System Failure

by Joe Zieja

  “Wait,” General Krell said. “What if we take a small group of ships and fly into its exhaust ports to try to blow up the core?”

  Rogers looked at him for a long moment. “That is literally the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life. Dismissed!”

  “I thought it was worth a shot,” Keffoule said, patting Krell on the arm. “Captain Rogers sometimes lacks imagination.”

  “Dismissed!”

  Parades

  Cynthia Mailn couldn’t seem to get used to her new quarters, despite sharing them with the woman she’d married just four short years earlier. It reminded her of their tiny apartment near the edge of Haverstown; not cluttered by any stretch of the imagination, but still full of memorabilia and pictures. Sjana had always been such a pretentious art snob; she had canvas paintings all over the walls from different regions of the galaxy, stretching as far as the outer rim of Grandelle. Those were the most extravagant and diverse, ranging from stunning charcoal sketches to bizarre abstract art.

  Cynthia sat up in bed, blinking her eyes clear, feeling like she’d been hit in the head with a tire iron. Miraculously, she and Sjana hadn’t fought at all since she’d come aboard, but the grogginess this time was from another source: insomnia. Cynthia had found it difficult to relax. Images of everyone on the Flagship nagged at her in her dreams, looking down their noses at her and waggling their fingers in a pedantic, condescending way.

  She slipped out of the sheets and dressed mechanically, pulling whatever was on top of the pile of clothes Sjana had designated for her use. Cynthia hadn’t brought that much with her; there wasn’t much on the Flagship that she considered essential enough to bother packing. Most of it was military issue. Besides, Sjana had always liked to dress her up, and Cynthia didn’t mind. Fashion wasn’t exactly her passion, so if it made Sjana happy, it made her happy.

  Except right now, she wasn’t really happy.

  Cynthia splashed some water on her face, spitting out a tuft of hair that had swung into her mouth as she’d done so.

  “Ugh,” she said, wiping the side of her mouth.

  “Something disgust you?” Sjana said.

  Mailn jumped a bit; she hadn’t heard her come in.

  “Just the taste of my hair,” Mailn said. “I didn’t expect you back so early.”

  Sjana grinned at her and gave her a quick peck on the lips. It was morning, ship time, and Sjana normally spent a good portion of it chatting with the other pirate captains and planning their next move. As subsidiaries of the Meridan Galactic Navy, they took their orders directly from High Admiral Holdt, but they were mostly left to their own devices once their assignments were delivered.

  “Not much going on today,” Sjana said. “It seems the Jupiterians are regrouping, but we aren’t really sure where. A smaller group of Thelicosan ships tried to follow one of the retreating blockade formations, but they didn’t make it back through Un-Space. Wherever they’re going, they’re protecting their location well.”

  Mailn sighed. “Right.”

  Sjana unbuttoned the top part of her brown leather jacket, which was more for style than it was for warmth, and took off her pistol holsters. Placing them on a towel hook, she walked back into the main room and sat on the bed, stretching.

  “I have to say,” Sjana said. “It’s been good having you around again.”

  “Yeah,” Mailn said. She was looking at herself in the mirror above the sink, not really thinking about anything. God, she hated when she was broody.

  “Why are you so broody?” Sjana asked.

  “I am not broody,” Cynthia said.

  Sjana sighed, falling back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling. She was so different when it was just the two of them. When anyone else was around, it was like she inserted this Rod of Authority up her ass and walked around trying to make it not jiggle. But now, she felt like they were two girls again, trying to figure all this shit out. Cynthia was still pretty sure they didn’t have anything figured out.

  “You’re broody,” Sjana said.

  “I’m broody.” Cynthia dried her face off and came out to the bedroom, where she plopped down next to Sjana. “I just . . . I dunno. I thought there’d be more . . .”

  “Pirating?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s it,” Cynthia said. “It’s not like I wanted exciting firefights and swashbuckling and all that. I just . . .”

  Sjana sat up, edging closer to her. “Things have changed a lot in the pirating world since the Garliali and Purveyors blew each other up. It’s been tough to score credits; everyone stopped being afraid of us. When we got wind of war maybe breaking out, we all thought we could scrape some stuff together and go knock off some cargo ships that were making supply runs. Of course, back then we thought it’d be a little border skirmish between Merida and Thelicosa.

  “Now . . .” She put her arms up in the air, like she was reaching for an answer. “We’re all part of something big, I guess. It feels good, in a way, but it’s also a lot more pressure. Used to be all I had to worry about was my crew and getting paid, not the whole galaxy falling apart around me.” Sjana laughed. Not the bitter laugh of a cynic, but the carefree laugh of someone who genuinely just did not give a shit. That was one of the things Cynthia liked the most about her.

  “I just couldn’t sit planetside with the brass while you were up here doing all the work,” Cynthia said. She still couldn’t bring herself to look at her wife, and that bothered her. Why was she avoiding her gaze?

  “That’s what you keep telling me,” Sjana said. “So if you’re not bored, what is it?”

  Cynthia tried to get the words out, but they just wouldn’t come. She’d never been so moody in all of her life. Back when they’d lived together on Merida Prime, Cynthia had just relied on going from calm to batshit crazy as a good way to solve all of her problems. She supposed that Sjana hadn’t been the only one at fault for their separation, and Cynthia eventually joining the marines. Now, though, she felt like those annoying teenage girls who never said what they meant. Maybe, she realized, it was because none of them really even knew what they meant.

  “Do I actually belong here?” she asked finally.

  Someone knocked on the door, stopping whatever answer had been about to come out of Sjana’s mouth. Likely she would have just hit her again and told her not to worry about it. Then they would have shouted at each other, hit each other, kissed each other, and forgotten about everything. That was just the way things had gone between the two of them. Meeting Sjana again in Haverstown had let Mailn know just how much she’d missed it, black eyes and all.

  “Hey, Cap.” It was the voice of Hideko, her first mate, a bristly old man with a wild mustache and a wilder temper. He hadn’t talked much to Cynthia, but what words he did spare her were mostly spent telling her to get the hell off the Africanus.

  “What?” Sjana called. “Didn’t we just finish our meeting?”

  “Something else came up. Got orders to change course. Can I start the prelims?”

  “Sure,” Sjana said. “I’ll come check up on it in a minute.”

  “Alright. Wouldn’t want you to do the boring work. Come over to the bridge when you get your pants back on.”

  “My pants are on, asshole,” Sjana shouted, throwing a boot at the door. It collided with a satisfying thunk, and Cynthia could hear Hideko’s loud, wheezy cackle as he walked away.

  “Where’d you meet that guy?” Cynthia said, using the moment’s disruption to get off the bed and finish dressing. She tried to grin, but it only came halfway to her face, probably leaving her looking like she was drunk. Raising her arms in the air, she presented herself to her wife.

  “That belt? No,” Sjana said, reaching over and throwing her one that, to Cynthia, looked exactly the same as the one she had on. “Hideko and I are old drinking buddies. I actually met him before you, back when I first got into pirating. He helped me make sure that my mouth didn’t write any checks that my pistols couldn’t cash.”

 
; “And what a great job he did of that,” Cynthia said. She slipped on a pair of work boots—these were hers—and moved toward the room’s exit. “Come on. Don’t you want to see where we’re going next? I bet we get to watch a whole cargo train of plasma coils.”

  The two of them walked through the halls in silence, and after a minute or two Cynthia felt some of her confidence returning. Walking down the middle of a pirate ship with her wife, dressed like a civilian, with a pistol at her side and a purpose to her step. It was so much better than waiting around for the bureaucrats to put red tape all over everything and then get pissed off that they couldn’t complete their mission with all of it in place. No generals, no admirals, no crazy Thelicosans. No rules.

  But also, no Viking, and no Rogers. As much as she hated working for the government, she didn’t mind some of the people working with her.

  The walk to the bridge was a short one, and they didn’t run into any of the other crew on the way. The Africanus was the command ship of Sjana’s small band of pirates, but it wasn’t anything like the Flagship. It housed, from what Cynthia could tell, maybe fifteen to twenty crew, and was mostly for shooting things and keeping other people’s possessions in the cargo hold. When they opened the bridge door, Cynthia saw that most of the bridge crew wasn’t even there yet. They trickled in behind them after getting notified that they’d be moving.

  “What’s the story?” Sjana asked as she sat down in her captain’s chair, near the very front of the bridge. Unlike a large capital ship like the Flagship, the Africanus was arranged more like a private vessel, with a pilot and copilot in the center, surrounded by various systems and weapons operators. In this case, only one of the gunners was on deck. Cynthia chose a comm station and sat down, looking blankly at the buttons in front of her. What the hell did all these things mean?

  “Looks like they’re chasing some hot target in Grandelle. It’s a pretty big effort, and we’re supposed to be the ones clearing the way. Couple of jumps into uncleared territory between us and the destination.”

  “Any idea who we’re escorting?” Sjana asked.

  “Some kind of ‘joint force,’ ” Hideko said. He squinted at his datapad. “The Resistance Engagement Detachment to Avoid Planetary Elimination. Great name.”

  Cynthia frowned. “That doesn’t sound like any unit I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Oh, suddenly you’re the master of the military?” Hideko said. “I thought you were a grunt.”

  “I am a grunt. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t know about a gigantic unit. Any other information about who is in it?”

  “Nope,” Hideko said. “Just that we’re to provide ‘any available support’ and we’re supposed to provide it ‘with all possible haste.’ I hate military orders. They all sound so pretentious.”

  As pretentious as that mustache, Cynthia thought.

  “If you’ve already made the preparations,” Sjana said, “let’s go ahead and move out. Get everyone ready for a fight if we need to punch holes in places we haven’t been yet.”

  “Way ahead of you, boss,” Hideko said. “Ships are already moving into formation and we are ready to go.”

  “That was fast,” Cynthia said.

  “Well, we were just sitting here and waiting for orders,” Sjana said, plopping down in her captain’s chair. “Looks like you’re going to get some of the action you wanted, Cyn. Why don’t you take a seat back in the cabin and wait until we’re at our destination?”

  “Oh shut up,” Cynthia said. “I might not be any good at piloting ships or working the system, but if you need some holes punched in some skulls, I’ll be ready to go with your boarding teams.”

  Sjana gave her a grin, but didn’t reply. It wasn’t, however, a good idea for Cynthia to take up valuable console space. There would be other pirates coming into the room soon who would need these stations to do their jobs properly. So Cynthia was left with the awkward choice of either taking her wife’s condescending advice and going back to the cabin, or staying on the bridge and being actively in the way of everyone trying to do their jobs. It galled her, but she stood up.

  “Well, I’ll just head over to the rec room and work up a sweat on the punching bag,” Cynthia said.

  “I’ll turn on the security camera so I can watch,” Sjana said, turning to look at her and winking.

  “Very funny. You should probably focus on your—”

  A buzzer cut through their conversation, shortly followed by a member of the bridge crew shouting at them from the far side of the room.

  “Cap, we’ve got ships.”

  “What?” Sjana said, whirling around. “Jupes? I thought we cleared them all out.”

  “Not Jupiterians. MPD.”

  “Oh,” Sjana said with a relieved sigh. “No big deal. They’re probably just starting to patrol the areas that we’ve freed up.”

  Another buzzer sounded, this time accompanied by a high-pitched whoop and the flashing of some amber lights that hung from the ceiling.

  “Then you might want to ask them why they’re targeting us.”

  Hideko vaulted into his copilot’s seat so quickly and smoothly that Cynthia thought he must have done it a thousand times. He started pressing buttons on his console with the practiced alacrity of a career pirate.

  “Open an immediate channel to all of their ships,” Sjana barked. “Get our shields up and weapons ready. They could be Jupes in disguise.”

  “Aye, Cap,” Hideko said. “Halfway there already.” He leaned forward and pressed a large button to the side of his console. When he spoke, Cynthia could hear it echo throughout the whole ship’s PA system.

  “Asses to seats, everyone. MPD is spoiling for a fight. Pearson, stop making out with the new recruit in the closet and get back to your station.”

  “Ah, come on!” came a very disappointed voice from the supply closet, followed by a very girlish giggle.

  Cynthia felt her heart beating heavy in her chest. She’d been in combat a few times now, thanks to some really weird situations on the Flagship, but she’d never felt so helpless. With the droids, at least she could shoot someone, and then with the Limiter, at least she could also shoot someone. Now she was one useless person on a spacecraft without any other marines to grouse with.

  “Channel open,” someone called.

  “This is Captain Sjana Devingo of the Africanus. Stand down your targeting systems immediately or we will defend ourselves by killing all of you.”

  “Very official sounding, boss,” Hideko said. “I thought we were supposed to be military now?”

  “Nah,” Sjana said. “We’re contractors.”

  For a moment, they received no reply. From what Cynthia could tell, they were still receiving warnings that targeting systems were locked onto their ships, but there were no indications that any weapons had been fired. Looking out the window of the bridge, she could see a small contingent of ships gathered together right in front of the Un-Space point. If the pirates were going to get to Un-Space, they’d have to go through the MPD first; it was a standard interdiction position.

  The bridge fell silent, all eyes and ears focused on determining whether or not these “MPD” ships were about to start launching torpedoes. The moment seemed to last for an eternity.

  “Helloooo!” came a voice over the radio. “Thanks for joining us over here today and sorry about the radio silence; I accidentally had the call on mute. My name is Officer Atikan of the Meridan sector police. Unfortunately, it appears that you’ve been caught transiting an Un-Space point without the proper permit, an offense for which we are going to have to ask you to stop and submit your information to be logged.”

  “Permit?” Sjana said. “What are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a war here, and we’re official envoys of the Meridan Galactic Navy. In fact, we’ve got official orders here telling us to move through this sector and get to a new position.”

  “Are you able to transmit those orders to me?” Officer Atikan asked.

&
nbsp; “Of course,” Sjana said.

  She looked over at Hideko, who stared back at her with a blank expression on his face, his mustache twitching.

  “What, you want me to do it?”

  “No, Hideko, I’m just wondering which half of your mustache to pull out first. Yes, I want you to send them the information.”

  “I don’t think it’s any of their damn business,” Hideko began.

  “Just do it. The quicker we get them the paperwork, the quicker we can get out of here.”

  Hideko muttered something unintelligible and probably obscene, and went over to one of the communication stations to start pressing buttons. The sparsely crewed bridge looked more annoyed than nervous, which made sense to Cynthia. They had probably spent most of their career blowing up the MPD, not sending them love letters.

  “Done,” Hideko said.

  “You should have the orders now,” Sjana said. “And I’m obligated to warn you that these are military orders. We are authorized to fire upon anyone who impedes our progress. We won’t take kindly to being boarded.”

  “Oh, I hardly think that will happen! We won’t need to board you this time, unless of course you get all squirrely, as I know pirates sometimes do.” Atikan laughed heartily, sounding as though he was truly enjoying all of this.

  “Guy’s a real charmer,” Hideko said. “I’d like to squeeze all that cheer right out of him with a piano wire.”

  “If you’ll just give me a few moments to review your documents, I’m sure we can get this all cleared up.”

  “Of course,” Sjana said flatly. “Take your time. We’re only in the middle of a race to save the galaxy. I’m sure we have a few extra minutes so you can file your reports.”