Well fuck.
The End
Novels by Erik Schubach
Books in the Worldship Files series...
Leviathan
Books in the Techromancy Scrolls series...
Adept
Soras
Masquerade
Westlands
Avalon
New Cali
Colossus (2020)
Books in the Urban Fairytales series...
Red Hood: The Hunt
Snow: The White Crow
Ella: Cinders and Ash
Rose: Briar's Thorn
Let Down Your Hair
Hair of Gold: Just Right
The Hood of Locksley
Beauty In the Beast
No Place Like Home
Shadow Of The Hook
Armageddon
Books in the New Sentinels series...
Djinn: Cursed
Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness
Fate: No Strings Attached
Open Seas: Just Add Water
Ghost-ish: Lazarus
Anubis: Death's Mistress
Sentinels: Reckoning (2020)
Books in the Drakon series...
Awakening
Dragonfall
Books in the Valkyrie Chronicles series...
Return of the Asgard
Bloodlines
Folkvangr
Seventy Two Hours
Titans
Books in the Tales From Olympus series...
Gods Reunited
Alfheim
Odyssey (2020)
Books in the Bridge series...
Trolls
Traitor
Unbroken
Books in the Fracture series...
Divergence
Novellas by Erik Schubach
The Hollow
Novellas in the Paranormals series...
Fleas
This Sucks
Jinx (2020)
Novellas in the Fixit Adventures...
Fixit
Glitch
Vashon
Descent
Sedition (2020)
Novellas in the Emily Monroe Is Not The Chosen One series...
Night Shift
Unchosen
Rechosen (2020)
Short Stories by Erik Schubach
(These short stories span many different genres)
A Little Favor
Lost in the Woods
MUB
Mirror Mirror On The Wall
Oops!
Rift Jumpers: Faster Than Light
Scythe
Snack Run
Something Pretty
Romance Novels by Erik Schubach
Books in the Music of the Soul universe...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Music of the Soul
A Deafening Whisper
Dating Game
Karaoke Queen
Silent Bob
Five Feet or Less
Broken Song
Syncopated Rhythm
Progeny
Girl Next Door
Lightning Strikes Twice
June
Dead Shot
Music of the Soul Shorts...
(All short stories are standalone and can be read in any order)
Misadventures of Victoria Davenport: Operation Matchmaker
Wallflower
Accidental Date
Holiday Morsels
What Happened In Vegas?
Books in the London Harmony series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Water Gypsy
Feel the Beat
Roctoberfest
Small Fry
Doghouse
Minuette
Squid Hugs
The Pike
Flotilla
Books in the Pike series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Ships In The Night
Right To Remain Silent
Evermore
New Beginnings
Books in the Flotilla series...
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Making Waves
Keeping Time
The Temp
Paying the Toll
Books in the Unleashed series...
Case of the Collie Flour
Case of the Hot Dog
Case of the Gold Retriever
Case of the Great Danish
Case of the Yorkshire Pudding
Case of the Poodle Doodle
Case of the Hound About Town
Case of the Shepherd's Pie
Sample chapter of my Scifi/Paranormal/Space Opera, Worldship Files: Leviathan...
Chapter 1 – Irontown
I navigated my hovering Tac-Bike through the streets of Irontown on C-Ring, Beta-Stack. Another disturbance was reported in the bulkhead corridors. People moved out of the way as my warning beacon strobed. Air traffic was light and I considered heading above street level. This inner ring, like most of the inner rings, was inhabited mostly by Humans and a few unsavories like Sprites, witches, and a few shifters. Which is why I get dispatched here.
I usually get the shit calls, since I was Human too. Why should the Enforcers Brigade be any different than anyone else on the Worldship? Equal opportunity bigotry is the one thing leftover from the old world, that old home called Earth that is just a legend to most of us here on the Leviathan.
I've always thought the stories were just old folktales to keep us lower races in line, that idea that there ever was a place of Open Air, where machines and the ship's oxygen processing systems were not needed to keep us breathing, to keep us alive. But I have questioned it a few times when I've met a couple of the Old Earth Fae who say they were there on the day five thousand years ago when the Leviathan left the orbit of that dying planet.
And Fae... well everyone knows that the Fae cannot lie. Which makes them the best deceivers of all the races, they can spin the truth to make you believe anything they wish and not tell a single lie while doing it. And being in the Brigade, I've seen the outer rings, the lush forests and villages, and rivers that they modeled after Earth. I can almost imagine what it would be like if those forests went on forever instead of being constrained to just a mile wide strip in the fifty-mile diameter torus of the A-Rings.
It is hard to believe that each of the four A-Rings has almost two thousand square miles of space, four times that of the crowded C-Rings. Even more than the surface of the seven-mile diameter asteroid encased in the Heart sphere located... well located in the heart of the Leviathan. The workers and ore extractors there have virtually no gravity, so they can't even come farther out than the small D-Rings without requiring exoskeleton support or magic buffs to support their brittle bone structure in the higher gravity of the spinning rings.
I went past the outer markets then parked and mag-locked my Tactical Bike at one of the many entrances to the labyrinth of corridors, living, and working units of the slums in the bulkhead spaces, assigned to the people who couldn't afford to live outside in the cities and villages crowding the ring's environmental envelope.
An advertisement for cybernetic eye implants was playing across the door, damn taggers with their interactive graffiti were getting so commercial lately. Whatever happened to simple gang tagging or art expressionism? Now it was all about making an extra token chit or two.
I tapped a code on my wrist panel, to inform engineering to come out and strip the programmable paint from the structure as I just shook my head. It's no wonder us humans have such a bad reputation for being slacker trash that's only good for reclamation for fertilizer for the farms, or sucking hard vacuum in space.
It wasn't worth reviewing the surveillance footage to track down th
e tagger, it was a minor offense and wasn't worth having his or her meal cards set to rationing mode for a month. That sort of thing just promotes the rash of homeless in the lower rings when they can't eat properly to stay healthy enough to work. Not everyone had jobs that made enough chit to supplement their meal cards with fresh food if needed.
Sometimes as an Enforcer, we have to choose our battles. The others from Beta Squad, either call me soft because I let minor infractions like that slide, or null because, like all humans who weren't witches or shifters, had no magic of my own. Ahhh there's that Leviathan bigotry in action again.
Speaking of... a large tiger saw me step into the bulkhead corridors and it hissed and backed off as it changed to human and slipped into a living unit. Ok, maybe the Brigade isn't as popular here in the lower rings as elsewhere on the ship, or 'on the world' as we locals say.
I checked my wrist unit again, and muttered, “Oh go suck vacuum, Bulkhead J?” Of course, it would be the maintenance corridors out by the Skin. I sighed and started jogging through the semi-crowded corridors, people moving aside as I started the quarter-mile journey. I should have just taken my Tac-Bike like the entitled asses of the other squads do, siren wailing and forcing people out of the way.
The deeper I went, the fewer people I passed, until it was only the back hall vagrants. I kicked the hoof of a Satyr just to make sure he was still breathing. What the hells was he doing down here? When he groaned and opened his eyes, he started cursing me in Old Fairy. Who used Old Fairy anymore?
I snapped at him in the same tongue, “Get up, get out, and get sober.”
He staggered to his hooves and took the bottle of spirits with him, muttering, “Fuckin' null.” Ok, apparently he spoke Ship Common too.
I snorted and sighed, then started jogging toward the reported disturbance. Could they at least have classified it? Was it just someone shitting in the corridor or someone threatening to open a breach in the Skin?
On that thought, I paused at one of the massive breach seal blast doors as I passed from the section, at a sound. I saw flickering lights around the door seams of the emergency manual door release. I stepped over, shook my head then pulled the small door open and growled out, “Hey, get out of there, now! I'll pin your wings and haul your little asses in right now if you don't make yourselves scarce. And hey! Put that linkage back! We'd all be sucking vacuum if there was a meteoroid strike and this section decompressed without us being able to operate the door.”
One of the glowing, five-inch tall humanoids with large moth-like wings hissed at me and waved me off. “Get lost, null.”
I muttered to myself, “Sprites.” Then I said as I pointed back toward the exit, “Out now, you filthy scavengers.”
Two of the trio looked up from where they were trying to pull a linkage free, their eyes shooting from my face to my scatter armor to the badge and guns at my waist. They looked at their companion then took flight, leaving a trail of that damn itchy wing dust in their wake.
The third called after them in his... or her... or its squeaky voice; I always got pronoun headache with a three sex-species like Sprites, “Cowards! We can get ten chit for this!” Then it looked at me, harrumphed, then slammed the little access door in my face. The cheeky little shit.
I yanked it open again and the Sprite had the balls to cast at me. I didn't even bother dropping my talisman reinforced visor on my helmet with a thought. The spell sparked from its finger and dissipated against my scatter armor as it lived up to its namesake.
I reached into the box and grabbed the little ass by the wings, pinching them together as I hauled it out to hold up in front of my face. What had it been thinking, even without my armor, Sprites were the bottom of the magic community food chain, right below Faeries. The most it could accomplish against a human is to sting or make a slightly uncomfortable rash with its magic.
I asked as I cocked an eyebrow, “You want me to add assaulting an Enforcer to the list of charges? If you're lucky, they'll have you cleaning out grease traps in the food districts instead of the urinals in the D-Ring.”
It swung little fists at my fingers uselessly as it dangled from its wings. “You're like all the other Bigs. If I were your size you'd be quaking in your fancy-schmancy boots like every other man.”
“I'm a woman, are you visually impaired as well as stupid?”
It growled, “Man, woman? All you nulls look the same to me.”
I sighed and said, “You aren't winning any points here.” I scanned it with my wrist unit and an ID popped up. Ah, a third gender, a pollinator, I would have mistaken it for a girl, but I could see the feminine androgyny in it now. “Graz. No surname? You're not that old are you?”
The Fae and other preternatural races became known to the humans of Old Earth when they stepped forward to help construct the Leviathan so that all the races could escape the slowly expanding sun. In those days most preternatural people had only a single name. They didn't start taking surnames until a few hundred years after the Exodus launch to Eridani Prime, the new world our people will call home at the end of our ten thousand year journey.
We were only halfway there, and I and every Human on board would never see it, only the Fae and the Vampires had the chance of seeing the end of our voyage. Us Humans were not blessed with long lives, we burned bright for just around two centuries, then died. So it would still be thirty or forty generations before a human would set foot on the Ground, under Open Air.
It harrumphed and crossed its arms over its chest, and gods be damned if it wasn't cute as hell. “My parents were traditionalists, living on a farm, and couldn't pronounce grass right.”
Answered like a true Fae, it wasn't exactly a yes or a no, why were they always so evasive? The lesser Fae could lie, unlike the Greater Fae.
I sighed and said, “I tell you what Graz, I'll overlook your little indiscretions if you just make yourself scarce and promise not to scavenge from critical emergency systems again. I'm on a disturbance call right now back at Bulkhead J, and don't have the time or desire to deal with you too, besides the paperwork is a bitch.”
The purplish-pink color drained from Graz's face and it said, “Bulkhead J? The screaming? You don't want to go back there, it's...” The Sprite trailed off, shook its head and asked, “Just... it's better to walk away officer...”
I offered, “Shade, Knith Shade.”
“Shade.”
Letting the Sprite go, it buzzed its wings to stay in my face and asked, “You're going back there anyway, aren't you?” It actually looked scared... even though it was virtually immortal... well as long as nobody killed it.
I nodded. “It's my job.”
The Sprite looked back the way I came as it licked its lips, contemplating my offer. Then it did the last thing I would expect a Sprite, which were flighty annoyances who looked out for only themselves, to do, and said, “I can show you where the screams came from.”
Then it added quickly, “Not that I care what happens to another Big. Just if something happens to you, I'm stealing those MMGs you're carrying.”
I snorted and patted my stunners, or Magic Mitigating Guns, as I pointed out, “Like you could even lift one, you flying rat.”
It buzzed up and sat on my shoulder grabbing the edge of my helmet. “You've got a smart mouth for a Big.” Then before I could retort Graz pointed, “That way.” Then it muttered, “Shade means nobody.” I knew that, but like everyone else, we don't pick our own names.
I sighed then started jogging in the direction it pointed. Gods... I hope nobody from the squad finds out I was taking directions from a Sprite.
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