I wouldn’t be pushing the gees until we got human-sized acceleration couches. That ruled out a trip to Silverado. So I decided on the next best thing.
“Drone,” I said, “have you got any useful technical expertise, apart from scrubbing, polishing, and killing stray dogs?”
“I am a highly qualified engineer. I am also a trained medic. I can change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects,” it finished, with a shit-eating grin on its screen.
Dolph and I were silent for a moment, ticking off skills on our fingers to see how we stacked up.
“By the way, that’s a quote from—”
“All right, all right, no need to impress us with your literary acumen as well. In that case, I’m sure you’ll be able to help the Silveradans with a little problem they’re having.”
I radioed Silverado. It was one-half AU further from their sun, a cold and bleak little place. They had no FTL comms, so the lightspeed lag made conversation frustrating but at last, using the Scavarchis’ names, I managed to get the Crown Prince on the horn.
“This is in regards to a certain cargo that your boys took off me a few days ago,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to come get it back. I just wondered if you know exactly what you’ve got.”
The interplanetary silence answered me. I was pretty sure they had no clue. All the cargo looked like was a bunch of very long, very strong cables, and some fancy tension dampeners, as well as a few other bits and pieces for the anchor points.
“What that is,” I said, “is a space elevator starter kit. The Generalissimo pretends to despise space. But even he knows you can’t get by without access to orbit these days. So he ordered the essential high-tech components for a space elevator. Everything that’s not there you’ll be able to put together yourselves at that assembly plant you’ve got. The only missing piece is the expertise to put it together. I suppose the Generalissimo was planning to ask the Eks. You do that, they’ll take half your planet off you in consultancy fees. So instead, my associate here is going to tell you exactly how to make a space elevator. If you’re not recording, start recording now.”
I gave them thirty seconds to get their recording equipment cued up.
“OK, chrome dome, you’re on,” I whispered.
And for the next three hours and a half, the drone told them how to make a space elevator.
Then it spent another four hours answering their questions.
I sloped off for a nap in the air, feeling pretty good. With a space elevator, the Crown Prince would be able to retake Gorongol in no time. I just hoped he was nice about it.
When Dolph and I woke up, the drone was still on the radio, telling the Silveradans that if they wanted, they could spray some vaporized aluminum over the cables, and as the planet rotated through its own magnetic field, electric currents would be induced into the cables, so they could use that to run the lights and heat and such on the elevator cars ...
I sliced a hand through the air. “Wrap it up. They’ve got to learn to walk before they can run.”
I said goodbye to the Crown Prince. Then, floating above the drive console, I initiated the FTL field generator.
I couldn’t wait to show Lucy our new ship.
The only question was: What would we name her?
About Felix R. Savage
Felix R. Savage’s “The Scrapyard Ship” was written with interjections, complaints, and improvements from Walter Blaire, author of The Eternal Front and other Sci-Fi novels. It is set in the Cluster, a new space opera universe co-created by Felix and Walter, with many more exciting adventures to come! No one say “clusterfu…”
Follow Mike Starrunner and the crew at www.clusterverse.com, and sign up to be notified when the first trilogy of action-packed Clusterverse novels launches later in 2018.
Felix writes hard science fiction, space opera, and comedic science fiction. He has also occasionally been known to commit fantasy. He woke up one day to learn that he was a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, but he continues to keep a low profile, and never stops watching out for any sign the lizard people have found him.
Felix’s latest release is The Chemical Mage, the first book in a hard science-fiction series packed with plot twists and suspenseful fleet action and battles. Check it out here. Or sign up for Felix’s mailing list and pick a free book to start reading now!
Here Be Dragons
by Lindsay Buroker
“ONLY A SUICIDAL LUNATIC WOULD TRY TO LAND DOWN THERE.” McCall Richter fidgeted with her bracelet while wondering if familial loyalty required her to risk her ship.
Wasn’t it enough that she’d flown all the way out to a penal moon so inhospitable that it had the nickname Dragons? Thanks to all the cartographers who’d thought it amusing to write “Here Be Dragons” under it on their maps.
“I have recently downloaded an upgrade to my piloting protocol,” Scipio, her android pilot/bodyguard/business partner, said.
“One that allows you to assume the role of a suicidal lunatic?”
Scipio looked over at her, his expression unchanging, though his silver eyes conveyed remarkable blandness. “One that gives me the ability to land your ship in inhospitable conditions. As a sturdy DuraSky 3636 android, the likelihood of my survival is high even in the event of a crash.”
“Therefore, you’re not being suicidal.”
“Correct.”
“I could be suicidal for flying with you.”
“Correct.”
“Glad we got that cleared up.”
McCall eyed the jungle below them, the cockpit’s wraparound holographic display giving them almost a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. A thick orange, green, and pink canopy obscured the terrain below. Maps promised canyons, rivers, craters, and entire lakes hidden from aerial view. In places, the Star Surfer’s sensors could verify that. In other places, the sheer mass of vegetation thwarted them. The only certainty was that the jungle was full of life. Serpents and dragons and who knew what other genetically engineered beasts the scientists who’d terraformed the moon had loosed into the wilds.
What good was a penal colony if people deposited there weren’t penalized? Perhaps by being eaten by a dragon. The scientists, inspired by the cartographers, had apparently made plenty of those.
“I’m ready,” McKenzie said, stopping on the threshold of the cockpit, since Junkyard’s hundred-and-fifty-pound form blocked the entrance. The black, white, brown, and gray mutt snored away without acknowledging her.
McKenzie frowned down at the dog but didn’t step over him. She wore a full suit of green combat armor. Where had she gotten the money for that? She’d recently left her last job, the latest of twenty or thirty, supposedly over a “difference of opinion.”
“Put down as close to Shangri-La as you can, please,” McKenzie added.
Scipio tilted his head. “Shangri-La? Do you reference the fictional utopia described in—”
“She means Tianlong Three,” McCall said, knowing Scipio could and would recite the entire encyclopedia article, if not the whole novel. “My sister is under the delusion a colony founded by a bunch of autistic people will be utopian.”
“I didn’t say that.” McKenzie scowled through her faceplate. “But those founders were brilliant scientists, mathematicians, authors, and philosophers. If their offspring are like them, we might fit in there. That’s all I said.”
McCall started to retort that she fit in just fine on her own ship, but noticed the travel pack strapped to her sister’s back. A huge pack. “You’re not planning to stay, are you? I thought you just wanted to find it.”
“And apply for citizenship. If they’ll have me. And they should. I can design infrastruc
ture for any terrain, and I can fix anything. If they’re completely self-sufficient, as the stories say, they may have a lot of old equipment in need of repairs.”
“Assuming the colony is still there. It’s been eighty years, and for brilliant people, they’ve been awfully quiet.”
“They’re there. I’m sure people like us could start a successful colony even in a remote, inhospitable location.”
“People like us? Clumsy geeks with the wilderness skills of chubby lap dogs?”
“You know what I mean.” McKenzie looked down at McCall’s wrist, at the bracelet McCall was still fiddling with.
Frowning, McCall let go of it. “Fine, go and live like a monk. But don’t expect me to visit.”
“You didn’t visit when I lived in Perun Central.” McKenzie arched her eyebrows. “Even though you have three clients there.”
McCall opened her mouth to make an excuse, realized that was all it would be, and said nothing instead. Her sister’s eyebrows remained up.
McCall looked back toward the cockpit controls, finding the silence uncomfortable. And typical. Just like the last time McCall had visited. Other than sharing goofy names their mother had chosen during a phase of reading Old Earth romance novels, they had little in common. Also, McCall had a hard time forgetting all the times her older sister had turned her back on her during school lunches. She’d been on a never-ending quest to fit in with the popular kids. It seemed McKenzie was trying to find someone else to fit in with now.
“I believe I can land the Star Surfer on that ledge,” Scipio said, oblivious to the awkward silence. Or indifferent to it. Or both. Either way, he was unflappable, as always. McCall fondly remembered the childhood year that she’d pretended to be an android. That might have been about the time McKenzie had been shooing her away. “It will require use of the quad grippers and a departure from the top hatch,” he added.
“Meaning we’re landing on a cliff and McKenzie will be climbing?”
“Correct.”
“Good thing you bought that fancy armor,” McCall told her sister.
“It is, because I’m sure you’ll need help climbing, and with the enhanced strength it gives me, I can offer you a boost.”
McCall blinked. “I’m not leaving the ship.”
“You have to.”
“No, I don’t. I made the map, and I brought you all the way out here, even though I have clients waiting for me to find things more criminal than genetically engineered dragons.”
“You’re the one who dug up all the clues. If the map is wrong and we need to adjust our route, you’ll be the one to know how.”
“Scipio helped me make the map. He’ll go along with you if needed.” McCall felt guilty whenever she volunteered Scipio for dirty work, but he was, by his own admission, nearly indestructible. The only time she’d seen him take serious damage had been during a run-in with a rogue imperial cyborg who hadn’t appreciated being hunted down.
“I don’t object to him coming, but I strongly object to you not coming. Be logical, McCall. Finding things is your gift. If Shangri-La were easy to locate, people would come here all the time.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Mom would have wanted us to work together.”
McCall scowled at the deck. She’d been afraid her sister would play the mom card at some point. They both regretted that so many family gatherings had involved arguing, accusations, and temper tantrums in front of their poor mother, a woman who’d loved them even though they’d been hard kids to love. McKenzie liked to cash in on McCall’s guilt from time to time. McCall recognized the manipulation, but she hadn’t figured out how to wall off her emotions so she could say no to it. Maybe she should have tried harder as a little girl to turn herself into an android.
* * *
McCall’s toes were going numb.
The sales robot that had sold her the jet boots had extolled the virtues of a secure fit, but she kept wondering if losing the circulation to her toes for too long would cause permanent damage. Then she wondered if she was weird for being more alarmed about that than the long drop into the gorge below. If the boots failed, she would plummet a hundred feet, bounce off the top of her ship, and splash into the river another hundred feet below. Or maybe she would splat into those prickly ferns next to it.
“I can’t believe you painted your ship purple,” McKenzie called over her shoulder.
She was climbing while McCall hovered behind her, the gauntlets of her fancy combat armor giving McKenzie far greater strength than usual.
McCall forced herself to focus on her sister’s back rather than the fall or her boots. This wasn’t the appropriate place for a panic attack. When they reached the top and a giant dragon sprang out to eat them, that would be the place.
“Nobody finds purple ships a threat,” McCall replied. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the thunderous squawks, shrieks, and screeches emanating from the jungle above and below them. Further, a waterfall roared over the edge of the cliff to their left, the river marking the canyon they were to head up. “It’s a scientific fact.”
“I’d think … your work … want to be inconspicuous.”
McCall flew closer, struggling to hear over the noise of the waterfall.
“All I do is fly around and do research on the sys-net. I’m not skulking through seedy space ports, looking for bad guys to pounce on.” McCall had chosen her line of work, being a self-employed skip tracer, specifically because she never had to leave her ship or interact with criminals. Or much of anyone. Most of her clients knew to send text messages rather than comming her.
“No pouncing? Sounds boring.”
“We can’t all lead the scintillating life of a sewer designer.”
“I won an award for that waste treatment system. And that’s not all I design.”
McCall bit back a comment about all the jobs McKenzie had been fired from in her life. As she’d finally learned, nothing except hurt feelings ever came from their sniping sessions. And it wasn’t as if she could have dealt with bosses and co-workers and office politics, either. There was a reason she’d constructed the career she had.
“Just wait until I get the costs down for the space elevator I’m designing,” McKenzie added, “and the empire builds it. It’ll be amazing.”
A noisy hiss came from above. Since McCall hovered only ten feet from the top, she had a good view of the monstrous snake head sticking over the edge. A dark tongue darted between fangs long enough to sharpen a butcher knife on. Or maybe a sword. Yellow eyes looked McCall up and down, assessing her ability to defend herself, or perhaps her caloric potential.
McCall tapped her wrist controller to pause her ascent and pulled out her blazer from its holster. Normally, she wouldn’t pick a fight with innocent wildlife, but this snake had the look of an imperial cyborg fresh from a 50K run, making selections at a buffet.
Unaware of it, McKenzie kept climbing. The yellow eyes shifted focus to her. Before McCall could shout a warning, the flat, arrow-shaped head darted toward her sister.
Though her heart pounded in her ears, McCall stayed calm enough to aim and fire twice. It helped that she wasn’t the snake’s target.
Her crimson blazer bolts struck as it tried to sink its fangs into McKenzie’s helmet. One scorched a hole into its thick body. The other blew up its head, and snake brains spattered the cliff and McKenzie’s armor. The remains of its limp body slithered over the edge of the cliff, clunking her shoulder as it fell.
McCall lowered her blazer with a shaking hand. It took her three tries to get it back in the holster. She was well aware that she would have been too late if McKenzie hadn’t been wearing armor. Fortunately, those long fangs hadn’t even scratched the helmet.
“You shoot well for someone who doesn’t pounce on bad guys that often.” McKenzie twisted to look at the snake’s body—it had landed on the Surfer.
Maybe Scipio would remove it, and Junkyard could have it for dinner. The dog had been
put out at being left behind for this adventure.
“Sometimes, bad guys want to pounce on you. I try to avoid that, but figure it’s better safe than sorry.” When a client concerned for her welfare had first dragged her to a shooting range, McCall had been delighted to learn that her lack of athletic ability didn’t translate to ineptitude when it came to marksmanship. Different genes, maybe.
“Good idea. Though I’m shocked you don’t have a set of combat armor.” McKenzie resumed her climb, surprisingly blasé about the snake incident. Maybe she believed nothing in the jungle could get her through that armor. McCall wouldn’t take that bet.
“I’m shocked you do.” McCall resumed her own ascent. “I can’t even wear a shirt with a tag in it without going nuts.” She wiggled her numb toes. She was making a rare exception when it came to wearing uncomfortable clothing.
“Don’t laugh,” McKenzie said as they stepped into dense moss coating the top of the cliff, “but I went to a hypnotist. To help with the claustrophobia. I’ve been planning this adventure for a while.”
The huge pack on her back promised this was more than an “adventure” for her.
McKenzie peered into the dense, dark foliage ahead of them and out over the gorge they’d climbed from. “There’s nothing left for me back on Perun.”
“You got rid of your apartment and everything?”
“I sold my car to buy the armor, and the apartment… Yeah, it’s gone too.”
Her phrasing made McCall suspect there was more to the story, but she didn’t pry. She was surprised McKenzie was being this open with her, as it was. For the first ten years of her professional career, McKenzie had always pretended she was doing great, that the frequent employment changes represented new opportunities she’d chosen to take rather than jobs she’d been fired from. McCall remembered being envious of the design awards she’d shown off, until she’d dug around and learned that McKenzie had, on several occasions, come close to being the kind of person McCall got hired to find.
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 10
