Fire Fight
Page 16
Caladan exchanged a glance with Lia, who smiled.
‘We have a case of vintage Earth-whisky in the hold,’ Lia said. ‘I hadn’t got around to drinking it yet, but it always tastes better with company.’
Caladan grinned, and Trina looked delighted.
‘Oh, it’s been years….’
Lia patted Harlan5 on the shoulder. ‘I guess you can’t have any, but you can raise a toast in spirit.’
Harlan shook his head. ‘I’m afraid no one can have any. I used it to pay the Karpali mechanics who repaired the Matilda. On their home world, Earth-whisky is banned, and therefore an extremely expensive black-market commodity. It is literally worth more than gold.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking….’
Harlan shook his head. As he looked from one to the other, he said, somewhat sheepishly, ‘My programming suggests that it might not have been such a good idea….’
END
GLOSSARY OF CHARACTERS
Major Characters
Lianetta (Lia) Jansen – former member of the Galactic Military Police (GMP), now a rogue trader / mercenary, 35 years of age
Caladan – one-armed, bearded, disgraced pilot on the Matilda
Harlan5 – a multi-purpose humanoid droid in the service of Lianetta Jansen onboard the Matilda. Silver in colour, he stands approximately seven feet tall.
Other characters
Bennett – an ancient creature from Cable that is part animal, part machine
Ed Firthane – miner from Avar on Abalon 3
Fardo Galad – Raylan Climlee’s chief advisor
Haverland – Karpali parts trader in Boxar on Abalon 3
Hiberian-Orst – assassin from Jan-Jan-Last
Hiberian-Soth – assassin from Jan-Jan-Last
Lady Julienne – Raylan’s bed-thing
Leon-Ar – a Tolgier smuggler
Raylan Climlee – angry, murderous dwarf, warlord of Abalon 3
Trina Jansen – Lia’s mother
GLOSSARY OF NAMED SYSTEMS, PLANETS, AND CITIES
Phevius System
Brentar – Fire planet
Loam – Fire planet
Trill System
Feint – main inhabited planet
Cable – second inhabited planet, it’s capital city is Seen
Abalon 3 – fire planet and desert world. It’s largest spaceports are Avar and Boxar.
Areola System
Iris – main inhabited planet, 1.02 of Earth gravity, three times Earth’s size. Capital is the domed city, Louis Town.
Dove – inhabited planet
Event System
Larsisus – marsh world
Rogue – synthetic planet (metal based) home of major Estron Quadrant shipyards
Quaxar System
Bryant – inhabitable planet
GLOSSARY OF NAMED RACES
Barelaon
Originally an antagonistic and feudal species originating from an unknown system, it is also a blanket term given to bands of for-hire mercenaries made up from members of other races either outcast or leaving by choice. Often adapted by their teams for warfare, they are usually at least partially robotic.
Farsi
A human subspecies that closely resemble their parent species in terms of physiology, with the exception of having overlarge facial features, one extra toe, and a slightly extended average lifespan.
Human-Minion
A former human subspecies created long ago in a laboratory by fusing human genetics with those of the common domestic cat. Small and irascible, they tend to be destructive by nature.
Karpali
Six armed, and as a result very popular as manual labourers. Highly skilled Karpali are often employed in shipyards and other industrial sectors because of their working speed.
Rue-Tik-Tan
A lizard-based species, scaly, tall, spine-backed.
Tolgier
A human subspecies with similar features to their parent species, but larger, more muscular, and hairier.
Abaloni
One of the most ancient human subspecies, they are roughly sixty percent machine, an adaptation that allows them to fold up into an sealed oval in order to protect themselves from the powerful firestorms that their planet’s atmosphere suffers from. While by their nature they are home-loving and simple people, rarely leaving their home planet, their technology has been made available for adaptation by peoples on other fire planets.
Grun
Slow, peaceful, known as deep-space traders
Hispirians
Formed from the organic fusing of thousands of intelligent snakes, they are assassins from the Janfar 9 moon of the planet, Jan-Jan-Last
Gorm
Jellified but highly intelligent creatures with possible mindreading capabilities, they are only able to move by the use of motorised carts, and often the employ of subservient species.
Kathlistini
Resemble humans despite not being a subspecies, they are around seven feet tall, spindly and bony.
GLOSSARY OF NAMED SPACECRAFT
Dirt Devils
Small planetary fighter ships, circular, fast but with limited body armour.
Enforcers
Newer city police craft, faster and sleeker than older Peacekeepers.
Grun Freighter Draft V14
A deep-space cargo freighter, huge and cumbersome. Built by the Grun, a generally peaceful species who thrive on inter-galactic trade.
Matilda
Lia’s ship, a Pioneer-Class XL Rogue Hunter Assault Craft, which resembles a spider on landing and taking off, while reverting to a more elongated shape for longer journeys. Designed for close-contact space battles.
Peacekeepers
Older city police craft, shaped with a flat front end and a long, triangular pointed tail.
Prosperity
Raylan Climlee’s space station, resembles an exploded metal ball.
Slither-14 Ultra-Space Fighter
Unique spacecraft built over millennia from scrounged parts by the Hiberian assassins on Jan-Jan-Last
GLOSSARY OF TERMINOLOGY
Off-Worlder
A blanket term used by most species to describe all species with origins from a different planet or star system. A local on one planet becomes an off-worlder on another.
Human sub-species
As humans explored the galaxy and colonised other star systems, they seemingly had two main goals: annihilation and reproduction, and anything that didn’t adhere to the first usually adhered to the second. Therefore, over millennia, numerous subspecies of human have developed through interbreeding with other races, genetic development and gene manipulation, or biotechnological engineering. Some are nearly identical, others vastly different. According to current galactic law, a subspecies can consider itself a unique species (and therefore be able to create its own rules and regulations) when it is no longer able to breed with pureblood humans. So far, roughly thirty former subspecies have been identified thus.
Expansions
A significant wave of space exploration that occurred some time in the past is known as an Expansion. Each wave is usually identified as a great departure of new deep-space exploration craft or the discovery of two or more previously-unknown inhabited systems within a relatively short space of time. Sometimes, when a series of linked systems are discovered, the period becomes known as a Great Expansion.
Stasis-Ultraspace
This is a form of long-distance travel, and the only practical way for spacecraft to move from system to system. Ships adapted to enter stasis-ultraspace do so using a special transmitter which creates a miniature wormhole around the ship and places it in the destination system, so that effectively the ship goes nowhere in actual distance. However, the energy used for each jump is immense, meaning that only bigger craft are able to carry the fuel needed to achieve it. In addition, while the time taken for the jump is instantaneous, on busy routes a time given for a jump would be the time that ship rem
ained queued behind other craft using the same route, although there are adjacent routes for ships of similar size, and using a hop coordinate for a different class-size is a breach of intergalactic law.
Inter-planetary hops are common, but moving from one star system to another is a far riskier business. On top of that, since the coordinates of each wormhole jump needed to be manually created, it is not possible to blindly jump into deep space. An incorrect coordinate will cause the ship to remain in its original position, while new routes are added by exploration ships—some manned, some not—that travel into deep space using lightspeed-based methods. For this reason, new systems are only added to the known galaxy every fifty or sixty Earth-years, and often access to such systems is severely restricted to prevent clashes with potentially hostile natives.
Thank you for reading Fire Fight!
At the moment, this book is a single short novel, but if you would like to see more of the characters and the world of the Fire Quarter expanded into a longer series, please let Chris know by email at
chrisward@amillionmilesfromanywhere.net
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
By Chris Ward
About the Author
Contact
Fire Fight
1. Harlan5
2. Lia
3. Caladan
4. Lia
5. Raylan
6. Lia
7. Leon-Ar
8. Harlan5
9. Lia
10. Hiberian-Orst
11. Lia
12. Lia
13. Leon-Ar
14. Raylan
15. Lia
16. Raylan
17. Caladan
18. Lia
19. Raylan
20. Lia
21. Harlan5
22. Raylan
23. Caladan
24. Lia
25. Raylan
26. Lia
27. Caladan
28. Lia
29. Raylan
30. Lia
Glossary of Characters
Glossary of Named Systems, Planets, and Cities
Glossary of Named Races
Glossary of Named Spacecraft
Glossary of Terminology
Thank You!