by P. J. Lowry
Written by P.J. Lowry
Tales of the Rocket Patrol 2
Published by P.J. Lowry at Smashwords
Copyright 2016, P.J. Lowry
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Other works written by P.J. Lowry:
Fiction:
The Manifest
Completing the List
The Cure
Rock My World
The Summer Home
Home for the Holidays
Outrageous Proposal
Poetry:
Recurring Dream
50 Sonnets
Poèmes du coeur
100 Sonnets
Non-Fiction:
Outspoken: Confessions of a Devout Atheist
As the second son rose into the sky, the skyline of Capital City became that much brighter, informing the more lazy residents of the city that the morning was already half over. The sky of Earth Colony Vega didn’t always have two suns, but a star in a galaxy several light years away was close to going nova. It didn’t post a threat to their galaxy but prior to dying out the sun in that system expanded to more than ten times its original size, which made it visible to the residents of Earth Vega as they liked to call it. When it had started to expand, colonies that were located on the planets in that system were evacuated as the people barely managed to escape before the planets were roasted by the enlarged sun. There were still scientists on those colonies, watching and studying the enlarged star, which was a gigantic gamble since there was no way to tell when it would explode. The people studying the planet would change up every two months, limiting their risk to being killed without notice.
Yet to the residents of Earth Vega, it was a sight to behold and one they have gotten used to over the last few years. The second sun in the sky wasn’t as large as the one in their system, less than half the size, yet it was a dark orange which made for quite a site. People often came to visit this system, just to see what it would be like to look at two suns at the same time. After a few years the fad began to fade and life returned to normal on Earth Vega. The people on the planet had gotten used to having two bright orbs in the sky and when the second one eventually faded out, which was only a matter of time, it would missed by the residents of the city who had grown quite fond of the sight.
As the orange star rose into the sky, Amanda Star rolled out of bed and finally got her arse in gear. Usually when the second sun came into the sky it meant she only had a few hours to get ready for her shift. Watching the Capital City was a lot more daunting than patrolling the colonies as the tech of the city made crime much more prevalent, which meant more arrests, more paper work. In the end it also meant quicker promotions, which was why she didn’t mind being assigned the Capital of Earth Vega. After a scorching shower to clean herself up after a night out on the town with the girls, Amanda slowly prepared herself for work as she the machines whipped up her favourite breakfast and played the morning news to get her up to speed on what was going on in the system while she was dead to the world after drinking up a storm. Usually she was more responsible than that the day before a long shift but she had good reason to celebrate. A friend was celebrating a birthday and Amanda didn’t have too many friends so she made an exception and partied deep into the night. Despite not having too much sleep, she had recharged enough to get through the day. She would likely crash early tonight, unless something big came up at work but she doubted that would be the case.
After cleaning herself up and eating breakfast she tossed on the city uniform, armed herself with the usual weapons needed to do her patrol. As a member of the Rocket Patrol, one of the duties of the force was to guard the Capital of the star system. Most colonies and cities outside of capital were responsible for their own security, which was co-ordinated by the patrol but the Capital was always watched and enforced by the patrol. By guarding the Capital, it made the big city the home headquarters for all members of the Rocket Patrol, whose jurisdiction was this one solar system. It had several planets, but most of the colonies in the systems were on moons which were more inhabitable than the planets themselves. There are two planets in the whole system that command deemed fully inhabitable, Earth Vega which was about two times the size of Earth Alpha, the world where all humans came from. The other was called Nero Delta. It was similar to mars, red in colour but has an atmosphere that was breathable and carbon based. It was half the size of Saturn but without the rings. It had several moons, three that were home to colonies. The red planet had several of its own colonies as well and the population of the large planet has already swelled to a few million. The population of Earth Vega was a paltry several hundred thousand, but it was a comfortable number. Moon colonies were never allowed to swell beyond fifty thousand to avoid potential famine disasters. Planets were allowed to hold a lot more people because they were more capable of providing more resources which allowed them to thrive and grow at an acceptable rate. With so many people in the star system, the twenty-second system to be taken over and inhabited by the human race since the race first started expanding to the stars. Not all star systems are selected for expansion. Any systems that had a single indigenous species already naturally evolving in any of its planets was automatically disqualified it from being expanded into. After humanity’s long history of colonizing indigenous peoples throughout their history on Earth Alpha, it was not something people wanted to repeat when expanding to other planets. There were countless star systems in the universe, so there was no need to encroach on other people’s home worlds if they could just move on to the next system.
After centuries after being complete douches, Amanda was relieved humanity had finally learned from their numerous mistakes. She dressed into her uniform, armed herself and then left her condo to get to the station. As a defender of the capital, Amanda didn’t require a ship capable of interplanetary travel, merely a small vessel that could get her from one part of the city to another promptly to take care of domestic issues. She had what was called a land speeder, which looked more like a flying ski-do than a vehicle. It was like an airborne motorcycle, but she had the option to sit down or stand. Given her preference to jump off at a moment’s notice, Amanda was the kind of office who preferred to stand, which she did often knowing that the ships autopilot would kick in the moment her weight was no longer detected onboard. It was a fast and very reliable machine, and Amanda preferred it to the spaceships that the other Rangers used. Sitting down in a cockpit and being sealed in like a sardine didn’t appeal to her one bit. She enjoyed standing straight, with good posture and the wind blowing in her hair. She felt free on her speeder and wouldn’t trade it in for anything. Seconds after reaching the helipad, Amanda had boarded her speeder and was zooming between buildings towards headquarters. In order to fly around the city through the streets, you needed a special licence so traffic in these parts were light but that still no reason to not keep any eye out for others zipping around. It took her speeder less than ten minutes to travel to the center of the capital and to her destination: Rocket Patrol Central.
This was the central hub for the Patrol. Every member of the patrol worked through this building, which was a staggering eighty floors high and even had its own prison twenty floors beneath the building. While there were other buildings in the capital and others on two other planets in the system, they all answered to the capit
al building. Amanda loved working in the capital as she got to work under the people who were in charge of the patrol throughout the entire galaxy, something she thought might increase her odds of moving up sooner rather than later. When approaching the building, Amanda always chose to use the upper landing bay, unafraid of the heights as she loved landing and departing through the higher zones rather than staying close to the ground. He lack of fear with regards to heights made her more effective at her job, as many disputes were often in buildings higher than Patrol Central. If you were afraid of heights, being a part of the Capital Patrol was definitely not the position one would want to take when signing up. As she approached the landing bay, she was stopped by the machines guarding the doors.
“Identification,” One of them called out.
“Sergeant Star,” Amanda replied, “Badge number eleven, two, five.”
“Voice print verified,” The robot confirmed. The machine then proceeded to do a scan of the Sergeant’s head, “Retina scan complete. Good morning Sergeant Star.”
The big doors opened and Amanda moved her speeder in gracefully and then landed on the same spot in the landing bay she had been using for months since starting her career as a Capital member of the Rocket Patrol. Once parked, Amanda realized she had arrived earlier than expected and decided to get something to drink from the break room before attending the morning briefing. Something told her she was going to be the kind of day that might require her to get as much energy as she could get.
After grabbing something strong with a lot of artificial caffeine in it, Amanda walked into the hallway and bumped into a familiar face. “Hey!” she called out as she walked towards him. “What are you doing back here so soon, old man?”
“Nice to see you too, Sergeant,” Captain Rogers said, grinning.
Star looked around. “Where’s the rookie?”
“Like you have room to talk,” Rogers replied, “It hasn’t been that long since you were a rookie yourself!”
Amanda didn’t respond and gave him a look that told the old man that he was pushing his luck. “What’s going on?”
“O’Brien is downstairs,” Rogers answered. “We picked a few prisoners from one of the moon colonies. They were causing mischief in one of the techless territories.”
“We have people in the techless colonies?” Amanda asked.
“We did that day,” Rogers said with a chuckle.
Amanda padded the old man on the shoulder. “You’ll have to tell me more about it later. I’ve got a briefing to get to.”
“I’ll do that, Sergeant Star,” Rogers said as he gave her a wink, “You take care of yourself out there.”
“I will,” Amanda said as she left the old man in the hallway and strolled over to the large conference room for the day’s briefing.
As she walked into the conference room, most of the seats were already taken. Amanda didn’t really care as she preferred to stand close to the doors so the she could make a quick exit when the meeting was over. She did so that she could get to her speeder and to work as soon as possible but also to prevent the commander from calling on her to do something or gripe about another civilian complaint. While civilians were free to speak their mind, it never meant that what they had to say was correct. Sergeant Star had her fair shire of complaints but she only took that as a sign that she was doing her job properly. She never took them personally and shrugged them off as sour grapes from people who had been caught breaking the capital law. The officers quieted down when Commander Anders strolled in. With blonde hair so bright that it could only come from one of the Swedish colonies. Once at the podium, Anders paused for a moment and then started to brief the crowded conference room.
“We’ve had some unusual off world activity.” The commander started, “Arrests off world are up, so we’re going to have to work hard to make sure that this trend doesn’t spill over into Capital City. Gang activity has been at an all time low and it’s mainly been pushed out of the city to the outskirts, and I prefer to keep it that way. Any suspicious activity is to be called in immediately and no one try to be a hero. Heroes go home in body bags and I really don’t need the additional paperwork. I get enough of that from some of you already.” He shot a glare over at Sergeant Star when he made that comment. “Your patrol routes have been forwards to your speeders. Good luck and follow your directives.”
The briefings were never this long and Amanda personally thought Anders did it just to make sure that everyone arrived on time and were present to start the day. Sometimes she felt like a school kid being called for attendance every morning and with the technology that was available, doing an in person head count seems rather redundant. It was still the way Commander Anders preferred to run his unit, and it was in charge. Amanda wasn’t in the mood to hear what his gaze was about and quickly shuffled out the door and towards her speeder which carried her patrol route for the day.
Once at her speeder, she discovered that her assumption was correct; Anders was angry. She was given one of the worst patrols in the city, something he was known to do whenever an officer got a complaint which caused him to do more paperwork than usual. Sergeant Star found it ironic that putting her in tougher parts of town would really make things better for him. Being in that part of town would result in more arrests, more interactions and thus more paperwork for Anders. Amanda thought putting her in a softer zone would be a harsher punishment as she would be bored and have nothing to do, hence less complaints. Either Anders was a glutton for punishment or he just didn’t seem to care as long as she was up to her neck in scumbags and having to work her tail off. She also dared to think that one reason why she was getting this part of town was because of the fear of escalating violence and preferred to have his best in place, paperwork be damned. Amanda didn’t require approval from neither Anders nor Captain Rogers to know she was the best in the Capital, she already knew it.
When Sergeant Star had cleared the hanger and was on its way to her assigned section, she immediately activated her communication boards and started to listen to incoming chatter. There were hundreds of officers working the ground; busting people who were bring rowdy or just getting in the way of citizens trying to do their own thing. The job of the patrollers above was to monitor the ground from above and only intercede when things became too dangerous and the officers on the ground required a stronger hand to help out. With millions of people in the city, it was too much for just the patrol to handle on their own, so there were assigned police forces but they were the lawmen in charge when things got really out of hand. More like marshals that only stuck their heads in when it hit the fan. In the section that Anders kept assigning Amanda to, that was often. She hadn’t been in the air more than seven minutes when the first call for assistance came in.
“Sector Command to Patrol Pod Seven.” The com-link called out.
“Patrol Pod seven here,” Amanda replied.
“We have a robbery in progress at a local shop.”
“I have the location on my panel,” Amanda said as she began to change course. “Are other officers enroute?”
“Affirmative, but the will take longer to get there. Exercise caution.”
“Understood,” Star said as she began to weave through traffic on her way to the shop that was under siege. It didn’t take her long to figure out why backup from the Patrol was called in. One of the crooks emerged from the shop armed with a disrupter and fired at her without hesitation. Star had no problem dodging the shots but was surprised that the blaster was working at all within the city limits. There was tech installed in the city that was supposed to render all unauthorized laser weapons disabled but for some reason it wasn’t working on this particular blaster, which meant Star was going to have to disarm the man and take this gun nut and whoever else was inside. When she was close enough to make a move, Amanda leaped off the speeder and flipped out onto one of the balconies above the shop. She then withdrew her own blaster and returned fire. Unlike the man who was shooting wildly, A
manda hit the range everyday and never missed her targets. She nailed the gunman with a perfect shot to the chest, which stunned the man and knocked him to the ground.
Once on the ground beside the man she just stunned, Amanda placed inhibitor cuffs on the man and picked up his blaster. There were no markings, no logos or serial numbers. Wherever this blaster came from, it was homemade and not affected by the city’s defence systems. She had never seen anything like it before. Whenever someone walked into the city limits with a blaster that wasn’t authorized, there were defences in the city that would deactivate it until the person returned outside city limits. When it came to this blaster, those defences were not working. This was the first time someone had shot at Amanda within the city since she started working there. She could tell this was going to be a problem but immediately shrugged it off and walked into the shop with her own blaster raised, ready for anything.
When she strolled into the shop, it was very quiet. People were lying on the floor with their hands on their heads. She moved in further, looking around for possible hostiles but there were none. Amanda then made a motion to the shop keeper who was in the corner.
“Where’d they go?” she whispered.
“The other two when out the backdoor when their friend started shooting at you,” He answered while pointing to the door that led to the back.
