by M. D. Cooper
“It figures,” Morticia said in their ears, “no one wants to give me a medal. I was brave, too, you know. It was my hull on the line. Not yours.”
Not even a grumpy AI could get Jones down. As they partied later around the buffet table, Macy held his hand. In her form-fitting red dress, she was a sight to behold. And she was all his. Jones kissed her, even though her mouth was stuffed with whipped cream.
Or maybe because it was stuffed with whipped cream.
“I love you, Jim Jones.”
He grinned and threw her a wink. “You have any idea how happy that makes me?”
“You could try telling me.”
“Or…tonight maybe I’ll try showing you,” Jones was about to swat her on the ass when Captain Spectacular strolled up to shake their hands.
“You’re one hell of a pilot, Macy. If you want to join my capital ship, you only have to say the word.”
“Thanks, Captain,” Macy said with a glance at Jones. “But I’m going to stay with the Barnburner. It’s my home. It’s where my family is.”
Spectacular nodded. “You’re a lucky man, Jones.” He shook the captain’s hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a mission to attend to. For now, this is goodbye, but when the call comes, when Earth needs you…”
Jones stood up straighter. “We’ll be there, sir. I promise.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Jones and Macy stood, their arms around each other, as Captain Spectacular made his way through the banquet hall. “You could’ve had him,” Jones said. “I saw the way he looked at you. You could’ve traded up.”
“I know,” Macy said with a shrug. She threw her arms around his neck. “I guess I just didn’t want to.”
“You guess?” Jones asked with a rise of his eyebrows.
Macy laughed. “Just shut up and kiss me, Jones.”
That was something that Jones could do. He wouldn’t mind if he spent the rest of his life kissing her…
Except Stephen showed up right then with an expression of fright on his face. “The Barnburner just got an encoded message from a mining colony. Something about giant bees coming up from the ground. They’re in trouble.”
Macy groaned and rested her head on Jones’s shoulder.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go kick some bug ass!”
The crew of the Barnburner was hot on the trail of an exciting mission once more, and Jones was feeling just fine. Because those damn bees didn’t know what he knew…and it wouldn’t be the last time.
THE END
— — —
Want to read more by Chris J.Pike?
Starship captains. Space battles. Dramatic relationships with big payoffs.
Close Proximity (Perilous Alliance Book 1)
Kylie Rhoads is a junker. She makes her living traveling the stars, salvaging abandoned ships left over from pirate attacks on the edge of the Gedri system. Some of the hulls are legal for the taking, most aren't.
When a salvage job goes bad, Kylie finds herself on the opposite end of a gun. The hand holding that gun? The SA Space Force, just the people Kylie wants to avoid. To avoid prison, Kylie makes a deal to go deep into the Gedri System and rescue a simple girl but out in the fringe, nothing is as it seems.
With her ex acting as the military liaison, Kylie takes her crew on the most dangerous mission of their lives. Rescue the girl, defeat the crime syndicate, and pray the military holds up their end of the bargain.
Buy it now: http://amzn.to/2qcQ6w2
About the Author
Chris J. Pike is an up and coming sci-fi author, focusing on writing in the Aeon14 universe. When not writing science fiction, he’s watching the Expanse, the Kill Joys, Firefly and anything else that might go boom.
Find Chris J. Pike’s books on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Chris-J.-Pike/e/B06XR1SHDC
Follow along by liking his Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ChrisJPikeAuthor/
Brewing Trouble
By Amy DuBoff
Stolen ship? Check. Cybernetic eye? Check. Coffee beans? Check. Insane mission to steal the perfect power source to brew said beans? Work in progress.
When you go to the trouble of legitimately buying a ship for your illegitimate smuggling operation, and that ship turns out to be stolen from a powerful weapons dealer… well, you might need to figure out why the universe hates you.
But not Jack Tresler; he’s used to being karma’s whipping boy.
Given the choice to take on an ill-fitting cybernetic eye and join a crew of thieves on a crazy heist, or die, he takes the unpleasant modification in stride. After all, it’s just another day in the life.
The thieves are out to steal an innovative energy core—the MEC—and the plan appears to be all too easy. That is until the Vorlox show up to complicate matters. Still, all is not lost. If the gang of zany thieves can get the MEC and keep it from falling into the wrong hands, they just might be able to brew the perfect cup of coffee.
CHAPTER 1: Shot in the Foot
It all started with a ship. More specifically, a stolen ship. Unfortunately for Jack Tresler, he didn’t know it was stolen at the time he purchased it, or that the rightful owner was the most powerful weapons smuggler in the sector, Svetlana Korinov.
In retrospect, Jack should have realized the ship’s terms of sale were too good to be true; like with most of his past “business” dealings, he’d shot himself in the foot. However, the turn of phrase took on a whole new meaning as Svetlana pointed a real gun toward Jack’s actual foot.
“Really, this is all a terrible misunderstanding,” Jack tried to explain.
“Misunderstanding or not, you’re a dead man.” Svetlana charged her laser pistol while a handful of women in her gang looked on with amusement. “I will incinerate you piece by piece.”
Jack held up his hands and plastered on the most charming smile his mediocre looks allowed. “While I’m sure killing me would bring you great short-term satisfaction—I mean, who doesn’t like to start out Monday morning with a revenge killing—what else would it really accomplish? Wouldn’t you rather find out who stole your ship in the first place?”
Svetlana’s violet eyes narrowed to slits beneath her exaggerated eyeliner. “Yes, but how could you possibly be of any use to me?”
“Me? Useful?” Jack forced a smug chuckle and smoothed back his blond hair with one hand. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
The weapons dealer activated Jack’s holopin she was holding in her free hand, displaying his credentials. “Jack Tresler, age thirty-four. Outstanding warrants on five planets and banned from a sixth for… inappropriate yodeling?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Hey, it was very appropriate at the time. The authorities and I just didn’t see eye-to-eye.”
“Of course. And what about the forty-eight thousand credits in unpaid debts?”
Jack made a dismissive flip of his wrist. “Petty cash. That’ll all be settled up after my next job.”
“The one you intended to complete with my ship?” Svetlana asked.
“Well, yeah…”
Svetlana scoffed. “You’re a small-time criminal incapable of following through with his promises. I’d be doing everyone a favor if I end you.” She altered handgun’s aim from Jack’s foot to his head.
“Whoa, whoa!” Jack raised his hands again with renewed urgency. “You stopped reading too soon. You didn’t get to the part about my being a legendary detective.”
“You mean your one-time role as Sherlock in a primary school play?”
Jack lowered his hands. “Wow, you really did read my file.”
“Your acting career won’t help uncover who stole my ship, which confirms that you’re utterly useless to me.”
“Did you watch a recording of the play? You have to admit that an eight-year-old detective is adorable.”
“Enough!” Svetlana took a step forward.
“Actually—” a woman in her late-twent
ies standing in the throng behind Svetlana cut in, “—we do need someone to modify for our next venture.”
Svetlana lowered her weapon part way, which Jack hardly found to be an improvement since that meant it was pointing directly at his groin. Nonetheless, “modify” sounded like a status upgrade from “dead”.
“If I can be of service…” Jack began tentatively.
“I don’t know if he’s worth the trouble, Alissa,” Svetlana stated.
“I’d rather not lose an eye, if I can help it,” Alissa replied. She looked Jack over with her tawny eyes partially obscured by dark, side-swept bangs. “I can handle him.”
Svetlana sighed and deactivated her laser pistol. “Fine. If he assists and is successful, his debt to me will be forgiven.”
Jack perked up. “You won’t regret this!”
“I already do,” Svetlana muttered as she holstered her handgun. “Prep him for surgery.”
“Oh, right… the ‘modifications’,” Jack gulped. “What exactly—”
“We need to replace your eye,” Alissa stated with the matt-of-factness of a tax auditor.
“My eye?”
She nodded. “Your left eye. You will be fitted with a multispectral camera that will feed directly into your brain.”
“That sounds…”
“It’s minor brain surgery, don’t worry,” Alissa said. “Morine has done it at least once before.”
Jack crossed his arms. “Yeah, about that…”
“It’s the implant or an execution. Take your pick.”
“No Option C?”
Alissa groaned and turned back toward her boss. “Svetl—!”
“Wait, I’ll do it!” Jack interrupted.
Alissa relaxed. “Great. You’ll hardly notice a difference! Then we can get to work.”
*
Jack’s eye fluttered open.
A bright light shone down on him, obscuring his view of the room at first. Then, a figure next to his bed came into focus.
“That is… horrifying.” Alissa’s nose wrinkled.
“What?”
Alissa took a step backward from his medical bed. “Well, the apparatus didn’t quite fit.”
“What do you mean?” As Jack asked the question, he realized that the left half of his vision was missing. He reached toward his face and felt a metal protrusion coming from where his left eye used to be. “Great.”
“I’m sure it’ll seem natural in no time.”
“Liar.”
Alissa shrugged. “I tried.”
Jack sighed and sat up on the medical bed. His head swam. “I didn’t realize this was going to half-blind me.”
“The implant isn’t activated yet—this was just the installation. We’ll give you another day or two to heal before we turn it on.”
“When are you going to tell me what it’s for?”
The woman eyed him. “Someone’s cranky.”
“Well, how do you expect me to be?” Jack shot back. “I bought a ship that I didn’t know was stolen, you held me at gunpoint, and now you’ve taken my eye—my favorite eye, I might add. Aside from my terrible luck, I don’t know why this is happening or what your aim is.”
Alissa stuck out her lower lip in a mock display of pity. “It has been a rough day for you, hasn’t it?”
Jack ignored her and slid off the bed. His sense of equilibrium was basically nonexistent and he needed to keep both his hands on the bed to prevent himself from toppling over.
After watching him sway awkwardly like a newborn foal for a minute, Alissa came over to him and placed her arm around his waist. “You want to know what’s going on? I’ll show you.”
She led him out of the exam room—more accurately, a storage closet with a second-hand hospital bed and tarp on the floor—into a drab hallway. Jack took in the details of the corridor and strained to identify any background mechanical sounds that might provide more information about his location. As near as he could tell, they were no longer on Svetlana’s freighter where he’d been interrogated, but rather somewhere in the depths of a space station.
They traversed the dimly lit hall lined with utility lines and eventually arrived at a hatch. Alissa spun the manual wheel to unseal the door, then leaned her shoulder against it. The hatch creaked open.
The other side was far more welcoming than where Jack had awoken after the surgery—an open room furnished with two white couches, an assortment of potted plants, and various other furnishings that made it feel like a living room. Most surfaces were white and shiny to a degree that Jack considered completely impractical; even without the worry of tracking mud in from outside, the fingerprint smudges could get way too easily out of control.
“Where are we?” he asked.
Alissa re-sealed the hatch using a lever that folded back into a disguised recess within the wall. “This is Luxuria, our main base. If I told you any more, Svetlana would probably have me kill you.”
“Keeping it vague works for me,” Jack hastily replied.
“But, now that you’re sporting that neat little piece of hardware, I can share exactly what it is you’re going to do for us.” She stepped over to a low table between the two couches and activated a translucent touch-surface panel inset in the top. She navigated through a menu and made a selection. The tabletop flickered as a hologram of a slowly rotating cylindrical object appeared above it.
Jack studied the image. “I haven’t a clue what that is.”
“It’s a micro energy core, or MEC,” Alissa explained. “It’s a new prototype that was developed by GiganCorp Labs.”
“They’re the giant, corporate research company, right?”
“The very one.” Alissa scowled with disdain. “MECs were completely theoretical until this prototype was developed. The potential applications are endless—biomedical, backup power, kitchen appliances…”
“And let me guess: weapons,” Jack completed.
“Correct.”
Jack shook his head and groaned. “Svetlana wants said prototype, huh?”
Alissa nodded. “And you’re going to help me steal it.”
CHAPTER 2: A Terrible Plan
Jack gingerly itched around his cybernetic eye. “Break into GiganCorp Labs and steal their prototype?”
“Correct,” Alissa acknowledged without batting an eye.
“You said that with a straight face.”
“Because I’m completely serious.”
“But that’s insane!” Jack exclaimed. “Their security—”
“Won’t be that big of a deal,” Alissa cut in. “At least not with the aid of that fancy Thingamado in your head.”
Jack crossed his arms. “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?”
Alissa rolled her eyes. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Says the woman who cut out my eye!”
“I’ll admit that wasn’t the best way to start out this relationship. But keep in mind that I did save your life.”
Jack scoffed. “Yeah, spared me so I could instead rot on a prison planet after we’re caught trying to steal a gizmo from what I can only imagine is a highly secure research facility. Yeah, that was really considerate.”
“MEC,” Alissa corrected.
“Oh, so you get to use ‘thingamado’ and I’m not allowed to use ‘gizmo’?”
“Thingamado is literally the brand name. Clearly you didn’t hear the capital ‘t’.”
Jack didn’t have a good response to that. “Oh.”
“Anyway,” Alissa continued, “we won’t get caught.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m awesome.” She closed the hologram on the tabletop and the screen returned to its clear, glass-like state.
“So I’m not doing this alone?” Jack clarified.
“Oh. Oh no,” Alissa laughed. “No, you’d most certainly be killed. Like, immediately.”
“I thought security wouldn’t be a problem with my cool eye-thing?”
; She shook her head. “That’s only a small part of it. I mean, honestly, you’re just a tool for me to use so I didn’t have to do that to myself.”
The words cut deep. “Ouch.”
Momentary regret flashed across Alissa’s face. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.”
“You think?” Jack sat down on one of the white couches, massaging his temples. “I do appreciate you stopping my execution and all, but I wasn’t trying to wrong any of you. One bad purchasing decision and my life has sort of been derailed in the last twenty-four hours.”
“You were actually unconscious for three days but…” Alissa shook her head. “That’s irrelevant. Look, we’re going to have to work together, so let’s just start over and make this work.”
“I guess I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”
“Not really, no. Unless you want Svetlana to shoot you.”
“Still not liking that option.”
Alissa cracked a smile. “All right. In that case, I should probably show you to your quarters so you can get some real sleep—that anesthesia doesn’t make for quality rest, even if it has been three days.”
“I was going to say, I feel like I should be way better rested.”
“Well, you better be after tonight because we have quite the journey ahead of us.”
“So, this isn’t just a simple theft?” Jack questioned.
“Hopefully everything will be straightforward once we get there, but we’ll need to stock up on some supplies first, and some of those items won’t be easy to obtain.”
“Such as…?”
Alissa winced. “A nano induction module.”
“You have to be kidding.”
“I know, I know. I have a plan.”
Jack raised his one good eyebrow. “There isn’t any reasonable approach for dealing with the Winkelson Brothers.”