Chapter 1 (PART SAMPLE)
In what seemed like a really bad
omen, Bob Tuesday was summoned to the Captain’s office over the PA system. For
most people on board this ship, such a visit could relate to any of their
personal achievements being congratulated, or perhaps result in some
encouragement for working hard, but for somebody like Bob Tuesday this could
only be for something negative. This was certain because, for one, he had not
achieved anything worth remembering in his entire life, and two, Tuesday did not
work. Ever.
Dressed in the standard
orange overalls, white shirt and steel-capped boots that all civilian janitors
aboard Naval starships had to wear, Tuesday had an immaculately clean broom
slung over his shoulder, which had not been used even once this year, and a
soggy cigarette was hanging out of his smirking mouth.
He was ready.
Entering the cramped
little room outside of the Captain’s office, which somehow managed to hold a
secretary, large filing cabinets and laughable plastic plants, Tuesday sat on a
metal chair and calmly watched an oil painting, waiting for the call. He knew
this treatment was designed to make him sweat, worry, perhaps even freak out,
but Tuesday simply continued to sit there calmly and wait.
The Captain, a snooty,
upper-class snob that Tuesday would have beaten up in high school more than
once, opened the door, glared down at the janitor and gestured for him to come
in. Tuesday smiled at the secretary with a mouth that held only half a dozen
blackened teeth and walked inside.
Within the office, the
walls were covered by expensive and rare paintings, which were either done in a
futuristic post-modern abstract style or were just some scribble by a
five-year-old. Tuesday knew his day had come when the Captain did not say a
word, did not offer him a seat and simply glared from behind his mahogany desk.
The janitor waited patiently, trying not to smile, and the pompous Captain
finally spoke.
“Do you know why we have
janitors on starships, Tuesday?”
He shrugged.
“To keep things clean.
Because if things are not kept clean, that means that they’re dirty. And if
they’re dirty, that means they are unsafe. And if things are unsafe…” The
Captain trailed off and made a ripping gesture with his hands. “Boom, that’s
what.”
“Boom?” Tuesday
repeated.
“Boom.”
“Ah.” Tuesday sucked at
his sad little teeth. “Is that all?”
The Captain narrowed his
piggy eyes.
“I haven’t even
started.” A vein could be seen throbbing in his forehead. The Captain opened a
drawer, got out a paper-thin sushi screen and tapped at it with a stylus. “I
have here a comprehensive list of your criminal offences since you came aboard
the Carpe Stella, and I thought it might be nice to make you aware of what your
current situation is, Tuesday.” He took a breath. “Drinking on duty, sleeping on
duty, dereliction of duty, gambling on duty, smoking on duty, getting to work
late and leaving early every single day that you’ve been here…there is also the
matter of petty theft from the cola machine, nine counts, petty theft from the
kitchen, forty-seven counts, petty theft from a superior officer, fifteen
counts, petty theft from fellow passengers, eighty-three counts, petty theft
from Medical, nine counts, selling stolen items, forty-three counts…and let’s
not forget the illegal cockfight you staged last week!” The Captain threw down
the roll-up sushi screen. “What do you have to say, Tuesday?”
Tuesday furrowed his
brow and thought about this.
“Wasn’t me.”
The Captain brought both
hands down on his desk with a sound like thunder and his face turned bright red.
At this rate the veins were just going to burst out of his neck.
“We’ve been watching you
for the last six months, Tuesday! We’ve got nine hundred hours of surveillance
footage, signed testimonies from thirty-two people, we’ve recovered stolen goods
with your fingerprints all over them, and we’ve gathered so much evidence that
it needs its own bunkroom! Have you got anything to say about being a one-man
crime wave, Tuesday?”
“Yer.”
“What?”
“Yer real ugly when yer
mad, Cap’n”
The Captain looked like
he was about to have a stroke.
“BRIG! TWO YEARS!
GUARDS!”
*
Three hours later, Cadet Lana Slade,
a student at the Naval Academy, slowly approached the magnificent starship known
as the Carpe Stella in a much less flashy school shuttle. From this distance it
looked like an overgrown football stadium with a dozen smoke stacks on top,
which were actually advanced nuclear drives, and it had a bare minimum of
propulsion systems. The lack of jets and retros was deliberate, because this
particular starship could simply move from point A to point Z without worrying
about the entire alphabet that would normally be in between. Nine tenths of the
Carpe Stella was made up of the mile-long splitter engine and nuclear drives,
and the remaining tenth was devoted to entertainment, food, storage, sleeping
quarters and other essentials, all of which Lana had seen in one form or another
in many simulations.
This was no ordinary
ship.
Lana was sixteen, and
she had dreamed about a day of work experience on board this immense
masterpiece, and it just so happened that her high marks had made this fantastic
dream come true. Lana had waited for this opportunity her whole life; she had
craved to command a ship, any ship, in search of adventure and fame. When
she was not scoring the highest marks in her year she was daydreaming about how
Cadet Lana Slade would soon be called Captain and how all those other girls at
the Academy that had filled her lunchbox with mud and flushed her head for being
a prissy cow would have to respect her.
Of course, that was
still another six years away, but she could wait.
Docking silently with
the Carpe Stella at one of the available pylons, the umbilical lines connected
themselves automatically to the shuttle and the door of her school bus stuck
fast to a magnetic walkway with a clank that could be felt rather than heard.
Such a minute touch did not affect the Carpe Stella, and the starship simply
continued to float in the black of deep space.
Stepping out of the
yellow school shuttle, Lana brushed down her black Navy uniform and made sure
her hair was still concrete-stiff in a bun that would need a crowbar to undo,
and then she took her first step aboard the Carpe Stella. A Navy enforcer in
riot gear looked down at her, checked a tiny plastic sushi screen and called out
to somebody.
“Hey, Jenkins, that
jail-bait work experience kid’s here. Should I call the Captain?”
“No,” Jenkins called
out, just as loudly. “He’s got better things to do than bother with that. Shove
her in a corner. Let her be someone else’s problem.”
Lana’s mouth dropped
open at these unprovoked insults.
“But…”
“Captain’s down that
way. You’re not my problem,” the Navy enforcer said with a shrug, walking away
from Lana without bothering to make eye contact. “I’ve got work to do.”
Lana picked up her
backpack, glared at the enforcer and started walking.
Due to the fact this
ship was a dozen levels high and filled with escalators, elevators and pneumatic
tube lifts, a simple point in the right direction really did not help, and Lana
eventually got lost. She made it to one of the many observation bays that were
used to watch the more interesting aspects of space and waited there for a few
minutes, watching people go by in a hurry and staring out of the two-inch-thick
plexiglass at the local world, which was a sort of orangey brown and covered in
thin pollution. She held back a tear, as all of this was not going as she had
imagined it, but she gathered her wits about her as a robotic tour guide
approached her.
“Can I be of
assistance?”
Lana nodded when she saw
the universal symbol of a white letter I in a blue circle that meant it was an
information bot. She thought that memorising some of what this machine could
tell her might impress the Captain.
“Yes. Tell me about this
ship.”
“The Carpe Stella,
which translates into Latin as ‘Seize the Stars’, is an ambitious project that
has taken most of the 23rd Century to perfect. In theory, the massive
splitter engines and nuclear drives should be able to transport the ship from
any point to any other point in a matter of a second, which is made possible by
a series of nuclear reactions. Today, the tenth test run of this prototype is
going to be performed for a select few passengers, which include the rich,
famous and brilliant. Everything will go smoothly, and once some further tests
are completed the successful design will go into mass production.”
“Where are we going?”
Lana pressed.
“Seven star systems to the west. Old
styles of travel would take anywhere from months to years to perform such a long
distance flight, but for the Carpe Stella it should be almost instantaneous.”
Lana thought on this.
She was not hearing anything new.
“Thanks. Where’s the
Captain?”
The machine paused for a
moment.
“In the Captain’s
office.”
“Which is?”
“Where the Captain is.”
“Yes, I know, but where
is the Captain’s office?”
The robot pointed to the
left. A giant hologram spelling out CAPTAIN was slowly spinning next to a
doorway, so Lana nodded at the machine, picked up her backpack and made her way
there.
Inside, there was a
cramped waiting room where Lana announced that she had arrived to the bored
secretary, then she sat down in an uncomfortable metal chair and waited. The
Captain emerged in a matter of seconds, heading straight past her and towards
the open doorway without even a nod, but by this point Lana was sick of the
disrespect everybody was giving her. She defiantly stood up and blocked the
doorway.
“Captain, my name is
Cadet Lana Slade and I am reporting for duty. I was informed that I would be
given jurisdiction over a small area of this ship for the duration of the next
two hours, and then receive a detailed debriefing on how I went.”
“I really don’t have
time for this,” the Captain snapped, but Lana simply stood up straight and
glared at him.
Although small and
young, there was a certain scary determination in Lana’s eyes, which was a
special stare she had been perfecting for years in order to show who was boss.
It usually gained her a little more leeway than she would otherwise receive,
which was because it made her look slightly insane. Her years of training in the
Academy’s unique style of martial arts, known as jing wu, had helped her focus
this fire, but it did not help to keep the equally-trained bullies at bay.
“I have, in writing,
permission from the Academy to take control of one area of the ship for two
hours. Now, I would prefer the engine room or the control deck, but if this is
not possible…”
The Captain glared right
back at Lana, fished in his pocket for a laser-tip pen, scribbled a code on a
piece of paper and thrust it into Lana’s hands. She looked down at the sequence
of letters and numbers and tried to think what they could mean.
“Where do I use this?”
“Downstairs, in the
garage. You now have full authority over lifeboat number thirty-five. I trust
you will not misuse your power, Cadet.”
Lana blinker. A
lifeboat? That was just an automated escape pod for a handful of people. It had
no manual controls and was as boring as a cardboard sandwich on brown bread.
Lana, however, tried to put on a brave face for the sake of her career.
“Thank you, sir.”
The Captain snorted.
“Enjoy the lifeboat, Cadet.”
Lana got out of the
doorway and let her commanding officer through. She sighed and grumbled to
herself.
“Great. Just…great.”
She knew what this
situation called for: a decaf vanilla-essence cappuccino.
*
An hour later, Trace was storming
through the only drinking establishment on the Carpe Stella, which was far
classier than what the janitors, technicians, dock workers and low-level
mechanics were used to. For one, you actually had to wear shoes to get
in. Strictly speaking, this club was designed exclusively for the rich,
powerful, beautiful and brilliant, but the off-duty labourers used the same
colour of money and were grudgingly welcomed on a daily basis.
Trace was a tall woman,
and was more heavily built than most men she had encountered over the years. She
had managed to get together a mess of scars on her face and forearms from the
brawls she had been involved in, but these were partially hidden by half a dozen
facial piercings. The light reflected off her bald head and the metal of her
weapons, which were in plain view for all to see, as she carried out her
enforcer duties. This basically meant she went around bumping people and
wordlessly daring them to start something. As she was on the most precious ship
ever designed by man, the fact that she was hired in the first place proved that
the personnel officer really did have severe drug issues.
The crowd was thick, but
Trace simply barged her way through. She had just begun to think that her fun
was over for the day until she bumped a short girl wearing the black of the
Naval Academy. The Cadet turned around with a surprised expression on her face,
as this bump had spilled half a mug of her fifth decaf vanilla-essence
cappuccino all over her best dress uniform.
“You’re paying for the
dry cleaning,” Lana snapped.
Trace blinked in a bored
way.
“I’m not kidding.”
Trace yawned and turned
from the teenager. She was about to walk away when an iron-tight hand gripped
her scarred forearm. Trace smoothly turned, punched the Cadet in the abdomen,
picked her up by her head and threw her over the bar with a crash of bottles.
Trace had just begun to smile at the release of tension when the Cadet did
something apparently stupid: she got up and jumped back over the bar. She went
down into an exotic martial arts pose, keeping her balance on the balls of her
feet.
“Ten years of jing wu
coming your way, freak.”
The Cadet’s foot flashed
up and hit Trace in the jaw, stunning her for a moment, then a barrage of
open-hand punches and knees pummelled Trace all over her abdomen, chest and neck
before she could recover from the surprise of this prissy little Cadet suddenly
turning into a wild animal. Trace caught Lana’s leg by its ankle, turned and
threw her at the wall, but the Cadet bounced off the hard surface with her other
foot and struck Trace right across the jaw for a second time, trying to knock
her out.
Other enforcers
suddenly burst into the bar, pushing aside the horde of yelling onlookers as
Trace and Lana were both tackled, handcuffed and dragged away, but even then the
two women were trying to kick each other.
“You’ve been warned
before,” one of the armoured enforcers snapped at Trace. “This’ll be the end of
your career this time, I’m sure of it. Brig them.”
*
Jimmy Slummer, one of the worst
apprentice chefs that had ever lived, was putting together another culinary
treat for the crew, but once the cryogenically frozen meat was defrosted Jimmy
realised that he had run out of shake and bake chicken seasoning. He grudgingly
decided that it was time to learn a new recipe, as his record-breaking run of
ten years as an apprentice was getting annoying, and so Jimmy dared to try and
cook soup.
After putting out the
flames, Jimmy sat back, wiped the ash and grit from his unshaven face, and
looked in the mirror finish of the dishwasher unit. What stared back at him was
a loser, an obese chump with back hair and a five o’clock shadow that would need
a power sander to remove. A schmuck dressed in a filthy apron with no shirt and
a pair of ratty old pants, Jimmy Slummer was really sick of being at the bottom
of the evolutionary ladder wherever he went.
Putting on his floppy
chef’s hat with a sigh, Jimmy realised what was bothering him: Bob Tuesday owed
him money. A lot of money. The kind of money that you only lent to somebody like
Bob Tuesday if you were really drunk.
Which he had been.
Determined to stand up
for himself for once, Jimmy marched out of the kitchen, made it two steps
outside, turned around on his heel and walked right back into his workspace when
he remembered just how big this ship was. Digging through a pile of charcoal
that used to be a small library of recipes, none of which he could actually
cook, Jimmy found that his touch screen was undamaged. Pressing firmly on the
locate button, he spoke:
“Robert Tuesday,
janitor, civilian.”
The computer ticked over
for a few moments.
“Level one. Brig.
Cell four.”
Jimmy smiled. This
should be easier than he had hoped.
Filled with
determination, Jimmy slipped on his thongs, stashed a large rolling pin in his
apron’s front pocket and stomped into the corridor.
This side of the ship
was a bit tight for Jimmy’s ample frame, as it was only designed to be wide
enough for two people, but he managed to squeeze through to the elevator.
Hopping inside and slapping the lowest button on the wall, Jimmy’s capsule went
from the rear end of the ship to the bottom level in a matter of seconds and
spiralled open.
Jimmy advanced into the
dingy brig, which was only a small metal box filled with smaller Perspex cells.
There was a control desk with a guard off to the side, and not much else.
Sidling up to the jailor, who was known to be as crooked as a pretzel, Jimmy
Slummer got out twenty francs from his pocket and put them on the guard’s desk.
Smiling at the bribe and tipping his hat, the jailer left the room, whistling
merrily.
Getting up close to the
electronic desk, Jimmy looked for the button he needed. Pressing it, all of the
boxes went from opaque to transparent in a flash. Bob Tuesday was cramped into
an area that was too narrow to sit down in and too short to stand up properly,
and Jimmy enjoyed seeing his discomfort.
Another two boxes held a
very different pair of women who were shouting abuse at each other (even though
the boxes were soundproof, Jimmy could tell the words were all of the
four-letter variety). The names over the cells were Lana Slade and Trace, but
they held no interest for him, as Lana was far too young and Trace far too
homicidal, so he walked over to Tuesday, unlocked the food slot in his cell with
the keys the jailor had left behind, and spoke.
“Right, Tuesday, where’s
my two hundred and fifty francs?”
“It was only two thirty!
“Plus the bribe for the
guard equals two fifty. Simple.”
“Hey, only thing simple
here is you. I’m not paying more than two thirty.”
“So pay up.”
“Soon as this cell is
open, I promise I’ll try and think of a way that I might manage to figure out
how to get my hands on some money, if that’s at all possible, okay? And then
I’ll seriously attempt to pay that money back to certain parties that may
possibly have it coming to them, yeah? Happy with that?”
“When’s that?”
“About two years.”
Jimmy sighed, which made
Tuesday smile in victory.
“Well, that’s tough.
Guess I’ll just have to find another way to earn some cash. I know! I’ll take
that job cooking meals for the brig, hey? Spice up the menu with some nice
fish-eye stews, and sausages made out of the leftover bellybuttons and rectums?”
“No!”
“Perhaps some fried rat
bladders filled with cockroach eggs and cigarette butts?”
“Please!”
“And broccoli on the
side.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Oh, I would, Tuesday.
I’m sick of being your chump. I want that cash or you’ll be eating food so bad
that your tongue will commit suicide.”
Lana and Trace were
still yelling at the inside of their cells. They finally calmed down and just
glared at each other when they realised they were wasting perfectly good insults
on nothing but their own ears, and they both started to watch Tuesday and Jimmy
argue over money.
*
Above, the mile-long splitter engine
was whirring and clicking as it focused on a specific point seven start systems
to the west, which was the location of an advanced shipping yard that would deal
with the Carpe Stella on arrival.
A billion calculations a
second were rushing through the internal pathways of the incredible splitter
engine, connecting it to the dozen nuclear reactors that would provide the spark
to open the doorway to another place. This procedure must be perfect,
immaculate, without faults of any kind.
Unfortunately, for the
first time, the computer forgot to carry the x. |
