“Captain?” Representative Arriet’s voice came out of the transport’s consoles.
“Representative.” Brook angled the transport’s nose upward and pushed the throttle forward. “About those ships you mentioned: where can we find them?”
“I was referring to the Boneyard,” Arriet said.
“Right.” The name conjured images of Interplanetary Network broadcasts from just after the Order War, showing thousands of no longer needed vessels being clustered into a massive orbital shipyard over Meltia for storage. “JP can you get me coordinates on that?”
“Likely,” he said.
“Captain, I don’t know what you’re planning, but you’ll need to do it quickly. We drafted the order to dismantle the IES this morning and submitted it to our administrative staff for documentation and distribution. It could be delivered to the headquarters of the Emergency Service at any minute.”
“I know,” Brook said. “JP told me. Is there any way we could stop the order after it’s been delivered?”
“What do you mean, ‘stop’ it?” Arriet’s tone was suspicious, almost as if Brook had just been arrested for something similar.
Luckily, JP leaned into the cramped cockpit at that moment. “Representative, once we acquire a vessel from the Boneyard, we plan to petition the Emergency Service to contest the dismantlement order on the basis of its counterfactual statement that we have no ship. To the captain’s question, that option is removed as soon as the Emergency Service signs off on the order.” JP tapped one of the readouts that surrounded Brook, and a neon green waypoint appeared on the ship’s viewport. “Your coordinates, Captain.”
“Thanks, JP.” Brook adjusted the orientation of the shuttle. They quickly left behind Meltia’s atmosphere for the blackness of space. “Arriet, can you keep an eye on that order for us?”
“Certainly,” Arriet said.
Brook did not realize they were approaching the Boneyard until its darkened, inactive vessels began to blot out the stars. She switched the viewport to a sensor-augmented display, and almost jumped as hundreds upon hundreds of blue-wireframe starships popped out of the void. She did not have much time to admire the scale of the place, though, as a fully operational Meltian Guard command frigate cut between them and the ghostly armada.
“JP?” Brook asked.
“I have a communications channel open with them,” he said. “They want us to come aboard.”
“Did you tell them it’s an emergency?” Brook asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s try to make this quick.”
The command frigate opened one of its hangar bay doors, and Brook maneuvered the police shuttle inside. Once it was landed, she unstrapped herself and joined JP in walking down the gangway. A female Rosarian in a Meltian Guard officer’s uniform met them at the bottom, carrying a clipboard-sized personal screen.
“Captain Brook.” The Rosarian saluted her.
Brook made a quick guess based on the Rosarian’s uniform as she returned the gesture. “Lieutenant Commander?”
If she was wrong, the Rosarian did not correct her. “I understand you have need of one of our ships, Captain?”
“Yes,” Brook said, “for the Interstellar Emergency Service. Preferably quickly.”
The Rosarian frowned, consulting her personal screen. “What does that entail?”
“Well, our old one had these big fins coming off the side.” Brook illustrated the shape with her hands. “And a pointy—”
“We need a large interior microgravity receiving bay and capacity for at least two hundred crew members,” JP said.
“That too,” Brook said.
The Rosarian entered a command into her personal screen and then turned it to face Brook and JP. “No fins, but it should work.” The screen displayed a ship with a long, boxy body that opened at the front—their microgravity receiving bay—and a skinny protrusion poking out from the bottom side like the grip of an ill-proportioned gun.
“Perfect,” Brook said.
JP produced a small cube from a pocket—Brook recognized it as a biological signature, or biosig cube. “For legal purposes, we will just need you to officially sign over the vessel to us.”
The lieutenant commander gave JP a skeptical look but accepted the biosig cube.
“Captain Brook!” Arriet’s voice emanated from the interior of the police shuttle. “The order has been dispatched.”
Brook smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure JP’s got us almost squared away.”
“Unfortunately, Captain,” JP said, “just as the dismantlement order must be delivered in person, so too must our petition to contest it.”
Brook blinked. “Meltia. What is it with Meltia and doing things in person?”
JP began, “Meltian political culture—”
“Never mind!” Brook held up a hand. “How are we going to get back to Meltia, fast?”
“My ship and my crew stand ready to assist you, Captain,” the Rosarian said. “Though I am still not sure what the nature of your emergency is.”
“Warm up your flip drive, then,” Brook said. “Take us as close as you can to Telahmir.”
The lieutenant commander departed quickly, but Brook knew it would not be enough. The frigate’s flip drive could only take them to the fringes of Meltia’s atmosphere. They would have to make the descent to the surface in the shuttle, which would still take a lot longer than flying a hovercar from the Legislature to the Emergency Service.
If the courier was able to use a hovercar.
Brook sprinted back into the shuttle, leaving JP scribbling something on a personal screen. She quickly found her transceiver, linked to the ship’s computer, and removed it.
“Later, Arriet.” She closed that communications channel and opened another to the Telahmir Security Command Center. TeSeComm was responsible for a range of duties centered on keeping the capital of the Meltian Republic safe.
Including restricting air traffic.
“TeSeComm, this is Jareyn Brook, Captain of the Interstellar Emergency Service,” she said as soon as they picked up her query. “We have an emergency situation, and I need to ground all non-military, non-Emergency-Service air traffic over Telahmir.”
“Yes, Captain,” came the reply. “Should we take additional precautionary measures?”
“Not at the moment.” Brook cut the communications channel and returned to the hangar. In another city, this move might have halted the delivery of the order completely, but in Telahmir, with its famous pedestrian culture, the grounding would just slow the courier down.
When she stepped out of the shuttle, Brook saw through the Airshell field that protected the hangar that Meltia had grown a thousand times closer, its red-brown surface now taking up her entire field of view. The lieutenant commander must have activated the ship’s flip drive while Brook was inside, shifting the vessel superluminally across space.
JP thrust his personal screen into her hands, and Brook looked down to find their fully filled out contest petition. “Good wo...”
“Captain?” JP asked.
Brook’s eyes had wandered to a Meltian Guard interceptor that was sitting next to their police shuttle. “We do still need to get down to Telahmir quickly, right?”
“Likely.” JP turned, following her line of sight. “Captain, with all due respect, you can’t fly an interceptor.”
“That was a Foonyan interceptor,” Brook said, “and the weather was atrocious. This one’s Meltian, so it’s got a standard throttle-and-stick setup—it’s basically just a really fast hovercar. Hey! You!”
The pilot Brook yelled at turned around.