Genrenauts: Season One

by Michael R. Underwood

Just a block’s walk away (or what she mapped in her head as a block, since the station had branching hallways like no one’s business, every hundred feet or so), they came across a thick crowd, all waiting in line for something. “Is this the party?”

  “Yes. Oonar Th’Nal is a major information broker, and his parties are paid events—there’s nowhere better to dig up information or trade favors. Today’s was just announced three hours ago.

  Oonar never misses an opportunity to capitalize on a crisis.”

  The crowd included several other Xenei, hovering anxiously on their classic UFO-shaped discs. Representatives of every race were there as well, the same Cantina-ready mix she’d almost actually started getting used to. There were more Xenei than she’d seen together elsewhere, and fewer of the pink race. A quick check of her wrist-screen reminded her that those were in fact the Nai, the hippiecommunist ones.

  “Do I actually get to talk this time?” Leah asked.

  “Of course. I’ll need to go off and work my magic, and there’s too much going on for us to not split up. Don’t engage in any conversations where you feel you’re out of your depth, and don’t be afraid to lean into your character.”

  The pair rounded a corner and found the end of the line, more than two hundred persons deep.

  Leah restrained a sigh. “How long is this going to take?”

  “As long as it takes to introduce everyone ahead of us.”

  “At least I don’t have to wear a ridiculously frilly dress.”

  “I thought you were more the Captain Tightpants type, anyway.” “True story.”

  Chapter Seven: Graveyard Pit Stop

  Six hours into their flight—almost halfway to the coordinates Zoor had provided—Roman picked something up on his radar. They were flying around a patch of debris from a centuries-old battle, the mass of a wrecked behemoth carrier ship forming a gravitic biome. The ship was Ra’Gar, left over from the last invasion.

  The shattered ship looked like an imploded grenade, all yellow metallic sheets and sharp edges. Around it floated wrecks of Terran, Nbere, and other ships, ranging from fighters close to the size of their own ship to mid-level cruisers, nearly half as big as the Ra’Gar behemoth. The last alliance had only brought together three civilizations, but from the reports of new Ra’Gar movements, it’d take a hell of a lot more to stop them this time.

  “Radar ping, two hundred thousand klicks out. Looks fighter-sized, but it could just be hot debris or an asteroid.” His adrenaline kicked in, ramping up his reaction times and making him giddy. He kept a lid on the giddy, as it unnerved his teammates. Even King.

  King roused from the rack in the back room and made his way up to back into the copilot seat.

  He blinked the sleep from his eyes and studied the readouts. “Could be, but let’s not take that chance. How long will the cloak on this last?”

  “Ten minutes, with a ten-hour recharge.”

  “What’s the sensor range on commercial fighters?” King asked.

  Roman sorted through his mental inventory of systems available. Every member of the team had their genre specialties, and this region was one of his. He could look up the information on the wristscreens, but if all he did was rely on the database, there was no reason to be a specialist.

  “One hundred and fifty-thousand klicks at best. Unless they’ve got a satellite booster nearby, a sentry or the like.”

  “That seems likely. Come in under the sensor shadow of the debris so we can get a better sensor read. We don’t want to break hearts before the final hand.”

  “As long as we can make it to the final hand. There’s room for any number of traps in this debris field, boss. It’s a great scavenger’s hunting grounds.”

  King clapped Roman on the shoulder. “Then it’s good that our best pilot’s at the helm, isn’t it?” “You’re too kind.”

  “I have my moments.”

  “You could stand to be a little more kind and back me up on the sensor suite. Start on thermal and radioactive. Most of the traps big enough to cripple a ship run hot enough to give off a signature.”

  King flipped some switches, and several screens blinked off for Roman, popping up in the copilot seat.

  Roman leaned into the controls, banking close around a wrecked Terran transport, lazily spinning head over stern in place, the same spin that had been born of its doom. Void-crawlers would have picked any biological matter clean long ago, leaving only the metallic corpses.

  “Sensor suite extended to maximum,” King said. “The ship is locked in a consistent patrol route, orbiting this location.” King highlighted a point in space and swiped the display back over to Roman’s screen. Free space on his screen zoomed in to show a sensor readout of the ship, its route, and a stable hull of something at the center.

  “Any bounce-back?” Roman asked.

  “Nothing yet. Coming up on jamming range.”

  “Shut them down before they see us. If the scout can rabbit and inform the rest of the Dark Stars, we’ll be up to our ears in lead the moment we set foot on that station. But get us within range before the scout twigs and we’ll be fine,” Roman said, cutting main thrust and pushing the attitude adjusters, turning up to slope over a cluster of shattered fighters, keeping a solid chunk of the Ra’Gar ship between them and the solo fighter.

  Roman turned and twisted and snaked his way through the ship graveyard until they were within sensor range, but shielded by the still-hot cores of a trio of frigates.

  “I’ll jam, you scan,” King said. Their fingers danced across the consoles, lights blinking, alarms and acknowledgments beeping as they worked. Roman ran a deeper scan on the ship, pulling IFF information as well as ship specs.

  It was a retrofitted freighter flying under Nbere tags, though he doubted that a Nbere was at the helm. The Nbere were happy to sell ship tags to anyone who could pay, so the void was full of “Nbere” ships. They were the Panama of space, and all an Nbere tag told you was the owner wanted anonymity. The IFF, however, was clearly spoofed, a weak cover proclaiming them as an Nbere messenger easily penetrated to reveal a Dark Stars IFF signal, running the same ping address as Zoor had indicated.

  “It’s a Dark Star, alright. Flimsy-as-hell IFF. They need a better tech.”

  “I think Zoor was their tech,” King chuckled. “Jam is up, but I think they’ll notice her right quick.

  They’ve been spamming radar pulses like rats on an endorphin lever.”

  “Closing distance. Keep the jam up, and hold on to something.”

  Roman grabbed the stick again and floored the thrusters, punching out of the field of dead freighters and looping down out of the debris to make a hard half-Immelman and come at the fighter as it broke from its route and made for the jump node.

  Roman pushed the thrusters to cut off the merc ship’s escape.

  “Weapons systems spooling up,” he said, vocalizing the actions as he tapped through the menu to activate the lasercannon. Years of running with heavily armed packs and working around vehicular weaponry had prepped him to think nothing of saying aloud every single thing he did. There was a long while where he had to keep from announcing, “Brushing teeth,” and “Taking a dump,” which was fair, since several of his pack-mates took to doing just so, sharing every little bit of their lives with the squad out of a clownish perversion of group cohesion. Hellish circumstances made for weird traditions.

  “They’re rabbiting. Impressive speed for a ship that size. They’ll lose us in …” King ran the numbers. “Five minutes. Let’s hope that cannon we picked up can pick them off in time.” “Ready to fire in five. Take the wheel?” Roman asked.

  “Assuming Navigation control,” King said, grabbing his control stick.

  “Releasing control,” Roman answered, wrapping both hands around the firing stick, , exaggerated curves around the hand and into the base, three buttons on top, wired to activate up to three different weapon systems. Roman had only bothered with the one, and hoped it’d have the range to
pick off the merc before they could get to a jump point.

  “Locking on,” Roman said, holding the ship in his sights. As the targeting circles clicked into place, the ship started banking and juking, responding to the incipient lock.

  “They’re evading. Pursuit pattern beta,” King said, matching their movements to the merc’s.

  King was rated for this class of ship, but Roman was the one with the real stick time. But when you were the top gun and the top pilot …

  “Sorry, boss, this isn’t going to work. Resuming navigation. I’ll have to dogfight them. Keep on

  the jammer, in case they’ve got a copilot and try to get sneaky.”

  “Roger,” King said, releasing the controls, slipping back into drumming on the console to work the sensor suite.

  With piloting and gunnery back under his control, Roman leaned back into his seat and found his happy place. He’d logged more flight time than any active North American Genrenaut, though not nearly as much in the field as he’d prefer. The simulators couldn’t quite match the way the G-forces work, never gave the full suite of randomness that a real sortie always brought.

  Roman opened fire, without a lock, hoping to shoot into the mercs’ evasive maneuvers.

  But their pilot was no slouch, either. The merc ship banked and twisted and looped through and around his laser-fire. Roman followed a deep sloping turn, letting up on the stick and hoping for another lock, the merc ship flipped stern over prow and floored its jets, coming right for them.

  “Bold,” Roman said, hauling the stick to one side and firing the attitude thrusters, moving them off to the side as the merc ship unleashed a barrage through the empty space where they had just been.

  “Come on, then. Show us that all of that simulator time was worth letting you slack on your readings,” King taunted.

  “Yes, your Majesty.” Roman pushed forward, flying at a relative forty-degree incline to the merc ship, then tapped the attitude thrusters just so, a quick burst to turn and then stop, leaving him cutting through space at the same angle, but with their nose (and cannon) pointed down.

  These ships were single-chair fighters, no cargo capacity. The ambassador would be held on a transport or freighter.

  Which meant he didn’t have to worry about fragging them.

  Roman squinted, leaning forward and waiting for Just.

  The right.

  Moment.

  He squeezed the trigger, and the pulse cannon spat out a tight trio. The merc ship tried to bank, but caught two of the blasts along the undercarriage. The ship went up like a firework, a genre concession given the fact that there wasn’t enough of anything explosive in the ships to detonate.

  “How’s that for justification?” Roman said, righting the ship and looping around to confirm the kill and grab salvage.

  “That’ll do. Now, let’s see if their IFF is intact …”

  * * *

  Leah waggled her head in her best aping of the Jenr manner. “But of course, your honor!”

  The crowd roared. And while her crowd was a mere three people—all junior diplomats and attachés like her—it was the most welcome and acknowledged she’d felt since touching down on Ahura-3.

  When in doubt, go with what you know.

  It hadn’t taken long to slot this dimension’s races and cultures into existing material—everyone had stereotypes about everyone else, and most of the time, they didn’t vary that much.

  The Yai thought the Nai were lazy, the Nai thought the Yai were callous and greedy. Most people thought the Gaan were a little slow, the Nbere ambassadors were super-standoffish but had their secret proclivities, and only the Gaan didn’t think the Xenei were unnerving.

  Her colleagues, a Nai, a Gaan, and a Jenr, chuckled again, but softer, probably remembering themselves. Gut-busting laughter was apparently Just Not Done, even at cocktail parties that were, as far as she could tell, all about gossip.

  Darei, the Nai, leaned in to the other women and said in a low voice, “Don’t tell anyone I said so, but the Yai do that, too. But when they do it, they use both hands!”

  That got more laughter, which Leah answered. Darei was the talker, which meant Leah didn’t have to hold up the conversation by herself, which would be just about guaranteed to reveal the spaceship-sized gaps in her knowledge.

  “We do not have such problems, but then again, just one trunk,” said Haaja, the Gaan, gesturing with her prehensile trunk. Haaja, like the prelate, used her trunk to gesture, grip food, and to shake hands. It was all Leah could do to not flash back to YouTube videos of elephants rollicking on the beach. On top of being dangerously amusing, Haaja was loose-lipped. “You just had dinner with the prelate, did you not?” Haaja asked.

  “If by ‘had dinner,’ you mean tried not to even look at food, then yes,” Leah said. “It was my sixth dinner meeting, and if I’d had one more bite, I swear I’d have exploded.”

  Ufa, the Jenr, crossed her lower arms. “We had the same. Every race with their own dinner times and customs. I wish the translators we use could let us all agree on one way to eat.” “It’s a wonder all of us diplomats aren’t as round as a beach ball,” Leah said.

  “Beach ball?” Darei asked.

  “Oh, you don’t have beach balls?” Leah said, forgetting her mission more than a little bit. She set her drink on the railing to the stairs she and the junior diplomats had taken as their perch and held her arms open wide. “It’s a plastic inflated ball this big, and you use it to play games on the beach.”

  “That would be very large for a playing piece,” Haaja said.

  “Do you have different colors to indicate the castes for Uga?”

  “I’ve never played Uga on the beach, so I couldn’t tell you. But as a kid, I mainly just kicked it in the water and splashed around, screaming with joy.”

  For lack of a specific agenda, Leah was happy to just hang out and shoot the shit with the three women. And she figured that having the ear of assistants to a vice-prelate, an ambassador, and a gray speaker would be useful over the next couple of days as diplomatic push came to shove.

  Leah picked Shirin out of the crowd, then noticed the woman was heading right toward her.

  And she looked pissed.

  “Sorry friends, business calls,” Leah said, picking up her drink again. She shook, hugged, and waggle-nodded to her new space-friends, then matched step with Shirin as she made a beeline for the door.

  “What’s up?”

  “Emergency. Bhean, the Nbere ambassador, just blew up at Laran and said he’s leaving the station to head home. We need to intercept him so that Laran can follow up and talk him down.”

  “And do we know where he is?”

  “Somewhere between the Nbere sector and the VIP dock.”

  “So how do you delay an angry Nbere ambassador?”

  “Very carefully.” The pair turned into the hallway and headed for the nearest lift.

  “Wait, did you say his name was Bhean?”

  “That’s right,” Shirin said, her voice sounding uncertain.

  “I know that one!” Leah rewound her memory to the conversation with her fellow junior diplomats. “He likes dancing boys. Jenr dancing boys.”

  Shirin stopped, and looked Leah dead on. “Where did you hear this?”

  “From one of the junior attachés. She said that her boss arranged for some special kind of dancing boys to join them at a negotiation a while back. The guy was a total ass, except with those …

  she called them something.”

  “Verene?”

  “That’s it.”

  Shirin pulled Leah in and kissed her on the cheek, once again assuming the role of classy aunt. “You’ve earned your gold star for this mission, newbie. We’ve got some calls to make.”

  * * *

  After a short jaunt out into space with the ship’s EVA suit, Roman returned and sat in the copilot’s seat, working on the IFF box while King kept watch as the autopilot continued them on their course for the D
ark Star base.

  The thing was well and properly slagged. He knew this dimension’s tech, but that didn’t mean he was a miracle worker.

  “Three hours out. How’s it coming?”

  “It’s not. The circuit board is half-melted, and I’ve got maybe a one-in-three chance of being able to strip the IFF without it breaking entirely.”

  “Any chance of just hooking it up as is?”

  “This kind of IFF has to be slotted. Makes it harder to trick.” “So that’s a no.”

  Roman flipped the box around and eyed it from the other direction, holding a penlight on the connections between the board and the IFF transponder.

  “Pretty much. I’ll try to pry it out, but the problem is, we could slot it in and patch the Dark Star signal over our own, but if the transponder is slagged, we won’t know until the mercs open fire on us or set off whatever traps they’ve got.”

  “So we assume it won’t work, then celebrate if it does.”

  “Pretty much,” Roman said, setting the box on his lap and reaching for the flat-head screwdriver.

  Tongue peeking out of his mouth, Roman fiddled, pushed, and pulled, popping the IFF transponder out of the circuit board. He set the board aside and leaned over to pop open the control console.

  “Keep an eye on our course. These small freighters can lose autopilot when someone’s monkeying around with the transponders.”

  “That’s not ominous, no sir,” King said from the pilot’s seat.

  “I could just toss this thing out the airlock and declare that entire EVA a waste.”

  “You still get to log it on your chart.”

  “Almost a complete waste, then.” Roman shone the light into a mess of cords. Even though they had fancy super-Bluetooth and wireless wearable computers, the innards of the ships on this dimension were a huge tangled hassle.

  Just one of a hundred things about the dimension that didn’t make sense, thanks to the uneven conceptualization of the genre world. Hi-tech, but with inconsistencies galore. Not unlike home. But where this region had hi-tech, he had “whatever you could cobble together from whatever you could salvage.”