.
“I should just go,” she muttered to herself, the cool bottle of red wine gingerly held in her left hand weighing a tonne. “We both have more important things to be doing. This is silly.”
“Or you could wait there for another three minutes and hope I notice you by then,” came Smith’s voice from behind her.
Morcos spun, wincing. “Oh! Hey. Hi.”
Smith smiled, holding up a bottle of white wine. “See, I wasn’t smart enough to bring one from home and had to go out and get one.”
Smith had somehow had opportunity to shower and change in the time it had taken Morcos to unpack hastily, grab the bottle from within her suitcase, and walk over to Smith’s ship.
Morcos blushed deeply. “Oh, this? No, it was a gift I got for graduating.”
Smith’s smile grew. “Huh, somebody just happened to give you a bottle of Niagara Ridge Shiraz? Somebody who doesn’t know you don’t like reds, but does happen to have bought my personal favourite wine? Weird.”
“I know, right?” Morcos winced. “Look, can we just pretend that I’ve managed to maintain some dignity in this conversation and let me crawl under a rock somewhere to die of shame?”
“Shut up and come inside already.”
The interior of the ship was all smooth metal and crisp colours. The air had a sharp smell, somewhere between pine and paint, and the light seemed to come from everywhere at once. The doors along the hallway were curved and graceful.
“She’s beautiful,” Morcos said breathlessly, trying to look everywhere at once. “You’ve got a, what, fourteen terawatt fusion drive?”
“Fourteen-five, if the specs can be believed.” Smith smiled. “One of the new Tau drives out of the Europa division.”
Morcos looked at Smith, the edges of a smile warring with her attempts to remain calm.
Smith sighed, but smiled at the same time. “Yes, we can go see the engine.”
Fifteen minutes later and Morcos flopped onto the small loveseat in Smith’s quarters, her smile wide. “Damn fine ship you’ve got, Krissy. I think you could fit my bridge in yours three times with room leftover.” She wiped her arm across her forehead, leaving a streak of grease she could feel immediately after she did it. She scowled to herself. “And that Tau drive… I want to take it back to my ship and whisper naughty things to it.”
“Enh, she’s not bad,” Smith said with a shrug.
She managed to hold back her laugh at Morcos’s horrified look for about a second.
“Okay, okay! She’s pretty cool.” She leaned back in her desk chair with a contented groan. “I’m just tired and nervous as hell.”
“At least I’m not the only one,” Morcos agreed, carefully pouring the red wine into a stainless steel coffee mug. “I can’t shake this feeling like we’re in way over our heads.”
“Oh, we totally are,” agreed Smith, accepting her mug of wine. “Thankfully, I don’t think anyone else knows that.”
“Do you think we can really make a difference?” Morcos asked, leaning back with her own mug of white. “How much can we do?”
Smith sipped the wine and smiled. “Don’t go soft on me now, Morcos. You were always the one pushing me forward. We got this.”
The two sat in silence for a long, calm moment.
“You know we lived together for twelve months, right?” Smith said.
“Of course.”
“And I never asked you about that gun you kept locked in your desk and now have holstered on your back.”
“I am aware.” Morcos’s voice was flat.
“So, now that we’re here, can I ask you about your sidearm?” Smith said, leaning back in her desk chair. She tilted the mug of wine, looking at her reflection on its dark surface.
“It’s a standard two-barrel stunner,” Morcos responded automatically. “Nothing special about it.”
“First, you know that’s not the gun I was talking about.” Smith nodded towards Morcos. “Second, I know a deflection when I hear one.”
Morcos opened her mouth.
Smith raised her eyebrow, sipping gently.
Morcos sighed, abandoning her plan to lie to her friend.
“Can I see it?”
Morcos hesitated for a long moment, then nodded. She leaned forward slightly, raising the hem of her shirt slightly to expose the holster at the small of her back. She drew the weapon.
Smith let out a low whistle. “Wow, that thing is an antique.”
The stubby laser pistol was ugly and squat in Morcos’s hands. She carefully removed the ammunition pack and then tossed the pistol to Smith.
“I’ve seen you using this on the range,” she said to Morcos, turning the weapon over in her hands carefully, “but never really got a chance to see it. Terrestrial sidearm, no question about that, but it must be thirty
years old. Military, or my uncle was a Martian lemur.”
The weapon gleamed menacingly, the copper coils of coolant pipes running along the sides of the black ceramic barrel.
“The grip is custom, but definitely not for your hands,” Smith continued, sighting down the length of the weapon at a framed picture on the far wall. She pulled the trigger a few times. Morcos flinched slightly as the trigger clicked softly. “This could probably punch a hole straight through the side of the ship if you really wanted it to.”
“Yeah,” Morcos agreed, taking the weapon back from Smith reverently. She slid the energy charge back into the hilt and listened as the weapon hummed softly for a brief moment. She double-checked the safety and slid it back into the holster.
“… but you’re not going to tell me anything about it, are you?” Smith said after the silence stretched for a long moment.
“Nope.”
“Fine. Have it your way, Ms. Mysterious. Miss-terious. Ha. Like you would ever miss.”
Morcos chuckled softly. “Side-effect of using a stunner. You gotta put the bolt right between the eyes. Or at the very least on the head. Means I can’t afford to miss.”
“What, and you think just because I use a laser means I can be sloppy?” Smith scoffed. “I’ll remind you we tied for accuracy all three semesters in a row.”
“Fair. But if you slip up and hit a perp on the shoulder, they’re still going down. If I slip up, I’m probably dead.” Morcos refilled her mug, and then switched bottles to refill Smith’s.
Smith waited for Morcos to sit back down. “Fair point. Look, I don’t want to think about having to shoot people for tonight. Can we just… I dunno…”
“Pretend to be normal people for an hour?”
“Yeah. That.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Chapter 6: The Judicator Departs
A couple hours later Morcos shifted in the captain’s chair, trying to find a comfortable position. The MkIIIs were designed as purely utilitarian vessels, the priority always given to function over form or comfort. Her seat, set at the back of the bridge with a slightly raised position to oversee the four stations arrayed in two rows in front of her, had recently received brand new cushions made from black leather, but were still stiff and far from comfortable to sit on.