Blue Shift (Backyard Starship Book 5) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Blue Shift Copyright © 2022 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

  1st Edition

  CONTENTS

  Don’t Miss Out

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Glossary

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  About the Authors

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  1

  “You know, I could get used to this sort of mission,” I said, leaning back in the Fafnir’s self-contouring pilot’s couch. Legs stretched, I glanced at the tactical overlay that depicted the situation around the ship out to the effective limits of the passive scanners, with a smaller, closer volume swept by the active ones. Anything Netty, the Fafnir’s AI, considered relevant would be displayed and constantly updated, including ships, rocks, bits of debris, other celestial bodies—and threats. Whatever she assessed as a potential menace would be highlighted in bright red and painted both onto the display between the pilot and copilot’s seats, and directly onto the canopy.

  Right now, the tactical situation around the Fafnir was just how I liked it—boring.

  Perry leaned into my field of view from where he perched behind and between the seats. “Be honest now, Van. Would you really like a career of flying around space on peaceful missions, visiting other cultures and ingratiating yourself to them by returning stolen artifacts—” He stopped and cocked his head. “Come to think of it, that does sound pretty sweet.”

  I smiled at him. “Right?”

  We were closing in on the second planet orbiting Luyten’s Star, an unusually hot and active red dwarf star a little over twelve light-years from Earth. The planet, Luyten-b, better known as Ajax, had actually been known to Earthly astronomers for some time as the closest exoplanet orbiting within its star’s habitable zone. In 2018, a recurring music festival called Sónar had actually funded a project to transmit a radio message to Ajax, consisting of both mathematical and musical data. The transmission reached about a third of that distance and was a popular bit of a moving tourist attraction in known space. Since it traveled at the speed of light, it was easy to find it, intercept it, and listen in to it. There was a kind of bemused indulgence given to the transmission; it was as much an artifact as information.

  Of course, to the good people who had earnestly assembled and sent the message in hopes of receiving a reply sometime around 2042, it had been an almost forlorn call into the void, hoping for an answer. They had no idea that the people living on Ajax, a humanoid race known as the Daren-thal, were well aware the message was on its way. Apparently, they didn’t intend to worry about it until it arrived, not wanting to spoil the surprise.

  Which left me stuck in a weird place of knowing the truth about it all but withholding that truth from my fellow humans.

  It was for the best, Perry insisted. “There’s a way to introduce a technically advanced, nuclear-armed, and, let’s face it, unduly aggressive species into the space community. And just dumping the reality of it on them all at once ain’t it.”

  “Sounds like there’s some hard experience talking there,” I observed.

  “Yeah, it’s happened in the past and hasn’t gone well at all. Doing it according to certain procedures is one of the few things that all the major powers in known space agree on.”

  Whatever. Right now, I had a job to do, a pretty cushy one, and I intended to enjoy it to the fullest.

  “Netty, can you try and raise Rovan? I want to give him our ETA,” I said.

  “One moment.”

  Rovan was my contact here on Ajax. He was employed by his peoples’ cultural affairs shop and was a specialist in archiving and analyzing historical data, particularly ancient artifacts. He was also the person responsible for recovering them should they wander away from his homeworld. The illicit trade in stolen cultural artifacts didn’t only afflict Earth but was an ongoing problem across known space.

  Netty announced that she had Rovan on the comm and switched the center display to an image of him—or, more correctly, his face, framed against a lurid purple sky. He reminded me of the Grinch in that old cartoon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but even leaner and more angular.

  “Peacemaker Tudor, I presume,” he said. Although he wasn’t doing anything I could recognize as panting, I still got the impression I’d caught him in the midst of doing something demanding, like working out at the gym.

  “Please, call me Van. I just wanted to let you know that we’re about an hour out.”

  “Excellent. I’m really looking forward to recovering that piece you’re carrying.”

  I glanced back. The item, an intricately carved wooden sculpture almost three meters long, had been carefully wrapped and then placed aboard the Fafnir in the only way it would fit—laid out along the galley floor. We all had to step carefully, particularly Icky with her enormous feet. The last thing I wanted to do was hand over an artifact that had been broken because someone had accidentally stepped on it while making a sandwich or three.

  I nodded to Rovan. “And I’m looking forward to returning it to you. I’ve had some experience with my own cultural history being looted, so I feel for you.” I omitted the fact that I’d done some of that looting, replacing two of the Vanguard satellites orbiting Earth with skillful forgeries made by the Starsmith, Linulla. But hey, omelets and eggs, am I right?

  “It was a devastating loss when it was stolen from our Cultural Center in Brunus—oh, five years ago, now. It’s our oldest known artifact, dating back nearly sixteen thousand years.”

  I nodded again. “Okay, well, I just wanted to let you know we’re arriving shortly, and—”

  “Can you do me a favor and land out here to pick me up and take me back to Brunus with you?”

  “Uh—where’s out here?”

  In answer, Rovan swung the imager around, revealing rolling grasslands varying from dark purplish gray to almost black in every direction. Well, everywhere except for the brief image of some lean, predatory beast festooned with spines and a gaping mouth full of many, many teeth.

  “Holy shit. What was that?”

  Rovan reappeared. “That? Oh, you must mean Rovan-ir.” In the camera’s image, a long, narrow muzzle pushed closer, filling the lens area with a toothy grin crowded with long, sharp fangs.

  “He’s my—” The next word didn’t translate. “Sorry, the best description would be my life-bound companion. All Daren-thal males are bonded to a hunterloper when they come of age. It’s a part of our culture almost as old as that artifact you’re carrying.”

  Rovan-ir chose that moment to try and seize the imager from Rovan, giving me a brief and terrifying view straight down the creature’s throat. I heard Rovan admonish him and pull the imager back.

  “Sorry, he likes to grab things and run. Fond of the chase, he is. It’s a game to him.”

  “So he’s… a dog.”

  Torina appeared and pushed past Perry to get into the pilot’s seat. “What a beautiful creature.”

  I glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. To me, it looked like a hairless Afghan or Borzoi, or maybe a greyhound but with a crest of spines around his neck and running down the ridge of his back—in other words, not cuddly, let alone beautiful.

  But I sure as hell wasn’t going to say that, so I just smiled. “He is. He’s a stunning companion. Truly breathtaking.”

  “That sounded practiced,” Perry muttered.

  I feathered the comm channel to hit mute for a moment.“Used it at a party once when a guy showed us a picture of his son. Ugliest kid I’ve ever seen, and I’ve got two cousins who look like barbecued trolls.”

  Perry winked. “Good move. You’re a natural diplomat, boss.”

  We arranged with Ajax traffic control to proceed directly
to a rendezvous point with Rovan out in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, he and his… dog… had been hunting, an annual ritual intended to help them bond.

  “Is that the point of your, ah, time out in the field? To bond?” I asked Rovan.

  His nod was enthusiastic.“That’s exactly why. I can’t wait for you to meet Rovan-ir. He’s a real sweetheart.”

  I pasted a polite smile on my face again. “Looking forward to it. As I said, he’s breathtaking.”

  Except Rovan-ir did turn out to be a gentle and surprisingly intelligent creature, and, once I was in his presence, yes, he actually was breathtaking. He reminded me of my neighbor’s Great Dane—huge and formidable, but also noble and warm. As Rovan coaxed him aboard, I held out my hand for him to sniff, since all I knew about dogs was that they wanted to smell you. He did, then opened his mouth and closed it around my hand. I tensed as the sharp points of his teeth dimpled my flesh.

  “Uh—”

  Rovan uttered a hissing rumble deep in his narrow chest, what seemed to be his version of laughter. “He’s telling you that he accepts you—that he could savage you but chooses not to.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you, Rovan-ir, for not doing that.”

  The beast released my hand, then repeated the little ritual with Torina. He turned to Icky, who just glowered back at the hunterloper.

  “Icky, go ahead, make a new friend,” I said.

  “Thanks, but… we Wu’tzur don’t really get along with animals.”

  “We Wu’tzur or you-in-particular Wu’tzur?”

  She sighed. “Okay, fine. I’m afraid of the damned things.” She spun on Perry, who was standing nearby. “That doesn’t include smart-assed metallic birds, by the way.”

  “What? I wasn’t going to say anything about how laughable it is that someone your size and bulk is afraid of cute little animals.”

  “Listen, you—”

  I stepped between them. “Before you two make a scene and maybe cause a diplomatic incident, let’s just get ourselves settled to fly, okay?”

  We lifted, and Netty set course for Brunus, the largest of the Daren-thal cities on Ajax. I’d read up on these people before arriving, so I knew they obviously weren’t unaware of the realities of known space. In fact, they were capable of spaceflight but for the most part chose not to leave their homeworld. They lived a strange sort of hybrid existence, happily making full use of the latest tech while also living a relatively primitive lifestyle. The hunting ritual in which Rovan had been engaged with his fearsome beast was just one example of a culture firmly tied to their natural environment.

  “I understand that you don’t really do politics, either,” I said, offering Rovan a cup of tea brewed from herbs native to Ajax that we’d acquired on our way here. I took a seat in the galley beside Torina, across from Rovan. The Daren-thal cultural scholar had been forced to kind of fold himself into the available space, him being nearly a head taller than me. Rovan-ir lay on the deck beside him. The creature was an alien one called a hunterloper, but to me it was very much just a big dog, right down to its resting posture. The only doggy attribute missing was a tongue hanging out as it panted.

  Rovan paused a moment, then shook his head slowly from side to side. “That’s the correct no gesture among humans, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. I’m always interested in expanding my cultural horizons—sometimes I get too immersed in mine. Anyway, no, we don’t practice politics as they’re generally understood elsewhere. My people mostly lack personal ambition. Our focus has always been on the collective good, so we select people by random draw to function as our governing body.”

  I frowned at that. “Really? What happens if you draft someone who doesn’t want the job?”

  “That’s… not really a consideration. It’s an honored social obligation to fulfill a term as a provost representing a district. The term lasts for exactly three years, and then the provost is discharged and a new one is selected as a replacement. One person can never serve more than a single term in their life.”

  I sat back. Huh. It sounded almost idyllic—no professional politicians, no scheming or backbiting or shitty political infighting. I was sure there was a catch somewhere, but I wasn’t about to start probing the niceties of another race’s ways to try and find flaws.

  “That is who we’ll be dining with, in fact—this provost represents the Brunus district. He’s as anxious as I am to see the artifact you’re returning,” Rovan said, gesturing at the long, wrapped bundle on the deck nearby.

  He turned back to me. “I do have to ask, though, how it is that a Peacemaker came to deliver this to us. Surely you have more urgent jobs than acting as what amounts to a courier.”

  I chuckled. “Oh, believe me, we do. More than we could possibly complete during an entire career, or at least that’s how it feels sometimes. But we just finished a particularly tense operation, and the Masters of the Peacemaker Guild saw this as sort of a—”

  “Vacation?”

  This time, I laughed. “Yeah, in a way.”

  Just as I hadn’t wanted to delve into the minutiae of Rovan’s social structure, I had no particular desire to get into the details of how I’d ended up here, which included two topics I found distasteful—politics and personal ambition.

  Carter Yost, my lazyass cousin, was a hero.

  According to the public record, he’d concocted a cunning scheme that had severely bloodied a dangerous criminal enterprise of top-end assassins known as the Cabal. Then, allegedly, Carter nabbed a Nesit who went by the name Trux, ended a major crime ring, and did it all on his own.

  Naturally, none of that was true.

  But Carter was, as my Gramps said, dipped in lucky, and it was expeditious for me—and the Guild—to give credit where it wasn’t due. Namely, the carcass of one Carter Yost, who was a petulant, scheming, lazy, whiny sonofabitch who didn’t deserve to have his name on a ship’s roster, let alone be considered an asset to the Peacemakers.

  But I’m not bitter.

  Torina swept in at the end of the affair, actually saving the day, so to speak, and we could have all gone on our respectable merry ways, but since Carter was involved, that wasn’t going to happen. Despite being dipped in lucky, he also attracted flies, and now, I was being summoned to meet Master Yotov, which could be anything but good.

  Quiet and unassuming, Yotov belonged to a race with the psychic talent of insidiously persuading almost everyone she met to see her, her motives, and her actions in the best possible light. A formidable talent, it had made her the single most powerful person in the Peacemaker Guild. I met her with this in mind, determined not to fall under her almost literal spell. And I’d needed every scrap of willpower I had, since she had specifically invited me and me alone, without Perry or Torina to back me up.

  When I warily settled into her expansive office in the Keel, the innermost hub of Anvil Dark reserved for the Masters, she got straight to the point.

  “So, Peacemaker Tudor, I wanted to congratulate you on your successful mission against the Cabal.”

  Her praise rang in my ears like a song, making me feel unaccountably good about myself and pleased with her approval. Which was, of course, a lie, or at least a truth that really only existed in my mind, planted there by the sinister subtlety of her psionic influence. It took effort to work past it, so much so that I could see even a strong-willed person eventually giving in.

  “I’m sorry, Master Yotov. There must be some mistake. That was Carter’s operation.”