by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Davi pushed the joystick forward and his VS28 fighter dove out of the cloud cover to rejoin the rest of his squadron. As he slid into the pole position, he glanced over at Tela in position off to his right. She smiled and waved.

“Imagine seeing you here,” he said over the comm-channel with a smile.

He heard Tela laugh as the squadron formed up around them, doing so without the usual chatter. Davi knew they were all as tired as he was.

It had been an amazing three weeks. After their capture of fighters and takeover of the planetary shield, the WFR stayed busy skirmishing with Alliance forces. So far, the energy shield had prevented enemy reinforcements and aerial attacks, but Davi knew it would be a matter of time before the Alliance sent in star cruisers to break through the shield.

The success of the WFR’s attack plan also yielded other benefits for Davi. Once the workers had control of their planet, those who had shown little interest in the Resistance signed up like wildfire. Experienced pilots from all over the system offered their services. Davi and Tela gave those who were local an immediate crash course on VS28 fighters, enabling squadrons to be in the air around the clock, thus allowing Davi and the others time to rest.

Already the constant tiredness of the past few weeks had begun to fade. Additional fighters had been requisitioned from the Vertullis starport and brought back to the base, but fighting persisted around the starport and the Alliance still had access to fighters there. Davi and Tela continued training new recruits, while additional units were trained and added to Uzah’s troops as well.

At a leaders’ meeting, Davi learned the WFR forces had gained enough ground to drive the remaining enemy troops into strongholds at the government center and starport. The Alliance had failed to recapture the energy shield control center but continued trying. Davi and the pilots reinforced the ground forces by air and destroyed enemy infrastructure and equipment.

His comm-channel beeped. “Squadron One, commander,” he answered.

Uzah’s yelling voice came through, struggling to be heard over at the explosions and laser blasts in the background. “Squadron One, we request immediate response. We have enemy forces pinned down on the east edge of the government complex. Please intercept vehicle traffic.”

The Alliance had been making use of Shuttles and Floaters to launch attacks and move troops around. His pilots strafed enemy launch sites as well as ground craft.

Davi keyed the comm-channel transmit button. “Roger, Ground Leader, ETA six minutes.” Davi ran down the pilots’ various skill levels and successes, devising a strategy he hoped would work. It all depended on the actual positions and activities of the enemy once they arrived.

The fighters glided over the tops of the buildings at close range, staying low to confuse the radar and maintain good line of sight with the ground. Davi divided the squadron into two groups of six fighters, assigning Tela to head the second group. “You go after ground weaponry emplacements first. We’ll try and take out any vehicle traffic.”

“Roger,” she said. They exchanged one last look before steering their craft apart as their assigned groups formed up around them.  Then each group vectored off toward their target areas.

A few minutes later, the government center came into view. Two columns of large Floaters moved up parallel corridors, attempting to flank the WFR forces. Their dark blue coloring made them hard to spot through the smoke on the ground but the shiny Alliance emblems reflecting light on both sides gave them away.

“Dru and Virun, form behind me. We’ll take the group to starboard. The rest of you form behind Jorek and take the group to port.”

“Roger,” the pilots responded in unison as they split into subsquads.

Davi smiled, remembering when Jorek and Virun had pulled him aside after the air raids on the enemy starports.

“We owe you an apology,” Virun had said.

“We’re sorry we gave you such a hard time,” Jorek said. “It was just hard to believe we could trust you.”

Since then, they’d become two of his strongest leaders.

“Go for their weapons capabilities first,” Davi instructed.

“Ah come on, boss! Total destruction is much more satisfying,” Jorek said over the comm-channel.

“You can destroy them after you’re sure they can’t fire back,” Davi said, knowing that despite his enthusiasm, Jorek’s focus never wavered.

“You got it,” Jorek responded, not big on comm-channel protocol.

Both squads executed the plan perfectly, swooping in on the Floaters from above, strafing them with laser fire. Outside his cockpit, multiple flashes appeared followed by booming explosions as Davi’s blasts disabled the front vehicle in the column. The next Floater in line swerved to avoid it, but the driver misjudged his position, running over troops fleeing the first Floater to seek cover, before crashing into the third Floater in line.

“Three down with one shot, not bad,” Davi said to himself. He adjusted his targeting and fired again, this time aiming for the laser cannons on the three Floaters. He shifted in his seat as the VS28 vibrated with each blast. The cockpit started feeling stuffy as the temperature rose along with his excitement and adrenaline.

Laser bolts flashed outside his blast shield. Spotting rooftop snipers, he didn’t even bother to dodge. Blasters wouldn’t do much good against the VS28’s shields even at close range. He circled around and watched Dru and Virun dispatch laser cannons on four more Floaters. Several more bright explosions boomed before the Floaters split up onto separate corridors in an attempt to avoid their fire.

“They’re trying to keep it interesting for us, boys,” Davi said over the comm-channel.

“Good. Moving targets are so much more fun,” Dru responded. To Davi’s amazement, Dru had become one of the better target shooters among the pilots.

Davi and three others swooped down in tight formation and fired. Laser blasts exploded around the Floaters again. Davi’s and Dru’s blasts hit their marks, taking out more laser cannons. Virun’s missed, but he aimed again and blasted the Floater’s engines, bringing it to a sudden stop.

Troops jumped clear, seeking cover as Virun chuckled over the comm-channel. “That had to hurt.”

Virun’s fighter rocked with an explosion and orange flashes appeared on its port wing. “What the—”

Davi looked over to spot a laser cannon zeroing in on him again from the top of a nearby building. “Laser cannon, top of the Acron Industries building. I’m on him,” Davi said over the comm-channel. G-forces slammed him back against his leather seat as he put his VS28 into a steep turn and dove down, targeting the rooftop of the office complex.

Jorek’s voice came over the comm-channel. “Keep your eyes out for laser cannons on the rooftops.”

“How’d we miss those?” Dru wondered aloud over the comm-channel.

“Keep your eyes peeled for others. He really did some damage,” Virun warned them.

Davi’s targeting computer lit up as it locked on the target. Lining up visually on the guides, he strafed the rooftop. Alliance soldiers dove to each side as the laser cannon exploded. “One cannon down.”

“Thanks, boss,” Virun replied as Davi steered into position above Virun and to the right.

Virun’s starboard wing had black burn marks from the impact and a tear in the metal. “The damage doesn’t look unmanageable from here. Can you still control her?”

“I’m not out of this yet,” Virun replied turning the fighter for another run.

Davi and Dru both maneuvered into formation around him. Without further chatter, knowing what to do, they took out the laser cannons on the four remaining Floaters, and then targeted their engines.

As they circled around, Davi glimpsed Jorek’s squad making similar runs. In a few more minutes, the remaining Floaters had been disabled and the squadron reformed around Davi, heading to assist Tela’s team. Davi brushed his clammy brow against the sleeve of his flight suit.

They arrived at the government center to find charred remains of more laser cannons and Alliance equipment. One of the barracks was smoldering. In the beginning, the WFR had hoped to preserve as much infrastructure as possible, but Alliance resistance had made it so difficult they’d decided to do what must be done and worry about it later. They could always rebuild.

“Leave anything for us?” Jorek said as they circled Tela’s team.

“We were about to ask you the same question,” Tela responded as she joined their formation. The rest of her team formed up behind her.

A squadron of seven Alliance VS28 fighters appeared heading straight for them with laser cannons blazing. “Heads up, here they come!” Tela called into the comm-channel.

Davi spun his fighter into a dive as two laser blasts exploded off his starboard wing. “We need to capture that starport.”

“Let’s knock these boys out of the sky!” Brie said over the comm-channel.

Davi chuckled. She’d come a long way from the lost teenage girl he had known in training. Davi glanced over to see one of his fighters crashing into the top of another office building, as the Squadron divided itself into pairs and began targeting the enemy fighters.

“We lost Kinny,” Tela said over the comm-channel.

Davi pounded a fist into the side of his fighter. Kinny was an experienced pilot who had joined after the initial attack. “Wingmen, cover your leaders!” They didn’t really need the reminder, but losing one of his pilots switched him into teacher mode again.

Tela lined up on an Alliance fighter and unleashed a burst of fire from her cannons. The enemy fighter exploded, spiraling toward the ground. Tela let off a victory yell, “One down!”

Davi lined up another in his sights, firing several sloppy blasts through its wing. It spun out of control. “Make it two.”

An enemy fighter swooped in from above, firing on Dru at close range. Explosions rocked the hull of his fighter.

Smoke trailed from it, and Davi could see the damage out his blast shield. “You okay, Dru?”

Dru sounded rattled. “She’s a little shaky but I can still fly her.”

Davi and Tela both dove in to provide cover, blasting in unison at the enemy fighter trying to escape. It disintegrated with a bright flash.

Dru’s voice rose in excitement. “He won’t do that again! Thanks, guys!”

“Don’t mention it,” Tela said.

“Let’s clean this mess up!” Jorek said.

Davi watched as the enemy fighters retreated. “They’re running,” Nila said.

“Jorek, take the squadron and chase them down if you can. We’re escorting Dru back to base,” Davi said.

“You got it, boss,” Jorek said.

“Don’t let them lead you too close to the starport. They might launch reinforcements,” Tela warned.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be okay.” Jorek said as the others formed around him and peeled off after the enemy fighters, leaving Tela and Davi flanking Dru.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry,” Dru said.

Davi heard Tela’s laugh over the comm-channel as he keyed the transmitter. “Let’s go home.” They flew in formation back toward the WFR base.

Xalivar arrived at the meeting with his military leaders feeling beyond frustrated. Never had such brilliant leadership been undermined by more incredible incompetence.

General Lucius, General Pres and Admiral Dek sat around the table in the High Lord Councilor’s conference room, just down the hall from the throne room. The oldest of the three, Lucius led ground operations. He’d served first under Xalivar’s father and had a long and prestigious record of service, marred solely by his involvement in the Delta V disaster. He had Xalivar’s sympathy.

The two junior officers were two decades younger. Pres, the sole female to rise to the top of the Alliance military hierarchy, was descended from the people who once ruled the Eastern regions of Old Earth. Her slanted eyes and yellowish skin lent darkness to her features. She coordi-nated air defenses, from energy shields to in-atmosphere attack forces. Of the three, Dek looked most like a soldier—his hair closely cropped, his big-boned, muscular frame emphasized by the fit of the gray uniform. He led the extra-planetary air forces.

As Xalivar paced at the head of the table, Lucius broke the silence. “We’ve consolidated all remaining forces on Vertullis at the government center. We are seeking to regain ground and retake the starport.”

“We sent reinforcements?” Xalivar looked to Dek.

“Our men are waiting and ready,” Dek responded, “but until we find a way through the energy shield, they cannot be deployed to the surface.”

Xalivar whirled around, his anger rising. “What’s taking so long? We designed the shield, didn’t we? We need those forces on the ground!” He clenched his fists.

Dek flinched but managed to compose himself. “We designed the shields to protect against these types of invasions. Our attempts to weak-en the shield with fighters and smaller craft have not been successful. We’re preparing larger cruisers for a full-scale assault.”

“Our forces have coordinated attacks on the surface using shuttles, Floaters, and the few VS28 starfighters not under WFR control,” Pres said.

“The greatest Alliance in the galaxy is being brought to its knees by a bunch of fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants workers?” Xalivar couldn’t believe what he was hearing! Had the years of peace turned his once finely tuned military into incompetents?

“We’ve seen several gains in the last few days toward recapturing the shield control center,” Lucius said. “We hope to regain control of it in the next two days.”

“It’s been three weeks already! What’s taking so long?” Xalivar saw them all flinch at his screaming. “You told me we had the finest military in the galaxy!”

“Our training is top notch, my Lord, but our troops have limited experience with real warfare,” Lucius said.

“Are you actually arguing, General Lucius, that years of peace have made us soft and incompetent?” Xalivar stared at him, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer. Proud men like this could never admit their failures. He shook his head. “I want all cruisers in the star system recalled to attack that energy shield. All soldiers not essential to their posts are to be brought here and armed for battle. We must recapture Vertullis as soon as possible.”

The three leaders nodded. “The cruisers have already been recalled,” Dek said.

“We’re refitting some light aircraft with better shields to allow increased attacks on enemy positions,” Pres said.

“How long will this refitting take?”

“We can’t send supplies through the shields either, my Lord,” Pres said. “Our men have to reconnoiter and requisition required materials.”

Xalivar cursed and pounded his fist on the table. “When am I going to stop hearing excuses and start seeing results?” He turned to the door as Manaen entered holding a data pad. “More bad news?” Manaen nodded.

“I expect the next time we meet to be hearing actual progress reports, instead of more excuses for delays.” He grabbed the data pad out of Manaen’s hands and stormed into the corridor, as the leaders sighed and exchanged frustrated looks.

Davi reported to the command center for debriefing an hour after landing. Matheu, Aron and Joram had already assembled.

“We lost a fighter today and three others were damaged. One of those was nearly shot down as well. Repairs on two of them can be done in a few days, but—”

Matheu nodded. “Casualties of war. It happens.”

Davi frowned. “Dead pilots are more to me than just numbers!” His face turned red with anger as he drew close to Matheu and looked him in the eye. How could he be so callous?

Joram stepped between them. “They are to all of us. But people die in war. It’s unavoidable.”

Davi stepped back, trying to regain his composure. “We’ll need all the fighters we can get if we hope to continue this fight. It’s only a matter of time before the Alliance brings in star cruisers to blast through the energy shield.”

“We have to hope we can negotiate before it happens,” Aron said from a nearby chair.

“With what leverage? We are one planet against the entire system!” Davi said, sinking into a chair near Aron and wondering how they could feel so confident.

A communications panel beeped, distracting their attention a moment as a commtech ran to answer it.

“Not everyone in the system sides with the Alliance,” Joram said. “They dominate by force, not by election.”

“We’re making gains daily,” Aron said. “The Lord’s Council and the citizens of the Alliance must take note of it. Pressure will be brought to bear on the High Lord Councilor. Especially in regards to the Alliance prisoners we’re holding. Xalivar may not care about them but others will.”

“The Alliance hasn’t even used half the force available to them. If history has taught us anything, it’s that they won’t give up easily,” Matheu said.

“The Borali Alliance hasn’t fought in years,” Aron said. “They quelled a few ill-thought-out worker Movements, yes. But none of those had the military organization and planning we have.”

“They don’t even see us as human beings,” Davi said. “You can’t assume their whole way of thinking will change right away.”

“Not everyone in the Alliance thinks the same way. You didn’t,” Joram said.

Davi nodded. “My mother saw to it that I was given unique opportunities and a liberal education most in the Alliance never have. Even she doesn’t think as I do.”

“Most of them only remember the history of animosity between our peoples,” Matheu said.

Davi couldn’t believe he’d wound up on the same side in this argument with Matheu. The tension between them had eased since they’d started trusting him, but Mathew was cold and hard, unlike Davi.  “It may be a long fight.”

“As soon as the area around the government center is stable, we’ll retrieve what’s left of Kinny’s fighter. Try to rebuild—” Joram said.

“It crashed into a building. There won’t be much left to salvage,” Davi said, cutting him off.

“We’ll take what we can from it,” Joram replied.

Davi nodded as Aron stood and motioned for him to follow.

“We’ve been looking into the information your friend at Presimion sent you about the prison,” Aron said as they walked away from the others.

Hope rose inside Davi. “You’ve found something?”

Aron shook his head. “Information on its defenses. It’s hidden underground and very well protected. Besides the fact that it’s on Legallis, there’s no feasible assault plan we can conceive of.”

Davi’s heart sank. “I have to find a way to help Miri and my father.”

“Maybe something can be worked out in the negotiations,” Aron said, trying to encourage him.

“We don’t even know if there are going to be negotiations,” Davi said, his voice rising in frustration.

“We don’t know for certain Miri and your father are being held there,” Aron reminded him.

Davi turned and headed toward the corridor, feeling a need to get away from military thinking for a while.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novel The Worker Prince, an honorable mention on Barnes & Noble’s Best SF Releases of 2011, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. He resides in Ottawa, KS with two precocious dogs.

~

This work proudly brought to you in association with Every Day Publishing and Diminished Media Group. If you like what you’ve read thus far, there’s no need to wait – click on over and pick up a copy right now!

by Robin Bailes

The sign that met travellers at the Herschel Crater Spaceport on Mimas read Welcome to Mimas. Terraformed: 2166, underneath which someone had spray painted “made liveable: pending.” The words had been scrubbed off many times but they always reappeared and the spaceport authorities had eventually given up. Now it had become the unofficial motto of the unregarded moon that hung in lazy orbit so close to Saturn that it was actually within its rings.

Of all the human colonies in the galaxy, Mimas remained the most down at heel. In a campaign speech Regional Governor Lev Tarkman had called it “more backward than Phoebe” (a ‘clever’ pun on the fact that Phoebe orbits in a contrary direction to all Saturn’s other satellites), the crack won him more votes than it lost him. Mimas’s colonisation had turned into a fiasco when it was discovered that the moon’s fractured core (a legacy of the meteor strike that had created the Herschel Crater) made mining impossible. With no resources to call its own, this most distant outpost struggled in the galactic economy.

Cal Jennings was fortunate; he had a natural aptitude for Mimas’s one growth industry. By the time ships got this far out they were in dire need of an overhaul, plus, Mimas seemed to be a magnet to everything that was burnt out, clapped out, over the hill and on its last legs; it was the junk yard and dumping ground for the rest of the galaxy. All of which was ideal for a mechanic like Cal; it meant regular work, and that was the main thing.

Cal had been born on Mimas and was glad of it, because from here the only way was up. He had few sentimental feelings about the polluted ball of rock that he called home, and certainly not enough to keep him here if he could only get together enough money to take himself someplace else. But that was easier said than done, if you worked on Mimas then it was assumed that you had probably done something to deserve it; that your work was below par, and that you weren’t going anywhere else fast. People paid just below the bottom end of what a job was actually worth. In such a climate, scraping together enough money to live on was hard, enough to get out? That was a dream.

Realising such a dream was made no easier by the fact that Cal did not want to leave alone. He ran his garage along with his two best friends, Link and Cadey. Link was a huge slab of a man with a face like a side of meat. He and Cal had been friends since school, and they were practically brothers. By contrast, Cadey was anything but a sister as far as Cal was concerned. Cadey was the goddess of mechanics, a stunningly beautiful girl with red hair and a pretty (though usually oil smeared) face, who also looked at home in overalls and could diagnose an engine just by listening to it. Cal had harboured a secret crush on her for years but had never said anything. Words did not come easily to Cal, he understood what made an engine tick, but a woman? He could not even guess. To make matters worse, Cadey favoured oddly pretty, slim-hipped young men who wouldn’t know a Heeley turbine switch-release from a graduated tensile injection pump. They always seemed to be poets as well. Cal had tentatively tried his hand at romantic poetry but had come unglued searching for a rhyme for aspirated polycyclic gauge inverter, and then wondered if people who tried to find rhymes for aspirated polycyclic gauge inverter were really cut out for poetry in the first place. It was not that Cal was an ugly man, his harshest critic would have admitted him to be appealing in a ruggedly rough-hewn sort of a way. But the men Cadey dated were from a different planet, often literally, and Cal lived in fear that one day one of them would take Cadey back with him.

It was Friday morning when the Excalibur turned up. The three mechanics stood in the main workshop, gazing up at it in awe.

“Someone dumped this?” Cal finally asked. “What’s wrong with it?”

Werzy shrugged. “The black box is up the spout, starts recording randomly. But other than that; nothing. Didn’t even have a body in it. Escape pods haven’t been fired neither.”

Werzy ran a scrapyard on the spaceward side of the moon and had a standing contract with the Lunar Council to break up abandoned ships for parts to be sold off-world. But he was also an enterprising man, and when something half decent came in he was not averse to making some money on the side by selling it on to a contact. Cal had got many an interesting project from Werzy over the years, and had even made some money himself on them, but this was in a different league, the Excalibur was a classic! And this was a 42, generally agreed to be the best model.

“I suppose it’s the real thing?” asked Link, voicing the concerns of all three.

“Serial numbers check out.”

“They can be faked.”

“Fire it up,” said Cadey.

Werzy gave a curt nod, and climbed up into the cockpit, moments later the engine flared into life.

“That’s an Excalibur,” said Cadey with absolute certainty. “My Dad used to take me to the Sub-lights when I was a kid. I’d know that engine noise anywhere.”

“How does it sound quality wise?” asked Cal. “I don’t hear any problems.”

Cadey listened, frowning then shaking her head. “Might be some wear in the grading brushes but they can replaced for nothing. And there’s a slight rattle in the lower manifolds, probably just need re-boring. But I can’t hear any reason for it to get scrapped.”

Werzy rejoined them. “Satisfied?”

Cal shrugged. “I’m happy it’s real. I don’t think I’m going to be satisfied once you name a price.”

Werzy spread his hands. “Cal, you know what this thing’s worth?”

“I do. I also know that no one who visits Mimas has that much. And I know it cost you nothing. Look mate, you know what I can afford, you brought it here to sell, and you want to move it quick.”

Negotiations moved, stalled, lurched backwards, and finally settled on a compromise that made neither man happy, and so was probably fair. With Werzy gone, the three mechanics again fell to regarding their prize.

“Cal?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do with it?”

“Fix it up. It’s a classic.”

“But it barely needs any work and there’s no one on Mimas who’ll pay more than you just did.”

To his credit, that thought had already occurred to Cal; less to his credit he had decided to ignore the thought and buy the Excalibur anyway because, like every boy in the galaxy, he had always dreamed of owning one, business be damned.

“It’s a classic,” he repeated lamely.

Cadey nodded with a smile; she liked it as much as Cal did. “By the way, is it okay if I head out a bit early today? Cyprian’s picking me up.”

Cal tried not to wince at the mention of the name; Cyprian was Cadey’s current boyfriend (or ‘beau’ as he insisted on calling himself), an excruciating youth with long hair, drooping eyelids and no discernible chin.

“Ye. . .”

“I know it’s short notice.”

“It’s. . .”

“And I’m happy to make up the time tomorrow.”

“Cadey it’s fine,” Cal finally managed to get a sentence out. “Now, you want to have a look at the lower manifold if you think you heard something?”

“If I think?”

Cal grinned. “Re-bore the lower manifold. I wouldn’t dream of contradicting your ears.”

“Damn right.”

“They’re good ears.”

“Good?”

“The best.”

“Damn right.”

As Cadey went to work, Link came up behind Cal and slapped a huge hand on his friend’s back. “Ask her, mate. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could say ‘no.’”

“No one ever died from hearing the word ‘no,’” pointed out Link.

“You can’t possibly know that. Besides, if I ask and she says ‘no’ I lose a friend and a great mechanic, and I couldn’t replace either. And she would say ‘no.’”

Link shrugged his massive shoulders, “You can’t possibly know that.”

In the afternoon Cal joined Cadey lying under the ship.

“How’s it going?”

“I think I was wrong.”

“Surely not.”

“I know; hard to believe, right? But the manifold doesn’t need re-boring, there’s something stuck in there.”

Cal frowned. “How does something get stuck in the lower manifold?”

Cadey shook her head. “You’ve got me. I can only think that it was put here deliberately.”

“Can you tell what it is?”

Cadey stuck her arm deep into the Excalibur and strained.

“Can’t quite reach it. My arm’s not long enough.”

“Well, you make up for it with good ears.” What sort of a compliment was that?! Cal’s subconscious yelled at him. But Cadey seemed flattered, smiling prettily, though Cadey did most things prettily.

“Let me have a try.” Cadey shuffled across and made room for Cal.

“Can you feel it?” Cadey asked.

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” He really didn’t. It did not feel like anything that had any business being in a ship. It felt like cloth. He managed to get a grip on it and pulled.

“It’s coming!”

With a final tug Cal extracted the offending object; it was a bag which slipped from his hand to fall to the floor. Diamonds spilled forth.

For the second time that day, work stopped in the garage while the mechanics stared at something. In this case, it was the pile of cut diamonds that sat in the centre of the workbench, glistening. They had been staring for some time.

“How much do you reckon they’re worth?” asked Link finally.

Cal shook his head. “No idea.”

“What do we do with them?” asked Cadey.

“We’d get a better price off Mimas,” said Link.

“We’ve got to take them to the police,” said Cal.

“Why? We bought them fair and square.”

“Yeah, but I bet someone didn’t. If we get caught dealing in stolen goods then we’d be doing life in some hellhole.”

Link snorted. “We’re already doing life in some hellhole. This is our ticket off Mimas. This could be enough to get us all the way to Earth. You talk about it enough Cal, your dream is in front of you. In fact,” he cast a glance in Cadey’s direction, “I reckon this could help you achieve all your dreams.”

“I don’t know,” Cadey too was unsure. “It just seems like theft.”

“We didn’t exactly purchase the Excalibur legally,” pointed out Link. “And neither of you said ‘boo.’ The only difference is scale. We’re not stealing anything. That’s the beauty of the law: finders keepers.”

“I don’t think that is the law, Link,” said Cal.

“Well it should be.”

“I’m not sure that argument will hold up in court.”

“We can afford good lawyers with this lot.”

Cal shook his head. “I’m taking them to the police.” He swept the diamonds into the bag.

“Now hang on a minute,” said Link. “Why do you get to make the decision?”

“I found them,” pointed out Cal, immediately regretting it as Cadey turned on him.

“Oh did you now! I didn’t have anything to do with it, huh? I’m the one who heard the problem with the manifold, I’m the one who found something stuck. The only reason you ‘found’ them is because you’ve got long gorilla arms!”

“Quite right,” said Link. “It should be a group decision.”

“The hell it should!” Cadey continued. “I found them, it should be my decision.”

“They’re not that long are they?” asked Cal, looking at his arms.

Link ignored him. “The diamonds were found in the garage. The garage is ours. We all make the decision.”

“The garage is actually mine,” put in Cal.

“You always say it’s about the team!”

Cal acknowledged this. “Yeah, and then the bills come in and the team goes for a beer while I write a cheque. It’s my name on the lease, it’s my money that pays the rent, and it’s my Excalibur in which those diamonds were found!”

“By me!” Cadey added vehemently. “Finders keepers!”

“That’s the law,” said Link.

“No it isn’t!”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“It’s not!” Cal said with an air of finality. “I’m taking these diamonds to the police! Get back to work!”

Link and Cadey looked at each other.

“Did you really think that ‘big boss man’ stuff was going to fly with us,” Cadey asked finally.

“No, but it was worth a shot.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Cal,” said Link, “either we’re a team or we’re not, either the diamonds belong to all of us or none of us.”

“None of us!” Cal exclaimed. “That’s what I’ve been saying. That’s why I’m taking them to the police.”

“Okay, hang on,” Link tried to back up. “I got that wrong.”

“The only question here,” said Cadey sharply, “Is do you think of us as employees or friends?”

Cal shrugged, “Well I do pay you but—”

“Well that’s answered that.”

“Hang on, you didn’t let me—”

“Me and Link are clearly just hired hands here to do your bidding!”

“I didn’t say—”

“Here!” Cadey pulled a handful of loose change from her pocket. “It’s on your property so it must be yours!”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“How is it different?!”

Cal tried to think for a minute but he was rapidly losing his temper with this whole discussion. “I don’t know, but it is and you know it is! You’re being deliberately stupid now! Just to wind me up and make me look like the bad guy!”

“You hear that Link? Now we’re stupid!”

“You maybe,” said Link, “I didn’t hear my name.”

Cal headed back towards the Excalibur.

“Where are you going?!” yelled Cadey.

“The diamonds should stay here till we’ve decided what to do with them!” called Link.

Cal turned back. “I’m going to check the Excalibur’s black box to see if there’s anything on there to tell us where these came from. We’ll take it from there.”

In the Excalibur’s handsomely appointed cockpit, Cal slumped into a chair and threw the diamonds onto the navigation panel to his right. What the hell was that about? Not just them; him! When the girl of your dreams wants something, you comply! You don’t argue with her and call her an employee! Girls don’t like that! He could kick himself. Money was the problem, money made everything blurry, money set good friends at each other’s throats. Better off without it. But there it was, sitting on the navigation panel, and nothing he could do would make it vanish, the damage was already done.

He was sitting brooding like this when a loud noise, almost an explosion, from outside sent him tumbling over backwards out of his chair. He ducked behind the controls and peered out through the front screen into the garage. The main doors had a smoking hole in the middle of them, a quintet of armed men were prowling around his workshop, and his two best friends were on their knees with their hands on their head.

“Where are they?” the leader of the men asked.

“Where are what?” Link replied. Men as big and ugly as Link are so seldom intimidated that dangerous situations sometimes take a while to filter through. The leader cracked Link on the head with the butt of his gun and the big man went down like a sack of potatoes.

“I’ll ask you,” the leader said, turning to Cadey, “Where are they?”

“Where are what?” Cadey on the other hand was just plain stubborn.

“What’s going on?”

Cal nearly jumped out of his skin at the voice that had come from just behind his shoulder. He turned to find the lank hair and aesthetic features of Cyprian directly behind him.

“How did you get in?!” he hissed an angry whisper.

“I came in the back way to pick Cadey up. Do you know there are men with guns down there?! I hid in here. I don’t think they saw me. What’s going on?”

“Not sure yet.”

Cal turned his attention back to the events in his workshop.

“Fine,” the gang leader continued. “You want to play dumb, I’ve got all the time in the world. This is Mimas, no one’ll come when you scream. They’ll come five minutes later to steal the watch off your corpse. So here’s the deal; an associate of mine stole some property from me. My friends and I tracked him down in his ship”—he indicated the Excalibur—”and then we did the decent thing and let him out, because, contrary to appearances, we all have good hearts. Of course, we were in space at the time so he didn’t exactly thank us for it. More sort of imploded. We then dumped his vehicle at a scrap yard to be dismantled so that no evidence would lead to us, and went on to his home to find my stolen property. But it wasn’t in his home. He’d hidden it in his ship. This ship. Which you have now had in here more than long enough to find my property. So I ask you again, where is it?”

“What property?” asked Cyprian.

Cal indicated the diamonds that still lay on the navigation panel.

“Boss?” one of the other gangsters spoke up. “I think someone else works here.”

“Bonzo, what have I told you about thinking?”

“That I am conn-jen-it-al-ee unsuited to it. But Boss, there’s a picture here with three of them, and three names on the licencing thingy. Plus, I got my old girl’s retros buffed up here last year and there was another bloke in charge.”

“He’s not in charge, we’re a team,” Cadey butted in pointedly.

Cal winced, even with a gun to her head she still found time to be pissed at him.

The leader smiled a thin, unpleasant smile. “Well done, Bonzo. Later you can have a cookie.” He addressed the room in general. “Whatever your name is, you’ve got my property and I want it back. If I get it then I promise no harm will come to you or your employees—”

“We’re a team.”

“Shut up. As I was saying; I might even throw some business your way. I saw Bonzo’s retros, that was a nice job. But if I don’t get my property back, I’m going to make a mess of your nice clean garage.” He levelled his gun at Cadey’s head. “By blowing this young lady’s brains all over it. Twenty seconds.” He looked at his watch.

Cal did not hesitate, he reached for the diamonds. But they were gone. So was Cyprian.

A cold, clammy sensation swarmed across Cal’s body. He reached for the comm switch and his voice crackled out into the garage.

“I don’t have them! Please don’t hurt her, I don’t have them!”

Through the screen he watched Cadey’s eyes widen  in shock. The gang leader shook his head. “Well then, I’m going to shoot her in seventeen seconds. That should be long enough for you to ‘find’ them.” He turned to Bonzo. “Tch, the things some people will do for money.”

“It’s sad, Boss.”

Cal looked desperately about him. There was nothing he could do. The woman he loved was about to get shot in the head and there was nothing he could. . .his eyes lighted on a button on the control panel. It might work. But what about Cadey? He’d just have to trust that, gun to her head or not, she was still Cadey.

He pressed the button.

Out in the garage the countdown continued. All the men had gathered now, not wanting to miss the fun.

“Eight, seven, six, five. . .”

“What’s that noise, Boss?” asked Bonzo.

A click and a hiss and a clunk issued from the Excalibur making Cadey frown. Her mind was overwhelmed with cold, blinding terror, what did some stupid noise matter?! But this was still Cadey, and part of her brain was automatically analysing that noise. It was a familiar sound, one she knew from when her father had taken her to the Sub-lights when she was a kid. It sounded like. . . Realisation hit with only a split second to spare and Cadey threw herself to the ground.

“One. . .”

With a spurt of flame the Excalibur’s twin escape pods fired, shooting violently forward, passing safely over Cadey’s head to take out the workbench, a rack of tools, a partly dismantled engine, and five armed men.

Seconds later Cal came running out of the Excalibur.

“Cadey! Cadey! Are you all right?!”

Cadey stood amidst the debris.

“You son of a bitch!” She delivered a stinging slap across his face. “You could’ve killed me!”

“But—”

“Why didn’t you just hand over the diamonds!”

“I—”

“Happy to give them to the police but not to use them to save a friend’s—sorry; an employee’s life?!”

“No—”

“You never were going to give them to the police were you! You just wanted them for yourself!”

“Cadey—”

“I’m going to see Cyprian, at least he cares about me! I never want to see you again!”

“But—”

She strode off without another word and without looking back. It occurred to Cal, not for the first time, that the hard-boiled stubbornness that made Cadey so attractive to him could also make her a proper pain in the ass.

With a groan Link sat up and surveyed the chaos of his surroundings. “What the hell happened here?”

Later that night Cal sat at home alone drinking a bottle of beer and trying to put today in some sort of perspective. If he told Cadey the truth now there was no way she would believe him, and he had no proof. That was it, game over. The doorbell squawked harshly and he reluctantly went to answer it. Outside stood Cadey.

“The black box was up the spout.”

“What?” Cal frowned.

“That’s what Werzy said. Starts recording randomly.”

Cal began dimly to see what she was telling him.

“I went back to pick up my tool belt and Link said there was something I should see. Why didn’t you tell me Cyprian took the diamonds?”

“Well—”

“You let me make a complete fool of myself.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“I suppose I should be grateful you came up with a way of saving my life.”

“That was—”

“But still, making me look like—”

Cal grabbed Cadey and kissed her. When he let her go she looked at him slightly startled.

“You know, it’s good manners to ask first.”

“I didn’t like my chances of getting a word in.”

“Are you saying I talk too much?”

Cal sighed. “Cadey you are the most frustrating, infuriating, and annoying woman I have ever met and if you would agree to have dinner with me sometime it would make me the happiest man on Mimas.”

“No.”

Cal’s heart sank. “No?”

“I mean, no it won’t make you the happiest man on Mimas, it’ll make you the happiest man on Amalthea.”

“What?”

“We’re moving. You, me, and Link.”

“How?”

“I persuaded Cyprian to give me the diamonds (he’ll be walking again in a week), and I turned them in to the police. Turns out there was a finder’s fee. I know Amalthea isn’t Earth but we’re getting closer.”

Cal grinned, it seemed that all his dreams were coming true.

“Oh, and if you’re wondering,” Cadey continued, “and if the offer still stands, I’d be delighted to make you the happiest man on Amalthea. In fact, I think doing so would make me the happiest girl there.”

Cal kissed Cadey again, words were not his strong point, but the kiss said it all.

Robin is a freelance writer with various credits on stage, page, screen, and radio, and will write almost anything for money. He has written everything from horror film to pantomime and from greeting cards to stage musical. He is currently available for paid work.

This month, RGR is proud to feature an interview with Michael F. Flynn. Nearly all of Flynn’s work falls under the category of hard science fiction, although his treatment of it can be unusual since he has applied the rigor of hard science fiction to “softer” sciences such as sociology in works such as In the Country of the Blind. Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, he earned a B.A. in Mathematics from LaSalle University and an M.S. in topology from Marquette University.  He has been employed as an industrial quality engineer and statistician.  His novel series include the Firestar and Spiral Arm series. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Asimovs and Analog, as well as the anthologies Southern Strategy and The Ensorcelled ATM edited by Harry Turtledove.  He can be found online at his journal: http://m-francis.livejournal.com/

SFFWRTCHT: Where’d your interest in SFF come from?

Michael F. Flynn: From bed-time stories my dad used to tell us, like “To Serve Man” by Damon Knight. Also Ray Bradbury. We thought he made them up.  It wasn’t until later we found his stash of Galaxy and Worlds Of If.

SFFWRTCHT: Who were some of your favorite authors/books growing up?

MFF: Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov. Later, A.E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, L. Sprague deCamp, and others.

SFFWRTCHT: How did you get your start as a writer?

MFF: I entered a contest for new writers at Galileo magazine. Charlie Ryan took my entry and accepted it for the magazine rather than for the contest. But the magazine folded before it saw print (which means, before I got paid). Later, I sent it to Analog, and Stan Schmidt bought it.

SFFWRTCHT: Did you study writing in college? How did you learn your craft?

MFF: Never took a writing course. I learned by osmosis, reading and writing stories since I was 10.

SFFWRTCHT: How do you define space opera and what makes a good space opera story? 

MFF:  Space opera is where the astronauts sing all their lines… I know the term was originally intended as derogatory, but I take it to mean far-future, galaxy-spanning, sensawunda, romantic adventures. That’s “romantic” in the original sense of the term. IOW, what we used to just call “science fiction.”

SFFWRTCHT: Where’d the idea for the January Dancer saga come from?

MFF:  I read “Dune World” in Analog back in high school and got the notion of writing a “Gaelic” galaxy and a hunt for a Maltese Falcon style maguffin. I wrote it, too; and it really sucks.  But the basics of the plot-idea and the background — the ULP, the CCW, the Rift, the prehumans, the Hounds — they were all there.  So were most of the characters; but I didn’t know Jack Cheese about characterization back then.  Maybe I don’t know that much now.

SFFWRTCHT: How much world building do you do in advance? You used real world cultures as a basis?

MFF: Enough, I hope.  The Wreck Of The River Of Stars was small-scale world-building; viz., the ship layout and the backgrounds of the characters as space-born, Earth-born, Lunar, or Martian.  I even made a distinction between the space-born from LEO and space-born from the ‘Stroids.  Eifelheim was less building than learning, since the world — 14th cent. Schwartzwald — actually existed.  So the Spiral Arm books are really the first large-scale world-building, on two scales: the Spiral Arm itself (ULP, CCW, the old Commonwealth of Suns; the basic culture of both combines) and then at the level of individual planets (Jehovah and the Corner, New Eireann, Old ‘Saken, Peacock Junction, Harpaloon, Dancing Vrouw, Boldly Go, and all the rest.  I tried to make each one as different as possible and then generally used some place where I had been — Austria, India, Australia, Panama, etc. — to lay a base and then mixed some other culture into it.  There was a period in the Periphery characterized by deliberate recreations of half-forgotten Terran cultures, which by that time had become all jumbled up through exile and intermarriage.  Basically, I try to “describe the thumb well enough that the reader thinks he’s seen the entire hand.”

SFFWRTCHT: How long did the first book take to write and sell?

MFF: That was In The Country Of The Blind.  I had been selling short stories in the magazines and the first third of what became the novel had already been written. After that, it took about a year and a half to finish it.  If you mean the first book in the Spiral Arm series, The January Dancer, that was under contract, so it was sold before it was written.  The writing took about a year, maybe a little more.

SFFWRTCHT: Do you outline or pants it? How much planning do you do before you write i.e. did you plan the whole series first?

MFF: I usually have a fair notion of what’s going to happen, but I usually don’t have much in the way of an outline.  Sometimes I outline when I am maybe 2/3 done, to make sure I’m not backing into a corner, that the timelines are running right, and so on.  For The January Dancer I decided how long it would take to travel from star to star, then made a chart showing where each character was for each week of the plot-line and  the time it would take to travel to their next destination.  The January Dancer stood alone and I had not initially planned a sequel, but I did leave an untold story in the by-play between the harper and  the scarred man.  That eventually became the plot of Up Jim River.  If the Dancer was Maltese Falcon in Space, Jim River was Heart of Darkness in Space. Well, sort of.  I don’t mean the same plot-line, but the core idea of, first, the quest for an artifact of great value; second, for a journey to progressively more primitive and desperate locales.  Perhaps more like The Argonauts in Space and Orpheus in Space.  About halfway through Jim River I began to get a notion for the third book In The Lion’s Mouth, for which I scattered little hints.  The fourth book… I should mention that there was an alternate second book that we did not go with, and that was what happened to Captain January and New Angeles  after they took a wrong turn and would up on the Lower Tier.  Think of that one as Odyssey in Space.

SFFWRTCHT: How much and what type of research do you typically do before writing or as you write?

MFF: One of the features of the Spiral Arm series is the future and blending of various cultures, so one of the things I research is different languages.  There are a couple I can handle myself.  For others, like Tamil or Arabic, I rely on friends and acquaintances.  For still others, like Ibo or Hungarian, I have grammar books and vocabularies in my library.  So I’ll look up words and so forth, then apply some phoneme shifts.  The same goes for personal names and such.

For the science and technology, I rely on speculative science articles, such as those by Dr. John Cramer in Analog.  That was where I read about Krasnarov tubes – subway tunnels in space – and some noodling around would give me a bit more detail.  I was also receiving summaries of technological announcements by various research groups, which is where I learned about self-repairing materials, invisibility cloaks, and so forth.  Most of this research was not done specifically for any particular book, but was gathered magpie-like in passing and kept in a notions box in the back of my head.

Research-as-I-write tends to be details, like if I’m looking for a plant that lives in a particular environment.  Now and then, I’ll leave such things as <<BLANKS>> in  the text to be researched and filled in later.

SFFWRTCHT: Do the books occur successively or are there time gaps between?

MFF:  There is a 20-year gap between The January Dancer and Up Jim River. But In The Lion’s Mouth starts immediately after that.

SFFWRTCHT: Up Jim River followed and now In The Lion’s Mouth. Is Lion’s Mouth the conclusion?

MFF: No.  The fourth book, On The Razor’s Edge, follows immediately after Lion’s Mouth.  I’ve also had ideas for two other books, one as I said following the odyssey of Captain January and his crew, mentioned briefly by Maggie Barnes in Up Jim River, and the other following a few years after Razor’s Edge the expedition to find the source of certain items uncovered in the course of that book.  Neither would have the same featured cast as the Jim River-Lion’s Mouth-Razor’s Edge sequence.

In addition, I have sold a novelette to Analog entitled “The Journeyman: On the Short-Grass Prairie” which is an adventure of Teodorq sunna Nagarajan, the Wildman bodyguard from Up Jim River on his home planet of World.  You might say it is a chapter from his backstory.  A second story is being written, and if I get enough of them sold, they could become a book.

SFFWRTCHT: Tell us a little about The Lion’s Mouth’s plot please?

MFF: The Iliad in Space.  The Lion’s Mouth is to the Shadows of the Names in the Confederation what the Kennel is to the Hounds of the Ardry in the League.  Well, more ruthless.  A stealth civil war has erupted among the Shadows between those who support the Names and those who oppose them.  The war is fought by judicious promotions, dismissals, and transfers of key bureaucrats and a few well-tempered assassinations and is being kept secret not only from the populace, but also from the military (“the boots”) and from the Names themselves.  The Shadows are recalling field agents from all over, including those nominally retired, like Donovan buigh of Jehovah, who is very much disinclined to get involved in someone else’s civil war.  The war has been going on for twenty years and the rebels are at best stalemated.  But it might could be that Donovan knows something that could tip the scales.

SFFWRTCHT: What role has your editor played in shaping the stories?

MFF: A vital role in ensuring clarity and cohesion and in relegating certain passages of deathless prose to the dustbin of history.

SFFWRTCHT: Where’d you get the idea for the Dancer artifact?

MFF: It started as a “Maltese Falcon.”  Something valuable sought by many.  It was a pre-human artifact, and so valuable per se. But I wanted it to have more than monetary value to incite the kinds of players it does.  So I eventually came up with the notion that it gives its holder immense power.  Back in high school (when this was all first thought out) I had imagined it to be a graceful figurine; but as I started to write the story “for real” it became a sandstone brick that was continually twisting and bending — but never such that you actually saw it changing.  Where that came from, I couldn’t tell you.

SFFWRTCHT: You chose an interesting story structure, described often as medieval storytelling. Why that choice? Is it for all three books?

MFF: I’ve always been partial to stories that are told within stories, and to stories about things that happened long ago — once upon a time.  Two novels I thought did this well were The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner and Justinian by H.N.Turtletaub. In the original high school version, there was no harper, and the story was told in straightforward linear fashion.

As for the supposed “medieval storytelling,” it just flowed naturally from the decision to have a) a Gaelic Galaxy, b) a harper, and c) the scarred man as seanachy.  And what better way to have people sound different from Early Post-Moderns than to have them speak and narrate in high language.  Up Jim River does not employ a frame.  In The Lion’s Mouth does, but now it is the Shadow Ravn Olafsdottr who narrates.  And Razor’s Edge again does not employ a frame.  But Shadow culture is  flamboyant and baroque so there ought to be something of the same flavor running through it.

SFFWRTCHT:  What’s your writing time look like? Planned time? Grab it when you can?

MFF: Except for doctor appointments and the occasional consulting gig, I pretty much start writing at maybe 10 and keep going until I run out of gas.

SFFWRTCHT: Do you use any special software or music playlist?

MFF: Does MS Word count as special software.  I sometimes play music; but I have the bad habit of listening to interesting music and so I tend to listen to it while it plays.  I might play Irish pipe music or Indian ragas to get into a Spiral Arm mood; but once I start writing I let it play out.

SFFWRTCHT: How do you deal with writer’s block?

MFF: a) stop writing and stare at the screen until blood drips from my eyes.
b) stop writing and switch over to another story or article.
c) stop writing and go off and do something unrelated for a while.
d) continue writing anyway and trim the drivel next day.

SFFWRTCHT: What’s the best writing advice you have to offer new writers who ask?

MFF: I’ve never thought of myself as enough of an eminence grise to be the advice-offering sort.  But if forced to commit advice, I suppose I would be forced to tie myself into cliches.  The first might be to read what you like to read, but to read it from the perspective of craft: how does the author accomplish his effects.  But the second is the hoary old stand-by: write what you know.  That doesn’t mean to write your autobiography, which would be insufferably boring for most of us.  But it means to take what you’ve done, seen, felt, read, experienced, and use it.  For example, when I was in Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India, I saw people living in grass huts along Beach Road not too very far from the neon glitter of the downtown.  This part of India has produced two Nobel Prize winners in Physics and a world-class mathematician, and there were people living in grass huts who went out each day on the Bay of Bengal to fish with nets thrown over the sides of the their rowboats.  Worlds are big places and even when some fair portion are living on the cutting edge of tomorrow, there will be others living as their ancestors have always lived.  In the Spiral Arm series this was realized as people still living in more primitive ways than the interstellar culture they were embedded in and…. I had the Terran Corner of Jehovah.

SFFWRTCHT: What future projects are you working on that we can look forward to?

MFF: As I said, On The Razor’s Edge is in production and is likely to appear early next year.  It’s the final book at least in this cycle of the Spiral Arm.  Some short fiction is in the pipeline at Analog, including at least one story set in the Spiral Arm.  A collection of short
fiction is coming out in a few months from Arc Manor, consisting of three older stories and three brand new ones written just for the collection.

A new novel, unrelated to any of the others, is in partial draft.  The Shipwrecks Of Time part one is set in Milwaukee in 1965-67, part two in Denver in the 1980s, and part three in a small Pennsylvania mill town in the present day.  It involves a lost medieval manuscript
that is evidently fatal to anyone who searches for it.  And yes, it’s science fiction.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novels The Worker Prince, a Barnes & Noble Book Clubs Year’s Best SF Releases of 2011 Honorable Mention, and The Returning, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories featured in anthologies and magazines. His children’s book 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids from Delabarre Publishing. He edited the space opera-military science fiction anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 for Flying Pen Press, headlined by Mike Resnick. As a freelance editor, he’s edited a novels and nonfiction.  He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Robert J. Sawyer, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A frequent contributor to Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and SFSignal, he can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Bryan is an affiliate member of the SFWA.

19 5-star & 4-star reviews THE WORKER PRINCE $4.99 Kindle http://amzn.to/pnxaNm or Nook http://bit.ly/ni9OFh $14.99 tpb http://bit.ly/qIJCkS.

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

The Leaders met for several hours, after which Davi joined Tela at Lura’s quarters for dinner. His mother had prepared beef with Gixi sauce, accompanied by fried Gixi and fresh Jax salad. The fruits added just the right sweetness to go with the beef and red wine.

As they finished the meal, Lura raised a glass in toast. “A salute to the brave men and women who will accompany you both into this battle.”

Davi and Tela raised their glasses, clinking them against hers. “And to all those who support us here at home,” Tela said.

“Here! Here!” Davi said, smiling, as they sipped their wine. It brought warmth to his whole body as it flowed down his throat. He wondered how long it would be until he could relax like this again.

“May God protect you and give you wisdom,” Lura said.

“May God protect us all,” Davi said, placing his hand over hers on the table.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. “I’m very proud of you,” Lura said.

“I’m proud to be your son,” Davi said.

Lura’s eyes grew moist, tears forming at their corners. “I wish your father were here, he would be so proud. He fought with Aron and Joram in the revolution twenty-five years ago.”

The Vertullians always referred to the Delta V incident as The Revolution.  “One day we’ll find him,” Davi said, knowing he would give it his best.

“It’s more than I could hope for,” Lura said.

For a moment, he considered sharing with her what Tela had told him, but then thought better of it. False hope would end up making things worse in the long run. “I’m sure he’s here in spirit,” Davi said, squeezing Lura’s hand again. She smiled and nodded approvingly.

“I wish my father could be here as well,” Tela said. “And my mother.”

“What happened to them?” Davi had wondered.

“Dad disappeared a while ago. Another one of those unanswered mysteries that we’re just supposed to accept. Then Mom died in an accident two years ago.” Tela refuse to make eye contact.

“So you’re alone?”

Lura reached over with her other hand and placed it on top of Tela’s, squeezing. “We’re your family now.”

Tela smiled. “I feel blessed!”

“We’re all very blessed,” Lura said, nodding.

They bowed their heads and prayed for the battle ahead, committing their actions and plans to God and asking for wisdom, guidance, and safety through whatever came.

Davi had difficulty accepting that the actions he and others made might lead to the deaths of friends. But he knew the higher cause always required sacrifice, and, in the end, it would be worth the losses for his people to be free again. He thought about Tela, wondering if their relationship would have a chance to flourish or if this war would mark the end of it. He brushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t afford to be distracted at a time like this. He had to appreciate the time they had while hoping in the future God would provide for them, whatever it was. As their Scriptures said in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, God’s plan was perfect: a future full of hope.

Davi kissed Tela goodbye moments before launch. As flight crews performed final pre-flight preparations on their shuttles, he went over and over the plan of attack.

Uzah had obtained schedules of regular fighter patrols on both Vertullis and Legallis. The fighters were kept on the ground for several hours a week for routine maintenance. The attacks were timed to coincide with one of those periods. The ground assaults on the Vertullis starport, energy shield control center and government center would be timed to coincide with the attacks at the starports.

Davi watched the first shuttle launch, carrying Tela and her team toward the starport on Legallis. He had assigned her the majority of his most experienced pilots—Virun, Jorek, and seventeen others—since her mission would require the most flight skill and involved the most possible risk of counterattack. Davi assigned Nila, Dru, Brie and sixteen others to his team. The shuttles were being flown by experienced men who had once worked for Borali citizens as private pilots. Additional shuttles would carry Uzah and his troops to their attack points.

Tela’s team had to fly into the Legallis starport under the cover of an emergency landing due to engine failure. Because there would be no WFR ground assaults like those on Vertullis, Alliance ground forces posed a serious threat. The shuttle bay and fighter bay were connected by short tunnels, so that if the team moved quickly, they could get in and out without engaging troops. He and Tela had been over the layout several times with her team.

The potential for success of the WFR’s ground attacks on Vertullis had been increased by recent developments. Bordox’s attempt to capture him had led to reassignment of great numbers of troops to search the forest. As a result, while the worker’s base might be detected during the launch of the attacks, ground forces at the starport, energy shield control center and government center would be down to skeleton crews during the time of the attacks. Davi couldn’t believe their good fortune! Aron and Tela had reminded him their God was behind them and had a hand in temporal events. Davi found it easier to have confidence in a God who played such a role in human affairs.

When his shuttle landed, Davi was already on his feet beside the door. “Go!” he said as his pilots filed out, blasters held at the ready.

As he stepped on the landing platform, he could already hear ground forces engaged in other areas of the base. By launching their attacks first, the ground forces hoped to draw troops away from the launch bays around the fighters. From what Davi could see, everything was proceed-ing according to plan.

Mechanics met them on the ground and pointed them to the twenty fighters which they’d prepped and readied for launch. On both Vertullis and Legallis, the mechanics had disassembled key parts to make counterattacks impossible. Only the exact number of VS28s the WFR would steal remained flight-worthy.

Special shifts had been selected at each starport, and those mechanics would return with the strike teams on the shuttles to avoid execution. Since the fighters were already scheduled for maintenance, it would take the Alliance time to call in another shift, let alone determine why their fighters weren’t functional. By the time they knew, Vertullis would safely be under WFR control and protected by the energy shield and stolen fighters.

Davi’s pilots climbed aboard and started preflight checks. The moment the fighters launched, the mechanics would board the shuttle and follow them out. Davi would launch last.

Venetian System’s Model 28 fighters were sleek and black with snub noses and three wings–two longer wings on each side, and a third shorter wing standing vertically above the fighter’s four engines. Each bore their squadron insignia, and a few bore a name painted on at the pilot’s indulgence. There were laser cannons on each wing as well as in the nose. The cockpit lay beneath a gray, transparent blast shield through which the pilot could monitor the area outside the cockpit.

As the first fighters prepared to launch, Davi heard explosions near the shuttle. Interrupting his preflight check, Davi turned to see a few armed troops moving into the bay.

“Get your men to the shuttle!” he shouted to the head mechanic.

Alliance ground troops wore the same gray uniforms as the officers, but were equipped with black metal helmets instead of hats. They had matching black shields and armored vests, all three designed to withstand heavy blasts from lasers. Their black boots reached almost to their knees. Well-trained and disciplined, they were intimidating to watch, let alone face in battle. They began setting up laser cannons and firing at Davi and the mechanics as soon as they entered the bay.

As fighters launched, Davi climbed down onto the landing pad and returned fire with his blaster. An entire squad of enemy troops wound their way toward the shuttle. The lead mechanic began returning fire with a blaster as well. Davi didn’t stop to ask where he’d obtained it. Their co-conspirators had prepared for the worst.

As the fighters continued to take off, Davi and the mechanic laid down cover fire. The troops ducked behind machines and starcraft to avoid their laser blasts, firing back as they continued inching closer. Several blasts hit fighters as they took off, but the damage was minimal.

To Davi’s right, a fighter lifted straight into the air and around toward the oncoming soldiers. Davi heard the whirl of laser cannons revving up to full power and then spotted Dru at the controls.

“Dru, what are you doing?” He said over the comm-channel.

Dru opened fire with the VS28’s laser cannons at the Alliance troops. Machines and starcraft exploded as debris flew around the bay. Enemy soldiers dove to the ground. Some were buried under falling debris. One took a hit in the arm.

Davi chuckled at the bravery and ingenuity of Dru’s efforts as he turned and climbed back into his fighter. The necklace jangling against his chest reminded him what they were fighting for.

“Get the shuttle out of here,” he said into his comm-channel as he lifted his own fighter and turned it to add his own lasers to Dru’s barrage.

The shuttle’s engines revved up as the lead mechanic dove on board. Moments after the door slid shut, the shuttle launched.

“Go, Dru, go!” Davi called into his comm-channel as he fired another round from his laser cannons.

Dru turned his fighter and flew into a launch chute. Davi followed moments later.

Most of other fighters had already headed back toward base as Davi and Dru launched with the shuttle, but four fighters closed in around them. Davi noted with surprise that two of them were flown by Brie and Nila.

“I thought I ordered you two back to base,” Davi said over the comm-channel.

“Did you think we could go without knowing you and Dru were safe?” Nila’s voice rang in his ear.

“Yeah. What took you guys so long?” Brie teased. The women’s laughter filled the comm channel as the fighters slid into formation around the shuttle.
“Well done, team. Let’s go home,” Davi said, wondering how things were going for Tela.

As they flew over the city, Davi glimpsed gunfire near the starport and government center. WFR forces had begun engaging the skeleton Alliance crews left to defend them. From what Davi could see, their attack had been a success. His prayers had been answered. He hoped Tela and Uzah were being as blessed as he had been.

Moments after laser fire exploded outside the building, Zylo received an urgent SOS from the captain in charge of the defense detail at the starport. Most of the regular defense detail had been reassigned to search the forest, in the wake of Bordox’s failed capture of Davi. Bordox himself had been sent back to Legallis to answer to Xalivar, while Corsi and Zylo took over leadership of the search. The captain’s voice sounded terse. Zylo thought he heard laser fire behind him as well.

“The starport is under attack. I demand the return of my men,” the captain said.

“Your men are on the other side of the planet,” Zylo said.

“We are under attack by unknown numbers of enemy forces both inside and outside the starport!” The captain said.

“The entire government center is under fire. I have already called back troops, but they won’t be here for an hour,” Zylo said, not liking the captain’s tone.

“An hour will be too late! I need help now!” The captain screamed.

“You’ll have to do the best you can,” Zylo said, breaking the connection before the captain could launch another protest. There wasn’t anything Zylo could do about it anyway.

Out the window, he saw from the size of the WFR force that his own men would soon be overrun. Alliance soldiers ran around in chaos, dodging explosions as debris flew. A worker army on Vertullis?No one had ever imagined organized military attacks by worker armies. The explosions outside the building drew nearer and nearer. Zylo wondered what else could go wrong.

Uzah led his forces in attacking the Shield Control Center—one hundred and thirty men against twenty-five Alliance soldiers and officers stationed there at the time of the attack. They fought an intense battle, before the few remaining defenders retreated behind locked doors and shielded walls.

Some of Uzah’s men used the battle as cover for a sneak attack from the rear. The five guards stationed there were easily overcome, allowing WFR troops to enter the station. They exchanged fire with the defenders locked inside, but once WFR reinforcements arrived, the battle was over. To Uzah’s delight, the workers now controlled the energy shield around Vertullis.

The battle for the government complex, including the offices, barracks, and starport, took longer. Although most of the Alliance troops had been out on other duties, there were still one hundred and fifty soldiers spread throughout the complex. The three hundred and fifty WFR men under his command wounded or captured large numbers of enemy soldiers, leaving only a few strongholds.

The last hold-outs surrendered after a two hours of fighting, when WFR reinforcements arrived. Uzah immediately contacted the base.

“Legallis approach control, I say again, identify yourself.”

Tela listened as her pilot identified the shuttle for the third time. While emergency landings due to engine failure were not unheard of, the Alliance almost never allowed emergency landings by civilian craft in military areas, and the portmaster didn’t seem inclined to allow this one.

“You’ve been cleared to land at the civilian dock on the eastside,” the voice instructed for the third time.

Tela reached over the pilot’s shoulder and keyed the comm-channel. “We’ve told you. We’re losing power fast. We can barely control her as it is. We need to land now. We won’t make it to the east side.”

Tela heard the portmaster’s sigh over the comm-channel. “Landing Bay Five-A. Do not leave your craft until given further instructions.”

“Thank you!” Tela tried to disguise her relief with a cheerful tone, but they’d been delayed almost half an hour. The other attacks were already well underway.

The portmaster sent two officers to inspect the shuttle upon landing. The moment they stepped inside, Tela, Virun, and Jorek disarmed them and tied them up. However, the wait for their arrival and their capture slowed things down.

Several times during the ensuing battle, Tela wished Davi had led the assault instead of her, but because too many people knew his face on Legallis, the leadership had thought it unwise to send him there.

It took all of Tela’s knowledge and training to lead her group well. First, the portmaster’s men inquired why pilots were in fighters during the scheduled maintenance period, then military flight techs inquired about unscheduled launches. While Tela and the maintenance chief did their best to allay any concerns, military police came to investigate and several mechanics died in the ensuing laser battle. Five pilots also died and the shuttle suffered exterior damage from the lasers.

When the shuttle launched, it did so with half the remaining mechanics on board. The others stayed behind to provide cover fire for the launching starcraft.

Tela mourned the loss of the brave mechanics. She also pushed her team to fly back to Vertullis at top speed to warn them. It wouldn’t take long for those on Legallis to figure out what had happened, even if they couldn’t launch fighters to counterattack. Despite the successful capture of the fighters, the mission felt like a loss. She blamed herself and dreaded facing Davi and the other leaders with the news.

When Manaen rushed into the throne room in mid-afternoon and announced the attack at the starport, the news caught Xalivar by complete surprise. Who would attack them? No one had attacked Legallis since the settlement of the planet.

As bits of information trickled in over the next two hours, Xalivar became more and more enraged. Disabled fighters? Mutinying mechanics? He knew right away Davi had to be involved.

He motioned to the vidscreen. “Get me the security videos from the launch bays!”

“Yes, my Lord!” Manaen typed on a terminal and the videos played.

Davi was nowhere to be seen. Trained pilots took off in the fighters. How could the workers have so many trained pilots? He ordered the few surviving mechanics interrogated as soon as possible. They would be pumped for everything they knew before being executed.

Still, Xalivar couldn’t believe what he had seen. He ordered all off-duty mechanics to be called back to duty to get the fighters airworthy. Pilots would launch as soon as possible to chase down the fleeing intruders.

Later, Manaen delivered even worse news. “There were attacks on Vertullis as well, my Lord. Enemy forces captured fighters there too, leaving the rest disabled or damaged. They also captured the entire government complex, the starport, and the energy shield.” Xalivar couldn’t believe his ears. “Vertullis is no longer under Alliance control.”

Xalivar screamed in frustration. No! This can’t be happening to me! The fighters he’d sent after the retreating attackers had arrived after the stolen fighters had already disappeared behind the planet’s energy shield. Xalivar pounded his fists into the wall.

Is there no one competent in my entire military? How could they be caught with their pants down? The Council will have me for this! I will never hear the end of it. My gods, the greatest army in the Universe defeated by a ragtag worker army?

It had to be the workers. That much seemed certain. Who else would dare attack the Lords at their capital like this? Xalivar ordered reinforcements sent from all over the system. They wouldn’t get away with this. He would show them the power of the Alliance. They would not defeat him—the greatest High Lord Councilor in the history of his people.

He paced back and forth behind the throne, cursing Bordox’s failure and his sister’s betrayal. Had she fed intelligence information to Davi and his co-conspirators? He would have to question her again as soon as possible. Yes, all those involved would be brought to justice. They would feel the iron hand of the Alliance.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novel The Worker Prince, an honorable mention on Barnes & Noble’s Best SF Releases of 2011, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. He resides in Ottawa, KS with two precocious dogs.

~

This work proudly brought to you in association with Every Day Publishing and Diminished Media Group. If you like what you’ve read thus far, there’s no need to wait – click on over and pick up a copy right now!

by Milo James Fowler

Captain Bartholomew Quasar was not impressed. Nor was he intimidated. And if this fellow on the viewscreen believed a hideous scowl and incredible amounts of facial hair would do the trick, he was sadly mistaken.

“Emperor Zhan, I presume.” Quasar rocked back on his heels, muscled arms folded as he surveyed the floor-to-ceiling screen on the bridge’s fore wall. “We meet at last.”

“Who are you?” Zhan spoke in a throaty sort of whine, his black eyes twitching under formidable brows. “How did you access this channel?”

“Is this a bad time? Should we call back later?” Quasar set his jaw.

Zhan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You are human,” he spat. “What are you doing out in this quadrant? Playing hero?”

“Yes.” Quasar and the Effervescent Magnitude had recently saved the earth from imminent demise, but the captain was not here to toot his own horn. He was here to face down the devil responsible for the atrocity in the first place. “Tell me this, Zhan—”

“Emperor Zhan to you!”

Quasar shook his head. “As far as I can tell, you’ve been dead for five centuries, and your empire no longer exists.”

Zhan seethed full-frame, nostrils chuffing across the mustache that drooped below his chin. “You do realize that we have locked all surface-to-orbit weapons on that little star cruiser of yours? At this very moment, my most powerful battleships are circling the planet to hem you in, both before and behind. Get that through your thick Cro-Magnon skull, Mister Hero!”

“My name is Captain Bartholomew Quasar—”

“To me, your name is Cannon Fodder!”

“You may wish to reconsider. We have in our cargo hold one of the annihilation bots you left on Earth. If you destroy this ship, that thing’s power cell will take out your advancing fleet—along with a sizeable chunk of your planet.”

The corner of Zhan’s mouth jerked. Otherwise, he remained stoic. “What is this annihilation bot of which you speak?”

“You should know. You dropped a few thousand of them back on Earth, once upon a time. But I suppose your memory may have dimmed over the past five hundred years.”

Zhan clucked his tongue. “What would I possibly have against Earth? Such a silly place. Nothing but ash heaps, from what I recall.”

Quasar’s fists clenched beneath his biceps. “You’re not an easy man to track down.”

Zhan cackled, baring stained teeth. Apparently, he had a real taste for the addictive Goobalox tunneling worm—a disgusting habit, and a smelly one. “Tell me now, who gave you the codes to my private channel?”

“You made a mistake Zhan,” Quasar said. “You left survivors, and one of their descendants told us all about you.”

“My reputation should have preceded me!”

Captain Quasar glanced at Hank, his very hairy, four-armed helmsman. A native of the planet Carpathria, he looked like a cross between an overweight sloth and a drunk orangutan. “Have you ever heard of this guy?”

Hank shrugged and shook his shaggy head. “Not before we met Bill.”

“I am Zhan, Galactic Emperor of the Universe!” the giant face—which could have been directly descended from the great Genghis Kahn—declared. “Prepare to meet your doom!”

“Battleships approaching,” Hank grunted. “Raise shields?”

“Might as well.” Quasar dropped into his captain’s chair. “Listen Zhan, you’ve got two options here. Either you agree to my terms, or we all go up in a giant blast—”

Zhan pounded his fist, and the image shuddered. “How did you get this channel?”

Quasar bared all his teeth. “Notice anything?”

Zhan squinted in revulsion. “They are blinding white.”

“Unlike yours. That Hermo chew-slug dealer ratted you out, Zhan. It’s amazing the information one can get with the right number of credits. You really should have paid him better.” Quasar frowned. “Her. It.”

“I don’t know what you expect to achieve, human. Flying out here like some sort of space cowboy. But it’s obvious you are in need of a lesson in humility.”

The screen went dark. Quasar glanced over his shoulder at Commander Wan, his first officer. She shook her head—there had been no transmission failure. Zhan had actually hung up on him.

“Captain.” Wan’s left eyebrow contorted as she surveyed her console, stationed just behind the captain’s chair. “We are being boarded.”

“What?” Quasar spun to face her. “How is that possible?” No transport pod had approached to couple with their docking bridge.

She stared at her screen. “A dozen armed intruders are on Deck 12—heading toward the engine room.” She cleared her throat and met his gaze. “They. . .materialized, sir.”

“They what?” This was a first: an adversary able to pass through a star cruiser’s plasteel exterior. Would they move through the Magnitude’s interior walls in the same fashion?

Quasar clenched his jaw. No matter what, he was up to the challenge. Leaping from his chair, he pounded the right armrest with his fist, and a Cody 52 Special emerged with a hiss of pneumatics from a concealed compartment, its chrome cylinder and barrel glinting in the artificial light. Chambering a pulse round, Quasar glanced at Hank.

“Think you can handle a few enemy ships?”

“They’re locking weapons,” Hank said.

“Let them. Our friendly Emperor won’t open fire. He knows full-well the blast radius of one of his annihilation bots.” To his first officer, Quasar barked mid-stride as he headed for the exit, “Have Gruber and his team meet me on Deck 11. You have the bridge!”

She parted her lips to object but changed her mind. Protocol aboard United World star cruisers dictated that an armed captain was not one to be trifled with. Was it the most prudent course of action for him to lead a defensive against phase-shifting intruders? Of course not. But where advancement was concerned, following orders always looked good on an officer’s resume, and her ten-year-plan included ambassadorship by age forty.

“Yes, sir.” Doing her best to hide any sign of delight, she eased herself into the captain’s chair and crossed her legs. “Keep us steady, Hank.”

The Carpathrian helmsman grunted.

Climbing down from a ladder alcove on Deck 11, Quasar was greeted by Lieutenant Nathan Gruber and a complement of six armed men sporting the latest Cody 3000 plasma rifles. The captain took a moment to catch his breath. It had been a while since he’d been anywhere on the ship besides the bridge and his quarters, and he’d forgotten how cumbersome ladders could be. Would it have been so difficult for the Magnitude‘s designers to install an elevator or two?

“Ready for business, Captain,” Gruber announced, already sweating and soaking his uniform around the armpits and chest. The man had a condition exacerbated by stress, according to Doctor Yune. Not the most confidence-inspiring for a ship’s head of security.

Quasar cocked his Cody 52 for effect and eyed the eager faces around him—battle-ready, men after his own heart. “Let’s clean house.”

“We’ve got twelve hostiles below us, sir.” Gruber consulted the thermograph on his forearm and cursed. “Should’ve brought more men.”

“Nonsense.” Using sophisticated finger gestures, Quasar broke the security team in half, pointing them down opposite ends of the corridor. “They think they can walk through walls? We’ll show them how to walk through floors.”

“Huh?” Gruber frowned.

Quasar tucked the Cody 52 into his belt and grabbed the lieutenant’s rifle. “Watch and learn.”

He hammered back the charger bolt and aimed it at the floor. The other men glanced at each other with uncertainty.

“Time to be heroes, boys.” Quasar flashed a winning smile.

Squeezing the trigger, he sent a white-hot beam of energy into the deck, burning straight through it to the corridor below. With a wink, the captain reached for his Cody 52 and jumped through, landing in a crouched position.

Zhan’s soldiers surrounded him immediately. They were easy to recognize: on each of their face shields was a holoscreen where the emperor’s face was clearly transmitted.

“Allow me to introduce my drones.” Zhan’s voice came as a chorus in unison, the same hideous expression on all twelve of his soldiers as they leveled their snub-nosed rifles at the captain. “Lay down your weapons.”

Quasar narrowed his eyes at the closest drone. “I don’t think so.”

Streams of particle energy and unstable matter rained down at both ends of the corridor as Gruber’s men dropped in. Only the lieutenant remained above, lying prostrate as he aimed his rifle’s laser sight through the hole Quasar had made. Its glowing pinpoint twitched among the drones’ gleaming black helmets.

Oddly enough, the emperor’s expression failed to falter. “I would be careful, Captain. One shot fired at any of my drones will set them all off. They have been armed, you see. Programmed to detonate at will.” Zhan chuckled. “My will.”

Quasar rose slowly to his feet, holding his weapons at waist level. “Then it appears we are at an impasse.”

“How so?”

Quasar set his jaw. “Have you forgotten our bot?”

The holo-images of Zhan growled deep in their throats. The drones stood stock-still. “Let us say for argument’s sake that I believe you—”

“Scan our cargo bay. And while you’re at it, scan the crew member in there on Deck 6. He should register as a recent Earth emigrant. He remembers you well—not that he’s ever been graced by your handsomeness. Knowledge of your atrocities was passed down through the generations.” Bill’s forefathers and mothers had been tasked with keeping the earth’s sun shield well-stocked with debris—a barrier dense enough to keep Zhan’s solar-powered annihilation bots powerless.

Zhan ground his teeth. “You seem to think you have the upper hand here.”

Quasar shrugged. “Maybe because we’ve rigged that bot with a detonator and are prepared to drop it into your planet’s atmosphere. According to our scans, the air you’re breathing down there would ignite on impact, burning your planet to its core—even if the bot were to explode hundreds of kilometers above the surface.”

Zhan’s gruesome teeth made a reappearance. “Listen to yourself, Cowboy. If what you say is true—that I tried to destroy your planet—then you would be doing the same to mine! Do you not realize your own insanity?”

“I want an apology.”

“What?”

“You owe it to Earth’s exiles spread out all over the galaxy. I’ll make it my life’s mission to carry it to the farthest reaches of space so that all men and women, boys and girls, senile old people and drooling infants will know that you regret what you did, and that you humbly beg their forgiveness.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“You’d better believe it,” Quasar said without pause. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to right your wrongs, Zhan.”

“What about your crew? Are they willing to die for your misguided sense of justice?”

“They’ve done it before and lived to tell the tale. The choice is yours. Give me your apology, or we’ll have it out right here, right now.”

The Zhan faces blinked once. “You are seriously insane,” they murmured. For a moment, it appeared that Zhan would acquiesce—an intense battle raged behind his eyes. Then he said, “I do not negotiate with lunatics.”

The drones’ face shields went dark.

“They’re firing weapons,” Hank said, staring at his console.

“Evasive maneuvers,” Commander Wan ordered.

The Effervescent Magnitude rocked and rumbled as explosions near-missed the hull on both port and starboard sides.

“A fleet of ships is rising from the surface,” Hank reported. “Heavily armed.”

Wan activated the communication device in her rigid collar with a quick head-jerk. “Captain, we have a situation.”

Quasar hissed on the line, “I have my own situation down here, Number Wan.”

She winced briefly at the ridiculous nickname. “Captain—”

“Drop the bot.” It sounded like Quasar was trying not to move his lips.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.” The line clicked off.

Wan blinked, taking a moment to steady her nerves. Then she gave the order.

Bill’s voice on the comm sounded uncertain. “Yeah, okay, Commander, but we’ll want to get plenty far away before it blows. Considering how outgunned we are, I’m thinking they’ll probably try and hit it as soon as we open the cargo bay doors. You know, blow us to hell and all that.”

Wan clenched her fists. “Do it, Bill.”

“Commander.” Hank’s four hands flew across the controls with minds all their own as he swiveled to face her. “Maybe there’s another way.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

The bridge swayed as the Magnitude continued to dodge every shot, receiving only minimal damage to the external plating. Even so, violent tremors coursed through the ship as if it knew what dangerous weapon was about to be released into the void.

The very hairy helmsman shrugged. “I’m just saying. Maybe there is.” He returned his attention to the console before him.

“If only,” Commander Wan muttered.

She watched the viewscreen as the bay door crept open and the massive annihilation bot tipped out into the black, rotating end over end as it met the planet’s gravitational field and succumbed to its pull.

“Cover fire!” she ordered.

The weapons officer was quick on her feet, laying down a barrage of explosions to provide the bot with a protective buffer as it descended, just in case Zhan’s ships attempted to take it out mid-descent.

“Bill, route the bot’s detonator to my console. How long is the delay?”

“They haven’t destroyed it yet?” He chuckled on the line.

“Focus, Bill!”

“Uh—the detonation sequence should be up now. I gave it five standard minutes.”

It would have to be enough.

It had been a while since Quasar had played poker, and even then he hadn’t been very good at it, always smiling at inopportune moments. But he hoped to call Zhan on his bluff. No negotiating with lunatics? They would see about that.

“What are they doing?” Gruber whispered from above, staring at the motionless drones.

Frozen in like manner, Quasar replied in his best imitation of a ventriloquist, “Watching us.”

“Why haven’t they attacked?”

The captain had no idea.

“Commander—” Hank growled in surprise. “Look!”

The enemy barrage had ceased. Two of Zhan’s battleships, along with a dozen more that had joined the fray from the surface, were now syncing their tractor beams to create a web-like energy field. The descending bot drifted right into the center of their net and hung suspended between the fleet, immobile.

“What do they think they’re doing?” Bill’s voice wondered over the comm.

“They’re too close to the planet’s atmosphere. When it blows. . .” The countdown ticked past four minutes.

Zhan’s ships coasted on impulse power away from the planet, gently dragging the bot with them.

“It’s going to wipe them all out,” Hank said. “They’ve got to know that.”

Wan nodded. “Of course they do.” They were willing to sacrifice themselves for their emperor.

“Hey—uh Commander,” Bill said. “We should be getting out of here too, you know.”

Wan’s look of grim determination did not falter. “We’re not going anywhere until we’ve gotten what we came for. Let them take that bot wherever they please.”

“Huh?” Hank swiveled to face her.

“We wait.” She could only hope the captain knew what he was doing.

The drones’ holoscreens came back to life. The emperor’s full-framed face appeared as outraged as ever on each one.

“Who would do this?” he growled. “Why?”

Quasar met Zhan eye to eye—in a manner of speaking. “I came here for one thing, Zhan. Destroying your ships or your planet weren’t high on my to-do list. You’ve obviously scanned us, and if you can magically send your drones inside my ship, then you probably already know what I’m prepared to do next.”

“You demand an apology? Anything I say to you would be mere words! What are they worth to your kind?”

“It’s the principle of the thing! No human worth their DNA could say your actions haven’t affected them in some way. Leaving your bots on the planet to blast it to pieces—that was an act of war. When Bill told us what you did, I couldn’t believe such a wicked man existed as this one called Emperor Zhan.”

“Galactic Emperor!” the holo-faces shouted.

“Right. Whatever. Apparently, you’re a big cheese around this quadrant. But emperor of the universe? I don’t think so. And once I have your apology recorded, nobody’s going to take you seriously ever again.”

Zhan’s eyes narrowed. “Words, Captain Cannon Fodder. Just words. They do not make or break great leaders such as myself. I am known for my actions. You may have occupied my fleet of battleships with that ticking time-bot, but know this: after we resolve this situation, I will be coming for you, and there will be no corner of the universe safe from my wrath!”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, all I’m asking for is a simple apology. And for you to take back these drones. They’re kind of creeping me out.”

“Or I could detonate them now and take your ship apart in an instant!” Zhan shrilled.

Quasar didn’t skip a beat. “Do that, and no one will be left to stop that bot from exploding out there. Give me what I want, and I’ll end the countdown. I give you my word.”

“Otiose words? That’s all you want?” His foul teeth reemerged. “Very well.”

Quasar signaled Gruber, who started recording with his audiograph, also located on his forearm. “Is it true that during the period of Earth’s greatest upheaval, in the wake of nuclear wars that left the surface uninhabitable, you came promising salvation to the Eastern Conglomerate?”

“I offered them work on my home planet.”

“As slaves.”

“A meaningless word,” the Zhan faces sneered.

“The people of Earth agreed to your terms, yet many escaped off-world instead. And in retaliation for their betrayal, you landed thousands of annihilation bots on the surface. Is that correct?”

Zhan growled again. “I came to help them, after they had nearly destroyed themselves. And they repaid my generosity by going back on their word!”

“You stated, and I quote, ‘If I cannot save the earth, no one will.’ Is that right?”

The Zhans chuckled and shook their heads. “An exact quote would be, ‘If I cannot have the earth, then no one will.’”

“Of course.” Quasar nodded. Good to have that on record. “And so commenced the Great Diaspora. Humans left the planet in droves, while a few remained behind and attempted to thwart your diabolical plans. Meanwhile, growing bored with Earth and its people, you moved on, and what took centuries of Earth-time, for you has been only what? A few decades?”

“Space has been good to me.” Zhan nodded, stroking his mustache with a grimy finger.

“You’ve found a supplier of fine Goobalox chew-slugs and a great planet to hide out—one complete with an incendiary atmosphere. If that’s not enough to keep would-be assassins at bay, I don’t know what is. By the way, how did your ships leave the surface without blowing themselves up?”

“Phase-shift propulsion systems. Far beyond any pathetic human technology.”

“I’m sure.” Quasar glanced at the drones around him. “Well, your emperorship, all I need now is your apology for grievous atrocities committed against the human race, and we’ll be on our way. You’ll never see the Effervescent Magnitude again.”

Zhan grinned, and it was his most gruesome facial expression yet. “That is where you are wrong, Captain. You record my apology, and I will hunt you down from this day forward. There will be no safe harbor for you. I have many loyal subjects in this quadrant. All it will take is a word from me, and you will find this corner of the universe to be worse than inhospitable.” He released a low, garbled chuckle times twelve. “Is it worth it to you? To live the rest of your days as a hunted animal?”

Quasar’s gaze had yet to waver. “You owe it to my people. You owe it to our planet.”

“Very well.” Zhan raised an eyebrow. “Then I am sorry—for underestimating your species. They are not all mindless cattle. Apparently, there is one among them with the stones of a Carpathrian Ox.” He paused. “I am sorry for thinking I could destroy your planet without consequence. I am sorry for leaving weapons of mass destruction to do my dirty work for me—to be destroyed by the likes of you. And I am sorry that the next time we meet, there will be no delightful battle of wits and meaningless words.” His eyes, as cold and abysmal as black holes, filled the holo-screens. “Next time, you will have only a moment to recognize me before you cease to exist.”

The screens went dark. Then without warning, the drones seemed to ripple out of phase, dissolving into the air.

Gruber remembered to swallow—and to breathe—as he ended the recording. “Good enough, sir?”

Captain Quasar nodded, staring at the space where the drones had stood just a moment ago. It was hard for him to believe his own eyes. What kind of technology could do that?

Striding onto the bridge a little out of breath after climbing up all those ladders, Quasar assumed command with a nod to Commander Wan. “Let’s get out of here.” He switched the viewscreen to a rear-facing vantage point as the Effervescent Magnitude powered up its engines.

Wan frowned. “We’re still going to detonate, sir?”

“We can’t have them following us.”

“But the blast—”

“That’s why we’ve got to vamoose.”

“Captain, you know I’m never one to question orders.”

“Besides the occasional raised eyebrow? No, of course not.” Quasar almost grinned.

She remained serious. “We can’t just kill all those people. It makes us no better than Zhan!”

He nodded. “You have a point there. But remember, we’ve got a job to do. Namely, sharing that recording with the rest of the galaxy and somehow bringing humankind back together again so we can return to Earth and start cleaning things up. Isn’t that more important than one evil emperor with megalomania and a few of his spineless minions?”

“If we behave no better than our enemies, what good are our hopes for the future?”

Captain Quasar’s eyes stung a little as he gazed upon his noble first officer. “Well said.” He punched the console on his chair. “Bill, I’d prefer you do the honors, considering your history with Zhan and all. I’m transferring the detonation sequence to you.”

A long pause, during which Hank fidgeted with both pairs of hands and glanced up at the viewscreen. Zhan’s ships were jettisoning escape pods. Apparently, they knew the countdown was drawing uncomfortably close to zero.

“Gee thanks, Captain,” Bill said.

Quasar held Hank’s somber gaze. “Make sure we’re well out of range, Helmsman.”

Hank nodded. Jumping to full speed, the Effervescent Magnitude put plenty of space between them and Zhan’s fleet.

“Take that, suckas!” Bill shrilled on the comm.

Commander Wan couldn’t help cringing. All eyes on the bridge focused on the screen as it zoomed in to capture a massive explosion above Zhan’s planet.

Only the blast didn’t resemble a power cell detonation like anyone had ever seen before. Instead, it looked like a pulse of wave energy bursting outward in a giant bubble of blue light, striking each of Zhan’s ships without structurally damaging a single one. They were left dead in the water, so to speak, yet still intact.

Wan faced the captain with the closest thing to a grin he’d ever seen on her.

“EMP,” she said with approval.

Quasar raised an eyebrow. “I might have asked Bill to augment that bot a bit.”

Bill whooped and hollered on the comm. The captain muted him. Gazing at the disabled fleet as they drifted apart like dead fish in a pond, Quasar strummed his clean-shaven chin and narrowed his heroic gaze.

“Until we meet again, Zhan.”

Milo James Fowler is a junior high English teacher by day and a writer by night. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, and Macmillan’s Criminal Element. In his spare time, he collects rejection letters.

http://www.milo-inmediasres.com/

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Miri paced back and forth in the cell, until the door slid open and Xalivar appeared. She shot him dead with a furious look as he stepped inside and the door closed behind him.

“You have no right to lock me up in a cell like this!”

“I have no right? You have been conspiring behind my back for weeks, and you want to talk about rights?” Xalivar smiled, amused.

He knows. Her heart sank. “I am a member of the Royal Family, Xalivar. Not some mere peasant!” Miri almost spat the words out.

“I am the High Lord Councilor,” Xalivar scolded. “My authority extends over you as much as the rest. Leaking top-secret information to the media, conspiring behind my back to turn the Council against me, and receiving communication from a fugitive this afternoon!”

Miri’s tried to hide her surprise. He always seemed to know everything. “He’s my son, Xalivar.”

“He’s wanted by the Alliance for murder, among other charges,” Xalivar said. “You told me he had not communicated with you.”

“This was the first time,” Miri said.

“Which I had to learn about through other channels,” Xalivar chided.

His hands hung relaxed at his sides. Why was he so calm? What did he know that she didn’t? “I had not seen you yet.”

“Do you wish to make a confession?” Xalivar’s brown eyes met hers.

Miri looked away. “You’re crazy. What would father think if he was here to see me locked up like this?”

“Father is dead, and he left me in charge,” Xalivar said. “Your actions are a betrayal, not just of me, but of the Alliance itself. Whatever imbalance is occurring in that head of yours, I cannot allow it to continue.”

“You are a power-hungry, deceitful, evil—”

“Save your whining for your women’s brunch, Miri!” Xalivar shook his head. “I have protected this Alliance for almost thirty years; done whatever it takes.”

Just once she wished she could see him perspire. “I question you as a citizen of the Borali Alliance. It’s all the authority I need,” Miri said. Xalivar’s calmness had her worried. He never handled betrayal this well. What was going on in his demented mind?

“Your loyalty to your son has clouded your judgment. Your actions have disparaged our entire family line. I cannot allow it to continue,” Xalivar turned back toward the door. It slid open and he stepped through.

Miri could see Manaen’s red eyes outside. “What are you going to do with me, Xalivar?”

“Send you somewhere safe,” Xalivar said as the door slid shut.

Miri pounded a fist against the door as tears flowed down her face. What could she do now? She had to find a way to get a message to Davi. He would help her. He had to help her. And she had to warn him.

Davi and Tela moved the training course to the west side of the base, hoping to avoid further encounters with the LSP. They also installed an electronic sensor system around it to notify them of any unknown vehicles entering the area.

The trainees had made great progress on the course in the past week. Each had now completed several runs with the targeting system on. Most had landed at least one successful hit on one of the pylons. A few could hit the majority of the targets every time. Davi was impressed with both their determination and their dedication to their training. He’d heard no complaints about pushing them too hard or demanding extra hours.

Even Nila, Dru and Brie were getting the hang of things. Of course, he still had doubts they would be able to maneuver a fighter, but they’d at least know enough to take off and follow someone else home. He assigned them to the team against the base on Vertullis and let the stronger trainees take on the Legallis base and fly the longer distances.

They’d run the course three times with increasing success, when Virun and Jorek’s group pulled up beside Davi and Tela.

“We’re going to try the Skitters on the trails now,” Jorek said. His friends mumbled their agreement.

Davi and Tela exchanged a look. Neither one knew how to stop them, yet Davi still wanted to project a sense of command. “As long as you stick to the square mile around the course,” Davi insisted. They nodded and headed off.

Some of the less skilled trainees watched them go. “We want to go, too,” Dru said.

“You guys need more work on the course,” Davi said.

“Can’t you show us stuff on the regular trails which would help us with the course?” Dru asked.

“Yeah, doing the same thing over and over is boring,” Brie said. Nila and Dru groaned in agreement.

Davi looked at Tela, who shrugged. “Okay, look, we can try it for a half an hour or so, but you guys need to master the targeting on the course.”

Brie, Dru and Nila exchanged high fives.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Nila said.

Dru sped off toward the trails with Nila and Brie close behind. Davi and Tela raced to catch up with them.

      Although he would have preferred to keep the search to his own men, for fear word of his failure on the mission might spread, Bordox had called in more troops after realizing that, the sooner he succeeded the better. In the long run, success always outweighed failure.

As soon as the code came over the comm-channel, Corsi called for a rendezvous of their forces at the scout’s location, and then notified Bordox, and they headed for the coordinates together.

Bordox’s heart pounded faster and faster as they sped past row after row of cedars drawing closer to the rendezvous. After this, there would be no doubt who was superior. Rhii’s career would be over! He’d be in prison. Bordox would have the favor of the High Lord Councilor and be awarded medals, perhaps even a promotion. Thinking about it excited him. He accelerated his Skitter, ignoring the wind beating against his face, as Corsi struggled to remain alongside.

Davi and Tela followed Dru, Brie and Nila, as they weaved along a trail through the trees. The wind whistled past Davi, rustling his hair. The air was fresh and clean. He enjoyed the sensation, the blur of the trees as they passed, and their spicy smell.

Dru and Nila delighted in swapping places on either side of Brie—one zipping in front of her, the other behind. Sometimes, they cut it a little close, startling Brie, who cried out.

“Hey! Watch it!” She would shoot them scolding looks as they slid back alongside her, and then all three would break into giggles.

      Ah, to be young, Davi thought. He exchanged a look with Tela, who chuckled and shook her head.

“Try not to damage the Skitters, okay?” Davi called after them. This just led to more laughter as Nila and Dru swapped places yet again.

“I don’t think they’re listening,” Tela said, her blue eyes glistening with amusement.

“You got that idea, did you?” Davi said as she chuckled. “So much for military discipline!”

Tela laughed. “We have kept things pretty loose. We’d better start tightening things up.”

The comms on the Skitters beeped as a red light on the comm panel began flashing. They exchanged a look.

“The warning beacons,” Davi said.

Tela nodded.  “Better call in and see what they’ve got.”

The brush behind them rustled and they heard a noise, turning back to see four LSP soldiers slip behind them on armed Skitters. Davi and Tela exchanged looks of alarm, accelerating toward the trainees as the LSP men fired their lasers and the cedars exploded around them.

“So much for our early warning system,” Tela groaned as they sped up to catch their trainees.

Hearing the explosions, Brie, Dru and Nila turned around to look as Tela and Davi pulled alongside.

“Don’t slow down! Go as fast as you can. Follow me!” Tela warned them. She pulled in front and they sped up to follow her.

Davi hung back to protect the rear, dodging fire from the LSP soldiers. All around, he heard laser blasts and explosions as LSP soldiers engaged the other trainees. The smell of burning wood and leaves thickened the air as Davi flicked on his comm-channel.

“Attention trainees: do not go back to base. Lose them, and then hide until we can rendezvous.”

His private channel beeped and he switched over, steering sharply to dodge another laser blast.

Tela’s voice came over the headphones. “Right about now, I’m wishing we had armed Skitters, too.”

Davi reached down to the side pocket and pulled out his blaster. “I’m going to try and lay down some counter fire, but my blaster won’t do much against their Skitter guns.”

“Can you keep them occupied while I go help the others?” Tela asked, drawing her own blaster from the side pocket of her Skitter.

Without answering, Davi turned and started firing back toward the LSP soldiers, who zigzagged to avoid his blasts. Davi slammed on the brakes, and the LSP soldiers zipped right past him, their faces registering surprise. He slipped back in behind them and began firing at their flanks.

Tela fired two blasts from her blaster, then she and the trainees sped away, as the soldiers dodged more bolts from Davi’s blaster.

Davi managed to land a couple of hits on one of the Skitters, sending sparks flying, but causing more fear in the rider than damage to the machine. As the rider and his companions leaned back to inspect his Skitter, Davi ducked off onto a side trail.

In a few moments, the LSP soldiers slid back onto his tail again. Davi accelerated to full speed, zigzagging in and out between trees, jumping over rocks, diving under overhangs—keeping his target profile as small as possible. The wind buffeted him every time he emerged from the trees, forcing him to work harder to stay on the Skitter. Then he rounded a bend to find more LSP soldiers who joined the chase.

      Great! Are they all after me? He hoped Tela was helping the other trainees. He was too busy to help them himself.

Around another bend, Bordox and his aide joined the chase. Bordox. No wonder they’re all after me. Davi smiled, waving, as he dodged their fire. Outgunned, he searched his mind for a new tactic.

Bordox sped to the front of the LSP soldiers, close on Davi’s tail. Davi, looked back over his shoulder as Bordox growled: “In the name of the High Lord Councilor, I order you to stop! You’re under arrest!”

Davi braked and Bordox’s aide wound up in front of him. Bordox remained alongside, as Davi fired several shots with his blaster at the aide, leaning close enough to Bordox to yell: “Give my uncle my regards!”

He ducked off onto another side trail as Bordox shot on past, cursing.

The other LSP soldiers followed Davi as he followed the turns of the side trail, staying just out of range of their lasers. He shifted in his seat, trying to stay comfortable but his sweaty body and uniform made that difficult.

As he shot into a clearing, he discovered Tela, Jorek, Virun, and four others waiting for them, blasters held at the ready. Davi spun his Skitter into a one hundred and eighty degree spin and slid in alongside them, aiming his blaster as the first of the LSP soldiers came into view.

Davi’s group opened fire and chaos erupted. Two LSP Skitters collided as the soldiers tried to dodge the blaster fire. Another slammed into them from behind, while yet a fourth ducked to one side and crashed into a large cedar.

Davi and Tela motioned, accelerating on their Skitters onto another trail with their trainees close behind. All continued firing blasts back at the LSP men behind them.

Tela took three trainees with her and split off onto another trail as Davi, Jorek, Virun and two others continued on the present course.

“They’re after you?” Jorek yelled, sounding surprised.

Davi nodded. “I told you before; I’m on your side.” A laser blast exploded near them and Davi keyed the comm-channel button. “Try and get around behind them.”

Tela’s voice came over the radio. “Hang on, Davi, we’ve got a plan.”

      A plan? Who’d had time to make a plan? Most of the LSP soldiers stayed behind Davi and his group.

“Make it hard for them to lock their weapons on us,” Davi said, as his group zigzagged in and out of the cedars in varied patterns, never leaving more than one of them on the trail at a time. Their skills impressed him. They had made a lot of progress.

Jorek and Virun slid to a stop amidst the trees, watching several LSP soldiers zoom past, then accelerated after them, firing their lasers.

Davi heard a rebel yell over the comm-channel. “You two be careful! They outnumber us!” Davi warned.

Jorek’s voice came back at him. “Best training exercise ever!”

“Don’t get cocky. This is not a game.”

“No problem, Captain. We can handle it,” Virun said.

Davi wondered if he’d heard right. None of them had ever called him Captain before.

Bordox and his aide pulled back into the lead behind Davi, firing blasts which exploded on either side of him. Too close for comfort!

Tela and her group shot out of the forest, firing at the LSP. Two more Skitters crashed and two others were damaged. The LSP soldiers slowed down and dissolved into chaos as they attempting to avoid fire from the lasers.

Another group of trainees shot out from a group of trees and surrounded them, firing.

“When did you have time to get all this organized?” Davi said into the comm-channel, as he glanced back at Tela.

“Quick thinking is a military necessity,” Tela said. “They were all issued blasters with their uniforms, so…”

Davi smiled. “You’ve never been more beautiful.”

He braked, sliding in between Bordox and his aide. As they passed him on either side, he swung a foot out and kicked at Bordox’s Skitter. Bordox struggled to regain control but flew off to one side, as Davi slipped in behind the aide and shot at his Skitter with the blaster.

Bordox pulled alongside him again, his face a fierce grimace. “You can’t escape this time, Rhii. We outnumber you,” he called out with his usual menacing grin.

“You’re losing men fast,” Davi said as Bordox reached over grabbing for his controls. Their Skitters banged into each other as Davi struggled to push him away. His sweat soaked gloves barely maintained their hold on the handlebars of the Skitter.

“I always knew you were a traitor,” Bordox said.

“I always knew you were a pompous blowhard,” Davi said, freeing his leg and kicking hard. Bordox frowned as he spun off to one side.

Tela zipped up, firing at Bordox as his aide and another LSP soldier slipped in behind Davi.

Bordox corrected his course and charged back toward Davi, dodging Tela’s blasts.

Davi slowed, sliding upward, as Bordox’s aide and the other soldier flew right underneath him. Distracted, both turned, crashing into each other as Davi dropped down to fire on them from behind.

Bordox headed straight for Davi, who rolled his Skitter, dove off and landed on his feet in the dirt. He aimed his blaster and fired at Bordox, forcing him to turn suddenly and crash his Skitter into Davi’s. The impact sent Bordox flying off into the cedars. Both Skitters sputtered and smoked, amid a field of debris.

Tela turned her Skitter back and slowed down beside Davi, who hopped on behind her as the other trainees raced up beside them.

“We’ve got them on the run,” Virun said.

“Want us to go back and finish this?” Jorek said, sounding a bit too eager.

“No, get the others and get back to the hangar,” Davi said.

“At least they don’t know where the base is,” Tela said.

“They know enough to keep looking for us here,” Davi said. “It’ll be a matter of time. We have to warn everyone. The Forest won’t be our refuge much longer.”

Tela nodded as the group brought their Skitters to full speed and sped away, disappearing into the trees.

Davi looked back; no LSP soldiers were following them. He couldn’t believe they’d gotten away. Maybe his trainees deserved more confidence than he’d had in them.

Virun and Jorek passed him, smiling and laughing and enjoying it more than they should. He didn’t have time to worry about it now. He had to get back to the leaders at the base and warn them.

Bordox gave up trying to dust off the dirt clinging to his sweaty uniform and looked around for his Skitter. It was a disaster, destroyed along with Rhii’s. His men were scattered everywhere.

Corsi ran toward him. “Are you okay, sir?”

“Don’t stop. Catch them!” Bordox’s voice was full of frustration.

“It would be a little difficult at the moment,” Corsi said, motioning to several crashed Skitters.

“Get the men regrouped now and go after them!” Bordox yelled. A bunch of untrained workers against LSP troops? Bordox couldn’t believe it! How could they have embarrassed him again!  Furious, he drew his blaster and fired at a nearby cedar.

“Yes, sir,” Corsi nodded, but his face questioned whether it would matter.

      Davi entered the command center at a run. It was busier than he’d ever seen it with technicians and workers occupying every chair, fiddling with dials, adjusting wires and screens, and talking on communicators. Final preparations were underway for what lay ahead.

He found General Matheu and the other leaders in the conference room. “Our training today was interrupted by LSP troops searching the forest,” Davi blurted out as he entered almost out of breath.

“So we heard,” Uzah said.

“What were they looking for?” Aron asked.

“Me,” Davi said. They all looked at him with surprise.

“It’s true,” Tela confirmed, arriving out of breath as he answered and slipping into the room.

“Why would they be looking for you?” General Matheu asked.

“I’m wanted for questioning in the murder of a guard who was beating my cousin Nila. His death was accidental, but the Council brought charges.”

“Against a member of the Royal Family?” Joram said with surprise.

“One who questioned worker policies, yes,” Davi said. “And I suppose I’m also wanted for betraying the Alliance.” He wondered if the minds of those who’d doubted him would change now.

“It’s clear your chance encounter with them during previous training was not forgotten. They must have been searching for weeks now,” Aron said.

“Which means we have been discovered. We must put our plan into action right away,” General Matheu said, standing and walking over to examine some charts hanging on the wall.

“You’re sure you didn’t lead them back to the base?” Joram asked, as he moved over to join Matheu at the charts.

Davi whirled and glared at him. “What will it take for you to trust me?”

“We just need to know if they’ve discovered our location,” Joram responded, blanching at Davi’s harsh tone.

“I’ve been with you for months now, training pilots, and helping you. What’s it gonna take to prove myself?”

“The decoders already confirmed your story about the e-post,” Aron said, putting a hand on Davi’s arm.

“You have our trust now,” Uzah added with a nod.

Davi glanced around at the leaders. Even General Matheu’s face looked supportive. Tela smiled reassuringly.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet,” Aron said.  “I’m sorry.”

“We’re sorry, too,” Joram added.

Davi sighed, releasing the anger, then remembered he hadn’t answered Joram’s question. “It won’t matter if they followed me or not. The man leading them is a rival of mine from the Academy. He won’t stop until he captures or kills me.”

“We can’t wait until we’re discovered,” Aron said.

“We must prepare final plans and brief our teams,” Uzah said as they all nodded in agreement. Feeling guilty for being the cause of this, Davi looked away. Rushing into battle could cause extra loss of lives. He wished they had another way.

Aron noticed Davi’s sullen face and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Davi. It was a matter of time.”

Davi still felt responsible.

“Yes, our time for execution was drawing near regardless. Now we will act while we can still hope for some element of surprise,” General Matheu said.

The others all looked at Davi with anxious smiles. “My trainees are ready,” Davi said. “They now have actual experience in combat.”

Aron laughed, patting him on the back. The others laughed too, encouraged by the thought.

“Let’s commit our plans to the Lord and He will guide us,” Uzah said. The others mumbled agreement bowing their heads.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novel The Worker Prince, an honorable mention on Barnes & Noble’s Best SF Releases of 2011, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. He resides in Ottawa, KS with two precocious dogs.

~

This work proudly brought to you in association with Every Day Publishing and Diminished Media Group. If you like what you’ve read thus far, there’s no need to wait – click on over and pick up a copy right now!

by Peter Wood

The deer rammed its antlers into Lancaster’s battered VW bus. “What the hell?”

“Something wrong, corpsman?” The voice of Finch, his boss at the county planner’s office, crackled over the CB’s tinny speaker.

Lancaster winced. He hated when Finch reminded him of the two years he had wasted in the Peace Corps. “A deer just ran into my bus.”

“Good Lord, I hope your bus is okay.”

“I gotta go. I think I see the guy who owns the property.” Lancaster shut off the CB.

A beat up tractor wheezed out of the corn field. A burly black man about seventy shut off the engine and held up something that glistened in the midmorning sun..

The buck changed direction and disappeared into a field of corn.

Lancaster reluctantly grabbed the stack of legal papers off the front seat. He did not to want to serve them on the unsuspecting farmer. He stepped out of the bus and examined the door. It seemed fine. Thank God. He couldn’t afford much else on an entry level government worker’s salary in the backwoods of North Carolina.

The farmer strolled over. “Can I help you, son?”

A crow landed on the tractor and cawed loudly.

“Are you Jake Buford?” Lancaster asked.

“Yep,” the man drawled.

“I’m Mark Lancaster. I work for the County Planner’s office. Are you having trouble with deer?”

Buford laughed. “They used to eat my corn until I hypnotized them.” He held up a plastic disc about the size of a silver dollar. “Used this hypno coin. Made the critter you just saw into a guard deer. Sorry, but that buck don’t know you.”

“Nobody hypnotizes deer,” Lancaster muttered.

The crow squawked in agreement.

“That thievin’ varmint knows better. Deer work better than any old scarecrow.” Buford held the disk between thumb and index finger and spun it back and forth. It danced and twinkled as its spirals seemed to vanish into the coin’s center. “Got the disk in the mail.”

Lancaster handed the legal papers to Buford. “I’m sorry, sir.” Lancaster hated this part of the job. He wanted to use his Agriculture degree to help people, not kick them off their land. “The county needs your property for a landfill.”

Buford scratched his bald head. “The only place the county thought of to dump trash was my farm?”

“You could hire a lawyer,” Lancaster said, but his words felt hollow.

“I’ll think about it.” Buford’s mood changed abruptly. His eyes twinkled. “Son, want to see my sea monkeys?”

Buford’s living room was full of clutter. An unfinished beer bottle sat amidst stacks of newspapers and unopened mail.

The farmer looked embarrassed. “I ain’t done much cleaning lately.” He pointed to a dusty black and white photo on the brick fireplace mantle. A much younger Buford stood in front of a Depression-era truck with a woman and two small boys. “My boys don’t want to live here. Atlanta’s got more going on. Carol passed two years ago. Still expect to come in from the fields and find her fixing dinner.” He laughed. “I ain’t much of a cook.”

“I’m sorry,” Lancaster said.

“Thanks, Son.” Buford pointed across the room. “Check out my critters.”

Buford tapped the glass of a aquarium about the size of a restaurant lobster tank. A tiny pink creature no larger than a green bean swam out from a plastic storybook castle. Standing on spindly legs, webbed hands at its side, the creature peered about, as if asking who could it be at this hour?

Lancaster worried he was imagining things. Maybe it was a flashback from the drugs he had sampled in Asia. But that was almost two years ago.

He stared at the tank. They sure looked real, but his mind resisted. “What’s the trick?”

“Ain’t no trick. Got them from a comic book.” Buford scratched his scraggly beard. “Don’t know why they call them sea monkeys. They do just fine out of water.”

Lancaster leaned in closer. The sea monkeys swam back into their home. He hoped they’d emerge soon, but the tank was quiet. “Sea monkeys are just dried up shrimp,” he said to Buford.

“Don’t look like dried up shrimp to me.” Buford picked up a stack of magazines from the coffee table. He laid them aside one by one until he found what he was seeking. “Here it is.”

Lancaster didn’t want to look away from the tank, but turned around to see the comic. The cover was dull pastels. It showed Captain Invincible in purple tights. He was punching a hole in the side of a Soviet tank. “I used to read those years ago.”

Buford gave a sad smile. “Comics belonged to my boys. You got kids, Mr. Lancaster?”

Lancaster looked back to the aquarium. Still nothing. Had he really seen the creatures? “No, sir, I don’t have kids,” he muttered.

“If you get youngins, don’t be so busy being a dad, you don’t let your kids be kids. Know what I mean? Comics ain’t that bad.” He coughed. “Here’s the sea critters ad.”

Buford turned the comic over. On the back was a full color ad with a family that looked like it was lifted from 1950s whitewashed television comedies. The image of the perfect family. Dad in suit and tie, Mom in dress and pearls smiled as their son gazed into a bowl of sea monkeys. The ad proclaimed: ENTER THE AMAZING WORLD OF LIVE SEA MONKEYS. INSTANT PETS. THEY CAN EVEN BE TRAINED.

Buford flipped the page. Two cartoon kids gawked at a submarine. The ad said POLARIS NUCLEAR SUB. FIRES ROCKETS AND TORPEDOES. “I’m gonna order one of them subs. Go exploring the pond.”

“Those subs aren’t real.”

Buford shrugged. “They sent the sea monkeys.”

Lancaster rapped the glass.

Finch had crammed a plate of fried chicken and cornbread on his crowded desk. He took a sip from a cup of sweet tea and smiled at Lancaster. “Stopped by Sutton’s Chicken and got a basket. You want some?”

In the mundane confines of the county government building, Lancaster began to question what he had really seen down at the farm. There was no such thing as sea monkeys. There couldn’t be. His senses must have tricked him. Buford must have tricked him.

The wafting aroma of fried chicken reminded Lancaster he hadn’t had lunch. He grabbed a crispy wing and leg. Sutton’s gave enough food for two or three. “Thanks.”

“How’s your van?”

“It’ll be okay. Even a steamroller couldn’t put a dent in it.”

“Heard of cars hittin’ deer, but never deer hittin’ cars.”

Lancaster sat underneath the laminated county map on the wall. Finch had marked all the current projects in red magic marker including the landfill on Buford’s farm. “Scared the hell out of me.”

Finch took a bite of fried chicken. “Lancaster, you’re been here six months. You’re a good worker, but you get too involved with people. You should have given that farmer the condemnation papers an hour ago.”

Lancaster had spent almost a hour sitting by the tank, waiting for something to happen. He wanted to go back. “I got tied up talking to the owner. He had some questions.”

Lancaster opened a file folder. “Looks like it’s up to the lawyers now.”

Lancaster wanted to grab Finch and shake him and make him understand how wrong it was to turn a cornfield into a dump. He was so angry at his boss he stopped thinking about the sea monkeys for the first time since leaving Buford’s place. “The farmer’s lived there for years. He doesn’t want to move. He’s growing corn.”

Finch nodded. “I feel for him too. Buford can hire a lawyer.”

Lancaster pointed to the wall map. “There’s a bunch of good sites for the dump where people don’t have to move.”

Finch leaned back in his chair. “Anywhere we put the dump’s gonna get somebody riled up. This is politics. The county commissioners just want to get re-elected.”

This was worse than watching the communists steal land. Now Lancaster was doing the taking. Lancaster brushed back his shoulder-length hair. “Look, boss, I know there are other options.”

“Corpsman,” Finch interrupted. “The county’s made up its mind.”

A long dinosaur-like neck peeked out of Buford’s pond. It reminded Lancaster of those faked Loch Ness photos that purposely never showed enough of the monster. As the neck got closer he realized it was a periscope draped by lily pads and weeds.

He had been thinking about the sea monkeys for days. He had to come back and see if they were real. Nothing had taken his mind off the creatures. Until he stopped at Buford’s pond.

A miniature submarine surfaced. Except for its size, it was not unlike the real subs Lancaster had glimpsed a couple of times overseas. As long as a delivery truck, it chugged through the thick film of algae that skirted the pond.

The hatch opened. Buford stuck out his head and waved. “What are you doing out here, son?”

The words rushed out. “Is that a sub? Where did you get a sub?”

“Sure it’s a sub. Got delivered yesterday. Want to go for a spin?”

Lancaster ran his hands along the hull. It was solid. Impossible, but the sub seemed real. “I’d like that.”

A pulsating red light, just like the movies, lit the living room sized cabin. Buford tightened the hatch and stepped off the entry ladder. “Have a seat, son.”

Buford moved a lever and the sub lurched ahead. “Take a look out the window.” Buford flipped a switch and a panel slid back.

Lancaster heard frenzied squeaks. A couple of smiling sea monkeys hopped up on the bench beside him and peered outside. They were about six inches tall, larger than the ones in the tank.

Lancaster’s heart jumped. “Crap. I wasn’t expecting them. These can’t be the guys you showed me the other day.”

“They grow fast.”

Nothing grew that fast. Nobody ordered sea monkeys from magazines. And nobody took sea monkeys for rides in magical submarines.

The sea monkeys bleeped back and forth, paying Lancaster no attention.

Buford continued, “Them critters just wanted to look around the pond.”

“They told you that?”

“I just figured they’d want to look around down here. About the best place for them to live,” Buford said.

The submarine sank past the dock. Then the pond’s surface came into view briefly until they were underwater.

Lancaster pressed his face against the glass. He felt like he was on an amusement park ride. Through the murk he saw occasional fish. There wasn’t much else to see except for trash. Beer bottles. A rusted out row boat.

When the sea monkeys saw the boat, they chattered back and forth in a torrent of bleeps and buzzes.

“Them critters don’t like trash. Wouldn’t be surprised if they figure out a way to clean out this pond. They’re cleaning up my place. Busy little fellas,” Buford said.

That evening Lancaster stopped by Strickland’s Five and Dime and bought the latest Captain Invincible. He felt silly, but he cut out the ad and mailed a check for his own Polaris.

Lancaster raced to the front porch. He pulled out his pocket knife and cut the package open. He felt like a little kid. He couldn’t wait.

In half an hour he had assembled his submarine. Several large pieces of cardboard twisted and clamped together into a sham Polaris. Rubber bands shot plastic torpedoes.

The fake sub was just the latest in a long line of disappointments. He had not realized how much he had needed the submarine to be real. He didn’t need a submarine. Where would he keep it anyway? But somehow, even as he assembled the toy, he expected the flimsy cardboard magically to transform into what Buford had.

Instead of the cardboard submarine changing, his anger morphed from anger at the comic book company to anger at himself to anger at Buford. Buford had tricked him. He had made Lancaster believe in something else that wasn’t real.

Lancaster picked up the directions to the Polaris and fired up his VW bus.

In twenty minutes he shut off the engine and stomped up to Buford’s front porch. It was well into dusk. The sun had dipped below the tall loblolly pines. A chorus of crickets welcomed him.

Buford sat on a wooden kitchen chair. He shucked corn and tossed the husks into a galvanized bucket. Gospel music piped out of an antique radio, the sort that used to dominate a living room before television. He took a sip from a diet soda. “Sea monkeys hid my beer. I’m getting used to this stuff.”

A sea monkey, now about as big as one of the corn cobs, picked up stray tassels and put them in the battered trash can.

Lancaster’s voice cracked. “Why does all this stuff work for you? Why can’t I get my own sub?”

Buford shrugged. “Don’t know, son.”

Lancaster gave Buford the sub directions. “Your company ripped me off.”

Buford studied the directions and handed them back. “Ain’t my company, son.”

Lancaster balled up the paper and flung it on the ground. The sea monkey let out a little squeak and scurried over and picked up the trash.

“Sorry, buddy,” Buford said to the sea monkey.

“The sub is a piece of junk,” Lancaster said.

“Yeah, it don’t look like it’s worth much, do it, son?” Buford finished off the soda and dropped the can on the floor.

The sea monkey bleeped loudly.

Buford sighed and picked up the soda can.

Lancaster stared at Buford. “I had a feeling the sub would be a piece of crap.”

The crickets roared from the shadows. Lancaster could no longer see Buford. For all he knew the farmer had disappeared.

When Buford spoke his voice seemed to come from nowhere. “Did you now? I thought I’d be getting a real sub. Looks like we both got what we expected.” He paused. “Why do you want a magic sub anyway? Ain’t like it’s gonna solve all your problems.”

“I dunno.”

“Maybe before you start believin’ in comic books, you should be believin’ in yourself.”

Buford stood on his front porch in the blazing midday sun. Since last week it looked different. Lancaster realized it wasn’t sagging in the middle. It had been shored up.

Lancaster’s anger at Buford had dried up. He needed to go back to the farm. He had to see the sea monkeys and the sub. He had given up trying to explain them. The whole way over he wondered what other impossibilities awaited him. “Your place looks good,” Lancaster said.

Buford wiped his brow with a red handkerchief. He pointed to the top step where the sea monkeys were busy with tiny hammers. “They did most of the work.”

Lancaster swatted a gnat buzzing around his head. “Those sea monkeys sure lit a fire under you.”

Buford picked up a thermos and poured a cup of water. “Yeah, I reckon. I just couldn’t get myself to do much after Carol passed. You oughta see what them critters did inside. They cleaned up my kitchen and they’re starting to go through all that trash in the shed.”

“You ask them to do chores?”

Buford put down the thermos and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nope. They’re just helpful. Son, they’re even dragging the garbage out of the pond.”

Lancaster heard Finch’s voice coming through his VW bus’s CB. “I gotta get the CB.”

Lancaster picked up the mike. “Ten four.”

“Where are you, Corpsman?”

“I’m out at Buford’s house.”

“You’re there way too much.”

“Maybe you should come out here.”

“This is an open channel. We can’t talk about this over the air. You need to come to my office right away.”

“Yes, sir.” He put the CB mike back in the bus. “Son of a bitch.”

Buford held out something. “Take this. It might help your meeting with your boss.”

Lancaster took the hypno disk. “What am I supposed to do? Hypnotize him? This stuff works for you. I don’t know how, but it does. You really think this thing’s any good?”

“Depends what you believe, son,” Buford said.

Lancaster marched into Finch’s office. “Somebody should tell the county commission how much money they’ll waste buying Buford’s farm.”

Finch took a sip from a bottle of root beer. “Take a seat, corpsman. You seem pretty upset.”

“You keep calling me that. I was in the Peace Corps, not the army.”

“For God’s sakes, it’s the Peace Corps. Blame Kennedy if you don’t like the name.” He laughed. “You know what I don’t get? You keep visiting that farm. Everybody else wants to stay clear of the place. Like it’s haunted or something.”

Lancaster studied Finch. “What do you mean?”

“You weren’t the only one attacked by deer. Some county trucks got attacked too. Wildlife control thought it might be rabies. But all the deer they checked out were clean.” He took another sip of his drink. “And wildlife control can’t catch all the deer.”

“Maybe the deer don’t want the dump,” Lancaster suggested.

“Ain’t just the deer. A surveyor said he saw some monsters out there. Some critter, big as a bass boat, moving across that pond. And then a little pink thing dragged his wallet into the woods.”

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Lancaster muttered.

“He’s a good man. Thirty years with the county. Not the kind who’d make up stuff.”

Lancaster fished out the hypno coin and looked at it.

“What is that?” Finch asked.

“A hypno coin.”

Finch burst out laughing. “A hypno coin? Like from the comics? You gonna make me cluck like a chicken or somethin’?”"

Lancaster put the magic coin in his pocket. He wanted to do this on his own. “It’s just a toy.”

Still smiling, Finch pointed to the county map. “Okay, show me some better sites for the landfill.”

Lancaster noticed trash heaped on the shore of Buford’s pond. Beer cans. A battered lawn mower. A couple of water logged garbage bags. The sea monkeys must be at work.

Buford slammed the gate to his truck shut. “My boys are coming tomorrow. Cleaning out my truck so we can take all the corn to the farmers market in McCrae.”

Lancaster pointed to the front porch where a sea monkey scrubbed the wood with a toothbrush. “You gonna tell your boys about them?”

Buford grinned. “I ain’t sure my boys are ready.” He leaned against the truck. “They’re gonna get me a lawyer. Gonna fight the county.”

Lancaster tossed Buford the hypno coin. “You don’t need to do that. The County’s moving the dump.”

Buford laughed. “That’s great news, son. How’d you manage that?”

“My boss changed his mind. He’s moving the dump out to the industrial side of town.”

“Ain’t no deer out there,” Buford said.

“That’s what my boss figured.”

Buford stuck out his hand. “Thanks for all your help, son. I appreciate you putting in a good word with your boss.”

Buford’s grip was firm. Like oak. “I didn’t do much,” Lancaster said.

“It weren’t just the deer that changed things,” Buford said.

Buford was right. Lancaster felt a sense of accomplishment that had been missing for too long. “I’m glad to help.” He looked over to the pond. “How about if we get rid of all that trash those sea critters piled up on shore? I’ll help you load the truck.”

Buford opened the driver’s door. “Hop in.”

The sea monkey on the front porch dropped the toothbrush and squeaked in delight.

Lancaster sat beside Buford. “Think you and your boys could use some help with that corn tomorrow?”

Buford beamed. “Can always use an extra hand, son.”

Pete is a lawyer in Raleigh, North Carolina where he lives with his patient wife and moody cat. He fell in love with science fiction through the writings of Bradbury, Vonnegut, Dick, and Asimov and spent far too many hours in front of the television watching the original versions of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek.

Age: 41

Country of residence: UK

Hobbies: science, documentaries, digital art, writing digital music, technology, film, and games

Favorite Book / Author: River God, Wilbur Smith—I love his style as he really gets me involved with the characters.

Favorite Artist: Feng Zhu, a master of concept art for the entertainment industry. I watch his free online tutorials over and over.

When did you start creating art? I am a self-taught artist who began learning the fundamentals about two and a half years ago using online resources and books. I started creating the art straight away, using Photoshop and a graphic pen tablet.

What media do you work in? So far all my work is for video games and film. Predominantly concept art and illustrations.

Where your work has been featured? At this time, the concept art work has been used to develop game elements, and the illustrations have yet to be released. The work that is available to see currently is via my website (www.jamesledgerconcepts.com) or via my deviantART profile (http://www.kingjamesuk.deviantart.com). Like most artists’ art work, it tends to appear all over the place on random sites. I have no problem with that at all.

What was the motivation / story behind the featured piece? I wanted to portray a fairly bleak setting in which an alien race had come to destroy us. I wanted the alien to be confidently looking towards the viewer, as if to say “you’re next!”

Where should someone go if they wanted to view / buy some of your works? They can view my works via my website or deviantART profile. If I am attending a sci-fi convention I will usually be selling posters and prints at the location. I will always update my website and deviantART profile with this information. I am based in Bristol UK so any conventions will take place nearby. My next convention is May 19^th and 20^th, in Bath. http://visitbath.co.uk/whats-on/the-sci-fi-comic-fantasy-art-extravaganza-p1372123

The guest of honor is Jim Burns, whom I have displayed with before. I don’t think he needs an introduction!

How did you become an artist? After discovering Photoshop, I became aware of the potential to paint digitally. I tried it and became hooked over night.

What were your early influences? I have always been a Star Wars fan. I love the atmosphere that is created in good quality movies and games. I really love the environments more than anything. The films that influence me include Tron, Alien, Bladerunner, Star Wars, Moon, and so on. The games that inspire me include Halo, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc.

What are your current influences? I love the Tron Legacy environments—gorgeous! Avatar, Moon and a whole heap of concept art books portraying dark painterly images. Artist influences are Dylan Cole, Feng Zhu, James Clyne, Gary Tonge, and hundreds more.

How would you describe your work? Sci-fi, over-technical for sure. To the point. Attention to detail. This is changing though as all concept artists must learn the art of high speed abstraction, not fine art!

Where do you get your inspiration / what inspires you? Anything with atmosphere, be it a book, film, or game. Music also plays a huge part, particularly orchestral film soundtracks. I love the depth of field created in huge vistas.

Have you had any notable failures, and how has failure affected your work? The only failures have been my over-technical approaches. This is not a good way to earn a living. Too much time detailing doesn’t pay off—my works have had to reduce from days or weeks to hours!

What have been your greatest successes? How has success impacted you/ your work? I am still waiting for the big day when I get to do all the designs for Star Wars Episode 20 or Alien Part 15. The final images are always successes—I am always proud of myself at the end. The novelty hasn’t had time to wear off yet!

What are your favorite tools / equipment for producing your art? Photoshop CS5, Wacom Intuos4 Large, iMac i7. No doubt about any of that gear. I am a Mac convert and I never want to go back to PC again. My Mac hasn’t crashed once in the year I have had it, which is outstanding.

What tool / equipment do you wish you had? A more powerful Mac, simply because creating and working on huge, printable, high res Photoshop images drains even the best machines.

What do you hope to accomplish with your art? World recognition and a reliable income so I don’t have to get another career doing something boring. Nothing original in that statement of course!

Here’s an exclusive interview with Bryan about editing the SPACE BATTLES anthology and an excerpt from his Space Battles story, “The Hand Of God,” set in his Davi Rhii universe.

Q: How’d you come to be hired to edit Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6?

BTS: I was pitching around this anthology idea called World Encounters, which is now going to happen at a different publisher, which had Mike Resnick and others interested in contributing stories. I discussed it with Flying Pen Press publisher David Rozansky, but, being a small press, he just didn’t have the budget to do it at pro-rates, and with the caliber of people I had attached, I decided to wait. Instead, he asked me to pitch him other ideas, so I talked about my enjoyment of previous Full Throttle Space Tales anthologies and my friendships with some of his editors and pitched several ideas: Space Colonists, Space Robots, etc. and Space Battles became the one he liked and asked me to do. It was that easy. A Twitter conversation led to my first job as editor of an anthology. So for those who frown on the value of social media, there you go. From there, I went to Mike Resnick and several others as headliners and wound up with Mike & Brad R. Torgersen partnering and Jean Johnson doing a tale from her Philip K. Dick nominated Theirs Not To Reason Why military Scifi series.

Q: How’d you recruit/invite the authors?

BTS: Well, I started by compiling a list of people I’d like to invite and David had a list, too. He likes to include at least half from previous FTST anthologies on the invite list to keep some continuity in style and even tie-ins (David Lee Summers, CJ Henderson and others have stories throughout that series set with the same characters and worlds). I pared both lists down and combined them into what I thought was a reasonable number, around 37, of invitees, knowing we could only accept 16-19 stories and that I’d been invited to write one of my own.

Q: You’ve said you didn’t originally intend to take advantage of that and write a story, but then you did.

BTS: Well, yeah, I had so many great writers, most of them friends, sending me stuff. How could I reject one of their stories for my own? I just thought that would be kinda crummy, but then, frankly, lots of people dropped out. As I said in my editing lessons post, some didn’t get back with me, others just didn’t have workable ideas, others had other issues and deadlines interfere. So I wound up with extra space and brought in a few more writers. I also noticed what was missing as far as style and flavor and decided I could write something in my Davi Rhii universe that would fill that gap well and had an idea set 20 years after my novel trilogy and ended up running with it.

Q: So tell us about your Space Battles story. What’s it about?

BTS: “The Hand Of God” is about a pirate who calls himself The Hand and his ship The Hand Of God and is terrorizing shipping lanes in the Borali system. Farien Noa, Davi Rhii’s childhood friend, is on patrol with a squadron, including their sons, and finds The Hand stalking a freighter. Farien decides to interfere, but when The Hand’s compatriot pirates show up, things get more difficult than Farien first imagined. It’s written to be non-stop action. And it’s written with an element of mystery. I never full explain The Hand’s motives or who he is, because it would be a spoiler for what I want to do in the third Davi Rhii book, The Exodus, which I have not written yet. And it also would spoil the other books as well as far as character fates and such.

Q: Why is Farien the POV character in “The Hand Of God” instead of Davi, your lead character from the novels?

BTS: I chose Farien as POV character instead of Davi because I didn’t know how to tell a Davi story 20 years later without spoiling the forthcoming novels. I found I could do it with Farien’s POV if I was careful. I did give Davi Rhii a cameo at the end of the story and his and Farien’s sons are both included.

Q: You also named characters after another Space Battles writer and another writer friend, I hear?

BTS: Yes, Lieutenant Hest is written in honor of Patrick Hester. And Siregar is named for Moses Siregar, from Adventures In SF Publishing, who was also my roommate at World Fantasy 2010. Moses loves space opera but is currently too busy writing epic fantasy, so I threw him in so he could live vicariously through the character some space opera adventures. Both seemed to get a kick out of it.

Q: Where’d your interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy come from? You ask everyone else…

BTS: My passion for Science Fiction and Fantasy really came about through Star Wars: A New Hope. So did my passion for storytelling. It’s hard to explain to kids now how pivotal that experience was. I’d seen movies before. The Wizard Of Oz was oft-repeated on TV back then, for example. Star Trek was syndicated, Dr. Who, Space: 1999. But I hadn’t discovered them yet. Then we go to Saint Louis to visit my cousins and David, the cousin closest to me in age, really one of my best friends at that age, was all excited about this movie he’d already seen multiple times that I just had to see. He told me the title and my reaction was: “the title’s kinda dumb.” But we went anyway. I think the opening Rebel-Imperial battle is still one of my favorite sequences in all of films. I went as a blue shirt, black vest Rebel trooper for Halloween the next year. Star Wars had special effects like no one had ever seen them. It was so powerful and innovative for its time. Of course, they developed the technologies and approaches which have become common place in filmmaking today, but at the time, no one made movies like that. It was truly eye-opening and awe-inspiring work. The story followed the classic heroe’s journey, yes, and it was modeled after B movies, but the idea of space travel and intergalactic wars was made real in a whole new way and my imagination was fertilized and just took off. After that, I started looking for other SF and I had Star Wars standards. I read books I could find. I watched Star Trek and Space: 1999. I hated Dr. Who because it had the most ridiculously cheap special effects. I went to movies like Black Hole and Journey To The Center Of The Earth. Then the animate The Hobbit came on TV and hooked me on fantasy, too, so I picked up Tolkien and then Donaldson, etc.

Q: So you read Tolkien, Donaldson. What authors and books influenced you?

BTS: That could be a long and prohibitive list, like most authors but here’s the most important ones. Tolkien, LOTR and Hobbit; Donaldson, Thomas Covenant; Silverberg, Majipoor, particularly Lord Valentine’s Castle, which, like Star Wars: A New Hope, is an incredible heroe’s journey; Watership Down; Star Wars tie-ins like Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter Of A Mind’s Eye, in particular; the Blish Star Trek novelizations; C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books; Animal Farm by George Orwell; Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes; Huxley, of course; the Uncle Remus tales; Stephen King’s early work, particularly The Stand and Thinner, which remain two of my favorites; Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach; H.G. Wells was huge for me; I read some Jules Verne, too, and then I read stuff outside genre too, of course, like Twain, Ingalls Wilder and so on.

Q: What next? What future projects are you working on?

BTS: Well, in the immediate future, I have my second novel, The Returning (Saga of Davi Rhii Book 2) to launch May 29th. I also have my first SFFWRTCHT Author event at Hastings in Lawrence, Kansas, May 12th and ConQuest Memorial Day weekend. I have a busy summer Con schedule, see here. I’ll post more specific details on my blog as I have them for those. I’m doing a second draft and polish on Sandman, book 1 of my Dawning Age epic fantasy trilogy and writing the first Falcone book, as yet untitled, which is a Science Fiction/noir/detective.urban fantasy mix involving time travel. I anticipate a series with that one as well, though unspecified in length at this point. I have a sword & sorcery novel half-written but as soon as Falcone and Sandman are finished, I have to get going on The Exodus which closes the Davi Rhii trilogy. I’ve got more anthologies I’m pitching and planning to edit, the ongoing North Star Serial flash fiction space opera stories to finish writing for Digital Dragon Magazine, and who knows what will come. I am editing novels and novellas for Grail Quest Books fairly regularly and looking for other opportunities to edit, write and teach. Trying to stay busy and make a full time run of it. We’ll see how that works out.

Bryan’s Space Battles story “The Hand Of God” focuses around supporting character Farien Noa and a new character Buj Masters and is set 20 years after the novel trilogy. Here’s an excerpt:

The Hand of God

(A Davi Rhii Story)

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Cordelia shivered, her hull groaning, as Buj pushed her engines to full and spun her into a sharp, diving turn with the hopes of evadingvfurther blasts from the pirate ship’s cannons. His hand slipped on the stick, wet from the sweat which now covered him. He took a deep breath and relaxed his grip. “Come on, baby. Hold together now.”

He glanced down at the scanner to see the pirate ship echoing his dive and spin, falling back only slightly as it stayed on his tail. He cursed, then adjusted his rear shields to seventy percent. Might as well protect what needed protecting. It was supposed to be a simple honey run—basic supplies for the colony on Kempol I—nothing of interest for anyone. Except a pirate. They always needed basic stuff to survive. Still, he had to try.

Flipping the comm to an open channel, he keyed the transmit button. “Freighter Cordelia to raider ship, I have nothing of value on board.”

His answer was another volley of laser cannons, the blasts rocking his ship as they exploded against his rear deflectors.

“Basic supplies for Kempol I.” A scratchy male voice came back over the comm: “Your ship has no markings. That’s illegal in this system. Stop engines and let us board.”

Buj’s mind raced for an excuse to stall. The ship attacking him had no markings either. They couldn’t be Alliance official then. Who was this guy? “Your ship has no markings either. What right have you to stop me?”

“Citizen’s Patrol. Keeping the shipping lanes safe for honest pilots.”

“What makes you think I’m not honest?”

A blip lit up his screen and he quickly pulled back on the stick just
in time for the torpedoes to fly past his left wing, a near-miss.

“Last chance to avoid disintegration.”

Buj’s hands moved like lightning on the controls as he pulled up
quandrant scans, one after another. His eyes searched the screen for
something—anything—a suitable place to hide. Then he saw them: the
dwarf twins, Romulus and Remus, named after an Old Earth legend. The
only dwarf planets in the system, out in nowhere land between Kronis
and Plutonis. Kronis was his destination but the chase had forced him
off course, and the two dwarfs were now his closest option.
Explosions rocked his ship as the pirate’s lasers raked his shields
again. He pushed the joystick forward and sent Cordelia into a twisting
dive as he turned her toward the dwarf twins.

Shutting off the comm, he dropped two mines in his wake right
in the path of the raider, but the pilot was skilled and deftly slid his
ship between them, flying the large freighter almost like a fighter. He
definitely flies like a military pilot.

He increased Cordelia’s speed and shifted horizontally and vertically
in a zigzagging pattern, trying to stay out of range of the freighter’s weapons.
The pirate stayed with him, hit-and-miss explosions rocking his ship
as they exploded on or near his shields.

I’m not going to make it!

Then Buj recognized the ship, and he knew for sure he was in
trouble. At that moment, the pirate’s laughter echoed over the comm.

***
Major Farien Noa was leading his squadron on a deep space probe
when the alarm sounded. One of his pilots defined it for him, even as
he checked his computer.

“Explosions and laser blasts—some kind of battle,” Lieutenant
Solanus Rhii said, sounding much like his father twenty years before.

“Anything on how many ships are involved?”

“Negative,” Rhii replied. “We’re a quadrant over.”

“Well, let’s change that. Accelerate in formation, shields up,
weapons armed.” Farien complied with the commands even as he issued
them, then laid in a course and accelerated his fighter, leading the
squadron toward the targets.

“There’s two of them,” a young voice said—Farien’s son, Yao,
named after an old friend of Farien and Solanus’ father.

Farien nodded as he checked his computer. “One of them’s a
freighter.” The scan was fuzzy on the second ship. Farien typed commands
into the computer, even as he completed his arc and straightened his
VS37 for a direct approach from above the fighting ships.

“I’ve seen that signature before,” Rhii said, his tone evidencing
the search running in his mind. “On reports…”

“It’s an odd construction,” Yao said.

Farien smiled. Still so much to teach him. “It’s probably employing
sensor blockers itself as well as being custom modified to confuse them.”

“Got it!” Rhii called. “The Hand Of God.”

“The Hand Of God?” Yao’s concerned voice echoed.

The Hand Of God was the name of a ship belonging to a pirate
who’d been terrorizing smugglers and other commercial pilots throughout
the area for six months—a pirate who went by the moniker “The
Hand,” as if ship and pirate were one. What was he doing out here
alone? Supposedly he had great numbers. Had he stumbled onto the
freighter by accident?

“He rarely works alone,” Farien answered. “Where’s his gang?”

“I only read two ships,” Rhii said.

“An ambush?” Yao asked.

The two fighting ships came into view through Farien’s blast
shield as he keyed the comm. The Hand’s ship was tight on the tail of
the freighter, explosions rocking it as it struggled desperately to continue
evading. Clearly the freighter pilot had some real skill. “This is
Major Farien Noa of the Borali Alliance,” Farien said into the comm.
“Kill your engines and come to a full stop so we can inspect you.”

The only answer was laughter over the comm. Farien shuddered.
Why did he recognize that laugh?

“The freighter’s barely hanging on,” Rhii said. “My weapons are
locked.”

“Fire warning shots,” Farien said. “Don’t damage them. Just
scare them.”

His squadron slipped into attack formation around him, all seven
VS37s sliding into a V-pattern, their weapons locked. Farien held back
as the others fired at both ships. Explosions rocked the pirate ship with
a couple other blasts singing the freighter.

“I say again,” Farien repeated into the comm, “kill your engines
and prepare to be inspected.”

“You already shot at me!” the pirate’s rasp snapped back over the
channel. “Why would I trust you?”

“Because you want to live.”

The pirate’s only response was laughter. The Hand fired two more
blasts at the freighter, then swerved off in an erratic pattern, clearly
designed to prevent further damage from the squadron’s cannons.

“Stay on him!” Farien ordered. “Yao, you and Siregar check that
freighter.”

Yao’s voice was full of disappointment. “Yes, sir.” The two fighters
swerved off, leaving the formation and heading toward the freighter as
the rest formed up on Farien and increased speed, chasing the pirate.

***
Buj listened to the chatter on the radio as his ship rocked with
more explosions. Then the fighters fired too, barely missing his wings.
Had they missed on purpose? Farien Noa? Where did he know that
name?

He heard explosions from behind him but his ship didn’t shudder.
He checked the display and saw five ships closing fast on the pirate.
Two more had turned off and were closing on him as the pirate led the
others off in an attempt to evade. Buj didn’t want Boralian pilots aboard
either, but they’d probably saved his life, and he couldn’t outrun them.

He killed his engines, allowing Cordelia to drift as the VS37s
closed in.

“This is Lieutenant Yao Noa of the Boralian Alliance,” a young
voice said over the comm. “Please identify yourself.”

Another Noa? Were they related? “This is Buj McMasters of the
freighter Cordelia,” he responded.

“You’re flying without markings,” another voice said. “That’s
illegal in this system.”

“I just had my ship refit. The markings will be added once I arrive
at my destination.”

“What is your destination?” The first voice, Yao, if Buj recalled
correctly, asked.

“Kempol I,” Buj answered. “I have supplies for the outpost there.”
The VS37’s matched Cordelia’s velocity and settled in along
either side.

“Leaving port without markings is asking for trouble,” the second
voice said. “And it looks like you found it.”

Buj sighed. “He came out of nowhere. I don’t know how he
found me.”

“You’re lucky we came along when we did.”

Buj chuckled. “That’s for sure. Thanks for the assist.” The comm
went silent for a moment. Buj assumed the two pilots were talking
with each other. Please don’t let them board me. He was already delayed
because of the encounter with the pilot and the supplies were on
rush. If he got them there on time, he’d get a large bonus. He really
needed the money.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to escort you to the nearest port
for an inspection,” the pilot Yao said.

Buj groaned, cursing to himself, then keyed the comm. “I’m kind
of in a hurry. I could lose a major bonus. I really need the money. Can’t
you cut me some slack? You know he was preying on me.”

“Sorry,” said the other pilot. “Major gave us strict orders.”
Switching his engines on auxiliary, he slowly accelerated,
matching his speed and course with the escorting fighters. There goes
my bonus.

***
Adrenaline raced through Farien’s veins as his squadron gave
chase. It had been a while since they’d seen any real action. Their
deep probes generally involved encounters with merchant ships and
passenger vessels either in trouble or committing minor violations.
Usually they issued warnings for the violations and sent them on their
way, stopping only to assist the vessels with trouble. But in this case, a
mini war had been waged. He had a responsibility to find out what was
going on, especially if the pirate was indeed The Hand Of God.

The pirate’s ship rocked as blasts exploded just off his engines but
he continued evading their shots like an expert.

Who is this guy? Farien knew a lot of people who’d love an
answer. “Pree and Ami, cut him off. Rigel, stay with me. The other
two hit him from the sides. We need to shut him down.”

As the squadron broke apart, Farien fired another burst at the
pirate’s engines, striking the heat shield and rocking it again as the
silver hull turned black from the flames.

“You want him alive, right?” Pree answered, a chuckle in his
voice. The chubby veteran was one of Farien’s best pilots and had a
reputation as a prankster, but he was always on top of his game when
he needed to be.

“The pirate, yes—his ship, no,” Farien replied.

Pree laughed as Ami’s high pitched giggle filled the comm. “Let’s
leave enough of her to see what she’s made of.”

“You can indulge your fascination with starcraft on your own
time, Ami,” Pree teased. “We’re on official business here.”

Farien could almost hear the female captain rolling her eyes as
she responded to her wingman: “You’re the wingman, remember? Just
follow my lead.”

Farien watched as she accelerated rapidly then arced sharply and
spun around to face the oncoming pirate, firing head on. Pree slid in
beside her and did the same, forcing the pirate to dive and roll to avoid
their blasts.

The dive was so steep that the fighters had to abruptly change course
to keep him in their sights and maintain their positions. Farien noticed
the pirate was leading them toward an outer moon of a nearby planet.
“His course is taking us toward that moon.” Even as he commented
he launched his computer into a long range scan. “He could have
a base there.”

“Or be hiding his fleet,” Pree added.

“My sensors pick up nothing,” said Lieutenant Hest. The youngest
squadron member and Farien’s wingman sounded nervous.

“The moon could be hiding them,” Ami said.

“Or the planet,” Farien said. “Let’s keep our eyes open and get
ready for evasion if we need to.”

Farien accelerated, Hest staying right with him. The pirate ship
disappeared around the arc of the moon as Farien glanced around and
spotted the black, sleek-bodied snub-nose craft of his squadron closing
in. Suddenly, the pirate ship spun into a sharp arc, curving back
around upside and firing its cannons straight at Farien and Hest.
“Hest! Evasive now!”

Farien scrambled with his own controls, hoping his young wingman
was doing the same. His ship rocked from explosions as a blast singed
his right wing, leaving streaks on the dark painted hull. As he slowed
back to turn toward the pirate he caught a glimpse of Hest’s limping
fighter nearby. A blast had knocked out one of the engines and torn a
jagged cut into the hull plating just behind the cockpit.

“You okay, Hest?”

The young wingman sounded surprisingly calm. “Fine, sir. A little
shaken but I’ll be okay.”

The pirate ship arced back around toward the moon, following the
curve of its atmosphere. It was moving so fast it would soon be out of
sight. Accelerating, Farien’s teeth clenched as he checked his targeting
computer and fired blasts at the pirate ship’s disappearing engines.
Pree and Ami fired from above as well, then his computer beeped. The
blip marking the pirate ship disappeared.

“He’s gone?!” Ami’s voice was almost a squeal.

Farien typed frantically into his computer. “He can’t be.”

“He is,” Pree said softly. Farien could sense his disgust.

“What the hell—?” Ami yelled over the comm as Farien heard the
pounding of her fist on her cockpit wall. Ami always pounded when
she was irritated.

“We don’t have time to argue. Circle the moon and do another
scan. Spread out.” Farien turned, with Hest on his tail and arced
around the moon as he ran through more scans on his computer. There
was no sign of the pirate ship and he knew none of the others would
find any either.

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6, which can be purchased here.

by Rob Mancebo

Massy McKinney barely managed to duck the loquar’s swinging fist. She knew she’d been lucky. As big as the creature was, the blow could’ve staved her head in. She stumbled for the sanctuary of the slave wagon, but she wasn’t fast enough to avoid the loquar’s follow-up kick. It struck before she was completely out of range, sending her sprawling into the dirt of the road. She was still young and strong enough to roll with the impact, but the pain jarred her to call out a desperate lie.

“I just wanted a drink of water!” she yelled blindly as she tried to untangle her yellow sun dress from her legs and scrub the dust of the road out of her eyes.

“No escape!” the beast warned her in its rumbling voice.

Massy felt herself picked up in a powerful grip and pitched toward the slave wagon. She bounced when she hit the ground but managed to scrabble to her feet before she was abused further. She staggered toward the bleary image of the slave wagon and felt Moody and Cyane’s frantic grip as they helped her climb back aboard.

She wiped the sandy dust out of her eyes in time to see the blocky, noseless face of the loquar as it leaned over the wagon after her. Exactly like every other loquar, it was a ten foot tall, leathery-skinned giant with hands the size of frying pans.

“No escape!” the creature warned again, forming the unfamiliar words carefully. “I beat.” It took her head in one crude hand and gave a squeeze that threatened to crush her skull. She tried to scream but the pain was too much and the edges of the world were dimming around her before the slaver let her go to drop into the wagon bed.

The loquar vented a plethora of alien curses as it tromped away.

“Well,” Massy said to the other girls while trying to cough out all the dust she’d swallowed. “We know that won’t work.”

“I warned you you couldn’t make it to the trees,” Moody Reynolds chided. “The loquar are too fast.”

“Well, what do you expect us to do?” Massy demanded. “Just sit in this wagon until we’re sold and taken off-planet? It’ll be a little late to try and escape then, won’t it?”

“She’s right,” Cyane Dubois came to her defense. “We’ve got to do something before we’re sold.”

“And that means soon,” Massy told them. “When they captured us I heard them say something about ‘three days travel,’ and it’s been two already. We’re out of range of any security patrols, and Ellis radar station is blocked by these mountains. We’re getting into the sort of wild country a ship could land in without detection.”

“You speak loquar?” Moody asked with her blue eyes opened wide under her shading bonnet.

“A little,” Massy admitted. “But for heaven’s sake don’t let on. We don’t want to give away any advantage we might have.”

“But what can we do?” Cyane whined. “They’re so big! And they’re armed.”

“Yes, but there are only two of them.” Massy reminded the girl. “And they want us, more-or-less, undamaged. We’re no good to them dead or broken up.”

The girls lapsed into a guarded silence as one of their captors came to the wagon and gave a tug at the harness of the draft oxen.

The wagon rolled along with one loquar leading the oxen and the other striding behind to make sure the girls didn’t try and drop off the back.

For the thousandth time, Massy considered their captors. The stony-faced loquar were not native to Ruhn any more than humans were. They generally stayed in their small clans in the southwest raising cattle upon the rich grasslands. Humans and loquar frequently traded, but didn’t live near each other.

Ruhn was a world of endless land and few people. Plenty of room for all. Too much room for most people. On Ruhn, most of the population, human and loquar, were involved in ranching or farming of some type. Working hours were long, and in a harsh world of few settlements, there wasn’t much time for romance. The girls had been traveling to an annual match-making festival when the slavers had jumped them and dragged them off.

Slaving was a recent crime-wave on Ruhn. Obviously someone had decided that raising crops, cattle, and horses was more work than kidnapping. It was rumored that somehow girls were being taken and shipped off-planet. Being so far out on the galactic frontier, there were no patrolling constabulary ships to put a halt to the foul trade.

“We’ve got to try something—anything!” Massy encouraged when she was sure the loquar couldn’t possibly hear.

“There is one thing,” Moody suggested slowly.

“What?” Cyane whispered.

“The odds are two-to-three,” Moody said with a fatalistic shrug. “We each run in a different direction. We have to gamble that they can only run-down two—one of us will get away.”

They were all quiet for a long time. Massy thought she saw Moody wipe away a terrified tear, but the girl never made a sound.

“We’ll try it tonight,” Massy whispered. “Just at dusk.”

“Whoever gets away has to inform the authorities which of the loquar did it,” Moody said grimly. “They need to be ID’d and hunted down.”

“How are we supposed to tell which ones did it?” Cyane said with a snort. “We can’t tell one from another anymore than they can tell us apart. They’re alike as peas in a pod!”

“They’ve got some sort of recognition factors,” Massy said. “We just don’t understand each other well enough to tell.”

“Which means, if we don’t catch them in the act,” Cyane said, “We can’t prove who they are. A fat lot of good it will be to report them after the fact.”

“We’ll do what we can do,” Massy told them. “We can’t do anything unless one of us can get away.”

“This evening then,” Moody agreed. “Just before dark. By the time they catch two of us, there won’t be enough light to track down the third.”

That evening their captors stopped in a wide clearing. The girls were given food of some bland, unidentifiable type, and a cup of water. They ate carefully, always with one eye on the sun setting behind the mountains.

Each of them had already chosen a direction of travel. Each girl had removed and pocketed her sunbonnet. They waited until the last direct rays of the setting sun dipped behind a mountaintop and the loquar were together setting up a polished alloy tube in the center of the clearing.

“That’s a signal beacon,” Moody told them quietly. “They’re calling for a ship.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” Massy whispered. “Luck to us all.”

Without another word the girls bounded over the wagon box and scattered. They were as quiet as they could be and Massy found it was several running steps before she heard an inhuman growl of recognition.

“Stop!” a voice bellowed. “No escape! No escape!” the order was punctuated by the evil thrum of a loquar handgun.

That only spurred Massy to greater exertion though. She knew it was probably an idle threat. And if it wasn’t, if she were really shot, that was better than the despicable life of a slave-whore in some seedy brothel.

Her dress hiked up, her long legs stretched out in a sprinter’s stride to carry her straight down the road until she cut hard into the trees. The local conifers weren’t so thick that she couldn’t pass through at full speed. She must’ve run a mile before she thought it might be safe to slow down. In all that time she’d heard no sound of pursuit. She could only guess that the slavers had chased the other girls.

She jogged through the darkening woods almost blindly following a game trail, until she saw the soft flickering of a campfire. As she approached she called out breathlessly and was thankful to hear a human reply, “C’mon in.”

Before she ever registered who she was talking to she shouted, “Loquar slavers!” The words seemed to tumble out of her mouth between gasps. “They took three of us. There’s a clearing about a mile back. They were signaling for a ship!”

The startled man who greeted her was a mountain hunter. He was a small, wiry fellow. He had long, shaggy hair, but was clean shaven and dressed in faded homespun and flannel. At her warning, he scooped up a Kalashnikov rifle and kicked dirt over his small campfire.

“Slavers here?” he repeated. “Calling a ship?”

“Yes!” she wondered if the man was an idiot. Couldn’t he understand? “They may be right behind me! They were calling a ship to pick us up—”

He suddenly bounded forward and clamped a hand over her mouth to silence her.

Massy’s first impulse was to fight. She began to struggle against his grip but he shushed her and she realized that he wasn’t attacking her. She rolled her eyes to where he was looking. The stark light of Tsolan, Ruhn’s first moon, revealed the shambling shadow of a loquar coming up one of the many forest paths. Its large head dipped frequently as it carefully scanned the trail. The loquar obviously could track at night. The girls’ whole escape plan had failed.

She nodded when she realized that he was protecting her, but his hand didn’t release her mouth. Instead he dropped his rifle and clamped a muscular arm around her neck. Massy struggled against him but it was useless; he had her in some sort of martial arts restraint. It wasn’t until the shadowy forest faded around her that she realized she’d been betrayed.

Massy awoke in the cold darkness. Fingers of pale moonlight were filtering through the forest branches around her. The dim woods were quiet except for the chirping of Ruhn’s great, green frogs.

She felt an odd breeze as she sat up and realized that she was stripped to her skimpy underwear and rudely wrapped in a blanket. What had happened to her? Where were her clothes? She remembered the hunter, the loquar coming, and then—nothing. The man had put her in a ‘sleeper hold’ to render her unconscious. But then he had just left her there? And without her clothes? As she moved, Massy felt something cold and hard against her leg. It was the man’s rifle. Why ever had he put her out, but then left her with a rifle?

Massy stood and wrapped the blanket around herself, pinning it together with several sticks from the forest litter. She hit the latch and pulled the rifle’s magazine. There wasn’t enough light to see clearly, but it was easy enough to tell it was full by its weight. She loaded the weapon and snapped on the safety.

She didn’t know what had happened to the man or to her clothes, but she had a loaded rifle and she knew where the slavers were.

Massy’s lip curled defiantly in the moonlight and she headed back down the trail toward the slavers camp. She was going to do her best to see that there would be no more girls kidnapped.

Her heart felt like it was beating in her throat as she crept back to the open glade. Every shadow might’ve held one of the hulking loquar. She crept along with the rifle up and her finger ready upon the safety.

She was nearing the area where she and her fellow captives had tried to make their escape when an explosion rocked the forest. She flinched as a tall, billowing fireball ripped up into the night sky.

She snapped off the rifle’s safety and placed her finger firmly along the trigger guard, ready. Then she trotted forward to see what had happened.

The conifers thinned out as she approached the site of the explosion. Through their thinning mass, she recognized the shimmering blue flames of pectral rocket fuel.

She heard a warning crashing of brush and thundering of approaching feet just before a loquar stumbled out of some bushes in front of her. Its pale skin shone a leprous white in the moonlight and its blunt face was disfigured by night shadows. Her first impulse was to shoot it, but was it one of the pair who had kidnapped her? She couldn’t tell and murder was still murder on Ruhn.

When it saw her standing there, the creature identified itself by yanking its sidearm and leveled it in her direction. Their shots sounded together but she was already holding her weapon on-target. She kept on pulling the trigger until she’d put a half a dozen .30 caliber rounds into the massive creature’s chest.

It took two, stumbling steps toward her, then crumpled in a lifeless heap. Only then did she allow her focus to break and she looked up to see a tree branch burning by her ear.

She banged the glowing branch with the rifle stock to snuff the tendrils of flame and cursed the loquar as she stomped on the sparks that fell. What sort of an idiot used a thermal gun in a forest?

Massy kicked over the body keeping her rifle trained and ready as she did. Once she was certain it was dead, she took up the fallen pistol. It was a Timurian made arm, obviously an expensive import weapon from one of the industrial worlds. Not the sort of thing anyone would find out on the ragged edge of the galactic frontier where daily use arms were ancient, surplus Kalashnikovs and archaic Mausers.

She pushed forward with a weapon ready in each hand. When she came out into the glade, she found Moody and Cyane simply standing by the cart that had so recently been their prison. There was a grounded spaceship burning merrily in the center of the glade, and someone standing by the harnessed oxen who was wearing her dusty yellow sun dress.

“What? You!” she exclaimed when she recognized the hunter she’d met in the woods.

“Ma’am,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“What are you doing in my clothes?” she demanded.

“Oh, I was just giving them slavers a sort of a surprise.”

“He was wonderful!” Cyane gushed. “He shot the loquar and blew up their ship! Oh you should’ve seen it!”

“I couldn’t very well watch when I was unconscious and naked, could I?”

“Sorry about that, Ma’am,” the hunter apologized. “There just wasn’t much time for planning.”

“Time for planning?” Massy raised the rifle muzzle to the stars and snapped on the safety. It seemed that all the trouble was over for the moment. Only an explanation was lacking.

“No Ma’am,” the man assured her. “It’s like this,” he turned to Moody and snapped, “Quick, take off all your clothes!”

Moody scowled and held her collar closed self consciously. “What ever are you talking about?” she demanded.

“See?” He waved a dismissing hand. “A natural reaction. Some things take planning and explaining to organize between people. We just didn’t have the time.”

“He dressed up like you and let them capture him,” Moody told Massy. “The loquar didn’t know the difference, what with your bonnet on and in the dark. When they dragged us into the ship he let loose on them. He was a regular terror. Shot a couple and overloaded one of their engines to destroy the ship. I only saw one of them get away.”

“I got that one in the woods,” Massy assured them. She looked the disguised man up and down before commenting, “But you say he got those local boys and the ones in the ship too.”

“It was no trick, catching the small fry,” the man told her. “Getting into a position to destroy their transport ship to put the whole crew out of business, that was the tricky part.”

“And here I thought you were a little slow on the uptake,” Massy admitted.

“No. Ma’am, I just haven’t met up with a woman in these hills all these last eight months. You sort of took me by surprise.”

“Do this sort of thing often, do you?” she asked.

“I blew a few ships during the war, Ma’am,” he admitted. “I’m a little out of practice, but—”

“No, I mean, stealing and wearing women’s clothing!” she snapped.

“Why—er—no.”

“Good. It’s best you don’t make a habit of it,” she told him. “In a land short on fellers, it riles a girl to see a man go to waste. Besides, I’d get real tired of explaining such behavior to friends and family.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I just won’t have a man who won’t wear his own britches, that’s all. Call it a personal preference.”

“Have a man—?”

“Well, you’re out here alone. You’re not wearing a ring. You’re not married nor engaged, are you?” Massy demanded.

“I am not,” the man admitted.

“Then I’m throwing in my bid,” she tossed the Kalashnikov to Moody. “I am Massy McKinney, I’m twenty-five years old, I have a horse ranch on the upper blue river, and I’m pleased to meet you.” She took hold of his shoulders and kissed him, a bit awkwardly, but long and hard. The man didn’t reply, but he didn’t push her away either.

“Well, that’s a start,” she said quietly. “I’ll tell you, I raise the prettiest horseflesh you’ve ever beheld. But that country is rough and I’ve had some trouble with rustlers. They killed my husband George last year, poor soul. I’m not what you call a needful woman, but I like havin’ a man’s company. I need a man I can depend on not to buckle when times get rough.

“So, what do you say?”

In reply, the man took her carefully in his arms, swept her back off-balance, and kissed her.

When he untangled himself from her lips, she didn’t pull away, but kept her arms wrapped about his neck. He nuzzled her ear and whispered, “Can’t remember that I’ve ever buckled in my life.”

“Things are getting better and better all the time,” she murmured as she looked into his dark eyes.

“Well we’ve got a long trip back to talk things over,” he told her while easing her back to her feet and letting go of her waist.

She slid her hand down his sturdy bicep and took his arm. Arm in arm they walked toward the wagon.

“There’s just two things I’m going to ask of you,” Massy said as they walked. “First, what ever is your name?”

“Pete,” he replied. “Peter Brown.”

“A good name, Pete,” she acknowledged. “A simple name. I like that.”

“What’s the second thing?”

She stopped and tapped him on the chest with the loquar’s thermal blaster and said seriously, “Will you get yourself out of my best dress before I’m tempted to shoot you?”

After many decades of defense and retail security work, Rob has moved on to earn a living as an MA/LXMO in an emergency care clinic. He still writes when he can and edits for Cyberwizard Productions.