“Can we borrow this?”
“Under standard operating procedure, absolutely not,” the pilot said, “but this is an emergency, and the CO did say we should help you...”
Brook shot a sideways glance at JP. “Is that a plausible interpretation of his commanding officer’s words?”
“I’d say so,” JP said.
“Great.” Brook clambered into the interceptor.
“All you have to do is bring that petition to the front desk,” JP said. “Or anyone in the organization. So long as you beat the Legislature’s courier there, you’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.” Brook wedged the personal screen between her legs as she warmed up the interceptor. Realizing that if this stunt went wrong, these words might be her last to JP, she added, “For everything.”
Brook sealed the interceptor’s cockpit. The control scheme was indeed centered on the universal throttle-and-stick system, albeit surrounded by a plethora of controls she did not recognize, so she was able to gingerly lift the craft off the hangar floor and out of the command frigate.
Nose pointed down at Telahmir, Brook shoved the throttle forward. The surface of the planet leaped up toward her. Judging by the rate at which isolated clouds were blurring past her, Brook knew that without the normalizing force of the interceptor’s artificial gravity, she would be unconscious if not dead. Still, she kept the throttle at the interceptor’s maximum velocity until the spires of Telahmir spread out below her. She then pulled it all the way back, firing full retrograde.
Her descent slowed noticeably—but not as much as she had hoped. The spires continued to rise up, like spikes coming to impale her tiny ship. Brook was confident that no civilian craft would be allowed to go this fast this low over Telahmir, but she was in a Meltian Guard interceptor, so ostensibly she knew what she was doing. Brook spotted the Emergency Service’s headquarters—three boxy buildings in a U-shape around a marble-rimmed pond—and adjusted her course to come down in the middle of it. Not that doing so helped her with her velocity problem.
Brook knew real interceptor pilots executed insanely-high-acceleration turns routinely during combat, but she was not getting anywhere near that kind of thrust—because she was using her retrograde thrusters.
Brook flipped the interceptor around, pointing its nose and tiny retrograde thrusters toward the sky while firing her powerful main thruster to push her away from the ground.
Her descent slowed considerably. She was falling past the Emergency Service’s building—there were meters left until the ground. Then a white gas flowed up and over her interceptor.
Thud.
Brook shut off the interceptor’s thrusters as the ship settled, butt-first, against the ground. She unsealed the cockpit and swung herself out of the interceptor as the white gas dissipated.
Not white gas—steam. Brook had landed in the center of the Emergency Service’s pond, vaporizing it with her thrusters in the process.
A Meltian man in a suit—the courier from the Legislature—was gawking at her from behind the low stone wall that had been the rim of the water feature a few seconds ago. The decorative barrier must have protected him from the worst of the steam.
“Good morning, sir.” Brook retrieved JP’s personal screen from the interceptor and clambered out of the former pond, heading for the front door to the central Emergency Service building.
As if suddenly remembering his job, the courier stumbled after her. Inside, the Emergency Service receptionist—a male Archavian like JP—was just as speechless as the Legislature man.
“Good morning to you, too,” Brook said.
The courier produced a small personal screen from his pocket. “I have an order from the Meltian Republic Legislature Subcommittee on—”
“And I have a petition to contest that order.” Brook set JP’s screen on the receptionist’s desk.
The receptionist looked from one screen to the other. “Uh—”
“Is everything in order?” Brook asked. If this document went through, she could fly back up to the Boneyard, start up their new ship, and flip over to the Erian solar system to pick up the rest of her crew—she trusted JP to clean up any legal aftermath. Unless Griffin was willing to physically come after them—which Brook highly doubted—they would be free of his influence.
The receptionist took JP’s screen gingerly and scrolled through the document it presented. After a minute, he said, “Everything... except on this document, where you receive ownership of the vessel from the Boneyard, you, ah, you need to give it a name.”
“Oh,” Brook said.
“Of course,” the receptionist said, “if your chosen name differs from the name of your previous vessel, you’ll need to apply for a new registration.”
Even if there was not the danger of giving Griffin another chance to thwart them, Brook had dealt with enough Meltian red tape for a lifetime. “Just go ahead and put it down as the ‘MRS Kindred Spirit.’”
Q&A with Adam Quinn
How similar is this story to the rest of your work?
Very! In fact, “Procurement” is in the same universe as my main series, the Drive Maker Trilogy. Flashpoint, the first book in that trilogy, takes place about six years after the events of “Procurement,” and features Brook, JP, Arriet, and Charles Griffin, as well as the new Kindred Spirit.
So that means that Brook goes six full years without needing a new ship?
A fact for which I am sure Brook and JP are both grateful.
What about Roth the elevator guard? He was my favorite character! Does he—
He dies.
What?!
Hit by a hovercar. Very sad. Just two days away from retirement.
Are you serious?
No.
Oh. I guess I should read those other Drive Maker Trilogy books, then—how can I get them?
Glad you asked; Flashpoint is available right now on Amazon. For information on my existing titles, you can visit my website at adamquinnauthor.com. To make sure you’re the first to know when new titles come out, you can sign up for my newsletter at smarturl.it/AQNewsletter.
Only one title?
Don’t worry—Pressure Point, the sequel to Flashpoint, is scheduled to come out later this Fall, followed by a novella in the same universe in Spring 2017.
But seriously, about Roth—
I’m sure he goes on to live a happy and fulfilling life.
One More Star, Shining
by Anthea Sharp
LIZA ROTH TOOK a swallow of her green jimjack beer and, for the hundredth time, tried to ignore the old-Earth piano keyboard stuck in the corner of the miners’ cantina. Even if the instrument worked, which she doubted, she probably couldn’t remember how to play any of her pieces.
And supposing she did, it was so crowded and noisy in the cantina the music would just be buried under the babble of voices, the clank of gear, the clatter of dishes.
That would be fine, actually. She didn’t want anyone to hear her, to notice and start asking questions about how an asteroid miner on the far edge of the galaxy knew how to play an antiquated hunk of machinery, let alone perform the classic works of the old masters.