VENATORIS
AN AURORA RHAPSODY SHORT STORY
G. S. JENNSEN
2016
VENATORIS
Copyright © 2016 by G. S. Jennsen.
Cover Design by HammerHead70
Cover Typography by G. S. Jennsen
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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“Venatoris” was originally published in ‘Beyond the Stars: A Planet Too Far,’ edited by Patrice Fitzgerald and Ellen Campbell.
Venatoris / G. S. Jennsen.—2nd ed.
AURORA RHAPSODY
is
* * *
AURORA RISING
STARSHINE
VERTIGO
TRANSCENDENCE
AURORA RENEGADES
SIDESPACE
DISSONANCE
ABYSM
AURORA RESONANT
RELATIVITY
RUBICON (2017)
REQUIEM (2017/18)
SHORT STORIES
RESTLESS, VOL. I • RESTLESS, VOL. II
APOGEE • SOLATIUM • VENATORIS
RE/GENESIS
Learn more and see a Timeline of the Aurora Rhapsody universe at:
gsjennsen.com/aurora-rhapsody
VENATORIS
AN AURORA RHAPSODY SHORT STORY
Humanity may have colonized much of the galaxy, but space remains as dangerous as ever, and so do the people inhabiting it.
When Alexis Solovy—space explorer, freelance scout, recalcitrant wanderer—lands the contract of a lifetime, the race is on to claim the prize. Now she must not only outrun but outsmart her rivals to uncover the secrets of an ancient, mysterious pulsar. For deep in the void, far beyond the reach of civilization, wealth and renown matter little absent the ultimate reward: survival.
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“The fast lane I am flying down is one
with no end in sight
filled with reckless adventure and
paved with dangerous delights.”
— Ashley Young
YUZHOU LI ORBITAL STATION
SHI SHEN STELLAR SYSTEM
1,080 PARSECS FROM EARTH
MARCH 2317
* * *
“DOUBLE BOURBON, STRAIGHT UP. Double everything. Except the ice. Don’t double the ice.”
Alexis Solovy glanced down the bar in idle curiosity at the source of the dramatic pronouncement. A woman with frizzy black hair and pale, bleached skin sagged off a stool and onto the bar, arms splayed out in defeat. She looked familiar, but damned if Alex could pull a name out of anywhere. “Bad day?”
The woman didn’t lift her head from where it lay propped sideways on her elbow. “My ship is trashed. A mangled heap. Bloody asteroid spun out when I tried to grapple it. I limped back here like a crippled monkey, jack shit to show for my trouble.”
Alex raised her glass in contrived sympathy and turned away. If the woman didn’t have any useful leads, it wasn’t worth the pain of engaging in conversation, polite or otherwise.
Intel was the only reason to come to this godforsaken place, the sleaziest bar on the sleaziest space station for two kiloparsecs. Tidbits. Information. Leads. On a good night, contracts.
Her eyes roved over the room in search of better prospects. The bar was nearly two-thirds full—loud and busy, but not so full as to preclude card and target games and the occasional display of bravado. Bad synth blaring out of the speakers made it feel rowdier than the reality.
Alex knew half the people on sight. Some she was on a last name basis with; others, an epithet basis. Many were interstellar scouts, freelance—same as her, while a few were traders, smugglers, or both. But she didn’t see any corp reps or brokers. Was no one in this cursed place doing business?
“Alex, doll, you need something stronger than…what are you drinking?”
She leveled an unimpressed scowl in Bob Patera’s direction as he leaned on the bar beside her. “A Carina Nova. They make it in civilized places like Earth. Luckily, the bartender’s visited civilized places.”
He nodded with as much vigor as his inebriated state allowed. “Still need to get you something stronger.”
“Can’t. I’m working.”
He stared at her skeptically but couldn’t seem to think of a suitable response. Finally he took a long, fulsome sip of his drink, a dark and frothy concoction. “Go on a date with me.”
It had to be at least the seventy-fourth time he’d asked in the two and a half years since she’d met him. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you think you’re a space pirate, Bob.”
“But I am a space pirate.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “My point exactly.”
“You dated that Ethan Tollis guy, and he thinks he’s a synth star.”
“He is a synth star.” And the dating happened years ago, before Ethan found well-deserved fame, but she wasn’t inclined to correct him.
He looked genuinely offended. “I am a space pirate.”
Patera was a good guy; a functioning drunk and a righteous lech, but a good guy nonetheless. He took the odd scouting job mostly to entertain himself and to have tales to brag about at any of a staggering variety of bars, of which this was only one.
“Oh, clearly. But—”
She recognized the man the instant he stepped in the bar and made sure she was the first person he made eye contact with. “Sorry, Bob, got to go. Working.”
The man sat down at a table in the corner near the door. She stood up and headed for it with an air of deliberate casualness. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to notice him and beat her there, but she also didn’t want anyone else to notice her running for him.
She made it to the table scot-free and slid in opposite him. “You have a job?” Perhaps not the smoothest greeting, but she rarely had the patience for pleasantries.
He didn’t appear to mind. As a respected and experienced broker for numerous Alliance corps, he presumably knew interstellar scouts weren’t always the most socially well-adjusted people.
“Astral Materials is getting ready to post an open contract for rare, high value elements at a newly discovered pulsar in Messier 71.”
Messier 71 lay a considerable distance from Shi Shen, out in the void beyond settled space. She was okay with that.
“What’s special about it?”
“It’s a millisecond pulsar with three suspected planets identified. The scientific data is so promising they already gave it a name: Shanshuo. It’s the Chinese word for—”
“Scintillation. I know. And it’s an open contract?”
“Should hit the boards in the next hour or so. You did a great job on the contract for Palaimo last month, so I thought you’d be interested in a little forewarning.”
Pulsar planets were rare, and rare was interesting. Better yet, millisecond pulsars were very, very old, which meant lots of opportunities for elements to bake, mature and transform. The odds leaned toward something lucrative waiting at Shanshuo.
She harbored no doubts she would find that something if it was there to find, but she also had to find it first. “What’s the payout?”
“Depends on what you find.”
Her gaze bore into him until he made a prevaricating motion. “200K to 1.2 million.”
She managed to stand up without sending the chair skittering across the floor. “Appreciate the tip.”
Then she slinked out the door, hoping no one noticed her exit, and hurried down the curving walkway of the station’s outer torus as she messaged Kennedy.
Ken, where are you? It’s time to quit partying and start working.
The response took several seconds to come in.
Are you sure? I literally just met a delicious merchant from Arcadia. He sells custom wide-band decrypters fabbed onsite.
And he needs you to come to his hotel room so he can show them to you?
Actually I suggested the hotel room.
Alex reached the transfer lift and hopped aboard as it departed.
Hey, it’s your vacation, but you said you wanted to come on a job with me so you could, and I quote, ‘See what I did with all my free time.’ Here’s your chance. You can stay and bed Don Juan if you want, but I’m clamps off in twenty.
Oh, fine. I’ll meet you at the ship. I’ve got to disentangle myself here.
Twenty, Ken.
The hangar deck did not look to be in compliance with any safety regs from this century, and certainly not Earth Alliance regs, which Shi Shen claimed to be subject to. Maybe the jurisdiction got fuzzy once one breached space? Alex knew better, though. Her mother—Queen Admiral of the Universe, Earth Alliance Strategic Command Division—would have an apoplectic fit if she saw the wreck this place was. But her mother did not deign to frequent places such as this.
A third of the bays were filled with half-broken ships while their owners, bots and assorted mechanics tried to put them back together. Two men were busy installing a new impulse engine in the ship next to hers, right there on the deck. She shook her head and strode past them.
The Siyane sat at the end of the left row. Sleek, aerodynamic lines gleamed panther black, giving it a predatory appearance. It wasn’t the largest ship in the bay, but by God it was the most beautiful. As well it should be, since she’d designed it herself. Built to spec by the company Kennedy worked for, it represented nothing short of perfection.
…Except for all the upgrades and customizations she desperately wanted to make but could not yet afford. Step by step, day by day.
Kennedy came rushing up behind her, a mess of golden curls bouncing around a flushed face as she repositioned the straps of her jade slip dress on her shoulders. She skidded to a stop in a huff. “You’re not on board yet? I could’ve gotten—”
“You can tell me on the way, Ken. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“On an adventure. Trust me, it’ll be fun.”
SIYANE
MESSIER 71
PSR J1952+1846
4,220 PARSECS FROM EARTH
Many people believed humanity’s mere presence in the stars beyond its home planet had rendered space civilized.
Superluminal travel allowed them to hopscotch over the void on their way from one colony to the next. Half the time they didn’t even bother to glance out a ship’s viewport and note it was the stars they journeyed through.
But out here, twelve hundred parsecs from the nearest settled world—which happened to be the most uncivilized world of them all, run by gangsters, murderers and thieves—space revealed its true nature. Vast. Untamed. Dangerous.
In other words, her playground.
Alex noted all this with a brief smile of anticipation as she increased the thrust of the impulse engine and accelerated into the stellar system hiding in a far corner of Messier 71. Not the venue for idle musing.
The race was already on. Word of the contract had spread across the width and breadth of the freelance scout network by now, and she’d be deluding herself if she thought she’d be able to close this deal without competition.
The rules for claiming ‘property’ in unexplored, unowned space were straightforward: plant a beacon at the location detailing the extent of the claim and the name of the claimant. Once the broadcast reached the relevant authorities—a matter of seconds—the claim was certified. Period, full stop. It was the only practical way to handle development of the forty billion star systems still unexplored in their little corner of the galaxy.
The various governments generated much to-do about their new discoveries. Corporations, however, simply took what they wanted.
Well, it would be more accurate to say corporations paid people to find and claim what they wanted for them. People like her….
“Oh, chyertu.” Alex groaned as the long-range scanner picked up the telltale signs of another vessel in the system. A database check identified the owner of the ship bearing that particular emission signature.
“Problem?” Kennedy muttered as she ascended the spiral staircase from the personal quarters below wearing far more appropriate sweats and a tee.
“Joaquin Kyril’s here.”
Her friend leaned against the cockpit half-wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “Who?”
“Asshole extraordinaire. Not a scintilla of hunter skills to his name. He wouldn’t recognize a neutron star glitch if it sauntered up and slapped him across his peevish face.”
Kennedy’s eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Wait, is he that guy we bumped into on Demeter last year? He was cute.”
“Really, Ken? I offer a string of insults by way of introduction, and you go straight to ‘cute’?”
“I didn’t say he was nice or upstanding. Just said he was cute. I can’t believe you haven’t put a second chair in the cockpit yet. Where am I supposed to sit?”
Alex shrugged. “The floor? The couch back in the main cabin? You’re the only person who ever comes out with me.”
“What about Malcolm?”
She snorted. “We’re nowhere near the stage where he goes with me…anywhere that isn’t on Earth. Seriously, he hasn’t even seen my bedroom.”
“Here on the ship or at your apartment in San Francisco?”
“Either.” She’d been on two dates with Lt. Col. Malcolm Jenner in the past month; the third might have happened this week, were she not out here in the void. Perhaps it would happen next week, if she didn’t die out here in the void.
He wasn’t her type. For one, he was military—a Marine of all things—which she’d been swearing off since…since a long time. He was upstanding and proper and gentlemanly to a cringe-inducing fault.
But he was also smart, considerate and funny in a self-effacing way. And handsome, even if he did have to keep his hair shorn in an annoying military close-crop. For reasons she hadn’t yet found the words to articulate, she liked him. Maybe. She’d worry about it later. Right now she had to work.
Kyril wandered around five AU out from the pulsar…searching for the outermost planetary body? If so, he was searching in the wrong place.
Shanshuo hadn’t been receiving scientific attention long enough for the eccentricity to be accurately measured, but the orbit appeared wildly erratic. Kyril was guessing.
Alex studied what data existed on the sequential orbits of the third body.
ORBIT 1: Inc
lination: 12.3°; Ω: 147°; Period: 3.8 years
ORBIT 2: Inclination: 17.6°; Ω: 132°; Period: 4.1 years
ORBIT 3: Inclination: 9.5°; Ω: 153°; Period: Incomplete (859 days as of yesterday)
She ran through some calculations then killed all the screens to stand and stare out the viewport.
They weren’t able to see the pulsar, of course, as it emitted primarily X-rays. A spectrum filter engaged over the viewport to rectify the deficiency in their eyesight.
“Ooh, that’s pretty.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Like a lighthouse on an ampaKhat high, the X-ray beam spun madly, strobing across the viewport faster than she could blink. It was hypnotizing, and she let it cast its spell. She watched without seeing as her vision blurred under the mesmerizing rhythm.
There.
She dropped back into the cockpit chair, strapped in and set a course for there.
Cold gas giant, 0.8 the size of Jupiter, sporting a standard hydrogen and helium composition. Likely a captured planet, although with an orbit this close it must have been falling into Shanshuo for billions of years. Still, gas giants, whether cold, room temperature or hot, ranked among the most common non-stellar bodies in the galaxy.
“Ugh. Boring.”
Kennedy now sat on the floor, propped up against the wall eating roasted almonds. “Are you kidding? Look at those colors, at the way the clouds swirl together. This planet is spiffing art.”
She didn’t disagree, but…. “I know, but we’re not here for art. We’re here to find elements worth money to Astral Materials, and as lovely as this planet may be, it’s not lucrative. One day I’ll have earned sufficient credits to be able to spend days gaping in wonder at such sights, but that day isn’t today.”
Venatoris: An Aurora Rhapsody Short Story Page 1