Distant Horizon (Backyard Starship Book 6) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Distant Horizon 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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Join the Conversation

  Connect with J.N. Chaney

  Connect with Terry Maggert

  About the Authors

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  1

  I shook my head in disgusted wonder. “This has got to be the sleaziest menagerie of characters I’ve ever seen.”

  Torina nodded. “Right? When they look at you, they kind of leave an oily residue, don’t they?”

  We’d stopped a class seven workboat that was outbound from Dregs, and Netty noted that its transponder data actually matched another class seven currently impounded by the Eridani Federation. Trafficking in bootleg transponder codes was big business. If yours was subject to a warrant, then just switching to a blank code wasn’t going to cut it. It would attract unwanted attention anyway, and your cover would inevitably end up blown because no one was ever as slick as they thought they were. Genuine codes, on the other hand, that actually conformed to registry databases barely attracted any notice at all. The vast majority of ships in known space didn’t receive updates to their transponder databases regularly, so they’d never notice a bogus code. It made using a pirated code a good bet.

  Until you ran into a Peacemaker whose database was updated pretty much in real time, that is. Combine that with an attentive AI like Netty, and you were pretty much screwed.

  Perry hopped up beside us with a metallic clack-clack of alloy talons on the deck plate, a sound I’d come to associate with good advice. When Perry and I put our heads together, problems generally went away—and often, at the speed of an AI’s computational power. Icky and Zeno were checking the boat’s bill of lading against the actual cargo, while Perry had been scouring their computers, leaving no file unexplored.

  “To use a precise scientific term, there are about a bazillion crimes recorded in their logs,” Perry said, then raised his voice. “I mean, if you’re going to fiddle your cargo registry and smuggle shit, you should at least make an attempt to cover it up.”

  The nearest of the skeezy crew, a pot-bellied Yonnox, shot Perry a rude gesture.

  “Sorry, my friend, but I don’t have a mother,” Perry said, then turned back to Torina and me. “It’s all really small, even trivial shit, though. These guys aren’t exactly rocket scientists when it comes to petty crime. It seems to be their stock in trade. None of the payoffs are big enough to fund an operation past lunch.”

  “They aren’t rocket scientists when it comes to taking care of their ship, either—which is kind of ironic when you think about it. I don’t know when they last tuned their drive, but it’s got more harmonics than that Synclavion World-Organ thing you told me about,” Zeno said over her shoulder while rooting through an open cargo pod.

  I scanned the crew. Two Yonnox, a human, and a couple of S’rall. The latter were a surprise, frankly, because the S’rall were well known as homebodies who rarely left their planet. All grease stains and scowls, they seemed seedier and sketchier than the others.

  Zeno finished up the manifest and shrugged. “This manifest is a mess. There are things on it that aren’t here, and things that are here that have no official record.” She handed me the data slate showing the items that couldn’t be reconciled. It was most of them. “But nothing notably illegal. Probably some stuff that’s stolen, but I’m not sure it’s really worth our time trying to match missing crates of hatch bolts against a theft report somewhere in known space.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Zeno. Unfortunately, incompetence and sloppy bookkeeping aren’t crimes.”

  “Yeah,” one of the Yonnox snapped.

  I rolled my eyes. “You guys are still up for charges for your illegal transponder code, so don’t get too excited about your freedom yet.”

  The other Yonnox shrugged. “We just fly it. We don’t know nothing about transponder bullshit.”

  I glanced at Torina. “That’s the outer space version of I was just holding it for a friend—”

  “Van? Rolis here.”

  I frowned. Rolis, who rejoined our crew after quite happily being installed into a new version of the standard maintenance bot commonly named Waldo, had stayed aboard the Fafnir. A disembodied identity loaded onto a sophisticated chip, he was an oddity. Technically, he’d been murdered, his essential self stolen in the process and stuck into the chip—another victim of the elusive identity-theft ring we’d been chasing for what now seemed like forever. But while for the vast majority of those who’d been brutalized this way it was nothing but horror, Rolis had embraced his new digital existence. We’d offered to procure an organic body for him, but he was happy being Waldo.

  He was also a skilled spacecraft structural engineer and had done a mandatory stint as a gunner aboard a warship. It meant our Waldo was far more than just a simple maintenance AI who could diagnose and fix complex problems with the Fafnir. I was quite happy to have him aboard, although his actual status was uncertain, caught somewhere between an Auxiliary crewmember like Torina or Zeno and an AI like Perry and Netty. He had, however, saved the Fafnir and almost lost his own life in the process, so I didn’t care—he had nothing to prove to me.

  “What’s up, Rolis?”

  “That workboat you’re on—its hull has been expanded by about two meters along most of its ventral length.”

  I glanced at the sketchy crew, who were all suddenly no longer looking defiant and instead were interested in other things.

  “Really? Fascinating. I’m hardly an expert at—Perry, what’s that term?”

  “Measuring things, boss.”

  “Right. Thank you—at measuring things, so naturally, my math might be off a bit. But even a simple fellow like myself can see that increasing the size of a ship will yield extra space. Is that accurate, Rolis?”

  “I’d say so. These off-the-shelf workboats get modified all the time. I’ve worked on a few jobs like that myself, back when I was, you know, all fleshy and squishy and stuff.”

  “Good catch, and thanks again, Rolis.”

  I grabbed the nearest Yonnox, the one ostensibly captaining the workboat, and spun him toward me, then leaned in with menace. “Care to show me around downstairs?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I sighed and turned to the others. “You know, it’s not the sullen defiance or obscene gestures that bother me. It’s when they treat me like I’m stupid. That pisses me off.”

  Icky stomped to a halt in front of the Yonnox. She loomed over him, a quarter again as tall as he was and nearly twice his mass. “You know what pisses me off?” she growled, her voice like stones grinding underwater.

  I shook my head. “No, Icky, I do not. What pisses you off?”

  She poked the Yonnox in the chest hard enough to knock him against the oily bulkhead. “This guy.”

  The Yonnox gave his head a quick shake in the face of Icky’s menace. “Look, I just fly the damned thing, I don’t—”

  Icky bristled, but I touched her arm. “Let’s just find our way into their little secret compartment. I’d rather not let them get anywhere near it, thanks.”

  “Van, we’ve got four deck plates here with no sub-frame under them,” Perry said from a few meters away. “Seems they just interlock with one another.”

  “Torina, Zeno, can you watch these guys? Icky, you can pry up a deck plate, right?”

  “Just show me where to start.”

  “Well well. I’m not sure what I expected to find down here, but it was not this,” I said, cro
uching a little in the long, narrow compartment. At roughly two meters high, my head didn’t quite touch the overhead, but it was still a tight fit.

  Especially since most of the empty area was filled with a spaceship.

  Well, maybe a spaceship. It reminded me uncannily of how old tech magazines on Earth from back in the twenties and thirties imagined future vehicles, all art deco curves and bubble canopies and flaring tail fins.

  “This is… gorgeous,” I said out loud.

  I ran my hand across the sleek alloy. Whatever it was, it was only about six or seven meters long and two meters across, narrow and sleek in a way that implied speed. The hull, smooth to the touch, was a misty gray color so nondescript as to be hardly a color at all. My fingers felt pressure as I touched the hull, but got no purchase on it, sliding along as if I was trying to handle a wet bar of soap. Little flourishes of a bright metal like chrome may have had some function, or they might have been just that, little flourishes. It looked like art. It looked like quicksilver.

  And it looked fast. Even sitting here, stuffed into this hidden cargo hold, it gave the impression of racing along at some insane speed despite sitting perfectly still.

  Icky couldn’t fit into the hold and could only poke her head in from above. “Van, what’s—oh. Oh wow. What is that?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  She withdrew and I heard some conversation, then Zenophir clambered into the hold. “Oh, it’s one of these,” she said.

  “One of what? What is it?”

  “A—thing. A really fast little thing.”

  “You have no clue, do you?”

  “None at all. All I can say is that it’s a ship—which you’ve probably already figured out.”

  “I’m going to need a bit more detail, if you please.”

  She touched it. “Wow. That is one hell of a low coefficient of kinetic friction. Put that together with all that streamlining, and I’d say this is meant to fly inside an atmosphere.”

  We pushed along the narrow compartment past it, noting that it seemed to have stubby wings that were currently retracted into its slender hull. That further suggested that it had been designed for atmospheric flight. Moreover, unless its drive was tech beyond even the current bleeding edge of anything in known space, it was far too small for any sort of sustained spaceflight.

  “Okay, I give up. And I don’t say that lightly because I take pride in my knowledge base after decades as an engineer,” Zeno finally admitted.

  We exited the cramped compartment and questioned the crew, whose responses varied from claiming that all they knew was that they were supposed to carry it from Dregs to Tau Ceti, to claiming—unconvincingly—that they had no idea it was even down there. We finally sent imagery back to the Fafnir, where Rolis broke the case.

  “Oh, hey, that’s a Rumor,” he immediately said.

  I glanced at the others and their blank looks. “A Rumor? What’s a Rumor?”

  “Insert joke about defining what a rumor is for Van here,” Perry muttered.

  I shot him a lip-curl, but Rolis came back right away.

  “It’s a Conoku atmospheric racer. It’s not a sport thing, though. It’s involved in whatever they call the process of an immature Conoku becoming a mature one—so a rite-of-passage sort of thing.”

  “Conoku? Huh, that’s not a race you hear about very often, unless you’re talking about Linulla the Starsmith and his adorable brood of little crab kids.”

  “Yeah, here it is. Netty just fished it out of infospace. The Rumor is used for ritualized races on a moon called Ock-kuss-nar. It’s part of a larger coming-of-age thing that involves feasting and dancing and going like a bat out of hell through the upper atmo.”

  “Bat out of hell?” Zeno asked.

  “Cultural reference that means not just fast, but stupidly fast,” I answered.

  “Absolutely accurate then,” Perry added.

  I tried to imagine Linulla dancing. It made me smile.

  “Okay. Netty, contact Linulla so we can talk to him about this, please.” I turned to the crew. “Meantime, folks, this ship is now officially impounded, and you’re under arrest for transporting stolen cultural artifacts.”

  One of the Yonnox peered back at me blankly. “That’s a thing?”

  I sighed. “Yes, sir, that’s a thing. Perry will explain it to you.”

  Perry nodded. “And I shall use suitably simple, ideally one-syllable words to do it.”

  “To do what?” the Yonnox asked.

  Perry turned to look at me, his amber gaze one of resignation. “You might as well go do something else, Van. This is gonna take a while.”

  “So that’s what we found, Linulla, one of those little ships of your peoples’ called a—”

  “A Rumor, yes,” Linulla said over the comm. I could hear a mix of outrage and excitement in his voice. “It should never have been removed from Ock-kuss-nar.”

  “Why is it called a Rumor?”

  “It’s an imperfect translation. The actual Conoku word is more like a story begun and shared, the idea being that as young Conoku pass into maturity, the story of their life truly begins. The races conducted in the Rumors are not competitive, at least in the sense of pilots competing with each other. Rather, each young Conoku will race the course trying to beat their own best time. Each Conoku will do so until they’re satisfied that they have achieved the best possible time they can, so any further attempts would just be needlessly dangerous.”

  I crossed my arms. “How dangerous is this course?”

  “At low speeds, not very. But as the Rumors are pushed harder and faster, it becomes quite dangerous. The point of it is for each Conoku to recognize their own limitations and, more importantly, come to accept them.” He waved a claw. “I realize this all must sound very complicated, even silly—”

  “No, not at all. On Earth, the transition to maturity mainly involves growing hair, getting drunk, and having to pay taxes. So your peoples’ ceremony is really quite impressive and a helluva lot more fun than some kid from Omaha growing his first mullet.”

  “The fish, or the hair?” Linulla asked.

  “Impressive. How’d you know?”

  “Baseball cards, of course. There appear to be a high rate of mullets among that class of athletes. I’m convinced it’s an elaborate mating ritual,” Linulla concluded with the air of a sage.

  “And you’d be right.”

  “I can only assume the Rumor was bought by some wealthy dilettante, then hidden on that rust bucket, and intended for racing by someone other than my people. The new owner might even have entered races for money, given the quality of that little craft,” Linulla said.

  Considering the craftsmanship and sheer engineering elegance of Conoku design, I could see why.

  “But it’s still a stolen cultural artifact, which means I need to return it to your people. Should I bring it to you, Linulla?” I asked him.

  “No. It needs to be returned to Ock-kuss-nar. I’m going to have to make some calls, mainly to get dispensation for you to visit. The moon is closed to all outsiders.”

  “Okay. Well, in the meantime, I’ll find somewhere safe to keep it, probably at Anvil Dark.”

  “I appreciate this, Van. On behalf of the Conoku, thank you.”

  “Hey, it’s what I do, Linulla. I trust you with my blade, and I hope you’ll trust me with this ship.”

  “I do, and I’m honored. Starsmith out.”

  I signed off as well and returned to the workboat, where we’d docked the Fafnir. A cutter from Dregs was en route to take the crew into custody, which prompted a derisive snort from Perry.